As she watched the group of hard working NPCs move around on the lawn before her, Neptune shook her head. They all were holding a piece of a long, single strand of rope, and at a glance, one might assume that Neptune was trying to get the borders set up for some kind of hole in the ground... Though what she planned on doing with that hole was anyone's guess. Knowing Neptune, it probably wasn't a good thing, that was for sure.

"A little to the left guys... No no no, my left! Now you have to go forwards! No, I mean backwards! Gosh, never send a group of grown men in to do a small statured girl's job..."

Noire, who had no idea that Neptune was doing anything with anyone today, could only assume that Neptune might have remembered that "pool of pudding in the yard" comment from that special something or other that they weren't supposed to remember anymore, and knew it was her duty as the voice of reason to set the record straight. There would be no pudding pools on their lawn — or any lawn, for that matter. Think of the bugs!

Approaching the strange group made Noire pause, however, for the NPCs seemed to be affiliated with a generic landscaping company, so generic that their logos didn't even have words on them — just imagery meant to evoke a "wow! they landscape!" sort of feeling. Noire supposed Neptune could have just lied about her intentions, but would she really do that to her followers? That just didn't seem like her...

... Okay, it didn't seem like her anymore, anyway.

"Neptune? This isn't for pudding, is it?" Straight to the point, Noire placed a hand on her hip and watched for reactions — particularly those of the NPCs. If they were in on it, even if Neptune tried to cover it up, there was no way any of these guys would be able to defy the stare of a goddess such as herself. "Is it?"

The NPCs, rather than look guilty, all excitedly began exchanging looks. "It's Lady Black Heart, it's Lady Black Heart!" and the like began erupting amidst this ragtag group of workers, and Noire got the distinct feeling that she was about to wish it had been something ridiculous like a pudding pool. Neptune, telling the group of Planeptune workers to take five, hopped on over to Noire as soon as they set off, an all too innocent expression on her face.

"Hiya, Nep Black! Here to stop my evil plans?" Noire sighed at the name, shaking her head. How many times had it been now...? In fairness, she supposed they were probably overdue for Neptune calling her that, weren't they? She wished she could come up with a pet name like that for Neptune... It would be so embarrassing, though...! But why should Neptune get to be the only one who had a pet name...?! "Uh, Noire? You in there? Your eyes didn't turn yellow, so you're not dead..."

"M-My eyes don't change color like that!" Crossing her arms, Noire let out a light "harumph!" under her breath as she shot a look past Neptune and towards the abandoned bit of rope on the ground. "Now answer my question, and not with another one this time either."

The CPU grinned.

"It's for the talking shark I'm gonna get us. I need to give this a lot of room since I want it to have a friend."

Noire closed her eyes, before pinching the bridge of her nose and taking a deep breath. Curious as to why she wasn't getting chewed out yet, Neptune leaned forward, on her tiptoes, and tilted her head. What was going on? Was Noire actually okay with it...?

"Sorry, Neptune, I think my life just glitched. Can you repeat that?" Stay calm, Noire. Stay calm. Neptune definitely hadn't said what Noire thought she had. There was no way, in no uncertain terms, that Neptune had...

"It's for the talking shark that I'm-"

Darn it Neptune! Stop letting her down at times like this!

"We are not getting a talking shark!" Noire cried indignantly, heading towards the rope to stop this madness before it got so far out of hand that there wasn't any hope of going back from it. "Why would you even think about something so ridiculous? Let alone get some people out here to actually make it a habitat... I'll show you a 'shark,' that's what I'll do."

"But Noooiiiire! We need one! It has to be our new Oracle!" Protesting with all her might, Neptune latched onto one of the black haired CPU's wrists and dug her feet into the ground. For the sake of her future shark friend, she could not fail! "Everyone is doing it! Do you want to be lame, Noire?"

Noire wasn't sure which part of that she liked less. The implication that anyone was doing it, or the idea that she could possibly ever be lame. Deciding on the more logical approach, Noire turned and gave her wife a good, hard look in the eye.

"First, don't assume I'm okay with it, by the way, because we both have perfectly fine Oracles right now. I'm just humoring you." With that out of the way, Noire offered her wife a confident smirk and held up a single finger. It was all she needed to win this argument and save the lawn from certain doom. "So Neptune, I just want you to do this: Name one person who is hiring a talking sea creature as their Oracle. Just one. If you can't, this conversation is over and you're giving all your pudding to those NPCs. Okay, go."

"Just one? Well, my cousinmomsister from the new game is doing it." Well that was unexpected. Neptune actually had an answer? Just as Noire was about to bring up the fact that that couldn't possibly true, not to mention none of the characters in that game were any of those things to Neptune, certainly not all of them at once, Neptune pulled a rolled up picture out of her hoodie's pocket and proudly presented it to Noire. "See? Look at this hottie. Don't you just... Don't you just wanna fry him up and make fish sticks out of him? He's practically doing it himself he's so smoking!"

Much as she wanted to protest and comment on Neptune's terrible fish joke... Upon closer inspection of the picture, the art style did fit their universe — in other words, the art style of the goddess above even they, the goddessesses themselves.

What it didn't fit, though, was what Neptune was doing now.

"Neptune, that's a tiny little fish with an emoticon for a head. That doesn't explain a talking shark or a talking shark's friend at all." Smoothly sidestepping the fact that she had been technically proven wrong, for this was a sea creature of some kind, Noire raised an eyebrow and awaited Neptune's answer. "That's more than a little jump in the food chain, isn't it?'

Neptune didn't even miss a beat in replying.

"It is!" Holding up three fingers, Neptune offered Noire a simple "ha ha ha!" sort of laugh, as if she was about to explain the truth behind a great mystery that only a child would still not understand. "First! If the important new main characters have fishies as their new Oracles, we gotta have one too! Second! Our new console needs all new stuff to go with it, including an Oracle! So why not a fish to keep up with the times? And third! Since we're definitely way better than any 'new' and 'original' character will ever be, our fish Oracle should be the best kind of fish you can get!"

With that, Neptune spun around and finished up with a pose.

"And that's why I'm getting us a talking shark!"

Noire groaned. Right now, she seriously wished it had just been a pool filled with pudding that Neptune wanted. Only Neptune could come with something like this to totally surpass her worst expectations...

... though hold on. Hold on one moment here!

"That doesn't make sense." Shaking her head, the black haired CPU twirled a finger in the air and, by the power of breaking the fourth wall, called forth a literal text box featuring Neptune's last piece of dialogue for the pair of them to look at. This actually took Neptune off guard — the Special Stages were evolving! they could actually rip it out and touch the script now! — but Noire paid it no matter, instead tapping part of the box instead. "Look at this part. What you said here."

"Noire, is what I said important right now? You just did something that could revolutionize our story as we know-"

"Neptune!"

"Fine..." Sighing, Neptune made a mental note to abuse this discovery someday for all it was worth, before looking at the specific words that her wife was trying to get her to look at. Nothing seemed that strange to her, though... "What? Are you saying I'm not better than any new charac... Wait! Noire! You do like that fat version of me better than you like me me, don't you!? I should have known!"

The CPU of Lastation had to try very hard not to whack Neptune over the head with the text box right then.

"T-That's not what this is about at all, stupid! And you know it!" Starting to get just a bit frustarted now, Noire pointed to the text herself. "Look, see this? You're better than any new character? Don't you think that's a little strange? I mean, okay fine, ignoring your ego, isn't there something wrong with that, Neptune?"

"Hey, I said 'we,' ya know." Neptune shrugged awkwardly, giving her wife a rather dismissive look. She wasn't really sure where Noire was going with this, but she definitely wasn't feeling it from where she stood now, that was for sure. She needed to find a shark store before they went out of season...! Who knew how hard it would be to find one that talked and had a witty personality that bounced off of her perfectly? The friend, meanwhile, could fit with Noire. "What's the big deal?"

Neptune's head was looking really tempting right now... but Noire restained herself. Instead, she took in a breath and calmed herself.

"Wouldn't your shark be a new character too? And its friend? Wouldn't both of them be that?" She quirked a brow and waited to see how Neptune would react to this, hoping that it wouldn't shock her too much. "And if our console has an Oracle... Going off of last chapter, s-shouldn't it need some proper representation t-too? So... So are you saying you'd be better than..."

Neptune grimaced.

"Fine, fine, I get it!" She crossed her arms, a noticably annoyed pout on her face. She hated it when Noire used logic on her like that. It was so totally unfair! Who wanted logic in a story about her anyway? That stuff was no fun at all! "I'm still the main character here, but fine, I'll allow it."

For a moment, there was silence between the pair. After all, they were bordering a very dangerous topic right now. One wrong step, and they'd go from joking about a new Oracle and a what-if daughter to unleashing the very contents of Pandoriginala's Box itself...

What? Never heard of the feared thing? If only Gamindustri were so lucky!

It was a box that kept Gust's new boss and who knew who else from escaping into the world... From girls with two toned hair that trapped people in schools to girls made of cloth strung together as though they were a rather cute sack person... From CPUs of other, long forgotten lands to physical manifestations of atrocities like pay to win games and overpriced DLC...! It held the potential to both create and destroy, to bring life and to bring death...! All of it was kept hidden away from the world in that one tiny box... Just one tiny box...

It was a box that kept that which was new at bay. It was a box that kept that which was original far from that which was rehashed and redone. It was a box that...

"N-N-N-N-Neptune! Where did you get that!?"

... was in Neptune's hands at this very moment?!

"Weeeeeell, I figured if you could make the text boxes real..." Neptune was grinning from ear to ear as the tossed the cube back and forth from one hand to the other, a criminally guilty expression on her face as she watched Noire's eyes go wide every time the little thing left one hand and traveled to the next. "I could make this one too. Besides, if you think about it, Nep Jr. and the rest of the kids were just 'new' and 'original' at one point too, but now we all love them plenty, right? Who says all the people stuck in here shouldn't have a chance?"

"That's..." Noire bit her lip. While Neptune certainly raised a good point, one that she would be proud of her wife for coming up with under normal circumstances, with Neptune holding onto that thing right now, she couldn't help but be wary instead. "I guess that's true, but now really isn't the time to let all of them out, is it?"

Neptune frowned. Noire had been the one to show her the light! Why was her wifey turning her back on her at such a crucial time?

"Why not? Wasn't everyone like that at some point? Iffy, Compa, our sisters... What about Kei and the rest of them, huh? How come these guys aren't welcome here to even have a chance but we were tooootally okay with all our sisters and Oracles and Plutie and everybody else?" Shaking her head, Neptune extended the box towards Noire. "Is it 'cause you're worried they'll take your spot on the popularity poll? Is that it?"

The black haired CPU ran a hand through her hair nervously. They were getting dangerously close to opening it now, even without actually doing it! Stop, Neptune, before it's too late!

"Neptune, that kind of thing... Isn't... You know..." Noire waved a hand in the air, making a few circular motions, in the hopes that her point would be made through that action. It was true, after all. Unfair as it was, new things were usually given a lot more scrutiny than the old, and the kind of new things Neptune was trying to set loose. "I'm worried about the opposite happening. That they'll all be on the bottom for not being the kind of characters people want to see."

The smaller of the two tilted her head.

"So? How come the ones who might should lose out 'cause of the ones that might not, huh? There's always gonna be stinkers. We've got stinkers too! Everybody's a stinker to somebody — I bet even you reek if you asked the right person. That person's crazy, 'cause you smell fine, but if we just worried about stuff like that, we'd never shake up the status quo... No one would buy our games anymore!" With that, before Noire could even comment on the comments about her smell, Neptune tossed the box high into the air and spread her arms wide. "Think about it! Blanc never would have gone into 3D games if she did that! Our sisters wouldn't exist! Vert and Iffy would probably be the ones married right now, and poor Compa would be all alone! Plutie, P-ko... They wouldn't even be here! In fact..."

Rather than listen to Neptune for much more, Noire held her arms over her head and waited — as soon as the box came down, she just knew there was going to be some kind of explosion. It would either be a real explosion, an explosion of them getting overwhelmed with darkness, or maybe just an explosion of sound from all of the new people the box being opened was sure to bring. Squeezing her eyes shut, Noire awaited the end. If nothing else, their cancelation was guaranteed now.

Strangely enough, though...

Nothing happened.

No explosion. In fact, there was barely any sound at all. Unless Neptune had thrown that thing so hard it had left the planet itself (maybe leading to a segway for a weird "Planet of the Originals" spinoff where the movie ended with the lost-in-space Neptune finding the ruins of the Neptower...? was that her game now...?!), chances were... Nothing was going to happen either.

As Noire slowly opened her eyes and lowered her arms, what she found before her was something fairly different from the scene that she had expected to find upon looking at the world again. No chaos or doom and gloom, or worst of all, the unexpected and different. No... Instead, Neptune was simply extending a text box towards Noire.

It read: "Even you and me wouldn't be here. This story — our story — wouldn't be here."

Noire chuckled, smiling wryly. Now that had been unnecessarily dramatic, now hadn't it, Neptune?

The point had definitely been made, though, that was for sure. It had been made loud and clear.

"Okay, I get it. Honestly, you take this 'main character' thing a little too seriously sometimes. Isn't Nepgear supposed to be the preachy one out of the two of you? You might want to worry about being called annoying in a different way now." Despite her words, the tone she spoke them in made it clear she was teasing. Shaking her head, Noire placed a hand on her hip, taking the text box from Neptune as a sort of token of affection, to which Neptune responded with a stupid looking grin — though that wasn't saying much considering this was Neptune they were talking about here.

At this point, Nepgear might have made a cameo appearance to comment on Noire's unfair comment about her, but unfortunately for her, the restraining order the plot had filed against her for interacting with any major characters in the Special Stages would be in effect until Part 3. Instead, she found herself somewhere else, doing who knows what with who even knew. The scene might have even made a detour to show off just what that something was... But why not save it for another day instead?

"Now that's what I call foreshadowing."

"Damn you, conveniently worded restraining order that has never been mentioned before now! Damn yoooouuu!"

Noire rolled her eyes. Way to kill the moment, Neptune. It was just as well, she supposed, she was starting to feel like this was dragging... Or more like... What was it...? Hmmm...

"Anyway, since that crisis has been averted and we're on the same page now, I'm going back inside." Although she felt like she was forgetting something important, Noire let out a yawn as she turned towards the Basilicom, stretching one arm over her head to stretch the other straight up.

Neptune watched her, a glint in her eyes that went unseen by Noire. Her lips curved upwards in a smirk.

She had been waiting for this.

"So... We're on the same page?" Her first question was asked innocently. Her true intentions could never be discerned from something as simple as this. For this was the first piece of bait of many... Now that things had come to this... Neptune was going to...!

Stopping, Noire frowned. Was Neptune still confused about something? It was all pretty clear to her. Shooting a glance behind her and seeing her wife, looking fairly confident and normal, Noire paid the feeling no mind.

"Yeah, we are. Why do you ask?" The black haired CPU didn't suspect anything. Neptune was sure of it. And yet... It still wasn't time! It was too early to strike! Not yet!

"That means that you're saying new characters are good?" Neptune offered Noire an innocent, sweet sort of smile. Childlike even, like she was saving the game for the very first time in her young life. It was the face of an angel!

An angel of deceit, that is.

"Yes." Shrugging, Noire turned again, ready to head back into the Basilicom — she was getting a little hungry at this point, and for the strangest reason that she couldn't quite remember, she felt like ordering some fish... Why would she feel like having fish out of nowhere, though...?

"And you're saying they're okay?" As Noire turned away from her, Neptune found her grin widening. She was taking the bait, she was taking the bait! Just a little more... One more push... All Neptune needed was...!

"Yes, Neptune. I said it first, remember."

Bingo!

"Great! I'm glad you agree!"

Upon hearing the surge of enthusiasm in Neptune's voice, coming from when she had been speaking in a much slower tone only moments, seconds prior, Noire spun around — but the only sight that greeted her was Neptune's retreating back, heading off to who knew where.

"Wh- Huh? What are you..."

Neptune looked over her shoulder, grinning wolfishly as she offered Noire a thumbs up. In that moment, Noire remembered exactly what it was she had forgotten — and why she had suddenly had a craving for fish of all things.

"I'm off to get our shark!"

"You are not!"

No matter how she felt about new people (and no, that didn't mean she wanted friends or anything like that, before anyone says anything!), that did not mean that Noire was okay with them adopting a talking shark to be their new Oracle! She'd sooner let Histoire and Kei dress up as sharks, and seeing as that was never going to happen, they certainly were never getting a real one!

Thus, as Noire gave chase, that, dear Gamindustri, was the day that Noire herself ended up becoming the "shark" chasing down its prey, while poor Neptune was the "fish" going to be eaten up.

And no, it was not at all going to be in the fun way.