*****
Bentley shut off the binoc-u-com one way that let him keep track of Sly, muttering, "No, no, no, fool, no...", slumping forward against the monitor. Murray, sporting his own part of the network, said, "He's alright!"
Bentley turned in his chair, staring at Murray as if the hippo had sprouted a pair of tentacles.
"No really - Carmelita got him with the stun blaster's all, an' it looks like she's arguing with that wolf!"
The shock turned into a brief bit of celebration in the turtle's mind; the worst hadn't happened. Then he spotted a figure in a grey suit at the intersection ten yards away, looking straight at them intently and talking on a radio; somehow, his gaze met Hyperion's briefly.
"Murray - full reverse, bootleg, and floor it!"
"But Sly -"
"We can't break him out of jail if we're there too!", Bentley snapped; Murray nodded and floored it, throwing the van into a backward spin and then neatly pulling out of it down a side street, while Bentley braced in his chair. Murray went zig-zagging insanely though Paris, down narrow side streets, pulling off things no one would've believed a van could accomplish.
His head hurt, there was the sort of uncomfortable
tingling sensation all over as if he'd just stuck a fork in a light socket,
and his limbs felt heavy. There was an obnoxious loud rumbling noise
that made the headache all the worse, to boot. After a bit of thought,
he realized that some of the weight was a rather elaborate mess of handcuffs,
chains, and restraints. He decided it was a good idea to try cracking
his eyes open, then retracted that idea at the stab of light. Of
course, he was never one to let himself be beaten that easily, so he kept
trying until he managed to peek a crack without blinding himself.
He could sorta see everything around him as a grey blur, with a red blur
in front of him; as it cleared, a grey hazy blur was between him and the
red blur. The red blur was vaguely person-shaped, with a bushy side
blur that had to be tail off one side. He unstuck his tongue from
the roof of his mouth.
"Car..melita?"
"Finally awake, Ringtail." Two plus two equaled
busted. "You are one of the most stupidly fearless people I have
ever met - you do realize that Nalphyr would've killed you, correct?"
"Why are you working with that psycho anyway?"
His vision was starting to clear, fairly quickly now that he was awake.
"Nalphyr was put on this case by Green Island on
special assignment."
"Lovely." He glanced to both sides; small
room, curved walls, a back wall with a heavy door. "Flying me out
somewhere?"
"Yes. Jotunheim Prison, in the North Sea.
The World Court in the Hague is working through which country will be trying
you, seeing as how you've committed major thefts in more countries than
most people know by name."
"Really...they're fighting over me? I'm flattered."
He sounded almost cheerful.
Carmelita's ears ticked down as she either muttered
or growled, shaking her head, he couldn't tell which. "You act almost
as if you haven't been caught."
"The real question is, how long am I going to stay
caught?"
"Har har. I'm giving the entire place a *personal*
once-over, with every once I've ever learned of your tricks, and Jotunheim
will be no easy trick in itself - it's become known as the new Alcatraz."
"Ooo, a challenge." His ears perked.
Carmelita raised one eyebrow, sighed, and hunched over, apparently intent
on personally keeping an eye on him the whole way there. "So...are
you going to be keeping up watch like this often?"
"If that's what it takes to keep you in prison."
"Sticking around just might be worth it for the
pleasure of your company."
Her ears went flat as she slumped forward, muttering
something unintelligible under her breath. The door clicked shut
behind Hyperion. "Is this how things always go?"
"Well, usually I'm not in handcuffs, but yeah, pretty
much." Hyperion blinked a little that the reply didn't come from
Carmelita.
"Yes...unfortunately." She buried her head
in her hands and returned to muttering.
"Aww...that's awful harsh, Carmelita."
"Nothing fazes you, does it?"
Sly stopped, cocked his head thinking. "Nope...Not
that I can think of, not really, no."
"It doesn't bother you that you're in restraints
normally reserved for the criminally insane, en route to a prison which
no one has escaped from?"
"Yet."
One of the cat's ears twitched, slightly.
"You're right, Inspector Fox...he is nuts."
"So, you're Carmelita's new partner?" Sly
didn't seem impressed, and Hyperion knew he was being studied.
"Yes." Where Carmelita had her head buried
in her hands and was still muttering unintelligibly, in a mish-mash of
languages, he was still keeping his usual stoneface.
"I hear you were the one assigned to chasing the
Fiendish Five."
"You're well-informed."
"You were pretty far behind on that one."
"Interesting to hear, considering that much of the
information in the file you stole to track them down came from my investigation."
Another ear twitch, and the tip of his tail was twitching.
"So you already knew?" Cooper was giving him
an incredulous look. "Damn, you WERE behind."
"Do you always try to be annoying?" Ear-tick,
and a glare down through his sunglasses.
"I just call things as I see them. And you
had plenty of time to get there before I did."
"I also had paperwork to chase and a case of corruption
to take care of that was making the paperwork and red tape far worse -
you were after the Five...I was working to bring down their entire empire.
You just chased their hideouts, I was tracking down all of their areas
of influence."
"So I made your work easier."
Hyperion took a deep, irritated breath, tail fitzing,
the ear tick getting a bit more pronounced. "I still have work to
do on that case, but your little stunt on Green Island attracted enough
attention for me to get transferred to assist on this case as well."
"So in other words, you have more important things
to do that you're not doing."
"That...will be quite enough, Ringtail." Carmelita
had recovered from her grumblings, and was glaring up at him over her arms
thrown over one knee as she perched on the crate lashed in the middle of
the plane deck. The crate shifted, forcing her to move to keep her
balance, as Hyperion shifted his weight; Sly didn't really have to worry
much about moving. The plane was banking in for a landing.
Some of the restraints were removed when he was moved
into a cell somewhere underground, but not all of them; there were still
chain-handcuffs with a good six inches between them on his hands and feet.
The metal bars (he noted that there was only three inch spaces) were clicked
shut, then the guard turned a key as a light blinked - a layer of criss-crossing
lasers. Not all the lenses blinked of lasers, which probably meant
motion sensors as well, spaced pretty evenly between, and cameras more
than likely. Just outside that, a layer of some kind of tough plexiglass
was lowered.
"Again with the obsessive security." There
was a sort of continual intercom, a small grate built into one wall inside
with some kind of connection to a similar small grate on the outside; probably
linked speaker sets and microphones.
"You're not getting out of here, Cooper Raccoon."
He leaned back, pulled an inch-across rubber superball
out of the back sole of one of his boots, and started bouncing it off the
wall.
Carmelita glanced to Hyperion, whispering, "I thought
we searched him more thoroughly than that..."
"We'll just have to make sure he's kept under constant
surveillance...and searched again." The two inspectors nodded to
the guard, who walked off where Sly couldn't see - probably a control booth
- then they turned and left themselves, both sparing glances back to check,
as if not sure he'd still be there. There was a temptation to pull
the invisibility trick to mess with their minds, but he didn't want to
let them know he could do that just yet, so he kept to playing with the
ball, mind already clicking over ways to dismantle the security devices.
*****
The Hague, Paris, etc. are all based off a few years living in Europe...Jotunheim
and Green Island are pure fabrications. (Of course, Jotunheim..snrrgh...the
initial temptation was to name it Niflheim, since THAT was the place in
Norse myth that was both the realm of the dead and where the creatures
of evil were imprisoned...buuuuttt decided to avoid the obvious FFVII parallel,
and the home of the frost giants seemed to work just as well.)
