4-H-N On The Trail, Chapter Two

For some hours 4-H-N traipsed the lit streets, a female Mini-Flash conspicuous only for the small backpack she wore, which looked like it was slotted together from interlocking plates of metal. At length she found herself before the entryway of a vast supermarket concourse. Above the heads and other organs of life-forms proceeding inside, spotlights fanned the beginnings of space where bobbed several blimps bearing the outlet’s name.

4-H-N supposed galactic bounty-hunters had to shop for groceries the same as anyone else, so she joined the customers entering via the wide sliding doors.

Past newspapers and tobacco and into foods proper wandered 4-H-N, thinking to herself she ought to start coming to this sort of place more often. Terrestrial comestibles were still strictly speaking black-market goods in this sector, so you had to go a little way from the bright lights of the Conurbation to find shelves well-stocked with them. The prospect of treacle pudding and custard was becoming ever more real to 4-H-N as she reached the end of fruits and broached the deli. Would she be able to bring back all the ingredients her mother Iskira needed? Which way was suet?

From where she stood 4-H-N cast her eye along the aisle-mouths stretching away from her. Oh, over there by mineral water was the item at the top of her shopping-list.

It was Moltron.

And he’d seen her.

The old enemies stared at each other for no more than a moment. Then he sprang, several hundred pounds of fluidic muscle in a slick-surfaced bucket-headed body, while she held her ground and yanked a string on her backpack’s shoulder-strap.

The telescopic panels behind her blew apart, rapidly expanding outward to assume a circular state surrounding 4-H-N. It resembled some sort of gigantic hamster-wheel, two upright rings united by rungs with the occupant at centre. On one side was a thing like a funnel, and the other a nozzle, these connected by tubes with an apparatus in between which hung suspended above the round construction and its operator.

4-H-N kicked her heels to move, booting the rungs behind her one by one so the wheel in its entirety spurted where it sat. Its exterior appendages were so weighted that the overhead assembly remained uppermost even while the spinning body bumped and skidded along the supermarket floor. Moltron meanwhile barrelled headlong through a display and demolished it, scattering cheeses and meats.

Thumbing a button on the control-board beside her, 4-H-N caused for the wheel to unfold struts. These locked to the ground and lifted all between them a little above it.

Then she began to sprint.

As the wheel whirled in place, its funnel whirred to life and the widely-flung landslide of delicatessen goods started flying into its maw. Salamis and brawn and haslets and enormous slabs of double-Gloucester succumbed alike to the suction, whereat the machinery above the wheel struck up a tremendous gurgling rumble even as 4-H-N’s feet kept the centrifuge in motion and her busy arms pistoned away. Next second the nozzle on the opposite side commenced spewing huge pink plumes of minced-up meat-mash, a thrashing tangle of sausage without cease which summarily crushed Moltron under its coils and crammed his gaping mouth full of herby hash. The smell was divine, as of a first-rate antipasto platter writ large.

Retracting the clamps 4-H-N executed a six-point turn and accelerated, while shoppers by dropped their baskets and gasped. She knew it took more than rissoles to hold Moltron, and sure enough, in no time at all trademark water-based cannonballs were hurtling after her. Breakfast cereals to 4-H-N’s left splashed to a storm of clattery shrapnel, while cream-cakes blurted from their chiller-cabinet one oozing unified blot.

He was gaining. The immanence of his bellowed oaths told 4-H-N as much. She shouldered her thunderous conveyance to a swerve and hit the freezer-section.

She was no more than a third of the way along it when Moltron rounded the aisle.

Less a humanoid by now than he was a tidal wave.

A frantic over-the-shoulder glance afforded 4-H-N one glimpse of his terrible face riding high on the crest of the breaker, before he hit and she was sidelong amid the tide. Struggles to stay within her wheel swiftly became a matter of clinging to its frame from the outside, legs kicking, while torrents and foam left her gasping for life. She washed up at last embedded headfirst in some sacks at the supermarket’s farthest tip, toes pointing towards the distant roof.

It took effort to come out of that impromptu handstand. 4-H-N did remember vowing Moltron would get a good look at her pants, so one mission at least was accomplished.

Problem was, that had been one bath too many for this week.

Couldn’t survive another. And as soon as her opponent recollected himself…

But what could she do? There was the wheel, lying askew beside one of the huge bins, but it was technology versus a force of nature. She’d been a fool to –

Wait.

Bins.

Sacks.

4-H-N couldn’t believe it.

She was in the very section she’d hoped from the start to find.

Seconds later her apparatus was heaved upright and set static again, and the heartbeat after that 4-H-N was burning every last calorie that remained hers, this time not only stampeding on the spot but also grasping each rung in her hands as it sped by, hastening through every means available the mechanical process on which all depended. From the open-topped bins her funnel sucked streams of coarsely-shredded butter-coloured content, while whole sacks were spirited the same way from the floor, their canvas coats exploding as each payload was gobbled up. Never had one girl taxed the innards of her Mr. Frosty so, and Moltron’s approach roared all around, but 4-H-N’s nozzle by now was venting a Siberian blizzard which dropped visibility to zero as of pre-packaged dumplings and pies.

So it was that the Moltron-wave crashed around the corner, and straight into the teeth of a suet-storm.

END OF CHAPTER TWO