The Walled City didn't have weather so much as it had ambiance, and even that only existed on a spectrum of emotion that consisted primarily of paranoia. But still, it felt like weather against Chia's digital skin, secrecy sometimes thick in the air like fog, or suspicion stinging the bare arms of her presentation software like spring rain.

Today the air felt warm and welcoming as Chia practically skipped down Sai Shing Road, reminding herself not to actually skip because she was nearly sixteen and that was too grown up to skip.

Inside the barber shop, Klaus and the Rooster were murmuring about something that had happened on Level Three, and Klaus gave Chia a nod of greeting as she entered.

"He hasn't been by yet," the Rooster told her, but when she asked if he meant the Etruscan or Masahiko, he only smiled and turned back to Klaus.

Rolling her eyes, Chia half-listened to the gossip behind her as she put a hand in the pocket of her presentation to find something to write on. She came up with a gum wrapper, and smirked because Masahiko had given her the program to random generate material for messages, and it was always food detritus.

She turned the wrapper over to the non-shiny side and traced her message across it with her fingertip. It didn't leave any marks, but Masahiko would be able to decrypt it. As she was folding the wrapper in half, a soft chuckle sounded from behind her.

"It will be different here than outside the city," the Etruscan commented.

"I know." Chia stepped into the doorway of the barber shop and bent down to intercept the first rat that shuffled by. "Masahiko," she told it, holding out the gum wrapper between two fingers, "Level Eight." The rat blinked at her with oil slick eyes before deftly taking the wrapper in his teeth and scampering off. "Maybe it'll be better to do it this way."

"Most people think it is better the other way," he advised, and when Chia turned around to face him, he was momentarily a ripple of rich crimson silk.

"Hello." Chia looked over her shoulder at the sound of Masahiko's voice and smiled as he stepped into the shop, because as quickly as things moved in the City, he still must have been waiting for her message. All talk in the shop hushed a few decibels, and Chia saw the twitch at the corner of Masahiko's mouth that meant someday he would hear just as much gossip as she did, just wait and see.

"I have something to show you." Chia took Masahiko's hand and tugged him out of the barber shop, giving a wave to the Etruscan and calling out goodbyes to the others. Outside she set off down the road at a trot. They had gone a block and half before Masahiko withdrew his hand from hers, but Chia tilted her head to smile at him because that was a new record. He was watching her out of the corner of his eye as they walked.

"Faster ways," he commented.

"Yes," Chia agreed, but did not speed up, wanting to let her nerves settle a little before they reached the place. She slipped a hand into the pocket of her presentation and ran fingers over the cold curve of metal nestled there.

They reached Lung Chung Road, and Chia couldn't take it anymore and finally did speed up, Masahiko at her shoulder, but they were so close now that the card-shuffling of doorways had barely started before they were standing in the room.

Her room.

Masahiko stood in the middle of what little floor space there was, looking around. Chia had replicated her room at home in a sort of compacted manner. A copy of her bed took up most of the floor space, with its familiar quilt, the poster of Lo/Rez hung next to the small window looking out over the early evening quiet of Lung Chung. Along side of the bed was a strip of space barely wide enough to stand in, then against the wall a thinner version of her desk, on which sat her Sandbenders and a piece of multi-function software keyed to look like her Espressomatic. Above it, a shimmering map of Walled City rippled slightly against the wall.

"Yours?" Masahiko asked, still taking in his surroundings with his back to Chia.

"Yes." Chia took the silver bracelet out of her pocket and palmed it for a moment before slipping it on. She felt the slight ripple that meant her presentation was updating. She usually updated her scan fairly frequently, but when she'd first started coming to Walled City she'd been too busy to do it for a few weeks. When she'd finally gotten around to it, Masahiko'd glanced at her just a second too long; the next day, his scan was updated, hair back to the length Chia remembered from seeing him in person.

That had given her the idea. She hadn't updated herself at all in the last six months, so that she could spring a significantly more mature presentation on the otaku all at once. Fifteen-year-olds changed fast, after all, and even Chia's mother had mentioned how she'd been filling out across her hips and chest.

It had been worth it, because when Masahiko turned back to her, his glance lasted a lot longer than a second too long. Suppressing a grin at the effectiveness of her plan, Chia gave her second surprise on Masahiko: clasping her hands in front of her, Chia murmured in reasonably explicit Japanese just what she might like Masahiko to do to her.

English wasn't the only language one could learn in the Walled city.

After a moment that stretched long enough for Chia to start being nervous again, Masahiko answered something in a low voice that was far too fast for Chia to understand.

She laughed, stepping closer, and asked him to go slower, she was still learning, the one Japanese phrase she had learned very well. She reached out to put her hands in Masahiko's, smiling a little when he slipped his grip up to wrap a thumb and forefinger around each of her wrists.

He repeated himself more deliberately, and Chia pieced together enough words to know he was asking what else she had learned to say. Possibly.

The answer was how to ask where the bus station was, and one dirty joke which she didn't fully understand but involved a schoolgirl and her pet cat. When Chia repeated the joke, Masahiko's bark of shocked laughter filled her with such pride that she stood on tiptoes to press her lips against his.

The expression on his face was nothing compared to the one he made when Chia planted both hands in the middle of his chest and pushed him back until he tipped backwards onto the bed. He looked up at her from his back, eyes calculating under the hair that had flopped into his face.

"You're serious." In anyone else's hands, that would have been a question, and Chia smiled as she planted a knee on either side of his legs and pulled herself onto the bed to straddle his lap. She reached down to push the hair out of his eyes.

"Hai."

You couldn't actually hurt somebody while ported, and by the same token you couldn't do anything particularly earth-shattering to them in terms of pleasure either. But the most powerful sex organ in the body is the brain, and a fifteen-year-old and a seventeen-year-old left to their own devices can generally manage, even if things are a bit slow and muted.

"Different outside Walled City," Masahiko commented when they were sprawled out next to each other, feeling boneless and warm. He had one hand splayed across Chia's stomach, the other arm propping him up a little on his side to watch her expression.

"People keep saying that." Chia opened her eyes just enough to give him a look. "And what do you know about it anyway?"

Masahiko said nothing, and Chia smiled knowingly.

"That's what I thought," she said, letting her eyes slip closed again and pressing her cheek to Masahiko's shoulder. After a moment, she felt his hand slide off her stomach and come to rest her wrist. "We'll have to give it a try in person."

"Hmm," said Masahiko, curling fingers and thumb around her wrist.