Ziggy's Corner: Okay, chapter thirteen. Now we get to see the oldest of Issac and Maria's children, as well as the long talked about Black Sheep of the family. We also get to see Morgan Skye return to action. Oh, by the way, the two movies that Carmen talks about in the beginning paragraph are true movies. If you like you can order them from or you could go to They are Catholic movies (of course), but they are both good, and enjoyable. Anyway, on with the chapter!
The nun smiled up at the customer and handed the two videos to him. She was tiny, not even close to five feet, with tuffs of raven locks poking around her hood, her eyes shinning with brown light. "Thank you sir," she said; her voice just as tiny as her body, her accent mixed with both French and Spanish. "The Scarlet and the Black, and the Miracle of Marcelino, are both wonder films for families to watch." She handed the DVDs to the man and waved as he walked away.
Far to the end of the convention room she could see another booth, one that she wanted nothing to do with, and had truly hoped that no one would have. It was a Vic Crow's Kitten2Claw's organization who sat there, young woman with barely anything on, being gawked at by unclean eyes. Mentally Carmen Francis Fox, or rather, Sister Carmen Fox, said a few Hail Mary's, and went back to her job. It was kind of too bad Mother Angelica wasn't there though, she'd be leading a long line of nuns toward that booth and praying until it was closed down, she had done it before, and Carmen knew she would do it again.
She busied herself with her work, handing out Rosaries, and selling videos and books, and as the hours went by, she could hear the sounds of new girls across the hall, and she looked upward, curious as a very familiar voice echoed passed the rest of them. She blinked and sighed, her suspicions being confirmed.
"She's a cute one," one of her customers said, eyeing the new woman, not in a very lustily way, but still admiring. "It's too bad that she's in that kind of work, isn't it?" he looked at her and smiled for a moment, before doing a double take. He laughed and stroked his chin. The goat blinked yet again and did a second double take. "You know, the two of you could be sisters. Lord only knows how that child got into business with a creep like Vic Crow though."
Carmen smiled sadly and craned her head to look at the other woman. "I wouldn't say only the Heavenly Father knew that," she said in a tender tone. When the goat turned to look at her with a frown, she blinked. "You were quite right when you said we could be sisters."
He looked at the tiny little nun standing before him and back at the tall, statuesque fox, with dyed green and sea blue hair, multiple ear rings, thick brown eyes, and an obvious self conscious attitude. She wore only a light blouse, which was too small for her, a Victoria Secret's bra, and a dark black short sleeved jacket. Her voice was deep and filled with milk and honey, but didn't seem to hold much promise in the innocence that it portrayed.
Another man, one not very innocent himself had been walking by, smiled at the taller Fox, and turned back to the nun. "You're Olivia Josephina's sister?"
"One of them," she said with a nod of her head. She stared at him, daring him to say or do anything else, and the large pig shrugged and walked away. "It always seems like this, doesn't it?"
"Family, what can you do?" the goat said with a sad grin of his own. He patted the nun on her shoulder and lowered his head. "I'll say a few prayers for you both." Carmen smiled and nodded her head in thanks and the customer walked away.
Another hour went by, and it was the young nun's lunch break. Carmen normally would eat for a few minutes, and then say her prayers, but this time she was not very hungry. She licked her lips, mustered her courage, and began walking to the other booth, stopping only as her superior asked her what she was doing.
"Just going to have a little family reunion," she said.
Her superior looked at the other booth, and understood instantly. She could have prevented the young woman from going over there, ordered her to stay put, and she knew that Carmen would have obeyed. The hippo sighed and shook her head. "Please don't get into too much trouble, dear."
Carmen smiled and nodded her head. "You know me, Mother Terese," she said. She turned and began walking toward the booth again; not seeing the smile slid across her superior's face.
"I also know your family, which is why I said what I did," she said to herself with a chuckle.
Carmen walked passed the crowd, and finally reached the booth, and knelt down to pray. It took only a few minutes before those on the other side of the booth knew what was going on; most of the girls began covering up their bodies, the men shifting from foot to foot. Olivia only glared at her older sister.
When Carmen was finished with her prayers, and stood to her feet, Olivia practically pounced at her sister. "What do you think you are doing?" she asked, narrowing her eyes.
"It's been a long time," her older sister said with a grin.
Olivia grabbed the nun by her arm and began pulling her a little ways off. "I'm not coming back to the family, or your silly little faith," she snapped. "I've found my own course, and I'm very happy with the direction it's taken me."
"And what of the families that you ruin with your movies?" Carmen snapped though not as bitter as her sister. "Have you ever wondered about that?" She watched her sister roll her eyes and turn from her. "Look I didn't come over there to try and bring you back . . .," Carmen began.
"No, just scare away all of my customers," she growled. Olivia pounded her fist into the air and turned away. "I'm an actress," she hissed.
"An actress tries to bring joy and entertainment to people," the nun said. "You're good at acting; don't get me wrong, but all you provide is cheap thrills to a few lonely and sad people for just a few minutes to an hour."
Olivia spun on her heels, and glared at her sister, raising her upper lip with a flash of her upper canines. "There you go again, preaching, telling me how much better you are then me," she hissed.
"I never said that," Carmen said. "Olivia, you could be such a wonderful actress, if you would just go about it the right way." She reached out tenderly for her sister, but pulled back as Olivia slapped her hard across the face.
"Don't you talk to me about this is the right way, or this is the wrong way! Can't you just understand that I want to do things the way I feel are right, what makes me happy?"
"And are you happy now?" the nun asked.
"I was until you had to get on your high horse and get all holy than though on me," her sister screeched, ignoring the public staring at them. She stared at her with such anger that fireballs seemed to come from them. "So I have a life, so I was popular in school, while boys didn't even give you a second glance, that's not my fault."
Carmen's chest ached as she looked at Olivia, and she felt tears in her eyes. "I have a life," she said softly.
Olivia turned and laughed bitterly. "You don't even live in the real world. You live with a bunch of other women, in poverty, cooped up in some boring old castle, doing nothing more than planting a garden, and saying your prayers like the good little girl you always were. How boring."
"I don't live in a castle, first off . . .," she started to say.
"You know what I mean," Olivia scoffed.
"And secondly, life is not all about excitement and fun," the nun snarled.
"Well it should be," the younger woman snapped.
"Then I suggest that you grow up," the nun sighed. She turned and walked back to her booth.
"We're not finished," the younger sister growled.
"I think we are." Carmen stormed back to her booth, and was half way there, when five armed jackals entered the convention area, and scanned the room, ignoring horrified gasps and fingers pointing.
Security quickly rushed to intercept them but was cut down as the fiends opened fire and dropped not only the guards, but numerous innocent beings as well. Carmen had dropped to her belly as the guns were lowered, and held her hands over her ears, waiting for the guns to silent.
"I'll say this only once," the head jackal shouted. "We are here for the sisters of Carmelita Montoya Fox. If they surrender themselves, no one else will be injured."
Carmen frowned, and blinked. What on earth could these bullies want with Olivia or her, and how did they know their sister? The nun swallowed and slowly rose to her feet, her arms into the air. From the corner of her eyes, she could spy Olivia lay on the floor, and stay there, her eyes wide with horror.
"That's one of them," one of the thugs snapped. Quickly they rushed forward and grabbed her by the arms. "So where's the other one?" one of the men asked, pushing Carmen forward.
They scanned the room, and fired their bullets again. "I want to make this perfectly clear, we are not patient men, and neither is our employer." His eyes were full of fury and hatred, the devil's eyes. "We know that the nun and the actress sister of Carmelita are both here." His eyes scanned the room; there were at least thirty foxes there.
The leader of the thugs grabbed the nun's arm, and pointed his gun at her head. "If you don't show yourself, I'll blow her brains out."
"You're wasting your breath," she sighed. "I don't have a sister here." The thug howled with anger and pistol wiped her across the back of the head, leaving her dazed.
"Charlie the Great doesn't want them dead," another jackal said. "He wants us to bring them to him alive."
"I know that," the lead jackal howled. His eyes scanned the room, and he raised his gun yet again. "All of you foxes rise to your feet, now!" Slowly but surely they complied, and he had his men gather them up.
Then he turned his attention to the girls of Vic Crow's booth and narrowed the gun at them. "I prefer much more sophisticated films than the ones you make, so I'll make this brief. If you want to live to see another day, tell us which one of these foxes is Olivia Josephina Fox." In unison, they pointed to their coworker, and the thugs quickly rushed to grab her, and pull her toward them. The lead jackal smirked and nodded his head. "Thank you ladies, you're not as stupid as you look." He blinked and aimed the gun at the crowd. "Now, none of you do anything stupid, and you can all go back to your boring, stuffy lives."
"Ladies first," one of the thugs said, bowing as he opened the door to a limo. He grinned wickedly as the nun approached the door, and bent down to enter, but screamed as she turned around and slammed her foot into his stomach, shutting the door on his fingers.
Before the others could respond, Olivia gripped another thug by his shoulder and lifted him off the floor, heaving into a few others. Before the fiends had known what had happened, the two sisters had mopped the floor with them, and were standing over a rug of unconscious bodies.
Carmen reached over and gripped her sister's cell phone, and quickly dialed the police. After explaining what had happened to them, she hung up, ignoring her sister's complaints and called her superior. She explained what had happened, and that she had to take a few days off to figure what to do next. With a little wrangling, she was finally given permission to do what she had to, but was told to be very careful.
She tossed the phone back at her sister, and began walking to the hotel, for her clothes. When she was asked by Olivia what she was going to do, she turned and looked at her. "What do you think? You heard what I told my superior."
"So? You're off to be an action hero now?" the younger Fox snapped.
"I want to know what these men wanted with us, and with Carmelita. If you want, come with me, otherwise, go ahead and go back and explain to all those poor people why you felt free to just lay down and stay on the ground, when you could have helped them." She cocked her head and grinned.
"What is that supposed to mean? I'm not an officer, I'm not trained to combat gun totting maniacs," she snarled.
"And yet you did," Carmen said, her eyes twinkling.
Olivia glared at her sister and looked back at the convention center. She'd much rather go back and get on with life, but she could easily see the angry stares from everyone when she walked back in, like the dame of the ball, like nothing really happened. In the distance she could hear sirens wail, and she knew both the police and an ambulance were heading this way. "Shouldn't we at least stay and let the police know what was going on here?"
Carmen hadn't thought about that. She agreed, and as soon as they could give a statement, excused the two of them on important matters. The nun pulled the tall actress away from the crowd, and toward the hotel. Once there, they changed clothes, her a little more modern, though nothing revealing except for her face and arms, while her sister covered herself, though left more skin than her sister did.
They walked down to the lobby and it dawned on the younger sister that they had no way to get around. When she brought that to Carmen's attention, the nun smirked and winked at her. "Are you so sure about that?"
They continued to walk to the parking lot, and to Olivia's amazement, the nun dragged out a large Harley Davidson. It was painted white, white angelic angels over it, but it was a Harley none the less. "So much for not sticking out," she moaned.
"We don't have to worry about that," she said. "We just need to get where we are going fast."
"And that would be?"
"Europe for starters," the nun said. "And then if need be, Australia."
Olivia cocked her head and blinked. "Australia?"
"Those thugs said something about Charlie the Great," Carmen said. "What I know about that criminal, is that he operates in the continent nation."
"I've never heard about him until today," the actress said, blinking more.
"One of these days I'm going to have to ask momma if you were adopted," the nun said with a playful sigh.
Morgan Skye looked down at the infrared beams and smirked as they slowly moved back and forth; guarding the booklet she was after. Her eyes twinkled and she chuckled, brushing some hair from her eyes. "They call this security?"
The numbat leapt down off of the balcony and tiptoed behind one of the guards matching back and forth, just inches from the bars of light. She smirked again, and pulled out her two hooked Katara blades, tapping him on the shoulder. "Excuse me love, could you direct me to the nearest restroom?" she cooed. She giggled as the guard spun on his heels, and laughed as she latched onto his suspenders, lifting him off of his feet, and crashing his head into the thick brick wall. "No? Sorry to bother you then, enjoy your nap."
It wasn't very shadowy, or smooth, but it was fun. Morgan always liked seeing the shock in her target's eyes before she struck. It was like a rush, to see how fast her reflexes were as compared to her mark. And with the occasional exception of Sly Cooper, she always proved to be the fastest. The young numbat twirled her Katara and looked again at the moving lights. "Well, maybe this will be more fun than you were," she said to the unconscious guard.
Her blue eyes darted around the room at first, and spied two security cameras. She grinned yet again, and pulled a hood over her head. She wanted them to catch her in the act, but not her face. It wouldn't do for a respected business woman to be caught going back to her old ways of doing things. As soon as her mask was on, she turned and began approaching the lights.
She walked over one, and flung herself back, as if doing the limbo as a second arched overhead. She tiptoed, spun, dropped on her back and stomach, and even preformed a cartwheel past a group of them, each beam just narrowly missing the young master thief. On camera it looked like she was dancing across the floor, her nimble body twisting and stretching in ways that many people could possibly imagine it doing. She leapt on statues, and twirled around them as the lights stroke the marble figures' heads, and rolled into a ball and rolled past beams that had just kissed the floor with their heat a second ago. Inch by inch, she made her way to the booklet, until she was far passed the lights themselves. Morgan giggled, and bowed for the cameras, and then spun her Katara in her fingers and tossed them in opposite directions, shattering electric controls that were hidden in the walls, which would have activated lethal booby traps should she had stepped on the wrong step on the granite floor.
Morgan sauntered over to the manuscript that had held her attention since she had read about it in a newspaper, and contemplated the glass container that held it. If she had been Sly, she would have taken her cane and burst the glass, but smash and crash usually was not her style. She liked the air of confusion and mystery that swept over her marks, wondering who she was, and how she managed to do things that seemed impossible. She placed two gloves over her hands, and splattered a strange liquid over them. Rubbing them together for a few minutes, she wiped the top of the glass box a few times, and watched as the heat dissolved it to a liquid substance, just enough that no alarms would go off, and so she could reach in, with a gloveless hand and take her prize. Once that was accomplished, she replaced the glove, squirted another dose of liquid and manipulated the ooze until it was as hard and clear as it had been in the beginning.
The numbat turned, smiled and again bowed to the cameras as she retrieved her Katana, and leapt into the air, landing on a statue's head. Leap by leap she made it back to the balcony, and finally out into the open air. She leapt onto the roof of the famous Greek criminal, Mikal Minatos, and jetted off into the dark.
When she finally was within a safe distance, she pulled the manuscript from her bag, and paged through it, studying the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. She wasn't able to read them right there, but that really didn't matter. Once she got back to her apartment, she could translate it there. After all, she owned the famous Rosetta Stone, not a copy, or even an etched scratching on paper, but the stone itself, which she had decided to acquire one night when still in her teens. The stone everyone said was authentic in the museum was the fake.
Perhaps that's what caused the break between her and Sly. He had thought that it was impressive that she had taken something like that, but thought it should really be returned. Or so he said anyway. And he had gone about taking it "back" a few weeks later, only to find out that he had only possessed it for a few hours, before a disguised Morgan had managed to slip him a fake one, and retake the stone for herself.
She stood there and smiled, no, that hadn't caused the dissention between them, she had no doubt that he knew within a few days he had been tricked, but he had never tried to steal the stone again, that she knew of. From time to time she would have her scientists study the stone, making sure it was authentic, and it always was. So what was the break? Probably that I told him I was bored with this lifestyle. God only knows why, this was amusing to say the least.
Morgan Skye closed her eyes and relished their last meeting, five years ago before he had brought those children with him Friday night. She could still remember his strength, those sweet brown eyes, so sad at the thought of losing a partner, how intoxicating. It had almost made her want to retake what she had said. Then, of course, that kiss. It was the last one between them, and it had still sent waves of chilled delight up her spine. She had always thought he would try and woo her back to a life of nightly escapades, but a few months after that, a certain fox had been brought in to investigate and apprehend Sly and his friends, and after that, it seemed like Sly had a new dance partner.
Morgan felt her chest drop and her eyes turned sad, so many happy memories, so many thoughts of what could have been. She shrugged and sighed, and looked at the book again, paging through it a few more times. There was one thing that always seemed every present on these pages, a symbol that she couldn't quite make out, but it caused her apprehension. It was the figure of a large, winged being with a shadowy body. Below that being would always be similar words, but without the stone she could not make them out.
She bent forward and used a flashlight to get a better look at the picture, and she blinked. "Is that . . . an owl?"
Okay a long chapter, that's cool. Anyone getting ideas about Clockwerk coming back, well I don't think that's going to happen. It will be determined with how my niece thinks about it. Right now I intend to go for someone much worse than the lunatic owl, someone who helped push him into insanity and jealousy for their own goal. Of course should my niece think the idea of Clockwerk returning is a good thing, then you may see him too.
By the by, what have you all to say about my characters? I know what you think of the twins (I am really enjoying them too ), and Shark likes Nyoko. Yeah, I did envision her as a sexier version of the Contessa, so you're right there, Shark! I wish I could draw as well as I write, or I could draw a picture of her for you all. Anyway, what do you think of Carmelita's other siblings so far? I really wanted Olivia to come across as a spoiled, selfish little brat (though she's 28, so not so little), Carmen I wanted to come out as loving, but hard headed, and Miguel, he came out just like I wanted him too. And Morgan Skye, who is inspired by my niece (though my niece is younger than Morgan Skye), well I have to say, she's really coming across as a cool character to me, but what do you all say?
Anywho, I guess I'll stop rambling long enough so you can rub your eyes, and get ready to enjoy chapter 14. Have any of you figured it out yet? If not, then hold on, because the secret of Sly's poisoning is about to be told! And no cheating! Because the cyber cookie bags that are won by cheating as still poisoned. Not to mention that I've also created numerous traps and set up certain robotic sentinels that will live you giggling your pants off if you get to close. I've also recruited Alyson Mack who plays Chloe from Smallville and Michaela Conlin, the actress who plays Angela on the show Bones, to guard the secret with AK-47's. Why, because quite frankly their both hot, and have promised to distract any of my male readers from trying to get the secret before its time to reveal. So beware, even Sly would have a hard time getting this little tidbit. Lol. Anyway, off to the 14th chappie!
Oh by the way Heiduska, I don't know if you are familiar with the anime series, BoBoBo-Bo Bo-BoBo, but its really rather funny, and I've done a fiction on that if you want to cheek it out. Who knows, you might be the first reviewer? Anyway, this announcement goes out to all of you, I just brought Heiduska up because I know, she (he?) likes comedy. Okay see you all later!