PREDATOR IN THE DUNES

OPERATION: TIGER RACES

Murray starts the mission, of course, by dressing like an 'alligator' (Seriously, how on earth does that disguise fool anyone?) and getting in his chariot. While he's 'preparing' for the upcoming event—cleaning the wheels, testing the balance, and obeying Bentley's order not to feed the hungry hippos—he maneuvers his chariot near the edge of the chariot course.

Bentley and Khamen jump and hover over the wall and take their positions. "Okay, Murray, I'm ready," says Bentley into his earpiece. He grabs the underside of the chariot with all his robot arms, ready to roll along when the chariot does.

"As am I," murmurs Khamen, crouched just before Murray. "Let us be on our way."

With a crack of the whip, Murray puts his chariot last in line and follows the others to the ridge. Play switches to Carmelita as she follows them through town, a few streets away, using her skills as a cop tailing a suspect to keep them from getting too far out of sight or noticing her (though if it'd been Sly down there he would've. He always did. And Murray gives her a cheery little one-handed wave every time he notices her somewhere, so either her skills are in need of improvement or The Cooper Gang has way too much experience with noticing when they're watched). The chariots lead her out into the desert, where one of the lesser guards waits on the other side; with the press of a button, two halves of a bridge, one on either side, raise out of the fissure and join.

The chariots rattle over them, Murray's included, and then the guard lowers the gate once more.

Carmelita waits until the chariots are a distance away and the guard isn't paying attention to jump over and shoot him. While he's stunned, she cuffs him and removes his communication devices, then sets him under the nearby tent. There'll be no reinforcements from the town after that.

LOADING SCREEN

Bentley slips out of the bottom of the chariot by releasing his handholds and allowing it to continue driving without him. Carmelita meets him, at the base of the tower. "You ready?" asks Carmelita.

"Wait for the race to start," says Bentley. He checks his dart gun, priming it for action. "We want to catch anyone inside off guard."

The two of them set themselves to wait. Khamen, meanwhile, slips out of Murray's chariot in the confusion of all the racers getting themselves set for the race. Rajan is watching from a platform built into one side of the tower, about a full story up. Khamen climbs one of several large blocks with a stylized lightning bolt on it and crouches just beneath the platform, waiting for his moment.

A jackal climbs to the starting pole and waves a red flag for attention. "The race will be in three laps," he announces. Alligators, get in position.

All right, everyone! This heist requires doing multiple things at once... so will the narrative. Be prepared for things to REWIND and show us a different character. Why do we need to do this? Because how else can we RACE with The Murray and PICKPOCKET with Khamen at the same time?

And so, without further ado, let's look at the... um... race course. You know, that oddly-shaped oval surrounded by a cactus fence with dust tornadoes in three spots and random obstacles ranging from unrealistically large cacti to the windmill blades that need to be dodged just like mini golf? The sort of course that makes you wonder if the drivers are supposed to survive it? Yeah, that. And The Murray's going to drive it. With his hippo.

This is a great idea, what are you talking about? All Murray has to do, according to Bentley's instructions, is make it 'entertaining'; entertaining enough that Rajan stays transfixed and doesn't notice Khamen pickpocketing from him.

Of course, since this is a Sly Cooper game and The Murray is racing, that means he's going to win. Two parts because he's a great driver, even if he's... driving... a wild hippo... when he himself is a hippo... and he's wearing a tablecloth, and a leaf-snout, and dragging a fence. One part because he punches the other drivers whenever he gets anywhere near them—or they get anywhere near him—and being punched by The Murray is enough to unsettle anyone.

You know, that's two laps of the race The Murray's done now. What say we REWIND and go see what Khamen's doing?

As the race begins, Khamen waits at his post for the sound of cheering to get loud, then peeks over the edge. Rajan's standing at the end of the platform, staring at the race; at irregular intervals he growls, fiddles with the large jewel on his choker, and turns to one side to eat from a large plate of food on a table there, right next to a big red button. The food is liberally covered in red powder: Spice dust. Very illegal, very expensive, and what Rajan grows. For most people, too much Spice can cause fits of uncontrolled rage... but Rajan's been using it for so long he's always one misstep away from one of those rages.

Khamen had better be careful.

Khamen takes his chance and starts pickpocketing. If Rajan weren't stroking that dang choker so often, he'd take that, too! It's got a huge jewel in it; it almost seems to glow from the inside. Khamen finds himself staring at the jewel, entranced. In fact, whenever Rajan strokes the jewel, Khamen is briefly unable to move. Still, he is a Cooper. He's got all the keys before the end of the first lap and, with one last look at the choker, he ducks off the platform and makes his way to the tower's inside.

REWIND

Let's see what Bentley and Carmelita are doing, then? As the starting flag is waved and the race begins, the cheering can be heard from their position on either side of the front door.

Bentley looks at Carmelita.

Carmelita nods.

Bentley holds up his fingers to count down. Three. Two...

On 'one' Carmelita kicks open the door and shoots whatever's closest. The player controls Bentley for this, swinging his wheels to attack and knocking out enemies with sleep darts. Carmelita handles most of the work, but Bentley has to do his share of knock-outs.

They've just finished tying up the last unconscious guard when Khamen comes in. "Great, we've got plenty of time," says Bentley. "Carmelita?"

"I'll take the keys," she says, holding out her hands, and the player takes over as Carmelita. She gets to make her way up the stairs, just like last time. Different from last time, though, is that this time there are guards by all the buttons. And more coming down. And Carmelita no longer cares about being sneaky or subtle.

No one who meets her on the stairs is a flashlight guard; all of them are racing, or watching the race. Carmelita's dealing with hyenas and geckos. And sure, there are a lot of them.

But this is Carmelita.

They should've stayed in bed.

Well over a dozen unconscious guards later, Carmelita reaches the landing and the room of Sly's. Due to Bentley's hacking, it's still unlocked. She goes straight inside, not bothering to be quiet. "Sly!"

"Carmelita." Sly twists to look at her over his shoulder as she approaches. "It's... amazing to see you. You look..."

"Can it, ringtail," she says, using the keys to unlock him. "The flirty chit-chat can wait until we're out."

"But there will be flirty chit-chat, right?" asks Sly as he drops to the ground.

Carmelita straightens up from unlocking his feet and smiles at him. "In your dreams."

REWIND

Carmelita takes the keys and makes her way up the stairs. "Okay, Khamen, we need to make our way through that hallway," says Bentley.

"You mean I need to disable the traps," says Khamen, taking care of the first one.

"Yes," says Bentley, wheeling his way in. "You should put that one back once we're through; it'll keep any guards from coming after us.

Khamen does so, then turns to face the obstacle course that faces them.

In one sense, it's not that different from what Khamen had to do when he got his tools back: take traps blocking their way and reposition them, often in such a way that they destroy the mechanism holding a gate closed or that blocks a guard room. In another, it was rather different. No spotlights. No real guards. Just an endless descent into a dark, damp basement.

When they arrive at the bottom, a few things are immediately noticeable.

The first: the river flows through here. Most of its flow is being diverted through pipes and pumped through the tower. A healthy water level, nearly full at the entrance, is lowered to almost nothing by the end. The river bisects the tower; in order to reach the other side, they'll have to do some jumping or hovering.

The second: The glowing, pulsing, whirling sphere of darkness floating a foot above the ground—or where the ground would be, if it weren't over the river—in the center of the tower. It looks like the embodiment of a bad idea. Four chains hold it in place, stretched taut in four different directions and anchored to the sides of the tower, two near the floor and two near the ceiling. Bentley can't tell how they're attached to the sphere. For all he can tell, they simply vanish somewhere into its depths.

The third is the Spice dust, dumped from somewhere overhead every few seconds. There are a number of moving platforms on the walls, going in and out, up and down, all at awkward jumps and timings; somewhere near the top is something that causes the Spice manufactured elsewhere in the tower to be dropped down here. The red dust goes directly into the dark sphere and doesn't come out.

The last might be most important: Sly's cane. The family heirloom, passed down from Cooper to Cooper in one form or another, the one Sly inherited from his father so many years ago. Hanging on the wall near the ceiling, between two of the chains holding the black sphere in place. The only possible way up to it is via those moving, shifting platforms.

REWIND

Let's check in with The Murray's race! He won, of course, and the results are... as you expected. The cheering crowd, the flowers being thrown (cactus flowers, of course), the hippo he drove getting a well-deserved drink while his opponents curse (and in some cases, hit) their less successful steeds.

A large trophy is held in the air by the jackal who waved the starting flag. It rightfully belongs to The Murray, as the winner, so he walks over to claim it, on a victory pedestal just below Rajan's balcony, where Rajan watches and eats Spice-covered food. As Murray accepts the trophy, his leaf-snout falls off.

Everyone falls silent at once. "Uh-oh," says The Murray.

"You're not a real crocodile, are you?" says one guard in the crowd.

"Hey, what's the meaning of this?" says someone else.

And Rajan leans way over the balcony, inspecting him. "YOU!" he snarls. "I know you! The fat, pathetic weakling who works with the Cooper Gang!"

The Murray props his hands on his hips. "Weakling? The Murray beat you like the kitten you are!"

"And if the hippo is here..." he snarls, stroking the jewel around his neck. "GUARDS! A POUND OF SPICE AND THE TROPHY TO THE MAN WHO KILLS THIS HIPPO." With that yell, he slaps the big red button on the table and turns to climb the tower.

MEANWHILE

An alarm sounds on the wall over the door. Bentley and Khamen turn to the door, to see dozens of Rajan's lesser guards, hyenas and geckos, running towards them at full speed. And, of course, each of the things moving up and down shoots out a laser that goes straight across.

"I do believe," says Khamen, crouching into a fighter's stance with his canes at the ready, "that this was not a part of the plan."

MEANWHILE

"Carmelita, you need to get Sly and get out of there," says Murray over her headset; the sound of fighting echoes in their ears. "Rajan's onto us, and he headed towards your position. We'll meet at the rendezvous."

"Come on, ringtail," she says, leading him out into the main room. One glance through the door and she slams it shut. "He's already halfway up."

"Then let's climb down the outside," says Sly, just as lasers block that exit. Of course.

"I am not leaving this criminal here to do untold amounts of harm." Carmelita checks her pistol. "He goes down now. Sly, what sort of shape are you in?"

"Good enough for a fight," he says. "I'll do what I can to back you up."

That's all the time they have. Rajan shoves open the door. "COOPER! Your gang has taunted me for the last time!"

"Only one problem," says Carmelita. "I'm not Cooper."

"But, Carmelita, I am?" says Sly.

"Shush. You just let me handle this," says Carmelita.

"YOU! You destroyed my hard-won empire! And now you have followed me here!"

"It's my job to take down criminals," says Carmelita. "Hands up, and I may show a little mercy."

"Mercy?" asks Rajan, leaning on his staff. "Mercy? MERCY is a thing for weaklings, a tale told to the unfit and unwell! I shall DESTROY you, you and your allies!"

And so begins a boss fight. Only, as Carmelita realizes after a few shots, there's one problem. "My shock pistol isn't affecting him. We've got to think of something else!"

"Then for now, let's run. Come on!" Sly grabs her arm and pulls her out of Rajan's way, to the rope ladder into the ceiling, the trapdoor now conveniently unlocked. The two of them haul themselves up at full speed...

...and into a proper area for a boss fight. Ohhhh yeah, this is more like it. In addition to the much wider floor, there are a number of platforms in jumping distance, and a lot of pipes gracing the walls, though they don't seem to have water running to them at the moment.

"Carmelita, how are you and Sly doing?" asks Bentley over the binoc-u-com.

"We're safe for the moment," says Carmelita, "but unless we can figure out a way to boost my shock pistol, Rajan's gonna be a problem."

"Hold on a second," says the camera, switching to Bentley, standing by a wall in the dungeon he was in earlier, "just give me time. Khamen, can you hold them for a second?" he yells, taking his hand from his head.

"I can, but not much longer," says Khamen. "Think quickly, chair-turtle."

Control switches to Khamen. The lasers are blocking any hope of getting to a higher level; the guards keep coming in, traps or no traps. And boy, is Khamen using any and all of the traps around the edges of the room to his advantage—falling blocks of death, swinging axes, arrows that shoot from the wall, he takes them off and puts them back and rearranges them and keeps the guards from even entering the room they're in. It's all giving Bentley flashbacks to Prague and the bad mojo bomb, but he tries to ignore it; Khamen's knocked out all the guards at this point. There must be something—

then he spies something further up in the room. "Of course! If I turn the wheel on those pipes, that'll alter the flow of the water. Carmelita, are there pipes in the room you're in?"

"Yes—and Rajan's gonna be here in a second!"

"The only problem is, there are lasers between us and those pipes. I doubt there's any way for you to turn them off up there, but if you see a power box—"

"Not to worry, guys," says The Murray over the headset. The camera switches to The Murray, mid-brawl, surrounded by crocodile guards and restless hippos still tied to their (parked) chariots. "The Murray can do something about those lasers."

And boy, can he. Unlike him, most of the crocodiles whip their hippo-racehorse-substitutes. It takes a bit of work, but The Murray destroys the chains holding one wild hippo to its chariot; it dashes straight ahead, shouldering aside a power box as it does so.

"That did it, Murray," says Bentley over the binoc-u-com. Play switches to Bentley—and platforming!—as he climbs several of the moving blocks to the water wheel. Khamen follows. "Drat. And, curses!" says Bentley. "The bottom right chain for that orb goes through it."

"Then let us destroy the chain," says Khamen.

"That might work," says Bentley. "You stay up here to turn the wheel; I'll go down below and bomb that support."

And that's just what they do. Bentley bombs, Khamen turns the wheel, and they brace themselves for the worst. "Did anything change up there?" asks Bentley.

"We've got water!" says Carmelita; the camera switches to her, just as she dodges one of Rajan's attacks. The player controls her and continues dodging him. "But it's filling a container, not falling down below."

"Carmelita, hang on!" says Sly, jumping to one of the platforms. "If you lure him over here I'll dump the water on him."

That's right. Rajan is in a Spice induced haze of anger, and you have to lead him, matador-style, over to Sly, so he can dump water on Rajan's head and you can actually hurt him.

And whaddaya know, it works...or, at the very least, it does something. The shots get absorbed into the red gem Rajan's wearing around his neck, two, three, four, five; at the sixth blow, it cracks, and Rajan's whole body is surrounded by a massive jolt of electricity... which destroys the pipe so no more water comes out.

Guess Murray needs to free another hippo. "That's right, my hungry friends. Freedom awaits you. THE MURRAY will permit this freedom!"

And be a large ham, but really, what would The Murray be if he weren't?

"There goes another power box, Bentley!"

"Perfect. Khamen, you head for that wheel; I have to bomb that other support." Play swaps between the two of them, so the player does platforming with Khamen and bombing with Bentley both—and it seems near instantaneous that the pipe is sabotaged, sending the water shooting up to Carmelita.

"Sly! Can you—"

"On my way."

In short, it's a pretty typical boss fight, with the stages each getting slightly more complicated (number of guards The Murray has to take out, the platforming Bentley and Khamen have to do, the number of shots that gem absorbs before discharging them all and cracking) but things play out much the same. Bentley has to use an exploding dart to take out the third chain (the orb shaking wildly, swinging in all sorts of random directions, as though struggling to be released), and Rajan is throwing bolts of lightning from his staff at Carmelita (really, he needs to learn to watch his temper) but it's nothing they haven't done before. Just... under a lot more pressure.

"The guards have cleared out," says Murray over his binoc-u-com when he's destroyed the fourth electricity box. "I'm going to head towards the rendezvous; we may need the van."

"See you there, Murray," says Bentley, even as the player controls his jumps. "Khamen, you grab Sly's cane. I'll make my way to the last wheel before I take care of that chain. I don't know what that orb is, but once it's released, things may get messy."

"I understand, chair-turtle," says Khamen. "Do as you must, and I shall do the same."

"Just be ready," says Bentley, reaching the wheel. He takes out his binoc-u-com and shoots the last chain just as Khamen grabs Sly's cane, then spins the wheel.

The sphere is released, all right, but it doesn't drop to the floor. Instead, it starts to rise—through the ceiling.

"Carmelita, you need to hurry," says Bentley over the binoc-u-com as she and Sly try to position Rajan for another spray of water. "We have some... unexplained technological or supernatural phenomena on its way to your position. I don't know what it does, but you need to get out of there before we find out."

Carmelita and Sly together manage the final blow, shattering the gem on Rajan's choker. He slumps forward, seemingly unconscious, in cutscene time, just as the giant glowing orb rises through the floor and into their tower room. And starts to pulse eerie light.

Rajan slides on the floor towards the orb and in; so does everything not bolted down. Orange banners with white tips flap as they try to go to it; Carmelita and Sly have to brace themselves. Pieces of the wall fly past them, too, opening a way to escape. "Sly!" says Carmelita.

"I'm on it," says Sly. "Let's go!"

The final sequence of the boss fight is Carmelita frantically climbing DOWN the outside of tower. Sly goes with her—or ahead of her, or behind her, depending on what master thief moves he's doing, given that his paraglider got destroyed sometime since he went missing—but the tower is falling into pieces behind them as the two of them frantically make their way down. The two reach the bottom just as Murray pulls up in the van, Bentley and Khamen already inside, and they jump in and speed away.

Behind them, there's a burst of black light—or maybe you'd call it darkness—and both the tower and the fissure disappear, as though nothing was ever there.

Author's Notes!

Technically, this is earlier than I said it would be: there still has to be an official closing cutscene for area 1. But, like the opening cutscene, it's rather short (about 600 words) and this is a fairly long author's note. There are a number of things I'd like to address as the story continues, both in response to some reviews and for my own sake.

I've had a few reviews asking me to finish. Barring a major disaster or Sucker Punch/Sanzaru contacting me to ask if they can make this into the real Sly 5, this story will be finished. (And really, would anyone mind if the second thing happened? It's a sort of impossible ideal...) I'm posting in tiny bits deliberately; it gives me time to write more. I'd rather give everyone small updates every week than leave you with nothing for a month or three.

I finished Area 2 before I started posting. Right now, I'm working on the heist for Area 3; I hope to have area 3 finished by the end of the month. According to my master document, I've posted 19,500 words of about 70,000. If I did my math right, and I don't always do my math right, I could keep posting until April without writing another word. Right now I update every Tuesday evening between getting home from work around 8 PM and going to bed at midnight. Updates may be less clockwork as time goes on and life intrudes—power outages, major snow storms, family vacations, stomach bugs—but the 'once a week' thing will continue.

And yes, I have the entire story/game planned out. The only thing I'm conflicted about is if I should wrap everything up or leave an opening for a Sly 6.

Now that I've gotten the updates/story finishing thing done, I'm going to discuss something else. I've noted in this story's description that it's 100% canon compliant. I'm using the Sly Cooper Wiki as my official guidepost. When there's conflicting information, I get the final say. But I've called this Sly 5 for a reason: if I've done this right, then someone with programming experience could read this story and create Sly 5. It could be the fifth game; not just the fifth story of the Sly series, but an actual game. At the top of my master document, I have four sentences, and I read them every time I open the document.

I want Bentley to hack and bomb and play with technology.

I want Murray to get into fights and destroy things.

I want Carmelita to shoot and have jumping challenges.

I want Sly to climb, and sneak, and pickpocket.

There may come an area where Bentley doesn't hack anything, or Murray doesn't fight, or Carmelita doesn't jump. There's already an area where Sly doesn't sneak. But these are the things we've seen in almost every Sly game. If Sucker Punch or Sanzaru made a Sly 5, they'd do these things. That's why they're in this game. Much as I enjoy having a story and writing character interactions, the game comes first.

Last thing is...I know I don't act it. My profile is offputting and I don't have author's notes saying 'Review!' and I rarely respond to anything. But I get the stupidest grin on my face every time I get a review and I follow the number of people who view each chapter almost obsessively and I am ludicrouslyproud that I have more people following the story and getting alerts when it updates than I have individual chapters (19 followers, 15—16, once this posts—chapters.) So thank you, all of you, for reading.

That about does it. I'll officially end Area 1 next week. We'll take a breather next week and run Sly through the hazard room, and start area 2 the week after. Barring some sort of emergency, the next big author's note will be at the end of area 2.