Here at the party people were starting to glance in her direction, aware that something big was roiling the city interface. They pulled out handhelds, gathering in corners to watch together.
"So far so good," Hiro announced. "Your face rank just hit the top ten thousand. You're beating tonight's Reputation Bomber!"
"Glad to hear that." She flinchedher alert tone had just gone crazy, like a tiny jackhammer ringing a bell in her ear. "Something's wrong with my eyescreen!"
"Nothing's wrong, Aya," Ren said. "Those are pings rolling in. Better turn off your sound."
She squeezed her fists shut, silencing the noise, then rubbed her ear. "Ouch. Being famous is so brain-shattering!"
"Aya Fuse, complaining about fame?" someone said. "Talk about brain-shattering."
Aya turned to find Frizz standing there, huge-eyed, beautiful, and grinning.
"Frizz!" she cried, gathering him into a hug. "Did you see my story?"
"Of course." He squeezed her hard, then took a step backward and bowed to Hiro and Ren.
"Frizz Mizuno."
Hiro smirked as he returned the introduction. "So you're the famous Slime King?"
"And you're Aya's famous older brother," Frizz said, then frowned. "But probably not so famous anymore, compared to her."
Hiro's eyes widened, and Aya grabbed his arm.
"Go do something else, Hiro," she commanded. Radical Honesty was anxiety-making enough without her older brother around.
Smiling, Ren dragged Hiro away toward a group of kickers waiting for interviews.
"I've only got a minute, Frizz. I'm supposed to answer questions soon. But I'm glad you came!"
"I missed you." He stepped closer, his eyes locked on hers. "I never got to say sorry in person for getting you slammed."
Aya looked away, trembling a little under his manga gaze. "It wasn't your fault, FrizzI should have been more careful. And being Slime Queen was kind of interesting."
"After tonight they won't call you that anymore." He took her arm. "But I never thought of you as slimy."
She dared his gaze again, speaking too softly for the buzzing hovercams to hear. "But remember what you said that day? That you weren't sure what kind of person I was? Do you see now why I had to lie to get this story?"
It was Frizz who looked away this time. "It sounded awful, betraying friends like that. But I get it now." He sighed. "I guess sometimes you have to lie to find the truth."
He looked so sad saying those words that Aya wrapped her arms around him again, squeezing tight. She didn't care how many hovercams were watching, or how many slammer feeds compared her ugliness to Frizz's beauty.
"But I'll never lie to you, Frizz." She felt his muscles tighten.
"Then tell me one thing," he said.
"Anything."
"If you hadn't found the city killer, if this story was just about the Sly Girls and their mag-lev surfing, would you have kicked it anyway?"
Aya pulled away. Frizz wasn't stupid; he'd noticed that her truth-slanting had started long before she'd known about the city killer.
But would she have betrayed them, just to get famous? Like Miki had said, surfing through the wild had been so brain-expanding, and the more time Aya had spent with them, the more the Sly Girls had started to feel like friends. She could have changed her mind maybe.
Was it lying if you weren't certain about the truth?
She cleared her throat. "When I joined the Sly Girls, I was just looking for a story any story. But after talking to you that day, I was starting to wonder."
He nodded. "So you'd already changed your mind?"
Aya looked up into his manga eyeshe wanted to believe her. It would be so easy just to agree.
And why make Frizz sad? It wasn't like she could ever be incognito again. After tonight everyone would know Aya Fuse was a kickerno more lying for stories. So what did it matter if she was a truth-slanting Slime Queen just one last time?
"It all happened so fast," she said. "First it was just tricks, then suddenly the whole world was at stake." She looked away. "But no I couldn't have done that to them."
Frizz pulled her close again. "That's a relief."
Aya squeezed her eyes shut, hiding from her own doubts. Frizz had believed her, just like that.
Maybe it wasn't such a stretchthe whole question was hypothetical, after all.
It would be crazy to throw Frizz away forever, when the price of keeping him was one little stretch of the truth.
"Um, Aya?" Frizz whispered in her ear. "I think your brother wants you."
She grasped him tighter. "I don't care."
"Actually, it's not just Hiro. It's sort of lots of people."
Aya sighed and pulled away, glancing over his shoulder. When she saw them all, her jaw dropped open.
The feeding frenzy had begun.
Feeding Frenzy
There were dozens of people waiting. Ren was arranging them on the mansion's main staircase, with the most famous closest to the bottom. About half were tech-heads with crazy surge and smart-matter clothes, the rest looking out of place here at the bashego-kickers, newsies, a handful of city officials. Some big faces, some not.
But all of them were here to see her.
Hiro took Aya's arm and gently propelled her toward an empty spot at the bottom of the stairs.
Several hundred hovercams were focused on her now, in constant motion as they jostled for the best angles, shadowing her every step. Aya felt strangely small under their collective gaze, as insignificant as that first night she'd surfed into the wild.
But this was the opposite of obscurity, she reminded herself. This was what she'd always wantedfor people to watch her, to pay attention to every word she said.
"Eyescreen off," Hiro whispered. "You'll need your whole brain for this."
Aya nodded and flexed her ring finger. But as she stared up at the attentive faces before her, all suddenly crystal clear, the answers she'd practiced the night before started flying from her head.
"Um, this is kind of paralyzing," she said softly.
Hiro squeezed her arm. "I'll be right here."
She nodded and cleared her throat. "Okay, lets start."
The questions came hard and fast.
"How did you find the Sly Girls, Aya?"
"Just lucky, I guess. I just saw them surfing one night, and tracked them down at a party like this one."
"Why are some shots in the background layer altered?"
Aya cleared her throat, wondering how anyone had watched all those hours so quickly. "The Sly Girls wanted anonymity. So I scrubbed a few faces. That's all."
"You're not hiding anyone else?"
"Like who?"
"The builders of the mass driver."
"Of course not!"
"So you don't know anything about them?"
Aya paused, wishing she'd mentioned the inhuman-looking figures in her story. But it was such a crazy claim, and she didn't have a single shot to back it up. Alien builders would be a million times more implausible if she brought them up now.
"Why would I protect them?
Whoever built the city killer is crazy. Or did you miss the city-killing part?"
"Isn't that title a little hype-making, Aya?" another kicker asked. "A few tons of falling steel can't really destroy a city, can it?"
Aya smiled. Ren had made sure she was ready for this one. "At reentry velocities, it only takes a small projectile to knock out a hoverstrut-supported building. So if a cylinder splits into thousands of pieces well, you do the math. Or better yet, ask that woman over there to do it. The one with the puzzle cube."
"Couldn't we stop the cylinders? Like the Rusties used to shoot down rockets?"
She'd looked this one up herself. "The Rusties never got very good at intercepting city killersexcept in their own propaganda. And rockets trail big plumes of smoke. Slivers of metal would be tiny and invisible."
"Why do you think they left the mountain empty?"
"Do you think there could be more of these things in the world?"
She blinked. "I sure hope not."
"With the metal shortage going on, where do you think they got all that steel?"
"I have no idea."
"What made you want to be a kicker, Aya?"
"Um " She paused, unready for this one, though Hiro had warned her that there was always some bubble-head asking personal questions, no matter how important a story was. "After the mind-rain I was having trouble figuring out the world. And telling other peoples stories is a good way to do that."
The kicker smiled. "Isn't that the same answer your big brother always gives?"
"Oh, crap no comment," Aya said. At the sound of their laughter, she smiled and finally relaxed a little.
"What kind of face do you want when you turn sixteen?" a fashion-kicker shouted from the back.
"I don't know yet. I'm sort of partial to manga-heads."
"So we noticed, Slime Queen!"
"Okay. No comment again."
"Do you worry that you're glorifying dangerous tricks, Aya?"
She shrugged. "I'm just telling the truth about the world."
"But you didn't tell the truth to the Sly Girls " Aya glanced at Frizz and said, "Sometimes you have to lie to find the truth."
"Why do you think a big face like Eden Maru hangs out with the Sly Girls?"
Aya shrugged. "Like she said in that interview: to get away from you guys."
"Do you think our city built the mass driver?" someone in the back row askedone of Toshi Banana's groupies, Aya realized.
"Why would we do that?"
"We're the closest city to the mountain. Wouldn't that make you a traitor?"
"Make me a what?"
"What if we need the mass driver to defend ourselves?"
She looked at Hiro, who said, "If this is about defending us, then shouldn't we knew about it?"
"So, Hiro?" a tech-kicker interrupted. "What's it like to be upstaged by your little sister?"
"Pretty vex-making," Hiro said, then smiled. "But much better than watching my mansion getting bombed."
The questions kept coming: Aya's childhood, her favorite kicker, plans for follow-up stories.
Endless talk about math and missiles, Sly Girls and spy-cams, parachutes and paparazzi. Every time one kicker peeled off to prepare their story for the feeds, another joined the fray, and soon the questions began to repeat. Aya tried to come up with fresh answers, but eventually found herself mouthing the same words again and again.
Finally Frizz dragged her away into a corner, promising she'd be back soon. Hiro kept going without losing a beat.
"Water," she croaked.
Frizz thrust a glass into her hand, and Aya drank deep.
"Thanks," she gasped when it was empty, taking a look around. The air was thick with hovercams pointed at her, but people were keeping their distance, trying not to stare. For the first time in her life, a reputation bubble had formed around Aya.
On the other side of the room, a bunch of tech-heads had gathered at the mansions big public wallscreen, watching Ren demonstrate the grim math of ballistic weapons and collapsing buildings. For a moment she was alone with Frizz.
"How'd I do?" she asked softly.
"Amazing." He grinned. "So what does it feel like, being famous?"
She groaned, remembering her radical stupidity the last time they'd been together. "Very funny."
"No really," he said, "what's it like hanging out with someone as face-missing as me?"
"Cut it out! What happened to your radical honesty?"
"Teasing isn't lying," Frizz argued. "And besides, I'm really wondering how you see me now."
Aya rolled her eyes. "But it's not like you're some extra. There's no difference in ambition between us!"
"Yes there is."
"What do you mean?"
"You went for an hour without checking your face rank?" He laughed. "That's pretty jaw-dropping. Take a guess, before I blurt it out."
Aya swallowed. She'd hardly breathed since the story'd kicked, much less tracked her face rank.
And somehow she was afraid to boot her eyescreen and check. "You mean I'm more famous than you?
Am I under a thousand?"
"Don't be brain-missing, Aya! Immortal crumblies got your brother under a thousand. This is a city killer! Take a real guess."
Aya shrugged, not wanting to sound ego-kicking. "Um, five hundred?"
"Still brain-missing!" A pained expression twisted Frizz's face. "Not telling you is killing me."
"Then tell me!" Aya cried.
"You're the seventeenth-most-famous person in the city!" Frizz spat out, then rubbed his temples.
"Ouch. That hurt."
Aya stared at himeven if Frizz couldn't lie, he had to be mistaken. "Seventeen?"
"Nana Love kicked you."
"No way!" Aya cried. "What does she care about Rusty weapons?"
"Nana-chan cares about all humanity." He shrugged. "Which is nice of her. Maybe she pinged you."
"No way!" Aya turned her eyescreen on, heart pounding as it came to life. "You really think so?"
"Probably. She pinged me when I hit the top thousand."
Aya's interface appeared, stuffed with an enormous stack of pings, tens of thousands of them stretching off into the invisible distance. She'd never have time to read them all!
"You should see yourself, Aya," Frizz said, laughing. "You look like a littlie who just ate too much ice cream."
"Too much is right. You should see all these messages!" She remembered Hire's trick after big stories, when he was always ping-bashed with tips. Her fingers began to twitch. "Hang on, let me sort them by face rank. Pings from extras go to the bottom and the important ones rise to the top. If Nana-chan really is in here, she'll be right at the whoa."
There were so many pings, Aya could actually see them moving, the city interface straining as it checked each one against the constantly updating face ranks. Gradually a few bubbled to the topbig-face kickers, politicians, a note of thanks from the Good Citizen Committee "I am totally going to score some merits out of this," she murmured. "Shuffle Mansion, here I come."
Then she saw it a glowing ping rising on angel's wings.
"Oh, Frizz. You were right Nana-chan was watching!"
He laughed. "I told you so!"
Aya was about to open it, but suddenly the ping slid down. She stared at the new message in disbelief. It carried no decoration at all, its black text as bare as an automatic reply.
"Um, Frizz, there's another one above it."
"Another what?"
"I think someone more famous than Nana Love just pinged me."
"But there isn't anyone who's except " Frizz let out a strangled sound. "You mean Tally Youngblood just pinged you?"
Aya nodded slowly. It was right there, painted in laser light on her eyeball. A ping from the world's most famous personthe girl who'd made the mind-rain fall. The name prayed to by the Youngblood cults every morning, cursed by Toshi Banana as he slammed the latest mind-rain clique, repeated countless times whenever the story of the Diego War was taught to littlies "How could she know so fast?" Aya murmured. "Isn't she hiding in the wild somewhere?"
"The story went global two hours ago," Frizz said. "She must have friends checking the feeds for her."
"But since when does Tally Youngblood just ping people?" Saying the name made her throat go dry again.
"Who cares?
Open it!"
Aya twitched her finger, and the ping expanded. It was tagged by the global interface, guaranteed authentic. But as she read the message, Aya wondered if Tally's English was confusing her somehow.
"What does it say?" Frizz cried.
"It's only seven words."
"What words? 'Thanks'? 'Congratulations'? 'Hello'?"
"No, Frizz. It says, '
Run and hide. We're on our way.'"
Pinned
"This is stupid," Hiro hissed. "We should go back to the party. Running off like this is making us look like idiots!"
"You're telling me to ignore Tally Youngblood?" Aya said. "Her ping said run and hide!"
"You call this hiding?" Ren asked.
Aya glanced into the sky. A hundred or so hovercams had trailed them out of the party, probably wondering why the seventeenth-most-famous person in the city had suddenly abandoned her first interview ever. The swarm was silhouetted against the night sky, a host of lenses glinting down at them like the eyes of predators.
"That's a good point," Frizz said. "We have to find somewhere private."
"I'm trying."
Aya sighed.
The four of them had left the bash by a side door and headed randomly across a darkened baseball field. Safety fireworks were still shooting up from the mansion's roof. Flickering across the grass, they sent Aya's huge, jittering shadow stretching out in front of her.
She remembered Lai's last warning on the sled: "Whoever built this monstrosity is dangerous."
"What's the point of privacy?" Hiro snapped. "If you think someone's coming after you, shouldn't we stay where everyone can see us?"
Aya came to a halt, stopping so quickly that Moggle bumped her from behind. Maybe the safest place was in full view. No one would dare do anything at a crowded party or with a hundred hovercams directly overhead, for that matter.
She sighed. "I guess we could go back in."
"Exactly," Hiro cried. "We can kick Tally Youngblood's ping. If everyone finds out she's on her way here, it'll be massive!"
Frizz cleared his throat. "This probably isn't the best time to worry about face ranks, Hiro."
"This isn't about face ranks, you bubblehead!"
"Technically speaking, I'm not a bubblehead," Frizz said calmly. "Which is why I'm not shouting our plans where everyone can hear them.'" Aya glanced up. There was still a fair-size reputation bubble around her, but a few cams were close enough to have caught Hiro's outburst.
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