Click.
Clickclick.
Perfect, Jackson thought. The image in the viewfinder of his camera showed a couple strolling through the mall. The gaunty, middle-aged man had his arm wrapped protectively around a woman…, no, around a girl that was surely a fifth of his age.
Chase Jackson smiled inwardly. Well, well, well, Senator Helmes, he thought. I believe we still have some statutes regarding ‘age of consent’ in this state.
Click.
Very nice, it even looked like he was fondling her. Chase could hear the splintering sound of another political career being shipwrecked on the shores of public opinion. Now I only needed a nice frontal shot, clearly showing both faces, he thought. The couple unintentionally obliged.
Click.
The girl screamed, having seen Chase paralleling their course by unobtrusively following a winding course in the fake jungle beside the wishing well. Senator Helmes looked like he was about to have an apoplectic fit and was turning an interesting shade of purple. Chase grinned.
Clickclick.
Jackson extracted himself from the plastic bushes and ran towards the mall entrance to make his getaway. Smugly, he bounded around a corner and almost bounced of a gorilla in a suit that had ‘mob’ written all over him.

Ugh, thought Chase, I completely forgot about his ‘other’ escort…

He sprinted down a side corridor to try for another exit. Twisting his head, he could see that the bodyguard had finally activated all five of his brain cells and was tromping after him.
Turning around a corner he dumped the camera and it’s incriminating evidence in a trash can. If it was going to get rough, he would prefer to have a couple of broken bones instead of a broken camera – the pictures would be worth it. Besides, he reflected, I can always pick it up after I thrash the goon (yeah… right, said a small, nagging voice inside his head).
He skidded through an open service access. A quick look around ensured that no one else was here. He had about three seconds until the goon showed up, so he positioned himself beside the door. When the bodyguard ran through the door, Jackson’s leg lashed out, placing his shin and knee neatly in pursuer stomach. As the air whooshed out of the bodyguard’s lungs and he doubled over, Chase brought both fists down on his back. Wham, bam, thank you, mam, his inner voice cheered.

He considered kicking him in the ribs, but decided that a quick getaway might be more sensible. Jackson’s adrenaline-pumped body trembled slightly as the first waves of post-combat let-down made him jittery. Without looking left or right, he passed through the service access and walked briskly towards the nearest exit.
It was only after he had started his car and driven onto the freeway that he realized that his camera was now probably lying in a dumpster at the back of the shopping mall.

Chase Jackson was swaggering down the main shopping spree of the mall, his thumbs hooked into the heavy duty belt of his security guard uniform.
A piercing scream pulled him out of his reverie. “Second level, center,” he thought and took the escalator five steps at a time. The scream started up again, now being joined by other yells and shouts; one of them an ominous, “he’s got a knife!”
“Oh, great,” thought Jackson. Mall security was too stingy to trust it’s personnel with anything more dangerous than a walkie-talkie. No gun, no pepper spray, not even a stick to shake at aggressive assailants.
Turning a corner, he saw a knife-wielding, crazy-eyed man standing in the center of a growing crowd. He was slowly turning around, weaving the knife in front of him.
“Come on, friend, put down the knife,” said Jackson in his most trustworthy voice as he shouldered his way through the crowd.
“Get away from me, pig!” screamed the man. His voice broke.
“You’re one of them! You won’t get me…. Argh, they’re coming out of the walls!”
He was thrashing his head to all sides, his eyes unfocussing.
“Loony,” thought Chase, “suicidal maniac.”
He slowly edged up to the crazed man, trying to judge his distance so that he would stay out of the range of the knife.
The man jerked around. He was now completely focussed on Chase, his knife held low.
“Uh, oh,” thought Chase.
“Argh!” screamed the man, lunging towards Jackson and bringing the knife upwards in a large sweeping movement.
Someone in the crowd screamed, but Jackson’s universe had contracted and reduced itself to the man leaping towards him.
He side-stepped to the left, turning his body slightly. His left palm slapped the lower arm of his assailant away and slid down to grab the wrist. His right hand came up to grab the wrist from underneath, locking the knife hand tightly.
He followed the momentum of the hand upwards until the knife glittered at head height. Now his left leg came around in a sweeping kick to smash with brutal force into the back of his attacker’s right knee. The loony dropped to the floor, landing painfully on his knees. Chase brought down the hand holding the knife, his thumbs sliding up the back of his attacker’s hand and forcefully levering the wrist. He felt bones grinding beneath his fingers. With a scream of pain, his attacker let the knife fall from his sprained hand.
Jackson applied more pressure on the sprained wrist and twisted the arm at the elbow joint. Moving behind his opponent’s back, he pushed him flat to the ground, bringing the abused arm up painfully. Then he kneeled down squarely on the crazy man’s lower back.

His right arm pinioning the hand, he fumbled with his left for the walkie-talkie.
“This is Jackson. Level 2, by the escalators. Get me a medic.”

Somewhere in the crowd, a little boy started cheering.

Narrator: When we last left Chase Jackson, he had safely made it through his ordeal on the plane. Now we find him in an area shopping mall, where he faces a nerve-wracking decision.

Chase: Hmm, I normally stick with black, but I really like this royal blue outfit. Regardless, this is just the trick to ease my jet lag. Besides, it simply wouldn’t do if I were to wear the same clothes two days in a row. I can only imagine the uproar from society.

Woman (off-screen): Eeeeeek!

Chase: Well, that seems a little too much, but I guess….

Woman (still off-screen): Hellllllllllp!

Chase. Oh! I guess it’ll be the blue, then. Action comes before fashion!

Narrator: With a speed possessed only by secret agents, Chase pays for the outfit and is off towards the cry. Using his ultra-sharp hearing, the source is quickly found. A woman wearing a scientist’s robe stands outside Der Weinerschnitzel, surrounded by figures cloaked in black and carrying weapons, no doubt fiendishly smuggled past mall security. She is struggling valiantly to escape, despite being heavily outnumbered.

Woman: Please help me!

Chase: No problem! Here I come!

Narrator: And with a flash of feet and fists felling foes, fate soon finds the famous fortune hunter facing the fair femme. Now excuse me a minute while I untongle my tangue.

Chase: Just so I know what to write in my journal, what’s going on here?

Woman: I’m being attacked by corporate ninjas! They must be after the top secret formula I’m carrying.

Chase: Corporate ninjas?

Woman: Well, they are wearing black, and threatening me with sticks and swords.

Chase: True enough. But why are you carrying such an important formula through a shopping mall?

Woman: Um… I have to make a presentation about it, but wanted to wear something more dashing than my laboratory garments.

Chase: A woman after my own heart. One world-famous rescue coming up, then!

Woman: Thanks, I think. And the name is…

Narrator: But before she could finish, Chase grabs her by the waist, pulling her out of the path of a throwing star. The two dash towards the nearest exit, dispatching enemies in their way.

Thug 1: Oof!

Thug 2: Ouch!

Thug 3: Other onomatopoeia!

Narrator: A merry chase begins, but thanks to Chase’s brilliant mind and swift feet, the ninjas are left in the dust. Chase leads her to his car, where they race off towards the scientist’s appointment.

Woman: Thanks again. And by the way, the name I tried to give earlier was…

Narrator: But the gunning of the engine drowns her words out. But what’s this back in the mall? A shadowy figure staying in.. uh, the shadows?

Figure: Well played, Chase. But we’ll see how you handle the rest of this adventure.

Narrator: Who is this figure? And does he bode ill or good towards our hero? And what is the woman’s name anyway? Find out these answers and more in the next action-packed episode!

Chase Jackson was bruised and tired as he entered the Chapel Hills Mall in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He had just finished his latest endeavor and was ready for his trip to Aspen. A few days of skiing and a few nights of drinking and he’d be ready for action again.

As he passed Dillards, he thought he heard a woman screaming, but there were kids playing in the playground below. He just wasn’t sure. Then he heard her scream again. His steel blues eyes focused in on Comfort Dental and his ears turned up the volume.

The sign said, “Compassionate Care.” The screams said otherwise.

Another piercing scream and Chase darted like a rabbit through the crowd. He burst through the doors of Comfort Dental and saw the shocked face of the receptionist who was paralyzed with fear. All she could do was point to the door. She knew Chase was the good guy just by his rugged good looks. Secretly, she wished he had stopped right there.

Chase followed the terrorized screaming through the door. “Whoever this lady is, she’s in pain,” he thought to himself.

As Chase burst through the door, there was a wimpy dentist and his assistant who couldn’t muster the courage to move. They just pointed down the hallway. Chase didn’t need directions. The screams told him where to go.

By now the screams were endless in pain, but there was another person screaming also. It was a man who was obviously angry. Chase grabbed some dental tools as he ran down the hallway. He thought to himself, “These might come in handy.”

There was no door to the examination room where the woman was screaming. Chase cautiously peered around the corner. It was shocking and gruesome. The burly patient had taken the dental hygienist and thrown her to the floor. He had her shoulders pinned to the ground with his knees. He was still wearing his bloody dental bib.

“Does this hurt? Does this hurt? You said it wouldn’t hurt!!!” The patient was digging in the hygienist’s mouth with a pointed stainless steel tool. She was screaming at the top of her lungs. Feared streamed through her eyes as she begged Chase to help her.

“Hey buddy, calm down,” Chase said soothingly.

Mr. Burly looked at him and held up the bloody stainless steel cleaning tool. “She said it wouldn’t hurt and she was killing me!” He waved it like a trophy. Her mouth was bleeding profusely.

“I told her to stop. She was killing me and she kept digging! She wouldn’t stop!”

Chase searched his eyes for the truth. Then he looked in her eyes for the truth. She was cold. She was calculating. He could tell that she enjoyed her work immensely.

He slowly inched forward remembering the tools in his own hands. He remembered his last visit to the dentist.

“Hey, I’m only here to help. Here buddy, try this one,” as he handed Mr. Burly a perversely crooked dental tool.

Noon. Bayville shopping mall. Chase Jackson saunters through the capitalistic atrocity with a decidedly manly swagger. As he approaches the "Johnson's Footlong Hotdog" cart he hears a cry for help from somewhere in the parking lot! Because of the feminine nature of the voice, he's off and bounding and snapped into action!

Jacket fluttering in the breeze created by his galloping form, he slaloms through droves of shoppers with their carts and brats attached at the hand until he plunges through the front doors and is jetting along the hot black top of the lot.

Sweat breaks on his brow as the sun relentlessly torches him. He raises a hand to shield his eyes from the afternoon glare. Waves of heat rise off the ground, distorting his vision. In the distance, there! He spots a head full of long blonde hair and is off running again, a slight dribble from the corner of his mouth.

He finds the young woman desperately pulling at her car door. She is absolutely ablaze in the heat, on the verge of sunstroke! Chase acts quickly, his cool, level head discreetly approximating her measurements and deciding she's worth helping.

"What's the problem miss?" a manicured hand swipes back a lock of blowdried hair.

"My keys! They're locked in my car, oh please, tell me you have a cellphone mister!" she's pleading, almost panicked!

Chase deftly and expertly reaches into his side pocket, producing a cellphone. With practiced ease and not a bit of flair he flips it open and hands it to her. She takes it in her hand and begins dialing madly, slumping against the car door.

"Please! Please come and save me, Bayville Mall parking lot, I'm the sweat soaked blonde, hurry, there isn't much time!!!" she sobs as she reaches to hand the phone back, staring ahead blankly.

Chase bends over, plucking the phone from her limp grasp and quietly creeping away before breaking into a sprint. As he bursts back into the large lane of the parking lot he's pursued by a mall employee pushing a load of carts at a breakneck speed! The pimply faced teen has a sinister glint in his eyes as he bears down on Chase, who begins a mad dash towards the safety of the mall.

Thinking quickly, Chase yanks a soda can off the ground and tosses it at the wheels of the death train trying to run him down. It slips under the lead cart and jars it off balance creating a monumental trainwreck of almost noticeable proportions. The thwarted cart wrangler shakes his fist angrily at Chase as he watches him slide between the quickly closing automated doors and into safety at the last moment.

Chase leans against a bank of payphones, breathing deeply, shuddering at the close call. As he calms down another poor soul is in trouble.

"Dammit! I'm almost out of time, quick does anybody have a quarter?!" a worried shopper yells.

Chase thinks fast and hurries off to the hotdog stand to break a dollar and save the day once more!

"Crap, not again..." – I thought to myself, right after half the people at the mall heard that loud scream coming from the food court.

I mean, why can't I enjoy a peaceful afternoon at the mall? How come I always have to save somebody? There I was, trying to enjoy an ice cream – which was not that good anyway but heck, it's all I got – and some idiotic woman has to scream, probably because some good for nothing bum stole her purse or something. It's me who has to deal with this. Me... Damn.

Well, it's not that I complain a lot... Ok, so maybe I do.

As I did my best to get to the food court as slowly as possible (they have internal security people in the mall, don't blame me for taking my time), the screaming continued. Louder and with a higher pitch, it was getting quite annoying I must say.

It was a robbery, as I thought. It's the most common known crime in malls. So it was predictable.

"Lady, quit whining!" – I yelled.

"But he took my purse!"

"Listen lady. I have better things to do than to save you or your stupid bag from a loser. A loser who probably doesn't know that he stole a purse with nothing but pictures of your grandkids, maxed out credit cards, and old toffee candy stuck to the bottom. So why don't you go home, take more money from under your mattress, and go buy yourself another cheap purse. You'll stop bothering me, you'll stop bothering them, and we'll all go back to living our happy lives." I was having a pretty lousy day by now.

The woman looked at me in awe. Her eyes open wide, tears just piling up in her eyes just waiting for me to say one more word and come out.

"What, you gonna cry now?"

She went furious and jumped over me, pounding on my chest like a wild beast. "Lady, I can't afford to get this shirt stained with your ugly makeup, back off!" – but she wouldn't. Being the gentleman that I am, I couldn't hit her back. So I took a lot – and I mean a lot – of punches, until I managed to get her off of me and with a swift jump, I got up and turned back, to gaze into her furious red eyes and heavy breathing, just waiting for a second air and kill me.

Two seconds later three security guards arrived to the scene and lifted her off the floor. Hands cuffed behind her back, she was taken away, her feet dangling while useless little kicks couldn't get her free. It was a sad sight.

I was hungry, so I had a burrito. I mean, why can't I enjoy a peaceful afternoon at the mall?

The only one who might have been relieved to hear her piercing cry for help was Brent, the Radio Shack sales associate who had diligently offered to help Chase Jackson with his enquiries. Chase was in the fourteenth minute of draining Brent’s patience, not to mention his knowledge of diodes and capacitors, when a frantic, piercing cry shattered the Saturday morning hum of commerce in Bristow Mall. In his haste to investigate, Chase dropped his handful of blister-packed amplifier accessories, and accidentally nudged Brent into a pegboard display of stereo jacks which exploded from the wall and clattered to the floor. Uttering a “sorry” in Brent’s general direction while accidentally knocking over a battery display case, Chase ran out of Radio Shack and into the crush of shoppers towards the source of the scream.

She wasn’t hard to find. A smallish woman, mousy blond, maybe 25 or 26 by Chase’s guess, was raising a ruckus near the lottery kiosk, doing her best to let everyone know that she had been wronged. “My baby! He took my baby!” she shrieked, waving her arms and pointing towards the mall’s main entrance. “My baby’s gone!”

Chase is a man of action. It is his instinct, his pride, his nature. But this time Chase simply stood, staring at the anguished woman from several yards away, the one stationary person in a maelstrom of activity sparked by the woman’s frantic plea. “This is wrong”, he thought to himself. “This is no mother. She hasn’t lost her baby. Why is she lying?” It took a few seconds for reason to catch up to intuition: this woman clearly had spent last night, and probably many nights before that, on the street. Now Chase saw her dirty winter jacket, her torn running shoe, her dilated pupils, her matted hair. He saw she had no purse. “No purse, no shopping, and definitely no baby”, Chase thought. “What is her game?” He wheeled around, looking past the shoppers, searching for the answer, just in time to spot some activity at the other end of the mall.

Two men were running towards the distant mall exit, and there was clearly something amiss at Palladio Jewelers nearby. Chase now understood: the screaming woman was a distraction. A quick glance back to the lottery kiosk confirmed his suspicion: she was nowhere to be seen. Dashing towards the jewelry store at the far end of the mall, Chase once again met Brent as he ran past Radio Shack, flattening the hapless clerk with an unintentional body slam. “Oops, my fault” he said, without missing a step. Nearing the door, he found he was still clutching a small but solid Neutrik die-cast quarter inch stereo jack in his right hand, just the sort of thing that could be dangerous to a fleeing crook if it caught him in the temple.

The Springdale Mall wasn't overly busy today, but it was packed according to Chase Jackson’s standards. He hated malls. He hated crowds. All the noise, all the lollygaggers wandering aimlessly about, not watching where they’re going. But he had to be there. It was his secretary’s birthday tomorrow, and Heather was already pissed at him for forgetting her raise. Chase had to make up for it, but he had no idea what to get her. He looked at the floor plan of the mall, and that confused him even more.

“What to get, what to get?” he asked himself aloud.

His thoughts were interrupted by a cry so shrill it could only mean trouble. Chase ran to the railing to look down to the floor below, and a movement caught the corner of his well-trained eye. He was now faced with two choices: elevator or stairs. His lightning-fast mind went through the calculations. The elevator is empty, but it’s slow. The stairs are quick, but way too crowded. “Screw it” he told himself, and hopped up on the railing and leapt towards the palm tree that mysteriously grew in a mall. The impact of landing on the branches hurt, but not half as much as the fall to the ground below will would. With a “thud” Chase fell to the sawdust-covered ground, a jolt of pain ran through his body. He was going to feel that tomorrow.

Immediately he looked around to orient himself. The shrieking returned, he turned to the direction of the noise, and there was a hysterical woman sitting on the floor pointing towards a fleeing figure. Chase jumped to his feet, and bolted towards the scene of the crime.

“Out of my way!” yelled Chase as he shoved his way though the gathered crowd of gawkers.

His opponent was already over a hundred feet away, but he had made the mistake of running the long way around the food court area. Our hero didn’t have time to waste going around the food court, and he was already pissed he had to go gallivanting around the mall on his day off. Chase agilely made his way over the low rail and directly on top of a table. He hop scotched his way down a row of tables, kicking over drinks, stepping on burgers, and generally making a big mess of everything in his path. He didn’t care; he had a job to do.

The thief made the rookie mistake of turning around to see if he was being followed. That slowed him down a fraction of a second, giving Chase enough time to make a diving tackle from atop the last table. Both men slammed to the ground and slid into the counter of Taco Time, much to the surprise of the thief.

“Oh God, please don’t hurt me!” whimpered the bandit.

“Shut the he[NF]ll up!” uttered Chase, and slammed his opponent’s head to the floor, knocking him out.

“I have shopping to do damn it”.

The echoes of the piercing scream reverberated down the length of the shopping mall. Chase Jackson’s head jerked around in the general direction of the cry. He had lost interest in the display of overpriced, overstyled sunglasses which he had been browsing for the last fifteen minutes. His ears had picked up the subtle harmonics which indicated to his testosterone-drenched brain cells that the victim would undoubtedly be a lithe, blonde, long-legged beauty who would be oh so very grateful. With a leap he bounded out of the store, pushing past an over-anxious attendant who tried to block his valiant dash towards rescue and recompensation.

“Away!”, he snarled, slapping the pimply-faced attendant’s restraining hands away.

Out of the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirrored facade, taking the time to appreciate the well-toned upper body musculature that was barely contained by his t-shirt. His jeans were perfectly faded, and the black cowboy boots immaculately shined.
He skidded to a halt and ran his hands through the well-greased black hair. Then he flicked the price tag of the sunglasses out of his field of vision and sprinted down the corridor in search of the maiden in distress. He was followed by the pimply-faced shop attendant who was wheezing “thief, thief!” as he tried to catch up with Jackson.

Jackson’s dash ended in a screeching halt in front of the extensive window display of Hazal’s House of Mirrors and Bathroom Decorations. He had counted on subsequent screams in order to home in on the scene of the crime, but all he could hear now was the general hubbub of a busy mall. Twisting his head left and right, he tried to get his bearings.
So he was unprepared for the low-level tackle of the underweight shop attendant who had finally caught up with him. The pimply-faced youth rammed his shoulder into Jackson’s midsection, overbalancing him. They stumbled backwards and crashed into the window display of Hazal’s. Contrary to conventional physics, they were not sliced to pieces by splinters of glass dropping onto them from above, but survived miraculously. They landed in a shower of glass which would have brought tears to the eyes of any professional special effects man. In the process they smashed enough mirrors to ensure 24.5 years of bad luck for each of them.
Chase stood up swinging wildly, but slipped on shards of glass. While trying to catch his balance, his opponent jabbed a puny fist into his ribcage. Exhaling sharply, Jackson threw a roundhouse punch at the meddling interloper and connected solidly with his lower jaw, sending jolts of pain into his lower arm and his opponent into unconsciousness.
Looking around, Chase noticed that he had aroused the attention of two burly members of the mall’s security staff who were now bearing down on him with a murderous gleam in their eyes. Calculating his chances and gibbering horrifiedly at the result, Jackson decided to make like a tree and leave.