*BEN POV*
As we drove to the location of the first member of the Fiendish Five, Sly and I decided to read up on him.
His name was Sir Raleigh the Frog. In his youth, he grew bored of his life of luxury and privilege, wishing to find excitement in his life. On a whim, he decided to be a pirate and found the profession to be to his liking. He was the Fiendish Five's Chief Mechanic and was responsible for the creation of all sorts of devious devices sold on the Black Market.
After three hours of driving thanks to the Cooper Van being outfitted with all sorts of stuff to get across the world in a jiffy, we made our way to the Welsh Triangle on the Isle of Wrath, where Raleigh was last reported being sighted.
It was raining pretty hard as the gang soon arrived and parked their van. Sly and Ben getting out while Bentley and Murray stayed behind to keep an eye on things and be their eyes and ears. The two thieves approached a large gate before getting a call from Bentley.
"I just spotted something that's going to complicate the mission. That gate is blocking the only entrance leading to Raleigh's hideout!"
"You say that, but there's a ladder right next to it, Bents." Ben frowned, noting the ladder.
"Oh...Sorry, I just have a habit of getting worried." Bentley muttered sheepishly.
"Hey, don't beat yourself up over it. We all get a little worried." Ben reassured as he and Sly used the ladder to sneak over the gate and make their way through the area, knocking out a few Beaver Guards in the process.
When the duo made it to the end, Ben stumbled upon a strange bottle with a roll of paper inside it. Curious, the young man smashed the bottle and took out the paper, unfolding it as his eyes widened in amazement.
"Yo, Sly! You gotta check this out!"
Sly looked at the paper with Ben and both thieves saw it was a list of codes to every safe in Raleigh's hideout! The two looked at each other with devious grins as they already knew what they were gonna do with this knowledge.
"Hey Bentley, think you can take a look at these codes?"
"You betcha! In the meantime, check out that blimp!"
Ben and Sly turned to see what appeared to be Raleigh's main base of operations and sailing above was a large blimp of some kind that looked like no blimp the duo had seen before.
"You know, it looks more like a machine than a hideout," Sly said.
"You're right, Sly. That's a storm machine! It's the reason it never stops raining around here." Bentley said as Ben looked at all the wrecked ships down by the bow of the giant ship.
"Let's just hope the people on those boats managed to abandon ship..." Ben muttered worriedly.
Sly nodded. "Looks like Raleigh's using the storm machine to make the waters extremely volatile, causing tons of trading ships to sink into the ocean for him to plunder."
"Yeah, and also because he's a frog and eternal rain would make him feel the most comfortable."
Sly chuckled at Ben's joke before gaining a serious expression. "Whatever it takes, I'm going to steal my family's book back... and if Raleigh gets in our way, it's on."
"I don't doubt that for a second, Sly."
After making their way further, the duo came across a safe. Ben held up a finger to Sly to signify that he had it covered before turning the dials and getting the right code before swinging the door open. Sly's ears perked up as he moved over and took what was inside.
"It's one of the pages of the Thievius Raccoonus! This one is for Drake Cooper's Knockout Dive attack!"
"Sweet! Now we can get the drop on enemies quicker!"
Sly took out the empty book that was the Thievius Raccoonus and placed the page back into it.
"Hmmm, maybe we can find someone we can trust to tidy up the book. Make it so that none of the pages were ever torn." Ben suggested as Sly nodded in agreement before stashing the book back in his pack.
"Now time to move onto Raleigh's hideout," Ben said as he moved to the lock on the front gate and pulled out a bobby pin, using it to pick the lock and break it off, leaving the gate open for him and Sly to go through.
Once the thieving duo got to the overlooking of Raleigh's base before contacting Bentley.
"That blimp is the most secure location on that boat. If Raleigh is really as smart as the case file suggests, that's where we'll find him." Sly said seriously.
"Wonderful idea, but your plan is flawed," Bentley said with the shake of his head.
"How so?" Ben asked.
"Because it's impossible to get near him. To get access to Raleigh's blimp, you'll need to go through that high-voltage power tube." Bentley frowned as Sly and Ben looked at the tube in question. "To do that without getting electrocuted, you need to knock out that power generator next to it. And to do that, you'll need two of Raleigh's treasure keys, which are heavily guarded."
"Treasure Keys? What's so special about those? Can't I just pick the locks?" Ben pointed out as Sly chuckled at his friend's witty retort.
"Don't say I never warned you...Anyways, I've marked the areas you need to hit with holographic markers. Follow them to get to areas with a treasure key at the end of each." Bentley said.
"Thanks, Bentley."
"Don't mention it, just be careful, both of you?"
Sly and Ben decided to split up to the two locations that Bentley marked in order to make things faster. Sly took the boiler room while Ben took the treasury. As he made his way inside, he couldn't help but admire all the priceless stuff around him.
"Time for the kleptomaniac inside me to go crazier than a drug addict high on twenty hundred grams of coke!"
Ben swiped a couple of priceless jewels, a golden ruby-encrusted crown, a 24 karat gold bar, and even a nice painting that caught his interest. He soon found a safe and smirked as he dialed in the proper code and opened it up to reveal several pages detailing the story of Sly's pirate ancestor, Henriette 'One Eye' Cooper.
"Whoa! Sly is gonna LOVE these!" Ben said as he pocketed the pages and soon found the Treasure Key, sneaking out of the treasury without any of the guards being the wiser to what had occurred. Ben soon met back up with Sly, who had finished collecting the Treasure Key he had gone after in the boiler room.
"Did you find a safe too?" Ben asked as Sly nodded and showed the page he found.
"It's Old Sally Cooper's Raccoon Roll move. She could move faster rolling than anybody could do on foot."
"Nice! I actually got the pages of your pirate ancestor, Henriette 'One Eye' Cooper!" Ben then gave the pages a quick lookover. "Gotta say she was quite the looker, huh?"
"Heh, don't go falling in love with her now? She's way too old for you, pal." Sly joked as Ben rolled his eyes and gave him the pages.
"Har, har, very funny."
"Alright, we got the keys. Now let's take out that generator." Sly said as Ben nodded. After taking out the generator, the two decided to split up again to cover more ground. Ben found himself in a room with booby-trapped carpets. Luckily, he hid in a barrel and snuck through, the deadly arrows being repelled by the barrel's sturdy wood.
Soon, Ben found both the Treasure Key and the safe, unlocking it, he found another page of the Theivius Raccoonus inside and took it. It was Karin Coopergiwa's Coin Magnet technique. She had managed to create a special magnetic formula for her cane that allowed her to attract all coins she wanted towards her.
"This will definitely be good for Sly to use," Ben said as he pocketed the page and regrouped with Sly, who had collected a page written by Chris Cooper detailing his Dive Collection technique, which was an upgrade to Drake Cooper's Knockout Dive that allowed him to collect anything his enemies had while also hitting them with the Knockout Dive.
"Wow, we'll finish restoring your family's book in no time, Sly!" Ben said as the two friends did a secret victory handshake before continuing through the power tube, which was now safe to cross. A beaver with giant golden throwing stars noticed the two and began throwing his weapons but the two dodged them and Sly knocked the thug into the air with an upward swing of his cane.
"All yours, partner!" Sly exclaimed as Ben jumped and did a diving knee into the beaver thug's stomach, knocking him into the ground and unconscious. Ben adjusted his cuffs with a smirk as his eyes gleamed behind his mask.
"Show's over, pal!"
As Sly moved to another area to collect more Treasure Keys, Ben noticed a submarine and gave a goofy grin as he jumped inside it before contacting Bentley.
"Yo, Bents! Can you help me out with the controls on this sub?"
"Sure! It's actually pretty easy to control!" Bentley explained. "Use the wheel to move left and right, press the green button to descend, the blue button to ascend, and the buttons on the wheel to move forward and back."
"I also see a gun turret button and a button for a grappling hook. Alright, I think I got it figured out!" Ben then submerged the submarine underwater after closing the canopy and then dove through the water. There were several undersea mines placed around but a few good shots of the submarine's turrets destroyed them with ease.
Soon, Ben found the Treasure Key and pressed the grappling hook button to bring it onto the submarine. With his prize collected, Ben returned to the surface and disembarked the submarine to see Sly return.
"Yo, you get another page?"
Sly nodded and presented the page in question. "It was by Dev Cooperinda and it details his Slow-Motion Jump technique. He also had some stories written on the back. They seem to take about some mysterious owl figure."
"Creepy..." Ben said, feeling a slight shudder. With plenty of Treasure Keys collected, the two unlocked the controls for a nearby cannon and then looked up at Raleigh's blimp before realizing what they needed to do.
"You SO owe me for this, man..." Ben groaned as he and Sly got inside the cannon and fired themselves out of it and through the glass canopy of the blimp, finding Sir Raleigh waiting for them on his throne.
Sir Raleigh was a green frog with a dark blue top hat that had swirling gears on it as well as fancy white gloves and spats on his feet.
"How delightful...we have guests...the only thing is...I HATE UNEXPECTED GUESTS!" Raleigh exclaimed the last bit as he slammed his fist down angrily.
"Listen Raleigh, wipe out my family and steal what's mine? You better expect company." Sly said with a glare as Ben twirled out his knife and held it in a reverse grip.
"And seriously, I understand you were bored of being rich and having everything given to you but couldn't you have taken up a hobby? Maybe built machines to better the world or something? You have such a big brain and you use it for evil? That's just sad."
"Don't you dare speak of me that way, you insolent brat!" Raleigh snarled. "It's not MY fault that life held no thrill or joy before I took up piracy!"
"Well, now you can add 'cold-blooded murder' to your list of crimes you could have avoided if you just find a way to use your tech for good. Because you and your entire gang are gonna pay for killing my buddy's parents!" Ben growled.
"Oh, I'm ever so SORRY..." Raleigh said in a fake sad tone. "Of course, if it makes you feel any better, I didn't have any hand in the death of your parents, Sly Cooper. In fact, it wasn't even part of the agenda on my part. But now, let me make amends by what?"
"What?"
"BLOATING TO GARGANTUAN SIZE! AND SQUASHING YOU LIKE THE INSIGNIFICANT BUGS THAT YOU ARE!"
"Bring it on!" Ben and Sly said at the same time as Raleigh ate a bee and bloated up before bouncing towards the duo. The two easily dodged his attempts to crush them and he soon shrunk back to normal.
"Seriously? You could have used a battle mecha or something but you did something as mundane as that? How pathetic."
Raleigh couldn't even put up a fight as Ben and Sly struck him multiple times like shadowy blurs before knocking him into the water, utterly defeated.
"BLAST IT ALL!" The fiendish frog cursed. "You've BEATEN me..."
"Well, what did you expect?"
Raleigh growled before chuckling weakly. "Well, gloat all you want. Neither of you is a match for Muggshot, my villainous cohort in Utau! You will see...Mesa City is so well guarded a SNAKE couldn't slither in without setting off alarms!"
With one last weak laugh, Raleigh passed out from his injuries. With their foe defeated, Ben and Sly made their way to his throne and found a safe behind it. Unlocking it, they saw detailed pages showing the stories, techniques, and exploits of Sly's ancestor from Feudal Japan; Riochi Cooper.
"Alright, let's grab Raleigh and blow this popsicle stand...LITERALLY!" Ben had a maniacal grin on his face as he took out several packets of C4 from his coat and placed them all over some important gears before he and Sly bailed from the blimp, taking Raleigh with them as Ben detonated the plastic explosives and sent the blimp crashing into the sea.
Leaving Raleigh unconscious for the police to find, Sly and Ben hid under the bridge just as Carmelita and the Interpol Police Force arrived and they were all too happy to bust Raleigh and all his henchmen.
With their mission done, Ben and Sly jumped back into the Cooper Van and Murray punched the ignition driving off with Carmelita and her crew none the wiser to the Cooper Gang's presence on the Isle of Wrath...or as it would soon be renamed 'Isle of Nice'.
"I say this was a very successful run! We defeat Raleigh and got all of his sections of the Thievius Raccoonus. What do you say we go on a vacation to England? We could use some sunshine after this." Sly smiled.
"Hell yeah! I'm gonna need to blowdry my jacket for hours after that rainstorm!" Ben said, gesturing to his relatively wet clothes.
As the gang drove off, Sly and Ben read up on the skills of Henriette and Riochi Cooper, the latter having perfected the Ninja Spire Jump technique, which allowed him to perch on just about anything narrow with ninja-like skill and agility.
Huge Shout-Out to jumbochamploonrules and his story 'A Human Among Animal Thieves'.