Disclaimer: I claim words, not Newsies. Everything belongs to people and personages that are not me. Sue not. / Sid is mine. All mine. I do like Sid a lot so please do not take him. :)

Dedication: Again, this tale belongs to Ali. I know Slinks isn't completely right; I am fairly certain she suffered a few personality bumps on her way from your head to mine. However, I still hope you like this humble attempt. You are and will forever be one of the most fantastico people I have ever known!

To Slink: A Definition…

Without a doubt, Slinks felt completely and utterly uncomfortable.

Whether it had been hours or days since she'd left the Lodging House –with her tail tucked firm between her legs- she didn't know. It felt like an aching hole of forever.

At first she'd cowered in that alley, contemplating her return. But something –definitely not a fear of Conlon, though contradicting such presumptions would surely be a hard task in light of her recent reenactment of 'One Who Flees in Panic'- moved her down the puddle-covered streets and away. Her feet took her blocks, into dark doorways and over grassy parks. They took her past shop fronts and massive looming factories, where sodden gray smoke swirled against a sodden black sky. She trudged in wide arcs and wobbling 'straighter' lines; over and around, slowly and sometimes painfully, her hands in her pockets and her head hung low.

The gray and wet had crumpled her clothes and spirit, bulging and dragging them down until they sloshed with every step. Before long she found them both to be disinclined to be led onward. The entirety of her face agreed wholeheartedly. It ached and throbbed and she was sure her nose was swelled up much larger than what she considered suitably attractive. Her hair hung limp and sopping, getting in her eyes and aggravating the corners of her mouth. Her cheeks felt soggy with rain and raw to the touch.

And so she halted, under the wide awning of a bookstore –long since closed when the weight of rain sent potential profits hovering a little below financially acceptable- and waited out the last grumbling efforts of the waning storm. The dark blue fabric made a funny sort of gasp when the rain pattered hard against it.

Presently the onslaught slowed its vicious campaign over the city and the rain began soften and then eventually disappeared; the storm was moving onward. A mist now hung in the early evening air and the approaching dark of night was tinting the corners of the sky only just emptied from the receding storm clouds.

Pooled raindrops slipped lazily off green leaves and down lampposts. Water amassed into uneven concaves of earth. And, like mice venturing timidly out of their hole after the cat had given up its proposed vigil for a saucer of hot milk, people were beginning to edge out into the damp world. They sidestepped puddles and glanced occasionally at the suspicious looking sky from beneath their wide black umbrellas.

Slinks felt suddenly crowded and out of place with her drowned appearance.

Good Intentions...

She had always intended to consider buying an umbrella but the investment had never seemed so significant. Until –perhaps- now.

(In fact, the time she had actually set out to purchase such a sensible item, a shiny new set of marbles had taken her attention completely: called out seductively and snagged her with their perfect roundness and colorful shimmer. She already had an impressive looking sling shot, one that paled only slightly to Spot's own weapon in both size and potency. Visions of these tiny orbs flinging through the air and catching that same suspender-wearing individual by surprise had carried what little savings she had to her name to the clerk behind the counter before she knew what was happening. She had left the shop an umbrella-less girl but a happy girl -and had continued in that happiness a few times before those shiny marbles suspisciously disappeared.)

Yet, it was not her lack of rain-retardant canopy that was her problem. Her problem was simply that, when moisture was falling in any shape or speed or time of year, she shouldn't be outside. Under it. Covered in it. Instead such weather should be endured by a great deal of lounging in bed and/or devious scheming or deep in a cigarette-hazed game of poker. This was the Slinker's way of things; her own personal religion. But today had thrown an unforeseeable wrench into the works and now the whole perfect machine had skidded into a steaming, useless mess.

And it was because of the cap.

Of Collusions and Confidantes...

Slinks turned a condemning glare to the hat in her clenched fist. She did want to blame it and, as silly as it would sound to her later, blaming the brown bundle of soaking cloth seemed perfectly acceptable at this juncture of her life. The cap (A respectful correction: Spot's cap) had become the bane of her existence. The thorn in her side.

It was the Apple in the Garden of Eden and she had been just been a silly, hungry Eve.

Slinks squeezed her fingers tightly around the cap. It squished under the pressure, oozing stale-colored wetness. It looked nothing like a bad luck charm (In fact it looked fairly innocent; a sad, frightened bystander.) but Slinks knew now it was. It needed to be destroyed.

And she stood, dripping wet on a street corner, pondering just the best way to destroy the nuisance. Her mind was whirling with possibilities, each one more elaborate and fabulous than the previous. Each one inching her a little further away from rational thought.

Within a few minutes a complex scheme had been concocted. Some parts were tricky and it was, overall, quite dangerous but it was a doable plot; the roll of chicken wire would be easy enough to find but the llama was going to be difficult.

And then she shook her head, collapsing her outlandish plan and sweeping it under her mental rug.

A drop off the Brooklyn Bridge would do the trick well enough. Plus, llamas, she'd heard, were notoriously moody.

It was then she heard her name being called or more appropriately hollered. Repeatedly and with the hint of a growing eagerness. Slinks looked up, blinked and squinted, and noticed the figure.

It was a small figure but only because it was so far away, a block down and on the other side of the street. Her current thoughts and fear bent the sight and for a moment it looked like someone Slinks wasn't sure she wanted to see. Someone who may have been wanting their cap back and probably before she tossed it in the East River.

Her heart did a little leap then, dancing to the familiar tune of sudden alarm she'd known so recently. But at the back, barely discernible, a silly little harmony had joined in. This was a beat very different and slightly confusing. And Slinks wondered, a good deal of time afterward, why, when she discovered the approaching figure was not, in fact, Spot Conlon, she felt just the tiniest bit disappointed.

(The answer did come to her finally after many sleepless nights and confounded days. What she found was strictly between her and her Maker, with whom, in light of recent deductions, she was supremely displeased for making her a female, a fact which included every irritation and fuzzy emotion that went with being a part of such a species. It should be noted perhaps that she could not look Spot in the eye for a very long time without going an admirable shade of red and having to excuse herself with a sorry, have to be elsewhere, goodbye.)

When the waving figure was close enough to be identified, Slinks offered an unconscious grin.

It was Sid. And, even in her calamitous state, she was happy to see him.

Sidney Robins…

Sidney was a boy whose ancestry was everywhere and essentially, nowhere. He was a boy of all peoples simply because he had none of his own. His features were plain and held nothing indicative of any family that had shuffled onto New York's welcoming soil. He was a mutt; a heritage painted upon zealously and with a bright shade of every color imaginable.

Yet, truthfully, no one really dared to spend much time or thought on Sid's facial features, as pleasant as they were. No, they were much too busy being intimidated by the rest of him. Usually they wondered whether or not they should run for cover.

It was really an insult to say that Sid was a just large boy. At seventeen he already had quite a lot in common with that of a small ox. Sid was tall, wide, and strong.

His great vastness must have come from somewhere and everyone had their theories. An extreme growth spurt; one too many helpings of his mother's Grebbel; the last of a forgotten race of giants… the list really had become endless, and, at times, incredulous. But whatever the reason for his six foot plus massive shape and beneath all the apprehension his daunting presence stirred up in the unsuspecting heart, Sid was simply Sid: a gentle, humorous soul who was not capable of any insincere word or deed.

Sid worked in a factory with great machines that did something equally great and imposing. He was a solid asset to the working force and was always ready to prove himself. His enthusiasm usually won him a smile from the man with the checklist and covered him in a layer of well-earned grease, much to his ever-cleaning mother's chagrin.

Slinks had known Sid for a while though the exact date and circumstances of their introduction were lost to her. Sometimes he would visit the Lodging House or participate in a lazy summer swim off the docks. He didn't gamble or smoke and he was kind to all the girls –even mischievous ones like the Slinker- to an extent that made one suspect his seven sisters and his mother's fearsome-looking rolling pin had shaped quite an influence.

As he approached Slinks now, on the walk, in the darkening afternoon, she realized it had been quite a while since she'd last seen him. He looked much the same as always. He wore a pair of overalls, the straps of which were frayed over a shirt that looked as though it might have been too small three sizes ago and was barely holding together over his arched shoulders. His blonde hair was misted through with the lingering dampness; he was still hard at work for the worst of the storm. His eyes were a darker brown than she remembered but they sparkled with genuine happiness as he saw her.

The happiness quickly turned to concern the closer he came, taking in her thoroughly disheveled condition.

He came to a quick stop a foot from her and raised a thick dark eyebrow. And then he spoke, his voice as deep as one would expect.

"Just tell me there's a good story behind that." He gestured pointedly to her swollen nose.

Slinks gave a quick glance at the hat in her fist, then straightened her gaze toward her towering companion and nodded, a slight arch to her lips.

"Join me somewhere dry and warm and I'll let youse decide for yourself?"

Sid grinned, her shadowed response enough of an intrigue, and he offered one thick forearm. Someone had presumably told him this was the sort of thing a gentleman did when accompanying a lady to a destination.

On any normal day Slinks would have protested with a disapproving look and even an offended slap but in view that today was filled with anything but normal occurrences, she bit back her automatic response and slipped her hand around his waiting arm. Yet, if it meant anything at all, she did so with the lightest of touches and stayed a good foot from his body, supporting her own walk entirely. After all, her internal traditionalist smugly reasoned, one could not completely forget oneself… no matter what the prevailing circumstances.

A Spot of Unrest…

Back at the Lodging House, Spot was having a horrid night.

It had been unusually quiet after Slinks' hurried departure and if Spot'd spent a few moments thought on it, he probably wouldn't have liked the silence. As it was, his mind was a good distant away, concentrated wholly on a girl who, at the very moment, was settling into a warm booth in a dimly lit restaurant, a giant of a boy taking a seat across from her.

This concentration in itself was a bit of an unsettling experience and for one of the few times in his rather distinguished life, Spot Conlon was at a complete lost. He wasn't quite sure what had happened just a few hours before, where it had all really started, or even just what was happening now.

Spot Conlon was fairly sure that his troubles were rooted in the day the Slinker had showed up on his proverbial doorstep and that, over time, every other troubling instance stemmed in some way from that same root. Incidentally, he wasn't really sure how that happened either; one day she was just there, selling papers and making the Lodging House her home.

Slinks -as she had proclaimed herself- wasn't a girl in the conventional sense; more girl shaped and then in every other way possible, boyish. She was a force to behold, something like a hurricane rushing helter-skelter on dry land. She was in as many –sometimes more- tussles as some of the boys under Spot's command; she wore nothing that proved she had any sort of a figure; and her head was so wholly linked with all things mayhem and prankish that it sometimes downright frightened the otherwise unflappable King of Brooklyn.

In ways he didn't fully understand, he admired Slinks. Or was at least intrigued by her.

Yet, at this moment, he was steaming full speed on a muted sort of annoyance and utter confusion.

Something had to be done. This –whatever it was- had to stop. But he knew it wouldn't. There was no power alive or conjured that could stop the Slinker, not completely at least. She had a mind that way. She would wiggle or wheedle her way out of whatever he would devise and the chaos would continue onward, the relentless force of an eternally persistent imagination.

But then, he had a thought. It was a good thought, he realized, born out of justice and finality and a rather commendably endurance. It was a slightly cunning idea, he mused, and a little unethical but had good potential for becoming a great plan.

And so Spot dared to plan.

Presently he was on his feet and striding purposefully through the bunkroom and down the steps. Only a few heeded his departure with mild interest. Had they noticed, however, the strange smile adorning their leader's face, internal alarms would have gonged a great deal louder than mildly.

Yet as it was, Spot exited the Lodging House without the slightest of impediments, in search of Slinks. The mottled group of newsboys lounged lazily in the odd silence, oblivious to their King's mad spinning mechanisms of thought and the way those same thoughts had just clicked into perfect place.

We Pause (again)...

Author's Note: It's been just too long since I updated. And though I have some good tales of worthy distractions, there really is no excuse. So all I can offer is a sincere apology and beg forgiveness. I beg. Apparently this story will be going on much longer than I intended but I liked where this was at for the moment (finally; you don't know just how many revisions to which this poor story was subjected!) and so the finale will hopefully be in the next addition and --again: hopefully-- much sooner added than this chapter. :)
On a side note: my punctuation leaves something to be desired; I didn't pay as much attention as I prolly should have to the punctuation do's and don't's in school. So if something is wrongly punctuated, please try and forgive me for that too. If you can't, I accepted any and all furious teachings.
Also, Grebbel is something my aunt and my mom sometimes make. It's German in origin as far as I know. It's fried bread dough and often served for breakfast with butter and brown suger. Yum.