Actualsis and her Arena, Chapter One

“Actualsis?”

Flashslip was drawing a blank. Mini-Flash Crimsonhead helpfully flipped between her fingers the vertical panel of light which hovered above the communications desk.

“Oh!”

He’d assumed she didn’t have a name. Now an all-too-familiar face smouldered back at him, glossy of lips and long of lashes.

“Apparently she’s filming a new project,” continued Mini-Flash Crimsonhead, reading from the message, “and she’s requested you.”

“She’s requested me?” repeated Flashslip.

“Says you had chemistry,” Crimsonhead confirmed.

The little red-haired neophyte’s own lips twitched minutely. Flashslip marked it with a suspicious glare. That advertisement was still doing the rounds of galactic social media.

“And she asks you to bring a friend,” added Mini-Flash Crimsonhead, all duty and diligence.

Flashslip, still scowling, told her to carry on and made for the exit.

“Rooting for you in the rematch,” sang Mini-Flash Crimsonhead sweetly, just before he left.

Presently Flashslip was piloting a punctual Flash Club shuttle to the coordinates Actualsis had specified. That wasn’t the most surprising part, though it vied for second place with her having wished to so much as set eyes on him again.

The top-spot for surprises was occupied by Flashslip’s choice of friend.

Mini-Flash Phytolith. That it should have come to this.

Flashbee and Flashsatsumas, however, were still as crazy for 4-H-N as Flashslip himself had been. Their inseparable misfit senior trio was already a thing of the past, not through any open argument or fight, but merely a steadfast and solitary severing on Flashslip’s part. Which wasn’t to say an altercation might not ultimately come, he now ruminated bleakly. For he’d been to Auntie Green, and his once friends would stand by 4-H-N should it ever become known he had.

So it was that in Flashslip’s new, lonely universe, boyfriends had been in as short supply as girlfriends were. For the latter, all he could claim was pain and unrest over three.

For the former, a misanthropic assistant he might at least command.

There Phytolith sat in the co-pilot’s chair, bare-legged and beige like his entry-level contemporary Crimsonhead, though in point of perkiness that was where the resemblance ended.

“Nearly there now,” Flashslip told him.

Mini-Flash Phytolith looked as if there was an expanse’s worth of withering things he’d have liked to have said about that.

“You ought to enjoy this,” continued Flashslip, entering the final computations. “I know you’re into media and all that. You can talk about it at your next film night.”

The other started.

“I haven’t got a film night!” he gaped aloud.

“Yes you have,” said Flashslip patiently. “Everybody’s talking about it, and not just your year. In fact it sounded to me like you’re a big hit.”

So saying he steered the shuttle down through clouds thick with moisture. The ventilators began to suggest a sultry spiced perfume, and Flashslip couldn’t help shifting in his seat, prey to every sort of presentiment on the reunion to come. It was a primordial planet, unpeopled, and directly above a dormant volcano the autopilot ticked off.

“This is what I’ve got,” declared Flashslip, puzzled, double-checking the navigation controls.

“We’re under attack,” replied Mini-Flash Phytolith.

He’d happened to glance scope-wards in the last split-second before a surface-to-air missile annihilated their ship.

The fall was sheer fright, and when they dropped into the darkness of the waiting mountain-mouth both Mini-Flashes probably resigned themselves to their doom.

Then…whumph!

A cushioned landing. The latest surprise, in a day which kept coming out with them.

Sudden spotlights dazzled from every direction as Flashslip and Mini-Flash Phytolith flew from the stack of gymnastic crash-mats, each boy describing a breathless somersault to show to full advantage his white or faded ones respectively. These then hit with a double-bump the hard sandy surface of a cave-floor, leaving the duo with a dusting-down job to rival that incurred by the least-swept Flashball court at Headquarters.

Flashslip however would take care of that later. For next moment he saw her.

In spite of it all, his heart began to pound.

Same silver dress which looked like it was made of tinfoil. Same magnificent sweep of piled-up auburn hair. Same agonies and raptures worked on the inside lining of Flashslip’s nostrils.

Her glimmering scarlet lips seemed to be counting down.

Then Actualsis turned her back, succinctly, a step not a twirl. For the first time, Flashslip and Mini-Flash Phytolith noticed the flying cameras she now faced.

A large forcefield sprang up and enclosed the boys within its transparent dome.

“Welcome,” the hostess intoned, “to Actualsis and her Arena.”

What followed was addressed to camera, not the boys, and it was no help that Actualsis was competing with a brassy bombastic theme tune which burst from speakers concealed about the cave. As far as the pair of prisoners could gather however, tonight they were blasting reality TV out of every known comfort-zone and deconstructing the Coming Conflict right here on the galactic public’s holo-screens. Flashslip and Mini-Flash Phytolith were ready to testify it was a successful engagement with postmodernism thus far. Indeed, both were still gaping round their confinement at an utter loss as to what was supposed to be going on.

The music dropped to a rumble. “So let’s meet the contestants,” Actualsis continued, striding slinkily to the forcefield’s curved wall and enticing a camera to follow.

“Hello, boys,” she breathed through the barrier. “Warm enough for you in there?”

“Why are you holding us hostage?” Flashslip flung back. “Actualsis, I trusted you! Who are you working for? Is this an act of war against the Alliance, or – ”

“Don’t bother, Flashslip,” put in Mini-Flash Phytolith. “Weren’t you listening to that drivel? Your little girlfriend’s out of her mind.”

“Oh-oh,” Actualsis observed to the camera. “The housemates are fighting already.”

Flashslip heaved a breath. It was more than warm enough for him in there.

“You shot us down with a guided missile,” he tried again, as reasonably as he could. “This isn’t a game, Actualsis! The Flash Club’s going to look for us when we don’t check in, and…”

Only that wouldn’t be for a long time yet. Flashslip was becoming all too aware that if Mini-Flash Phytolith was right, then he’d done a great job of letting his pants point the pair of them nicely into the clutches of a raving lunatic.

“It’s a television programme?” Phytolith demanded of their captor, ignoring Flashslip. “So how do we win?”

“Ooh, contestant two pulls ahead!” sang Actualsis, doing a little dance. “Initiative’s going to be needed here, even though he wasn’t listening very closely either. Our scenario mimics in microcosm what you’ll both be up against later in life. All you have to do is prove that it’s possible for boys to subvert the power of the second gender.”

She was leaning by now on the shimmering convexity, idly plucking with one thumb and forefinger the silver edge of her skirt.

Lifting it a little, then letting it fall again.

It was scarcely the first time a girl had done that under Flashslip’s nose, yet his head was suddenly spinning anew amid the stifling heat. For all at once he remembered the careful way she’d turned around, taking pains to exercise tight control over what that same hemline did…

But she couldn’t be serious.

“You can’t be serious,” said Mini-Flash Phytolith.

The giggle that came back was bad news. Actualsis bounced upright again.

“Just tell me the colour!” she declared triumphantly, to the participants and the people watching at home. “And now that we know the rules, let the contest begin. Will our boys work together? Will they compete? Will they go to any lengths? Will it help if I do a cartwheel?”

She kicked one leg up at the knee, and threw her hands over her head in the starting position.

Next second Flashslip was furious at himself. Because his heart actually had leapt.

No self-respecting boy should have fallen for such a stupid obvious trick, but it was so hot in here, and Actualisis’s spluttering fits of giggles were focusing most of it on his cheeks.

She traversed the breadth of the cave, stepping in measured fashion and turning around and around while she stepped. Her skirts, free of the forcefield’s crushing climes, lifted like cool cirrus in springtime. Two fervid pairs of eyes tracked the billowy motion as it disclosed glimpses of quivering pale thigh, but just not quite anything more.

“Raising the temperature,” laughed Actualsis. “And it’s not like they need it.”

Two jokes on that theme and Flashslip finally twigged. The volcanic heat within the bubble was under the control of their persecutor too, and she was causing for it to steadily rise. Flashslip’s small shoulders dropped in a helpless exhalation.

“Actualsis, you weren’t like this before!” he begged her. “What’s happened? Why have you started behaving this way?”

She looked back at him.

“I told you I wasn’t going to stay in advertising, Flashslip,” were her words. “Now please, I’m used to working with professionals. Show a little media-savvy and try to find out what kind of knickers I’ve got on.”

TO BE CONTINUED