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impossible. He was a manga-head: eyes huge and glistening, his delicate face inhumanly beautiful. Long, tapered fingers stroked his perfect cheek as he stared at her.
    That was the weird thing: He was staring at her.
    But he was gorgeous, and she was ugly.
    "Let me guess," he said. "From some pre-Rusty painting?"
    "Uh, not really" She touched her nose, swallowing the last few shards of ice. "It's more, um…randomly generated?"
    "Of course. It's so unique." He bowed. "Frizz Mizuno." As Aya returned the bow, her eyescreen displayed his face rank: 4,612. A reputation shiver went through her, the realization that she was talking to someone important, connected, meaningful. He was waiting for Aya to give her own name. And once she did that, he'd know her face rank, and then his wonderful gaze would turn somewhere more interesting. Even if in some logic-missing, mind-rain way he liked her ugly face, being an extra was simply pathetic. Besides, her nose was way too big.
    She twisted a crash bracelet to call her hoverboard. "My name's Aya. But I kind of … have to go now."
    He bowed. "Of course. People to see, reputations to bomb."
    Aya laughed, looking down at the robe. "Oh, this. I'm not really…I'm sort of incognito."
    "Incognito?" His smile was eye-kicking. "You're very mysterious." Her board slipped up next to the stairs. Aya stared down at it, hesitating. Moggie was already half a kilometer away, trailing Eden Maru through the darkness at high speed, but part of her was screaming to stay.
    Because Frizz was still gazing at her.
    "I'm not trying to be mysterious," she said. "It's just working out that way." He laughed. "I want to know your last name, Aya. But I think you're purposely not telling me."
    "Sorry," she squeaked, and stepped onto the board. "But I have to go after someone. She's sort of… getting away."
    He bowed, his smile broadening. "Enjoy the chase."
    She leaned forward and shot into the darkness, his laughter in her ears.

    UNDERGROUND

    Eden Maru knew how to fly.
    Full-body lifter rigs were standard gear for hoverball players, but most people never dared to wear them. Each piece had its own lifter: the shin and elbow pads, even the boots in some rigs. One wrong twitch of your fingers could send all those magnets in different directions, which was an excellent way to dislocate a shoulder, or send you spinning headfirst into a wall. Unlike falling off a hoverboard, crash bracelets wouldn't save you from your own clumsiness.
    But none of this seemed to worry Eden Maru. In Aya's eyescreen, she was zigzagging through the new construction site, using the half-finished buildings and open storm drains as her private obstacle course.
    Even Moggie, who was stuffed with lifters and only twenty centimeters across, was finding it tricky keeping up.
    Aya tried to focus on her own hoverboarding, but she was still half-hypnotized by Frizz Mizuno, dazzled by his attention. Since the mind-rain had broken down the boundaries between ages, Aya had talked to plenty of pretties. It wasn't like the old days, when your friends never talked to you after they got the operation. But no pretty had ever looked at her that way. Or was she kidding herself? Maybe Frizz's intense gaze made everyone feel this way. His eyes were so huge, just like the old Rusty drawings that manga-heads based themselves on. She was dying to ask the city interface about him. She'd never seen him on the feeds, but with a face rank below five thousand, Frizz had to be known for something besides eye-kicking beauty. But for now Aya had a story to chase, a reputation to build. If Frizz was ever going to look at her that way again, she couldn't be so face-missing.
    Her eyescreen began to flicker. Moggie's signal was fading, falling out of range of the city network as it followed Eden underground.
    The signal shimmered with static, then went dark…
    Aya banked to a halt, a shudder passing through her. Losing Moggie was always unnerving, like looking down on a sunny