10. A Rendezvous

From that evening forth, Nana avoided Yon as much as possible. She locked Bit in her room whenever he was with her and spent most of her time holed up in there with him whenever Yon was over at the Mori residence.

When she filled her plate with food to take back to her makeshift bunker for the fourth time that week, Shuya stopped her.
"You're being ridiculous. Take a seat and eat at the dinner table."
"I don't want to eat here when she's like that," Nana mumbled, throwing a brooding look at an unassuming Yon.
"She's still the same person, you can barely tell she's been… altered," Shuya hissed at her, having difficulty finding the right words. When Nana attempted to walk away, he grabbed her arm and pulled her down into a chair.
She didn't get up, but instead just stared at her plate with a defiant expression. She could feel Yon looking at her.

"Well everyone, dig in!" Shuya said as he sat down himself.
"Thanks for letting me stay here so much," Yon began, a hint of sadness in her voice, "I hope it's still okay."
"Of course," You said, "you'll always be welcome here. Nana's just being a little childish," he said as he threw an accusing look at his little sister.
Yon also looked at Nana, her face still apologetic. Shuya was right, she didn't seem to be any different aside from the bright blue rings around her pupils, the black chip that accompanied it hidden under her multi-coloured bangs.

Mulling it over in her mind, Nana wondered if it might be a good idea to use this opportunity to ask Yon some questions. The only other docile Nana knew personally was miss Helding, but she was a teacher and Nana didn't talk to her outside of independence class.
She didn't know how closely connected to Hera the docile were. They either just had certain thoughts suppressed by that chip, or Hera could monitor everything they saw and heard, depending on who you talked to. Was it even possible for Hera to invade people's minds that extensively?

"Do you feel any different," she asked after a short pause, circling her spoon on the table and not looking Yon in the eyes.
Yon blinked in apparent surprise of the question after getting the silence treatment from Nana for so long.
"Not really. I remember going to the business district. I think I got knocked out at some point, but I don't know how or why. I also remember…" She scrunched up her face, like it hurt to think this hard, "I remember panicking."
She looked at Nana, seemingly expecting more questions.
"How do you feel about it, now? The chip, I mean." Yon's face relaxed in the same way miss Helding's face would sometimes whenever someone asked a question deemed too risky.
"Nothing, really. It's just there. Inside I feel like I should be very upset, but… I'm just not."

Shuya and You were intently listening along. From this, Nana gathered they'd never asked Yon anything about her docile procedure, which she found strange. Maybe they were used to seeing docile people in the store?

Nana grabbed the spoon a little tighter. "Do you think Hera has direct control over you…? Can.. Can she read your thoughts?" She felt her cheeks grow hot; hearing herself say it out loud made her realise how silly this notion really was.

Yon shook her head. "There are some things I think differently about. Some songs I don't want to sing anymore. I think if I forced myself to, I could still sing them, I could probably think bad thoughts, but I've lost all the will to do so. I think…" Yon hesitated. She picked at her nail polish nervously, as if debating if she should continue or not. "...I think bad things would happen if I did those things. That is why they are blocked from my mind."
"What kind of bad things?"
Yon didn't answer right away, still picking at her nails. She'd cleared most of the paint off two of them.
"I don't know," she eventually said, staring at the table in front of her, her eyes looking blank.
"Bad things to you, or to others?" You had joined in the questioning. He moved his chair a little closer to Yon, as if to comfort her.
"All of us."

This sounded so ominous Nana promptly let go of her spoon. It clattered down on the table, which seemed to snap Yon out of her eerie mood.
"I'm still me, I promise," she said, looking at each of the Mori siblings in turn. "I'm just not that rebellious anymore."
Shuya chuckled. "To be fair, that was a pretty big chunk of your personality."
"Don't worry, Yon," You said, seeing how her face had fallen after Shuya's remark, "as I said, you'll always be welcome here."

After dinner, Yon helped Nana with the dishes. They owned a dishwasher but it had broken down after Shuya had tried to alter it one too many times. It now produced a large amount of foam whenever it was turned on, and he hadn't figured out yet how to make it stop.
Yon washed the dishes while Nana dried them. She handed Nana a plate, and without looking at her, asked: "Is that why you've been having dinner in your room?"
Looks like Hera didn't block her bluntness.
"Yes," Nana admitted quietly. "You used to be wary of them too, you know. Dociles, I mean."
Yon laughed.
"I know, Nana! I still have all my memories. I don't like the term "dociles". Sounds like cattle, or something."
"You kinda are. You're Hera's cattle." Yon laughed again, and Nana couldn't help but smirk herself.
"Maybe I should start wearing a tag in my ear."
Now Nana couldn't help but laugh.

It was weird, she'd expected Yon to be a lot less human, being a docile, and she'd certainly sounded that way when Nana had texted her during the Sorella concert, but when the subject wasn't anything that could be considered "rebellious", Yon was the exact same person she was before.

Yon scratched at her forehead with a soapy hand. "This thing itches like crazy sometimes," she said, an irritated expression on her face.
"Does it actually go into your head?" Nana asked, handing her a towel.
"I don't know. I'm afraid to actually touch it. I let Shuya take a look at it but then he started pulling at it." Yon raised her voice at the end of her sentence and threw an angry look at Shuya, who was sat at the table working on his laptop. He looked up and airily shoved his glasses a little further up the bridge of his nose. "I wanted to see if it would come off."
"It didn't," Yon said, voice still raised.
"It's definitely inside her head. I already figured some component of it would be inside of her skull because it's clearly doing something to her brain, but there was always the chance the external part would be removable, like certain types of hearing aids."
"You could've asked me before you tried to tear it out of my head," Yon grumbled.
"I thought you might be okay with it. You used to really hate Hera, I figured you'd want that device off your temple as quickly as possible. But it seems that thing doesn't just suppress thoughts, it also makes sure you won't remove it yourself…Or let anyone else try."

Shuya held up his arm. Nana gasped when she saw it had bite marks all over it, two on his hand apparently so deep Shuya had felt the need to bandage it up.
Yon looked at Nana with wide eyes, like a dog that had just been caught doing something bad.
"It really hurt," was all she managed in defense.

After cleaning up, Nana retreated to her room. She could hear Yon talk to her brothers, apparently not intent on leaving anytime soon. Bit greeted her with a cheerful bleep.
"Sorry I've locked you up in here," Nana said as she sat down on the edge of her bed.
"That's okay. It's not like I flew around the rest of your house much before, anyway!"

Nana's eyes fell on an object in front of Bit on her end table.
"What's that?"
It looked like her Cure Bracelet, only it was pure white. The cat's face was blank.
"It's a bracelet like yours, but it's unfinished. It's just a prototype, I don't think it works."

Nana picked it up. The bracelet had a kind of otherworldly feel to it, just like her own bracelet, but it lacked something. Her Cure Bracelet felt powered in some way, even when she wasn't Cure Spark. The white bracelet, on the other hand, felt cold and empty.

"Where did you get this?" she asked Bit. Bit shook his head slightly, as a sort of stand-in for a shrug, which he couldn't, seeing he had no shoulders to speak of.
"I've had it since I woke up. I didn't do anything with it as it doesn't have any magic in it, unlike the other four bracelets. I also know I was only supposed to find four Cures, not five. I took it out because I only now realise it's a bit odd I have it… It doesn't work, why do I own this?"

Nana suddenly realised she'd never asked Bit something that normally had high priority for her and the other Cures due to the circumstances of their last battle.
"Did you get any new information from... From the wreckage left after our last Glitch fight?"
There really was no other way to describe what was left after Spark and Volt had purified the garbage truck Glitch. Neither of them had taken a closer look, but from far away Ellie's remains looked like scrap metal with some cloth wrapped around it. It had been a tough decision, but Spark had decided it was better to get Volt away from the scene and try to calm her down. When she and Bit had returned by themselves later that evening, Ellie's body was gone.|

"I didn't check," Bit admitted. "Gogo told me about her plans, but I didn't think she'd actually do it without talking it over with you and Saiko." His bright blue eyes looked sad; it was clear he felt responsible in some way. Nana wasn't sure how to comfort a robot fairy, so she put a hand on his head and lightly stroked it.
"I think Ellie must've been very important in some way, because some of the chips contained information about her."
"When I became a Precure, it really sounded like Ellie would be the big bad villain," Nana said.
"She woke up wrong," Bit replied. Nana remembered this was something he said when they'd first met.
"What do you mean by that?"
Bit took a moment to reply. For a split-second, the eyes on his display distorted.
"It's not just her. There's a lot of things that aren't the way they should be," he said, "but I don't know why, or how, or even what!" Bit made an annoyed bleeping noise and flew a few inches off the table, the top of his body spinning. When he landed again, he landed on the bed, his eyes still sad. "I'm a fairy but I can't even get the Cures to work together." Nana patted him.

"And even if I could, I can't tell them what they're fighting for because even I don't know." Tiny bleeps escaped Bit, what Nana deciphered as being small sobs.
"Please don't say that," Nana said. She actually felt a lump growing in her throat; it was absolutely heartbreaking to see Bit like this. "It's not your fault. You've done everything you could. Please don't feel bad!" She sat down on the bed and held Bit in her arms, petting him on the head. After a little while he stopped sobbing.

"As long as we keep fighting, we can protect Clairewood. And that's because you found us," Nana whispered, unsure if Bit had stopped crying because he'd calmed down or fallen asleep.
He swiveled his face around to look at Nana. His eyes no longer looked sad, instead they now were determined. "Thank you, Nana. As long as you keep fighting, I'll be there to guide you! Even if I don't know everything, I-" Bit hiccuped, "...I won't give up!"

The next day she went off to school, Bit tucked away in her backpack. She rolled her eyes when she came across yet another billboard of Luzia on her way to the bus stop.
It seemed Hera had replaced Ellie with her, though Luzia was a lot more vindictive than Ellie had been, in a very off-putting saccharine way.

"Please don't walk away!" the billboard pleaded. Nana long since had stopped waiting for the billboard to finish its message, seeing as it had been the same every single time and she'd passed about thirty of them the past week, and by now she knew its message by heart.
"Something terrible has happened in our city. I tear up just thinking about it! The Pretty Cure, those girls we've trusted to protect us for weeks, have turned on us! Look what they did! Would anyone heroic ever do something as heinous as murder a girl, robot or not? I don't think so! What's worse, they're not telling us who they really are! They're running from their crimes, how shameful. If you know anything, anything at all, about who the Precure are, please tell me? Please, pretty please? It'd make me so happy! It's for the good of the city."

The entire message was riddled with over-exaggerated cutesy movements, from crying to pleading to cheering. The fact that Luzia's message once again showed the footage of Ellie's demise was like an extra slap in the face. All in all, the ad made Nana want to vomit. Hera had stopped threatening her own people like she'd done at the concert, but she had started a manhunt on the Pretty Cure.
They'd been a little worried about this at first, but Bit reassured them nobody could ever find out who they were thanks to his protection.

At school people didn't seem to talk about anything else now. Possible candidates were discussed, though nobody had suspected Nana or Saiko. The theory that Raina was Cure Circuit seemed to be doing the rounds in the school, too.

Even Hera's morning message had been replaced by the stupid Luzia ad. By day three people were mockingly imitating her. During independence class someone asked Ms. Helding why Hera had prioritised the Precure manhunt over establishing contact with the outside world. Ms. Helding didn't have an answer to that.
The atmosphere in the school was very peculiar. People didn't seem to think what Cure Static had done was inherently wrong. Nana had heard people express pity for Ellie; "even if she can't feel anything, that's a terrible way to go," but nobody seemed to hate the Precure. If anything they seemed to idolize them and only speculated about their true identities out of interest, not because they wanted to give them up to Hera.

Nana wondered if the sentiment was the same in the rest of the city, and how Hera felt about it. She read everyone's messages, she had to know about it, right?

As Nana left school that afternoon accompanied by Saiko, her backpack suddenly started to move around. She slid it down her arm and zipped it open, revealing one of Bit's eyes in the darkness. "I've got great news!" He said, slightly muffled by the bag. "Cure Circuit wants to meet with you!"
Saiko gasped so dramatically that Nana thought she'd seen a ghost.
"She wants to meet you at the abandoned airport. I can take you to her!"
"Wait, right now?"
Saiko next to her let out a barely audible squeal.
"Yes!"

When they arrived at the airport, they saw the window Static had shattered was still broken. As it appeared the building didn't have any electricity, they went in through the broken window.

"She's in the passengers only section," Bit declared as he flew out of Nana's bag. Now that it was daylight while they were there, the airport wasn't particularly dark. The security section however didn't have any windows and therefor was very dark. The only lights to guide them were their phones and Bit. They had to climb over several security gates.
"I already don't like this part of the airport when it's in use," Saiko grumbled after she'd tripped over one of the gates, "it being in pitch-darkness doesn't make it any better. Cure Circuit better actually be Rae or this is so not worth it!"

They went through the door after security, which was a lot brighter as sunlight flooded in through the giant glass windows. The passenger only section of the airport appeared to be several stories up.

"There she is! Circuit!" Bit flew down over the railing, to a lower section where a girl appeared to be sitting in an area designated for travelers to wait until they could board their planes.
She's transformed. Saiko made her way to the escalators a little to their left, but Nana stopped her.
"Should we transform? She has. Maybe it's not smart to reveal ourselves like this."
Saiko frowned at Nana. "Why not? We're here to work together, right? It doesn't matter."
"Are you coming?" Bit called from downstairs.
"Bit trusts her!" Saiko said with a grin. Nana supposed she was right about that.

They made their way down by the escalators (which weren't on), and Circuit got up to greet them.
Nana felt pretty at ease; they'd met Cure Circuit before after all, but Saiko was practically exuding an aura of nervousness. Neither of them said anything, expecting Circuit to take the lead. That she did, though she didn't greet them.

"You're not transformed," she said, a note of concern in her voice.
"Uh, no. Should we be?" Nana inspected her own clothes, as if looking for tears or bits of dirt.
"You're taking a risk, coming to me like this. I could've been someone intent on catching the Precure, for all you'd know." Nana was taken a little aback at this accusation. We finally meet again after all this time and the first thing you do is scold us?!
"You are, too." Nana's eyes went wide, she hadn't expected Saiko to talk like that to someone she'd been convinced was her idol. "If you walked in here as Cure Circuit, how sure can you be nobody saw us? If all three of us walked in here transformed and someone followed us, we'd be trapped like… like mice!" She defiantly looked up at Circuit. "Oh and also Bit told us you'd be here and we trust him," she added quickly.

Because of the mask they couldn't see Circuit's expression. She seemed to be looking at Saiko, but it was hard to tell. Suddenly, she slumped her shoulders.
"You're right. I was being silly, I'm sorry. It's really hard to shake that older sister role when you've got to stick to it almost twenty four-seven." And just like that, Circuit de-transformed. She shrank a little (seeing as Cure Circuit had very high heels), but she retained her blonde hair, though it was more honey-coloured as opposed to Circuit's. Her eyes were strikingly blue, and although she wasn't wearing a lot of makeup, she was very pretty. Saiko had been correct. Cure Circuit was Rae Rivers.

"I knew it! I knew it was you!" Saiko exclaimed, jumping up and down with a big grin on her face.
Rae looked worried. "Oh no, what gave it away?"
"I'm a big Pink Diamond fan," Saiko said, blushing, "and Sorella, too. I recognised your accent and the way you walk and stuff. And your attitude as Cure Circuit is pretty similar to how Rae- um, you act normally."

Rae bit her lip. She clearly wasn't happy about this. "If you found out it was me, then other fans might, too. I should try to act differently when I'm Circuit."
"Most people seem to think Raina's Cure Circuit," Saiko said. Rae nodded, her face contorted into a worried expression.
"I've heard that too. Raina doesn't seem too worried about it… I wonder if Hera knows it's not her somehow. Have you heard anything about people disappearing since those Luzia ads started?" Rae sat back down, and Saiko took a seat across from her.
They shook their heads. Rae nodded knowingly.
"I figured. Since Hera keeps tabs on everyone, she can probably deduct if someone's a Cure or not by checking their messages and the like."
"I don't think anyone suspects us," Nana said.
"I imagine she has checked my records, actually," Rae said, a hand on her chin. "But since Bit blocks out any Precure info she can't have found anything. I haven't talked about it with anyone, anyway. You know, just to be safe."

"What do you think she'll do if she catches one of us?" Saiko asked.
Nana shrugged. "Turn us into dociles, probably. For a personal army or something."
"Impossible!" Bit piped up. "Precure cannot be turned into dociles. It is simply out of the question."
"Well, that's good at least," Rae noted, "she might try to jail us or something, or just give us a stern talking to. She's definitely got the whole mom thing ingrained pretty deeply."
"The way you talked to her at the concert was really admirable, by the way," Saiko said.

Rae studied her for a moment. "Thank you," she eventually said. "I don't know for how much longer I can keep her at bay by trying to talk her down, to be honest."
"You also think it'll come to a battle?"

Rae straightened up in her seat. She looked even more mature than she normally did. "It's inevitable. We can't live like this forever."
Nana nodded. "That's why Static did that to Ellie."
Rae raised her eyebrows. "Ellie? Is that her name? The robot girl's, I mean."
"She was in our class," Saiko answered, "she was very naive and had a really short fuse, but she didn't seem evil. I think she mostly just wanted to understand the world around her." Saiko stared vacantly at a spot on the floor in front of her.

"That doesn't take away that she's endangered people." Rae's tone was harsh. Saiko flinched, like she'd been slapped.
"We know that," Nana quickly said, "we've been fighting the Glitches that she's made since day one. That doesn't take away that she acted like a real person most of the time. Destroying her hasn't brought us any closer to liberating Clairewood, either!"
"It has stopped the Glitch attacks, now we can focus on the barrier." Rae still sounded icy. "It's tough, but please remember that that girl was only a machine. She didn't feel any pain, her systems turned off and that was it. Clairewood is safer now."
"I'm not sure if you've noticed, but we've called the wrath of a dictator AI over us by doing that," Nana retorted, slightly annoyed at Rae's superior behaviour.
"Hera wouldn't hurt her children, she's said it herself. And Bit told us she wasn't made with ill intent. As long as she won't find our true identities, we'll be safe."

"Static has a similar mindset to you," Saiko said, now sounding slightly defensive as well. She was still staring at the floor. "You're both outsiders. Nana and I grew up in Clairewood. Clairewood is the pinnacle of robot and AI development, it's irrevocably woven through our everyday lives. I bet if you had grown up here, you wouldn't think so easily about it. Ellie might not have been alive…" Saiko paused for a second, and her eyes flicked to Bit for a moment before she resumed looking at the floor, "...she might not have had a soul, but in a way, she was a person."

Rae once again broke out of her icy demeanor, slumping her shoulders and relaxing in her seat a little. "You're right, I didn't grow up here. I actually haven't gone outside much at all since arriving here, I only know of Ellie through news footage. I'm sorry for being harsh. You're younger than me and I thought maybe you were being overly sentimental, I admit. Maybe you can show me some of your amazing technology now we'll be working together." Rae's bluntness would take some getting used to, Nana thought. She hadn't expected a prissy idol to resemble Yon in that regard.

"Where's Static anyway, I invited her too." Rae looked around as if she expected Gogo to suddenly pop out from behind a pillar.
"She's taking a break from being a Cure. I think she regrets that she did what she did without discussing it with us first."
"I see… That's a pity. I was hoping we could become a real team," Rae sighed.

As if on cue, Nana got a phone call. When she picked up, a little hologram of Gogo appeared. She looked absolutely bedraggled and it appeared she was running.
"Gogo! Are you alright?"
"No! I'm coming to the airport right now!"
Saiko leaned in closer to listen. Rae straightened up again.
"It's Luzia! She knows who I am!"