"This doesn't make any sense," Kyle murmured while pacing his spacious kitchen. Felix, for his part, sat sipping orange juice, watching the doctor's mental gears turn. "You mean to tell me you saved a high-profile man named Gerald – of which I know only one here in West City – and that he was abducted in front of witnesses?"
"That's pretty much the gist of the story, yeah," Felix nodded.
"And you didn't figure out who these abductors were working for?" Kyle checked, his tone not hopeful in the least.
"We didn't really stick around, Kyle," Felix explained. "The police would have taken us in to get our statements, and then the whole thing of secret identities is out the window."
Beth, who had been thus far sitting quietly at the far end of the breakfast bar, spoke up indignantly. "I did NOT work that hard on those costumes for them to be made useless instantly, Kyle!"
"Okay, okay," Kyle waved his hands in surrender. "You're right; I just wanted to see if there was anything that I can use to figure this out."
"Figure what out? As far as I'm concerned, this is a pretty open-and-shut case. We stopped the abduction, so it's over now, yeah?" Felix finished the last of his juice, pushing it away from him. Kyle looked at him as if he were an alien.
"Felix. Who do you know that just up and decides to abduct a person? Particularly the mayor of West City?" Kyle asked slowly, spelling it out as best as he could. Felix would have been annoyed by that, if he hadn't been shocked by Gerald's identity.
"Gerald's the mayor?"
"And you claim to watch the news… Felix, do you live under a rock? Gerald Smith" Kyle asked, looking at him funny.
"I'm perfectly in-the-know most of the time. It just so happened that I've never heard our mayor do anything, and so Gerald's name never came up. I honestly didn't even know his last name," Felix tried to explain his ignorance away, but neither Kyle nor Beth bought his excuse.
"You're just a tiny bit dumb sometimes, Felix," Beth said, walking over to pat him on the shoulders pityingly. "It's okay. Sometimes we're all a bit dumb."
"I'm not dumb!"
"So you say…" she said, her words trailing off. Before she could say more, Kyle took control of the conversation again. He finally sat down, his feet not taking him on a trek around the gargantuan space anymore. Either he'd grown tired, or he needed to find a different way to think. Evidently, it was the latter, given how quickly he came to express his conclusions.
Looking at Felix, he began, "All we know is that a group of people attempted to abduct the mayor of one of the wealthiest cities in the world, and that they did it in front of witnesses. Alone, both things would prevent any sane person from doing anything. Together… whoever ordered this should've known it would end in failure."
He continued without waiting for Felix or Beth to chime in. "Most of the underworld kingpins wouldn't be so brazen, and I know that first-hand." Felix would have loved to ask him more about that, but Felix wasn't given the chance. Kyle's ramblings were like they were on a 'rapid' setting.
"I haven't been involved ever since you saved me, Felix, so I might be a bit out-of-touch. However, I don't think anyone would have done this unless some of the politics shifted in my absence. I'm pretty confident that's the case," Kyle offered, bringing about the end of his verbalization of his thoughts.
When Felix finally caught up, he asked a question that bugged him. "How do you know it's some kind of criminal organization?"
"It always is." Both he and Beth got really silent after that, so Felix didn't press the issue. Kyle had been right about a lot of things in the past; Felix would just have to trust that the man knew what he was saying. At the very least, he knew more than Felix did. "On a different note, how did it feel to kick butt in your new suit?"
"I felt pretty cool, if I'm being honest. It kind of sucked that I got only one to Harper's four, but I'll take what I can get," Felix said, grinning.
"You'll catch up to her in no time, Felix," Beth replied with overflowing confidence. "After all, someone needs to look like a legitimate superhero. She doesn't even have a cape!" The horror in her voice brought Felix and Kyle to a snicker that only stopped when Beth's excitement quickly died down.
"Sorry, Beth. I agree completely; she totally should've went with a cape," Felix hoped to cheer her up, and his words seemed to be somewhat successful. When she looked up at him, she smiled. And then she had one of those looks where your face drops as you realize you forgot something.
"Kyle, don't you need to get to work?"
"They'll make do without me, today," Kyle grumbled. "They overwork me."
Then, on cue, his phone rang. Answering it, a growing terror appeared in Kyle's eyes. "They're trying to operate on someone in a way that even a baby could see was stupid. I guess they won't be making do without me," he muttered, pulling on his shoes and sprinting out the door.
Felix stood up at Kyle's departure. Turning to Beth, he said, "I should get going, too. Johnathan has been blowing up my phone to meet him and Harper at the dojo."
"Dojo?"
"It's a long story…"