Prologue

Disclaimer: Fedora Kid doesn't own Sly Cooper. Those rights belong solely to its respective creators and distributors: Sony Computer Entertainment America and Sucker Punch Productions.

Rating: T, but the highest kind of T, for one particular chapter towards the end that features a graphic scene of torture.

Failure.

A seven-letter word that packs more punch than a shotgun to the chest. It is a word that can mean several different things to different people. To some, it may mean missing a few questions on an Algebra test. To some, it may mean showing up to work too late and being fired by your boss for it. To some, it may mean not being enough for your girlfriend and listening to her tell you that it's over.

But the kind of failure that I was faced with was far greater than anything else you could possibly imagine in your entire life.

Six months ago, we had learned that ORNWOR – the Organization for New World Order and Regime – was not done. They had a back-up plan. A second weapon. The Second Death Ray, otherwise known as The Omega Project. It made the Second Clockwerk look like a moth. It was over half a mile high, with an entire army of high-speed, well-armored, and well-armed blimps inside, as well as an equally large army of armed personnel, with guns ranging from revolvers to rocket-launchers.

Above all, it had a laser. A very special laser that could be emitted from the two horrible yellow eyes, that could take out an entire area of land equal to the amount of damage done by the common atomic bomb. Similarly, it left a heavy cloud of nuclear fallout everywhere it struck.

That Death Ray was so heavily armored, it was impossible to stop. The only way me, Bentley, and Murray were able to get in was when they kidnapped us. The only reason we even found out about that thing was pure happenstance. We were on our way to the Krak-Karov Volcano in response to a series of nightmares that I had been having, which I eventually considered visions, or divine messages, that told me to return there for closure. We were traveling over Russian airspace in a stolen blimp when we encountered them.

It was there that, despite being in the middle of the lion's den, surrounded by enemy forces, in an impregnable flying fortress, we managed to remain hidden, kill one of the five commanding officers, and steal a large series of blueprints for the Death Ray. However, as we made the final run back to our escape blimp, we suffered perhaps the most agonizing loss since Penelope. Murray was killed by a guard's throwing knife…thrown by a guard whom I had just been fighting, and made the mistake of leaving alive since I was running out of time. That was the first failure. At the very last moment, just as we were heading for safety, the strongest of us was taken down.

We managed to escape, and through his sorrow and rage, Bentley managed to pull it together and study those blueprints thoroughly for nearly four whole days before he thought he found a weakness.

It was just as the Death Ray started to approach Paris when the United Nations launched a full-scale aerial assault on the Death Ray, the two armies colliding at once. We ascended in our escape blimp and tried to get Bentley's RC Chopper inside the Death Ray through the open hangar doors, to plant a small but powerful bomb in the main nuclear reactor of the Death Ray. We had pulled a similar attack on the Command Blimp – the largest blimp in the entire army – and destroyed it, killing another one of the commanding officers. When they realized that destruction via infiltration was taking place, they sealed off the Death Ray completely, but not before we barely managed to get the chopper inside. However, the RC Chopper and its payload were discovered and destroyed by a squad that had been sent to intercept it. After that, with no options left, we could only flee the scene as they delivered the final blow, which, while destroying their own blimp army, would also crush the enemy and deal them a serious blow with the destruction of the entire aerial army and the headquarters of Interpol's French Branch.

We realized what was happening and fled the area before they fired the laser. We managed to escape, but we might as well have died.

Our attempt at destroying the Death Ray had failed. Our hideout and most of our equipment were destroyed with the rest of Paris. Now, nothing could stop that Death Ray.

For six long, agonizing months, it has been something out of a movie, or post-apocalyptic novel. That thing has rampaged all over the world. It has evaded detection due to apparently being equipped with a massive silencer that made it invisible on radar. Whenever it was found, its massive array of machine guns and missiles would destroy any craft that approached. Several attempts were made to launch nuclear weapons against it, but on all four attempts, the bombs would mysteriously detonate whenever the Death Ray was just approaching the edge of its blast radius. The world has been powerless to stop it. It tore across Europe, firing its laser upon every capital and major city in its path. Paris, London, Madrid, Dublin, Stockholm, Berlin, Budapest, Prague, Vienna, Warsaw, Athens, Madrid, Rome, and so many, many others. Then it headed back to Russia, taking out Moscow, among others. It continued further East. Beijing, Hong Kong, Tokyo, even heading into the Southeast for Calcutta, and the Middle East for Islamabad, Kabul, Tehran, Baghdad, Damascus, and Jerusalem, among others. It even briefly went over North Africa for Cairo, Tripoli, and Rabat, among others.

Over just 6 months, it has completely terrorized the Eastern Hemisphere and a vast majority of the civilized world, wiped out the world's largest, most populated, and most significant cities, toppled governments, and killed millions. Some say that the death toll has easily hit two billion, perhaps two and a half, perhaps even three billion. What little remains of the international community's leadership, Prime Ministers, Presidents, and ambassadors, have all fled West to the United States for shelter. Along with the US, the only countries still not affected are located in the Western Hemisphere – Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean region, and South America. The one other unaffected country is Australia. But it won't be long before it heads there and takes out the remaining nations. It doesn't even need to bother with Australia or South America, for that matter. Once it hits the United States, the free world as we know it is done for.

And us? The Cooper Gang, and the only ones who could've stopped this thing from the inside, in its moment of weakness?

We have failed.

We have run away.

And we have gone into…

…hiding.