"Zoinks!"
Things had gone completely out of control again. As usual.
Every time the team set out to investigate a new mystery, Wilma swore that this time was going to be different. This time, she was going to say something when Rickey suggested they split up and look for clues. This time, she was going to put her foot down when Bongo went off to look for something to eat in the commissary of the 'haunted museum' and left her alone with just the gang's science project for company. (Admittedly, Bingo the Robot was probably smarter than at least half of Wilma's friends, and that was being generous to Rickey. But still.) This time, she was going to get one of those straps they sold at the drugstore to keep her glasses from getting knocked off by an overenthusiastic Bingo. This time, she was going to sit and wait for help when the world around her descended into a hazy blur of random shapes, instead of groping around and stumbling into yet another secret passage. This time, she was not, repeat not, going to succumb to her curiosity when she found a hidden floor full of mysterious Roman artifacts that matched the ones left behind after the appearances of the Spectral Centurion.
Needless to say, that hadn't happened. Wilma stumbled to her feet, pale fingers groping along the wall in the gloom for some kind of light switch to give her at least a fighting chance at seeing where the heck she was going. Bingo trundled along behind her, burbling cheerfully in its synthetic voice as it searched for clues. The glowing viewscreen that passed for its face gave Wilma just enough illumination to see that the passage went along straight for a little ways before... well, before fading into silent shadows that could contain anything from a hole in the floor to a whole legion of ghostly Roman soldiers.
Not that Wilma really expected it to be an actual ghost behind all this. "We're not falling for that one again, are we?" she murmured softly, as much to herself as to Bingo. It seemed like they'd investigated dozens of supernatural occurrences on behalf of Rickey's eccentric uncle, and every single one of them had turned out to be an invention of the old caretaker or the groundskeeper or a disgruntled former employee or a disinherited relative looking to spook their old man into changing the will. Wilma had become an expert at spotting the telltale signs of fake blood, luminous paint, and latex trickery by now, and even though she hadn't yet seen this Spectral Centurion, she was sure that he wasn't going to be any different from--
"Ahhh!" Wilma's train of thought was interrupted by the unmistakable sound of a pair of glasses bumping against her foot and skidding across the linoleum floor. She froze, terrified to take another step lest she accidentally crush them under her chunky, steel-toed shoes. They must have taken the same tumble down the secret trapdoor that she did, and slid down the hallway further due to their light weight. "Hold still, Bingo," she said, desperate to make sure that the robot didn't accidentally break them either. She didn't have a spare pair on her (another thing she swore she was going to do next time) and couldn't see a thing without them.
Carefully, Wilma sank down to her hands and knees in a posture that had become depressingly familiar to her. She hitched up her skirt to keep it out of the way and began feeling around for her glasses on the dusty floor. For once, she was grateful for the solitude and poor lighting; traveling the countryside in Rickey's van had its disadvantages, and one of them was definitely a lack of reliable laundromats. Wilma's thick, baggy sweaters and sensible tweed skirts were pretty easy to keep clean, but anyone standing behind her when she bent over like this was bound to notice that her supply of clean panties had pretty much dried up three days ago. (And it wasn't exactly like she could borrow from Laurel, either. Wilma wasn't judgy, but how a woman could wear a skirt that short without anything under it but a pair of thigh-high stockings was beyond her.)
She felt a momentary surge of triumph when her fingers brushed against something plastic, but just then Bingo squealed, "A-HA!" and launched itself forward excitably. Wilma's heart sank. Just once, just freaking once, she wished that the stupid robot she and Rickey designed together wasn't quite so desperately enthusiastic about providing assistance. She'd tried everything she could think of to balance its artificial intelligence with a little bit of calm wisdom and common sense to offset its drive to help the team solve mysteries, or at least to make it a little bit more graceful and better coordinated, but it was no good. Bingo remained a gawky, galumphing liability 90% of the time.
If it wasn't for the one time in ten that it absolutely saved the day, Wilma probably would have junked it by now, no matter what Rickey said. But the little wheeled cylindrical robot with the spindly multi-purpose arms continued to function just well enough to tantalize Wilma into trying to improve its performance... instead of just finding the nearest antique Roman gladius and dismembering the damn thing for knocking her glasses clear into the next room in its efforts to 'help'. With a sigh of frustration, she crawled carefully after them, her round thighs awkwardly rubbing against one another as she scooted her hands and knees across the cold tiles.
When she reached the threshold, though, Wilma heard something that made her think twice about crawling in front of the open doorway. She fumbled for Bingo, pushing it behind her before it could peer around the corner and give away her position with its lighted face. Someone was speaking, their low, husky voice echoing sepulchrally in the silence of the abandoned wing of the museum. "Watch the gold coin sway and dance," they said, "and you will fall into a trance." The smooth, menacing confidence in those resonant tones chilled Wilma to the bone... but it was nothing compared to what she heard next.
"Watch the gold coin sway and dance," Laurel said, her voice unmistakable even with all of the emotion drained out of it into a sleepy monotone, "and I will fall... into a trance." Wilma forced back a groan of frustration. Of course she'd gotten separated from Rickey. And of course she'd stumbled into the same hidden wing of the museum. And of course she'd bumped into the Spectral Centurion. And of course, of absolute freaking course he was hypnotizing her. Because what else was Laurel good for if not to be hypnotized by every single wicked caretaker or sinister groundskeeper they ran into?
And of course when it heard Laurel's voice, Bingo was bound to chirrup in excited resolve and attempt to charge into the room to rescue her, smacking square into Wilma's plump buttocks as if it didn't even notice she was there. Wilma sprawled forward, landing on the floor with a thud that was thankfully absorbed by her thick orange sweater. "Who's there?" she cried, hoping to make enough of a commotion to rouse Laurel from her dazed slumber.
"Right on cue," the mysterious stranger said. Wilma couldn't make out much, even with Bingo's face brightening into a warm glow that banished the shadows to the very corners of the room, but she saw a vague pink blur that she knew had to be Laurel kneeling helplessly on the floor next to a tall, imposing person wearing an iron helmet and luminescent armor. The Spectral Centurion, Wilma supposed. She could smell the glow-in-the-dark paint from here.
Wilma tried to struggle to her feet, but Bingo had rolled forward just a little and the hem of her skirt caught in its wheels just as she had stumbled halfway into a crouch that she couldn't easily recover from. The net effect was to yank the sensible tweed outfit back and down exactly as Wilma was moving up and forward, tangling it around her ankles and causing her to fall forward onto her face with her bare buttocks completely exposed to the stranger's view. "Jeepers," she muttered, her chubby cheeks flushing bright red with embarrassment.
Laurel didn't seem to notice. She hadn't moved since Wilma came into the room, still down on her knees with her shoulders slumped and her legs ever so slightly parted. It was hard to tell for sure--even from just a few feet away, her friend and partner looked decidedly blurry--but judging by the color of that blur, Laurel had already removed all of her clothing before kneeling down in the dusty darkness. It was hard to escape the implications of that fact, even harder when she realized that the Spectral Centurion's glowing armor had a distinct flesh-colored gap where the codpiece usually went.
"Please, don't get up on my account," the Centurion purred, removing his helmet to reveal a face that appeared frustratingly vague to Wilma's astigmatic eyes. "I'm enjoying the view at the moment, and it's not like you can stop my plans anyway. Not when you're going to be hypnotized just like your friend soon." His voice sounded deliberately low and breathy, as though he was concealing a more natural tone that Wilma was bound to recognize. Was it the curator? The janitor? The antiquities expert with the big weird eyebrows? Wilma had to keep him talking. It was the only way to find out.
"I don't think you're going to find it that easy," Wilma said, casting her gaze around for something, anything that would give her a chance to escape. Most of the room simply looked like a fog of vague, misty shapes, but as she glanced over to the right, she couldn't believe her luck--her glasses were right there, just inches out of her reach! If she could only squirm over to them without attracting her captor's attention, she could put them on and discover the Spectral Centurion's true identity. She rolled onto her side, squinting angrily in an effort to make it look like she was simply confronting the mysterious stranger face-to-face.
Whoever it was, they certainly didn't appear too threatened by her. "That's exactly what Laurel said," he purred confidently, his voice dripping with silky menace. "She thought she could resist my pretty gold coin... this one, right here." He made a flourish with his right hand, and a sparkly haze that Wilma presumed to be a Roman aureus with a hole pierced through it dangled down from a cord that she couldn't quite make out. Her right hand groped behind her for her glasses, so frustrated by her poor eyesight that she didn't even care what happened to her so long as she could see it. Why hadn't she gotten Lasik, dammit?
