A Shock for 4-H-N, Chapter Three

4-H-N was after him in an instant, so hotly as to incur a painful reminder about her ankle. Two parallel narrow pipes spanned a pit ahead, and Flashslip was taking tentative steps onto his, struggling. Funny how either at home or in another galaxy, girls were always better at this. Injured or not, knickers on or not, this event was 4-H-N’s. All ready to show off she started surely along the other pipe.

It span like a wheel beneath her feet and put 4-H-N in free-fall.

Oh! Everyone was going to see again – !

Blup.

Deep into the disgusting gunk at the bottom of the drop plunged 4-H-N, and broke the sloppy surface breathless before she’d even registered what was going on. This stuff served the purpose of cushioning your fall, but it also seeped through the very weave of a Flash Club tunic and chilled your skin with its cold clinging creepiness.

Twice already 4-H-N had had to try hard not to cry. Now it was getting too much.

So there were tears leaving trickly tracks all down her greenish daubed face as 4-H-N slowly hauled her way through the muck, labouring for the rough stepladder which stood at the far end. This whole thing had just become a waste of time anyway, since her pipe not having been fixed correctly meant they were going to have to go again. It took strength for a girl to heave herself out of that sucking slime, and no sooner had 4-H-N flopped to the top of the chasm than she looked to confirm her complaint, while preparing to call for an adjudicator –

The pipe was fixed down.

4-H-N stared on the blunt butt of it, beyond bafflement by now. The peg which held it in place was slotted through the bracket and embedded securely in the earth below.

She gripped the shaft in both hands and shook it. It was firm.

Even if the peg at the other end was missing, the pipe couldn’t have revolved round and round with this one where it was.

But…!

Oh, wait. She’d said that.

It wasn’t possible. Someone tampering with the pipe and remaining unseen between her fall and now. Someone taking her underwear off between the foot of the stairs and the summit.

It wasn’t possible.

The laws of time and space didn’t allow for it.

Yet here we were.

4-H-N had known this galaxy in which she wished she’d never set foot was always coming up with new ways to break the rules, but today it was setting new standards for itself.

Yet she wouldn’t let herself stop by the edge of some hole in the ground and sniffle. This wasn’t going to beat her. Clothes dragging with damp goo and her hurt ankle transmitting such a pang as to squeeze tears afresh from her eyes, 4-H-N forced herself up again and hobbled back to action. Flashslip had made serious progress, past the ramps and the low walls and the zip-line and was now onto the semi-automatic glue-guns. Five on either side lined his path, an avenue of upright parking-meter things, and those at least were certain to slow him down…

That was when 4-H-N did halt halfway, gaping in disbelief.

Because Flashslip had really improved at this.

So much so and in so short a time that 4-H-N could scarcely credit what she was seeing. The horizontal flare of his blue tunic-skirt as he whipped whitely round each splotting glob of glue was a motion you might expect of a skilled girl, but not a boy who couldn’t even master Flashball. He had to be cheating. There was no other explanation. Yet the guns fired at random, which meant there shouldn’t have been any way for him to memorize their pattern in advance.

One thing 4-H-N didn’t have time for was more mystery, even though a small voice inside kept telling her time was what lay at the heart of the matter.

She herself was at the glue-guns now, and heaved a deep breath.

Flashslip, unbesmirched, had made it through and was toiling to duck and skip his way past the Security Lodge. Just twenty tons of robot to beat and he was home free.

But if he could, she could.

4-H-N raised her hands and whirled to run the gauntlet.

On a good day it was fun. On a good day she liked to tease the spluttering blots, keeping clean a step ahead of them, letting them gasp in vain by her panties and armpits and spinning skirt. A good day this wasn’t. A day to giggle at sticky Flashbee then show him how it was done, this wasn’t. For one thing there was her ankle, not to mention the gunk weighing down her tunic, but 4-H-N might still have won through even despite these handicaps.

Only sooner or later, you had to twirl.

And 4-H-N wouldn’t.

The Drenthis feeling was nearing the point she’d always feared, when she wasn’t going to be able to force it down anymore.

So 4-H-N hesitated, and that was all it took. The guns, as if remembering her getting the better of them on so many prior occasions, here launched into a spirited and spiteful revenge. Next second 4-H-N was blundering foot over foot in what might actually have passed for a very clumsy twirl, impelled by the momentum of a vast glue-glob which had slammed into her shoulder. It did the trick on her hemline though, and the crowd roared again.

Another, fragmenting as it struck to slithery slivers which seared her cheek, stinging as they half-stuck to the skin.

No-one was on her side. They were only shouting because they liked what they saw.

A low-slung blob boomed on her inner thigh and all but bowled her over.

She’d been right about who it was making up most of the audience.

Not another…! This one to the small of the back. Then another, then another. It was never going to wash out of her hair. All she wanted was for it to end.

4-H-N wasn’t usually someone who hated.

But just now, in the midst of this, jeers and hollers of those who’d formed a private cabal against her all but drowning out the spurting rasps of the aisle…

This entire galaxy.

She hated it.

Out from the storm staggered 4-H-N at last, while a towering shape directly ahead of her hefted its iron mountainside of an arm.

Just one of the day’s concerns had been needless.

The Kral-it-Gor Memorial Security Lodge displayed no partiality at all.

Blam.

Storm-Sky had not taken his seat in the leader’s box that afternoon, but he was there, looking on from a high hilltop alone.

Of course, there had been no blam. Strict safely protocols were a prerequisite for the assault course, and the Security Lodge’s giant fist halted well in advance of harming Mini-Flash 4-H-N. For her however, there the contest ended. It was young Flashslip who sundered the finishing-tape, and the accolades were considerable.

But they were not of the proper sort.

Having devoted his life to principles of balance and peace, Storm-Sky was in a position to declare that what he sensed from the Mini-Flash masses below did not speak of those.

Instead, division reigned. Between the genders, and between The Flash Club and Nottingham, which latter had mustered merely a boy-girl tie thus far. Storm-Sky sadly shook his head. Both sources of discord were commonplaces with which he had hitherto been acquainted, but they were not what he had striven for. And as for the victor, one strain sang ferociously from him…

Let her giggle at these powers now. Let us see if this day has left her in any mood to giggle.

No rules had been broken, Storm-Sky knew. Such was the purpose of the assault course. If the neophyte could not overcome the skills of a senior, then the neophyte would not advance.

Lightning would without doubt have approved.

That however was no longer sufficient to recommend the moment to Storm-Sky.

All this, moreover, was but foil to the shadow-hued opal which glinted at the heart of the unrest. Storm-Sky had witnessed its dark scintillations when 4-H-N herself did.

She however had momentarily broached its shell, and known the depths.

It was as Manual had predicted.

Storm-Sky did not blame his old master. The fault was his own. Age and enslavement at the hands of The Foretold One may have left poor Manual unequal to predicting the scale of the threat or the speed of its approach, but his warning had been issued nevertheless, and Storm-Sky had chosen to accommodate for it in the manner which seemed correct. To deny 4-H-N further powers within the body of The Flash Club, while ever trusting she was the one who would bring the Special Program home.

It was Manual who had apprehended the danger which lay in her hate.

Now that Storm-Sky did too, certain misguided designs on his part must not go on.

Manual, long ago, had made another prophecy. It was the one all masters did, of a time when their pupils must rely on them no more.

Storm-Sky looked up, and his expression was resolute.

For him, that time had come.

THE END