#4 : All Lickety Split
Summer evening sun streams in low through the shutters. She skims the op-art tiled floor of the 50’s Themed Icecream and Milkshake Diner collecting oversized empty glasses. A six foot tall blur of blonde, red, white and pink on oversized roller-skates. If you blinked, you’d have missed it: red plastic surfaces wiped clean, dishwasher full, shutters beginning to close.
Waitress clothes gone, loose fitting jacket and trousers on, Valerie is sat at the chrome counter, a lit cigarette already in hand. Brunette. Only one thing about her hasn’t changed while you were blinking, as one of the two suits who have just stepped out from the store room entrance is already pointing out...
“So... where do you find a girl who cannot remove her magic hypersonic rollerskates?”
But Valerie has already vanished in a blur of speed. This is normal, this is expected. The men stride into the middle of the Diner.
“A Rollerskate Diner, would surely be the only place such a person could maintain anything like a secret identity.” says the second man in exactly the same deadpan, who is busy typing impolitely into his iPhone.
“Valerie, or should we say ‘LicketySplit!’, in the flesh. We know you’re still here. You haven’t set off any of the time vortex traps so by now you should know that you can’t escape...”
“Please slow down so we can talk... oh.” he says as his eye falls on a brunette wig and a neatly folded pile of clothes on the seat behind the counter..
Three hundred and seventy miles away, Valerie skids to a halt.
Who the hell did they think they were, trying to trap HER? She could have incapacitated them with ice-cream headache fired at the speed of sound with one of fifteen regular flavours and four guest varieties, but the traps came online a nanosecond after she left, so she’d made the right choice.
And her loose fitting clothes have gone, Tightly cropped red hair, frictionless white jumpsuit, and matching the skates, streamlined red knee and elbow pads, helmet and goggles, whose high speed net connection is already scanning the conspiracy chat rooms for the Brotherhood logo.
Not keeping up? Valerie is looking at the wallet that she took from the first man: “Brotherhood of the Flame”. Apparently even satanic conspiracies carry identity cards these days. She looked again - a crossed metal fork and spatula on a diagonally lined circle logo.
They were either trying to keep LicketySplit! out of the picture or coerce her into doing a job for them. That’s the usual deal. She’d seen it all before. Barbecue themed super villains. Ridiculous. Maybe they were planning to invite her to a garden party.
The internet spits out some theories, as the internet will and writes up its conclusion on the goggles display. Aha, the third option. A second later, she’s on the streets of London.
Red boots flaming up the surface of the Millenium Dome. She’s hurled across the Thames. Impact in 0.3 seconds her knee pads pop into balloon of ultra dense toffee milkshake and she’s above over two hundred shops, boutiques, bars and restaurants glued to the pyramid of Canary Wharf. A blast of ice cold Slusho! from her helmet and the glass smashes, she drops into the headquarters of the Brotherhood of the Flame.
She hits the floor of a huge elegant room, belying the buildings glass and steel exterior. A woman, gothic styled suit, black and red, sits at an antique table set for two. She stands, tall on impossible heels and smiles at Valerie without a hint of either surprise or malice.
“Crowley, You’re meant to be...” says Valerie catching up with herself “What do you want?”
“Hello Valerie” says Crowley “You got here faster than expected. Did you take a cab?”
Crowley grins. Slightly sinister.
“This is ridiculous”
Crowley nods “Isn’t it? would you care to try the wine?”
“White or Red?”
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