5:18 P.M. – Dearly Beloved Memorial Hospital
Three Months Ago
Nick concentrated as hard as he could, not wanting to trip up again.
"Jump over that wave!" Sarina exclaimed.
"I'm trying, I'm trying!" Nick responded. "There's so many dang projectiles on the field right now!"
Both Nick and Sarina kept their focus up, not letting anything get in their way, and eventually...
"VICTORY!" Nick and Sarina exclaimed together once they'd achieved what they'd been fighting so hard for.
"...man, that boss was hard," Nick sighed in relief.
"But it's a lot easier in co-op, right?" Sarina giggled.
"Mostly because you were doing the heavy lifting and I was soaking up all those energy bullets like some kind of flying sponge," Nick chuckled. "I'm just lucky my guy has so much health..."
"That was the role we agreed on, right?" Sarina replied. "You'd be the meat shield and I'd be the attacker?"
"Hey, it somehow worked," Nick quipped.
"Ah, that was fun," Sarina sighed. "It's been a long time since I just had fun playing a video game..."
Nick knew that this was most likely one of the many simple pleasures that Sarina had been robbed of due to her diagnosis. And he was more than happy to provide whatever he could. After all, he'd promised to make the time Sarina had left the best it could possibly be.
Nick couldn't help but blush slightly when Sarina affectionately leaned against him.
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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 129: The Creepy Jeepers Peepers
Story Rated: T for Teen
Story Created: March 21st, 2025
Story Summary: The one-hundred and seventy-third co-op project between Mat49324 and The Blue Time Ranger, and episode one hundred twenty-nine of our mission-based series Totally Spies: The New Adventures. The spies are suddenly, apparently, part of a movie shoot now, but here's the kicker: they had no idea about any of it. Worse, some of the crew are trying to make May and Haruka do something a little more... 'not safe for work'. But soon enough, the spies find out that this is actually the work of who else but Marco Lumiere, who hopes shredding the spies' dignity will keep them from scuttling his latest schemes. Can the spies shut this demented film down, maybe with the help of a fellow movie fiend?
Author's Notes from Mat49324: As season 11 is still pretty young, it's summertime in Beverly Hills, but this is where summertime could go awry if you know what I mean. I'm sure some of you out there have seen some TV shows where some girls go pretty wild for cameras, right? If so, you'll likely get the gist of this project. I figured there's no harm in bringing that into our TS Fanfiction season. That kind of stuff can also get pretty ugly at times like I've seen on Law & Order before, and maybe any woman who reads this story could possibly relate in their own way. For now, here's The Blue Time Ranger for anything he'd like to say.
Author's Notes from The Blue Time Ranger: Season eleven continues to roll on, and Lumiere's back in the main series after his stint in New Cinema Labyrinth for something pretty out there. And don't worry, things won't get too raunchy, considering the rating. That, and I highly doubt I can really write 'raunchy' stuff to save my freakin' life. I'm more about feelings and action. Anyways, let's get this project started, 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?
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Act 1: Aspect Ratio
11:11 A.M. – The Spies' Beach House
It was another usual balmy summer day in Beverly Hills. Currently, Alex was at the beach house pool ready for a bit of water exercise for a change; Sam and Clover were already out there, too, along with Mat. Nick and the others were also getting set.
"Did you come to a decision what you're going to try first, Alex?" Sam asked.
"I was thinking something with the legs," Alex answered. "Gotta keep up my best feature, am I right?"
Nick came out in board shorts followed by Britney in a two-piece.
Melissa and Haruka were next; they both had one-pieces on.
By that point, Alex had already started her exercises, diving underwater for short periods and twirling her legs in different patterns.
"Look at her go," Britney giggled at Alex.
"Hey, you stole my line," Nick chuckled.
Melissa and Nick noticed Mat sitting nearby, but he wasn't too thrilled about something, and it wasn't hard for them to figure out why.
"Bro, are you still bitter about the last race?" Nick asked.
"Well, to be perfectly honest, I'm okay with Chad Reed's performance since you have to start somewhere," Mat answered. "But I guess I'm more disappointed in Andrew Short than I really should be."
"Why?" Melissa wondered, coming to Mat.
"It's hard to explain," Mat remarked. "But when you look at how Dungey's Motocross season is going, and how Supercross went for him, it's sort of not hard to explain why."
"I could understand that," Bridget stated, which got Mat's attention.
Nick looked over at Bridget and appeared a bit starstruck briefly at Bridget in a two-piece again.
"A lot of times, people tend to compare themselves to someone who's just doing better," Bridget quipped. "That was pretty much Zoey during her first few months with the old Bev High track team."
"Wait, I think I remember you telling me about that," Nick responded. "She was trying too hard to get up to their level."
"Pretty much," Bridget answered. "Corina and Renee had to kinda beat it into her head that constantly comparing yourselves to others like that wasn't gonna help."
"Well, there you go," Clover chuckled.
She was happy to see Blaine come out in his board shorts after finishing her sentence. The rest of the spies (May, Dawn, and Nozomi) were also in tow.
"What's up with Alex?" May asked.
"Her usual 'staying in shape' schtick is my guess," Nick chuckled. "One of her best qualities in my book."
Alex happened to overhear Nick and gave him a grin.
"It'd be nice if I had a partner," Alex stated to Nick specifically with a playful idea up her sleeve.
"What do you have in mind?" Nick asked and bent down.
"Pull me out and I'll tell you," Alex requested.
Nick held out his hand, but that was what Alex wanted him to do, and she pulled him in the pool instead.
"...should have figured," Nick chuckled.
"You still fell for it, silly," Alex giggled.
"She got you, Nick," Nozomi teased.
Haruka laughed as well since she did the same thing to Nick at Mali-U.
In the meantime, Melissa and Mat came in the pool next, which was a bit of a relief in a way to Nick and Sam.
"Well, let's get this started," Haruka quipped.
Little did she know that those were the exact words someone like May wanted to hear. She motioned to Haruka to keep quiet as she snuck upstairs.
Just as everybody was wondering where May had gone, the telltale sound of rapid footsteps caught their attention, though this time around, May's footsteps actually drowned out the sound of somebody else entering the beach house.
"Hey, guys, guess who's..."
"PIRATE DIVE!" May shouted as she cannonballed into the pool like she always did, though the wave from her splashdown also drenched somebody else in the room.
"Um, May, I think you got somebody wet," Haruka quipped once May had resurfaced.
That was when Nozomi finally realized who was now in the room with them... and who exactly May had splashed with her Pirate Dive.
"Oh, jeez, Hikari!" Nozomi gasped as she jumped out of the pool to make sure that Hikari was okay. "Are you all right?!"
"...a little bit wet, but I'm fine," Hikari chuckled once she'd regained her composure. "I guess this is kinda just a thing that happens around here?"
"Usually," Nick replied as he used his powers to telekinetically dunk May. "And it's typically May who does the unpredictable cannonball dives."
After a brief moment where Hikari ducked out to change into some dry clothes (she'd thankfully packed a lot of extras just in case), the spies all got dressed so they could properly greet Hikari.
"I'd almost forgotten that this is the day you said that you and Makoto were gonna be in town," Alex chuckled.
"Well, it came a lot faster than we thought, so it probably just felt longer," Haruka quipped.
"Speaking of which, where is Makoto right now?" Melissa wondered.
"He headed off to the Groove to get some 'supplies' for our stay," Hikari answered. "Knowing him, he's probably looking for those expensive candy bars that they don't make in Japan."
"Oh, yeah, you told me how he got hooked on those things thanks to Yukiko," Nozomi chuckled. "Honestly, that girl needs to stop with the weird food choices around poor Makoto."
"Hey, you know Yukiko and her strange appetite," Hikari giggled. "So, it's your turn to spill. What's been up with all of you since the last time we've seen each other?"
"Mostly the same thing, just busting bad guys and their really, really strange schemes," Sam quipped. "And we've definitely had our fair share of oddball guests during those times, too."
With that, the spies regaled Hikari with the tales of some of their recent capers, including their adventures in the Shatterverse and their time with Michi and the Arbiters of Justice.
"Wow, there's really no shortage of weird when it comes to all of you, huh?" Hikari laughed.
"We've kinda accepted it by this point in our lives," Dawn noted.
"And on that note, any relationship news you all wanna share?" Hikari wondered.
"Only one 'article', really," Haruka responded as she smiled at Nick.
"Ooh, that sounds like a story," Hikari giggled. "Come on, tell me, tell me!"
Not wanting to keep Hikari waiting, the spies all told the tale of how Haruka had confessed her own feelings for Nick.
"And all it took for me to finally fess up was a villainous version of May from another dimension basically forcing me to," Haruka chuckled. "That sounds like us, really."
"Okay, okay, enough about us for the moment, what about you, Hikari?" Nozomi asked. "How's your movie going?"
"Well, this baby's only at the halfway point of the pre-production stage, so there's a lot that still has to happen before it's ready to go," Hikari explained, reaching into her bag to procure her movie laptop (she'd brought two laptops, one for personal use and the other for her movies) so she could open it up and show the spies what she was working on. "But we've got enough of it ready that I can show you guys what my latest masterpiece is all about."
From what the spies could tell, this movie appeared to be a combination of Wild West and modern sci-fi with a few elements of mystery to it.
"Ooh, that looks pretty dope," Clover quipped.
Hikari flipped the screen over to show the spies some of the pre-production stills for this movie.
"I GOT THEM!" Makoto exclaimed as he made his entrance into the beach house. "I found those freakin' candy bars!"
"Took ya long enough," Hikari teased. "What'd you do, search the entire mall for them?"
"Hey, it's not my fault that everything is in different places than Japan is," Makoto sputtered.
"Oof, that brought back a memory," Haruka groaned. "That was pretty much me the instant we moved to Beverly Hills..."
"Cultural differences rear their ugly heads yet again," Nick chuckled.
"Say, how did pitching Tale of the Moon Warrior go?" Nozomi asked.
"Ooh, man, there's a story behind that one," Hikari laughed.
"Basically, the pitch actually got picked up by a movie studio," Makoto explained. "But once the time came for the scriptwriting, you know, to adapt it to an actual full-length movie, Hikari noticed that a lot of changes were being made to her original script without her approval."
"It turns out that scriptwriter was actually exposed for being a hack who couldn't really write for crap and was stealing others' ideas for his own scripts so he could pass them off as his own ideas," Hikari continued. "Needless to say, once Makoto told me what was happening, I was having absolutely none of that."
"Basically, the studio gave mister unoriginal the boot and put a different writer on the project, one that allowed Hikari much more creative control," Makoto responded.
"Makes you wonder how numbnuts like that even got hired in the first place," Britney chuckled.
Suddenly, a cascade of odd noises caught the spies' attention, and they all walked outside just in time to see, of all things, a film crew setting up their equipment in the spies' front yard.
"Um, excuse me?" Mat gasped.
Some crew members heard Mat's statement.
"Are you the homeowners?" One crew member asked.
"Yeah, while our parents are away," Sam replied.
"Clover, do you have something to do with this?" Alex asked immediately getting suspicious.
"...first I've heard of this," Clover immediately replied after a brief pause.
"What are you doing at our summer home?" Nick asked the crew.
The brains of the operation approached the spies and handed Nick his business card. The spies all got a look for themselves.
"Summer fun films?" Britney asked.
"We go around to people's houses at random and ask first," Another crew member added.
"You sure you're not the brains behind this, Clover?" Sam asked Clover again, becoming suspicious.
"Sammy, I swear this is the first I've heard of this," Clover insisted.
"This is the first time we've seen you all, too, for what it's worth," a third crew member stated.
"Uh, excuse us a moment," Nick told the crew.
The spies went away, but Clover and Mat overheard some of the crew asking to use the spies' bathroom. Clover escorted two of the crew members to the nearest downstairs bathroom.
"Jerry can't be behind this, can he?" Britney asked.
"Especially after the last time when Mat and Nick were under fire from Milan Stilton..." May remarked. "I'm still feeling a sour taste in my mouth that they went through that."
"We can't forget that," Melissa added.
"We'd like to film at your swimming pool if you accept," one of the crew members stated, which got the spies' attention.
"We'll let you know shortly," Bridget told him as the crew went outside.
With that, Sam got out her X-Powder to scan the business card to see if this was legitimate or just a group of people looking for trouble.
"Seems like it's legitimate," Sam told the others.
"But are they asking all of us or just some of us?" Mat wondered.
"Then, I suppose we'll have to ask them before we make our final decision," Haruka remarked.
After realizing this discussion had lasted over seven minutes, the spies agreed to this; they went outside to tell the camera crew and even ask their said questions, too.
"All right, then, we're willing to give this whole thing a shot," Nick stated.
"Just make sure you at least let us know what's gonna be happening, just in case we need to get ready for something," May replied.
"Of course, we can accommodate that," one crew member answered.
"Are you going to need all of us to star or just some of us?" Mat asked.
"Some of you will star separately since there's so many of you in this household," the head of the crew answered.
"We're just awaiting an extra scene from our head director," another crew member stated.
"Did we hear you wanted to film at our pool?" Bridget asked.
"Yes, that's correct," The head replied.
"And since it's summertime, you will just need swimwear," the head told them.
In the meantime, Hikari and Makoto looked on with some skepticism.
"Hey, we thought you'd be thrilled for us," Alex stated when she looked at them.
"I'm not so sure about this, to be honest," Hikari commented. "Something doesn't feel right, but I can't put my finger on it."
"I'm getting the same feeling," Makoto noted. "I'm not sure if it's filmmaker's intuition, considering our field..."
"How about you, Nick?" Nozomi wondered. "After all, you can literally read minds. Is there any bad intentions from these guys?"
Nick glanced back at the film crew and used his psychic radar to check them out one mind at a time. Thankfully, much to everyone's relief, Nick didn't detect any ill intentions from the crew.
"It looks like they're all in the clear," Nick answered. "But I'd still keep your guard up, just in case. Even if the film crew is actually innocent, you never know if somebody might be using this to their advantage from the outside."
"Got it," Sam replied.
With everything in place, the film crew started explaining what they were going to be filming, and it seemed simple enough at first.
As the filming began in earnest, the spies were just doing their usual pool shenanigans with Hikari and Makoto watching intently to make sure nothing was amiss. As filmmakers themselves, they tended to have a 'film eye' for odd things in the filmmaking process, as Makoto and Yosuke had often put it.
"Well, what do you think, Makoto?" Hikari wondered. "Is any of this odd to you?"
"The whole thing reeks of some kind of setup," Makoto answered. "But whether it's a ploy from some amateur filmmakers or a scheme from the spies' rogues' gallery is still kinda up the air."
"So, we keep watch on these guys," Hikari affirmed.
For the next hour or so, the shoot proceeded without issue.
"Well, Nick, you think you're ready for this next scene?" May chuckled as she ran her next lines through her mind.
"Hey, you're the one who's been practicing, you know," Nick quipped.
Feeling a little daring today, Nick and May held hands before jumping down the stairs...
...only for a Quantum Rift to suddenly open up right in front of them. With how fast they were coming down, they had no time to change course and wound up falling directly through the rift, which closed behind them.
"Ow..." May groaned. "That was a..."
May trailed off when she realized what exactly they were looking at.
"...what in the hell?" May gasped.
"Took the words right out of my mouth," Nick answered.
Nick and May were staring at the same seemingly endless white void they'd seen through a rift in an earlier caper, only now that they were up close and personal with it, they could see that it indeed resembled a city similar to Tokyo, Japan, only every last drop of color had been drained out of the buildings, the skyline, everything.
"This is fifty kinds of wrong," May noted.
"I'm thinking we need to find another Quantum Rift and get the heck out of here before the others start worrying," Nick quipped.
With that in mind, Nick and May began to explore the strange, empty dimension in hopes of finding a way out, and maybe a hint as to what had happened here.
However, every way they went, it was the same thing. The buildings were all intact, but they were all completely drained of color and life.
On their way down a town road past a large hospital, May was the first to notice that there was actually somebody there, staring intently at the hospital as if she knew it personally.
She appeared to be a sixteen-year-old girl with wide pale-blue eyes and her head covered by a wool hat with a heart pattern on its brim and adorned it with a bunny pin, wearing a bright pink hoodie and grey shorts.
"Um, excuse me, miss?" Nick asked, catching the girl's attention. "Do you have any idea what's going on here?"
"...oh, my gosh, is that you?!" the girl gasped as she ran over to hug Nick tightly like she hadn't seen him in a long time.
"Okay, what was that about?" May wondered.
That was when the girl got a good look at Nick, realized something, and quickly backed away. "I-I'm sorry, I thought you were..." the girl sputtered, clearly not expecting that.
"I get that a lot," Nick chuckled, used to this by now. "So, if you don't mind me asking, miss, what's your name?"
"Well... my name's Sarina Tendouji," Sarina answered. "And, this might be hard to believe, but... I'm supposed to be dead."
"Wait, what?" May gasped.
"I had a condition that ended up taking my life," Sarina admitted. "But... just when I thought it was over, I woke up here. The weird part is that this looks like the city I grew up in to me, but everything's... well, this."
Sarina looked around the vistas of the strange city before glancing up at the empty sky. "And what's even weirder... I don't feel my condition affecting me here," Sarina noted.
"You think somebody tried to bring you back to life?" May asked. "I wouldn't be surprised that that's possible in some places, given everything we've seen in our lives."
"That still doesn't explain this white space of emptiness," Nick quipped. "And I think that's the big mystery here."
All of a sudden, another Quantum Rift opened up behind Nick and May that led back to the beach house.
"You go back home, okay?" Sarina stated. "I'll be fine here, promise."
Nick quickly brought out his X-Powder and made a copy of this place's dimensional coordinate codes, just in case. He had a feeling they'd be back here again at some point.
With one last look at Sarina, who simply smiled at them, Nick and May both jumped into the Quantum Rift and landed back in the beach house, the rift again closing behind them.
"Whoa, where'd you two go all of a sudden?" Mat wondered as he walked into the living room. "I saw you both come out of a Quantum Rift, and..."
That was when one of the film crew called for the spies to begin the next scene.
"We'll explain later, when we've got some time to," May stated.
"Besides, I'm still not entirely sure what's going on over there myself," Nick admitted as he and May followed Mat back into the pool area.
Obviously Mat was still in his board shorts from their earlier pool day that got interrupted before it ever got started.
"So, who's up first?" May asked the crew.
"We'll need Melissa, Bridget, and Alex for this first part," one crew member replied.
"Any two who want to be in the pool are up to them," another crew member added.
Britney and Dawn volunteered there.
"So far, everything has been pretty clean," Sam told Nick before he could ask anything.
Nick nodded at that, but he could see the scene booklet nearby.
"So, what kind of scene is this?" Alex asked.
"For this one, we're going to mix a little bit of dramatic tension," one crew member stated. "Nothing out there, just for the sake of the scene."
"Oh, I think I'm getting the vibe," Dawn chuckled.
While the rest of the spies were still on the side watching them, Nick motioned to Sam to see the scene booklet themselves. Mat noticed and joined them.
"Looks like everything's clean," Sam observed.
"Looking for your lines?" a crew member asked the three of them.
"You could say that," Sam stuttered.
"Not all of us are really actors, so sometimes we've gotta do our best to memorize our lines," Nick admitted.
"Trust me, I've been there," another crew member chuckled.
"Finally, someone who gets it!" Makoto exclaimed, to which Hikari just laughed.
That crew member gave a wry chuckle.
"Don't worry about any of those feelings," the crew member replied. "We've had a lot of people peek at our scenes, which we're okay with."
"That's surprising," Mat commented.
"We can understand it when it comes to some certain scenes, and we are open to changes," The crew member replied.
"Well, we appreciate that," Nick stated.
Clover and Blaine looked on while that said scene continued.
"Wait, you're kidding," Bridget gasped, even holding her gasp for dramatic effect just like the script had called for.
"I wish I was," Melissa sighed. "If only I hadn't seen it with my own two eyes, I would have just passed it off as a heat-induced fantasy."
"Would he really, though?" Britney wondered. "After all, he seems like he'd be the last person to ever do something like that..."
"Well, you know how that whole thing goes," Alex answered. "You think you know a person, but there's always that one moment when they show you who they truly are."
"Well, I can't stand it!" Bridget proclaimed, slamming her fist into the water dramatically. "I don't want to believe it! I've known him for far too long, he would never!"
"I guess the only thing we can do is find the right time to talk to him about it, and hope he'll be more forthcoming about it," Dawn quipped.
"God, I hope so..." Bridget sighed.
"Aaaaaaaaaand cut!" the director proclaimed.
Before long, that scene was over.
"That was pretty fun," Alex commented.
"Totally," Melissa quipped. "I can't wait to see what our next one is."
"So, how long is this filming going to take?" Britney asked.
"We'll be here the whole day because we want to add in a night scene, too between some of you," the head of the crew answered.
"Okay then," Sam replied.
After some picking, it was Sam, Mat, Clover, and Blaine as part of the next scene, but there was some time beforehand.
"So, guys, what happened earlier?" Mat asked Nick and May.
"Well, Nick and I were coming downstairs to do a scene, and we kinda felt a little daring," May chuckled. "We decided to jump down the stairs and make a big entrance."
"However, a Quantum Rift opened up at the bottom and we fell right into that thing," Nick continued, catching the spies' attention. "When we got our bearings, May and I found ourselves inside that strange dimension where all the color was drained from everything, you know, the one we saw a while ago."
"Did you find out what that place's deal was?" Haruka wondered.
"Sadly, no, but we did meet somebody who I think is from that dimension," Nick answered. "Problem is, that, according to her, she's supposed to be dead."
"She told us that she had a condition that ended up taking her life, but when she 'woke up', she was in the White Space, apparently alive and kicking somehow," May continued.
"The... 'White Space'?" Blaine asked.
"It seemed apt, so I'm just gonna call it that until we hear otherwise," May replied.
"We didn't get a chance to ask Sarina any more questions thanks to another rift opening up to take us back," Nick continued. "But I did save the White Space's dimensional coordinates just in case, because I have a feeling we'll be going back there at some point, especially given that Sarina seems to know that dimension's me."
"It's always something from another dimension, isn't it?" Britney noted.
"That tends to be the pattern with us," Alex giggled.
Meanwhile...
"Looks like any bad feelings were a false alarm," Makoto told Hikari.
"No... I still think something's not right," Hikari insisted and looked at the scene booklet that Sam, Mat, and Nick got to see themselves.
"Are you sure, Hikari?" Makoto asked. "I mean, everything looks on the up and up."
"My movie-making instincts are screaming at me that something about all this doesn't add up, and dang it all, I'm going to find out just what that is," Hikari answered as she continued to give the script another once-over.
Eventually, Hikari noticed something seemingly out of place, and took a good look at it.
"...you find something, Hikari?" Makoto wondered.
"I think I did," Hikari replied. "Take a look at this scene coming up."
Makoto glanced back at the spies, who looked to be preparing for that particular scene. For this one, both Haruka and May had been called up, and after being told what this scene would entail, apparently some kind of swimsuit scene, Haruka seemed to look slightly uncomfortable only to quickly shrug it off, and May didn't seem disturbed at all, approaching the scene with gusto.
"I don't remember them saying anything about that kind of swimsuit scene," Makoto stated. "Especially considering how... close to being 'offbrand' this script is talking about."
Hikari and Makoto both watched as Haruka and May walked back into the beach house to change into their swimsuits before heading back out to start the scene, the director and a few crew members already shooting the scene with gusto.
"They're way too into this," Hikari stated. "They're just lucky the spies are all legal age now, or there'd be some real trouble."
"And you're sure that's suspicious?" Makoto asked again.
"I'm positive," Hikari responded. "This doesn't seem like something they added just for the sake of the movie."
"I guess all we can do is wait and see, then," Makoto sighed, until a beeping from somewhere caught his attention. He looked over to see that the beeping was coming from Haruka's phone, which she had left on the desk so it wouldn't get wet during the filming.
Even though Makoto told himself not to, some kind of curiosity overcame him and he reached to check out the phone. After all, that beep had happened not long after they'd had those thoughts about this swimsuit scene.
Makoto took a look at the message that was on the phone screen, only to do a massive double take at what he saw. Naturally, this drew Hikari's attention.
"I don't like that look, Makoto," Hikari stated. "What's the matter?"
"This text message is telling Haruka that she needs to do this swimsuit scene, or the sender's going to leak the 'images' across the entire internet," Makoto answered.
"And we don't want that kind of exposure, do we?" Hikari quipped. "Who is this sender?"
"Frankly, I have no clue," Makoto admitted. "The sender's name is just a bunch of jumbled letters and numbers. Probably from a burner phone so they can't be traced that way?"
Suddenly, Hikari gasped out loud when she realized something about this that she hadn't even thought of before for whatever reason.
"W-What?" Makoto gasped.
"Oh, how could I have been so dumb?" Hikari groaned. "Makoto, this is a film shoot. And who have we had to deal with practically every time we're here to visit the spies?"
"Hold on, you think Marco Lumiere's got his hands in this?" Makoto wondered.
"It would track with the kind of crap he likes to cook up," Hikari quipped.
"The problem is, Nick already read the minds of the crew here, and they were completely free of bad intentions as far as I could tell," Makoto countered.
"That doesn't mean that the crew's aware of this whole blackmail thing, or any other junk he might have fudged with in the process," Hikari answered.
"Well, this is a pickle," Makoto sighed. "Should we tell the spies?"
"Not yet," Hikari responded. "I don't know if Lumiere's got some kind of contingency plan for this in case things go south. If this really is one of Lumiere's schemes, then we haven't heard hide nor hair from him, and that worries me."
Hikari looked out towards the large trucks that the film crew had come from. "Let's do a little digging, shall we?" Hikari quipped.
Makoto nodded, since even though he had his doubts, he was still willing to believe Hikari, since her intuition had never steered them wrong before.
While Haruka and May both continued with their swimsuit scene (May was even doing a pose that made Makoto chuckle; that girl was something else), Hikari and Makoto snuck out of the beach house to climb into the back of the larger truck.
"Okay, now what do we do?" Makoto asked.
"We call in the experts," Hikari chuckled, reaching into her pocket to pull out her emergency X-Powder that the spies had given her. She flipped it open to call W.O.O.H.P. on it.
"Oh, hey, Hikari, what's up?" RiCO asked. "It's kinda different seeing you call me."
"I won't waste time, RiCO, considering we might be in trouble here," Hikari answered. "Can you do a scan of the movie-making equipment in the truck we're standing in?"
RiCO obliged, scanning everything in the truck.
"Oddly enough, everything here seems to be... wait," RiCO answered, cutting herself off when she noticed something odd. "This production company seems legit, but look at who bankrolled this particular film shoot. The mystery benefactor has the initials 'M.L.'. Sound familiar?"
"I freakin' knew he had something to do with this!" Hikari proclaimed. "What's his game this time?"
"Oh, you might be able to ask him that sooner than you thought," RiCO responded. "My superdrone just picked up Lumiere's signal, and he's heading right for the beach house!"
"We'd better get our butts over there, quick," Makoto stated.
Hikari could only nod as she and Makoto booked it back towards the beach house, hoping they could expose this before the spies were put in unnecessary danger.
To be continued...
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Coming up next...
Haruka: Okay, can I say something?
Crew Member: What's the matter?
Haruka: Well, this scene looks like it's starting to get a bit too... how do I say this without sounding like a jerk... 'out there' for my tastes.
May: Hey, I'm having fun.
Nick: That's because you really have no shame, you goofball.
Director: If that's the problem, then we can make a few changes to the script. We're willing to accommodate.
Clover: Okay, so... you all wanna start explaining yourself, like, right the hell now?
Crew Member: W-Wait, what do you mean?
Mat: Oh, don't play coy with us. We all just got a text message saying that we need to continue with the raunchy scenes or those photos of us are going to be posted all over the internet!
Melissa: I knew you perverts were too insistent about the swimsuit scenes!
Director: H-Hey, what's this all about?! We would never do something like that, honest!
Haruka: Like we're really going to believe that crock of nonsense?!
Nick: ...this might sound weird, but they're telling the truth. I don't detect any bad intentions from them.
Sam: Then who's blackmailing us with that photo crap?
Hikari: You readers might have already figured it out, so we'll unveil that next time on Totally Spies: The Creepy Jeepers Peepers, "Deep Focus Shot"!
Alex: Was that your idea to name the act titles for each episode you star in after movie terms, Hikari?
Hikari: Maybe, hehe.