Disqualification Tablet, Chapter Two

“I’ll stop her, Joe!” shouted Flashtease, and before our hero could muster a word of caution the Mini-Flash bounded from his seat and gripped the top of the windshield in both hands, straightening his small body into a picture-perfect line and then flipping all the way over while curling up and continuing to spin. By the time he hit the racer’s scarlet apron he had become a whizzing sizzling ball of energy which bounced from that surface and soared to settle old scores, but the leering Solidity girl yanked back on her handbrake and unexpectedly curtailed the attack. Flashtease fell helpless through air she had never occupied, struggling out of his somersaults and resuming his tousle-haired tunic-flapping self, that he might clutch at the stern of the nearest hurtling craft and cling for dear life while his legs kicked frantically behind him.

The Solidity girl pulled her racer neck-and-neck with Joe’s. “Fancy that, I’ve been to Grindotron too!” she cawed down at Flashtease. “What have you got written on your spare pair, ‘I flew by the seat of my pants at Disqualification Tablet’ perhaps?”

Joe freed a hand and put numerous shots across the girl’s bow, forcing her to back off and climb, then as soon as she was out of the way our hero sped to catch the flailing Flashtease around the middle and lower him back into his seat before he ended up splattered on the road below. While they were about it the Solidity girl swept by them and vanished in a gaudy yellow blur.

“Are you well, my friend?” Joe asked at once.

“I’m fine, Joe, and I don’t feel that anything embarrassing just happened,” Flashtease replied primly. “You will however allow me to take the wheel, so I can sort out that horrid girl for good!”

Reversing their roles seemed to Joe the wisest move for several reasons, so after a minimum of gymnastics in and out of the racer’s confined footwell he and Flashtease had successfully switched and the latter was picking up the chase with all boosters fired to a vengeful roar. They were descending a long slope which ran parallel to Disqualification Tablet’s sunnyside. Determinedly gaining speed as he and darted in and out of the immediate competition, Flashtease included Mini-Flash Splitsville among that number and left her onyx contours in the dust for the second time since starting.

“One horrid girl down,” he muttered grimly to himself.

The diagonal was levelling out below, and it looked as if another tunnel was nigh, but there at the hill’s foot the butterfly’s considerable yellow abdomen was drawing up apace. Its tutu-clad pilot paled with panic on sight of the imminent foe, and bent double over her control-stick to work her wings to a fitful flutter until she somewhat resembled the vehicle she drove. Joe stood up in his seat.

“Still eager for a return to Collective values?” he inquired.

Fire flying from Joe’s outstretched palm trimmed the target’s flapping flanges in short order and knocked the Solidity girl’s knickers for a spin. She smacked the gravel a wailing whirlwind and finally ground to a halt, fetching up unhurt and seated between two smoking stumps where wings had been. Terrible indeed were her howls as the crimson-coated racer among a host of fellow competitors left her there useless in her stubby charred husk.

Flashtease was elated as he and Joe rounded the curve into the tunnel, but his joy was short-lived. For no sooner were our heroes in, than they were confronted once more by a black-painted tail-end holding down a comfortable lead on them.

“How does she keep doing that?” Flashtease almost shrieked.

This circle was of lesser radius than the previous two, and many of the racers were attempting to mount the slick sides and even complete a full spiral up and around and back again. Those few who completed such aeronautics in one piece were certainly leaving rivals behind, but Joe advised his companion: “Rein in the urge for stunt-driving, Flashtease, and stay on her. I for one have had my fill of this mystery.”

Identical-twin alien roadsters, otherworldly and driverless, were next in line for Mini-Flash Splitsville to overtake. This silent duo drew apart, but not to let her pass between them. Instead, bars of crackling electricity arced from their opposite hulls and met in the middle, thus stretching a deadly fence across the girl’s path.

“She’s not going to get past that pair of Veirls,” Flashtease proclaimed authoritatively, while Joe continued to watch.

Mini-Flash Splitsville, letting go the steering-wheel, stood up and threw her arms wide. In the gap between her prow and the Veirls, reality mimicked this gesture and parted like elevator-doors. The black-hued racer vanished into this opening, which immediately sealed shut, and then a second later shot out again from another portal which appeared in front of the electric barrier. Joe and Flashtease had time enough to glimpse Mini-Flash Splitsville sitting back down with a bump and putting her car into high gear, before she was gone.

Our hero drew a slow breath of deepest satisfaction, and hoped Flashshadow would keep her ephemeral little self squarely in his corner. She had truly delivered. A phase-shifting power which could even make it though energy-field obstructions – such as, for example, the Toothfire sensor-ray net that surrounded Planet Eshcaton. There, tearing up the road ahead, was his silver-haired hard-dragging jive-talking doorway to the temple. Joe reached for ignition.

“Now all we need do is win the race,” he informed Flashtease with a smile.

END OF CHAPTER TWO