Fun For Flashsatsumas, Chapter Two

“That’s mine!” erupted Flashsatsumas, leaping to his feet again.

“What’s the matter with you?” cried the girl. “It’s the property of the Galactic Tourist Board!”

Flashsatsumas parked his hands on his hips. “Mine was the only pink one I’ve seen since I arrived,” he accused her.

“I can’t help that,” was the girl’s reply. “They gave me a pink one at the entrance gate.”

“You mean a certain little Special Program someone gave it to you!” Flashsatsumas flung. “You and she are in cahoots!”

“Cahoots?” repeated the girl, as one who couldn’t take much more of this.

“Please,” Flashsatsumas implored her, trying a different tack. “Even if it is yours, can I borrow it a minute just to go and vent?”

“Non-transferrable,” she sang back primly, fanning all the while. Flashsatsumas felt weak. What wafted his way from her was making him push as never before.

“You need a pass to use the harness-rooms around here!” he begged.

“Not all of them,” she corrected, pointing. “Not the one on the other side of that arch.”

Hearing it all but buckled Flashsatsumas at the knees. “Really?” he breathed.

“Yes, and they pay you for using it,” snapped the girl. “So why don’t you do so, and leave me alone?”

That was what Earthlings called the last straw. In more than just the literal sense Flashsatsumas had been close to boiling over, and now he made a big impetuous grab for the pink pass-card. Its bearer however sidestepped smartly, then gave him a big shove right in the middle of his containment-suit. The backs of his thighs hit the edge of the trough and Flashsatsumas toppled. For a terrified second or two he feared the panic might make him pop, but then all other sensations were supplanted by that of splodging deep into heaps of revolting effluent plasma.

Daubed and malodorous, Flashsatsumas picked himself out of the repository. His second girlfriend of the day had vanished into a shopping-centre, taking the pass-card with her.

She had however left him with one remaining option.

It wasn’t much to go on, and had probably only been said to get rid of him, but Flashsatsumas wasn’t in a position to pass it up. So he sighted the archway she’d indicated and made all possible haste, not that that counted for very much either now his powers were screaming for release on every step.

Under the arch was shady and cool after the bright suns outside, yet as soon as he stepped there Flashsatsumas’s interior confluences put in such a stint as to all but render him face-down on the causeway. He couldn’t last much longer. Gritting his teeth he forced himself on and stumbled back out into day.

Then a second rush, hot on the heels of his last. This time, however, it was joy.

On the other side of the junction was a harness-room, its door standing ajar. Flashsatsumas had done that female Mini-Flash a grave disservice.

So he’d buy her a little souvenir to make up for it, he panted to himself in resolution as he heaved over as quick as he could, holding himself. He’d seen a nice logo pair in the gift shop, “It’s always a Space-Scream at the old war-moon,” and with a quivering hand Flashsatsumas threw the door wide. He staggered in, slamming it behind him so it bounced from its jamb again, knowing she’d like those and they’d be friends thereafter. Everything was going to be alright after all, or at least everything would be in a second or…

The scrabbling fingers of both hands by now were behind him.

Not now. Please, not now.

These clasps…!

Why would they never slide when he needed them to? Flashsatsumas was giving out gasps that were more like whimpers as he tried and tried.

The theatre, all over again.

But it couldn’t end like this. Not after what he’d been through.

And yet, fumble as he might, stretch until his arms ached, the stupid things just wouldn’t and it was all because of that girl with her red lips and round pouty face…

Oh!

This was it!

Once or twice in his life Flashsatsumas had drawn dangerously close, but it had never been it until now.

What was within forced its way through and he wailed as his containment-suit ruptured.

The Special Program girl had been hiding underneath the arch. When she’d so acted on the boy who was after her that he’d nearly measured his length, she’d been sure the gig was up.

Now she peeked out the way he’d gone, sensing something.

It was a foreshock such as would have been beyond the range of effectively all but her kind. Take the second gender instance in the blue with dots, coming down the hill towards her. Older than she, and probably psychic, yet heedless still.

Not that that wasn’t about to change. Marking those infinitesimal time-intervals which only the Special Program would have been able to distinguish, one girl stared as another felt the wave at last and started to turn. Her pretty spotty skirt whipped in the slipstream, disclosing pristine day-trip panties both attractive and practical.

A few more of these beats and she was going to be past embarrassed.

She’d be shredded.

What was left of this place was about to be destroyed.

Time for someone else to move her knickers, and someone else did, a bright pink visitor-pass poking out gaudily from the white waistband of the same.

Blue-with-dots was willing to swear she saw such a sight speed by her.

And Flashsatsumas, certain he’d perish in the throes of guilt at the countless other lives lost, all at once felt his powers close back painlessly in on themselves.

He felt himself the fatty core, bubbling volatile yet harmless in a hollow at the heart of some sort of encasement. There was evidently tremendous heat, yet the cocoon muffled its excesses and sealed him at a comfortable simmer. Nor had Flashsatsumas ever known so delightful a smell, of heady baking wholesomeness which banished the last of the plasma-effluence and sang through his piping-hot oils and juices. Stewing thus, yet in anything but distress, Flashsatsumas marvelled at this recipe which worked so in harmony with his ingredients, and coped with them, and together made itself and him more than they would have been alone.

The Special Program girl was huskily before him.

“Mini-Flash Piloshiki,” she introduced herself.

It would have taken more than shyness to make her cheeks as red as that. Flashsatsumas saw it wasn’t without effort she was doing this thing for him. He’d felt for a moment like asking her if she really thought a cuddle was going to make up for everything else today, but recognising as much was what stopped him.

That, and the fact that his very essence was glorying in this singing smelling embrace and answering yes, it did.

The old war-moon was perhaps a little more knocked-around than it had been after the fleeting cooker-top spill from Flashsatsumas it incurred, but disaster was averted, and all the tourists went home that night with nothing worse than photos and souvenirs to show for their day. As for Flashsatsumas himself, he flattered himself he knew enough about the Special Program by now to have accurately predicted that when the loveliness was over, Mini-Flash Piloshiki would be gone. In a happy daze he surveyed the dilapidated harness-room which he no longer felt any compulsion to use, observing with wonder but little surprise that the rift in his suit was mended as though it had never occurred. What was more, fastened to the hemline just where it had been was his pink pass-card.

Scrawled on it, in scarlet lipstick, the twin intersecting strokes of a kiss.

THE END