Hey there guys! It's been a little while. I'm excited to share this story with you guys. So, here's chapter one! Now a quick note; I am using the official comic that spans between games two and three, but I've made one rather large change to it. (PS if you haven't read the comic you can find it on the wiki)
Sly Cooper was getting antsy. It had been almost a year since the whole Clock-La incident and the gang was still split up. Sure he had Josephina, his girlfriend of nearly a year, but he was starting to feel the itch, the need to pull a job. It had been too long.
"Rings... Earth to Rings..." Josie waved a hand in front of his eyes and he jumped. "You've been staring at that flower cart for fifteen minutes now."
He shook his head to clear out his head and smiled sheepishly at her. "Sorry Josie." He said, ears falling against his head slightly.
"Sly, what's wrong? You've been acting funny all week."
"I'm fine... I've just been missing the guys and you know, pulling jobs." He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. She smiled in sympathy and took his hand from across the table.
"We're just waiting for Bentley's signal remember? Any day now he'll have us come get him from the hospital and we can go get Murray back and call in the twins and all the others and be back to pulling jobs in no time." She smiled, her now blonde hair flopping in her face. "Until then we get to drink champagne and eat all the caviar we want. Sit back and take in the sights for once."
"We've been taking in the sights for a year Josie."
"So? The world is an amazing place! France is beautiful, the Rivera is amazing..." He gave her a dry look and she sighed. "Alright so I'm bored out of my mind too. This isn't exactly what I was hoping for when I decided to stick around. But, let's make this boring little trip interesting. We only have a few more uses on this card before someone tips Carm and Liam we're using it. Let's split up and see who can get the biggest haul before we get back to the hotel?" He smirked.
"You really think you can beat me? I won the last three times we did this."
"Well I have my damaged pride to think about." She winked. "Besides it beats sitting here moping." She stood, left the last credit card they had on the table and walked away with a small smirk. "See you back at the hotel." She blew him a kiss and then vanished, leaving him alone. He chuckled and left in the opposite direction, slipping through a small park, his hat pulled low as he put headphones in his ears and pretended to listen to music on his phone. He ran into a jogger and helped her to her feet, profusely apologizing as he slipped her wallet from her fanny pack. He waved to her and then tossed most of the wallet on the road, taking her cash and both credit cards before continuing on his way. By the time he returned to the hotel he had several hundred in cash, six credit cards, two watches and a diamond ring. Josie was waiting in their room, cross legged on the bed, and counting the cash she'd collected.
"How'd you make out?" He asked once the door was shut.
"Four fifty, three cards and a rather nice watch." She held up her wrist to show off the gold and diamond rollex.
"Fancy." He flopped down on the bed and counted out the cash he'd collected, smirking.
"Five twenty three, six cards, two watches and a ring. I win." She groaned and fell back on the bed.
"Damn it! How do you keep doing that?" She whined, though he knew she wasn't really upset.
"Awww, is my poor Josie-wosie slipping?" He teased.
"I am not slipping!" She pouted and Sly smirked, leaning over to kiss her.
"Says you." He collected their ill gotten gains and stuffed them in one of the bags. Tonight was their last night on the Riviera and they needed to be ready as soon as the sun came up in the morning.
"I'm not slipping!" She insisted, folding her arms over her chest. He smirked and sat down on the bed beside her.
"Alright, alright, I'll stop teasing." He chuckled. She smiled and leaned against his shoulder. Her ear twitched and she looked over at the window with a frown.
"That's the fourth carrier pigeon this week." She grumbled. Sly nodded and frowned, getting up and going to the window to open it. The bird hopped into the room and cooed as he took the message from it's leg.
He read the small slip of paper and then sighed, crumpling it up. "Alright, that's it, I need to go find out who this Big Jim McSweeney is. He's been trying to get my attention for three weeks now."
Josie nodded and smiled at him. "I'll make a few calls. See what I can find."
"Thanks sweetie." He cooed, walking over to give her a quick kiss. "I'll see what mine can find too."
They spent the rest of the night planning their next move and getting in touch with their contacts around the world, searching for whoever Big Jim McSweeney was.
Josie narrowed her eyes as she looked over her contact's information. She'd spent three days getting every scrap of information on the mysterious pidgeon sending stranger. It wasn't much. A friend of her father knew the man, but that friend had Alzheimer's and could barely form sentences, let alone remember something from twenty years prior. All he'd been able to give them was the word Heathrow. Even then it took a full day to get any hits.
"Sly, I found something!" She called excitedly into the small kitchen. "James C. McSweeney, known associate of Connor Cooper and Dr. Reginald Mandrill arrested in 1992 only a few weeks after your parent's death. Says here, he turned himself in." Sly leaned over her shoulder to read what little information she'd found. "Currently housed at Heathrow Prison for the Criminally Insane and Dangerous."
"Didn't Tris mention there was a riot there a few months back?"
"Yeah, like eight months ago..." He narrowed his eyes.
"What's his current status?"
"Doesn't say and I'm not a hacker. Computer talk makes no sense. If you want to know about McSweeney we have to send the information to Tris and wait three weeks or head to South Carolina now." Sly sighed and stood back to his full height.
"We can't wait three weeks. I need answers."
"You're gonna make me go to South Carolina aren't you Rings?"
"Like I could make you do anything you didn't want to." He rolled his eyes and smirked at her. "Look, I can go alone, or you can come with me, but either way I'm going to talk to this guy. He supposedly was associated with my dad, that's reason enough." In the twelve years since his father's death, Sly hadn't found a single one of his father's old contacts. Not one had reached out to him and his father's contacts list had been seized by the police after his death. The ones who weren't in jail had done a very good job at laying low and most, if not all of them, were very likely retired. This was likely Sly's only chance to learn anything he didn't already know about his father, and maybe even his mother.
Josie nodded. She understood, if it had been information on her parents she would have wanted to know. "Alright, I'll come with you. Act as getaway driver. But if I get arrested because some nut job dropped a name and lured you into a trap, your tail will be my new scarf." He laughed and nodded, raising his hands slightly.
"Easy tiger." He chuckled. She stood and shut her laptop, giving him a quick kiss.
"So I guess we should get going to South Carolina."
"Guess so." He grinned.
Big Jim McSweeney was an aging man. Long past his prime, he had spent the past twenty or so years in Heathrow Prison and was currently fighting a losing battle with cancer, not to mention nursing a stab wound from a fellow inmate. Damn pudding cups. They kept getting him in trouble. He grunted and shifted on his medical cot.
"Lights out in ten McSweeney." He glanced at the nurse and grimaced.
"As if I can actually get ta sleep." He mumbled under his breath.
"I don't care if you can't sleep Jim, it's lights out for everyone. No exceptions."
"Now see if that were true the guards would have ta sleep too." She glared at him and he chuckled, though it turned into a rather violent coughing fit. "When am I getting back to my own damn cell?"
"If your cancer magically goes away in the next ten minutes I'll have you transferred back. How's that sound?" She deadpanned. He groaned and leaned his head back on the pillows, staring at the ceiling. At least he wasn't currently hooked up to any of the machines around him. "I'll see you tomorrow Jim."
"See ya Delores." He waved and watched the doddering old rabbit shuffle out, replaced by the cold and rather bitter young owl on nightwatch duty this week. "Evening Polly, or is it Morning for ya?"
"Lights out McSweeney." She hissed at him, flicking off the lights and moving to her usual place at the small desk, with her little lamp and her stupid trashy romance serials and her god damn annoying bubble gum popping. He sighed. It was going to be a long night, his lungs were burning and his leg was acting up. No way was he getting to sleep anytime soon.
After an hour of listening to Polly's annoying music blasting through her headphones and her gum popping he'd about had it. His ear twitched as a guard walked in and he looked over at him. Guards didn't usually stop by the infirmary unless they were stationed there, or they were bringing in or taking out injured inmates.
"McSweeney? Bed six." Polly grumbled after a short, hushed conversation. Now that got his attention. The guard walked over and seconds later a small cloud of smoke enveloped Polly's station, knocking the poor owl out cold.
"Y'er sure as hell ain't Jones." He said as the fake guard approached.
"Officer Jones has the night off." The figure's hat and hood were drawn low over his face, and slick with rain.
"Really? Ain't that a shame. His lullabies are the only thing that gets me ta sleep on night's like this."
"Ain't that a shame..." He repeated. "Maybe this will help." A small card landed in his lap and he picked it up to look at it in the dull light.
"Well I'll be... I should have tried pigeons years ago." He muttered to himself before looking up at the fake guard and narrowing his eyes. "This supposed ta mean something to me pal?"
"Depends. You the same James Big Jim McSweeney who's been trying to get the attention of Sly Cooper for the past four weeks?" The guard pulled the hood back to reveal a young raccoon. Approximate age for Conner and Marie's kid, same eyes, same hair, but you could never be too careful when in a situation like this.
"Ya mean am I the same Big Jim McSweeney who ran with the original Cooper gang? Who bounced a little snot nose named Sly on his knee for two years between jobs?"
"Yeah, that would be the one." The raccoon's eyes narrowed and his tail flicked behind him.
"Well... Maybe I am, maybe I ain't, but how do I know y'er not some ambitious wanna be with a forged calling card and a big mouth? So here's what we're gonna do." He held up a hand to show a tattoo of a building. "If y're a real Cooper I don't even have to ask the question." The raccoon stared at his hand for several minutes before he started getting impatient. "Look kid I don't got all night."
The racoon gave him a desperate look. "It's right there, I can feel it please just-"
"I said no. We're done. Ya had yer one chance, take yer phony card and get out while ya still can, cause trust me, breakin' outta here is a lot harder than breakin' in. Not that a real Cooper would have that problem." He'd barely finished his sentence before the cold hook of a cane was being shoved under his chin, hooking on his remaining unbroken tusk.
"You're lucky I'm the real Sly Cooper, any other thief would have torn your tusks out by now. Enough games. I want answers!"
"Look kid I don't know who ya think ya are but-"
"I'm Sly Cooper! My father was Connor, my mother was Marie, I'm an only kid. My full name is Sylvester Thaddeus Winslow Cooper. My parents settled down on the Ligurian Coast in Italy and stayed there until the day they died in 1992 when I was eight years old! I have a mild allergy to fish, I snack on pistachios just like my old man, I can't swim because water terrifies me, I still have nightmares about the night Clockwerk attacked and I wanted to be a pirate when I was little! What more do you want from me?" McSweeney was a little taken back by the sudden rush of information but he quickly wrapped his head around what Sly was saying. "My mother grew fresh vegetables and herbs in her garden, she wore a rose perfume I can still smell today if I sit and think about it hard enough, and she played one song on the piano, only the one song and -"
"Alright, that's enough! Kid calm down." He said. "I believe you, geeze..." Sly blushed a little and looked down at the floor.
"Sorry..."
"No, no it's my fault... But ya can't be too careful." He wheezed a cough and winced. "How long until that powder you gave the nurse wears off?"
"We have twenty minutes left, tops."
"Then sit... we have a lot to talk about and time ain't exactly on either of our sides." He nodded and took a seat in the chair by the bed. "Now... What do you know about the Cooper Vault?"
Okie dokie guys, that's the end of chapter one! Let me know what you think!