You either want to be with me or be me.

Maneater

Nelly Furtado

A light rain fell steadily outside my window. The conditions were horrible for hover boarding; the wind had been terrible, the rain- while no longer falling heavily-was enough to kill visibility, and an hour before, the sky had been almost constantly lit up with flashes of lightening,

That's why I was going to wait another fifteen minutes before going out to make sure the lightening was over for the night.

I couldn't afford to miss any practices. I was good, but I did have some weaknesses. I also still didn't know how good of a hover boarder Takashi was; I had to assume that he could handle anything thrown at him including hover boarding in the storm, and then prepare for the worst.

Another good thing about the storm was that it kept all of the hover cams away.

The people of the city had yet to stop wondering about the girl in the reputation bomber's robe. My name had thankfully been taken off the list when a girl named Airi Hamasaki, an extremely famous hover ball player, apparently started the rumor that she was the one to challenge Takashi. My face rank stopped climbing as people stopped talking about the Bomber Girl and moved on to Airi.

The way they were treating her was absolutely ridiculous. People would do anything to get close to her; all the people wanted to hear was about Airi. Nothing was kicked on the feeds that didn't have something to do with her. Guys were all over the feeds claiming to be dating her. Girls were claiming they had been best friends at some point in life: littlie, ugly, pretty, former clique, hover ball team, you name it. The whole city had stopped functioning because it was so obsessed with her.

I was a little glad I was fading back into the woodwork, but I wasn't sure if I was glad to be losing my fame to her.

She was the embodiment of all the things I hated in a famous person; she was arrogant, conniving, and cruel. Every interview I had ever seen from her left a bad taste in my mouth; she always made the perfect jokes, the statements everyone wanted to here, and gave the perfect illusion of being a badass, but an overall good person. Even though she balanced it very well, everyone knew that was nothing but an act, though; especially when rival players that made bad comments about her would wind up having to be taken to the hospital afterwards.

Her aggressive personality was a bit of a crowd favorite, further pushing her into fame. But that wasn't enough for her; she always found ways to advance her face rank by perfectly timed little publicity ploys that most people wouldn't see as calculated. My years of being around Kaede and Hayate had taught me how to look for that.

The people were actually excited about the matchup; Takashi had even kicked a statement saying that he was looking forward to the challenge. I wasn't shocked he couldn't tell he was talking to under that reputation bomber's robe, especially considering how drunk he was; but what did shock me was the fact my idiot brothers didn't have a clue it was me. The only other person in the entire city who really knew was Han.

"Good night room." I called. I watched the wall screen dim to black as the room gave its usual reply.

I unfolded my legs on my bed, and started running my hands across my sheets. After finding my new jacket, I pulled it on before putting my dorm jacket on top. The extra layer locked in a lot of warmth that the thin silk of my dorm jacket let out. I was hoping it was also help keep out some of the water. I blindly yanked open a drawer and started searching for the glasses I got to at least block part of the rain. I put them on my face and flicked the switch to make them clear. Or at least, I hoped I did; I'd find out when I made it outside.

I slid out of bed grabbed my hover board from its hiding place. The sound of the rain spilled into the room when I pushed my window open. I hesitated at the door; this really might not be such a good idea.

Neither was pissing off the leader of the most exclusive clique in the city. I reminded myself. Knowing I'd talk myself out of it if I didn't go then, I set my feet on my hover board and snapped for it to rise.

"Follow me out." I ordered to my hover cam as I pulled the hood of my jacket over my head. It rose from its place and floated gracefully out the window, waiting for me to follow.

The rain physically hurt when I shot outside the window. Even though the rain was nothing more than a light drizzle, at the speed I was going it felt like I was being pelted by tiny rocks. My glasses weren't really helping that much, but it was better than getting the raindrops directly in my eyes.

Despite the pain from the rain, I pushed my board to its almost top speed. The water left the grippy surface of my hover board dangerously slick. I had many near accidents that I managed to save at the last second. The only way I could make it work without sliding off was to stay perfectly level and fly perfectly straight; any sort of weight shift or banking attempt sent me scrambling for my footing.

I kept the straight line going until I got towards the construction site at the edge of the city where I knew the grid would run out. I took several deep, steadying breaths as I tried to mentally picture myself taking the turn ahead. I watched my hover cam zip ahead to get a better shot of the curve; it might not have been this route with me before, but it knew my filming preferences enough to know how I wanted the shot to be.

Suddenly Han's little three second banking lesson came back to me. I shifted my feet a little closer to shoulder width apart as slowly and as fluidly as possible. I got nervous when my feet slid a little apart from the water, but I forced myself not to react. I took a deep steadying breath and slid them back where I wanted. When my feet where firmly planted in a place where I still had balance, but they weren't going to slide apart, I started moving for the turn.

I edged one hip down a little bit, and the minute shift in weight carried the board off to the left. I curled my toes in my left foot and turned them slightly outwards. The surface of the board tilted to a tiny angle and banked perfectly off in the direction I needed. When the curve had brought me back to the place I wanted to be, I just slowly uncurled my toes back to the normal and slid my foot back to the front. I eased the weight off my hip and the board went back to flying straight. It really was an almost perfect turn. The angle my board tilted probably wasn't as steep as it needed to be, but it worked so much better than what I had been doing.

I followed the edge of the grid away from the construction site, along the woods. This route carried me towards a few of the big face mansions, and towards a few parks. I didn't really expect anyone to be out this late in the rain, but I did know of a party in one of the mansions; my luck someone would be walking away from the party and see me. The thought of getting caught made me nervous.

I had already screwed my chances of getting my brother back after our fight; I really didn't want to add to that humiliation by being one of the famously hated people in the city I brought up in the fight with Hayate.

Just as the lights of the big face mansions were getting too bright for comfort, I noticed a stream running through one of the parks. A crazy idea forming in my head, I pulled up to stop just above it.

Hover boards worked of magnets. Magnets needed metal. Water carried metal that it scraped off of rocks, which this stream contained a lot of. Therefore, the hover board should be able to work over the water. Right?

Probably, but the issue was, what if there wasn't enough for the lifters to run on? The stream wasn't that big, and it went straight up the mountain. The city grid didn't extend much further beyond the reach of the park, so I was stuck with only the stream to keep me in the air. If I ran out of metal at a high speed I was in trouble; my crash bracelets wouldn't work and my very heavy hover board would crash straight into the freezing cold, rock filled river that was already swollen from the spring rain water draining from further up the mountain. No one knew where I was, and I had never even heard of anyone who ever hover boarded through a stream or up the mountain besides a few trash talkers who were obviously lying, so that is the one place no one would think to look.

I heard yelling from the other side of the park. My spine went board straight like a mouse that got caught in a hawk's shadow. It sounded like a group of drunk guys and a few giggling girls, obviously just leaving a party.

"Stream it is." I muttered to myself as I shot forward along the water. I glanced back to make sure my hover cam was following me.

I stopped when I was just out of sight of the park and looked around me in awe; the woods were a lot scarier than I was expecting. The trees were nothing like the park trees I was used to practicing around; they were dark, bigger than anything that was allowed to grown in the city limits, and their overgrown foliage was with nocturnal creatures scurrying around their branches that picked up on my infrared. The trees were so thick they blocked out a lot of the raindrops. They seemed to go on forever in every direction. I started to get nervous because of the vastness of what was outside the city. This was my first time outside of the city.

I flexed my fingers and my eye screen overlaid my vision. I had only been outside an hour and still had many more to go. I had gotten cocky about not getting seen because of the rain and left way too early; I'd have to remember that for tomorrow night. Assuming I made it out of the woods by tomorrow night.

Deciding I might as well make the best of my time outside, I took off above the stream.

The first twenty minutes I was sure I was going to die. The water kept splashing up on the riding surface of my already slick hover board, and I just knew it was going to slide straight off and onto the rocks. The stream also had several random curves and steep grades where it would be flowing down a hill. I would think I had it figured out, right before it would twist in a direction I hadn't been expecting or a giant rock would block my path.

After the first twenty minutes, I began to appreciate the curveballs the wild through me; I needed to be able to handle anything anybody threw at me, and this was the perfect training tool for being prepared for anything. It was also a massive confidence boost that I wasn't doing half bad along the stream. I couldn't believe I was actually having fun.

It felt refreshing to be so far away from everything; I could've done without the icy-making temperature of the water though. That wasn't refreshing at all.

I was almost ready to turn around when the worst happened. I shot up an incline to the place where a waterfall emptied into a pool. I had head the loud rush of water, but just assumed there were just more rocks that it was traveling over. I really needed to get out of the city more.

The pool was deeper than any part I had encountered before. With the excess rain water, it was so turbulent and overflowing that the lifters had nothing to catch on. When I shot over the top of the incline, the board dropped out from under me like a rock. The two, horror stricken seconds it took to meet the surface of the water felt like it was in slow motion.

The cold water knocked the air straight out of my lungs. I almost gulped in surprise, but some sort of survival instinct kicked in and made me shut my mouth to keep the water out. I floundered helplessly in the water as the current from the waterfall kept me swirling underwater. I finally got swept against a rock, which hit my shoulder. I almost gasped in pain, but before I could even get that out, I got swept into another rock. When I felt it knock against my leg, I forced a foot down on it and kicked up.

My head broke the surface of the water and I gulped in as much air as my burning lungs could hold. I almost go pulled off the rock, but I flailed my arms to get my balance and planted my other foot on it. I looked around frantically for a way to get myself out of the water. Keeping myself on the rock was taking a lot more energy than my sore, tired muscles were willing to give.

I saw the night lights of my hover cam across the pool. They looked shaky like it was trying to keep itself in the air while it tried to figure out where I went. Desperate to reach it, I kicked off the rock and paddled hard. My head almost dipped under the water several scary times, but I managed to keep myself afloat. The hover cam saw me and tried to move closer to me.

"No!" I yelled at it. Its flight halted. I kicked a few more times and made it to it. I wrapped an arm around the top of it and, confused about what I was doing, it pulled back towards the edge.

It wasn't until I was lying on the side of the pool on a rock that I realized exactly how cold I really was. I knew I wasn't a pleasant temperature, but I wasn't shaking to the point where I couldn't move before.

"Get this in your little hover cam brain; go find Han." I ordered the hover cam. "Han Lue. You can't get in his reputation bubble, but get on the edge of it and try everything possible to get him to follow you. Bring him to me." It shot off through the woods in search of Han.

I brought up my eye screen and sent a ping to Han.

It read. You found me once; I really need you to do it again.

After it send I felt like an idiot; he probably got a hundred pings from random girls a day. Even if he did read it, he'd probably take that as one of the flirty comments other girls made to him and ignore it. All the same, I turned my locater on.

That gave me the idea to find Han, or at least see if anyone was in the park.

My heart sank when I found him; he was in the middle of a pleasure garden with Airi Hamasaki. I was going to freeze to death in the middle of the woods in a mountain.

This thought was almost enough to send me into a panic attack. I had force my breathing to remain calm, but it only worked for about four breathes. I knew I had hypothermia; the only thing I remembered to do for it was to get into dry clothes. I didn't have anything that wasn't soaked, so I was in trouble there.

I pulled myself to my feet and started moving down the hill. The least I could do was move closer to the city and closer to part of the stream that had enough metal to carry a hover board.

I was about halfway down when I tripped and slid the rest of the way. Unwilling to get up again, I curled up in a ball at the bottom of the slope. Thinking I might as well try to get rid of some of the layers of heavy wet clothes, I pulled off my dorm jacket. I started to pull off my new jacket, but then I changed my mind and shoved my hands in the pockets. My fingers found the dial to turn up an internal heater I didn't know I had.

I turned the dial all the way up. The batteries wouldn't last forever, but it was something until Han showed up. If he showed up.

I thought through the people I knew who could possibly find me. The only people I could think of were my brothers, but I knew chances were they would both think of it as a prank. I knew if I got a ping from them like that I definitely would.

I sighed and curled up further into a ball. I could ping the wardens, but I knew there was no way they'd take it seriously. What person goes hover boarding through the woods outside city limits in the middle of a spring shower?

My only hope was Han Lue.

Z

"Kid. Kid!" My eyes scrunched together as I tried to ignore the noise. I noticed I could barely breathe through my nose. A blinding light cut through my eye lids and my eyes popped open to see my hover cam flash its nightlights a second time.

"Rin!" My name finally cut through the fog on my brain. "Damn it, Rin! You have to get up."

"Huh?" I sort of choked out. Han yanked me up by one of my arms and started pulling off my jacket. I weakly tried to shake him off, but I felt so sick it was easier to not resist, so I went limp.

I started fighting him again when he tried to reach for my shirt. He huffed in annoyance, and told my hover cam to turn its night lights off. I wasn't any happier about it, but I let him pull my shirt over my head and replace it with a warm jacket. Apparently decided to leave my wet pants, he pulled me to my feet and half carried me to a waiting hover board.

"I can't stand long enough to ride double." I told him honestly as I used him for a prop.

"You'll have to get on my back then." He answered without missing a beat. He sounded like he had thought all of this through.

He dropped to his knees and pulled one of my arms over his shoulder. Hesitantly, I wrapped my other arm over his shoulder, wincing at the pain from my bruised shoulder, and leaned my weight on him. He leaned forward to stand and I automatically wrapped my legs around his waist. It was extremely awkward; I felt a little like I was going to pass out and that made me tighten my too long limbs around him. He didn't seem to be bothered as he stood, bearing my weight like I weighed nothing.

His movements seemed completely confident as he stepped onto the board. I thought he was going to take everything slow since I was clinging to his back like a spider monkey, but he leaned his weight forward and the board shot out like a rocket. Turns out Han did know a thing or two about hover boarding.

AN: This was an awesomely fun chapter to write. This is probably my favorite story to write out of all my other ones.

If I could get a little feedback on how it's going, that would be great. I know the whole idea for this story is a little out there.