Take a Bow

Mister Mystery gazed out over the rooftops of his city at midnight, an expression of grim determination on his face. Below him lay a sprawling metropolis of five million souls, and all too many soulless monsters that preyed upon them. They would learn, he vowed, whose city this was. By the time he finished with them, they would be begging to spread the word about Mister Mystery.

Tonight, though, he didn't need them to tell others about him. He needed the scum of Macropolis to open their shrunken, black hearts to him and give him all the information they had about the sinister temptress, Vita Brevis. She was out there, he knew, somewhere in the city. She'd kidnapped Lucinda Love, heiress to the Love media fortune. The ransom note had already been delivered, but Mister Mystery knew his old enemy enough to know that it was nothing more than a decoy. It would fool the police, of course--Captain O'Rourke was a good cop, but he was used to dealing with ordinary criminals. He knew the way their minds worked. Vita would count on that.

No, Vita's plan was far more subtle. Far more insidious. She would allow the police to trace the ransom note. Not too quickly, of course; the cops would take days deciphering the seemingly accidental clues that the wrinkled piece of paper held for them. But trace it they would, and in the end, they'd rescue the innocent Lucinda from Vita's foul clutches. With Vita, of course, barely escaping in the confusion. Well done, officers. Medals all around.

But Mister Mystery knew Vita's true plan. She'd hidden her tracks well--a series of bizarre, seemingly unrelated thefts around the city in the months leading up to the kidnapping attracted no attention to Vita, not for the average detective. They wouldn't even connect it to the Love kidnapping. But the details of those crimes stood out to Mister Mystery's impeccably trained deductive genius like a beacon in the darkness of the criminal mind, marking Vita Brevis as their architect as surely as if she'd left her signature. She'd been assembling a brainwashing device, a masterwork of technology far beyond the skills of any but a mad genius like herself.

Mister Mystery could just picture it. Lucinda, sweet, innocent Lucinda, playing the role of damsel in distress so perfectly that she believes it herself. The police rescue her, and she weeps tears of true gratitude before being returned to the bosom of her beloved family. A few weeks later, her father dies of sudden and inexplicable heart failure. Then her fiancé, actor Kevin Charles, perishes in a mysterious 'accident', leaving Lucinda in control of the Love movie studios, and all the profits thereof...and she takes advantage of that control to siphon funds off to Vita Brevis, while secretly submitting to Vita's decadent pleasures. The perfect crime. Why take a pittance of a ransom when you can have it all, and with no-one the wiser?

No-one except Mister Mystery, of course. But now, the clock was ticking. He had to find Vita's secret laboratory, and he had to do it before Lucinda's will broke and her delicate, nymph-like body became Vita Brevis' submissive plaything. And finding Vita meant getting the criminal element of his city to talk.

He looked down, into the alleyway below him. Three young men lurked behind the trash cans, laughing and joking in the manner of arrogant young toughs the world over. Mister Mystery smiled. Sometimes, his city was good to him. He hooked his grapple-cable onto the ledge, and slowly, silently descended down towards the three punks below.

*****

Lucy woke up with a pounding, throbbing headache. The light in the room felt agonizingly bright, and her eyes felt like they took too long to focus. But when they finally did, she saw that she was in a hospital bed. She looked down. She was wearing a thin smock that barely covered her lithe body, and her wrists and ankles were secured to the bed with thick leather straps. She tried to move her hand a little, just experimentally, and noticed the I.V. tube leading into her wrist as she tugged at the straps. They didn't give.

There was a woman with long black hair standing there, wearing a white coat over a green smock and holding a syringe. "Ah," she said, "I see you're awake again. That's a very good sign. You had me quite worried, young lady."

Lucy blinked. "I don't...I don't understand," she said, her mouth feeling unpleasantly thick with half-dried saliva. "What happened? Where am I? Why am I in these?" She jerked at her restraints, suddenly panicked.

"Please calm down," the woman said. "There was an accident at the studio. You suffered a severe concussion, and we had to bring you here to the hospital. You've been in and out of consciousness several times during the last forty-eight hours."

"I don't remember any of that," Lucy said angrily. Her head still throbbed like a gong that had been rung several minutes ago, but was still gently quivering.

"No," the woman said, smiling gently, "you wouldn't. That's generally one of the signs of a severe concussion. But during the periods you were conscious, you tried several times to leave the hospital. We had to restrain you for your own safety."

Lucy tried to sit up, but the restraints and the sickening head-rush she got whenever she moved too fast convinced her to lie still. "Well, I'm awake now, so you can go ahead and take them off."

The woman smiled. It was an irritatingly bland smile, like she was used to hearing irrational requests like that, and to humoring the people who made them. "I'm not sure that we want to do that just yet, dear," she said. "But I'll certainly speak to the doctor about it. In the meanwhile, you just try to rest. Your friends have been very worried about you. They're waiting outside right now."

"Friends?" Lucy said eagerly, a sudden wave of relief coursing through her body. Somehow, she felt intensely relieved knowing that she wasn't alone here after all. She still felt so groggy and disoriented, but she had friends here. She was safe here. "Can I see them?"

The woman's next words dashed her hopes. "Maybe once you've recovered a bit more," she said, the bland smile still fixed to her face like a mask. "We don't want you over-exerting yourself just yet, do we?"

Lucy felt a rush of sudden, irrational terror. She couldn't remember how she got here, she couldn't leave, and they weren't letting her see anyone... "Please," she said plaintively. "Just ask the doctor if it would be alright to let them in, just for a minute or two."

The woman looked down at her for a long moment, then nodded. "I'll go ask. In the meanwhile, you just try to rest, okay?"

Lucy nodded enthusiastically...or at least, she did until the sensation made her want to vomit. Then she sagged back onto the pillows, waiting for the world to stop spinning.

It seemed like forever, lying there on the bed with absolutely nothing to do. She couldn't even scratch herself, and the moment she thought of that her butt developed an itch that absolutely would not go away. It felt like some sort of bizarre torture, and she only prayed that whoever her doctor was, he'd let her out of this thing once she convinced him she wasn't about to run away. That wasn't too much to ask, was it?

After what felt like an eternity, the door finally opened to reveal the woman once more. "Now you can only stay for a few minutes," she was saying as she walked into the room. "She's still very weak."

"I understand, ma'am," the man behind her said. "Thank you for letting us see her." Lucy looked at him, and at the Asian woman next to him, and her heart sank. These people weren't her friends at all.

*****

Mister Mystery gathered his cloak around him, becoming almost at one with the shadows. He coughed meaningfully, delighting in the looks of shock on the faces of the thugs as they spun around to see him seemingly materialized out of nowhere. "Gentlemen," he said in a low, rough voice. "I'm in need of information. Now we can do this the easy way...or the hard way. Keep in mind before you answer, the hard way involves spending two weeks in traction."

One of the punks peered at him, his face wrinkling in confusion. "Say," he said, "aren't you--" Mister Mystery silenced him with a punch to the breadbasket. He doubled over, gasping for breath.

"You already know who I am," he said, "unless you're new in town. And if you are, then maybe you're just the men I'm looking for. You maybe work for someone who came here recently? Someone with a plan for making easy money fast? A woman named Vita Brevis, perhaps?" He took a step forward, fixing his grim stare on them. "Tell me if that rings a bell."

One of the two remaining thugs looked at the other one. "You seeing this, Miguel?" he asked. "Seriously, man, this is fucking nuts. Like something out of a comic book or something."

Mister Mystery darted forward, grabbing the young man by the shirt and pushing him roughly back against the wall. "There's nothing funny about any of this," he snarled out. "A young woman's life is at stake. Where is Vita Brevis?" Behind him, his preternaturally sharp senses noted the third man, Miguel, fleeing. He unclipped a mysterang from his belt and turned his attention away from the crook he was holding just long enough to fling it down the alley at the running suspect. It clipped him on the back of the head, sending him sprawling headlong into the trash can.

Mister Mystery pulled the last conscious suspect up to his face, glaring at him intensely. "I'm running out of patience," he said. "Where is Vita Brevis?"

The last thug looked at him closely. Suddenly, a light of recognition dawned in his eyes. "Hey, I know you!" he said, the fear on his face melting into astonishment. "You're--"

Mister Mystery head-butted him, and the man sagged into unconsciousness in his grasp. That was a little too close. Usually, criminals were too busy cowering in terror to recognize him as newspaper publisher Frank Fowler. Obviously, Vita's hoods were made of tougher stuff. He sprayed a little amnesia gas into the crook's nostrils, then retreated via grapple-gun to the rooftops.

The criminal element wasn't talking. Time to take a different approach.

*****

Lucy groaned, more from misery than actual pain. "Don't take this the wrong way, Paul," she said, "but when they said 'friends', I was thinking they meant actual friends."

Paul chuckled. "Ah, that's just the concussion talking," he said to the woman next to him. "She's normally sweetness and light, our Lucy. Always brightens up the set just by being there." He turned back to Lucy. "Nah, you've had plenty of visitors while you were out, but the nurse chased most of 'em home. They'll be back in the morning. But Ms Laine and I, we kind of had to talk to you as soon as you woke up."

Lucy tried to put her head into her hands, but the straps stopped her. "Oh, I'm not up to dealing with you yet, Paul. Can't it wait until the morning? Whatever it is, it's already waited two days, ever since..." She frowned. "What did happen to me, anyway?"

Paul waved dismissively. "You got a little too close to one of the flash pots, and the idiot who made it used too much powder. He's already off the set, by the way, and insurance is gonna cover everything. We're all just glad you're safe and sound, really we are. Everyone is pulling for you, love. Absolutely everyone."

Lucy grimaced. Something about the way he said those words sounded hideously wrong to her. But then again, she'd always thought of Paul as an insincere douchebag who glad-handed everyone so ineptly that it actually made them like him less, so this was her usual reaction to his every statement. "Everyone..." She blinked, her sluggish mind finally catching up to events after two days of forced inactivity. "What about Charles?" she asked. "Is he here?"

Paul and his silent partner looked at each other, worry etched into their faces. "Um...yeah, about that," Paul said at last. "That's kind of what we wanted to ask you about. You see--"

"He walked off the set after we finished filming for the day," Ms Laine broke in. "Nobody's been able to get in touch with him since. He hasn't been back to his house, he hasn't answered his cell phone...it's like he's dropped off the face of the earth."

"After you what?" Lucy shouted, the loudness of her own voice making her wince with pain. "I thought we had an agreement," she continued, a bit more quietly. "It specified in our contract that no filming was to take place unless I was directly present on set alongside Charles."

"Well, yeah," Paul said, "but I mean, this wasn't like you were just out getting a coffee or something, Luce. The docs said you might be out for days, maybe even wind up in a coma. It was pretty touch and go. You think I can shut down production on a $200 million dollar movie because the star's personal assistant is hurt?" The look on her face obviously suggested that the answer was 'yes', because he continued, "Besides, Chuck gave it his personal okay."

Lucy rolled her eyes. "Let me guess, you asked him and he said something like, 'Let's do it,' right?"

Paul looked a bit startled. "Yeah. How did you...?"

Lucy closed her eyes for a long moment, gathering her strength. "Call a doctor," she said after re-opening them. "Get him to get these straps off of me. We need to go looking for him, right now. Oh, I knew this was a mistake. I absolutely knew it. I tried to tell him this was the wrong part for him, but he wanted to do something different, thought he was getting typecast as a romantic lead..." She sighed heavily. "I should never have let you talk him into this."

"I don't get it," Paul said. "What's the big deal?"

"Didn't you ever wonder why we had all those weird clauses in the contract?" Lucy asked. "Why we wanted working props, indemnity clauses for the stuntmen, why I always had to be on set with him every single take? Didn't you ever notice how he never dropped character, even when the cameras weren't rolling? Or wonder why he absolutely refused to do that goddamn serial killer movie you kept trying to push on him?"

Paul shook his head. "This is Hollywood, Lucy," he said with a shrug. "Hell, he could do all that shit and take home tranny hookers every night and still just be considered 'a little difficult'. What's the big deal?"

So Lucy told them.

***** Mister Mystery frowned, his face a mask of anger. Underneath that anger, though, he felt a sickening feeling of dread. Some new, sinister factor was at work here, something more than just the machinations of Vita Brevis. Something that had managed to wipe the Mystery Cavern from the face of the earth.

He looked around again at the tall cliff face, its smooth perfection marred by the smoldering ruin of the Mystery Mobile. He'd barely managed to jump clear of the crash in time, once he'd realized that the hidden door in the cliff face wasn't opening when he sent out the hidden signal. But even after his specially-designed car had impacted it at full speed, the secret entrance to his inner crime-fighting sanctum remained indistinguishable from the rocks around it. Almost like...almost like it was solid rock.

But that wasn't possible, was it? He'd returned to sift through the clues he'd gathered from the burglaries, hoping to find something that would help him track down Vita's secret lair, but now, he had an even greater mystery to solve. And this mystery was, quite literally, a little too close to home for his comfort.

He felt along the cliffside, as close to the burning car as he dared, looking for the barely-perceptible join between true rock and carefully shaped and decorated concrete. But all he found was the signs of recently-removed construction. Someone had filled in his secret entrance. Someone knew his secret identity. And when he found out...

"You won't find your way in," a woman's voice said from behind him. He spun around to see a pretty young blonde in a wheelchair, her head bandaged. Flanking her was a portly man in a white suit, and an Asian woman in a dress. Mister Mystery racked his brains, trying to figure out who these new villains might be.

"So," he said, "it looks like my old nemesis Brainstorme has returned." He'd never seen her looking this weak, but no doubt the progressive deterioration of her body had advanced further since they'd fought last. With a correspondingly dangerous enhancement of her mental capacities, he reminded himself. "I should have realized sooner once I deduced that my enemy knew who I really was. I don't know who your friends are, but you've made a mistake bringing only two of them--"

"Take a bow, Charles," she said wearily, slumping back into the chair in exhaustion.

Charles Bailey blinked once, then a second, longer time. "Lucille?" he asked, pulling his mask off. "Are we finally done for the day? Feels like I've been under forever."

Lucy nodded again. "We're done, Charles," she said. "Now can we get me back to the hospital? The doctor told me that even if it was a matter of life and death, he didn't want me out of bed for more than an hour."

*****

"So how did you figure out where to find me?" Charles asked, once he'd settled Lucy gently back into her bed and chased away Paul and his boss. "You'll need to tell me quick, the doctor said he'd only give me ten minutes."

Lucy smiled as smugly as she could, given her exhaustion. "Well, I figured that the hypnotic persona we created for you would keep you roughly on the plot of the 'Mister Mystery' movie even after you departed the script. And that meant you'd be trying to solve the Vita Brevis case...which wouldn't be possible, because there is no such person. And what does Mister Mystery always do when presented with an unsolvable case?"

"He goes back to the Mystery Cavern to think it over," Charles said, smiling back at her. "Or in this case, the location we used to film the exteriors of the Mystery Cavern."

"Exactly," Lucy replied. "We were still almost too late, though. When I saw that smoke in the distance..." She shivered. "Let's stick to the romantic comedies from now on, okay?"

He grinned. "Oh, I don't know, I thought I handled myself pretty well as Mister Mystery. I escaped a fiery car wreck, defeated three hoodlums...we did find those guys, right? Sorry I couldn't give better directions, but at the time I did it, I thought that L.A. was the city of Macropolis."

"Paul said they're about three floors down," she said, jerking her head in the direction of the door before remembering what a mistake that was. "He's going to offer them parts in the movie to keep them quiet."

"Then all's well that ends well," he said, kissing her gently on the forehead. "Now, you get some ressmmmmph..." His words were muffled as she pulled him down to her lips for a longer, steamier kiss.

"I'm feeling much better now," she said once she broke the kiss, her eyes wide as she looked at him innocently. "And we do still have eight minutes before the doctor comes back."

"Oh, no," Charles said. "You're recuperating from a serious injury. Much as I would love to engage in hanky-panky, it's going to wait until you get out of here. I'd hate to have to tell Paul that I delayed your return from the hospital by over-exerting you."

She leaned back into the pillows, pulling the loose smock aside to reveal her naked body. "Oh, I'll just lie right here, Charles, I promise. You can do alllll the work." She gave him a lascivious wink.

Charles' gaze drifted down between her thighs as if drawn by magnets. "I really shouldn't," he said.

"Then maybe someone else will," she replied mischievously. She took his chin in her hand. "Raise the curtain, love. On Marc Kingsley." Instantly, Charles' whole demeanor changed. His gaze softened. His expression became meek. His whole body trembled with lust. "Now," she said seductively, spreading her legs wide, "lick my pussy, pet."