10:07 A.M. – Santa Monica

The Flow

"Huh, I don't think I've seen this place before," someone asked as a small crowd approached the building marked "The Flow".

"It looks like a water park of sorts," a woman stated as she looked inside. "Is that what they were saving this space for?"

"It looks pretty fun, to be honest," a third person answered. "Why don't we see what all the hub-bub's about?"

That was all the crowd needed to push their way inside and behold the majesty that was The Flow.

"Holy crap, this place is amazing!" one person exclaimed.

"Yeah, look at all of the effort they put into it," a woman laughed. "This is no second-rate water park, let me tell you that much."

"Well, what the heck are we all waiting for?!" another person proclaimed. "Let's go in there and have some fun!"

The rest of the crowd made their way towards the water park with excitement on their minds, not knowing that they were being watched from the shadows by a certain surfer dude.

"Ah-ha," Frankie Dude chuckled. "Right into my trap, just as planned."

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(The pages constantly turn, no matter how long the reader takes. When one story ends, another story will inevitably start. In the end, there is only a new beginning.)

Mat49324 and The Blue Time Ranger are proud to present:

Totally Spies: The New Adventures

Episode 60: The Water Wars

Story Rated: T for Teen

Story Created: June 7th, 2022

Story Summary: The eighty-third co-op project between Mat49324 and The Blue Time Ranger, and episode sixty of our mission-based series Totally Spies: The New Adventures. A fancy new water park has opened in Santa Monica so guests can enjoy the last vestiges of summer before fall fully takes hold, but a lot of the guests either don't want to return to this park, or they don't want to leave. Naturally, the spies get suspicious and decide to investigate the park, only for at least half the team to mysteriously disappear on water slides. It turns out that this is the uncool work of Frankie Dude, once again out to ruin the spies' time in the sun. Can the spies find their missing teammates and save this stylish new water park from closing its doors before it can even get off the ground?

Author's Note from Mat49324: Well, it's time we got another project under way. Last time, we had just two members of Idol Opportunity join in to stop a new original enemy called Metalhead. Hope you guys are ready for #60 of The New Adventures like we are. This time, we're dealing with a villain we haven't used since last season (and was seen only once in the TV series – season 2). Anyway, before we get under way, I mentioned this before in the opening note for He's Full of Snit, but this is now my landmark 100th project on my page! That's a big accomplishment after essentially abandoning FF following a lot of undeserved backlash from others. All I'll say is that I am glad I made the return after TS returned to TV on Universal Kids for a while before being placed back in the proverbial vault for good (it seems) – at least until the new season starts next year. For now, enjoy my 100th project on Fanfiction, and here's The Blue Time Ranger for anything he'd like to say.

Author's Note from The Blue Time Ranger: Mat's reached a hundred total stories, and that's a milestone if I've ever seen one. I've got a ways to go before I hit that milestone myself, even if some of those older stories were left behind for whatever reasons (and NOT counting most of the stuff from my S.P.D. Gold Ranger days). But regardless, I'm not here to bore you with more dwellings on the past. Let's focus on the now, and see how exactly we're going to dunk Frankie Dude this time around! ROLL IT!

And Now, the Obligatory Disclaimer: Mat49324 and The Blue Time Ranger do not own anything related to Totally Spies or any of its affiliations. It belongs solely to Marathon Media Group, Image Entertainment Corporation, Vincent Chalvon-Demersay, and David Michel. The only things of this story we DO own are any characters created by us truly for the story (in this case, Nick, Haruka, Bridget, May, Nozomi, Dawn, and Melissa on my side, and Mathew on his side). Any characters or things we don't own, we are just borrowing with no intent of copyright infringement, only for the entertainment of our readers. Besides, if we did own Totally Spies, which we don't, why would we be writing fiction on a fan site?

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Act 1: Pushed By the Waves

12:07 P.M. – Malibu University

Beach Area

It was another late summer afternoon at Malibu University. Sam, Haruka, Bridget, and Melissa were all hanging out at the Mali-U beach after their classes. Alex and Clover had a shift at the Mali-U Café, and told the others they would join later.

Nick and Mat were just leaving the newsroom of the Mali-U paper after just concluding a weekly desk meeting.

"Well, assigned games are pretty soon," Mat remarked.

"Yeah, that should be fun," Nick stated.

Mat got assigned to a girls' volleyball game that upcoming Saturday, and Nick was assigned to one the following day just to get acclimated to being a part of the media.

"No cheering though is pretty difficult," Mat groaned.

"Sometimes you've gotta make sacrifices," Nick quipped. "To be fair, that's a thing I didn't even know existed until I got this gig."

"Well, let's not worry about that until the time comes," Mat quipped.

They knew that the rest of the spy friends were hanging out on the beach; everyone else was in classes (well, Dawn, Nozomi, Britney, and May were), and Blaine was at beach volleyball practice. Nick and Mat immediately set foot for the Mali-U beach.

"Something on your mind, dude?" Mat wondered.

"I'm thinking tonight would be good for me to treat Alex to dinner again," Nick told him.

"Funny, I was thinking of that just the other day with Sam," Mat chuckled. "And perhaps having Britney and Melissa tag along, too..."

"Say, that sounds like a good idea," Nick replied as he looked back at a smiling Alex. "I'm willing to bet May and Nozomi would love that idea, too."

The two boys made it to the beach and used their devices to get in their board shorts, and Mat could immediately see Sam was getting a tan in her classic green swimsuit.

"Hey, babe," Sam greeted when she looked and saw Mat.

"Hello," Mat laughed as the two shared a kiss.

"I was waiting for you," Sam giggled as she got up.

"Oh, really?" Mat wondered as he could deduce what Sam had in mind.

Sam gave another giggle and the two lovers started chasing each other happily.

"Oh, Nick...?" Alex replied in a sing-song voice.

"Yes?" Nick replied in an equally singy-songy voice.

"Get over here, you," Alex giggled, grabbing Nick by the shoulders and yanking him closer so she could kiss him as passionately as she could.

Clover and Alex were in their barista uniforms, but Clover wasted no time using her X-Powder to change to a bikini, as did Alex.

"Well, Sammy isn't wasting any time," Clover laughed when she saw Mat chasing her.

"Neither are they," Nozomi chuckled when she pointed to Nick and Alex having a merry beach chase of their own.

To Alex's surprise, Nick used his psychic powers to launch a bunch of sand upwards to stop her in her tracks, only for Alex to juke around the makeshift sand dune and keep the chase going.

Meanwhile, Britney had arrived at the Mali-U beach herself after her class to see what was going on at the Mali-U beach and noticed Sam and Mat having their merry chase, and Melissa eventually joining in.

"That chase is incomplete," Britney told herself as she switched to a bikini via her X-Powder and joined in that three-person chase.

Blaine had just finished up beach volleyball practice and had joined in with Clover and the others.

"Hey, don't you dare leave us out of the fun!" May shouted as she, Dawn and Nozomi showed up in their own beach attire.

Once everybody had shown up, the fun levels escalated to an all-time high.

At one point, Nick secretly tripped May up by using his psychic power to lift some sand under her feet, but she quickly recovered by rolling along the ground and coming out of the roll with a flying leap to tackle Nick to the ground.

"Shoulda seen that coming," Dawn chuckled.

All in all, the spies had quite the fun time chasing each other across the beach.

"Man, that was quite the experience," Nozomi laughed once the spies had all settled down for a short time. "We haven't had a good ol' beach chase in a while, have we?"

"Probably the last major one we'll get to have for a while, considering fall's almost here," Britney quipped. "So we might as well enjoy it while we can, right?"

"Truer words, Brit," May replied. "So, what should we do next?"

Alex would have responded if she hadn't noticed something strange nearby.

It appeared to be a large metal pipe stalking through the sand like it was discount Jaws.

And it was coming right for them.

"Um, you guys..." Alex stuttered, her warning coming too late as the pipe expanded, sucked all thirteen spies into it, then closed and sunk back into the sands with no one else on the beach being any the wiser.

1:03 P.M. – W.O.O.H.P. Headquarters

Jerry's Office

As the spies all tumbled to the ground, thankfully surrounded by a psychic bubble to cushion their fall, Nick couldn't help but glare at Jerry.

"You sneaky little shark," Nick quipped.

"Sorry, Nick, the Jaws homage was my idea," RiCO giggled as the spies all got to their feet and changed into their spy suits. "And speaking of movies themed around water, that kinda relates to who's on the loose today."

RiCO waved her hands to change the office viewscreen to a mugshot of Frankie Dude.

"Oh, wonderful, the dude's back in town," Sam sighed. "When is he going to learn his lesson?!"

"Uh, Sammy, most of our baddies refuse to learn their lesson," May quipped. "Emphasis on most."

"...okay, point," Sam replied.

"What's he up to this time?" Melissa wondered.

RiCO changed the viewscreen to an overhead view of The Flow, a relatively new water park that had opened up in Santa Monica.

"We've received a lot of strange reports pertaining to this water park in the past week or so," Jerry explained. "Either patrons don't want to come back, or they refuse to leave."

"Of course mister dude would try something like this," Mat quipped. "It seems like he's more salty than the oceans he used to surf on, huh?"

"I've got your gadgets ready, everyone," RiCO proclaimed. "Now go and dunk that dude!"

"Trust us, RiCO, we'll probably be doing a lot worse than just dunking," Nick responded as the spies all set off.

1:46 P.M. – Santa Monica

The Flow

"This the place?" Clover asked as the spies all approached their destination, The Flow. "It looks really fancy for a water park."

"Trust me, Clover, when it comes to big water parks, there's no such thing as 'too fancy'," Nick responded. "I should show you all the Wisconsin Dells sometime, that place is NUTS..."

Alex did the honors of opening the front doors so the spies could enter and begin their investigation of The Flow.

At first, it didn't appear to be out of place, mostly just the people there having fun in the various rides and slides.

"Hey, I think I saw something over there," Melissa quipped, pointing to the hallway across from the water slides where she'd seen a suspicious shadow moving across the way. "Wanna go take care of mister dude so we can hopefully get back to our end-of-summer fun?"

"I'm all for that," Blaine responded as the spies moved across the park to head down that hallway...

...only to be jumped by a bunch of Frankie Dude's mooks as they turned the corner.

"Oh, that's just rude!" Clover exclaimed.

Nick quickly unleashed a psychic pulse all around him to send the mooks flying backwards before they could touch any of the spies.

"Haven't you ever heard the saying that it's rude to gang up on people, Frankie?" Nick taunted as Frankie Dude emerged from the shadows.

"I'm just using rules for villains number fifty on you little wave-munchers," Frankie responded.

"...okay, that's a unique insult," Dawn quipped. "Points for originality on that one."

"All right, Frankie, what's your game this time?" Nozomi challenged. "Do you have some excuse for forcing people to stay at a water park, or is it just general villain pettiness?"

"Oh, I bet you'd love to know the secrets of my scheme, wouldn't you?" Frankie retorted. "Well, tough curls, because I've got much better things to be doing with my time. I'll have to see you cats later."

Frankie turned around to retreat, only to be stopped when someone came running in and planted their boot into Frankie's chest, sending him tumbling backwards.

"Did somebody call for a combat instructor?" Sortiliena proclaimed as Frankie picked himself up.

"And where did you come from, little lady?!" Frankie shouted.

"Oh, I come as needed," Sortiliena quipped. "And it looks like you need some lumps."

"Right on time as always, Sortiliena!" Melissa exclaimed. "You wanna help us kick this guy's keester?"

"Don't mind if I do," Sortiliena chuckled as she flipped over Frankie to land in a fighting stance by the rest of the spies. "Let's mess him up good."

"You like playing the uncool way, huh?" Frankie shot at them.

But shortly, the mooks reappeared to at least even the odds.

"I don't know what your game plan is, but you're not going to succeed, no matter WHAT you try!" Bridget proclaimed.

"Totally!" Clover shouted. "And you are so not ruining everybody's last moments of summer!"

"Them's fighting words coming from a bimbo," Frankie sneered.

To say that Clover didn't like hearing being called a "bimbo" was an understatement.

"BIMBO?!" Clover chastised.

"Oh, that was not the right thing to say," Nick taunted.

The mooks came after the spies with multiple shots from laser guns, but Clover was quick to combat that by having them deflected back via her X-Powder mirror.

"That'll teach ya who the true bimbo is!" Clover quipped.

"You got my mooks," Frankie Dude chastised. "But no matter... it's over for you anyway!"

Before long, more mooks came out of hiding, even some of the evil beach bunnies from before.

"Somehow I find this environment more suitable than the last time," Alex commented.

"Tell me about it," Haruka replied, remembering the last time they encountered them. "Anybody that wears a bikini in the snow frequently is either really crazy or doesn't care if they get sick."

"I wouldn't," Sortiliena quipped.

"Anyway, let's get these mooks and the Dude squared away," Sam proclaimed in her leader tone.

"You're there, and you're square," Bridget quipped, taking a shot at Frankie Dude.

"Come on, girlie, you can do better than that," Frankie laughed.

In response, Bridget just smiled. "Okay. Sonic Mode, online!"

Before Frankie could react in time, Bridget had already transformed into Sonic Mode and started speeding around the area, knocking down mook after mook as she ran.

"Always remember, you asked for it," Bridget taunted.

Once the army of mooks were dealt with, security had taken them away, but Frankie Dude was not among them anymore.

"He got away?!" Melissa chastised.

"So, what brings you here, Liena?" May wondered.

"Exactly," Alex replied. "No L.A.M.O.S. are on the loose this time..."

The three main spies knew that the L.A.M.O.S. were Terrence Lewis, Tim Scam, Boogie Gus, Myrna Beesbottom, and Helga von Guggen.

"Thankfully, the L.A.M.O.S. are still locked up nice and tight," Sortiliena answered. "Still, I figured you could use a little extra muscle when it comes to the weirdos that you fight."

"Oh, don't we know it on the weirdos part," Nozomi laughed.

Surprisingly, other water park personnel came after the spy team and was in the process of having them thrown out, but a guest came forward to stop them.

"Stop!" Britney proclaimed. "You got it all wrong!"

"HOLD IT!" He called out. "They're not responsible, it's this long-haired dude who knocked me over who's responsible!"

"Was it this guy?" Mat wondered as he showed Frankie Dude's mug shot via his X-Powder.

"That's him!" The male guest proclaimed. "Five minutes ago, he knocked me over and made me drop my lunch!"

"And we were sent to investigate what's going on here, too!" Sam added, showing her W.O.O.H.P. credential.

Everybody else was no different once the other employees saw the truth.

"To put it simply, we're the good guys," Nick emphasized.

The staff apologized and let the spy team do their thing, even giving the spies passes to investigate the water park.

"Glad that worked out," Dawn sighed in relief.

"Well, let's officially see what's causing people to not like this place," Melissa remarked.

"Look the part then, everyone?" Mat wondered.

"Damn right, bro," Nick replied after a prior mission with Ariel running loose.

With that, the spies went from their catsuits to their swimsuits as if they were a whole party themselves.

"Split up or go together?" Haruka asked.

"Stay together," Sam replied.

With that, the fourteen spies split into three teams of four with Britney and Melissa joining Mat and Sam, May and Nozomi joining Nick and Alex, and a team of two (Clover and Blaine); Sortiliena, Haruka, Bridget, and Dawn were the other team of four.

They all chose to check out an attraction with four separate water slides that all emptied into a big wading pool to come out.

After all the tubes reached the slide's end, Clover and Blaine noticed that the only full team of four that came down were Sortiliena, Haruka, Bridget, and Dawn.

"What happened to the others?!" Clover chastised.

Bridget and Haruka looked to see two empty tubes and eight members of the spy team gone.

Dawn immediately tried calling Melissa at least on her own X-Powder, but there was no answer.

"Damn it!" Dawn swore.

"Now what?" Blaine wondered.

"Oh, this definitely isn't good," Bridget quipped.

"Tell me about it," Nick responded as he emerged with Nozomi trailing behind him.

"Nick, you're okay!" Haruka shouted. "What happened to everyone else?!"

"Not entirely sure," Nick admitted. "But when we went up that water slide, I sensed something weird at the top. Alex and May had already gone down the slide, but I was able to get Nozomi and I in a bubble before we were next. Everyone else, far as I know, flew the coop after they went down the slides."

"Seems like we might have found the cause of at least some of the weirdness in this place," Nozomi replied. "And we're down six spies. Not exactly promising, if you ask me."

"Hey, we've survived worse before, trust me," Sortiliena quipped. "How about we go back up and check things out?"

The eight remaining spies all headed back to the water slides, moving slowly this time so they wouldn't get caught by whatever had ensnared the others.

"Do you still sense whatever you heard before, Nick?" Nozomi asked.

"Yeah, it's faint, but it's there, and it's getting easier to hear the closer to the top of the slides we get," Nick responded.

Upon reaching the top, Nick ducked in and glanced around, eventually finding what appeared to be a tiny radio transmitter hiding underneath the canopy above them. Nick reached out to grab the transmitter and crush it in his hand.

A quick scan of the other three slides revealed three more transmitters, to which Nick crushed two of them and deactivated the last one so they could send it off to Jerry and RiCO for analysis.

"What did you hear, Nick?" Sortiliena asked.

"It sounded like a really faint melody, kinda like what you'd hear in movies about beaches and Hawaii and stuff like that," Nick stated. "Must be some kind of hypnotizing tune."

"Wonderful, Frankie's dabbling in hypnosis now," Haruka groaned. "That's all we need."

"Well, then, let's get moving so we can hopefully find our friends before any more trouble pops up," Bridget quipped.

With that, the eight spies climbed down from the slides and headed deeper down the hallway they'd initially gone down to find Frankie Dude.

Nick's psychic radar eventually picked up the panicked thoughts of someone in a nearby room, and after finding it locked, Nick decided to just forego subtlety and kick the door open to reveal a slightly older man tied to a chair and struggling to escape.

Nozomi did the honors of rushing over to rip off the duct tape that was keeping the man captive so he could finally stand up.

"What's going on here, mister?" Haruka asked.

"Oh, thank goodness someone finally found me," the man responded. "I'm the manager of this water park, and just when things were getting going today, some weird surfer dude guy and his minions busted in to the park, tied me up in here, and just left."

"Sounds like the dude's been busy," Clover quipped.

"We're here chasing that dude, by the way," Sortiliena stated, flashing her own W.O.O.H.P. credentials to assure the manager that they were on his side. "Where was the last place you saw him?"

"Not sure, but he mentioned something about 'putting an end to summer' before he tied me up," the manager replied.

Nick did a quick psychic radar sweep of The Flow to confirm the manager's statement. "Yup, the dude had ditched this place," Nick confirmed. "I can't sense any of the others here, either."

"You all have to stop him," the manager proclaimed. "The Flow just opened last week, and this could ruin our reputation if his shenanigans keep up."

"That's kinda our job, sir," Nick chuckled as he flipped open his X-Powder. "RiCO, we need your super drone."

"Always on call!" RiCO laughed. "I'm tracking Frankie Dude as we speak."

"And we've finished analyzing the transmitter that you sent us," Jerry stated. "As you have probably guessed, it plays hypnotizing melodies to brainwash whoever hears it, but the victim needs to be at very close range for it to work."

"That makes sense, if the victims only got mind-melded when they got to the top of the slides where we found them," Blaine quipped.

"And on that note, we have some friends to go and save," Nick proclaimed as the eight spies set out to follow the drone's tracking signal.

The signal eventually took them to Santa Monica Beach, where the spies could just barely see Frankie Dude swimming away from the beach and out to sea, no doubt towards his secret lair.

"Busted!" Clover exclaimed.

"Get back here, you son of a bitch!" Nick shouted. "We still have to kick your teeth in for taking our friends, you know!"

"Sorry, but I'd rather keep my teeth, thank you very much," Frankie retorted. "I'd love to play with you some more, but like I said earlier, I do have things I need to be doing. In the meantime, though, I have something for you to play with."

Nick raised his hand to charge up a Final Shine Attack, only to stop when he noticed who had just made their presence known.

It was Alex and May.

And they were both advancing on the eight spies, their eyes dulled and sinister expressions on their faces.

"...oh, crapbaskets," Nick quipped.

He couldn't believe that his own fiancée and one of his love interests were coming at him in this capacity.

"You weren't supposed to leave us behind!" May growled as she summoned her anchor at Nick.

"What she said!" Alex snarled as well.

"Believe me, there wasn't time!" Nick shot back as he secretly did a psychic reading on Alex and May.

His suspicions were confirmed, Alex and May had been brainwashed.

"Brainwashed?" Dawn asked Nick.

"100% brainwashed," Nick told her.

"Now, you all will deal with us!" Alex and May proclaimed in a monotone voice.

"I don't think so," Bridget remarked. "Sonic Mode, online!"

Before the light of her transformation had faded, Bridget was already on the move, running around and around Alex and May as fast as she could, the sheer speed of her dashing creating a small whirlwind effect that lifted Alex and May into the air and allowed Bridget to jump into the air and sock both Alex and May in the chest with a double fist strike, sending them crashing back down to the ground.

"Sorry I had to do that," Bridget stated.

May still hurled her anchor at Nick and the others, but Nick was able to block it via his psychic barrier he'd created just in time.

"This isn't getting anywhere!" Haruka chastised. "Hey, May... this is Nick we're talking about here..."

Somehow, that got to May, mentally. She wobbled slightly and clutched her head, and Nick hoped that meant something.

In the meantime, Alex lunged for the rest of them.

"Alex, stop!" Clover shouted. "This isn't gonna get us anywhere!"

"There's gotta be something we can do," Blaine stated.

"But what about Sam and the others?" Haruka wondered.

"They're gonna have to wait for the time being," Sortiliena replied.

After just barely missing Haruka, Alex turned around and leaped towards Nick...

...only to find her attack blocked by a large metal anchor.

"Come on, Alex, we don't need to do this," May proclaimed, her voice back to normal, as she swung her anchor to get Alex to back off.

"Holy crap, that worked?" Bridget gasped.

Alex attempted another lunge, only to be leg sweeped off of her feet by May so that Nick could throw out a psychic pulse and cause Alex to stumble.

"Let's hope that worked," Haruka responded.

"What the heck?" Alex chastised when she was saved.

"All right, we got them back," Bridget replied with some relief.

When everything else got squared away, the remaining spy team immediately asked Alex and May what the last thing was they remembered.

"Being on the water slide," Alex immediately answered.

May nodded in agreement.

"You got hypnotized by transmitters," Nick told them.

"Since when does Frankie Dude go for transmitters?" Alex wondered.

"He doesn't," Clover deduced. "Some surfer like him would likely not take interest in those kind of electronics..."

"So, if we're dealing with a second villain, the question is... who?" Bridget wondered.

"We find Sam and the others, we'll know right away," Sortiliena deduced.

"I would be a little more irked that he nabbed us for his little brain-bending, but then I remembered that rules for villains number eighty-four is a thing," Alex quipped.

"That's a typical villain one," May responded.

"Hey, are my eyes a little wacky right now, or am I seeing a dolphin over there?" Clover asked, pointing to what she'd seen a few feet away.

Nick took a few steps forward to confirm what Clover had noticed, and what he saw disturbed him.

It looked like a regular person, but with dolphin features, including flippers and a dorsal fin, flopping around on the beach.

"Oh, I'm gonna turbo barf," Nozomi groaned.

"Wait, it kinda looks like a hybrid mutant of sorts," Sortiliena quipped as she took a good look at the victim. "You think Professor Genesis is behind this one? That does seem like something he'd do."

"Don't I know it," Nick sighed, remembering the time that Professor Genesis had teamed up with Max Exterminus.

Suddenly, Alex gasped in shock, as she recognized this kind of dolphin transformation from a while back.

"Oh, lordy, I think I know who Frankie's partner might be," Alex proclaimed, all eyes now on her. "Do you all remember that time I got shipped off to Dorsal Academy when my report card got switched with Mandy's? That weird headmaster guy who tried to turn me and everyone there into dolphins?"

"Wait, he did what?!" Nick gasped. That had been one caper that Alex hadn't told him about.

"Yeah, he was some wingnut that turned everyone at that academy into dolphin hybrids because he was sick of the way dolphins were treated," Alex explained. "And while I'm all for saving the dolphins and all that, that was not the way to do it!"

"Does he seem like the type to try and hypnotize people?" Nozomi wondered.

"Honestly not sure, considering we only had to fight him once, but who knows what else he'd try?" Clover responded.

"Ah, if it isn't our esteemed guests."

The spies all spun around to confront the owner of that voice, Dorsal Academy's Headmaster Charleston, still looking slightly like a dolphin as he had at the end of that caper.

"It has been a while, hasn't it, my dear Alexandra?" Charleston chuckled. "It looks like you're getting along well."

"I honestly hoped I'd never have to deal with you again after what you put me through," Alex proclaimed.

"Well, I figured now that I've been freed, it was time to try again," Charleston stated. "And I must say, you've grown even lovelier since last we met. You'll make quite the wonderful queen like this."

Before Charleston could advance any further, Nick whipped out a Cyclone Blast Hairdryer and aimed it for Charleston.

"I'm gonna have to stop your right there, you four-bit Penguin ripoff," Nick growled. "I don't exactly know you myself, but what you did to Alex is bad enough as it is. If you have half a brain cycle, you'll back the hell off right now. That's my fiancée you're leering at with those dead fish eyes of yours, and that's not something you should be doing when it comes to me."

"And what, pray tell, are you going to do if I don't?" Charleston laughed.

In response, Nick just grinned. "I'm actually very glad you asked that, freak show."

Nick tossed the Cyclone Blast Hairdryer over to May so he could clench his fists and allow his psychic aura to explode to life around him, causing Charleston to take a few steps back out of surprise.

"Yeah, didn't know I could do this, did you?!" Nick shouted as he fired a flurry of psychic bolts from his right hand to make Charleston dance around to avoid them. "Dance, my puppet, DANCE!"

"Now where the hell is Frankie?!" Dawn shouted. "He's still got some of our friends hostage, after all!"

"Like I'd tell you after we've progressed so far in our plans," Charleston laughed. "If you want the rest of your entourage back, you'll have to find them yourself."

With that said, Charleston retreated, jumping into the water and swimming with, appropriately enough, dolphin-like grace out to sea.

"Oof, I never wanted to deal with that nutjob ever again," Alex shuddered as Nick walked up and hugged her.

"Hey, as long as I'm here, he won't lay a flipper on you," Nick responded. "That's a promise."

"And on that note, let's start swimming out there," Sortiliena stated. "I'd bet any kind of money that Frankie's lair is out to sea, and that's where the rest of our friends are."

Everyone equipped their UPWATIs and started swimming out to sea while following RiCO's directions to Frankie and hopefully his lair, hoping they could find their missing friends before it was too late.

To be continued...

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On the next episode...

Alex: Oh, wonderful, the place is dank. That's all we need.

Haruka: Reference rules for villains, number forty-six.

Bridget: Aside from that, does this place look a little too high-tech for Frankie's purposes? We all know he doesn't prefer technology this advanced for his schemes...

Clover: It's gotta be Charleston, then.

Sortiliena: I'll say it again, but you all have quite an interesting rogues' gallery.

Nick: I think I sense them over that way. Let's get moving, everyone.

Nozomi: Hopefully mister dolphin guy didn't do anything to them...

May: Hey, if they did, we'll just stomp on them until they fix what they did. That's what we usually do, right? So, I guess we'll see you all on the next act of Totally Spies: The Water Wars, "A Drop in the Bucket"! ...okay, so far this scriptwriter has thankfully refrained from dumb puns in our lines. Just keep 'em in the episode titles where they make more sense and we'll be fine.