Of Traps and Lace, Chapter Two

The restaurant’s back-exit let onto an alley with two mouths. While most of the Mini-Flashes went out front to scare Petunia and Dacks in that direction, the remainder waited in their parked cars and covered both escape-routes. At one end of the alleyway brooded Mini-Flash Meteor, and at the other sat Mini-Flash Bobbypins with 4-H-N. Bobbypins had in an understated way been quite insistent about this arrangement, and it wasn’t long at all before she revealed why.

“I’m glad we’ve got this little chance to chat, 4-H-N,” were her confidential words. “You know how I mentioned a bit ago you’re bringing something to the group that Meteor never did? Well, I’m not the only one saying it. Change may be afoot,” she finished significantly.

4-H-N listened. It wasn’t that she hadn’t seen this coming.

“And if it is,” Bobbypins continued, “I just want you to know I’m in your corner. So are a lot of the girls.”

With her perfect pink cheeks and swishy silver-blonde hair, Mini-Flash Bobbypins had always looked too much the goody two-shoes to have ever had 4-H-N fooled. Her falseness and sneakiness just now would have made her downright impossible to like, even for a girl who hadn’t to got to know her while dodging her pot-shots with rock-hard fire-pearls. 4-H-N stayed in character, which was all Bobby ever did anyway, especially with this cloak-and-dagger stuff.

“Forgive me if I don’t start doing cartwheels, but you know these tunics,” she scoffed aloud. “Like I’m even bothered who’s in charge. I can take it or leave it.”

“Then I hope you take it,” said Mini-Flash Bobbypins, in such a markedly different voice that 4-H-N had to turn to her and look.

“I’ve hoped so since you joined,” Bobbypins went on, faltering as if this was the first time she’d ever had to say such things. “I just think it’d be…nicer, with you. You didn’t leave me in that space-sponge. I’ve not forgotten that.”

4-H-N was wordless a long time. This was more than she’d reckoned on when she started her act. At great length she gave the other girl something between a grimace and a grin.

“Let’s get through tonight, Bobby,” said she. “Try and sit tight in that corner until then.”

As if on cue Petunia blundered out the back-exit that moment, Dacks at her elbow. 4-H-N, Bobbypins and Meteor climbed from their cars at once, while the rest of the gang ran back around to reinforce the guard and block the restaurant door. The Grindotron camera hovered at hand, documenting it all.

To Plunder Dacks, Petunia looked like a lovely lone flower of some or other unnamed genus surrounded by nasty crackly beige canker-blossoms. The tragic botanical mise-en-scene he’d crafted was frankly more than he could bear. Bravely rooted stood his bloom, but Dacks could see her pale milk-bottle stalks were trembling and her petticoat-edged petals all aquiver as querulously she challenged the wicked weeds: “I’ll have you know my friend and I were enjoying ourselves before you came along and ruined our evening!”

“Ooh, they were enjoying themselves,” cawed one of the Mini-Flashes. “Bet he was anyway, dressed the way she is!”

Petunia flushed.

“For a girl who’s never ever done anything like that before, I seem surprisingly proficient at it to listen to you!” she declared, hands on hips.

“For a girl who’s never ever done anything like that before, you seem surprisingly proficient at it to look at you,” Mini-Flash Bobbypins smirked.

There were general sniggers. 4-H-N strode forth.

“Auditions for Hamlet are over, Bobby,” she pronounced. “Now listen, Petunia, and you, whatever your name is. There are things you have to know, things Joe hasn’t told you. I need you to understand why it’s not OK to wear The Four Heroes’ insignia in his name. And afterwards, when you know the truth, if you promise me you’ll think about what I said…”

4-H-N took a deep breath. Here was the part she’d not got round to running by the Mini-Flashes, and she couldn’t honestly say how they were apt to receive it.

“…then you can go.”

Even 4-H-N’s camera seemed to freeze. The stunned silence however didn’t last long. Mini-Flash Meteor’s tones were terrible.

“Not so long as there’s a sole scintilla left in this energy-based constitution, fluffy one. It’s my ink. Relieve her of it, Mini-Flashes, and I’ll do the job myself!”

“Not like that, you won’t!” shouted 4-H-N. Those who had started for her hesitated a second time. Once they would have obeyed without question, but it turned out Bobbypins was right. They were indeed living in an epoch of change.

“I told you,” 4-H-N said to Mini-Flash Meteor. “It’s not enough just to do it. I have to make her see.”

“What I see is you’d sooner be swooning over her pin-ups of Joe than making good on your boast,” said Meteor.

Some insults ran the risk of going too far. 4-H-N fought hard to keep her cool, but outward signs of the struggle showed, and Mini-Flash Meteor wouldn’t have been Mini-Flash Meteor if she hadn’t perceived it.

“You and he go back how far?” she pressed on, oozing bane. “You fought by his side how long? And how frequently during that fabled forsaken friendship did the sacred stuffies that saved us in the Nereynis Incident fail to stay snugly tugged up?”

It wasn’t the sort of accusation any girl would have particularly appreciated. 4-H-N however in that instant was back on Drenthis. Once. Once, he’d made her do that.

She flew at Mini-Flash Meteor and smacked her sweet little face.

Spinning back to herself 4-H-N felt dizzy, though she guessed she wasn’t alone in that. The dark lot was all of a commotion, and even despite her daze 4-H-N was struck by how purposeful the Mini-Flashes seemed, less like they were in a panic than a well-practiced procedure for which they’d just been given the go-ahead. They may have looked like ordinary girls in this galaxy, but there were times 4-H-N couldn’t figure them out at all. What made much more sense to her was the sight of Petunia bolting with her boy in rubber pants and successfully making a break for it amid the confusion. Inevitable, in fact, was what 4-H-N called that. Duly she popped it onto her fast-lengthening list of problems.

“Time we made ourselves scarce, Dacks!” proclaimed Petunia as they panted down the high road holding hands. “Things back there look like they’re getting pretty serious!”

“Right, Petunia, and I think perhaps one night out with those friends of yours was enough!” stated Dacks.

“More like more than enough!” was his companion’s verdict.

4-H-N had to shield her eyes as gloom was abruptly banished by a harsh glare suggestive of spotlights. The Mini-Flashes had hit the headlamps on their two parked cars. She and Meteor faced each other across a stark yellowish arena, their sharp-outlined shadows making surreal shapes on the fluorescent-flooded pavement. The camera close by was a silhouetted blob, and beyond this 4-H-N could just make out the other gang-members gathered in the blackness of the boundaries, continuing to blockade both ways out. Each pair of unblinking blinders stared down on the stage as these spectators did, steady, pitiless, anticipating.

This quadrant seldom skimped on imagery, 4-H-N gave it that. Nor would it have surprised her if this was what Bobby had meant by all her talk about corners.

“Sorry, I forgot my switchblade,” was the best she could do.

“Too bad,” Mini-Flash Meteor sang. “I didn’t.”

She swung an arm out to the side and clapped her palm on the camera’s round belly. What punctured the opposite swell from within really did look to 4-H-N like a knife, one whose flat had caught the dazzle of the car headlights, so viciously vivid to its tapering tip was Mini-Flash Meteor’s energy-emission. With an awful gasp altogether too much like that of a living thing, the camera’s baglike body sagged in on itself and slopped upon the paving-stones. Meteor drew back a toecap and with more spite than was called for spurned the skin out of sight.

“My lifelong policy on other people’s toys,” said she.

Rising to a middle height the Mini-Flash held battle-ready, reigniting her belligerent blade. Flight and power-projection. Two capabilities that didn’t come as standard with 4-H-N’s physis, however much that form stood comparison to Meteor’s in other respects. The phrase “fair fight” had never featured much in these girls’ collective lexicon.

“Your move, dearie,” said Mini-Flash Meteor with an acid smile.

Obligingly, 4-H-N pushed the button on her wristwatch.

Micro-Mallet rammed Mini-Flash Meteor from behind, bowling her headlong for the floor. She and her fancy expensive knickers were still seconds from splatting when 4-H-N’s toes quit terra firma and she twirled, tunic-skirt riding high over less luxurious ones ever so slightly more gracefully displayed. Now facing away from the alley she slipped the soles of her boots into Micro-Mallet’s sockets as he swooped, and was skateboarding skyward before Meteor had completed her last undignified tumble.

With tiny teeth clenched the Mini-Flash was fearsome as she rose. Out from under her skirt she whipped her collapsible Flashball, which puffed to full size in the flick of a wrist.

Meteor struck like her namesake. She had aimed not at 4-H-N’s head but the reverse of her knees, taking her unawares in the one spot that would not only tip her backward into nothingness, but also have her unwittingly kick Micro-Mallet out from under her and throw off his trajectory in an uncontrollable spurt of acceleration. Wildly he pranged a rooftop’s ridge, mangling most of his undercarriage as half-scrapped he wheeled helpless behind the horizon.

That girl could really throw. Good at sports, good at making people hurt each other. Mini-Flash Meteor’s two greatest gifts right there.

Keep calm, 4-H-N. You know all about being up in the air.

It was just that little bit less scary when you still had Avion powers.

Turn, girl, turn. You can do it. It’s never going to be the happiest of landings but one thing it needs to be is face-down. Or to put it another way, ink-bottle up.

That’s the last place you want glass-splinters.

Crunch.

END OF CHAPTER TWO