ASSAULTING SUNRISE
Job 5: Reflections of the Past
Murray tucks into his Aboriginal Ball form and makes his way down the rounded streets of the water park. It's rather fun, once he gets going: enough speed, and he can literally bowl over every guard he encounters, sending them flying (and unconscious). Only downside is, he doesn't get much money that way.
"Man," Sly says in his ear, "I should see if I can get a bunch of them to line up like bowling pins."
"That'd be awesome," Murray agrees. He starts bouncing in his enthusiasm, working up quite some height in the process, and continues terrorizing the guards that way.
Still, all good things must come to an end. Murray rolls to a stop in front of one of the train stops. He pulls out his binoc-u-com and looks across the street, at the boldly named HALL OF MIRRORS. "I never liked these places, Bentley. They make me feel sick."
"That's fine, Murray. You won't even have to go inside." Bentley fixes his glasses. "That'll all be Tennessee's doing."
"So what will I do?"
"The hall of mirrors is locked down magnetically. There's a strong magnet in each pillar by the corners of the buildings. To get inside, you'll need to pound the pillars into the ground; that'll reduce their power. Then you'll need to pry the door open for Tennessee by hand."
"No sweat. Pillars, prepare to be pounded by... The Murray."
Murray puts his binoc-u-com away and starts working to get on the roof of the hall of mirrors; because he's not Sly, it takes a little while. "Time your jumps in ball form to build up power and jump higher," Bentley suggests. "You can use that to get on the roof, and pound the pillars."
Honestly, Murray finds it easier to just jump to the roof; there are plenty of salt bricks to help him up. But he humors Bentley anyway, pressing the jump button the moment he touches the ground to shoot further up into the air, bouncing and bouncing and putting his whole body into it, getting on the roof and then higher. And higher! And higher still!
He is THE MURRAY! Bouncing! And trouncing! And flattening that pillar! Bouncing! And trouncing! Another one goes down! No guard stands before him; they're bowled over by his bulk. And if one tries to fight him, he imitates the—wait wrong franchise, carry on.
In any case, it's not long at all before Murray has the pillars pounded into place.
With that, he makes his way around to the door. A large number of guards wait there. I wonder why. It's almost as though pounding those pillars drew some attention. In any case, it's time for Murray to flex his muscles and get in a big, heart-pounding brawl.
Boy, does Murray love brawls.
He's actually sad when the last guy goes down to a gunshot and Tennessee shows up. "You ready to do this thing, pardner?"
"Totally! I've got the door; you go inside." With that, Murray stomps the ground and catches the bottom of the door. With a grrr... hick... ugh... doh! He pushes it up. "I'll keep watch here in case anyone tries to disturb you."
"Shoot, Murray, you know I can handle myself!" Tennessee twirls his gun.
"No, he's right, Tennessee," Bentley cuts in. "We don't know how many guards are inside. Murray's just making sure you have a way to retreat."
"You lot worry too much," Tennessee says, and goes inside.
With the flash of a LOADING screen, Tennessee emerges into... well, the sign proclaims it's the Mirror Maze. A 'map' helpfully shows the exit on the far side of the room, the right-side wall, with a large square filled in with a ? between them. Helpful text below tells people who get too lost to raise their hands, and a helper will come from the observatory booth to lead them out.
"Hey Bentley, what am I looking for in here?" Tennessee asks, strolling forwards and spinning his gun in one hand.
"I doubt they'd have any good information out in the open. See if you can make your way to the observatory booth."
"Right," Tennessee says, entering the maze. "I'll be quick as..."
Tennessee trails off, and I can't blame him. The observatory booth is basically a window cut in the far wall, easy enough for Tennessee to reach if he can get over there; a power cord, more than thick enough for Tennessee to climb, runs down the far left corner from the window to the floor. The walls of the maze are made up of mirrors, maybe hundreds of them, big and small, wide and skinny, reflecting endlessly, but that's the point of a mirror maze. The problem is the lasers. There appears to be several laser emitters on the various walls, positioned so that the lasers themselves hit the mirrors and bounce . Figuring out exactly where the lasers come from is possible, but downright dizzying, and every path is completely blocked.
"Okay, this may take a minute," Tennessee says. "Got a suggestion?"
"You may be better off shooting your way through than trying to solve the maze," Bentley says.
"Finally," Tennessee says, holding up his gun and grinning wildly. "I've been waiting for a chance to-"
"Just be careful . If you shoot a mirror with a laser pointing at it, then it won't bounce off that mirror any more, and will hit some other mirror. If you're not careful, you could change this from 'difficult' to 'completely impassable'."
Tennessee rolls his eyes. "Shoot, Bentley, I know what I'm doin! You just leave this," he pauses to aim his gun at a mirror, "to me."
This next area is a little tricky to play, for... fairly obvious reasons. As discussed, when everything is covered in mirrors, breaking one can lead to unintended consequences; to aid in solving it, the camera switches to a top-down view, allowing the player to see and trace the consequences of their actions. A smart person would look all around as well as they could, spot where the lasers were coming from and try to trace them along, so as not to make things worse for themselves. A terrible player would shoot completely at random and hope they don't bounce a laser into themselves.
Tennessee proves to be neither of those. He checks that breaking a mirror won't immediately cause his fur to be singed by new laser-bounces, but that's about it. Mirror after mirror shatters, because Tennessee doesn't care if he gets 7 years or any years of bad luck, they'll probably all happen in the early 1900's anyway and he's in this time now. Or maybe they'll happen in the next couple years, but he'll be back in whenever he came from, several decades away from the bad luck, I don't know.
Time travel meets superstition is confusing!
But either way, Tennessee is taking a shotgun to several... dozen... mirrors in a very short period of time. The end result is... well, he still has to traverse some of the maze, but he avoids all the lasers and gets to the thing he can climb easily. And then shoots out the window and climbs inside there, to an area with a large desk.
Tennessee rifles through the drawers and pulls out a folder. "Huh. Bentley, I don't suppose you'd be interested in the only country this place is givin' that lithium to, would ya?"
"I would," Bentley says. "Care to enlighten me?"
"Looks like it's some spot in the North o'Europe," Tennessee says. "There's a map, not names, and for all I know there was a war that changed sometin or other."
"Then bring that whole folder with you, and come on back to the safe house."
JOB COMPLETE
Tennessee tucks the folder under his arm and jumps back out through the window, whistling.