Actualsis and her Arena, Chapter Two

The next couple of hours were long.

As Flashslip had observed to himself once already, there was nothing new about any of it. These days he could barely go to the Conurbation at weekends, or brave the Headquarters corridors when neophytes were finishing their shifts, without one girl or other subjecting him to the same species of tease. Some show-off whose day couldn’t be complete until she’d made her male senior fidgety and restless. Then however, a boy at least had the option of refusing to play along – of stalking off, or just trying to ignore the temptation to look.

Here Flashslip had no choice but to look, and possibly his life depended on it too.

So it was less fun even than it was in the ordinary way.

And the worst of it was that even in the ordinary way, the more you watched, the more hot and bothered you became. Especially when you didn’t manage to see. Add that, to being trapped in a volcano inside a forcefield where the thermometer was going ever up and up, just as Actualsis’s hemline wasn’t. Ultimately both boys longed to undress, and were prevented from doing so only by a nasty feeling that that particular endurance challenge would end up a sub-section of the finished show.

When their presenter at long last announced her intention to let them alone for a bit, Flashslip and Mini-Flash Phytolith were feeling utterly defeated.

The reason for this wasn’t solely to do with underwear.

For as little as Flashslip was in the mood to put together a rave review for Actualsis just now, he couldn’t help admitting her production had delivered on its stated aims and objectives.

Even if he and Phytolith survived this, what chance did they or any of their sex truly have?

Actualsis’s huge pretty pudding-face filled the lens of one goggling camera.

“Hour number three in the forcefield,” she whispered. “The contestants think I’m giving them some private time. What they don’t know is that hidden microphones are even now recording their every scandalous conference and darkest revelation…”

Flashslip sat slumped, breathing carefully, his back against a hot rock. Mini-Flash Phytolith, however, had started pacing back and forth.

“I can’t take this heat, Flashslip,” said he.

“Phytolith, sit down,” that one returned.

“The heat’s how they get to you,” continued Mini-Flash Phytolith, heedless. “First you feel the heat. Then it’s the smell of limestone and you know. After that, you hear the first cracks…!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” were Flashslip’s words, “but knock it off. It’s past check-in time by now. They’ll be searching for us.”

“And she knows that,” replied Phytolith darkly.

Yes, she did. Flashslip had forgotten. It was getting harder and harder to think.

“Sit,” he tried again. “Seriously, Phytolith, you need to conserve your energy. We can talk about whatever you like. Just quit panicking. We’ll get out of this.”

At last Mini-Flash Phytolith threw his pants and thighs at the sand.

“It’s not that I blame you,” he went on, with barely a pause. “I used to let my guard down around them too. Around one, anyway. Until I learned.”

“What happened?” asked Flashslip, although mostly so the other would hold still.

“Her name was Mini-Flash Moon,” Phytolith informed him. “I thought she was different. Special. One morning I found out it had all been a lie. Later that morning, she was dead.”

This time, Flashslip stared.

“So looking back, I knew that her pretending to be my friend had just been so it would hurt me more,” Mini-Flash Phytolith finished. “They’re all like that, Flashslip.”

That one didn’t feel in the best position to start contradicting this just now. For it hadn’t only been misplaced faith in Actualsis which had led him to park Mini-Flash Phytolith in their present mutual predicament. There’d been eagerness on Flashslip’s part too. Excitement, even, at the prospect of seeing his flame-haired old flame again.

Struggling against the sluggishness and swelter for some reassuring counterargument only made Mini-Flash Phytolith seem more and more correct. Yes, there was also Presh, and Flashslip still wanted to believe she was different and special. However, a part of him up until earlier today had wanted to believe that about Actualsis. As for 4-H-N, there were altogether too many correspondences between Phytolith’s story and what he himself had been told by Presh. Flashslip heaved a huge sigh.

“I don’t know what to think,” he commenced, with utter truthfulness. “But I’m not ready to accept absolutes about any group being bad all the way through, including the second gender. There are some, though, who are the way you describe. I don’t deny that, Phytolith. What you went through over this Mini-Flash Moon, I’ve had to face too. A girl I…”

Funny sort of day, on every level. This recalcitrant surly assistant, always striving to put one over on him, was the last boy Flashslip had ever imagined sharing such confidences with.

“A girl I cared for,” Flashslip declared. “Just like you did. She turned out to be the same.”

By now Mini-Flash Phytolith was the one staring. “Not 4-H-N?” he whispered.

Flashslip guessed he must have been more obvious about it than he realised. Maybe other Mini-Flashes had noticed he wasn’t hanging round with Flashbee and Flashsatsumas anymore.

He nodded. Funny too, how much better he felt confessing it to this unlikeliest of listeners. Maybe guilt and vulnerability were always thus – maybe they sought out the ones who already made you prickle, because there was too much shame in bringing them before those who commanded your liking and respect. Whatever the case, Flashslip hadn’t had to find much common ground between himself and Mini-Flash Phytolith to suddenly start wearing his heart on his tunic-hem.

“Exactly the same,” he affirmed. “Faking a friendship because that meant she could laugh at me the more. In gym class, or when she’d trigger my powers just to…”

He was rushing on a bit now. Was it the heat? Flashslip resolved not to let it get him in a muddle.

“But, Phytolith, there was a bigger picture,” he insisted, starting again. “Hurting my feelings wasn’t important. I can take being teased. I wouldn’t have gone to Auntie Green over that.”

“You went to Auntie Green?” repeated the gawping one.

Yes. Flashslip apparently had just owned up to that too. He was becoming light-headed.

“I had to,” seemed the response, or rather the recovery. “There’s a lot more to what 4-H-N’s up to than getting the better of us at Flashball and on the flight-simulator, Phytolith. She’s in deep. That girl’s nothing but trouble. She wasn’t only giggling that we didn’t know how to play as well as her – there was a whole lot besides which she knew and we didn’t. Well, I’m putting a stop to it. For the sake of what The Flash Club stands for, or used to before the proliferation. For the sake of our galaxy and our future. For the sake of every boy who ever had to go up against that little delinquent nightmare and her maddening stuffy tricks in a match.”

So much for not getting muddled. From the looks of Mini-Flash Phytolith however, Flashslip had more than taken his interest.

“When you talked to Auntie Green,” that one breathed back, “did she mention the Ritual of Demand?”

Flashslip blinked.

“Yes, she did,” he replied in astonishment. “She said that the way things were looking now, it was probably going to come to that. But how did you know she’d – ?”

A clank and a bang and a loud crashing rush frightened both Mini-Flashes onto their feet in an instant. That fleeting stretch Flashslip knew a moment of never-to-be-forgotten terror, for the heated stones gave up all at once such an eruption of steam and smell that Mini-Flash Phytolith’s intimations of some obscure horrid fate seemed coming true. Though this turned out not to be the case, it was still as if the sports session Flashslip himself had alluded to had culminated in a shower which sapped what little 4-H-N had left the males of their strength and confidence. They stumbled amid the suffocating nebulosity until it finally dissipated, then glanced about them in rising dismay. Conduits inside the forcefield had opened at full flow, and even now ankle-deep swirls were slyly peering up the boys’ skirts.

Actualsis strode back in, attended by her fluttery flock. “So we enter the final!” she pealed. “Will the entrants get there at last, now that I’ve given them a real incentive to try and see my pants?”

TO BE CONTINUED