Ch. 008 - Dreams fulfilled
Purple Heart's hypersonic flight has her utterly ecstatic. The speed with which everything blurs by, the wind rushing over her face and body, the colours in the world being so much stronger and clearer than they had been in decades, it leaves her with a sense of wonder she has not felt in oh so long. She needs to share this with someone, and who better than her eternal rival-slash-love interest, Noire, formally the regent of Lastation as 'Black Heart'?
She takes a dive over a lake, speeding along as her body almost touching the water causes splashes and waves, her trail a series of miniature explosions rippling across the formerly still surface. She goes even lower, the water surrounding her somehow proving no more an obstacle than the air beforehand, and with a jolt she shoots upright, causing a massive wave where she exits.
But despite the fun she's feeling for the first time in so long, she has someone to visit. Someone dear to her but whom she never quite had the heart to sincerely admit her feelings to.
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"Enemy object inbound at Mach 7.3! Scanners indicate it might be an opposing CPU! All stations go on LDA 1!"
Utter panic has broken out in the defence HQ of Lastation. With the war against Rei Ryghts still fresh on everyone's minds, and the devastation she brought to Planeptune and the surrounding provinces, Noire decided to push forward any and all initiatives to protect Lastation by installing a new generation of long-range scanners that automatically detect and report any object matching certain criteria, such as incredible speeds or energy signatures. With the detected object going almost as fast as the fastest cruise missiles Lastation has to offer, it stands to reason this could be an attack on Lastationese soil.
"Keep calm, everyone! This CPU's speed might be highly unusual, but our laser defences should be able to take her down if necessary, and if not I'll engage her myself. Now, can someone tell me where the heck Uni is!?", Noire shouts her orders from behind her command console, trying to bring back order.
"Uni was with the other candidates; 2 days ago they wanted to visit Plutia in the other dimension. They haven't been heard from since.", summarises Kei Jinguji, Lastation's trusted Oracle and third in command of the Lastation Armed Defence Force.
"Gaaah! Why does she need to be away during such a moment of crisis!? I know I should've demanded she stays. Who knows how many crazed CPUs like Rei there still are?"
"Noire, Histoire is trying to make contact on channel 2. Should I put her through?"
"Put her on the secure private channel."
"*Bzz, bzz* Noire, Noire! Can you hear me?", the slightly flickering screen with Histoire's face shouts at the black-haired goddess.
"Loud and clear! What is it? We're currently having a situation here!"
"It's about Purple Heart, she's heading your way right now, and I was informed by Nepgear and Uni that she might not be herself!"
Noire shifts uncomfortably in her seat, knowing that of course it would be Neptune who did something stupid again.
"Clarify that for me, what exactly happened?"
"It's better if you see for yourself."
Histoire on her book hovers aside, and in front of the camera step Nepgear and Uni in their modified HDD forms. Noire immediately notices the difference in appearance.
"Wh-What the heck happened to you two!?"
"We had a teleport mishap and despite escaping from wherever we had ended up, we now look like this. We also can't shut this off, and it seems to influence our thinking in strange ways. Ram and Rom are the same, and they're currently on the way to Lowee. We already have someone try to contact Blanc, but she seems currently unavailable. Anyway, sis, the bigger problem is that Purple Heart is affected by the same thing."
Noire takes the new information in and nods to Uni to have her continue. Although Nepgear speaks up next instead.
"It was Croire! She had us in a trap and did... something to our HDD forms. We ended up killing her, but that didn't fix it. Anyway, the change isn't just visual, but also in power. We are currently much, much stronger than we ought to be while in HDD, and worse it's harder to restrain ourselves. I don't know how much this affected my sister because she has been like this for maybe 20 minutes at most, but it's very possible she's currently by far the most powerful CPU on the continent!", Nepgear rattles off.
"So that CPU coming in really is Purple Heart!? She's flying at more than seven times the speed of sound right now, it's crazy! She'll be here in 14 minutes at most!"
"We know, and we'd come over, but we just can't match her speed, so you'll have to fight her alone, sis! Instead we'll try to head to Lowee. The guild reported that Ram and Rom are still missing; their last known location was Hollijolli Village somewhere in south-western rural Lowee, so they probably haven't gotten home yet. If we fly with all we have, we can probably just about make it there before them! Anyway, we gotta go! Take care, sis!"
The connection shows the two candidates not waste another second and leave, with Histoire taking over again.
"I've been running a database search for an answer. It took three minutes, and I might have something.", the small fairy says, with Noire urging her to continue.
"Noire! What is your deepest desire?"
"My wh-wh-what!?"
"Your strongest wish! I know this is a weird question, but its answer might be the key piece missing to the puzzle I've been trying to solve for the last three hundred years."
Needing a moment to collect herself, Noire very reluctantly types in the answer into the chat. It's a secret nobody else should know, not even Uni, but considering the situation at hand she has no choice but to admit it to Histoire: she wishes to have a normal life. Maybe she would attend school, work as a voice actress perhaps. But most importantly, she wants to leave everything behind because her duties are increasingly too much for her to handle.
"...Oh, that's... yes, I understand it now. *Sigh*, it shouldn't surprise me as much as it does, really. But thank you for confiding this to me. Now I think I understand the true nature of HDD."
"The... 'true nature'? What did you learn from that?"
"Lady Black Heart, the enemy object is just six minutes away! The army and airforce have deployed, but please, we need you to prepare for the battle as soon as you can!", shouts one of the comms officers in the room.
"I'll head out in four minutes! Keep up the observation!"
The officer immediately goes back to her task, sweat forming on her face as the situation becomes more obviously dire.
"Noire, I think what HDD does is cause you artificial strain by taxing your bodies, and this is fuelled by the thing that hurts you the most. Imagine overclocking a computer: what part do you overclock first? That's right, the CPU! But it's a dangerous and potentially damaging action to do in exchange for more processing power. Neptune's deepest dream is to protect her people; that is her strongest desire, and she hurts every time she sees someone in danger, pain, or outright killed by monsters or other actors.", Histoire summarises, then needs to take a breath for the next part. "I know that sounds hard to believe considering how she normally is, but it makes sense from what I learned over the centuries. It never quite clicked why Nepgear barely changes, or why Ram and Rom only have their natural traits exaggerated, but now I get it. They aren't really hurting or maybe just don't quite understand their situations."
"Th-That's quite a lot to take in at once! Neptune actually isn't a stupid, lazy bum but actually genuinely loves her people? That's so completely different from how she acts!"
"I must agree, Histoire, it seems very unlike her.", Kei says, having come to Noire's side to remind her that she should prepare for the upcoming fight.
"I know! I know that! But it fits with the warning I received from Magna Heart thousands of years ago in that none of you must stay in HDD too long or it will hurt you deeper than you can imagine. And that is the issue, these modified HDD forms apparently cannot be shut off! So please, keep that in mind when fighting Purple Heart! She probably means well, but right now she might be seeing you, her friend but also greatest rival of all time, as a great danger to all of Planeptune! And she decided to act on that!"
Noire nods, now understanding the greater picture. Mentally preparing herself, she fires up her HDD form: her hair becomes almost pure white and fills out to cover her entire back, black gloves with white accents and lights cover her hands, a black leotard with more white bits covers her body and finally matching overknee socks and armoured boots complete the ensemble. Her normally red eyes turn teal and faintly glow with the power symbol common to all modern CPUs.
"I'm heading out! Well-meaning or not, Purple Heart is a danger right now and I'll take her out myself!", she shouts, summoning her massive plasma blade and various bits while already jumping up and out the balcony to face her eternal friend-slash-rival head-on.
Her six hard light wings glow a powerful cyan and propel her onwards to match the predicted flight path of the potentially-crazed Purple Heart. She does not have to look long as the other goddess comes to a dead stop somewhere outside the capital city's borders. With Lastation Capital City just behind her, she strikes a pose holding her sword out and challenges Purple Heart.
"Fancy meeting you here, Purple Heart. I see you got a new look going. But you should know this is Lastationese airspace and you are coming very much uninvited. So I suggest you head back home before I'll make you!"
"Thank you kindly for welcoming me... and coming to me on your own volition, Black Heart. I am sure we will be having quite a lot of fun today."
A creepy smile shows on Purple Heart's face, making Black Heart very wary of her opponent. Then Purple Heart radiates power. A lot of power. So much power in fact that sweat starts gathering on Black Heart's brow and for a moment she thinks she might be better off fleeing in the face of such an opponent, but she banishes the thought. If she did such a thing, she would not be worthy of her title.
Quickly thinking what to do, her best chance would be to take Purple Heart out in a single unexpected strike. A battle of attrition would definitely prove impossible to win for her. Black Heart activates a small device on her wrist, and flies upwards, her blade firmly in her hands.
Purple Heart doesn't react, lazily following Black Heart's path. It's so obvious, too obvious. With her enhanced perception, the black goddess might as well move at a snail's pace for all the difference it made to her. That is until a squadron of fighter aircraft as well as dozens of hidden missile emplacements all shoot a unified barrage, unloading hundreds of missiles directly toward where she's hovering!
"Oh, you want me to play with your toys first? I'll gladly do that!", the purple goddess shouts and summons her own blade, then goes on a rampage, flying through the air at speeds that match even the fastest Lastationese smart and cruise missiles.
The barrage has no problem keeping up with her, their sensor suites powerful enough to easily lock onto a target as large as a CPU and more than fast enough to strike them directly. But that alone is not enough. Purple Heart essentially dances in the air, striking each of the weapons with her curved blade clean in two before seemingly teleporting away from the resulting explosions. Two, three, five, ten, twenty, fifty missiles are cleaved in this manner, and even though they keep coming, she has no problem keeping up with them.
Smoke and dust fill the air, but that is exactly what Black Heart had planned. Her goal was to disorient Purple Heart for at least a few moments. When her opponent thus distracted isn't looking, she strikes from above!
"HAAAAAAAH!", she shouts, putting all her might into her swing to take out Purple Heart right then and there!
Actually surprised, the Planeptunian goddess can only react by putting her own blade in Black Heart's path, and sparks fly wildly from where the weapons match. But it is not enough for Black Heart to get through! Purple Heart quickly gains the upper hand, her much enhanced strength and resilience proving to be much more than just a match, and with a deft kick to Black Heart's side, the white-haired goddess is sent flying through the air right towards the ground!
A loud crash ensues as she hits the earth, a small crater and dust cloud showing where she impacted. Barely a second later, Purple Heart is already standing over her, her long thin blade's tip poking her adversary's cheek and drawing blood.
"Hurts, doesn't it? Letting your people down like this? You don't have enough determination to protect your country, Noire. But I do, and I will prove it to anyone who threatens Planeptune. Now undo your HDD and get up, I have something to tell you."
Black Heart does not move for a moment, her will shattered. This one strike had taken her out of commission; this overwhelming, almost cheat-like power not something she could possibly hope to match. But Purple Heart's words seem to ring true, somehow. They match what Histoire said, in any case. Did she really mistake her friend's motivation so badly for all these centuries?
"*Cough, cough*, gaaaah...!"
Her power is already depleted, her HP nearly zero. One attack did this. She understands she has no chance as she is right now. Normally she would heal, she would be performing a super attack, an EXE Drive, anything... but absolutely nothing comes to mind.
Reluctantly, she disengages her HDD, leaving only the usual black-haired, red-eyed teenage girl in her blue, princess-like dress behind.
"S-So what do you have to tell me?", Noire asks she gets up. While outwardly only a little dirty, she still has to hold her side where Purple Heart's powerful kick nearly shattered her ribs. She probably held back, even.
Wordlessly, Purple Heart instead takes Noire's face in her hands and stares right into her beautiful red eyes. With a mild blush, Noire can't help but stare back, but also look more closely at her adversary's body - while Purple Heart did always have a very sexy body clad in a CPU-typical form-fitting leotard, the much-reduced coverage of her new HDD leaves basically nothing to the imagination. Thus comes the even stronger surprise when Purple Heart leans in and kisses Noire right on the mouth!
"Gh! Mmpf, mmhhh!!!", Noire can only weakly shout, her muffled voice expressing the surprise from the sudden kiss matched by her deep red eyes going wide awake. But as she cannot resist it, she just has to bear with it. That is, until she notices how Purple Heart's tongue presses against her lips, slowly but surely pushing inward and touching her own in a playful way.
"Bear with it! Bear with it, Noire! If that's all she wants, you can take it!", she thinks to herself and very reluctantly reciprocates the deep kiss. It does not take long until the initially clumsy kiss turns more passionate; the two girls shortly losing themselves in it.
Purple Heart eventually breaks the contact, leaving Noire desperately gasping for air, her chest heaving up and down to get fresh oxygen in. Her face is flushed and her mind in total disarray.
"That was delightful, Noire. So, do you understand my message?", her Planeptunian counter-part asks, and Noire's mind barely works to understand it, but she slowly nods. The kiss said more than a thousand words possibly could, and even someone like Noire who almost never expresses her true feelings can't help but admit that it felt... really good.
"You... you love me, don't you?"
"That is exactly right. So I ask of you: please become my lover. Will you do that for me?"
Noire, barely able to think, nonetheless tries to calm herself down. Taking a few more deep breaths, her mind finally starts to clear, the fog dissipating. If she says 'no' right now, who knows what might happen. Worst case scenario, Purple Heart will outright destroy Lastation. She certainly could, and nobody would be able to stop her due to her overwhelming amounts of power on display.
But if she says yes, she'll enter a relationship she isn't prepared for. Certainly she thought about Neptune in such ways many times, but something always held her back from admitting to it. Damn here tsundere-ness!
"If you need a push, then let me say this: Nepgear and Uni are also lovers now. I have no idea how it happened, but it's the truth. For that reason alone, I won't harm Lastation even if you were to decline because Nepgear would suffer for it, but... but it would make me incredibly sad."
Noire, taking this new information in, can feel the many conflicting thoughts swirling in her mind. Should she go for this? Should she decline? She does not know, but she has to give an answer, so she...
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"Ram, Rom, what the heck are you doing!? Sto--- mmmhhh!"
Blanc, currently in a very compromised position, can only whine as Ram plugs her shouting mouth with her own, muffling her oldest sister's constant complains for once.
Blanc's bedroom is a mess, various books strewn about the floor where a quick struggle took place. Mina is to the side, knocked out by accident, and the twin candidates are holding their older sister, Lowee's regent Blanc or formally 'White Heart', by her hands and forced her on her bed.
With a seemingly misplaced feeling of affection, Rom flips Blanc's white dress up lets her magic do the work. Blanc notably calms down as warmth spreads throughout her body; a familiar warmth she hasn't felt in a long time. Ram, demanding her attention, starts kissing her more furiously and Blanc almost automatically answers the kiss. She isn't sure why, but somehow it feels right.
Rom meanwhile goes to work on her lower body, but not before explaining their motive.
"Big sis, you're always looking so tired and lonely, so we figured we'll try to cheer you up a little. We learned a lot of things that felt good and want to thank you for what you told us. So please, let us help you back.", the blue-haired girl says with a radiant smile, somewhat at odds with the sexual situation at hand.
Blanc is a little confused on what exactly Rom means with whatever she said, but decides it does not matter. She really has been tired a lot recently, all the work as the ruler getting to her and the constant combat and crises leaving her mentally drained. So why not have her enjoy herself for once? A little voice in the back of her mind tells her that this is wrong; that these are her little sisters and she shouldn't do this with them, but she dismisses it.
Ram breaks the kiss and she and Rom await Blanc's answer. A shallow nod follows, and the twins happily get to it, now that they have proper permission.
Rom takes off Blanc's white panties, carefully sliding them down her legs, and stares at her pussy. Cute, and completely hairless, she figures it does look similar to Ram's, so she carefully touches and prods it for Blanc to show reactions. Again, she is similar to Ram in that regard, so Rom figures it's best to pour all her love into making her older sister feel good.
Slowly, very slowly, she licks over Blanc's lower lips, taking in her everything and feeling how she lightly squirms back and forth. The strong, so far unknown feeling nonetheless feels very good to her brown-haired sister, and she quickly grows to enjoy Rom's loving cunnilingus. It doesn't matter anymore that they are sisters, all that matters is the sheer love and affection she's being shown by these girls, and she loses herself in the love-making.
"Oh, Rom, that's--- mff, mmm, *Kiss, kiss*!", she wants to shout, but Ram cuts her off with another intense kiss, which Blanc gladly answers to.
It really does not take long until enough pleasure from all this builds up, and Blanc can't help but move back and forth, her back arching up as she cums! And cumming hard she does, her vision going all white, small tears escaping her closed eyes and rolling down her cheeks.
Satisfied, the twins let her go and Blanc can't help but breathe deeply. Her mind is a blur, but she feels incredibly satisfied. Ram and Rom meanwhile stare at each other, happy to have shared this experience with their beloved elder sister and, putting the blanket over themselves and her, lightly touch both Blanc and each other.
Blanc eventually comes to, but something is odd. She feels so different, her mind no longer fogged but of a clarity she didn't know she was capable of. Then she understands - she somehow went into HDD while asleep! She gets up from the bed, Ram and Rom looking at her wordlessly, unable to convey their amazement but it shows on their faces all the same. That is when Blanc understands that she needs a mirror right this moment!
But what the mirror reflects shocks her all the more: her HDD looks very different now. While she still has the blue hair and red eyes with extremely long side-bangs that she mostly has in common with Rom, the outfit itself is notably different. It resembles a grey, metallic bikini with blue highlights over the hips, and a strange symbol rests above her small chest while rounded headpieces made from three interlocked circles float above her temples. Metallic gauntlets with wicked-looking dark blue claws cover her arms and hands up to the shoulders, shield-like devices hover over her hips, and similar armour plates cover her outer thighs and boots cover her lower legs up to the knees. Wings made from hard light that glow an intense, almost white at the base and flare out with star-like sparkles cover her back in an uneven, edgy arrangement. But the biggest difference is the segmented tail, in the same colours as the rest, that ends in an arrowhead-like stinger. In a sense, it resembles the strange new HDD forms of her younger sisters, taking little elements from both, but still having a unique identity to her own.
"I feel... I feel so gooood! Better than I have in years! Like I can destr... no, wait. Why am I so calm right now?"
"Sis, you're looking really cool like that!"
"So cool, much cooler than even before! It's super exciting!"
The twins, their eyes basically sparkling, can't help but admire the new form Blanc has acquired. Blanc herself meanwhile can't help but turn and move around in front of the mirror, looking at every detail of her new outfit and testing out her new tail. It moves perfectly as she wants, as if she always had it. But one thing still bothers her: her chest, as always, hasn't increased in size. That thought flares some anger in her mind, but it's much, much less than what she normally has when in HDD or even in her regular form.
"Now what if...?", she mutters to herself and turns to Ram. Ram's own tail actually kind of looks like an injector, and while normally she would think it stupid and dangerous to even consider it, she beckons her youngest sister over.
"Ram, do you know what that tail you have does?"
"Eh? Uh... I dunno. I didn't actually use it before, but I think it causes... growths? Swellings? Something like that, probably."
"Then please stab me in the tit."
A moment goes by, then another, and other... until everyone present realises what she just said.
"B-Blanc, I don't think that's a good idea! Right, Ram!?"
"I dunno, I really feel the urge to do it. Since it's big sis who asked, yeah?", Ram retorts, already excited out of her mind to try whatever Blanc has in mind.
Before Rom can protest further, Ram's heart-shaped tail end shoots forward, piercing Blanc under the bikini top she's holding up. The effect does not take long to make itself known as Blanc's left breast suddenly begins swelling... And swell it does, proving quickly uncomfortable as the increased boob tries to push against the top, so Blanc pulls on the armoured bikini, thinning out the metal to give herself space.
Rom sees where this is going and rushes forward, a healing spell already on her lips. It stabilises and eventually stops the growth, leaving Blanc with one breast that would be more than a match for that of Purple Heart's.
"It... it worked! It actually worked, I can't believe it! Thank you, you two!", Blanc shouts in utter joy, hugging her two beloved sisters who wordlessly hug and pat her back.
The trio then proceeds to repeat the process, carefully timing so the result looks perfectly balanced, and Blanc's head is almost drowning in euphoria over the fact that finally, finally, she solved the one problem that plagued her for literal centuries.
