//------------------------------// // Training With Uncles // Story: Dressed to Steal // by Tatsurou //------------------------------// Of course, Daddy's not the only one who trained me over the course of the next two years. As Daddy said, agility is a big part of being a Master Thief, and that required getting me physically tougher, as well as training my mind. Uncle Murray and Uncle Bentley worked with me in those areas... Murray smiled down at Coco as she stared up at him. "Alright, Coco, I'm in charge of building up your physical fitness. That means toning all your muscles to their peak without bulking up at all, so you can jump and flip around the way Sly does." He let out a chuckle as he patted his ample belly. "After all, you're not ever gonna be big enough to punch your way through stuff like I can. Heck, you can fit in the palm of my hand just now." "Up, Uncle Murray?" Coco asked hopefully, lifting her forelegs towards him. Murray chuckled, but shook his head. "No, Coco. This is about getting you able to pick things up. Though that tactic right there might be good at getting close enough to pick pockets." Seeing Coco's ears go flat and her lip quiver without lowering her legs, he sighed. "Oh, come here, you!" Bending over, he scooped her up and held her close, enjoying her trying to hug him as best she could, even if she could only reach as far as his breast pockets. Bending over, he set her down. "Now then, as for fitness-" He froze, staring. Coco grinned up at him eagerly. She clutched no less than seven wrapped snack cakes in her forelegs and was wearing a restaurant menu folded up as a hat, and a bib as a cape. While this was absolutely adorable, all of those things had been in Murray's breast pockets before picking her up. Murray scratched at his head. He hadn't even noticed her reaching into his pockets. Patting his chest, he found no sign they'd been tampered with. Opening them up, however, he found they were indeed empty when they shouldn't have been. "Yo Sly!" he bellowed out. "I think you can skip non-tool-assisted pick pocketing! She's a natural!" As Coco giggled happily at the praise, Sly called back, "That's a relief. I couldn't figure out for the life of me how to translate dexterous finger manipulations to hooves. Still gonna test her, though." "I know you will!" Murray called back. He then held out his hands. "Give 'em back now, Coco." Coco obediently returned the filched items. Once his pockets were stuffed, Murray set his jacket aside. "Alright, first thing I'm going to teach you is push ups. Not gonna do too many of them, though, that'd be too hard on you." Letting himself fall forward, he caught the ground with his palms and proceeded to fire off a good two dozen push ups, back ramrod straight and gut sucked in so it didn't touch the ground. "Now you try!" he instructed. Grinning, Coco proceeded to bend all four knees repeatedly, mimicking Murray's motions as best she could. Murray rubbed his chin. "Huh...this will take some thinking..." Bentley rubbed his gloved hands together as he sat across from the filly. "Alright, Coco. I'm going to be covering some brain exercises with you. Critical thinking and logic are going to be very important when it comes to making a heist, and you need to be able to plot the best path to take when it comes to infiltrating a facility, whatever sort of facility it, uh, happens to be." He shook his head as he tried to regain his confidence. Something about the way she just stared up at him with that soft smile, those adoring eyes, the way her forehooves rested on the table as her tail wiggled back and forth in her chair... Shivering, Bentley got control of himself. "Now, first things first is some basic logic puzzles. I'll be laying out a few clues regarding a few points of information. From those clues, I want you to fill in the blanks." He laid out a standard book of logic puzzles. "Work through a few of these until you feel confident in the concept, and then I'll make a few more for you." Bentley sat back, confident that this would work quite well...until he noticed Coco not even reaching for the pencil. "Umm...Uncle Bentley?" she asked worriedly. "Yeah?" "What does this say?" She pointed to the text. "I...can't read it." Bentley's palm promptly met his face. "No shoes, Sherlock," he grumbled to himself, managing to censor himself before teaching her a swear word. "She comes from another world! Just because the spoken language is compatible doesn't mean the written ones are!" Standing up, he went to a nearby shelf and pulled out some old books and notepads, setting them out in front of Coco. "Alright, I guess first up instead is teaching you to read and write...just as soon as I come up with a way for you to hold the pencil. I mean, you have hooves after all, no fingers..." His voice trailed off as he saw her holding the pencil in her mouth and manipulating it with teeth and tongue, drawing a rather good likeness of Sly from memory. "Huh. That's a...rather talented tongue..." he mumbled, stunned. "Bentley!" Sly snapped, sticking his head in, having only heard those last words. "Just what are you teaching her?" "Look at how she's holding that pencil!" Bentley proclaimed, pointing to Coco as she continued to draw. Sly stared for a time. "Huh, you're right," he admitted, rubbing his chin. He then grinned slyly. "Wonder if she gets that from her mot-" "SLY!" I still don't get Daddy's sense of humor. What's really weird is that the first time I stayed with Mommy, she said the same thing about my tongue when I showed her how I could draw. For some reason, she turned bright red when I said I thought I got it from Daddy, and started stammering. She also took a cold shower the moment Daddy got me back out the door when he came to pick me up that day. I decided not to tell Daddy about it, but Uncle Murray found it hilarious.