Alright, so this is my Christmas fic for the wonderful Tzadikim. It's a short one-shot about Shay and her first hoverboard and first trip to the rusty ruins, told by a friend. Enjoy!
Prompts:
1. "I'm the King of the World!"
- "Funny, I don't remember voting for you."
2. There were bad ideas, and then there were —insert name here— ideas, but no wanted to ponder long on that.
3. "This will work. I saw it on a TV show. You gotta believe me."
The first time I met Shay was Christmas morning on my fifteenth birthday. She was a friend of a friend, a frail fourteen year old with bright green eyes and a mischievous smile. I had to admit that she was pretty cute, for an ugly. She was invited by Nollie Dean to our third annual holiday get-together where Nollie, her good friends Shay and Piper, and my friends Axel and Wyatt would all get together and open the gifts that our parents had sent to us.
After many greetings and poor jokes told by Wyatt, we all settled in by the virtual fireplace that emitted warm air from a heater in the bottom. Uglies couldn't be trusted with real fire, apparently.
"Let's go oldest to youngest," Nollie squealed enthusiastically, being her lovably bossy self. Her controlling nature would've been annoying to some, but I'd gotten used to it, since I'd known her since we were both littlies in diapers. "That means you go first, birthday boy," Nollie said, nodding toward me.
I looked down at the four presents in my lap. There were two for Christmas and two for my birthday. Middle pretties in our area weren't big on getting us an abundance of presents after we lose our littlie status.
I opened the presents one by one, receiving a new set of crash bracelets to replace the ones I had lost the month before, some socks, a new uniform, and a box of candies. Everyone followed suit, receiving gifts as boring as mine, but ooh-ing and ahh-ing at them anyway. Shay was last, since she had only turned fourteen in August. She had one long, thin present, and had been picking at the corners of it since we sat down, anxious to open it.
"It's Shay's turn now!" Nollie announced loudly, as if we weren't all less than five feet away from her. Shay ripped into her paper, causing Piper, who had opened hers carefully and had even saved the paper, cringe.
"No way," Shay squealed, "my very own hoverboard!" She hugged the thin black board to her chest.
"Now we all have one," Nollie said, "you wanna ride?"
Shay's face lit up. "Duh," she said, standing up. We all grabbed our boards and headed outside.
"You ridden before?" Wyatt asked Shay.
"Once or twice," Shay said, "I'm not terrible."
"Zeph's basically a pro, he can help you if you need it," Nollie said, nodding in my direction.
Great. I'm a babysitter now.
I gave her a small smile as I slipped on my crash bracelets. I opened my board and it whirred to life. All at once, we rose from the ground. "Where to?" I called to Nollie over the wind that was trying, but not succeeding, to knock me off of my board.
"Let's just board around Uglyville for a while," she called back.
Shay wasn't half bad. She was a little wobbly at first and her crash bracelets saved her a couple of times, but after about an hour, she fit in with the rest of us. We boarded over the dorms and around Uglyville about nine times before it got dark and we were all bored of the plain scenery. We landed right in front of the girls' dorm in the soft, man-made grass.
Axel, whose shaggy hair was windblown and messy, looked at us with a huge grin. "Now that it's dark, can I show you something really cool."
Wyatt and I exchanged a skeptical glance. "Sure!" Shay said, almost bubbling with excitement. It was probably because she didn't know Axel and had never been a part of one of his ridiculous schemes.
"You're gonna have to give me your interface rings then," he said with a smirk.
"No way!" Nollie said, eyes wide. "I am not getting in trouble again because of you, Axel. Not a chance." I rolled my eyes.
"Count me out," Piper chimed in, nose upturned.
"Fine," Axel said, looking offended, "I don't want boring girls like you to ruin my fun anyway."
Shay looked from Nollie, to me, them to Axel. She then looked down at her interface ring and twisted it off of her finger. "I want to do something really daring for a change." Nollie gave Shay a warning glare, but it was ignored.
"Good choice, how about you guys?" Axel looked toward where Wyatt and I were standing. I shrugged. Why not. Wyatt, being Axel's partner in crime, agreed and took off our interface rings.
"Alright then, put your interface rings in your dorms and meet me here in ten."
There were bad ideas, and then there were Axel ideas, but no wanted to ponder long on that.
When we reached the edge of the city, I realized that his scheme was a little more risky than we had originally thought. "Axel, where the hell are we going?" I asked.
"There," he said, pointing out into the darkness beyond the city's border. Against our better judgement, we followed him across.
We followed him to a river right outside of the city. "Okay, we'll have to ride this river to get to the rusty ruins."
"The rusty ruins? Why would we go there?"
"I want you to meet someone."
The river looked menacing, like a hungry animal waiting for its prey to come close enough. "Are you sure it's safe?" I asked, looking down at the water that bubbled and gushed below me.
"Yeah sure," he said dismissively, "and I really want to show you guys a new trick I've seen." He positioned himself over the water. "You just have to skim lightly over the water, turn your board upward, then turn the power off you plummet downwards real fast, but you have to turn your board on right before you hit the water, or you're soaked."
"No way I'm doing that," Wyatt said, "we'd all end up dead."
Axel looked at him as if his noncompliance was a ridiculous thing. "This will work, guys, I saw it on a show once. You gotta believe me."
"Well I don't." And even Shay couldn't disagree with that.
"Fine, whatever, let's just go then. We still have to ride the river, though."
We skimmed lightly along the small part of the river, spray in our faces from the waves below. When the waves got bigger, Shay was the first one to ride all the way to the top.
"I'm the king of the world!" she screamed, hands in the air.
I laughed. "Funny, I don't remember voting for you."
We got quite a bit farther before Axel slipped off of the river and onto the grass. He shook his hair out and wiped his face off with his sleeve. "We're almost there."
We followed this metal track that Axel called a roller coaster. Apparently, it was some kind of fun ride for the Rusties. Shay looked at me and gave me a small smile as we went over a loop-de-loop.
"Watch out!" Axel called a little too late as we reached a broken part of the track. Our boards turned off, sensing the lack of a metal power source. Shay screamed and we all plummeted downward at full speed. I could hear Axel laughing and I didn't know why, until we were sent abruptly upward by the other side of the track, like an invisible hand grabbing us and pulling us toward safety.
I stopped, trying to catch my breath. Shay was shaking, her pigtails lopsided and her eyes wide. "Why would you do that to us?" Shay half asked, half yelled at Axel.
"It's funny, you big babies!" he managed through fits of laughter.
"That was so not funny."
Axel ignored her and we followed him to the ruins. He led us to a room at the back with a busted window. A boy, an ugly boy, was sitting there, as if he was waiting for us. "Oh, you're already here, no need to call you now, I guess," Axel said, obviously having met the boy before.
The boy nodded and stood up, moving toward us. He held his hand for us to shake. "Hi, I'm David and I'm from the Smoke."