"There she is... Since this chapter doesn't take place in the real story, it means I'm free to get revenge without consequences."

Cave was not normally a vindictive woman. She was efficient, to the point, and never let her emotions get in the way of her mission. She wanted to say she was like Solid Serpent, but unfortunately, thanks to Noire, she could no longer make that claim (and probably not even that reference) thanks to a character having been invented to fill that exact role.

Though she supposed, now that she thought about it, that just gave her one more reason to be doing what she was doing right now, didn't it?

And what was Cave doing right now?

Why, she was exacting her revenge on Lady Noire, of course! It was a simple, petty thing that normally would never cross her mind. Truthfully, she had gotten over what had happened fairly quickly. The fact of the matter was that she had been calmed significantly after her discussion with Lady Neptune, and her bigger priority during that period had been, of course, calming 5pb. down and helping her get ready for her concert later that evening. After a shock like Lady Neptune barging in on the two of them in such an intimate moment, the poor idol's heart had been pounding even more than it normally did when she went on stage.

She had, however, finally managed to get on stage, and that would have been the end of it...

... if Cave hadn't noticed that there was a segment in the anniversary chapter where Lady Noire was alone. How could she possibly pass up such an opportunity? It would have no effect on the story as a whole or her relationships with anyone. No one would have to know a thing. She could do what she wanted to do here and no one would be none the wiser once this chapter ended. Even better, while originally, the script had been written so that she had been to mistake the other world's Noire for the one she actually meant to go after, that had even been changed as well.

Although... Now that she thought about it, she wondered if maybe she should have brought 5pb. along to do something else that she would have liked to do, or have done to her rather, were there not certain... "consequences" attached to it... An entirely different sort of "consequences," that is, but still, they were things that wouldn't disappear normal-

"What am I saying?" Cave shook her head, torn between being ashamed with and annoyed at herself. The lack of a stable fourth wall was already getting to her...! It was getting in the way of her objective — her petty, meaningless revenge! No matter how good 5pb. looked in that Iris Heart costume, fourth wall or no fourth wall, Cave simply would not ask her to act like-

The redhead's internal monologue was interrupted by the sound of movement below. At the moment, she was perched just above the balcony of Noire's personal bedroom in Lastation.

This was the moment she had been waiting for. All that time (since the beginning of this scene)! All of that preparation (all few paragraphs of it)! Everything she had done (in the past few moments this scene had been running for) came to this!

Lowering herself just enough so she could see inside, Cave pulled out the greatest weapon of all, the mighty device that would send Lady Black Heart to her doom:

A camera Cave had bought on the way to the Basilicom.

While she wouldn't be able to see very well from this distance, certainly not enough to be able to pull off something as precise as the perfect revenge, with this, she could see exactly what Lady Black Heart was doing as she did it, and could react accodingly! It was a foolproof plan, or at least Cave liked to believe it was.

Setting her camera to take a few pictures for her every second, now all Cave needed to do was sit back and watch — and plan out just what she would do next, of course.

The images she was seeing through her camera were... strange. Cave had heard the odd rumor that Lady Black Heart would occasionally engage in the activity of wearing costumes and acting like the characters that belonged to those costumes, but she had never witnessed it before, and what she was witnessing was something she couldn't describe in words.

Lady Black Heart, currently in her human form, had started off by putting on some sort of music (Cave wasn't paying attention to the lyrics — something like about fantasies and the cosmos and love? it didn't sound like a recent song, whatever it was) before... jumping around the room...? Cave had to glance up from the camera to make sure it wasn't malfunctioning, but no, the thing in the room that was certainly Lady Black Heart moving around was definitely moving in the same peculiar manner that she was on her camera's screen.

It looked like she was fighting some kind of invisible enemy. Cave might have suspected she was simply image training, or worse, actually being assaulted by some kind of unseen foe, but Lady Black Heart's current actions said otherwise. First off, she was wearing jeans and a jacket rather than her normal attire, which lended to Cave's theory that she was engaging in her strange hobby. Second, Lady Black Heart's current style of fighting didn't resemble how she normally fought at all. She was throwing herself around and using her fists and kicking at the air, as though she were some kind of hand-to-hand fighter, when it was a well known fact that she wasn't.

It... It almost reminded her of Nisa, but the idea of Lady Black Heart doing something even remotely comparable to Nisa of all people was simply unacceptable — it didn't happen.

Yet... It certainly seemed to be. Before Cave's very eyes in fact.

Over the top movements and jumps that made it look for certain like Lady Black Heart was fighting an invisible enemy in the manner that a "hero" might. Her outfit added to that, but then, as the song continued, Lady Black Heart did the strangest and most amazing thing of all — as though the enemy had actually struck her, she was flung across the room, crashing into the wall as boxes fell around her. Cave could even hear her make some kind of scathing remark to the invisible enemy, as though it had really just struck her.

As Lady Black Heart stood from the "wreckage" that was the fallen boxes, she faced her enemy with a gaze that looked as though she was really fighting an enemy. Then, rather than continuing her battle, she started... Cave didn't even know, but at this point, she found she had actually been taken in by these strange movements of Lady Black Heart's.

First, the CPU had her left fist clenched at her side while her other arm was extended straight towards her foe. After only a mere moment of this, she brought both arms to her right side and began clenching her fists. Cave almost thought her camera had stopped working, but no — Lady Black Heart was holding that position, tightening up every muscle in her body slowly but surely, her gaze cast downward. Strange as this was to observe, there was something almost impressive about the lengths she was going to do... whatever it was that she was doing.

In an instant, after holding the position for at least a few seconds, Lady Black Heart was moving again. Her left fist flew to her hip, palm facing upward and elbow outstretched behind her as she kept it firmly at her side. In this same instant, her right arm followed her other hand, quickly reaching towards it, before, in the next instant, it was that arm that was at her other side now! In that same moment, the arm that had been at her side was thrust forward, pointing straight to the right with all of her fingers outstretched.

Cave would have thought this was more than enough, but Lady Black Heart still wasn't done. Like the arms of a clock going from 10 to 2, her outstretched arm moved in a slow but clearly practiced motion. Finally, for the first time since this strange process began, Lady Black Heart spoke.

"Trans..." It wasn't even a complete word, but it didn't matter — in the next moment, she thrust both arms in the opposite direction now, and with that, it appeared as though she was finished. "... form!"

Cave shielded her eyes from the familiar light of a CPU's transformation as her camera kept taking pictures of every moment of it. When she finally was able to look back at Lady Black Heart's room as the light faded, she was in for the greatest surprise of all.

Apparently having decided it wasn't enough to have her normal outfit in on whatever it was she was doing, because even her HDD form was different. Compared to how Lady Black Heart normally appeared, significantly less skin was showing in this new form. Besides for stripes of yellow and red around her wrists, ankles, and neck, and a silver belt around her waist, everything about this new form was black, save for the processor unit in her hair, which looked as though it was almost some kind of helmet — red orbs on either side of it, with two prongs sticking out almost like antenna of sorts.

Finishing off her routine, Lady Black Heart did a few more poses, which culminated in her leaping through the air and landing on her bed in the most triumphant post of all.

"Nep Ranger... Black!"

She held it for a few moments... then finally collapsed onto her bed, letting out what seemed to be a satisfied laugh.

At long last, Cave realized she had gotten so distracted that she hadn't enacted her revenge.

As Lady Black Heart was floated over to computer — apparently, she had had her camera filming her the entire time, probably for her own personal collection — Cave decided it was time to withdraw. Turning off her camera, she began to sneak away from the balcony. Thinking on it, this was actually going to be a lot easier than she had thought — she could simply post these online. Her hands would be free of blame in these matters, and Lady Black Heart would suffer an embarassing situation of her own.

All in all, it was a harmless little act that...

"Wait... What's this in the window...? Is that... a person...?!"

Cave's eyes widened as she heard the voice coming from the room below.

Time to go.

And in a motion not unlike the ones Lady Black Heart had been making just moments earlier, Cave leapt off of the side of the building, twirling and spinning in midair. As calm looking as ever, Cave glanced towards where the viewers might be and gave them a salute of sorts before she spoke, all still while she was falling.

"See you next Sunday morning, kids. Be sure to buy all the new Masked Megami Black toys that you saw in today's episode."

Landing perfectly on the ground below, Cave turned from the "camera" and began dashing off, giving this week's exciting episode of Masked Megami Black the perfect ending.

Wait... Wasn't it supposed to be this week's episode of the Nep Rangers...?