The Verruca Bazooka

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“Why don’t you ever learn?” asked Jack, helping Oscar disentangle himself from the hedge. “You always crash when you do stuff like this”

Oscar grinned. “Yeah but the bit just before the crashes – that’s awesome!” He dusted himself down and noticed that one of the inflatable arm bands had burst on impact. “And your safety gear was brilliant.”

Stripping off Jack’s now deflated limb protectors – and the helmet – Oscar stowed them all in his bag and turned to Jack.

“How about that Frisbee thing now?”

At the very moment that Oscar was climbing out of the bush, a grey squirrel appeared on the path nearby. Neither of the boys saw it. If they had seen it they may have noted that it was acting rather oddly. Rather than scurrying across the path between trees like normal squirrels it was sitting perfectly still and looking around like an automated security camera scanning a car park. There was a very good reason for this – as anyone who looked closely at the squirrel’s eyes would know. Because they were cameras.

There was a mechanical hum as the mysterious robot squirrel moved forwards to get a better view. Then it scanned the park and zoomed in on the boys as they began to play with the remote-control toy.

Nearby, a man watched carefully as the images from the Squirrel-Cam were fed back to his monitor. Could these boys be the ones he was looking for? They had courage, certainly, and ingenuity too. Both qualities the Watcher needed in any recruit. He sent a signal to the squirrel. Focus on the two boys. Follow them…

The heli-frisbee proved to be a great success. It was flying like a dream. The boys each took turns with the remote control and practised swooping it around, taking it low to the ground and then back up into the sky again. At one point when Oscar was at the controls it almost took the head off a rather dense squirrel that seemed mesmerised by the boys’ activity. The heli-frisbee flew right at the poor creature, but all it did was stand there as still as a statue, looking at the device.

At the very last moment Jack managed to push the creature out of the way, saving it from decapitation.

Interesting, thought the Watcher from his secret hiding place. Very interesting.

“No, no, no” shouted Jack suddenly.

Oscar looked over at him, alarmed. “What’s up?” he asked.

“The heli-frisbee” answered Jack.

“Well, duh, of course it is!”

“No, I mean it’s too far up!” explained Jack. “If it gets too high in the sky it’ll go out of range and…”

Oscar frowned, then frantically jigged the controls. “It’s not responding!”

Jack sighed. “And we won’t be able to control it”

He took the controls and had a go but it was no use. The boys watched helplessly as the heli-frisbee flew off over the bush – which still bore an Oscar-shaped imprint from his recent impact.

“Wait here with the other stuffy,” Jack shouted and bolted off.

Following the heli-frisbee, Jack ran along the fence until he found a gap leading into the ornamental gardens. Jack continued his pursuit, taking care to stick to the paths and not to damage any of the flowers. He didn’t notice a squirrel taking a more direct route through the flowerbeds behind him.

The heli-frisbee was beginning to lose height – it only just managed to clear the fence on the other side of the garden. Jack burst through another gap in the fence and stopped dead. A group of older kids, three or four of them, were bunched together in front of him. They had their backs to him. Something about the way they were standing troubled Jack. What are they looking at? he wondered. Then one of them moved and Jack could see the object of their attention.

It was a girl of about Jack’s age. Jack didn’t know much about girls; as a rule he tried not to have much to do with them. They confused him with their talk about things he had little interest in – boy bands, fashion, toy ponies – and this one looked like any other that he had come across. She had long black hair, pulled back in a pony tail, brown skin and bright intelligent blue eyes. She was also wearing a bright pink ballet dress thing…What was it called? A tutu? It was this distinctive and unusual fashion choice that had attracted the older kids’ attention.

“Nice dress,” said one of the older kids. Now Jack recognised her. It was Jess, a heavily-built girl from the nearby estate. When Jack and Oscar had started at primary school she had been in Year Six and everyone knew that she was a horrible bully. Jack realised that he was looking at the back of Jess’s latest gang.

“Give us a twirl then,” said Jess and the other kids laughed, and not in a nice way. “How about showing us some ballet?” Jess pronounced the word in the wrong way, sounding the final “t” to rhyme with jet.

The dark-haired girl just looked at them – her face set.—

“I didn’t choose this dress” she replied bravely. “Ballet’s rubbish.”

Jessica laughed. “In that case maybe we’d better put you in the bin.”

Jack saw that there was a large rubbish bin further along the path. He didn’t remember ever seeing it before. It was bigger than the usual park bins. The gang started milling around the tutu girl, pushing her towards the new bin.