Uploading this right quick before bed! For those of you who are curious, work on the sequel to Nightingale Syndrome is underway as we speak!

For the rest of you, enjoy the chapter!

Bentley was glad that at least Sly stopped sniping at Kaia when he realized that, out of all of them, she was the only one who didn't have any dry clothes to change into, leaving her curled up in a cold, miserable, seasick ball in the corner all the way back to England.

Upon docking, they found the nearest hotel and took conjoined rooms. Kaia immediately vanished into the bathroom and, within seconds, the sound of a shower turning on was heard.

"I can't believe she did that..." Sly hissed, pacing.

Bentley wasn't a confrontational person, but he spent a good, long moment just then contemplating the merits of verbally tearing his good friend a new one. Then he noticed that Sly's hands were shaking slightly and everything made sense.

He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut. Sly and gratitude had roughly the same relationship as water and pure sodium- they could only coexist for about a second and a half before combusting violently.

He vaguely thought he deserved recognition for everything he put up with. Maybe not from Sly or even Murray, but from someone.

Maybe he'd be canonized- the Patron Saint of Patience in Regard to Teenage Angst.

"Sly," he finally sighed out, "You do know that she's the only reason you're not being fingerprinted right this second, right?"

"Yeah, and you realize how weird that is right? I mean, what's her endgame?"

Endgame... Bentley pinched his nose a bit harder. "I know it's against your nature, but maybe consider that she was actually helping?"

The look the raccoon gave him was flat, "'Helping'?"

"On impulse and probably regretting it now, but yes. I cannot think of a single ulterior motive she could possibly have had. And I spent most of our travel time thinking about just that."

Sly crossed his arm and averted his gaze, "There has to be some reason."

The turtle just sighed, letting his hand fall. Flat out telling Sly that he was being paranoid (and coming from Bentley, that was saying something) would just convince the thief even more, so instead he just said, "If you're so convinced, talk to her and figure it out yourself. You two are sharing that room," he nodded to the one Kaia had claimed by virtue of disappearing into the shower, "Don't look at me like that, the sooner you two stop acting like you want to eviscerate each other, the sooner I can stop having a migraine. Get."

It was probably just the fact that Sly was so surprised that allowed Bentley to shut the door in his face.

Before he completely drifted off to sleep, he heard the sound of muffled voices next door. At least they weren't shouting and didn't even sound that antagonized. He figured that was probably a good sign.

Sly had never been so out of his element.

He was an extrovert, a very social person, he could at least banter with just about anyone. But Jinx was the Left-Field poster child, nothing she did made sense so he had no idea if he was supposed to like her or smother her with a pillow in her sleep.

Still, even though he was sort of leaning towards the last option, she was the reason Interpol hadn't arrested him in the Welsh Triangle, so he owed her if nothing else. That decided it for him.

Once he decided to at least try to be civil, he finally had a course of action. Having something to do helped a lot. He rummaged around in his bag until he found a clean shirt that had somehow survived a handful of heists without being destroyed or irreparably stained. Further search revealed a pair of sweats he was pretty sure he didn't own (though he suspected Bentley put them there after that one time Sly had gotten sick and didn't have any warm clothes).

He picked the lock on the bathroom door, then opened it just enough to place the clothes inside before closing and locking it again. Just in time too, he heard the water shut off just as he stepped back from the door.

Sly paced back to his bed, the one closest to the door, and sat on the edge, finally giving into the temptation to pull his backpack onto his lap and gently pull free the hard-won papers inside.

He'd barely had time to so much as glance at the page (ancient Japanese script copied into several different languages as the book changed hands over the centuries) before the bathroom door opened and a cloud of steam escaped, followed shortly by Jinx.

Sly wasn't sure why he was so surprised at how small she looked, long hair looking bedraggled at best, clothes so many sizes too big (he was surprised the pants were staying on, even with the drawstring).

They stared at each other for a long minute, him going completely still, her working her fingers nervously through her hair in absence of a brush. Sly might not have been as good at reading people as Bentley, but even he could see she was trying to decide whether or not to accept the shaky offer of a truce.

Finally, she cleared her throat and said, "Thanks. For the clothes."

Something eased in Sly's chest and he shrugged, subconsciously moving over a bit on the bed, a silent invitation that the hybrid accepted, coming to sit beside him.

"Are those the pages of the book you were looking for?"

He nodded, "As far as I can tell, they detail a technique developed by one of my ancestors from feudal Japan, Rioichi Cooper." His fingers twitched toward the sketch in the corner, a figure shadowed by a cloak, only clearly a raccoon by virtue of his tail. "The Ninja Spire Jump, I think." He cut himself off there, he still wasn't going to trust her, he wasn't going to tell her what the technique was supposed to let him sneak past.

That was all they said, for a while. Sly read over the pages in his hands and Jinx wrestled her fingers through her hair until it was moderately untangled.

It was... well, calm. Not really nice, but it wasn't bad in any way. Which of course meant it didn't last.

"So, this book you're looking for, that's what was in the safe at your house, all those years ago?"

Sly looked at the hybrid sharply, "How did you know that?"

She merely blinked at him, like she hadn't just thrown out that information casually, "I read your file, Sly. Don't you think I read your dad's too?"

The tightness in the raccoon's chest returned with a vengeance, twisting up in his heart and lungs until he stood abruptly, placed the pages back in his backpack, and strode purposefully into the bathroom, leaving only a strangled, "I'll take my shower now." in his wake.

I lay awake for most of the night, cursing both my curiosity and my utter lack of tact.

Seriously, what had I been thinking? Cooper had reacted to next to nothing the whole time I'd been around except mention of his dad, it was a sore subject with flashing signs and freaking neon and I'd still stomped all over it.

I pretended to be asleep when Cooper came out of the shower, made his way to the only other bed in the room, and settled in. It didn't take him long to fall asleep at all, but I kept curling into a tighter ball, watching the curtains over the window as the breeze from the air conditioner made them wave.

I might not like Cooper, but only a horrible person wouldn't feel bad about what I'd just done. And he'd even offered an olive branch beforehand, I sucked at being a person.

The night passed mostly in a slightly varied feedback loop of those thoughts and before I knew it, the sky was lighting beyond the curtains and I hadn't gotten any sleep at all.

I finally got up about an hour later, after staring fruitlessly at the ceiling and hoping to still squeeze in a little sleep.

I slid out from under the covers as silently as I could, which wasn't very, and shuffled over to the nearby table, trying not to trip over the hem of the too long sweatpants that refused to stay rolled up. A brochure of sorts for the hotel sat there, so I settled in and idly flipped through it.

Excellent, they apparently served breakfast. My stomach grumbled at me. I hadn't eaten anything since the peanut butter crackers Bentley gave me what felt like ages ago.

Still... I let my eyes slide over to the second bed in the room. Cooper was sprawled out, looking exactly as young as he was, now that he didn't have that cocky expression on his face. I wondered if he'd hear me leave. If he did, I had no delusions that I could get downstairs before he caught up with me. He'd probably think I was going to call in the cavalry or something. Sure, I probably would have before, but at that point I was just tired of it all. I just wanted to go home, and I didn't dislike anyone in the gang enough to call the cops on them anymore. Well, I still didn't like Cooper, but I felt like I owed him from what I said last night.

I was just sitting there trying to figure out what to do when, out of the corner of my eye I saw the door to the adjoining room crack open. Bentley caught my eye and waved, motioning at Sly and putting a finger to his lips, then gesturing for me to follow him out of the room.

Curious and more than a little pleased to not have to sit awkwardly in the room doing nothing, I followed him. Murray was still asleep, but Bentley and I headed out into the hallway quietly, closing the door.

"Thought you might be up," He said before I could even open my mouth, "I was going to head downstairs for something to eat and thought you might want to join me."

My stomach answered that for me with a loud growl that Bentley, bless his saintly turtle heart, completely ignored.

The breakfast fair was a mixture of familiar and completely foreign things to me. I didn't tend to trust anything in a buffet that wasn't baked, so I found myself a bagel and some little cheesecake brownie muffin things that were probably grossly unhealthy and a glass of apple juice before sitting down with Bentley. He had oatmeal, fruit, and milk. I honestly couldn't find it in me to be surprised.

"So, how'd it go with Sly last night?" He asked casually, once I had a nice mouthful of muffin to choke on.

I downed half my apple juice trying not to die, "How did you know about that?"

He shrugged, spearing some kind of melon with his fork, "I had a little talk with him while you were in the shower."

I put my head in my hands and groaned, not looking up at him, "Please don't tell me you told him to be nice because if you did that makes this five times worse."

"Why, what happened?"

"He was nice. Well, sorta. And then I totally put my foot in my mouth."

I told him the story. At the end, the look he gave me was the same kind of look I got from my dad when I failed my French class.

"You're an idiot."

"And a bad person." I agreed, picking at the paper shell of one of my muffins. "Now that we've established that, what do I do about it?"

"Apologize," Bentley said immediately. "Don't make a speech of it or anything, but he will not bring it up, he'll just seethe about it. Which will make it so much worse in the long run."

"Thanks, that's comforting." But I didn't have time to offer a different idea because suddenly Cooper was slipping into the seat beside Bentley with a cup of coffee, looking more than a little irate.

"You could have left a note," He grumbled into his mug, "I thought Jinx had slipped off to call the cops."

"Uh, rude. My name is not Jinx and I'm sitting right here." He looked over at me, with an expression I couldn't name, as his eyebrow began an incredulous upward climb. I quickly switched gears, "But that's neither here nor there. I'm sorry for epically putting my foot in my mouth last night, please accept this muffin as a gesture of solidarity."

There was a split second of awkward, but then Bentley snorted into his milk and Cooper rolled his eyes and swiped the muffin, which I decided to assume was his emotionally stunted way of accepting my emotionally stunted apology.

Well, at least we could end this crazy vacation on a positive note.

Bentley cleared his throat and turned to Cooper, "So what exactly happened with Raleigh?"

The raccoon shrugged, inhaling his coffee, "We fought, I won, he did his generic villain monologue- I may have defeated him, but I'm no match for his villainous cohort, Muggshot, blahblahblah, a snake couldn't slither into Mesa City without setting off an alarm, meaningless threat, etcetera."

"Wow, seriously?" I asked, tearing my bagel into little pieces, "I thought those sorts of speeches only happened in comics and video games."

"Yeah well Raleigh grew up spoiled rotten and became a pirate because he thought it'd be fun, I think we've established he has a flair for the dramatic."

"True," I muttered, dragging one of my bagel pieces through the cream cheese on my plate. "Still, is melodrama a requirement to villainy?"

"Well as a friend once told me, the frailty of genius is that it requires an audience," Cooper glanced to Bentley at that and, seeing the turtle had his head in his hands, nudged him with an elbow. "What's your problem?"

Bentley's hands slid down his face as he groaned, "Seriously?"

"What?"

"Seriously?"

Cooper glanced at me with a raised eyebrow as if to say 'is he making sense to you?' I shrugged my confusion at him.

Bentley seemed about three seconds away from beating his head against the table and to hell with societal norms. "You just detailed our next move. Out loud. At the breakfast table."

Cooper got it before me, which was slightly painful for my pride, but to be fair, I think it speaks well of my character that I didn't understand at first. He groaned. "Oh man, seriously?"

"What? What are you two talking about?" And then I got it. And threw my last piece of bagel at Cooper, "Seriously? Seriously?!"

"Okay," he said, catching the bagel out of the air because among everything else of course he had to be a freaking ninja, "in my defense, it's not like you even thought of turning us in."

"Well, duh, that's because Bentley would do terribly in prison."

"It true." The turtle agreed with his head in his hands.

"You just had to go blabbing," I accused, jabbing Cooper in the ribs with the dull end of the knife I'd gotten for my bagel, "I do not want to go to Utah with you."

"I was just going to leave her in front of the Tower of London," Bentley groaned.

I felt my eyes start to twitch. I let my head drop to the table, "I hate everything."

Cooper took that opportunity to rub the bagel he'd snatched out of the air into my hair.

To my eternal dismay, I spent most of my first visit to England staring at the inside of my motel room. The official reason was that I was far too recognizable, which was true, but it was also true that I'd try to go sightseeing if I could get out of sight of the gang for half a second and the sights were where the most security was. It was would kind of be hard to not be noticed there.

This led to a truly spectacular amount of time playing cards. Mostly with Bentley, because he didn't really go out unless he had a reason, but sometimes with Murray and occasionally with Sly.

Games with Cooper got really intense really fast and it was ridiculous when he came back from an excursion with Bentley and Murray one day and instead of betting with our usual poker chip substitutes that I'd made (various origami figures fashioned from hotel stationery), he dumped a bag on the ground and wanted to bet with the crown jewels.

I think the fact that I absolutely lost it freaking out that he'd stolen the crown jewels kept him entertained for the rest of the week.

At some point, a small duffel appeared by my bed and, as the week progressed, filled up with various articles of clothing and, glory hallelujah, a couple of pairs of shoes. Most of the stuff was generic, just T-shirts and jeans sort of things, but at one point a pair of Vans colored like the Union flag appeared and I just laughed and laughed.

Cooper turned out not to be so bad. Sure, about 75% of the time he was teenage angst buried underneath ten feet of arrogance, cynicism, and wit, but the remaining time he could actually be charming and sometimes downright friendly, which I was starting to see more of now that I no longer was the one responsible for my continued presence.

We weren't exactly friends, considering that most of the time I wanted to punch him in the face, but I got where I could tolerate him, at least.

It was all that could be reasonably hoped for, I felt.

It was also something I was valiantly trying to remember as I stared him down, arms crossed and glaring. "No."

He rolled his eyes, "You say 'no' like we're giving you a choice."

"Sly," Bentley admonished in what I liked to think of as his 'parent' voice. I liked Bentley much more than Cooper, Bentley and I were buds. That is, I liked him until he turned the Voice on me, "Kaia, it's only logical."

"How is this logical?" I asked, throwing my hands up in the air. "How did my life get to the point where me spending the day drugged is the logical choice?!"

"You know, your voice gets screechy when you're riled." Cooper said archly, forcing me to throw one of my shoes at his head.

Murray sat near Bentley, looking like he wasn't sure if he should be upset we were fighting or pleased we were getting along, the poor sap.

"Think about it," Bentley said, the Voice not wavering one bit even as Cooper stumbled behind him, clutching his shoulder where my shoe had impacted, "We need to go to our hideout, it's the place best equipped for me to do research. You can't know where our hideout is, not unless you want this situation to be semi-permanent."

"So blindfold me or something, I don't care," I grumbled, trying to figure out how to get my shoe back without being too obvious about it and, thus, prompting Cooper to run off with it to parts unknown.

"We don't trust you to keep the blindfold on," Cooper shrugged like, 'you should totally spend the day drugged in the back of my van, that isn't psychotic at all'.

I could have suggested that they also tie me up to avoid the whole drugged thing, but I honestly wasn't sure what the lesser of two evils was.

I stared at them. They stared at me. It occurred to me that I was beyond outnumbered and I felt my eyes start to twitch as I pointed at Cooper, "No drawing on my face."

"Wouldn't dream of it." He said, the epitome of innocence, which didn't make me feel better at all.

"You drool in your sleep," was the first thing I heard upon waking up. Seeing as how this was me, I immediately flailed in the direction of the voice in the urge to do violence and dumped myself off the couch and onto the floor.

I groaned loudly, trying to drown out the laughter, "I hate you."

"I know you do." But then Cooper turned out not to be a complete jerk because he grabbed a handful of the back of my shirt and hauled me up, which was extremely helpful since I wasn't sure which of my bits were still connected to me.

Effing drugs.

"I'm just gonna say 'no' next time, screw you all very much," I grumbled once I'd been deposited back on the couch, squeezing my eyes shout.

"I kept Sly from drawing on your face," Murray piped up from nearby.

I pointed in his vague direction, "You're my favorite."

"Does anyone want to hear what I found out about Muggshot?"

I squinted at the blurry shape of Bentley, sitting at a desk to my left. "If you drugged me for X amount of hours so you could do an hour of research, there will be a reckoning."

He waved away my announcement, "You have no idea how long we've been here."

"And that's not creepy at all, nope."

Sly flopped down on the couch next to me, throwing an arm over my shoulders, "Come on, you're almost as paranoid as Bentley."

"Remove your arm or I shall bite."

He did, then promptly kicked his feet up and dropped them in my lap. I yelped and tried to push them off, but his boots weighed a metric ton and I still didn't have full control of my rather flaily arms.

Cooper laughed, "You're like a tiny kitten!"

"Get off! I'm going to stab you in the eye with a rusty nail!"

He actually reached out and patted my head, "Teeny, tiny, squeaky kitten."

I did the only thing I felt could reasonably be expected of me. I bit him. It was possible I had a genetic condition that predisposed me to violence when I didn't get the last word.

"I'm glad you guys are getting along better." Murray said with a sunshine and rainbows grin after I detached myself and Cooper made a few choice remarks about rabies shots, which... what?

Before I could ask what he was on about, Bentley interrupted, "Anyway, back to our target? The sooner we make a plan, the sooner we can leave."

"I am on board with this plan!" I said, spitting out some blood.

"So what's Muggshot's deal, Bentley?" Cooper asked, going for nonchalant as he sank into the couch, but anyone with eyes could see the way his shoulders tensed up at the thought of one of his dad's killers.

"Self-made gangster," Bentley answered instantly. "Grew up watching mobsters on the big screen. He was the runt of the litter and had a problem with bullies growing up, so he decided to be just like his heroes and demand respect at the point of a gun. He's the Fiendish Five's muscle and is holed up in Mesa City, Utah."

"Always wanted to go there," the raccoon responded with a slow grin that didn't quite reach his eyes, "Been a while since we've been in the U.S. anyway."

"Fantastic," I interrupted. "Don't suppose you guys could drop me off in New York?"

"On our way out of the country, maybe."

"Stellar," I grumbled, crossing my arms and settling in the couch for a good sulk.

Then, of course, because he was a jerk, Cooper decided tickling me was an excellent idea.

It was war.

Getting back into the states was an exercise in subterfuge. Bentley apparently had a contact that was teaching him to forge passports and we were using the master's creations for this particular venture.

Yup, even me. Bentley had some sort of weird dust that turned whatever it touched a different color so with that and the aid of some contacts, I became a grey-furred, brown-eyed wolf. It was freaky looking in the mirror and seeing that, but it was true that without the crazy color of my eyes, I didn't look too much like a hybrid. Sure, you could still tell, but only if you knew what to look for.

All this was necessary because we had to fly. Theoretically, I'm sure Bentley could have rigged something with a boat, but I'm also sure he valued his sanity enough not to try and stick the four of us on a boat together for a prolonged voyage.

So flying it was. This was only slightly better in my mind than sailing and that was because I had a stupid fear of heights. Flying in a plane wasn't too bad, because it felt pretty dang solid under your feet and the windows were small, but I would still get pretty bad vertigo if I looked outside and turbulence was a personal sort of hell.

The airport was fun because I got to do something illegal with no fear of consequence. If any of the security personnel got suspicious, I could pretend to be relieved they'd discovered me. So I had fun with it and did my best to ignore Cooper's hovering. Bentley and Murray might trust me not to throw them under the bus, but Cooper hadn't quite gotten there yet.

I wasn't going to throw them under the bus, though. Truth to tell, I liked them fine and, while the situation thus far was annoying at times, it wasn't like I'd actually had any plans for my summer break and making a tour of the U.S. and Europe certainly wasn't a bad one.

Besides, the gang wasn't like any other criminals I'd ever met. They treated their disregard of the law almost casually, but still had a fair amount of respect for law enforcement and they only went after master criminals because, as Cooper put it, how else could you prove you were a Master Thief? Also, stealing from the layperson was apparently boring.

I didn't spend too much time thinking on whether their particular crime of choice was actually wrong, all things considered. I probably could come up with a pretty good case either way, having grown up with an FBI agent for a father, but I didn't want to look too closely at my situation, not when I was just starting to have fun.

So I didn't cause any scenes in any airports or on the plane and, thankfully, was pretty distracted during the flight because my seatmate was a single mother with a small child who thought my hair was pretty much the best toy ever.

I'd never been around kids much, but I was able to fumble through well enough to let the poor, frazzled-looking mom take a nap. Really all I had to do was let the young sugar glider play with my braid. Somehow he seemed to equate it to his tail, which was longer than his entire body. The whole thing was stupidly endearing and I was well and truly distracted for the entirety of that first flight.

The rest of the gang was all on the plane somewhere, but splitting up was part of the plan and I wasn't about to go looking for them.

After a while, the flights sort of started to blur together. Every now and again, I'd start to doze off, only to have someone jostle me awake when it was time to switch flights.

I sort of felt like a zombie, shuffling from gate to gate and seat to seat, only grabbing a couple of hours here and there and having my ears thoroughly abused by the pressure changes until it felt like they were full of water.

Cooper took pity on me during a short layover for the flight that would be taking us to Utah and dragged me to an in-airport Starbucks. I was so out of it that I just glanced at the menu and ordered the first thing I saw, which was, thankfully, an iced latte.

A few minutes later, I was sitting with Sly at a table by a massive window that looked out over the air strip and feeling slightly more human now that I'd had a few sips of coffee and was halfway through a piece of pound cake that I definitely hadn't bought for myself. Come to think of it, I hadn't paid for the coffee either. Oh well, free food.

"You don't travel often, do you?" The thief asked with a slight smirk, taking a long, pointed sip of his black coffee.

I shrugged, "Very rarely. I don't get out much."

"Yeah, I could tell that from the second I met you."

I flicked my straw wrapper at him.

Younger Sly and Kaia are very fun to throw together, I must admit. Very reactive. I hope you enjoyed! Feel free to check out the blog for story extras and I'll see you in a couple of weeks!