ASSAULTING SUNRISE
 Job 1: Sandy Seas

9:48 PM
 Sea Of Salt

The gang sits at a circular table in a squat, square room. The walls, floor, and ceiling are all made of identical gray blocks of what might be stone; Thaddeus and Tennessee work to cover the walls with blankets. Bentley types at his laptop, grumbling about dust; Carmelita polishes Tennessee's gun, since hers is already gleaming. Murray's eating a large bowl of soup. He pauses, breaks off a small piece of the nearby wall, puts it in his bowl, and stirs until it dissolves, then continues eating.

The fourth side of the building is open into the back of the van. Sly emerges from it, a cloth in his hands; he uses it to wipe white powder off his hat, then passes it to Carmelita. He nods at her once, getting her to smile back. Murray gives him a thumbs-up. Bentley makes a shooing motion with one hand, so Sly leaves.

He emerges into an area studded with a handful of similar square, grayish-white-blocked houses and picnic tables; a sign pounded into the ground reads LUNCH BUNCH MUNCH SQUARE. The ground is made of identical grayish-white... stuff; cracks run through it in rough hexagon patterns, and not far to the right is a chain link fence with construction equipment on the far side of it. None of that seems important, though, as the water park stretching out on three other sides.

Sly jumps on a stray block of... rock? Sand? whatever, and uses that to get to the roof. He pulls out his binoc-u-com and tells Bentley, "I thought doing any sort of major construction here was illegal?"

"Houses and buildings are usually okay," Bentley says. He stops to blow his nose. "But the construction here makes it too unsteady for more complex, permanent structures. The entire desert is made of salt, but it only goes down so far; it's all resting on pure disgusting brine, salt water so thick with other gunk it may as well be poison. Plus, theres nowhere for them to put any trash or waste. If this is here much longer, they'll have to start piling it up like an old dump."

Sly pans his binoc-u-com around at the water park, zooming in for a moment on the log flume. "Then yeah, I'd say whatever's going on here isn't legal by a long shot."

"Go around and take some pictures, I need more information." Bentley waves one hand. "And watch your salt intake."

Bentley ends the conversation before Sly can respond, which is probably for the best, really. Sly shakes his head, puts his binoc-u-com away, and starts exploring.

The water park seems... to be rather lacking in water, really, with the exception of a river of brine weaving its way through everything; every now and then a few inner tubes float along it, making risky moving platforms if Sly wants to attempt jumping over. The paths are lined by buildings that run the rides and serve no real purpose other than letting Sly jump on them. The paths themselves are half-circles dug into the ground, so Sly can't just leave them to explore without jumping. One jump to get onto proper ground (for a given definition of ground, when everything looks like it could fall apart any minute), then he can grab the light pole and shimmy to a nearby roof to take the first few pictures.

He takes a picture of the path, of course, and Bentley moans. "That's gonna be annoying." And then Sly takes a shot of the chain-link fence surrounding the entire area. "That encloses everything neatly, unfortunately. But our safe-house is inside the fence, and the views from my RC Chopper indicate there's no building outside the fence. It shouldn't hinder us too much."

Well, all right then.

Moving on, Sly navigates the streets for a while, stopping to take pictures of the guards—flamingos, burrowing owls, and something very fox-like that Bentley identifies as a Culpeo with a flashlight and a gun they do not want to mess with. He has to take to the streets to get a good shot of the carousel, and that makes Bentley pause. "There's a door in the center. We should investigate that."

No doubt Sly'll be doing that later, but right now he leaps on top of the carousel to get a good view of the nearby water slide, a swoopy thing with a pool at the bottom. Bentley almost gags. "Yick! Do you see that?"

"Yeah, a water slide. We went on one once when the orphanage-"

"The water is brown ," Bentley snaps. "It's barely even water. They must be pumping the brine up from beneath the salt and using that, completely unfiltered!"

Sly chuckles. "Is it as bad as the swamp around Mizz Ruby's lair?"

"Worse. Don't even touch this stuff, Sly; it may not be acid, but we should treat it as such."

Well, that's gonna make things fun. It gets even better when Sly takes a picture of the log flume, a tall, wide building with most of the ride enclosed, save for where the log emerges at the top, plummets to the brine bath below, then floats back inside. "You can't be serious! Don't they know the damage that brine can cause?" Bentley demands.

"I don't think they care, buddy," Sly murmurs.

"Well they should." Bentley hangs up in a huff, and Sly sighs and continues looking around.

There's a trolley system with tracks making its way through the park, doing a sort of clover shape through the area and around the carousel in the center. "Should make getting around a little easier," Bentley comments. "You and Tennessee can ride the rails, and the rest of us can hitch a ride on the cars when they come by."

"I like the sound of that," Sly admits.

A shot of the security cameras (lovely) gets him only a thoughtful hum and warning to stay out of sight from Bentley, but the fountain park in the center of the area makes him pause. The ground is full of small holes, each surrounded by a circle of blue lights; water—well, brine—fountains out, in a number of different heights. "That brine is so toxic standing on top of one when it goes off would be painful," Bentley mutters. "So could standing in too much of the spray, for that matter. We should avoid this place.

Sly nods without responding. He can't even walk across the fountain plaza; there are too many brown jets of water everywhere. But he continues exploring, making his way around the park, and finds an enclosed building, strangely oversized pillars at its corners, worth taking a picture of: the sign over its door says HOUSE OF MIRRORS.

"We'll probably need two to explore that place," Bentley mutters.

"Are you sure we need to?" Sly asks, furrowing his brow.

"If I wanted to hide something, what better place? If it's laid out well, you might walk past your own cane without seeing it."

Sly screws up his face. "I thought we agreed never to bring up Guam."

"I didn't." Bentley sounds far too pleased. "You did."

Looks like there's a few more things for Sly to take pictures of. He finds one near one side of the park, a gigantic wave pool... full of brine. Bentley makes gagging noises over the binoc-u-com as Sly moves on. It takes a while, but in one corner of the park, as far from the safe-house as possible, is the start of the lazy river. "The river's too wide to just jump across, but we've gotta get over there," Bentley muses. "Based on the extra chain-link fence around that building, it's gotta be some sort of extra guard encampment or secret facility, not just the ride's operations."

"Lovely," Sly sighs.

"Come on back to the safe-house, buddy. We've gotta think about this one."

JOB COMPLETE

Sly glances in the lazy river, pokes it with his cane, and makes a face.