Warning for brief implied violence and gore.
The first real thieving lesson Sly's father ever taught him, when he was three years old, was how to be quiet. He'd thought this was dumb and not nearly as fun as robbing a bank, so he'd told his father exactly that. But instead of reprimanding his son, the elder Cooper only chuckled and sat him on his knee with the patience of a master parent.
"Silence is the language of thieves, kiddo," he told him gently. "How can you rob a bank if everyone knows you're coming? How can you steal someone's wallet if he can hear you behind him? What do you do if he turns around?"
"Hit him," Sly announced, chin held defiantly high. "Hit him and take it."
"You've been spending too much time with McSweeney."
"Nu-uh!"
Connor smiled at that. "Well, I suppose not. But if you were quiet, then he wouldn't turn around at all, and then you wouldn't have to hit him. Do you understand?"
Sly considered this point with solemnity only a toddler could manage. Then he blinked up at his father and nodded, mouth closed firmly.
"Good. Now it's time for you to learn how to never make noise. Starting…NOW!"
Connor had taken this moment to grasp his son around the waist and suddenly lifted him high in the air above his head. Sly shrieked in delight and wriggled with his arms and legs. His tail flickered every which way as he collapsed into giggles.
"Come on kiddo, I thought you were going to be quiet!" His father was grinning up at him, hands steady as rocks.
"No fair, no fair," Sly laughed, "Not ready!"
"Master thieves have to be ready for anything. If you get surprised or scared, and you make a lot of noise, then you get caught. I surprised you, but if you want to learn to be a master thief, you have to know when it's okay to laugh and scream like that, alright?"
"Okay Daddy!"
"Good," Connor brought his son down to his knee again. He grinned with all his teeth, and Sly mirrored the look with his own baby canines.
"Here we go."
Five years later, Sly doesn't remember much about that conversation except its most basic part; he has to be completely silent, right now, no matter what. Because that's what master thieves do when they're surprised, or scared, or hurting. That's how they survive.
That's how he will survive, in this little closet, as he watches his father get pinned down on their bloody living room carpet. As his mother's horrible screaming from the dining room stops with three muffled bangs and a wet choke. As something bigger than anyone he's ever seen taps iron claws against Connor's back and flips him over.
Sly doesn't make a sound as someone else breaks open the family safe and pulls out the Cooper family's heritage, the Thievius Raccoonus. He doesn't cry as the book is torn apart by five different sets of hands over his father's struggling body.
Doesn't scream when those talons decide his father shouldn't struggle anymore.
All he does is stay still as a statue – don't move kiddo, movement makes noise and we don't want to be caught – as the five murderers leave just as swiftly as they came. He stays in that closet after that, not because he thinks they will come back, but because he knows now what death looks like, and if he steps out of his hiding place, he will have to acknowledge the reality of what has happened.
He's not enough like his father to do that.
When the local police office gets the call about a night disturbance in a nearby suburban area, they're mildly surprised. It's always been a quiet neighborhood on the edge of town, and the most recent call from out there had been for an ailing older rabbit who needed a quick pick-up to the hospital. They're even more surprised at the call's contents.
"911, what is your emergency?"
"I heard screaming next door!" The voice is almost hysterical. "And there was a big car in the street I've never seen before, and I saw, I saw something huge fly into the sky – it blocked out the moon!"
The operator gets their address and name immediately, and promptly sends two officers to go out while promising the distraught caller that everything will be fine and to expect someone to arrive to ask them a few questions in person.
"What do you think it is?" Fangmeyer asks as he opens the driver's door, settling in behind the wheel.
"Dunno," McHorn shrugs, squeezing into the passenger seat. They pull out of the station. "Might be a domestic disturbance, with the screaming. Someone probably had someone else come pick them up, if there was a strange car."
"Yeah, sure, but what about the big flying thing? I've never heard of anything like that." The tiger keeps his eyes on the road, on the lookout for street signs.
"Who knows. The caller probably psyched themselves out, you know how people get." They both go silent for a moment and watch rows of houses pass by. "Don't forget, it's a blue house with gold trimmings. You got better night vision than me."
"Yeah, I got it."
They find the address of the caller with little trouble, then the house next door where the screaming supposedly took place. It's a modest little home on the end of the street corner with a plastic swing set in the yard, colored just as McHorn described. Light spills through the front entrance, and the rhino cop assumes it must be one of those full-glass doors.
He starts to get out of the car but is stopped by a fuzzy paw on his shoulder. He turns to his partner, who is staring at the house with sudden intensity.
"McHorn, call in for backup."
"What? Why?"
"The front door's been ripped from its hinges."
They call the station, backup is promised within five minutes, and the two officers step up to the doorway cautiously, on high alert. The door is lying on the floor just inside, and there's immediate wreckage throughout the hallway. Hanging portraits have been smashed to the ground, littering broken glass everywhere. A coatrack is on its side with garments strewn about. A low bookcase along the wall has been overturned, its books scattered and torn.
The first room to the left seems to still have the lights on, so the two pull guns out of their holsters and sidle quietly over that way, peering in carefully. It's the dining room.
There's a raccoon, a woman, slumped on the ground against a chair leg with three bullet holes through her body. McHorn goes as rigid as a bowstring. Fangmeyer holds his paw to his mouth as bile threatens to come up his throat. They both rush up to her and the tiger checks her pulse. Nothing. One of them brings the radio up and manages to call in a 10-79 with a trembling voice.
This is when they see the next doorway leading to the living room.
And it's here that they learn exactly whose house this belongs to, because the world-famous thief Connor Cooper is splayed out on the floor with his chest ripped open.
Fangmeyer can't hold himself together any longer; he staggers to the farthest side of the room and retches, leaning against the doorframe of a coat closet. McHorn is about to call this in as well, to report that they've found the corpse of one of Interpol's most wanted criminals, when he sees the tiger suddenly collapse to his knees.
"Oh my god. Oh my god."
"Fangmeyer, what is it? Did you find another body?"
His partner doesn't respond except to shake his head without turning around. Instead he pulls open the closet door all the way, and the rhino forgets to breathe.
A child stares back at them with tear-stained fur and shell-shocked eyes.
After that, things move very quickly.
Backup arrives just in time to find two haunted officers coming out of the house. The tiger is green through his fur and staggers to the nearest cruiser to ask for water and a forensics team. The rhino behind him walks solemnly through the yard, carrying a raccoon kit who clutches a very recognizable cane to his chest and won't look at anyone.
Within two minutes, the Police Chief orders the house to be sectioned off completely while they sort things out. Twenty minutes after that, he orders an evacuation of the whole street because curious neighbors and nosy townsfolk are drawing a crowd to gawk at this unusual occurrence. When a local news station pulls up just outside the evacuation zone, the chief calls for all present officers to declare an oath of silence until everything has been investigated thoroughly. Then the Force contacts Interpol.
Known only to the first few responders – and to the international detective they're informing over the phone – is the presence of Cooper's only child, who has been whisked to the nearest hospital in secret. He's miraculously unharmed, but they keep him there, in a private room with an officer guard, for fear that whoever had it in for the Master Thief might come back to finish the job.
They don't know his name or his age, but those are things easily found in records and birth certificates. What they're really wondering is how he survived this horrific encounter, how he managed to sit in a little coat closet and not give himself away.
They won't get this answer from him directly, but they're getting an inkling of how it was possible anyway. Because Cooper's son hasn't said a word to anyone since he was found.
He hasn't made any noise at all.
A/N: I'm very sorry. I'm not sorry. I don't know.
This is probably going to be the worst chapter as far as violence goes, but I'm not making any promises. But here we are, the real kick-off of Sly's story. I'm super excited to get to Bentley and Murray, but there are a few other things that have to happen first. Interpol has yet to actually arrive, after all.
Thanks for reading!