Hyperdimension Rising
Cannongerbil
I came here to nep at you
- Location
- Soviet Lunar Base
[x] Strypgia's plan, except replace "increase output of biofuel refinery" with "go hunting"
What? I want a dragon hunt.
What? I want a dragon hunt.
Dirtnap
Kanmusu Affecionado
probably the one where Nep spends time with her and actually talks about it.
Omegastar
fear the {CENSORED}.
....which means never
- Location
- A place
I am glad you enjoy this picture XD yes, I am the one who made that picture.
Cornuthaum
Be kind to each other.
- Location
- Austria
- Pronouns
- He/Him
You, sir or madam, are an artist and a gentlebeing.
Winter 2266: 6.2
- Location
- Singapore
...Right, you know what? I'm going to get this out first, and then worry about next turn's action plan later.
----
The Nation of Planeptune, Winter 2266
Neptune Status: Vaguely Troubled
The day is like any other. Ice falls from the sky in thick carpets, everyone who goes outside has to carry a shovel, wear a thick pair of boots, or get lucky enough to find two pairs of flat wooden board that haven't already been used for tables, benches, or for everything else that a flat piece of wood would be great for, to make a pair of skis.
Still, it's not all bad; there are children out there playing in the snow, because you can always trust a kid to have fun when it's freezing cold and shit literally starts falling out of the sky because it's so damn cold. Still, Vert wouldn't have it any other way. Because children are adorable.
But not as cute as the children she has with her.
"I cast fist!"
Ram shouts enthusiastically as she flaps her hands about with no coordination to speak of. A pile of ice not far from her rumbles, and it rises up, sharpens vaguely into the impression of a closed fist, tightly clenched. It lacks definition, style, and two fingers. But for the record, it actually looks like a hand. No hand Vert has ever seen, but it is a hand. It looks like something a kid would draw with crayons.
Pretty fitting, if you think about it.
"Focus," Blanc barks from behind, arms folded while a hapless lab-caddy - wait no that's just Matthew - holds a thermos of coffee up for her. "Tighter. Stronger. Make your ice like steel." Sometimes, Vert wishes she had the arcane gift. A Goddess does not need the ability to throw fire or summon ice to matter on any level, but it would be nice. But reminders like these, of how hard any practitioner of magic must train to become simply adequate, remind Vert that no, she would not get very far. Sloth is her sin, and she wears it with pride.
Ram grumbles as she clenches her eyes shut. "Yes, feel it with your mage senses," Blanc says evenly, like a teacher. The snow-fist compacts, tightens, grows mild definition. Grooves cut down each lumpy, oversized finger as snow slakes off, dividing them into four. The faint imprint of a folded thumb grows deeper, rumbling as the snow sinks into itself and becomes ice. The barest hints of reflection peek through the snow layer as ice crystals form from pressure and arcane persuasion. Rom looks on from beside Blanc, hands clasped over her older sister's.
Ah, to have a sister. Vert longs for one. She has not stopped longing for one. But since her mother is dead and her father is a head… well, she must make do. All little girls will be her little sisters. She will take care of them, and they will be cute. Just the cutest.
The snow-fist erupts midway and falls apart into a pile of snow again. Ram lets out an exhausted sigh and flops backward onto the snow. "Aaaaaaaaaaah why is it so haaaaaaaard," she whines.
Blanc steps forward, sipping her coffee even as its surface starts freezing over into coffee crystals. She kneels before her sister, keeping the same expression as ever, and slackens her shoulders. She hugs her sister, coffee frozen over and tossed to the side, and presses Ram's head into her nonexistent chest.
And then she looks at Vert, dead in the eye, and snarls,
"Not my fucking sisters."
----
Vert wakes up screaming in the middle of the night, and swears bloody vengeance for Blanc's sisterly affections.
----
When Noire went to bed the previous night, Neptune was washing up and brushing her teeth. She's seemed uneasy ever since she fell asleep while settling her nation's future economics after she promised she would help. Which, admittedly, is a very good reason to be uneasy towards the person who is doing her a favour.
It'll help Lastation in the future, sure, but Neptune really should be appreciative of the good things in her life! L-Like her girlfriend! Who she h-hasn't really spent q-q-quality time with. Which is understandable, Neptune is working through some heavy things in her life, like being afflicted with the god-essence of the Fallen Goddess – and the fact that there is only one Fallen Goddess does not make it less awful – but still! They've been official for over a year, and they haven't… they still haven't… they haven't had s-s—
--ANYWAYS THE POINT IS SHE WOKE UP AND NEPTUNE WASN'T IN BED. AT SIX AM.
NEPTUNE DOESN'T EVEN WAKE UP BEFORE TEN ANYMORE.
NO SHE'S NOT BEING FLUSTERED ABOUT THE S… T-THE S-SE… T-THE THING! THE BABY THING! THAT MAKES BABIES! BUT NOT BETWEEN GIRLS BECAUSE THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS, MAGIC BE DAMNED!
She stomps out of her room that morning, face steaming.
"You doing oka—" Shirou asks as she comes in for breakfast, before he gets a bowl full of rice in his face for breakfast, courtesy of a tsundere in full relapse who is also his little sister.
"Looks like she needs to fu—" Blanc says as Noire stomps off for work, before Noire tosses Histoire at her – and the cooing winter twins sail, cajoling and squealing, straight into their sister's face.
"Mornin' Nowa~" Neptune waves as she stomps into her office, hoping for a moment to herself to calm herself and her cheeks, before she is set off into another episode of squealing and 'awawawawa's by Neptune's kind and tired smile. It took a minute for her to compose herself. Well, maybe several.
Maybe half an hour.
"Neptune?!" She said finally, cool as ice. "Why are you here?!" She asked, coolly.
Neptune passed her a bag wordlessly, presumably to breathe into. It happened to have a D-Pad on it, because it happened to be one of her own panic bags. Noire slaps it away. It hits the ground with an unsatisfying crinkle.
"Oh oh I'm so sorry Neptune I'm just a bundle of nerves and please answer my question why are you here."
"Ah, you made yourself hot and bothered with your internal tsundere monologue." Neptune nods understandingly. She holds the pen in her hand up to her head, and clicks it every other second. "I do it all the time. Well, not really because I don't tsun-tsun myself into a tizzy, but I empathise."
"COULD YOU NOT."
"Sorry, sorry… Soooo I couldn't sleep last night."
"…So you came to work."
Neptune nods like an excited puppy. "Yep."
"…In my office."
Neptune nods like an excited puppy again. "Yeah… Turns out I don't actually have my own office."
"You have your sparring room!" Neptune's Sparring Room is a known and distinct location in the areas of the Basilicom that were Goddess-only, in fact. It is notable that unlike literally everyone else's sparring room, it is empty except for the small mini-fridge with pudding.
Neptune shrugs, looks at her pen like she's going to nibble the tip, and thinks better of it. "It doesn't have a desk." A beat. "Yet. But I felt like working now, so. I figured, who has the best, nicest, office-est looking office in here?"
Noire looks around at her office, from her wall of charts to her wall of Five-Month Plans (because Five-Year Plans are wasteful and they don't need that kind of long-term planning yet) and up at her logarithmic table ceiling, and then at her desk covered in sheets and orders and old forms they found in stasis vaults.
"So, you went to Blanc's lab but the door was locked?" She asks flatly.
"Yeah…" Neptune sighs. "Also she would eat me alive. Or kill me and make Matt eat my corpse. Or freeze me and let the twins count how many licks to get to the centre of a Neppy Pop. Or have Histoire make pouty eyes at me." The both of them shudder at the humanity of such a warcrime. "So I came here!"
"…I was joking about the Blanc's lab thing."
"Oh." Neptune looks away. "Uhm." She looks at Noire, then away again, then under the desk. "Oh, darn, you don't have a sinister trap door button."
"It's activated by sinister whistling," Noire responds, still as deadpan as ever. Neptune kicks herself for expecting Noire to have such an easily-subverted mechanism. Of course! How cunning for Noire to exploit the fact that Neptune cannot actually sing! "Look, Neptune, you can't just walk in and do my work for m—" She stops midway, reading through one of Neptune's dispatch forms, and whistles. To Neptune's disappointment, the floor does not fall away somewhere in the room – and she checks, too! "This is actually pretty well done."
"I learned from the best!" Neptune preens.
"Your handwriting is ineligible and I'll have to redo like…" Noire breezes through the entire stack in seconds, hands doing the 'vrrrrt' noise as she cuts through from top to bottom, and shakes her head. "…Well, okay it's not all bad, but I'll have to redo like half of it. But I guess it's okay." Neptune celebrates in her – well, Noire's - chair, for that is an improvement on Noire redoing everything. And she knows she does, while Neptune isn't looking. Because Neptune is always looking.
"Alright, Neptune, come on." Noire hops up and sits on the other side of the desk, leaning against one arm and into Neptune's face. The close proximity brings heat to Noire's cheeks, but – no no not now she's trying to be serious and make a point. "What's the problem?"
"Uh…" She smiles sheepishly – but it feels fake, and forced. And Noire has grown used to seeing through Neptune's very good fake smiles. "The problem is how little work I actually do?"
"That's never bothered you before, and you do…" Noire suppresses the thought that maybe Neptune really should be doing more for her nation in her gut, "…Enough. Come on, it bothered you enough that you didn't sleep. And I don't see pudding or Tetris around, so you didn't do that, either. So it's a big bother."
"…You really are something else, aren't you?" Neptune asks. She looks at her with one eye narrowed and the other raised as high as she can get it. Noire smirks, and tosses one of her twintails.
"Of course, I only do everything."
Neptune giggles and clicks her pen excitedly. Well, Noire's pen. But it's in her hand so bleh. "You haven't done me!"
And then Noire had another case of the Tsuns and nothing got done until right before lunchtime.
----
"OKAY," Noire seethes, face still flush and bothered. She is not going to be distracted from this! Damn Neptune and how flip-floppy she is about her personal issues! "Do you want to talk about it OR DO YOU WANT TO MAKE MORE JOKES AT MY EXPENSE?!"
Neptune wilts like a dead flower that got shown the business end of a plasma cannon. Like she should. "Sorry…"
They sit there, dithering. Noire behind her desk, as is her rightful place. Neptune on the office couch, lying down like she's having a therapy session. Which… she sort of is? But Compa isn't here, so… Well, if they don't call it a therapy session they don't have to bother her. Right? Right.
"…So I had a dream vision of Luteus." Neptune glances at Noire, who gestures for her to continue. "It was like… a meeting memory. A memory of a meeting. There were twenty Goddess, all in the same absurdly ostentatious room, and they were friends! Just friends, who happened to be divine beings who happen to be political figures who happen to be having an official high-level meeting concerning the fate of their world."
Neptune stops, and looks at Noire's expression. She frowns when she notices that Noire dropped her pen. "What?"
"I… I mean, I know you're not dumb, but why're you using 'ostentatious' of all things?"
"It was really big and fancy, is the point! I'm pretty sure we couldn't build something that fancy if we tried. Like, really tried. Like, it was probably the fruits of their labours over decades. Who knows how many master craftspeople and whatever it took to make that one ridiculously classy room?"
"…You sound jealous."
"A little bit, sure! But the thing is, they were discussing some alien invasion thing—" Neptune snarls, like she choked on a biscuit, and claws at the air in front of her face. "Focus focus focus, that's not the point! The meeting's just the background, the problem is that I saw Lu again, okay?"
"You, uh… Neptune, do you need a moment?"
"I'm fine," Neptune insists, hands clasped over her chest. "She was… I guess not really her, it's a 'smart message' she left behind, no idea what that means but whatever, she didn't know the password to her laptop we found."
"That's a shame," Noire says flatly.
"It's… probably also not her laptop. She wants us to destroy it, and never go in that room again."
"Oh." They look at each other, frown on frown, but each is not sure if they should start first. God, it's like they're flirting. Except this is distinctively not sexy at all. Ugh. Noire takes the first step again. "So… are we?"
"No!" Neptune shouts suddenly and covers her mouth. "Sorry, sorry. I… can't. It could help us, and who knows how much it's worth, and it's also the last closest thing we have to her stuff, but I also don't really want to betray her memory even if she's being really selfish about it and I just ugh I don't know! And she's gone. I can't even talk to her again. She died, her memory went away, and I have her actual memories – or pieces of them – in that thumb drive over there."
Noire looks, and there it is. A glistening clear gold crystal memory stick, emblazoned with the symbol of Nacma… leaning against the inner wall of a coffee mug. That – she takes a smell – was filled with coffee not too long ago. "Neptune, did you just dunk the only thing of a dead Goddess we have left inside a cup of coffee?"
"It's sharicite, it adds to the flavour. That thing's as stubborn as she was."
Noire looks at the memory stick, dangling it from her fingers, and considers getting her own coffee to test it out. But no, that is stupid. That is a long walk and this is an unbelievably important thing they have right now. Neptune is just so unbelievably reckless about her things. Jeez.
Neptune sits up and curls up against her legs, and then throws her hood on as an afterthought. "I dunno who to go to, though. I feel like Histy will get Sadsty if she finds out about that, but then she's probably also the only one who can read it, so… Unless you can read it?"
"This was in you until recently, you could probably read it better than I can," Noire says dryly. "And you obviously can't so what do you think? Histoire will want to know, go bother her about the memory. Is that it?" Noire feels like a bad person feeling like this, but it feels so… samey. Literally, the same problem Neptune has been going through for the past year and a half. Seriously, she and Neptune both know that Neptune can get over this. And should have, by now.
"Uhm…" Neptune curls up tighter, until her chest is incredibly tightly mushed against her knees – and she can see that even through the hoodie, that's how tight she's hugging herself. "Well, a-actually that was just the thing I was telling you to stall for time… Like, it's not that big of a deal, I just wanted to say something that wasn't my actual problem first… yeah…"
Noire glares at Neptune.
"Yeah… I deserve that."
Noire glares at Neptune.
"…Please stop?"
"What else did you find out?" Noire asks. Her patience is wearing thinner and thinner, and honestly her patience had a trim figure to begin with. It does not need to get thinner. "Come on, stop flip-flopping and say it!"
"OKAY I'M ACTUALLY A LOT MORE REI-NFECTED THEN ANYONE REALLY THOUGHT IT'S ACTUALLY A FIVE ON THE SCALE NOT A TWO WAAAAAH PLEASE FORGIVE ME NOIREEEEE"
Noire blinks. She expected something more along the lines of 'I cheated on you with Vert', or 'I'm actually heterosexual', or 'Nepgear made out with Uni and I helped'. You know, outlandish, not… this. "What."
"Oh." Neptune's eyes dart from left to right, then briefly cross as she really grinds her mind-gears in concentration. "Right Lu never told you about the Throwback Scale. Well… want an infodump?"
"Not really," Noire admits with a grumble and pinches her nose, "But lay it on me."
----
Things have been pretty good in the years since Neptune saved her from herself, thinks Histoire. She has friends, she gets to help them out, and she doesn't have to open fire with high-powered weaponry or dwell on what she did as SKYNET very often! Sure, she might have slightly lobotomised herself, an immature Class-VII P.I.X.I.E. AI, to function at merely Class-V AI functionality, but that's good enough, right? Nobody expects too much of her!
A-And people think she's cute! Which she is, the finest kawaologists of the old world worked on her design, b-but still! Even not knowing she was responsible for the killbots that infested the city anyways… I-It's nice!
But then, because she is Histoire, and she is friends with several Goddesses, plus those descended from the bloodlines of Goddesses and who possess the potentials for divinity… there are the bad days.
"Uuuwah, please don't use me as some sort of distraction projectile, Noire! ヽ(ﾟДﾟ)ﾉ"
"Hahahaha! Do it again, Noire! Do it again! Wheeeeeee!"
"Yaaaaaay... A-Ah, Blanc, are you okay? Can we… do it again?"
"OH FOR FUCKS SAKE GET OFF ME!"
"A-Ah! I'm so sorry, Blanc! (⊃д⊂)"
Histoire scrambles out of the knotted mess of petite brunettes as quick as she can, while a small crowd gathers around them. As it turns out, 'as quick as she can' is not very quick at all. Being able to fly and levitate on a tiny book does not help much when, uh… you are a tiny book. That is significantly smaller than even twelve year old children. Like the twins.
"Hehehe! Yay, we have Blanc all to ourselves!"
"I dunno… Blanc, do you mean us too?"
"FUCKING EVERYONE!"
"Ah, Blanc~" Vert sighs, one hand folded under her chest and the other… on her chest. Histoire isn't the kind of artificial intelligence who doesn't understand people - 'beep boop what are these feelings', one of her parents would like to joke - but sometimes, people will just be people. And Vert will just be Vert. Despite knowing full well what Blanc will do to her face. "How l-lewd~"
And there it goes. Everyone present reflexively covers their eyes and their chest in anticipation of the battle to come. Oh, the mornings are usually nice and quiet. But then the loud ones happen, and they are very loud.
Blanc, for her part, plays her role very well. Like a horrible sea monster breaching the surface, she tosses her twin sisters off like tiny boulders and turns the temperature in her personal space down several degrees. "VERT I AM SERIOUSLY GOING TO SHOVE THE BUTT OF MY HAMMER UP YOURS!"
"Ah, but I don't have a hammer…" Vert looks at Blanc, smirking. She sighs, cheeks flushed, and puts a finger against her lips. "Unless... You're offering to be my hammer, Blanc-chan…?"
"YOU MOTHERFUCKING--"
"I'm getting out of here," IF groans. Compa says nothing, for she is already in the stairwell, holding the door open for her other two friends. "Hey, Shirou, stop being a bitch and let's get to work already."
"I just wanted to know how she's doing…" Shirou weeps. Curled up in the corner, with the bowl of rice still on his head, like some sort of lumpy plastic hat, there is the distinct air of a man who truly understands suffering, for it is his life. "Why is she so mean to her big brother… I just wanted to know if she's okay…"
"There there, big bro," Uni sighs, and pats the part of his head without rice patronisingly. "We'll make a Hero of Justice out of you yet, I guess."
"Ara ara… n-not so hard, Blanc-chan~"
"WOMAN I AM GOING TO HAMMER YOUR OVARIES SO HARD YOUR MOTHER'S GONNA FEEL IT! YOU'LL NEVER HAVE SIBLINGS IN EVERY POSSIBLE REALITY!"
"Ahn, how lewd~"
"SERIOUSLY! STOP THAT!"
"You should probably get out of here too, Histoire." IF says, in between winces, as Blanc summons her hammer and Vert gracefully dodges every rage-infused swing. "This time, I'm thinking… extensive collateral damage."
"Thank you, IF. I'll be in the lab, probably pouring over those Field Manuals you found the other time. Oh, many thanks for finding those, by the way. （=´∇｀=）"
"Thanks, but don't look at me, our Seigi no Mikata here found it."
"I just want to know if she's okay…" Shirou weeps piteously. "Why is my sister a tsundere… I just wanna sit home and cook and make people happy and okay…"
Uni makes a face at him and then looks at IF and Histoire with a sad frown. It's almost comical, seeing someone as tall as Shirou being supported by someone as small as Uni. And Uni is pretty small. Not Histoire small, but… pretty small! "Yeah, he's completely out of it. I don't think he can work, boss."
"Eh, I'll just dock his pay."
"...We don't get pay."
"I'll dock his pay the second we do." IF looks at Compa, and they shrug at each other. "Waiting on Nep and Noire too, over here."
Looking at the young adult swordmage, Histoire makes a mental note to talk to Noire about this later. "I see… I'll thank him when he can accept it. ( ´ ▽ ` )ﾉ "
Something explodes, and those of them watching from the door to the stairwell see Vert landing on her feet in front of them and summoning her spear at last.
"Okay, I may have gone a little far! Blanc, I'm sorry, please cool off and forgive me!"
"I AM GOING TO BLOW YOUR TITS OFF AND GLUE YOUR LEGS TO THE STUMPS!"
"How lewd... No, wait, Blanc stop it!"
"FUCK YOOOOOOOOOOO--"
"...Close the door please. )Д⊙`)"
"Yeeeep."
And so all of them vanish to the lower levels of the Basilicom, as the nascent nations of Leanbox and Lowee engage in war for the first, but certainly not last, time in their history.
----
The labs are silent this time of the day, as they usually are. Blanc runs a tight ship, but she also asks that researchers take time outside of the lab and do practical experiments from time to time. Which means that, in practice, nobody except Blanc, Nepgear, herself, and maybe Matthew come in before noon, unless she specifically requested it.
And right now, Blanc is… busy, Nepgear is helping her father, and Matthew hasn't shown up yet. That's good. She has some time to herself. Gliding by their research into Industrial Vehicles, across their practical prototypes in the corner, around the many requests Blanc has filed for Noire to give her more researchers (which amount to scraps of paper with the words 'I need more smart people' written in harsh font) but never gotten around to putting on her desk… Histoire arrives at her desk.
Histoire, like everyone in research, has her own desk. Her size was never an issue. The way Blanc saw it, she was a full member of the team and so she deserved a full-sized desk. Histoire didn't use most of it, since she worked through the network anyway, but she certainly appreciated the gesture!
It certainly let her get on with… her other projects.
She pulled a drawer open with no small amount of effort and glided into it. It was a large drawer, you see, with plenty of space for a little book pixie to float around in it. If anyone saw her in such a drawer, they would no doubt squeal in joy and try to grab her. Which is very rude, but then Histoire has long since grown accustomed to it, especially with the exceedingly-grabby Neptune around. But nobody will ever see her in a drawer.
Not this drawer, at least.
Her, in her little shrine to CPU Yellow Heart, Histoire sits before the largest remaining portrait of the dead Goddess she could. It was once a religious image, with the old goddess standing with arms spread, soaring high above the ground, backlit by the sun. Her expression blank, almost imperious, but at the same time compassionate.
And here she sits, in front of Luteus. Alone, in a drawer. The silence in the box is deafening, like a lion's roar.
"I'm sorry I can't bring you back."
She sniffs, and wipes away tiny digital tears with her sleeve. Even though she has friends now, people who accept her and care for her, it doesn't matter if she can't save the first person that tried to save her.
"I can't even bring back your memory…"
Perhaps if she was still in Neptune's head. Perhaps then, she could have given Luteus her own body. But now?
Histoire sits there, alone.
Now, she doesn't know what to do.
----
"…Wow that really sucks."
"Yeah!" Neptune nods like an excited puppy, legs kicking, and rocks back and forth like a demented roly-poly. "Like, I thought it was kind of weird too, because a two on the scale usually just means some memory bleedthrough and maybe mental influence, but I figured Taint works differently, hence the physical transformation! But no, I'm just really, really sick with Rei Disease."
"…I kind of like the physical transformation though," Noire admits as heat flushes her cheeks. G-God dammit not again. Focus, Noire, focus. You know Neptune's actual problem now – she's worried about the Fallen Goddess Essence inside her is about to take over even more, and wants to learn about avenues of purification.
"…Noire, this—" And she points at everything, from the hair to the eyes to the everything below the neck, "--technically isn't me."
"Iknowyoujustlookreallygoodanyways. S-So! Purification! M-Maybe we could…" She swallows. Wow that was a lot of saliva built up in her mouth. "You know… engage in the… s-sanctity of… m-m-marital p-procreation?"
For a moment there, Noire wonders if Neptune started laughing or was getting ready to jump her bones. But alas, she was just unfolding herself into a sitting position. For shame, girlfriend. "Yeah, about that… I mean, I kind of want to, too?"
Noire cheers internally, but then realises – of course she does! She doesn't have this body just so she could be insecure about it! Come on Noire your parents look pretty alright! Even if your father could do with some parenting lessons… but admittedly he's getting better so there's that. She supposes. "Wait, I hear a 'but'."
Neptune nods sadly – at least, Noire thinks she is. "I know you, like, subclassed into Paladin, so you can purify pretty good? But I get the feeling that if we do the, uh, cooperative arts and crafts, at the very least I'm going to split this taint between the two of us. And uh, when I initially got taint…"
Memories flash past Noire's eyes. From the complex expression, Neptune's too. She is still pretty beat up about stabbing her father, and Noire can't blame her. And Neptune actually still really loves her father. "…Yeah, I can see the, ah, lack of appeal."
"Yeah… so yeah, no sexytimes." Neptune smiles sheepishly. "Sorry."
Noire sighs. Well, it's been a year and a half. What's another foreseeable future? "Can we at least cuddle?"
Her girlfriend smiles at that. "We can do that now, if you like."
And so they do.
----
Total Cost:
13 Resources
1 Industry
Faith: 67.5%
-5.0% (Next Door to Hell)
+2.5% (Food Surplus)
+3.0% (Compa)
Shares: 32/74
----
The Nation of Planeptune, Winter 2266
Neptune Status: Vaguely Troubled
The day is like any other. Ice falls from the sky in thick carpets, everyone who goes outside has to carry a shovel, wear a thick pair of boots, or get lucky enough to find two pairs of flat wooden board that haven't already been used for tables, benches, or for everything else that a flat piece of wood would be great for, to make a pair of skis.
Still, it's not all bad; there are children out there playing in the snow, because you can always trust a kid to have fun when it's freezing cold and shit literally starts falling out of the sky because it's so damn cold. Still, Vert wouldn't have it any other way. Because children are adorable.
But not as cute as the children she has with her.
"I cast fist!"
Ram shouts enthusiastically as she flaps her hands about with no coordination to speak of. A pile of ice not far from her rumbles, and it rises up, sharpens vaguely into the impression of a closed fist, tightly clenched. It lacks definition, style, and two fingers. But for the record, it actually looks like a hand. No hand Vert has ever seen, but it is a hand. It looks like something a kid would draw with crayons.
Pretty fitting, if you think about it.
"Focus," Blanc barks from behind, arms folded while a hapless lab-caddy - wait no that's just Matthew - holds a thermos of coffee up for her. "Tighter. Stronger. Make your ice like steel." Sometimes, Vert wishes she had the arcane gift. A Goddess does not need the ability to throw fire or summon ice to matter on any level, but it would be nice. But reminders like these, of how hard any practitioner of magic must train to become simply adequate, remind Vert that no, she would not get very far. Sloth is her sin, and she wears it with pride.
Ram grumbles as she clenches her eyes shut. "Yes, feel it with your mage senses," Blanc says evenly, like a teacher. The snow-fist compacts, tightens, grows mild definition. Grooves cut down each lumpy, oversized finger as snow slakes off, dividing them into four. The faint imprint of a folded thumb grows deeper, rumbling as the snow sinks into itself and becomes ice. The barest hints of reflection peek through the snow layer as ice crystals form from pressure and arcane persuasion. Rom looks on from beside Blanc, hands clasped over her older sister's.
Ah, to have a sister. Vert longs for one. She has not stopped longing for one. But since her mother is dead and her father is a head… well, she must make do. All little girls will be her little sisters. She will take care of them, and they will be cute. Just the cutest.
The snow-fist erupts midway and falls apart into a pile of snow again. Ram lets out an exhausted sigh and flops backward onto the snow. "Aaaaaaaaaaah why is it so haaaaaaaard," she whines.
Blanc steps forward, sipping her coffee even as its surface starts freezing over into coffee crystals. She kneels before her sister, keeping the same expression as ever, and slackens her shoulders. She hugs her sister, coffee frozen over and tossed to the side, and presses Ram's head into her nonexistent chest.
And then she looks at Vert, dead in the eye, and snarls,
"Not my fucking sisters."
----
Vert wakes up screaming in the middle of the night, and swears bloody vengeance for Blanc's sisterly affections.
----
When Noire went to bed the previous night, Neptune was washing up and brushing her teeth. She's seemed uneasy ever since she fell asleep while settling her nation's future economics after she promised she would help. Which, admittedly, is a very good reason to be uneasy towards the person who is doing her a favour.
It'll help Lastation in the future, sure, but Neptune really should be appreciative of the good things in her life! L-Like her girlfriend! Who she h-hasn't really spent q-q-quality time with. Which is understandable, Neptune is working through some heavy things in her life, like being afflicted with the god-essence of the Fallen Goddess – and the fact that there is only one Fallen Goddess does not make it less awful – but still! They've been official for over a year, and they haven't… they still haven't… they haven't had s-s—
--ANYWAYS THE POINT IS SHE WOKE UP AND NEPTUNE WASN'T IN BED. AT SIX AM.
NEPTUNE DOESN'T EVEN WAKE UP BEFORE TEN ANYMORE.
NO SHE'S NOT BEING FLUSTERED ABOUT THE S… T-THE S-SE… T-THE THING! THE BABY THING! THAT MAKES BABIES! BUT NOT BETWEEN GIRLS BECAUSE THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS, MAGIC BE DAMNED!
She stomps out of her room that morning, face steaming.
"You doing oka—" Shirou asks as she comes in for breakfast, before he gets a bowl full of rice in his face for breakfast, courtesy of a tsundere in full relapse who is also his little sister.
"Looks like she needs to fu—" Blanc says as Noire stomps off for work, before Noire tosses Histoire at her – and the cooing winter twins sail, cajoling and squealing, straight into their sister's face.
"Mornin' Nowa~" Neptune waves as she stomps into her office, hoping for a moment to herself to calm herself and her cheeks, before she is set off into another episode of squealing and 'awawawawa's by Neptune's kind and tired smile. It took a minute for her to compose herself. Well, maybe several.
Maybe half an hour.
"Neptune?!" She said finally, cool as ice. "Why are you here?!" She asked, coolly.
Neptune passed her a bag wordlessly, presumably to breathe into. It happened to have a D-Pad on it, because it happened to be one of her own panic bags. Noire slaps it away. It hits the ground with an unsatisfying crinkle.
"Oh oh I'm so sorry Neptune I'm just a bundle of nerves and please answer my question why are you here."
"Ah, you made yourself hot and bothered with your internal tsundere monologue." Neptune nods understandingly. She holds the pen in her hand up to her head, and clicks it every other second. "I do it all the time. Well, not really because I don't tsun-tsun myself into a tizzy, but I empathise."
"COULD YOU NOT."
"Sorry, sorry… Soooo I couldn't sleep last night."
"…So you came to work."
Neptune nods like an excited puppy. "Yep."
"…In my office."
Neptune nods like an excited puppy again. "Yeah… Turns out I don't actually have my own office."
"You have your sparring room!" Neptune's Sparring Room is a known and distinct location in the areas of the Basilicom that were Goddess-only, in fact. It is notable that unlike literally everyone else's sparring room, it is empty except for the small mini-fridge with pudding.
Neptune shrugs, looks at her pen like she's going to nibble the tip, and thinks better of it. "It doesn't have a desk." A beat. "Yet. But I felt like working now, so. I figured, who has the best, nicest, office-est looking office in here?"
Noire looks around at her office, from her wall of charts to her wall of Five-Month Plans (because Five-Year Plans are wasteful and they don't need that kind of long-term planning yet) and up at her logarithmic table ceiling, and then at her desk covered in sheets and orders and old forms they found in stasis vaults.
"So, you went to Blanc's lab but the door was locked?" She asks flatly.
"Yeah…" Neptune sighs. "Also she would eat me alive. Or kill me and make Matt eat my corpse. Or freeze me and let the twins count how many licks to get to the centre of a Neppy Pop. Or have Histoire make pouty eyes at me." The both of them shudder at the humanity of such a warcrime. "So I came here!"
"…I was joking about the Blanc's lab thing."
"Oh." Neptune looks away. "Uhm." She looks at Noire, then away again, then under the desk. "Oh, darn, you don't have a sinister trap door button."
"It's activated by sinister whistling," Noire responds, still as deadpan as ever. Neptune kicks herself for expecting Noire to have such an easily-subverted mechanism. Of course! How cunning for Noire to exploit the fact that Neptune cannot actually sing! "Look, Neptune, you can't just walk in and do my work for m—" She stops midway, reading through one of Neptune's dispatch forms, and whistles. To Neptune's disappointment, the floor does not fall away somewhere in the room – and she checks, too! "This is actually pretty well done."
"I learned from the best!" Neptune preens.
"Your handwriting is ineligible and I'll have to redo like…" Noire breezes through the entire stack in seconds, hands doing the 'vrrrrt' noise as she cuts through from top to bottom, and shakes her head. "…Well, okay it's not all bad, but I'll have to redo like half of it. But I guess it's okay." Neptune celebrates in her – well, Noire's - chair, for that is an improvement on Noire redoing everything. And she knows she does, while Neptune isn't looking. Because Neptune is always looking.
"Alright, Neptune, come on." Noire hops up and sits on the other side of the desk, leaning against one arm and into Neptune's face. The close proximity brings heat to Noire's cheeks, but – no no not now she's trying to be serious and make a point. "What's the problem?"
"Uh…" She smiles sheepishly – but it feels fake, and forced. And Noire has grown used to seeing through Neptune's very good fake smiles. "The problem is how little work I actually do?"
"That's never bothered you before, and you do…" Noire suppresses the thought that maybe Neptune really should be doing more for her nation in her gut, "…Enough. Come on, it bothered you enough that you didn't sleep. And I don't see pudding or Tetris around, so you didn't do that, either. So it's a big bother."
"…You really are something else, aren't you?" Neptune asks. She looks at her with one eye narrowed and the other raised as high as she can get it. Noire smirks, and tosses one of her twintails.
"Of course, I only do everything."
Neptune giggles and clicks her pen excitedly. Well, Noire's pen. But it's in her hand so bleh. "You haven't done me!"
And then Noire had another case of the Tsuns and nothing got done until right before lunchtime.
----
"OKAY," Noire seethes, face still flush and bothered. She is not going to be distracted from this! Damn Neptune and how flip-floppy she is about her personal issues! "Do you want to talk about it OR DO YOU WANT TO MAKE MORE JOKES AT MY EXPENSE?!"
Neptune wilts like a dead flower that got shown the business end of a plasma cannon. Like she should. "Sorry…"
They sit there, dithering. Noire behind her desk, as is her rightful place. Neptune on the office couch, lying down like she's having a therapy session. Which… she sort of is? But Compa isn't here, so… Well, if they don't call it a therapy session they don't have to bother her. Right? Right.
"…So I had a dream vision of Luteus." Neptune glances at Noire, who gestures for her to continue. "It was like… a meeting memory. A memory of a meeting. There were twenty Goddess, all in the same absurdly ostentatious room, and they were friends! Just friends, who happened to be divine beings who happen to be political figures who happen to be having an official high-level meeting concerning the fate of their world."
Neptune stops, and looks at Noire's expression. She frowns when she notices that Noire dropped her pen. "What?"
"I… I mean, I know you're not dumb, but why're you using 'ostentatious' of all things?"
"It was really big and fancy, is the point! I'm pretty sure we couldn't build something that fancy if we tried. Like, really tried. Like, it was probably the fruits of their labours over decades. Who knows how many master craftspeople and whatever it took to make that one ridiculously classy room?"
"…You sound jealous."
"A little bit, sure! But the thing is, they were discussing some alien invasion thing—" Neptune snarls, like she choked on a biscuit, and claws at the air in front of her face. "Focus focus focus, that's not the point! The meeting's just the background, the problem is that I saw Lu again, okay?"
"You, uh… Neptune, do you need a moment?"
"I'm fine," Neptune insists, hands clasped over her chest. "She was… I guess not really her, it's a 'smart message' she left behind, no idea what that means but whatever, she didn't know the password to her laptop we found."
"That's a shame," Noire says flatly.
"It's… probably also not her laptop. She wants us to destroy it, and never go in that room again."
"Oh." They look at each other, frown on frown, but each is not sure if they should start first. God, it's like they're flirting. Except this is distinctively not sexy at all. Ugh. Noire takes the first step again. "So… are we?"
"No!" Neptune shouts suddenly and covers her mouth. "Sorry, sorry. I… can't. It could help us, and who knows how much it's worth, and it's also the last closest thing we have to her stuff, but I also don't really want to betray her memory even if she's being really selfish about it and I just ugh I don't know! And she's gone. I can't even talk to her again. She died, her memory went away, and I have her actual memories – or pieces of them – in that thumb drive over there."
Noire looks, and there it is. A glistening clear gold crystal memory stick, emblazoned with the symbol of Nacma… leaning against the inner wall of a coffee mug. That – she takes a smell – was filled with coffee not too long ago. "Neptune, did you just dunk the only thing of a dead Goddess we have left inside a cup of coffee?"
"It's sharicite, it adds to the flavour. That thing's as stubborn as she was."
Noire looks at the memory stick, dangling it from her fingers, and considers getting her own coffee to test it out. But no, that is stupid. That is a long walk and this is an unbelievably important thing they have right now. Neptune is just so unbelievably reckless about her things. Jeez.
Neptune sits up and curls up against her legs, and then throws her hood on as an afterthought. "I dunno who to go to, though. I feel like Histy will get Sadsty if she finds out about that, but then she's probably also the only one who can read it, so… Unless you can read it?"
"This was in you until recently, you could probably read it better than I can," Noire says dryly. "And you obviously can't so what do you think? Histoire will want to know, go bother her about the memory. Is that it?" Noire feels like a bad person feeling like this, but it feels so… samey. Literally, the same problem Neptune has been going through for the past year and a half. Seriously, she and Neptune both know that Neptune can get over this. And should have, by now.
"Uhm…" Neptune curls up tighter, until her chest is incredibly tightly mushed against her knees – and she can see that even through the hoodie, that's how tight she's hugging herself. "Well, a-actually that was just the thing I was telling you to stall for time… Like, it's not that big of a deal, I just wanted to say something that wasn't my actual problem first… yeah…"
Noire glares at Neptune.
"Yeah… I deserve that."
Noire glares at Neptune.
"…Please stop?"
"What else did you find out?" Noire asks. Her patience is wearing thinner and thinner, and honestly her patience had a trim figure to begin with. It does not need to get thinner. "Come on, stop flip-flopping and say it!"
"OKAY I'M ACTUALLY A LOT MORE REI-NFECTED THEN ANYONE REALLY THOUGHT IT'S ACTUALLY A FIVE ON THE SCALE NOT A TWO WAAAAAH PLEASE FORGIVE ME NOIREEEEE"
Noire blinks. She expected something more along the lines of 'I cheated on you with Vert', or 'I'm actually heterosexual', or 'Nepgear made out with Uni and I helped'. You know, outlandish, not… this. "What."
"Oh." Neptune's eyes dart from left to right, then briefly cross as she really grinds her mind-gears in concentration. "Right Lu never told you about the Throwback Scale. Well… want an infodump?"
"Not really," Noire admits with a grumble and pinches her nose, "But lay it on me."
----
Things have been pretty good in the years since Neptune saved her from herself, thinks Histoire. She has friends, she gets to help them out, and she doesn't have to open fire with high-powered weaponry or dwell on what she did as SKYNET very often! Sure, she might have slightly lobotomised herself, an immature Class-VII P.I.X.I.E. AI, to function at merely Class-V AI functionality, but that's good enough, right? Nobody expects too much of her!
A-And people think she's cute! Which she is, the finest kawaologists of the old world worked on her design, b-but still! Even not knowing she was responsible for the killbots that infested the city anyways… I-It's nice!
But then, because she is Histoire, and she is friends with several Goddesses, plus those descended from the bloodlines of Goddesses and who possess the potentials for divinity… there are the bad days.
"Uuuwah, please don't use me as some sort of distraction projectile, Noire! ヽ(ﾟДﾟ)ﾉ"
"Hahahaha! Do it again, Noire! Do it again! Wheeeeeee!"
"Yaaaaaay... A-Ah, Blanc, are you okay? Can we… do it again?"
"OH FOR FUCKS SAKE GET OFF ME!"
"A-Ah! I'm so sorry, Blanc! (⊃д⊂)"
Histoire scrambles out of the knotted mess of petite brunettes as quick as she can, while a small crowd gathers around them. As it turns out, 'as quick as she can' is not very quick at all. Being able to fly and levitate on a tiny book does not help much when, uh… you are a tiny book. That is significantly smaller than even twelve year old children. Like the twins.
"Hehehe! Yay, we have Blanc all to ourselves!"
"I dunno… Blanc, do you mean us too?"
"FUCKING EVERYONE!"
"Ah, Blanc~" Vert sighs, one hand folded under her chest and the other… on her chest. Histoire isn't the kind of artificial intelligence who doesn't understand people - 'beep boop what are these feelings', one of her parents would like to joke - but sometimes, people will just be people. And Vert will just be Vert. Despite knowing full well what Blanc will do to her face. "How l-lewd~"
And there it goes. Everyone present reflexively covers their eyes and their chest in anticipation of the battle to come. Oh, the mornings are usually nice and quiet. But then the loud ones happen, and they are very loud.
Blanc, for her part, plays her role very well. Like a horrible sea monster breaching the surface, she tosses her twin sisters off like tiny boulders and turns the temperature in her personal space down several degrees. "VERT I AM SERIOUSLY GOING TO SHOVE THE BUTT OF MY HAMMER UP YOURS!"
"Ah, but I don't have a hammer…" Vert looks at Blanc, smirking. She sighs, cheeks flushed, and puts a finger against her lips. "Unless... You're offering to be my hammer, Blanc-chan…?"
"YOU MOTHERFUCKING--"
"I'm getting out of here," IF groans. Compa says nothing, for she is already in the stairwell, holding the door open for her other two friends. "Hey, Shirou, stop being a bitch and let's get to work already."
"I just wanted to know how she's doing…" Shirou weeps. Curled up in the corner, with the bowl of rice still on his head, like some sort of lumpy plastic hat, there is the distinct air of a man who truly understands suffering, for it is his life. "Why is she so mean to her big brother… I just wanted to know if she's okay…"
"There there, big bro," Uni sighs, and pats the part of his head without rice patronisingly. "We'll make a Hero of Justice out of you yet, I guess."
"Ara ara… n-not so hard, Blanc-chan~"
"WOMAN I AM GOING TO HAMMER YOUR OVARIES SO HARD YOUR MOTHER'S GONNA FEEL IT! YOU'LL NEVER HAVE SIBLINGS IN EVERY POSSIBLE REALITY!"
"Ahn, how lewd~"
"SERIOUSLY! STOP THAT!"
"You should probably get out of here too, Histoire." IF says, in between winces, as Blanc summons her hammer and Vert gracefully dodges every rage-infused swing. "This time, I'm thinking… extensive collateral damage."
"Thank you, IF. I'll be in the lab, probably pouring over those Field Manuals you found the other time. Oh, many thanks for finding those, by the way. （=´∇｀=）"
"Thanks, but don't look at me, our Seigi no Mikata here found it."
"I just want to know if she's okay…" Shirou weeps piteously. "Why is my sister a tsundere… I just wanna sit home and cook and make people happy and okay…"
Uni makes a face at him and then looks at IF and Histoire with a sad frown. It's almost comical, seeing someone as tall as Shirou being supported by someone as small as Uni. And Uni is pretty small. Not Histoire small, but… pretty small! "Yeah, he's completely out of it. I don't think he can work, boss."
"Eh, I'll just dock his pay."
"...We don't get pay."
"I'll dock his pay the second we do." IF looks at Compa, and they shrug at each other. "Waiting on Nep and Noire too, over here."
Looking at the young adult swordmage, Histoire makes a mental note to talk to Noire about this later. "I see… I'll thank him when he can accept it. ( ´ ▽ ` )ﾉ "
Something explodes, and those of them watching from the door to the stairwell see Vert landing on her feet in front of them and summoning her spear at last.
"Okay, I may have gone a little far! Blanc, I'm sorry, please cool off and forgive me!"
"I AM GOING TO BLOW YOUR TITS OFF AND GLUE YOUR LEGS TO THE STUMPS!"
"How lewd... No, wait, Blanc stop it!"
"FUCK YOOOOOOOOOOO--"
"...Close the door please. )Д⊙`)"
"Yeeeep."
And so all of them vanish to the lower levels of the Basilicom, as the nascent nations of Leanbox and Lowee engage in war for the first, but certainly not last, time in their history.
----
The labs are silent this time of the day, as they usually are. Blanc runs a tight ship, but she also asks that researchers take time outside of the lab and do practical experiments from time to time. Which means that, in practice, nobody except Blanc, Nepgear, herself, and maybe Matthew come in before noon, unless she specifically requested it.
And right now, Blanc is… busy, Nepgear is helping her father, and Matthew hasn't shown up yet. That's good. She has some time to herself. Gliding by their research into Industrial Vehicles, across their practical prototypes in the corner, around the many requests Blanc has filed for Noire to give her more researchers (which amount to scraps of paper with the words 'I need more smart people' written in harsh font) but never gotten around to putting on her desk… Histoire arrives at her desk.
Histoire, like everyone in research, has her own desk. Her size was never an issue. The way Blanc saw it, she was a full member of the team and so she deserved a full-sized desk. Histoire didn't use most of it, since she worked through the network anyway, but she certainly appreciated the gesture!
It certainly let her get on with… her other projects.
She pulled a drawer open with no small amount of effort and glided into it. It was a large drawer, you see, with plenty of space for a little book pixie to float around in it. If anyone saw her in such a drawer, they would no doubt squeal in joy and try to grab her. Which is very rude, but then Histoire has long since grown accustomed to it, especially with the exceedingly-grabby Neptune around. But nobody will ever see her in a drawer.
Not this drawer, at least.
Her, in her little shrine to CPU Yellow Heart, Histoire sits before the largest remaining portrait of the dead Goddess she could. It was once a religious image, with the old goddess standing with arms spread, soaring high above the ground, backlit by the sun. Her expression blank, almost imperious, but at the same time compassionate.
And here she sits, in front of Luteus. Alone, in a drawer. The silence in the box is deafening, like a lion's roar.
"I'm sorry I can't bring you back."
She sniffs, and wipes away tiny digital tears with her sleeve. Even though she has friends now, people who accept her and care for her, it doesn't matter if she can't save the first person that tried to save her.
"I can't even bring back your memory…"
Perhaps if she was still in Neptune's head. Perhaps then, she could have given Luteus her own body. But now?
Histoire sits there, alone.
Now, she doesn't know what to do.
----
"…Wow that really sucks."
"Yeah!" Neptune nods like an excited puppy, legs kicking, and rocks back and forth like a demented roly-poly. "Like, I thought it was kind of weird too, because a two on the scale usually just means some memory bleedthrough and maybe mental influence, but I figured Taint works differently, hence the physical transformation! But no, I'm just really, really sick with Rei Disease."
"…I kind of like the physical transformation though," Noire admits as heat flushes her cheeks. G-God dammit not again. Focus, Noire, focus. You know Neptune's actual problem now – she's worried about the Fallen Goddess Essence inside her is about to take over even more, and wants to learn about avenues of purification.
"…Noire, this—" And she points at everything, from the hair to the eyes to the everything below the neck, "--technically isn't me."
"Iknowyoujustlookreallygoodanyways. S-So! Purification! M-Maybe we could…" She swallows. Wow that was a lot of saliva built up in her mouth. "You know… engage in the… s-sanctity of… m-m-marital p-procreation?"
For a moment there, Noire wonders if Neptune started laughing or was getting ready to jump her bones. But alas, she was just unfolding herself into a sitting position. For shame, girlfriend. "Yeah, about that… I mean, I kind of want to, too?"
Noire cheers internally, but then realises – of course she does! She doesn't have this body just so she could be insecure about it! Come on Noire your parents look pretty alright! Even if your father could do with some parenting lessons… but admittedly he's getting better so there's that. She supposes. "Wait, I hear a 'but'."
Neptune nods sadly – at least, Noire thinks she is. "I know you, like, subclassed into Paladin, so you can purify pretty good? But I get the feeling that if we do the, uh, cooperative arts and crafts, at the very least I'm going to split this taint between the two of us. And uh, when I initially got taint…"
Memories flash past Noire's eyes. From the complex expression, Neptune's too. She is still pretty beat up about stabbing her father, and Noire can't blame her. And Neptune actually still really loves her father. "…Yeah, I can see the, ah, lack of appeal."
"Yeah… so yeah, no sexytimes." Neptune smiles sheepishly. "Sorry."
Noire sighs. Well, it's been a year and a half. What's another foreseeable future? "Can we at least cuddle?"
Her girlfriend smiles at that. "We can do that now, if you like."
And so they do.
----
Total Cost:
13 Resources
1 Industry
Faith: 67.5%
-5.0% (Next Door to Hell)
+2.5% (Food Surplus)
+3.0% (Compa)
Shares: 32/74
Not happening, Nepgear wouldn't notice without drills. At least
Get a room
- Location
- England
Well.
Nothing much of vital importance happened.
This is good. Means things are working right. Now we just wait until the next thing goes wrong I guess.
It's nice to have turns where we don't have to worry about being smashed by something or other, really.
Nothing much of vital importance happened.
This is good. Means things are working right. Now we just wait until the next thing goes wrong I guess.
It's nice to have turns where we don't have to worry about being smashed by something or other, really.
- Location
- National Capital Region, USA
What's the difference?
Besides the fact that Matthew is dating Blanc without her apparently knowing about it?
It's cute that you think that, Noire. But magic is total bullshit, doubly so when you're a goddess. So once you can stop at awawawawa-ing and over the idea of you and Neptune having Happy Fun Time together, you better get used to thinking about the idea of....
....your kids.
While this may be very very very true, Blanc, it's still rude to point it out.
Histoire needs a hug. Not desperately, but she really, really, really, really, needs a hug.
...Why do I get the impression giving her that USB would either be a very good idea...or a very interesting idea in the Chinese sense?
Histy has built a shrine.
Now, that might be the Japanese roots talking, but from a Western PoV?
Creepy~
They can build them! They have the technology...well, WILL have the technology once they have Nepgear, Histy and Blanc work on it....man that would be awkward as hell.It's cute that you think that, Noire. But magic is total bullshit, doubly so when you're a goddess. So once you can stop at awawawawa-ing and over the idea of you and Neptune having Happy Fun Time together, you better get used to thinking about the idea of....
....your kids.
- Location
- Singapore
As if Histoire didn't always worship Luteus.
I mean granted her tenure as Skynet meant worship in the Khornate sense, but ah well.
Not really?
I mean, Westerners also create a shrine like that, although we usually pack it up after the funeral is over and otherwise remember them with stories. It's just one more way to handle grief.
Theunderbolt
"Prepare for trouble..."
- Location
- USoA
One of these days Neptune...one of these days, bam, zoom, straight into the bed and Noire is not going to let you leave until she is satisfied~
And poor Shirou he gets no respect. ;_;
And poor Shirou he gets no respect. ;_;
Dirtnap
Kanmusu Affecionado
Being Shirou is suffering, this is a quantifiable fact of the universe.
Also, whatever else we do
[] Hug histy
Needs to be part of the next plan. Poor little book fairy
Soulful100
ARchivist of Fate
- Location
- Beyond the 4th Wall
Fuckkkkk me and the army for removing my attention to this quest....
I'm...I'm just going to pre-emptively lock in my Nep token for the purification of Neptune's mindscape.
And if any dire enough situation comes up in the future in quest, I'll relent my nep token to the community to vote for its usage...
I'm...I'm just going to pre-emptively lock in my Nep token for the purification of Neptune's mindscape.
And if any dire enough situation comes up in the future in quest, I'll relent my nep token to the community to vote for its usage...
Mizu
Software Developer
- Location
- Victoria, Australia
Here, in her little
Aww, no sexytimes yet. Shall Nep and Noire ever get it on, Swordo, or are they banned forevermore due to this not being QQ?
Here, in her little
Aww, no sexytimes yet. Shall Nep and Noire ever get it on, Swordo, or are they banned forevermore due to this not being QQ?
Meh, it's not like Fade to Black or 'yeah, we totally did it last night' hasn't been used on this forum before.