This fic is rated PG for violence.

Disclaimer: The Arthur characters all live together in a great big house, and Marc Brown owns the house.

----

In his study, or the "war room" as he liked to call it, Ed Crosswire (who was cross indeed) was engaged in a phone argument with a police investigator.

"It's been two weeks now!" he exclaimed angrily. "What are you people doing, playing darts all day? My tax dollars are paying for you to find my daughter!" He paused. "Yes, I've already increased the reward figure. Three times. It's now at one hundred and fifteen thousand dollars."

As he bickered with the officer, a dog man wearing a blue uniform and cap shuffled into the study. His expression was one of anxiety, as if he expected to suffer terrible repercussions merely for being in the room.

"I received seven ransom notes today," Mr. Crosswire went on, "but I think they were all cranks."

"Begging your pardon, sir," said the dog man meekly.

Mr. Crosswire lowered the phone and glowered at the man. "What do you want? Who are you?"

"Bailey, sir," the man replied. "Miss Muffy's chauffeur."

"Well, out with it!" Mr. Crosswire growled impatiently.

Bailey pulled off his cap and held it in front of him, as if to show respect. "Sir, I have a confession to make. I drove Miss Muffy to the train station on the day she disappeared. It is my opinion that she is in the company of one Angela Ratburn, who is fleeing from a court order."

Mr. Crosswire laid down the phone and leaped to his feet. "Why did you wait until now to tell me this?"

"She, er, purchased my silence, sir," Bailey responded.

Mr. Crosswire clenched his fists. "What else do you know?" he demanded.

"I know that you've been forcing the poor girl to attend a private school at which her needs are not being met," said Bailey, his voice growing more bold. "I know that your obsession with the Simon lawsuit has led you to neglect her. And I know that, as of this day, I am no longer your employee." With that, he unceremoniously dropped his cap onto the floor at Mr. Crosswire's feet.

As the used-car magnate watched in confusion and wonder, Bailey turned on his heel and walked out of the study, smiling and humming a happy tune.

----

It was Friday afternoon, and a light snow was falling. When Francine arrived at her apartment after playing with her friends, she quickly pulled off her red jacket, placed it in the closet, jumped onto the couch, and used the remote to turn on the TV. The opening credits for her favorite new TV series, Rat Woman, were underway.

As Francine eagerly anticipated a new adventure, her sister Catherine emerged from their shared bedroom, with a towel wrapped around her head. "Hi, Frankie," she said in greeting. "You'll never guess what happened to me today. You know that guy named Mitch who kept trying to call you?"

"Uh-huh."

"Well, he stopped me on the sidewalk in front of the high school. He called me Francine."

"Interesting," said Francine, although she felt a little nervous. "What did you do?"

"I told him that my name was Catherine, but I sometimes went by my middle name, Francine. He was kinda cute, you know."

"Hmm," Francine grunted. On the TV screen, the alluring ex-villainess Rat Woman was locked in combat with the crime kingpin Frightmask, a man with the ability to contort his face into horrifying shapes. What made the struggle more intriguing was that Frightmask had been Rat Woman's mentor during the early days of her own criminal career.

The phone rang. "Frankie, will you answer that?" called Catherine.

Francine grabbed the remote and pushed the pause button, but remembered that she was watching live TV. Standing up, she went to the kitchen and picked up the phone. "Hello?"

"Francine!" She gasped when she recognized the voice.

"Muffy? Where are you? Where have you..."

"I don't have time to talk," Muffy's voice interrupted. "Listen carefully. I want you and Sue Ellen to meet me at the old barn by the creek, in fifteen minutes. No parents, no police, just the two of you. Goodbye."

The call ended, and Francine replaced the receiver. Without a moment's hesitation, she hurred to the closet and yanked out her coat.

Several minutes later, she was ringing the doorbell at the Armstrong house. Shortly Sue Ellen answered. "Oh, hey, Francine."

"Get your coat on," said Francine firmly. "I just got a call from Muffy."

Sue Ellen was startled. "Where is she?"

"She's going to meet us at the old barn by the creek," Francine replied.

Enthused at the prospect of being reunited with the missing girl, Sue Ellen grabbed her light yellow coat from the rack and threw it on, first over her cast, then over her right arm.

The two girls walked eagerly along the sidewalk, making a crunching sound as they stepped on the crisp layer of ice. "Maybe we should tell the police," Sue Ellen suggested.

"She said no police," Francine responded. "She must have a good reason. Maybe she's broken the law."

The skies were beginning to darken as they stepped through the frozen grass near the old barn, where Francine had once battled an evil Irish setter and come into possession of a magical unicorn horn.

"Muff-" Sue Ellen started to cry out, but Francine waved a hand at her.

Without making a sound, they tiptoed toward the entrance to the barn, which had been left slightly open. "I think she's inside," Francine whispered.

They slipped carefully through the crack in the door. The small amount of light passing through the windows revealed, in one near corner of the structure, a small girl with her back turned to them. She was kneeling and her head was bowed, as if she was in mourning. Although the drab clothes were unlike anything Francine and Sue Ellen had ever seen Muffy wear, the red braids appeared genuine.

"Muffy, it's us!" Francine whispered to her.

"Come closer," the girl whispered back in a quivering voice.

As they walked across the hay-strewn floor toward the girl, she suddenly turned around. To their surprise, she was wearing a black mask over the lower part of her face. Her eyes were filled with dire purpose. Raising a nozzle she held in one hand, she fired a cloud of gas at them, and suddenly everything turned to blackness...

----

Francine didn't know how much time had passed since she and Sue Ellen had encountered the masked girl. She groggily forced her eyes to open. She was apparently still in the barn, but there was much less light than before. Hoping to illiminate things by opening the barn door wider, she tried to push herself to her feet. While her right arm moved freely, for some reason her left arm was frozen at a right angle, and would not bend. Her head spun wildly as she straightened up, and she feared she would lose her footing. After stumbling around drunkenly for a few seconds, she managed to walk in a semi-straight line toward the door. The light coming through caused her eyes and head to hurt. As she aggressively shook her head in an attempt to ward off the effects of the gas that had knocked her unconscious, she noticed several unusual things about herself. First, she seemed to have more hair than before. Second, she was no longer wearing her own clothes. Third, her left arm was in a cast.

She reached up with her right hand and felt the top of her head. Two pointed, catlike ears sticking up through mounds of curly hair...this wasn't right.

Her eyes now adjusted to the light, she looked toward the corner where she thought she had left Sue Ellen...only to see her own body lying there.

She tried to scream, but only a whimper came out.

(To be continued...)