"Thee hundred feet down, give or take ten feet."

Try 'give or take thirty', Sly thought to himself, lying on his back, sprawled out, staring up at the circle of daylight pouring in from the mouth of the wide, deep cavern formed by a dissolving lime deposit millions of years ago. He could see a small green dot and a larger pink one, the smaller running around the opening in a panicked manner.

"Sly! Sllllyyyyy! Are you okay?" Bentley roared over the communication gizmo in Cooper's right ear.

"Yes, Bentley," Sly groaned, sitting up and scooping his cane out of the dirt. "Tell your friend his measurements were a little off." He remembered reaching the end of the rope and looking down into the darkness, expecting a nice, gentle landing. He didn't remember much else until blinking up at the light. With the familiar soreness of a rough impact, Sly stood and dusted off his much-more-familiar-and-far-more-comfortable blue shirt and gray trousers, flipping his cap into his paw with his foot.

"Okay, Sly. Murray and I are headed back to the van. You're all alone down there. Be careful."

"I always am."

Sly let his eyes adjust to the dark, and then set off into an opening lined with cut stone. He walked along, cane in paw, for several minutes, before getting a bad feeling in his stomach, the type he got before a bad guy jumped out from around a corner and whacked him over the head.

"Bentley, what was the first trap again?" Bentley sat down on a rock beside the team van and opened his big book of trivial information, the kind of things that only come in handy in, well, situations like this.

"My research indicates that the first trap set by the ancient Siamese people was always a poison-tipped spear pit, usually disguised as a normal walkway. Be sure to watch your step in there, Sly."

"Thanks, Bentley," Cooper grunted, stepping around a brown skeleton. The walkway curved to the left, and went deeper into the ground. The small and seemingly random stones that made up the floor became wide, square cuts of rock that had been laid carefully in place. The passage opened wide to about ten meters in diameter. The walls and floors had been painted a confusing array of red, green, yellow, purple, orange and blue. It took Cooper a few moments to spot where the room ended. There were no strings, no clumps of leaves, and no suspicious rays of daylight. Nothing to cause alarm. He took one step forward. The floor caved in, even before any weight had been applied, as if someone manually pulled the stones away. Cooper would have fallen into the gaping hole had it not been for his cane, which was long enough to bridge the gap and stay from slipping. Cooper dangled from the handle by one paw, looking around. Below, beneath more darkness and another long drop, were rows and rows of tightly packed spears lodged in the ground, their sharp points aiming upward into a hollow space under the thick stone floor tiles. Cooper looked down at them, then up at his cane. "That could have been much worse." He pulled himself effortlessly onto his cane, squatting and balancing on the handle. Not more than a second after he was out of the hole, the stones slid back into place under his cane, re-forming a perfectly level floor. The ringtail blinked at the sight a few times and shook his head vigorously. "And I thought Miz' Ruby's swamp was weird."

Sly took caution not to step on the same stone again, and had himself upright and with cane in hand, looking out over the floor again.

"Well, I stepped on a red stone. So, let's try a blue one."

Sly was looking down at the spears again, dangling by a paw. Blue wasn't the answer. He climbed up onto his cane again. Perhaps yellow? Ah. Yes. Yellow seemed to work. Cooper stood on one foot, on a yellow stone. All he had to do was… step… on the next one… way the hell over there. Now, Sly was a very skilled jumper. He could easily make gaps that others would get nauseous just looking at. But the next yellow stone was impossibly far away. Sly stood on his one foot, looking around for quite some time. It appeared that jumping was the only solution until Cooper looked up at the ceiling. A few ancient vines had grown to make a nice loop and a perfect place to swing the ol' cane from. Sly could almost see the blue sparks hovering around it. He crouched low and vaulted himself upward, not making a sound other than the rustling of his clothes. The cane hooked onto the vine and held Cooper's weight, the vine creaking and snowing dust when he kicked his legs forward and pulled free. The landing was perfect, or, it would have been had it been the right stone to step on. Sly hollered as he clutched at the still-remaining floor, his legs curling up under him. The cane clattered across the stones, sliding to a stop on the far end of the room. His heavy breathing echoed through the lower pit, and he grunted slightly as he climbed up. He was hesitant to remove his foot-paw from the hole and let it close again, meaning he was vulnerable to another fall. His next move would decide his fate. The yellow stone he had stood on previously was too far to make a sure jump, but Cooper had no choice. He would have to try. He pushed off the ground with one foot, the gap closing behind him. He soared through the air, feet forward, trying to get his toes around the stone, but it was no use. He wouldn't come close. His butt landed directly on a blue stone. Cooper expected to fall several dozen feet down and be turned into Ringtail-kabob. He sat for a long moment, perhaps as long as a minute before he opened his eyes again. He was alive. Cool. He let out a long sigh and patted the rock he landed on.

"Thanks, Peter," Sly whispered, giving the stone a pet name. He stood on his new platform and looked around. The yellow stone was just a hop away now. Cooper shrugged inwardly and held his foot out. As per the normal, the floor parted before he could put his foot down. Cooper recovered quickly and staggered back onto Peter. The yellow stones weren't the right ones. Sly stared at the stones after they had closed up again and sat down, folding his legs in front of him. He hunched over and stared at the floor, hoping something would come to him.

"Yellow, blue. Yellow, blue. Hmm. Uhhh…" It was going to be a wild guess. Cooper stood and spotted a green stone next to him. He gently tapped his foot to it. It stayed in place. He cautiously pressed his weight onto it. He smiled at his own genius. "I'm so smar—aaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHhh!" Cooper, in his apparent victory, had gone and stepped on a red stone and fallen into the pit. It was only by sheer luck that he managed to grab onto a spear's shaft with his paws and hold himself in a handstand, his face just inches from the poison tip. He blinked at the spear and gulped hard, his arms shaking a little with the strain of maintaining an awkward position. "O-o-oh-hhkay…" He breathed slowly and closed his eyes, slowly lowering his body to the side of the spear, between the one he held and another bamboo stalk. He had to do this right if he wanted to see daylight again.

Cooper swung his legs around in a circle, snapping a whole slew of spears and sending the top two feet of them into the air. Cooper managed to catch one of those ends with a paw, at the same time vaulting himself into the air and landing on the narrow head of a broken shaft, balancing himself there. A hearty layer of sweat had accumulated on Cooper's body, making his clothes stick to his back.

"Okay, Sly," he said to himself, laying the caught tip between two broken shafts to make an ad-hoc footrest. "Just ten feet up." He pushed off the makeshift bridge and into the air, letting the small segment roll off and fall into the darkness. His paws managed to grab the side of the hole in the floor, pulling himself up and onto Peter again. He sat there for another moment, his limbs shaking with adrenaline. He ran his paw over his face and under his cap, wiping away some of the moisture. Sly slapped his paw over his ear and pressed down on the 'call' button. "Bentley? I need to know about colors."

"Wha—Colors, Sly? I think you graduated first grade when I did."

"I mean down here. I'm looking at different-colored spots all over the place. It seems, when I step on certain colors, the floor caves in trying to kill me on those poison spears of yours. I can't figure out the pattern."

"Well, what do you know?"

"I've gotten by stepping on yellow first, then blue, then green. I don't know about red and orange yet." Bentley looked over his books for a moment, then looked up and narrowed his eyes in thought.

"I wonder…"

"Huh?"

"If my knowledge of ancient history is correct, the Siamese monks spoke a different language than the common people. Nobody but those who were selected knew how to speak it. The pattern, so it seems, is simply alphabetic, even though there is no such thing as an alphabet in that language."

"Wha?"

"In their language, yellow comes first, followed by blue, green, orange and then purple. Step on an orange spot next." Sly stood, looking at an orange stone a jump away.

"Are you sure about this Bentley?" He asked, his tone nervous and shaky.

"I am eighty-nine percent certain that orange is the correct color." Sly swallowed hard and jumped. His foot slapped down on an orange stone, staying firm. Cooper let out a long sigh.

"What's next? Red?"

"Yellow."

"Why yellow again?"

"The word for 'red' was the same as 'death', Sly. Don't step on red."

Sly let out a small oh and continued hopping along, yellow, blue, green, orange, yellow, blue, green, orange. He zigzagged across the room several times, following the surprisingly easy-to-reach pattern of colors, now that he knew the right procedure. Finally, he leaped off an orange stone and onto a slightly raised walkway on the far side of the room, scooping up his cane and letting out a long, relieved sigh.

"Thanks, Bentley. Your brain saved me again." Bentley blushed slightly and closed his book.

"Uhhh, it was nothing, really." The tortoise slid his copy of Quantum Mathematics Today into his bag and sighed his own sigh of relief that he had guessed right.


It was a familiar sound, the one of cars rushing over wet asphalt. Matkovich watched Senior Director Pasha Torenkov devour his Belgian waffle as rain pounded against the large diner window next to them.

"This is very dangerous, what you are asking me," the elderly Caribou muttered between mouthfuls of breakfast. He had been eating quickly since Fedorov had first spoken.

"I am aware of the danger, sir. It does not concern me." Torenkov let out a bleated laugh, a spot of waffle landing on the table from his mouth.

"It's dangerous to me, too, Matkovich!" He dropped his knife and fork loudly to his plate. "This isn't like your other assignments. There are people looking for them other than just us. We have the Swiss, the Germans, the Italians, the English, the Americans…" Pasha spun his wrist like a wheel, suggesting the list went on. He picked up his fork again and resumed eating. "Besides, the people I have working on the case are far more qualified than you. They will bring them in and we will bring them to trial for their crimes." Fedorov remained rigid, staring down at Torenkov.

"Consider it a personal favor, then." Pasha dropped the fork again, tossing his paws in the air in frustration and looking away, hoping to make his displeasure more apparent. "One that will not be forgotten by the Fedor-"

"Matkovich!" Torenkov growled. Fedorov hushed immediately and listened. "You, of all people, know what happens when you make these things personal. I thought that is what they taught you." Matkovich stared at the Chief Director of Interpol in Russia. Pasha stared back, his yellow eyes blinking and looking away. After a moment, he clicked his tongue. "You will have what you ask. Come by my office this afternoon." He picked up his fork again and resumed eating. Fedorov made no thanking gesture as he stood and left.