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For rosemilk and Ice Queen!

*

It was, in the end, probably a good thing that Marne and Ruby Soho didn't have a teaspoonful of morals between them: having wriggled into the toy store through a tiny vent near a window, staring at the still-lit aisles bereft of slovenly teenage workers, Marne was pretty sure that they had entered paradise.

For a few long moments, she was silent, which was an amazing thing; darting between the gaudy pink Barbie section, the shelves full of soft toys and new GI Joes and Batman transformers - her eyes got the size of the girls' in Silva's Japanese comics where they wore no clothes and met tentacle beasts.

Then she landed next to Soho, put her hands over her face, and made a noise in pretty close approximation to this:

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

She panted for a moment, then: "This is the best idea ever. Ever. Ever. Ever. Let's move in and LIVE HERE. We can sleep in the Barbie Dreamhouse."

"Okay, okay, o-kay," said Marne, hopping from foot to foot as if she needed to pee very badly. "Okay. We deserve a van WAY MORE than Barbie, because I'm a hot redhead and you're, ... um, a whitehead. This is the BEST EVER. Ohmigod! There's Barbie As President! And there's Barbie's ETHNICALLY BALANCED FRIENDS! Ohmigod! Ohmigod! She even has a horse."

"I call shotgun!"

They clambered over to the toy vehicle; it was well made, considering it was a die-cast metal and plastic car, only there were no cupholders. (Marne found this a great oversight.) There were no brakes or anything either - until Marne found the remote, and with a lot of tugging, pulled it into the backseat. She straddled it and pounded on a button that made a little green LED flash, which was pretty, and then grabbed the most likely object - the joystick.

"This is so totally illegal," she gleefully recounted to Soho. "Neither of us have our liscences. - Okay, are you ready? Because I'm totally gonna make this thing go FAST. We are going to go SO FAST that we are going to hell of go back to 1950 where you will fall in love with your mom."

Marne leant forward with all her might on the joystick. The car shot forward so fast that the two feien juveniles barely had time to shriek loudly, like teenagers on a rollercoaster, as it shot like greased lightning down the aisle.

It was all Marne could do to hold on - everything was a large, bright blur as they shot past shelves of sentimentally grinning My Little Ponies.

There was a moment of silence as the box teetered - back and forth, back and forth - and then, nearly in slow motion, slipped from the top of the pyramid. Backwards, away from them.

Unfortunately, it started a chain reaction - the other boxes in the display started to wobble, and then topple fatally forward to crush Soho and Marne to bits. Marne could hear her heart beating in her ears; and also, mentally, the strains of the Indiana Jones theme. As the tower started to come down around their ears, her hand seized the joystick, and they reversed away as boulders of Star Wars toys crashed around them. They managed to get halfway down the aisle before crashing again (this time, into a large stuffed Pikachu, so no harm done).

"Wow," said Marne, impressed at the surveyed carnage. "Cool."

Totally distracted, Marne leapt out and started to examine the rows of jointed soldier dolls. "Wow, somebody should totally tell these guys that moustaches are really 1970. Hey, he's kind of cute, though. And him! And him! Except I would never date a guy who was called 'Chuckles' - maybe we could just, I don't know, have a hot one night stand unless he changed his name. I would not write my phone number down in the morning. Actually, I don't have a phone number. - Rock'n'roll!"

The other feien girl pounced, and started dragging a box out from behind a moustached guy called Gung Ho. "Now, this is totally more our type. Look at his name. Heavy Metal. He is a hottie."

With their combined strength, they finally managed to haul the doll out of the box; it was just a matter of untying two little plastic loops around his arms and ditching about thirty gun accessories before they had him free.

Marne propped him up to stand against the shelving, looping one arm around his as she batted her eyelashes at the inanimate object. "Boy, Mr. Heavy Metal, what big sculpted arms you have!"

"My future boyfriend is totally going to have abs like Silv," Marne agreed, standing on the edge of the shelving to help the doll off with his shirt. "See, it'll be your future boyfriend too, 'cos I've decided I'm gonna share all of my girlfriends and boyfriends with you because I love you, so you can have half-shares in the Pepsi Man. - I wish this guy had wings, it'd look more normal. Where's it meant to feel good if you grope it again? - Hey, look, no nipples. Just like us. Go you, Mr. Heavy Metal! - Okay, you grab his pants."