Tokyo, Japan. contact (bunny atsign ixp.jp) about 2606 words.
If you don't understand parody, go read a newspaper.
One night on the last day of half-term, Raquel woke up for some reason. She looked out of the bedroom window at the back garden. Everywhere was dark and it took her a while to realise that there was a light on in the old shed. Quickly she put on her dressing gown and woke her sister Kitten, then they went downstairs in their gowns and slippers.
The dial on the phone in the hallway was glowing brightly too, a strange greenish glow. This was unusual for the tired old trimphone.
'What do you think it is?' Raquel whispered.
'Golbins?'
'In our shed? They must be desperate. No one goes in there except granddad.' Raquel pointed out, she picked up the torch from its holder by the door, handing it to her sister just in case.
The greenish glow and faint sounds of hammering from the shed were quite bright enough to guide them down the garden path as they crept along. Skirting around the pit that would be this year's compost castle.
'I still think it's golbins.' Kitten muttered, holding the torch like a club as they peered in the window.
The green glow was coming from one of granddad's mysterious constructions. 'It's an old radio?' They looked at each other. 'Do radios glow?' The screws on the back were moving, slowly unscrewing themselves.
A spray of red sparks coming from the radio's chimney startled both girls and they nearly fell off the flower pots they were standing on. 'Crumbling cream cakes!' A tiny voice complained. The back fell off the radio and purple smoke oozed heavily out.
It was a fairy! A very strangely dressed one, it wore a thick suit with thick gloves and boots. On top of this it wore a thick helmet with a window in, all of which glowed a strange soft green. But most amazing were the wings, instead of two pairs of wings like all the other fairies they had met, this fairy had three enormous feathery wings that glowed a most amazing shade of dark blue.
'It is a fairy!' Raquel stated the obvious.
'I've never seen one with three pairs of wings before. I wonder what it is a fairy of?' Kitten suddenly realised it was looking at them! It went back to some wires and things.
'Maybe it's the wings fairy?'
'In granddad's shed?'
'Why not? Maybe it is making something. Let's ask.' Raquel tried the door.
It opened! Neither girl had been in the shed before, granddad was old-fashioned enough that he thought a woman's place was in the kitchen, the bath, the garden, anywhere except his shed.
The bench was covered in strange bits illuminated by the glowing radio.
'What are you making?' Kitten asked, 'a radio?'
The fairy struggled out of the mess of wires and looked at the two girls. 'Not seen a rhombic isoclinator before?'
'No,' both girls admitted in unison.
'Good, because this is an super heterodyne erkmograph made with the finest cross beam treadle valves.' This didn't actually help at all. 'A magic radio.'
'Why do you glow?' Kitten asked her first intelligent question of the day, or night.
'I'm the Isotope fairy. Iori.'
'Nice to meet you.'
'I've never seen an isotope, are they cuddly?' Raquel asked. She got such a look. Perhaps. The fairy's suit made it difficult to see their face.
'An isotope is a special kind of element. The same, yet different.'
'Like cats?'
'You could say that, yes. I doubt many cats are radioactive though.' The fairy mused.
'Radioactive?'
'Pass the thurkler,' the fairy indicated a tool like a screw-spanner-snip-plier-driver. Kitten helpfully got it down and handed it to the fairy. 'Hold this a moment.' It handed her a socket and sorted wires. 'Radiation is everywhere in the world, both natural and unnatural.' He wired the socket into the space in the mess of brightly coloured spaghetti that now filled the antique radio. 'Imagine a world without radiation. It would be horrible.'
Suddenly there was a rustling outside, six golbins burst in! Quick as a flash, the fairy picked up two large glass lamp bulbs and thrust one into Kitten's surprised hands before attempting to fly off with the other. 'Protect the valve!' But it was no good. A seventh golbin armed with a net caught the fairy and rushed off to fairyland.
The other golbins put sacks on top of Kitten and Raquel then dragged them away. After a while, one of them came back for the magic radio. Jake Frost would be pleased, for once they had completed a mission without any screw ups. Surely a first in golbin history.
This time, Jake Frost's castle was in darkness. Partly because he had forgotten to pay his electricity bill and been cut off. Partly because it was also night and raining, this didn't help illuminate the place much. Here and there, candles tried vainly to stifle the gloom. Golbins ran around relighting them as the slightest gust blew them out. At last, the fabulous dungeons of the castle really came into their own. This was their kind of night and they were making the most of it.
'At last! I have the magic radio!' Jake Frost chortled and cackled in the darkness. He stubbed his toe on something and cursed. 'Hurry up and get it working!'
'It's not working guv!' The golbin pointed to the needle. 'It's missing something important.' He looked in the back. 'There's an empty socket here.' There was a flash and a bang as the incautious golbin vaporised itself.
'Next!'
The seventh golbin brought in the captured fairy. 'Fix the magic radio!'
'But it's a rhombic isoclinator!'
'Rubbish! It's a magic radio, I heard you with my very own ears!'
'You poor golbin, have you considered cosmetic surgery?' The fairy squeaked when threatened with a golbin cookie. 'Don't be ridiculous, it's missing the flux capacitor. You'll never find one of those in fairyland, can't get the parts.' Iori the isotope fairy grumbled and held his ground even when faced with the fearsome cookie.
'What's that you're holding?'
'This? Can't you tell a thudulent resonator from a flux capacitor?'
Jake Frost, rather than admit ignorance grumbled, 'Silly fairy, of course I can.'
'One of the girls had a flux capacitor!' Another golbin helpfully pointed out.
'Bring them to me immediately!'
'Can't boss.'
'Why not!'
'They escaped.'
'You buffoons! How could you let them escape?'
'It's dark see, and the candle went out and they wanted to go to the toilet see on account of them being girls and like, by the time we lit the candle, they'd like disappeared and gone! They even vanished!'
Jake Frost sighed deeply, 'There are no toilets in the dungeons.' He was not impressed. Even less so when a gust of wind from somewhere blew out the one remaining candle. Again.
Only the faintly glowing fairy was visible, somehow making the darkness darker.
'Glow brighter fairy!'
'I can't flap my wings, no chance. Why not turn on the light?' Iori pointed out.
'Because, you imbecilic iceberg fairy, the fairyland electric company has cut us off!'
'Oh,' Iori the isotope fairy wondered who the iceberg fairy was. 'Tried paying your bills?'
There was a stream of curses in the darkness. 'Dropped the matches guv!'
Jake Frost complained about the hired help. How could he be an evil genius with this kind of henchman? 'You! Find the matches.' He pointed in the dark.
There was a loud crash and a pained 'ouch?'
'Now what?'
'I splinged my bindle!'
Kitten and Raquel kept very quiet, somewhere between enjoying the show and trying to escape. Jake Frost's dungeon was even darker than their back garden at night. Holding hands they inched along the corridors, bludgeoning any golbins daft enough to see them. The torch made an excellent reasoner and many of the golbins were quite reasonable after being appropriately softened. 'Ssh. I can hear voices.' Raquel whispered. They centimetered closer to listen.
Suddenly a glowing fairy raced out of a darkened doorway and down the corridor.
'You useless twits! You're fired!' Jake Frost roared, 'after that fairy!'
Kitten, who had seen the door in the brief flash, dashed forward and shut it. With a stream of thuds, blinges, bangs and other noises, pursuit stopped.
'Quickly.' She and Raquel fled the dungeon, using the torch now. It only took them ten minutes to leave the darkness of the dungeon and emerge in the equally dark castle. Another ten minutes saw them safely emerge in the not quite so dark fairyland at night. At least it had stopped raining but the ground was still wet.
Far behind them, Jake Frost seethed and raged as his incompetent golbins sorted themselves out and looked for more candles.
'Now what?' Kitten asked as they followed the road away from the castle. 'He's still got the magic radio!'
'But without the flux capacitor, it's useless.' Raquel pointed out. It was a long walk to the fairy palace and the night wasn't exactly warm. 'I think my slippers are leaking.' She added sadly as the clouds moved and moonlight flooded the land.
Kitten held up the mysterious valve she had been given. 'I'm not so sure this is a flux capacitor.'
Something swung down from a tree, snatched it from her hand and ran off into the forest laughing manically. A golbin wearing only a leather loincloth. It grabbed something from a tree as it ran. The girls gave chase and were almost upon him when he sailed up into the air! Around a tree and down on the far side, vanishing into darkness.
'Ew, now I know my slippered are leaking.' Raquel complained. They had been lured into the stinking bog. 'I hope the bog wibble isn't nocturnal.'
'Ssh! This way.' A faint green glow hovered near a tree, 'quietly!'
Kitten and Raquel squelched and squicked out of the sticky mud. Ever step the bog threatened to eat their slippers. 'Iori, what are you doing here?'
'Rescuing you?' The fairy waved its magic want and a trail of faint green sparkles lit the way, meandering off into the forest. 'Hurry now, the bog wibble is a very light sleeper.' It landed on Kitten's shoulder and held onto her hair for balance.
'We lost the flux capacitor.'
'No matter.'
'Jake Frost has the magic radio and the flux capacitor.'
'No matter, we must get as far away from his castle as possible.' Iori the isotope fairy stifled a yawn. 'We can always build a new magic radio, it's not irreplaceable and it's certainly not worth risking the lives of friends over.'
'What does it really do?'
'Simple really. Keep walking,' the fairy pointed to a hillock they had just passed. 'Light sleeper.'
'That lump near the hill?'
'Is the tip of the bog wibble's tail.'
'The lump?'
'The whole hillock.'
Kitten and Raquel walked very quietly all the way to the road and even until they had put a hill between them and the unseen creature. 'So, what do you do? Besides make magic radios?'
'Imagine a world without radiation. No more atomic bombs, no nuclear waste. No nuclear submarines. No more mutants.'
'Sounds wonderful.' Raquel wondered if the fairy meant the Smith's next door.
'True. The Eco-Loons would have to find a new cause.' Iori the isotope fairy admitted, 'No more nuclear power, no chemotherapy and the likes. No more glowing trimphones.'
'Sounds serious.'
'Especially the trimphone,' Kitten agreed. That was their father's treasured possession, possibly even more important to him than the candlestick phone in the downstairs toilet.
'The magic radio sucks radiation out of the air and converts it into electricity. We in fairyland have no need of radiation, we have magic... Magic and particularly potent curry. But a magic radio can't be constructed from fairyland stuff. It's all wrong. The condensers just don't condense the same.' The fairy explained as they reached a lake. A frog watching them suddenly found itself with an extra head.
'But Jake Frost has it now! That's bad.'
'Well, two negatives make a positive.' The fairy shrugged as they found a pebble beach and washed the mud out of their slippers.
'I bring the flux capacitor!' The triumphant golbin tripped over a prone golbin and the glass object sailed through the air. Half-a-dozen golbins rushed to catch it. This time there were lanterns everywhere and they could see where they were going. They crashed into the bench where the magic radio waited.
The other tube fell off and in a scramble, they caught bother of them safely! A second first in golbin history! Jake Frost was amazed at his good fortune. He rescued the glass tubes from his golbins and examined the socket. 'That sneaky fairy!' There were two identical sockets!
Making sure it was turned off, he plugged the first valve in the first socket. Nothing happened. He plugged the second valve into the second socket. Still nothing happened.
'Silly me,' he plugged it in and flicked the switch.
Raquel noticed the light, 'it's daybreak.'
'That's north.' Kitten pointed out. The torch she was carrying had a compass in the hilt. She watched Iori the isotope fairy take off a glove and dry their slippers with a wave of his hand. 'I guess Jake Frost turned it on.'
They marvelled at the enormous glowing cloud rising high into the sky. Normal clouds skittered aside and for a minute it was brighter than daylight.
'Amazing,' Iori the isotope fairy mused as a rumble like summer thunder shook the air.
Kitten made a quizzical sound.
'I never realised it was possible to put two identical valves into two identical sockets and get it wrong. That's supposed to be green.' The cloud was turning orange and still rising.
The trees rustled and a hot wind blew gently for a moment before turning around and blowing the other way.
'Is there an iceberg fairy?' Iori the isotope fairy asked suddenly as they continued on their way to the fairy village. The light from the cloud made disturbing shadows that faded slowly as they re-entered the darkening forest.
Kitten and Raquel had to turn on the torch to see their way. Right in front of them was granddad's shed!
'What a strange adventure.' Raquel peered into the shed. 'Oh no.'
The old work bench was completely clean, no sign of the magic radio or the bits at all. Instead an enormous black cat stared back at them with glowing orange and green eyes.
'Whatever do we tell granddad?'
'I don't know.' Kitten shrugged as they went back inside the house. 'I wonder what makes the dial on the trimphone glow?'
What do you think Kitten and Raquel told their granddad?
Do you know why the dial on a trimphone glows?