Plastic With Die-Cast Parts, Chapter One

A five-inch-tall Mini-Flash Juniper lay smiling in her recessed bed of transparent plastic. Mini-Flash Robin, cradling the rigid card in both hands, looked in on her with longing.

“I’d totes take this home with me and keep it forever,” he moaned.

“They’d totes expect you to pay for it first,” Neetra reminded him. “I chose you as my assistant for this business-trip, Robin. So can you put that thing back and…assist?”

Heaving a wide-mouthed sigh the Mini-Flash obediently trotted across the toyshop carpet in his bumping beige tunic, and with visible reluctance hooked the packaged action figure back on a rail which already bore Mini-Flash Juniper pentuplets suspended in single-file. Typically, Robin couldn’t even do that without knocking into the entire Four Heroes display. Several other action figures were dislodged and scattered to the floor, while a Plunder Dacks bonked and cartwheeled wildly into the path of something that threatened to do the red-painted representation of his rubber pants some damage.

Neetra took to her toes and hurried after him, bobbing down into a picturesque kneel as she gained Dacks’s landing-site. These days she wanted to roll her eyes every time she involuntarily popped such a move. At this rate she’d still be making like the little girl of The Four Heroes when she was getting on for forty-three. The pilot of the trundling conveyance meanwhile, having been going slow anyway because he was indoors, put on the brakes in time for his tank-treads to rest comfortably above Dacks’s boding visage.

“Someone better put this boy in a two-pack with Petunia,” remarked Neetra, picking him up. “Then she could keep him out of trouble, like the real one does.”

Neetra stood, prettily smoothing her skirts and cringing again. The ample occupant of the caterpillar-tracked wheelchair smiled up at her. As it happened he was a caterpillar himself, a huge one, each fat fleshy segment of his reclining body as round and stuffed as an airline pillow. It was not so much that however as his formal pinstripe, cleverly tailored so as to give a little sleeve and cuff to each of his innumerable small stubby feet, which conferred on him so proprietorial an air that Neetra knew him at once from their prior communications.

“Mr. Wodding?” she breathed.

“Oh, please, just Wodding,” chuckled the genial grub. “We don’t believe in titles here on Flaban.”

Neetra was still holding Plunder Dacks. In the name of the two moons. It looked like the important visiting dignitary from Nottingham had reached a decision on where her pocket-money was going this week. Mini-Flash Robin had by now hurried over to her side, so she shoved the action figure into his arms then curtsied to Wodding at once. Appearances to the contrary, this wasn’t another instance of recurrent little girl-ism. It was rather a symptom of her turning into a Mini-Flash, Neetra’s second most pressing social concern.

Wodding however proved a hatched diplomat. He wouldn’t be thanked for agreeing to receive Neetra, affirming it was his galaxy who owed The Four Heroes a debt of gratitude not the other way around. Nor would he have any talk of getting down to business right away, not after the journey she and her young aide had had. Nereynis might be on the map these days but was still light-years from anywhere else, and it wasn’t like Flaban itself was exactly the centre of the civilized quadrant! So what Wodding proposed was nothing more strenuous than a tour of his humble premises, and then he wanted Neetra’s word she’d think only of the dinner they were hosting tonight to welcome her.

She, relenting, grinned and took the tiny paw Wodding proffered from among his many. It had in fact somewhat piqued her curiosity to be surrounded by likenesses of friends and family in action figure form. Mini-Flash Robin, however, Neetra noticed was starting to fidget. The toy of Mini-Flash Juniper seemed to make him as restless as the real one did. So our heroine gave her assistant the afternoon off, and once he was on his way to the hotel told Wodding she’d love to know more about his trade.

“Well,” that one commenced, firing up his chair again and leading the way knowingly. “I do believe when I arrived, you were just asking about this item?”

Neetra looked where he was indicating, and blinked in surprise. “Oh, there really is a Plunder Dacks and Petunia gift-set!” she exclaimed.

“Yes indeed,” said Wodding. “The manufacturers are hoping to shift the last of these unsold Nereynis Incident Petunia units. There’s a new version on the way, you see. Something they’ve only just perfected, and quite ingenious. I’ve read the press-release. She’s going to come with a small capsule of perfumed gel, which you slot into a compartment in her back. Switch her on, and out come heart-shaped bubbles, just like the real thing!”

“She’s got such a marketable power,” Neetra cried. “Nothing like mine. You can’t do anything with mine,” and she snatched up an action figure of herself. “Except move her from one part of your bedroom to the other and then say I’ve teleported. Talk about hours of endless fun. That’s really going to hold its own against a Petunia that blows real bubbles. I bet,” she continued to Wodding, with some spirit, “I’ll never have a fancy battery-operated special feature. I’m stuck in the era of toys that expect you to use your imagination.”

That said, Neetra flung the figure into her shopping-basket. “I’m still having her,” she declared. Then she plucked a Petunia and Plunder Dacks twin-pack, all four of her sisters, her parents and a Joe to bring back to Nottingham for him. “Not that I’m taking advantage of your generous offer of complimentary action figures,” she added to Wodding.

“I made you the offer, and I meant it,” he laughed. “Please, help yourself.”

In that case. Neetra hesitated a moment at Mini-Flash Robin’s favourite stand, weighing up what would do more harm than good. She decided, and chose a Mini-Flash Juniper for him.

“I’d feel a bit mean otherwise,” she confided in Wodding. “It comes with a condition, but I can have a chat with him about that after dinner.”

“Oh, keep your juniors on a tight leash,” replied her host approvingly. “Only way. Seems a nice enough lad though. Now, let me talk you through the new Limb Four range. Rushed into production after that recent contretemps with The Foretold One, these have been flying off the shelves. You’ll be the first to point out Schiss-Zazz wasn’t there, but call it artistic license. Those double spring-loaded shears of his have always made him a top seller…”

END OF CHAPTER ONE