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both their faces.
    "I've heard of them," Hiro said. "But they're not real." Aya laughed. "Not real? Like, they're robots or something?"
    "More like a rumor," he said. "The Sly Girls don't exist."
    "What do you know about them?" she asked.
    "Nothing. There's nothing to know about them, because they aren't real!"
    "Come on, Hiro," she said. "Unicorns aren't real, and I know stuff about them. Like…they have horns on their foreheads. And they can fly!"
    Hiro groaned. "No, that's Pegasus that flies. Unicorns just have a horn, which makes them a lot more real than the Sly Girls, who I can't tell you anything about. It's just a random phrase kickers use. Like last year when someone was jumping off bridges wearing homemade parachutes, and no one ever figured out who. Everyone just said, The Sly Girls did it.' Because sly in English means clever or sneaky." Aya rolled her eyes. "My English is a lot better than yours, Hiro-sensei. But what if they really exist?"
    "Then they wouldn't be secret, would they? I mean, some cliques start off underground, and a lot of people pull tricks on the sly, but nobody stays anonymous forever." He swept his gaze around the apartment—the huge wallscreen, the garlands of paper cranes, the floor-to-ceiling window with its slowly shifting view. "Thanks to the reputation economy, they'd rather be famous. Did you know that every real criminal since the mind-ram has wound up confessing?"
    Aya nodded. Everyone knew that, and how they'd all hit the top one thousand for at least a few days. "But what if—?"
    "It's not real, Aya. Whatever it is."
    "So if I bring you some shots of the Sly Girls?" she said. "What are you going to say then?" Hiro turned back toward the wallscreen. "The same thing I'd say if you stuck a plastic horn on a horse and started kicking unicorns: Quit wasting my time."
    Aya clenched her fists, her eyes stinging. The doubts she'd had about sneaking footage of the Girls were gone now. She was going to make Hiro eat his words.
    She turned to Ren. "What's a good cam to requisition? One that's small enough to hide." She fingered a button on her dorm uniform. "This big."
    "That's easy," Ren said, then frowned. "Where's your hovercam, anyway? You never used to go anywhere without Moggle."
    "Oh…well, that's sort of why I was looking for you, Ren."
    He grinned. "What, did you break another lens? You've got to stop jumping out your window"
    "Um, it's kind of worse than that," Aya said softly, but she could see that Hiro was listening. Why was she always invisible to him, until she made a mistake? "You see, I kind of… lost Moggle." Ren's eyes widened. "But how…?"
    "You lost it?" Hiro turned to them, a glare set on his pretty face. "How do you lose a hovercam?
    They just fly home when you leave them behind!"
    "It's not like I left it somewhere," she said. "I mean, I would never—"
    "Do you know how long Ren spent on those mods?"
    "Look, Hiro, I know where Moggle is, sort of," Aya said, a lump rising in her throat. "I just need a little help finding it and…getting it back to the surface."
    "The surface of what?" Hiro cried.
    "There's this sort of underground lake, and …" Her throat closed up around the words, and Aya shut her eyes. If Hiro kept yelling at her, she'd burst into tears.
    She felt Ren's hand on her shoulder. "It's okay, Aya-chan."
    "I'm sorry," she managed.
    "Well, it sounds like a pretty famous-making story." He exhaled slowly. "I think I've got some time tomorrow. Maybe I can help you dredge up Moggle from this…underground lake?" She nodded, eyes still closed. "Thanks, Ren-chan."
    "She'll just lose it again," Hiro said.
    "No I won't!" she shouted. "And I'm going to prove that you're wrong about the Sly Girls, too!" But Hiro didn't answer…he just shook his head.

    Aya made her way home, still trying not to cry.
    She was exhausted, Ren hated her, and her stupid brother was getting more famous and horrible every second. If Ren couldn't find Moggle, there was no way she