Radical Honesty--seemed like an amazing idea when I first read about it in Extras. Then I wondered how Frizz came up with the whole thing...so I decided to write a story on it. R & R and enjoy!!

--MC

Frizz Mizuno was in love.

Her name was Sakura Kimura, and she was undoubtedly the sweetest, smartest, most gorgeous girl he had ever met. As an acclaimed visual artist, she was also famous—very famous. The last time he checked, the flaxen-haired beauty had had a face rank of 713.

Frizz had been surprised times ten when he found out that Sakura liked him the same way he liked her. At fifteen and nine months, he was almost a whole year younger than she was. Plus, he was a science nerd with a face rank of 532,967. Frizz was a total extra. A nobody. The only thing that he had going for him were his surged emerald manga eyes.

Yet they had been going out for two weeks now, and Frizz was totally sure he was in love with Sakura.

But now he was going to get her killed.

Three Hours Ago

"Have you ever been to the old Rusty ruins?" Sakura had asked Frizz. They were at a small party at Udon Mansion, which was one of the buildings that were on the border of the city. The two of them had been standing on the balcony and looking out into the forest, the starry night sky an indigo blanket above them. "I've always wanted to go to the Tower, but only the trickiest body-surgers have made it to the top. I heard a lot of people have died trying."

"I've been there." Frizz had been surprised at how easily the lie rolled off of his tongue. "I've been to the top of the Tower, too."

Sakura's beautiful face had lit up and her sapphire eyes sparkled. "Do you think you could take me?"

"Sure." He'd lied again, as smooth as velvet.

Grabbing Frizz's hand, Sakura had looked into his eyes deploringly. "Could you take me now?"

Only a twinge of guilt and nervousness had hovered at the edge of Frizz's conscience as he grinned. "Of course."

The two of them had taken hoverboards outside of the city limits, traveling on lines of old iron hidden in the ground. It had taken the better part of twenty minutes to get to the Rusty ruins. They had stopped at the base of the Tower.

Now, looking up at the rusted contraption's massiveness, Frizz knew that lying was going to be the death of him. The guilty twinge from before was slowly expanding. This tetanus-inducing metal behemoth of a Rusty creation rose at least a hundred meters into the air, and it was crumbling, dilapidated, and altogether dangerous and extremely scary-making. With the shrouding darkness and the building's infinite height, the top was way beyond his field of vision.

"We have to back up," Frizz said, unwilling to reveal that he had lied. He hadn't thought this would be so difficult until just a moment ago, and now that they had come all the way to the Rusty ruins, it would be defacing, humiliating, and embarrassment-making times a thousand to confess. Frizz continued his charade. "When you get enough speed, bend forward and hold on to the front edge of your board. If you were going fast enough, you should be able to make it up." That was what all the rumors he had heard said to do. He just hoped it would work.

"And if you weren't?" Sakura grinned deviously.

Frizz found himself smiling back despite the guilty-making twinge, which was still growing. "Then you'll just have to trust your crash bracelets, won't you?"

Sakura laughed. "Well, let's go!"

Before Frizz could think, Sakura was racing up the side of the Tower, clutching the front edge of her hoverboard with white knuckles, and Frizz was right behind her. Suddenly, fear held onto his heart the same way he desperately clung to his board and to the hope that everything would be alright. How could he have ever agreed to this?

Oh—wait. It was technically his fault.

Frizz's lie made him feel sick inside, and that combined with the stomach-dropping height made him hold on to the front edge of his hoverboard even more tightly than he had before. He knew he lied way too much—to his parents, to his friends, and now to Sakura. And the smallest, most harmless-seeming lies were the ones that turned out the most terribly.

Like now. He couldn't believe that his one simple falsehood had gotten him into this life-threatening situation. Not to mention Sakura, whose life was similarly threatened. The thought of having his life snatched away as quickly as they were racing up the side of the tower made Frizz's stomach churn.

All of a sudden, Frizz felt the overwhelming urge to confess his sin. He also wanted to bonk himself on the head. How could he possibly have waited until now to decide to tell Sakura he had lied? Why had he even lied in the first place?

Sakura, on the other hand, was having the time of her life, whooping into the wind that snatched her voice away before Frizz could hear more than a millisecond of it. Frizz realized that even if he did try to confess, Sakura wouldn't be able to hear him. The wind, whistling deafeningly in his ears and bombarding him in the face, made his eyes water as fear strengthened its stranglehold on him.

The speed that they were going at did have one benefit. Time and distance passed more quickly than Frizz thought they would, and before he knew it, they were almost at the top of the tower. His heart leapt—would this all work out after all?

Tingles of adrenaline raced up and down his arms, and Frizz could feel the pounding in his chest as the top of the tower came into view, the night sky hovering above them. He could understand why Sakura was getting such a thrill from this—the speed, the wind, the height, the whole experience—it was totally breathtaking. And though he couldn't see much as the aerial scenery raced by, Frizz knew that it was amazingly beautiful, with the stars twinkling and the crescent moon smiling above him. Tingling sensations danced all over his skin and a sense of extreme exhilaration raced through him that made him feel like he was invincible. Frizz opened his mouth to whoop into the wind—

That was when Sakura fell.

It happened so quickly that Frizz barely registered it in his brain. Yet his eyes seemed to see everything in slow motion—the hoverboard losing its purchase on the iron—inertia catapulting Sakura forward—her fingers desperately clinging to the edge of the board as she was swung through the air—and then both the board and Sakura falling, falling—flaxen hair streaming through the air as gravity extended its impregnable hands and pulled Sakura down—disappearing from his view—

The silence was deafening and Frizz couldn't seem to make himself react. It took time for his shock to finally settle in, and then even longer for him to recognize his fear when he felt his own board wobbling as the iron bars thinned—Frizz had to spend precious shards of fractions of milliseconds turning his board around and racing back to the Earth, all the while knowing he was too late.

The force of gravity on a forty-five kilogram girl falling from a hundred meters in the air is too much for any crash bracelets to handle. As Frizz neared the earth, he slowed his hoverboard down, but still leapt off before it came to a full halt. A metallic taste filled his mouth and he felt like vomiting as his eyes fell upon the crumpled shape that was Sakura's broken body. Frizz's footsteps were alarmingly loud in the eerie silence.

Instead, he swallowed the bitter taste in his mouth, knelt down by her side, and watched as his teardrops made dark spots on her jacket.

Frizz cursed his lies.

The next afternoon, Frizz finally returned to his dorm at Tanuki Mansion, after being held in the law office for the night and then having to attend the hearing that declared that he had not been involved in Sakura's death beyond the point of hoverboarding up the Tower with her.

Oh, what a lie. It was all his fault that Sakura no longer walked this earth, and the weight of that guilt was like a thousand kilograms of pain, grating on his shoulders, which were obligated to bear the agony in silence. Frizz was too stricken to speak more than one word at the times he was called upon and he felt like his guiltiness was eating him alive from the inside.

In his bedroom, Frizz sat down on his bed, still not making a sound. His body was tired, but not as tired as his mind and his heart were. Along with the guilt, there was a hurt inside that had been gradually augmenting with every hour, minute, second that passed.

Sakura was dead. And it was his fault.

Frizz couldn't feel guilty anymore; he couldn't hurt anymore. He crawled under the covers, still wearing his clothes from the day before, and slept the rest of the afternoon away.

He didn't wake up until he heard the owls hooting outside, their melancholy voices reverberating in his ears. The darkness was like a blanket that dulled his pain, and Frizz found enough energy to crawl out of bed and stand by the window. Tilting his eyes skyward, Frizz watched the multitude of stars twinkling in the darkened heavens.

Heaven. That must be where Sakura was now. In the darkness it somehow no longer felt guilty; no longer hurt to think about Sakura, and Frizz wondered if she was up there somewhere, looking down on him. Did she blame him for her death? Did she hate him?

No. Sakura would forgive him, because that was the kind of person she was.

Frizz balled his fists so hard that his nails drew blood on his palms. A truth swept down on him, tearing of the darkness's blanket and letting the guilt and pain inundate him again. Sakura might be in Heaven now, but he knew that he wouldn't be heading there when he died; his lies would make sure of that. Looking up at the stars again, Frizz was sure that there must be a lie he had told for every star out there.

His lies had caused the death of one person that he had truly loved. And that was the cold, hard, guilt-inducing, pain-making truth.

As the tears welled up in his eyes, Frizz suddenly thought of the solution. It crashed down upon his shoulders, shoving the guilt out of the way, pushing the pain to the side so vehemently that it cowered and retreated like a frightened animal.

He would never let himself lie again. Better yet, he would make it scientifically impossible for him to lie.

Frizz booted up his wallscreen and got to work.

Three months later

Frizz woke up on his sixteenth birthday in an operating room, lying half-naked on a stretcher with multiple wires and sensors connected to his forehead. As the sensors registered his consciousness, a young, auburn-haired woman in a white doctor's jacket entered the room, her heels clicking on the linoleum floor.

"Am I okay?" Frizz asked, shaking off the fuzziness of his sleep and fixing his eyes on the woman who had performed the operation on him, Dr. Alyssa Corona.

Dr. Corona smiled. "Yep. Your procedure was quite elegant, and your surgery was absolutely successful. In fact, we've already got a few people waiting for the operation process to gain clearance with the medical council. They want to try your idea, too."

Frizz sat up suddenly, stretching the wires and popping the sensors off of his forehead. "Really?!" he exclaimed, his manga eyes wide.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, calm down. Yeah. A few teenagers, around your age—they think it's a great idea," the doctor said. "Actually, you're probably bound for a lot of fame, being the fifteen—excuse me, sixteen-year-old who created this procedure."

"Are you sure it worked?" Frizz inquired.

Dr. Corona nodded. "Yep. Try it."

Frizz opened his mouth to say the first thing he could think of that would test his new brain surge. Sakura isn't dead.

But it was as if his voice box had forgotten how to speak. Or maybe his brain forgot how to control his voice box. Briefly, Frizz wondered if this was what it was like to be a mute person. Nothing came out of his mouth, no matter how many attempts he made at saying Sakura isn't dead.

A huge grin crossed Frizz's face, no matter how grave the truth of Sakura's death was. Radical Honesty was a success!

"See, it worked flawlessly," Dr. Corona said. "You can no longer tell lies; the ability has been completely erased from your brain. And you're ready to go home. So why don't you get some clothes and head out? It's your sixteenth birthday; your friends must be planning a bash or something for you."

"Yeah," Frizz agreed, grinning. A few of his friends had indeed told him they would throw him a party. "Thanks, Dr. Corona."

For the first time since Sakura's death, he felt truly happy. His lies might have killed her, but his penance would be perfect—he would never be anything but honest ever again.

Thanks for reading and be sure to leave me a review!!

--MC