Summary: Scene from Curses Foiled Again.

Disclaimer: I'm just a fanfiction writer. All hail the rightful owners.

"Camille Murphy." Carmen announced. "Eleventh grade, Kaimuki High School in Honolulu."

I nearly turn right back around and run then, but my father would… not be pleased. I have a current events project to complete, and I need an A to get into Harvard or Oxford or whatever dad's latest favorite is. "How does she know that?" I ask the guard, who shrugs.

"And you can have this back, if you'd like." Carmen holds up my student ID card, rotating her wrists in the cuffs to display it to her best advantage.

The explanation is no assistance, as I have no idea how she could have picked my pocket from 10 yards away, in a holding cell, on the other side of the bars. I almost decide to give up now, but this is a semester long project, and I've left it to the last week. I need something good. "So, you know I want to interview you."

Reclining on her elbows, my subject shrugs. "I do now."

"Oh… right." Have you ever seen one of those animations of a cat tossing a mouse up in the air and bouncing it around on its paws like it's playing hacky-sack? I am so the mouse right now. My ex-military chief-of-police father is going to be less than proud. "And are willing to give me an interview?"

"Well, I have already counted the ceiling tiles." Carmen declared dryly.

My eyebrows rise.

"One hundred and thirty nine."

I stare at her for a good twenty seconds, trying to figure out if she's serious. "Err… is that a yes or a no?"

"That may depend on your motivations."

"Well, right now I would love, like seriously absolutely be over the moon, if I could get a decent interview with you, so I don't fail current events."

All of a sudden, she's laughing. Then, scarcely a giggle later, she stops. Her mouth settles into a shrewd and very unsettling smirk. In the moment or so it takes her to consider my suggestion, I've been weighed, measured, classified, computed, compiled, and analyzed in every way possible. I see suspicion in her gaze and also concentration. The handcuffs ring out a metallic sound, as she settles onto her little bench, with the air of one preparing for a long and very intense chess match. "Very well," she pronounces musically.

All of my ten minutes of journalism training on how to disarm my source is coming up short, but I haven't exactly got a whole list of alternatives. It's not like I even would have got this interview without my father pulling some strings. If I blow this I'm toast. "I… err… I'm really nervous." Drat, that's not a question. Agents no older than me deliver up the collar my father wants most on a silver platter, right in his jurisdiction, and I can't even stay within ten feet of her to complete a school assignment. I'm so pathetic.

Carmen smiles as though my nerves are a mere ploy that she's seen through, though what she thinks I'm hiding I have no idea. "Dear child, we both know what you've been instructed to ask. Why don't you try that?"

I've got no clue what she's on about, but if we're going based on things I'd really like to know the answers to, the question is either how to get into Harvard or the thing everyone want to know about her. "Why did you do it?"

Chuckling under her breath at my cliché wording, the captured thief locks eyes with me. She breathes in slowly, and with great weight, utters a single word, "Kicks."

My stomach drops like I'm on a roller coaster and I'm not quite sure why. "Uh… could you elaborate on that?" "

"I could tell you my story, but you might want to turn on your tape recorder." She remarks smugly.

I'm an idiot. "Oh."

Slowly, the reel starts moving and the infamous story begins. "I was a brilliant child," she bragged, "But precocious."

Was that supposed to be a joke? She's either having a great time toying with me, or going to destroy me…. Or both… probably both.

"As an Acme detective, I had the best possible set of moral influences. I rejected them all." Carmen continued, rather scornfully. "I left the safety of conventional life and embarked on a career of crime. My exploits are the finest heists in history." Smirking, she continued, "but you can read all about my crimes in any library or newspaper. I'm sure you don't want me to make your research too easy."

Well I'm an open book, but I can't help feeling she's got some ulterior motive for making me work. It seems that the details of her crimes bore her, yet she's inviting another question. What else is there to ask? "Did you ever regret any of it?"

Bingo. Big grin. That had to be the question. Just because I guessed what she wanted to be asked doesn't seem to mean I'm off the hook though. "Naturally, I regret some actions," The thief declared condescendingly. "I have my own moral code, and, like anyone, I occasionally break it. However, I have never regretted the thefts, as such. Nor will I." Carmen sounds like she's explaining herself to a child… a very small stupid child.

There are two ways I could take this. The good route, the one that creates great sound bites, would be to ask her what precisely she regrets. Unfortunately, that's not what I'm curious about. "How can you have a moral code that allows stealing?" I sound judgmental as all get out, but too bad.

Finally given the chance to say what she wishes, Carmen leans in and fixes me with a single-minded gaze. "The human mind," she intones softly, "Will justify any act to itself, once that deed becomes a habit. Those impulses we all feel to do something wrong, something insane, just this once are far more powerful than they seem. Human morality is ultimately situational. So you must be very careful about how you indulge your impulses, detective."

If this woman is trying to scare me, she's certainly succeeding. Carmen could convince Mother Teresa she was actually Al Capone. However, frightening spin on moral relativism aside, it looks like she misspoke, so I comment. "I'm not a detective."

"Of course you're not." My subject dismisses me entirely, truth and all. "You can tell her that, then." "I don't know what you're talking about." This is really getting annoying.

Don't you?" Carmen mocks.

"I don't." I protest persistently.

Harmonically, she scoffs. "You agents have a bad habit of clinging to a story long after you've been found out."

I don't know if it's the prospect of an all-nighter for the third time this week, that obnoxious know-it-all sneer on her face, or the fact that she's doggedly comparing me to a group of people that I deeply envy. I just loose it. "For someone with your reputation you stink at reading people!" I spit. "I am not an Acme agent. Acme agents are brilliant and famous and successful and everything my father wants me to be but I… I'm a damn high schooler, who can't even pass a single honors class." My voice breaks and I lean against the bars. "Not to save my life."

"Ivy didn't send you?" I vaguely pick up on what sounds like actual surprise in her voice.

"Golden Girl?" I mutter in a bitter derogatory tone, without lifting my head from the bars. "Never even met her."

In a few seconds, Carmen's face flickers through half a dozen emotions, all unpleasant, in quick succession. Finally, she settles on what seems to be fake pity. "Are you alright?"

I sit down right on the floor and stare into her cell. "So do you psychologically screw up everyone who talks to you, or is it just the reporters?" I demand caustically.

She lets me cool my heels for about a minute before she deigns to speak. "Is that a serious question?"

"Do you have a serious answer?" I snap.

Carmen pauses. "It's just about everyone." She finally decides. "Though I suppose by now you realize that you've been caught in some sort of crossfire."

"No kidding." I sigh. "Look, I think the interview's over." I don't have what I need from her, but I'm past bothering anymore.

As I turn to leave, the thief throws me a newsprint bone. "Look up the time that I endangered Ivy's life at Neuschwanstein Castle. You can put me on record as saying I regretted that deeply." I vaguely realize that she's just made a major admission, but I can't force myself to care. The last thing I want is to hear more about Golden Girl. I just want to lie down. However, her offer makes me look back just one more time. Misery likes company and I realize all of a sudden that she isn't looking too hot either. In fact, her skin seems … green. It didn't a minute ago when she was messing me up. Carmen is doing her best to sneer, but the symmetry is off. If looks like she could pass out any second. What the heck is wrong with her? I didn't do anything.

The woman catches me staring at her again and glowers. "If you're going to end the conversation, you should have the strength to hold to your convictions." She orders. "It doesn't do to push farther than you're willing to go."

I've had it. "Have you looked in a mirror lately?" I shriek shrilly.

My insult hits home, but blood red lips curl in disgust at me, not in self-reflection. "You are just like all the others." She pronounces.

"In my dreams." I retort.

"You pretend to care… but you don't give a damn about me."

Why is she pulling on the handcuffs? Can't I just finish this project in peace? "I don't have to."

"You just want to know why I did it." She growls.

"So?" My voice is crescendoing and crackling. The tears are anger now.

If my temper's snapped, hers is shattered into a million tiny pieces. "You're obsessed, and never mind who it hurts."

Not true, not of me, but it's a shouting match now. "Yeah!"

"That's the only thing that matters isn't it?" She demands. "You just want to know why."

"Yes!"

"Me too!"

I feel like I'm standing next to the speakers at a death metal concert then suddenly the music stops. "What?" I breathe.

Carmen's lips are pressed so far together that her jugular vein pops. "I too…" she says without opening her teeth, "Would like an explanation on that front."

"How can you not know?" I'm incredulous.

The red mouth works. "I had a decent theory… at the time." She's breathing as though choking. Eyes flash to the door repeatedly, as though there's someone else who just refuses to make an appearance. When Golden Girl doesn't strut on in though, her face hardens. All of the emotion drains out of it, and empathy with it.

Just before she calls the guard, she says, almost inaudibly, but with undeniable bitterness. "I think your father would be very proud."