Hello, fanfiction readers. I am Some Random Tosser, both in name and label. Wouldn't you know it; it's been over two years since I started writing this self-insert story. As you can probably tell, the quality of this story has been wonky as hell, bouncing up and down between "oh good God, I didn't even know my eyes had arms or katanas but now they're using them to commit seppuku" and "this is mildly tolerable and I have nothing better to do every two weeks".

It's only been recently that my arts are being applied more appropriately. Because of this, I feel that my first chapter as it is now is a poor representation of my abilities as they are currently. I know rewriting this first chapter is going to violate the historical sin of leaving products pristine and how they were released but, for those naysayers, that's why I'm leaving Chapter 2 and the others alone. Chapter 1 will be rewritten, to reflect my abilities as they are now.

By the way, if you're reading this after Re;Birth has been released, know that this fanfic is based off the original game and not its re-release.

So I will not hesitate any longer. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls alike, I present to you:

Hyperdimension Neptunia is Real!

Chapter 1: No Semicolons in Rebirth

Would Jacob Winters call himself an exceptional individual? Well, sometimes. On one hand, he felt as if life handed him an instruction manual that seemed to differ from everyone else's and he could feel the differences between himself and those around him like a physical object. On the other hand, there were exceptional individuals in the world who stood in front of a huge line of tanks, sacrificed their professional sporting careers to rescue people in trouble without hesitation or make famous speeches to shake the status quo of an entire nation. Those were only the successful exceptional individuals. No matter how much Jacob was unlike his peers, he was still like them in that he spent his winter nights on his desktop, distracting himself with funny pictures.

His appearance wasn't conventional or unconventional either: Jacob's hand rested in his hair of black ring curls as he used his other hand to operate the mouse. He wore a brown t-shirt with lighter brown shorts and he stood at six feet when he wasn't sitting down. His brown eyes didn't run across the contents of the web page he was looking as much as they were walking along without a hurry.

Then his dad knocked on the wall of his bedroom from the other side. Jacob hated it when he did that; the sound echoed throughout the entire room like hammering nails into thick wood and it utterly shattered the bubble of serenity he built. Still, requests were requests and Jacob had to answer them lest his dad guilt tripped him again. He turned off his computer monitor and exited the room before turning around to look down the stairs. John stood in the middle of the stairs, dressed in a dark blue wool jacket and dark blue shorts with a patch of white stripes on the left leg.

"Hey Jake, we're leaving for the footy game now," he informed his son. "You have the entire house to yourself."

"Nice." The reason for the reply's dull delivery was that, spending most of his time in his room on his computer, he was very used to being alone even when the rest of his family was in his house. At the very least, he could play his music as loud as he wanted without anyone complaining. "So when will you be back?"

"About three hours. Maybe a bit longer... Are you sure you're going to be alright here on your own?"

Jacob let out a soft sigh. "Dad, you asked me this last time and the time before. The time before that one, Mum asked me. As I have said each time, I will be fine, okay?"

"I know but don't you ever get bored."

"No. I have the Internet, an endless world of wonders. I'll never get bored."

Now it was John's turn to sigh. "Alright then. Zac and I will pick up Mum and Hannah on the way back, alright?"

"Mhm. Have fun."

"You too." John then descended down the stairs, quickly getting out of Jacob's sight.

Jacob walked back into his room. As he did, a new feeling overtook him. It was one thing to be told you're going to be alone for at least one eighth of a day. It was another to actually be alone.

Jacob grinned and rubbed his hands together.

Unexpectedly, after about half an hour of websurfing and listening to his favourite songs at max volume, Jacob felt the boredom begin to set in. Finding good fanfiction was like trying to find gold in a septic tank and funny web videos weren't currently in his list of interests. Therefore, he went out into the main room and to the PS3 and widescreen TV tucked in the corner. The TV stood on top of a wooden cabinet with two shelves, two side cupboards and a lower drawer. The PS3 Slim sat on the bottom shelf.

"Okay, what do I have..." he asked himself before opening the left cupboard to browse his PS3 game collection. "... Oh yeah." His eyes lit up as one game case caught his eye. He bought the game earlier today but never got around to playing it due to being sidetracked by private messages, forum posts and the repulsive notion of having to wait half an hour for the game to install whatever updates were released in the few hours after the game had come out. Nevertheless, that was a half hour that was looking mighty appealing right now, especially since the game in question was one he had been looking forward to for ages: Hyperdimension Neptunia.

Grinning, he took the disc out of the case. "Finally," he said to himself with a voice of pure satisfaction, "I shall play this game set in a world about video games. A JRPG of an adventure of epic proportions, clever jokes and sharp insight into our industry. Hopefully, anyway. But whatever. I am not going to regret this." Then he finally—

The phone on the small wooden table behind him rang, piercing his "me time" like his dad's knocking. Groaning, he picked up the phone and answered. "Hello?"

"Hey Jacob, it's dad."

"Hey dad, what's up?"

"Just calling to ask if everything's alright."

"Yeah, everything's dandy. How's the game?"

"We just got here. You really should've been here tonight," said John with a great amount of zeal.

"Thanks but no thanks. Footy's not my thing."

"Alright, alright. Have fun."

"I will. Love you, Dad."

"Love you too."

And Jacob hung up. "Finally," he began again, "I shall— oh bugger it." He put the game into the PS3 and sat in his rocking chair that began rocking back and forth vigorously with Jacob's movements. After the main screen of the PS3 showed itself, he quickly scrolled across to the Game menu and scrolled down to see the disc icon with "Hyperdimension Neptunia" listed after it. He highlighted the icon and waited. After two seconds, the wallpaper was replaced by a blue screen with the head of Purple Heart, the alter-ego of Neptune the main protagonist. Having visited the game's website several times before it was finally released, he had a bit of knowledge about what he was in for. He pressed X on the disc icon and the screen faded to black. Jacob rocked even harder in anticipation.

His rocking began to slow down when a loud whirring sound started coming from the PS3. A purple glow was soon after emitted from the disc slot, USB ports and ventilation gaps. After the whirring sound reached its peak and the purple glows couldn't get any brighter, a small 'bang' sounded from within the console. The whirring and glowing died immediately. So did the PS3, if the smoke pouring out of the console's openings was of any indication.

"... What...?" he finally asked himself. "What what what what WHAT?"

Jacob quickly scurried off his rocking chair and to the PS3. He didn't touch it; he just stared at the smoking console. That just blew up inside. With his brand new game inside. His brand new game inside his $450 PS3 Slim. "H... How...?"

Before he had time to explode, he heard screaming from above him. This was weird because he was on the second floor of his house and there were only two floors in his house. Above his house was just empty sky. What was even weirder was that the screaming was getting progressively louder.

"... aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH—"

... Now that he thought about it, this was beginning to sound a lot like an anime episode where some random tosser fell from the sky onto the unsuspecting normal person—

Jacob shot up immediately and ran to the left of the room. This proved to be unnecessary when a pink blur shot right through his room and through the middle of the second floor that he wasn't near. He heard the impact on the first floor and the sound of the hardwood floor breaking while he was lying on the floor, having been knocked over from the force of his second floor getting a brand new hole. He lied there for a few moments as he caught his breath. After getting his shock under control, Jacob stood up and walked to the edge of the massive hole. He looked up through the new hole in the roof and saw the night sky very clearly.

"... That's gonna take ages to fix..." he panted, still shocked from the unidentified falling object falling into his house at terminal velocity. Speaking of which, he looked down through the second floor hole to the first floor. A crater was present where a large section of the hardwood floor used to be and broken planks pointed up like rectangular stakes.

When he saw that a person was in the middle of the crater, he wasted no time running down the stairs to get to her. The purple blur that ruined his house belonged to the hair of the young girl curled up within her nest of destruction, seemingly sleeping. She also wore a white hoodie jacket lined with purple and white socks with sky blue stripes that reached up to the middle of her thighs. Jacob gulped. "Hey, um... are you okay?"

To his surprise, the purple shooting star groaned. She moved around a bit before sitting up and yawning, rubbing her eyes all the while. When she was done rubbing her eyes, she looked at Jacob and blinked. "Ugh... where am I...?" she asked, still fatigued.

"Hi," Jacob greeted. "Um..." He quickly ran out of words and pointed up to the hole in the second floor.

The girl's gaze followed his finger upwards. When she saw the hole and the other one after that, her eyes widened. "Whoa..." she remarked, waking up a bit more. "Did I do that?"

"Yup," Jacob answered simply.

"Eesh... That's gonna take ages to fix."

"I know. So..." he extended a hand to her as a wordless offer to help her up. "My name is Jacob Winters. You are?"

The purple-haired girl looked at his hand with an odd energy. If Jacob was to describe the look, he'd groan and ask if he really had to but, if pressed, he'd say that it seemed to be partly admiration, partly confusion and partly surprise. She grinned fully before grabbing Jacob's hand in an unorthodox manner that looked somewhat like she was about to engage in an arm wrestle. "My name is Neptune, and I'll be glad to be your blood brother! Or sister!"

"... Actually, I was offering to help you up."

"... Oh. Well, can it be both?"

"I'm afraid not."

"Aw."

Jacob lifted Neptune off the ground and gave her a bit of space to dust herself off. Despite falling at tremendous speeds through a two story house, not even her clothes looked slightly worse for wear beyond the dust. Now that he could look at her a bit more closely, he could tell she had a very unique appearance. Beyond just her purple hair, that is. Two white clips in the shape of d-pads on a Nintendo Gamecube controller adorned her hair which was shoulder-length and composed of many messy bangs, the ones on the sides turned up slightly. Standing upright, she reached up to a bit below Jacob's shoulders and she looked like she was fourteen at the latest. She also wore a white tubular choker and purple shoes with blue laces. Her white hoodie's strings were modelled after USB plugs and the zip tag was a circular emblem with a purple N in the middle of it.

... Now that he thought about it, she looked a lot like the Neptune in Hyperdimension Neptunia. And they shared the same name.

"Hold the phone..." Jacob muttered. "Could you come with me for a second, please?" He didn't wait for her to say "sure, I guess" before he took off up the stairs quickly, Neptune following not too far behind.

"Whatcha lookin' for? Is it... a secret weapon? Or maybe some special hidden extras, like artwork?" the girl asked as Jacob fished out the Hyperdimension Neptunia case from the cupboard. He stood up and inspected the back and front of the case before he looked again at Neptune, who casually walked to his side and looked at the case as well. Currently, they were looking at the back of the case on which was printed the picture of a girl that looked exactly like Neptune. "Hey," Neptune started, "that girl looks a lot like me. I'm prettier, though, but we look a lot alike."

Jacob decided to wait a few seconds.

Neptune's eyes shot wide open. "Holy crapperoni!" she finally yelled as she recoiled back. "I'm a video game character!" She looked down at her body and inspected herself fervently. "I'm— you— game— buh— wuh... whoa..." Neptune placed a hand on her forehead and took a deep breath.

"I have a rocking chair if you want it," Jacob offered as he gestured to the chair in question.

"Thankilio, frienderino..." Neptune complied and sat down on the chair. "Whoa... I'm a video game character..."

Jacob sighed and rubbed his forehead. "I know... I'm surprised as well."

"You don't look it."

"Well, I've mentally prepared myself for events like these. I'd always imagined Godzilla appearing in my street one day and all the awesome adventures I'd have with a completely straight face. I'm surprised that I'm surprised you're here, to be honest."

"Well... okay then. Anyway, how's that for an opening twist, eh? I'm a video game character! And with a forgotten past to booty!"

"Oh yeah, you conveniently have amnesia," Jacob responded. "Want something to drink? Or eat?"

"You know about my amnesia?!"

"Yeah. I did a bit of reading of the game before I bought it."

Neptune's jaw dropped. "Wha?! You spoiled yourself? How could you?! Now the game's twists and turns won't—"

"No, no, no, no, no," Jacob cut her off. "I just did research on background information before I bought the game so I'd know what I was throwing sixty bucks away for."

Neptune pouted. "I still think you're a party pooper. Still... what do you know? I'm an amnesiac so I need you to tell me everything."

"I gathered. Anyway, I know that you come from a place called Gamindustri, there's the goddess realm Celestia and the human realm and there's this tome called Histoire, which is necessary to—"

"Wait!" cried Neptune as she stood up quickly from her chair but it was a rocking chair so it lurched forward and banged against the back of the purple-haired girl's legs. "Owies!"

"Ooh..." Jacob winced. "You alright there?"

"Yeah, just dandy-liony..." Neptune sat down on the blue carpet floor cross legged and rubbed her pained appendages. "Anyway, you said Histy?"

"I said Histoire but what about it?"

"I had a dream and Histy called to me for help in it and she's in Gamindustri and I need to get there. Do you know how to get to Gamindustri?"

"Well, considering that we're in what I call the real world and Gamindustri is a fictional locale located inside a disc that just blew up in my PS3..." Neptune looked towards the source of the odd smell and noticed the smoke coming from the console in question, "... I don't think we're going to Gamindustri any time soon."

"Aw, but I need to get there!" Neptune shouted as she stood back up. "Well, then it's up to me to find my way to Gamindustri and save Histy!" She punched upwards at the end of her speech and then she pointed to Jacob in an overly histrionic manner. "Come on, Jacob! Adventure awaits us!"

"Wait, what?" Jacob leaned back from the outstretched finger. "Why do I have to go? It's your job."

Neptune recoiled as if Jacob's words came to life and turned into a dog that barked at her. "B-B-B-But..." she stuttered. "But-But you're the smart, tall, snarky and dark guy who serves to be the exposition! You have to join my team!"

"Why?"

"It's how these things work!"

"You're an amnesiac. You shouldn't know that."

Neptune clenched her fists into a tightness proportional to the size of her inflated cheeks. She quickly turned around, letting out the air and unclenching her fists at the same time, and walked to the end of the room with her arms crossed. She paced back and forth next to the wall, tapping her head with her finger.

"You need something?" he asked.

"Hush! I am planning something!" Neptune continued pacing back and forth. Two minutes passed before she suddenly brightened and snapped her fingers while shouting "HUZZAH!"

"What? What'd you think of?" Jacob inquired.

Neptune did not answer with words. Slowly, she walked over to Jacob, keeping her head low so that her bangs obscured her eyes from Jacob's gaze. "Jacob..." she began with an uncharacteristically quiet voice, "I don't have any friends here... I'm all alone in this completely alien place and I really need to get home..." Neptune then looked up at Jacob, executing what many otaku call the 'puppy dog eyes' manoeuvre. "Please help me..." Her eyes wobbled and her mouth quivered. She looked at Jacob most intensely. She leaned forward and stood on the tips of her toes to get her face, her adorable little face, as close to Jacob's eyes as possible.

"You're going to have to do a lot better than that," Jacob answered with a look of complete indifference.

"Crackers!" Neptune threw up her arms and abandoned her cutey wooty puppy dog eyes completely. "How did you resist my adorable charms? There isn't a male protagonist alive who should be shielded from that technique!"

"Unfortunately for you, my heart of ice takes up even less space than a grain of sand and it's located somewhere within the black hole occupying the bit where my heart should be," he explained.

Neptune stomped her right foot and she walked towards the staircase. "Well, fine! Someone's life depends on it and I, the beautiful heroine, can't just sit idly by! With or without your help, I am gonna get back to Gamindustri!"

"Alright, alright, fine..." Jacob sighed. "I'll go with you."

Neptune stopped at the top of the stairs. She looked back at Jacob with a look of befuddlement. "... Wait, really?"

"Yes," Jacob answered.

"That's really all it took to convince you?"

"Yes," Jacob asserted through gritted teeth. "I can't let you go out there alone."

Neptune raised an eyebrow. "Huh. To think you would've helped me if I just appealed to your hero complex."

Jacob rolled his eyes and crossed his arms. "Let's just get this over with. I have about two hours to help you find your way back — if there is a way back — and get back here."

"Why two hours?"

"Well, my family's away and they'll be getting around in about two hours."

"Oooh!" Neptune sounded. "You have a family?"

"Yes. What about it?"

"Well, you don't know a lot of people with families. You know, orphaned heroes or boring loner types who stay home all day until they get a harem at a school."

"... Neptune, you are an amnesiac. You don't know anyone."

Neptune's eyes widened. "Oh yeah!"

Jacob slapped his forehead.

After Jacob donned his black hoodie and black sneakers with white socks, the two of them left the house. The winter night was dark and it was the responsibility of the power poles to illuminate the street that the two of them strode on.

"As you can see," Jacob began speaking to Neptune, who was entranced by her new surroundings, "we have a park and a playground over to our left. There's also a sewer hole there but it's dangerous so don't get near it."

"Wait!" Neptune stopped in her tracks. "Have you ever explored this sewer hole?"

"No, not really. Never took much interest in it, what with all the possible dangerous spiders. Why?"

"It could be a portal to go back to my home!" Neptune concluded as if this made perfect sense.

"... Neptune, if that was the case, the architects and, by extension, the government, would probably know and seal off access to the sewer hole with slightly more than a mesh of wooden planks."

"Who cares? It happens all the time, now come on!" Neptune grabbed Jacob's hand and took him across the park.

At least, she would have if Jacob didn't force his hand out of Neptune's grasp. "How would you know that it happens all the time? You're an amnesiac."

"Ooh, you make me so angry! Clap that trap shut and come on, already!"

Neptune ran across the park while Jacob walked with no sense of urgency whatsoever. After a minute or so of running and walking, the duo came across the sewer hole. To Jacob's surprise, the wood covering the hole wasn't there. If that wasn't enough, an eerie ethereal glow of purple surrounded the hole leading into the horizontal space.

"Ha! I told you so!" Neptune pumped her arms triumphantly while Jacob crossed his.

"That's... unusual..."

"You go first," Neptune commanded. "You know, chivalry and all that stuff."

"What? Why me? Why not you?"

"Because I'm a girl and you're a boy and this is a thing boys should be doing."

"But there are spiders in there! And maybe rats! And most likely sewage!"

Neptune bent down to look into the hole. "Looks clean to me. I think you're just a chicken. No offence, mind. Chickens can be really strong if you hit them enough times."

Jacob bent down as well and looked into the tunnel. It stretched out into eventual darkness but, from what he could see, it looked brand new. Not a sign of filth could be seen anywhere. "... Fine." Jacob got down on all fours and crawled into the tunnel. Neptune followed after him and they crawled along in the narrow space. "If I even so much as hear a rat or a spider, we are out of here, you hear me?"

"Sure, whatevs. Just don't fart, okay? I'm right behind you."

"All the more reason to crawl back as fast as you can when I doOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

All of a sudden, Jacob found himself falling through complete blackness. This was odd because he couldn't see any holes in front of him when he was crawling.

I hope you enjoyed that chapter. If you are a new reader, I hope this inspires you to look through the thirty other chapters of this fanfic and I hope you enjoy yourself if you do. Any constructive feedback you can provide would (possibly) be of tremendous assistance. The adventure's only getting started, my friends!

Anyway, for those wondering, the exceptional individuals mentioned at the start of the chapter are Tank Man, Shavarsh Vladimirovich Karapetyan and Martin Luther King Jr.