A/N: Whew, it's been a little while since the last chapter, sorry about that folks. Well, I was surprised at the violence votes. Apparently I'm not the only one with a nasty streak, who likes to put their characters through all kinds of hell. Or at least watch them go through all kinds of hell. This chapter may not be up to what was voted (8 ½), but I think the next one will be closer. You tell me.

A slight spoiler: This is the next to the last chapter! The next one will be the end. Will there be a sequel, or an alternative ending? That will be partly up to my readers. But no matter what happens, after this I'm working on something unrelated first. It may be Sly, it may not be. We'll see. Loves to everyone!

Disclaimer; Sucker Punch Productions owns all original Sly Cooper characters. I retain all rights to all OC's. If anyone would like to borrow these characters for their own stories, please ask first and we'll work something out.

---------

Thief for a Day

Raven Ehtar

Chapter Six, 'Hopeless Battle'

---------

Time stood still as Sly stared at Carmelita standing over him, once again holding her shock pistol. She wasn't pointing it at him yet, but the way she gripped it, like it was a lifeline and she was hanging off the edge of a cliff, Sly knew that it was over. How could he have just put the pistol out in the open like that? Now his friends were hostages and he was in the power of Inspector Fox. There was no way for him to escape either, his cane was still behind Carmelita, where he had dropped it, the only way of getting to it was going through Carmelita. And she was armed with the pistol and the faux cane Bentley had made for her.

Game over, he thought. I need advice! What do I do?

Very slowly, Sly put the computer back on the floor, then raised his hands slightly, fingers spread. If he was captured, he was captured, but he might be able to convince Carmelita to help him. After all, PT was a bad guy, too. "So," he said quietly, "what now?"

To his surprise, Carmelita crouched down next to him until she was even with him. She leaned forward and stared him hard in the eye. "Now we make PT pay for this," she growled harshly.

Sly blinked. His brain refused to process what she had just said. An Interpol officer offering to help an international criminal to get his gang back? "You mean it, Carm?" he asked incredulously.

Carmelita snorted with a frown, "Of course. They're our friends!"

Pure astonishment shifted to uncertainty on Sly's face. Our friends? "What do you mean?"

Carmelita put down her cane just long enough to give Sly a gentle cuff across his ear. She smiled lightly, "I may be new, but I'm part of this gang, too." Picking up her cane, she stood and strode back to where Sly had dropped his. Using her foot, she flipped it straight at Sly, who caught it out of pure reflex. He was still staring at Carmelita in bafflement. "We're not going to just hand over what PT wants," she said, apparently not noticing his slack jawed stare. "We're going to make him pay. We're going to fight." Her eyes glittered dangerously, and Sly realized that for once, they weren't meant for him.

His breath came out in a rush, as though he had been punched in the stomach. Somehow, unbelievably, the sight of her pistol, the feel of her pistol, hadn't restored her memories. He glanced at the hand that still held her weapon in a death grip. It was trembling very slightly. It hadn't restored them entirely, anyway. Carmelita didn't seem aware of how she was holding the pistol, but Sly could almost see the suppressed Inspector in her, fighting the hypnosis. She was still a loyal Cooper gang member, but it was only a matter of time now before she broke through the spell Llazarrad had put on her, and returned to her old self again. If he wanted help in rescuing his friends, he would have to take Carmelita's suggestion now, before she changed back.

What she was proposing, though, it was a bad idea. It was a stupid idea. Two people taking on PT Bull, notorious London thug, and all of his forces, were as likely to win as a couple of bugs were to win against a kid with a magnifying glass. They would be fried before they even got close. It would be a hopeless battle.

Sly looked over at one of the spots of blood – Murray's blood – that spattered the floor. It was already starting to dry. They have no reason to bargain with me, he had said to Carmelita. It was still true. If he just handed over what PT wanted, he would have no reason to return Bentley or Murray. He would have everything he wanted, and Sly would be in his power to boot.

Sly clenched his hand into a fist, crumpling the paper that was stained with his family's blood. If this was the game PT wanted to play, Sly would oblige. He wouldn't lose another family to fiends, hopeless battle or not.

-----

The building that PT had chosen to outfit as a temporary fortress was barely within the city limits. It was in a rundown neighborhood swarmed with the lowlifes that made their way in any city. The building itself had been a kind of nesting ground for them, and it had taken a little time for his men to root them out of every corner. Normally PT wouldn't be caught in such derelict accommodations, but his current business required him to be away from prying eyes.

PT himself was in the best room that could be found, on the top floor, four stories up. Here the walls were still mostly intact and the rats less frequent. His 'guests' were in the next room where he could keep an eye on them and occasionally tend to their needs. Such as making sure they kept quiet. He had had to send in several of his more talented enforcers to quiet down the hippo. When he had revived, he had broken the ropes that restrained him, but he was still weak from the blows he had taken earlier and went down again quickly. He was now bound with chains. The turtle didn't cause any trouble. He just sat where he had been originally dumped and stared at the floor. The enforcers were left in the room anyway, just in case they decided to try anything smart. PT wondered idly if the beating the turtle had taken hadn't damaged him somehow. But it didn't matter. Sly would come anyway. The fool was sentimental like that.

The floors below, instead of being swamped with the homeless and the deserted, were now crawling with PT's guards. They patrolled the hallways, rested in rooms, and played cards in every nook they could find. They were thickest on the ground floor, where anyone was likely to breach the perimeter, but the second and third floors also had their sentries. Two were walking on of the western hallways on the second floor.

One of the guards, a small, gray feline, stopped suddenly and spun around. Large, nocturnal eyes scanned back and forth over the hallway they had just walked through, searching for the source of his apprehension. Without taking his eyes away from the dark corridor, he whispered to his partner, "Did you hear anything?"

The second guard, a tall grizzly, looked back down where the cat was pointing. His eyes weren't quite as well adapted to the dark, but he could see all the way down to where the hall turned. Only a ratty pair of curtains swayed in the breeze coming through a broken window. He snorted, "Nothin'. Don't see nothin', neither." He took a long drag from his cigarette, then dropped it to the floor and ground it with his foot. "Buildin's old. Prob'ly settling." He exhaled, creating a tiny cloud of carbon dioxide and nicotine.

The cat's ears twitched and swiveled around, searching for any scrap of sound in the eerily quiet building. After another minute, satisfied, he rose out of the crouch he had sunken into and continued with his larger partner. He kept a hand on the gun strapped to his hip, still listening intently for anything out of the ordinary. Keeping his voice quiet, he turned to the bear at his side, "This place was a bad choice for a hideout. I can feel something's about to happen."

The bear chuckled lowly, "That your cat instincts kickin' in? Or you know somethin' the rest of us don't?"

The gray shook his head, "I don't know. Something just feels wrong." There was a tiny sound from the shadows they had come from, and the cat spun again, drawing his gun. "There! Did you hear it?"

His partner had his gun out too, his flashlight out and shining down the hallway. "Yeah, I heard it." He swept the light from side to side, but it revealed nothing to their sight. He still wasn't convinced, "I don't trust them shadows no more. Could be hidin' all sorts of nasties."

For a moment neither moved. As a rule, they were men used to the darkness. They had spent their lives depending on the concealment offered by shadows to execute their jobs. But now, they were hiding something else. They were almost able to see the shadows twisting around each other, protecting the unknown from their view. They could feel it, the eyes of that nameless thing, staring at them, and were unable to stare back.

Finally, the cat began walking into the gloom. His partner hung back, gun drawn and light shining. The feline slowly crept back to the window and the fluttering curtains, lithe figure making no sound over the threadbare carpet. He stopped at the window, bent, and picked something up from the floor. He grinned with relief at his partner, "Just a piece of the ceiling Spackle."

The bear let out the breath he had been holding, and lowered his gun again. Just as the flashlight beam fell away from him, the cat suddenly flew out of the open window with a yowl. The bear blinked, hesitated a second before he broke into a sprint for the window. He knew he would be too late, and just hoped that cats did land on their feet.

Halfway to the window, he was slammed in the back with a huge jolt of energy. Every muscle in his body snapped taut, from his face and jaw to his toes, crammed inside his boots. His fingers clenched, and the gun would have fired, except he always kept his fingers outside the trigger guard until he had a target. His jaws clamped together so tight he thought he could hear his teeth begin to groan under the strain, ready to crack, his lips pulled back in a feral snarl he couldn't help, he could felt the muscles in his neck stand out like rods. Twitching, trying to draw breath into lungs that refused to function, he collapsed to the floor. He tried to shout a warning to the other guards, but his jaws refused to unclench. He was paralyzed. Minutes seemed to pass in lieu of seconds. Finally, he was able to draw a ragged breath into his body, which threw him into a fit of coughing. He tried to move his arms, but as soon as they stirred, a slim shadow crossed his field of vision, and another shock of electricity ripped through him. Everything went black.

Carmelita knelt over the fallen guard and checked his pulse. It was a little fast, but that just meant he was still alive. Anyone's pulse would be faster after two shots from the shock pistol. She wrinkled her nose as the smell of burnt fur reached her. At least his flesh was still intact. Mostly.

She heard Sly swing inside through the window behind her. He had been hanging outside the entire time, occasionally making some sound or other to draw the guards close and yank them out the window with his cane. They had made their way through the layers of sentries in the same way – separate and take them out individually. There had only been one group with enough sense to be in a group of three rather than two, but even they fell to the combination of raccoon and fox. A quick look was passed between them, and they hurried on. The night was waning fast, and dark deeds were best done when only the stars could witness them.

Carmelita was worried. Not about Bentley or Murray, she was confident that she and Sly could break them out of whatever prison PT had them in. Not for Sly or herself, either, at least as far as their physical safety was concerned. They could take out everyone in the building before they even realized that there were intruders.

She was worried for herself. For her mind. It was starting to play tricks on her. As soon as she had seen the pistol in the van, a tenseness had crept into her shoulders, and it felt as though something were tickling at the back of brain. Everything that had been clear to her moments before had blurred. It was like placing a second image over reality – a visual echo. Even Sly looked like he was being chased by his own ghost. It was subtle, almost invisible until she looked hard, but it was there. The pistol itself was strange as well. Or rather, her reaction to it was. Her hand refused to open once it was clasped around the stock. It was like a piece of herself that she didn't want to lose.

Carmelita shook her head as she ran down the hall. Now was no time to be distracted. They had a job to do, the others were depending on them. Swinging her cane up over her head in an arch, she latched onto an exposed beam in the ceiling and swung up to the third level. A tiny, unheard voice at the back of her mind whispered, Procedure.

-----

PT was sitting at his makeshift desk, grinning. He knew that his new guest had arrived. He had installed a chip into every one of his guards' gun holsters, which sent a locating signal to his computers, letting him know exactly where they were. It was a way of making sure nobody slacked off, and much more exact than security cameras. For the past ten minutes the signals had been stopping. His secondary computer now showed a senseless pattern of still dots, when it should have been a dizzying swirl of movement. At first he had thought some of his guards were just getting lazy, but as the stillness spread, he knew the Sly had come. And he wasn't playing by the rules. Fine, neither was he. Barking out orders to every sentry within hearing distance, he set up a protective ring around himself and the room where the hippo and turtle were being held.

He waited, watching his screen as the raccoon quickly made his way through the ranks on the third floor. He was impressed. The thief must really be motivated to rescue his friends to make such quick work of all of the thugs. PT knew from experience that rage could contribute greatly to a person's fighting power, but for a single raccoon to mow through so many heavies, it was odd.

The wave of stilling dots made it to the fourth floor, his floor, and slowly approached the perimeter. Just as it came close to the ring, it stopped. PT could see the line just outside his room, and the guards were beginning to fidget. He yelled and they snapped to attention. It was too dark to see very far beyond the shoulders of the guards, so he trusted his computer screen to show him if the raccoon began to move again. He watched, and waited.

Minutes drug by slowly, and there was still no sign. PT briefly considered having the guards hunt through the darkness for the cowardly thief, but knew that that would be like sending them out already bound and gagged. Separated, they were vulnerable. Together they were impenetrable. PT's eyes stayed glued to the screen. He only noticed something was wrong when his guards began muttering.

Looking up, he could see a tiny light, far back in the hallway, slowly growing. The guards were shifting uneasily, unsure of what it was. A few had drawn their firearms and were taking aim, but they hesitated to fire, not knowing what exactly it was they would be shooting at. PT suddenly realized what it was, and shouted for everyone to get down, but it was too late. He barely managed to duck behind his desk as an explosion ripped through the room, slamming into the guards and taking every one down. PT's fur tingled and snapped as he rose from the floor to see all of his guards sprawled out on the floor, stunned. He growled and began heading for the source of the light and the explosion, when the window he had been sitting in front of shattered, and a weight crashed into his back, throwing him into a forward roll.

PT stared at the thing that had attacked him, which had flipped around during the roll to crouch on his chest. He gaped. Sly Cooper! The raccoon's face was twisted into an ugly scowl, pure rage making it impossible for him to speak to the London kingpin. As PT slowly regained his breath, he managed to gasp, "How?"

The thief smiled, the grin contorting his features even further, and looked where the explosion had come from without replying. PT twisted painfully from his position on the floor to see the form of Inspector Carmelita Fox striding over the fallen guards, smoking pistol in one hand, and the Cooper Clan cane in the other. Again, PT gaped. Impossible! A woman of the law siding with a known criminal – even to capture another – was unthinkable! Especially this one. She was known for being irrationally strict at times. His attention was brought back by the thief still sitting on top of him, "A trick I learned from Bentley," he said lowly. "Remove the safety chip that keeps the power from reaching dangerous levels, and you've got yourself a multiuse bomb. Just charge it and let 'er rip."

Carmelita smiled. It felt good to use the shock pistol, it felt familiar. And it felt very good to take down PT Bull, but she was surprised at the vicious thoughts working their way through her head, all aimed at the prone crime lord. He had torn into the van and kidnapped their friends, but it almost felt like she had something more personal against him. She wanted to take him down, take him down hard. Her left hand clenched around the cane in a bid for self-control.

Sly leaned in close to PT's face, snarling, "Where are they?"

PT stared back into the narrowed brown eyes evenly. Moving his arm deliberately slowly, he motioned to the door that led to the prison room. As soon as Sly's eyes moved away from him, he heaved upwards, throwing Sly into the traitorous Carmelita. Both crashed to the floor, canes and limbs tangled. By the time they were on their feet again, PT was up and had a gun trained on them.

Sly gritted his teeth in frustration. So close! They were so close to freeing the others! But PT wasn't shooting yet, which still gave them a window of opportunity. He muttered to Carmelita out of the corner of his mouth, "Go for the others, I'll keep PT distracted."

Carmelita shook her head almost imperceptibly, "No. I want him. You get the others."

Sly was about to argue, but he saw the glitter in her eyes, the set of her jaw. No amount of arguing would keep Carmelita from this fight.

He looked at PT, who seemed to be trying to decide whether to shoot to kill or just to cripple. Over seven feet tall and muscular, he had to weigh at least two-hundred and fifty pounds, closer to three hundred. Against Carmelita, barely over five feet and one-thirty, the odds weren't good. But he had seen her fight, and now she had two weapons rather than one. As much as he hated to admit it, out of the two of them, she was the better fighter, and was better equipped. Digging his toes into the ground, he sprang for the door.

There was the sound of a gunshot, and Sly felt something whiz over his left shoulder, ruffling his fur. There was another shot, sounding more like static, and PT cursed loudly. Sly barely glanced back as he flew through the door.

Carmelita let a grin pull at her whiskers. This definitely felt right. Whatever PT had done to make her so angry, having him cornered made her feel lighter, made her feel in control. Whatever he had done, he was going to pay for it, and for violating the Cooper Gang at the same time. She heard the voice at the back of her mind, desperately calling out Procedure, but ignored it, and stepped into battle.