2:18 P.M. – The Society
Location Unknown
She looked around the hallway, wondering where Melody had gotten off to.
First Henya, now her.
What exactly was happening around here?
To be fair, Melody at least had the excuse that she wasn't feeling good.
Though she doubted that. Melody rarely ever got sick.
Something strange was going on around here, and she was going to find out what it was.
Waving her hand to conjure an illusion of herself in her place, she quickly stepped away from the proceedings and decided to book it for Melody's room...
...only for it to slide open the instant she went to knock.
"Eep!" she squeaked.
"Jeez, don't scare me like that, Froot," Melody chuckled. "Is everything okay?"
"I was going to ask you that, Melody," Froot answered, trying her best to give a stern look (even if everyone else thought it only made her look adorable). "Are you actually sick, or..."
Froot's question was cut off by Melody yanking her into her room and closing it just as quickly.
"Not out there," Melody stated. "I'm concerned about something, really."
"You mean why Henya left?" Froot answered. "Did you make any headway on that?"
Melody sighed in preparation before reaching underneath her bed and retrieving her laptop to show Froot what she'd discovered.
"I'm not sure if you'll like it," Melody admitted. "...but you need to see this."
(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 94: The Rage on the Stage
Story Rated: T for Teen
Story Created: November 20th, 2023
Story Summary: The one-hundred and thirtieth co-op project between Mat49324 and The Blue Time Ranger, and episode ninety-four of our mission-based series Totally Spies: The New Adventures. A mysterious new song is all the rage in Beverly Hills, but most people who listen to it suddenly start acting destructive and obsessed. The spies initially suspect that Sebastian's up to his usual tricks, but it's actually Boy Candy, having resurfaced after so long to try and find their way back to the spotlight. They're not into stealing faces this time, but their hypnotic song still needs to be stopped before it entrances the citizens of Beverly Hills into flattening their own city. Can the spies take down these pathetic excuses for musicians before they make a destructive re-emergence?
Author's Notes from Mat49324: Well, we're getting close to the landmark 100th episode of our series The New Adventures. We hope you all enjoyed Time to Come Home, and that you'll enjoy this new one, too. Once again, in case you might have forgotten, our movie fic, Another Side Another Story is officially completed, but I guarantee that this 8th season will be completed before that's posted. For now, here's The Blue Time Ranger for anything he'd like to say.
Author's Notes from The Blue Time Ranger: Seven to go! We're at the halfway point of season eight, and that means it's time for yet another villain, or rather villains, to make their New Adventures debut! As you know, I get inspiration from the strangest of places, and I'm not sure you'll believe what inspired this one, but we'll get to that. Let's just get to the musical madness, shall we? 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 or locations created by us truly for the story. 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?
Act 1: Time to Rock Some Faces
1:15 P.M. – Malibu University
The Spies' Penthouse
("Kura Kura" by Ado plays)
While she continued to wait for some of the spies to return from their afternoon classes, Henya continued to flip through the different channels on the television in the spies' penthouse, surfing through each one to see what was on. They'd never really let anyone watch television at the Society, and the only channels they really did get were basic cable, so yeah, not much.
Henya switched between a strange baseball game, a corny Korean soap opera, and even some of that anime May really liked to watch before she heard footsteps approaching.
"Whew, am I glad that's over," Nick sighed in relief as he and May were the first to enter the penthouse.
"Class was kinda brutal, huh?" Henya chuckled.
"At least for me," Nick quipped. "My new foreign language class was nuts. I honestly don't know if Korean is the language for me, especially given that I'm a psychic and can read minds."
"To be fair, Nick, that's not exactly an advantage you can just broadcast to your class," May chuckled, leaning over to kiss Nick on the cheek.
"Say, I was wondering something," Henya asked, and both Nick and May knew what Henya probably wanted to know. "I never actually got the chance to ask about that, given everything else that's already happened, but... does Nick have multiple girlfriends?"
"Technically, two girlfriends and a fiancée," May answered. "I'm surprised you didn't already know that, Henya, given that you already know a lot about us."
"To be fair, I really only know about your exploits in saving the world," Henya admitted.
"To make an extremely long story somewhat palatable," Nick explained. "Alex is my fiancée. May here is a childhood friend of mine, and Nozomi was my first girlfriend, long before I met the rest of the spies."
"I lost someone I really cared for a few years ago, and Nick was there to help me pick up the pieces," May continued. "So I guess it's really no surprise that I fell in love with him."
"Like I mentioned, Nozomi was my first girlfriend, but we had to split up due to circumstances," Nick stated. "But recently, we 'reconnected' after my sister Melissa hooked up with Mat. Mat's kinda in the same boat as us, in that he has a fiancée and two girlfriends as well."
"You're so lucky," Henya chuckled.
"I can imagine you probably never had much chance to build relationships of your own while you were trapped in the Society, huh?" May quipped.
"Tell me about it," Henya stated.
Suddenly, a loud beep resounded in the living room, and Nick quickly raised a psychic bubble to surround himself, May and Henya as a tube popped out of the ceiling and attempted to suck them into it.
"Does that happen a lot around here, too?" Henya chuckled.
"If only you could have seen some of the weirdest places we've been WOOHPed from," May giggled as the three of them flew up into the tube, Nick and May changing into their spy suits on the way.
When they landed in Jerry's office, the rest of the spies were already there and suited up as well.
"I hope that didn't ruin your moment, Sam," Haruka chuckled.
"You're the one who walked in on us, Haruka!" Sam sputtered.
"Hey, you were just kissing," Haruka quipped. "It's not like you were doing anything scandalous."
"Down, Haruka," Nick stated, knowing how Haruka worked. "This isn't the time for you to be slipping back into old habits."
"Hey, I just like to have fun," Haruka laughed. "But back to the business at hand, who needs the business end of our hands today, Jerry?"
"Someone you haven't faced in a while, it seems," Jerry stated as the office viewscreen changed to a mugshot of T-Bone, the lead singer of Boy Candy, along with the rest of his bandmates.
"Holy crapbaskets, it has been a while," May quipped. "After what he tried to do to Idol Opportunity, he's got an appointment with my fists!"
"Recently, I've been hearing about a very strange rock song that's playing across Beverly Hills," RiCO explained after materializing in the office. "And anyone who's heard it suddenly starts getting highly aggressive and violent."
"Whatever it is, it can't be anything good," Nozomi quipped. "Is T-Bone or his cronies still in Beverly Hills?"
"Looks like they are," RiCO answered after checking the signal from her superdrone. "It seems like they're heading towards The Groove."
"Because of course!" Alex proclaimed.
"Guess we've got a washed-out boy band to beat down," Nick quipped.
The spies all moved to retrieve their gadgets before heading out into the city to find T-Bone and the rest of Boy Candy before they could cause any more trouble.
"Just when I thought T-Bone turned over a new leaf..." Alex groaned, thinking back to when she and Britney were assigned to his mansion. (A/N: Reference S5's Evil Hotel.)
She'd gone from thinking T-Bone and Boy Candy were the best rock band in her opinion to downright hating them after they stole Teensicle's faces just to return to stardom... until T-Bone resurfaced and had apparently turned his life around from being in prison.
"Seems too cookie-cutter that they're wreaking havoc at The Groove," Clover sighed once the Skyskimmer reached The Groove.
1:53 P.M. – The Groove
The spies got to the Groove to see that nothing had looked out of place.
"Hopefully we beat them here then," Melissa commented.
"Totally," Sam quipped.
"Ugh... you spies again?!" T-Bone growled.
"Well, it seems we beat the spodes to the punch like Melissa was thinking..." Mat remarked. "Whatever happened to just cherishing when you WERE the talk of the town?"
"You apparently don't get how cutthroat the music industry can be..." T-Bone coldly stated.
"Not that it's important to me since music is not my calling," Mat commented.
"I don't know if Sebastian gave you any ideas for this idea of yours, but either way, it'll end in the same outcome as many of our rogues' gallery," Nick proclaimed.
"Luckily classes for us are light since it's the first week," Dawn remarked.
Everybody sighed in complete agreement since college life could get hectic any given day.
Boy Candy even had wireless speakers to try to hypnotize the spies right away.
"That's not happening!" Sam exclaimed as she used her Laser Lipstick on the speakers.
Clover got in the spirit, too when one of them pulled out another set of speakers.
"Not so hot now, huh?!" Mat proclaimed.
"Don't think we're going to go down quietly," T-Bone sneered as he reached in his back pocket, which Haruka happened to notice and quickly moved to counter it, snap-kicking what appeared to be a megaphone out of T-Bone's hands.
"Nice try, buddy," Haruka taunted.
"Good eye, Haruka!" Britney exclaimed.
Instead of it turning to a battle, Boy Candy had decided on a tactical retreat. However, something had fallen out of T-Bone's jacket pocket, which Sam happened to notice.
"Looks like we foiled their plans overall," Alex quipped.
"We can chalk up that 'victory' if we want to," Blaine added.
"And maybe Jerry and RiCO can fill us in on this," Sam chimed in as she knelt down to see some kind of solution on the ground.
Nick held his X-Powder towards the strange solution so that RiCO could scan it and figure out what exactly it was.
While this was happening, Nick's ears picked up a strange song coming from speakers just off to the side of the nearby street.
And he definitely didn't like the vibes that the song was giving off. It was almost as if...
"Everyone, cover your ears, quickly!" Nick exclaimed, and the rest of the spies did so, using whatever gadgets they could to block out the sound.
"Something up with that song, Nick?" Alex asked.
Nick glanced towards just across the street, where a bunch of shoppers who had been within earshot of the song had started marching in lockstep towards The Groove, one of them even taking a nearby shopping cart and ramming it straight into a car that was close by.
"Okay, never mind, I see the problem," Alex quipped.
"We'd better stop them before they cause too much damage!" Sam shouted.
Henya stepped up first, aiming her Wondercube towards the speaker that was blasting the offending music and hitting it with a flash of light to shut it down and stop the music.
Almost instantly, the mesmerized shoppers seemed to snap out of it and look around, wondering what exactly was happening.
"Huh," Henya quipped. "Maybe they need to actually hear the song to be brainwashed by it?"
"That's certainly what it seems like," Haruka noted. "RiCO, can you analyze that song for us?"
"Already on it, Haruka," RiCO answered. After a few seconds, an analysis flashed to life on Sam's X-Powder. "Yup, there's definitely hypnotic frequencies in this song, but thankfully, as you probably already figured out, it only works if the affected person actually hears the song. Disrupting the source of the song should be good enough to stop it."
"You'd think T-Bone would try the same hypno-trick he used when he tried to brainwash Idol Opportunity," May quipped. "That worked better than this."
"To be fair, I think he had access to Phil Jenkins' own hypnotic CDs when that was happening," Clover stated. "Guess that means T-Bone's band isn't as savvy as that."
"Regardless, I think we need to find those guys before things can get any worse," Melissa proclaimed. "Any sign of them, RiCO?"
"They're actually headed your way!" RiCO shouted.
Nick spun around and projected a psychic barrier in front of the spies to disperse the booming sound waves that T-Bone had shot from his megaphone towards them.
To the spies' confusion, someone was tussling with the other members of Boy Candy. She appeared to be a couple years older than them, with long brown hair mixed with black, white and red, along with "hair spikes" along her forehead, blazing orange eyes that were clearly thanks to colored contacts, and an absolutely insane mish-mash of an outfit that called back to many classic metal bands and their fashions.
"Wait, wait, is that Mallory?!" Nozomi gasped. "What's she doing all dressed up again?"
"Regardless, I'm gonna head over there and teach these clucks a lesson in speed," Bridget stated, reaching for her brooch. "Sonic Mode, online!"
The instant Bridget had finished transforming, she sped off in the direction of the Boy Candy members that were trying to attack Mallory and bowled them over rather easily.
"Nice to see you've still got the moves, huh?" Mallory chuckled.
"Okay, good, that means you're still you," Bridget quipped. "We saw you in your old Metalhead duds and thought they'd gotten to you, too."
"Nah, I'm too wily for that," Mallory admitted. "My years in the music scene have taught me to be wary of strange music like theirs."
"Drat, it's the speedster again," T-Bone groaned as he and the rest of Boy Candy regrouped. "This isn't the end, you dullards!"
"Yeah, yeah, we've heard it all before," Bridget retorted as Boy Candy retreated for the moment, allowing the rest of the spies to run up and see what was going on.
"So, is everything okay, Mallory?" Sam asked.
"Mostly," Mallory answered. "I was just trying to figure out where I was going to schedule my show when those has-beens decided to jump me."
"Wait, what was that about a show?" May wondered.
"Oh, you didn't hear?" Mallory giggled. "Ever since I got my early release for being such a model inmate and helping you all out, I've been wondering if I should try to get back into the music scene. At first, I didn't want to push myself too hard, especially after what I'd almost done. But I thought long and hard about it, and I eventually realized that Maria would want me to get my voice back out there. So, ever since that day, I've been workshopping things here and there, and... well, Mallory Metallic, the Smiling Metal Maiden, is just about ready to return to the music scene!"
"That's awesome, Mallory!" Alex laughed. "Any timetable on your grand return?"
"I just need to think of a suitable venue, and I should be all set," Mallory responded. "But right now, I think we need to follow that band of bums and stop them before they cause any more havoc."
"That's what we've been doing," Nick quipped.
"No rest for spies, huh?" Mallory chuckled.
"Such is the life of a W.O.O.H.P. agent," Nick answered. "Baddies rarely ever give us time to rest."
Nick flipped open his X-Powder so RiCO could continue tracking Boy Candy, the spies all heading in the direction of the signal, with Mallory and Henya following closely behind.
"That's definitely the truth there," Clover commented, regarding Nick's last statement.
"Plus, I never thought I'd ever say this, but... thanks, Mallory," Alex added, considering Mallory had once turned to a life of crime to one music band.
"You're welcome," Mallory replied. "And by the way, I don't hold any hard feelings about our last encounter."
"Heard that loud and clear," Mat stated. "The thing is, what I'd said about Kyle Lewis still stands since that's a true fact."
"Well, after all things considered, I sort of understood your point," Mallory replied.
Melissa and Nick certainly remembered that from Mat since he knew what he was talking about.
"Anyway, me assisting you spies would be the least I can do from before," Mallory continued.
"It's taking me a bit to locate them," RiCO told the others. "Oh... I got 'em – Santa Monica Beach!"
"There's also a beach party taking place at the same time," Sam told the others.
Some of the spies looked at Sam to see how she'd have known that.
"Mat had the news on last night and I happened to overhear it the other day," Sam reasoned.
Melissa chuckled at that "support" from Sam to Mat since Mat wanted to go into sports journalism.
2:21 P.M. – Santa Monica Beach
A stage was already set up, and people were dancing to the beat of the band that was playing.
"Should we be glad they didn't think of Mali-U yet?" Clover asked the others.
"For now... yeah," Alex stated.
"Looks like they're just beginning their plan of attack on here," Haruka observed.
"Lucky us again," May quipped.
"If only our luck was like this when Kyle Katz went to make trouble in Hawaii," Dawn remarked.
Henya and Mallory looked like they were in the dark about that.
"That's one of our past missions," Melissa replied concisely.
"And Mat's originally from Hawaii, too," Alex added.
"Well, that explains one part of that," Mallory commented.
There was no time to explain more, as they had a boy band to stop once again.
"I can't really tell what they're planning now," Nozomi told the others.
"More importantly, I don't see T-Bone at all," Mat noted.
"If I had to guess, he's backstage," Britney deduced.
The spies all made a break for backstage; Britney's deduction turned out to be right.
"Okay, so what's our plan before he starts unleashing his hypnotic music?" Blaine asked.
"Hey, Nick, can you get me closer to the speakers?" RiCO asked. Nick complied and scooted closer to the speakers so RiCO could take a look. "Hmmm... what complicated web do you have for me to unravel?"
After a few seconds, RiCO found something interesting inside of the consoles that were playing the music for the band.
"Okay, so let's tweak that just a bit," RiCO quipped as she did her thing and took care of whatever was causing the hypnotic effect of the song.
The band on the stage began playing their music, and much to the spies' relief, the crowd didn't get aggressive, simply cheering and even singing along for the ones who knew the lyrics.
"One boy band song de-hypnotized," RiCO giggled.
"Forever lost without you, RiCO," Nick chuckled.
"And now we just wait for one of them to get mad and come bum-rushing us," Clover quipped.
Clover would quickly be proven right when T-Bone and the other members of Boy Candy rushed backstage to confront the spies, and hoo boy, were they pissed.
"How in the hell did you stop our hypnotic song?!" T-Bone shouted. "You couldn't do it anywhere near that quickly in Japan!"
"That's because they didn't have me back then," RiCO retorted, appearing on one of the nearby monitors to show herself to Boy Candy. "You may have some tech skill, but I'll say it as many times as I have to. In the end, the super-advanced artificial intelligence sees all."
"Why, you little punks," T-Bone growled before quickly composing himself. "You know what, I can live with this. Once we've got our super-plan ready to go, even your precious little A.I. darling won't be able to help you out."
"Oh, what, you wanna test that theory, buddy?" RiCO laughed.
"Maybe later," T-Bone taunted. "Right now, we've gotta get rid of you brats. Get 'em, boys!"
The other members of Boy Candy charged in to attack the spies.
Mallory was the first to go on the attack, ducking under one of the band members' attempts to hit her with a right hook punch before jumping back up to headbutt him in the chest, sending him tumbling backwards.
While T-Bone and the others decided to bum-rush Alex, Henya stepped in and swung her Wondercube to fire a burst of ice from the cube that struck the ground and turned it into ice under the band members, sending them all slipping and falling to the ground.
"Gotta break the ice somehow, right?" Henya chuckled.
"So help me, little cube girl, you'll learn to tone down the puns around us!" T-Bone shouted as he jumped back to his feet and aimed his megaphone for Henya point-blank, shouting into it to unleash a series of deafening sound waves.
Much to his shock, though, the sound waves were simply absorbed into the Wondercube without affecting Henya.
"I'll pun as much as I want, thank you very much," Henya quipped as she swung her Wondercube out to whack T-Bone in the face with it a few times, sending him flying back into the other members of Boy Candy.
As they picked themselves up, Alex aimed a Cyclone Blast Hairdryer towards the entire band.
"I can't believe I used to like you has-beens," Alex quipped.
"We won't be has-beens for very long, chick-a-dee," T-Bone laughed, only to get floored by a Final Shine Attack courtesy of Nick.
"Watch what you call my fiancée, buster," Nick taunted. "Because you're toeing a dangerous line."
"Ah, to heck with this," T-Bone groaned as the members of Boy Candy retreated. "This won't be the last time you get to see our big performance, by the way. Just be ready for the finale."
And with that, the band retreated for the moment.
"Is it me, or are they getting even more insufferable than they were the last time?" Sam wondered.
"It must be related to whatever their big plan is," Melissa noted. "They mentioned something about it before they retreated."
"By the way, did Jerry ever figure out what that strange solution we found was?" Alex asked.
"From what I analyzed, it appears to be a solution used in stage construction," RiCO answered. "I'm willing to bet that it's related to Boy Bandy and their big plan."
As the spies prepared to discuss their next move, Mallory suddenly noticed something amiss about the stage they were currently standing on.
The archway above the stage looked very off-balance for whatever reason.
Noting how eerily similar this seemed, Mallory walked over and peeked towards the main stage where the current band was playing their song. Their lead singer, a girl not much older than her, didn't seem to notice the archway right above her was listing slightly.
And then Mallory heard a crack.
Mallory's feet carried her forward before the rest of her body could catch up, and she moved as fast as she could, hoping she could get there in time.
Just as the archway broke and started to fall towards the band's lead singer, Mallory leaped forward and grabbed the singer by the waist before pulling her backwards, both of them tumbling backwards to the ground just as the archway collapsed to the ground where the singer had just been, thankfully only damaging the stage and none of the band members.
"Whew, that was way too close," Mallory sighed in relief.
"Wait, what just happened?" the singer asked, only now noticing who had just saved her life. "Oh my goodness, are you...?"
"Yeah, it's the one and only Mallory Metallic," Mallory chuckled, to which the crowd all started applauding for her, clearly happy to see her again after so long out of the spotlight.
"I didn't even know you were here," the singer stated.
"To be fair, I'd just gotten here," Mallory answered. "I was scoping out some venues for my upcoming return, and I just noticed that the stage was starting to fall. I didn't want a repeat of what happened to Maria, so I rushed on stage to pull you away from that."
"Oh, yeah, I heard the news about what the Skyfallers did," the singer gasped. "And to think I used to like those jerks..."
"Well, it kinda looks like Mallory might be there a while," May chuckled. "While she's doing that, we should probably head off after Boy Candy before they can cause any more trouble."
After Nick sent a thought Mallory's way to call them on their backup X-Powder they'd given her earlier when she was on her way back, the spies all set off to find Boy Candy.
"Hopefully Mallory found her ideal location considering where she went," Mat commented.
"For her sake, me, too," Nick added.
"At least RiCO found a way to help Mallory out of that debacle," Haruka stated.
"Alex, are you holding up okay?" Bridget wondered.
"Perfectly," Alex replied. "I'm just glad none of us were near that."
"Glad the music industry's not for me," Mat stated. "It's too cutthroat, to be honest."
"Word..." Nozomi replied in agreement.
"Oh, tell me about it," May chuckled.
"Let's just find these spodes and put them where they belong..." Alex groaned.
"I can keep tabs on Mallory when she's coming to us if it's needed," Henya offered.
"I see no harm there," Blaine commented. "Go for it."
"Hopefully she won't be taking too long," Sam stated.
"RiCO, we could use your assistance to track where Boy Candy escaped to," Britney quipped as she briefed Jerry and RiCO on the matter.
"Already on it," RiCO told them.
"I have to say that Mat's point from before makes a lot more sense now," May commented, regarding when Mat brought up former Supercross racers Kyle Lewis and Mike Brown.
"Yep, don't give up on your dreams unless things are VERY bleak," Dawn quipped.
"I've pinpointed where Boy Candy is now," RiCO told the spy team. "Rodeo Drive."
"Isn't that out of the normal comfort zones?" Alex asked.
"If they're planning to cause a lot of ruckus in other businesses, that actually makes some sense," Nick deduced.
"I agree," Sam quipped, thinking back to other villains like Ariel and Sebastian Saga.
It didn't take long for the spies to hear some nearby screams.
"Crapbaskets... we didn't beat them to the punch this time!" Clover exclaimed.
"No matter," Sam quipped. "We can take them."
"Allow me to throw another monkey wrench on them," Henya volunteered as she waved her Wondercube around to conjure a phantasmal speaker right above the hypnotized crowd. A glowing blue microphone appeared in her hand and she raised it to her lips.
"WAKE UP, EVERYONE!" Henya screamed into her microphone, her loud shout echoing through the glowing speaker and rattling all of the brainwashed people enough to snap them out of it.
T-Bone looked behind and saw the spies again; he was really annoyed.
"Not you again?!" T-Bone chastised.
"Better get used to it..." Melissa emphasized. "Because your plans are roasted!"
The rest of Boy Candy saw the spies and were flabbergasted, too.
"No matter... we can answer to you," T-Bone sneered and lunged for one of the spies.
May was quick to respond by hurling her anchor at T-Bone and knocked him into the other two members. They all fell over like bowling pins.
"You know how to make it too easy for us," Alex remarked.
"Too easy?! WE are the ones who will make THIS easy..." T-Bone sneered as he attempted to spray something at the spies.
Henya made quick work of the strange spray by aiming her Wondercube towards it and absorbing the strange mist into her cube.
"Sorry, guys, but that's not gonna work while I'm here," Henya chuckled. "But since we're here, why don't we see what it does, shall we?"
"You wouldn't dare," T-Bone taunted.
Henya responded by giving off a cheeky smirk as she flicked her Wondercube upwards to send that spray right back at the members of Boy Candy.
When it surrounded them, they suddenly started glancing around, scared, and began flailing wildly as if trying to chase away something that wasn't actually there.
"S-Snap out of it, you idiots!" T-Bone shouted. "You weren't supposed to let yourselves get affected!"
"So, you wanna spill what exactly that stuff is supposed to be?" Mat retorted as the spies advanced on T-Bone.
"Well, since you've seen it in action, I guess it couldn't hurt to tell you," T-Bone chuckled. "We made this spray in order to induce hallucinations in our adoring audience. Anyone who gets a whiff of this will start seeing, let's call 'em 'strange things'. I figure, put this baby as the smoke machine at a concert, and you've got whole crowds of people causing chaos and mayhem. What better way to hype up our comeback performance?"
"Oh, like you freaks would know anything about making a proper comeback," a voice from right behind T-Bone responded.
T-Bone only had time to turn around as Mallory came barging right into him with a shoulder-tackle that sent him reeling into the rest of Boy Candy as the effects of the spray wore off.
"Wait, wait, wait, now I recognize you," T-Bone gasped when he realized who had just attacked him. "Aren't you supposed to be Mallory Metallic, the Smiling Metal Maiden?"
"Yeah, but I gave that up for a while," Mallory answered. "And now that I'm actually planning my comeback, I'm not going to have nutballs like you try to remind you of what happened to me."
"Hey, I may be into mayhem and chaos, but even I think the Skyfallers can go get bent for what they did," T-Bone admitted.
"That's still not gonna save you from us, you know," May taunted as she tossed her anchor like a javelin to knock T-Bone down again. "Now get back up and face the music!"
"I think I'm supposed to be the one saying that line, you little pirate chick-a-dee," T-Bone taunted as he and Boy Candy regrouped. "Now, then, I think it's time we get a move on. After all, we do have something big planned, and we'd rather be in tip-top shape for the grand show. So, until then, hasta la bye-bye, suckers!"
Boy Candy threw down a trio of smoke bombs to obscure their escape.
"Well, at least now we know what exactly their game plan is, huh?" Alex quipped.
"Which means we'd better go after them before they can cause any more trouble," Mallory responded.
"Never fear, everyone, I'll lead the way," RiCO proclaimed from Nick's X-Powder.
With that in mind, the spies followed RiCO's signal back into the city, with Mallory and Henya following closely behind, in order to find Boy Candy's secret lair and hopefully stop them before the city fell to their schemes.
To be continued...
Next time...
Clover: All right, I'm getting bad vibes from this place already. Is anybody else getting bad vibes from this place already?
Mat: I wonder if it's got something to do with that spray stuff they made.
Sam: I'm not detecting any of it nearby.
May: Then let's stay on our toes. I wouldn't want to get messed with by that stuff.
Mallory: I'm kinda surprised those Boy Candy guys are dabbling in chemistry now.
Alex: They used to dabble in taking people's faces, if you'd believe that. It happened to poor me...
Nick: Hey, what's the matter, Henya? Did you find something?
Henya: Yeah, it looks like a recipe of sorts for that spray stuff, and... oh, no.
Melissa: Is something wrong?
Mallory: Welp, readers, I'd rather not spoil something in the previews, so how about we see what the problem is next time on Totally Spies: The Rage on the Stage, "Concert of Calamity"!
Alex: Wow, was that you playing guitar backstage, Henya?
Henya: Yeah, I know my way around a few strings thanks to the music director.