Bright Moon City, 2158
A red supercar sailed through the endless sprawl of the largest city on Etheria, the light from its off-white pop-up headlights emerging from the garish visual cacophony of shop fronts that reflected off the puddles of rain on the road, and the red taillights vanishing back into it. By the way it drove, quickly and directly, swerving round other cars in its way, the driver clearly had somewhere to be that night. But that was what most people in Bright Moon City were like now; this wasn't a city to take your time in after dark unless you wanted to be set upon by the gangs that lurked in the shadows of the alleyways between the countless high-rise buildings.
Thirty years ago, the streets of the colony in its infancy had been much safer. When it had been set up, the pioneering settlement on a newly terraformed planet, the Krytisian government had appointed a governor to run the colony. His name was Horde Prime, and for a few glorious years, Etheria had been the jewel in the crown on Krytis's off-world living program: technology, luxury, aspiration – the future of homes amongst the stars. But Prime's hunger for control grew, and bit by bit, he cut Etheria off from its parent planet and took power for himself, declaring independence in the summer of 2139 on a day he optimistically termed "Freedom Day."
For the citizens of Bright Moon City and the other towns on Etheria, 'Freedom Day' gave them anything but. Prime turned his biggest, most fervent supporters into a militia known as the Guardians of the Will, an armed force that all but worshipped the ground he walked on. Etheria was only safe as long as you toed the line; all public bodies from schools to hospitals were made to hang his portrait in every room, television and radio only broadcast things that praised, and had been approved by, Prime. His egotistical hold on the colony even went so far as to require coloured lighting to be replaced with the vivid lime green that had now become synonymous with his reign of terror.
It was Prime's desire to control and monitor his citizens that ultimately led to his downfall. A decade into his dictatorship, he announced a plan to embed microchips in the neck of every citizen. Supposedly, this was to 'ensure public safety' and would help the police identify criminals more easily, but all bar his most deluded of fanatics knew the project was merely a way to monitor the population and silence the growing dissent with his rule. The microchips were mandatory, and a mass-chipping program was announced that effectively saw his devotees going door to door with handheld devices, giving residents the choice of being chipped or being impriosoned. Propaganda posters sprang up across the city proclaiming that "Prime sees all. Prime knows all." as a way to scare people into accepting their chips.
Still, some resisted. They escaped through windows, jumped from balconies and outran the Chippers (as they had become known) through the back alleys and streets they knew intimately. These people, this burgeoning insurrection against Prime, formed themselves into the Rebellion; under the direction of a leader known only as She-Ra, a mythical figure in Krytisian folklore, the seeds of revolution sprouted in the dark underbelly of Bright Moon City. On May 15th, 2156, the Rebellion stormed the building where Prime had secluded himself, an armoured fortress he called the Velvet Glove.
There was still so much debate about how many people were involved in what turned into a bloodbath; some reports said the Rebellion consisted of barely a dozen people, but the reality was more likely to have been upwards of a hundred. What was certain was that almost two hundred people, along with Horde Prime himself, were killed during the raid – a picture of the mysterious She-Ra with her glowing plasma sword embedded in his chest had circulated around the entire galaxy in a matter of hours. Most of Etheria's residents celebrated their liberation, those that didn't took a little longer to be fully divested from Prime's cult of personality. Over the months immediately following the coup, remnants of his tyranny began to vanish, and the colony found itself with hope for the first time in a decade.
The interim government, under the leadership of an associate of She-Ra, pledged to return an independent Etheria to the ideals that its founders held. Acting President Angella vowed to restore individual freedom, to deactivate and remove all the microchips that had been implanted and to turn around Bright Moon City's descent into a deprived wasteland. But the plans largely fell to nothing, a forward-looking and ambitious government discovering that running a large colony was not a simple task. Two years since the revolution, patience with the interim government was wearing thin as they struggled with competing demands for time and money; life had vastly improved for most across the colony, but in the backstreets of Bright Moon City, criminal gangs rose to the fore.
That was where a new group came in. Some would call them saviours, others vigilantes, but they called themselves the New Etheria Overseer Network. Their aim was not to claim power or to depose those who held it; they simply watched, and intervened when it was necessary to maintain the precarious balance that the colony's citizens found themselves in. They investigated where the thinly spread police force refused, they meted out justice where the courts would not, and they kept to the shadows to do it. Sometimes it involved infiltrating gangs, sometimes it involved taking lives, but every Overseer vowed to do whatever it took to keep order. That was the goal of N.E.O.N.
The car slowed, diving down a ramp into a blue-lit underground parking garage. Its engine calmed to a low purr as it pulled up in front of the cyan mesh forcefield that blocked its path, and a gloved hand reached out to press a button on the small intercom next to the driver's window. The unit rang with a series of muffled beeps, the words 'Please wait' showing on the screen for a few seconds until the blurry face of a security guard appeared.
"Yeah?"
"We're here for the party," a woman's voice, stern and direct but not impolite, responded above the soft rumble of the car's engine.
"Names?"
"Netossa and Spinnerella."
The guard turned to his side, and pecked his finger at a keyboard, the click of each stroke audible through the intercom's speaker. After pausing to read the screen, he found the names he was looking for and wearily slammed a finger down on another button, his image on the intercom vanishing to a small green line across the centre of the tiny screen.
The forcefield vanished, and the road in front of the car lit up a path of blue neon that led into the garage. A robotic voice announced in a stilted tone, "Welcome, Net-ossa and Spinner-ella. Follow the path to… Floor B. Two. Space. One. Five."
"I'm quite looking forward to tonight," Spinnerella remarked as her wife inched the car forward along the guiding lights, fighting to keep its power restrained, "Not often we get to have a night out together."
"This isn't a night out. We have a job to do."
"Doesn't mean we can't enjoy ourselves for a bit, my love."
Netossa held her tongue while she carefully manoeuvred the vehicle into its allotted space. The car, or the 'Red Arrow' as she called it, was her pride and joy, and if anyone damaged it, she would likely murder them on the spot. She loved the thrill of speeding through the Etherian countryside with the roof down on a summer evening, the planet's nearby star dipping below the horizon and painting the sky a perfect mix of oranges, pinks and purples. Even though a rainy night in Bright Moon City wasn't quite the same, Netossa still found joy behind the wheel, 500 horses under her command.
"I don't want 'enjoying ourselves' to disrupt our mission. After what happened in the Erelandia district last month, NEON is keeping a close eye on us," Netossa let her head fall forward onto the steering wheel, the stress of what could be a pivotal night already beginning to weigh on her.
Spinnerella ran a hand down her wife's silver-blue hair, a calming gesture that she felt instantly work when Netossa's shoulders relaxed, "Erelandia was not our fault. We were ambushed."
"And almost killed, Spinny! It could have put the whole network at risk if they had – it wouldn't have been to difficult to trace it back to C."
"But we got out of there, and they didn't get anywhere near C," she reassured. That night had been a major failure for them both. They had been tasked to sneak into and observe a gang meeting; rumour held that the gang was behind a series of high-profile thefts, and NEON's leader wanted them to gather information on it. Upon arrival at the supposed site of the meeting, an abandoned building in the Erelandia district, they found it empty. Rather than communicate back to base, as they were supposed to, the couple ventured further in to search the building for any sign of the gang.
As they rifled through an old office, half a dozen people armed with everything from old-fashioned pocketknives to a primed laser shotgun appeared in the doorway. It was only Netossa's quick thinking by kicking out a window that allowed them to escape, even if the two-storey drop had resulted in a painful landing. Returning to NEON HQ the following day, both women had been thoroughly admonished by C, the secretive figure who ran the group. Neither had been sent on assignments for four weeks since that night, and tonight's mission was their chance to atone for their mistakes.
Netossa sighed, her forehead still balanced against the wheel, "Let's just get it done. We take out Warner as soon as we can and then leave, okay?"
"Okay," Spinnerella agreed. The couple's instructions for tonight had been clear: NEON was investigating several disappearances of children across Etheria, and the host of the party, a man called Warner, was suspected of facilitating their movement around the colony. Although he was not a main player by any means, the plan was to kill him and let the group's agents watch what happened in the resulting power shift. C likened it to a Jenga tower – those at the top can still fall by the removal of the right block lower down.
Another arriving partygoer stared, his eyes almost falling out of his head, as the two women exited the car. Spinnerella wore a deep purple bodysuit with glowing pink neon accents, matching wedge heeled boots and a cape down her back in a complementary lilac. Her lavender hair, usually left free flowing across her back and shoulders, was tied into a ponytail that framed her face, revealing the subtle blush of her cheeks. Hand linked with her wife's as they walked, Netossa had opted for a silver-grey suit with white edging, the jacket slightly open to expose the royal blue blouse she wore underneath. Her hair fell across the right side of her face, kept out of her eye by a silver hair clip with embedded cerulean-shaded lights. The couple were, quite literally, dressed to kill.
Following a short, but awkward, elevator ride with the man who still couldn't take his eyes off the couple, they arrived to the soirée in full swing. Almost the entire floor of the building had been opened into one big area, and hundreds of people filled it from wall to wall. It was dark, the only lighting provided by strips of vivid magenta neon that ran the length of the walls, swerving to frame windows and furniture, as well as a brightly lit bar in the centre of the room. Music played in the background, layers of synths over a laid back beat that relaxed the mind by evoking images of fading days, of orange and purple skies being chased away by night, and the partygoers looked as though they were enjoying every pulse.
"Welcome, ladies," they were greeted by someone barely more than a kid, clad in a black trench coat lit with yellow trim. They looked at the couple through yellow wraparound glasses, their eyes just about visible when the glasses caught the reflection of the minimal lighting, "This evening is entirely paid for by the host; he encourages you to take full advantage."
"Thank you," Spinnerella smiled, a contrast to her wife's irritated scowl. Netossa had barely let the conversation finish before she was dragging her partner towards the bar, in need of a drink to calm her nerves.
The bartender was an overly cheerful twenty-something woman, easily distinguishable by the threads of pink neon lighting woven through her chestnut brown hair. That was the fashion amongst the younger (and more well-off) people in Etherian society, despite the presumably horrible practice of gluing strips of lights to the scalp; supposedly, removing them risked tearing the person's hair out at best. At worst, it put them in need of skin grafts. But the girl didn't seem to be bothered by it tonight, judging by the ear-to-ear smile she wore, "What can I get for you? All drinks are paid for by our host and he encourages you to take full advantage."
"Yeah, I heard," Netossa scowled, already having had her fill of the slightly creepy reminders about the unnamed host. It was Warner, she knew that, though she wondered if the staff here did too or whether he had left his identity deliberately vague, "Two Crystal Castles. Etherian style."
"You got it, boss," she disappeared underneath the bar, re-emerging with two tall glasses and a bottle of vivid pink alcohol, which she measured into each of them. She carefully manoeuvred around one of the other bartenders and returned with a carton of purple fruit juice, which went slowly down the inside of the glass to prevent it mixing fully with the alcohol and gave a layered effect. A slice of orange garnished each cocktail, and the bartender pushed them towards the couple with a mock salute, "Enjoy them, ladies."
"She seemed pleasant," Spinnerella said airily, making her way towards a quieter corner of the room, the perfect place to observe everything. The music, though still a laid-back mix of synthwave and chilled pop beats, had been turned up and she had to speak a little louder to be heard.
Netossa's eyes darted around the room as she sat down, anxious to ensure they weren't in eavesdropping range, "She seemed like a robot, they all do. 'Our host encourages you to take full advantage'? It's like he doesn't want people to know who he is."
"Not sure I would if I was kidnapping kids, to be fair."
"It just seems a little weird is all," Netossa fiddled with her hair clip, which had managed to slide its way downward and sit on her cheekbone, "The way they all say the same thing creeps me out."
Spinnerella took an entirely-too-large gulp of her cocktail, coughing as the alcohol burned her throat and looking sheepishly at her wife while it subsided, "Whoa, too much… Have you had eyes on the target at all?"
"No, you?"
"Nothing."
From her squinted eyes that flitted around the room and pursed lips that always accompanied Netossa in deep thought, it appeared as though a plan was beginning to form in her head, "There is something that might work… You know the old phrase 'if She-Ra won't go to the heart, the heart must come to She-Ra'?"
"Are we talking the Prime-murdering one or the storybook one?" Spinnerella said dryly, sipping her drink.
"Book one, obviously. But no, if Warner isn't going to come out and meet people, there's an unguarded door over there."
"Netty…" Spinnerella pressed a couple of fingers to the bridge of her nose, something she had inexplicably always found to be calming, and took a couple of deep breaths. She loved her wife's ambition, the way that she was always planning one, even two, steps ahead was admirable; but taking matters into their own hands had almost resulted in their deaths in the Erelandia district, "We can't. Not after last time."
Netossa was unperturbed; although she did her best to keep them out of danger, their line of work was naturally fraught with risk, "We were going to have to sneak out of view some time. What, were you going to wait for him to be in full view of a couple of hundred people and kill him?"
"No! I… I don't know, okay? I'm just overcautious now because we almost… you almost died, Netty. I would never forgive myself if that happened. So just let me think, let me think, please."
"Hey, it's okay," she placed a hand on each of Spinnerella's shoulders, gently pulling her around so that they faced each other. Their eyes met, as full of love now as the first day they met, and Netossa broke away her gaze only to place a kiss on her wife's forehead, "I know you're worried because of what happened in Erelandia. But this isn't anything like it, we're in a crowded building, not an abandoned office block. I've counted two guards, maybe three if you count the kid on the door – Warner isn't expecting us. We'll be careful, I promise. I've got you."
"And I've got you, darling."
Netossa formed an understanding and reassuring half smile as Spinnerella silently mulled over the pros and cons of her plan. Their brush with failure last time out had severely shaken her confidence, and she couldn't quite be sure whether it was death or another dressing down from C that scared her more. But her wife's confidence was inspiring, and even if she couldn't quite share it herself, she trusted Netossa with her life. With a nod and an 'okay' that was lost underneath the music, Spinnerella downed the last of her drink and rose to her feet.
Scouting the room to make sure they remained unnoticed, the couple made their way towards the dark corner, pretending to dance to the music to blend in. They kept vigilant, and Netossa acted as look-out whilst Spinnerella crouched down to investigate. It was an old-fashioned metal door, the kind with a manual handle and keyhole – likely one of only a few on Etheria. Criminals tended to prefer these because they were much less vulnerable to hacking attacks and therefore a lot more secure if you wanted to hide something; during Prime's reign, he had outlawed manual doors, mandating that all citizens must only have electronic doors, with emergency release codes registered with the government. It was another insidious way to control the people, but the image of non-electronic doors being for criminals that Prime's propaganda created had become widely accepted.
Bright light shone through the keyhole, and Spinnerella knew she had to be gentle. Throwing the door open and instantly illuminating a hitherto quiet, dark corner of the room would be the quickest way to attract attention. She tried the handle, pushing lightly, but the door remained firmly shut, held in place by its lock.
"Autopick, darling?" she held out an expectant hand, waiting for Netossa to reach into her pocket and pull out a small device to give to her. Spinnerella pressed the device over the keyhole, and pressed the button, a low beep indicating its springing to life.
It took less than ten seconds for a green light to appear on the autopick, confirmation that it had successfully unlocked the door, and Spinnerella handed it back to her wife. They always tried to carry one of the gadgets with them, their line of work often saw them met with a locked door, and the modified ones that NEON's hacker, Entrapta, had created allowed them to open both old-fashioned physical locks and electronic ones. Spinnerella had tried to teach herself how to manually hack doors, but had never been particularly adept at it, so she was rather grateful that these autopicks existed.
She pushed the door open slightly, barely an inch, but enough to see into a small, bare corridor bathed in cyan lighting. There were a couple of doors on either side of the other end of the room, the green square on the adjacent keypads indicating that they were unlocked. More importantly for the two of them, however, the corridor was deserted. Being careful to open the door no further than she needed to, Spinnerella slipped inside and beckoned her wife to follow. Netossa made sure she remained unwatched, and joined her wife, gently closing the door behind them both. Although she was somewhat glad that they hadn't been spotted, the bright light of the empty corridor, with muffled music filtering through the gaps around the door frame, began to evoke memories of the similarly quiet, empty building that had preceded the ambush previously.
"One room each?" Spinnerella whispered, a finger on each hand pointing to the doors.
Netossa nodded, tiptoeing towards the left-hand door and opening it with a touch on the keypad. She was greeted with another empty room, this one clearly serving as an office. The floor was the dark grey hard plastic that was common in most of Etheria's buildings, criss-crossed with thin strips of orange neon that ran up one wall to the ceiling where they brightened to act as overhead lighting. In front of the large windows that gave a view out towards the colourful night vista of the city, a solid wave of plastic designed to look as though it had emerged from the floor formed a desk, upon which a boxy monitor stood with a blinking green cursor. She tried a few commands on the keyboard, met each time with an error.
"Come on," she muttered, her eyes scouting the room for any kind of inspiration that might gain her access. Their mission was to eliminate Warner, but if she could return to NEON HQ with any extra intelligence that could lead them towards the missing children, it would make their job far easier. Having hands-on access to his computer terminal could help her learn about the workings of his operation, give her details of any upcoming transports that they could waylay – but without a password, she would get nowhere.
"Try, 'I'm not supposed to be here'," a gruff voice made Netossa jump, and she spun around on the spot to be met with the barrel of a laser pistol, a tiny green dot in the centre indicating that it was live, "Step away, there's a darling."
The man gestured with the weapon for Netossa to back up against the wall, and she knew that trying to fight back would be pointless. Her skill at hand-to-hand combat was unmatched amongst the other NEON agents but trying to evade an active firearm aimed at her from close range exceeded her ability. All Netossa could do was obey, and perhaps try to talk her way out, "I'm sorry, I got a little lost."
"I appreciate the attempt, but you don't accidentally pick locks now, do you?" he took another step towards her, prodding the gun into her chest, "Do you?"
Netossa shook her head, nervousness sending adrenalin coursing through her body, "N-no… No I don't."
"Who are you? What are you doing?"
"I'm... with a gang," she rapidly had to think of a suitable lie and hoped that this one would at least buy her enough time to figure out an escape plan, "I was just trying to find out about your shipments so we could intercept them. You're Warner, right?"
He pressed the weapon harder, bringing his face so close to hers that she could see every stubbly hair that adorned his top lip, "So, you know my name… Not to worry, I'm going to kill you in a minute, but first, I'd like you to tell me which gang is trying to disrupt my operation. Are you with Mystacor? Alwyn Street Crew?"
Netossa hadn't expected her lie to have been examined in quite that level of depth, and she stumbled over her words trying to form a convincing answer. Her fear blanked her mind, and she struggled to even remember the gangs Warner had mentioned seconds before. She prepared for more menacing words, for another jab of the gun, but instead the expression on the man's face turned to one of surprise. His eyes widened and pupils dilated, his mouth opening slightly to emit a pained gasp and he reached out a hand to Netossa's shoulder in a futile attempt to steady himself before collapsing forward onto her.
"I'm going to remind you that I just saved your ass every day now," Spinnerella stood in the centre of the room, a smug but loving grin on her face. In her hand, a glowing purple blade extended into the air where Warner's body had been, and Netossa glanced down to see the blood spreading from the wound on his back as she pushed him off. Her wife tapped the handle of her weapon and the plasma blade shrunk back into its housing, which she replaced in the secret pocket inside the neckline of her bodysuit, "What are we now, 13 heroic savings for me to your 10?"
"You can't count the Mystacor Estate as three!"
"There were three people," Spinnerella said with genuine seriousness, "That's three points to me."
"No it's..." Netossa's awareness became less concerned with her wife's boasting, and more so with Warner's breathy grunts as he lay sprawled on the floor. She held a hand up to indicate Spinnerella to stop, and turned her attention to the dying man, "Tell me who you're working for."
"He…" Warner let out a desperate pained groan, sucking air in through his teeth as though it would make any difference to the agony of being impaled by a plasma blade, "He s-sees all, he… aghhh… knows a-all..."
The two women shared a terrified glance at the sound of the most sinister phrase from their former dictator's propaganda machine. Supposedly, the interim government had rounded up his fanatics, at least the ones that hadn't been slaughtered in the revolution, and either imprisoned or deprogrammed them from his cult-like influence. They could both remember being in the central district of Bright Moon City one night, when every advertising billboard had been temporary replaced with a short video from Acting President Angella joyfully announcing the completion of their treatment plan. Horde Prime's influence had supposedly been eradicated from even his closest allies and most fervent fans, and yet here, in front of both of them, this man had spoken those chilling words.
Spinnerella darted backwards, "Did he just…?"
"Yeah, he did."
"No…" she thumped the wall with uncharacteristic rage, the light threaded through it flickering with the impact, "Fuck! We've got to let HQ know."
Netossa hauled herself to her feet and gestured to the limp body on the floor, the once-pristine white suit now soaked through with deep red, "We need to get out of here first."
The couple hurriedly exited the room, slowing as Spinnerella attempted to hack the door to lock it behind them, a venture that she gave up on after a couple of tries. Though it would buy them more time before Warner's body was discovered, it wasn't worth the risk to hang around for even a minute longer in an attempt to apply her amateur-level hacking skills. They tried to attract as little attention as possible upon re-entering the party through the darkened doorway, and made a beeline towards the entrance. Spinnerella gave another smile and nod to the kid on the door, mumbling an excuse about having a personal emergency as the reason they had to leave so early. They were clear for now, but neither woman could breathe easy until they had returned to the relative safety of Netossa's car.
"Drive," Spinnerella ordered, fumbling inside the glovebox for her portable phone, "I'll alert HQ."
The supercar navigated through the parking lot, following the path that had lit up to guide it towards the exit, which dropped the protective forcefield as they approached. While they did so, Spinnerella flipped open the keypad of the phone and extended the aerial, which sparked the red LEDs of its display into life. She tapped in the number that, by this time, she knew by heart, and waited for an answer.
"Good evening, Plumeria Florists, how may I help you?"
"I would like to buy twenty-four thousand and three bouquets."
"Please hold."
The line went quiet for a few seconds before a different woman's voice came on, an older one that bore the hallmarks of someone who had lived through more than Spinnerella or Netossa could imagine, "State your name and code."
"Spinnerella. Authorisation November Sierra One Seven"
"Line is secure."
"We've taken out Warner," she decided that starting with the good news would perhaps be a better idea, not that it could take the sting out of the bad, "But as he died, he repeated one of Prime's slogans. Might be nothing, but if there are surviving Horde Prime fanatics behind these disappearances…"
"… then it's not good news for any of us. I understand."
Netossa slowed the car and leant across to shout into the receiver, "I knew we shouldn't have trusted the President when she said she'd deprogrammed them all."
"Thank you for that. I will divert resources to looking into a possible link to Horde Prime, and I will contact you soon."
"Thanks, C," Spinnerella ended the call, closing the keypad and placing the phone back into the glovebox without saying a single word. She didn't have to spell out the possible results if Prime fanatics managed to worm their sinister way back into Etherian society, they had both lived through it once.
Spinnerella's parents had been taken in from the very beginning. They had brought her over to Etheria at the age of 3, disgruntled with the way Krytis was run, and hoped that the new colony would provide them a better way of life. Although she'd never quite worked out how – her parents were both highly intelligent and always taught her to think critically of everything – they slowly became first supporters of Prime's call for independence, and then campaigners for his policy of Etherian liberation. 'Freedom Day' happened when Spinnerella was 7, and she could vividly recall the celebrations, how her parents took her out into the street and cheered loudly for Horde Prime, along with hundreds of others.
But her parents weren't content with stopping at merely helping Prime achieve independence for the colony. They first attended meetings of his supporters, which in the space of just a few months turned into rallies where Prime would give speeches to ever-increasing numbers of adoring fans, shouting out his rhetoric in front of giant banners with his image on. Spinnerella had had no choice but to attend a few when she was too young to be left at home alone, but once she'd reached her teens, she refused to go. Her parents didn't like that; they said that refusing to attend the rallies was anti-Etherian, and that they couldn't help her if her lack of patriotism was discovered by Horde Prime. They would be powerless to stop her punishment, she was told.
When he stepped up his megalomaniacal hold over Etheria, her parents blindly obeyed. Prime's portrait, a huge thing that ran almost floor-to-ceiling, took centre stage in their small house, and the once-pink accent lighting was replaced with the sickly lime green that now represented him. Spinnerella often tried to debate her parents, get them to use the critical thinking skills they had always espoused, but they were too entrenched in Prime's cult to listen to her challenges. Everything in her family's life became centred around Horde Prime, their days scheduled around his speeches and mealtimes preceded by a pledge of allegiance and thanks.
Prime's microchipping experiments started in 2149, when Spinnerella was 17, and her parents fought to be one of the first to receive them. As she was underage, Spinnerella wasn't given the right to opt out, and was forced to come along to his headquarters under threat of arrest. Her parents couldn't understand why she would want to refuse – the microchips were a symbol of freedom, they said, the program was an example of the trust that Prime had in his people and why would Spinnerella not want to accept that gift? Her reservations and misgivings about the chips being used to track the population were dismissed as laughable conspiracy theories, and she only dropped her resistance (albeit superficially) when there was talk of sending her for 're-education', something she could only imagine to be akin to torture.
It was their closeness to Prime that held Spinnerella back. Her parents tried to keep her 'faithful' by imposing a curfew on her and attempting to ensure she only made friends with the kids of other people who were similarly engrossed in Prime's cult. She tried her best to support the Rebellion in her own ways – trying to 'accidentally' get in the way of the Guardians as they chased rebels or tearing down posters when nobody was looking – but Spinnerella knew that if she went any further, if she left home to live with Netossa, her parents were in a position to report her as a deserter. Every single person in Prime's police force would be alerted and would arrest her on sight to be taken for re-education. At least if she remained under their roof, she had some freedom.
Sadly, her parents' devotion to Prime came to an end during the revolution. By the time the Rebellion had formed, they worked in the upper echelons of Prime's administration. Spinnerella wasn't entirely sure what they did, but they spent their days in his fortress; she only saw them in the evenings. On the night of May 15th, she was at home watching events unfold on the news – Prime's grip on the media had them reporting it as a small disturbance, a group of radicals who wanted to spread anarchy on Etheria and disrupt the peace Prime brought. But it was what they didn't say, the way they didn't comment on the numerous explosions she could hear across the city, that gave Spinnerella a true indication of what was happening; it was a revolution, plain and simple, and not a bloodless one.
The following morning, Spinnerella woke up alone in her home. It wasn't unusual, her parents sometimes spent all night working, but as the memories of what she'd seen on the television the night before flooded back in, she knew in her heart that they had been caught in it. She had so many mixed feelings – sadness for the loss, of course, but relief as well. Her parents had long since been lost in the rabbit hole of Prime worship, and in many ways, they had died over a decade before, their bodies turned into mere vessels for Prime's will. She'd got the chip deactivated not long after meeting Netossa (without her parents' knowledge, of course) but fear of reprisal stopped her taking it out until the new government had made it legal. The memories of what happened, by contrast, weren't so easily removed.
"Hey, he's not coming back," Netossa laid a gentle touch on her wife's thigh, having spotted her hand anxiously coming to the back of her neck. Spinnerella often claimed she felt it itching when she thought about Prime or her parents, and it was a signal she was starting to fall to her memories, "And we're going to make sure that there's no-one left who supports him, okay?"
Turning out of the parking garage and onto the road, Netossa floored the accelerator, and they were catapulted forward amidst a squeal of smoking tyres. The garishly lit high-rise buildings flew past them in a jumble of neon shop fronts and advertising boards as they raced through the streets, a bright red blur leaving a tornado of dust in its wake.
This was Bright Moon City – BMC to the locals – a high-rise city bursting with vibrancy and the hope of hundreds of thousands of people that its past is long gone. The residents with their heads raised to the future, accepting the promise of a novice government, and waiting for a new age of freedom. But to those who took the time to look again at the shadows, to search down dusky alleyways and upturn rocks to see what came crawling out, it was a city on the edge. A city that was only ever a few steps from self-destruction, were it not for the actions of a dedicated group of fighters who looked on from the side-lines and stepped in when they needed to.
This was NEON's city.