Kawada Asa didn't know what she was thinking. Until recently, she'd been terrified of Nakayama Yoko, just like everybody else seemed to be. Being Pretty Cure and ending up in the science project together had made the past month or so confusing, to say the least, but she slowly found herself warming up to the so-called Ice Queen. Even if they didn't have much in common, Asa sometimes caught herself thinking that the other girl was interesting or fun to talk to. It was easy to come to that conclusion, once she thought about it. After all, they were Pretty Cure. Didn't that mean that they should become the best of friends?

Still, then there had been yesterday. Okamoto Yukari, Yoko's friend, had been used by Mekuramast and Kainatrol to help find the Moon Pieces, and, when Pretty Cure showed up, to fight them because they'd hold back against her. After the whole ordeal was over, Yoko ran to Yukari and instantly focused all her attention on her, dropping her plans for the afternoon with Asa and leaving her up in a tree without seeing if she could get down. Even if Yukari was that important of a friend, Asa couldn't help feeling at least a little shafted.

Well, it was probably nothing, right? Everything would be normal at school today.

Futari wa Pretty Cure Blue Moon

Episode 8: There's No Way I Like You! Is There?

"Love! Justice! Truth! These virtues will spread throughout the Lily Class! Throughout the school! Throughout all of Kazahana City!"

Ami-sensei was on one of her rants again. Most of the students were passing notes, doodling in the margins of their looseleaf or staring out the window. Asa raised her hand in her desk.

"Yes, Kawada?"

She stood up. "Nakata-sensei, aren't you missing some?"

Ami-sensei blinked. "Some what? What did I miss?"

"Virtues!" Asa grinned. "Love, justice and truth are good and everything, but you need a full set. You can't forget friendship, courage and happiness!"

"Well, yes, of course..." Ami-sensei put her finger to her lip and thought. "But why are those six a 'set'? What makes them the most important?"

"They're the Six Spheres of the World," Asa said, still with a wide smile on her face. "Without one of them, the others are weaker, you know?"

"I'm not sure how you came up with this," the teacher replied, "but it sounds true enough! Kawada understands the great nature of this world! All of you must try harder to also see the world's goodness!"

Hoshi leaned forward in her desk when Asa sat back down. "Where'd that come from?"

Asa sweatdropped. "Uh... Super Ultra Special Team?"

Hoshi sighed. "Figures."

In her own desk, Yoko was among those staring into space. It was hard to tell what she was thinking, but she blankly ran her pencil along the line of her ruler, redrawing the straight lines on the looseleaf. A folded piece of blue note paper dropped onto her desk, and she absently opened it up.

You okay? Something looks wrong.

~Yukari.O~

Yoko turned her head back to the smiling Yukari for a second. Of course she'd pretend to be fine. Looking at how Ogata Mia had reacted the same day, Kainatrol's victims probably did remember being hypnotized, even if Yukari was acting like nothing was wrong. Yoko turned the cloud-printed stationery over and wrote something neatly down before handing it back.

The lunch bell rang not long after that. Yoko got up and went to join the rest of the students filing out the door. Asa stood and moved to block her way.

Yoko stepped back and glared. "What are you doing?"

Asa gulped. "Well, I thought we were going to work on our science project at lunch today, like normal. Right?"

Yukari frowned but didn't say anything this time. Most of their other classmates had left now, but the remaining few stopped to stare. Omemi Emiru adjusted her glasses in the corner.

Yoko tried to maneuver past. "I can't today. I'm eating lunch with Yukari."

Asa shook but stood her ground. "What? Why is it changing now?"

"What do you mean, 'why'?", Yoko snapped. "Look, I'll talk with you after school, but this is more important! You should know that!"

More important than Pretty Cure? "How is it more important?", Asa demanded. All eyes still in the room were on the scary class stoic and the weird girl who was standing up to her.

"You just don't get it!", Yoko said. "Be less selfish once in a while, Kawada-san! Think of it this way. Who means more to you: your friend or someone you only talk to because you have to?"

Asa froze. She stood there trembling for what felt like an hour before she forced her body to move enough to step backward.

"Nakayama-san... you..." She scrunched up her eyelids and clenched her fists at the sides. "Well, that's fine with me!" Asa whirled around and ran out of the classroom.

Yoko blinked as people around her murmured and stared.

The plan had been perfect. Mekuramast would put on a show to draw attention, while Kainatrol, hidden in the back, would hypnotize the crowd to search for the thirteen Moon Pieces. If Pretty Cure showed up, and they did, the magician would do all the fighting. It had all gone according to plan, but Mekuramast mentioned offhandedly that the girls had to defeat Kainatrol to free the civilians, and they turned their attention to finding her. She wasn't a fighter. She barely made it out unhurt.

"That insufferable-" Kainatrol nearly snapped her riding crop in two. "If it weren't for him, I would have gotten the Moon Pieces right then and there!"

Mireyes appeared, her dress and head covering swishing as she walked. "You can't take that as a sure thing. Probably nobody knew where to find a single one."

Kainatrol whirled to face her. "Oh, shut up, you old hag."

Mireyes started to glow purple. "What did you call me-"

"Ladies, ladies!" Five teenage girls popped up wearing white and gold Etherium uniforms, weaving themselves around the two. "None of us need an argument in here. We were trying to rest."

"You stay out of this, Tachimany," Kainatrol snapped, the light glinting off the red jewels on her mask. "It isn't like you've done much to help."

Tachimany shifted into two businessmen. "How cruel. We've done the same amount of searching as any of you. If we have to step it up, then so do the rest of you."

Mireyes smirked, her eyes giving off an eerie glow under the head covering. "It seems that we'll get an opportunity soon enough."

It had been a very awkward rest of the day. At least now school was letting out, and most of the students were leaving school or sitting in the courtyard. All of them were very focused on talking about what they'd seen or heard, particularly one group sitting in a circle on the grass.

"Seriously, that's what happened." Emiru adjusted her glasses and brushed fallen leaves off her skirt. "Nakayama just completely shut her down."

"Normally, that wouldn't be surprising, but isn't there something off about this?" Misaki Izumi picked a leaf out of her hair.

"There is," said Izumi Misaki, who did the same thing, but on the opposite side of her head. "They seemed to actually be getting along."

"That's why it's so interesting," Emiru snapped. "This either proves that no one can pretend to like Kawada for too long without either going back to normal or going insane, or that Nakayama just has some mental block against making friends. Kondou excepted for the first theory and Okamoto for the second, of course, although I don't see how."

Kondou Hoshi herself stormed through the school halls back to the Lily Class' room. She swung the door open and locked on to Yoko sitting in her usual spot by the window.

"Kawada-san, you're here. I was beginning to-" Yoko looked up and blinked. "...Kondou-san?"

Hoshi marched over to the desk, shoved the ones in front of it out of the way, moved to stand opposite Yoko and slammed her hands on the desk.

"What did you do to Asa?"

Asa didn't stay at school that afternoon. She walked as quickly as she could past the other students pointing at her, not even stopping to buy a sweet potato. She didn't have the change right now anyway. So there she was, a girl in a Clair Academy uniform, a piece of blue hair dropping in front of her face as she forced herself to keep on walking. She finally let out a sigh and sat down on a bench.

Asa moved her hair back where it was and looked up after a moment. Without noticing, she'd ended up at the clock tower in the middle of town. She frowned and stared up at the hands moving.

"The bow on your uniform is crooked."

"Nakayama-san-" Asa startled and blinked a few times. No, that wasn't Yoko at all; the long grey hair and stern face she thought she saw faded to fluffy, short red hair with a pink bow at the back and a concerned look.

Ogata Mia offered a hand. "Want to talk about it? Let's go somewhere that not everyone will show up and gape."

"Me?" Yoko made a face. "I didn't do anything. What are you talking about?"

"Don't give me that! I know you did!" Hoshi didn't move from her spot. "Not only is everyone talking about what happened at lunch today, Asa wouldn't even talk to me about it. She tells everything about her life to everyone she knows, whether they're interested or not! You did something, so admit it!"

Yoko stood up and looked Hoshi in the eye. "She was the one being insensitive, to me and to Yukari. She knew what happened yesterday. I'm sure you remember what happened yesterday, even if you've blocked it from your mind like everyone else who's seen the monsters and heroines and mind control and all those other things that have been going on in town. They used Yukari, and she's my friend! Why can't I skip one meeting to make sure she's okay?"

"Is Okamoto Yukari your only friend?" Hoshi's brown eyes began to burn.

Yoko's eyes widened. "What are you talking about?"

Hoshi moved to the aisle in between desks so she was still standing opposite Yoko. "I warned Asa about you, but she wouldn't listen. She started meeting with you, she went with you for the science project, she kept telling me you weren't all that bad..."

"That was just for-" Yoko stopped before she could say 'Pretty Cure'.

Thankfully, Hoshi butted in at just the right time to make her think she'd cut Yoko off. "I don't care what it was for! For some reason, Asa stopped being creeped out by you like everyone else is. She wanted to be your friend, although I have no idea why anybody would."

Yoko blinked. "...she wanted to what?"

"You're so clueless!" Hoshi waved her arms in the air. "You blow her off yesterday and today, and then you say you just talk to her because you have to, right? I heard everything from Omemi-san, not to mention everyone else in class. Even if you thought you were telling Asa to be more conscious of other people, the insensitive one was you!"

Yoko stood for a moment, unable to reach for her bag. She finally gave a sigh and picked up her things.

"Kawada-san..."

"You didn't have to do this." Asa sweatdropped as she munched on a fire-cooked sweet potato.

Mia shrugged. "I really owed you. I wasn't the nicest person when we met. I just believed what everybody said about you." She took a bite of her own sweet potato. "So Nakayama-san did that stuff? I thought you were friends."

"Well..." Asa sighed and looked down at the path. "Maybe not friends yet. Probably not friends ever, now, but I thought we would be. She's not as bad as she seems. Sure, she's kind of scary, but I think, a lot of the time, she doesn't mean to be. Besides, even if Hoshi's been my friend since we were kids, there are some things I can only talk about with Nakayama-san."

Mia bit her lip. "I guess that's how things are sometimes. I mean, I feel really bad about what I did because..." She looked around to make sure that nobody was around and lowered her voice. "You were still there at the show after I ran away, right? Did... did those girls named Beauty Cure show up?"

"Pretty Cure," Asa automatically corrected, turning pink with embarrassment as she realized what she'd said. "Yeah, we saw them. They saved everyone."

The redhead gave a big sigh. "I couldn't mention it in front of anyone because they'd think I was crazy. Pretty Cure, the monsters, those performers in white with the eye masks... I don't know what's going on, but no one's talking about it even if they've seen it themselves. Everyone thinks it'll all go away if they ignore it, like a little kid who's breaking things and whining so people will pay attention." She smiled. "But I know you'll listen. You really like that stuff, and... even if I got mad at you for it earlier, I'm glad that there's someone who won't pretend it's not happening."

Asa took a deep breath and smiled. "...Yeah. It's that way with Nakayama-san, too, sort of. She won't pretend there's no Pretty Cure, either. We saw them once, and that's when we started talking to each other."

Mia nodded and stopped. "Here's Sapphire Park. You live just down that way, right? I should go. My house is actually in the northwest, and I didn't tell my parents I'd be late."

Asa nodded and waved as she went into the run-down park. "...Yeah."

"I'm working on the Vita," Yoko called back, walking into the garage from inside the house.

"But there's nothing wrong with-" Her father sighed as the door closed. "Sometimes I wonder about her."

"She's probably just had a bad day, Kino," her mother said, pushing back a piece of her long silver hair. "I suspect it's therapeutic."

"Who cares?" Takashi chugged a one-liter of milk. "She's just weird, that's all."

"Takashi, don't say that about your sister." Their mother shook her finger at him. "And what did we say about drinking from the carton?"

"Geez, I bought my own carton!" Takashi held his arms up as in surrender. "Your milk is fine!"

While her family moved on to other topics, Yoko gave a deep sigh and leaned against the door in the dimly lit garage. Starry, who was already awake and out of the phone, jumped around in the garage with a stained square of fabric wrapped around his head like a scarf.

"That's my oil rag..." Yoko's complaint was unusually listless. Starry blinked and gazed up at her.

"Yoko, are you okay ~susu?"

She sunk down and sat on the steps to look at the little orange creature. "...hey, Starry, did Kawada-san really want to be my friend? Or was she just thinking of Pretty Cure and the science project?"

Starry scratched his head. "Asa says that heroes are best friends ~susu."

Yoko frowned. "So it was just Pretty Cure..."

"I don't think so ~susu." Starry hopped up onto her lap and looked at her. "Asa used to say you were scary, but now she smiles when she talks about you ~susu. You're the kind of person someone will like if they get to know you ~susu."

"Scary?" Yoko raised an eyebrow. "At least you're honest... I doubt I can be her friend now, though."

Starry hugged the girl and smiled. "You just have to apologize ~susu. Asa is probably at home ~susu."

Yoko looked down at the steps to the concrete floor. "I don't think I can do it..."

Starry thought for a second. "If Yoko can't come, I'll bring Asa here ~susu! Just wait a few minutes ~susu!" He waved, hopped over to the garage door, wiggled out through a crack - she hadn't completely closed the garage door, it brought fresh air in that way - and presumably ran down the street.

"Hey, wait-" Yoko slumped over and sighed. She knew she should go after him, but she couldn't even bring herself to stand up.

Starry's little arms drooped at his sides as he plodded along the sidewalk, attracting strange looks from passersby.

"Kazahana Town is bigger than I thought ~susu..." He panted and put one paw against a tree, stopping to catch his breath. "There's still a long way to go ~susu."

Someone teleported behind him. Wait, maybe it was two someones.

"She was right," the man on the left smirked. "All we need to do..."

"Susu?" Starry turned around and gasped.

The identical one on the right picked up the little orange creature and held him away as he flailed. "All we need to do is go back and wait."

The two of them adjusted their white eye masks with matching gold accents.

"He's taken a long time..." Yoko sighed. Why had it even come to this? She would never have let him go by himself on a normal day. This was just getting worse.

Her eyes fell to her transformation phone in her bag. Yoko took in a sharp breath and reached over to pick it up. This little thing was the only reason that she and Kawada Asa ever spoke to one another, but even so... She opened it and looked at the top screen. A low-tech map of the town appeared. Yoko's signal was on the northeast end, Asa's still in the southwest. He hadn't picked her up yet. Of course he hadn't. What was she even thinking?

Yoko cringed and forced herself to stand up.

"Hey! Let me go ~susu! What do you think you're doing ~susu?" The little creature flailed, but either the townspeople had been enchanted not to notice or they didn't want to acknowledge a tiny orange thing, whether it needed rescuing or not. He struggled and flailed until Tachimany teleported out with him, leaving Yoko's oil rag to fall onto a low tree branch.