I meant to post this last night, but there was a snag. So here it is a night late. Enjoy. :)

Click-click, click, clicketty-click, ka-chunk!

"Got it," hissed a weasel. By the light of a lone streetlamp, he removed a pick from the door to a jewelry store. He and his gang eased it open, spraying a mist of lubricant onto the hinges every few inches to stop it from making any noise. "Okay boys," he whispered, "Let's go..."

A blast of light shot from inside the shop, catching the startled mustellid right in the face. "Freeze! Police!" shouted a Spanish-accented voice from within.

The crooks scattered, several tripping over each other or their paralyzed comrade. As they split up and down the alley, Inspector Carmelita Fox bolted out the door with her shock pistol in hand, charged and ready to fire again. Without hesitation she headed out of the alley after those who had made for the open street.

The ones who had headed for the shadows thought they were pretty well off. "We'll wait for her to get clear of here, then make a break for it. Right Sam?" hissed a raccoon.

There was no answer.

"Sam? Mac, what happened to Sam?"

There was a brief muffled shout, then silence. As Mac fell silent, the coon decided he'd had enough and made a break for it. Grabbing a drainpipe, he scrambled up with fear spurring him onward. The sound of someone climbing after him forced a snap decision. With a leap, he caught the rail of the fire escape and scrambled up onto it. With the cop a mere few feet behind him, he bolted up the stairs. If he could just get to the roof, he'd have a fighting chance. No police officer could match his super-sneaky thief moves.

Behind him, the cop chased with intense focus. 'This kid's good,' he thought as the young crook gained a few feet with a quick leap toward the next level. 'But I'm better!' He jumped onto the railing and leaped for the next level, just in time to see the boy race up that flight of stairs, still with a solid lead. 'Man, he's really good.'

The chase broke out onto the roof with the junior thief still in the lead. Casting a glance around, he made a break for the nearest escape route, a clothesline stretched between two pulleys. Catching the bottom half, he rode it across the gap. That cop would never catch him now. Once his momentum carried him to the other building...

Right at that moment the line jerked to an abrupt halt as a clothespin jammed in one of the gears. The jarring motion tore his hand loose, and with a scream he tumbled toward the street.

"Gotcha!"

Yanked to an abrupt halt, he looked up to see the cop dangling by his feet from the clothesline and holding into him by his jacket. There was a smirk on the cop's face, that of a raccoon like himself.

"You should know," the cop told him, hauling him up until he could grip the jacket collar in his teeth and use his hands freely, "It takes more than that to escape the long arm of the law." The officer, now balancing his catch on his stomach as he made his way back to the roof sloth-style, managed to talk clearly around the cloth in his teeth. "So what's your name, kid?"

The younger raccoon kept silent. Rule one of thieving: never fraternize with the enemy.

"Okay, you want to be rude, I'll start," said the cop as he hauled them both onto the roof an handcuffed his young prisoner. "My name is Cooper. Constable Cooper."

"So," asked Carmelita Fox once she and Cooper had brought their captives to the station, "Let's make this simple. Who are you and where do your parents live?"

"And while we're at it," added Sly, "What's a kid like you doing robbing jewelry stores?"

The young raccoon scowled. "I'm not going to tell you anything," he snapped, folding his arms.

Carmelita pulled out her shock pistol and twirled it on one finger. "This thing isn't comfortable, you know," she told him pointedly.

Sly put a hand on her arm. "Let me handle this, okay?"

She looked at him, then reluctantly put her weapon away. "Alright, but if you don't get any answers we're doing it my way." And with that she left the room.

As she left, Sly sat down across the table from the kid and pulled a candy bar out of his pocket. He took a bite and set the rest down on the table just out of the prisoner's reach. "So," he said after swallowing the mouthful, "What's your story, kid?"

The young coon eyed the candy bar with hunger, then looked away stubbornly. "I'm not telling you anything," he snapped. "I don't talk to cops."

Sly smiled as winsomely as only he could. "Look, nothing you say will get in any trouble. The only people in this room are you, me, and Babe Ruth here," he added, wiggling the candy. "Just think of me as a friend. We could be family – we even look alike."

The boy still held his ground. "Do you know how hokey that sounds?" he asked.

Sly shrugged. "Eh, what can I say?" He picked up the chocolate bar and took another bite. "Mm, peanuts. Tasty." He waved the bar in the boy's direction. "Look at it this way: if I were so bad, would I have saved your life back there?"

Sly could see that his wheedling was beginning to wear the kid down. This was obviously a child who had been on the streets for a while, and there was no missing the repeated movements of that little throat. The kid's mouth had to be watering like crazy, so Sly decided to move in for the final blow. "I'll tell you what. There's a vending machine right outside. Answer a few questions, and you can have your pick of snacks on my quarter. I'll even throw in a soda."

It was more than the poor kid could take. "Okay, it's a deal!" he blurted at last. "Just, uh, just don't tell the gang I ratted them out, okay?"

Sly nodded and winked. "Don't worry," he promised. "Secrets are what I do best."

A cola and a bag of cheese puffs later, Sly started questioning. "So, what's your name?"

"Larry," came the reply through a mouthful of cheese, "but my friends call me Sly."

Sly blinked, but kept his composure. "Sly, huh? Because you're such a sneaky little guy?"

Larry shook his head. "I think it's mostly because I'm the only raccoon in the bunch, just like Sly Cooper was a raccoon." The kid paused as he thought of something. "Say, you said your name was Cooper too, right? Are you related to Sly Cooper?"

Sly shook his head quickly. "Heard a lot about him, but I wouldn't know. Never met the guy. So, you and your pals look up to him?"

The kid nodded. "Yeah, me and a bunch of other street kids heard about him. All those cool moves he could do, all his famous heists. So we decided to become thieves too and become famous after he disappeared."

"Disappeared, huh?" asked Sly. "Any word on how that happened?"

"Yeah," said Larry, taking a swig of soda and letting out a burp. "But it's so confusing. Last rumor was that he was trying to find some kind of buried treasure, but no one knows what happened. Some say he was buried in a rockslide by this crazy scientist, others say the cops caught him and locked him up someplace or sent him to the chair. Lot of his old contacts disappeared after he went missing, and nobody's heard from him since."

Sly nodded slowly, as if processing this information. "So you and the other kids tried to fill his shoes, huh?" he asked thoughtfully. "What kind of heists have you pulled?"

Larry looked at his feet. "I don't know if I should tell you," he said.

Sly did his best to smile, his tail twitching uncertainly. "Come on," he urged, "I won't bite."

It took a lot of coaxing, but eventually they managed to coax more details out of Larry. Between the bunch of them, he and his gang had shoplifted everything from candy to jewelry, picked pockets, stripped cars, even mugged a few people taking shortcuts through their territory.

"Well," Carmelita observed later as they clocked out, "I guess people on the north side of Paris will sleep easier tonight."

"Yeah, I guess so," agreed Sly, wishing he could say the same. This was the third time this month that they had busted a gang modeled after his own. At first it had seemed almost funny, a blip on the radar and nothing more. Some of the gangs did nothing worse than disturb people in the middle of the night as they raced around playing at Sly Cooper, like so many Robin Hood wannabes with little suction-cup arrows. But some of them really were doing bad stuff. And none of them, it seemed, had the scruples that had defined the Cooper Gang for generations: the deeply ingrained code that forbade stealing from anyone but fellow thieves, or harming any innocent bystanders. And even though he tried to tell himself that these kids were responsible for their actions, or that they were the victims of bad parenting, something in his gut told him he was to-

SNAP!

The popping sound of Carmelita snapping her fingers tore him from his reflection. "Earth to Ringtail," she said in an irritated tone.

Sly shook his head. "Sorry," he said. "Guess I got a little lost in thought."

"Apparently," she replied with her ears briefly reclined. Then she softened. "I was trying to ask you who's driving to dinner tonight."

"Oh, I will," he replied. He needed something to take his mind off the problems surrounding him anyway.

So, Sly Cooper's got a new life, and a new set of problems. Show of hands, who thinks this is going to get worse.