'Sorry, Hiro, but I have to,' she said. 'The end of the world isn't something we can kick halfway.'
Lurking behind every chance to be made whole by fame is the axman of further dismemberment.
The Sly Girls were not pleased with Slime Queen.
It turned out that Kai watched the others' face ranks as closely as her own. Aya's sudden jump from obscurity to mild fame hadn't escaped her notice. After several pings back and forth, Kai admitted that maybe it wasn't entirely Aya's fault, but it was still a problem.
No hovercam-magnets allowed.
So Aya was banned from the Sly Girls, at least until her face rank fell back into six figures.
At first Aya thought the delay would drive her crazy. Here she was, a huge story finally in her grasp, and she had to wait for a bunch of nobodies to stop making fun of her about nothing.
On top of that, Aya didn't dare hang out with Frizz until this was all over. If anyone spotted them together, another wave of Slime Queen slamming would erupt, driving her face rank back up.
But as the days passed, waiting turned out not to be so bad.
Aya stayed in her room, avoiding classes by claiming that her underground lake chill had worn her out. She took all her old stories down from her feed for a week, and only answered pings from Hiro, Ren, and Kai. And gradually Aya Fuse (and her alter ego, Slime Queen) began to disappear, her face rank dropping thousands every day.
The strangest part was not having a feed. For the last two years, everything important to Aya had been stored there: images, stories, class schedules, and grades. Lists of everything she did and thought and wanted, and of all her friends and enemies. Even if hardly anyone ever looked at it, blanking her own feed was like erasing part of herself.
Fortunately Aya had plenty to keep her occupied.
It took a whole week to edit a rough draft, making sure to conceal the awful truth until the end, yet still revealing enough to keep people watching. It was the longest story she'd ever kicked?almost twenty whole minutes. Hiro told her to shorten every version he saw, but Aya wasn't worried about anyone getting bored.
The story had everything: eccentric outsiders, mysterious technology, eye-kicking shots of the wild, even a near miss with a mag-lev train. And of course, good old humanity trying to wreck the planet once again?all the promise and danger of the mind-rain wrapped up in one big kick.
The only thing she left out was the trio of inhuman figures she and Miki had seen. There weren't any shots of them, after all. And surely city-killing weapons were enough, without adding implausible aliens to the mix. She didn't even mention them to Hiro and Ren, who would probably just say she was believing in unicorns again.
She left a blank space at the end for the truth about the cylinders, once she'd proved Ren's theory about smart matter. But Aya was already convinced: The math all checked out, and she'd found out that the Rusties had also hollowed out mountains, places for their leaders to survive while the rest of the world crumbled. This was all an awful flashback to the ancient wars that had killed millions.
Maybe once they saw the truth, the Sly Girls would forgive her for kicking the story. Even Kai could understand that the safety of the world was more important than keeping a few tricks secret.
So Aya waited patiently, editing and reediting, putting up with Hiro's annoying comments, and giving Ren a whole minute to fill with the math of orbital mechanics and kinetic energy. That part was boring at first, but it ended with explosions?the perverse eye-kicks of buildings tumbling after their hoverstruts were ripped apart by slivers of half-molten metal.
And finally, after a long week, her face rank slipped back across a hundred thousand. Slime Queen was no more, and Aya Fuse became a Sly Girl one last time.
'You're sure nothing followed you?' Kai called.
'Very,' Aya said, skidding her hoverboard to a halt. Just to be certain, Moggle had stalked her all the way from Akira Hall, watching for any hovercams left over from Slime Queen's short reign. And to make doubly sure, Ren had sewn six spy-cams into her dorm jacket, facing in all directions, and none had spotted a thing.
'Where's everyone else?' asked Aya. Eden and Kai were the only Sly Girls waiting here at the edge of town.
'Taking the night off,' Eden said. 'It's a little windy for surfing. But we thought you'd be game, since you've been on parole.'
'Really?' Aya frowned. She'd noticed the wind on the way out, but it hadn't seemed that strong.
'Thanks, I guess. I was getting pretty bored of my dorm room.'
'That's what you get for hanging out with big faces.' Kai laughed. 'Maybe if you got that nose trimmed down, you wouldn't attract so many pretty boys.'
Aya rolled her eyes. Her nose was too pretty now? 'Whatever, Kai. I just want to get inside the mountain again. I've been doing some research, and I've got a theory about those cylinders.'
'Can't wait to hear it,' Eden said. 'But I'm afraid you're a little behind.'
'You mean you already know about them?' Aya asked softly.
Eden grinned and shook her head. 'No, I just mean that Kai is Lai these days.'
'It's a never-ending battle, staying obscure,' Lai said. 'But you know all about that now, don't you, Slime Queen?'
'Sure, Lai.' Aya hid her relief with a glance over her shoulder. The rumble of the train was just beginning to build beneath her feet.
'Don't worry about being out of practice, Nosey,' Lai said, smiling. 'Mag-lev surfing's just like riding a hoverboard. You never forget.'
The slipstream was worse than ever.
The wind grew stronger as the train neared the city's edge, and lying flat against her board, Aya could feel every tug and shudder in the air. The breeze was blowing straight across the arc of the turn, its energy blending with the turbulence of the train's passage, like two swift rivers merging into boiling rapids.
Her first contact with the slipstream knocked Aya into a barrel roll, spinning earth and sky around her. Only Eden's souped-up crash bracelets kept her hanging on, her fingers white-knuckled around the board's front end.
She struggled for control, wrestling the board level again. But every time she edged it toward the train, the tumult knocked her into another spin.
No wonder Lai and Eden had told the other Girls to stay home!
The train began to hum?it was straightening again, speeding up?and Aya gritted her teeth. No way was she spending another day locked in her dorm room, sitting on the biggest story since the mind-rain She leaned hard to the left, yanking her hoverboard toward the train, willing it through the slipstream's barrier.
The board spun into another set of barrel rolls, but this time Aya didn't fight the spins. She let the world twist around her a dozen times, until the pattern of the track lights steadied. Then, letting the board's gyrations carry her, she rolled across the tumult.
In the calmer air, Aya wrestled her board back to level flight. Her head was still spinning, but the train stretched out beside her, as steady as a house.
She slipped up against its metal flank and climbed aboard.
A few meters ahead Lai and Eden were already standing, watching with amusement.
'Not bad,' Lai called. 'Maybe you're ready to learn some new tricks!'
The train was still speeding up, and Aya didn't answer, scrambling to shift a crash bracelet to her ankle. She
