Jonny Moon - The Verruca Bazooka

Jack showed his friend his prototype: it was a normal Frisbee, but attached to the middle of the disc was a pair of model helicopter blades.

“It’s remote-controlled,” he explained.

Oscar jumped to his feet. “Brilliant. Let’s go to the park. You can fix up my skateboard and then we can test drive your remote-control Frisbee. OK?”

Jack nodded and then looked concerned as Oscar started to climb out of the window.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

Oscar turned and grinned. “You’re not the only one who can come up with brilliant ideas you know. I thought we should have an emergency exit, so I fixed up this zip line.” Now Oscar could see there was a cable running from the tree house to Oscar’s house. Jack watched in fascination as Oscar clipped a karabiner to the line, grabbed the rope running through it and slid off down the zip wire.

Jack looked at where the zip wire was connected and made a rapid mental calculation. He started to call out a warning but it was too late.

SPLAT! Oscar slammed into the side of his house and dropped into the muddy flowerbed below.

“Just a few technical hitches to iron out” Oscar croaked weakly, before falling back into the squelchy mud.

Jack made some final adjustments to the makeshift ramp and stood up, brushing his hands together with satisfaction. He’d found a couple of bits of wood and some bricks in a skip on the way and had put them together to form a jump at the bottom of the largest slope in the park.

Jack looked up at the top of the hill where Oscar was waiting. Oscar waved his hand, enthusiastically.

This isn’t going to go well, thought Jack.

He had insisted that Oscar put on some protective gear. Oscar, of course, didn’t have any. So Jack had produced some of his own design that he had been working on. Adapted from swimming floats, the knee and elbow protectors were inflatable and as Oscar stood at the top of the hill, wearing the gear and the foam-lined strap-on yellow hard-hat that Jack had also made, he looked like a badly-dressed superhero from an old TV programme.

At Oscar’s feet was the now-rocket-powered skateboard. Before they had left home Jack had found two old lemonade bottles in one of his ‘Useful Materials’ boxes and these were now firmly taped to the sides of the skateboard. Fixed to the centre of the board was an old foot pump with twin rubber pipes connecting it to both fuel tanks.

“Pump!” shouted Jack, after checking that the path at the bottom of the hill was clear of dog-walkers and other park users.

Oscar frantically pumped with his right foot, rapidly filling the bottles with air. The bottles began to swell, the plastic straining. Oscar kept pumping. Something would have to give. If Jack had made a mistake in his calculations the plastic would rupture and Oscar would end up – not for the first time -on his bottom. If Jack was right, the corks he had wedged into the bottle tops would be expelled like bullets from a gun, propelling the skateboard – and Oscar – forward at great speed.

POP!The two corks blew at exactly the same moment and Oscar’s jet-powered skateboard launched on its maiden voyage.

Oscar came hurtling down the hill with his arms outstretched to balance. The launch velocity had given him a much faster than usual start and now, as the board careered down the path, it picked up even more speed.

Oscar let out a cry that could have been excitement or fear (or possibly both). Moving at maximum speed, he hit the ramp.

Thrown violently into the air, he threw his arms back behind him, like the ski-jumpers he had seen on the Winter Olympics. Jack watched with a mixture of awe and pride as, for a long glorious moment, Oscar flew through the air. It worked! he thought.

But then he had another thought. What about landing?

At that moment, gravity woke up and remembered about Oscar. Jack had to cover his eyes as his friend returned rapidly to earth. Luckily, he landed in a bush, which absorbed the impact like one of the gym mats at school.

Unluckily, it was a rose bush.

“Ow!” said Oscar, picking thorns out of his bum. And then, more enthusiastically, “Wow! How cool was that?”

“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.