Scooby Doo! Meet Ellie Machine

Where Walks Aphrodite (Part 2)

Angel pulled the van up to the area nicknamed 'Lover's Lane' before saying she needed to run back to the station and lock it up. She was acting suspiciously, but I didn't question it.

"We gotta find out who she is and what she wants," Fred told us, now having climbed back into the driver's seat. "Like, maybe she's a gorgon who rose from the dead, and she's gonna turn us all into an army of vampire robots!" Shaggy exclaimed. "Shaggy, that's the plot from Vincent van Ghoul's Gorgon Parade," I chided him.

"And it was based on a true story," he argued, making me chuckle. "Far be it from me, a tiny thumbless avian, to hazard a guess, but did anyone else notice her choice of clothing, specifically the style?" Pericles spoke up. I felt a shiver run through me at the little bird's voice but tried to focus on what Aphrodite had been wearing.

"Wait a sec," Daphne said. "She was wearing a prom dress!"

"Then that's where we'll start," Fred announced. And so, Fred drove us to the school, and we snuck into the library. "Spread out, gang. We're looking for any information on the kind of prom dress Aphrodite was wearing. We find the dress, maybe we can track it back to her," Fred summarized, and we began looking.

I grabbed a stack of yearbooks and started flipping through the pages, trying to spot the dress she was wearing.

We spent a couple of hours looking through everything. "Nothing," Fred said after looking through the last yearbook. "Like, nothing here, either," Shaggy called from the stacks of newspapers.

"Hey, gang! I got something!" Velma exclaimed. We all gathered around her at the table. "This girl went to school here, and she's wearing the same dress. Her name was Amanda Smythe, and she was some sort of chemistry wiz," Velma said, now looking at us. Daphne read through the article as well. "It also says she was named prom queen," she added. "The crown," Pericles and Scooby said in unison. "Like, what crown?" Shaggy asked, gripping my hand nervously.

"Miss Repugnant Bohemian said something about having her crown," Pericles explained. "It says here the night she came to be crowned turned out to be a trick by some of her classmates. She was laughed out of the school and never seen again," Daphne continued as she kept reading. "Ouch," I winced in sympathy. "All right, I think we all know what time it is," Fred announced.

We all looked at him, waiting for him to say his famous words but I guess he wanted one of us to say what he normally says. "Time to set a trap? Trap time? Boy, you guys. You think you'd know by now," he said, and I couldn't help a chuckle. With that, he explained a plan and we set up the home base in the biology lab so we could make more antidote for the town.

One of the things we needed was a set of fire extinguishers. "There's a lot of them down in the basement. Ellie and I can go get them," Velma volunteered, and before I could argue, she pulled me along with her.

I looked at her in surprise. "Wow, you never volunteer to go with me. Something on your mind?" I asked her. "No," she said simply, then sighed. "Maybe... Yes."

"Well, what's up?" I asked, though by now I figured it out. I just wanted her to be the one to say it. "Are you and Shaggy together?" she blurted. I opened the door to the basement and let her go first. "Yes. We are," I told her. I watched her from behind to get any sort of reaction from her.

"How long have you guys liked each other?" she asked, not meeting my eyes. I sighed. "A while, I guess. He told me he had feelings while he was dating you, but I refused to do anything until you guys were broken up. But, with him breaking up with you, he also ended anything that could have happened with us. But then he asked me out a few nights ago, and I said yes," I explained to her.

Velma remained silent, before nodding. "How long would you guys have waited until I knew about it?" she asked. I spotted the fire extinguishers and started walking towards them. "Until I thought you were over Shaggy for good. We might not be the closest, but I would never hurt you like that. It was my idea, actually. I figured you wouldn't be okay with us dating so soon after your breakup," I told her.