And another MFU blurb

Written for today’s short affair prompt at Section VII

Summary: In which Illya reads about an ancient, cursed pendant–unaware that Napoleon is already handling it.

Not cross-posting this as I’ll be expanding this in the future.

Illya was busy finishing up a carbon-dating experiment on
some old, dirty bone fragments that had been found within a box of
artifacts.  THRUSH had attempted to seize
them to finance their operations, but Napoleon and Illya had retrieved the
artifacts, which looked like genuine items from the New Kingdom of ancient
Egypt, and, in order to determine their authenticity, Illya had taken the bone
fragments to Section VIII to test them as Napoleon sorted them out.  Beside him, Baba Yaga, the Egyptian Mau that
he and Napoleon had raised from a kitten, sat patiently, grooming herself.

The results were coming in as George caught up with him.

“The entire building is talking about those artifacts that
you and Napoleon found—I caught a glimpse of them just now; Napoleon’s still
cataloguing them for the evidence locker,” he said.  “They look authentic, but I guess I wanted to
see the test results for myself.”

“You’re just in time,” Illya said, tearing off the results
as they were printed.  “…They are
genuine; the results indicate that the bone fragments found with the artifacts
are nearly three thousand years old!”

George let out a low whistle and now consulted a book he
had been carrying.

“I brought a book on New Kingdom artifacts,” he said.  “It’d be interesting to see what we have–”

“Whatever we have, we don’t have it indefinitely,” Illya
said, slightly amused by George’s enthusiasm.
“Now that we know that they are genuine, we’ll have to get in touch with
Karim in the Luxor branch; he’ll know the authorities to contact so that we can
return the artifacts to them once they are no longer considered evidence.”

“All the same, it’s still interesting,” George said.  “Look, there’s this same statuette of Bastet
that was in the collection–”

George was cut off as Baba Yaga meowed loudly at the
mention of Bastet; Napoleon had insisted that Bastet was their cat’s mother,
and though Illya had been skeptical, both he and George were now looking at the
Mau as she hopped on the table, looked at the picture of the statuette in the
book, and started purring at it.

“…You don’t suppose…?” George began, but Illya just
shrugged.

“What else do you see in that book that was in the
collection we seized?” Illya asked.

“Well, there’s this Ushebti—it’s from the Pharaoh Sethos,”
George said, turning a few pages.  “There
was this white alabaster jar…. And there was this weird-looking gold thing…”

“Thing” seemed to be the best description of it; it was an
odd golden pendant, a triangle with an eye in the center, and the triangle
surrounded by a ring of gold.  Small
pendulums dangled from the circle.  Illya
was just about to comment on how odd it looked when Baba Yaga suddenly arched
her back and flattened her ears, hissing at the picture in the book.

“What got into her?” George wondered.

Illya blinked, and then looked at the description in the
book.

“‘An unknown cursed pendant, circa the 18th Dynasty,’”
Illya read aloud.  “‘It is said that the
mere touch of this pendant causes one to be corrupted by the darkness that
resides in one’s heart.”

“…Napoleon is down in the evidence locker with that thing
right now!” George exclaimed.

Illya’s mind raced; he didn’t know what to believe—though
the nagging voice in the back of his mind told him that after all the bizarre,
unexplainable happenings, there were things beyond belief that sometimes
occurred.  With another glance at George,
they dashed out the door and headed down to the evidence locker.

Napoleon, oblivious to all of this, was continuing to put
the evidence away, one by one, after placing them in the appropriate plastic
bags.  He stopped to chuckle at the
Bastet statuette, and then paused as he looked at the odd golden pendant—it was
like nothing he had ever seen before.
With a shrug, he picked it up, as he prepared another evidence bag, and
then paused as he heard a whispering voice.

“Napoleon Solo…”

Napoleon paused, looking around for whoever had spoken.

“…Hello…?” he asked.

“I am speaking to you
from within this ring.”

Napoleon glanced back at the artifact in his hands.

“…What.”

“I know not how I
have come to be in your possession, but now that I am, I have a proposition for
you.”

“…Well, ah, technically, you are not in my possession;
you’re going into an evidence locker…
…Why am I talking to a piece of ancient gold!?”

He moved to place the artifact in an evidence bag.

“Wait!” he heard
the voice whisper.  “I told you, I have a proposition for you!  Do not lock me away; keep me, and I can make
your deepest desires come true.  I can
give you power beyond your wildest imaginings.
Surely there are things in this world you need!”

“…Clearly, what I need now is coffee,” Napoleon said,
shaking his head; he paused again as the artifact glowed in his hand.  He arched an eyebrow at it.

“I can grant you your
wildest, deepest desires!  What is it in
this world that you desire the most?”

“I already have it,” Napoleon said, and he placed the
artifact in the evidence bag.

“Impossible!  How were you not brought under my
power!?  No one can resist me!  I resonate with the darkness that resides in
every heart–!”

The voice was cut off as Napoleon let go of the artifact
and sealed the evidence bag.  It also
stopped glowing, and he shook his head again and put it away with the rest of
the evidence.

“…I gotta stop pulling these all-nighters.  Now I’m hearing things…”

“Napoleon!”

“Napoleon!”

“Meowrowrrr!”

Napoleon blinked again as he saw Illya, George, and Baba
Yaga running towards him.

“Napoleon, are you alright?” Illya asked, as Baba Yaga ran
figure eights around Napoleon’s legs before hissing at the artifact in the bag
in the locker.

“Sure, why wouldn’t I be?” he asked.

“We just read something about a cursed artifact,” George
said, pointing at it.  “It can supposedly
corrupt people by touching it—tapping into the darkness in their hearts.”

“…And you were worried about me?” Napoleon asked, looking
at Illya, who shrugged helplessly.

“I have reached a point where I no longer know what to
believe,” he admitted, gently touching Napoleon’s shoulder.  “You are alright?”

“Yeah,” Napoleon said, trying not to think about the voice
and how the artifact had glowed, trying to corrupt him—and how it had been
shocked at its failure.  “I… just need
coffee.”

He didn’t want to worry George, but he would talk about it
with Illya over coffee; he owed Illya that much—after all, his partnership with
Illya was what had left him with the contentment he’d needed to resist the
temptation of needing anything that the voice had to offer.

He smiled to himself as George and Illya now helped him bag
the rest of the evidence, and as Baba Yaga continued to hiss at the artifact
while alternating with purring at the statuette of Bastet.

Napoleon was a lucky man, and he knew it—and that might
have been what had saved his soul that night.