Chapter 2

“Gamindustri is home to many things, and one of them is Dimension Hopping. It is said that the ability is limited to a few chosen by the Original Goddess, in a way to balance the universe. Two beings were able to hold it originally, but only one of them has kept this ability for unknown reasons. Their whereabouts are unknown. It is unknown why this creature was given this purpose as well. It might have been for reasons beyond any of our understanding…

“The book continued revealing information as it was written by the Original Goddess, she created everything. But with creation, it also comes with destruction, and it’s impossible to decouple one from the other. If she really made this world that way, then everything we do is a cycle. It repeats over and over, without anyone thinking about it. It’s meant to be this way. Heroes defeat villains, new threats appear, villains get the upper hand, creating new heroes that defeat the villains, and so on.

“If this is a cycle, a way to stop it might exist. No one has looked for it, and no one seemed to be interested in doing so. If we are stuck in this cycle, we might as well enjoy the ride… Except what if the cycle wasn’t the goddess’ creation but a consequence of her actions? Gamindustri is doomed to repeat itself because it had protections put in place by the goddess, not because she created the cycle. If that’s the case, then the cycle can be broken.

“The only question is… What happens when this cycle is broken?”

“I CAN EXPLAIN, CALM DOWN!,” said a very comically angry sounding Neptune against her fellow goddess friends, Noire, Vert and Blanc, standing in front of Arfoire, who wasn’t amused by anything.

“She’s not supposed to be here!”

“What is she doing here?”

“Neptune, you better explain this.”

The three goddesses were all complaining to Neptune about their most deadly rival being there at the Planeptune Basilicom.

Arfoire didn’t seem to be bothered by it. But she did speak.

“I’m here by my own volition. I have nothing left, since it was taken by me – arguably correctly – and I don’t wish to do this cat and mouse game anymore. Now I found out that somehow the world decided to either create a new version of me to cause mischief or it’s an alternate version of me doing what I’m not willing to do anymore. I don’t need you all to believe in what I’m saying here, since we have history, and apparently with alternate versions of me that soured our idea of me but believe it when I say this: If this world takes me for a fool, then I’ll show it that it’s more than just wrong. If it believes that I’ll always be a villain, then I’ll show it what I can do.” Arfoire gave the four goddesses a speech that was incredible.

The reaction from the four goddesses was silence. There was a moment they also looked at each other, making eye contact with Neptune.

Neptune chuckled nervously. “I say we give her a chance! She didn’t attack me at any point! She had plenty opportunities to do so.”

Arfoire nodded and agreed with “Yes. If I wanted to, I could have. But Neptune remains unharmed, and will continue to be so.”

The first goddess to complain was Noire, of Lastation. She sported traditional black twin-tails and red eyes, as well as a nice figure. She looked at Neptune with a face of utter contempt, impossible to mistake. “Excuse us for a moment.” She grabbed Neptune by the arm and walked around, with the other two following, to the other room.

“Hey! Watch it!” Neptune complained pointlessly.

Immediately, she drilled Neptune verbally. “So, you’re telling us that our enemy wants to do a truce? Did you forget what she did the last time she was around?! Or the other times we faced her?!”

The next goddess was Blanc. Her slim and mostly flat figure, almost matching Neptune’s, with brown short hair and blue eyes, was on display. Her cute hat was there as well. She didn’t seem to be visually angry but mostly confused. “I think she’s trying to deceive us… But hasn’t done so. I don’t trust her, but this seems very strange…”

The last goddess was Vert, a much taller bombshell of a woman, with blonde long hair and deep blue eyes, dressed very properly, almost like a princess. “While I agree with Noire, I also think that Blanc is correct. There is no reason for her to act like this unless… Perhaps she can also feel ‘shame’?”

“No, no! You guys aren’t getting it,” said Neptune, trying to steer the discussion back to an explanation. “Arfoire cried in front of me over the failures she had. And Noire, we went against an Arfoire from the Ultra Dimension, where Plutie came from. And that one from Uzume was a fake. But! I don’t think she’s trying to deceive any of us. Mostly because…”

Neptune’s face got a little dark. “I went to the PC Continent with her, it was chaos. The goddess there was taken, and apparently there was an Arfoire behind it. But it was not this Arfoire, but another one. We don’t know which, but they seem to be highly competent. The entire PC Tower Basilicom was just gone. The streets were under attack by robots too.”

Vert was the first to ask: “Do we have any leads?”

Neptune nodded. “Yes. We got someone from the group that attacked the PC Continent here. They are called ‘NAS’, short for ‘Not A Slave’, they are going against the perceived ‘tyranny’ of the Goddess there.”

Vert put a hand on her cheek. “Hm. The information is both good and bad at the same time. It’s good that we know who did the attack but it’s bad because we don’t have more to go on.”

Noire brushed her right twin-tail back. “Robots you said? It might be manufactured in some Lastation factory. I’ll try to see if I can find any orders from our factories. Don’t want to be funding an attack like that.”

Blanc looked at the other two. “Neptune, I’d like to go investigate the PC Continent, if possible. We need to find some sort of clue that could help us, now that the dust has settled.”

Neptune gave her a thumbs up. “Alrighty! But… Arfoire might join us in some capacity. Are you okay with that?”

Blanc nodded. “I’m fine as long she keeps her end of the bargain.”

Vert clapped her hands. “Okay. I suppose I could look up any information online about this NAS group. If I find anything, I’ll let Chika know, then she can let the other Oracles know.”

The four goddesses nodded. “Alright, we got our jobs to do.”

Vert and Noire went to the balcony, turning into their goddesses’ forms, and flew away in different directions. Neptune and Blanc went back to the living room, where Arfoire was taking a sip of tea.

“Back so soon, Neptune? And Blanc?” The woman said, with her legs crossed.

“Me and Blanc want to investigate the PC Continent,” Neptune said. “There’s gotta be something there that could help us find whatever did this.”

“Yes. We don’t know how they are structured either. Any information we can get from the source, directly, will be helpful.” Blanc added.

“Well… Then I’m coming with you. If the world wants to make me its bitch, it’s gonna get it.” Arfoire stood up and placed the cup on the coffee table. She sounded serious.

“Small problem… I don’t think you should have this look…” Neptune informed. “No offense Arbore, but you’re dark and purple, and evil all over. Bad vibes, bad mojo.”

“Hm. Can’t you use a disguise?” Blanc asked. Didn’t take long for Arfoire to do just that.

This disguise was a black haired, twin-tailed blue eyed high school girl, sporting a nice figure and wearing a black jacket, white dress shirt, high waist black skirt, and loose red tie. On her back, a backpack. The end result looked like a newbie journalist reporter. “This can work.”

“Ayo? Nice work!” Neptune clapped her hands at Arfoire. “You look the part. Can you sound the part too?”

“Hai!” Arfoire said, hyping her voice up to be high-pitched. “Oh. My. Gosh! I’m standing next to the Goddesses of Planeptune and Lowee! You two are insane! My name is Chiaki Post, and I work for the local Planeptune News journal… Would you mind giving me an interview?”

Blanc made a face that felt like her face shrunk to somewhere. “That… That was quite the whiplash…”

“Woah… That was perfect, Ar- I mean Chiaki!” Neptune was still impressed. “Now… We are good to go.”

“Hai!” Arfoire in her Chiaki guise said.

---

The three went out to investigate the PC Continent once more. White Heart and Purple Heart flew around while carrying Arfoire in her Chiaki Post disguise.

“You’re kinda heavy…!” White Heart complained.

“Hey! You suggested the disguise, live with it!” Arfoire retorted in her own voice.

“This was a bad idea, Neptune…!” White Heart complained again but this time, it was to Purple Heart.

“Better this bad idea than leaving these PC Continent guys in peril.” She replied, stonefaced.

This caused White Heart to do a double take, Neptune was taking this seriously, more than usual. Did something change?

Regardless, the three touched down near the crater that one was the PC Tower.

“…! What?” White Heart couldn’t believe when she saw the crater. The two let Arfoire on the ground while White Heart flew around to check the crater.

While she was there, Arfoire kept staring at the crater, looking at it with a strange face, one that could only be described as ‘pity’. Her entire purpose was this, she was the villain but this time, she didn’t do this, and was looking quite sad from it.

“I’m starting to believe on what you said, Neptune.” She mused with her real deeper voice. “Not out of the fact that I want to destroy things, but the fact that I didn’t do this and somehow I’m the one being blamed.”

Neptune, in her Purple Heart form, mused a bit. “Well… At least that’s a start.”

“Of what?” Arfoire looked at her confused.

“A start where you finally understand how do we feel about the things you do.” She said, before de-transforming. “Anyway! We need to find some clues about what happened here. The problem is… Where do we start?”

White Heart touched after a few minutes to point at a ground of women having a shouting match. At least two of them. “Over there, Neptune!”

“Huh? Oh! Those women look remarkably important! Let’s go check them out!” Neptune replied.

The three walked a bit and as they got closer, the shouting became a lot more clear. Two of them were screaming at each other, with another trying to keep the peace.

The one on the left had green pearl short hair in a wolfcut style, green eyes, and was using a black and dark gray leotard with green lines and accents, as well thighhigh boots. The other, on the right, had a leotard that looked almost like Noire when she was on her HDD form, but accented blue, and her hair had spikes behind it, while her eyes were also blue, matching the hair. The one trying to keep them from killing each other was a another woman with a leotard, but with red eyes and red short hair in a bobcut style, with bangs that split to the sides. They had similar womanly features, and thanks to their boots, they look much taller than they were.

“YOUR SECURITY SYSTEM DIDN’T CATCH THEM!”
“I TOLD YOU ALREADY, THEY HACKED IT!”
“THEY DID IT BECAUSE YOUR SECURITY SYSTEM SUCKED!”
“AND WHERE WERE YOUR TROOPS?! THEY WERE ALL SLEEPING THEN THE ATTACK HAPPENED!”

The shouting continued as Neptune, Arfoire and White Heart approached.

“Well, this is gonna be interesting.” Arfoire said, coughing a few times to get her voice high pitched again.

“Excuse me! Ladies, can you help us?” Neptune asked and caused the two to stop shouting and look at her.

“WHAT DO YOU WANT?!”

They said at the same time, making Neptune shriek a bit. “I just had questions!”

The red themed woman got in front of the other two and took over. “Ah, yes, of course! I take you’re the Planeptune’s goddess, Neptune, right?” Then she looked at White Heart. “And you’re from Lowee, Blanc, right?”

Both Neptune and White Heart nodded, with the latter de-transforming back to Blanc. “We have some questions if you don’t mind…” Blanc said, being a bit more lowkey about it.

“Well, you find the right people to ask questions! We’re the PC Continent Generals. I’m Carmine, and the lovely two behind me are Emerald and Sapphire, respectively.” The two behind her waved.

“Oh, Generals?” Neptune asked. “How does that work?”

“Oh, single, Miss Neptune. We’re the highest ranking officials that helps the PC Continent Goddess with her official business. Since her coma, we’ve pulling quadruple duty though, running the place. Somehow we were all spared from the attack as we were called on official business in town, which now that I’m saying this, sounds like they lured us there to attack.” Carmine said, with a pondering face.

“Ah! We’re investigating what happened, because my sister was hanging around with Maho and then hell broke loose, apparently.” Neptune said. “We found a member of NAS and have him imprisoned at Planeptune’s Basilicom.”

“I knew it! Of course they would be behind this!” Emerald said.

“Uhm… Who are they?” Arfoire asked. “Ah excuse me, Chiaki Post, Planeptune News journal.”

“They have been a nuisance for ages with the PC Continent.” Carmine explained. “They say that they are against the ‘tyranny’ that we have but they have done harm into our nation, multiple times. These kids aren’t the hacktivist type, they want to cause damage.”

“Now they somehow managed to teleport the PC Tower away…” Sapphire mused, looking back at the crater.

“We got no clue on how they got in so quickly,” Emerald said, “My guess they used some real goddess to attack, but as I’m concerned, the other goddesses are the ones from the other continents, like you two.”

This made Neptune think for a moment. “Do you have more information about the group? They might be trying to attack us too, in some capacity.”

Sapphire replied that one. “As the official Security General, I have some information for you, Miss Neptune, related to that. The group has multiple Generals and troublemakers.”

“Wait, hold on. ‘Some’ information?” Neptune raised a brow.

“This group is quite slippery, and we don’t know the full extent of their power.” Sapphire replied. “In fact, I might say that they are too slippery since a few years ago. They are planning something big.”

Emerald rolled her eyes. “Yeah, they got you outclassed, Saph. And as much I didn’t want to admit, me as well.”

Carmine did a little magic trick, pulling two devices from both Blanc and Neptune’s ears. “Here, take these.” The device was a little square with a small button on top and one bottom. “This is a communicator. Keep this around and we can talk. Top button calls, bottom button answers. “As for now, we’ll have to continue to investigate the area, to see if we’re missing anything. We’ll let you two know if we find anything new.”

With that, the three women left, vanishing from sight. Blanc looked a bit confused.

“This is quite weird… But I guess it can happen when a group is that organized and beats you to a pulp.” She mused.

Arfoire changed her voice back to her normal deep one. “Something stinks about this whole thing.”

Neptune nodded. “I agree.” Then looked at Blanc. “Blanc, you should go back to Lowee and see if there’s anything happening there, related to this group.

“You don’t have to tell me twice, Neptune.” She engaged into her HDD, turning back to White Heart and flew off to Lowee.

As the two saw Blanc fly off, Arfoire spoke. “This is the sort of crap you all ahve to deal with?”

Neptune chuckled. “Yeah. Last time was like that. You know… Uzume?”

“Ah…” Arfoire raised a brow, maybe she forgot when she was here in the PC Continent. “Anyway, I think we should investigate if anything is wrong in Planeptune.” She offered her hand. “Fly me away, oh Goddess Neptune.”

Neptune rolled her eyes. “Fiiine.” She engaged her HDD and after turning into Purple Heart, she grabbed Arfoire’s hand and they flew back.

---

Noire touched down at Lastation’s Basilicom, only to be greeted by her Oracle and personal secretary, Kei.

“Noire, we got a situation at the factories. Some of the workers are going on strike. Their leader is demanding better working conditions.” Kei explained and Noire was confused.

“They get paid 120% of the regular salary and have only 4 days of work per week, as well 3 periods of vacation per year. What else do they need?!” Noire retorted.

“I have no idea but there’s a commotion at the Kutagari Factory District. I’ve sent Uni to try to appease them.” Kei said with a nod.

“Thank you, Kei. Now we have something different to deal with. Look over any strange dealings in the system.” Noire was quite vague with her words.

“‘Strange dealings’? What do you mean, Noire?” Kei and Noire stepped inside the Basilicom, entering Kei’s hightech office.

“Anything that looks out of order. Placing an order of massive amount of steel, or something among those lines.” Noire said as Kei sat down at the computer to type away.

click click click click

A lot of typing later, Kei found something different and unusual. This was the order of many parts to from one factory to another, and then hopped to a third factory, then a fourth and then fifth. Apparently the robots that attacked the PC Continent were made by Lastation but there was no indication they were from there, as the design was apparently completely original.

“Huh… That is strange.” Kei mused. “Noire, the last order was shipped 2 days ago. The destination was the PC Continent.”

“Well… Good job, Kei, I think we found where the robots came from.”

“Robots?” Kei raised a brow.

What followed was an explanation of what happened to the Oracle. Noire didn’t know everything, but what she did know was that Lastation could have been involved without consent.

“Yes, I can see how that could be very dangerous to our reputation. But from what I can tell, the design wasn’t made by Lastation, they just hired the factories and made the design real.” Kei replied.

Before Noire could reply, Purple Sister, aka Uni landed on the balcony with a new figure. “Oof!”

“Now you can explain what you want to the leader of Lastation.” Uni said, de-transforming from her HDD.

This figure was a woman with blonde hair that was tied up, green-ish yellow eyes, and with a red patterned flannel shirt with jeans and work boots. She wouldn’t be out of place cutting woods in a forest.

“Oh, that’s better than I was expecting! Hello!” The woman said, smiling.

“Uhh… Uni? Why did you bring her here?” Noire crossed her arms.

“I’m not the leader of Lastation, am I? She wanted to talk to the leader to get some rights going.” Uni shrugged. “You know I’m not good with that stuff, sister.”

Kei blinked a few times. “I believe they call this ‘social engineering’…”

Uni retorted. “What?!”

Then the woman spoke. “My name is Cialen, and I represent the Workers United for a Lastation but Democratic. Or just ‘WOULD’.”

“You just made that up.” Noire scoffed the woman. “We don’t have that sort of thing here. Our workers are treated fairly and get the best benefits they could ask for.”

“Then why 6 factories have been working for 24/7 for the last year?” Cialen asked.

Before Noire could reply, Kei turned the computer monitor to the others. “Because you ordered it. Your signature was found in the design you sold to these companies.”

Cialen didn’t reply, completely stumped.

“Noire, I already notified the Lastation Police. They’ll take her to a proper facility where we can interrogate her.” Kei said.

Uni crossed her arms. “Don’t even try to do something funny, missy.”

Cialen didn’t speak anymore and just sat down on the ground.

“I wish things were always this easy!” Noire laughed. “I wonder how the others are doing…”