They awoke when the sun came through the curtains the following morning, Shaggy leapt to his feet "Best job of the week Velms, shopping for food! It's nice and early so the store should be empty" he said almost dragging Velma to pick-up "We'll get breakfast there." They settled in the truck and hit the shops.

"Good work you two, the Myst, I mean History Machine seems to be running fine, it sure beats having to carry the food back." said Velma. When they got in the door they heard the beep of the answering machine.

"Just missed a call, let's get this stuff away first" suggested Shaggy so then went through the usual routine of putting all the stuff away, eating the little treats that had 'accidentally' fallen into the shopping cart, then settled down to listen to the message.

"Probably Daph making sure I'm taking those pain-killers..." said Velma as she pressed the play button

"Velma, Shaggy it's Daphne, please help me!" came Daphne's terrified whisper "Someone is trying to kidnap me, I can't find Fred or Scooby anywhere, I think they've already been taken. There is someone here pretending to be Fred. Please help; I'm still at the convention centre, I've also found that stolen..." Shaggy and Velma stared at each other; there was some muffled noise in the background then they heard Daphne scream "you're not Fred, get away from me, leave me alo..." there was some more muffled noises followed by the phone being switched off. Both stared at the answer-phone, stunned by what they had heard.

"Daphne" whispered Velma,

"Fred" whispered Shaggy

"Scooby" they both whispered. Shaggy and Velma held onto each other for a while until the initial shock of what had happened had left them.

At the convention centre 3 figures were grouped around the open boot of a car. "See Mugsy?" said Rocky "That was easy and she was supposed to be the toughest of them."

"Gee, yeah, just like the boss said, it was easy" replied Mugsy

"That's three of them taken care of, the other two should be even easier, I doubt one of them will even turn up" said Rocky looking at pictures of Shaggy and Velma "Even if they both do, we'll be waiting."

"Oh yeah" replied Mugsy cracking the fingers on his huge hands "We'll be waiting for them just like you said Rocky. I'm gonna scare the little orange one so much that's she won't even be able to think her way out of a paper bag just like the boss wants"

"The boss has waited a long time for this, not only will we be rich from the ransom but it will mean the end of those meddling kids, their reputation will be ruined when they all have to be rescued by the local police. All it took was a little inside knowledge, isn't that right boss?" said Rocky as he closed the boot, trapping an unconscious Daphne inside.

"Works for me" said Fred clapping Rocky and Mugsy on the back.

Back home Shaggy and Velma had got over the initial shock of the message. "Let's check that message for clues" said Velma as she took the answer-phone down to her lab. There she ran the message through some signal processing software. Once the muffled sounds had been cleaned up and enhanced it was clear that Daphne had been kidnapped. "We need to go and rescue them Shag" said Velma wiping a tear from her eye,

"Just us?" asked Shaggy

"I understand, I'm just as unsure as you, but they'd do it for us." replied Velma she then smiled at Shaggy "Besides, we have each other"

He smiled back and held her "I know, but let's not split up and look for clues, we're a bit thin on the ground as it is" he said

"I agree. Lets get our gear together. I think it's time to test some of the new toys I've been working on" replied Velma "But first let's stop and think about how we proceed." Velma waited for a few seconds, then mentally kicked herself, usually she and Fred bounced ideas off each other. This is going to be harder than I though.

"What was she talking about when she said something was stolen?" asked Velma

"Daph told me that the first shipment of their new products had been stolen before it had even been shipped, their team is on the case, not us" replied Shaggy

"Hmmmm. Daph was the Face of Blake for this launch, stolen product turn up at the convention, they had already got Fred and Scooby, someone is pretending to be Fred, she finds the stolen stuff, she gets kidnapped... sounds like their all connected to me..." muses Velma. Upsetting as it was she forced herself to go over the last part of Daphne's message in fine detail and was able to extract two phrases '3 down 2 to go' and 'got her we're rich boys'.

"Like man they know who we are, they're not only waiting for us, they want us to come!" quivered Shaggy.

"Good thinking Shaggy" replied Velma "This is no mystery; I think they are just going to hold Daph for ransom, and from what I could make out on the tape, they are going them as bait to go after us as well. I'll alert Daphne's father." Velma picked-up the phone, dialled a pre-arranged number, left a series of code-words then hung up, this had happened so often that Velma could do this in her sleep. She looked at Shaggy "As we don't know who we are dealing, but they seem to know us all to well, we'd better go undercover, very undercover." Velma thought for a while, smiled then blushed slightly "How does this sound..." and she proceeded to explain her idea.

"What about traps? Fred usually does the traps" Shaggy sighed.

"Not today Shag, if we're right about this then we can leave the trapping to the bad-guys. We just need to provide the bait" she replied "and I already know one lucky Dinkley who will be volunteering to be that bait, follow me"

(Authors Note: Of course Mugsy is the kind of man who couldn't think has way into a paper bag)