Join the Club, Chapter Two

Vramm’s essential self, a red and white transforming robot, was on patrol by the monorail station minus his humanoid outer shell.

Mini-Flash Juniper emerged from the tunnel that led to her part of the camp. She was dressed now, long legs tight in stockings that stretched all the way to the tops of her thighs, which was as far as her school skirt reached in the opposite direction. The weather was too warm for cagoules, even though Juniper had been wearing hers the first time Vramm saw her, so today it was just the V-necked uniform sweater plus blouse and tie. A summer breeze lifted her long fair hair, blowing back its one brilliant lock of blue. Males of more organic composition than Vramm’s might have experienced a quickening of the heartbeat, at the very least, and likelier still that phenomenon Earthlings called butterflies-in-the-tummy. None of which was to say Vramm’s systems and servos didn’t immediately fall prey to the cybernetic equivalent of these, albeit for reasons other than the typical.

“Where’s the rest of you, Vramm?” was Mini-Flash Juniper’s first question.

“National Pentathletes,” Vramm rapped back at once. “In sentry mode. For Calvin. They went after him there once before, and a repeat-performance is a risk we can’t afford to take.”

It all came out sounding wrong to Vramm. He’d known it would. Every time, she put him on edge, simply by being calm and confident in just the way he wasn’t.

Although. That said.

There was something different about her today.

Vramm couldn’t help but notice, and he didn’t mean the bit of blue hair.

For one thing, he was fitted with an extensive suite of olfactory sensors, so was able to tell Mini-Flash Juniper was smelling her restlessness at him. That wasn’t even all, however. As Vramm watched she took several ponderous strides in no particular direction, and couldn’t have looked less like someone who had nothing more on her mind than to do so. Then she put her school shoes together, tucked in her middle, and dipped in front of Vramm to inspect for lengthy seconds a spotless pair of toecaps.

Again, there were males in the cosmos who wouldn’t have complained. Vramm on the other hand was becoming nonplussed, though he bided as patiently as he could.

“We girls are funny, aren’t we, Vramm?” Mini-Flash Juniper appealed to him at last.

Vramm opened his mechanistic mouth to point out he wouldn’t know.

“Take Sheila,” had issued from Mini-Flash Juniper well before he could. “Secrets and keeping your word are so important at her age. I remember what I was like!” and she snorted a loud artificial laugh, before continuing in the same breath: “But the worst of young girls nowadays, Vramm, is they don’t always know what’s good for them. That’s how someone older and more responsible ends up being branded a tattletale, just because she was only trying to do the right thing.”

Even Vramm’s high-speed processors needed a minute with this.

They were granted it however, for all of Mini-Flash Juniper’s knuckles suddenly seemed needed to coax the gusset of her nylons into sitting straight. That, and the cheesy-crackers bombardment which by now was making Vramm’s sensor-suite draw power from other sources finally hinted to him she was expecting some kind of response, although the Foundational Formula knew figuring out these females and their ways was hardly his primary function.

“Where’s Sheila?” he ventured.

A string of faltering syllables spilled from Mini-Flash Juniper’s lips. She couldn’t remember offhand when it was she’d been called a tattletale, but the hurt had never gone away.

“With Tessie at the crazy golf course,” Vramm repeated. “Right. I’ll take care of it.”

Apparently Mini-Flash Juniper showing vulnerability for the first time equalled an immediate switch on his part to macho-overdrive. Vramm didn’t even want to contemplate what she must be thinking of him right now. So instead he converted to rocket-powered dragster mode and tore away the quickest he’d ever done, throwing Juniper’s school pleats high above her Luttertons amid the subsequent dust-cloud, and Vramm just bet she wasn’t going to like that either.

The rivals had reached the watermill, whose large red fibreglass wheel turned with a rhythmical clunking. Sheila, still in the lead, was lining up to putt.

She wiggled herself into readiness.

“Last Duracell I bought was a dud,” commented Tessie. “Can’t think what’s just reminded me of that.”

Sheila ignored her and glared down at the ball.

Those revolving rungs could be cleared in one, but if she messed up her timing now…

“Ooh, Sheila, look!” Tessie cawed aloud.

This was really too much! “Just because you’re losing!” Sheila flung back indignantly, and only then raised her head in the direction Tessie indicated.

A big boy was drawing near.

He was already on the crazy golf course, walking steadily towards the girls.

“Must be one of the new Saturday to Saturdays,” Tessie continued, smiling.

Sheila had serious doubts about that. She knew about big boys on this camp, and the ones you had to watch out for were a permanent fixture. A wise girl would have watched out for them even if she hadn’t known they were monsters in disguise, and this one really looked the part. He was tall, and very good-looking, just as they always were at first.

And Tessie was supposed to know about them too.

Calvin had told her. Sheila had been there.

Surely not even Tessie could have paid so little attention?

“It’s your lucky day, carrot-top,” that one went on, her smirk more enormous than ever.

If Sheila had needed anything else to make her heart beat hard with the certainty something was terribly wrong, a veiled compliment from that particular quarter would have done it. She threw her putter down and stepped bravely over the boundary.

Good thing she knew what would do it for their uninvited guest in turn.

Just like that night at the disco. When it had worked just fine.

Erm…

Nothing was happening in the region of Sheila’s knickers. She blanched, eyes darting down that way, and tried again. Still nothing happened.

The big boy was studying her, curiously.

All Sheila could think to do was thrust her fingers beneath her skirts to grip her elastic leg-holes and give everything a vigorous shake with both hands. Yet even this desperate operation failed to wake the oilseed.

Chances were, it was dead.

END OF CHAPTER TWO