Author's note: This chapter is based off season 2 Episode 5, Art For Monkees Sake, one of my all time favorites. I absolutely love when Mike, Davy and Micky are looking for Peter, and Micky meets that crazy artist and Mike sees that guy destroy that grand piano, and I love the entire Mission: Ridiculous scene, from the moment they begin climbing up to the rooftops to the moment when they get captured. It makes me giggle the whole time. XD
Peter really hated being kidnapped. No, really, it was getting to be quite an issue. He didn't know what it was about him in particular that made all the evil people in the world decide to kidnap him. The other Monkees didn't get kidnapped nearly as much as he did, and one of the times that Micky had been kidnapped, they had even been aiming for Peter.
This time, he had been kidnapped by two art thieves pretending to be security guards. They'd kidnapped him, forced him to copy a painting, and now they were taking his copy to replace the real painting that they were going to steal. They had left him bound and gagged in the basement.
Hopefully, they wouldn't notice that he'd signed his name on the copy until it was too late to change it out.
And hopefully the others would notice he was missing and come looking for him.
Really, he had been gone all night. He knew Micky wouldn't have thought about it, and Davy might not have thought much about it either, but he felt confident at least Mike would notice he was gone.
Maybe they were looking for him now. Maybe they had run into the thieves dressed like security guards, and maybe the thieves had sent them on a wild goose chase somewhere else.
Or maybe the thieves had gotten rid of them some other way. Peter shuddered. He decided not to think about that.
Art was just too dangerous, he decided. And all he had wanted to do was paint a few pictures of doors. He liked doors. Doors could hold mysterious secrets behind them, doors could be gateways to strange new places, or doors could be familiar and strong, security from the unknown, shutting the world out and the home in.
And then those lousy thieved had to come and make him paint a copy of that other painting. He knew they weren't real security guards the moment the big one had come up to him and almost slugged him for copying the door in the first place. After that, he'd decided to go for his default defense mechanism and play dumb, all while trying to stall them long enough for the others to come and find him. He knew the thieves couldn't hurt him as long as the painting wasn't finished, because they needed it for their plan.
But he had finally run out of ways to stall, and had reluctantly finished the painting. He had waited for the strike to come, the big thief had been begging to be allowed to do it all day, when he thought Peter couldn't understand.
But the final strike never came. The phone rang, and the boss had answered, told someone that they'd be right there, and had the big one tie Peter up.
"Business before pleasure," he had said. That left Peter little room to doubt. If he didn't get rescued before the painting was stolen, the big guy would come to finish him off.
How did he always manage to get into such desperate situations?
After awhile, the big guy came down to hide the real painting. Pinching Peter's cheek, he said something about suffering and then ran back upstairs. That was just rude.
It wasn't long after that when the others finally came downstairs to look for him.
"What are you doing down here tied up with a gag in your mouth?" Micky asked. What a stupid question. As if he could answer, with a gag tied in his mouth.
Mike pulled the gag down and Micky asked again.
"What are you doing down here with a gag out of your mouth?"
As if that made the answer any less obvious. Why would anybody sit in a basement for hours tied up if they hadn't been kidnapped?
"I'm suffering for my art," he said sarcastically.
They ignored him and found the real painting. "That's a beautiful copy, Peter," Micky said.
"The man who painted that was brilliant," Peter said. The man who painted that had never been stupid enough to get kidnapped by security guards and forced to copy another man's work. He assumed. It could have happened.
"That means they switched the paintings," the others said. It would have hurt if Peter hadn't agreed with them.
With that, they untied Peter and they all went upstairs to tell the curator about the thieves.
The curator didn't believe them and sent the four of them packing.
Discussing what to do, they decided to sneak back in that night and switch the real painting for the fake. It was the only thing to do, since the curator didn't believe them, and as long as they had the real painting, the thieves would be after them.
So they embarked on Mission: Ridiculous late that night. The whole thing was a disaster. Davy knocked over a priceless statue, Peter had forgotten to take the real painting down with them (he blamed the memory eraser), and the big guard had woken up and began hunting them down. They pretended to be statues, however, and luckily for them, the big guard was dumber than Peter, so he just took their sandwich and left.
Mike told Micky and Peter to follow the guard, so they did, Micky still acting like a leopard.
After the guard left, Peter stood up straight, and said in a deep voice, "He's in for a lot of trouble."
Micky, playing along, almost smiled, but managed to keep a straight face. "Why, because we're switching the paintings?" He asked, also in a deep voice.
"No, because I put hot mustard on those sandwiches."
He hadn't spent years with Micky for nothing. With Micky, everything was a joke, and if you knew him long enough, you managed to pick up a few jokes along the way.
They ran back to where Mike and Davy were just finishing switching the painting, and they all ran for the ladder to make their getaway, Mission: Ridiculous marked as a success, despite all the problems they'd caused.
But Micky stopped halfway up the ladder.
"Why'd you stop?" Mike asked him.
"We have traffic coming in the other way," Micky answered.
"Don't they know this is a one-way rope ladder?" Peter quipped.
"I don't think so," Micky answered, jumping to the ground.
It turned out to be the boss thief, who wasn't dumb enough to be fooled by their excuses and pulled out a gun. Micky chuckled nervously and let out another leopard meow.
Then the big guard came up behind them. Startled, the four Monkees yelled and ran as fast as they could to get away.
They ran all over the museum, they ran up to the rooftops, they ran into all the studios, they ran down to the basement and hid among the supplies and the boxes and all the creepy stone statues that Peter felt sure were staring at him, and then they finally led the thieves up to the invisible beams and got themselves and the two thieves caught in the jail trap in five seconds.
They all fell asleep, exhausted, knowing that they were trapped, but that everything could be explained and sorted out in the morning.
Back at the pad, the adventure all over, Peter began fiddling with a different branch of creativity. Painting was just too much trouble.
Mike walked over, goofily singing Papa's Gene Blues, and laid down on the backless couch.
"Peter," Micky said, walking up to where Peter was working on his new hobby. "I am awful glad that you gave up painting."
Peter nodded. "I got a new hobby now," he said.
"What's that?" Micky asked worriedly.
"I'm building things," Peter said.
"Oh," Micky said in relief- right before he sat down on the chair and it gave. He fell hard to the ground and looked up at Peter, who smiled sheepishly.
"I needed a few parts," he explained.
"Peter?" Mike said, helping Micky to his feet.
"Yeah Mike?" Peter asked.
"Maybe you should stick to music," Mike suggested.
Peter nodded, looking down at the splintered chair. "I think you're probably right," he said. Maybe art itself wasn't the problem. Maybe danger was always around the corner for Peter because he was just that kind of person.
Hopefully, he would find his place one day, and then maybe he would stop getting kidnapped so often.
'Cause really, getting kidnapped was a real drag.