Delinquents, Chapter One

The first blast always flipped 4-H-N’s ponytail upside-down so it stood higher than the top of her head. Suspended a foot or so above the floor-vent she pointed her toes at this starting-spot and waited, fast-moving currents rushing past her legs and arms and cheeks. What the wind was doing to her skirt was everything you signed up for when you played Mini-Flash sports, but 4-H-N hoped her opponent was enjoying any quickened heartbeats prompted by that view because she reckoned it was good for one more at most. Turbines and bellows beneath the arena’s deck were fast recovering their breath after the preliminary push, with a view to raging at full fury. Sure enough, subsequent to the interval 4-H-N had estimated she shot heavenwards like a surface-to-air missile, her ponytail now plastered against the back of her sweater and her skirt sleek and streamlined over knickers and thighs.

Fast one to begin on. System must be playing for keeps today. 4-H-N saw she was travelling too speedily to alight on top of this column when she reached its summit, but that was OK, she could see another slower one over her shoulder. So, on being ejected just as rudely as anticipated, all she had to do was calculate the distance to the pillar behind and think of her head as a pivot. Riding out the momentum hundreds of feet up she relaxed her shoulders, arched her back and kicked her legs over, such that everything else tumbled one way or another into place and 4-H-N finished her inversion kneeling safely on the aeolian foam that rounded off the gentler gusher.

From this vantage-point 4-H-N surveyed the flight-simulator, a great square room full of ledges and oblique surfaces interspersed with the rippling visual agitations of a myriad air-jets all blowing full force. In no time at all she sighted her target, little and dark-haired in tunic and knee-boots, travelling up a current several hundred feet off. At that sedate pace he was surely planning to perch, and he had his back to her. Good thing you look cute in beige, Mini-Flash Brace, if you’re going to be making entry-level errors like that.

With a smirk 4-H-N raised the device she held in her hand, which resembled a square-ended pistol with a grip but no trigger. Using her other hand she pulled on its spring-loaded stock, which slid back to full length and in so doing rolled what looked like a large ping-pong ball out of its cartridge and ready into the tray. Mini-Flash Brace popped from the top of his pillar and finished in a crouch on cue, his tunic-skirt completing every motion several seconds after the rest of him. Blue spotty ones again? Well, whatever. Letting go the stock she pinged him right in the middle of his polka-dots.

The projectiles were anaphasic and vanished on impact, which was why participants needed no protective clothing. A slight sting was all, though this mercy didn’t seem to be much appreciated by Mini-Flash Brace. As encoded impulses from the disintegrating ball illumined the first of three bulbs on the electronic scoreboard to indicate a point in 4-H-N’s favour, the boy Mini-Flash whipped round rather lit-up about the face himself. With one hand clasped to the place he’d been hit he glared at the girl.

Giggling, 4-H-N set off down a descending sweep of thermals, her empty gun swinging from one hand. The summits of these staggered geysers made convenient stepping-stones for her to hop on tippy-toes from higher to lower. When this strange staircase brought her near the simulator’s boundary she made sure to slap with her free palm a lighted wall-panel as she passed. The molecules of a new ball instantaneously cohered within her weapon and clattered into place in its chamber.

Mini-Flash Brace must have found one too, because two vengeful volleys had whizzed by 4-H-N’s head. Now she was charting his course as he jet-jumped along the middle heights to close in on her, no doubt loaded for bear. Time, in that case, to offer him a target he wasn’t going to be able to resist. At the foot of the billowy steps fumed the source of one ferocious fount. 4-H-N ducked inside it without ado, daring Mini-Flash Brace to follow.

That he did, as a glance behind told 4-H-N seconds later, though the sheer velocity of this roaring tunnel meant that in that brief time she’d already gained quite a lead. Pursuer and pursued matched each other for pace as they cannoned in single-file for the ceiling, 4-H-N switching eyes-front again so her opponent wouldn’t see her secret little smile. She pictured him though with face upturned into the frantic flow, gawping ahead at the fanning petals of her skirt’s pink innerside which hid her top half from sight. It was a funny-looking flower she’d transformed into, for it had two stalks which ended in the soles of her shoes, but 4-H-N suspected these were less distracting for Mini-Flash Brace than the elasticated white silk heart of this pretty polyester poppy.

Smugly she timed him, one heartbeat to thrust his catapult higher than his nose, another to fumble with its slider, and one more to take aim at the all-too compelling bullseye. On the expiry of that third throb however 4-H-N was gone from the mighty air-spout’s mouth, outstripping an awkward ball which finally flew after her. She for the second time in the same contest somersaulted to less demanding climes as she knew how to do, while Mini-Flash Brace, who lacked that kind of aeronautical experience, blew with feet kicking into open space. He was in for a soft landing however, since an angled trapdoor had opened directly in the patch of wall his haphazard trajectory was about to bring him up against. Scarlet-cheeked with legs askew and blue-spotted underwear once more on show, the Mini-Flash splatted straight into the sticky embrasure of a waiting tentacle-trap.

Amid this adhesive nest of black rubber tendrils that slopped around his struggling bare limbs and clung on with suction-cups, Mini-Flash Brace struggled and wriggled desperately to extricate himself from infuriating restraints that were all stretch and no give. 4-H-N on the ledge where she’d touched down smartly drew back her slingshot-stock and thwacked the bound boy long-distance, putting herself within a point of victory. Then she took flight again, merrily dancing over fountainheads and riding rushing tubes until the last of these propelled her into the tentacle-trap’s nearest possible neighbourhood, close enough even for a little stuffy girl-scent to find its way to her fitful rival’s straining nostrils.

Momentum permitted 4-H-N a cheesy grin and a twirl, teasing the spare feelers which started to wave in her direction, for immediately she dropped into free-fall with her back to the captive and let her skirt parachute in front of him. Want another try at twanging these silky whites? That was the invitation she sent him as another current caught her up and swept her aloft. Mini-Flash Brace tore himself free of the tentacle-trap at last, and 4-H-N, keeping an eye on him as the distance between them widened, read first in the scowl he shot her and then in every indignant movement that followed a reply that he couldn’t believe she thought he was stupid enough to take that bait again. He was scrabbling for the ground instead, where presumably he’d seen an illuminated reload-panel.

Unfortunately for him, so had 4-H-N, and hers was in a place he wouldn’t have thought to look because he was never going to be able to reach it. The secret to controlling this game was letting your opponent think they had the upper hand. Hurtling to the end of her powerful jetstream 4-H-N tucked and rolled so she came to rest upside-down, standing on the ceiling, her skirt inside-out but the strong gusts that had carried her there still pressing down on top of her head to pin her in place. She tapped one foot on the light she’d spied shining here in the centre of the roof, and clinched the match while Mini-Flash Brace was still yards from the ammunition he’d been reaching for. Final score, three-nil. Not an uncommon outcome when 4-H-N was flying the Flash Club simulator.

Agreeable as such modest triumphs were, she didn’t neglect to tread on her plate one more time before seeking the showers. That was a habit you got into. You never knew when you might need to have a spare ball handy.

4-H-N decided on reflection that a panty-change would be less trouble than an actual sonic shower after a workout as mild as that one had been. Slipping down her her slightly sweaty silkies as she walked along the exit-corridor and stepping out of them didn’t pose her too much of a trip-hazard. She shoved the damp pair into her bag and fished out her spare ones, which had rows of little white ruffles in back and so weren’t for flying the simulator, not if a girl wanted to be taken seriously. The clone poked her shoe-clad feet clumsily though the leg-holes one after the other then tugged everything up and into place with barely a check in her stride. She was just sorting out the last few folds of skirt that had become tucked up inside her waistband when Mini-Flash Brace caught up with her.

He was still very hot about the cheeks, and looked keen on kicking off a spirited debate. 4-H-N however was out of patience. She couldn’t keep having this conversation with him every night.

“It’s just an excess of boy-hormones, Mini-Flash Brace,” she informed him, not stopping. “Simmer down and comm-channel me on Grindotron later, and we’ll talk properly about how it went.”

Mini-Flash Brace however wanted to talk now, so much so that one impassioned complaint ran garbling into the next. Second gender going round thinking they’re so much better than us – interfering with boy-only sports on which The Flash Club’s traditions were built – showing off. To illustrate this final point he clutched scornfully at 4-H-N’s hemline and gave her clean knickers an unneeded airing.

She slapped his hand away. “Did Neetra find you this much of a creep?” 4-H-N demanded.

Mini-Flash Brace pushed her hard so she bumped into the wall behind. Next instant her catapult was out of her bag, locked and loaded and poking its blunt bore at the very last place any male Mini-Flash would want to take even an anaphasic projectile.

“Don’t start up about below the belt,” she told him coldly. “Where I come from that’s what we think about boys who hit girls. Now, want to find out whether point-blank range smarts as much as they say it does? Especially where this one’s going next time you declare a flip-up Friday.”

Her threat seemed to do the trick on Mini-Flash Brace’s confrontational urge, if the swiftness with which his blushes drained away to pallid green was any indication. Hastily he stalked off.

4-H-N felt rather weak, and leaned back against the wall. Who’d have thought Mini-Flash Brace would start being like that? They’d often partnered together on these evenings here at the Flash Club Headquarters gymnasium. All of a sudden 4-H-N felt she could quite fancy giving her armpits a quick sonic-blast after all, just to help scour away that nasty squabble too. Putting her slingshot back in her bag she retraced her steps for the girls’ changing room.

Stepping inside, however, gave her a start. It wasn’t that female Mini-Flashes were a surprising sight, given where she was. It was that they weren’t showering or getting changed, just lounging instead along the benches with their eyes on the door, looking like they were expecting her. Which, as 4-H-N was presently to discover, they were.

END OF CHAPTER ONE