Meteor's Tease

A giggle from directly behind made the boys jump. They whirled round as one, hearts in mouths, to gaze on the big brown eyes and button-nose of their least favourite female.

“You wouldn’t be so afraid, dearies,” Mini-Flash Meteor sang, finishing Flashslip’s sentence.

She was balancing along the edge of the rooftop, fearless. The male Mini-Flashes supposed they’d do likewise if they were able to fly.

“It’s as much your fault as it is 4-H-N’s!” cried Flashsatsumas indignantly.

Mini-Flash Meteor sauntered past him then hopped down from the wall, tunic blooming so that Flashsatsumas’s vision was filled not with beige but a sudden blaze of silky pink.

“Poor little obsolete-gender Mini-Flashes,” Meteor drawled, strolling past Flashbee and tweezing the tip of one antenna between finger and thumb, then stretching it back and releasing it so it twisted up with the other and he had to disentangle them both. “Cruelly compelled to do actual Flash Club duties for a change. Just imagine. I do hope you can get your money back on those front-row tickets you’ve doubtless purchased for our quadrant’s peachiest little performer.”

If Mini-Flash Meteor had made Flashsatsumas blush, it was nothing to the colour that rushed upon Flashslip’s cheeks at this.

“I’ll have you know we’re Alliance!” he fumed. “We don’t go gawping and gasping at Joe’s faction like some Mini-Flashes do!”

“I did detect something of a preference for the loyal kind of Flash Club girl,” Meteor returned archly, tossing back her flaming curls to cast a contemptuous glance in Flashsatsumas’s direction. Then she ascended, skipping aloft so lightly it was as if she danced on dust-dots that hung swollen with luminosity in the motionless evening air. The boys were left to those duller motes which carpeted the concrete at their feet.

“Be brave, little lookouts,” Mini-Flash Meteor teased from on high. “I’m sure our quarry’s had enough by now of terrifying the galaxy’s most helpless. And even in the event of danger, rest assured there are many girls out and about tonight besides myself. You have but to radio a plaintive plea for help, and one of us shall speed to your rescue.”

With that she swept off smirking, through heavens suggestive of ruddy thunderheads as the dome of luminosity completed its shade to twilight-cycle.

Somehow the sweet stuffy smell of the second gender always seemed to hang around after they were gone. Flashbee, still fiddling with his feelers, grumbled something about how it was just their luck she happened to be in town. Poor Flashsatsumas may have looked most hurt of all, while Flashslip’s thoughts ran endlessly on the way that girl had spoken to them.

She was only a neophyte. She still wore a beige tunic and boots. He and his friends were supposed to be seniors.

The things she said were true though. That was why it always smarted so.

Or at any rate, Flashslip corrected himself rather sniffily, she thought they were true.

It wasn’t like Mini-Flash Meteor was some galactic-level expert. In fact, it wasn’t like anyone really understood what she and her strange sub-species actually were.

And if she was going to go around practically daring them…

Most likely it was Flashslip who finally put the suggestion into words.

Both his friends felt the same however, and just possibly this wasn’t the only galaxy in the cosmos where too much thinking along such lines might have led three boys into trouble. Be that as it may, by the time the conurbation’s synthetic heavens had shaded to the lilac of their twilight cycle, Flashslip’s space-car was chugging over alleyways with the three male Mini-Flashes inside.

It wasn’t that they weren’t still frightened. Dubious fuel kept their engine rumbling on regardless of the many good reasons for it to lie silent, a mysterious distillate the boys had discovered soon after the departure of their uninvited guest. Reminding certain stuck-up girls who’d graduated and who was still a neophyte lent it much of its potency, though for Flashbee there was also a dash of how he still couldn’t get his feelers to sit right, whereas Flashsatsumas would have argued its kick came of his being perfectly capable of asking had he wanted those shoved in his face. As it was also one-eighth part wishing they’d all lived in the galactic golden age, topped off by a stiff shot of not needing to be rescued by any gender besides their own, the boys couldn’t but be secretly worried so volatile a mixture might lead them to stall at the least opportune moment.

Flashslip gripped his steering-wheel. At least with three pairs of eyes restlessly scanning the streets below, they were certain to stay on top of things.

Just as long as their enemy wasn’t already on top of them.