Of course, most of the partygoers had gone back to their conversations after Ren's announcement. A few handhelds flickered, but the mansions big public wallscreen stayed dark. Why interrupt a bash to watch one feed out of a million? Especially once it turned out to be Hiro Fuse's little sister kicking tonight, and not Mr. Big Face himself.
In one corner, Toshi Banana was making a show of ignoring the rest of the party, telling jokes to his entourage and basking in their laughter. But Aya noticed one of his groupies lost in her eyescreen. As the story reached the truth about the city killer, she rose on her tiptoes to whisper in the Nameless One's ear, and a thoughtful look crossed his face.
Out in the city it was building fasterfriends pinging friends, feeds rekicking it, the story spreading like a brushfire in the dry season. Aya watched her feed ratings slowly climb, her face rank crawling upward, already back under a hundred thousand.
"Just caught a ping-blast on the wardens' feed," Ren said. Both his eyescreens were on, his expression lost in scribbles of light. "They're scrambling hovercars."
Aya smiled. Like a good little citizen, she'd put a security flag on the story to make sure the city government watched it right away They'd have wardens out there tonight, securing the site from thrill-seekers and paparazzi, making sure nobody got smashed into mag-lev paste. Of course, this wasn't just about personal safety by tomorrow, the Global Concord Committee's suborbitals would no doubt be headed here from every continent.
Staring into his eyescreens, Ren burst out laughing. "This is hilarious! Gamma Matsui is slamming you: She thinks you faked the sled footage! She says you couldn't have stayed up in the air that longso the whole story's a hoax."
Aya's jaw dropped open. "That's so mean! What does she know, anyway?"
"It doesn't matter what she knows, Aya," Ren said. "What matters is that she's the most famous kicker to notice you so far."
Aya growled in frustration, but it was true: Her feed ratings had just bumped again. She brought up Gamma on her eyescreen, struggling to hear over the music and babble of the party.
"I'd kill for your wallscreen right now, Hiro," she said, her eyes suddenly itching for twenty feeds to follow the story's spread. "Why did I let you guys talk me into coming here?"
Ren placed a hand on Aya's shoulder, giving her a glass. "Hush, and drink some champagne. See that extra-looking woman playing with the puzzle cube? She can calculate the sled's terminal velocity off the top of her head, just by watching. When it comes to physics, she'll eat Gamma for breakfast.
That's why we're here."
"But she's not even watching my feed!" Aya cried. "Should I go explain to her?"
"Don't you dare," Hiro said. "No one else is talking about hoaxes yet. Don't poke a dead fire."
Aya groaned, putting the champagne aside. Sometimes, the hardest thing was doing nothing.
"Well, there's some good news," Hiro said. "The Nameless One's leaving."
Aya looked up in time to catch Toshi Banana and his entourage heading out the door. They looked like they were in a hurry.
Ren chuckled. "Probably wants to get back to his wall-screens and start slamming you before this gets too big."
"Shouldn't we be slamming him first?" Aya asked.
Ren blinked away his eyescreen squiggles and turned to face her. "We don't need to. This is a city killer, remember? It's way too big for that bubblehead to make his own."
Five minutes later the story went massive, ballooning out across the feeds, reaching past the city interface into the global network. It seemed to happen all at once, in one of those explosions of kick that was inexplicableor at least way too fast for Aya's little eyescreen to make sense of.
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.