First, the stage is pitch to my eyes, and then the spotlight gets on me. It'd be blinding if my eyes weren't to my feet, but the sudden sound of that heavy shutter opening is enough to make me jump in my shoes. To my left is dark. To my right is dark. All there is around me is dark, dark and more dark except for the light that points me out as the only person to see.

Another light flashes on with that same heavy sound for emphasis, but this wasn't another spotlight, but a single horizontal bar shining from high above me, tinted a bleach white.

"You there," a voice, deep and distorted, calls out to me from the direction of that white light, "state your name."

I'm nervous to respond, but I still do. I give my name, my age, my nationality, and a few other things I wasn't asked for.

"We only asked for your name, the rest is no concern of ours," said the voice.

I swallow my breath to clear my throat when another light switches on, this one a purple bar in line with the white one, though a ways away.

"Aww..." Another voice chimes in, distinct from the first in pitch and delivery. "That's still such a boring name. I was hoping he'd at least shorten it, or have a cool nickname with adjectives and nouns and maybe even some of those agreeable subject verb things."

Between the purple and white bars comes a green light. I'm noticing a pattern.

"Don't be disheartened, Friends." A third voice drops in, and I notice that this and the second one have kinda ruined that menacing atmosphere that was going on a second ago. "Even in situations such as this, the player, or players in our case, is allowed some level of customization."

"Focus!" The first voice shouts to send his/her compatriots back to the scene. "Now, do you know why you're here?"

"Huh?" The second voice starts, and with only their disembodied, distorted voices here, I'm having a bit of trouble following who's talking. "Of course I know why we're here, we grabbed up an NPC and we were gonna..."

"Not you! Arrgh!"

Seeing as how I've been forgotten, I've decided to name these voices to better follow what's going on. White is Raphael, purple is Michelangelo, and green is Donatello. I realize that Donnie should be purple, but I guess we're breaking trends, here.

"Umm...," Donnie takes the mic as Raph vents over Mikey, "I don't mean to break you to apart when you're getting along so well, but our fourth wheel seems to be having some technical issues."

Those shutters are sounding off and on again, but no fourth light accompanies the sounds.

"Oh fourth voice of mystery, what's going on with you?" Mikey asks, saving me the trouble.

"Ummm..." I chittered in. "Look, I'm not sure what's going on, but if this is a cutscene then I'm not your guy. It's been months since I last applied for a nondescript NPC role."

"Did you really try and use black painted lights in a pitch dark room?" Raphael is taking the last of their group to task. "You should have just went with a blue light. Ugh! Now this whole scene is ruined!"

"Wow. This whole thing fell to pieces and I'm not even the one to blame. This'd be amazing if it wasn't so totally, like, E Rank disappointing," said Mikey.

Whoever number four here is, I'm glad they didn't use a blue light. Blue is Leonardo's color, and they obviously don't deserve to be the Leo. They can be a Rabbid instead.

"Oh forget this!"

Raphael's white light went out, and Mikey and Donnie's purple and green lights shut off immediately after. Now, I'm in the dark all by my lonesome.

"Was I going to become relevant anytime soon?" I asked the void.

"Wait a sec!" A new voice, this one natural in pitch, undistorted, and girly sounding, shouted back at me. "Sorry about all this thisness. We're consulting tech support, and we promise to be back in a short, so leave a message after the beep. Beep!"

I'll just assume that was Mikey's natural voice...

"I suggest you partake in some reading while you wait." Donatello's elegant inflection reaches me from within the darkness, now sounding much more feminine sans the distortion.

An arm extends into my spotlight with a gloved hand holding out a dubious looking magazine with the header, Heaven x Boys above the image of two male-ish looking fellows with addorsed glances from each other as their fingers are intertwined. I accept the volume, pinching the bottom corner of the spine, but I have the sinking suspicion that this particular mag isn't in my genre.

"Thank you?" I say.

"You're quite welcome," says Donatello before her(?) arm recedes back into the black.

I choose to stay quiet. From all around there sounds of arguing, the clanking and shuffling of equipment, and all without any names crossing the air for me to hear. I wish I had my iPad with me. Oh wait can I even say that? I didn't say that, but am I allowed to think that?

The spotlight on me shuts off, and I regret thinking about my iPad when every ceiling light above me kicks on for me to see the gray metal pillars and cushioned pews all around. I'm in a bascillicom. I was in Planeptune before getting manhandled and left in the dark, so I'll guess that I wasn't taken into another nation.

"Ahem!" Mikey calls for attention, only it's not Mikey.

Mikey never had purple hair. Actually, I'm pretty sure Mikey never had hair to begin with, and I'm definitely sure he was never an adorable young girl in a white hoodie... Never outside of fan art, at least.

There is no Michelangelo here to speak with me. Nor is there a Raphael or a Donatello, and I thank every goodness there is that there aren't any Rabbids here. As for the four people that are here before me, they're a lot more..., womanly than the Turtles.

"Sorry about that! Our poor Noire had an issue with her light bulb," said Neptune, the Console Patron Unit and figurehead of this nation of Planeptune, resplendant in her hoodie and blue and white striped thigh high stockings. "I guess the ominous lights in the darkness thing doesn't work so well when your coordinated color is black. Who'da thunk it, am I right?"

Standing next to Neptune is Noire, CPU of nearby Lastation, identified easily by her long black twin tails... There are more bits to her, but I don't really care so much about her. I'm not into the twin tails look. If nothing else, all that red in her cheeks is doing something to bolster her aesthetics. Moving on.

"Yes, well, the fault isn't entirely on Noire that her esthetic conceit has made all for naught the planning that went into our intended display. Only most of it," said my Donatello, or rather my busty blonde Donatello—alright this analogy just got weird.

My Donatello was Vert all along. Big, beautiful, blonde-haired and blue-eyed, and bouncy everywhere it counts, Vert. She's wrapped in greens and whites, both lovely colors around lovely tits. Oh, why aren't there any Senran Kagura games on Leanbox consoles? It'd be so perfect...

I apologize to any and all who just read that mess. Anyway, Vert is the CPU of Leanbox and she's here with the rest of them. While I'm not from Leanbox, and from the sound of things I wouldn't approve of the way she rules her dominion anyway, I do think she's probably the best looking, if my ramblings from a paragraph ago weren't evidence for this enough. Seriously though, let the misrule of another nation be damned. Green Heart's tits be, like, crackin', Fam. Pretty sure that right then is Leanbox's national motto, too.

"Oi, did your eyeballs get locked in their sockets or something?" Suddenly, Vert's boobs started talking to me. "At least look at people when you're spoken to. Hey!"

No. Boobs don't talk outside of my dreams. It just appeared that way because my eyes were locked onto Vert's sweater-puppies, and when that happens the rest of the world just melts away. I wasn't being spoken to by a shapely set of boobies. I was being chided by a little brunette girl in a puffy white hat and an oversized fur-trimmed coat. This one is Blanc, the CPU known as White Heart who presides over the nation of Lowee, so, yeah: I definitely wasn't being spoken to by a shapely set of boobies.

"Ugh!" Blanc shudders in distain as I look at her. "I don't know why, but you're already pissing me off," she says, making things a bit difficult for me.

She doesn't like it when I look at tits. She doesn't like it when I look at her and her decided lack of tits. What does she want I do: Ogle Neptune?

Blanc looks aside at her fellow goddesses and says, "Is this guy really our best option?"

"Oh, don't fret your fretters, Blanc!" Said Neptune, displaying her palms. "Remember? I asked Histy about this and I even waited the three days for her answer before I told you guys."

"Neptune's right, and I mean Histoire's right," said Noire, whose complexion is finally back to the normal CPU-ly alabaster. "Lowee's R&D division looked into him, and even they gave the okay, didn't they? He'll be fine."

Wait. I was investigated by a foreign government? Crap, I wouldn't have bought B**k of Memories if I knew there were people watching everything I did...

"Look, whatever you think I did..., I'm not sure if I can explain, but I'll try!" I plead with them. I'm a good man, I promise I am.

"Oh, no need to be alarmed. It's more than just you're conduct we mean to correct, young man," said Vert. "We meant to break the ice with a theatrical approach, but with Noire having failed to produce that, I suppose it's best to just come out with it here."

"I don't understand. Why was I brought here, and why did you need to spy on me for?" I only ask because I'm a pretty normal dude. I don't think I've done anything to get caught up in international espionage.

"You see, the men of Gamindustri are..., an assorted bunch," Vert puts it mildly.

"Yeah, boys are weirdos," and Neptune cuts to the chase. "There've been evil guys trying to topple governments, evil guys that pirate videogames, and then there was that one guy who kept trying to lick girls without asking for permission first, and it's things like that gives this series a bad rep.…! Well, that and all the dodgy CGs."

Noire steps in before Neptune could trail off further. "And since we're the CPUs, it's up to us to lead by example and show the men of Gamindustri how men should act, but..."

"But we're all girls," said Neptune. "And since we don't have any really reliable guys around, we decided to build our own from the base stats up!"

"The codename for this project is Raising Sim," said Blanc. "It's like the Princess #_ker games, but in stead of a princess, the four of us will be making a prince, and that's you. So from this day forth..."

The four CPUs stand together to form a wall in front of me. Each of them put on a smile directed my way. How few people in Gamindustri get to have this pleasure, I wonder.

"We'll be your new mothers!" Is what they all say, but each of them had their own variant of "mother," from the sound of it.

…

Also... What?

Thank you for reading the first chapter. If you'd care to, please leave a review. I'd very much appreciate it.