Va-Va-Vramm, Chapter Two

The toyshop was at the bottom end of the high street and the bus station just across the road from there. To this latter Mini-Flash Juniper led the way, explaining that its combination of shelter from the weather and open-air spaces were what they were going to need. They quickly found out a run-down old bay, some distance from the rest and no longer in service, under whose awning they hurried out of the rain.

Squeezing together side-by-side on the narrow bench they then proceed to unpack Vramm. “And we’ll all have some chocolate cake right after we’ve brought him to life,” Flashsatsumas promised Robbie.

“I’m forgetful,” Juniper told him in addition, truthfully enough. “So you’ll likely have to remind me to eat mine, Robbie. That can be your job.”

Then she herself would be able to help Flashsatsumas, who was wont to pass out on such occasions. Robbie smilingly acquiesced at once, most excited about it all.

There seemed to be all sorts of bits and pieces to Vramm, and both Mini-Flashes were ready to admit they were a little out of their depth. The robot that seemed his essential self could be slotted inside a larger form, which was hollow and resembled a human male encased in bulky battle-armour. Accomplishing this operation, however, was as far as Flashsatsumas and Mini-Flash Juniper ultimately decided to take things. To them, Vramm’s weapons and accessories represented not so much technology they knew well, but rather guesswork about the same which might have been made during their galaxy’s stone age. Not wanting to start off on the wrong foot by plugging something where it had no business to be, they deemed the rightful owner best qualified to assemble himself. Thus Juniper zipped her cagoule and braved the elements to lay everything out on the tarmac of the bus-bay, standing Vramm upright in his outer shell, and then arraying guns and shields and detachable wheels wherever there wasn’t a puddle. Last of all she set down the piece at whose purpose she and Flashsatsumas had been well and truly stumped, another robot, this one of dwarfish stature by comparison to Vramm. Unlike him it boasted no moving parts, but was cast from a single mold in purple-coloured rubber.

Here Robbie watched with especial interest, wondering why his new friends would do that after having said twice they only wanted goodies.

Still, they were older, which meant they knew best, and it wouldn’t have been good manners to start chipping in. So Robbie held his peace and looked on, as the girl scurried back underneath the overhang and the boy rose to stand beside her, rotating the orange-coloured capsules on the forearms of that funny dress he wore. Then together the pair of them turned to the damp dripping Vramm on the tarmac, with so decisive an air as to reassure Robbie beyond all doubt they had the situation well in hand.

Superhuman powers were necessarily invisible when you played this sort of game, which was why that part didn’t come as any surprise to Robbie.

It did however make him blink when Vramm really did come alive.

Suddenly that one was swelling in size as genies did in books Robbie read, his helmeted dome already level with the rain-streaming roof. He was moving too, the manlike visage of his outer shell contorting from a dozen different emotions, while his mighty mechanical arms amazed the windswept welkin.

Flashsatsumas swooned clean away. Given the circumstances, Robbie might have expected him to be a little better-prepared.

That thought however was fleeting, for next second Robbie felt a wicked pinching grip as of tiny hands about his shorts-seat and rain-slicker, and then he was borne aloft through breathtaking torrents to the cold swirling sky. For an instant Vramm’s vast shape span beneath him, as the safety of the bus shelter swept away into darkness.

Why didn’t the girl who was still there do something?

Unluckily for Robbie, that girl was gone.

She’d been replaced by an Earthling named Jenny, who remembered nothing of the day’s events, and knew less of transforming robots and their ways than Robbie himself did.

It wasn’t the first time something like this had happened to Jenny lately. In fact she seemed to be having a very strange holiday, and her memory-blackouts were the least of it.

She saw at once she was back in town, rather than on the camp, and it was raining just like last time. The boy outstretched at her feet was one of the friends she’d come with then, not that Jenny could call to mind his name, but his fashion-sense would have been hard to forget. As for the other, smaller boy, what Jenny noticed most about him was that he was being spirited away by some rubber robotic Rumpelstiltskin. Across the storm-slashed concourse that same purple imp alighted with its hostage atop a double-decker bus, which had just commenced pulling out for the high road.

Last on Jenny’s list of things that were a little out of the ordinary was the giant in a space-suit towering above, paraphernalia heaped hugely at its feet.

“Ready to roll out?” this one asked her.

Without waiting for a reply it opened its chest-compartment, which was apparently hinged at the head, so that everything from blank-featured fleshy face to waistline swung upwards like an ironing-board. Before Jenny’s astonished eyes a red-and-white robot emerged and immediately started to transmogrify, landing on the asphalt in the shape of some vehicle like a rocket-powered go-kart or bobsled. Bits of apparatus including the largest gun, which was bigger than Jenny was, then proceeded to leap from the ground by themselves and lock on to the fuselage. The engine beneath was already running, as though to drop a hint.

Jenny didn’t even know where to begin.

“You mean you’re going after that little boy who was kidnapped?” she asked the race-car. “Well, good! Looks to me like you’re the only one who can rescue him. But why do you think I’m coming? There’s nothing I can do!”

“That’s not what my sensors are telling me,” the car declared.

“I can’t help what your sensors are telling you,” returned Jenny rather acidly. “Besides, someone needs to stay behind and take care of this other boy.”

“Sentry mode!” shouted the race-car, and it wasn’t addressing Jenny. Right away the great-faced empty outer shell strode on its own accord to where Flashsatsumas lay, on dry pavement under the awning, spilled slices of chocolate cake strewn about him. Jenny had to admit any boy would be safe, watched over by that thirty-foot-tall staring unselfish presence. Briefly she reverted to a childhood reading of Oscar Wilde which had never happened.

The race-car revved again, apparently near its limit.

“If I say yes, will it make you stop that?” cried Jenny, who’d just passed hers.

This time it was she who didn’t wait for an answer, but flung a leg onto and over the turret. There were no seats, so Jenny had to content herself with riding face-first and no doubt laddering her stockings six ways from Wednesday, which she had a vague feeling today was. At long last her new partner kicked his slick tyres for a spin and shot squealing from the lot, a spray of puddle-water fanning behind him.

“I still don’t see why you need a grammar school girl,” grumbled Jenny as she clung on tight. “What am I meant to do about evil enemy robots? Strangle them with my panties?”

“Thought I was the one low on confidence,” the other couldn’t but comment.

END OF CHAPTER TWO