“Welcome to Protonia! We boast the largest game library in Gamindustri! …But honestly, the only masterpiece I care about is my darling Ruby.”
The Console Patron Unit (CPU) of Protonia. While famous for her massive game library and legendary holiday sales, her citizens often complain about her notoriously long delays when it comes to releasing highly anticipated projects. Despite being a heavy-hitting powerhouse, she is hopelessly in love with her younger sister, Ruby, and will gladly ignore her ever-growing backlog of games to dote on her.
Story
Separation Anxiety (and Development Hell)
Back in Protonia’s Basilicom, Rouge stares blankly at her computer screens. She is supposed to be programming the highly anticipated “Project Three”—a game gamers have waited a decade for. She writes one line of code, looks at the clock, and realizes Ruby has been gone for exactly twelve minutes. She completely breaks down, throws her keyboard out the window, grabs her massive axe, and declares, “Project Three is delayed again! My sister needs me!” The massive neon penguin hologram above the Basilicom subtly flickers as her anxious energy surges through the building’s power grid. Ignoring the frantic buzzing of her intercom from her assistant begging for the patch notes, she simply steps onto the windowsill. With a powerful leap, the CPU of Protonia bounds into the sky, leaving her monitors flashing a catastrophic server error as she rushes straight toward her sister’s coordinates.
The Art of Subtle Dev-Work
Rouge arrives at the Greenlight Ruins and sneaks in behind Ruby. Because she’s a heavy-hitting home console CPU, her idea of “stealth” is terrible. She stalks Ruby from afar, hiding behind pillars that are way too thin for her. When she sees a monster sneak up behind Ruby, Rouge chucks her axe across the room like a boomerang, vaporizing the monster silently, before diving headfirst into a bush. She proceeds to follow her sister through the dungeon by combat-rolling clumsily from shadow to shadow, occasionally knocking over ancient ruins and frantically catching the debris before it hits the floor. Despite her heavy footsteps and the occasional localized earthquake from her landings, she somehow manages to remain entirely outside of Ruby’s peripheral vision, fiercely glaring at any shadow in the dungeon that dares to creep too close to her precious Candidate.
Hotfixing the Mid-Boss
Rouge spots the dungeon’s mid-boss—a massive, heavily armored golem vibrating with high-level energy—waiting in the next room before Ruby gets there. Panicking that the monster looks way too dangerous for a low-level verification run, Rouge transforms into Red Heart in a blinding flash of crimson light. In a fit of overprotective rage, she completely obliterates the monster with a devastating downward strike of her EXE Drive, atomizing the creature and leaving nothing but a massive, smoking crater in the center of the chamber. Hearing her sister’s footsteps rapidly approaching from the adjacent corridor, she immediately powers down and frantically dives underneath a conveniently placed cardboard box, holding her breath just as Ruby walks into the room.
Breaking the Fourth Wall (and the Ceiling)
Following close behind, Rouge watches her darling sister open the final boss door while clinging precariously to the crumbling stone rafters above. But as Rouge scans the room, she realizes the boss dormant in the center is an “Anti-Cheat Dragon”—a brutally difficult, data-corrupted entity that is way out of the recommended level bracket for this zone! The massive beast lets out a deafening roar, its scales glowing ominously as it raises its razor-sharp claws toward the unsuspecting Candidate. Seeing her beloved sister in genuine peril, Rouge’s protective instincts completely override any remaining rational thought, causing her to summon her massive battle axe with such reckless, furious force that the sheer weight of her aura begins to physically fracture the ceiling structure around her.
The Reunion
Just as the massive dragon prepares to strike, intending to crush the Candidate with a devastating blow, the heavy stone ceiling of the boss room violently caves in. Rouge drops down like a fiery meteor in a massive flurry of dust and pulverized debris, swinging her gargantuan axe with enough force to completely deflect the beast’s attack and send it stumbling backward.
“ROUGE?!” Ruby shouts in sheer surprise, momentarily lowering her own weapon as the smoke clears to reveal the panting CPU.
“Did you really think I could survive an entire hour without you, my sweet little Ruby?!” Rouge cries dramatically, immediately dropping her heavy weapon to the floor with a loud clang to pull the bewildered Candidate into a tight, incredibly affectionate embrace. She affectionately nuzzles her sister’s cheek and frantically checks her for scratches, completely and utterly ignoring the massive, enraged dragon roaring furiously in the background as it attempts to recover from the ambush.
Boss? What Boss?
The colossal dragon, feeling deeply insulted that it is being utterly ignored in the center of its own boss room, inhales sharply and attempts to unleash a torrent of corrupted fire directly at the embracing siblings. Annoyed that their perfectly romantic reunion is being rudely interrupted by an aggroed enemy, Rouge and Ruby both snap their gazes toward the beast with matching glares of pure annoyance. In a blinding, synchronized flash of crimson binary code, the two seamlessly transform into their Processor units, Red Heart and Red Sister.
“You made me wait for my sister,” Red Heart growls.
“And you’re ruining our date,” Red Sister adds.
Leaping into the air in perfect, flawless unison, the two Goddesses execute a devastatingly synchronized double-axe EXE Drive, crossing their glowing weapons to unleash a massive shockwave that instantly and forcefully deletes the dragon from the server entirely. Without even bothering to wait for the victory animation to finish or checking the scorched crater for rare loot drops, the sisters simply power down and interlock their fingers. Holding hands, they jointly submit the clear data to the quest log and happily walk out of the collapsing dungeon together to go cuddle back on their couch, leaving the structural damage unfixed and the programming for “Project Three” delayed indefinitely.
Interactions
The Arrival of the “PC Threat”
Before Rouge and Ruby even make their official debut, the other four CPUs notice a terrifying anomaly on their Basilicom data monitors: all of their respective shares are dropping simultaneously. It’s not just a small market dip—it’s a massive hemorrhage that sends their Oracles into absolute hysterics. The root cause is quickly traced to an unprecedented, server-breaking phenomenon known as the legendary “Protonia Summer Sale.” Gamers across Lastation, Lowee, Leanbox, and Planeptune are suddenly emptying their wallets for ridiculously discounted digital games, completely ignoring the traditional brick-and-mortar console storefronts in favor of massive batch-downloads. Forced to momentarily set aside their usual bickering to confront this existential new threat to their economies, the four main CPUs and their Candidates hastily organize a heavily guarded emergency summit, fiercely demanding that the leaders of this mysterious new “Protonia” show themselves immediately.
Neptune (Planeptune)
True to her nature, Neptune isn’t threatened by the massive drop in shares at all. Instead of preparing for a tense diplomatic summit, she bounds right up to the new arrivals and immediately breaks the fourth wall.
“Whoa, new characters?! And they have super high-res textures! Hey, since you guys have the biggest library, can I get some free keys? Pleeaase? My Basilicom budget is basically zero!”
She completely ignores Histoire’s frantic scolding in the background, opting instead to poke at Rouge’s high-poly character model to see if she has a unique idle animation while unashamedly begging for premium access to Protonia’s storefront.
Noire (Lastation)
In stark contrast to Planeptune’s CPU, Noire is having a full-blown panic attack about her plummeting market share and the sudden loss of her precious exclusivity deals. She marches right up to the Protonia delegation, furiously slamming her hands on the conference table.
“Listen here! You can’t just swoop in and port my third-party exclusives to your platform! And how are you even making a profit selling games at eighty percent off?! It’s ruining the economy!”
Her passionate, well-rehearsed lecture about industry standards goes completely unheard, as Rouge completely ignores her angry ranting in favor of delicately adjusting and fixing Ruby’s collar, much to the Lastation Goddess’s absolute fury.
Blanc (Lowee)
Sitting quietly at the edge of the conference table, Blanc is fiercely glaring daggers at the new arrivals from beneath her hat. While she normally prides herself on having an unshakably dedicated fanbase, she absolutely hates how Protonia’s incredibly convenient digital storefront is making a total mockery of her traditional physical cartridge sales. Furthermore, her knuckles turn white as she tightly grips her favorite book, feeling intensely and immediately threatened by Ruby confidently stepping onto her historically undisputed “handheld and family-friendly” turf.
Vert (Leanbox)
Initially, Vert acts unbearably smug during the introductions. Recognizing they actually share very similar “PC” architecture roots due to their interlocking OS histories, she gracefully tries to act like a condescending older sister to Rouge. However, the exact moment Vert lays her eyes on Ruby, her notorious, unstoppable sister-stealing instincts activate.
“My, my… what an adorable portable Candidate you have. Perhaps little Ruby would like to come live in Leanbox?”
Rouge immediately summons her giant battle axe, her eyes glowing a terrifying shade of red with pure murderous intent. “Take one step closer to my sister, Green Heart, and I will permanently ban your IP address from existence.”
The ambient temperature in the room instantly drops to freezing as the towering CPU of Protonia physically shields her Candidate, making it very clear that any diplomatic ties will be instantly severed if Vert tries anything.
The Protonia Perspective
The funniest part of the highly anticipated summit is that Rouge and Ruby fundamentally do not care about the ongoing Console War in the slightest. While the other Goddesses are fiercely stressing out about stabilizing their plummeting Shares and frantically waving around trade treaties, “The PC Master Race” duo remains entirely and comfortably relaxed in their plush chairs. Rouge views the other CPUs as children squabbling over a tiny slice of pie while she effectively owns the entire bakery. She doesn’t have an aggressive ego about her sheer market dominance; she just genuinely wants the boring political meeting to end as quickly as possible so she can take Ruby back home, log some co-op hours on their massive couch, and perhaps launch a surprise midweek publisher sale just to watch Noire and Blanc’s shares temporarily plummet again for her own private amusement. Eventually, after hours of one-sided negotiations, they establish a fragile working truce: Protonia gets to peacefully exist as an overarching, neutral superpower, solely on the strict condition that Rouge formally promises not to host a ninety-percent-off discount sale every single day of the week.