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T h e C h i e f -- tempestuous doldrums
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The months preceding La Noche de Millón de Hurtos (as Armando had dryly christened it) were a time of eerie tranquility, as far as the Chief was concerned. Browsing Crimenet, he had the distinct impression of a calm before a massive storm. His analytical algorithms had found nothing even slightly characteristic of a Carmen crime spree. As a matter of fact, Carmen might have told all the petty thugs and gangsters of the world to lie low, too -- there was very little criminal activity of any kind going on.

And so the Chief's duties as head of the world's most prestigious detective agency had turned from defending the world order to the ever more arduous task of keeping a large group of high-energy, highly bored youngsters from deteriorating into a scenario out of Lord of the Flies.

He had succeeded. Mostly. The lowest point of the three-month lull was when he had had to break up a fistfight between a couple of Uruguayan field agents that had apparently arisen over which one of them would get to investigate a local traffic violation.

But as aggravating as his bored detectives could be, they were cake in comparison to the Acme brass, who did not like to write checks to idle employees. After two months without a major case, they had decided something must have been wrong with the Chief's analytical subroutines, or with Crimenet itself. After all their diagnostic tests and system checks had come out normal there was nothing else for them to do, and that's when the real trouble started.

His first scent of danger came when he was commuting from the mainframe of Acme's Russian branch one weekday morning. Zipping through the fiber-optic cables, a particular file had caught his attention -- pSkinner to oBernarde ; Re: Detectives Evans and Evans.

Patrice Skinner was the regional manager of the San Francisco branch. The Chief only knew Otto Bernarde as a type A personality who had recently signed on with Acme in some executive capacity or other. So what could he have to say about Zack and Ivy to their boss? He tried to forget it, but it just didn't sit well with him. The siblings were not only his best agents, they were his best friends as well, and if someone had a problem with them, they had a problem with him. Over the following week, he encountered many e-mails between Skinner and Bernarde on Acme's network, and it only served to germinate his seed of nagging worry into a huge anxiety oak.

The oak sprouted an acorn the next Thursday.

- - - - - - - - -

The fluorescent lights hummed pleasantly; from an adjoining corridor a radio was playing KKSF. It was morning at the San Francisco branch. The Chief was doing some virtual paperwork, filing and organizing reports and the like. He could have done this anywhere, of course, but he tended to dwell around San Francisco -- historically, it was his home, and Zack and Ivy's home, besides. And then he noticed it. Several of Ivy and Zack's case reports had been accessed recently. He had already put two and two together by the time his trace request displayed, a few nanoseconds later. Oh, no...

The two detectives in question chose that exact moment to arrive. "Morning, Chief," Zackary Evans greeted, shrugging off a backpack filled with comic books and Game Boy cartridges -- the boy knew how to keep himself occupied. Ivy was only a step behind, a pen tucked behind her right ear and her eyes glued to the top page of a stack of printouts she carried. She also called out a greeting and took a seat at a computer terminal.

When the Chief didn't respond, both looked to the monitor where his head was currently residing, and when they saw the expression on his face they moved as one to him.

"What's the matter, Chief?" Ivy asked immediately.

He looked from one pair of bright eyes to the other, from verdure to azure. They were such earnest, good-hearted kids. And now he had to tell them this.

"Gumshoes, bad news, I think...." he began heavily, suddenly wishing he had thumbs to twiddle. He made himself rush onward when he realized they had stopped breathing in anticipation. "Last week I saw a bunch of emails about you being sent between two higher-ups at Acme, and today I found out they've been poking around in some of your more interesting case files."

Ivy blinked; Zack collapsed into a nearby chair. "Sheesh, Chief! I thought someone had died, or something!" The blonde boy let out a strangled chuckle.

"Hello!? Earth to Acme! Did you even hear a word I said!? You guys are in trouble with the execs!" Hoping that a visual aid would drive his point home, he vacated the screen and called up a list of the emails between Bernarde and Skinner.

"Well, aren't we popular all of a sudden," Zack cracked, but he had sobered.

"It gets better," the Chief huffed sardonically, unseen. He cleared the transcription of the emails and displayed the trace request he had just gotten off the server. There was a moment of profound silence as the detectives scrolled down the list of their case files Skinner and Bernarde had recently been reading, which was then broken by long, audible exhalations as they started to connect the code numbers and dates to various misadventures they'd had.

Ivy slowly lowered herself into a swivel chair next to her brother. "Oh, hell..."

"Couldn't have said it better."

Zack and Ivy were Acme's best detectives. However, the attempt to live ethically had at times caused them to walk a path that was not entirely straight and narrow, as defined by the law. Friendship was not the only thing the detectives and the Chief shared; among themselves they held the secret of a bond to a certain master thief, a bond which would look rather incriminating on paper. So they had fudged a little on certain case reports. Not major things, of course, just minor details. Their partnership with Carmen Sandiego in the pursuit of Dr. Maelstrom, for example, had turned into an "extended interrogation and closely guarded custodianship." Their restoration of Carmen as the head of V.I.L.E. had been nebulously described as "an unfortunate side effect to correcting the space-time continuum and bringing Mason Dixon to justice."

Even with the exaggerations and half-truths, though (or perhaps because of them), the reports would have looked specious at best to anyone looking too closely, simply because there were too many near misses and special circumstances. Reading down the substantial list of cases in which they had had to bend the rules in their dealings with Carmen Sandiego, the detectives suddenly realized how bad it looked.

"So who's this Bernarde dorfbud, anyway?" Zack asked despairingly, knowing full well that it didn't matter who he was.

Reappearing, this time on the room's enormous main screen, the Chief did a remarkably good approximation of a shrug, considering he had no shoulders. "He's a new paper pusher down at main headquarters. The name is Bernarde, Otto Bernarde," (phasing into a faintly British accent) "and apparently no one told him he has a license to chill, 'cause he's been stirring up a ruckus ever since he was hired."

Ivy frowned. "What kind of a 'ruckus'?"

"The 'it's time we made some improvements' kind. He thinks he could make the sun shine more efficiently." After discovering the emails, the Chief had done some homework on Bernarde; in the two weeks since he had signed on, he had already posted twenty-one notices to Acme's online bulletin, recommending changes in everything from coffee makers to personnel. The Chief had seen his type before: he was ambitious, probably hoped to claw his way to the top.

Ivy studied her hands, not looking up. "And I'll bet he figures that giving the axe to the weakest links in the chain would really make Acme run more efficiently," she surmised in a voice that was barely audible, but brimming with pain.

"If he's only accusing us of being incompetent we're lucky," Zack said flatly. "Look at the cases he's been studying, Ive. I think he's thinking more along the lines of treason."

The older girl visibly flinched, and the Chief furrowed his computer-rendered brow.

Although he had never mentioned it to his detectives, the managerial arms of Acme had been infused with a new tension ever since the Lee Jordan affair. When one star agent goes bad, it's deeply unfortunate; but when two do, people start sniffing for conspiracy. In the new atmosphere of suspicion, the Chief could believe that someone would leap to a wild conclusion, even about Zack and Ivy Evans.

The fact that there was a grain of truth in the situation, however small, didn't help things either.

The two siblings spent the day in idle busywork, and bid farewell to their Chief with preoccupied expressions at quitting time. The Chief puttered around the dim, empty control room, trying to come up with something, anything, he could do. Feeling hopeless, he finally switched himself into sleep mode around sunset.

An alarm. It had been such a long time since there had been any activity on Crimenet, it took the sleepy Chief a moment or so to realize what had awoken him. But when he finally did, he felt more awake than he had in months. Yes, it was unmistakable; she had literally left her calling card at the scene of the crime.

Carmen Sandiego was back in business.

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A/N: Just to clarify, no, Evans is not canon. No last name is ever given for Zack and Ivy in the show. I just made it up.