Treasures, Chapter One

“Wodding,” said Neetra over breakfast. “Do you happen to have any idea what this is?”

Outside her hotel room window that morning had been cozily abutting hive-fronts, and below them a quaint county-seat cobbled lane. It was the first thing Neetra had checked after getting up. Now over the table she handed Wodding a crude drawing of what tramped about by night when that wasn’t so.

The huge grub took her study in three of his numerous digits.

“Oh-ho!” he exclaimed. “If he’s what you’re here for, I can put you onto several second-hand dealers. You were right to come to me. He’s not at all easy to find.”

“That hasn’t been my experience,” was Neetra’s reply.

She had to confess, she was a bit lost. Wodding too seemed perplexed by her answer, but with characteristic geniality he started up his tank-treaded tractor of a wheelchair and said: “Come. I’ve something at home that will interest you. I’d been meaning to invite you to the old humble abode, and it’s on our way to the store!”

Neetra, and Mini-Flash Robin beside her, jumped to their feet at once and untucked their underwear with simultaneous little snaps of elastic. At this rate she’d soon be every bit as much a Mini-Flash as him, thought our heroine to herself as together they set off, Wodding chugging away in the lead.

It had already become clear to Neetra why he needed the caterpillar-tracks. Flaban town was clustered about one single severe gradient, and from her hotel at the very summit plunged steeply to the pool whence expansive farming flatlands stretched. Wodding clung to the cobblestones with a grip of iron and rubber, carefully clacking along while Neetra and Robin followed on tippy-toes and tried their best not to slip. The pointed tips of those townhouse hives were staggered in accordance with the incline, such that the apex of one dropped well beneath that of its neighbour and the parallel silhouetted skylines directly overhead were as unto a pair of diagonal zigzags. Vaporous stirrings of the early morn promised proper Flaban moisture and heat once the day was at its height, and in the narrow slit of sun between the ends of each terrace Neetra glimpsed breathtaking vistas of open countryside towards which she felt she was free-falling face-first.

Presently the procession’s small-talk was interrupted by the arrival of someone Neetra and Mini-Flash Robin had met before. The latter, stumbling along, suddenly gasped as from over his shoulder skipped a Flaban girl some distance above the sloping street. Neetra knew her at once for the one from last night who somewhat resembled Mini-Flash Juniper, of which feat our heroine was quite proud, since the apparently nocturnal females of Flaban were almost too airy and light to make out on a bright morning swirling with cirrus. Or in other words, they were a bit like Flashshadow. There seemed to be many similarities between this manifestation of the second gender and The Flash Club’s so-called Special Program. Even the fact that these curious finned frilly creatures preferred to fly around without any clothes on was like Jenny again.

“Saw you at the pool,” the Flaban girl murmured to Mini-Flash Robin. “What’s your name?”

He, although having enough trouble on his downhill toil and shy on top of that, managed to stammer a reply. Immediately the Flaban girl flitted ahead and alighted, then striking a pose proceeded to recite:

“One boagelly eye, a big green face: It’s Mini-Flash Robin!”

“Hey!” he cried, indignant. “That’s not very nice!”

“Off with you,” Wodding blustered at the girl, masterfully wiggling his little stumps until she complied and departed. “I do apologise, what must you think?” he tutted once she was gone.

“Oh,” said Neetra right away, politely, “don’t you worry about that, Wodding. I’ve no doubt at all you’ll have heard about our girls!”

She only noticed the “our” on hearing herself say it, as she watched with some interest the Flaban girl fast dwindling to nothingness against the brilliant ether. It certainly seemed The Flash Club’s second gender troubles were something else that had their correlative here. But, Neetra reminded herself in turn, Shadow and Jen herself and Splitsville, not to mention Flashstanch, Bloomer, Frill and dear Titch. They weren’t all hoodlums.

“I mean, take my infamous stuffy little sister,” she went on to Wodding with a grimace. “Our family’s very own media starlet, with a reputation to match. Besides me there’s only a handful in your galaxy who know that behind all that nonsense is the same sweet clone she’s always been. We’re not even in touch these days, but I’m sure of it, Wodding. Just as I’m sure the same sort of thing’s true of your girls here on Flaban.”

“I’m having difficulty believing this is your first diplomatic function,” chuckled Wodding in response.

Mini-Flash Robin meanwhile was looking glum. Neetra put her arm around him and gave him a comforting squeeze, much as this ran the risk of turning the pair of them into Jack and Jill.

“I can’t fly either,” she told him kindly. In recent years Neetra seemed to have dedicated her life to cheering up male Mini-Flashes with this news. “No girls can, where I come from.”

“Not even your little sister?” asked Mini-Flash Robin.

“Not even her,” Neetra affirmed. “Although she could once. Oh, and so could two of the others. And there’s one more, who still can.”

Our heroine didn’t think she was ever going to get used to this Limb Four range of action figures. She and Mini-Flash Robin were surveying Wodding’s large framed print of the back-of-the-box art while the master of the hive was through in his cocoon-chamber, digging out what he’d brought them both here to see. Schiss-Zazz was just wrong, locking shears with Harbin’s dusky dart on the Patriotic Planet, especially since most of the others represented such as Mini-Flash Meek and Storm-Sky and Neetra herself really had been there.

“They don’t even make an action figure of me,” remarked Mini-Flash Robin plaintively.

Poor Robin. Clearly that Flaban girl had handed him a good deal to be doleful about. Neetra suspected he’d have shrugged it off sooner if she hadn’t looked so much like Jenny.

“Well, you weren’t at Limb Four,” she pointed out, to be fair.

“Chap could totes start to wonder what that’s got to do with it,” moped Mini-Flash Robin.

“Oh, Wodding explained to me why you can get Schiss-Zazz,” put in Neetra, loath as she was to be a know-it-all. “It’s artistic license, because the toy of him sells well.”

Her companion just sighed, as if to tell her that hadn’t been what he meant.

Now that Neetra remembered, some of the first Flash Club arrivals in Nottingham had carried with them tales of the run-up to the Nereynis Incident. Apparently that lean denuded musculature had caused quite a flutter among a certain sort of female Mini-Flash when the charming individual who laid claim to it was enjoying his short stay at Storm-Sky’s pleasure. On that one point however, Robin had absolutely nothing to worry about. Neetra would have been hard-pressed to think of a man who was less Mini-Flash Juniper’s type.

“You don’t want to be jealous of the likes of Schiss-Zazz, Robin,” she told him firmly. “You’ve got way more to offer than he’ll ever have.”

When Robin merely looked sad in response, Neetra was moved to go on with some heat:

“Once Little Miss Flaban’s grown up a bit she’ll see she could do a whole lot worse than get with someone like you. And by the way, if we were on my planet, I’d tell you not to let her pick on you just because she’s a girl. Next time she pulls something like that, why don’t you try standing up to her?”

END OF CHAPTER ONE