I know that Sophia's story is a little abstract, but I kind of like it. I mean, it's a little off her style.

Picture It… New York, 2011

Even little old ladies weren't safe on the streets of New York City, Leo thought sourly as he pushed a Purple Dragon into the brick wall, grabbing him by the hair and knocking his head into the brick. Well, that was the last one. Time to disappear into the shadows and wait for the police and paramedics to arrive on the scene to help the old woman. Just a normal Saturday night.

He needed something else to do on Saturday nights. Like dates. With females. Oh, well. He'd have to settle for violence. It was alright with him.

But as he silently leapt onto the bottom of the fire escape, he turned his head to look back at the victim. She was a stooped old woman with white hair like a football helmet and she was hitting one of her attackers in the face with her wicker purse. He suppressed a giggle and the lady stopped and said, "I know you're over there. What are you going to do? Leave an old lady to get jumped again?"

And then the Purple Dragon knocked the old lady on the ground again and Leo jumped down from the fire escape and landed a hard blow to the top of his head. He retreated back the shadow of a dumpster while she sat on the ground, rubbing her backside.

"I haven't been on my backside in an alley with two strange men since that time I got my day planner mixed up and had to two blind dates on the same night. Good thing they both turned out to be gay."

Leo didn't quite understand that and yelled, "Are you alright, ma'am?"

"Yeah… I mean, no!" She rubbed the back of her neck. "Oh, I think I'm paralyzed!"

His feet twitched, trying not to walk out into the light. "Are you! Just stay still then!"

"Are you deaf, Spiderman! I just said I'm paralyzed. I was going to get up and do a tarantella because I get a handicap placard, but I think I'll stay down here."

His break wrinkled in offense. Spiderman? He was nothing like Spiderman. Leo was real and Spiderman was a stupid character in one of Mikey's comic books. "I'm coming out to check on you, ma'am. But you have to promise to close your eyes first." He waited and she craned her neck around, her wide eyes magnified by her glasses. "I said close your eyes!" he reprimanded.

She closed them and he silently took a few steps. Then she opened them and bent backwards in shock. He was ugly. Big, green and ugly. And now she would scream and he would run away.

"You related to Salvador Petrillo?"

"No. Why?" That was an odd question.

"He was my husband. You remind me of him. He had a big head and wide mouth and tended to go green when he saw me with another man." She gave the thug another whack with her purse and he groaned.

"I'm… not human, actually. And I'm not supposed to show myself to anybody. Please don't tell anyone that you saw me."

Leo reached down to help the old lady to her feet. She held on to his hand and looked down and blinked a few times. "Yeah, I just met a giant karate fighting turtle in an alley. Let me go brag about to all my friends on canasta night. Maybe they can get me on the list for the most exclusive nut house in Miami."

She limped a few steps down the alley and he said, "Wait, I thought you were paralyzed. How are you walking?"

"Oh… uh… it comes and goes. Right now it's going. Like me. Goodbye." She hobbled further into the alley.

Leo took a few quick steps beside her. "You shouldn't go down there. It's dangerous."

"I grew up in Sicily and I've been walking down dark alleys since before you were hatched. How old are you anyway?"

"Sixteen. How old are you?" He gasped and said, "I'm so sorry. I know it's rude to ask a lady her age."

She hit him in the arm with her purse and said, "Yeah, I get mistaken for Megan Fox a lot. I'm 88."

"Well, I'll escort you on your way then. I can't let you get hurt." It felt like he was walking backwards, they were going so slowly.

"Is it just me or are you carrying swords?" she asked, looking at his katanas out of the corner of her eye. "It could just be me. I had my dosage changed last week. I thought that mugger was a coin operated horse and I was about to stick a quarter up his nose and go for a ride."

Leo took her firmly by the arm and marched her along, surveying the distance between the next corner and the darkness that lay beyond. Always another enemy. The never ending battle. All those lives he'd cut short. Could he ever repay them? The blood on his hands…

"You know in Sicily, this would be the equivalent of a Honeymoon," the old lady said. "So, stud, do you have a girlfriend?"

His face instantly heated. "No, ma'am. I'm too young."

She looked him up and down. "So it has nothing to do with you having no toys for her play with?"

"What?" He stumbled slightly at the insinuation. "I am anatomically correct! My… endowments are inside my shell. Not that it's any of your business. Where are we going?"

"I'm going to pay a visit to this bum Johnny No Thumbs. He moved up here after my uncle Vito threatened to use his kneecaps as coasters."

Leo laughed. "Johnny No Thumbs? I know him. He's… an idiot." There was no other way to put it. "My brother owes him a lot of money. I keep telling him to stay away, but he does what he likes."

She winked at him and gave his arm a little squeeze. "Just leave it to me. One call to Sicily and Johnny'll be buoy out in the river."

He couldn't resist laughing and stifled his rudeness. "Thank you for your generous offer, but Raph's perfectly capable of killing Johnny if he feels so inclined." He panicked and added, "Not that he would." He felt a sharp bolt of pain in his arm and winced. A long gash. Blood oozing down his arm and splashed onto his side.

The old lady noticed the sharp intake of breath and said, "Here, let me see it."

"No, I'm okay." He held his breath as he spoke.

She stopped and let go of his arm so she could gesture emphatically and look up at the sky. "Why do you think I'm looking at it for you? Maybe I want to make myself feel better, knowing that you got the worst of it. Let me see it."

Leo obeyed and pivoted in place so she could see the mangled arm. "It's not as bad as it looks."

Her cold fingers prodded his bicep. "Ah, no kidding. When I was a kid in Sicily I saw toddlers with worse injuries fighting over toys in nursery school."

"You're from Sicily?" he asked as he pulled his arm away and pulled out his sewing kit off his belt.

"Picture it… Sicily… 1918," she said, with a grand gesture. He admired her presence. She was only about five foot tall, but she filled the whole alley. "A beautiful peasant girl with a butt you could bounce a quarter on goes to the town watering hole…"

"To fetch a pail of water…" Leo mumbled automatically.

"No!" She slapped him on the arm.

He hissed and yelled, "Ouch!" even though he barely felt the slap. It seemed only polite to feign an injury when beaten by an old woman.

"One of the locals had thrown her brother in after giving him a necklace for a birthday present. It happened to have a cinder block attached to the end. Well, she leaned over to look into the water for him and fell in. As she saw her life flashing before her eyes, which was quite a treat because she got laid a lot, she felt a pair of strong arms around her waist. She's been saved by a stranger."

"She was okay?" He walked as slowly as he could and the old lady still jogged a little. Sort of a penguin-like trot.

"She was more than okay. The stranger was a Samurai visiting Sicily. He was from Spain and he was on his way to America, but he took a wrong turn back in Madrid and didn't want to stop for directions. Anyway, the Samurai fell madly in love with the peasant girl. She ran away with him and they lived underground in the sewers together with his pet rat, Pedro."

Leo ground his teeth uncomfortably.

"But soon the peasant girl learned that the Samurai always practiced nine hours a day, but once she moved in, his training shifted to the bedroom. He was always talking honor and he was a real bossy nag. And he was always blaming himself for everything and had kind of a martyr complex. But he had a tight ass and knew how to use his sword, if you know what I mean. Then he died suddenly in a fight over the price of an overcooked manicotti."

"What?" Leo stopped and looked at her, his brows wrinkled in confusion. "He was a Samurai. How did he get killed so easily?"

She jabbed him in the side and his muscle twitched involuntarily. "Glad you asked that." She took his arm again and motioned to him to keep walking. "He spent so much time making passionate love to the peasant girl that he forgot to train. Although he would have lived if he'd realized that his pelvis could have broken concrete after all the exercise it got. And so the peasant girl took Pedro the rat and moved to New York, but something sinister followed them." She looked at him solemnly and said, "That peasant girl was me. And that sinister follower… was… the Spanish influenza."

He screwed up his face and wanted to let go of her arm.

"So, when was the last time you had any action?" She pointed towards a door in the back alley.

He surveyed the area for enemies and saw nothing but trash and stray cats. "Just a few minutes ago. It wasn't much, but I'll take anything I can get."

"Sounds like me after thirty years of marriage," she said, her voice reverberating the old world tones of Sicily off the brick alley walls.

The back door to a seedy money exchange store burst open and a man landed in a puddle face first. A midget with huge arms followed, rubbing his hands together. "Don't let me catch you coming around here no more. This is Johnny's turf."

The man pulled himself out of the puddle and said, "But Tony! They weren't tacos! They were chalupas! Not even the same."

"Same country. Johnny's got dibs on Mexico. Go back to selling egg rolls." The midget thug glanced into the shadows and spotted the old lady. "Hey, grandma. Get lost unless you want them to find nothing but your wicker purse. Which is nice, by the way. My mother has one just like it."

Sophia took a few steps forward. "Yeah, it was the only one big enough to hold six Denny's rolls. You call yourself a mobster? I'm from Brooklyn and Sicily. I've seen harder gangsters in diapers in preschool. Now go get Johnny. I'll be waiting out here, keeping an eye on your perimeter. I got a medic alert bracelet and I can get the cops here quicker than you can say, 'I've fallen and I can't get up.'"

Leo bit his lip and repressed a laugh, then stepped out of the shadows after the chalupa salesman had limped around the corner and Bald Tony went back in the building, hollering for Johnny. "You're a very tough woman. You could rival my brother Raph. I think you'd scare him."

She sat on a trash can and held her purse on her lap, squinting into the darkness for enemies. "You're brother is scary? I bet he's nothing but a pussycat."

Leo couldn't remember Raph ever referred to as a pussycat and it was the strangest comparison he'd ever heard.

The back door creaked open a crack and Johnny's eyeball peaked into the darkness. "Butch? That you?"

"It's me," Leo said, stepping forward from the shadows, wondering if he looked as impressive as he felt. "I escorted this lady to see you."

"Hello, No Thumbs. I finally made it. So… how do you like your toenails? Still ingrowing?"

Johnny whipped the door open and pointed dramatically at the old lady. "Sophia! That is not you! There is no such thing as a curse! And even if there was…" His tone shifted to a whine. "Don't curse me, Sophia! I didn't do anything to you!"

She took a few steps forward and whacked him with her wicker purse. "You stole my marinara recipe! It's been in the family since Stalin was in training pants! And the joke's on you, No Thumbs. I already cursed you! Why do you think none of those deadbeats you loan money to will never pay you back?"

Johnny pointed dramatically at Sophia again, his nose wrinkled with rage. "Hey, it ain't my fault that Butch had to pay for his brother to have a kidney transplant. Hey, how are you doing, by the way? Did the pissing get easier for you?"

Leo jerked as he realized that his own urine was in question. "Excuse me, sir! I don't think that it's appropriate for you to discuss…"

"Hey, shut up. I work alone," Sophia muttered out of the side of her mouth. "That boy had to have his kidneys out? Boloney! That was all my doing. Why do you think the Euro's failing? It was a punishment for making so many ugly little cars. Who are supposed to use those? Smurfs?"

"That was your doing?" Johnny's eyebrows wriggled with anxiety and Leo's hand relaxed as it unconsciously tensed as he anticipated drawing a weapon. He wouldn't hurt Johnny. Just threaten him. Probably. "How do I make it stop?"

Sophia's glasses went askew as she smirked with smug triumph and she thumped her wicker purse against her stomach for emphasis. "You have to do an act of great generosity."

"Generosity?" Johnny asked as if he'd never heard the word.

"Yeah. You leave your ear trumpet at home? I said generosity." Leo looked down at her and mostly saw the top of her white curly head. He admired the presence contained in such a small space. Greatness wasn't determined by size. His Sensei was a prime example of that.

"What should I do then?" Johnny took a step backward and gestured behind him.

Leo heard shuffling. He stepped forward and put a hand on a katana hilt, shaking his head slightly. He knew that was all he needed to do.

Johnny sighed and stepped back into the alley.

Sophia said slowly, "Well, you could forgive the debts of those guys who won't pay you, since that's the source of the curse. That would square it all away."

"Sure! Leon, I forgive Butch's debts. I promise I won't send no more guys with bombs into the sewers looking for you guys no more. And it was nice to see you again, Sophia. You look great, by the way. Nice perm. How's your Uncle in Sicily?"

"Dead," she said automatically, then blinked with some kind of realization and said. "That's what they call him now, I mean, that he's the head of the Scarpezi family they call him Dead Vito."

Johnny sidled back towards the door. "Well, you tell Butch he's in the clear, Leon. And it was good to see you again, Sophia. Nice purse. See ya. My… dinner's burning…" And he scurried inside like a frightened rabbit.

Leo waited until the mobsters were all out of earshot and watching The Sopranos in the Johnny's office and then turned to Sophia, bowing low. "I must say that I have met a very wise person tonight. It was an impressive defeat using nothing but the mind. I never thought I would meet anyone as wise as my father. The elderly…"

"Save it for your inauguration speech. You sound like Henry Kissinger with a mouth full of Novocain."

Leo fought off a scowl. He knew better than to chastise an elder. Maybe he did sound rather pompous. "Could you give me some advice then?"

She pushed her purse up on her arm to prepare for more hearty hand gestures. "I'll tell you the same thing that my father told me. For sixteen generations this knowledge has been passed down in our family. So you better cherish it. I haven't even told my own grandchildren. I would, but Big Sally or the schmuck might find out."

He leaned in closer. "Yes?"

"Cut back on the green vegetables. You look like the Jolly Green Giant." And with that, she shuffled down the alley towards the street, her wicker handbag swinging on her arm.