//------------------------------//
// Second Case - Stardom 
// Story: On the Corner of Straight and Narrow 
// by Tatsurou 
//------------------------------//

	After Trixie won Embarrassing Idol, Sam had started to turn back to continue exploring the set, hoping to find their way to Myra's show so they could investigate what was happening with her.  However, he noticed quickly that Max and Trixie weren't following him.  They were heading out to the parking lot.  Curious, Sam followed.

Outside, Max walked Trixie back to the Desoto, then glanced around cautiously.  "Alright, Trixie," he said quietly.  "No one's looking.  You can let it out."

Trixie, who had still been vibrating visibly with glee, squealed happily.  "Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes!" she squealed happily, bouncing around in adorable circles around Max.  "I did it, Daddy!  I did it!  Trixie won the contest!"

Max smiled down indulgently at her.  "That you did, schnookums," he said softly.  As she stopped bouncing, he reached down and caressed her head.  "You did good."

As Trixie continued to dance about and squeal in glee, Sam smiled, brushing a tear from his eye as he silently closed the door as he stepped back into the studio.





After about a half an hour had passed, Max and Trixie came back in.  "Where have you two been all this time?" Sam demanded, feigning looking cross.

"Sorry Sam," Max apologized.  "You know how easily I get distracted."

"Trixie was following Daddy," Trixie added.

"Alright.  What distracted you this time, little buddy?"

"I saw a fish!" Max replied excitedly.

"It was pretty," Trixie added, "though not as pretty as Trixie."

"That's all?" Sam inquired.

"No.  I also saw a bird."

"Trixie kicked its ass!" the filly proclaimed proudly.

"You crack me up, little buddies," Sam mused, shaking his head with a chuckle.  "Come on, it's time to get back to investigating this studio."





As the trio stepped through the door to the game show portion of the studio, Sam pointed out something that caught his interest.  "Look Max, Trixie, there's the door to Myra's set!  Let's get in there and liberate her literally captive audi-"

"It's Hugh Bliss!" Trixie squealed, pointing to the man standing beside the door.  Squealing, she rushed forward, reaching into her hat for an autograph book.  "Can Trixie have an autograph for Daddy?" she asked the man.

He chuckled indulgently.  "Only if Hugh Bliss can have the Great and Powerful Trixie's autograph for himself," he replied, making a pen and autograph book appear out of thin air.

Trixie's eyes widened in awe.  "Hugh Bliss knows Trixie's title!" she marveled as Sam and Max approached.

"Of course I do," Hugh Bliss replied.  "That's the power of the Magic of Color!"  He waved his hands theatrically.  Turning, he greeted Sam and Max.  "Hi, I'm Hugh Bliss.  And you are Sam and Max, Freelance Police!"

"Trixie is Freelance Police, too!" Trixie objected.

"Indeed you are!" Hugh Bliss replied, waving his hand and pulling a lollipop out of thin air, handing it already unwrapped to the filly.  Trixie, for her part, eagerly latched onto the sucker, sucking happily away on it.

"So, Hugh Bliss, what brings you to WARP?" Sam asked suspiciously.

"I, too, am here to meet Myra," Hugh Bliss informed him.

Max gasped in shock.  "How'd you know we came for Myra?"

"Magic," Trixie replied.  "Duh."

"Indeed!" Hugh Bliss replied.  "I can read your mind in the colors of your auras."

"As the resident doubting Thomas of this crime fighting trio," Sam began, "I consider it my civic duty to say: prove it."

"Okay," Hugh Bliss replied.  "Think of something, anything!"

Sam screwed up his face in concentration.

"Hugh Bliss is a big fat charlatan!" Hugh Bliss said happily.  "Lucky guess!"

Sam growled, and redirected his thoughts.

"Pennies on the eyes of a dead mime!"

"Six million, three hundred seventy three thousand, four hundred eleven point nine eight."

As Sam started to growl, Hugh Bliss intoned happily, "Enough of this ridiculous farce!"

"Oh!  Do me!  Do me!" Trixie said eagerly.

"The nine hundred eighty seven thousand, six hundred fifty fourth digit of pi," Hugh Bliss replied.  "Which just so happens to be five."

"He's good!" Max said in amazement.  "Now me!  Now me!"

Hugh Bliss stared at Max for a time.  "Oh!  Oh my!  That's unspeakably depraved!"

"It's Max," Sam grumbled.  "Anyone could guess that-"

"But what you're using that to hide is just oh so sweet!" Hugh Bliss added.  Kneeling down, he gently pet Trixie's back.  "You're a lucky little filly to have him as your Daddy."

"Trixie knows this!" Trixie replied happily as Max stared at Hugh Bliss in confusion and Sam stared at Max in awe.

Sam eventually recovered his composure.  "What's your business with Myra?"

"I'm to be a guest on her show, silly!"

"Are you going to be promoting Emetics: the Handbook for Multi-Colored Happiness?" Trixie asked.

"Now who's reading minds?" Hugh Bliss replied happily.  "Be sure to take a copy when you leave."

"Can you just give us the ten word summary?" Sam requested.  "We're kind of busy."

"Ten words?" Hugh Bliss inquired.  "Oh my.  How about, 'Prismatology is the answer, unicorns are pretty-'"

"Don't need a book to tell us that," Sam chuckled, reaching down to pet a preening Trixie.

"'-and rainbows too!'" Hugh finished.  "That's ten!"

As Sam continued to question Hugh Bliss, Trixie lost interest in the discussion and wandered over to the two podiums in the center of the room.  Curious, she climbed up the left podium until she reached the microphone.

"We have a contestant!" the director yelled.  "Hugh Bliss, think you can fill in for the host?  He went on Myra hours ago and hasn't come out!"

"Can a butterfly fly?" Hugh Bliss inquired.  Everyone stared at him.  "Yes, it can.  Oh, what do I do?"

"Just get up there and read questions!" the director insisted.  "Hurry, the cameras are about to roll!"

As music began playing and Hugh Bliss warped to the other podium via a rainbow, Trixie was startled as the announcer voice from Embarrassing Idol echoed from somewhere.  "From somewhere deep in the bowels of WARP, it's Who's Never Going to be a Millionaire!  With special guest host, Hugh Bliss!"

"Hi, I'm Hugh Bliss!" Hugh said to the cameras.

"Our first contestant is a tiny filly who recently guest starred on the latest episode of Midtown Cowboys - stealing the show in the process - and won Embarrassing Idol!  Seems like she's going for a hat trick of fame today, please welcome, Trixie!"

"That's the Great and Powerful Trixie!" Trixie pointed out as the applause sounded.  She stomped her hoof on the podium, which triggered a laugh track.

"Welcome," Hugh Bliss began.  "You know the rules.  If you can answer even one question right, you will walk away...a millionaire!"

"Trixie will claim this prize too!" Trixie proclaimed, waving her hoof and accidentally sitting down on her buzzer.  This triggered another applause and laugh track.

"Okay!  Are you ready?"  Hugh Bliss brought out the questions.  "Oh happy day!  It's an easy one!"  He cleared his throat.  "If a man sets out from the Horsehead Nebula in a spaceship travelling at thrice the speed of light, and his father leaves from Rigel 2 at the same time travelling at half that speed, how many nanoseconds will it be before time paradox causes the first man never to have been born."

Trixie's eyes widened with panic.  There was no way she could figure out the answer to that question.  There was only one hope for her: fillybuster bullshit and pray she guessed right.  "According to unification philosophy, all truths are aspects of a single all-encompassing truth, call it the set of all Truths T.  Inductive reasoning within that philosophy suggests that it is through those individual truths that we can discover said ultimate Truth, meaning that the entirety of set T is both many small truths t and a single Truth T at the same time, meaning that the entire set T can be represented by any variable t accurately.  For an answer to be correct, it must be true, and by the logic stated above, any true answer respresents all true - and thus, all correct - answers, so the correct answer is...I'm adorable?"  Pursing her lips, she fluttered her eyelashes at Hugh Bliss.

"That's correct!" Hugh Bliss proclaimed.  "You've been reading my book, haven't you?"

"We just went bankrupt!" the announcer proclaimed.  "So we will not be back right after these messages!"

Trixie bounced happily over to the director.  "So where's my prize?"

The director scratched the back of her head nervously.  "We don't...actually have a million dollars as a prize," she admitted.

Max gasped.  "Such scandal!  We'll sue the pants off of you for getting my daughter's hopes and then dashing them so expertly!"

"We do, however, have a million dollars worth of food stamps we can give you," the director hastened to reassure them, pointing to the pile of stamps.

"That will do!"  Trixie walked over to the stack.  "With magic, Trixie will transform these next to useless money substitutes to cold hard cash!"  Pulling off her hat, she swept it down over the stacks of food stamps, causing them to disappear into it.  "Shazam!" she proclaimed, reaching into her hat and pulling out a bundle of 100 $10,000 bills.

"Amazing!" Hugh Bliss proclaimed, clapping encouragingly.

"That's three TV stardom moments under your cape, Trixie," Sam praised.  "Want to see if you can steal Myra's spotlight while we investigate why she's holding her audience hostage, and make it four?"

"Sounds fun!" Trixie said eagerly, stuffing the money back in her hat and putting it back on.





Heading to the door, Sam opened it.  Myra herself greeted them from the other side.  "It's polite to knock.  You do know we're taping a show here."

"We want to be on your show!" Trixie spoke up eagerly.

"We're supposed to be trying to get her to free the hostages," Sam hissed.

"I don't know what you mean about hostages," Myra began, "but my guest line up is rather full.  If you want to cut in line, you're going to be a really big name celebrity."

"There is no name bigger than the Great and Powerful Trixie!" Trixie proclaimed, puffing out her chest.

"Cute kid, but we already had a trained animals segment," Myra countered.  Ignoring Trixie's offended gasp, Myra continued.  "If you want to be on, you're going to need to be a TV star-"

"Here's a clip of Trixie's debut on Midtown Cowboys," Sam said, holding out the tape.

Taking it and looking it over, Myra continued.  "You need to have a recording contract-"

"Bim Boffom Recofs!" Trixe yelled around the contract, having grabbed it out of her hat with her mouth.  Whether from excitement or a calculated ploy to increase cuteness, Sam wasn't certain.

Myra glanced at the contract, then nodded.  "And you need to be involved in a scandal of some sort."

"We're two single anthropomorphic male adults with no known romantic prospects, living together for years, of questionable moral fiber, and raising a little girl from another dimension between us," Max explained.  "Does that qualify as scandal?"

"Only if there's something interesting in the sleeping arrangements," Myra pointed out.

"Does that mean Trixie gets her own bed instead of taking Daddy's while Daddy sleeps in Uncle's bed?" Trixie asked.

"Ooh, juicy!" Myra said eagerly, rubbing her hands.  "Get on stage, hurry!"





As they came onto the stage of the show, Trixie was too distracted with being in front of a genuine live audience to pay much attention to what Sam, Max, and Myra were saying.  All she was able to deduce easily was that the animatronic teddy bear on Myra's desk was evil, and that Sam and Max were unable to disobey Myra while on camera.  Trixie noticed that the bear had the same hypnotic energy as the glasses Brady Culture had used, and that she didn't seem bound in the same way as Sam and Max.  At least, she was able to stand up and spin around on her chair before sitting back down.

"So tell me, boys," Myra began, "I hear tell that the two of you are raising this little filly between you.  I'm a bit concerned about what that says regarding...family values."

"What do you mean?" Sam asked in confusion.

"Two single men who have been living together for years suddenly adopting a filly?" Myra queried.  "Surely that's not something that just happens out of nowhere."

"Actually, I just pulled her out of a hat, and she asked me to keep her!" Max said happily, resulting in a mix of scandalous Ooh's and heart touched Aww's from the audience.

"So sudden!" Myra mused.  "But surely that caused some problems with sleeping arrangements, right?"

"Trixie slept with Daddy when she first arrived," Trixie pointed out, reaching over to lay her hoof on Max's hand.  This brought another chorus of Aww's.  "Though once Trixie was big enough to sleep alone, Daddy slept with Uncle Sam."

Another chorus of Ooo's greeted that.  "My goodness!" Myra gasped.  "Are you really sure that's appropriate around a young, impressionable girl?"

"What's wrong with it?" Sam asked in confusion.  "Max and I have been friends since we were kids."

"It's hardly the first time we've shared a bed," Max agreed, startling more Ooo's from the audience.

"Dare I ask," Myra began, "is there perchance more than friendship to your relationship, Sam and Max?"

"What?" Sam asked, shocked.  "No!  There's nothing like that.  I'm straight in more than just my laces!  Tell her, Max!"

Max stood up on his chair, raising his hands menacingly.  "Like the dreaded No-Life King before me, there is no mortal alive that can comprehend my sexual preference!"

As the audience burst into laughter, Sam rounded on Max.  "Max, you're supposed to be helping me!"

"I am," Max countered.  "I'm being the chaotic, unpredictable madman complimenting your logical, predictable linear thinking."

"Not on live TV!" Sam argued.  "You're supposed to be acting a responsible father!"

Max blinked blankly.  "You've lost me."

As the audience laughed and Myra started babbling on about something or other, Trixie fidgeted in her seat.  Her tummy rumbled.  All she'd had to eat today since breakfast was a Cadbury Egg and a lollipop, and her stomach was expressing its dissatisfaction with such skimpy feeding over such an active day.  She found herself longing for Major Ursa to cuddle, as that always helped her ignore any physical discomforts.  "Can Trixie hug the bear?" Trixie asked, pointing at the evil bear.

As the audience let off a chorus of Daws, Myra smiled.  "Well I don't see-"  The bear's eyes zapped her with green energy.  "What is wrong with children these days, being so demanding?"

Trixie's ears went flat to her skull, and her eyes watered.  "Trixie...Trixie just wants to hug the bear..."

"And what is with the third person speech?" Myra demanded.  "Do you think it makes you seem more mature or important?  It's just yet another childish game to get attention and get your way, and when you don't you start crying to make the grownups feel guilty.  What happened to the days when kids had a sense of responsibility-"

Trixie, still being quite young, was unable to take the heaping verbal denunciation.  Within moments, she burst into tears.

"Trixie!" Max called out in concern, quickly pulling her into his lap.  "Sorry about her.  She's still young and we haven't gotten to stop for lunch yet.  You know how little kids get cranky when they get hungry..."

Myra started to open her mouth for another denunciation, but the angry muttering from the audience seemed to percolate into her awareness.  She blinked for a time, then closed her eyes and put her hand to her head.  Her eyes opened, and a green flare burst from them before dissipating.  "Oh, I'm so sorry," she said quickly.  "I don't know what came over me.  Here you go."  Grabbing the bear - which tried and failed to turn towards her - she handed it to Trixie.

Trixie, for her part, stopped crying and cuddled the bear, her grip making it impossible for it to turn its head back towards Myra.

Myra then glanced around, seeming confused.  "What are you all still doing here?" she demanded of her audience.  "Aren't you all up past your bedtimes by over a day?  Go home, shower, get some sleep!  Your body's a temple, so take better care of it!"

The audience cheered as the credits started to roll and they filed out.

"Trixie!" Sam said happily.  "I don't know how, but you broke Myra's hypnosis!"

"Yay!" Trixie said happily, squeezing extra tight and making the bear's head pop off.  "Daddy did it!" she cried, pointing accusingly at Max.

"I admit I'm guilty!" Max proclaimed.

"I just don't know what came over me," Myra explained.  "I opened that bear and then...I suddenly felt compelled to make the best show ever!  There was something in my head, driving me onward.  But...but when my audience started to turn against me because I was making a little girl cry, I...something snapped in my head and I knew I had to fix things...and somehow the bear was the cause of it all!"

"We'll look into it," Sam promised, "but for now, this case is closed!"

"Does that mean Trixie gets lunch now?" Trixie asked.

"Sure," Max replied.  "And until we get to food, look who I brought!"  Reaching into Sam's pocket, he pulled out Trixie's teddy bear.

"Major Ursa!" Trixie cried happily, cuddling the bear.

"You two take good care of that little girl, ya hear?" Myra instructed.  "I don't want to see you three on my show about family failures!"