~~~Where God Went to Die~~~
Cold. Cold everywhere. It almost made Sly long for the heat of the desert again. Their landing had been rough, but the several tonnes of owl would have no problem digging himself out of the snow. Sly was far down, when he opened his eyes only the faintest of blue light could penetrate the ice below him… or rather, above. With his cane still glued in his hand, he took a swipe outward. The frozen ground cracked and morphed around the cane, spraying his bare face with slushy snow. He couldn't feel nor see his legs, and the warmth of his blood even seemed to hesitate. Swipe. Swipe. Swipe swipe. More icy water and bits of gravel found way into his clothes and under his fur. He drew in a breath, focusing on returning feeling to his numb limbs. His fingers were starting to go off to wherever his legs were, some distant reality unattached to their host. He closed his eyes, giving himself only five seconds of 'rest'.
When he opened them again, he saw the light was moving, growing brighter and dimmer as its source seemed to scan over his iced ceiling. With a grunt, he positioned his cane vertically, and sent a hefty thrust upward. The ice chipped once, twice, then broke away with the third, sending a frozen shower down on the raccoon. The light was sitting stagnant, its origin still too far above to be distinguished. Sly pushed the hook of the cane above the ice and stuck it into what he prayed was a solid block. Straining his shoulder muscles to hoist himself out of the crater his body dug, Sly managed to surface his head. Standing above him, eyes a bright glowing blue, seemingly only to illuminate Sly's presence was Clockwerk, wings closed and neck hunched. He watched the raccoon struggle to free his lower half before he finally spoke. "Where did you take us?"
Us. Sly wanted to remark on that, but after feeling the caution in the robots voice, decided against it. "Somewhere my grandfathers wont see us." he didn't care to lie anymore, since apparently the bird knew more than he let on. At this point, it would be riskier to not tell the truth, for fear of disadvantaging himself further. Clockwerk was tricky, and may know just as much as Sly did. As far as he was concerned, the bird had already won their chess match, his reward may as well be the truth. Someplace way too damn cold. He almost said.
Clockwerk was still, looking ready to launch into the air and disappear into the dark. The moonlight caught his shiny silver crest like a blanket, ricocheting off the ice all around him. Sly wondered why his eyes were even casting a light at all, not believing the owl needed it to see. It couldn't possibly be for Sly's sake, right? "That never mattered." the bird said, light still on Sly, but attention distant.
The raccoon brushed off his legs, his nerves slowly coming back online. "Well, it does to me." a scornful thorn in his voice. The bird might not care about the timeline's structure, but-
"It matters to your paranoia, Sly Cooper," such malice, whenever he spoke that name. "not to your existence."
"Excuse me?" Cane still in hand, ready, eager to strike.
The blue gaze of the birds eyes grew dimmer. "How many times do I have to tell you? Time. Is not. Real." Clockwerk scolded.
"That's impossible!" He was surprised how steady he kept his yell. "We're moving through time! It has to be real!"
"Time is a concept, Cooper! A classification of measurements! A mile exists in space as does a minute in time, neither has true form or matter!"
Sly felt his teeth ache as his jaw tightened. "Then how do you explain how I got us here?"
Us. Dammit, Sly.
Yellow, piercing eyes. "I have nothing to explain to you."
"Bullshit you don't," Sly growled. "Why didn't you tell me you knew who I was?" he changed subjects to something he actually cared to learn about. Time travel logistics made his brain spin.
"Who you were?" cold.
"You know what I mean." colder.
The giant bird leaned farther down so he was eye level with Sly. The raccoon's heart was beating incredibly fast, but seeing his reflection in the glossy yellow stare, alert and ready to attack on on a millisecond's notice, he felt a calm climb his spine. He had beaten this bird before, and under much heavier opposition. This time, Sly knew Clockwerk. The only thing holding him back was the ever present threat of a paradox. "I wanted to see what you intended for me." Sly stayed silent. "If you so passionately believe your present is not a constant, subject to change by your actions on me, then I wondered why you indulged me for so long. Why bother morphing my philosophy if you firmly refuse to alter your past?"
"How do you know that wasn't my goal? To save my family, and make sure you can never hurt anyone?" he retaliated.
Clockwerk snuffed a laugh. "You don't think much, do you Cooper?"
"Fuck you."
"To 'save your family'," he said in a overly sarcastic taunt, almost sounding like a different language under his processed voice. "you would have to kill me. Now, or any time before you abandon your mission, and return to whatever future you desire." venom and impatience in his goloss reminded Sly the bird didn't have a speck of faith in anything he just said. He was speaking to Sly like a parent would to a child, using concepts they themselves didn't believe, but integral to be understood.
Sly didn't bother reminded his condescender that the future was a part of time, which according to the bird, didn't exist. "That would change too many things. That's something I can't risk."
The bird sighed, frustrated he wasn't being understood. "Kill me now, and your future will not change." Slowly, carefully. "But mine would. I would be dead, and buried in the snow for all time.
"Unable to kill my father."
Clockwerk nodded. "However, that has still happened. Nothing you do will change that. Even if you kill the father of your father of your father. Clockwerk, will still kill yours."
The raccoon got the feeling the bird wasn't speaking in third person with that last growl. He was referring to something else, as he did once before, in Russia, the first time they had met. "The Cooper line will be erased, then the only master thief will be, Clockwerk." Clockwerk. Clockwork. Time. "You… you'll always kill him…" Sly started, his mind finally grasping what the bird had meant, disregarded as just ambitious ego for all these years.
"Because I already have." Clockwerk finished, his eyes still yellow, but posture relaxed.
"So, if I kill you now, nothing changes."
A small chuckle. "Not in your reality. You would have to stick around in this one to find out how your family develops without my influence." a small laugh. "But I doubt you'd live that long, even if you wanted to."
Sly felt defeated. Everything he had worked so hard for, all the caution he employed when showing the bird his clan, the careful dance around what knowledge was safe to share, it was all pointless. If the bird was right (And Sly refused to risk finding out) then nothing he could do would change his life. His experiences, memories, all the joy and pain and love and loss he had endured throughout his strangled life, it couldn't be washed away. Everything he was, he would always be. Clockwerk could die right now, but to Sly, Bentley Murray Carmelita and all the others, that wouldn't be their Clockwerk. It wouldn't be his Clockwerk. He didn't need to convince the owl to hate his family to preserve his own birth, that already happened. The raccoon looked away, off into the distant tundra. Somewhere out there, land that would one day be named Paris. Land that would one day still, even relative to him, support his family. His real family. Carmelita and Ayleen were waiting for him. He had lost the battle in pacifying his arch rival, but for reasons entirely different from what he feared.
"But I wouldn't advise that." the bird kept talking, taking no notice or interest in Sly's crumbling beliefs. "You were right, Penelope can very well create an army of me." a big laugh this time, loud and cold. "I wouldn't incentivize her, if I were you."
"Not that it matters, right?" Sly asked, his eyes now locked on his cane, held limp, and dipped in the snow.
"Penelope is from your reality, Cooper. If she were to return with me, or even if you were to," he looked down at the raccoon. "it would not matter when or how I died. I would be there, in what we now call the future." Sly didn't even notice the yellow had melted. "What you will soon call the present."
"I… I'm still confused," Sly confessed, grossly ready to confide his inquisitions in the monster. "Does the future even exist?"
Clockwerk nodded, almost sympathetically. "It is synonymous with possibility. May I ask you a question, Cooper?" his voice still soaked in vitriol when he spoke that name. Sly sighed and let him proceed. "Have you ever tried to 'time travel' into the future?"
"You mean like, the future relative to what hasn't happened yet? What we don't have records of?"
"Any time beyond the final second you spent in your reality, before venturing into mine." He kept using that word. Reality. Sly would have to prod him for elaboration on that, before returning to his ti- …Reality.
"No. Only the past." he would still speak in his own terminology for the moment.
"Has anyone from your relative future traveled back into your relative present?"
"No."
The bird was silent for a moment. "I implore you, Sly Cooper… do not try." The raccoon raised an eyebrow. "No matter my fate in this icen wasteland, you will return home. That I know… I do not know what is to become if you were to venture into what does not yet exist. If no one has gone backwards to meet their past -your present- then I can not be certain it… 'exists'."
Sly thought for a moment. "I'm from your relative future."
"Yes. I am certain that exists."
"What does it matter to you? Your reality? Why would you care?" He asked, too hastily.
The bird chuckled again. "Cooper, you hate me because I murdered your family. And I always will, and I always have." He looked at the raccoon. "But I do not hate you. You have taught me a few things I will continue to consider. Perhaps even Penelope must be taught, and you have provided me those tools of which to teach."
Sly Cooper dropped his cane. The bird won, the bird won by letting a figure from his future, from a reality now completely separate from his own, influence his thought process.
Clockwerk won, by letting Sly have his way. "Clockwerk is, Superior."
Chapter Eleven
Northern Hemisphere - Late Ice Age
With a hefty thud, and a cloud of disturbed snow, the robotic owl landed a dozen feet out from the raccoon, clutching large dead tree trunks in his shining claws. Wings open to keep balance, he lifted a tree out from under him in his beak. The large frozen-blue oak looked like a twig in the grasp of the beast. Leaving his other kindling where the ice was just settling, Clockwerk walked his selection over to the bonfire, raging tall and orange in the frostbitten night. The pyre the two had built was reaching three stories now, and Sly had to sit a good ways back from it to not be burned. Logs the bird had flown back from somewhere deep in the distance crackled and popped as the flames ate their meal and shooed the cold. That is, to assume, the cold wasn't there first, and was instead an intruder. Sly felt upset with himself for having to clarify that, the analogy existing solely within his own head. Suddenly, everything he was thinking felt accompanied by a twang of doubt. Even the trivial deep-rooted thoughts like; I'm cold, or I should be getting back… felt so unbelievable he had to run them through his brain again and again. All attempting (but failing) to distract him from his chronological futility.
The trunk flew from Clockwerk's beak into the side of the fire, crashing with a grisly explosion of orange and black. Some of the logs tumbled, but all stayed in vicinity of the pit the bird had dug out. The snow had melted in a huge ring around the pyre, wet gravel and soot the only unearthed floor. Sly knew the bird didn't need the fire, and that meant this huge effigy of what may as well be his morale, was all for him. He had trouble, at first, admitting to himself he appreciated the effort, but with nothing but flames to watch and cold to ignore, the mind evolves fast. "Thanks…" he muttered earnestly, when the bird had settled next to him. The robot grunted in response, giving no acknowledgement to Sly's quandaries. "…You said…" he shook his head, cursing himself for dwelling. "I cant change my past." he looked up at the bird. "But… what if you change your future, steer it away from what you did in my past… what would happen to… the me, whose father you didn't kill?" he hated that he could realize- the nerves in his face no longer shunted by the cold -he was crying as he spoke.
The bird must have noticed, his perception seeming to be of some ethereal cognizance, but he made no mention. "I assume he will follow his father's line, as you did." he sighed. "But with more… first hand training." that made Sly wonder just how much of Sly Cooper the bird knew of. Penelope told him his name and accomplishments surely, maybe the latter included the reforging of his ancestral tome. "And maybe, when that Sly Cooper decides to rewrite his past, he will be quicker to learn time is best spent moving forward."
The raccoon was sitting in a fetal pose, his cane tucked underneath his knees. "What would he even have to change? Without you… my life wouldn't have been so…" He cut himself off as he remembered the faces of his friends, of the smile of Carmelita. Would he have that if his father raised him? Who would he even be if the book he considered the last living part of his family had stayed just that; a book? If his parents were to raise him, what values would he hold, what virtues would he practice, would he ever even get the chance to time travel?
"I know. I will not apologize for what I have done to you, for I am merely a version of me that had nothing to do with it." He looked down at the raccoon, shaking under the breath of the fire. "But I do extend my empathy in your woes. I have lost too…" looking away, his mind a distant ocean of black unreadable mud.
Sly remembered the fragmented story of the owl's bride, and of Slytukhamen, who took her away. His mind reluctantly rewound to the word rape. It made his skin crawl. "Yeah well… I guess we all have things we'd like to change."
"Why are you upset, Cooper? I do not believe you were attempting to save your family from my wrath, as you have implied. Why does the confirmation that you cannot depress you so?"
Sly frowned. "I don't really know… it's just, even if I wanted to... I-" "Can't." they both said in unison. "Yeah…" Sly continued, the air of understanding between the two warm, like their fire. "I guess its defeating… like, even though I was scared of paradoxes, believing I could still make one, if things came to it," The logs cracked and the flames rose, the newly added trunk finally thawed enough to burn. "Its like thinking you have one last trick up your sleeve. Only to find out you don't, right when you need it."
The bird clicked his tongue. "Do you mean that if you could, you might still consider killing me to save them?"
"Not consider." Sly said coldly. "If I knew it would work, I would. I would."
Clockwerk chuckled, almost forcibly, to exercise his disbelief. "You know it wont?"
"You just told me."
"...Just a theory."
Sly scoffed. "Yeah right. I'm sure Penelope explained it all to you."
The bird shook his head, wet joints creaking under his cold shell. "I suppose there is only one way to know for sure, if I am right." He looked down at the raccoon, keeping his wings tucked.
Sly chuckled too. "Yeah… but we know I wont."
Deep eyes looked back on the fire. "Yes. We know."
They stayed silent for an hour, just sitting in the mud, watching the fire eat away their past, unwilling to attempt to kill it, content in its orange heat.
When one of the two travelers finally spoke, it was the bird, with a question Sly had completely forgotten about. "You never told me, does God reveal himself?"
Sly was leaning his back into his cane, now stuck in the ground like a pike. "Didn't I?" his eyes had dried, internal attention now running though hypothetical futures for this timeline's Sly. Free to live with his father and bask in his legacy, free of the owl's primordial threat.
"No. You compared the idea to a fairy tale." He sounded almost, mournful? Like this was a conversation he would have preferred to have before they knew each other. "I didn't press the matter, we had bigger concerns to dissect."
Sly found himself lost in thought, searching for deeper inquiry in Clockwerk's question. He wondered if he truly meant "God" or rather, just used the word as a supplement, for some all powerful creator/destroyer. Maybe he meant someone like Penelope, after all, she had bestowed upon the bird immortal flesh. "What do you think God is?" Sly asked, finding his nerves on much sturdier ground. The bird's voice was still it's old hateful scratch, but his words were slowly making acquaintance with less threatening murmurs in Sly's brain.
"Penelope." Clockwerk said immediately, as if reading his companion's thoughts. "If she wanted to, she could rule the world. Or whatever of it is left, when I'm finally stopped."
Sly couldn't hold in his laugh. "The worst you ever did was to me, my family I mean." the bird looked down at him quizzically. "I mean, you might have broken something, you were pretty hard to dig up info on."
Clockwerk was silent for a minute, but Sly let him collect his thoughts. "So, when you told me I was renounced for my evil deeds, that was a lie?"
"No, not really. You like, funded this criminal ring, the one that killed my father." The faces of Raleigh, Ruby, Mugshot, and the now-reformed Panda King all ran through his mind. Extensive histories to fill any criminal bucket list, all except Clockwerk, who as far as the raccoon could remember was a villain to only him. "Other than that… other than attacking a few of my ancestors… Well, like I said, it was hard to learn about you." the bird said nothing. "But yeah, if you wanted to… you probably could- definitely could have done more. Not that I'm asking you to." Sly smiled. Somehow, this living factory of hatred and revenge seemed smaller, when all was considered. The raccoon still felt bubbles of contempt rise in his throat and behind his eyes when he looked at him, but all the fear of inferiority had melted. The bird may be wiser, but Sly would forever live as his killer.
"Then," Clockwerk's voice boomed through the heat of the fire. "Perhaps… I'm God." Cooper raised an eyebrow, excited to hear him out. "Your past is done." A confidant chime endowed his voice. "But my future is just beginning. If all your reality can remember me for is what hatred I could not dispense… perhaps…"
"Your reality will remember you for all the good you've done?" Sly finished, a bit satisfied when he saw the bird nod in agreement.
"Sophistication from a future not unlike my own… yet abridged, locked into a rivalry with a clan I misjudged… a clan I learned to blind myself from. The Coopers are not deserving of my hatred."
Sly laughed, somehow holding calm, though the worry if the bird intended to place hatred elsewhere burrowed like a botfly. "Yeah well, they aren't saints." They both chuckled at that, as the image of Galleth sneaking through the grass was pulled back into his mind.
"No, most certainly not. Least of all the one I know."
"Slytukhamen?"
The bird had been done laughing, but the shift in atmosphere was almost tangible. As the fire cracked and bellowed, Clockwerk puffed out his chest, like he was breathing the smoke high above them. "He took her from me. For the same reason you cannot forgive me, I cannot forgive him."
Sly scratched his neck, still not understanding his ancestor's and the bird's relationship quite fully. "Well… you're right about the forgiveness part," and Sly believed that too, no matter how different this Clockwerk may be from the one who killed his father, he still felt that rage deep in his gut. "but look at me, traveling with you at my side, sharing perspectives and whatnot." Psychological combat, more like.
The owl twitched his neck. "Then you have a stronger will than I. If he were here now, I couldn't promise I wouldn't execute him."
Cooper smirked, hidden by the shadows dancing in the flames. "Well, not that it would change anything, right?" Happy that killing blow dealt to him may be used against the bird, too.
A low growl, that through his distorted voice, sounded almost like an engine revving. "No." With just a pinch of defeat.
Sly decided to push. "Just a theory…" the bird had turned his head to stare at Sly, but the raccoon took no notice, instead intent on melding his mind with the logs, dying under the inferno. "Right, Clockwerk?"
"...Right…"
After half an hour of watching the flames, Sly grew curious, egged on by the monster's deafening silence. "What did he do, exactly?"
A few more silent minutes. Then, with a rusty sigh, the owl began a recount of his life. He was born under a different name, in a place far distant from what Sly knew as Egypt. Russia. He had been quite respected in his village for his understanding of science and technological progress. He had helped construct irrigation an plumbing networks for his people, who lived in the ignorant luxury that these inventions were eons ahead of their time. He had grown to be quite the noble, and when vagabonds looking for escort through the mountainous terrain took interest in him, he found love with another owl. They journeyed westward and settled Djesdjes on an oasis, unbeknownst to them; right atop of the hideout of Slytukhamen Kupaar (as the bird emphasized) and his gang of bandits.
Clockwerk described to his wife's killer's descendant that one of the first nights they stayed at that oasis, the Kupaar gang burned down their huts and kidnapped their women. Clockwerk- still living under his previous name -was able to hold many of them off, but when Slytukhamen arrived, most of the bird's men were slain. The raccoon was able to send his message loud and clean then; he beat the inventor nearly unconscious, then had his way with the poor bird's lover. Clockwerk spoke this portion of his tail with a genuine sadness in his voice, hard to detect over it's robotic static. He fainted, and regained senses too late. His bride was dead, raped and tortured before his eyes, and left mutilated with a hieroglyph carved into her neck. Sly didn't need to imagine what that hieroglyph looked like. Clockwerk seemed to believe he was left alive on purpose, a living defeat, a walking totem to Kupaar's victory.
When his story was finished, Clockwerk's eyes had nested into a mournful red, beating out the fire's monopoly on light as it painted the visible snow. "He deserves no mercy… no matter if it wont change my past. I accept that." He looked down at sly, with almost a soul burning behind sanguine lenses. "If you would do me the kindness to return me home, I cannot promise I wont pursue my revenge."
Sly had found his mind on an image of Carmelita, wondering what realm of hatred he'd live in if he had to watch her fatal torture. "And how do you know, for absolute certain, it wont stop-" Sly waved his arm through the heat. "-all this?"
A smile passed his metallic beak. "I suppose we can call it 'testing my theory'." Sly narrowed his eyes. "Even if it kills your family line in my reality, I am positive you will continue through yours."
An exaggerated scoff from the raccoon. "You keep using that word; reality." He stood up, flexing his cramped joints. "That something else Penelope taught you? Time isn't real but… I don't know, parallel realities are?"
"Penelope has given me eternal life, and can endow such upon others. She is the closest to a God I have met, and I have yet to find a subject she is incorrect on."
"What about me? What about my family?"
"What about them?" The bird asked, straightening his posture, his remorse again a memory.
"She told you we were all as bad as 'Tukhamen! She used to work with me you know, she was a friend. She lied about my ancestry to manipulate yo-"
"Enough!" the bird creeched, his wings open. "Cooper or Le Paradox, you know well your involvement in their legacy will forever impact your judgement!" A mighty flap sent the flames swirling off the logs, almost extinguishing them. "You are their heir. I am their victim."
Sly had moved himself askew to the bonfire, mindful of the twitching spikes of flame. "The Coopers aren't perfect, I know I'm not, but neither are you, or your god!" No mistake now, red hot hate in Clockwerk's eyes. "Why wouldn't she lie to you! I did!"
"You mistook me for a fool, Cooper. She, understands the power of potential. Did it ever occur in your arrogant little mind that she was running from you?" another gust of wind sent the flames into a wild frenzy.
"Why would she do that?"
"She understands the future is hers for the taking, you are hellbent on correcting the past!" Flap "You couldn't forgive her betrayal, you even came back to assassinate her when you thought you had the advantage!"
Sly ripped his cane out of the ground and held it through the fire, pointing it at the robot, ready to jump through the furnace if he had to. "No." Firm, and honest. "I came back to make sure she couldn't hurt my friends anymore."
"She. Has. No. Intention of any further involvement with you." with every word, a weight was dropped on Sly's stomach. Could he be right? Was she really buffing the bird for the sake of a bodyguard? "Every future is possibility. Every past is concrete." His eyes were so deep, even through the intensity of the fire, they carried their own unique burn. "You seem to think the past is possibility as well, and that Penelope wishes to exploit that." Flap Flap. "Fool!" he scolded, looking like he was ready to launch into the air again.
"No, I'm just cautious. You're basing this whole mentality off what Penelope told you!" Somewhere in the back of his mind he could fathom the smallest bit of respect for the owl's respect for his god. "How can you prove anything you're saying?"
Flap Flap. "I have nothing to prove, nor the want! It. Is. Logical! And there is nothing more to the argument."
Sly grit his teeth, feeling his gums rip under the pressure. "You believe what she tells you, no matter what, right?" Flap "Is there anything she said you don't believe?"
"She has nothing to gain from deceit."
Oh shut the fuck up, "...What would she have to lose?"
The horrific scoff the bird threw into the fire caught Sly off guard. It almost sounded like his death gurgle, a faint but flavored memory from the boiling lava pools of Russia. "If your baseless view of time is to be believed, her existence." The bird's posture gave no hint of cowardice, it was unknown to him. He had complete faith in Penelope's dismissal of paradoxes, just as he had total faith in her godhood. "To prove her right is pointless, to attempt to prove her wrong is suicidal. Selfish!"
Sly Cooper felt something inside him crack, something small at first, but something that grew into a puncture so large the dam of restraint holding his laughter exploded, and a torrent of hysterical cackling surrounded the fire. "You- you know what?" he managed to say in between his gasping for air, all while the bird was burning more visibly furious by the second. "I know a way we can find out, keeping things even-steven." He caught a speck of fear, almost enough to swallow him, but kept going. "If the past really is done, its over, right?" He smiled wide, almost wanting Clockwerk to finish his thought for him, as the monstrosity had been keen to do prior. "Lets go interrupt your operation. Lets go stop Penelope before she finishes you, and if time is real… neither of us will exist." A current of pride swallowed every ounce of Sly's body as he ran his mental victory lap. If he declines, you win. If he accepts, and when he's wrong, you win… That surging waves didn't last long, as he remembered that if the bird was right, neither of them had anything to fear, but if he was wrong, (As Sly tried to take himself away from hoping) everything would change.
…Perhaps for the better. Sly would grow up with his father, his family of dubious alignment forever free from the retched tyranny of a hateful owl, one unswayed by the philosophy of the sole survivor of his wrath. It was a big risk, but Sly swallowed his doubt, and stared the bird down. If he's right, and nothing changes… he pushed that thought to the back of his mind, simultaneously with that of an unfamiliar Carmelita. Not now.
The bird was standing, wings wide open, above the fire. "You'd be willing to risk your entire life, all the progress you've made, to prove her wrong?"
No. "Yes." Sly gulped, hoping the fire would obscure his throat, nodding confidently.
"Hmph!" Clockwerk hunched, almost inside the fire now, and closed his reach. "Fine." He said with furious vitriol, flapping his heavy wings one last time, enough strain poured in to fully snuff the flames. All that was left, Sly not even noticing the logs had completely disintegrated, was a smoldering pile of white ash, and a horribly sour tang of anticipation.
*)(_/*\_)(*
"Enough stalling Cooper. Take me back." The owl commanded, perched in the dwindling remains of the bonfire, ashes and embers swimming through the air. The date was already punched into the machine strapped tightly to Sly's cane, but he double checked. He had come up with a plan, and despite his reluctance, Clockwerk agreed to help, so long as he'd be returned to Penelope. If this experiment Sly right… well, he would never know if it did, if it did. Determination ejected all fear, and extending his kama to the bird, Sly smiled.
Djesdjes - 1316 BCE
"Ready?" Sly asked, knowing the rhetoric would only anger the owl further. They had materialized on exactly the same rooftop they'd departed from, in nearly one year. Sly had his eyes locked on the lift he had been studying just hours ago. Feels like a lifetime… Clockwerk had spoken of being nearly complete, but still under heavy-duty life support, to keep his organic parts cooperative with his new robot ones. "I don't think you'll fit in that." Sly said without moving his eyes.
"No. I don't." Clockwerk was standing tall, eyes red, unafraid to be spotted by passing villagers. "There is a ventilation system we dug, large enough to allow me to fly."
Sly readied his shoulders, running the plan though his head again. Get in, hit her once, let the bird destroy his old body. It had taken a good deal of time convincing Clockwerk to play a part, with most of the 'convincing' being hateful slurs slung back and forth and a plethora of arrogant scoffing. Finally, upset with Sly's 'selfishness' and at the peak of his own pomposity, the owl agreed. Cold frustration would emanated, as he held back his lecture from the raccoon who refused to listen. "Only when the fool accepts he is such, may he grow." The bird had cryptically allured at some point or another in their journey.
Clockwerk had flown off, presumably- hopefully -to some entrance/exit to his flight chamber. Sly wondered if he was really going to follow the plan, or if instead, he was hurrying to warn Penelope. That would mean he believed me… partially… Stapling his attention to the lift, he hid in the shadows, and waited for movement.
The shanty metal roof squeaked, and with a twitch, crawled down a square well into the dusty earth. Sly jumped on top, keeping his landing light, for illuminated in the dim yellow glow of service lights there stood a tall monkey in a lab coat, and a beefy spear-wielding rhino.
"Its more complicated than we thought, considering just how many ways there are." The monkey spoke in a low voice, possibly weary of unseen ears. "Every other time she tried it always happened the same way."
The rhino, who fittingly spoke in a slow and clunky manner, belched. With a scratch of his belly and an unflattering grunt, he responded; "But can't she try again?"
A large crawlspace revealed to be hiding under layers of heavy stone rose up from the ground of the elevator roof, showing the raccoon a jungle of wires and a colony of scientists, all plugging and unplugging unto some unknowable end. "Previous chronology is a book of infinite pages, never numbered nor indexed."
The hell does that mean?
"...You talk funny."
The monkey sighed, as the elevator found its nest in the ground. "Yes. I do." the two made their way through a huge room, the messy wires all now condensed into massive black veins, neatly organized and mounted to the walls. Littered in no logical order were terminals, large cardboard boxes of protruding gadgetry, and what looked like broken glass. Dull blue lamps hung from the high ceiling, dripping through the wires with no more organization than the floor.
Just as the lift started to rise, Sly leaped off the roof, and hugged the closest wall. A comfortable blanket of shadow swallowed his form, and continued all the way to a set of double doors.
Operation Room
!CAUTION! Heavy Machinery !CAUTION!
The doors announced within a large red triangle. Lurching his body through, leaving his recommended caution back with the elevator. Sly found himself at the feet of the fully expanded metal shell of Clockwerk. Its eyes were dead, reflective and gray, as his head and beak hung limp like sandbags. His wings and feet had been propped up by metal clamps, keeping the most of him you could possibly see at once visible. He was surrounded by a metal wire frame, like a Vitruvian-man hamster ball. Platforms and stairs curled their way all around the ball, offering multiple perspectives for-
"Cooper?!"
Penelope.
Before Sly could study the robotic husk any further, a mouse in a purple jumper standing atop a platform behind the backmost wing became the only thing he could perceive. There she was, welding torch in hand, flat metal visor lifted above her face, framing pure anger. "I thought I told you to leave us alone!" She made a motion like she was ready to sprint for Sly, but stopped, and took a step back.
Behind the raccoon, now more present in synthesized laughs than growling barks, was the Clockwerk Sly had brought along. Full of life, ready to leak hate. "Ahhh, so now Cooper. Your point?" He looked down at the raccoon, paying no mind to the confused gasping of Penelope, caught in a staring contest with whichever one of her intruders would look at her.
Sly held the gaze when it reached him. "Hey!" He yelled at the mouse, who had finally found a handle on the situation before her. "I need you to prove something for me." He said calmly, callously. If this theory they were testing really came from Penelope, maybe she could provide a better, less patronizing explanation.
She sighed, and set her torch on a hook. "Looks like I got into your head a bit, huh?" Sly frowned. She couldn't know yet, we just got here.
"No, but your pet did."
"Bodyguard." She corrected, eyes narrowing.
"Well, that was my second question. Mind if we get back to the first?" She flipped him off. "Great. Suppose I kill you now. What happens?"
Penelope shook her head, nervously quivering her lip. "Dammit Cooper, remarks like that don't look good on you. Don't wonder why I need protection if all you're gonna do is threaten to kill me."
"Or," Clockwerk spoke. "just don't threaten her at all."
Sly waved him off. "Answer me. He," Gesturing to the bird behind him. "seems convinced the future can't be changed."
"That's relative." Shit-eating smirk.
"Fine. The present. Our past wont be affected by time travel; that whole shtick."
Penelope nodded. "Chronology isn't as firm a concept as we believed it to be in our time." She took a careful few steps down the stairs, never breaking eye contact with the raccoon. "In your example, and I assume you believe your life would change in some significant way, killing me would only kill me. Sorry."
"So its true then? I can't cause a paradox?"
Penelope eyed the small green device on his cane. "Bentley took some liberties…" She smirked, warmly. "No, not with that. Why, did he tell you you could?"
Sly nodded. "He told me to be careful. Said even the smallest change-"
"Liberties… perhaps not improvements…" She didn't even realize she had interrupted him, too focused on the gadget.
Clockwerk lurched forward, flying over Sly's head to land comfortably in his maker's presence. "It is different from yours?"
Penelope smiled coyly. "Don't suppose you'd be too keen on letting me take a look, eh, Cooper?" Clockwerk was looking at him too, waiting for an answer. With a reluctant sigh, Sly slid the device from its grip on the handle and tossed it at the mouse. Giving some offhanded 'knock yourself out' remark alongside. Penelope looked at the device thoroughly, turning it over in her hands and shaking it like a present. "Hmm. Well, I'd give him a ten for portability…" She chuckled to herself.
"And a zero for color choice, yeah yeah how does it work?" Impatiently brash, enough so the owl had to growl.
"Calm down, ringtail…" The way she said that, the playful, almost cute jab in her voice, it made him miss Carmelita. After a little more turning, she tossed it back to her intruder. "Well, hes not far behind me, I guess." She folded her arms, back to the cold shoulder side of things, now that her toy was returned. "Okay… when Bentley and I made the first machine, to make sure we actually went to our past- that being the past you learned about in school -we encrypted a fail-safe, so we wouldn't end up in some Roman ruled colonial America, or something else silly like that."
Sly nodded, reattaching the time machine. "You needed an object from that time period."
"Yup."
"With this one I don't."
Penelope nodded. "Right. But time travel without an object, or some kind of physical catalyst, is like a fruit fly steering a boat." Sly groaned, forgetting how much Penelope loved her stupid analogies. "I mean its unpredictable. Could end up anywhere!"
"Seemed like the normal past to me."
"Yes, well, when you came back to… well, this time, and started…" she looked from the bird to the raccoon. "pursuing a friendship with-"
"We are not friends!" Sly yelled, hurting his throat. He refused to believe any part of him, even the brunt of what would sit and debate with Clockwerk, could be friends with him.
"Okay, okay, sheesh…" She had taken a step backwards, almost tripping on the stairs. "What I meant was, when you came back and met him, did you come alone?" A curt nod. "And with your cane, of course?" he didn't indulge that one. "Those are both, meaning you and your cane, from the same timeline, you dope. When you took Clockwerk and came back here with him, that created a different one… so to speak."
The bird nodded, right on her heels. "You took me further down history, history that for those moments we stayed, were housing our beings, but to us now, never have."
Sly bit his lip, starting to feel the cold again. "So… If I were to… kill you… then go back to my time?"
Penelope smiled, somewhat sympathetically, mostly victoriously, while Clockwerk exhaled. "You'd return to a reality where I came to Egypt, and built Clockwerk. A reality where you escaped Egypt, and Clockwerk. Same as if you don't kill me, you get it?"
"And…" The raccoon sighed, the final cog finally sliding into place. "If you were to take Clockwerk back to 2017, you wouldn't find your old reality there?" My reality.
"No, Clockwerk and I would just go to a 2017 that… well, may have a you, and a Bentley, but a 2017 that was never influenced by Clockwerk, or me, because we technically wouldn't have existed for those thousands of years. A new, different timeline."
"Reality." The bird corrected.
"Oh hush, I'm trying to make this simple." Aside to the owl.
Sly looked past the two, focusing intently on the lifeless Clockwerk living in the wire ball. He had created a new reality when traveling with the bird? A new one every time he jumped, or just one, exclusive to the two? Would this nearly-finished Clockwerk be the one to kill his dad? No, because by the very same logic, Penelope would have made a new timeline, exclusive to her… and if she wasn't lying about using the bird for protection… "This is pointless." Sly gave up.
Clockwerk, the living one, nodded. "It always has been."
His pompous voice, and the way he seemed to hold his chin higher with every second, drinking his own righteousness, squeezed the final few drops of anger the raccoon could feel carbonating inside him. "Well, we are here to prove it." Penelope looked nervous when he spoke through tight teeth, suddenly defensive on both side, stepping away from the bird.
"No, you-" She started, but the owl's leap into the air and onto the wire ball cut her off. His heavy body collapsed through the frame, and his talons caught his other self's back for balance. "What are you doing!?"
Clockwerk's eyes were glued to Sly, who stood in wait with his arms crossed. "I have your word, Sly Cooper?"
Sly wanted to make some sardonic remark, something alluding to how Clockwerk would never know if Sly went back on his promise, but he couldn't find the will. In truth, he held a cold heartbeat of contempt for himself, and couldn't care less about returning to his Egypt's past to hunt Penelope. She needed the bird's protection, but if her hunters gave up, she had no one to hide from. "Yes. I… We, wont go back for her." Is he actually going to do it? If he doesn't… and refuses to go back, she'll have two. A grim thought.
But, true to his word, and much to the horror of his god standing under his perch, Clockwerk squeezed. His huge talons sunk into his clone's back, red and black liquid left to fall like through a faucet. Penelope screamed in protest, but it didn't matter. From Sly's perspective, the claws were again visible, having torn through the bottom of the neck, blood spraying forth like it had been directed by Tarantino. Jesus… he was in there all right…
When the owl pulled out his claws, reeking of iron and oil, he turned his eyes back to his former peer. "And yet, here I remain." He said slowly, blankly, finishing a thought no one dare think. Least of all Sly, for that had confirmed it. Penelope was right, this was a timeline separate from the one where Clockwerk led the attack on his home.
Tears in his eyes, and a knot in his throat, Sly sighed, and absentmindedly punched a date into his cane. "You know," 2017. "You could still go on to kill them…"
Clockwerk had climbed off his dead, parallel self, absent eyes to never shine their light again. "I wouldn't make the same mistake, of leaving you alive, again." Cold, piercing words. Words that began to form within Sly an idea. With a final look to Penelope (frantically pounding her fists on the ball, confused and furious at her murdered project) and then to his father's killer. His father's potential killer, he had to remind himself. The owl had his wings open, ready to tear into the raccoon just as he had done to himself.
Just before he pushed the button, his one last idea blossomed. The worst idea yet, as even though this experiment of theirs had been risky, this new idea couldn't possibly be anything but self destructive. Adjusting the date, Sly pushed the button. He watched the bright red eyes penetrate the green haze of the time machine, never to forget his face. Then, the green dispersed, and after a blink, the red. And he was alone.
INTERPOL, Paris Fr. HQ - 2002
Sly remembered this night. The days leading up to it, it was the sole occupant of his attention. In the days following, his boon would hardly hold a candle to his very next objective. This was the night a very young Sly, aided by a cowardly Murray and a paranoid Bentley, would infiltrate Interpol's French headquarters and steal their file on him.
He heard a light thud. Here I come… Sly knew. If this worked, then for certain, for one hundred percent fucking certain, the bird's god would be right, and nothing Sly could do would change that. Sticking to the shadows, cane unladen by the green device, Sly could see himself. Smaller, younger, but just as naive.
Sly didn't think, he just swung. CRACK and a hefty THUD as the raccoon's younger self hit the floor. He groaned, having dropped his cane, as well as all senses. The traveler stood above his clone's tensing body, blurry eyes filled with terror. "What… how-" he tried to say, voice weak with confusion, but his attacker interrupted when he stuck the point of his cane into his neck.
With a yank, Sly watched his very own blood come flying out of his very own neck, staring down at the choking raccoon with a blank, unthinking face. His legs kicked, and his hands felt for some support, but with a final gurgle, and a gruesome roll of his eyes, the young Sly Cooper had died.
Sly with his hands trembling, the sensation and reality finally catching up to him, dropped his cane. "Jesus… fucking, I-" he stumbled off the corpse, down the hall, and leaned his back into a door. "She was… I just… fuck…" he was hyperventilating, realizing he had not only just killed himself, but risked resetting everything he had done beyond that point.. this point. All his adventures, the time with Bentley and Murray… the promise of a child with Carmelita… he had almost nuked that, just to prove to himself Penelope was right. The feeling started in his knees, but caught up with his throat when he realized he wanted her to be wrong, just so everything he fought for could be worth it… just for everything to reset, upon his self-murder, some grimdark final score for the Cooper clan.
Sly vomited, the only contents his stomach could turn other than bile was water, but it tasted like acid eating through his throat. He fell to his hands, spitting and belching as he tried to rid the poison. The puddle below him grew as he continued to spit, eyes closed and crying, wishing beyond all emotion he ever felt before he could just erase it all. He didn't even feel like himself anymore, the scolding burn of defeat, of the true insignificance of his legacy, inching its way over his body. Penelope was right, he finally understood. After horrendous introspection that led to him actually killing himself, he finally understood.
"The past is unimportant, Cooper. All we have, is the future."
~The one where The Author tries to explain a very idiotic concept.~
So ive always hated how you need an object to travel through time in Sly 4, so this is a retcon, yaaaay.
What im goin' with is timelines (or realities) branch off from one another the millisecond a time traveling party appears within it. Sly began his travels as a party of one unit, going back into HIS past, from there he and Clockwerk made a new reality as they became a party of two units. They then went (from that second timeline) into a third, where there now exists two Clockwerks, the other being the unfinished husk that the bird kills.
When Sly travels as a party of one unit, just himself, he returns to that first timeline (which ill foreshadow here rather than shoehorn in like I do everything else; now has a Clockwerk-less Penelope *winkie face*) and makes a new one by going to 2002 rather than home to 2017
Stupid and complicated enough for ya? Well don't worry this chapter is the longest, and therefor the worst. Its all uphill from here chums!
Not tonally, just like, accessibility-wise.
G'day.