WARNING: If you haven't finished Sly 2 and don't want any spoilers, dont' read this story! OO

A/N: For my convenience I had Murray stick with the gang after Sly reunited with him and Bentley. I know what he does in the beginning of Sly 3, but it was too difficult for me to worry about how to get him back into the gang. This whole story is still a W.I.P. and I'm trying my best to create more villains... so if you're going to be mad at me for having Murray back in the gang, just don't read this. : 'Kay?

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Sly Cooper... sadly. D':

Introduction: Target Sly Cooper

Bentley sat in the stands at the dogfight stadium with his laptop and some notes scrawled across his lap. With a few flicks of his keyboard he pulled up a live video feed from inside the Team Cooper hanger on his screen. He cleared his throat before speaking through a small headset with a microphone.

"Sly? Murray? Do you copy?"

The turtles voice crackled through the hanger's speakers. Sly departed from his plane and walked over to the intercom control panel, pressin down a small red button and answering his turtle friend.

"Yeah, I hear ya. Murray's a bit tied up at the moment, though."

Sly glanced to Murray for a moment. The pink hippo was pathetically caught in a bunch of wires coming from the hanger's security system ports. He gave a wave to Murray who, when he waved in return, fell flat on his face.

"Sly, I need you to check and make sure my robotic piloting system is working in my plane. When I give you the signal, tell me if all four lights come on in the cockpit!"

The raccoon did as he was told and went over to Bentley's plane once he was given the signal. One light flickered on, then two, then three, and finally the fourth.

"Yeah, they're on. But… are they supposed to be delayed like that?" asked Sly from across the hanger.

Just after he heard Sly give the A-OK, Bentley's connection broke and turned into static. The color commentary audio system kicked in and the stadium echoed with the voice of the announcer.

A tuxedo-wearing rabbit jumped on top of the announcers' table in their box above the stadium and poured his excited voice into the microphone he was gripping a bit too tightly.

"Welcome one and all to the twenty-fifth annual Aviator's P.R.I.M.E. competition! Pilots from far and wide come together here in this stadium in a network of heart-pounding battles to gun each other down and prove to the world who's the better aviator!"

As the commentator rambled on to get the crowd going, Bentley tried to tick around with his computer.

"It's no use," mumbled Bentley. "The commentary system is interrupting the radio waves linking me up to the hanger. I can't make out what Sly said entirely. Well at least he said they were working so it can't be anything to bad, right?"

Sly saw the yellow light in the hanger glow bright, meaning it was time for the pilots to rev their engines and get their planes out to their respective launch pads.

He climbed into his biplane and turned the controls on.

"C'mon, Murray!" he called to his teammate.

Murray finally got himself out of the mess of wires and got into his airplane as well. Bentley maneuvered his plane with a radio control system as a Robo-Bentley 5000 (basically a robot-like Bentley that the real Bentley commands from the stands) did the steering from inside the cockpit.

The three planes left the Team Cooper hanger once the doors opened up. Carefully the three drove the planes to their team's launch pad. There they saw another light system like the one in their hanger. The light was still yellow. The competition wouldn't begin until it shone green.

//MEANWHILE…//

Inside the massive French hotel the pilots were staying in, one of the pilots was wigging out. She ran across the lobby in a panicked dash and pushed the double-door entrance open.

"I have to make a break for it," she told herself nearly breathless as she continued to run down the street.

She was stopped, however, when she collided with a man who looked at least two decades her senior. He was partly in shadows from a five story building next to him, but the pilot on the run knew who he was.

"Where do you think you're going, Amelia?" he asked her in an accent native to his homeland. "I specifically told you what I wanted you to do. The arena you seek is that way."

Amelia let her eyes trace the path that the man was pointing in. Not to her surprise, she saw the dogfighting stadium. Usually the sight of such a place made her happy. She lived for these kinds of competitions. However, being asked to kill a fellow pilot was a first.

"I… I'm sorry. I'll go get to Team France's hanger and I will not fail you." The female pilot couldn't help but lower her cat ears in sorrow. "I'll get my biplane ready this instant."

Turning around, she dragged her feet as she headed off in the direction of the French hanger. Before she was too far, the mysterious man called out to her as she continued walking.

"I do not care what you do with the other members of Team Cooper, Amelia. They are no threat to me. It is only Sly that I demand you take down."

Amelia bit her lip and quickened her pace. Eventually she broke into another sprint and reached Team France's hanger. Quickly putting her gear on, the cat stepped into her biplane and revved the engine.

"Where were you?" asked a frog pilot in French, his accent being very thick. "You had the whole team worried you weren't showing up."

"I'm not even one of your top pilots," she answered back in rougher French than the frog's as it was not her first language.

"You're only nineteen," replied the frog as he climbed into his biplane. "No youth has ever been one of France's top pilots. The majority of them are over thirty. You still have a long way to go in your training."

Amelia slumped down in her seat.

"However," the frog added as he got into his plane and readied it, "you are much more advanced than most your age. Maybe you can make the Elite Pilots by your mid-twenties. Regardless, we still value all our pilots on this team. Because you're not in the top rank does not make you useless to this team."

"Yeah, I guess," she mumbled. As the doors rose to the hanger a single-file line of French planes left it.

Before it was her turn to drive out, she pulled a photograph of Sly Cooper out from inside her brown jacket. She stared at it for a moment and slid it back into her jacket's inside pocket.

"God forgive me, I'm only following orders," she whispered to herself in English. She drove her plane out of the hanger and up to the launch pad.

The Team Cooper launch pad was only two teams down from France's. Sly and Amelia were both studying the yellow light that shone before them both on their hangers. In their minds they were counting down the seconds.

Sly was waiting for a chance to just let loose and have fun on his short vacation after a massive string of European heists. Amelia was waiting to gun down and kill a man.

3… 2… 1…

The green light lit up. All the teams' planes who were fighting that round took off into the sky and into the dogfight arena. As planes from Team Belgium, France, Canada and Cooper whizzed around in the field shots began to fire.

"THIS IS AWESOME!" cried Murray as he nailed a Belgian plane dead-on and watched it careen into the ground.

The pilot escaped unharmed and ran out of the stadium quickly into his team's rest area.

Amelia watched that pilot for a moment.

She then spotted Sly's biplane and set her turret to lock on his craft.

"Cooper, you won't be so fortunate."

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Well? I know the intro here was kinda lame but trust me, it's going somewhere. It will get better! I just really, really don't want to rush into this story and make it sloppy. I haven't written anything in a WHILE, so this is a big step for me. I hope I don't seem to bad. And I'm depending on you to tell me if I am or not!

R&R, please? Suggestions are also totally welcome. I don't bite.

THANKS FOR READING!