Wow, this took a lot longer than I had expected it to! Cursed writer's block. But here it is finally, chapter three!

There hasn't really been much thief action as of yet, there's mostly just been conversation to begin establishing character relationships, so I'll try to get some action into the next chapter.

Anyways, I hope that this was worth the wait!


Chapter Three: A Semi-Permanent Arangement

When I became aware of the world existing again, I did not want to be awake. I wanted to just lay there where it was warm, and pretend like nothing else existed.

Unfortunately, I can never stay in that blissful half-concious world for long before my brain tells my body to start paying attention and reacting to things around me.

Things such as what initially sounded like a two year old abusing a set of drum cymbals. I twitched my ears a few times, trying to ignore the sound. But no, I was awake now, so I sat up to investigate, lowering my ears away from the harsh sounds.

I rubbed my eyes to get them to focus on the safehouse. It was light outside of the windows, early evening light by the look of it. I saw Bentley to my right, at the same table as yesterday, still doing computer work. The sounds of the cymbals seemed to be coming somewhere from that direction, too.

"Murray doesn't know how to cook quietly," Sly's voice came from my left, and I turned to see him sitting in a chair off to the side of the couch. His incredibly messy hair and half-focused eyes said that he'd just woken up somewhat recently, as well. He had a mug of what I assumed was coffee (it looked too dark and thick to be tea) in his left hand, and I made the subconcious observation about him that it appeared he was left-handed.

I moved to sit cris-cross and blinked a few times, feeling like parts of me (such as my eyes) were still asleep. "Sounds like he's abusing a cymbal set,"

"You unfortunately get used to it," Bentley stated, a hint of amusement in his voice.

"I take that it's a common thing, then?" I asked.

"Murray is the only one of us who really knows how to cook, so yeah," Sly chuckled, sipping from his mug. "There's coffee in the kitchen if you want any," he added, motioning towards the kitchen door.

"No, thanks," I shook my head. "I can't stand coffee,"

"Suit yourself," Sly shrugged. "There's soda in the fridge if you want, help yourself,"

"Thanks," I got up and sauntered on my stiff legs into the kitchen. Or as I jokingly called it in my head, the 'Cymbal Torture Chamber'.

"Mornin', Murray," I said to the hippo, who was cooking an insane amount of bacon and pancakes.

"Good morning, citizen!" Murray responded enthusiastically. "'The Murray' is working on preparing nourishment!"

"Who even makes that many pancakes?" I asked as I opened the fridge to assess my drink options. Murray had two boxes of pancake mix on the counter, and I figured that at least a fourth of one was scattered all over said counter (I couldn't blame him for the mess though, I wouldn't have done it much cleaner, myself). I didn't even attempt to count how many pancakes he'd made so far.

"You can never have too much of a good thing," Murray responded, as though it was a scientifically proven fact that everyone should know.

I shrugged and grabbed a can of pepsi off the top shelf of the fridge. "True, very true," I agreed as I headed back for the kitchen door. I dramatically turned and pointed a finger at Murray. "Don't burn the house down,"

"Have faith that 'The Murray' knows how to cook!" Murray boasted as I walked back into the living room to sit back on the couch.

"So, how'd you sleep?" Sly asked as I braced the soda can on my left knee and opened it carefully.

"Not bad. I've definately slept in worse places," I said. Such as underneath a coffee table in my own bedroom, or with my head flopped over the backrest of my desk chair, to name a few.

"Good, I felt kinda bad with you being stuck on the couch. That's why I offered to take it last night," Sly said through a yawn. His left ear twitched a bit and he switched his coffee mug into his right hand so he could use his left to scratch it.

"Nah, it's fine. It really wasn't bad at all. I've never had an issue with sleeping on couches, honestly," I shrugged.

"Maybe because you're a cat?" Sly suggested jokingly.

"Maybe because I'm a cat," I agreed, shrugging. "I'm not sure how true the 'cats can sleep anywhere' stereotype is,"

"If you're looking for an actual answer; It's both true and not true. While some felines exhibit the ability to sleep under otherwise difficult circumstances, not all felines can. It's a matter of individual ability, really. It just seems to appear most in felines," Bentley supplied this science fact without even looking over at us.

"Bentley is a walking textbook, you learn something new every day when he's around," Sly chuckled.

"Why thank you, Sly, I'm flattered," Bentley said, very overdramatically.

"You really might wanna go see a doctor about that, could be serious," Sly laughed into his coffee, and I sort of watched to see if he might choke on it.

Bentley looked like he had something smart he was about to say, when Murray burst into the room, cheerfully announcing that dinner was ready. Bentley decided to save his smart comment for later, and got up to remove his computer from the table, so that Murray could set the table with the overabundance of pancakes and bacon.

"It's good to know that I'm not the only backwards person who does breakfast for dinner when they get up in the evening," I joked as I pulled myself off of the couch.

"We do breakfast for dinner a lot," Sly said, pulling out a chair and motioning for me to sit down. "No one compains because Murray is good at making pancakes,"

I sat down in the chair Sly had pulled out for me. "Y'know. I honestly cannot remember the last time I had pancakes,"

"That's really sad," Murray said, shaking his head as if it were the most awful thing he'd ever heard.

"Is it really? My dad was the only one who knew how to make pancakes, my mom and I could never figure it out," I laughed, accepting the plate that was handed to me. "So it was probably like eight years ago..."

"That is really sad," Murray ammeded his previous statement. "'The Murray' shall re-introduce you to the wonders of pancakes!"

"I have no objections," I laughed.


After breakfast for dinner was over, Murray committed himself to a racing video game, Bentley continued his computer work, and Sly and I watched Murray play his racing game (which he was really good at, I might add). I decided that while there was a quiet moment, I might as well take the opportunity to ask a few questions I'd been thinking about.

"So, if it's not top secret thief stuff, can I ask who this Dimitri guy is?" I asked.

"Yeah, of course," Sly looked off to his side as he recalled what he knew about Dimitri. "Dimitri Lousteau was a young, frustrated artist. He came up with his own art style, called 'Kinetic Aesthetic' that involved him swinging from a rope while he painted. The art world wasn't very accepting, so he got bitter, decided to give them what they wanted, and turned to forging old masterpieces. These days, he runs that seedy nightclub down the street, and he's been using the Clockwerk tail feathers that we're after to print forged money,"

"Is he a good forger?" I asked. If I knew anything about economics, I knew that if forged money got circulating and wasn't discovered soon enough, the entire economy could crash and burn.

"We can't say. We havent seen any of it, yet," Bentley replied.

"Let's hope that means that he hasn't started circulating it, then. Otherwise there might be an impending economic crisis," I laughed, only half-joking.

"I've been concerned about that, too," Bentley said, nodding to himself.

"Just another reason to take Dimitri down," Sly shrugged, then got up and grabbed his coffee cup to head into the kitchen.

Bentley didn't say anything, so the silence gave me a moment to start thinking about more things. For starters, what were these Clockwerk tail feathers that Dimitri had stolen? I was thinking maybe some kind of ancient artifact? Whatever they were, they sounded important, if the Cooper Gang wanted to steal them back.

Secondly, why and how was Dimitri using these Clockwerk tail feathers as counterfeit printing plates? What reasons did he have for stealing something valuable to use as printing plates instead of just buying actual printing plates? And what about that tiger who'd been in the alleyway with Dimitri? It sounded like he had been in on it, too. What was his role in all this?

The more I thought about it, the more confusing it all became. While I liked to keep my thoughts 'straightened out' to prevent confusion, I decided that maybe it was best to leave that group of thoughts all tangled up for now. It wasn't even any of my business, so I supposed it didn't matter much if I didn't understand any of it. But, you know what they say about cats and curiosity...

I was glad when Sly returned, having refilled his cup of coffee, so that hopefully we could talk about something else that wouldn't further confuse me, or spark my curiosity for things that weren't my business.

I was expecting Sly to say something and start a new conversation as he sat back down, but instead Bentley began talking, addressing me.

"Nyx? Would you mind if we talked about something a bit more serious for a moment?" he'd stopped typing and had turned in his chair to face my location.

I looked over at him curiously. I never liked it when people asked me to talk about serious things, it usually meant something bad. But I swallowed down that fear for the time being, before responding. "Yeah, sure,"

"I probably should have mentioned this and talked to you about it before you decided to come with us, so I appologise for any distress this may cause," Bentley began. I took in a deep breath as inconspicuously as I could and let it out quietly, not exactly liking where it felt like this conversation might go. I nodded so that Bentley would continue talking.

"You're aware that Dimitri isn't the only Klaww Gang member; The other man who grabbed you is assumed to be one. In order to retrieve all the Clockwerk parts that we're looking for, and in the process keep you out of harm's way, we'll have to track down all of them. And chances are, Dimitri is the only one who's here in France," Bentley explained, pausing to give me a moment to process that.

I started putting two and two together on my own. "We're going to have to travel to locate them all?"

Bentley nodded. "Yes. And there's no saying where we might have to go. Not to mention that once we aquire the Clockwerk tail feathers, Dimitri will most likely be arrested, and we can't stay here afterwards. Interpol will be combing the streets looking for us,"

"I guess you're all pretty well-known?" I asked jokingly, trying to keep things from being too serious.

"That and a certain Interpol officer personally has it out for Sly..." Bentley gave Sly a look that implied something romantic between the two. Sly returned the look with a toothy grin.

Bentley rolled his eyes and continued talking to me. "I want to make sure that you're willing to come with us, wherever our travels may take us,"

I thought about it a moment. The idea of travelling possibly worldwide was immensely scary. But the thought of the Klaww Gang finding me was even more scary, because that would probably result in death. Self-preservation told me to stay where it was familiar, but logic said that it wasn't safe where it was familiar. I took a deep breath and nodded. "I understand. I already agreed to stay with you, because I'd be safer, and if that means travelling god-knows-where, then... I guess that's how it'll be,"

I really felt like I was going out on a limb. I was agreeing to do something that under any other circumstance I would never have done. Travelling worldwide really wasn't my cup of tea. Moving from Florida to Paris on my own accord was one thing. But knowing that I'd be travelling to an unknown number of unknown places, in an unknown amount of time... That was sort of scary. What made it worse is that it felt like I really didn't have much of a choice.

This was one of those times where I had to be brave and do a few frightening things, in order to do what's best for myself. Just like when I moved to Paris. I'd been scared to uproot my entire life again and start over someplace new and far away. But I wanted to be an artist, and Paris sounded like the best place for it. So I had to be brave and do something scary to get to where I wanted to be. I tried to think of the two situations as being more similar than different. I had moved to Paris, I had made it through that, I was okay. I could do this, too.

Bentley nodded. "Good to hear it. Do you have a passport?"

"Mhm, yeah," I replied. "It's at home, though,"

"I anticipated that. You'll need to pack some of your things to bring with you, anyways. Sly and Murray can take you back to your house before it gets dark so you can do that," Bentley motioned over to the raccoon and hippo, who'd both been pretty quiet through this discussion.

"We're ready to go when you are," Sly said. Murray nodded his agreement, having paused his game.

I shrugged as I stood up. "No time like the present, I guess,"


The first thing I learned about the Cooper van was that Murray was insanely proud of it. The second was that there are only two seats; Driver's and passenger's. Which meant that at least one poor sod was left to bounce around the back.

For our ride to my apartment, it was Sly. Because he's a gentleman, and he said he was used to it. I got the feeling that it wouldn't be long however, before I was stuck in the back with another unlucky soul. Probably during a getaway drive, knowing my luck.

I gave Murray the address for my apartment complex, and then we were off.

"You live in an apartment?" Sly asked curiously, leaning over the passenger's seat.

"Yeah. It's all I could afford, really. Besides, I'm not sure if I'm ready to deal with all the stuff that comes with owning property," I shook my head. "I'm not mature enough for that. I actually can't believe I talked my mom into letting me move here alone, and that I've made it this far by myself,"

"You moved here when you turned eighteen, right? How old are you now?" Sly asked.

"Still eighteen. My birthday was back in October," I replied.

"You're pretty brave to have moved here all alone, if you ask me," Sly said, then snorted a laugh. "I remember when I was eighteen. We were just getting started as a gang,"

"Yeah, things were kinda hard back then," Murray nodded to himself. "But the memories are good ones,"

"Things were kind of stressful back then," Sly agreed.

"But things got a lot easier once you took down Clockwerk and got your family's Thievius Raccoonus back," Murray added.

My brain stopped and did a double-take. And I turned to get both Murray and Sly into my vision. "Wait. Clockwerk... Was a person?"

"Sorry Sly, should I have not said that?" Murray asked, looking a bit concerned that he may have said the wrong thing.

"No, pal, you're alright. It's not a huge secret really, I just wasn't sure how to bring it up," Sly said, and then turned towards me. "I'll tell you when we get back to the safehouse, okay? We're here," he pointed ahead of us to show me that we were pulling into the parking lot of my apartment complex.

"Uh. Okay," I couldn't think of anything else to say. The unexpected knowledge that Clockwerk was a person made me rework a lot of the questions in my head. Were the Clockwerk tail feathers actually body parts from this Clockwerk person? Or were they something he'd created? The thought of the first scenario was insanely creepy, so I decided for my own sanity to believe that the tail feathers were something Clockwerk had made, until Sly explained and made everything make sense. Either way, it sounded like Clockwerk had been someone important...

I chose to push that out of my mind and not overthink it. Sly would explain when we got back to the safehouse, and then hopefully everything would make sense. So I directed my thoughts towards a more casual question, as Sly and I both got out of the van.

"Hey hold on. If you started this gang when you were eighteen, how old are you now?" I asked.

"Little over twenty," Sly replied.

"Huh. I almost thought you were older," I mused.

"Does the view from down there really make me look that good?" Sly teased.

I narrowed my eyes at him. "Just for that remark, no. The lighting down here is awful and it makes you look like an old hag,"

"You're not that much taller than me anyways..." I added lowly, starting off for the stairs to the second floor of my apartment building.

Sly said something to Murray, whom was going to wait in the van, just in case any of Dimitri's people saw and followed us, and then caught up to me. "How tall are you?"

"Five feet, one inch," I replied, fishing my keys out of my pockets.

"Yeaah, you're kind of short. I'm six feet, even," Sly replied, very arrogantly.

I glared up at him. "Tall people are awful,"

"Don't let Murray hear you say that, he's like six feet, six inches tall," Sly laughed.

I kept glaring at Sly as I unlocked my front door. "Tall people are awful with the exception of Murray,"

Sly snickered to himself and followed me as I entered my dark apartment. Said apartment was just how I'd left it the day before. But with everything that had happened, it really felt like more than a day ago that I'd been sitting at the park, minding my own business.

I flicked on the lightswitch. "I'll warn you now, this place is a wreck,"

"I can see that, but I'm not judging, Murray and I are no better," Sly laughed.

"That doesn't surprise me. Three guys living alone together. They're bound to be slobs to some degree," I snorted and walked down the hall to my bedroom, and turned the lights on.

"Wow, way to be stereotypical," Sly said with feigned offense as he followed me down the hall.

"But you already admitted to it being true, did you not?" I asked, stepping into my room and kicking a few things out of the way.

"Yeah, but you should really stop making assumptions about people based on reality TV shows," Sly replied in a jokingly condenscending tone.

I snorted and rolled my eyes. "Anything in particular that I should bring?"

Sly shrugged. "Passport and photo ID, for starters. Otherwise, I'd say just pack like you're going on a long vacation,"

"Alright, sounds easy enough," I said, and then headed towards the closet to see what suitcases and other travel bags I had.

In theory, packing for a long trip did sound easy. But I had actually never packed for a trip that was more than a weekend long since I was nine. And I don't even remember actually packing for that, my mom probably did it for me. The last time I packed to go anywhere was moving to Paris, and I was packing everything I owned, so there wasn't really a dillema of 'What do I bring?'

Not to mention the fact that my room was an absolute mess. I was probably in no position to call Sly a slob, because I was sure the state of my room trumped his, and I'd never even seen his before. Being that nothing had a place, finding what I wanted to pack was a nightmare. There was also the anxiety that came with knowing that if I forgot something, I couldn't come back to get it, and I had no idea how long I'd be gone.

I'm also no good at all at organizing. So my packing system was pretty much just putting clothes in a suitcase, and personal possessions (like books, drawing supplies, my phone charger, my iPad, things like that) in a backpack. Upon seeing my collection of cosplay materials, Sly requested that I bring some, in case we had to use disguises at some point.

I probably looked like a chicken with my head cut off, running about my room, trying to make sure that I had everything I would want on a daily basis. Sly offered to help, but even I didn't know where half the things I was looking for were, so I politely declined.

It took a lot longer than I had expected it to for me to pack everything I would need (or hoped I would need), and apparantly Murray started getting concerned. He contacted Sly through that binocucom thing (that I still needed to ask about eventually) twice while I was trying to find things. Sly seemed to find it amusing as he told Murray that I didn't know where half of my belongings were.

It was just past nine-thirty when I was comfortable with saying that I had everything, and was ready to go. Considering that I wouldn't be there for a while, I unplugged as many electronic things as I could, and then we headed back down to the van.

"I'll have to call the office in the morning, let them know that I'm going on a 'vacation', and figure out how to set up automatic rental payments..." I mused as I climbed into the passenger's seat.

"Bentley can probably help with the automatic payments. He's a computer whizz, in case you hadn't figured," Sly suggested.

"That makes things easier for me, I suppose. I have no idea what it means to be an adult," I said.

Sly laughed. "Does anyone?"


I set my bags down by the couch when we returned to the safehouse, pulled my shoes off, and then sat down. Sly leaned over the table where Bentley was still doing computer work. "So what's our schedule for tonight?"

"Well," Bentley began, tapping a few keyboard keys. "We need to eliminate the security measures in the printing press room, if we're going to get anywhere near those tail feathers. Luckily for us, that can be done from the theatre, which has an unguarded roof access,"

"Sounds like fun. When do you want me out there?" Sly asked.

"Around elleven-thirty," Bentley replied. "The nightclub will still be closed then, and there won't be too many people on the streets,"

"Got it," Sly nodded, and then came over to return to the chair he'd been sitting in previously. "I suppose I have another story to tell you, don't I?" he motioned towards me as he spoke.

"Yeah, I'm really kind of confused," I nodded, pulling my legs up to sit criss-cross.

"Okay, well. You already know about my family line of master thieves, so I guess I should start with Clockwerk... At one point, Clockwerk was a person. He was an owl, and he was insanely jealous of the Cooper family's thieving reputation," the tone of voice that Sly began to adopt was not unlike the one he'd used the night before when he told me about his family. But it was also different, more somber, as if the story he was telling was going to be sad.

"And so, consumed by his hate and jealousy, he replaced all of his mortal body parts with soulless machinery, so that he could live and survive throughout the millennia, with the sole intent of wiping out my family line so that he would be the only master thief," Sly paused, looking almost as if telling this story was painful for him. I was going to interupt, and say that if it was personal, he didn't have to tell me, but he continued on before I could open my mouth.

"Clockwerk caught up with my father on the night of my eighth birthday, when I was supposed to inherit the Thievus Raccoonus, our family book of thief techniques. He brought his gang with him, The Fiendish Five, and they ambushed us. My father hid me in a closet, and from there I watched the bloodshed, and as Clockwerk's gang ransacked the house until they found the Thievus Raccoonus. They split it up amongst themselves, and that was that. I ended up in an orphanage, and that's where the three of us met," he gestured to Murray and Bentley with a look that was both happy and sad.

It took a moment for me to realize what Sly meant by bloodshed and ending up in an orphanage. It was really hard to believe that someone as upbeat and friendly as Sly had seen his father killed right in front of him when he was just a kid. Had he not told me, I may have never guessed. But the look on his face as he told the story said that he was indeed hurt by the incidents in his past, but I guessed that he'd chosen to work past them, instead of brooding and seething like some people might.

There was just a slight pause before Sly continued talking. "When I turned eighteen, the three of us set off to find The Fiendish Five, take them down to get the Thievius Raccoonus back, and avenge the death of my father. And that's exactly what we did. I thought that I'd put an end to Clockwerk then; I'd dumped him into an active volcano, after all. But it was naive of me to think that I could destroy something like Clockwerk so easily," he shook his head. "Interpol recovered the parts just recently, and put them on display in a museum in Cairo. We travelled there to steal them, so we could finally put an end to Clockwerk, but when we arrived, we discovered that the Klaww Gang had beat us to it. Dimitri is the local Klaww Gang operative, so we decided to start with him,"

"So. The tail feathers can be used as printing plates... Because they're metal?" I asked slowly, still trying to process everything that I'd just been told.

"Yeah. They're made from some rare metal alloy, and they'll probably never wear out," Sly replied. "Which means Dimitri can make as much forged money as he wants to,"

"Do money forgers even understand that they're practically lighting a fire under themselves? If the economy crashes because of their fake money, they're going to feel the repercussions of it, too," I said. "Even if they aren't caught as the forger,"

"Finally, someone with sense!" Bentley cheered.

"Well, if we have anything to say about it, Dimitri won't have time to start spending the forged cash, before he's behind bars," Sly chuckled, and then stood up to start walking across the room, presumably to grab his cane that was sitting on the table.

"Wait," I stood up and stopped him before he could get there. "Permission to hug?"

Sly looked confused for a moment, but then laughed. "Sure,"

I wrapped my arms around him and hugged tightly. "I'm sorry about your dad... No one should have to go through that..."

I felt the air tickle my ear as Sly snorted. "Thanks. Don't worry about it, though. I've come a long way since then,"

I detatched myself from the raccoon and smiled at him, not sure what else I should say.

Sly smiled back, very mischieviously, and headed to the table to grab his cane, then glanced over at the clock on the wall. "Time to get started. Be back later, don't wait up," and then he was out the door.

I sat back down on the couch, and started thinking about, well... About everything. Most of my questions had been answered, now; I knew what the Clockwerk tail feathers were, how and why Dimitri was using them as printing plates, and why the Cooper Gang wanted to steal them back.

But now I also had the added knowledge that Clockwerk had been a living person who was insanely jealous of the Cooper family. He'd gone so far as to turn himself into a robot and kill Sly's father, just to get what he wanted... It was a scary kind of amazing to think that such a malicious person could exist.

As I contemplated the existance of someone like Clockwerk, I started thinking about how, in comparison to him, Sly and his gang were actually really heroic. I never would have thought that I'd find myself beginning to admire and respect a gang of thieves. But, as I thought about it more, that was exactly what was happening.

I sighed to myself. I had the feeling that this 'adventure' was definately going to be... Interesting.