Neptune had gotten married.
Blanc wasn't particularly bothered by it. Nah, not a bit — probably one of the least bothered of their crew over in the Ultradimension, as a matter of fact.
If she was anything... She was actually, believe it or not, pretty damn glad to hear it.
Oh, yeah, she'd been pissed as all else when she'd heard what had happened to that moron. She had half a mind to go right over there and give that purple haired nincompoop a piece of her mind, give her what for, all of that good stuff. Blanc didn't know how the other CPUs had taken it, she'd been alone when the message had come, but it had taken Copy releasing his newly installed limiters to hold her down and stop her from going over to the other dimension to yell and scream at the other CPU for what she had done before she'd finally cooled off.
There was a very good reason she had been so upset, though... Just not one the other CPUs might expect from a hardheaded lass like Blanc.
It was just... More than anything...Even more than how pissed off and disappointed and frustrated and even guilty she felt...?
She realized she had felt a surprising amount of empathy towards Neptune.
She had been there, after all.
Even though their worlds worked differently, and even though Blanc hadn't faced what Neptune had for nearly as long, to nearly the same extent, she still knew what it was like. For the people who believed in you to leave you... For your spirit to get sucked away all because of some lousy mistakes and tremendous screw ups... Blanc knew too well, or maybe only well enough, how Neptune was probably feeling. She was more aware of it than she was comfortable with.
She wondered just how much any of the other CPUs really understood. She wondered, more than anything, if that twintailed bimbo Neptune was hitching herself to would really be able to get it. This was a Noire they were talking about here... Well, she wouldn't think like that about it. If Neptune was happy, she'd leave it at that.
She wasn't going to say anything about her feelings to Neptune. Shit, she could just imagine what a downer that would be — and on the moron's wedding day no less? No, things were looking up for her.
The best course of action was to keep her mouth shut, enjoy the party, be glad Neptune wasn't dead, and go on home after playing around with her other self's sisters for a while and maybe even screwing around with the people from Neptune's dimension a little bit. It should have been fun, all in all.
So when the time came for her to actually go to the wedding, she hadn't imagined that there would be any issues popping up for her. It wasn't like there were any problems in her dimension. She met up with the other goddesses at the portal, all of them dressed up to varying degrees, and they were off.
No... She hadn't expected to feel much of anything at the wedding. She just wasn't the "I'm so moved!" type, after all. Maybe she'd argue with Noire, maybe she'd see if Plutia's head would roll onto her shoulder rather than Noire's when Plutia inevitably fell asleep, maybe she'd even get lucky and Plutia would be the "I'm so moved!" type and start crying into her chest or something...!
But all in all, that would pretty much be it.
She felt happy that Neptune had gotten out of the hole she had found herself in.
As it turned out, it hadn't quite worked out the way she'd figured it would.
Yes, the things she had expected had come to pass more or less as she had expected them to, but there had been a little more to the event than just that. At the wedding, Blanc had seen her other self, that counterpart that existed in the other dimension — Neptune's dimension. She saw the conflicting feelings, the confusion, the regret she clearly didn't quite understand yet that flitted across her face as she watched the newlyweds fly away.
Blanc had known that they weren't exactly the same. In many ways they were alike, but they didn't completely match up — and she was very thankful for that. Still... She hadn't expected this. It looked like they were different — yet similar all at the same time — in just one more area, Blanc realized. It wasn't just temples and snow or robots and sisters. There was another important difference between them, it seemed...
Her counterpart didn't know how she felt yet, did she? At best, if Blanc were to guess, she was probably just figuring it out now — now that it was too late for her to do a damn thing about any of it all. This was all new to her, wasn't it? That Blanc... She had missed her chance.
Well, the same wasn't true for this Blanc.
She had had years to sort out how she felt. She knew what she wanted, and she was going for it.
No black haired skank was going to be getting in her way.
... Right?
Vert had been humming to herself as she went about her room, all in preparation for what was going to most certainly be a riveting day of games and anime. She'd gotten all the new releases lined up and ready, and she even had a few imported titles from the other dimension just in case she had some time left over before...
... well, she didn't really have anything else planned, but she supposed she would need to eat or sleep eventually...
Sadly, Vert's day of boys love and frolicking little sisters was not to be. Before Vert could begin, the intercom on her desk sounded, its deafening BEEP silencing any hope she had of enjoying her personal day. This was what she got for being the only goddess that worked all by her beautiful self, she supposed. Oh well... That was just the price she had to pay for greatness, wasn't it?
With one grand gesture, well practiced after many years of necessity, Vert had everything off and organized, just in case whoever was visiting was here for business and should need to come up to her room. With a second, equally grand gesture, Vert tapped the button on her intercom, declared "I'll be down in a moment!" and was on her way before her hair could even settle from all the spinning around her room she was doing.
A whole lot of effort to go through considering when she saw just who was waiting for her at her front door, Vert found herself seriously considered closing it in their face and pretending she hadn't seen a thing.
"I need your help." Head lowered — in shame? oh, Vert rather hoped it was in shame — there, standing there like she never had before, was Blanc.
She almost did close the door right in the older goddess' face, right up until Blanc raised her head to face Vert, allowing her the chance to look Blanc in the eye. Once she did that, Vert did the complete opposite instead.
"My goodness, Blanc, you look like you were just robbed. Is that what happened? Well, you can tell me about it all in a little bit." Vert smiled, just a little cattily, at the smaller goddess. "Would you care to come inside and have some tea?"
Vert couldn't believe what luck she had. To think, Blanc had come to her in need of something, and she looked like that over it? Whatever it was, it just had to be succulent. She could not wait to hear all about it from her. Once she was satisfied, but only then, Vert would... consider helping her, certainly — just seeing Blanc so helpless like this was quite the reward already, you know. But depending on what Blanc wanted from her, maybe she could use it to get the upper hand over her, mmm?
"I'm not in the mood for screwing around today. Don't take this the wrong way, since I know I'm the one asking for something here, but I don't think I have a lot of time. Not as much as I'd like, anyway, so..." Blanc closed her eyes. She seemed to be gathering her thoughts, preparing herself to explain what it was she wanted from Vert then and there.
For what it was worth, despite her earlier thoughts and plots, after seeing Blanc like that, the blonde felt as though she had had a change of heart. Why, Vert was just about to tell her if it was that serious, she would be happy to help no matter what it was. It wasn't like she disliked Blanc that much, and besides-
"I need you to help me break up Plutia and Noire. I want us to completely ruin any hope of a relationship they'll ever have."
Vert froze in place. The smirk that had been coming and going from the moment Blanc had arrived had shattered like a piece of glass, but frozen as she was, it was still on her lips — not yet fallen to the ground.
It was truly a miracle Blanc had spoken before Vert had opened her big mouth and agreed to this before she had heard the details.
Surely she had heard Blanc wrong. There was no way in the entirety of Gamindustri Blanc had just waltzed up onto her doorstep and said what Vert thought she had just said. There were so many things wrong with what Blanc had just said to her, after all, that there was just no way that those words could have possibly left her lips! It was unthinkable!
Oh, Vert wished she was the vulgar type. She was fairly certain this would have been the perfect opportunity for her to let some kind of expletive accidentally escape, unknowingly boosting her popularity even further, and- No no no, this was not the time for that, was it?
"Blanc... You aren't serious right now... Are you...?" Slowly, perhaps so slowly her emotions were laid far more bare than she would have ever liked, Vert managed to respond to Blanc's request. It wasn't as though Vert wasn't unaware of Blanc's interest in Planeptune's goddess, but this was rather extreme, wasn't it? "What exactly brought this on? Y-Yes, that's an idea! Why don't we start with that, hmm?"
Turning to lead Blanc inside, as if they were now about to settle down for tea, Vert was acting for the world like that bomb hadn't been dropped on her.
Having other things in mind, Blanc slammed her hand on the wall to catch Vert's attention ("Eeeek!" the goddess cried, jumping a good foot in the air at the surprise move of Blanc's.) before reaching for the taller goddess' arm to turn her around and face her.
"Cut the crap, Vert." Looking up at Vert the way she was, Blanc's expression made Vert feel like she was the one looking up at someone rather than the other way around. "Noire did it today. She just- She walked right up to Plutia in broad daylight, then ran off!" She shook her head, the hostility almost palpable. But just who was it really directed towards? "I don't know what Plutia said, I don't know if she even knows what Plutia said, with how fast she hightailed it out of there, but I can't... Dammit, Vert, I can't let them get too far into this if I still have time to do something about it and move in there myself. If that makes me the bitchiest one of us all, well, I'll take my punish-"
The more she listened, the more it became apparent to Vert that Blanc simply wasn't thinking this through.
Really, what was she saying here? She sounded like a regular villain from a romantic comedy... well, that or a protagonist, Vert supposed. They were interchangable half the time.
Still, didn't Blanc realize there were other ways? Not to mention, if what she was saying was all she knew about it, then there was some very important information missing here.
"Before I say anything more, I'm going to insist you not say 'I'll take my punishment' as though your biggest motivation for all of this isn't specifically getting personal punishments on a nightly basis, because you just look like a hypocrite when you talk like that." Oh, yes, Vert was enjoying the horrified, humiliated, embarrassed, and oh so affronted look Blanc was giving her in response to that remark. Her smirk faltering just a little, she continued, proceeding to breach a more serious topic next. "Now Blanc, listen to me, it sounds like you don't even know if Plutia accepted Noire's confession. If you try to break up something that might not even exist, you could just be-"
"Look, just shut up! I'm begging you over here, dammit! What more do you want from me?!" Whether or not Plutia had accepted seemed irrelevant to Blanc as she screamed at Vert, quieting down the blonde in an instant. It seemed that to Blanc, so long as the idea was in Plutia's head, that she had already lost.
It was rather sad.
With her fists clenched at her sides and eyes clenched shut like that, the brunette really was the picture of desperate, Vert realized. For a brief moment, taking in the sight of Blanc looking like this, looking at her like this, she felt a powerful surge of sistership with Plutia — a jolt, even.
"Just..." Vert trailed off, her voice cracking as she tried to gather her thoughts. The feeling faded as quickly as it came. Truth be told, she wasn't sure how to approach this situation.
Part of Vert found that, even now, she really still wanted to gloat a little. Blanc losing was something she didn't get to see often, if ever. It was just... How in the world could she do it when Blanc had come to her for help? When Blanc was throwing her pride away in order to do it? It would completely spoil any sense of pleasure she could have gotten out of it!
And quite frankly, considering the situation, she doubted even Iris Heart would enjoy being in the position she was in now... Well, she supposed Iris Heart might enjoy going after the "Plutia" in that situation for getting her "Blanc" upset like this, but considering Iris Heart was... Oh, now Vert was just confusing herself!
"Do you realize you might have the both of them out for blood if this goes poorly?" Vert spoke more seriously now, her voice somewhat detached. What Blanc was suggesting, did she realize just what it could instigate if it backfired? Things were peaceful between their nations, but there was no reason they had to be- What if Blanc just-
Vert never was able to be sure what she had been about to think to herself. Blanc cut her off with a blade so sharp, she was certain not even Iris Heart would have been able to stand before it.
"Vert... Please...! Please, goddamnit! I'll do anything, give you whatever you want...! Just help me out here!"
The older goddess placed her hands on the ground in front of her and then knelt down, her forehead soon following suit as it was pressed square between her hands on the ground as well. It was a strange and oh so foreign sight, needless to say. Vert had never expected to see such a thing from any of the other CPUs, and to see it from Blanc of all people...
She really was that desperate.
After taking another moment to consider, the blonde CPU sighed. It went against her better judgement, but... No, she couldn't just leave her there, could she?
"Fine... My, but get off the ground first, would you? You're ruining it." Blanc's head shot up, her expression one of alarm. Good. Vert offered a small smirk. "That's right. When you do that in front of me, and you will be kneeling just like that someday, I assure you, it's going to be because I bested you at something in every way imaginable and you've been forced to surrender yourself in every way imaginable to me... Yes, it's going to be like that, Blanc."
Vert hesitated. She realized she couldn't quite look at Blanc like this — it just didn't feel right.
"Not over something like this," she added quietly.
Her smirk having all but faded completely, Vert was thankfully able to regain her composure and then some and turn back as Blanc rolled her eyes and moved to get herself up.
"It's not as though I hate you or anything, you know. So long as you make it clear how I got involved should this backfire..." Vert averted her eyes, before hesitantly reaching for the brunette's shoulder as she raised herself off the ground. "Then I'll accept seeing you this desperate as whatever payment you think you owe me. From this moment forward, while I may say otherwise if it ever comes up, you will not bring up this matter again, else I will leave you high and dry without another word. Does that sound reasonable?"
Blanc couldn't believe her ears.
Was this for real? Was Vert seriously willing to do this for her? With her? And for essentially, no, absolutely nothing in return?
"Wait... You're really just telling me that if you want something later, you can ask for it, aren't you?" Blanc frowned. She wasn't in any position to take issue with it, but she didn't want to put Vert in a position where she'd be able to-
"I won't be doing anything as unscrupulous as using that to blackmail you down the road, if that's what you're worrying about." Shaking her head when it became clear by the embarrassed look on Blanc's face that that had been exactly where her mind had been going, Vert gently pet the other goddess on her fluffy hat. "I have no intention of doing anything about it, I just want to leave the option open in case. I'm much more concerned with you deciding you're in my debt. Think of this as... charity work, yes, we'll call it that."
"Charity work... Well... Whatever floats your boat." Blanc shrugged, raising her arm to knock Vert's hand away from her head. She wasn't about to argue too much about anything here with Vert actually, much to her surprise, being so agreeable to her. All things considered, she had been about to leave. "You can't back out on this, you know. Even if Plutia and Noire never find out or hold it against you, if you-"
Vert rolled her eyes.
"Blanc, I'm sorry, but you're far too old to be giving me lines like that. Please let those who are age appropriate say them, if you would?"
"Wha... Why I..." Hands clenched at her sides, face burning a brilliant shade of scarlet, Blanc looked as though she was about to forget this entire arrangement and introduce Vert to her hammer. "Who the hell are you calling old?!"
"Oh, no one. Just the little girl who's at least old enough to be my mother."
"I'm gonna kill you!"
The two of them already knew that Blanc wasn't going to be doing a thing to her. Not as long as Vert was willing to be so compliant.
And so Vert just smiled and smiled and smiled.
This might actually turn out to be a lot of fun.