Blood is thicker than water.

Yeah?  Like hell it is.   Who ever said that was seriously deluded.  Or maybe they felt a connection to their family that I never have.

28 years ago a healthy baby girl was born into the Toong family.  Yeah..and that would be me.  Loredana Toong.   From birth I had a destiny to fulfil…..same bloody destiny that every Toong gets ….. as a ….”performance artiste” in the Toong Flying Circus.  Oh yeah and what a whole lotta fun it wasn’t.    Myself and my 13 brothers and sisters were trained from birth in the arts.  All the important ones .... acrobatics, circus clown, pickpocketing - whatever was necessary to get the troupe by for another week.  And we travelled from world to world in our rickety old ship painted bright orange with Toong’s Flying Circus plastered all over it.   To this day it’s still the tackiest ship I have ever seen.  I spent most of my childhood being totally embarrassed by that ship….I also spend a lot of time pretending to be someone else …. anyone else…. just not a member of the Toong family. 

At the age of 13 I jumped ship.  I couldn’t handle it anymore, thought anything had to be better than life on the flying orange rustbucket.    We had stopped at a planet called Baldour.  I had done some research beforehand and picked it because it seemed to be somewhere I could easily loose myself. 

I hadn’t realised how hard life on the streets would be.   I wasn’t lonely (in fact if anything I was extremely grateful not to be still sharing a room with 6 snoring sisters) but law on the streets was well maintained on this planet.   Crime seemed to be well organised and small time operators didn’t get much of a look in.   I had counted on getting by as a pickpocket but the takings on this planet weren’t as good as I had expected.    Life was very very hard.

This was not the life I wanted.   I had ambition but no opportunity.  Time to make an opportunity.   I wanted to make something of myself but while I was intelligent I had very little real education.   The library became my new home.  Actually I mean this quite literally.  I hid at closing time and slept there each night.  Really quite cosy, although for some reason I always avoided the basement.   Strange noises came out of there at night.

I learnt very quickly, it helped that I had a photographic memory.   In fact several of my brothers and sisters also were blessed with this. No doubt a side effect of whatever drug of the week my mother was probably on when she was pregnant.  She spent money we didn’t have on performance drugs to improve her acrobatic ability.  The show must go on was her motto….even when you are pushing 50. 

After 6 months of solid studying I applied for a scholarship at the Baldour University.  With my forged papers from a local high school I applied under my own name.  I assumed my parents wouldn’t still be looking for me.  Two of my other siblings had already disappeared and they hadn’t wasted a whole lot of time looking for them.   I was awarded a full scholarship and a living allowance. 

At University I did extremely well.  I studied business and kept up my acrobatic skills by using the well equipped uni gym.  I also became involved in the theatre group and made a lot of good friends.  One of these friends was Alain Shue.  His family was a well known but never caught crime family.   Alain was also studying business with a view to eventually taking over his family’s operations.    Alain taught me many useful skills that the university course just didn’t cover. 

When I finished university I was offered a job in Alain’s family business.    The branch I worked for (and in fact ended up being in charge of) was Information Brokerage.  It was our job to procure other people’s secrets.   This information was then used to blackmail, extort or simply sell to the highest bidder.   We weren’t fussy, personal secrets, government secrets, scientific secrets….anything that would turn a profit for the business.    I have the dirty little secrets of countless planets stuck in my brain….the downside of a photographic memory.   But geez I’ve got some useful contacts.

During the time I was employed by the Shue family I gained an appreciation of art.   Their house was filled with various masterpieces and was the epitome of class.  To me it represented all the culture that my family didn’t and would never have.   Whilst I was now well educated, well dressed, spoke the right way, socialised with very important people – inside I still felt inadequate.   To me the answer to my problem seemed obvious …..acquire some art work of my own.

For the last 3 years I have spent my spare time as a very successful art thief…..my collection almost rivalled that of the Shue family. 

Then it all came crashing down.  My last job was a trap ….. carefully constructed to catch the infamous “spiderman thief”  (I seriously don’t think anyone actually considered that the culprit might be a woman …. they were sooo shocked when they caught me)  Apparently I was part of a sting operation, involving 30 people that took 6 months to plan and prepare.  I was caught.  The Shue family couldn’t save me and neither could any of my contacts.  There were just too many people involved in my capture and the evidence was overwhelming.

I have been found guilty and am now awaiting sentencing. 

Whatever happens I will adapt and I will survive.  Its what I do.