Ziggy's Corner: Okay first off hopefully by now none of you are too bored with either this story, or this little announcement part of the chapters, or even with the name of the announcement parts! Most writers at simply write announcement in some way or form, but I kinda like calling it Ziggy's Corner; makes it feel more like mine and original. Well I promised you'd be seeing Carmelita's parents in the next coming three chapters at the end of the eighth chapter, and if I say the words I promise, I keep them (otherwise I have a hard time keeping my word, J Lol, great now that you know my weakness, I can see some of you exploiting it, LOL). So get ready to meet the parents, and yet another sibling in this chapter, enjoy!
The phone rang off the hook; occasionally Carmelita's irate voice would pick up and sound off against her quarry, Sly Cooper. Maria Carmita stood listening at the other end, her graying black hair hanging over her eyes as gray as her locks. The woman in her mid fifties listened twice to her daughter and scowled. Finally she decided to hang up, but not without leaving one last message.
"Carmelita Montoya Fox, I don't know what is going on at your apartment, but your brothers are not so much a challenge that you can't pick up that phone and explain yourself to you momma." Her eyes slanted and she bent closer to the black phone box, as if trying to see through it right into her daughter's apartment. "If you are after that damn raccoon again, instead of watching my mijos, then I will hunt you both down and skin the two of you, him for taking you away from the boys, and you for your blasted obsession!" She waited again, her foot tapping methodically as she listened to silence. "Pick up the phone!" she roared. When there was nothing she slammed the receiver on the handle, nearly cracking it.
She wasn't a very big woman, only five feet tall, very conservatively dressed in a bright floral dress, and a large flower resting contentedly in her ear, until she ripped it off and slammed it to the floor of the lobby, ignoring the crowd looking at her as she stomped back to the convention room. Twenty times trying to call her children with no response was long enough. At least it wasn't busy; the boys weren't burning their brains on the computer that was good.
She found her husband, a tall man with thick muscles the size of mountains, and a short gray brown mustache streaking across his upper lip. Both of them had tempers that would set off a whole supply depot of nuclear weapons, but in truth he was the easier going of the two. That did not mean he was a gentle giant, just the opposite.
"Maria, calm down," he began, seeing the rage and worry build in his wife's eyes.
"You calm down," she snapped. "We haven't heard one blessed thing from them since I called two nights ago."
"I'll admit that its not very like Carmelita not to cheek in with us, if we have her baby sitting or otherwise, but I'm sure she has a very good excuse," he said, his voice deep his accent a thick Spanish tone, some said he sounded a lot like Antonio Bat, from the movies Spy Kids, Evita, and Interview with a Vampire, to name a few, he however never caught the resemblance. "But I don't think there's any reason to panic just yet."
"I am way beyond panic Issac," she hissed. Her husband was a good foot in a half taller than her, but like her second child, Elisa, size didn't matter one bit to this woman. "Couldn't you call your superiors and ask if they've put her on a different case, one that would have made her have to hand the boys over to one of the other children?"
Issac Peter Fox laughed and stroked his chin, escorting his wife to a more secluded area of the convention room. His smile grew wider as he remembered the first time he had taken her to a less crowded area of a building, for less serious matters of state when they were first courting. "Darling, have you even tried calling any of the other children? If what you've said is true, then perhaps it would be smarter to just call them then to my superiors." He ran his hands through his hair and leaned back against a wall. "Besides, even if the superiors at Interpol tried to make Carmelita go on another case, I doubt they'd survive her raving rampage."
"It might do her good to go off the case she's been working," his wife snapped. "And I've tried to call Elisa, and Carmen, no one has even seen Carmelita." She stopped and frowned, "To be honest, Elisa wasn't home when I called; Roberto said something about her being whisked away for a job."
Issac raised a finger. "First, what would I have done if I had been told I was off a case I've been working on for years?"
"You would have had a fit," his wife said with a smile, then she waved her hands in front of her body, "but as I see it, you didn't regret listening to your superior's commands when they told you to investigate a crime committed at the house belonging to one of France's first female lawyers." Her eyes twinkled, "How did you say it the first time? 'I seem to have been given an early Christmas gift for my work?' the first time you laid eyes on me."
Issac chuckled. "Yes, and the first thing that gift did was knock my block off after those words came from my lips." His wife smiled and kissed his lips, and Issac exhaled, his shoulders dropping. "Now, we know that Carmelita is a responsible girl, we only had to discipline her twice as she grew up. So I doubt she's done anything stupid."
"Unless Cooper got in the way," she snapped. She watched her husband's shoulders tighten and she turned away. "She really needs to get off that case, to get a hobby or a man perhaps." There was silence between the two of them for a long time, and then she was shocked to here her husband laugh.
"She seems to have both in one neat little package," he chuckled. His arms flung up in a defensive position immediately as she spun around on her heels, her eyes gray as stone. "You know what I meant. I would not be very happy to see her end up with the raccoon, but these days more and more species entering into inter-relationships and marriage," before she could say another word he rose his finger and shook it, "let me finish. She could do a lot worse than Sly Cooper, and we both know it, or did you forget Brax Barrington?" Both of them shuddered at the name of the wealthy, racist, sexist Fox aristocrat who had his eyes on Carmelita all the way from junior high to graduation.
"Don't bring up that asshole," she growled under her breath.
"But he's a law abiding asshole who also happens to be a fox," her husband said with a twinkle in his eye.
"An asshole by any other name is still a sexist asshole," she hissed. "And I don't care if my daughter ends up with someone outside her species, so long as he's not a criminal."
"I agree, but Cooper is a special case," her husband said. "Not a true criminal in the sense of the word. Still, it's a good thing your mother is not here, she'd keel over just about us talking about her little granddaughter marrying outside the species. Hell she could barely handle the fact that her daughter was marrying a Spaniard instead of a Frenchman."
"Ma Mère would have to get a grip with that," she said. "But let's not forget, even she couldn't stand that asshole, Barrington."
Issac silently laughed to himself. His mother-in-law, Judith Sara Fennex-Alopex, had said something more than just asshole about Barrington, but what was said shouldn't be repeated in polite society. Leave it to say that the seventeen year old heir to an oil company was tossed out of Judith's house by the woman herself, who was then eighty-six years old, by the scruff of his neck and landed ten feet from the door! Judith's husband, Maria's father, and Issac's father-in-law, Eduado Estaban Fennec – and Issac still shared a good laugh about that to this day. Gee I wonder whose temper Maria inherited? Or for that matter Elisa or Carmelita?
"My darling, if it would make you feel better, then I'll see if anyone at the office knows about Carmelita or the boys. In fact, Miguel has the week off from the police academy, so I'll contact him and ask for his help. I'm sure there will be no problem with convincing him to cheek out his favorite big sister."
"I'm not sure I like having another of my children running around where I don't know where they are," she started thoughtfully.
"The boy is nineteen years old, Maria, he can look after himself."
"And Carmelita is twenty three, and look how that's turning out," she countered. Her husband frowned and rose and eyebrow and she sighed. "Fine, if you think he can help, then by all means, I just want to know my babies are fine."
Issac smiled and kissed his wife for a long time, running his hands over her back. Finally she pushed him away and shook her head. "You should get a move on," she giggled. "Or were you looking to make baby number ten?"
He laughed and shook his head, "At our age, I think that's the last thing we need now."
"We could always ask your brother Quinton to be their guardian," she teased.
He shuddered, "Quinton, watching our children. One scary thought at a time, por favor." They laughed, and kissed each other one more time, and then Issac was off, toward their hotel room, and a phone.
"Carmelita is in trouble?" Miguel shot to his feet as if he had just gotten bite by the cat where the sun don't shine.
"I didn't say that," his father snapped on the other line. "Calm down mijo. All I said was that your mother and I have not been able to get a hold of her for over twenty-four hours, and no one in the Interpol office has heard from her either."
"So my sister's in trouble," the boy growled. "Missing for twenty-four hours, no one's heard a thing. What else could it be, then that?" Miguel Horatio was his mother's son, a mini-me version of her, and almost an exact copy of his favorite older sister, Carmelita. In fact he looked like a male version of the Interpol officer, and his family and friends were not sure wither to joke about, or be weirded out by it.
"All I need you to do is go to her apartment and see if she's still there, or what's up. Perhaps there was an emergency and the boys are too freaked out to pick up the phone, or perhaps she's left them with someone else."
"So the twins are missing too?" he scowled. "Father this is a crisis, Carmelita wouldn't just abandon them, not even to go after that rat, Sly Cooper," his last two words were filled with such venom that Sly would have died the minute he was injected with them. Miguel's heart pounded, he was the type of big sister, hero worshipping little brother that if Carmelita told someone two plus two was nine, he'd throttle the person who dared to correct her. Why he didn't have a statue and a shrine to "Saint" Carmelita, no one knew, but if he did, Issac was determined to have him committed.
"Son, listen to me, you are not helping matters any," his father said, his tone growing dark and heavy. "Now, just go to Carmelita's apartment, cheek things out, and call me with what you have found." There was a pause. "If you want, stop by Elisa's and see if she's back from her mission, perhaps she can help too."
"So she's gone too? Perfect, two of my sisters and both my little brothers are all missing!" Miguel was pacing back and forth his eyes wide.
"Elisa is on a mission," his father barked, his Latin temper now overflowing past the brim. "I don't know if she's back yet, but if she is, contact her and ask for her help. Now please do as I say, before I have to come all the way to Paris and beat some sense into you. Do you understand me now, mijo?" His voice was so high it could be heard all over Miguel's apartment, though only the police academy trainee was there.
"Yes poppa, I understand," the boy said, blowing out air as he tried to relax. "I'll let you know what I find the first thing I can."
"Muy buen, gracias." The two said their good byes, and Miguel hung up the phone, grabbing his long tan overcoat as he walked out the door.
Christian opened his eyes and looked around the small mud hut that he was resting in. In his hand was the small yellow disk that the found in the wilderness and it all came back to him. The child shot forward and screeched, and two large hands grabbed his shoulders and squeezed gently.
"It is good to see you awake," the voice said, the same one belonging to the man who had picked him up."
"Who are you?" the boy asked.
"A friend," the man said. He could tell that the boy was trying to make him out, but it was dark in the hut and he walked away. "Let's just leave it at that. I belong to the Tricoli tribe, and we've been waiting for you to come. Legend has it that you are one of two beings who will restore our Ruby to us."
"A ruby?" Christian frowned. "I thought Sly Cooper was trying to do that."
"He is," the old man said with a laugh. "He has brought us you, and soon another." His eyes moved to the disk and he shrugged. "There is a second prophesy as well, not so much about you; but about that disk you hold.
"When a yellow rock lays in the field, hot as the sun and shining like the gods, a great evil will begin to reemerge from the darkness, to swallow the world.
"Perhaps you have come to save us from that too, but right now, we must concentrate on finding the second of the pair that will give us our Ruby back. If the shark uses it, there may be no world for the darkness to consume once it returns. That might seem to be a good thing, but if there's no world left after the Ruby is used, then there is no you or me, and I am not ready to die just yet."
Christian blinked and shook his head. A great evil? Did that mean the weapon Charlie had planned to use? But if it did, wouldn't it be part of the first prophesy? The old man said that this darkness was mentioned in another prophesy, so that must have meant that there was a danger greater than Charlie! Now Christian began to know how all the cartoon superheroes real world heroes must have felt. Strike an evil down, a worse one rises to take its place.
Things hadn't gone from bad to worse; they looked like they were going to go from worse to hellish.
Okay this is longer than I thought it would be, but then I remembered I said you would find out how one of the cliff hangers would be played out in the last chapter. So now you know what's happened to Christian, and a little history about that disk, as well as some parts as to who the old man is. So you ask yourself, okay so what happened to the other cliff hangers? Well another piece of the puzzle is revealed in the next chapter, so stay tuned!