Weeeellll, this is a bit of a departure for me, I s'ppose...let's just say this game ate my brain over the holidays, and the characters crawled into my brain, set up living quarters, and demanded that I write something. Given that this crew weren't the only characters-belonging-to-other-people to do so over the holidays, I think I had a spate of various characters taking advantage of my brain-dead state over vacation to move in and do the same. (BTW...I AM trying to get damn Legend of Mana request fic done...The problem being, my copy of the game, book, etc, were borrowed and not returned. Yes, it has been months and more. I apologize and you may whack me muchly with Lady Blackpearl's Baka-Mallet-O-Doom.)
*****
We Coopers have always prided ourselves on being the best thieves there were - the definition of masters. And our specialty has always been robbing the rich, corrupt, and criminal; the first Cooper back in old Babylon wrote on the first page of the Thievius Raccoonus that the mark of a true master thief was to be able to steal from other thieves. We've also had a second thing that's gone hand in hand with it, something Clockwerk had called a weakness -a bit of empathy. Long before Robin Hood's granddad was born, the Coopers had the gig of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor down pat, and we avoid killing. We're thieves, not murderers, and besides, only amateurs really need to kill marks to silence them. In more than one era we've earned at least some respect from the law. They're doing their jobs, after all, and the ones that're dedicated enough to chase us aren't that different from us - dedicated to mastering their profession, outdoing, outwitting, and outmaneuvering others. Besides, a law officer that'll go after us likely is neither rich nor corrupt and certainly not criminal.
After beating Clockwerk, I'd thought I'd made record time on living up to the Cooper legacy - I'd earned back the Thievius Racoonus and mastered all its secrets in the course of beating the worst crooks the world could offer. I almost forgot one lesson that every one of my ancestors had in their personal teachings - no matter how good you are, never ever get cocky.
Two months after Clockwerk was beaten, things had settled back into a comfortable routine - the van waiting on the edge of an area of New York skyscrapers, Murray slumped over the wheel in boredom, Bentley fretting over the com about various unnecessary risks, and Sly, finished with his heist, teasing Carmelita on the rooftops.
"Aaah, Miss Fox....I see you found a new blaster to replace the one I stole at Kraka-Kau." He ducked back behind the satellite dish he was using for cover as a burst of electricity hit it.
"And you're not going to dodge this one like you have in the past."
He darted out from behind the dish, up a cable with blasts hitting just short of his tail all the way up, stopping behind a stairwell building on the roof; for Carmelita to aim the way she was, she had to be climbing as well, but he was a bit busy getting up the wire without getting zapped to watch.
"I don't know, I seem to be doing a pretty good job so far, although your aim is definitely improving - I'm impressed." That said, he resumed working on catching his breath; it'd been a longer climb than he'd expected, and the pace it'd taken to dodge had been a bit more than he would've liked.
"Save your flattery, raccoon, you'll have plenty of time to talk on the way to prison."
"Prison? That's awful dark and dreary...y'know, I know this nice place on the Seine in Paris, they make the most wonderful pike in white wine with rice - fresh air, friendly service, great place for a date..." He ducked off keeping low to another hiding place, behind a steam vent.
"You're going to have a distinct lack of fresh air where you're going." That sounded a little too close for comfort, maybe even the same rooftop; however, she also sounded a bit uncertain and was headed off a bit the wrong way - she seemed to think he was still at the elevator building. If she was confused, that gave him an edge, as he slipped out invisibly to creep up behind her.
She slid up along the wall of the elevator building, then snapped around aiming at the place where he'd been hiding, firing at empty air. She'd come from the only direction he could've run to without being in plain sight, and there didn't seem to be a way past the route she took even for someone as agile as he was. She stepped back and started scanning the area, holding the blaster down in one hand, brows furrowed as she watched for some sign of the raccoon.
He crept up right behind her, grinning like a fool behind his invisibility - then swiped the blaster right out of her hand and ran for all he was worth, cackling and whooping as she wheeled angrily and gave chase, snarling, handcuffs already out in one hand; he dropped the blaster in his backpack, still sprinting. "Damnit, Ringtail, I hope you enjoyed that because you are never getting that close again without handcuffs on!"
Sly abruptly stopped, turning to face her. "Hmmm...what about as close as that *last* time, eh?"
"Definitely..." She took the last step forward, now barely a foot from him. "NOT!" She snapped out with the cuffs, then held up her right hand, as his left was now cuffed to it, teeth showing in a triumphant smile.
"Why Carmelita, I didn't know you were quite *that* way..." He manifested his best halo, not struggling with the cuffs at all.
"I'm not falling for this sort of thing again, Cooper. My blaster?"
"Ah, of course." He put his free hand back into the backpack. "But there's just one thing first..."
"What now?" She shot him a baleful glare.
Sly pulled back with his cuffed left hand, sending her abruptly stumbling forward straight into his arms, and he did the one thing she'd just sworn she wasn't falling for again - he kissed her. She stiffened at first, but then slowly relaxed, until he let go and stepped back slowly, and handed her back her blaster - with his left hand, which was no longer handcuffed. She blinked, glanced at the blaster and back at him, and realized that he was holding the handcuffs in his right hand as he backed away.
"Oh no you don't! You're not getting away like that!" She took aim and fired, and he may as well have teleported as quickly as he was out of the path of the shot and off over the side of the roof. Carmelita ran to the side and looked over; he hadn't fallen to his death, but was instead running along the narrow ledge above the windows of the floor below, headed for a place where the building came close to another and there was a fire escape. She followed him with gunfire the whole way up, a few inches behind his tail the whole time. At the top, he leapt over the side and vanished between two towers of the building; she jumped across to the fire escape herself and started towards the gap he'd disappeared into.
"Nice badge." He was above her, on one of the roofs, holding her badge; she stared in shock, checking her back jeans pocket where it'd been - the thief was stretched out on the rooftop, holding it up to examine it. She fired, and he was gone, vanished again. "I should really return your wallet, though." Her wallet dropped to the ground next to her feet, as the shock started shifting to a snarl while she checked her other back jeans pocket, then snapped to fire at the other roof he was now speaking from; he disappeared again. "Can I keep this as a reminder of you?" He'd popped up by a steam vent ten yards ahead of her, holding her necklace. She fired off a volley, denting the steam vent and tracking him as he dropped down off the side of the building, sliding down a vertical pipe and laughing all the way. The pursuit continued at a sprint for another two blocks before he rounded a corner straight into the back of the van; the doors were still closing as she fired after him uselessly.
The van wound about several alleys and side roads to throw off any pursuit before making for the docks. Sly had settled in reclining against the wall of the van by the doors, grinning like a fool and holding up Carmelita's choker.
"I really believe that it is a capital bad idea to spend any more time than absolutely necessary around Inspector Fox, especially when she's hunting you down - all you have to do is slip up once and you'll be in prison for longer than I really would care to calculate."
"Relax, Bentley...Carmelita's a known equation by now, and it just wouldn't be any fun to dash off without at least saying something..."
"Please tell me that you are not getting an infatuation with her." Bentley adjusted his glasses, looking down from the seat by the computer consoles in the van.
"Aw, c'mon...I know better than to take this too seriously. Carmelita just wouldn't be Carmelita if she weren't so dedicated to her job, and I wouldn't be a Cooper if I weren't on the opposite side of the law from her." He tapped the side of the charm, watching the light from Bentley's monitors reflect off it.
"And somehow I think that is exactly one of the things you seem attracted to. I haven't been around you this long without learning to notice a few warning signs with you, Sly."
"Hey, if she were attainable to a thief like me, she'd be a crooked cop, and therefore a target, and not somebody I'd care to be around, and I full well know that I don't have a snowflake's chance in Hell with her; she's never going to leave her post, and if for some weird reason I go crazy and decide to give up thievery, she'd still throw me in prison for what I've already done." He flipped the choker around and it vanished as he palmed it and pocketed it.
"That's precisely what I'm afraid of. You - " Bentley turned the chair around to face Sly fully, poking the air towards his old partner for emphasis. "Are a first class grade 'A' adrenaline junkie. You have a complex about chasing things that you logically should not be able to reach. You are obsessed with obtaining the unobtainable." The turtle leaned back in his chair, pushing his glasses back up onto his beak. "I will admit that your fearlessness has carried you through a lot of difficult missions, but in situations like this, it can only get you in trouble."
"She hasn't slapped me yet for kissing her."
"She has shot at you more times than even I care to count."
"For thieving - not for kissing her."
Bentley shook his head. "The more I learn of your logic, the less sense it makes."
Sly slid down the wall, laying back on the floor with his hands behind his head. "You've just got to stop thinking so pragmatically all the time - quit calculating out odds and hedging your bets and take a few gambles."
"Take too many gambles and your number will stop coming up." Bentley glanced back with one last grave stare, then hunched over at his computer screen, a familiar gesture that he was done talking.
Inspector Carmelita Montoya Fox stormed back into her office, ears flattened, snarling, tail floofed and twitching behind her. The charter pilot they'd been keeping on retainer since she started chasing Sly looked up from his paper and coffee long enough to comment, "He got away again, eh?", then went back to reading, adding, "Chief wants to talk to you, says he has some change in orders from Interpol."
She sighed, grimacing, eyes closed, then tried to smooth down her tail as she walked into the back office.
The "Chief" was a German shepherd of perpetually bedraggled expression, the sort who'd seen so much that they'd wholeheartedly accepted cynicism with a sort of warped semi-contentment that things were, and always would remain, rather crappy. Leaning against the wall by the door was someone she hadn't seen before - a lanky black cat whose golden eyes peered over blood-red lensed sunglasses, dressed in an immaculate grey suit with an odd white "tie" piece, long tail drifting back and forth to the side, with the kind of straight expression that'd be perfect on an unmoving guard of Buckingham Palace. His eyes moved to track her as she entered, but otherwise he remained unmoving.
"You wanted to see me, sir?"
"I just got word from Interpol, slight change in the way things've been going. Meet Hyperion Nocturne, your new partner in the Cooper case; he arrived with the paperwork for the orders about an hour ago."
"Wha?" She turned to the black cat, who nodded and sketched a sort of salute, expression still unchanging. "Each time I go out, I come an inch closer to catching that raccoon, and I have to be able to move quickly - anyone else would likely only confuse things." She was looking between the Chief and Hyperion.
"I've been on special cases detail for some time now; you were actually sometimes only hours ahead of me on the Fiendish Five, and while your reports were sketchy on how you managed it, it was nonetheless rather impressive. I can assure you that I'm not going to be a dead weight; I've chased shadows before." He took off the sunglasses and started cleaning the lenses with a handkerchief; they looked perfectly clean, so it was likely more of a nervous habit than anything else. "And if you dislike company, you're in for a disappointment; the People's Republic of Green Island has one of their own people after him for the theft of the Firebird Stone, a rather large ruby that was supposed to be part of some mystic seal. Nalphyr's not far behind me, and he seems far less happy to cooperate." Hyperion put the handkerchief back in his pocket and inspected his glasses; his tail tip had acquired an odd twitch, faster than its lazy swing, betraying something - she wasn't sure what. "I understand he has orders to bring Cooper in dead or alive, and that Green Island is none to happy about the five police officers that were killed in the theft of the Firebird Stone."
"The what?"
He replaced his glasses, closing his eyes and speaking carefully and levelly. "There were five officers guarding the temple where the Firebird Stone was stored who were ambushed and murdered just after it was removed from its holder. Some security devices and Cooper's ubiquitous calling card place him as the thief, and the officers were killed with a hook-shaped blade identical to that on his cane."
"This doesn't make sense...it's not like him."
"Can we talk outside?" Hyperion turned and stalked out to a balcony off the building, Carmelita following in a daze; was this really the same thief that'd gotten angry with her for going after him while in the compound of the Panda King, not because she was chasing him but because the Panda King had recently wiped out an innocent village? The one that'd nearly died in a gas chamber saving her life, in what was a rather obvious trap?
He leaned over the balcony and sighed, losing some of the ramrod straightness from his posture; a more pensive look tempered the stoneface. "I've done my homework on this case. You may have left his involvement out of your reports on the Fiendish Five, but you're still honest, and your file on Cooper made it quite obvious that he was instrumental in apprehending them. Something happened in Clockwerk's lair that was left out of your incredibly sketchy report on that incident, and I can only gather from my own knowledge of Clockwerk and your previous tangles with the Five that you wound up cooperating with Cooper. I understand that this is hard to accept, but I have yet to see any reasonable alternative explanation for the five deaths - and I reviewed their evidence myself, that's why I wasn't here in time to help you chase him after his theft from the museum here." His tail lashed, and he started cleaning his glasses again. "I understand what you meant about it not being like him, and I rather doubt that it was premeditated; I would guess that it was more of a hasty action, that something spooked him into doing something he may not have otherwise considered."
"Cooper doesn't spook - not in the face of far worse than five zealous cops."
"Something killed those cops, and all the evidence points to Cooper."
Inspector Fox slumped back against the wall, deep in thought. Somewhere in the confusion, she could still hear Clockwerk's mechanical voice rasping, "Empathy has always been the downfall of the Cooper Clan." Hyperion's tail was still lashing as he studied his glasses, and the ground below through the lenses.
"...I may not have gone over the evidence in this as much as you have, but I have been pursuing Cooper closely almost since he started thieving. I have had to study his methods inside and out, and I'm sure you know yourself that pursuing a difficult catch like him requires learning how they think. I have no answer as yet to what happened, but I know some things."
"Such as?" He looked back over his shoulder, glasses still held in one hand.
"He has built his life very much around the methods and ideals of his ancestors. The pride of his bloodline is his life. He is not fearless, cunning, cocky, and daring because he has done daunting things in the past and gotten away with it; he is so because he is a Cooper, and because to him being a Cooper means being all of those things - and it also brings with it a strange sense of honor, as so many of his ancestors gained fame by robbing the corrupt and cruel. Clockwerk even planned some almost-successful traps based not on any specific knowledge of Sly Cooper himself, but on the habit of 'empathy' he had observed in the Cooper Clan in general. I happen to know that a decent amount of his ill-gotten gains have gone into charities, and that he was the mysterious benefactor who paid several bills for the orphanage that raised him. He is many things, and is a thief through and through who laughs at the law, but one thing he is not is a murderer. If he had that kind of malice in him, the Fiendish Five would not have lived to see arrest; he got to each of them save Clockwerk before I did. They were the ones that killed his family, and if he were to have murdered anyone, it would have been them, yet he left them alive for us to capture. I will hunt him to Hell itself for his thefts and his mockery of law and justice, but I will give him respect where respect is due, and while it may be against the current evidence, I will hold the possibility that there may be another explanation for those murders." She stood straight and walked toward the door. "At any rate, he's likely headed back to France; his hideout is somewhere around there."
The trio stopped at a bakery in Paris en route to their hideout, covers snapped over the sides of the van to cover the rather distinctive markings, the gun turret pulled down into the back and hidden. Bentley and Murray were little seen enough in police reports to not have to worry about being seen; Sly had changed out of his thieving gear to more normal street clothes. They had just settled comfortably into an outdoor table when Sly became a little distracted.
To most observers, it would seem that Sly had just started focusing on his food and coffee, but for the occasional flicker of his gaze to a forbidding looking timber wolf in dark clothes across the street who was watching them. Finishing his lunch, he stood and adjusted the binoc-u-com that hung around his neck like any tourist's binoculars. "You guys go on ahead of me, I think I'm going to go for a bit of a walk." They both looked up, confused, then nodded and went back to their own more leisurely meals.
The first place Sly headed was the crowded Champs de Elysses. As he expected, the wolf followed. He headed straight through the crowds, hoping to lose the tail in the throngs of tourists and wealthy French. A few of the more wealthy looking among the crowds would doubtless later notice excess jewelry missing. He picked up the pace a bit at the broad pedestrian tunnel under the circular road, that led to the Arch de Triumph. He paused by the corner of the huge arch, confirming that the wolf was still following him. Ducking back through a tour group, he slipped into the middle of the group and walked with them through the opposite tunnel back out on the far side of the traffic circle. He boarded the tour bus with them, not really listening to the guide droning on but acting like he belonged there anyhow; glancing back as the bus pulled out, he saw the wolf snarl at the railing around the Arch.
The bus stopped close to central Paris, by the Opera house. He snuck around the bus as the tour guide started their head count. He saw the wolf, by the doors of the Opera house, looking the other way; a black sedan with a rental sticker was parked nearby. Sly ducked down an alleyway towards the inner city, away from people.
He started up a pipe along the side of a building, pausing on a gargoyle on the ornate facade of the building; a shot rang out, sending stone chips off the gargoyle. Sly glanced back; sure enough, the wolf was in the narrow cobblestone street below, a heavy revolver in one hand.
"Halt right there, thief! In the name of the People's Republic of Green Island, surrender and return the Firebird Stone, and we might be convinced to give you leniance."
Sly turned on his perch so he was facing the wolf, still crouched down against the gargoyle so that shots would be harder to aim. "Return the stone, eh? I'm never going to turn myself in, but I have no reason to keep your ruby." A quick glance sideways, and he had a route plotted out in his head along the sides of the building, up to the rooftops, and over them to the other side of the building, where Murray waited whenever they ran into unexpected trouble in Paris. "Be back here tomorrow and I'll see to it you get the Firebird stone back; you have my word as a Cooper that the Firebird stone will be returned." Then he was off, the pistol shots ringing out the whole way as he got over the building to the waiting van.
The van drove up the only non-booby-trapped approach to the cave where they usually hid it; as it came to a stop, Sly jumped out the back, the solid gold Mayan calendar stone they'd stolen in New York under one arm. He was darting through the field that led to the nondescript abandoned train car where they lived when he suddenly stopped, flattened low, and started creeping towards his own lair - several of the hidden booby traps in the field had been tampered with, and the door of the train car hung open.
He entered the train car in silence, cane at the ready, while Bentley and Murray waited at the edge of the field. Standing back by the wall where he'd stashed his souvenirs of the Haitian jungle was a dust grey cat with rust markings, dressed in nondescript black shirt and slacks; he was studying the Firebird Stone with half-lidded green eyes. He wore a pistol in a hip holster, and had a katana sheathed over his shoulder.
"Ah, so the famous Cooper finally returns." He didn't even look away from the massive ruby.
"Who the Hell are you?"
"All in good time...y'see, I wanted to check something before I left - you Coopers take being able to rob other thieves as a mark of being the top of the criminal food chain, right?" He looked up straight at Sly, whose only answer was a cold glare. "Thought so. Well, in that case, I challenge you to take this back. As for my name, you can call me Macavity." In a flash, he was out the window, Sly's cane swiping thin air well clear of his tail. He stopped halfway across the field, causing Sly to pause in his pursuit. "Oh, and by the way - if this doesn't get back to its temple by the time that eclipse hits the island this year, you can consider yourself responsible for the end of civilization as we know it. No pressure though, right?" With that, several smoke mines went off around them, sending Sly into a choking fit; when it cleared, Macavity was nowhere to be seen.
"Sly!! SLYY!! Are you alright?!"
"It's OK, Bentley, I'm fine."
Bentley stopped next to him, panting. "Who...*gasp* was that anyway?"
Sly was staring at the last spot he'd seen the cat in, already with a distant look. "Said to call him Macavity."
