Neptunia: Merc's Involvement

Chapter 35: Planeptune - Taken Over

"…You know? You're a lot like Neptune was back then."

"Back then?"

"We might not look like it, but us Goddesses are actually hundreds of years old."

"Really?" He said before looking at the CPUs, then at the CPU Candidates.

"Don't get confused, I was referring to us the goddesses. The Candidates are actually as young as they look."

"Oh...Okay then..."

"You don't seem very surprised about it."

"After seeing Neptune's transformation, anything can hardly surprise me by now." Admitted Alex while sweat dropping.

"Well, I guess that's a fair way of thinking." Said Leanbox's CPU while sweat dropping with a weak smile. "But as I was saying before, you resemble her a lot."

"How so?"

"Around a hundred years ago, Neptune was a lot worse than now."

"Worse?"

Alex could tell there was something wrong with Neptune sometimes, but imagining she was a lot worse than this was quite a terrifying idea.

"Of course, worse in a different way…" Explained Vert to clear the misunderstanding. "Back then she used to be in her HDD form all the time. She was mature, confident and determined, but also extremely arrogant and prideful. She loved fighting and solving everything with her sword rather than her words and hated losing with a burning passion."

The young boy took a quick look at Neptune again. It would be hard to believe the childish girl could have been such a person in the past. Then again, a lot of things regarding Neptune defied common logic, and if you considered her HDD form, it didn't seem like such an unreal possibility.

"What about the other two?"

"Noire's arrogance made her much more like a dictator than a leader and Blanc...well, you'd be lucky if she didn't chop you in half...I can't deny I had my temper too to be honest, but at least I tried keeping things relatively calm." Said Vert while recalling the past. "Those were very chaotic times indeed."

"Things don't look that good if you ask me."

"True. Noire is full of herself, Blanc can't get her nose out of her books and Neptune is...well, Neptune. But you weren't around back then. Things were truly chaos. Fights would constantly break out and I would barely be able to keep them under control most of the time."

After hearing Vert's story, the young boy tried picturing in his mind the events that she talked to him about. Constant battles breaking loose everyday between the CPUs. All of them arrogant and angered, wishing only one thing.

To defeat the other CPUs and claim control over everything. Alex didn't really have a hard time imagining it, considered that the CPUs were still pretty violent when angered.

"Wait. If they really were that crazy back then, then why are you the way you are now?"

"If I had to say, I think it's because of the people around us." Said Vert after putting some thought into it. "At time we didn't care about anything other than going at it against each other and getting all the shares, but after the CPU Candidates were born and people like the oracles appeared, things began changing. Slowly, the way we saw things began to change and before realizing it, we gained something far more precious than shares."

"What's that?"

According to what he heard from the CPUs so far, shares were priceless. Their life and power depended purely on them, but to hear there was something far more valuable than shares. This, without a doubt, caught his interest.