As it ended up, I got my good night's sleep throughout the day instead of at night like I would have liked, but Dimitri's club was popular enough that the Cooper idiot would have been out of his mind to try to rob it during the day. I was now sitting on a bench in front of the nightclub, Le Theatre Formidable, using the light from the obnoxious peacock sign to illuminate the notebook that I was taking notes down in.
My research had started with just the Clockwerk parts and Clockwerk himself, and I was amazed at how old the bird actually was. He hated the Coopers so much that he made himself an immortal body just so that he could hunt them throughout time. Now our gang was using the tireless pieces of that body to produce spice and distribute it around the globe, which was good for my father, but there were some things that weren't explained by that simple idea. It was certain that I had truly been stuck with the most useless member of the bunch by the way things looked. And I began to wonder how exactly Arpeggio and the Contessa fit into this equation. Arpeggio was the technology expert and the Contessa was, by all means, relatively new to the Klaww Gang, but if all they were trying to do was increase spice distribution then two of the five members weren't doing anything useful at all.
Something just didn't make sense, and some part of me knew not to put anything past the other members of the Klaww Gang. All in all, I knew what my father was doing, I knew that Dimitri was too stupid to do much more than watch over some of the parts as best as he could and use them for something equally stupid, like printing fake money, and my father worked very closely with Jean Bison so I always was kept up to date in his activity of shipping spice through North America. I wasn't even really sure where the idea had spawned in my head that something was up, but after realizing what we were dealing with, an immortal body, I felt that I had been kept out of the link about something. It felt wrong to point fingers at other members of the Klaww Gang and say they were doing something behind our backs, but there was something that was definitely up and it was probably Arpeggio's brainchild. After all, I noticed the day that we got the parts that he knew more about them than anyone else in the room and was the mastermind behind who got what and how it would be used.
Don't get me wrong. I actually really was fond of Arpeggio. He was the whole reason that I knew anything about technology. When I was too young to do anything with the gang itself he was often my babysitter while the others went out and did the heavy lifting. He was good for technology but other than being the mastermind behind most of the plans, he wasn't very useful in the field. It was in those long hours of waiting for the gang to return with their loot that he taught me the finer arts of hardware. After years spent with him, I could hotwire, hardwire, fix, modify, tinker and generally put things together just as well as he could. I got too old before he could teach me the finer arts of software, but we still got a few lessons in here and there over the years. It was because I knew Arpeggio so well that I knew that he would be the most likely to be keeping something from the rest of the gang.
"Little Tiger Girl" Dimitri's voice cut through my thoughts like a knife. I hated the nickname that he had given me, reducing me to a breed instead of an individual.
"Can't you see I'm busy?" I asked as I shut my laptop and flipped my notebook shut.
"Why are you not in the printing press room?" he asked me.
"Why should I be?" was my reply, not seeing his point.
"Strange things have been going down. Someone is trying to jack the parts, I feel it in my feet" he said.
"Well, at least you've got that much sense" I said. "His name is Sly Cooper, he's a raccoon and honestly I don't know where he is. I had a run in with him last night but he got away."
"If you've seen the meddling crackerbox then it's even more reason you should be chilling in the press room" he said, exasperated at my obvious lack of worry about the situation.
"I'm cooking up a plan right now" I said, patting my laptop. It was a lie, but I didn't care. I just wanted him to leave me alone. "And besides, I can hear everything from right here. The press is on right now, it just got turned on about a half an hour ago. One of your guests got a little crazy and smashed a table about fifteen minutes ago. One of the rat guards tripped on a empty bottle and threw a fit in the back of the club about an hour ago. You definitely have a mouse problem in the main dance hall because I can hear the little squeaks all the way out here. Oh, and you really shouldn't take your women into your private boat. Some of us can hear that all the way back here" I told him. "Look, just chill, Dimitri. I can hear everything going on around here just fine with these sensitive ears of mine. If he so much as takes a breath within a hundred feet of here, I will find him. You know I can do this. I'd rather stop him before he gets into the printing press room than have to try to stop him when he's already down there."
"Alright" said Dimitri. "I trust you to be on your game, Tiger Girl. If you see him, make him dead. I am on my way back to my boat to get my groove back and chill a little."
He headed off and I went back to my computer, just about to open it when the quiet sound of footsteps caught my attention. They were light, obviously trying not to alert anyone, but they were also familiar and they sounded like they were headed for the back of the nightclub. Shortly after I perked my ears up, I heard a louder sound of a window being opened at the back of the club. Abandoning my computer and notebook on the bench, I leapt up and quickly made my way through the front doors of the club. I stuck to the shadows and followed my ears to the back dance hall.
The disco room was vacant, but the huge mirror ball was still reflecting light all over the empty room. Dimitri's office was set on one side of the room. There was a second entrance to the office from the back of the building and the back dance hall, but that wasn't what I was worried about. Moving quickly and quietly, I climbed up the support beams for the disco ball and leapt out onto it. Someone looking at it from anywhere below would most likely see the glaring light shining off of it first. From my vantage point, I scanned the room for anything out of the ordinary but everything seemed fine in this room, not that it meant that things were fine elsewhere.
It was moments later that I heard a vent get smashed in the other room, right above the door to the office. There was the sound of crawling and then I saw none other than Cooper drop into Dimitri's office from the ceiling. He was carrying a piece of art on his back that looked identical to the prized one that Dimitri kept on a pedestal near his desk. Knowing that I wouldn't get anything useful out of a confrontation, I decided to remain a silent observer because I was interested as to what they were up to. He swapped the paintings and then stood there for a moment as if he was being talked to by someone. It made sense that he would have a communication device in his ear. Judging by how he had been talking through his binoculars the night before, he certainly wasn't in this alone but I had no idea how many or who his other operatives were.
I stayed on the ball as Cooper took the main door out to the back dance hall and then I got down and headed into the office. Without touching the painting, I looked it over. There were no cameras in it, but I did catch a tiny microphone in a darker part of the paint. They must have bugged the office to listen in on Dimitri but honestly there wasn't that much to listen in on. Dimitri wasn't all that much of a real threat in my opinion and he probably wouldn't do anything anyway as long as I was here. He tended to leave everything up to me when I was at the club. It also occurred to me, though, that all of the radio communications came through here and if the person who put this together was as good with technology as me or better that he would have known to pick up on those somehow so that he could listen in on the guards.
At this point I couldn't pick up at all on what they were trying to do, maybe because they didn't have a plan yet. I did know that they were now listening in on us and they had been there two nights already so they probably knew a lot more about us than I did about them. Actually, all I knew was that Cooper was here for the tail feathers because of his family, so right now they had lead on us. I didn't want to tamper with their bug because it would give away the fact that I knew what they were up to, but now I considered this to be unfairly tilted in their favor. It was only fair at this point that I did some reconnaissance of my own, seeing as they made it clear that they weren't giving up, so I headed out to the streets in front of the building again and tried to zero in on anything odd with my keen hearing.
"Miss Sekhar, Ma'am!" a guard stopped and addressed me. It was really the only time they spoke proper English.
"I understand that Dimitri went to his private boat" I said, taking the opportunity to get the scoop on the whole situation. "What were his orders?"
"He told us to ring the bell on his boat when the coast was clear" he replied. "But he didn't really say clear from what."
"Have you noticed anything going on out here? Anything unusual?" I asked as I continued to listen for something.
"No, but we haven't given him a signal yet" he replied.
"Good" I said. Without explanation, I reached over and tugged the communication device out of his ear and threw it on the ground, stomping it.
"Hey, why'd you do that?!" he exclaimed.
"I'll pay Dimitri for the damage, but right now I need you to do me a favor and tell all the other guards face to face that I will be the one to ring the bell because I have seen some strange things going on and I will know when the coast is clear. No one is to use radio communications" I told him. I honestly had no idea what Dimitri was even doing, but I did know that if they had heard about the guards ringing the bell over the communications system, then they would know how to lure Dimitri out. It didn't matter what they planned to do with Dimitri, because this was my chance to follow them around instead of them spying on us. If I wanted to run neck-in-neck with them, then I would need to find out who they were, where they were, and bug their hideout if possible. That would even the score.
The guard who I had sent out came back within ten minutes, informing me that the message was being passed on and that he intended to keep letting other guards know. Once I knew that my message was getting out to the guards, I, myself, headed for Dimitri's boat. If I was the only one who was allowed to ring it, then anyone else ringing it would either have to be Cooper and his gang or an idiot guard who didn't get the message, and my bets were on Cooper showing up. They would think from the message they intercepted that any guard could ring it and they could just ring it and catch Dimitri off guard, but instead now I had changed the rules to the game a little bit. When the bell rang, I would be waiting to take the necessary action.
I sat on top of one of the buildings near Dimitri's boat, keeping to the shadows as much as possible. There was no guarantee that Cooper would take the bait, but at this point I was more interested in using this opportunity to figure out where their hideout was. It didn't matter if they captured Dimitri or beat him up and ran or just watched him because they would have to return to their hideout eventually and they would be so intent on watching him that there was an excellent chance they wouldn't see me. I took up a place on the very roof where Cooper and I had our encounter the night before and got out of view on the other side of the roof.
It was probably a good fifteen minutes before I heard the bell ring. I stood quickly and peered over the roof to make sure that it wasn't one of the guards who had done it, and I was in luck because there stood Cooper on top of Dimitri's boat. Of course, he was in plain sight for me, but Dimitri didn't even turn around so he never saw him. Part of this was nostalgic and made me smile to myself as the two of them headed across town. It wasn't the first time that I had trailed someone that was trailing Dimitri and he didn't know about either of us. Part of me just did want to take out Cooper and be done with it, but if I did that then his gang would probably just finish the job. After all, that's how things were in the Klaww Gang. If one of us went down, the others just picked up the slack until a new member was chosen for the old member's responsibilities.
Dimitri lead us to the door to the underground water pump station. I noticed that Cooper had leapt down to street level now. While I stayed on the rooftops, I could only assume that he had gotten the code for the door to the aqua pump room because Dimitri would think that the coast was clear and wouldn't be the slightest bit suspicious of what was going on. However, I didn't think that was really useful to them. The aqua pump security wasn't linked to any of the newer security, and what could they possibly accomplish in there? Sure, they could destroy it, but that would mean that we would just have to get water from somewhere else for a while. It wasn't exactly threatening, or at least I didn't see it that way. Once Dimitri was in, I heard Cooper talking to his friends over whatever communication device he must have had in his ear. They spoke for a minute or so and then he was on the move again.
Once again, I was lead across town, to a location that was getting all too familiar. He took the rooftops closest to the river back to his hideout. As I was about to find out, our original fight had ended not even 50 feet away from the entrance to their hideout. They were on the second floor of a relatively small building where the entire upper floor was windows. To make things even better, they were in the building straight across from the nightclub, the one that had belonged to the young and failing artist. I should have just assumed it when I saw the strange things at that building. The van was obviously not a common vehicle around here, and honestly I had thought the antenna a little suspicious, but now I felt stupid that I had to follow him to figure that much out, especially after the way I felt about it before.
Cooper headed inside, and after a short while inside of the hideout, someone else came out. This man was a large pink hippo with a mask over the top half of his face and what seemed to be goggles. He wore a simple light blue t-shirt with a white scarf and a brown belt around the bottom of the shirt. On his hands he wore red gloves with what seemed to be tassels. It was pretty obvious from the first time I saw him that he was a fighter. He definitely looked like he was built to take on pretty strong opponents, and being what he was he probably had no problem doing it, either. My suspicions of this were confirmed when he took out a flashlight guard with two punches when he ran into him in the street.
My next suspicion was that they were sending him out to the aqua pump room. For what reason they were after it was beyond me, but if that was the deal then I would just let him do it. I still saw no threat in him getting in there, because what could they do, and on top of that I knew I couldn't take him in a physical challenge because even if he wasn't a fighter he had sheer size on his side. He looked to be at least four of me in weight. Maybe my father could take him on, but I knew it would be a stupid move on my part to even try. I didn't have a death wish tonight. That being said, I turned to head back to my apartment.
My plan was to quick whip up a bug and bring it back here. Then again, I didn't know how I would get it into that building if one of them was always there. There was a pretty good chance that I would get caught. I also didn't know how many they had in that building. They drove around in a van and that building could comfortably fit maybe six people if it had to, so I was looking at up to six thieves that I might have to deal with if I just tried to sneak in. I was already a couple of rooftops away when I heard the sound of feet landing on the edge of the roof where I had recently been. I stopped.
"Not going after him?" that annoyingly familiar voice asked.
"No, Cooper, I know I can't take on someone his size and I'm not feeling very suicidal at the moment" I said as I turned around to face him. He was standing with one leg crossed behind the other, using his cane for support.
"That building is made of windows you know. We could see your white fur in the moonlight from where we were sitting" he said. "I told Murray to watch out for you. I didn't really expect you to turn tail and run."
"I'm insulted that you think I'm so stupid to take on someone more than twice my size with an obvious aptitude for fighting" I said.
"Well, after what I told them about you the night before, Bentley predicted that you might try to bust in after seeing Murray leave, but you didn't so I came to check you out" he smirked. I assumed that he said it that way for a reason.
"So how many of you are there, then?" I asked.
"Three" he answered, almost smugly.
"You don't honestly expect me to believe that" I replied.
"Well, I guess Bentley could suddenly build a robot or something just for the fun of it" he trailed off.
"So Bentley must be your technology expert. You have a rather small gang if all you have is three. You plan to take on the Klaww Gang that way?" I asked, seeing how far I could take this. He was pretty smug to be giving away information and by now I knew that he was just probably throwing me little treats to keep me interested and keep me where I was.
"We're not looking for head-on confrontations or gang wars or anything like that. We like to do our work without being seen" he stated.
"I've already seen you" I said. "So I don't think that's an option."
"I don't think that will be a problem" he replied. I frowned at his comment and then turned to leave, not really wanting to hear the whole puppet thing again if that was where he was trying to go with this. There were better things for me to be doing right now, like making a bug that I could slip into their hideout without them realizing that I had done it. "Leaving already?" he asked, standing up straight and moving towards me.
"I don't have time for you" I said.
"Ouch, that's kind of hurtful" he winced dramatically.
"The truth hurts" I shrugged. "Besides, I'm sure that we'll see each other again. It will probably take your gang weeks to get at the tail feathers anyway. I'll find time for you at some point." I glanced back at him long enough to see that he was slack-jawed, probably at my sudden change of attitude. There was one more card that I had up my sleeve at the moment, and that was to treat him like the player I took him for. He had made some pretty open advances on me, and two could play that game. Before taking another step, I shot him a smoldering gaze over my shoulder and then as I walked to the edge of the roof I made sure to sway my hips with every step and swing my tail with them in perfect hypnotic harmony.
I didn't look back as I hopped down off of the rooftop and ran from there, disappearing once again in the shadows. My actions hopefully would throw him off and discourage him from following me. It wasn't clear to me if he had realized that the building that we started our chase on the night before was the one that I was currently living in, but if I could I wanted to keep him from knowing where I was living. There was an explosion from the other side of town as I reached my building. I figured that the hippo had managed whatever task he had been sent out to do, and as I walked into my room I could hear the panic of guards on the radio that I kept on in case they needed me. With a shake of my head, I turned to grab my computer, almost face-palming when I realized that I had left it on the bench in all the excitement.
I was almost too lazy and tired to climb out my window, but I did anyway and went to ask the rat guard on my roof to retrieve my things from the bench in front of the nightclub. He seemed shocked that I wasn't alarmed about the recent explosion, but he did as I asked and returned quickly. The other gang was certainly planning their next move by now, so I had to hurry and do the same. I realized now that a bug in their hideout would be impractical, but it would be just as simple to make a bug that I could place on Cooper somewhere. He wasn't that hard to make physical contact with, after all, and if I could place something on him his techno-friend would probably be less likely to suspect it or spot it. It would have to be small and I could probably just use a bit of Velcro to attach it to him somewhere. Not everything had to be high-tech. If I made a microphone with a small data receiver in it, then I could listen in on their communications with their devices and listen to them talking in their base. Now I just had to pull up some specs and get to work.