FADE IN:

EXT. VICTORIAN ENGLAND

MILLIE BOBBIE BROWN is riding one of those newfangled BICYCLES through the English countryside.

MILLIE BOBBIE BROWN

Hello, folks, and welcome to my Ferris Bueller-esque chummy narration and side commentary! My character is Sherlock Holmes’ teenage sister and YES OKAY he didn’t have any such thing in the original short stories but look, making shit up in Sherlock Holmes fan fiction is a tradition going back to the nineteenth century so just deal with it, okay? Without it we wouldn’t even have his big dumb pipe, and Moriarty would still just be some faceless silhouette falling off a waterfall. Anyway, here’s some flashbacks.

INT. HOLMES MANOR

MILLIE is being educated in a loose assortment of EVERYTHING by her mother HELENA BONHAM CARTER.

MILLIE BOBBIE BROWN

After my dad dropped dead and my older brothers fucked off to star in the real stories, I was raised by my mother, who was very much alive and not murdered at all, FUCK YOU VERY MUCH NICHOLAS MEYER. She was a very individualistic woman with many quirks and eccentricities, the main one being her tendency to speak exclusively in inspirational non-conformist slogans.

HELENA BONHAM CARTER

Forge your own destiny, Millie! Don’t let anybody tell you who you are! Be you! Be what you’re like! Be like yourself! Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

MILLIE BOBBIE BROWN

My mother named me “Enola”, which is “Alone” backwards, as she was obsessed with wordplay. And yes, as that suggests this is in fact not going to be a real mystery with proper clues and a clever investigation, but some Dan Brown bullshit full of deliberately-planted messages and anagrams and stuff. Sorry.

(shrugs)

But then my mother suddenly vanished, leaving me no message whatsoever! All my word-puzzle-loving mother gave me was a bunch of junk including a cipher wheel and a book explaining how flowers can be used as code. If only she’d left me some sort of CLUE!

EXT. TRAIN STATION

MILLIE waits at the TRAIN STATION to greet her older brothers HENRY CAVILL and SAM CLAFLIN as they get off the train. But then they just WALK OBLIVIOUSLY PAST HER.

MILLIE BOBBIE BROWN

Oh sure. Because the man famous for being able to glance somebody out of the corner of his eye and instantly tell you that he’s a retired typesetter from southern Kent who’s been married for eight years to a scullery maid with a glass eye, can’t identify the immediately family member who’s standing right in front of him and waving hello.

HENRY CAVILL

Ah yes. Our youngest sibling. I formally acknowledge your presence.

SAM CLAFLIN

I also.

MILLIE BOBBIE BROWN

Oh right, the Holmes brothers and their notorious aloofness disregard for human connection. Look, we kind of planned for a whole bonding thing between Henry and me, so why don’t we discreetly remove all the asshole from this guy...

(extracts Henry’s jerkness)

...and put it over here.

(crams it all into Sam)

HENRY CAVILL

(heart grows three sizes)

My my Millie, how you’ve grown.

(pats adorable puppy)

(bluebird alights on shoulder)

SAM CLAFLIN

(spitting with fury)

A female? Exhibiting FREE WILL and expressing HER OWN OPINIONS?! HERESY!! As your new guardian, I will now imprison you in Fiona Shaw’s Evil School for Human Chattel!

MILLIE BOBBIE BROWN

Whuh oh, I’m in trouble now! If only Helena had made any kind of arrangement to prevent this! Obviously an official arrangement, say some kind of legal means of placing me in Henry’s care instead of Sam’s, would have been best. Or maybe she could have left me a clear, unhidden, unencrypted message somewhere obvious where I couldn’t have missed it. But failing all those reasonable options, she could at least have concealed some dumb scavenger-hunt clue for me!

MILLIE’S MAID

I mean... that sounds like something she probably, you know, did.

MILLIE BOBBIE BROWN

Gasp! What an astute deduction that I, a girl genius who knew my mother better than anybody in the world, could never have figured out by myself! And call it a crazy hunch, but maybe if I checked that pile of code-themed flower books...

She riffles through the FLOWER BOOKS for FIVE SECONDS and finds a NOTE tucked into one of them.

MILLIE BOBBIE BROWN

Aha! “alonekoolniymsmumehtnasyrhc”, it says. It’s a code! I wonder what fiendish encryption she-

MILLIE’S MAID

The words are backwards.

MILLIE BOBBIE BROWN

Shush, I’m trying to figure this out. I should get out my Scrabble tiles and start shuffling these letters around, see if I can identify-

MILLIE’S MAID

“Enola look in my chrysanthemums”. Come on, it starts with your name backwards, you realized this straight away and told the audience, except they’d already figured out the words were backwards because THE WORDS ARE CLEARLY BACKWARDS.

MILLIE BOBBIE BROWN

Stop distracting me I’m trying to do something here!

(thinks)

(moves tiles)

Maybe it’s a substitution code using Pig Latin...

(ponders)

(analyzes)

(cogitates)

Aha! I have deduced that the words, in fact, are backwards!

MILLIE’S MAID

(facepalms)

MILLIE goes and examines her mother’s PAINTINGS OF CHRYSANTHEMUMS, where she finds a LETTER with a PILE OF MONEY.

MILLIE BOBBIE BROWN

“Dear Millie, be adventurous and bold! Make your own path! And so forth!” Okay, so her message to me turns out to be instructions to go be a teenage runaway. What a terrific parent! Welp, off I go then!

She RUNS AWAY FROM HOME.

INT. TRAIN

MILLIE is disguised as a BOY and catching a TRAIN TO LONDON.

MILLIE BOBBIE BROWN

All right, I’m free! Sam wanted to groom me to become the wife of some rich titled guy, but I’ve rejected that outdated idea, which means no generic love interest for me, awesome!

(frowns)

Unless of course we’re going to do THAT love interest...

Generically handsome youth LOUIS PARTRIDGE tumbles into her carriage.

LOUIS PARTRIDGE

Hi there, I’m a rich, titled, eminently marriageable young man who would have every conventionally attractive maiden in England falling over themselves to win my affections, but instead I look past them all to appreciate the more quirky charms of the protagonist!

MILLIE BOBBIE BROWN

Of course.

But then LOUIS is attacked by CREEPY ASSASSIN BURN GORMAN!

MILLIE BOBBIE BROWN

He’s trying to kill Louis by throwing him from the train! I know, I’ll save Louis by throwing him from the train!

She hurls LOUIS and HERSELF off the TRAIN, and they then proceed to WALK TO LONDON.

MILLIE BOBBIE BROWN

Well, we might as well get to know each other on the way. What’s your deal?

LOUIS PARTRIDGE

Uh, my deal? My deal... how about, I recently lost a parent, a warm and unconventional parent I loved very much, and afterwards I became alarmed at how controlling my current guardians are, so I decided to run away and hide out in London. Yeah, that’s it.

MILLIE BOBBIE BROWN

Dude, did you just steal my entire backstory?

EXT. LONDON

MILLIE and LOUIS split up upon arriving in LONDON. Then MILLIE goes to a DRESS SHOP.

MILLIE BOBBIE BROWN

When Sam comes looking for me, the last thing he’ll suspect is that I’ll be disguised as a proper lady. So all I have to do, as a roughhousing tomboy whose entire education has been about natural science and hand-to-hand combat, is to expertly put on the makeup, hairstyle, and ridiculously complicated period dress of an experienced Victorian socialite. Piece of cake!

She successfully affects the period-appropriate blend of ELEGANCE and ABSURDITY, then secures herself some ACCOMMODATION.

MILLIE BOBBIE BROWN

And now that I’m all set up, let the Helena Hunt begin! First I’ll try to contact her by placing an ad in the classifieds. I’ll use her flower codebook to create an inoccuous-seeming message about flowers, so that it looks just like a regular message and nobody realizes there’s a secret code in there. Then I’ll encrypt it, so that it looks like a totally bizarre jumble of nonsense letters, and EVERYBODY realizes there’s a secret code in there.

INT. JIUJITSU CLASS

MILLIE tracks down her mother’s friend, MARTIAL ARTS INSTRUCTOR SUSIE WOKOMA.

MILLIE BOBBIE BROWN

Wait a minute, I remember you! I once walked in on the meeting of some secret society Helena was holding, and you were there! And of course I remember the ten-second yet conveniently clue-stuffed snippet of conversation I overheard word for word...

She FLASHES BACK to HELENA’S SECRET MEETING.

HELENA BONHAM CARTER

So we have to choose a hideout. Will it be The Bankmen Met-

SUSIE WOKOMA

Oh for fuck’s sake, just say The Embankment. You don’t need to keep up the stupid anagram bullshit when we’re talking face to face in our secret meeting, what’s wrong with you.

HELENA BONHAM CARTER

-or Entangle Herb, or Ellie Houseman-

SUSIE WOKOMA

You mean Bethnal Green and Limehouse Lane? Look, even if we’re worried about random eavesdroppers, wouldn’t it make more sense to give these places innocuous code names, like “Jack’s place” or something? This way you’re just ensuring that anybody with a map of London and a working brain can figure out what we’re saying!

HELENA BONHAM CARTER

I know, but I’m just such a huge lame-ass anagram nerd! And I’m gonna keep prioritizing silly wordplay over common sense, or my name isn’t Mother Lecher Banana!

MILLIE BOBBIE BROWN

All right, since “Ellie Houseman” was the least tortured anagram of the bunch, let’s try that one.

INT. WAREHOUSE, LIMEHOUSE LANE

MILLIE finds the secret society’s WAREHOUSE, which turns out to be stuffed to the brim with BOMBS.

MILLIE BOBBIE BROWN

Oh fuck, my mother and her friends were bomb-making revolutionaries! They must have-

Suddenly a LOUD BUZZER sounds.

MILLIE BOBBIE BROWN

Ah, sorry folks, this is the overarching mystery that we’re going to be dragging out over the course of all these movies, so that’s all the clues we’ll be giving you today. Now let’s just drop that investigation altogether and switch over to figuring out why somebody was trying to kill Louis!

(frowns)

I sure HOPE this thing is successful enough for there to be more movies, otherwise the solution to the Helena mystery we’re left with is “she’s a fucking terrorist”.

BURN appears and starts trying to KILL MILL, VOLUME ONE! They MARTIAL ART at each other for a while, before eventually BURN stabs MILLIE!

MILLIE BOBBIE BROWN

Nice try, but your sword was stopped by my whalebone corset!

BURN GORMAN

Ah yes, your whalebone corset. That notoriously rigid and restrictive garment which inhibits both movement and breathing. That’s what you were wearing during all that jiujitsu just now, huh?

MILLIE gets away.

MILLIE BOBBIE BROWN

Hmmm, I better find go to Louis’s fancy-pants country estate to try and figure out who sent the assassin. While I’m traveling I’ll avoid attention by disguising myself as a sixteen-year-old widow, and as much as I’d like to be able to make a joke about what a silly concept that is, this is Victorian England, where that premise is depressingly plausible.

INT. PARTRIDGE ESTATE

MILLIE goes to visit LOUIS’S HOME so she can speak to the PARTRIDGE FAMILY. She is met by LOUIS’S MOTHER HATTIE MORAHAN and LOUIS’S GRANDMOTHER FRANCES DE LA TOUR.

MILLIE BOBBIE BROWN

Hello, I’m a teenage private detective. I’m here to investigate your son’s disappearance, despite the fact that you never hired me. I work for Sherlock Holmes, which sounds exactly like the dumb lie it is.

HATTIE MORAHAN

Sherlock Holmes? You mean that old man who was investigating me and my miscarriages, before I threw myself in front of a train and died?

FRANCES DE LA TOUR

No my dear, you’re getting this movie mixed up with an entirely different piece of Sherlock Holmes fan fiction that we were both in.

HATTIE MORAHAN

I see. What a confusing casting decision.

ADEEL AKHTAR

(entering)

You work with Sherlock Holmes?! Bullshit! Holmes always works alone!

MILLIE BOBBIE BROWN

...No. No, he kinda famously doesn’t.

ADEEL AKHTAR

Oh right. Well never mind me, I’m this movie’s Lestrade so I’m a bit of a thickhead.

MILLIE goes out onto the GROUNDS and finds a TREE with a fallen BRANCH.

MILLIE BOBBIE BROWN

Louis said that he ran away from home right after this branch nearly fell on him. But, just as I thought, it’s been sawn through! This was a deliberate murder attempt! Somebody sawed most of the way through this branch and then walked away, dusting their hands and saying “There, that branch will later snap off, and it will definitely happen at a time when Louis happens to be sitting directly under it”.

(pause)

...Or maybe that wasn’t it. Maybe they were sawing through the branch while Louis was already underneath it? And Louis just completely failed to notice the person loudly sawing on a tree right over his head, like something out of a Road Runner cartoon? Maybe, I dunno. Stranger things have happened.

Further exploration reveals that LOUIS had a TREEHOUSE nearby.

MILLIE BOBBIE BROWN

Aha, I see that Louis left a bunch of fake clues suggesting that he was going to hide out in Limehouse Lane. That’s how Burn found me there! He followed this completely made-up clue, which just happened to lead to the exact same place as the real clues I was following in an entirely separate investigation at the same time, by total, astronomical coincidence!

(sighs)

Sadly though this means I still have no idea where Louis is. It’s not like this treehouse contains any blatant clues pointing to the real location that he actual ran off to-

(glances)

Oh wait, he left some of those as well.

(pause)

What a fucking idiot.

EXT. LONDON MARKETS

MILLIE tracks down LOUIS.

MILLIE BOBBIE BROWN

Louis, I’ve been doing some investigation since that man tried to kill you. And what I’ve learned is... SOMEBODY is trying to KILL YOU!

(pause)

Huh, that really is all I’ve got so far. Oh well, at least I know where you are now, so I’ve made SOME progress.

Suddenly ADEEL shows up and catches her and LOUIS runs away to WHO KNOWS WHERE.

MILLIE BOBBIE BROWN

Wooowww, I’m not exactly living up to the family name, am I? How’d you even find me, Adeel?

ADEEL AKHTAR

The dress shop lady who found you a place to stay ratted you out.

MILLIE BOBBIE BROWN

Wait, so there was ONE person who saw me change from one disguise to the other, a SINGLE human being who had enough information to link me to my description in the wanted posters, and instead of vanishing off her radar forever I let her know my fucking address? Holy SHIT I’m bad at this.

INT. STEREOTYPICAL BRITISH TORTURE SCHOOL

SAM has MILLIE thrown into FIONA SHAW’S SUPER-STRICT FINISHING SCHOOL.

MILLIE BOBBIE BROWN

Curses, ensnared by the Conformity Police! Oh well, at least this prison-like environment affords me a prime opportunity to show off some resourcefulness and skill. Like, it could be fun if maybe my education in science finally came into play, like if I did some nineteenth-century MacGyvering and-

LOUIS PARTRIDGE

(bursting in)

Or I could just spring you!

MILLIE BOBBIE BROWN

Or that, if we feel like being lazy.

They ESCAPE THE SCHOOL.

MILLIE BOBBIE BROWN

By the way, Louis, I finally did some non-wordplay-based detecting for once in this movie, and worked out who’s trying to kill you and why. Your snooty conservative family want you dead because you’re about to become a lord, and your one vote could allow the reform bill to pass!

LOUIS PARTRIDGE

Reform bill, eh? What’s it reforming?

MILLIE BOBBIE BROWN

Uh, I dunno. Society? Look, it’s vaguely progressive somehow, that’s all that matters!

LOUIS PARTRIDGE

Okay, so my family wants me dead, what shall we do with this information? Inform the police? Ooh, why don’t we tell your brother, the famous detective who deals with situations like this on a daily basis?

MILLIE BOBBIE BROWN

Actually I was thinking we should go straight to your family estate and confront your family about it.

LOUIS PARTRIDGE

...That sounds like a terrible idea which serves no purpose whatever.

MILLIE BOBBIE BROWN

It is, and in the actual movie we more or less admit that it is, but it’s also BOLD, and our basic philosophy seems to be that as long as I’m being BOLD I’m doing right, even if it means being an idiot!

INT. PARTRIDGE ESTATE

They waltz into the house where ALL OF LOUIS’S WOULD-BE MURDERERS live. Then BURN emerges from the shadows!

BURN GORMAN

Aha, I knew you’d spontaneously return home in the middle of the night, Louis! Even though it was an utterly illogical move on your part that ought to have been impossible to predict!

He tries to strangle LOUIS but MILLIE ATTACKS HIM, so he turns on her and commences KILL MILL, VOLUME TWO.

MILLIE BOBBIE BROWN

Not so fast, Burn! There’s a special immobilizing jiujitsu move that I failed at twice earlier in the movie, and if a protagonist fails a combat move more than once, it ALWAYS works against the main bad guy in the climax! So now I’ll triumphantly get you in an armlock and-

As she pulls him down his HEAD smashes against a POST with a SICKENING CRUNCH.

MILLIE BOBBIE BROWN

...ooorrrr I could just kill you. Just accidentally murder you stone dead. Eh heh. This is awkward.

Then FRANCES appears with a SHOTGUN and SHOOTS LOUIS!

FRANCES DE LA TOUR

I can’t have that bill pass and make those vague reforms, Louis! And yes, with a hitman at my disposal I guess I could have instead killed one of the liberal-leaning lords that I WASN’T related to, and whose locations WEREN’T a mystery, but... huh. Actually I probably should have done that.

LOUIS PARTRIDGE

Nice try, but I‘m wearing a bulletproof vest! That’s right, I just happen to have knocked apart a suit of armor during the fight with Burn, and then while he and Millie were locked in mortal combat I decided the best use of my time would be to stuff the chestplate down my shirt just in case somebody with a gun showed up!

MILLIE BOBBIE BROWN

Oh, the creaky old “surprise armor under clothes” trope, huh? Feels like the kind of thing you should do once per movie max, but whatevs.

EXT. DENOUEMENT

Finally everything wraps up! FRANCES is EXPOSED! The REFORM BILL is PASSED and all of the THINGS get REFORMED! MILLIE gets a huge pile of REWARD MONEY which allows her to continue her TEEN RUNAWAY ADVENTURES in FUTURE SEQUELS! HENRY is HEARTWARMED about this, while SAM is an ASSHOLE about it! And finally, HELENA unexpectedly shows up in answer to MILLIE’S PERSONAL AD!

MILLIE BOBBIE BROWN

Gasp! Mother! I’ve been searching for you all movie, and now at long last here you are! There’s so much to say...

HELENA BONHAM CARTER

Millie, find your inner self! Live your truth! Don’t let the man get you down! Believe in your dreams! If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything! Let your freak flag fly! And so on and so on!

MILLIE BOBBIE BROWN

Oh. Right.

(pause)

I don’t suppose I could use this opportunity to ask about the giant pile of explosives in your-

HELENA BONHAM CARTER

FOLLOW YOUR HEART LIVE IN THE MOMENT ROLL CREDITS.

END.