Chapter 2: Caution! Evil Genius at Work…or Something Like It
As she approached the door to the suspect's room, Frankie noticed a hand-written sign hanging from the doorknob. It read, "Caution! Super Evil Genius Testing Facilty-Enter At Your On(sic)Risk!" "Genius…yeah, RIGHT!" muttered Frankie to herself as she turned the doorknob, surprised that it wasn't locked.
She wasn't the only one who was surprised. Standing in front of the closet with his back to her, the Prime Suspect nearly jumped out of his blue hide, or whatever it was he was covered in. It was almost hard to imagine that a creature who appeared to be little more than a two-foot-tall blue blob could be so much trouble, but the Imaginary Friend known as "Blooregard Q. Kazoo", or "Bloo" for short, seemed to attract trouble like a trailer park attracts tornadoes. After a startled (and to Frankie's experienced eyes, a guilty)jump, the blue being, who for some reason was wearing a black t-shirt with a big, hand-painted white "B" on the front, and a black vinyl mask affixed around his eyes, folded his short little arms in front of him and scowled at Frankie in what he hoped was a very intimidating manner.
"Don't you non-geniuses know how to KNOCK? I mean, this is a highly-sensitive, dangerous weapons-testing facility here, or can you not READ, either?"
"I don't have time for your games, Bloo! There's some things missing around the house, and for some odd reason I have a suspicion that YOU might know something about it!" Frankie stated accusingly, pointing her finger at the little blue blob. "Besides", she added, "I WORK here; I don't HAVE to knock!"
At least four or five different expression of disbelief crossed Bloo's face all at once. He gasped, staring at Frankie as if she'd suddenly grown an extra head.
"Soooo, you think you can just waltz in here like some Superhero on a mission and put a stop to MY geni…oh, wait…" he said, narrowing his eyes, "somebody ratted me OUT, didn't they? Who WAS it?" His normally high-pitched voice rose by several octaves to a rather unpleasant screech. "It was one of my HENCHMEN, wasn't it? Dirty, rotten, no-goods…I SWEAR, you just CANNOT get good Evil Genius help these days! Which one was it…come on, you might as well tell me now, and save your family a lot of PAIN later!"
"Cut the CRAP, Bloo! Mr. Herriman is missing one of his precious filing cabinets, Wilt is missing a cleaning pail, and the bus has a dead battery and I am missing my JUMPER CABLES! Now, do you have anything to do with this, or NOT? And don't think I won't bother searching every inch of this room, 'cuz you KNOW I will!" shouted Frankie, rapidly reaching the limits of patience with this so-called "Evil Genius". Before her suspect could answer, though, Frankie suddenly noticed something.
"And is that MY black t-shirt you're wearing? And do my eyes tell me correctly, that you have PAINTED on it?"
"T-shirt? T-SHIRT? I will HAVE you to know THIS is a Super Evil Genius COSTUME, designed from the latest high-tech, indestructible material! T-shirt, phhhffffttt…don't make me laugh!"
"It IS my t-shirt, isn't it?" Frankie questioned calmly, trying not to just reach out and rip it right off the current wearer, big white "B" on the front, or no big white "B" on the front.
"Welllll…I found the raw materials for it on the floor of the laundry room, so it coulda been ANYBODY'S…I don't see YOUR name on it anywhere, Miss Superhero Supporter!"
It took a supreme effort of willpower on Frankie's part not to strangle the object of her interrogation. Somehow, though, in spite of everything that the morning had thrown her way, she managed to maintain some semblance of composure, and to press on with her investigation.
"And, are those MY oven mitts you have duct-taped on your hands? I didn't even realize they were missing…YET!"
"Oven mitts? My, my, my…you silly, poor, ignorant non-genius, you!" Bloo responded, shaking his head. "THIS happens to be a little something I call 'Zero-Point Energy', pretty cool, huh?" He held up his gloved hands, grinning proudly.
"And I happen to call them MY OVEN MITTS, now give 'em BACK!" Frankie grabbed ahold of the mitts, snatching them off Bloo's hands, heedless of the duct tape.
"OW! You don't haveta get nasty about it, sheesh!" Bloo rubbed his wrists where he'd duct-taped the "Zero-Point Energy" gloves to them. He started slowly backing towards the closet, glaring accusingly at Frankie from the corner of his eye.
"Now," Frankie continued, "about the missing things. I intend to search this room inch by inch, so if there's anything you feel you need to tell me, you might as well go ahead and tell me now." Frankie folded her arms in front of her, and waited.
"Go ahead. Search ALLLL you want… I got nothin' to hide." Bloo shrugged. All the while he was saying it, though, Frankie couldn't help but notice him gradually inching towards the closet door, until he had come to stand directly in front of it, his back pressed up against it, his expression beginning to show signs of anxiety.
"Blooooo, is there something in that closet I should know about, hmmm?"
Behind his mask, Bloo's eyes grew wide as saucers. His response was considerably less self-assured than previous ones had been. "Uhhhh…Noooo, nothing in the closet, except...except, uhm, regular old everyday, you know, closet stuff. You know, blankets, Wilt's extra shoes, fake grass for Coco's nest, stuff like what's in everybody's closet…absolutely NO Evil Genius stuff in there, uh-uh!" His voice grew more trembly by the second, the veneer of fearless Evil Genius beginning to wear really thin at this point.
Frankie had had just about enough of this game, and wanting to end it quickly, reached over and around Bloo's masked head, took ahold of the doorknob, and pulled, having to literally pull Bloo right along with the door.
There, just inside the door, and pretty much filling the space of the closet, was an odd-looking assemblage of stuff, which had a vague resemblance to a robot, with the body comprised, sure enough, of an upright metal filing cabinet, a "head" constructed from an upturned plastic pail, with a face made up of glued-on can lids and a few scraps of aluminum foil. The "arms" of this creation appeared to have been made of some sort of corrugated flexible tubing, which, upon closer inspection, turned out to be air vent tubing from the back of a clothes dryer. And, to one of the cabinet drawer handles, was attached one end of a pair of orange jumper cables. The other end lay on the floor, apparently having no power source to be attached to.
Even as put-out as she was about this whole thing, Frankie couldn't help but admire the effort that must have gone into this…this, MESS.
"Well, Bloo, what have you got to say about THIS?" she asked, gesturing to the heap of formerly-missing objects.
Bloo laughed nervously, rubbing his hands together, and tried to make what he hoped was a look of concern come up on his face. "Uh, geesh, Frankie, you REALLY need to have a talk with Eduardo about him hording stuff like this…"
"I don't think so, Bloo. I AM planning to have a nice, long talk with MAC, though, about you stealing things to act out some silly, I dunno…Evil Genius Whatever!"
"It's NOT stealing! It's BOR-ROW-ING! I was plannin' on givin' it all back, once I'd built my prototype Battle 'Droid, and got all the kinks worked out!" whined Bloo.
"WhatEVER YOU wanna call it, Bloo, it's still taking things that don't belong to you without asking, and that's WRONG! Now, you are going to help ME get this thing taken apart, and get these things you've taken back to where you got 'em, especially Mr. Herriman's filing cabinet, before he gets back to his office. You KNOW he's not going to be happy with this!"
Dissatisfied with the way things were going down, Bloo decided to crank the whine up several notches, and smoothly executed the transition from Super Evil Genius to Super Pitiful Imaginary Friend. "PLLLLEEAAASE, Frankie, don't make me take my BABY apart! This is my life's work, my one single ambition, and you're going to just go and…RUIN it for me? How COULD you?"
Frankie had been expecting this sort of reaction, and was unmoved. "Well, are you gonna help dismantle this, or am I gonna have to wait until Mr. Herriman comes back in, and get HIM to help, so he can see who had HIS filing cabinet, hmmm?"
Bloo scowled, took a deep breath, and stepped forward. "FINE. I'll help destroy my one and only creation! But, next time you find a tanker truck hurtling towards YOU outa the sky, don't expect any help from ME, sister!"
Frankie sighed, "I'll keep that in mind, next time a tanker truck comes hurtling outa the sky at me."