I own nothing, EA Games Big owns all characters, locations and a good portion of my paycheque.

Chapter 2: Numbers
Psymon pulled into the driveway of his lodge and turned off the car. He had just dropped Nate off at his own lodge after they spent all night in the hospital. Griff was in stable condition but still very shaken up. He sat in his car and thought "who would have done that to a kid?" He drummed his fingers on the dashboard, the hospital would release him the next day, he could ask him then who did this. He got out of his car and entered the lodge.
"Anyone home?" he called in, only to be answered by silence. He sighed and slowly made his way to Zoe's room and pushed open the door. He turned on the light and looked into the abandoned room. Her bed and many of her possessions still sat in her room; Psymon leaned against the door frame for a few minutes, thinking about all the time spent in this room… laughing, crying, talking… he missed it. He turned off the light and walked to the living room, he looked down at his answering machine to see the display flashing. He pushed the "new" button and crashed down onto his couch.
"Message one: Hey Psymon it's Kaori, Allegra told me you and Nate were at the hospital all night. You alright? Call me.
Message two: This is Rahzell everyone. Griff gets out tomorrow, it looks like his current status isn't too hot and he will likely be out for at least half the season."
"Great." Psymon thought. "All we need is to lose another one." SSX had been hurting over the last two years. With untimely deaths of Luther, JP and Seeiah, a core part of SSX was gone. On top of that Moby had parted ways with SSX more than a year ago to start his own snowboarding league, the X-treme Carving League; and as icing on the cake, Brody and Zoe wed several months back and opted to not return to SSX. All this over the last two years had left SSX a much weaker product than it used to be, and Moby's XCL was starting to give them some decent competition.
"Message three: Hey handsome, it's me." Zoe's voice said cheerfully. Psymon's ears perked, he smiled slightly from the sound of her voice. "Just calling to see how you're doing, I… just a minute Brody… I guess you're not in, but I'll… alright alright… Brody says 'hi'. I'll call you back later on. I hope you're doing okay, I miss you."
"I miss you to kiddo." Psymon whispered to the room.
"Message four: Psymon, it's me again." Zoe sounded less chipper this time. "I guess you're out or something, I'll try you again later… I love you." Psymon raised an eyebrow, she didn't sound quite as happy in the second message as she had in her first. "End of messages." Psymon sighed and thought about Zoe, wondering if she was okay.
"Of course she's okay, why wouldn't she be?" Psymon chastised himself. "Just 'cuz you're not around doesn't mean her life is miserable, man." He shook his head and turned on the television. Moby's XCL was on. Psymon dropped the controller and watched the program. As much as he was against supporting his competition, he enjoyed some of the action XCL offered. The league was comprised mainly of younger snowboarders and lesser-knowns that had been paying their dues in the indie leagues over the years. He did grow tired of seeing Moby win week in and week out, but he had come to expect that, since he was the former SSX pro, and secondly, he signed their paycheques. He smirked as the first race was starting. One of the younger riders at the end was one that caught Psymon's attention from day one, a kid from British Columbia named Paul Diamond. "Man, if we could sign that kid…" Psymon said as he watched Paul make his competition look foolish. The kid had skill, speed, incredible balance and on top of that he had a look that just made him stand out, he flowed charisma. The next race was getting started and Psymon recognized some familiar faces. Some of the less popular SSX boarders jumped ship with Moby to the XCL in hopes of gaining more notoriety, but most remained mid-carders. He rolled his eyes as Marty and Jurgan lined up at their spots. Marty was a nice guy in Psymon's mind, but just lacked the skill and character to be a star. Jurgan on the other hand had a lot more going for him, natural ability, an intimidating presence and just a natural character that the fans loved to hate. "If we keep losing our numbers, these guys are going to own us." Psymon thought as he turned off the television.

Rahzell strummed his fingers on his desk impatiently, looking at the numbers from recent SSX and XCL draws.
"Not good, I'm guessing." Atomika said, looking away from his computer.
"They get closer to us every week, and now that we've lost Griff they're going to have that much more room to move in." Rahzell smothered his cigarette in an ashtray and leaned forward on his hands. "I'll give Moby this, he picked a damn good time to abandon ship, it's like he almost predicted this would happen."
"Moby always had a lot of luck." Atomika consoled, Rahzell was not pleased. "Look, we're hurting for name power, Psymon's constantly trying to sell us on this Paul Diamond kid, maybe now we should try to sign him since Griff is out." Rahzell shook his head.
"If we start taking scraps away from XCL, then the fans will know we're not doing as alright as we let on." Atomika nodded in agreement and went back to his computer. "And I'm going to assume that Zoe and Brody haven't changed their minds yet?"
"We're, uhhh… we're playing phone tag." Rahzell sighed.
"So, 'no' then."

Nate paced back and forth, Griff's clique sat quietly on a couch in the chalet, staring up at him, fearing he would snap any second and kill them all."Did you even KNOW he was in trouble?" Nate grumbled, Sam tried his bravery and spoke up.
"Dude, we were all just carving, he said he wanted to try something and that he would meet us at the bottom."
"So you let him go alone?"
"He knows the peaks better than any of us, why not?"
"And didn't you find it weird that he never came back down?"
"Well, we really didn't wait for him, we went back to our lodge and played videogames, next thing we knew it was getting late and we heard nothing from him. We M-Commed him but he never replied." Nate rubbed his face.
"Is there ANYTHING you're forgetting to tell me?"
"No, sir." Sam squeaked. Nate nodded.
"Then get out of here, now." The pack of teens didn't hesitate and they all ran out of the chalet. Nate was furious. He and Psymon had followed the trail left by Griff, but it simply led them to a highway where obviously the assailants would have gotten into a car.
"Nate, relax." Allegra said firmly to the beast that paced frantically. "Griff's alright, we can talk to him when he gets home tomorrow." Nate nodded and tried to relax. Allegra walked to him and gave him a hug, got up on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek and then went back to hugging him.
"When I find the guys that did this I'm going to kill them." Nate said in almost a whimper as he spoke into the top of Allegra's head.
"I know."

Ya know, this is usually where I throw in some cheesie drama-building suspense, but you guys know the drill, just keep reading.