GRAPHIDIMENSION RUBY

By Greg Wong

Chapter 2

"Forgive me, Ruby..."

Ruby's eyes shot open. Wha...? Where...?

Rubbing her eyes—they were all gummy, yuck—she sat up... and immediately regretted it. Urgh. She laid back down, and things got a whole lot less dizzy. That hadn't been fun.

She took a look around. Whoa. She was in her room, on her bed.

And there was someone sitting in the chair next to said bed. Female, tallish, slimish, youngish, with amber eyes, black hair, and an expression like someone had just told a terrible joke. Oh, and a bow that looked almost like kitty ears.

Kabini, another Emdi IGPU.

"Um... morning?" she said weakly.

"It's about two, so it's more like afternoon," the IGPU said back to her. The woman paused for a few seconds. "You've been out for almost two days."

Talk about sleeping in. Kaveri would have a cow if—

Her blood went cold. Kaveri!

She jumped out of bed, not even caring that the world was going spinny. She had to see if Kaveri was all right. Her... her arm had...

And then she wasn't going anywhere because Kavaeri had wrapped her up in a bearhug and that was the end of that. It was like trying to get away from a a steel vice.

"Slow down," Kabini said to her. "Your sister's alive and in no danger."

Which wasn't the same thing as saying Kaveri was fine.

"What happened?" she asked the IGPU.

She saw Kabini frown. "How far back do you remember?"

She frowned. "I remember the sky lightning up, but after that, nothing."

Kabini's frown deepened. That couldn't be good. "Your sister can tell you about it, then. We filled her in." The IGPU shook her head. "In any case, Trinity found you and your sister. She managed to get your sister stable before she bled out."

Trinity, huh. She knew the name—yet another IGPU—but not the face. She'd have to thank her sometime later. But first...

"I won't run," she said to Kabini. "But, please, I really want to see my sister."

"Fine, but be careful, then," Kabini said as she let her go. "I told Kaveri I wouldn't let you hurt yourself."

Easier said than done. Well. At least the floor wasn't at an angle anymore. That was a plus, right?

She took a few steps towards her bedroom door and didn't plant her face into the floor. So far so good.

"You stumble once, and I'm putting you straight back into bed," Kabini warned.

Well, great. No pressure or anything. At least it was warm in the house, so she wasn't shivering in her pajamas. That would've probably made Kabini toss her back into bed.

She managed to get out the door and across the hallway to Trinity's bedroom. Not a single trip or stumble either. She gently knocked on the door.

"Come in," she heard her sister say. She slowly opened the door and peeked inside. Kaveri was sitting up in bed, propped up with some pillows. Her sister was staring out the window, but Kaveri slowly turned to look her way.

Kaveri looked okay, except for a bandage wrapped around her forehead. Her sister looked a little down, sure, but that was because...

She caught a glimpse of Kaveri's right arm, cut off at the elbow and bandaged up.

Oh, Kaveri...

Her eyes stung a little and got blurry, but she didn't even care as she rushed to her sister—no, not a single stumble—and hugged her, hard.

"Hey, kid," Kaveri said softly. "How're you?"

She looked up at Kaveri, wiping her eyes a little. "Me? I'm fine. What about you, though? Your... your arm."

Kaveri felt her smile—strained as it was—falter a bit. She hid it quickly, though. She was the responsible adult here.

To those not in the know, she looked like any other seventeen-year-old to her fifteen-year-old sister. To those who did know, she was actually twenty-three. Yeah, bit of an age gap between them.

Six years ago was when she'd manifested as an IGPU, and also when she'd basically stopped aging. Sure, she wasn't a GPU and wasn't truly immortal, but the aging process was super slowed down. She'd probably look twenty-five when she hit fifty.

Actually, what was the life expectancy of a IGPU? She had no clue. The oldest one she knew of was one of the senior IGPUs over in Entel, who was on the wrong side of one hundred but looked early thirties. Kabini didn't look any older than Kaveri, but was late twenties or early thirties. She didn't talk with Llano much, and as for Trinity... well, the less contact she had with that little sociopathic troll, the better.

She blinked. The hell was her mind wandering off to? Hello, weird mishmash of big sister and mother figure here. She needed to be focusing on helping Ruby get through this, not wondering how many candles she needed to put on Kabini's cake.

"Hey, kid, just a flesh wound," she said, with about triple the cheeriness than she actually felt. "Give me a week or two. I'll just... regenerate. Yeah."

She saw her sister frown. "Really? I thought..." Ruby trailed off and didn't complete the thought.

Ruby thought that regenerating from terrible battle damage was only something a GPU could do.

And her little sister was right. There was a reason she didn't know the natural life expectancy of an IGPU.

This wasn't a safe job. It didn't happen often, but sometimes a particularly powerful monster showed up and and took out an IGPU. Hell, a couple of a decades back, IGPUs had been killing each other in the wars.

And just a few days a GPU had died.

Wow. Morbidville, population: Kaveri.

She sighed to herself, an arm—well, her only arm—wrapped around Ruby. It was just an arm. It sucked that she was right-handed and that's what got chopped off, but she'd deal. She'd bounce back. That was kind of her thing. Knock her down, she just got back up, more pissed and ready to push someone's face in.

Except... this time it hadn't been enough. She got knocked down and she'd stayed there. If Radeon had shown up—and died—Ruby might've... might've...

"Yow, Kaveri!" her sister yelped. "Squeezing kind of hard over here!"

She started. Geez. She loosened up on her one-armed bear hug.

"My bad," she said with a laugh. "Overcompensating. Gotta squeeze twice as hard now."

Ruby didn't say anything. Not even a giggle. Man, tough crowd.

"Kaveri, are you sure you're okay?" her sister asked softly.

"Yeah, Ruby, I'm fine, I'm fine."

Ugh. Was that for Ruby's benefit, or hers? Yeah, she knew wasn't the biggest fish in the pond, but what the enemy IGPU had done to her had been something else. It'd shaken her. It wasn't good enough to just give as good as she got. Sometimes things just gave better than she did, and suddenly she was an arm lighter. That was probably the scariest thing. It was a wake up call, saying ring, ring, Kaveri, you're far from as indestructible as you think you are. You're wrong about yourself. Grow up. There be sharks in these waters, and if you keep up this reckless crap, it wouldn't be just an arm that goes missing next time.

It might be her life.

Or Ruby's.

She squeezed her sister to her harder. Ruby needed some big sister proximity with all that had happened.

And Ruby didn't need to see her big sister crying.

Nepgear looked at the pile of paperwork and almost started crying. Neptune has promised that she'd do at least half of it before noon. It didn't look like it'd been touched. At all. All two hundred thirty-seven pages of it.

Okay, happy thoughts. Think happy thoughts. If she upped the voltage to the actuators and added a few more capacitors, the piezoelectric musculature should be able to lift the frame. Problem was, to do that she'd have to increase the powerplant, which would increase overall weight, which meant she'd have to redo the skeleton, or maybe scale back the chest cannon. But if she did that, the torso would have—

Something yanked on her sleeve. "Nep Junior!"

"Gyah!" she yelped. "Gah! Neptune! Don't sneak up on me like that!"

"But if you weren't daydreaming, you'd have heard me coming, mecha-head," said her sister with a giant grin across her face.

"I... I... I wasn't daydreaming! I was just... looking at the paperwork I'd have to do!"

"Nep Junior, you can't lie to me. I mean, the evidence is only a paragraph up."

She blinked. "What?"

Her sister sighed. "Never mind. Come on, you can suffer over the paperwork later."

She whimpered at the reminder.

"We, dear bestest sister, are having guests. And I can't make it look like I'm making you do all of my paperwork, after all!"

Um... but Neptune kind of was...

"Come on, let's go."

And then she was dragged away.

"Um, who are we expecting today?" Nepgear whispered to Histoire.

"Plutia and Peashy are coming over from their dimension," the little Oracle answered. "My counterpart contacted me a few days ago and said they had something urgent to discuss. The other CPUs will be joining us via teleconference."

Her stomach did a flip-flop. One, because Plutia coming over on actual business—as opposed to just playing and taking a nap and eating pudding—was so rare that something terrible must be happening. Second, she strongly suspected Peashy was going to give her a righteous headbutt the moment she appeared and her tummy was psychosomatically reacting.

Owie...

"Ah, here they come," she heard Histoire say.

She squinted and looked up into the sky. She caught a a faint glimmer. Ah, must be them.

The three of them were on the large balcony on the upper level of the basilicom, and some holoscreens were set up nearby. Must be how Lastation, Leabox, and Lowee would be getting in touch.

She hoped the technicians had wired them right. The holoscreens were really, really picky about configuration, and if the port forwarding wasn't just right you could get some really funky feedback loops that could put stress on the—

Nudge to her ribs. Gah.

"Nep Junior, come on. Enough techy mind wandering," her sister said to her.

"Sorry." she said with a sigh. She honestly did need to stop doing that.

The little speck in the sky drew larger and larger, until they resolved themselves into two CPUs, one tall and slender, with flowing purple hair, the other shorter, more muscular, and blonde.

Iris Heart and Yellow Heart—or Plutia and Peashy, depending on how you wanted to look at it—touched down on the balcony. She tensed up, knowing that Peashy was going to go back to her human form and pummel her.

Any second now.

Aaaany second now.

Um, what?

Plutia and Peashy just stood there in their goddess aspects. Well, this was unusual. Maintaining HDD was pretty straining, and unless they needed to, CPUs stayed in human form. Which begged the question, why weren't the two of them switching back?

"Hey, Neptuna! Hey, Nepgear," Peashy yelled, despite being only ten feet from them. Plutia just inclined her head to her and Neptune, smiling faintly.

"So, um, Sadie, mind giving Plutie back for a minute?" she heard her sister say from beside her. "I mean, I love you and all, but, uh..."

"Oh, don't lie Neppy," Iris Heart said with a husky laugh. "I know this form terrifies you." She saw Plutia's ever-so-slight smile fade. Hmm? "Normally I'd be happy to go back to my human form and just lounge about with dolls and pudding, but not right now. I want my mind to be focused and a little less... cluttered, for what I have to say. So I'm staying in my goddess aspect until then."

Wow. If she had thought this was unusual before, it was just plain weird now. And maybe a little scary.

"Is it really that serious?" she heard her sister say, without any trace of the usual goofy... Neptune-ness her sister had about her. It was almost like Neptune's Purple Heart aspect was coming to the surface for a second.

"As a safe word."

She blinked. Wait, what?

She heard her sister sigh. "And here I was hoping we could do the dramatic build-up for the next plot development without any hitches, but no, you just had to make it weird."

Her sister hadn't even finished talking when there was a flash of light, and suddenly Purple Heart was standing next to her.

Okay. Should she go into HDD as well? Hmm. Her personality didn't really change much when she transformed, so going into her goddess form wouldn't really do much more than impress the readers. Probably best to save her energy for when she had to tackle that—sigh—giant pile of paperwork.

"Histoire, if you could please contact the others," her sister said, in the powerful contralto she had when in HDD.

It was kind of cool. She loved Neptune to bits, because she was an great big sister, but she really looked up to the calm, collected awesomeness that was Purple Heart.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Histoire make a gesture to the holoscreens. They booted up, displaying a connection icon, before the faces of the other nations' CPUs showed up. There was Noire and Uni from Lastation, Vert from Leanbox, and Blanc, Rom, and Ram from Lowee. And, hold on, she saw a screen with her friend IF on it. On the wall behind Iffy she could see the guild symbol.

The others looked surprised that Neptune was in her HDD form, but no one said anything. She'd half expected Noire, at least, to take a poke at her sister. Because Noire.

Iris Heart looked at the screens and nodded. "Good afternoon, everyone. I'm stopping by from my dimension because I have some distressing news." Plutia paused for a second. "Three days ago the Leanbox of my dimension came under heavy attack from unknown forces. Vert was severely injured, and if Yellow Heart hadn't been along the seaways on patrol it's possible she would have been hurt far worse."

She saw Peashy nod vigorously

Vert—this dimension's Vert, to be precise, leaned forward on her desk. "How hurt, if I can ask?"

"Well, as far as I can tell, she hasn't logged into Four Goddesses Online since then."

Her eyes widened. So did Vert's. She'd spent a few years—lots of years, to be honest—with the Vert of Plutia's dimension, and the Leanbox CPU was just as as game-crazy as this dimension's. The other Vert had to be in, like, traction to not be clicking away at the computer.

Traction. Oh, goodness.

"What kind of enemies were they?" she heard Blanc ask.

"Unknown," Plutia answered. "They left no bodies behind when killed. However, between the accounts of Peashy and Vert, Histoire—my Histoire—was able to come up with a composite."

As she said that, Iris Heart unhooked a small device from her waist. Oh, she recognized that. It was one of the new models of holoprojectors that had just hit the market a few months ago. It was a joint project between both Planeptunes, and it was advertised to be at least fifty percent better than the previous model. Much better battery life, stronger processor for multitasking, wireless streaming, improved holographic fidelity, everything. She had to get one of those when she had what the goodness?

The 3D image that popped up looked like... like a girl or young woman, with pale skin. Medium build and height—about her size, come to think of it—if the hologram was at 1:1 scaling. A black helmet covered the upper half of the woman's face, and the rest of the body was naked except for armored plates here and there. Even stranger, the woman didn't have hands. Instead, from the elbow down, she saw swords.

It looked like...

"That looks like a CPU," Noire said, frowning.

"It's not, though," Peashy piped in. "Well not that I know about, anyway. They exploded when I punched 'em, and not even Nepgear blows up when I punch her." She groaned when she heard that. "Also their felt energy... really icky."

"Icky?" This from Vert.

"Yeah," Yellow Heart continued. "It's like... if normal Share energy is one of Neptuna's yummy puddings, then that energy felt like the pudding I left in my pocket for two weeks." Peashy pursed her lips. "Really made my tummy feel weird."

Uh? How on earth did you leave a pudding in your pocket and forget about it for two weeks?

Hold a moment.

"Um, Peashy," she said. Okay, time to carefully not notice how all the CPUs were suddenly looking at her. Scary. "You said 'they'. How many of those thing were there?"

Peashy frowned as she thought about that for a few seconds. "Dunno. Lots. Me and Bert weren't having too much trouble with them, but then they all kind of died and made one super strong whatever-it-is."

"They combined?" asked Noire. "Physically?"

"Not really. They just kind of gave all their energy to one of 'em. It was really strong when they did, too. Me and Bert were spaced far apart when they zonked out, so it took me a few seconds to get to her. By the time I got there, it had already smacked Bert into the ground and cut her up pretty bad. The two of us together were able to blow it up, though."

Her eyes widened at that. The Green Heart of that dimension was very powerful and skilled with a spear. If it took only a few seconds for it to hurt Vert that badly, it was an enemy you had to take very seriously. Plus, that icky energy thing was puzzling. Peashy had compared it to Share energy, but only CPUs had access to Share energy. And CPUs didn't just die to give their energy to another CPU.

"So with that knowledge," Plutia said, "I asked my Histoire to make a few calls." Iris Heart nodded to Histoire.

"And I made a few calls of my own when I had gotten the information," the Oracle said. She noticed Purple Heart looking at Histoire, eyebrow cocked. "Oh, don't give me that look, Neptune. For one, there was no reason to think it was of any significance in this dimension. Two, you wouldn't have done anything with the information, anyway."

Her sister chuckled. "I'd argue with you, but we all know it's true."

She heard a few laughs from the holoscreens.

"Guess that's my cue, then," IF said from her guild screen. "I went through our channels to see if anything had happened around our dimension. Almost nada."

"Almost?" she heard Blanc say.

"Almost," IF repeated. "Some of the guild detachments along the coastlines sent in reports of encountering new monsters that looked almost like CPUs. They weren't tough, and the senior teams were able to bag 'em without too much of a fuss. Following standard guild procedure, they documented this new monster type as best they could and sent it to the database." Iffy tapped something offscreen, and suddenly IF's face was replaced with an image of one of the units Peashy had fought.

"And you didn't think to mention it?" Noire snapped.

The screen flipped back to Iffy. "Whoa there," IF said, hands up in a placating gesture. "Like I said, standard guild procedure. New monster types pop up every now and then and get documented. Unless there's a huge outbreak it's just another one for the record books. Heck, I wouldn't even have read up on them if Histoire hadn't gotten in touch with me and convinced me to dig around."

Things were getting weirder and weirder. A completely new monster type that looked eerily similar to a CPU had showed up simultaneously in both dimensions. Plus they were strong enough, at least in groups, to hurt a full CPU like Green Heart.

"With that said, we've only had sightings of individual monsters along the eastern coasts of Gamindustri," continued IF. "I spread the word among some of my friends, and yesterday I got a message from a guy who knows a guy with a boat. Something similar to what happened in Iris Heart's Leanbox happened in the eastern continental area."

Huh? Eastern continental area? She didn't know about that. She thought for a moment. Well. Hold on. She remembered bits and pieces out of a history book Histoire had made her read. Graf-something, right?

"Graphicard?" Blanc said. Oh, that was it. Graphicard.

"Yup. The guy in question was anchored a few miles off the coast of one of the islands. Emdi, I think it's called." IF looked offscreen and looked to be reading something. "Yeah, Emdi. The way he tells it, there was a serious scuffle there about two days ago. And when I mean serious, I'm talking about an explosion up in the sky that was almost strong enough to capsize the boat, even from that distance. Flattened a lot of the coastline architecture." IF sat a little straighter in her chair. "If we want to know what's up with these new monsters, I bet a month's pay we'll learn more in Graphicard."

Silence.

Everyone looked deep in though, including Neptune and Plutia, who she assumed hadn't heard of the information IF had just given. The question was, what now? She didn't know anything, really about the lands to the far east. Probably the guild would send IF and a small detachment out to investigate. Was that safe, though? Individually, those monsters didn't seem too tough, but what if there was a lot of them? What if they combined? Iffy knew her stuff, but something that could really hurt a CPU could be bad news if the guild people ran into it.

They'd need someone... fast. Strong enough to fight so they could retreat if they had to. Sounded exactly like a CPU like her big sis or the others. But that wouldn't work, though. The nations were still trying to pick up the pieces from the Tari incident, and if a CPU was over in Graphicard, that meant they weren't in their own nations. If those monsters could challenge a CPU, she hated to think what they could do to normal military people.

Or civilians.

"I can go," she blurted.

Oh, goodness. She'd really said that, hadn't she?

Suddenly everyone was looking at her again. Eek.

Her sister was looking too, but not surprised. She swore she was a smile on Neptune's face. "Say again, Nep Junior?"

"I mean, it makes sense, right?" she explained. "The CPUs have to stay around here, right, to keep things going smoothly and just in case a mass attack happens here? It's just me going, so it's not too much of a big deal."

Ouch. She'd just insulted herself, hadn't she? She was about to give more reasons why she wouldn't be missed—sigh—when she saw Uni shoot up in her chair.

"I'm going, too!"

Noire looked like someone had just hit her in the face with pillow. "No, Uni, you're not."

"You heard when Peashy said. It's a two CPU job if they do their power combining thing, even if, you know, I'm not as strong as you are. Plus, Nepgear could use someone to cover her back."

She saw the Lastation CPU open her mouth to protest, but Iris Heart spoke first.

"For what it's worth, Noire, I think her reasoning's very sound. In fact..." Plutia turned to look at Yellow Heart for a second. "I think Peashy should come along too, since she knows how these things fight."

"Ooh, field trip!" Peashy said.

Noire just stared for a few seconds before leaning back in hear chair, massaging her forehead. "Fine."

Uni pumped a fist in to the air. Noire didn't see it. Or maybe just ignored it. It was Noire, after all.

"Is that going to be all right, though, Plutie?" she heard her sister ask. "With Vert injured and P-Ko gone, won't you be spread too thin?"

"I don't think so," Iris Heart said after a moment. "Our nations are already on high alert with our military mobilized. I also spoke with my Blanc yesterday. Copypaste was fitted with a new war chassis, so he can keep things secure around Lowee, which helps takes the strain off of us. We can mobilize to Leanbox if need be, until Vert gets better."

She saw Neptune nod.

Then it hit her. She'd really volunteered for something. Completely on her own. She was finally learning to assert herself! Be a real hero! Maybe be true protagonist material!

Neptune turned to her. "You think you can be ready go by this time tomorrow? You should reach the islands at night, and I think an inconspicuous entrance would be best."

"Sure!" she said, excited. Big sis was noticing her! "It's plenty of time."

"Very well. We still have that paperwork to do, after all."

Okay, maybe she didn't want big sis to notice her after all.

Kaveri leaned back on her pillows and rubbed the back of her head.

"That bad, huh?" she asked Kabini.

"Yeah," the other IGPU said.

It was just the two of them in their room for right now. Ruby had knocked out a few minutes ago, after she'd given a recap of what had happened. Kabini had carried her sister back to bed. Heh. You'd think two days of constant sleeping would be enough for Ruby, but obviously not.

She'd have carried Ruby back herself, but, you know, one arm and all...

Yeah... better not go there. With a sigh she looked back at her friend.

She and Kabini had discussing the events of the past few days. The attack had ended when Radeon had waxed the composite IGPU, but the explosion had also devastated the western coastal town. Hundreds of casualties, and the death toll was already several dozen.

Even worse, the Entel and Vida weren't answering their phones. You think after a head of state—which Radeon was, among other things—got taken out, the other nations would want to know what was up. But when the Emdi government and military had tried to get in contact with their counterparts, nada. Borderline shady, to be honest. One things were settled a little Kabini or maybe Llano would try to make contact with Entel, which was friendlier to Emdi than Vida was.

"Who's running the show then?" she asked. Traditionally in Emdi, the GPU was considered the executive unit in the government, and helped manage day-to-day affairs when she didn't have to take out particularly dangerous creatures. She had no idea what was going to happen now while they waited for the next GPU to emerge.

"Llano's the most senior of the IGPUs, so she'll be the leader in the interim," Kabini answered. "Trinity should he helping, too, though I honestly don't expect anything, not from her." Ah-hah, Kabini wasn't too hot on Trinity either. Score. "As for me, I'll need to coordinate with the relief forces. There's still people not accounted for on the coast, alive or dead." Kabini shook her head. "It's hard to get power equipment through the rubble, so my strength and SHADR sensors will be useful with the search parties."

Search parties. Hmm.

"Speaking of searches," she said to the other IGPU, "we'll need to be on the lookout for whoever takes up the GPU mantle. The guilds should be given a heads up."

"That's right," Kabini said, frowning. "That said, I'll be the one who does it, not we. You need your rest, Kaveri."

She frowned. No, not happening. She wasn't getting the kid gloves, thank you very much. "I lost an arm, not my vocal cords. I can work a palmtop. Heck, I bet could still assist the search parties. I'm still plenty strong. I can still heave stuff with one arm."

"Kaveri, no," Kabini said to her. Okay, this was starting to annoy her. "Get your rest. We heal faster than normal humans, a lot faster, even, but you lost an arm, and a lot of blood. You need to heal and rest. It's not going to help anyone if I have to fly you to a hospital because you collapse."

She leaned forward, teeth clenched. "You know what?" she snapped. "You can just come out and say it. 'Kaveri, you got your ass beat, so stay here in the safe little house while the rest of us do the important work.' "

"That's not what I said," Kabini said quietly. "And you're overreacting, Kaveri. You're not invincible, none of us are."

Yeah, not invincible. And that had cost Radeon her life, and almost her own and Ruby's. She kind of deflated back into her pillows.

"Just stay here, stay with Ruby. She needs you. And I think you need her."

She looked away. Just then, for the briefest of seconds, she hated Kabini's guts for playing the little sister card on her. Dammit. She closed her eyes for a few seconds, opened them. Kabini was on the short list of people she could call friend. She didn't want to end their conversation like this.

"Fine, fine," she relented. "I'm going to need to learn how to write left-handed, anyway. No time like the present."

The other IGPU smiled slightly. "Hope it improves. Your penmanship's always been terrible."

She snorted.