A New Beginning...?
By: Athena


Part Ten:

Acme Detective Agency HQ; San Fransisco, California; same day; 
15 minutes later

	Carmen walked into the computer room to find a sleeping Armando and
a very pleased looking Esmeralda who had been occupying herself by 
sitting on the floor coloring on some paper. Carmen hoped that there was 
nothing important on that paper.
	"Ma petite," she called out to her daughter.
	Armando awoke with a start to see Esmeralda crawling over to her
mother.
	"Carmen Sandiego!" 
	Carmen picked up Esmeralda and turned to Armando.
	"I'm glad to see that you remember me, Armando. Thank you for taking
care of Esmeralda."
	"She's YOUR daughter?"
	Carmen nodded and held her little girl close. Thankful that she had 
the chance to do that.
	"Welcome back, Detective Sandiego!" the Cheif shouted from a monitor.
	Carmen turned around to see the Cheif pop up out of nowhere. In her
arms, Esmeralda laughed. 
	"I see she's become quite attatched to you, Cheif."
	"Yeah, Essie and I got along great. So, how'd the case go? You find
out who it was?"
	"Yes, I did. He's in police custody right now."
	Armando looked from Carmen, to the Cheif, to Esmeralda, VERY confused
about what was going on. Just moments before he'd been babysitting another
detective's daughter while she was on duty, and now.... He didn't know what
was going on.
	"Cheif, perhaps, it's time for me to go home, now," Armando said, 
hoping that the Cheif would catch his hint.
	"I guess, Armando. See ya later."
	As Armando C-5ed back to Argentina, Carmen put Esmeralda down and 
went to retrieve her hat from the hidden closet. Her red hat didn't match her
detective clothes in the least, but she felt more comfortable with it on. 
With a start she realized that it was because she hid behind it. 
	There was a hum in the computer room from the C-5 opening again. This
time Zack and Ivy came out. Carmen noticed that Ivy was leaning heavily on
her brother.
	Esmeralda crawled over to the two young detectives. Zack picked her
up after setting Ivy down in a chair.
	"Whoa! You've gotten big in the last couple of weeks. Hasn't she, 
Ive? Uh, Ive? You okay?"
	Ivy was looking at Carmen. She noted how strangly perfect her red 
hat went with her detective clothes. 
	Like an inspriation, the idea came to Ivy out of the blue. Carmen, 
like her clothes, was that odd mixture of theif and detective. Carmen would
always be stratling the line of the law, never really being on one side or 
the other. 
	Ivy's eyes met those of the master theif, and for a breif instant, 
Ivy saw exactly what Carmen was. She was a teacher. Carmen had taught Ivy and
Zack how to be great detectives like she once was.  
	I guess she hasn't really changed much since she was a detective, Ivy
thought. 
	Carmen went over to the computer and programed something in. 
	"I'd love to stay and chat, but I really must be leaving now, 
Detectives. Cheif, can you C-5 Esmeralda and me to those coordinates I gave
you?"
	"Carmen, aren't you going to stay at Acme?"
	Carmen shook her head as she took Esmeralda from Zack.
	"Are you going back to VILE, then?" Zack asked.
	"I don't know what I'm going to do, yet, Zack. I suppose that's the
true challange of life, finding out what's waiting for you around the bend in
the road. Even I don't know what's going to happen in the future." 
	A thought to the night Vera Lockhart was killed came to Carmen's 
mind. When she began that caper, she never knew that it would lead to this, 
but she wouldn't have had it any other way.
	The C-5 opened up, and the Cheif tried one last time to convince 
Carmen to stay. 
	"Cheif, I can't. If I stay, I'll just get bored and turn theif again.
Besides, I think it would be very awkward for me to be going after my former
VILE employees."
	The Cheif nodded and watched as Carmen carried Esmeralda through the
C-5.



Acme Detective Agency HQ; San Fransisco, California; one week later; 12:15 PM

	Ivy hobbled into her office as best she could with her crutches. Her
Achilles tendon had been cut and the doctors had to opperate to try to stitch
it back together. It wasn't a pretty sight, and it hurt terribly.
	Ivy locked the door to her office and walked over to her small 
closet, the way she'd done two days earlier on her lunch break. She opened 
the closet door and pulled out a hat box.
	She took the box to her desk and sat down. Inside it was a symbol of 
the person Ivy most admired: the detective Carmen Sandiego. 
	Ivy was glad that she decided to drop the hat off at headquarters 
before following Carmen to Chicago. 
	As she examined the hat, Ivy noticed a pin, pinned to the inside of
the hat ban, by Carmen's initials. Ivy pulled it out. It was a four-leaf 
clover. Carmen was supersticious?
	Ivy held the charm up to the light to see it, all the while, thinking 
about her role model. When Carmen was a detective, Ivy wanted to be just 
like her. Every rookie at Acme had heard about the brillant young detective,
but when Ivy found out that Carmen was no longer a detective and even worse,
had turned thief, Ivy saw it as a disillutionment of what she thought Carmen
had been. She felt that Carmen had personally betrayed her. And until the 
fiasco with Garner, Ivy thought of Carmen as a liar who was really no better 
than Lee Jordan. But now....
	Now Carmen was human. She was someone who'd made probably the hardest
decision of her life and had to live with it. 
	After seeing the way Carmen handled Garner, Ivy saw the detective 
that was still in Carmen. Carmen had saved Ivy and Zack's lives. 
	But there was still a part of Ivy that said that Carmen made the 
choice to become a theif and that she should be punished for it.
	Ivy shook her head. I don't think I'll EVER understand you, Carmen
Sandiego, she thought.
	Ivy then took Carmen's old good luck charm and pinned it to the 
inside of her jacket, where no one would see it. 
	There would always be a part of Ivy that admired the detective 
Carmen, but at the same time, Ivy wanted to see the theif behind bars. Ivy 
realized though that both detective and theif were apparent in Carmen now
as much as 12 years earlier. 
	"What will Carmen do now?" Ivy asked the empty room.
	The answer came from a voice in Ivy's head. The one that had been 
telling her this whole time that she was a lot like Carmen.
	"What would you do?" it asked. 
	Suddenly, Ivy knew the answer, and she nodded sadly as she put away 
the box, knowing that she'd never get to work alongside her role model.



Epilogue:

The Louvre Museum; Paris, France; one month later; 11:00 PM


	Sirens blared as a pair of teenagers chased the woman in the dimly 
lit museum. She turned a corner, down a long hall with no way out. The two 
teen detectives followed her around the curve, but she was gone, vanished 
without a trace.
	Just when the duo thought they ought give up their search for the 
woman, she called out from behind them, but they still blocked her only way 
out.
	Zack stopped and looked at Ivy. "Hey, sis, is it just me, or do you
have the strangest feeling of deja vu?"
	"Yeah, I know what you mean, little bro."
	"You should watch your backs, Detectives," Carmen taunted, gazing at 
them with ice blue eyes from under the brim of her bright red fedora.
	"Carmen, give it up! There's no way out of here."
	"Ah, but there's always a way out, Ivy."
	Carmen touched the brim of her fedora in a farewell to the two 
detectives.
	Ivy then noticed a slight snap of the woman's wrist. 
	Suddenly, smoke blinded the detectives, and when it cleared, she was 
gone, leaving only a small box in her place. Carmen Sandiego had escaped 
again.