"What did I tell you about being stupid?" Takashi drawled over the rim of his drink. He was sprawled in his feed watching chair like a king. It was significantly nicer than anything Hayate had in his apartment. Takashi was obviously using his face rank.

"I don't know; you tell me." I back sassed him. I was way too tired to deal with Takashi at the moment. The Crims had gotten me back to Takashi's apartment, but they didn't take me to get my shoulder looked at so I was still in excruciating pain.

"Room replay feed." Takashi barked.

The wall screen with the image of me wavering shakily in front of the train from the turbulence with the tunnel opening up in front of me. The bone out on my shoulder was obvious under my jacket and the tears were streaming down my face. As the train got closer, I popped up, only to drop and slam down on the train. It went under the tunnel so fast that you couldn't tell if I had made it or not.

"Mom and Dad were extremely worried." Hayate informed me.

"If I had died there would have been a significant amount of blood spatter." I shot back as I sank onto his couch. I almost missed the edge of it until Han grabbed me and slid me back on it gently.

"We need to discuss membership." Takashi refocused the conversation.

"I'm not cut out for the Crims. Give it to Airi." I answered automatically. "And don't worry, Hayate. I'll disappear back into the shadows and you won't have to deal with me anymore."

I was a tired I hadn't experienced in a long time. I was emotionally, mentally, and physically exhausted and the pain was making me nauseated. I lay down on the couch and my eyelids drooped.

"Why?" Takashi asked.

"Why to which one?"

"Both."

"Because I care too much about real things. And I don't think I can handle being around him." I muttered weakly as I almost slipped into consciousness. The pain radiating down my arm and across my neck and back and chest was just way too much.

Hayate sighed deeply and I felt the couch dip by my feet. He pulled them up and over onto his lap.

My answer didn't even make much sense. I just couldn't deal with all of the fame grubbing and exclusive bashes that focused on nothing but getting drunk and being more famous than anyone else. There were a lot of times when I wasn't sure if Hayate was happy or even liked anyone in the clique; he was just forced to put up with them because that's what he was expected to do.

"Rin." Hayate muttered as he pushed my hair out of my face. I tried to glare at him, but I didn't have the energy to open my eyes.

"Not many people have the balls to call me fake." Takashi snapped.

"Maybe it's just been too long since you've shown yours." I quipped back in a whisper. He barked a laugh.

"Airi is exactly what you think we are: fame grubbing and arrogant. We're not like that; we just like to party and we actually try to stay out of the hover cams' sight. You only see the parties because that's the only thing we let you see. We haven't changed that much since were uglies, but we can't let anyone know that or we will have serious problems with copy cats." Takashi explained.

"Then why are you here? I haven't a conversation with you in years that didn't involve a number." I cracked my eyes and looked at my brother. He looked down completely ashamed. "Figures you'd be obsessed with that; you know you'll never be anything but second tier compared to the rest of them. You're miserable and lonely and you're trying to compensate for it."

"Rin, that's too harsh." Han said gently from his place on the arm of the couch by my head.

"But ultimately correct." Takashi conceded.

"What do you want me to do? I love you and I always have but you've hated me from the very beginning. Always running to Kaede for everything. You never even gave me a chance." Hayate exploded.

"And you gave me one? You couldn't take your head out of your ass long enough to stop checking your face rank to—"

"That's enough!" Neela broke in from the arm of Takashi's chair.

"Rin are you accepting our offer or not?" Takashi asked impatiently. I glanced over to see him watching the muted feed. It was focusing on Airi as she tried for her flag. As I watched her try to make some of the tight turns and avoid the flock of bats she disturbed when she went down a drain pipe, I realized how good of a hover boarder I really was. She looked so clumsy and off balance; I was sure I could have done better.

"I can't. I skipped half the tests. Being a Crim's sister they'll claim it was a set up to help me out." I answered honestly. After seeing Airi ride, giving her the title made me feel a little sick on the inside.

"So you'll let that take your place?" Takashi gestured to Airi about to fall off her board because she was trying to get a bat out of her hair with his mug of green tea.

"It looks bad on me and you. Tell them it was a test to see who would step up. Tell them you asked me to do it if they ever figure out it was me." My breathing started to get more ragged as the pain started to radiate further. I was trying not to cry.

"Make her pull a trick tomorrow in broad daylight. Break into the warden's headquarters and steal the city's old flag from the Pretty Time. Hang it on City Hall." Morimoto suggested.

"Look at her arm! She can't do anything the day after getting that injury!" Hayate insisted. I snorted, tired of having him tell me what I could and couldn't do.
"I'm in." I answered through gritted teeth before he could start ranting any more than he already was.

"Good. I'll send up the medic. Han, I think you should go with her with a hovercam, just in case." Takashi ordered.

"In case of what?" I blurted right as Hayate yelled "It should be me!"

Z

"I don't understand why I can't go alone." I murmured into the couch cushion as tears rolled down my face.

"Your shoulder can't take a pull from the crash bracelets. She caught the edge of her hoverboard under your collar bone and ripped every muscle attachment in your shoulder joint; that's why the bones weren't being held together." He explained for about the fifth time.

"I'd still be fine. The medics mostly fixed it." I whimpered as I tried to change positions.

"How bad are you hurting?" I heard him rise from Takashi's chair and move to kneel in front of me.

"Bad but I can handle it." I lied. The truth was I still felt faint and nauseated from the pain.

"I'm going to get you pain meds." He decided for me. I tried to protest, but he was already moving. A minute later, he was handing me a steaming cup of tea. I sat up as best I could and carefully drank it down. Takashi would kill me if I spilled any on his hover ball sweat shirt or couch.

Before I was even finished I could feel the pain starting to dull and my eye lids beginning to droop. I felt like I was floating and it was wonderful. Han gingerly pulled the cup out of my hands and set it on the side table before slipping onto the couch with me. His body heat made me even sleepier and I caught myself snuggling in closer to him.

"Damn, what was in that tea cup?" He chuckled at me.

"You're so out of it that I was little bit concerned about you trying to get up." He answered.

"But I could. I don't hurt anymore. I could move around."

"No. You'd get dizzy. That stuff is really strong. Just go to sleep and I'll wake you up when it's time to go."

I felt myself snuggle my head further up under his chin.

"Okay." I muttered into his shirt as I dropped off to sleep.

Z

"Did you have to give her the serious meds?" I awoke to Takashi asking.

"Yeah." The reply reverberated deeply through the back of the couch that I was laying on. Realizing it wasn't actually the back of the couch, I started trying to sit up.

"Damn." Takashi muttered as Han helped me to sit up fully. I glanced around bleary eyed at Takashi in his pajamas holding a bowl of whatever his breakfast was and Han sitting next to me wearing what he had on the night before. "Still hurting?"

I shook my head at him.

"Good." He replied warmly with a nod before turning back to the screen and resuming his usual cold personality. "Room, pull up the map."

The wall screen turned on revealing the blue print of a building. Only the first few floors were above ground; the rest of the building was buried. The basement was made up of at least ten floors. There were very few exits I could see. The best way in would be the roof.

"Where is the flag?" I asked. My voice sounded hoarse and dry.

"First underground level in that office." He pointed to a larger room in the back middle of the building.

"Is that the mayor's?" Takashi nodded. The mayor of our great city was Takashi's uncle. I'd met him once at a Spring family event in one of the parks and he'd given me the creeps.

"What's your plan?" He asked as he picked up his chopstick and started picking at the rice in his bowl.

"Go in through the roof. I might have hacked into some of Kaede's files and found a way to get past elevator security." I shrugged innocently as Takashi's eyebrows shot up. "I would probably go down a few floors and set off a small alarm in the system for a distraction."

"How do you think you're going to do that?" Takashi asked slowly.

"If you try to break into a door, the security system will flag that there is a problem with that one door and send drones in almost every building I've ever seen. I'd have to tweak the camera system when I get into the elevator system." I answered tiredly.

"What about the mayor?" Takashi pressed.

"He talks about liking to keep a handle on things himself on the feeds; wouldn't that extend to the security of his own building?"

"Good. Now you're exit?"

"They'd move the mayor if they thought there was a breach, wouldn't they?" I began unsurely. Takashi raised his eyebrows in a you-tell-me kind of gesture.

"Hanger bay door?" Han supplied. I nodded. "It'll work. We may have to improvise in some places."

"You're good?" We both nodded. "Well, I guess you have a plan. You leave in three hours."

With that closing statement, Takashi returned to his bedroom and the door slid shut behind him.

"Nervous?" Han asked his a small smile.

"Not even close." I muttered in return as I laid back down to get a few more minutes of sleep.

I snuck one last peek up at Han before I shut my eyes and I just happened to catch the growing smirk.