Part 0: Intro

Chapter 2: Alone in the Desert

Date: 1387 B.C, March 14, 9:09 AM

Right foot.

Left foot.

Right foot.

Left foot.

The pattern kept on repeating, as he steps through the Egyptian sands as he continued forth in the morning heat, the sun just rising to the east over a familiar hill of sand to his right. He had no idea where he was going, but he knew he had to keep moving less the heat and occasional gust of sand take him. He had been here for what he believed was two weeks, keeping track of the rising and setting sun to know how long he had been drifting in this dry landscape.

When he arrived, he was alone in the aftermath of his battle, Le Paradox and him battling atop the blimp he had used to keep his girlfriend and him trapped. He offered to spare Paradox as the skunk hung dangling at the end of his blimp's breaking frame, and Paradox returned that mercy by stealing the parachute he carried and escaped the falling aircraft. Ironically, the skunk didn't get very far, since he missed seeing a passing aircraft that tore apart the parachute's lines and he plummeted to the sea below. Whither or not he survived the wanderer didn't know, although he hoped the skunk met some pain either way for all he had done.

What happened next though was a real blur in all honesty. He remembered glancing about the crumbling frame, unsure of what to do with no way to escape. He tried to retrace his steps, slowly making his way back to Paradox's control room as the blimp burned and broke apart all around him. He saw the room briefly but there was a flash of light, and a massive boom as he felt himself thrown free from the blimp and blacked out from the force of the impact. When he awoke, he found himself somehow in what he feared was Ancient Egypt since he saw before him the Great Jackal of Egypt, which looked to still be in good condition unlike in the present day. Getting up from the sand the stranger reached out and grabbed his father's tool, a gold and wooden cane he had taken after his parent's demise in honor of their legacy.

The stranger was a Cooper, Sly Cooper to be exact, and he was the last of the Cooper Clan in existence. They had been around for centuries, thousands of years and they specialized in being the best thieves in the world. But it was not because of their grand thefts, though that was something they did gain notoriety for by the law, but in something else.

The Cooper Clan has a code of honor, a motto in that there is "no honor, no challenge, no fun in stealing from ordinary people." So instead they made their name by taking from those more of a challenge, chiefly other criminals who think their greater or the best. Since stealing from an ordinary citizen was not a challenge, to rob another master criminal of what they had possessed? That took the greatest of skill, and it was why Sly Cooper took pride in pirating that what which was taken from others.

Of course, all things have repercussions, and thieving was one of the most vengeful of trades.

Sly found this out when he was young, eight years old in fact when his parents were murdered by a group called the Fiendish Five, led by a mythical criminal known simply as Clockwerk. Sly would learn when he was older that Clockwerk was an immortal being, who was consumed by hatred and anger toward the Cooper Clan for their reputation as master thieves. His age unknown and his motivations being a mystery, the owl had been so fueled by revenge that he replaced his body with soulless machinery. The procedure was intended for one purpose in his mind, to continue throughout time tracking down and slaughtering the Cooper Clan members one by one. He finally caught up to Connor Cooper, Sly's father, on Sly's birthday when he showed up at the door with four others to murder him and Sly's mother.

But that wasn't the only thing he had done, because the Cooper Clan also had a prized possession they held onto throughout the ages. This relic was known as the Thievius Raccoonus, an ultimate guide to teach anyone how to become a master thief. Written by the members of the Cooper Clan throughout time, the book had an immense level of knowledge that in the hands of a Cooper could make them a master of thieves. Clockwerk desired this scripture so he enlisted aid from four others to help him acquire and divide it up, never to be united again. However, Clockwerk was blinded by his hatred since as Sly told him when the faced one another years later the book didn't make great thieves, great thieves made the book.

And so Sly, with help from his childhood friends Bentley and Murray tracked down the Fiendish Five and slowly rebuilt the Thievius Raccoonus. After a long struggle and the occasional run in with Interpol inspector Carmelita Fox, an officer working for the law to bring the Cooper Gang to justice, Sly finally caught up to Clockwerk again. The owl used Carmelita as bait, taunting Cooper as he worked to save her from the immortal's trap only to fall victim to one himself. Breaking free, Carmelita worked with the Cooper Gang to breech the owl's volcanic compound and put an end to the threat. Upon coming face to face, the two exchanged words with Clockwerk confessing to have spared Sly since he thought he was nothing without the book. Proving him wrong through his adventure, the two faced one another at last and with cane in hand Sly made his away across the owl's gigantic frame before bludgeoning him, ending his family's greatest threat and avenging his parents.

As Sly Cooper reminisced on his memories, he had looked up into the sky with his brown eyes and saw the sun had risen above the horizon, marking what he guessed was morning finally in the day.

"Jeeze, is it never not hot here?" He commented, his voice tired as he had been low on water he had recovered from the crash.

He was wearing his signature blue elbow-sleeved shirt with yellow collar, though it was battered and a bit dirty from his time in the desert. His blue hat was off his head, stored inside his makeshift backpack behind him alongside his blue gloves with yellow caps and thieving mask as he was working up a sweat with them on. Recovering pants from the crash the gray tinted pants, he was tempted more and more to remove them as they became more troublesome as he traversed. The slim bottom was tucked inside his blue boots and while he was annoyed multiple times to just take them off, he wasn't going to walk around the desert with nothing one below. His father's cane was held in his right hand, and Sly had taken to using it as a walking stick as he trudged on in the hot landscape.

When he arrived, he had taken up residence inside the Ancient Jackal, the shade and shelter giving him a nice place to relax as he waited for his friends to find him. Luckily Le Paradox had some food and water on his blimp, and Sly made due the first few days with those rations since he made himself a campsite inside the Jackal. However, when the first week ended and he was getting low on supplies, Sly had become worried that he may not be able to stay put. The Jackal and Pyramids that surrounded it didn't have any sign of life for miles, and Sly figured that whoever built them wouldn't come back and so help him too.

So, for the first few days of the second week he cut back on his available food and water. That was until finally he decided he needed to set off and find help or some indication of life. Gathering up what he could fit in his backpack, Sly finally left nearly two days ago into the desert heat. And he regretted it the moment the first day ended, since when he tried to backtrack to the ruins and blimp debris he found his way lost, and now he was too. So, he just continued to march, moving onwards in the Egyptian landscape with no sign of life for days.

As he resumed his walk and looked up into the sky again, he couldn't help but think back on his memories, as that was the only thing he could think of doing to maintain his sanity.

He remembered the second adventure he had with his friends which started after the immortal's defeat, the trio racing off and having managed to trick Carmelita into staying behind. Sly did so by hinting at his crush on Carmelita through giving her a kiss as a distraction while he then handcuffed her to a balcony overlooking the broken bird. She was of course angry with them, but the Gang were so happy for their victory and the rebuilt Thievius Raccoonus they didn't pay her heed. Carmelita must have escaped and reported back to her bosses, who wanted to showoff "her" victory over the mythical criminal by displaying his lifeless form in a museum exhibit.

When the Cooper Gang received word, they knew what would happen if Clockwerk was to be reassembled as the immortal owl vowed that Sly would never be rid of him. So, the gang broke into the museum, planning to steal the evil owl's metal frame before he had a chance to reboot and begin his vengeance again. But when they arrived they found someone had already stolen the display, before Carmelita and her new partner Constable Neyla appeared while accusing them of doing the deed. After a bit of bickering, Neyla hinted at the theft being a Klaw Gang operation due to the tactics involved to do the theft, giving Sly the distraction he need to escape with his friends.

The Klaw Gang, the Cooper Gang learned, had stolen the parts of Clockwerk and were using each piece to fuel their illegal spice trade. The reason why was because the parts of Clockwerk each held unnatural and advanced scientific possibilities, due to mysteries of his creation and how he upheld himself over the years. Tracking down each of the members, Sly with his friends managed to collect the pieces and take down the Klaw Gang members. As they did so Carmelita and Neyla would be close behind each time as they tried to catch them, making due with the defeated Klaw Gang instead. Neyla began to help Sly a little bit, and the two even became a little flirtatious as she seemed a lot more understanding of Sly and his friends then Carmelita was.

But in the end it was all a ruse, as Neyla framed Carmelita as a criminal with her caught with the Cooper Gang as they took down one of the Klaw Gang. It would be revealed she was working alongside Arpeggio, the leader of the Klaw Gang who wanted to remake Clockwerk but put himself inside the immortal's frame. With Carmelita on the run too, Sly, Murray, and Bentley worked toward stopping the duo before they succeeded, however ultimately, they failed. Arpeggio used Sly and his friends own ambition against them, waiting for them to take down his cohorts then he stole all the pieces all at once reassembling them with no one to stop him. With his plan complete and Sly and his friends having done his work for him, Arpeggio was about to fuse with Clockwerk and achieve immortality with vast power.

That was until Neyla double crossed him too and seized the metal frame for herself, renaming it into ClockLa much to the shock of all. She murdered Arpeggio afterword, and Sly and Carmelita put aside their difference on the law to work together and take her down. To achieve her true power though Neyla needed an immense level of hatred, and the spices the Klaw Gang traded in were set to spark that rage across Paris! Piloting a helicopter Carmelita, Sly, Murray, and Bentley worked together and brought ClockLa down into the Paris harbor. Despite the gunfight and the conflict the frame was unable to break and the user die despite all their effort. It was then the group realized the source of Clockwerk's immortality, and the reason why he could never die.

The Hate Chip, an advanced piece of tech Clockwerk possessed to keep his parts functional and unable to decay. Following his defeat by Sly at Krakarov Volcano two years earlier, Arpeggio had recovered the piece and had taken it alongside his brain as his share of Clockwerk's frame among the Klaw Gang. When he rebuilt Clockwerk's body, Arpeggio used the chip as its power source once again but took out Clockwerk's brain to insert his own before his death. With ClockLa too blinded by rage and ego, the Cooper Gang managed to figure out how to defeat the immortal once and for all. Working fast Murray and Bentley breached the frame and recovered the chip, but the immortal's shadow would take another form in their escape. As they rushed out of the frame through the maw, ClockLa slammed her metallic beak down and broke Bentley's spine!

Carrying his friend out as the frame then sunk into the harbor, Sly, Carmelita, Murray, and a broken Bentley watched as the chip was destroyed with one slam by the boot of the inspector. Turning to watch the sinking frame the four beheld as the pieces finally withered away, the years of unnatural time turning them to dust before their eyes. The moment, victorious as it was, however didn't last as Interpol arrived and seeing Carmelita with the Cooper Gang returned her position as a reward for the group's unescapable situation. However seeing the condition Murray and Bentley were in and that they needed medical aid, Sly made a deal to turn himself so they could go free, a deal Carmelita accepted.

What followed next brought a smile to Sly's dehydrated face, as it was the first "date" he and Carmelita had as they taken a helicopter back to her local headquarters. It began simple, with them talking about the years of their adventures with one another, laughing or having a moment of silence when things were awkward over time. Then it moved into more personal things, as the two exchanged their favorite hobbies, similar interests, and who they really were underneath their reputations. In a surprise, Carmelita pulled out a bottle of champagne on board to toast her capture of Sly finally, but before they enjoyed it she caught on to how strangely long their flight was taking. Checking the cockpit, she saw it was being remote operated, with her assumption being by Bentley. Swiftly turning she saw Sly, handcuff free, give her a victorious grin before he jump out of the aircraft with his parachute and escape again.

Sly maintained his smile as he looked up to the sky and saw the sun was already in the center, indicating the day was already halfway done. Suddenly, he tumbled down into the sand with his legs having collapsed suddenly from weariness. Rolling over, spitting out the mouthful of sand he received he caught his breath as he looked around the desert. He felt the familiar loneliness as he saw nothing in sight but sand and bareness still.

"I've been wandering this place for days, and I still feel like I haven't made any progress on finding anyone!" He shouted after multiple breaths, his body weak after the marching, rationing of food, and lack of water to survive.

Sly sat in the sand, his cane to the side as he slowly unhooked his backpack from behind and pulled it in front of him. The raccoon had grown wet from all his sweating in the heat, and he knew if he didn't get a drink soon he would experience a rather unpleasant fate. Opening the bag, he looked inside and saw he was on his last platter of food, nothing more than a sandwich and crackers with his water only a quarter of its capacity. He looked around again, praying that he may see someone to save him before he took what he hoped wasn't his last meal. With no one in sight again, he sighed and reached inside, grabbing the sandwich and drink as he pulled them out and closed the bag.

Tossing his pack behind his back and strapping it on, he opened the bag holding the sandwich and took a bite. He was beginning to grow weary of the meal, the bread, jelly, and peanut butter quickly losing their touch after the first week. But it was food, and he needed it if he was going to survive. Finishing the meal, he then turned to his water bottle, and looking inside he saw the swooshing and flow of the warm liquid. He hated its taste too, the drink's heat only a tad better then the sun that bare down on him. As he looked at the water, he thought back again to his memories, and remembered the adventures he had trying to reclaim Kaine Island from the mad scientist Dr. M.

It was one of the few times Sly had brushed with death, and like now one of the moments he could look back on his life and remember how he got where he was. It began when he received a message from Jim McSweeney, a friend of his father's who acted as the muscle in his Cooper Gang. Though it took some convincing, Jim accepted Sly was Connor's son and explained that the Coopers had a secret vault that held all their treasures over the years. Having not told Sly when he was alive, Connor gave McSweeney the map to the vault so that when the time came he could find it for himself. Turning himself into Interpol following Connor's death, Jim admitted how proud Sly's dad would be of him and so wished him luck as Sly set off to claim his family's treasury.

Unfortunately, someone else had already beaten them to the vault. A scientist known simply as Doctor M had been given control of the island somehow, and with it he had created a fortress upon the place. His reason was that he was after the treasures the place contained and had built up the place to act as a true monument to his genius with added defenses. Sly and Bentley were alone, as Murray was filled with guilt following Bentley's crippling and decided to leave feeling useless to the group. The duo realized they would need more help to reclaim what was theirs, and to do that it would mean building a larger Cooper Gang. So, the two began a quest to find new members across the globe, with each specialized and able to help them to find some way inside the legacy vault.

They began first with Murray, who had gone on his own spiritual quest to find himself after their last adventure which left him mentally scared both from their trials and what became of Bentley. Making peace with himself after a long journey, he joined the gang once again as their muscle and best friend before they set out to find the next person to aid them. Murray's spiritual teacher who was simply known as The Guru became their next ally, giving them a supernatural aid to handle more unnatural threats on the island. They found their additional tech aid in Penelope, the clever mouse who Sly felt was a perfect match with Bentley. She was a genius and was their expert in drone warfare, something they would need to infiltrate the fortress Dr. M had turned Kaine Island into.

Their additional backup however would prove more troublesome as Sly would have to make peace with the best one they could find for pyrotechnics, the notorious Panda King. The panda was hated for his part in killing Sly's father, one of the Fiendish Five who took part in the deed and was now living in exile following his release from jail and banishment from his own country. After a difficult quest to save his daughter from a forced marriage by the Chinese warrior General Tsao, Sly and the Panda King did finally move past the death of his father as Sly showed him the good he can do after all he had done as a criminal. This same forgiveness was carried onto the group's aquatics expert Dimitri, a former member of the Klaw Gang who needed the Cooper Gang's help to recover his family's dive equipment which had been lost for generations. Succeeding in recovering the gear and earning a ship along the way the group were ready to face Kaine Island and the scientist that controlled it.

The infiltration was at first a success, as each member used their skills to aid Sly as he reached the door to the vault itself before he at last opened it. But before he could enter the Doctor intervened, disarming Sly of his family's cane and the key to the vault as he was about to kill him.

That was one of the moments Sly could recall being faced with death, and he then was pulled back to the present as he still held the water bottle in his hands, the sun having moved onwards in his reminiscence. Snapping out of the day dream, Sly opened the bottle and gulped it down, his only hope now being finding civilization with his supplies gone.

Grabbing his cane, he used the weapon to pull himself off the sand before he turned back the way he was heading before falling. His breathing had become calm again, and his strength had returned after the rest and refill. However, as he looked onwards to the next dune, he could see the sun was getting ready to go beyond the evening.

"Well, I've come this far." He joked, though he knew that he couldn't go much farther considering his stamina.

Beginning with his left foot, he slowly began his walk again hoping, praying that he may find some aid before the ancient sands take his life.

Thinking back to Kaine Island, he remembered how he was saved from his near-death experience by Carmelita, who had been following him and the Gang internationally as they assembled a larger team. Equipped with her own strike team as well, together her and Sly worked to dismantle Dr. M's fortress on the island, with her mercenaries providing backup to the Cooper Gang. Eventually they managed to breach the vault again, and Sly ventured alone inside as Bentley and Murray guarded the entrance as Carmelita was off fighting Dr. M's mutated henchmen.

Inside the vault, Sly saw first hand the legacy his family had built over the years, with areas piled with treasure and memorials to the deeds of his ancestors. From the Wild West to the Age of Piracy, to Medieval England to Feudal Japan, to even Ancient Egypt he saw the history of his family one by one. Each section held a tribute to the thief of the era, treasures and relics belonging to the region and time they lived in. Through it all, Sly felt an overwhelming since of honor, and found himself in awe when he came across a memorial to his own father. Paying his respects, he learned a new skill from his deceased dad inside the vault, but he soon was face to face with Dr. M again and learned a sad truth to the scientist's aims.

Doctor M revealed that he worked with Sly's father too, and much like Bentley served as the brains of their Cooper Gang. Through all their heist, M felt sidelined by Sly's dad, who had taken most of their stolen riches and stored them in the vault. Feeling betrayed and treated unequal, M abandoned Connor and Jim McSweeney before Sly was born. He learned of the Cooper Vault while they had worked together, and he made it his mission to regain all the riches he demanded were rightfully his for masterminding their heists. Sly at first wanted to make emends, but he then found himself in a battle against the mad mandrill as the two fought in the crumbling vault.

Eventually Carmelita joined the battle, and the doctor took a shot at her with one of his plasma bolts before being intercepted by Sly, desperate to save his partner. In anger Carmelita defeated Doctor M before she attended Sly, who seemed to have amnesia after the jolt from the doctor. Lying that the two were partners on the law, they escaped as the Island crumbled around them, the doctor buried under the rubble forever in the vault he craved. After that, Sly, Bentley, Murray, and Penelope along with Panda King, the Guru, and Dimitri entered a retirement from crime. Each pursued their own advances, and thanks to Sly who faked the amnesia and left a breech in the vault for them to profit from found their lives were a happy retreat.

Breaking from the memories, Sly had crossed two of the dunes ahead of him when he paused and looking up into the sky he could see the sun was beginning to set. He shivered, as he knew when the sun went down the sands do get cold and he lacked proper clothing. He survived the past nights thanks to the food that gave him energy before and after, but right now, he didn't know he could survive another night.

And that scared him more than anything.

Trudging onwards, he finally looked back at his latest adventure, when he and his friends Bentley and Murray returned from retirement to their trade.

Although he faked amnesia with Carmelita, and the two worked together awhile with him serving as a consultant for the law he craved the life he left. Sure, he would give the occasionally glance and even scheme of a heist or two, but he valued his relationship with her more, even if he lied about the reasons he wasn't a criminal anymore. But eventually, he had his moment when Bentley came to him that fateful night, with a shocking revelation that even now he found alarmingly. Someone had been time traveling through history, erasing his family's lineage one by one so that their legacy of thieves would no longer exist!

Working together once again Sly, Bentley, and Murray broke into a museum that held a relic of his ancestor's time-period and used it to travel back, defeating the first of many of Le Paradox's henchmen. Saving his ancestors along the way Sly and the gang continued bouncing between time, their aid in the present coming from Dimitri who was letting the Gang know who was next on Le Paradox's list of targets by the missing entries in the Thievius Raccoonus. Eventually, they would reunite with Carmelita who was abducted by Paradox in the present and thrown back in time to be out of his way. Despite her anger at Sly betraying her trust in him becoming a better person, the four worked together to stop Le Paradox from erasing the Cooper lineage, but all their effort came with a cost though.

Penelope, who had gone missing before the Thievius Raccoonus entries were being erased, had revealed herself as one of Paradox's accomplices and gave him the time machine he was using in his quest. With her betrayal made apparent in how she spoke of the gang while they were in Medieval England, she swiftly schemed to use her brains for evil rather than good like Bentley had. The battle Sly felt was hard on his old friend, but in the end, he saw the turtle renewed and Penelope, from what he was aware of, put behind bars for her deeds. Sly knew how much the two loved one another, as in their quest to reclaim the Cooper Vault it grew their friendship and in retirement, blossomed into a true romance. Seeing the mouse betray them as blatantly as she had, it left a sour taste in Sly's mouth until he realized it wasn't the memory.

It was him.

And then, he collapsed again into the sand, the sun now beginning to set into the landscape as Sly clawed the area around him for strength. He looked for his cane, thrown into the dirt next to him and he reached out to grab it, but his arms were so weak from the lack of energy. He rolled onto his back, the effort slow and hard as he tried to not be swallowed by the sand around him. He looked to his cane again and tried again to reach it and pull himself back up. He did not want to give up.

No, he could not give up now.

He had survived the time travel and facing Le Paradox, finally catching up to him in the present as he had made twisted time somehow from the time travel. Sly was captured at first alongside Carmelita, but he was set free when his ancestors, Bentley, and Murray broke into the blimp and saved him and her. As they raced to escape the crashing blimp he stayed behind, wanting to put an end to the wannabe thief who thought he could go after his family and succeed. They fought across the dismantling aircraft and ending it when Sly best him in a duel in the sky. If he had not showed mercy and saved him from falling, he would not be here.

He had to return to present, had to make sure his friends were okay and that they knew he was alive somehow. He. Had. Too.

Sly reached out one last time, his hand straining itself to touch the familiar cane. The same he had taken from his father after he was murdered by the Fiendish Five. The same weapon that he used to deal the final blow to Clockwerk and avenge his ancestors. The very tool that he used to weaken ClockLa, so his friends could defeat her at last. The key that opened the door to his lineage, to the Cooper Vault and the treasures within. And the same hook that Paradox thought to erase from time with his ancestors, the symbolic weapon of all the Coopers are and can be.

He grasped the weapon, his hands wrapped tight around the base of the hook where it met the handle, and he pulled it close over his chest.

He would not die here.

He would be rescued by his friends and be brought home.

He would welcome them once again, his friends, truly his family once more as they talked and continued their adventures on and on.

He would confess how sorry he was for betraying Carmelita and admit how he really felt to her.

He would do all this and more…after he woke up.

And so Sly sluggishly closed his eyes as the sun finally lay upon the horizon, the raccoon's breathing becoming slower and slower. He held the cane close, as the world around him ceased to be as his mind became empty. His senses became muted, the fatigue finally hitting him and the void of unconsciousness consuming him ever slowly. His body grew numb, the grip of his cane loosened as his hand slowly unwound the tool balanced on his chest. So weak had he become that he could only make out the blur of light that shined in front of him, as a portal opened, and a lone figure stepped out.

The blurred figure was unrecognizable, Sly unable to see his face or make out his clothing in detail. He could only make out a mix of brown, black, and white that was underneath a top of dark gray and white. He seemed to be walking in darkness, his pants and boots so blurred and blacked out by Sly's failing sight that he couldn't make out the thin frame of his legs as he loomed toward him. His hands were thin, seemingly needles in the darkening world but coated in an orange hue with silver tips in the blurring world. Before Sly was overtaken by the abyss, all he heard was one statement by the figure before he collapsed into unconsciousness while the stranger leaned in close.

"Finally, I found you."

Chapters updated 7/25/2018 with fixed grammar, and new lines. Next chapter coming soon.