And after months of waiting, chapter twelve is finally here! I knew that eventually I'd come back around to this story, and it looks like that time is now.

This chapter takes place about four weeks after elleven, just so everyone knows. I've written two drabbles about what happens in-between; One being Nyx learning to fight, and the other being her telling Sly what happened while she was in Contessa's prison. There will be a third one about thief lessons eventually. The two that are up can be found via the masterlist link on my profile.


Chapter Twelve: Sabotage - The Paranormal Kind

"Okay, I know you said this place was a 'well-fortified nightmare' but I honestly did not expect the tank patrols," Nyx proclaimed, warily peering out the window at the passing tank. "Like who even has tanks patrolling their home?"

Sly laughed and clapped Nyx on the shoulder. "Well, there's a first time for everything, isn't there?"

"Yeah, I guess. But those things are definitely going to be a pain in our asses later, aren't they?" Nyx asked, watching the tank turn to circle back around the building. Of course the only empty building had to have a tank patrolling right by it, that was just their luck.

"Most likely. But I'm sure we'll be fine," Sly reassured the feline. "We've been through worse, haven't we?"

"You've said that before, and at the time I didn't quite believe you," replied Nyx. "...But now that you've survived being electrocuted, and we've busted out of an insanely secure prison run by this grade A psychopath... The tanks actually might not be so bad..."

"See?" Sly laughed. "That's the spirit! So long as we stay out of their line of sight, we'll be fine,"

"Yeah, but I bet that'll be easier said than done, won't it?" Nyx questioned, raising an eyebrow.

"Isn't that how everything works?" it was Bentley who answered this question, drawing their attention to him. "I've got a recon plan, if you two are ready to go,"

"Oooh, I get to do recon?" Nyx purred excitedly, turning from the window to grin at Bentley.

"Perhaps I'll regret it, but yes," Bentley sighed. "You're going to be taking some recon photographs, while Sly gets up to the top of Contessa's 're-education' tower. I have a bad feeling about what's up there,"

"Photos, huh? That sounds pretty easy and not dangerous. Alright, I'm game," said Nyx, nodding to the turtle. She wasn't the biggest fan of going out into the heavily guarded castle grounds, but she decided to - For the time being - Shove those thoughts back. Recon pictures couldn't be that tough, could they?

"Alright, I've got the waypoints uploaded to both your binocucoms. Whenever you're ready to go," Bentley informed them.

"Well, there's no time like the present, right?" Sly said, picking up his cane and cocking it behind his shoulder. "You ready?"

"Yeah, I suppose so," Nyx decided, fastening her supplies pouch to her belt (having found that her tail was not a good place for it). "Let's go,"

The duo quietly made their way out of the safehouse, and took a look at where their waypoints were. "Alright, you think you remember what we taught you?" Sly asked. His tone was a strange mix between teasing and serious; He wasn't sure if just a few weeks of combat and thief training was enough for Nyx to be able to traverse Contessa's castle grounds.

"Yeah," replied Nyx, despite all the signs in her brain that were telling her to go back inside. "I've got the spire jump down, at the least, and there's surely a way to not walk on too many telephone wires. I think I'll be fine, don't worry," then she forced a grin and gently bumped the raccoon on the shoulder. She might have been scared, but she was determined to do this.

"Now what did I say about being cocky?" Sly laughed, gently shoving her in return.

"You said that like four weeks ago before you taught me what I was doing," Nyx replied. "I think I have a bit more right to be confident, now," even though she actually sort of wasn't...

"Alright," Sly chuckled. "Fair enough. Still, be careful,"

"After this is over, I'm gonna have to change that to my legal middle name, y'know?" Nyx laughed.

"Nyx Careful Blythe?" Sly teased, pretending to actually be considering it, before leaping onto the edge of the safehouse porch. "Has a nice ring to it. Good luck!"

And then he was gone. Nyx rolled her eyes and took another look at where her objective was. Actually, she had four. A boat, a blimp, an assault tank, and Neyla's headquarters.

Nyx sighed at the idea of dealing with Neyla, and began making her way towards the closest waypoint. She slipped behind the tank patrolling near the safehouse, and climbed up onto a building. At least there the only thing she had to worry about were guards. Granted, those guards were intelligent and could hear her in addition to seeing her, but at least they weren't tanks.

As the first waypoint objective came into view, Nyx groaned mentally. She didn't see any boats, blimps, or assault tanks (she figured an assault tank differed from normal ones?), so that only left the option of Neyla's headquarters. She checked the waypoint again, finding it to be pointing to an old building.

Which, as unluck would have it, was surrounded by tanks. She spotted at least three of them making rounds that crossed in front of the building. Yeah, this would definitely be easier said than done...

Her current position atop another building was no good for getting a good angle of Neyla's HQ, there was some other structure in the way; Looked like a sheltered picnic table or something. So it looked like Nyx was going to have to slip through the tank patrols to get a better angle.

"Lovely..." she mumbled, assessing her options for safe spaces where she could see the building. ...It looked like that lamp post at the edge of the bridge to her right might do the trick?

Said lamp post was rather close to some sweeping spotlights that no doubt had guns mounted on them, but they didn't touch the post... As long as she was careful about where all her body parts were, Nyx figured that it was likely her best bet. Regardless of the fact that it scared the hell out of her, of course.

However, there wasn't much room between the tank patrols, let alone safe ground to walk on when they were around. Whichever way she did this, there was definitely going to be some risk involved...

"Well... I jumped out a window, didn't I...?" Nyx sighed to herself. Moments later she saw an opening in the patrol, and decided to take it. She leaped off the building, and made a mad dash for the lamp post.

This was fine. This was totally fine, she kept telling herself as she booked it towards the post. Except perhaps it wasn't; Just as she reached the lamp post, she felt the heat of a blue light hit her back...

Spitting curse words, Nyx had but a moment to leap up and get onto the lamp post. She flinched as the tank fired at her, the shot just barely missing her. Had she hesitated, this mission could have ended very badly. She hadn't the time to be thankful for this, and scrambled up to the top of the post.

She perched there, tensely waiting to see if the tank could still see her. The machine paused for a moment, before it turned and continued along it's path. Nyx let out a sigh of relief and pressed a hand to her chest. That just might have been the most terrifying thing she'd ever experienced.

"Okay, that was too close..." Nyx muttered as she pulled out her binocucom. Her breathing was erratic and her head was pounding, but she had a job to do, she reminded herself.

"Please tell me you did not almost get hit by a tank," oops, looks like the microphone had been on, and Bentley had heard her.

"I won't lie to you, Bentley. Yes, I did. Don't tell Sly," Nyx replied, zooming in and out until the building was properly focused and in-frame. Her heart was practically beating out of her chest and she was desperately trying to ignore this and focus on her job.

"Too late, I've already heard," Sly's voice came in moments later. Drat. "Are you okay?"

Nyx sighed. "I'm fine, it completely missed me, don't worry," though perhaps 'fine' was a relative term. Was she injured? No. Was she incredibly shaken up? Yes. She decided to just not mention that second part, though.

Sly laughed, though it was a slightly tense sound. "It's my job to worry about our rookie," Nyx got the feeling that he didn't believe her when she said she was fine; He was really good at people reading.

"Yeah, uh huh. Why don't you focus on climbing that huge tower?" Nyx suggested. "I need to be taking pictures,"

"I second that statement," said Bentley.

"Alright, alright," Sly sighed. "If you insist,"

Nyx snickered quietly to herself as the line went quiet again. Even if it was only for that short moment, talking to Sly had helped ease her nerves, and she was finally able to focus on taking a snap of Neyla's headquarters. She wasn't the best cameraman in the world, but she figured that'd do, right?

"Neyla's made a headquarters out of that old bank," Bentley's voice came in seconds later, confirming that the picture was good. "It's a pretty secure location... It'll take some doing to drive her out,"

Nyx sighed as she hopped down from the lamp post and rushed back to the safety of the other building. Didn't everything take some doing...?


"So, let me get this straight. Contessa has Clockwerk's eyes, and she's using them as a brainwashing device?" I asked incredously, staring at the recon pictures Sly had taken while up in the 're-education tower'.

"And she's testing them out on Carmelita," Sly added, sounding a bit annoyed by that notion.

"And she's testing them out on Carmelita, okay. And we know that Neyla is holed up in some old bank, and it doesn't look like she's coming out any time soon," I continued, followed by a sigh. "Does everything have to be impossibly hard?"

"Well, it wouldn't be any fun if it was too easy," responded Sly, giving a cocky smirk.

"Uh huh. I for one would appreciate it if sometimes things were easy. Would really make my life better," I replied, propping my head up with my hands as I leaned on the table.

"Aw, sounds like someone's just scared to test their skills," Sly purred, raising a teasing eyebrow.

"Oh please, Sly. You're the one who told me to not get cocky," I retorted, rolling my eyes at him.

"There's a difference between being cocky and knowing your skills and then pushing them," corrected the raccoon so matter-of-factly.

I was about to respond and say something witty, but it just wasn't meant to be, apparently. Bentley cleared his throat in that moment to get our attention, signaling that his new slideshow was finally ready.

Giving up our light-hearted arguement, Sly and I turned to the projector, as did Murray. Said projector turned on with a loud whirr, and the presentation began.

"The war between Neyla and the Contessa has put the castle on high alert," Bentley began, cycling through various shots of the castle grounds. "To get at the Clockwerk eyes, we'll need to subtley manipulate this conflict to our advantage,"

"Here's the plan; Murray, sneak into the castle and kidnap the head of security, I wanna ask him a few questions," explained Bentley, rotating through various pictures of an old vampire bat.

"Meanwhile, Sly, Nyx and I are going to get a little paranormal," Bentley continued, the slide changing to that of a crypt-looking thing. "I'll slip into the crypts beneath the castle, and put together a bad-mojo bomb. It should be enough to destroy the mindshuffler," I chose to not ask what 'bad-mojo' was, as much as I wanted to.

"Sly and Nyx, you capture a few local ghosts, and drop them into Neyla's headquarters. Hopefully the near death experience will inspire her to purchase more mercenary firepower," continued the turtle. Why that was a good thing for us, I'd never know, but by now I knew to not question Bentley's plans. "We've all got our assignments, good luck,"

And that was that when it came to the slideshow. Alright, looks like we had a pretty solid game plan. All that was left was to put the plan into motion and hope that nothing went wrong. Come to think of it, that was how everything went around here.

"You're up first, Murray, I need to talk to the General before I do anything else," instructed Bentley, typing something into his laptop. "Sly, Nyx, if you two want to get going with your ghost capturing, you're free to do so,"

Murray nodded enthusiastically. "I'm on it!" and then he was out the door.

"What do you say, Nyx? You ready to mingle with ghosts?" Sly asked, nudging me in the side with his cane hook.

"I don't even believe in ghosts, so this is gonna be. Interesting," I replied. "Let's do it,"

Sly laughed as he lead me out of the safehouse. "You don't believe in ghosts? Oh man, this is gonna be fun,"

"Do you believe in ghosts?" I asked the raccoon, glancing up at him.

"I've mingled with them before, actually. I'll tell you about it sometime," he responded, grinning at me as I stared at him. He'd seen ghosts before? I wasn't sure how to process that idea.

Sly chuckled at my confusion, and then motioned for me to be quiet as he began leading me towards our objective. Moving through the castle with Sly around was a lot less nerve-wrecking that doing it by myself, I decided. Sly knew how to navigate and pathfind, which was something I was still learning. Even though he liked to drag me up onto the buildings and make me use the rail walk a bit too much, I felt more at ease with someone who knew what he was doing.

After a little while of evading guards, tanks, and spotlights, Sly and I came to a small building with big spider legs protruding from it. Sly decided that this was a great perch, and lead me to the top of it. He directed my attention to a grave site across from the building, and then Bentley started giving us the proper introduction to this job.

"Alright guys, there's your new objective. Sneak inside and smash the coffin of the Evil Wolf Priestess," were Bentley instructions.

"Sounds pretty harsh," Sly responded. "Does the old girl really deserve that sort of treatment?" I sort of had to laugh as he said that.

"Weren't you listening?" Bentley asked. "She was an Evil Wolf Priestess. Once you smash the coffin, it'll free all the ghosts trapped in there with her,"

"Okay, I don't know where you're going with all this, but freeing trapped ghosts sounds vaguely heroic," Sly responded, and then cut the feed. "You ready for this?" he asked, turning to me.

I nodded. "Yeah, I guess so. Time to learn if ghosts actually exist,"

Sly laughed. "That's the spirit!"

We both leaped down from the spider-legged building, and approached the entrance to the Wolf Priestess' crypt. It was currently clear of guards, but I'd seen a few go by while we were talking to Bentley. So I supposed that we needed to be careful.

Sly had the lock to the crypt picked in no time, and just like that we were inside. No security, no nothing. "Why am I suspicious about getting in here so easily?"

"Because I've trained you well," answered Sly. "Then again, this is a crypt. They don't exactly expect people to break into these,"

"Yeah, I suppose so," I agreed as we moved further into the crypt. The hallway we were in was short, and when it opened up into a slightly larger hallway, we both stopped.

"I guess that's why getting through the door was so easy..." I muttered, completely in awe of what was stretched out before us. "I can't even..."

The floor of this room had patches of razor sharp spikes protruding from it, and if that weren't bad enough, there were huge axes swinging back and forth. "This room is a literal death trap,"

"Do you wanna wait here?" Sly asked, giving me a sidelong glance.

I thought about it a moment. I would need to learn how to do this kind of stuff sooner or later, wouldn't I? I just wasn't sure if I wanted that time to be now. I spent a short moment thinking it over, before I made my decision.

"Yeah I. Think I'll wait here," I finally said. I felt bad for chickening out, but I honestly hadn't been ready to face giant swinging axes.

Sly nodded and put a hand on my shoulder. "I understand. I'll be back in a flash,"

And then he leaped from the floor to hook his cane onto the handle of one of the giant axes. From here, he moved to the next one and then dismounted, landing safely on the ground opposite the spike patch.

The racoon then continued on, towards another setup just like the first. Once he cleared that one, I couldn't see him anymore. "Sly? What else is out there?"

"Not much, just this big room and the coff-" Sly's statement was cut off by the raccoon yelping in surprise, and then there was the sound of his cane smacking into something. "Okay, I take that back! There's guards in here!"

"Be careful!" I warned, feeling a bit bad that I couldn't be in there to help. But I knew that Sly wouldn't hold it over me, so I tried to not hold it over myself.

The fight didn't last long, and soon the only sound left was that of Sly panting as he caught his breath. "Alright, that was fun. Now to release those ghosts,"

The sound of his cane smacking into something very hard was then heard, followed by a whooshing sound that I couldn't completely identify. It almost sounded like voices...?

Seconds after this, I found myself suddenly being swarmed by various blue things that were now flooding through the hallway. I shrieked and dropped to the floor, instinctively covering my head like they teach you to during school tornado drills.

The sound of Bentley's voice had been drowned out by my shrieking, but I was certain that the turtle had said something. But currently, my ears were now hearing the sound of Sly laughing at me. "Good god, Nyx, I heard that all the way from here. Did they attack you or something?"

It took me a moment, as I pulled myself off the floor, to realize that those had been honest to goodness ghosts. "I can't believe it,"

Sly tried to contain his laughter as I saw him enter the hallway of death again. "Yep, ghosts are real, welcome to the paranormal club,"

By the time Sly reached me again, he'd finally stopped laughing. "That scream was amazing, you have impressive lungs,"

"Thanks. I could sing opera if I wanted to," I responded, choosing to just. Not question the ghosts.

"I'd pay to see that," Sly chuckled as we exited the crypt.

"Ha," I laughed. "That's never gonna happen,"

Sly looked at me with a mischievous look. "I have ways of making things happen,"

I rolled my eyes at him. "Uh huh,"

Now that we were back outside, we moved to climb up to the top of the crypt, where Bentley began informing us about the next part of our mission. "I've modified the imagers in your binocucoms to capture ghosts," was the mind boggling thing that the turtle said.

"Didn't I just set these guys free? Why would I want to capture them again?" Sly asked, not at all fazed by the idea of being able to capture a ghost with his camera.

"Not to worry, it's only a short term confinement," Bentley assured him. "Gather all the ghosts, then set them free down the chimney of Neyla's headquarters!"

Now that was an idea I could get behind. In fact, I really liked the sound of it.

"I get you. She'll think it's a sneak attack from the Contessa," Sly said, nodding to Bentley's genius.

"Correct. If I did my math right, and I always do my math right, Neyla should respond to the assault by purchasing more firepower," Bentley continued.

"Anything bad for the Contessa is good for us," Sly decided. "...And we get to really freak out Neyla!"

He sounded very, very enthusiastic about that idea, and I shared in this sentiment. However, as I caught sight of a skeletal figure just floating around the castle, I had to let my mind turn back to more serious matters.

"Sly. Sly are you not going to question the fact that we're going to catch ghosts by taking pictures of them?" I asked, nudging the excited raccoon in the ribs.

"Not at all, I've seen weirder," he answered, shrugging loosely.

"Well this is definitely the weirdest thing I've ever seen," I mused, staring at the glowing blue figure that had likely once been a wolf. "I cannot believe that ghosts are real and we're going to capture them..."

Sly laughed. "Well, you better start believing soon, 'cause we've got work to do," and then he pulled out his binocucom again, and snapped a shot of the ghost I'd been eyeing.

And no sooner than he had, the ghost just. Magically seemed to vanish inside of his binocucom, like a huge gust of wind had just sucked it right in.

I stared at Sly's binocucom and also him for a good few moments. "We're GhostBusters now, are we?"

Sly grinned. "Yep,"

I sighed, shook my head, and pulled out my binocucom. "Alright... Let's do this,"

As we embarked on our ghost capturing mission, I quickly learned that catching ghosts is not as easy as one might think. With Bentley's strange technology, all one had to do is snap a picture of the ghost, right?

Well, that's right but also wrong. One also has to chase the ghost to be able to get a good shot of it. And in our case, we had to chase them up really tall towers. They were incredibly evasive creatures, and I began wondering if they weren't doing it on purpose.

After nearly falling off a particularly tall tower, I decided to let Sly handle the ones who insisted on flying ridiculously high, and I handled the ones who, like me, seemed to prefer lower altitudes. This likely wasn't the best mission for someone with a mild fear of heights, I decided.

It was an indeterminate amount of time later that Sly and I were finally both perched atop the bank that Neyla had turned into her headquarters, both with trapped ghosts ready to set free.

"You ready for this? Sly asked, a huge grin plastered on his face. He clearly loved this idea as much as I did. Which was to say, too much.

I returned his grin with one of my own. "Absolutely. This is gonna be good,"

Sly nodded in agreement, and then we both released our ghosts into Neyla's chimney. We watched as the ghosts went down, and then listened as various yelling could be heard from inside. I still couldn't understand Czech, but one didn't need to in order to understand two things; One, when people were startled and angry. And two, when people were cursing.

Shortly after the commotion began, Neyla burst out the front doors of her HQ, looking very, very pissed off. "So the Contessa wants war, eh? Perhaps it's time I purchased a little air power; A few bombers should put that old charlatan in her place!"

And then Neyla was off, likely to go order those aforementioned bombers. Sly and I were grinning at each other so wide it's a wonder we didn't pull any muscles. "That was amazing," I hissed out, trying to not laugh too loudly.

Sly nodded. "I've never seen a job go anymore perfectly,"

High fiving ourselves for the job well done, Sly and I started back for the safehouse. "That was fun," I said decidedly. Despite the heights and the ghosts, I had enjoyed that mission. The end result had been more than entertaining, that was for certain.

Sly chuckled. "Already over the ghost thing, are you?"

"Not entirely," I responded. "I don't think I'll be over that one for a little while, but I have another question,"

"And what's that?" asked Sly, looking back at me with a raised eyebrow.

"Why does Contessa just. Have a random crypt in her home? Isn't that a little weird?" I questioned. It had occurred to me somewhere along the job and I was starting to really wonder about it. What sorts of reasons were there for people to have crypts in their homes?

Sly was silent for a moment, before he turned to look at me again. "That's a really good question,"

"Should we divert it to Bentley?"

"Probably,"


"Alright team, let's get down to business," Bentley announced, beginning his second slideshow. Nyx was pretty sure he'd been up way too long working on it. He'd still been awake when she and Murray had gone to bed with the sunrise.

"The first steps to escalating the war between Neyla and the Contessa have gone well. We're down to the final setups before we spring our trap," the turtle said, cycling through various photos of Neyla and the castle grounds.

"Sly, I need you to steal a voice modulator from the castle, and install it under Neyla's headquarters. If all goes as planned, it should allow us to give orders to her mercenaries without being detected," Bentley continued. Nyx had no idea what a voice modulator was, but it sounded kinda cool.

"Unfortunately, Neyla's recent bomber purchase has made her army over-enthusiastic, and they might strike before we're ready. Which leads me to Murray. I need you to hotwire one of the Contessa's tanks, and go to town on the mercenaries. We just need to... Intimidate them a little," said Bentley, giving his teammates a coy smile.

"And finally, Nyx and I will venture back into the crypts to power up that old computer in the re-education tower. We're going to need it to save Carmelita," Bentley concluded, and the slideshow flickered off.

Sly stood up and stretched, pulling his arms above his head and swishing his tail around. "Alright, let's get to it!"

"Sly, Murray, you two can go ahead and start your jobs," said Bentley. "Nyx and I will wait here to make sure nothing happens with you,"

"Aye aye, Captain!" said Sly, giving a mock salute as he headed for the door. Nyx rolled her eyes at him.

Murray followed the raccoon out of the safehouse, leaving just Nyx and Bentley. Nyx gave a small sigh and rested her chin in her palm. The closer they got to pulling the big heist, the more nervous she got. Messing with Contessa and Neyla just didn't seem like a good idea to her. The last plan they had that revolved around pissing someone off hadn't gone too well...

"So, how are you holding up?" Bentley asked out of the blue, making Nyx turn towards him. "Being a thief isn't easy, is it?"

Nyx averted her gaze for a moment before she answered. "I'm doing alright so far, I guess. But it's definitely not easy," she paused. "...I chickened out in the crypt when we came across these swinging death traps..."

"Don't be hard on yourself," said Bentley. "This really isn't the best way to learn how to be a thief. Sly practiced for years before he took on his first job. Throwing you into situations like these probably isn't the best way to go about it, and I'm sorry for that,"

"No, no, it's fine," Nyx insisted, waving a hand dismissively. "I want to help, I don't want to sit around and do nothing. It's just hard to ignore that fear of the terrible unknown. ...It's even harder to trust my own skills and instincts because I'm honestly not sure how much I have of either,"

"I know how that is. It took me a long time to work up the nerve to get out into the field. In fact, the job that lead us on this Clockwerk puzzle piece search was the first field assignment I ever took," Bentley said.

"Really? How long was that before we met?" Nyx asked.

"Only a week or two," responded the turtle. "It'll take time, but you'll learn to trust in your abilities, and also your teammates. But know that we don't hold it over you if you need some time to adjust,"

Nyx laughed lightly. "Yeah, learning a new lifestyle isn't an overnight thing I suppose. But this is something so big and important, I feel like I need to be good at this now, I guess. I need to step back and remember that it's not that easy,"

Bentley nodded. "Exactly. That's why I'm trying to not send you off by yourself too much. Giving you your own job back at the prison was a little too much, wasn't it?"

"Yeah, kinda?" Nyx responded. "I mean. I did it and got it done without dying, but I definitely didn't know what I was doing. I got lucky, I think"

"And luck can't hold out forever. So I'm sorry for sending you into something you likely weren't ready for. That's my fault," the turtle appologized.

"Don't be sorry. I said I wanted to help, didn't I?" Nyx asked, smiling. "It's not gonna be easy, I know that. Don't be sorry because something challenges me,"

Bentley had to give her a small smile at that. "There's a difference between a challenge, and being in way over your head, but alright, I'll let you win this one,"

And that was when the binocucom came to life. "Alright, Bentley, I've found a tank, what do I do now?"

Bentley glanced at some blueprints he had on the table, then began giving Murray a sequence of instructions so that the hippo could hotwire one of Contessa's tanks.

Nyx had no idea what anything either of them said meant, but she figured that was probably because she knew next to nothing about vehicles. She tried to listen anyways, but got lost over and over.

Murray eventually got the tank hotwired, and himself into it's driver's seat (Apparently the seat didn't go back as far as he would have liked). And then the hippo got to work thrashing some of the other tanks that were patroling the area.

While he did this, Sly finally came in on the binocucom as well. "I'm in position, Bentley, what do you need from me?"

"The Contessa plans on taking control of Neyla's army by fooling them with a prototype voice modulation device," Bentley explained. "To get the thing working, she'll have to jack it into the satellite connection beneath Neyla's headquarters,"

"Soo, I'm guessing you'd like me to steal the device and hook it up for our side. ...Giving us control over Neyla's mercenaries. Sounds great!" Sly purred. Anything that was bad for Neyla gave him great glee, it seemed.

"You'll have to steal a few keys here and there to get access to the more secure areas of the castle," Bentley warned, though it was more of a 'so you know' warning than an actual 'be careful' one.

"If there's pockets to be picked, I'm your man," replied Sly, grinning.

"First, steal a wire tap and the voice modulator. Then head for the sewers beneath Neyla's headquarters," was Bentley's next set of instructions.

Sly nodded. "I'm on it," and then he let the connection go, and got to work. Beneath him were two vulture guards who had been marked by Bentley's holographic waypoints. Looks like those guys had the keys.

Sly hopped down from his rooftop perch, and approached the two carefully. One was mobile, the other seeming to be guarding the building he was standing near. Sly slipped in between the beams of their flashlights, and dipped his cane into the stationary guard's pocket. Soon enough he hooked a key ring, and quietly pulled it out. One key down, one to go.

Slipping back around the flashlight of the mobile guard, Sly came up behind that guy, and went to work picking his pocket as well. In no time at all, he had both keys in his posession, and was heading for the castle.

The castle grounds weren't exactly safe, but Sly managed to reach one of the back doors easily enough. It really helped that he was a lot quicker than the bulky vultures that patrolled the place.

Sly unlocked the castle doors, and slipped inside, looking around warily for any guards. It might have been easy to get inside, but surely there would be security inside, right?

Right. Sly instantly spotted various wolves patrolling the room that was before him. Despite the challenge, Sly wasn't too bothered about it. He'd done this a million times by now.

"The wire tap is on the opposite end of this room, Sly," Bentley told him. "Easy does it in here, huh pal?"

The room before the raccoon was small, and there were four guards patrolling it. Sure, two were sleeping on the floor, but they'd surely wake up if enough commotion started. Normal people would view this as an impossible and/or annoying challenge, but Sly just saw it as another day's work, and was ready to tackle it head on.

The two guards who were awake were patrolling the room in what appeared to be a pattern. Sly studied it for a moment, before determining the best possible way to slip through. Once he had, he moved quietly to slip behind one of the guards for a short moment, and then slip underneath a nearby table.

From here, Sly waited until both guards had turned their backs again, and then darted from under the table to reach the wire tap at the other end of the room. He disconnected it from whatever it was hooked up to, and pocketed it.

"Oh yeah, that wire tap is perfect," Bentley purred.

"Geez Bentley, don't have an orgasm," Nyx teased, trying not to giggle as she spoke.

Bentley sounded like he almost choked on something, and Sly had to try to not laugh as he slipped back through the guard patrol.

"Nyx!" Bentley hissed, sounding thoroughly embarassed.

The feline laughed. "Sorry, couldn't help it,"