Hope you enjoy! Oh, and I hope everything falls into place in your minds soon. Can you find the hidden messages in the poems?

Perhaps I was too harsh on you,

Maybe I need to take it easy

You take my hand; you're all I needed

Mysteries surrounding us two

Chapter 4: Formalities

Diary Entry 004:

Dr. Lee-Young told me nearly a day ago that I should start to keep a journal here in my head. He said I should write whatever I want to remember or suddenly comes to mind. I wasn't sure if I could do it at first, but now it's become quite easy to access the files I've created and stored. He talked me through it for the first few entries, but from this point forward I'm on my own. Watching the words pile up on the screen before me causes a small sense of accomplishment to bubble in my chest. It's actually quite fun to do; much better than writing by hand, I guess. But why? I've had so many questions since I first woke up.

Before that there was darkness, and before that…

I know there was a flash of lights, and fire. Fire was everywhere. Just a lot of light and pain surrounded me. Sometimes when I close my eyes I can hear the screams, the creak of metal, and even feel the heat of the flames.

But I don't like to think about it for long. When I do, I begin to feel sluggish and slow. My thoughts just seem to stagnate in those moments.

The doctor said he'd take me to see a new person today. He told me she will still be asleep, so I'll have to be quiet.

I hope she'll be my new friend. I really hope she likes me.

...

On his way back from work, Hideki picked up Chii from her job at Tirol like he did every day. Today she wore a mostly red and white version of her daily uniform. When Hideki walked through the front door to see her, Chii was already waiting for him with a large smile on her face.

"Hideki!" she called, hugging him the moment she came in contact with the lad.

He hugged her back and laughed. "I take it you had a good day at work."

Chii nodded. "Today Chii helped to get many customers to come and eat. Chii made lots of pastries and served them as well. They all gave Chii a generous tip. Sensei was so happy he gave me a raise!" She held out a thick white envelope to her most cherished person. "Now Hideki can buy even more movies!"

At the last statement his face turned a very rich shade of red. To ensure that he would not lose the envelope, he put the paycheck into his backpack. Shrugging off what Chii had said, he coughed into his hand and turned towards the door. Ueda was standing there with an even smile on his face. Only the tinges of sadness remained in his eyes, and in his hands was a broom.

"Thank you again for looking after her, Ueda. But you didn't need to be so generous this time." Hideki said, almost in apology. He could tell that Chii being here really did brighten Ueda's day, but at the same time, it also must have saddened the lonely baker. Chii was a Persocom, and Ueda's wife had been also. Even having her around might have stirred up some memories.

"It's the least I can do," said Ueda cheerfully. "Ever since I hired her, business has been unbelievably good. It's the least I can do, Motosuwa-san."

Thanking him once more, the couple left the bakery.

Chii had so much more to tell Hideki, however, so they spent the whole time walking back to the apartment chatting away. Every word she said caused Hideki's heart to glow more and more as he watched the little Persocom recount her eventful day. She told him about nearly every single new thing she learned, from the new game she was advertised on a truck passing by, to the proper way to create an eight-layer cake.

By the time they arrived at Gub Jogasaki, the two were all smiles. They were about to stop by Ms. Hibiya's apartment to say "hello" when a large ruckus from upstairs caused them to pause. It was muffled, but they still could make out some things pretty well. There was a great shuffling noise, and then an awfully clear shriek of "No!" After that, a giant thud made the ceiling above them shake.

Chii tilted her head to the side. She pointed upwards and gave him her confused face.

"Hideki, what was that noise?"

He was getting ready to say "I don't know", but as if to answer her question, Ms. Hibiya suddenly materialized in front of them out of nowhere.

"Is everything alright?" she said, startling poor Hideki.

He jumped back and clutched his chest. "Ms. Hibiya!" he breathed. "I didn't see you."

Sometimes he wondered if she were either a ghost or a ninja with those stealth skills. You could scarcely hear her sneaking up on you, and when she did...

Hideki shuddered.

"Mama!" said Chii. She gave the woman a tight hug around her waist. Ms. Hibiya petted the little blonde on the head and giggled.

"I see you're very lively today," she remarked. After Chii released her, Ms. Hibiya smoothed out the apron she was wearing and folded her hands neatly in front of her. "I was just about to stop by and tell you some good news."

"Good news?" said Hideki.

"News?" echoed Chii.

Ms. Hibiya laughed at their nearly identical expressions of confusion. However, the difference was that Chii had one finger placed on her lips, and Hideki was scratching the back of his head.

"Yes, you two," she said warmly. Ms. Hibiya motioned so that they should follow her. They walked in silence until they arrived at a very familiar door.

"Shinbo's old apartment?" said Hideki, connecting the dots rather easily. "You've found a new tenant already?"

"Oh, yes, they're moving in today." She knocked on the door three times. "Smith-san, Amber-chan, could I speak to you for a moment?"

Before he even knew what to say, Hideki was face to face with the Americans again. Those names had been familiar, but now, looking at those two face to face, Hideki remembered them quite effortlessly.

Garrett's optics feigned disbelief fairly easily when he saw Ms. Hibiya and Motosuwa.

"It's you!" he exclaimed in mock joy. "You live here too?" His acting skills weren't that great, at times, but he hoped the humans would not notice it much.

"You know Motosuwa-kun?" asked Ms. Hibiya. The surprise she showed was genuine, because she didn't know they had any connection before, and besides, the Lee-Youngs were some good friends of hers. If she overlooked a single acquaintance before she accepted to host Amber and Garrett, then what else could she have missed?

Her worries were banished, though, when Hideki explained with some chagrin that he had met "Smith-san" and his Persocom earlier at school today.

As Hideki fumbled over the description of their meeting, Ms. Hibiya listened closely to every detail. Now and then, Garrett would nod in agreement and smile to encourage his new friend. After a while he offered to show them inside, only to realize all too late that he had left Amber to clean up the mess they had made.

The visitors stared at the avalanche of boxes, and suddenly realized why there had been such a commotion earlier. Comic books and papers were plastered all over the floor, and Amber had been trying and failing to organize them properly. She was bending over to pick up most of the mess, and when she saw the three visitors enter she bowed her head slightly and stood upright.

"Hello," she said in a flat voice despite the smile she wore. "It is nice to meet you all."

"Let me take those, Amber," said Garrett. He took the papers from her hands, and threw them into a nearby bin, cursing the staff under his breath. When they arrived, they had most certainly left the boxes in the correct places, but the problem was that there was so many of them. The confused men had stacked the boxes so high, that when Amber had brushed by one of the cardboard skyscrapers, the whole thing wavered dangerously before they came tumbling down on the poor girl. Actually, Garrett had been digging her out of the aftermath when Ms. Hibiya arrived with Motosuwa.

"Chii wants to help!"

"You don't have to, Chii-chan," said Garrett quickly. An alarm went off in his head; if she inadvertently saw what was contained in those boxes…

"Everyone doesn't have to help, really. We can take care of it!" He gave a very significant tilt of his head. Only Amber noticed the signal, however, and she took the opportunity to speak up.

"Actually, Garrett-sama and I had plans to watch a movie, we were about to leave for it."

Hideki seemed to enjoy the thought of that. "A movie, you say?"

"What kind of movie?" said Chii, remembering the time she and Hideki went to see "Shakugan no Shana the Movie." It had been a very nice night, and Hideki even kissed her again afterwards! Sometimes they were scary, but mostly they were exciting. So yes, Chii thought movies were very fun indeed. "Chii likes action-romances!"

"Oh, well," Garrett gave a genuine laugh at her announcement. "We were going to the 500 yen theater downtown. It shows some older films, I think."

Amber's face seemed to brighten a bit, walking to stand beside him, she rested her head against his arm, but he continued to talk.

"I saw it when we arrived the other day. One of the films really looked interesting."

…

And so, without much more chit-chat, Hideki, Garrett, Chii and Amber went to the theater. Ms. Hibiya apologized and told them she had other plans that evening, which was entirely true on her part. That morning she had planned to have a video conference with Dr. Lee-Young and a few of her former colleagues, so she didn't have much time for entertainment. She had a few questions for the peculiar inventor who had allowed his daughter to come to Japan—accompanied by one of the Chobits series, no less.

The quartet had purchased their tickets and sat in the dark theater, waiting for the previews to end so that they could finally see "A.I. Artificial Intelligence". Every few moments Chii would whisper to ask Hideki about something in the theater, and he'd respond with just as much enthusiasm as she did.

"So," whispered Hideki to Garrett. "Smith-san, have you seen this movie before?"

Even though he had met the boy only a few hours ago, Hideki was quickly becoming more comfortable with talking to him. He didn't know why, but Garrett seemed like the type that wouldn't mind being asked myriads of questions.

"Nope," he whispered back. "It came out quite a while back, and I didn't get a chance to see it."

When the lights dimmed further and the feature film began to play, Hideki noted with some curiosity that it was in English. Of course, there were subtitles, so that was no problem. But as the story progressed, Hideki grew more and more uncomfortable. It was a good story for sure; however, that wasn't what the problem. At times he would often glance at Chii to see her reaction.

The whole time Garrett and Amber both wished they had chosen another movie.

First of all, they had no idea it was going to be such a sad film. Right from the beginning, one could tell it was going to be a tear-jerker from the music that had begun to play. Hey, even the poster should have tipped them off, but apparently it hadn't, so they were stuck watching it for the rest of the evening.

Hideki couldn't help but feel sorry for the protagonist, David, and wondered how the others were responding to his story. After a couple hours of repeatedly riding the roller-coaster from heartwarming to tragedy, the four emerged from the theater. They began to walk back to the apartment in a strange state of mind.

"Hideki," said Chii as soon as they were outside. "Why were they so mean to David? He loved his Mommy very much."

One of Hideki's hands was placed behind his head. Shrugging, he walked beside her with one arm looped around her waist. "I really don't know, Chii." Truly, he was trying to figure that out himself. When Martin and his friends were ganging up on the boy, Hideki had to remind himself that it wasn't real, so he could resist the impulse to get up and yell at the screen. It wasn't his fault that he was a machine, and he couldn't change who he was, but they still treated him so callously.

"I'm not sure how to feel about that movie," admitted Garrett. Ever since they left, he had been thinking that maybe going to watch that movie with them was a bad idea. He should have looked it up beforehand. Maybe seeing it with Chii and Hideki wasn't the best way to try to start a friendship with them.

"It was…interesting," said Amber thoughtfully. Amazingly, she had chosen not to speak for most of the night, and Hideki had nearly forgotten she was with them. He watched as the "Persocom" drifted towards her owner and took his hand within hers.

"Chii thought that they hurt Daniel's feelings all too often."

There was a small silence that seemed to muffle their thoughts.

"I agree with all of you," said Garrett after a moment, his face wasn't exactly frowning nor smiling. In the distance he could sense two other Persocoms somewhere behind them. By the strength of their wireless signals, he could tell they were close. It was very hard to tell the exact location because he was preoccupied with the task of identifying them. At this distance it would be a bit difficult, but he already had a hunch that it was those two troublemakers from the other night. Not that he was worried, though. If they had intended to harm them, they would've done that already, he was sure of it.

'Probably just doing recon.' Amusement was only one of his feelings at the thought of them playing it safe. 'That definitely showed them.' He thought their last encounter with a certain level of satisfaction. No one got away with hacking his OS without at least some damage to their memory.

"But Chii thought it was a good movie nonetheless."

That surprised everyone else.

"Really, Chii?" said Hideki. Thinking back, he had to admit it was good, despite being a bit of a downer.

"I guess the director wanted us to get the message," said Garrett. His eyes rested on Chii and Hideki for a few moments but then moved onto Amber and stayed there. "That Daniel was a person too, and that it was the humans who needed to change."

…

Once they had said goodbye and were in their respective apartments, Garrett and Amber could finally relax their guard. By the time the door was shut, Amber was already buried face first in the mattress, kicking up her feet.

"This. Is. Insane."

She wanted to scream into a pillow, but with how thin the walls were here that wouldn't have been very smart.

"You knew it was to begin with," said Garrett. He pulled at one of the connectors in his head and stuck it into one of the monitors sitting on the desk in the corner opposite the bed. Several lines of code scrolled across the dark screen.

OS Y Platinum Monarch: the most secure and the most secretive OS not on the market. It also happened to be the OS Garrett ran on, and it was more reliable than gravity. Technically it was a more secure version of OS X Golden Monarch devised from Gala Inc. and it was unique in that it was the only copy, and was constantly updated by his conscious efforts at self-improvement.

"I'm hungry," said Amber suddenly, taking a lock of hair into her mouth and chewing. "Je fam!"

"Really now? I thought you were a Persocom," he teased, never tearing his eyes away from the program he was inspecting.

"Make me foooood~ Garrett!" she whined, still mindful of keeping her noise level acceptable. However, for extra caution she spoke in English, but mostly it was because her head hurt from all the Japanese. She hadn't had a headache like this since one of her un-subbed (but not English-dubbed) anime midnight marathons. Switching in between the languages frequently was obviously not a very good idea.

He sighed dramatically. When she got hungry, Amber became a cranky, noisy little girl. Well, now that he thought about it, she normally was like that. He would humor her. Really, he wasn't supposed to follow her every command, despite what her father had told her.

"Food food food food food food—," she chanted. He hadn't been paying attention to her movements, so Garrett unexpectedly found her arms encircled around his neck. Now she was whining directly in his ears, so he no longer could try to ignore her. Eyeing a very troubling piece of code near the middle, he finally gave in to her complaints.

"Fine. How does ramen sound?"

…

It took him not too long to finish the chicken flavored ramen, about ten or so minutes. He had nearly forgotten that he didn't eat, and had prepared two bowls.

He glanced at the extra food for only a second before pouring it into the other portion.

"You know," he said, looking into her eyes as he set down the food. "I think that we should tell them soon, before they get too attached to the idea of us in this way."

"Whatdoyoumean?" she mumbled, mouth full of ramen and chopstick. She slurped up the lengthy strands greedily, her cheeks puffed out from the volume of the food. There were also bits of chicken and cabbage floating about in the soup, and she already held a clump of nappa in her chopsticks.

"It's going to be hard to keep them safe from the others and keep our secret."

Amber could see the logic in that, but she wasn't concerned about that at all. Instead of fretting, she shrugged her shoulders limply. Swallowing the food, she gathered more noodles into her chopsticks.

"Well cross that bridge when we come to it," said Amber, stuffing more food into her mouth.

"If you say so," he said, warning in his tone, "but don't say later on I didn't advise you against it."

Now it was her turn to sigh. "Sometimes I just hate fate y'know?"

"I second that," he said, looking down at her food. Usually by this point she would be finished. Often he had to scold her for eating too quickly, but tonight wasn't the case. "Hey, you want to talk about…"

The hollow look in her eye made him stop.

"I-I'm not sure how I'd answer," she half-whispered. "I just don't know anymore."

She tried to pick herself up again, but found that she was rooted to the floor. Amber just knew she shouldn't have ignored the sluggish feeling she had felt in her legs earlier, but it had been just so easy to forget sometimes. Garrett gave her a very understanding smile.

"You need to borrow my charger?" he said gently.

"Y-yes," she said in a quiet voice, not daring to look him in the eye.

"Let me go find it, then."

He walked into the other room to retrieve it, shaking his head internally. She was always forgetting. Always and always. But he would be here to help her.

For always and always he'd be by her side.

Damn that woman for dragging them into this fight.

You have seen so many years pass, my beloved.

Unless I'm mistaken, it's time for a successor

Unless I am mistaken, there is no one suitable

Karma has a way of accumulating, you've said

Only time will tell, my dear, sweet butterfly