AN: So, soon school will be over for the summer. This means for most that us nerds can come out and play with impunity, for a little while. For me, I'm graduating. Ironically, I'll probably have LESS free time to write from here on, even without a job. But enough about that. Time to see just how Sly knows Carm before they ever met.
It Takes a Thief
Ch2 A Walk Thru Locked and Dusty Doors
Carmelita's heart and mind were doing circles, emotion and reason battling one another. Only one person had ever called her Carmel, outside of her family. But it couldn't be. She SAW the casket. She knew he was dead.
"Impossible... Sly... your... your... They said you... the fire-"
Sly leaned further back in his chair, relaxing for what would probably be a scream filled conversation. "That you can thank your father for. He helped arrange that story. He and Dad were good friends from there time as co-workers, they had this planned in advance should something happen to either one of them."
"Sly, none of this makes sense! Why! Why were you there last night! Why are you here! Why am I here!"
"That, my dearest vixen is a very long story. Pull up a chair, grab a mug, I've got a coffee pot back here.
Your gonna need it. Especially the chair." Carm sat down in a comfortable chair in front of the desk Sly sat behind, and poured herself a mug. When she had taken a drink and sat it down he began.
"Its best for me to start in the beginning, and explain your first question, why was I there, why was I claiming to be a thief? Simple enough answer, I'm keeping the family business alive and well."
Carm's first reaction was to reach for her shock baton and level it at Sly, an angry growl on her lips.
"Then why the hell are you her in an Interpol Division? Why the hell haven't they put you behind bars? How in God's name are you-"
"Being the head of the branch has its perks you know."
That knocked the wind out of her sails. Interpol was employing a thief?! But wait... he had said her father had-
"To elaborate, I come from a... rather long and, formerly well documented lineage. My family has its root in the days of the Pharaohs, before the days of the Book of Exodus, or roughly 3000 BC. We've had our fingers all over the globe in all sorts of ages, following call of the thief. In the ancient Mediterranean we stole from prince and king alike. In medieval Europe we laid the foundations of legends. In feudal Japan my ancestors helped to create the ninja. The list goes on. But we all shared a common theme. We were not ordinary thieves."
Carm's black and white morality went off at that statement. "Of course they were! A thief is a thief is a thief! Your all the same, crushers of dreams and hopes!"
"Not us, my dear. We did not rob the common masses, no, we were... risk takers, adrenaline junkies. Why steal from the poor man and earn no honor, when you could take from those who had crushed their dreams, to give hope to the hopeless?"
"You think I'm buying this Robin Hood nonsense?"
"You should, his name was Robin Cooper after all." That one made Carm groan. "We were master thieves. It was in Eygpt where our story truly began. There was no thief that could match us. Kings and princes feared my early ancestor Slytunkhamen. Nobles petitioned to the Pharaoh of Egypt to use his armies to find this thief, and offer the demon's soul to the gods o cleanse the land of his taint. But the Pharaoh saw fear in their eyes, fear of him removing their ill gotten possessions, stolen from those that they oppressed. The Pharaoh said he would indeed remove their taint and sent a messenger to where Slytunkhamen dwelt. He told him to say that the Pharaoh of Cairo wished to know this thief, whose name made god kings quiver where armies could not. He wished to offer him what no one else could. A true reason. Slytunkhamen considered the messengers words, and traveled with him to Cairo. It was there that the Pact was made."
"Enough nonsense! Get to the point!"
"I'm telling it as fast as I can, 5,000 years is a bit much to summarize! The Pact was a contract, a Letter of Marque, an agreement between just men, between law and criminal. They would aid the Coopers in their endevours, and help cover up the un endorsed ones as well." Carm began to voice here ire again, but Sly raised his hand once more to stop her. "They would aid us in secret, give us the means to track our quarries. In return, we would help bring to justice those that had broken just laws. In a way we were bounty hunters. We would acquire proof of crimes no others could, and give the those with whom the pact was made. It was recorded inside my family heirloom, a book containing the legacies and all the techniques that has been passed down, father to first born child, for millennium. Techniques arcane, occult, mechanical, technical, anything to aid the next heir."
"That still doesn't explain why your here!"
"My great-great grandfather, Thadeus Cooper, and his son, Otto Van Cooper, were instrumental in founding Interpol. Oh, sure, they came into being based on the ideas of others, but they were aided by my family from the beginning. Though Thadeus was to old for fieldwork, he created the analytic departments most basic of practices, and Otto made the designs for some of your oldest gadgets, such as that stun baton in your hand right now. The pact was forged into the very fabric of Interpol, and its oldest Black Ops division was formed with its founding: the Special Acquisitions Department. For the last few generations, my family has helped tackle some of Interpol's biggest game, from kingpins to spy rings."
"That's all well and good if I were to believe you, but where does my father come into all of this? You said he helped arrange this!"
"Thats where we take a more familiar topic. Over the years, some of Interpol's best have been assigned to the SAD for its public face. Your father, until eight years ago, was that face. He and my father were very good friends from day one, and why you and I met as children when they would visit one another. Such simple days, when we were children, playing with one another, the best of friends, but with subtler motives. Those skills your father taught you as a child, that you used last night to chase me down? My father taught him that, and told him to teach you those skills, to prepare us for the future. By their friendship, all our lives were endangered. You can't remember it can you? That night eight years ago, when the so called fire happened? Ever wonder how much of a coincidence your father was paralyzed from the waist down after that night? No, of course not, the trauma of it made your mind lock those memories away. Think back. It was raining that night. You and your parents were coming over, to celebrate my eight birthday. Your father stepped out of the car, saw the door smashed down, and parked the car down the road told you to stay inside. He came closer, heard the screams and saw the nightmare inside. My mother's mutilated corpse, screamingly feasted upon by a cannibalistic croc, an oversized mutt trashing the building, a seemingly remorseful panda in the corner, an obese frog trying to crack a safe. Watching it all was a figure in the shadows, with my fathers dismembered corpse in front of him. But he could see what they couldn't little old me hidden away in the closet. Or so he thought. They had not touched me, they wanted to break me. They found your father, they broke him, snapped his spine and left him to die. They stole the family book, all our deeds and vanished into the night, setting fire to the building, seeking to erase all that had transpired. But your father saved me. He dragged himself thru the flames to get me out of the building, took me to your car and whisked me off into the night, with me babbling about what I had seen. Three days latter, they had a closed casket funeral, they told you it was a tragic fire, that my entire family had died in a gas explosion. All to cover the tracks. Your father had taken a bullet to his spine, a miracle he lived, wasn't it? And so I was left in an orphange, it would have been to risky to leave me in anyone else hands, there I could vanish unnoticed. Tabs were kept on me as I grew older, waiting for me to come of an age where I could be recruited into the SAD. Last year, I found the truth out fro your father. He came and offered me the job. I took it without pause, but asked to bring my two closest friends with me. Bentley, a turtle who can access any device in the world and make a device to reach it, and Murray, the best getaway driver a man could ask for. They entered into this with me, a family forged of seven years without one, brothers in sweat and blood. So that explains half my story."
Carmelita hadn't heard the end. When she found out what had happened to him, she began to sob and wail. Sly, by fault of being born, had been subjected to something straight out of the minds of Hitchcock's nightmares. And she too had lived with the results of that night, a father forever unable to walk again. She had born the mental scars of Sly's past without ever knowing it. But there was just one thing she had left to ask him.
"Why me? Why seek me out to take my fathers place? To give me a chance for the revenge you seek as well?"
"No. I picked you not for so petty a reason. In need someone that can keep up with me. In your childhood you were taught the basics of my family. You can see them to, can't you, the sparkles of light all around, that point to you where you can do feats impossible? That is in you, the skills of a Master thief. I sought you to give you a chance to make a true difference. In the normal service, you would have been merely a tool for an agenda f your bosses, men that would claim it was all their own. Here, you would be able to give it your all, with no one to claim your work was theirs. We are the real long arm of the law, clad in the mask of a thief. I'll give you the time you need to think it over, but you don't have long. In a week I'm going to try and retrieve a the Firestone of India. Do what you need to prepare yourself. But know this Carmel. In this Division, there are things that can never be mentioned. Not only do we do things outside the law, but there are things we have found that defy common logic. Magic, creatures from fiction, extinct species, we've seen many a thing in my family. We attract the weird."
Carmelita was needless to say in turmoil. Could she really do this, betray the views her father had taught her? But hadn't he been one to aid them as well? She needed to see this for herself, and seek her answers to her questions latter. So she looked up from her now cold coffee and said something she hadn't said in years.
"What have you got me into now Ringtail?"
Sly nearly broke down at their old greeting being said again, and replied in kind with tears in his eyes.
"Just the same old story Carmel."
AN: And so, the framework for my story has been laid out before you. Throw a few things at it and lets see if it holds up, shall we?