Claimer: All characters presented were created by and owned by me.
Author's Note: Oh my goodness! It's been forever since I've been able to update anything and here I am starting something new. I'm not sure if I'll make this a full story with multiple chapters or just keep it a background oneshot, I'm not sure. But the reason I'm posting this here is to not only get a new story out there, but to share some news that I've been meaning to get out. 1.) Yes, I'm still writing, but it's just been so slow. Thankfully with the Thanksgiving holiday and Christmas holiday coming up, it means no classes for me so I should be able to crank out a good bit of stuff. 2.) Return of the Alpha, Threat of the Omega is still being worked on and will be updated soon. Again, I've been super busy, but I've also had a bit of writers block. But, it should update during one of my two breaks. 3.) As a request, I'll be doing a continuation of one of my old oneshots, Cold Winter Nights. I'm not sure if I'll make it a new story or add on to that one folder, but that's in the works as well. And finally, 4.) I now how a FictionPress account! I will still mostly be using this site, but I will use FictionPress to write Ramona, and other OC based stories without Sly Cooper characters, just OC stories. I have a copy of this story posted there and a link to my FictionPress account in my profile here, so please go check out that profile for any other stories or update if I've gone quiet here. But anyway...as usual, I hope you, read, review, and let me know what you think! Thanks!
What I Am Destined to Become
My lungs burned as I quickly sprinted through the night and around the corner of a building, using my paw on the corner to keep me from slipping on the ice at my feet. I darted down the alley I had turned into and swiftly turned right into another one, hoping to lose my pursuers in the maze I was creating. Being who I was and what my "profession" is, I tended to stay away from the police and stick to my own set of rules on how to live my life and abide by the expectations of society. To put it simply, I was a thief. I was the vermin of the world, quite literally when considering my species, but according to the law, being a thief wasn't desirable.
I cursed under my breath as I ran into a dead end. Sliding to a stop I bounced back and forth on my feet, trying to keep them moving and warm while giving me something to do while I searched for a way out of the hole I had dug myself into. My ears flicked in the direction I'd just come from, hearing the approaching voices of policemen and search dogs. Knowing time was short, I jumped and grabbed hold of the lowest rung of the fire escape ladder a few feet above me. I quickly hoisted myself up onto the icy metal bars and proceeded to climb. Given the ice all over the place, the climb was much harder than what it normally would have been. By the time I had reached the second ladder, the police had me surrounded from the ground.
"Bandicoot!" one of the officers shouted, who I recognized as the chief of police, "Come down from there! We just want to talk things out with you, there's no need for you to get in more trouble than you're already in! A young lady like yourself really should be careful! Just come down!" I shook my head, ignoring his negotiations, and proceeded to climb. The last thing I needed to do in this situation was to let the police try to get inside my head. I had my believes on the justice system and I certainly wasn't a fan.
I let out a shriek when I heard the shot and felt the reverberations on the metal rung. One of the officers, one that I knew was fresh from the academy and ready to set out in what she called the right line of work, fired her freshly appointed shock pistol in an attempt to get me down. Thankful the shot didn't hit me, it came me a chance to climb up the rest of the fire escape while the officer was briefly scolded by her superior. Unfortunately, I let the close call disturb me too much and as I finally reach the top of the building, I misjudged my footing and my right foot slid out from underneath me, twisting the ankle in an unnatural position and causing me a great amount of pain. Despite the searing burning that was now making my ankle throb and swell, I kept moving forward even if it was with a hobble.
I stopped briefly to catch my breath, resting my palms on my knees and hunching over. I could feel my lungs burn even worse as I sucked in as much of the crisp, cold air as I could. Fog escaped my muzzle in great clouds as my warm breath hit the air. I was tired, out of breath, injured, and starving, but I had to get to my home and not get arrested. I stood fully, knowing it was time to go, and sprinted as best I could with my bum ankle. I got a running start from the end I was on and bolted across the rooftop before leaping to the next. I landed with a heavy thud as my boots hit the concrete, followed by my knees and palms. I shouted in agony as the leap only injured my ankle further, but I kept pushing. Wind whirled past me in gusts as I continued my pattern of running to gain speed before leaping from rooftop to rooftop or rooftop to fire escape. I quickly learned to land on my one good foot to reduce the pain followed soon after.
"Almost there," I told myself, "you're almost there. Come on Ramona, don't you give up now. Just keep moving." I chanted this in my head as I made final leap to a short building top. I landed as softly as I could before hobbling to the other side. I slipped my legs over, good foot first, and hoisted myself down the side of the building and into the alley below. With a struggled, I hoisted the heavy metal covering from the manhole slightly, just enough for me to slip through. Picking up a nearby rock, I hurled it at a trashcan on the opposite side of the street with hopes it would give me with window of opportunity I needed to slip away from the Paris Interpol agents on my tail. I squeezed inside my opening and yanked the cover back on.
I pressed myself against the wall, staying deathly silent in the shadows of the sewer as I waited for the police to pass. I held my breath as the neared my hiding spot, fearing they would find me. The head inspector barked orders at his officers, telling them to close off the areas, go door to door, and scour the entire city to find me. On the bright side, they didn't think to look under the city. As I waited for the force to leave, I suddenly panicked, fearing that what I had stolen had somehow fallen from my jacket. I felt around my body, sighing with relief when I felt the goods in my jacket, nestled gently between my jacket and shirt.
"Thank you," I whispered softly
I waited a good hour and a half before moving, wanting to be sure the police had left. I pulled my hood up over my head, placed one gloved paw over my prize, wanting to keep constant assurance I didn't lose it, and the other paw trailed along the sewer wall to help me keep my balance on my gimpy foot. The stench down here was almost unbearable, but I thankfully only part of my journey was through active sewers. Last summer the city has closed off a section of the sewers because of a pipe that had broken in the previous winter. Instead of fixing it, since it wasn't an important part of the sewer, they simply shut it off. It was by no standards clean, but at least sewage and other unwanted particles of residents weren't floating by my feet.
It was a good one mile trek through the sewers that would be slow, given my injury and plain exhaustion, but I took it as a time to think. I always thought to myself, speaking not being something I did much, considering I was partly a loner. I wasn't completely alone however, I had my older brother, but he was always so worried about keeping me safe that he wasn't much for conversation. I couldn't complain though, he has kept us alive longer that our parents did; or anyone for that matter. It had been so long since I'd seen either of them that at times I honestly believed I didn't have a mother and father; just a brother.
I knew this wasn't true though. I had a mother and a father and even other siblings. I wasn't close to any other them, only the brother I stayed with, and my father, who has been dead for nearly eleven years. My mother and ten other siblings are alive and well however, but I had a deep searing hate for each and every one of them. When I was seven years old, my mother divorced my father after she had an affair and three children with the unknown man who would later become my step-father. My mother, who never liked me or my brother from the start, allowed us to live with our father. To me, it was the best thing that could have ever happened. It was just my brother and father and me, living together in peaceful harmony with no fights or screaming…just plain happiness.
I stepped over into the closed off section of the sewer and proceeded down that way. I watched my step, having to maneuver through a few rats at the entrance as they looked for any little bits of food. When I was running, my adrenaline kept me warm, but now that I had slowed down considerably the freezing temperatures were catching up. My teeth chattered as I made my way through the stone fixtures around me, taking the familiar routes I needed in order to get home. As I traveled the silent, cold journey, I became lost in my thoughts once again.
Of course, the happiness of living with my father was short lived. A week before I was eight, the three of us were spending a quiet evening at home, reading stories before bedtime. Then suddenly, without warning, I was shoved in a room with my brother and to keep quiet, to not leave no matter what, and to most of all stay safe. At the time I didn't know what was going on. I didn't know why there were bangs and shouts coming from my living room, or why my brother kept my ears covered as he shoved me under the bed. I didn't know why we had to suddenly leave the bedroom after dad told us to stay put. Why we fled out the back door was a mystery and I was even more confused when we arrived at the neighbors house. It wasn't until weeks later when my brother and I were sent back to Paris from my father's house in southern Australia and placed into an orphanage that I knew my mother didn't want us and I would never see my father again. That night, my father was murdered.
"It's funny how life turns out sometimes. It may not always make sense, but it always happens for a reason." That's what my father used to tell me. He used to tell me lots of things. To not worry. To have fun. To be smarter than my enemies. To never let someone to push me around. He was a great man and someone I would live up to or die trying. Dad was a thief, a great thief. He would steal from the most corrupt criminals and crime lords and would escape from the police in the blink of an eye. Well, not fully escape at least. My mother used to be the chief of the Interpol force when she first married my father. Now she's gone through multiple promotions and is some big wig of the force, not actually on the line. But that sure didn't stop some of my siblings. At least half were police officers or officer-in-training. The other half were like me, a thief. Not that it mattered, I hated all of them.
By the time I reached the end of the tunnel and finally made it to the drain off point at the river, it was well past midnight and I was supposed to be home hours ago. I peered around the lip of the drain, making sure the coast was clear, before hopping down and darting down the concrete path leading to the area underneath the local bridge; home. I smiled as I made it there, crouching immediately and putting my gloved paws to the fire, feeling the intense heat warm my fingers. I sat under the archway, my back to the concrete support pillar as I warmed myself by the fire.
"Where the hell have you been?" a voice hissed at me from the other side of the fire.
"I'm fine Sitka," I told my brother as he made his way over to sit next to me, "Calm down." He sat, a stern look on his face as he yanked my hood down to look me directly in the eyes and check me over for any visible injuries."
"I heard the sirens," he said gruffly, "When they stopped I thought they'd nabbed you." I had to give him credit, he was truly concerned for me and my safety, but it was a bit much at times.
"No," I said softly, "just a chase." I propped my injured leg out in front of me, briefly explaining what had happened.
"You need to be more careful, Ramona. You're going to get yourself killed one of these days and I'm not always going to be able to protect you. You're almost nineteen, you have to learn to be more careful out there." I rolled my eyes at his comment and continued to warm myself. I glanced over to my big brother, who warmed himself as well. Like me, Sitka was a raccoon, but he certainly didn't look close to my age; he looked much older than twenty-one.
"Did you at least get what you went out for?" he asked a bit more softly. I had briefly forgotten the small package tucked inside my jacket.
"It's not much, " I said as I tugged the parchment paper wrapped lump from my body, "but it should hold us over until the end of the week." He carefully took the package from my gasp and opened it, revealing two small loaves of bread and half a cheese wheel.
"They caught you when you stole it, didn't they?" I nodded slowly, looking at my stolen prize hungrily.
"And let me guess, she was there, wasn't she?" I nodded again, immediately know who he was talking about. The young female cadet that had shot at me with the shock pistol as I was scaling the building was no ordinary cadet…she was my sister. A bad tempered, raccoon-hating, cobalt blue haired vixen that was the spitting image of my mother in both looks and personality.
Sitka put one of the loaves in a bag my father owned and took out his pocket knife. From the bread, the cut two medium sized slices, one for each of us, before putting the rest away as well. He also sliced two thin pieces of cheese from the wheel and handed me one of the pieces of bread and cheese and keeping the other piece of each for himself. As he silently put away the cheese and knife, I took two mugs from the wall and filled them with some of the water we preserved and boiled from the river before it froze. I filled the mugs, splitting them up before settling next to him with the first meal I'd had in three days.
We ate slowly and in silence, wanting to savor what little food we had. Sitka and I had no real home and hadn't had a proper one since dad died. We stayed at an orphanage for a year or so, making few friends. We were then…adopted… from there. It wasn't a technical adoption, but that's a story I'd rather not re-live. As I ate, I noticed Sitka glance over from time to time, looking at me briefly before returning to his food. I knew what he was looking at, something that he wasn't proud of.
"You're still mad at me, aren't you? About my hair?" he sighed, sipping from his mug.
"To be honest, no. But I certainly can't change it. And it'll grow back over time." he then sat in silence, staring at the fire.
A few weeks ago I'd lost it, my nerves. I was so tired of living this way, of being this person I didn't want to be. I didn't want to be the girl living under a bridge, stealing food instead of large ticket items I could only dream about. So, I snapped. Using a pair of scissors I'd found while dumpster diving, I cut most of my hair off. The long, silky, raven black hair that used to adorn me from my head to my waist, was now gone. I'd cut it down to a military cut, leaving only my bangs just long enough to keep my right eye covered and away from viewing. After the orphanage and a long string of events and accidents, some sort of strange solution had gotten onto my face and into my eye. Turning the once bright blue orb into a foamy green that I couldn't stand to look at. I was now the freak with the multi-colored eyes. Since the accident, as I liked to call it, I kept the eye covered with my hair.
Sitka wasn't happy that I had cut my hair, however. He feared I was turning into a rebellious person who wasn't the "good" criminal, but a bad one that gave good criminals a bad name in the public eye. Which I can't blame him for thinking such things. Over the course of two years, I'd self pierced my ears multiple times, lips, and nose. I'd also resorted to smoking cigarettes and now cutting most of my hair off. I finished my meal and replaced my cup, crawling next to my brother and leaning against him as we readied for bed. He wrapped us in the few blankets we had and we huddled together next to our fire.
"With the snow storm coming in next week, we're going to need more blankets. Clothes too and food." he said softly.
"I'll go out tomorrow and see what I can find." I said, situating myself against the hard concrete pillar behind me.
"No, I'll go. You need to lay low for a while and I need to get out into town for a while, I'm getting cabin fever. Well…bridge fever." I giggled softly as his poor joke, leaning my had against his shoulder.
"Just be careful, I can't do this alone." he squeezed my paw in reassurance and we both took in each others warmth while we fell asleep in front of the warm fire with still growling stomachs.
Author's Side Note: Now, before you say anything, I know it's different than the Ramona I usually write. But please keep in mind that this is the teenage Ramona and this is more like her backstory than anything else. It's also set way before any of my already published stories so it's a bit of a fresh start, new spin, and more in-depth look on my OC. By the way, if I decide to update this story, I will NOT update it to FanFiction, only to FictionPress so look there for updates. And this story will not appear on FictionPress until 11-16-14 sometime in the afternoon; I have a 12 hour no-post time constraint to finish before the site will let me post. but it will be there, I promise.