Delinquents, Chapter Two

4-H-N knew the girls, though she’d never spoken to them. Frequent visitors to the gym such as herself couldn’t but be aware of this widely-storied clique and the magnificent irony they beamed over Flashball courts and flight-simulators. When they trained on the latter they did so without any need for air-jets, and by all accounts played hard. They wore regulation tunics and boots as Mini-Flash Brace did, but unlike him were soon to graduate from these neophyte uniforms whereupon each girl would receive the honour of a Flash Club costume uniquely her own. Even now it went without saying the underwear glimpsed beneath their beige was never anything but the most expensive and absolute best this galaxy’s fledgling lingerie trade could furnish. Almost involuntarily 4-H-N gave her flouncy skirt a last tuck-in check, while concluding the white butt-frills really had been a mistake.

“We liked the way you handled that boy,” were Mini-Flash Meteor’s words of greeting to the clone.

“I won my match,” 4-H-N returned cautiously. “It’s only a game though.”

Mini-Flash Bobbypins, slender with long fair hair, was smiling.

“We don’t mean the simulator,” that one advised 4-H-N. “We’ve watched you do that ever so many times, though we were most impressed by what we saw. No, we mean what happened just now. We also watched that. It’s what made up our minds about you.”

4-H-N had no idea what to say to this.

“You must understand why it’s taken us a while,” resumed the arch Mini-Flash Meteor. “After all, our very own famous little hottie heroine-helper of kidnapped farns galaxy-wide, opting out of toasting it up night by night on the Rings of Xandreth? Squandering her celebrity instead here at this sock-stinky old pile, flying a beginners’-grade simulator intended for boys? We were not immune to a certain degree of bafflement, dearie.”

4-H-N pinked. Mini-Flash Meteor’s big brown eyes and little button-nose might have been the sweetest features in The Flash Club, but what glinted about her expression now was anything but adorable. There was no use 4-H-N’s trying to keep things hidden from a girl like that. Clearly Mini-Flash Meteor’s reputation for fearsomeness on the flight-simulator was well-deserved, if her aim with a catapult was anything like as good.

“My best friend in this galaxy is a Micro-Mallet series Grindo robot, OK?” 4-H-N explained with a sigh to the prettily inquisitive faces. “He let me fix some sockets on his back to stick my feet into. Don’t get me wrong, I gave up my Avion powers by choice, and back home I was doing just fine getting used to life as a dodo. But your quadrant’s not the funnest place to be when you were once able to fly. Not when every girl your age can do it already, and every boy’s going to be able to when he’s older.”

The smiles at this were universal, and 4-H-N could tell her listeners understood. Whether theirs was the kind of understanding that came with compassion as standard, however, was the one point on which she wasn’t quite ready to commit.

“It is a novelty,” Mini-Flash Meteor conceded at length. “A girl among Mini-Flashes in this day and age who’s not able to fly. Nevertheless, it takes all sorts, and the skills you’ve exhibited on that simulator more than make up for any disadvantages on your part. So the question is this, my little fluffy gantrative, how would you feel about making an upgrade from your present sad state of non-delinquency?”

Wherewith it was 4-H-N’s turn to receive an invitation. What the Mini-Flashes apparently planned to partake of went by a name she had never heard, and nor, if she was going to be honest, did it sound to her way of hearing like something especially nice. Her curiosity however was well and truly piqued by the evening’s intrigues thus far, as 4-H-N suspected any girl’s would have been, and the answer she returned with nearly no hesitation at all was:

“I’d totally be up for a tappy smell-bomb. It’s all I ever do.”

The Mini-Flashes hopped into their compact cosmic jalopies and cruised with 4-H-N to a venue some distance from the bright lights of Flash Club Headquarters and the astro-conurbation. In fact it looked to the clone like little more than an outer space roadhouse, with a dim smoky interior to match. The music playing wasn’t of the romantic and oddly old-fashioned kind typical to this galaxy, but was carried by a minimal bass with some hollow percussion knocking out here and there. It was eerie for 4-H-N to pick her way through the wafts of vapour across a board floor crowded with tables on every hand, each of which boasted a huddled group speaking infrequently and low. That notwithstanding, and even though on Earth this wasn’t the sort of establishment where you’d look for a collection of uniformed little girls in knee-highs, 4-H-N saw clearly enough that her strange companions effortlessly ruled this incongruous scene.

Leading her they strolled to a vacant spot and sat down, primly tucking their skirts underneath them. The clouds were emitting not from patrons’ cigarettes or pipes, but rather what looked to 4-H-N like chemistry-sets which she now noticed each table-top here was equipped with. Her Mini-Flash friends made themselves busy at once, mixing and heating multicoloured fluids from the various glass vials and test-tubes provided, while 4-H-N watched wondering.

The first concoction appeared to be ready. Glass beakers one by one were charged with a steamy dash of it and handed round to all, 4-H-N included. It was the most excited she’d seen her new friends thus far as they anticipated to each other what they called “getting their smell on.” Once every girl was holding a glass, the company as if choreographed brought the bases of these tapping down smartly on the surface of the table. There was just enough time for 4-H-N to observe the kinetic energy thus released trigger a chemical reaction that transformed liquid into gas, before the Mini-Flashes acting as one thrust their tiny noses deep into their cups. Thus were the first and second halves of this pastime’s peculiar appelation clarified in order.

Eyes rolled back in their sockets and gazed at the bare roof-rafters overhead. Glossy lips dropped softly open to wordlessly exhale long and slow. The girls with freckles were accentuating these with a dainty flush beneath. Mini-Flash Meteor’s shoulders had dropped, but amid eyelash-flutters suggestive of feverish butterflies she seemed to be swinging back to herself. There were some signs of recovery likewise from Mini-Flash Bobbypins, though generally speaking a narcotised daze prevailed.

4-H-N had to admit, she didn’t much like the feel of where this was going. But her beaker was sitting in front of her, and a minute from now the Mini-Flashes would all be waiting in expectancy. So she plucked up her nerve. They all looked happy, at least. If she kept reminding herself of that it might convince her this couldn’t do any harm. Tapping her glass in the way she’d been shown she put her face inside its brim and smelled hard.

Oh. Oh, what was that? Some suicidal dessert made from swirled toffee and fudge flavour yoghurt which had sat out in the sun a little too long? It was no kind of aromatherapy, not the sort of smelling that would help a girl relax or find inner balance. There was nothing good for you about this. That was what made it so indescribably delicious. The ravishing catalysis seemed no longer to have anything to do with 4-H-N’s cup but was rather rising from the sweet arms and legs of her new friends, about whom early doubts had been summarily dispelled by a sudden and steadfast conviction they were very much her kind of company after all. And 4-H-N would say something else, which was that this curiously mellow yet edgy music made perfect sense once you’d hit your stride on a night out with these girls. She was so drifting into their creamy pungent world.

What in the name of the two moons was it, 4-H-N managed at great length to articulate? And would it be alright for her to have another?

Something with a little more spice, Mini-Flash Meteor promised, passing fresh glasses round the grinning sorority. 4-H-N beamed right back at them, this was great. She tapped the new smell-bomb and sniffed, and wow, it was like cheese and onion crisps! So exquisite it even gave you a salty tingle on your tastebuds. Then it occurred to 4-H-N that her friends wouldn’t be aware what Planet Earth delicacy this new smell reminded her of, and that they surely deserved an explanation. Someone seemed to be providing one already though. Gradually 4-H-N realised that the ongoing voluble voice talking the Mini-Flashes through everything from the many diverse varieties of crisps to what to do when you were holding a sealed packet straight from the shop was in fact hers. She noted she’d accidentally mixed up the colour co-ordination for prawn cocktail and tomato ketchup, but then remembered the Mini-Flashes wouldn’t know so her academic reputation remained safe. Anyway, she pronounced, can any of you imagine a salt and vinegar tappy smell-bomb? One of those might be a bit much! It’d clear her out anyway, talk about fun with a supersonic lawnmower!

More and more beakers ensued, until 4-H-N felt saturated with every dirty devilish scent in this galaxy and both versions of hers. Some dipped her into dreamy rambling realms while others were so effervescent it was like swigging down a can of carbonated drink in one go, such that she withdrew from the empty glass all but spring-loaded. 4-H-N in her private thoughts considered how she’d known all along that putting on clean knickers had been a waste of time, because the ones she was wearing must by now be in change-them-at-arms’-length, strictly last-in-file going up the school stairs territory. Oh, wait, the Mini-Flashes were giggling and repeating her, she must have said it out loud. Not that even that was enough to raise a blush anymore. This was bliss.

Mini-Flash Bobbypins was matching her. She needn’t think she, 4-H-N, hadn’t noticed. Every other girl was going at her own pace but when 4-H-N smelled, Mini-Flash Bobbypins smelled. Then and only then, no more no less. What was that about? Well, Miss Mini-Flash Bobbypins needn’t bother going round concluding 4-H-N wasn’t onto her little game, whatever it was.

There was so much to tell the others however that 4-H-N couldn’t afford to to dwell on minor mysteries like that. Dylan and Phoenix, for one thing. You’re all thinking of this big Alliance poster-boy and girl but seriously, there’d been something different about them ever since they got back from the Arch of Titus. 4-H-N didn’t know what had happened in that battle, what Harbin had said or done, but something had got to them. She could tell. And don’t even get her started on her parents, they were a whole other story. 4-H-N wasn’t going to bore her friends with the details but just before the war, Mum had got with someone from way back – and it wasn’t even for 4-H-N to say in what exact sense she’d “got” with him, but she was more than happy to enlighten the Mini-Flashes as to what it looked like, and there, she’d said it. So now Mum and Dad were together again, just like that? Why had 4-H-N and her sisters been told next to nothing about what really happened? Maybe because Mum and Dad didn’t know how to cope with it themselves. Like not talking about that was going to make it go away.

4-H-N tapped like the full-stop that closed her penultimate paragraph, and smelled deeply. Ooh, frying doughnuts. That was appropriate because someone’s fat was about to be in the fire, 4-H-N knew that much. She’d told Joe. Joe, of all people. Yes, they were loyal Alliance Mini-Flashes so naturally they didn’t think any better of him than she did. But even so, he’d been the one she told. If there wasn’t any place for her among her family these days, she’d just leave. She’d find her destiny like all her siblings had done. And this evening so far felt like a great start, 4-H-N concluded grandly.

The soft strains and the Mini-Flashes’ silence were creeping up on her. There were no more tappy smell-bombs left. It was feeling like time to go, so 4-H-N made bold as to ask what was next?

Her new friends’ kittenish smiles stayed on. Why, next was the fun part, of course.

END OF CHAPTER TWO