Disclaimer: I don't own any Sly Cooper characters; they belong to Sucker Punch.

Claimer: I own all of my original characters.

This chapter sort of brushes back over the rest of Ramona's siblings from my first story. Since I don't use all of them that often, I thought I'd mention them again. Please read and review!

Chapter 7: Research

Ever since I was a kid, I hated being lectured. It was bad enough when I was given one by my dad and it was even worse when I was being nagged at by my brother. And that's exactly was I was sitting though. After I was attacked in my apartment, my brother and sister came in a tried to get me to a hospital, I supposed Sly had some input into it. I argued with them for at least an hour before I was finally dragged into my sisters' car and taken to the emergency room. I had x-rays done and any of the major gashes were stitched together but there really isn't anything they can do for broken ribs other than just let them fuse back together on their own. I had to stay in the hospital overnight so the doctors could be sure that there wasn't any internal damage, other than broken bones, and while I stayed there that night and part of the following day my brother had my apartment cleaned so I could go home. So, now I was stretched out on my couch and listening to my brother chew me out.

"Are you even listening to me?" Sitka's voice snapped me out of my daydream.

"Of course I am!" I stopped listening after he said, 'we need to talk'.

"Ramona," he rested his paws on the arm rest near my feet, "you need to listen. That bull was at least three times the size of you and you see what happened. Think about if there were two of them, you'd be dead. Why didn't you tell us about the window and the note?"

"Because you'd worry and then everything would be hectic and I didn't want that to happen."

"I know you had good intentions, but if you ever get one again, let us know. Now, how are we going to fix our problems?" he meant the collections of gems. With four broken ribs and three of them fractured, I couldn't steal for a while. Sitka and Charlotte couldn't sneak in like I could, Sitka was more muscular than I was and Charlotte wasn't very light on her feet. I shrugged at his question and he started his lecture again.

"Well, while you're out of commission, I'm going to have Charlotte stay here to help you around. You can't really do much with a broken rib and I need someone to keep an eye on you. You always find a way to go back out in the field no matter what." He smirked and stood.

"No!" I whined. I knew I would feel like a child if she stayed and 'kept and eye on me'.

"Don't argue with me. You are still the youngest out of the three of us and what Charlotte and I say goes. It's so you don't get into trouble and can heal as quickly as possible."

"You're really going to pull the age card again?" he nodded and I groaned, letting my head fall backwards against the arm rest.

"She'll be here in a few hours. I'm going to keep tabs on the Interpol station, you say out of trouble." He pointed a finger at me before leaving. I sighed and shut my eyes. I knew they meant well, but I felt stupid having being cared for. But, if that could help me move as little as possible and allow my bones to set, I could get back out into the field and get everything straightened out.

My head snapped up and I looked at my glass door when I though I heard something on the balcony but found nothing. I settled back down and waited for my sister to come by. Along with the pain caused by my broken bones, I felt horribly guilty. Directly after that bull left, Sly had simply come in to make sure I was alright. I knew that but I still lost my temper and chewed him out. After literally screaming for him to leave, he did just that. It had been a week since that happened and I hadn't seen or heard from him since. I knew I needed to apologize, and I wanted to, to him but I can't seem to track that raccoon down. Since I'm out of the game for a while, I can't go out and look for him. Granted whenever I did talk to him he always found me, but I still would try and hunt him down. I also knew that since I couldn't go out and run around the city, these next seven weeks were going to take forever. I never liked staying inside too often and I knew this would feel like forever.

Charlotte finally got in and settled a few hours after my brother left. She moved into the spare bedroom I had on the opposite side of the apartment and was ready to get planning. We decided that since we couldn't go out into the field, we would do major planning. I was still stretched out on the couch, in an attempt to keep my sides from burning, and she sat on the loveseat to my right. She was typing away furiously on her laptop and chatting the entire time. My mother always said that I was the chatty one but this fox could talk your ear off.

"I've narrowed down two rooms that the safe could be in," Charlotte said as she looked up from her typing; "now we just have to figure out how to get in there."

"We could always give you some extensions, dress you up as Carmelita, and walk in and take the thing." I was almost serious, they looked identical. Charlotte was obviously older than Carmelita and had shorter had but other than that they could be twins. She let out a laugh and continued typing.

"There are a series of air ducts underneath the building where the cooling unit starts and there's a vent in every room of the building. You could crawl your way through, look for the safe, and then after you find it just pull it back through the air ducts with you. And if it doesn't fit we can you to sneak it out by dressing you up in a uniform."

"I'd need a security key so people can watch me go in and not just come out." I grunted as I sat up.

"Oh yeah, you can swipe Nick's card."

"What about your old card? I know you kept it after you quit the force."

"Yeah, but since I quit they disabled it." our family had many officers and when we were kids, Charlotte wanted to be an officer like my mother and a few of out siblings. So, she went through the academy and got a badge but after two years being Officer Fox she quit and joined the thieving side of us. My brother Nick was an Inspector like Carmelita and just as vicious. He might have been younger than me but he scared me a little.

"We could get Victoria to do it! She's smaller than you and she could get it done now!"

"She can't navigate her way out of a paper bag," my younger sister Victoria was also a thief but she was always getting caught.

"True, true she can't. Well we have Coco, Crash, and Crunch working in Australia to see what they can find. They sent me an e-mail a while ago and said that Carlos and Daniel are back in Paris. Carlos is supposed to be getting a promotion."

"Great. Two more officers we have to watch for." Both of them are my younger brothers and both were officers.

"Then I guess we just wait until you heal and see where we go from there."

"I guess so," I didn't really feel like talking about plans now. I still felt horribly guilty and I could tell Charlotte was starting to catch on to it.

"Something's bugging you. What is it?" she closed her computer and stared anxiously.

"Nothing, my sides hurt." I lied and hoped she'd drop it.

"That's not it. Someone's feeling guilty!" she laughed and still waited for me to reply.

"I am not!" I couldn't help but laugh and she knew I was lying. We playfully argued for the rest of the night off and on. She couldn't get me to crack, despite all her tricks. I decided that having Charlotte live here until my ribs mended together wouldn't be so bad. As long as she didn't try to snoop in my personal business.