Missy - Traps and manipulates a reality-warping bear

Missy said: ‘How about a bit of ambition, eh? What about wishing to become … ooh, I don’t know … let’s see … the Head of the Secret Service, eh? Or Chair of NATO? Or perhaps … the CEO of Galactico Chemicals?’

Jack, Esme and Peter all stared at her.

‘We don’t know what those things are,’ said Jack.

Missy rolled her eyes. ‘Well, of course you don’t. Not yet. But I’m thinking about the future and these are future things. They represent future security and success. You’re very lucky to have me here to impart my future knowledge to you.’

‘You’re right, thank you, Missy,’ said Esme. ‘We’ll take your advice and wish to become those very things. Whatever they are.’

***

‘Oh, but I can!’ shouted Teddy Sparkles crossly. ‘How dare you underestimate me, Missy! How dare you put me down! Look, here! I’m doing magic now! I’m granting those wishes RIGHT NOW!’

It was true, there was a very odd trembling in the air, rather as if invisible lines of force and influence stretching way into the future were activating and shimmering and obeying his mysterious will. Esme found herself growing rather frightened as the very air took on a golden hue.

***

Several decades went by. War years. Terrible years for London.

Bombs were dropped by the enemy, even on the fancier districts. Great houses were destroyed as well as much humbler ones. Vast armies of children were sent out to the countryside, to new homes, far away from danger, it was hoped.

The children grew up.

The house in Queen Square still stood, and the family retained ownership, even as the children moved away, into their own lives. Their father grew old and fussy, looked after by his serving staff. He complained that no one ever came to visit him.

The children forgot. Life after the war was tough and complicated. They had careers to build. Families of their own to raise. Gradually they came to take up positions in the adult world. Important positions. Powerful positions.

***

But Missy was real, and now here she was, back again.

Esme took a step forward and made her voice level and brave and professional-sounding, as befitted the CEO of Galactico Chemicals. ‘What do you want from us?’

‘I think it’s time for some payback,’ said Missy crisply. ‘And, to that end, what I’d like very much is if you combined all your power and influence, and arranged things nicely for me. What I’d really like is enough super-duper weapons and bombs and stuff like that in order to take over the entire world. All right?’

Everyone in the drawing room gazed at her as if she was bananas.

‘That’s right, I am,’ she grinned. ‘Bananas. And you’re going to help me take over the entire world, aren’t you?’

***

But still there was a fleck of hope in his heart. He still had powers. Not magical powers, although they were so amazingly advanced and beyond the ken of human beings that they might as well have been. Like other adepts on his home world, he had astonishing mental abilities that allowed him to see the warp and weft of reality. Like certain other Ursine mystics, he could refashion reality – both past and future – to his own liking. The children he had known here in Queen Square had believed he was granting wishes: it was their way of understanding the immense complexity of what he was actually doing when he cudgelled his brains and focused his will upon the workings of the multiverse …

***

The Missy Chronicles: Teddy Sparkles Must Die!