Ha ha! Something new for a change! I was getting so sick of the Buffy story. Anyway, on with this one.

Disclaimer: (boring, but important) I do not own any of the characters, apart from Beth O'Connell and Jimmy. The rest belong to the very brilliant people who wrote The Mummy, and The Mummy Returns. Sigh! Though I did not create Ardeth Bay, he will one day be mine, as will Legolas from LOTR and Doyle from Angel. I have a cunning plan...Ahem! Anyhoo, on with the introduction:

What would happen if Rick had a sister, and she was as much of a tear-away as he was? And what would happen if she stumbled across a lost artefact that could mean trouble for the world all over again?

By the way, if anyone can suggest a better way of spelling Eve, could they tell me? Anyhoo, Miss Elizabeth O'Connell (Mary sue - whether you like it or not!) has spent her life hunting ancient relics. She's kind of like a professional relic hunter (duh!).

By the way, if anyone actually reads this and reviews it, please don't attack me for my lack of knowledge of Ancient Egypt and other stuff, such as life in that time period. I can't help it if I wasn't alive back then. In fact, please don't attack me full stop, because anything that sucks I have already pointed out to myself a thousand times over.

O.O.O.O.O

Jimmy looked at Beth in awe. He had spent all of his adult life looking for this relic, and here it was, in his very hands. How the hell did she find this?

"Well don't just stand there gawping, Jimmy." Beth clucked. "Tell me what the thing's worth!"

Jimmy smiled. It was really here, and Beth, sweet Beth, had brought it to him. If only she knew what this meant to him. He could finally stop searching. His smile broadened to an unnerving grin, until he threw his head back and laughed like a mad man. Beth stood there, unsure whether or not to call a doctor for her boss.

"Jimmy! What the hell is it?" she snapped.

Jimmy abruptly stopped laughing. His deep green eyes twinkled furiously with delight. He took Beth's hand in his and began to ramble on. "Beth, oh dear, sweet Beth. This thing is priceless. It holds the answers to so many questions. It could mean the end of my many years of toil. This, dear sweet Beth, is a key. Not just any key, but the key, the key to all the Ancient Egyptian holy books, and the key to a lost city that will hold so many treasures and secrets! Beth, this is the key to Ahm Sher!" And with that he let go of her hand and danced around the room, convincing Beth even further that he had cracked. Especially because she remembered telling him about her brother, Rick, and what he did at Ahm Sher - most noticeably the whole city being destroyed by it's own booby trap. Why would he be so excited about a city that no longer exists?


Rick was sitting in his big cosy chair in the study of his rather large house. On a shelf before him a small obsidian statue of Anubis stared blankly in his direction. Rick closed his eyes and bathed in the peace and quiet while it lasted.

"Rick." Eve called, shattering the silence. Rick opened one eye.

"Ah! There you are!" Eve smiled as she walked into the study. She planted a kiss on her husband's forehead and knelt before him. "I've been thinking." she said. Rick opened the other eye cautiously. Usually, an 'I've been thinking' meant another trip to some far corner of the world, and possibly a mummy out to kill them all.

"Uh oh." he mumbled, sitting forward.

"You know that sister of yours that you mentioned once?"

"Beth. Yeah. What about her?"

"I think we should invite her round for a visit. I mean, I've never met her, and neither has Alex. And we both want to."

Rick groaned. Beth could bring something worse than a mummy out to kill them all.

"Eve, Beth isn't the visiting type." he sighed, easing himself out of his chair. No, Beth wasn't the visiting type. She was more the come-crashing-into-your-life-for-a-short-spell-and-land-you-in-a-whole-load-of-trouble kind of girl. Sometimes her recklessness scared even Rick, and that was a big deal. He didn't want her and her trouble anywhere near his family.

"Well, what if we visit her?" Eve persisted. She lowered the tone of her voice just enough to let Rick know she meant business.

"Impossible. She's in a different corner of the globe each week."

At this point Alex came scampering into the study after his mother.

"Dad! I really want to meet Aunt Beth." he pleaded as he tugged on Rick's shirt. Rick rolled his eyes, knowing he couldn't compete with both his wife and his son.

"Alright! I'll send her a letter." he conceded, knowing full well that his sister would never reply. Hopefully when that happened Eve and Alex would give up and accept that Beth wasn't a social member of the family.


A week later, the letter was sent and Alex was waiting by the letterbox like a well-trained dog.

"If I hadn't posted that letter myself I wouldn't of thought it was sent." he whined. "She will reply, won't she dad?"

Rick frowned and ruffled Alex's hair. "Doesn't look like it. I tried to warn you."

Alex nodded and trudged away from the front door. "I know, but I just hoped I might have an aunt that might be a bit more exciting than Uncle Jonathon. There's only so much of his bachelor act I can take without yawning my socks off."

Rick laughed. Jonathon had been invited round in hope of taking Alex's mind off of the absent Beth, but his visit didn't seem to have worked. "Well, sorry about that, kid. I guess you're stuck with your mother's side of the family." Alex responded with a disheartened shrug, and with one last glance at the letterbox, he scurried upstairs to his room.

Rick settled down in his chair again and began reading his newspaper. Upstairs he could hear Jonathon begging Eve to let him 'borrow' a gold statue of Horus they had recently found. Thank God he was leaving again in a few days.

Suddenly, a booming knock could be heard at the front door. For a fleeting second, Rick thought it was Beth, but he soon shrugged off that idea. If Beth could never find the time to write, she certainly didn't have the time to travel all the way to England.

"I'll get it!" Rick hollered as he leaped towards the door. He had only opened it a crack when the man on the other side forced his way in and stood in the hallway with a look of desperate panic upon his dark face.

"The key! Where is the key?" Ardeth demanded. Rick rolled his eyes. Of course, Jonathon was so close to leaving, so naturally Ardeth Bay had to come along and stir up everyone's lives instead. Oh well, Rick thought, better him than Beth. Beth would usually come with the Mafia on her tail.

"The key is right where you left it in the ruins of Ahm Sher, unless someone has dug through the rubble and taken it somewhere." Rick calmly replied.

"But that is exactly what has happened. That old friend of yours with the balloon, I think his name was Izzy; he went back and retrieved the key. When we questioned him about it all he would say was that he had lost it in a card game to someone of the name O'Connell."

Rick quietly observed the Medjai as he thought about what he had told him. Izzy wasn't usually the petty type to dig through the desert just for some key. That was more like Jonathon. Sure, he was sore about losing the gold Spear of Osiris, but he knew that was beyond finding again. And besides, he wasn't exactly the type to enter into card games like that either. Something was wrong.

"Ardeth!" Alex cried as he stomped down the stairs in an excited rush. He didn't regard Ardeth's presense with suspision as his father did. Instead he saw adventure, and release from his intense boredom. It was only when he saw the grim look in Ardeth's eyes that he stopped and wondered what was threatening to destroy the world this time.

"Why are you so worked up about the key anyway?" Rick asked Ardeth. "All it does is open a few books and a no-longer-existing city."

Ardeth sighed. "That is as we thought. But now we have discovered that the key is the only way into a new lost city, called Nak Tahn, and concealed within it is another victim of the Hun Dai. This nameless man appears to have done no terrible thing, but was chosen by someone to be a human sacrifice, killed purely to be raised again and to bring about the apocalypse of this century. We know not of who did this, or why they were so determined to destroy the world, but we believe that a reincarnation of them is alive now and seeking the key so that they may fulfill the wishes of their previous life. This is why it is so important that we find the key and destroy it."

Rick and Alex stared at Ardeth. All hope of adventure within Alex had now changed to that of dread. All hope of a trouble-free year within Rick had now dwindled and died. They slowly digested the information.

"I'm sorry Ardeth," Rick said after a painfully long pause. "I don't have the key, and I don't know where it is. All I can say is that it must be another O'Connell."

Ardeth hung his head. He had been sure it would be here, that one of the O'Connell family had the key. It all just fitted, considering their history with Imhotep and how each time it had been them that had defeated him. Why shouldn't they be the ones that could help the Medjai with this mummy? However, it seemed that fate was not willing to guide him so easily this time. It would take a lot more searching to find the key than he had hoped.

"Hello!" Eve chirped when she saw Ardeth. She skipped down the stairs, followed by Jonathon, who looked a lot less happy to see Ardeth. "What's going on?" Rick and Ardeth exchanged weary looks, and began to explain everything.

Eve blinked. "Well, at least he hasn't been raised yet, whomever he is." she smiled.

"There's just the small matter of finding out which O'Connell Izzy lost the key to." Rick sighed. "It's a pretty common name, you know."

"Well, what about your sister?" Eve suggested, matter-of-factly.

"Beth?"

"Yes. I assume she still carries her maiden name."

Rick was taken aback. It was a possibility. An obvious possibility. Beth would have shown interest in the key, and no doubt cheated Izzy out of it in a card game. It made sense that she would have it, and Rick knew from the one time he met her employer that Jimmy was very interested in The Book Of The Dead. The more he thought about it, the more he was sure that Beth was the mystery O'Connell.

"I guess it's a trip to New york to find out." he reluctantly smiled, and then went upstairs to pack, praying that Beth wasn't somewhere else already. If she had gone off to find something else, then who knows what could happen to her before Rick had a chance to follow her.


"So, what are we going to do with this key?" Beth asked.

"We're going to hold onto this key for a while and treasure the fact that we found it. Then we're going off to find a lost city and bring back some precious artifacts, which we'll sell to various museums, and then we'll be laughing." Jimmy replied. Beth nodded obediantly. She was up for finding Ahm Sher. She wasn't up for reminding him that they weren't going to find Ahm Sher, because it all got sucked into the ground. The thing she was looking forward to the most, however, was seeing Jimmy struggle with the long journeys across sweltering hot deserts and through sticky, humid jungles. Then he'd never complain about her slacking ever again.

"Are you sure we shouldn't visit my brother, just to check it's the real deal." she asked.

"It is the real deal! I know a precious artifact when I see one!" Jimmy snapped. Beth shrugged, used to his outbursts. She wondered if the money they made from the museums was going to be enough for her to leave Jimmy's employment and go relic hunting off her own back. That was her dream - to be free to find the things she wanted to find, and not have to come back to headquarters for a paycheck, and to hand over her finds to someone too lazy to find the things themselves. How she longed to be like her brother.

"Hello?" called a voice from downstairs.

"We've got a customer." said Beth. She went to go and see what they wanted.

"Get rid of them." Jimmy told her. Beth stared. "We're no longer taking any customers. All our attention must be focused on this key." Jimmy then turned his back on her to study the key further.

Beth shook her head in bemusment and darted down the rickety stairs to see off the potential client. When she got there she was surprised to see her brother and several other people gathered in the reception room.

"Sorry, I'm afraid we're no longer taking any outside custom." she said sarcastically to her brother.

"Hi Beth. This is Eve, my wife." Rick smiled, ignoring her sarcasm. Ardeth fidgeted with impatience. Rick gave him an It-has-to-be-done-they've-never-met kind of look. He continued. "This is Ardeth Bay, Chief of the Bay clan of the Medjai."

Beth smiled and nodded to each new person in turn. Eve gave her a welcoming smile, and she knew straight away why Rick had married her. She had a passion in her eyes. When she got to Ardeth, she gasped in amazement. Most of the Medjai she had met were usually old, ugly, and trying to kill her for trespassing. This one was young, handsome, and courteous. His dark piercing eyes regarded her with a look that made her shiver. His black curls hund loose around his shoulders the way Beth wished her blonde locks would. Even the protection tattoos on his face seemed to accent his chiselled cheekbones in some way. Then, Beth was reminded that he was a Medjai when she saw his swords half-hidden by his black robes. She coughed, and turned back to her brother.

"What brings you here?" she questioned. Her eyes kept sliding towards Ardeth.

"Did you win a key from a guy named Izzy in a card game?" Rick asked her coyly.

Beth's eyebrows knitted together in confusion. "Yes, but how did you know?"

"That doesn't really matter. What matters is that someone wants that key, is willing to kill for it, and once he has it he'll kill everybody."

Beth laughed. "Oh, I think I can handle them. Believe me, I've fended off half the Medjai army. I think I can cope with some lord-of-the-apocalypse-wannabe."

Ardeth frowned. She was boasting about defeating his people, confinced that they couldn't have stopped her if they wanted. This woman was not only arrogant, she was willing to sell the key to the highest bidder - he could tell. Not only that, he was attracted to her. He cursed himself for letting her pretty face and shapely curves distract him from what she was trying to do. He wasn't usually drawn to women like her; blondes were not his type. So what made her so different? If anything he should have been even less attracted to her because of her attitude towards the fate of the world. Yet, perhaps she wasn't aware of the full extent of her actions?

"I don't think you understand, Miss O'Connell." Ardeth said. "If that key were to fall into the wrong hands, then the world will be faced with a mummy that will bring with him the end of this earth and it's people. No doubt the person wanting to do this has a large following, more viscious and merciless than 'half the Medjai army'." A hint of venom was in his voice at this point. Beth showed no signs of backing down. Ardeth carried on. "They will find you, kill you, and take the key to a lost city where the mummy lies, unless the key is destroyed now. And if you don't hand over the key, I may have to kill you myself."

"Hey! I thought I told you to get rid of them!" Jimmy scowled as he came down the stairs. He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Ardeth. Suddenly, his eyes went wide with defiance. His fingers closed around the key tighter than a vice. "The key stays with us, Medjai." he spat. "How do we know you're not the one that wants to destroy the world with this key?"

Ardeth's eyes burned with anger at the thought of being accused of such a thing. He drew his swords and held one against Jimmy's throat, ready to take his head off with a single twitch.

"Stop it!" Beth yelled. She put her hand on Ardeth's arm and gently pushed it down, lowering the sword from Jimmy's throat. He was surprisingly cooperative. "I understand the extremity of this situation, and I'm willing to meet you halfway." she whispered to Ardeth. "Though I have every faith in your intentions, I've had some bad experience with Medjai in the past, if you know what I mean, so I propose an arrangement." Ardeth nodded.

Rick and Jimmy stood, watching with equally suspisious expressions, though each was suspisious of a different person.

Jimmy knew Ardeth was going to twist Beth into handing over the key. She was weak like that. God, he would kill her if she did. That key was everything he had worked for, and he didn't want to let it go, especially not to some Medjai.

Rick knew Beth was going to twist Ardeth around her little finger, thinking this was all a tremendous game, the way she always did with men. God, he was going to kill Ardeth if he fell for it. This was serious, damn it!

Eve watched with a curiosity. If she was to believe what Rick had told her, Beth would be using her womanly charm to get what she wanted out of Ardeth - the key. If she was to believe her intuition, then Beth would actually be taking this seriously and making the arrangement to satisfy her boss. Which was it?

Outside, Jonathon and Alex sat impatiently, fed up with being left out all the time. They had heard the sound of a sword being unsheathed, and a woman shouting, but it had all died down now. They were so bored.

"Who do you think it was shouting?" Jonathon asked his nephew.

"It wasn't Mum." Alex replied. "It was an American accent."

"Ah, it must of been the famous Beth then." Jonathon sighed. After a long pause he spoke again. "She sounded pretty. Do you think she's single?"

Alex shook his head in despair.

O.O.O.O.O

Sorry about my pathetic attempt at comic relief at the end there. I'm not very good at JonathonAlex conversation. I can't quite get their characters right, so I shall have to leave them out for a great deal of the story. Soz.

If you've read this, you are now legally obligated to review it. Well, not quite, but if you don't I'll be upset. I'll also be upset if you flame too, but that can't be helped. There are mean people in this world. Anyhoo, please tell me what you think, because it will help me when I continue writing this, as my creative juices are well known for a lack of flowing at the most awkward of times.