I don't own Sly Cooper, Sucker Punch does. I do own the stuff not in the games and comics, though, so don't even think of taking them! Please enjoy and review this newest chapter!

Unknown Place. Unknown Time.

When Sly once more became conscious, he found himself no longer at the scorched remains of his hideout, but instead resting in a clean, white plastered room. He was wearing a light blue dressing gown and his shoulder and leg were bandaged up while he rested in a railed bed beneath cotton sheets. Across from his bed was an open door way to a small bathroom, while on the right hand side of the room was another door, closed tight and made of a thick dark wood.

On a little table next to him his clothes were neatly folded, his cap and satchel placed on top of them. Leaning against the nightstand was, he was surprised to see, his cane.

"I don't remember having my cane when the hideout blew to pieces." Sly thought as he gazed at his new surroundings. "And where the heck am I?" Sly's eyes widened when he remembered whom he last saw before he passed out. "CARMELITA!" He groaned with the thought. "She probably took me to a hospital after she found me. When I'm done healing up, she'll probably put me in prison!"

He quickly moved himself up a little, trying to ignore the ach from his wounds, and looked for anything he could improvise as an escape route. Unfortunately, the room had no windows and the only air vent was way too small for him to crawl through. He glanced at the heavy wooden door at the other end of the room, but gave up on that plan since it probably was locked, and he didn't even have a paperclip to pick it with. Collapsing on his mattress with a huff, Sly leaned his undamaged arm on one of the rails of his bed and tried to think about how to get out of this newest incident he had fallen into.

The door flew open and an old brown doe in a nurse's uniform walked in wheeling a cart built with many drawers running down it. She had grey hair tied back into a ponytail, dark green eyes, and a kind smile on her face. Noticing Sly was up, she laughed heartily before speaking to him with an Irish accent. "Well, well. Look who finally decided to wake?"

She wheeled her cart up to Sly's bed and pulled out a plastic tray with a warm helping of roast chicken, mashed potatoes, and green beans placed on it. She clipped the tray onto the rails of the bed, so that it was like a table over his lap.

"Now eat up. You were in quite a bad state when they brought you in, so you'll need to get back as much energy as you can."

Sly looked at the meal, and realized he had probably not eaten in hours. When his stomach rumbled, he decided to dig in. The doe smiled when she saw the raccoon eating and walked back to the cart to wheel it out.

"Wait a minute!" Sly called when he saw her leaving. He quickly swallowed the chicken he had been eating so his mouth wasn't full. "Can you tell me where I am? Which hospital in Paris have I been taken too?"

The doe laughed again and walked up to the bed. "Poor dear, you don't know where you are, do you?"

"Uh, no, that's why I asked. I was hoping you could tell me."

"Well I guess you'll learn about it soon enough, so I guess it would be alright to tell you." She pulled up a chair that was in the corner of the room and sat down next to the bed. She smoothed the wrinkles out of the apron she was wearing and rested her hands in her lap before answering Sly's question. "Now, I don't know how open-minded you are, dear, but your not in any hospital, at least, not one in Paris."

Sly's brown eyes widened in shock. "WHAT? I'm not in Paris? Then where on earth am I?"

The doe held up her hand. "Calm down. I was getting to that." She put her hand back in her lap. "You are not in any specific city or country, but in a neutral, and before you ask, classified location which is the base for NEXUS, a secret government funded organization."

Sly raised an eyebrow at this. "Okay….Why would a secret organization bring me to their headquarters? I'm not sure if you know this, but I'm just a thief. I'm not a terrorist or anything like that."

The doe shook her head, smiling. "Mr. Cooper, I know very well who you are. NEXUS has dealt with your family in the past, though not that recently until now." She frowned unhappily. "You've been brought here because that artifact you stole, the Imperial Seal, was coveted by a group of criminals named OROBOROS. Very nasty folk, they almost killed you by activating explosives they planted in that train car you were living in. You were in such bad shape, I had to wake up Maggie to help treat you."

"Who's Maggie? Another nurse?"

"What? No, no. She's much better then that." The old woman looked around the room. "She should still be in here. MAGGIE!"

A snowy white bird appeared out of nowhere and flew around the room, landing on the end of Sly's bed. She had a golden beak, a long swanlike neck, and a faint glow like a heat wave around her body.

Sly slowly reached for his cane, but got his hand swatted away by the doe. "HEY! What ya do that for?"

She frowned at Sly disapprovingly. "Now don't you be thinking of hurting Maggie! The sweet girl practically helped save your life after Agent Doyle brought you in."

Sly rubbed his stinging hand. "Okay, I'm sorry. It's just, well, look at her! She looks like she's radioactive or something!"

"She's not 'radioactive.' She's enchanted. Maggie's a caladria, a healing bird found only in the Mediterranean. Her kind can absorb all of the sickness and pain folk have into their feathers and release it into the sun, where it evaporates like morning mist."

"Seriously?"

"Of course. Why, I remember when my Bran was still here. Whenever he got in a scrap in the field, I always could rely on Maggie to help me patch him up." The doe stared dreamily into space for a moment, than shook her head lightly. "By the way, my name is Gwyn O' Hara. I'm head of medical care here at NEXUS." She held out her hand to Sly.

The raccoon shook it politely to stay on the nurse's good side. "Sly Cooper, as I guess you probably know already." He glanced warily at Maggie, who was watching him with intelligent yellow eyes. "So, why does NEXUS have something like her?"

A Golden Retriever walked into the room, dressed in black pants, a white button down collared shirt, and a brown trench coat. "Because NEXUS deals with all manner of the supernatural, Mr. Cooper." The dog said simply as he came up next to Gwyn. He looked down at the doe. "Doyle wants to know if he is ready to come down yet for the debriefing."

Gwyn smirked. "Impatient as always, that tom. Yes, I believe Mr. Cooper will be making a full recovery." She got up and clapped her hands. Maggie flew off of the end of the bed and landed on her shoulder. "I'll just be getting back to work then. Oh, and Zhi?" She turned to the dog. "You should probably check up on 'them' in the Armory. Jacquimo got so tired of their bickering that he locked them up in a sound proof case."

The Golden Retriever ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. "Why am I not surprised?"

The old doe smiled understandingly and, after taking the half eaten meal from Sly, wheeled the metal cart out of the room; the caladria perched on her shoulder. After she left, the dog, or Zhi from what Sly heard, walked up to the threshold. He turned back to Sly. "We'll need you to get dressed. I'll just wait outside until you are done, then everything will be explained." Zhi looked outside, watching the old nurse go down a long white tiled hallway. "At least, the parts Gwyn didn't tell you." He said with a chuckle as he closed the door.

"Okay, this is just getting weird." Sly thought to himself as he unsteadily got out of bed. "First my hideout explodes, Murray and Bentley disappear, Carmelita doesn't arrest me after she finally catches my tail, and, apparently, I'm a guest at a top secret facility that has magic birds." After getting to his feet, Sly took his clothes off the nightstand and got dressed. "And didn't that one guy say something about working with 'the supernatural?' It's like one of those science fiction shows Bentley likes to watch." After placing his cap over his spiky grey hair, Sly grabbed his cane and headed towards the door, still aching slightly but feeling well enough to walk. He opened the door, which was now unlocked, and went into the hall.

Zhi was leaning against a nearby wall when Sly came outside, but straightened up when he saw the raccoon. "Good, you're ready." He waved his hand down towards the end of the hallway. "Now, just follow me and we can get to work on finding your Gang."

That was all Sly needed to hear. He followed after the Golden Retriever past seemingly endless doors, all of them made of the same dark wood. Sly couldn't help but notice that the outside of every door had strange symbols painted on them in many different colors. "Uh, so what's with the graffiti?" He asked his guide.

Zhi replied with his back still to Sly. "Those are sigils. They're spells of protection placed on the rooms to prevent any harmful metaphysical forces from entering and 'disturbing' the occupants."

"Alright…" Sly murmured, slightly creeped out. He looked closer at the psychedelic glyphs, but turned away when they seemed to move by themselves on the wood, like oil in water.

"This is going to be A LOT to take in."

Finally reaching an elevator, Sly watched as Zhi took a keycard from his coat pocket and swiped it through a slot by the closed steel doors. The elevator's gates flew open, beckoning its passengers within. The two men walked inside, where Zei typed a code into a keypad built into the back wall. The doors slid shut. Sly could feel the elevator descending quickly. Noticing the silence, Sly tried to make some conversation. "So, what? NEXUS has all this security, but doesn't even have elevator music?" When Zhi looked at him quizzically, not quite understanding his joke, Sly rolled his masked eyes and waited until they finally stopped on a lower floor. When the doors reopened, Sly almost fainted again at the sight before him.

He was looking over a vast expanse the size of six football fields. Hundreds of people were rushing all over the place, entering and leaving through other elevators and through many storied glass tunnels, connected with large railed platforms. High tech computers and machinery that would have made Bentley salivate were built into the ceiling and platforms, monitored by groups of people in black trench coats. In the center of the area was a great titanium column. The post had circuitry built into it that was curiously arranged around similar symbols like the sigils Sly had noticed earlier in the medical ward. These symbols pulsed with green energy, their light rising and fading every other second.

Zhi noticed Sly's slack jawed expression and grinned. "Welcome to NEXUS, Mr. Cooper."

The raccoon snapped out of his shocked state and followed the dog out of the elevator. "Alright, I'll bite. Where do you put a place this big?

Zhi shrugged as he made his way down a glass tunnel attached to the platform. "I'm not quite sure exactly. They don't speak about it that much, for confidential reasons, but I believe its somewhere deep beneath the earth's surface."

Sly caught up with him, suddenly remembering something. "Hey, wait a minute. You were one of those guys with Inspector Fox at the train station!" The dog nodded. "If that's the case, then how come you don't know where we are? You helped bring me here, didn't you?"

"Well, sort of. It was Agent Doyle who actually got us to NEXUS."

Sly looked blankly at him.

"Oh, sorry. That grey cat that disinfected your wounds."

Sly shuddered slightly when he remembered the freezing sting of the powder Doyle used. "Yea, now I remember him. So how'd he get us here?"

Zhi turned at a corner in the walkway, going towards a platform built into the wall on the other end. "He called up the Seelie, the benign court of Fairie, to transport us through their magic. We had to do so to avoid Interpol from finding you and to quickly get your injuries healed." Zhi and Sly exited the tunnel and walked up to a line of metal doors. "This organization has been allies with the Seelie for centuries. I've heard its because NEXUS once freed them from the Fomorians, water demons that have been the natural enemies of Fairie since the dawn of creation."

Sly kept quiet as the dog opened one of the doors by again using his keycard. The raccoon didn't really know how much of this stuff he could absorb in one day! "Now they're telling me there is such thing as FAIRIES? I'm not Bentley, but even I have to admit this is unbelievable!" To Sly's relief, they now seemed to have entered a museum, a more familiar site to him. Fine wood paneling made up the walls with a floor of white marble. Glass cases filled with various artifacts from every culture and time were placed in any available space, leaving only enough room for small paths between the displays. Large animal skeletons hung from the ceiling: some had wings, others had straight or curved horns, while more then a few seemed a bizarre mix of different species. Sly spotted a display case that featured a large ruby set in a thick solid gold ring. Unable to resist, Sly quietly, while Zhi walked on, began lifting the lid of the case.

"GET AWAY FROM THAT!" A voice roared from behind Sly. He quickly shut the lid and turned to see a chubby old mole glaring at him from behind a bronze idol of a many armed Hindu deity. He was wearing an old fashioned brown vest and a red tie with a silk shirt and a pair of striped trousers. On his large pink nose was a pair of glasses that were as big as dinner plates. The mole waddled up to Sly and smacked him across the head. "IMBECILE!" The mole shouted with a faint Austrian accent. "If you touched that gem, you would become nothing but ash, which I would then have to clean up!"

"What's with all the hitting around here?" Sly thought angrily as he rubbed his head. "Sheesh, alright, buddy, I won't touch it!" He glanced at the ring. "Why do you even have something so dangerous out in the open anyway?"

The mole wrinkled his nose. "Because it is a valuable mystical object, just like the rest of the artifacts in here! Only an IDIOT would take them lightly." The mole narrowed his eyes at Sly, than snorted with disgust. "I see I am correct, since it is quite clear from your genetic structure that you are a Cooper."

"Hey! I'm not a.." Sly stopped protesting about being called an idiot and looked curiously at the short old man. "Wait. How did you know I was a Cooper?"

The mole took a spotted handkerchief out of his pocket and started wiping off the smudges Sly's gloves left on the glass. "As if I would not be familiar with your clan. I've seen around, lets see, FOUR Coopers in my lifetime and two of them when they came here were also so stupid as to try to steal from the Armory! Both almost killed themselves in doing so. These things may be old, but they still possess great power."

Sly had never read in the Thievius Raccoonus about any of his ancestors visiting a place like NEXUS. He was about to ask the mole which Coopers he was talking about, when Zhi, having noticed Sly had wandered off, finally found him. "There you are, Mr. Cooper!" He spotted the mole. "Oh, hello Jacquimo! Can you tell me where you put the Blade? I can't seem to find it anywhere."

Jacquimo frowned as he adjusted his giant spectacles. "Ah, yes. I don't quite see why you still wish to keep that thing. Those two are like infants, always whining and shouting about the most foolish subjects! If I were you, I would have just left it at that monastery of yours!"

"You know I couldn't do that. Anyways, where did you put it?"

The old mole pointed down an aisle of displays near him. "Ninth case down, between the mummified vampire skull and the Ojibwa dream catcher."

"Thank you." Zhi bowed to the mole, which seemed to please him, and turned to Sly. "It would probably be best if you stayed with me for now on. I have some friends of mine I want to introduce you to before we meet up with Doyle."

"Sounds good to me." Sly followed the dog down the aisle. He turned around and waved sarcastically at Jacquimo. "It was REALLY 'nice' to meet you!"

The mole glared at the raccoon. "That feeling is mutual, young Cooper." He smiled nastily. "Please refrain from killing yourself while in here."

"No promises!" Sly called back as he followed Zhi past a grey fanged skull and stopped with him in front of a long wooden case with glass windows. Inside was an old Oriental sword, possibly Chinese in origin, in a simple leather sheath. Zhi opened the case and removed the blade from its scabbard. The bronze hilt and crossguard were shaped to look like a horned giant holding a withering dragon in the air while he pushed a phoenix to the ground with his foot. The blade was forged straight and made of an unknown metal that somehow was white on one side and black on the other. A series of trigrams ran down the sides, colored white for the black side and black for the white. In the middle of the blade between the trigrams was a circle within which the black and white metal swirled around each other, each having a spot of their opposite color within them.

Sly was about to ask about the sword, when he heard the voices.

"About time you got back!" A high-pitched voice whined. "Do you KNOW how long I had to go without another guy to talk to?"

"Oh, please shut up!" Another high-pitched voice more feminine then the first yelled. "As if you wouldn't be used to it after over ten millennia!"

Sly looked left and right, trying to find the source of the strange voices from nowhere. "Who's that?" He scratched his head with the head of his cane and looked at Zhi. "Uh, I think I got hurt worse then I thought. I'm starting to hear things!"

Zhi shook his head. "No, you're not hearing things Mr. Cooper." He held up the sword in front of him. "I would like to introduce you to Tai and Jitu. Guys, come out and meet our new ally, Sly Cooper."

White energy and black fog spiraled out of the blade and circled Sly's head. The white energy formed into a small Chinese dragon with white scales, red horns, orange hair, and yellow eyes. The black fog formed into an equally diminutive phoenix with black plumage, purple wings and claws, green tail feathers, and blue eyes.

The dragon floated in front of Sly's stunned face and looked at him with a whiskered smirk. "So this is the thief that's supposed to help us? HA! I've seen bigger muscles on a baby silkworm!"

The phoenix shot a look of loathing at the dragon. "Strength isn't everything you know, moron!" She turned to Sly. "Sorry about him. If something isn't big and exciting, it's not worth his short attention span."

Zhi frowned at the spirit dragon. "Tai, please stop speaking that way to Mr. Cooper. He is much more then he appears. He did, after all, defeat the Panda King!" The dog then turned to the phoenix. "Jitu, you stop insulting Tai. We need to work together if we want to get through these difficult times, remember?"

Tai turned from Sly and rolled his large yellow eyes. "Jeez, Zhi! You sound way too much like Pangu! He was always going on about 'peace' and 'harmony' and all that junk too!"

"That's because even back then you two were still fighting!" Zhi stated firmly.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah." Tai replied mockingly, waving his claws in the air. Jitu smacked him with her wing. "HEY, WATCH IT BIRDBRAIN!" He snapped at her.

The phoenix raised her brow sarcastically. "Oh, I'm sorry, did that hurt?"

"NO!" The dragon huffed indignantly. "I just don't want to catch bird flu from your feathers! They're probably swimming with disease."

Jitu's blue eyes became aflame with fury. "YOU TAKE THAT BACK, LIZARD LIPS!"

"MAKE ME, CHICKEN LEGS!"

Zhi moved swiftly between the two quarreling spirits before they started exchanging blows. "ALRIGHT, I THINK THAT"S ENOUGH!" The Golden Retriever put the sword back into its sheath.

"Oh, look what you did…." The phoenix murmured as she turned back into dark smog and went back into the blade.

"Wait! Not back in there with her…" The dragon started to cry as he transformed into white energy and also went back into the weapon.

Zhi sighed with relief and grinned at Sly, embarrassed by his friends' behavior. "I am REALLY sorry you had to hear them like that. They're not so bad as long as they don't argue."

Sly waved away his apology. "That's okay. To tell you the truth, they were kind of funny." He chuckled, remembering the insults the spirits traded. "I'm shocked they haven't killed each other already!"

"Thankfully they can't." Zhi took a strap attached to the scabbard and put it over his chest, carrying the millennia old weapon on his back. "I think we're done in here. How about we go see Doyle?"

"That depends. Is Carmelita with him?

The dog nodded, wondering why the raccoon asked that question. "Yes."

Sly gave a thumbs up and smiled playfully. "I'm in!"

What does Doyle have to say to Sly? Where did Zhi get his sword? What did OROBOROS do with Murray and Bentley? Find out next chapter!