Return of the Teaser, Chapter Three

When Flashsatsumas woke he was back at the chalet, undressed and hanging groggily in his harness. The light from the window suggested several hours had passed since lunch.

Before him was one of the two girls he’d spoken to that day, wearing the same white T-shirt and Luttertons the first of them had been that morning.

“Juniper?” Flashsatsumas groaned.

“Yes, and not another me in sight,” the girl assured him. “I’ve sent her packing. What a good thing I made it back in time!”

Flashsatsumas breathed carefully, resisting the urge to struggle.

He wasn’t strong enough to force his way free.

The girl walked slowly to him, her fair hair swaying and touched by what little ruddy glow made it through the gathering evening clouds.

“Rest, Flashsatsumas,” she whispered when she was near. “You’ve been through so much.”

He knew those eyes, and the flush on pale cheeks, and even the delicate quiver of the underlip he’d marked from time to time. What was new was the way she was looking at him.

As though expectant, but not yet sure what to say.

The breath Flashsatsumas had striven to control rushed from him all at once.

“I think perhaps I will rest, Juniper,” he managed at last, with difficulty. “And I see you’re all ready for bed too. Big day for you as well, I bet!”

He forced a grin to close on. It altered the girl’s expression and bearing not a jot.

“If only I could sleep, Flashsatsumas,” she said to him softly.

By now her very essence was tickling the filaments in his nostrils. You couldn’t but think of those little round crunchy things the Earthlings liked to eat.

Flashsatsumas didn’t know how long he could fight it.

Yet he had to. He’d overloaded his harness when he’d been at The Four Heroes’ house, and nearly harmed 4-H-N. Another surge might do the same for his friend Flashbee and Mini-Flash Pseudangelos. In desperation Flashsatsumas sought to direct the power of the oilseed outward, as Mini-Flash Juniper was able to do, but concentrating on one aspect of his pants in the face of everything else that was there proved a struggle which defeated him.

Never mind The Four Heroes’ house. It was getting as bad as the war-moon.

His powers were really pushing on the manacles.

If he couldn’t find some means of pushing back, to get the girl away from his senses –

Flashbee.

“Truth or dare!” blurted Flashsatsumas as he broke into a beaming smile, his voice sounding both terrifyingly bright and piteously hectic to his ears.

It did the trick though. His companion blinked, startled by the sudden burst of enthusiasm, and took a step back. The respite for Flashsatsumas was welcome indeed.

“That’s a great game when you can’t sleep,” he affirmed in the same gasp.

Oh Flashbee. That wonderful walking encyclopedia of Earth-data garnered to trip up 4-H-N. Flashsatsumas could have kissed his antennae for every conversation they’d had on the subject.

“I’ll go first,” the former hurried on. “Why are you having trouble sleeping?”

His companion’s full-body blush made for a renewed bombardment on the clamps, but this time Flashsatsumas bore it, increasingly confident he was no longer a victim but a strategist.

“Oh!” exclaimed the other, red. “Just the usual. You know, those scary comics I’m into.”

“At least tonight you won’t be hungry,” Flashsatsumas remarked.

The other acknowledged this good point with a nod, not having noticed. Flashsatsumas might have smiled, but instead he’d started to study his captor curiously and closely.

“It’s your turn,” he told her in a soft voice. “So let’s say you chose truth. I knew you weren’t scratching.”

She stared at him.

“After the first couple of times it was obvious,” continued Flashsatsumas. “And I see now I should have made you stop, but I jumped to the wrong conclusion about what you were really up to. Because you share so much else with Mini-Flash Juniper, I assumed that that also that went for this thing. And I’m guessing I wasn’t totally wrong.”

His cheeks were shading the same way as hers. She however looked as if she didn’t mind, and was listening.

“I’ve seen her eat one-handed too,” was how Flashsatsumas finally decided to put it. “It’s not something she can help, and half the time she doesn’t realise. It’s not her fault either. A terrible thing was once done to her, and don’t ask me for the details, because as you can tell I don’t know. All I can do is care about her while she’s going through it. And I care about anybody else who’s been burdened with the same pain.”

At long last, a smile began to glimmer on the counter-Juniper’s face.

Or more accurately, since she’d given Flashsatsumas several smiles that day, it was the first which for him made her look at all like her correlative.

“Just wanted to prove her wrong about not being able to tease you because I can’t touch,” she declared.

“You did,” Flashsatsumas told her, and truthfully once again. Only just now was it starting to subside.

The counter-Juniper winked goodbye, then turned the reverse of her borrowed Luttertons on him as the real one did, and went into the latter’s room to put her own clothes on and vanish back to her love-tester machine. Though the door was closed as ever, Flashsatsumas had no doubt about any of this, and that was perhaps the best part of all.

Few enough reminders came his way that he was actually older than Mini-Flash Juniper.

Now he wished he’d thought to thank that iteration of her, for giving him a day which had ended with one he could look back upon and enjoy.

Not long after the counter-Juniper’s departure, another girl came walking into Flashsatsumas’s bedroom.

Fattish and diminutive, she wore some sort of frothy pink terrestrial garment.

“Oh!” Flashsatsumas greeted her. “So she found you?”

“We were heading back on the bus together when I had one of my feelings something was wrong,” confirmed Miss Ugly.

Glad as Flashsatsumas was that she didn’t call herself Miss Punctual, and while he might have preferred it if today hadn’t included quite such an open invitation for girls to come and look at him in his vest and pants, he thanked the one apparent. She for her part accepted the praise as though she’d battled hordes to rescue him.

“Um,” Miss Ugly then said. “I overheard a little of the last of it while I was getting here, so just so I can be sure. Am I to take it I shouldn’t mention anything to Mini-Flash Juniper?”

Flashsatsumas told her he’d be extremely grateful.

“Fine, but one day she might like to know how you feel for her,” was Miss Ugly’s response. “Take it from someone who seldom ever heard that sort of thing. Except from Degas one time.”

“I’ve no idea who that is,” Flashsatsumas replied.

“That bus will be getting in any minute,” sparkled Miss Ugly. “Let’s make sure we’re there to welcome Mini-Flash Juniper home!”

With that she tutu-romped from the room, showing Flashsatsumas the fullness of her faded pink ones, after which was the click of the chalet’s front door and silence.

“Erm,” said Flashsatsumas.

END OF CHAPTER THREE