Hey! Roxy Goth here. Thank you to KailAnn for reviewing and let's crack on!

See chapter 1 for the disclaimer.

The museum was pretty busy. Mothers were running after kids who were doing there best to destroy the valuable objects that surrounded us. Teenagers were laughing and talking at the top of their lungs to each other.

Weirdly I had a sudden desire to be back on the moon where it was all silent. The I remembered how the silence lasted forever and I would literally talk to myself just to hear another voice and sharply told myself to pull myself together.

When we reached the portrait gallery section Louie stopped abruptly and stared into the distance.

I nearly tripped over him and snapped. "Louie! Watch it! You nearly had me over!"

Louie looked briefly hurt, then straightened his face and said. "Sorry Mom. I was just looking at that." And he pointed at a picture hanging on the wall.

Now, I will be the first to admit I know nothing about Art whatsoever. I thought about taking it during High School, but when I told my mother this she looked horrified and said. "Art!? Are you serious?"

Obviously I didn't end up taking it.

Now, however, I had a opportunity to pave a different path for my son, so I said. "That's pretty." And went over to it. "Very colourful." I looked at the picture, which was a mess of swirls and patterns in various coulors. Like someone had grabbed a rainbow out the sky and threw it full force at the canvas.

Louie looked up at me, and frowned a little. "Er...mom?"

"Yes, sweetie?"

"...What are you doing?"

"What do you mean?"

"You've got a weird look on your face."

"It's my 'intelligent' pose." I said, smiling at him. "Seeing as I'm studying such a lovely picture. Er..." I scrambled for the name of an artist. "A Raphael?" I said, my voice sounding unsure even to my ears.

A beat and then Louie said, not quite unkindly, but with a touch of annoyance. "Raphael did people, mom. Not rainbows. This is a Jackson Pollock." And he started to read out a bit of the information on it. Apparently it sat in some English house for twenty years before someone realised it was actually worth something and sold it to the museum.

About halfway through Louie's speech, Huey tugged on my sleeve in a manner that reminded me a little of Feathry when he was about five. "Mom, Louie, c'mon." He said, anxiety practically radiating off him. "We need to go and see the Ruby."

"The ruby can wait, Hubert." Louie snapped, immediately. "I'm explaining something to mom."

"But-"

"Shu-!"

"Boys!" I said, keen to stop the argument, as we were already getting quite a few looks. They stopped and looked at me, Huey pleadingly, Louie mutinously. "Huey." I said, trying to make my voice soft yet authoritive like Grandma does. "We will see the Ruby, but first we'll have a look round this room."

"But when?" Huey whined.

"When we're finished." I said, steely. "Now your brother was in the middle of telling me something very interesting about Jason Pollock-"

"That's Jackson Pollock."

"That's what I said. Now, Louie." I turned to him. He gave me a little smile and started explaining about art again.

I think Huey was going to argue, but when he looked around and saw that everyone else was looking at various portraits, he gave up and hurried back to Dewey who was listning to Webby explaining something about another portrait.

While listening to Louie I had a quick look round, just to check where everybody else was. Dewey and Webby were still looking at the portrait. Donald and Huey were talking about a different one, Huey was flicking through the the J.W.G in a way that indicated he was PROVING A POINT. Goofy and Max...actually where were Goofy and Max? I turned a little and saw Max leaning against a wall, looking at his phone. He had a soft smile on his face that made me think perhaps the girlfriend was involved somehow.

"Mom, you're not even listening to me!" Louie whined.

"Of course I am sweetheart." I said, distractedly. "I'm very interested in Jackson Polecat-"

"POLLOCK, Mom! It's Jackson Pollock!"

Then I saw Goofy - I don't know how I missed him in the first place, he was standing very obviously in the middle of the room with a curious look on his face, like he was trying to put together a puzzle without the actual puzzle pieces, if you know what I mean - and I turned to follow his eyes.

It was the same women he was looking at. The dog who had her black hair piled at the back of her head in a bun. She looked a little like she was trying to copy a ballet dancer, but not quite succeeding. She was examining a different portrait, a picture of a women that Louie HAS told me the name of, but I keep forgetting. It wasn't the Mona Lisa, I know that.

"MOM!" Louie bellowed.

"I'm sorry sweet-" I began turning back to him, as everyone within a ten-mile radius turned and stared.

"Hey!" Goofy suddenly called out. "Stop! Come back!" He legged it past me and Louie and out the door, much to Max's confusion. He stood up and yelled. "Dad! What are you doin'!?" And ran after him.

I was totally confused [as was everyone else] and turned to where the women had been standing. The picture had been taken of the little stand it had been on that was cunningly guarded by a rope and the women had [obviously] stolen it and legged it out the door and had been seen doing that by our Goofy. Who [being totally insane] ran after her.

"Oh for-" I said, before running after them. Thankfully no one else ran after me, so we didn't have a ridiculous scooby-doo moment of everyone chasing the villain in a long line. When I got out to the kind of hall-area it was to see Max leaning heavily against a wall and panting with his tongue hanging out. "Are you alright?" I asked, jogging on the spot [always best to not stop of you can help it.] "Where'd they go?"

"'M alright." Max panted. "Just u-un-unfit. They went...ugh." Unable to properly talk he just pointed up the corridor.

Now. I'm quite good at getting the layout of a building - or indeed a rocket-ship - and figuring out how it works. I'm not always right, but I am about 90 percent of the time. So I reckoned that if I ran in the opposite direction I could get to the fire-exit I'd saw earlier on, open it and get into the back-garden that way. Cos If I just ran after them I'd always be one step behind, if I did this I could potentially keep up with them. And if I lost them...well. The police could deal with that.

So I legged it back down the corridor, past Donald who started to squawk at me, but I ignored him, past the families who were outraged that I was practically pole-vaulting over their kids. [I wish that that was an exaggeration, but I had to do a lot of jumping over things, and I'm fairly certain that at least one, if not two of them, was a child.] Anyway, so I pushed open the fire-exit - the alarm blared - and I raced into the back-garden where I saw that my calculations [as Gyro would say] had paid off.

The women had [somehow] got out the entrance and doubled back on herself - for some reason best known to herself, I had assumed she'd be heading towards the car-park to get into her accomplices car, but as I said she'd doubled back on herself and was now running at the wall that surrounded the museum, protecting children from the busy road outside.

Let me just repeat that. SHE WAS RUNNING AT THE WALL. I mean, aside from insanity, I couldn't think of any reason why she'd be attempting to impale herself on the wall but that's what she did. She transferred the painting to her mouth, leapt at the wall, grabbed hold of the top of the wall with her hands and hoisted her leg up and carefully, leisurely even, climbed over the wall and dropped down onto the other side.

My beak was on the floor. I had planned to somehow interrupt her and grab the painting back, but she was one-step ahead of me.

And by that point [of course] the security guards had gotton involved. They locked the place down, sent everyone home and called the police in. Once we'd calmed Huey down and assured him we WOULD see the Ruby at SOME POINT we were able to see that one of the security guards was walking up and down the street asking people if they'd seen anything. Of course nobody had. Which was impossible because how do you NOT notice someone POLE-VOULTING over a wall for crying out loud!?

After quite a bit of eavesdropping, we discovered that people HAD seen her but she'd run straight into the public toilets just opposite and hadn't come back out yet. Of course the police looked in there and couldn't find her. So it appears that she vanished into thin air. It's at that point the police turned up and started clearing the street, which included several nosy-passers by [including us, obviously], a few street performers - including but not limited to, a juggler, one of those 'living statues' and a hip-hop dancer - a few taxi-drivers, and a homeless women who seemed to have all her possessions in a suitcase which she was hoping people would put money into.

"What a mystery!" Webby exclaimed delightedly, as we headed back towards the car. "I can't WAIT to tell Granny!"

Feel free to come up with your own theories for who 'the women' is. [You have met her before.] and - more importantly - how she managed get away. I do know how she managed to pull this off - I've thought about it quite a bit and think I've come up with a theory that makes sense - and also, why she wants the painting and what you think she's going to do with it.

If you don't want to do that, that's fair enough, all will be revealed soon.

There may be a bit of a break now, because I need to think about where the plot goes from here.

See you in a bit! Roxy.