Disclaimer: Carmen et al are the property of not moi.

Summary: When Zack is targeted by bullies, an unlikely ally comes to his aid. Zack/Carmen friendship.

Author's Note: This story was written as part of a Leap Day Challenge between the talented aptasi and myself in response to the prompt "bullying." It is also dedicated to victims of bullying, especially the students of the Annoka-Hennepin school district in Minnesota. Due to the nature of the prompt, this story contains some harsh language and descriptions of physical violence.

US Marine Corps Base, Quantico, VA

Zack scooped the lukewarm water from the bathroom faucet greedily into his mouth and spat back pinkish liquid into the sink. His lip was bleeding, his left eye so swollen he could barely open it, and there was a gash on his cheek that looked like it might need stiches. He touched his nose gingerly; it hurt, but he didn't think it was broken. Curtis and his two goons, Rodriguez and O'Neil (or as Zack preferred to think of them, Mean, Meaner and Meanest) had really done a number on him this time. He probably needed to go see a medic, but was scared at what might happen to him if he did. "You tell anyone, faggot, and I will personally rip you a second asshole," Curtis had threatened him when the beating was finished.

He wondered, for the hundredth time since he came here, why on Earth he thought a military leadership camp would be a good idea. You can't hack it, just like Uncle Joe always said. You're just a scrawny little dweeb and that's all you'll ever be.

The bathroom door creaked open and a resonant, calm female voice spoke to him. "Peas."

He spun around to find a tall blonde woman in dress blues wearing the twin stars of a major general. The name tag read "C. Buchannan" but the ice-water blue eyes and sharp cheekbones could belong to no one but Carmen Sandiego. "Frozen peas are good for a black eye. Though edamame makes for a much tastier snack afterward, I've found," she said.

Zack gasped. She was the absolute last thing he needed right now. "Carmen, this is the men's room…on a military base. You are not supposed to be here."

"If I had a dollar for every time I'd heard that one," the thief in disguise chuckled as she wedged a mop into the door handle, creating a makeshift deadbolt. "There, no one will disturb us." She stepped closer, her regulation black heels clicking on the olive and grey tiled floor. "Care to tell me how you came by those injuries?"

"I..I fell out of my bunk," he lied, lamely.

Carmen's mouth quirked. "Greatest detective in the history of ACME, Zack." Her thumb gently brushed his injured cheek and he flinched. "Does your bunk wear a ring with the Greek letters Sigma Zeta cut into the setting? Try again."

"There were these guys…they beat me up." If his face hadn't already been so red and swollen, he would have blushed with embarrassment.

"Obviously," Carmen said dryly. She opened up a small first aid kit and removed some gauze and antiseptic cream. "Hold still," she commanded.

Perhaps he had just become too accustomed to following orders in the past few weeks, but Zack complied without protest. The cream stung but he didn't so much as whimper. It was strange to admit it, but after a month of boot camp hell, even Carmen Sandiego was a welcome face. "Thanks," he murmured shyly when she had finished.

"When I discovered one of my favorite detectives had put in for a temporary leave of absence, naturally I was curious." Carmen looked at him intently, her face as impossible to read as ever. Her hand reached out hesitantly and caressed his buzzed blonde hair. "Oh Zack…what are you trying to prove here?" she asked, her rich voice holding an unfathomable register of compassion.

Zack found himself oddly wanting to cry and run away at the same time. He didn't want to answer her, didn't want to answer anyone. But the soft, broken look in her eyes reminded him so much of his mother when she was worried about him, he felt compelled to speak. "I got tired of everyone thinking of me as the nerdy helpless weakling. I wanted to prove once and for all that I was tough, that I could take care of myself." He paused and went deeper. "You might not know this…or maybe you do, since you seem to know everything…but my mom's side, they're a big military family. Two of my cousins graduated from Annapolis, both of my uncles fought in Vietnam. My mother's favorite brother, Zack, was killed in action. I'm named after him."

Her dark blue eyes flickered. "The jacket you wear. I'd often wondered."

"Yeah," Zack confirmed. "All of them did this leadership academy thing here…it's for teenagers, high school and college students. And well, I decided I was going to do it, too. Show that I was more than just computer boy," he said with disgust. Then words just poured out of him, like a car spinning out of control. "You have no idea what it's like growing up with Ivy as your big sister and everyone thinking I need her to protect me!"

Carmen shook her head. "Masculinity…always so fragile." Her eyes glanced over his injuries once again. "Since your attackers are still at large and not in Intensive Care, I'm guessing your sister doesn't know about the bullying?"

"No. I don't need her help. And I certainly don't need yours, Carmen," he said sharply.

His rebuke had no effect on her; the thief didn't so much as blink. "What provoked all of this?"

He shrugged. "It started practically from the minute I got here. Even with all of my ACME training, I'm still smaller and weaker than most of the cadets. The guys who did this to me…Curtis and his buddies…all went to military school together." Zack looked away, didn't want Carmen to see the weakness he felt he telegraphed with every gesture. "You know how dogs can smell fear? Well these guys can smell it, too. It was like they knew I didn't belong here. And from day one, I was their favorite target."

"What set them off today?" Carmen asked.

Zack blushed. "Well…I might have provoked them a little. We were supposed to give presentations in our military history class. I…um…hacked Curtis' PowerPoint and replaced footage of the siege of Stalingrad with Monty Python's History of the World Part I."

Carmen pressed her ruby lips together and looked like she was trying to hold back a laugh. "That was almost inspired. But you should know from your studies that escalation is rarely the best strategy for ending a conflict. Perhaps informing an adult would have been a better solution."

Zack frowned. "Colonel Armstrong? He hates me, too. My first day here, he called me a 'candy-ass jumped-up computer jockey.' The colonel doesn't think too highly of ACME...chasing you is soft work in his opinion. Child's play."

"Oh, is it?" Carmen asked in a low and dangerous tone.

Zack's stomach did a little flip. "Forget I said that. You've got that gleam in your eye, like you want to make an aircraft carrier disappear. Trust me, Carmen, you don't want to steal from these people."

The thief sighed and leaned back against the sink. "If you insist." She then asked him completely nonjudgmentally, "But Zack, if these people are disrespecting you and hurting you, why stay? No one is forcing you to be here."

Zack dug his hands into the pockets of his blue serge trousers. Of all of the parts of his story, this was perhaps the hardest thing to explain, because it seemed so contradictory. "Because…these three geekwads aside…I actually like it here. I like that I'm getting stronger. I like that I can run a mile now without getting winded. And there are these folks from the CIA coming next week to teach us cryptography…"

Carmen held up a finely manicured hand. "I think I understand." She paused and her deep blue eyes looked at him appraisingly, as if they saw something there they hadn't before. "Zack, I admire you for what you're doing. For not letting these boys ruin this experience for you."

"Really?" Words of praise from the enigmatic thief were always as rare as they were disconcerting.

"Yes." She removed her blue and red hat and the blonde bobbed wig she wore as part of her military disguise and massaged her temples. "Much better." Her normally wild dark hair was pulled back into a tight twist; Zack could not remember ever having seen her face so clearly before- it was almost like looking at a stranger. "Zack, you have shared something very personal with me. May I share something personal with you?" Carmen asked thoughtfully.

He was stunned. "Okay, I guess."

Carmen turned her face away so he could only see her elegant profile. He wondered if it was something she did instinctively, part of her ingrained mysteriousness. "Have you ever wondered why I was never adopted?" she asked.

To be perfectly honest, Zack didn't often think about who Carmen was before she became a traitor and a thief. But, it seemed thoughtless to say that to her right now. "I guess I did think it was a little strange," he hedged.

"There was a family…a farmer and his wife…in a small town near Bakersfield who had wanted to adopt me. They couldn't have children, you see. " Her voice turned oddly soft. "It didn't work out."

Zack turned suspicious. "Did they hurt you?"

Carmen shook her head. "No, no. They were very kind to me. The children at the local school, however, were not. It was a tight-knit community, all white, where everyone knew everyone else. And here was I, this chicana orphan from the big city who was perhaps too smart and too precocious for her own good. You can imagine the things that were said to me."

Her manner was detached and neutral, but Zack suspected that on some level, those words still stung. "I can't imagine anyone ever trying to bully you, Carmen."

She smiled a wry little smile. "I wasn't always the woman I am today, detective. And children, as you know, can be very cruel."

"So what did you do?"

"Ran away, of course. Back to the Girls' School, where I felt I belonged. And if I wasn't completely happy there, well…I wasn't unhappy either."

Not for the first time, Zack felt a deep pang of sympathy for the woman who was his adversary. His sister always liked to say that the thief was the product of her own bad choices, but sometimes he couldn't help but feel that the deck had been stacked against Carmen from the start. "Why didn't you tell your foster parents? They would have helped you."

"For the same reason you didn't ask for help either, Zack. Because…on some level…I believed that the words those bullies taunted me with were true. So, I admire you, you see, for standing your ground."

He shyly laid a hand on stiff sleeve of her uniform jacket. "I'm sorry that happened to you, Carmen. It's a shame."

She closed her eyes. "It was many years ago. But yes…it was a shame." Her words were simple and opaque, but underneath them, Zack heard the implications Carmen left unsaid. Who knew what kind of life she might have led had those children not been so cruel?

Carmen then rose abruptly and walked to the window, hands clasped behind her back, posture erect, every inch the general she was pretending to be. "So, what should we do about Cadet Curtis and his friends?"

"We? I don't need your help, Carmen. Part of growing up is learning to handle things on your own, right?" he said, trying to sound confident.

She spun on her heel and pinned him with her gaze. "I agree. Which is why I showed up today and not two weeks ago when I first found out about the bullying. You have tried to handle this on your own and it has not worked. Let me help you, Zack." The last part came out sounding less like an offer and more like an order.

He gulped. "I hope you're not planning to…abduct them or something. Or have your henchmen hurt them."

The thief laughed darkly. "As much as I would like to round them up and drop them in the middle of the Arctic Circle, I won't. Though Sara is always pestering me to find her some human subjects for her trials…this would really make her year."

These boys had been horrible to him, no doubt. But he wasn't sure they deserved to be handed over to whatever insane tortures Sara Bellum could dream up. "That's too cruel for anyone."

"Ah well," the thief sighed, then smiled. "Would you like to hear the plan?"

Thirty minutes later, he found himself sitting next to Carmen in her guise as Major General Catherine Buchannan in the backseat of a military transport Jeep being driven across the grounds of the base. They rode in silence until the Jeep came to an abrupt halt outside the brick building where Colonel Armstrong's office was housed. Zack marveled to see Marines snap to attention and salute as Carmen walked by. She acknowledged them all effortlessly with a curt nod here and a sharp glance there.

"Command must come as easily to you as breathing," he whispered.

She raised an amused eyebrow. "I only wish my employees were half as obedient or organized."

"And did you have to disguise yourself as a major general? Where is the real General Buchannan today anyway?"

"Never fear, she's giving a top secret NATO briefing in Brussels. And I rather thought I was showing restraint by giving myself only two stars."

They were standing outside of the colonel's office door when he gently tugged on her sleeve. "I don't understand, Carmen. Why are you doing this?" he asked in a quiet voice.

Carmen opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. She looked like she didn't quite know what to say. "Oh Zack, you're…you're one of mine. I'm always faithful, in my own way," she told him sincerely. Then she pushed the door open and waltzed straight into Armstrong's office. "I need to see the colonel," she told his secretary authoritatively.

The young man sputtered. "He's very busy today. Do you have an appointment, ma'am? I mean, General?"

Her eyes flashed. "I wasn't aware I needed one. This will only take a minute." She breezed past the helpless secretary. "Wait here, Zack," she called.

Zack sank into a standard government issue office chair, heart thumping through his pale blue uniform shirt. He couldn't hear much but murmured pleasantries behind closed doors. The plan was for Carmen (posing as General Buchannan) to confront the colonel about the mistreatment of her "godson," Zack. He wasn't quite sure that Armstrong would be any more inclined to stop the bullying after this confrontation, but Carmen seemed confident that the outrage of a highly placed superior officer would scare him straight.

What had started out as a muffled conversation, now grew louder. He heard the colonel raise his voice. "With all due respect, ma'am, the boy needs a little toughening up. He might be a big deal at that fancy detective agency, but this is the US Marines!"

When Carmen spoke her voice was low and she chose her words with the precision of a guided missile strike. "Colonel, I assure you that in his pursuit of the notorious Carmen Sandiego, Zack has shown the resourcefulness and bravery of a hundred Marines. He has rescued himself and his partner from any number of life-threatening situations and has successfully confronted some of the world's most dangerous criminals. Moreover, he came to this program because he wanted to learn what you had to teach him." She paused and when she spoke again, her voice was so withering, he thought it might blister the paint from the colonel's office walls. "The military has many admirable virtues: fidelity, courage, esprit de corps. But when you stand here and let one of your own cadets be bullied, Colonel, you disgrace every single one of them."

"I don't know who you think you are that you can come in here and tell me how to run things!" he shouted.

"One who outranks you. And a special attaché to the DoD. I would hate for my boss, the Secretary, to find out about this, wouldn't you?"

Zack couldn't hear what Colonel Armstrong's response was, but he would have gladly given Carmen carte blanche to steal anything she wanted for the next twenty-four hours to have seen the look on his face. A few minutes later, Carmen emerged from the colonel's inner sanctum smiling. "Come along, Zack," she told him. "Thank you, Colonel," she called over her shoulder, the same satisfied tone in her voice she usually used for taunting ACME detectives.

"Did it work?" He asked as he trotted after her down the hallway.

"Of course." Her blue eyes sparkled. "Here's a leadership lesson for you, detective. Apply the right pressure…in the right place…and anyone will break." They had reached the transport Jeep, still parked outside the office building. She turned to him. "I wouldn't expect any more trouble from this trio of bullies. And if by chance there is…"

"Sara's getting some new human guinea pigs."

"Precisely," she smirked.

"Thanks, Carmen." He didn't know why the thief kept blurring the line between enemy and friend, but he wasn't sorry that she did. "You know, it's more fun playing a game with you than against you," he said softly.

A curious look passed over her face. "Is that so? I, for one, look forward to meeting a stronger, faster Zack when you're ready to play again." She extended her hand and he shook it. Carmen held his hand in a firm grip and pulled him closer to whisper in his ear. "I meant what I said in the colonel's office. Every word."

Zack's heart swelled with something that could only be pride. He raised his right hand and offered Carmen his sharpest military salute.

She returned it. Her lips spoke the words, "At ease, cadet," but her bright eyes said "Until next crime."