Secrets Unveiled - Luna and the Sun Chapter 5
Mrs. Catwiks were exhausted where she sat down in her office chair in her private office. The clock is ticking towards 3A.M. Her yellow desk, normally strictly tidy and clean, is covered in a mess of papers, oil samples, and geological test tubes. It has been two weeks since she last went out to sea to try and fix the problem on one of the company's problematic oil rigs, but her efforts had failed, and the rig has no been out of service for almost three weeks. Every minute is costing the company dearly; they are losing literally the equal to millions of dollars every day the rig is not extracting oil. If she cannot figure this out, she's going to be deep in it when she faces the Board of Directors in two days. They are expecting, no, they are DEMANDING, results. If she cannot deliver, she'll never have a chance of the prestigious title of being CEO of the entire company. The company's current CEO is stepping down in just three months, meaning the race to find his replacement, is well underway now, and Mrs. Catwiks won't let anyone stand in her way to get what she wants. Not now, not ever.
But Mrs. Catwiks has more immediate concerns. Her eldest daughter, or rather, adoptive daughter, has turned nine years old now. To the outside world, it may seem strange, counter-intuitive even, for a cat like herself to adopt a fox. But there are secrets behind her adoption that most mammals do not know about. Luna is not some random orphaned whose parents went rogue and never recovered like the public has been led to believe. Nor is she just your average girl. If mammals around the world were to find out who Luna really is, it would cause shockwaves to say the least. Maybe even a war. It is... Complicated. Mrs. Catwiks opens a drawer in her desk, and brings out a thick, brown envelope. She empties its contents on her desk. Inside is Luna's original passport, her birth certificates, various legal documents concerning the adoption, and three pieces of paper with foreign text on it Mrs. Catwiks cannot understand. But she knows the pawprints and seals at the bottom of the papers. They are Alpharian signatures. Luna... Is the only surviving child of two of the most powerful Alphas the world has ever known. Luna's parents, Seyfur and Lucia, were once the Alphas of a vast empire stretching across what we humans would recognize as Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, and significant portions of China. Their family had been reigning for more than 40generations. But then, a devastating civil war crushed their reigns. No-one knows exactly what happened to the two foxes, but they would leave their daughter behind in their palace with detailed instructions for their servants on what to do with the pup, before they left to lead their warriors into battle. They may have fallen in battle as they desired to do, or they could have been captured by rivals; no-one can know for sure, as their bodies were never found. Luna on the other hand were discovered by the servants, laying in a basket underneath the Alpha's bedroom under some loose floorboards, and - upon the written instructions of her parents, brought out, stripped of her titles and jewelries, before she was sent off. The servants were also expressly told to tell everyone they met that Luna had been found, and killed, by rebels. Mrs. Catwiks, at the time just a newly employed worker desperate to shine in the face of her superiors, were sent away on what she thought was a business conference. However, it turned out that one of the members of the Board were a close associate to Seyfur and Lucia, and when the two Alphas left their daughter, they secretly sent a messenger to him, asking him to send his most trusted ``Servant'' as they called it, to pick up their daughter, and bring her somewhere safe and secure, where she could live until such a time that she could reclaim her Alpharian status and assume the throne. There is just one itsy-bitsy little problem to that; it turns out that Luna's family owned a significant portion of the shares in the company. Enough in fact that if Luna were to claim her heritance, she would gain the majority share hold, effectively making her the defacto owner of the company. An owner who despises Mrs. Catwiks with every fiber of her body; it is not a secret to neither Mrs. Catwiks nor Luna's teachers that Luna hates her. Surely she would never, in her life, tolerate having Mrs. Catwiks the CEO of what would essentially be her life-savings and the life's work of her parents and ancestors. Which is why Mrs. Catwiks decided to hide the physical proof that Luna's parents left with their child and had all the company's files and papers on the supposed heir hidden away, effectively meaning the majority share's interests and payouts were to be controlled by the Board, as stipulated by her parents, until such a date that Luna were to come forth. However, none of the Directors of the Board has any idea that this supposed heir even exists; Luna's parents were very meticulous in their efforts to protect their child, even going as far as faking her death to stop potential assassins from trying to hunt her down. Only a few, paw-written letters telling the truth were sent out, and they all went to Seyfur's long-time friend in the Board; an elderly zebra by the name of Dijango. Dijango promptly sent for Mrs.Catwiks and had her go to the kingdom in the area we would know as Bangkok, in this world a buzzling metropolis home to more than 200million mammals, and an important financial hub. Mrs. Catwiks were given the impression that she had been sent out on an important business conference in the hopes of securing a prestigious contract with another company, which would secure the Company oil and riches beyond their imaginations for years to come. The Board of Directors were told that Mrs. Catwiks made a fool of herself, mocked the representative from the potential partnering company, and that differences in business culture meant she accidentally insulted them. Which supposedly caused the company to pull out, and there was no contract. However, Mrs. Catwiks were really given instructions to go to an alleyway in one of the more dubious parts of the city and was told to dress in filthy clothes and rags, so as not to attract any unwanted attention. It was there that she met Seyfur's servants, disguised as beggars. Mrs. Catwiks still thought this was just some bizarre means of testing her negotiation skills in contractual matters and made vain attempts at trying to uncover what she thought must be wealthy investors. The servants however, had a written letter from Dijango where he revealed it all to her; she was to adopt the female pup the beggars had with them, raise her as her own child, and the letter contained instructions on where she would find legal documents which would prove Luna's true identity. Dijango also revealed in the letter Luna's ancestral background, her royal status as an Alpha child, and ordered her to meet up with him as soon as she had gotten back home. It was during their later meeting that Mrs. Catwiks were given the piles of documents and letters she has in front of her now, in the brown envelope. Mrs. Catwiks were left with very little choice but to reluctantly adopt the girl, and she constructed a ridiculous story that she had been given the child as a gift by a poor business partner desperate to build stronger ties, and that she had adopted Luna solely to advance her own career. Which, to be honest, although it sounded laughable, was swallowed by everyone seeing how cold, fierce, and stone-hearted Mrs. Catwiks a reputation has of being. Adopting a child for the sole purpose of gaining a career advantage would not be out of the question for her, is what most mammals would assume. Luna would grow up alongside her own biological daughter who were born shortly afterwards, and the two grew close bonds as siblings, but Luna has never truly been part of this family. Even Mrs. Catwiks cannot even deny that. And that fool of a mate she had, Mr. Catwiks, a lazy dirt-bag of a cat, smelled that right away; he never believed her story for one tiny moment. He would constantly try to coax her into telling the truth, which he eventually succeeded in doing one night Mrs. Catwiks had incautiously gotten drunk on whiskey; Mr. Catwiks filed for divorce days later after realizing Mrs. Catwiks would never reveal Luna's true identity, neither to the child, nor to the public.
Mrs. Catwiks had silently put her mate to the wall and threatened him to keep quiet, but Mrs. Catwiks has more to worry about. Now that Luna has turned nine years of age, those pesky servants that once gave her away, will start come looking for their precious Alpha. Not to mention that Seyfur had his blood-warriors swear to carry their blood-oath onto his daughter, and those foxes cannot be bribed, cannot be scared off, and cannot be pushed away through lawsuits. If even one of the servants or a blood-warrior finds Luna, its game over, for good. As if worrying about those stupid Arabic triplets, or whatever the heck their ethnicity is, who seems incapable of doing their jobs properly, is bad enough for her, she has to worry about a child she could not care less about. To her, Luna is nothing more than an obstruction and a hindrance to her own financial and professional goals. But she cannot get rid of the girl either, as much as she would like to be rid of her constant negative behavior and rebellious nature - Dijango is still alive, and although he retired from the Board 2years ago, his influence is still strong enough to ensure that if Mrs. Catwiks tries to do any harm to Luna, or even try to find someone else to adopt her, she will be fired, and her chances of finding a job with a different company in the industry is very slim, especially considering her reputation. What is worse, Dijango regularly pays her visits, and although he strongly dislikes how she treats Luna, Dijango has allowed it to slide for now. And while she was out at sea the last time around two weeks ago, she got a phone call which really unsettles her. Luna had wandered of, in the middle of the school day, bringing with her one of her few friends - this annoying little git of a river otter - causing a huge search back at the school, and nearly a police search. Chris had thankfully answered the phone when they called her home-line, and had explained the situation to them, so the search was called off. But the fact that Luna had the audacity to leave school like that in the middle of broad daylight, it scares Mrs. Catwiks. Luna has gotten increasingly disobedient over the past three years, and this recent event only tops all that. She must keep the girl in check - she just must do it. Luna have been asking her questions for the longest time on her origins, and it is only a matter of time before Luna will start to unravel the truth, if she continues this behavior. And what about that babysitter - Chris, is he someone who would help Luna find her true origins? He sure cares about the girl, far more than a babysitter should care about the kids they are sitting, that is for sure.
NO, it cannot happen. Luna must never find her true origins. She cannot! Mrs. Catwiks has worked far too hard for large parts of her life to have it be taken away from her by some brat like her. She's going to have to tighten her hold on Luna, keep her restrained from finding it out. Thankfully, only two mammals on this continent knows of her true self, that is Mrs. Catwiks herself, and Dijango. And the secret of her past is kept safely hidden away here in Mrs. Catwiks' private office. Mrs. Catwiks collects the papers again and stows them away in the envelope. She would have burned the damn thing long ago, but Dijango have copies of all the documents safely kept with his lawyer, with strict instructions to release them to the public in the event he dies mysteriously, or Mrs. Catwiks fails to provide the originals on regular occasions. She puts the envelop away, hiding it underneath a false bottom in one of her drawers; she frequently changes its storage place.
But her concerns with Luna remains. The girl is getting older by the day. She has turned nine years of age, and she will only become more and more rebellious as she enters puberty. Mrs. Catwiks realizes that if she is to keep her secrets guarded, it is going to be a constant battle, and she must pray that her friends and associates keeps up the fake story she has constructed around Luna's parents, with them having gone rogue and never recovering from their condition. And she better hope Dijango does not blow the secrets to the public, that would be the end of her career for sure. She must come up with a plan, and she must do it quickly; it is only a matter of time before something bad will happen. She cannot tell what it would be, but she's got this ugly feeling that something will, and the last time she had this feeling, one of the company's oil rigs suffered a serious and disastrous accident, which almost toppled their economy.
