Author's note: I want to preface this by saying two things: 1) This is based off a prompt from the Gamindustri subreddit where each goddess has their own show with minimal edits to my original post, and 2) I'm so sorry, Noire.
"Hurry up, Nepgear, it's going to start soon." Uni dragged said girl to the couch and sat down. Only then were all four goddess candidates assembled within the Lastation Basilicom.
Ram scoffed and clicked her tongue. "Uni, I don't get why you're so excited. Knowing your sister, this is probably going to be lame."
"Hey, knock it off. I promised Noire that I would watch it." Uni crossed her arms and thought, It has to be cool. Noire made it.
"Ram, let's just enjoy this together. Come on, I'm sure we're all excited to see what our big sisters have in store for us," Nepgear said with a smile. "Ever since Histoire suggested Neptune make a TV show to help rally up shares, all of our sisters and Vert have been really busy and thrilled making their own. And now we'll get to see the fruits of their labor." She left out the part about how Histoire's comment was mostly sarcastic after Neptune had been slacking off even more than usual.
"I'm really happy," Rom squeaked as she turned the television on.
"Quick, change it to Blanc's channel and hide the remote," Ram loudly whispered.
"Enough, we agreed that we would watch Noire's show tonight." Uni snatched the remote.
"Ugh, lame. But why did they all have to play their shows at the same time tonight?"
"I think it's to stir up healthy competition. Shares have been a little static lately," Nepgear said.
"We can watch Blanc's show during the commercial breaks, right?" Rom asked, practically begged Uni. "Noire has an anime, doesn't she?"
"Yeah, and everyone else has live shows, so you're super lucky right now." Ram poked Uni in the sides a couple times.
"Okay, okay, fine, we can flip channels when the commercials come on."
"Don't forget about Neptune's show. And Vert's, too," Nepgear said.
"Then you take the remote, Nepgear. Just shush, it's starting." Just as Uni finished her sentence, some music started playing.
A title card flashed across the screen reading Elenoire's Love and Friendship Adventure. Before Ram could open her mouth to scoff, a grating noise came from the television. Nothing like speaker feedback, nowhere near close in the worst way. Someone was singing, if it could even be called that. Toneless yet completely whole-hearted, as if the performer didn't know that their singing could be considered a weapon. Unintelligible yet seemingly filled with confidence, like they thought they had the vocal chords of an angel.
The girls could barely make out the shrill voice singing, "Lalala, a normal girl now on top of the world, with all her friends she'll have a happy end, lalala~" Just then, the credit for the opening song came on screen.
The singer? Noire.
"Ah, change the channel!" Reaching over Uni, Ram took the remote back from Nepgear and pressed buttons until a clean picture of Blanc took the screen.
"It hasn't even started yet." Uni switched the channel back. "Give it a… chance …" Her jaw dropped as anime renditions of Noire in frilly costumes changed every few seconds along with the pitchy theme song. A sailor uniform, a maid outfit, a magical girl costume, a gaudy ball gown, an idol dress holding a leek, a cat girl… The list went on and on as the opening song droned on and on, going far longer than anyone in their right mind would deem appropriate. "Noire?"
"That dress was really pretty." No one was sure how much Rom meant that.
"Well, this sure is unique." Nepgear tried to say something, but it came out more of a question. And still, the opening kept playing.
"Noire?" Uni repeated lifelessly.
Finally, the music died down and in its place was an advertisement for a new Lastation game. Ram jumped at the chance and said, "Commercial break! Change to Blanc!"
"Yay, Blanc!" Rom cheered.
"Okay." Nepgear complied as Uni's soul continued to leave her body. "I'm sure the actual anime will be super good."
Blanc came back on screen, holding a book while wearing red-rimmed glasses. "Thank you everyone for tuning in. Now let us get started. Here on my show, Blanc(k) Pages, we will explore different forms of media and dissect them to see if they make for good stories. I plan on typically doing book reviews, but today I have something special in store for us." Her tone was calm and quiet. "For our first episode, let us take a look at a new anime, Elenoire's Love and Friendship Adventure."
"Meh, never mind. Change the channel. She's being boring again." Ram leaned against her twin.
"Isn't she talking about Noire's anime?" Rom asked slowly.
"Noire?" Uni said one last time before snapping out of her trance.
"I think she is. That's an… interesting choice," Nepgear noted.
"Let us start by analyzing the theme song." On a television screen behind Blanc, Noire's anime's opening started playing again. "Now I know it sounds terrible, but let's look at the lyrics first."
"Change the channel, Nepgear!" This time, Uni said it.
"R-right!" She flipped a few more channels until Vert came on. The camera pointed at her sitting before her gaming setup, wearing a headset while sipping a cup of tea.
"Oh, no! This is an unwinnable boss fight, isn't it?" She clenched her controller, plastic slightly creaking. "I wonder if I could grind to a high enough level in the first area to beat him now."
"Oh, that's right, Vert has a gaming show." Nepgear was actually relieved that someone had yet to complain about the content.
"Oh, well. For the sake of this show, I'll skip it for now and come back during new game plus. Now then, what I wanted to say earlier is that one nice thing about this game is that the voice acting cast is mostly comprised of new voice actors. isn't that exciting? In particular, I'm looking forward to meeting a pair of brothers that come a little later."
Stuttering slightly, Uni said, "Hey, check back on Noire."
"Oh! It seems that I was misinformed! Look, the brothers are here now. I hope they'll join my party. Just look at them." Vert's breathing became heavier, her face twisting into the smile of a dreamer. What dreams, only Vert would enjoy. "Look how close they are to each other!"
Before Vert went any more in detail, Nepgear switched back to Noire's anime, just in time for it to come back from commercials.
The camera panned to an alarm clock. It set off in an obnoxious sound before someone under a bed turned it off and went back to sleep. They then shot up and did a double take at the clock. "I'm gonna be late!" a very familiar voice shrieked.
Narration kicked up, the same voice as the girl waking up. "My name is Elenoire, age 16. I'm just a normal girl, nothing special." The girls now got a good look at the main character, who bore an extremely uncanny resemblance to Noire. In fact, she looked almost exactly like her. "But I have tons of friends~"
"Change it, Nepgear, change the channel!" Uni grabbed her by the front of her dress.
"Got it!"
Next up was Blanc. "Now you see, you can tell just from the opening that we aren't in for a smooth ride. And if you were paying attention, we can see that Noire didn't just perform the song, but she wrote it, too. Hm, no wonder." Blanc smirked. "And we can see that this is just going to be a boring, cliche, slice-of-life-type anime. Where's the action, drama, excitement? If you ask me, I think this would be greatly improved by having aliens."
"Oh, Blanc's telling weird stories again," Rom whined.
"Aliens, and the main love interest is one of them. He comes from his home planet millions of light years away that's on the brink of destruction from war between two factions. He holds the key to their peace because, despite being an orphan, he's actually of royal descent. Their prince and next king! Am I right?"
"Change the stupid-"
"But he comes to the heroine's world to find both true love and someone to help save his home world with. It's actually a prophecy that he and the heroine will fall in love and save his planet. But he doesn't know how to express his feelings, and she's so shy, and there's so many misunderstandings. Then-"
"Change the channel, Nepgear!" Ram and Uni demanded.
"I know." Vert came on again. But instead of any commentary, all that happened was silent gameplay and the occasional squeal whenever her beloved brothers came on. "Back to Noire."
"My friends are so great. They always have my back whenever-"
"No!" Uni stole the remote, trying to hold together whatever remained of her respect for her sister.
Blanc came back, still rambling. "Then the next season, we can find out that the villain was actually their ally all along, one of the love interest's childhood friends. Then they could introduce a new antagonist that-"
"Change!" Ram took the remote.
"Ah, how splendid!" Vert ogled at a special fan service shot of the brothers in a rather compromising position.
"No more!" Rom changed the channel from Ram's hands.
"Enough! Why don't we…" Nepgear trailed off. Beside Rom at the end if the couch was a familiar head of short purple hair holding a video camera. At a loss for words, she flipped channels until she landed on the one Neptune said she would be on. Now on screen was the inside of Lastation Basilicom. More specifically, the four goddess candidates staring straight at the camera. "Neptune, what are you-"
"I've been spotted. Time to sneak away. I need to hurry if I'm going to find the good stuff." With that, Neptune skittered out of the room.
The camera feed went blurry, like Neptune was shaking it nonstop. So the channel changed to Noire's. Again. "I'm so glad I have you as friends-"
Uni yelped, and, almost simultaneously, a standby screen came on, as if the anime was pulled from the air. We apologize for any inconvenience brought on by Elenoire's Love and Friendship Adventure, the note on the screen, said as much.
Next up came Blanc. "That's enough about the theme song. Now then, I actually got my hands on a copy of the script. So, why don't we…" Blanc went silent upon flipping to the first page. She dropped her head and visibly shook, the paper booklet in her hands crumpling in her grip. "Noire wrote this? She wrote her own script? And this schlock is set for two seasons and a movie?" she practically screeched.
Blanc stood up with a heavy stomp and trudged off screen. After a string of screams and loud crashes of destruction, the camera cut to a standby screen.
"Blanc's angry again!" Ram pointed at her older sister and laughed with Rom.
"Why don't we check Vert out again?" Nepgear changed the channel once more.
"Oh, look at these new characters. How cute." Several voice clips played, each one causing Vert's face to sour. "What is this? Such a familiar voice."
"Huh? Isn't that…" Uni went even paler.
"Oh, my, it is! It's Noire!" On another one of her monitors, Vert looked something up. "Oh dear, she voices most of the female cast! And it seems that she influenced the creators to lessen the brothers' screen time for her own? Noire, you…"
With a composed sigh, Vert removed her headset and stood. "I apologize, everyone at home, but please excuse me while I go have a chat with my friend."
Cue another standby screen.
"Uh…" all the girls droned.
"Why don't we check my sister's show again?"
The picture changed to Neptune's face. She pointed the camera at herself and tried her best to stop laughing. "Bwah-ha-ha, welcome to Get Nep'd, with me. Today, we will get a glimpse at our dear Lonely Heart and see what secrets she's hiding from us. And, well, lookit."
Neptune moved the camera and peered around a door frame. Inside a room sat Noire at a table in front of a microphone. But that wasn't all. Instead of her usual dress, she wore one that looked familiar to the candidates. It was the exact same outfit as Elenoire's, from the hair ribbons on her pigtails to the stickers on the tips of her boots. And pinned to the walls around Noire was a collage of self-portraits, all of her in various cosplay outfits.
She whispered into her mic, "Because, you know, I love you."
Neptune couldn't hold it anymore. She burst out laughing, literally slapping her knees. "Haha, Noire!"
"Neptune?" Noire almost knocked down her recording equipment with how quickly she stood up.
"Man, I was gonna prank you or something, but I think this is already comedy gold, Lonely Heart!"
"What do you think you're-"
Noire got cut off by a crashing. A cloud of dust obscured the camera view. Once it settled, Blanc stepped into the room holding her hammer and baring her teeth. The candidates felt the Basilicom shake from their room. Blanc growled, "Noire, how could you!"
"What the heck do you think you're doing, Blanc? You just ruined my wall-"
She got cut off by another crash. Now Vert entered the room, hair fluttering behind her as she elegantly held her lance in one hand and her chest with her other. Two gaping holes let in a cool breeze from the wall behind her. "Noire, I've turned my head from a lot of your little quirks, but now is the time I act. I don't believe you would do something so low."
"What? What are you even talking about? And why are the three of you here, and couldn't you two use the door like a normal person?" Noire shouted. "Look at the mess you made!"
"You mean the mess you made!" Blanc barked.
"I must agree," Vert said.
"Whoa, I didn't think this would happen. I thought all we would get was Noire, but now everyone's at this party. Let's watch this epic battle-"
"Neptune, don't you dare think you're not a part of this!" Noire dragged her into the mess.
The next thing the candidates knew, they heard another boom from the other side of the Lastation Basilicom and were met with another standby screen. Several more crashes and shrieks followed.
Nepgear turned the television off. With a forced smile and clap, she said, "Why don't we go play outside?"
"Play!" Ram exclaimed.
"Let's play!" Rom said.
"Yeah…" Uni hugged herself as she said this and followed the twins out the door.
"Oh, I hope nothing bad comes from this." Nepgear could hear Histoire blowing a gasket at the way the goddesses' shows turned out.
Their pilot episodes were their first and last episodes to ever air in Gamindustri.