Look Out, Mini-Flash Robin! Chapter One

When a sudden squall hit Flaban, it didn’t mess around. There had been no chance of going downhill to Wodding’s toystore all day. The weather had made of that steep gradient a rushing hazardous weir, and local residents were by now huddled in their hives and cocoons. At the hotel on the summit, Neetra and Mini-Flash Robin sat by a roaring fireplace while the worst of the storm lashed steadily against the darkening window-panes.

“Maybe you should have an early night, Robin,” Neetra suggested in a murmur. “You look exhausted.”

“Totes can’t make it out,” he sighed back. “Chap hasn’t been right all day, even though it’s not as if I was up late last night! Can’t even remember dreaming about anything in particular.”

Wearily he rose and untucked his pants. Neetra followed his lead.

Tonight, doing even that in front of him made her feel self-conscious.

“Robin,” she went on softly, almost shyly, moving near and blinking hard several times. She didn’t want him to see the teardrops which threatened to dot her eyelashes.

“You know I’ll keep you safe, don’t you?” our heroine whispered, faltering over the words. “No matter what happens.”

In all fairness to Mini-Flash Robin, he was probably allowed to look a little stupefied. Neetra didn’t see what it did to his expression when she followed up her promise with a kiss.

For by then she’d turned and fled the lounge, as her tears had really begun.

It was the hardest thing she’d ever had to do.

Those she’d devoted her life to resisting were the ones who used others as bait. Dimension Borg. Harbin. In her hotel room with the door locked Neetra sobbed bitterly a long while.

There wasn’t any other way.

Neetra knew that, not that it made it any easier. This time she was pitting her Four Heroes powers against one whose own bore comparison – phenomenal, mysterious, immeasurable by conventional science. Warning Mini-Flash Robin, the pair of them skipping Flaban at daybreak and going on the run…for all Neetra knew, these would have been futile gestures to her new friend. She had no idea of his reach. Change the game on him and he’d change it right back, striking when she wasn’t ready. Neetra’s only advantage lay in letting him come to her.

Thus far all he knew for certain was his two spies hadn’t returned. He was intelligent, more than sufficiently so to deduce Neetra’s part in that, which was something else she was going to have to watch out for. It was however a fair bet he’d send others tonight, to find out what had happened and finish the job.

Speaking of which.

There was another reason Neetra had had to keep all this secret from Mini-Flash Robin. She’d seen the sort of psionic material her new friend was apparently bent on harvesting from him, but why a mechanical war-god would want those particular memories and impressions was beyond her. Until she knew, she’d be fighting blind. If Neetra was going to face this enemy on even ground, she needed to determine just what it was he was after.

And that meant making herself acquainted with those aspects of Mini-Flash Robin on levels more intimate than she could claim to be right now.

Of all the demands of this desperate plan, using her telepathy thus was by far the one with which Neetra was least comfortable. Just such invasions of privacy had been the stock-in-trade of the human being she’d most abhorred. This was the kind of needs-must she’d hoped never to have to confront. It was the hollowest of comforts to remind herself of the one difference from Gala’s approach, which was that Robin would never know she was there.

Neetra heaved a heavy sigh over her dressing-table. The worst part was, she could see how it might have been funny if the stakes weren’t so high.

For there was a pragmatic side to that last point, as well as a principled one. She required reliable results. This wasn’t a consultation, it was field-study. Hence the psychic shielding.

Because Neetra suspected most boys, if she’d told them in advance she intended to watch, wouldn’t have done it the way they typically did.

She stood up, wiping her eyes a last time. Well. She’d probably left it long enough. It was past Robin’s bedtime on a day he’d been restless and flustered and now would be in need of winding down. No better conditions under which to, um, gather data.

The tactful euphemisms were already getting on her knickers.

Quietly Neetra undressed for bed. She couldn’t honestly have said why, except because of what this was going to be only a tiny bit like. Maybe once again she could cite a practical note. After all, it wasn’t like she’d ever done it before. It might turn out to be enough like the other thing for this to be the best way of going about it.

Neetra climbed under the covers, and then pulled them all the way up to the tip of her nose.

She officially felt a bit silly.

Someone’s in danger and this is how you’re going to save him. Four Heroes business is all. It’s no different to fighting Dimension Borg.

OK, it was a tiny bit different to fighting Dimension Borg.

Here goes.

Neetra closed her eyes, and effortlessly slipped imperceptible into the mind of the boy next door.

END OF CHAPTER ONE