FISHING FOR FEATHERS
Job 9: Pecking At A Tail
Sly hasn't even made it off the cliff when he notices something happening by the path through the wall. One paraglide later (man, he loves that thing) and he's on a nearby tree, in perfect position to watch General Tsao stalk through.
He brings up his binoc-u-com at once. "Hey Bentley, something's going on."
"Bentley's not here," says Carmelita. "He left to do some more legwork on that tower."
"Huh," says Sly, focusing in on Tsao, who's making all the guards cower away. "At least this guy isn't there."
"General Tsao," Carmelita spits. "If you hold him, I'll come arrest him."
"Calm down," says Sly, adjusting his view as Tsao starts swaggering through the woods. "If we make our move too soon, everything could go wrong."
"Like what? I take him to prison?"
"And we never figure out what the deal is with the tower and time traveling," Sly says. "Pass. Worst case, we don't capture him, Bentley's plan is ruined, and, I don't know, we destroy history?"
Carmelita growls under her breath. "Fine. I hate it when you make sense. But what do we do about him now?"
"I'll follow him without being seen," says Sly. "Maybe we can learn something. I'll keep you in the loop, in case he says anything that triggers cop instincts but not thief ones."
With that, Sly puts his binoc-u-com away but turns up the sensitivity of the microphone and starts after General Tsao. He's cautious, that's for sure: even here, he stops to double check his surroundings often. Sly has to take to the forest floor to avoid some monkey guards, and that's when he sees Tsao jump to look at the treetops, too, as an extra measure of security. He gulps at that. Tsao's the first person Sly's followed to look up without a good reason, like suspicious noise or Sly getting in a fight and the guards calling for assistance or sounding alarms. He's going to have to rely on staying out of sight through other means.
Still, now that he's following General Tsao, he can tell there's something... off... about his movements. "I don't think the tropics agree with this guy," he mutters, knowing Carmelita can hear him. "He's walking like he's trying to keep the sand from his shoes."
Carmelita snorts. "In this place? Good luck."
General Tsao detours around the edge of town, leaping onto the roof of their safe-house (Sly's heart beats in his throat) and past it until he reaches the prison. "Oh, the broken prison," he says, staring at it from over his shield. "If only my guards had been prepared for the tricks of native throwbacks. Ah well," he continues, turning away. "It's nothing my trained fleet of sharks can't handle. If only I had more collars, I could tame more of them."
"Carmelita, did you hear that?" asks Sly, not bothering to take out his binoc-u-com; he stays inside a barrel as Tsao continues on his way.
"I'm going to add animal cruelty to my list of charges," Carmelita mutters.
"We'd best tell Henriette to stay out of the water until we can figure out how to deal with it." Sly pops out of the barrel and runs to the corner Tsao just turned down so he can peek after him. "Where is she now?"
"Bentley hooked her up to the GPS's of Tsao's pirate ships. She's chasing after them."
"That sounds like a lot of fun." Sly bounces to a rooftop and runs over Tsao's head at an opportune moment. It looks like he's going to the tea house.
"In your dreams, Ringtail."
Tsao does a full circle around the tea house and even jumps on top of it... but fails to notice Sly hiding behind the chimney. "I would like to find the thieves that made off with the tea set," says Tsao, gazing off into the ocean. "While not as high quality as my family's own, ancestral tea set, it was based on it and of... superior quality. They were wise to run while they had the chance. Had they remained, they may have compromised the secret escape passage before I brutally slaughtered them."
Sly waits for Tsao to jump off the roof again before darting to the edge of it and staring down, watching him. "Secret escape passage, huh?" he says, twirling his cane. "I'd say that's worth looking into."
"Look into it later, Ringtail," says Carmelita. "Right now, you need to keep on his tail!"
"Of course," Sly says, jumping to another rooftop and then off it, dodging Tsao's paranoia. "Boy, this brings back memories, doesn't it, Carm?"
Carmelita doesn't respond for a few streets. "I don't think I've ever tailed you like this."
"You never noticed me, then?" Sly stops on top of a clothesline. "I just thought you'd always decided it wasn't worth dealing with me on your rare day off."
"You..." Carmelita catches her outrage with a single word. "How often did you follow me?"
"Often enough that I wasn't guessing about your favorite places to eat," Sly admits. "Murray thought it was cute. Bentley thought it was creepy, but admitted watching the cop on our tail was a good idea." He ducks into a doorway to stay out of sight as Tsao backtracks a few steps before leaving town and heading for the cave Sly and Carmelita searched earlier.
"I suppose I can see his point," says Carmelita.
Sly has to be a bit more careful as he creeps along the beach: there are far fewer places to hide around here. He takes a risk and moves ahead of Tsao, to the cave's entrance, where a lone tree shadows the opening. If Tsao goes a different way, he may get caught, but if he doesn't go now, he won't be close enough to hear.
"I do hope the doctor doesn't blame me for the loss of his precious stone," says Tsao. He stares into the cave but doesn't go in, to Sly's great relief. "He did leave me with the impression that he had enough samples to control another dozen people, although I would serve him even without it."
Sly almost falls out of the tree.
"The insult of being forced to wear such a thing cannot go unpunished, however," says Tsao, turning away. "It may take him months to create another such stone. If I can rid myself of these jeweled gauntlets, I could have some form of revenge. Or perhaps I could return to the present and live in the lap of luxury while he labors here like a commoner. My legacy does not suit me for this task."
Then he turns and makes his way down the beach. "Sounds like Tsao's being forced to be here," mutters Sly.
"If we can destroy those gauntlets, we might be able to follow him and arrest them both," says Carmelita. "That should take care of the problem."
"Good thing we've got that stone." Sly leaps from the tree and paraglides to a rock sticking out of the sea, then leaps again onto a buoy. There are a number of them in the shallow water, marking traps; he has to use his ninja spire jump to land on them, but it's keeping him out of General Tsao's sight.
And where is General Tsao strutting to this time? To a group of fishermen standing by their boats on the beach, unloading their catch. Sly paraglides onto a boat and hides behind a sail to listen.
"Why hello there, worthless peasants," he says, puffing out his chest imperiously, metal plate gleaming. "I trust you have enough fish for today's shipment?"
"Do you really have to take it all?" asks one tortoise. General Tsao glares at him, and he ducks his head. "Meaning no disrespect, sir. We just haven't been able to trade or smoke any for lean times."
"Or eat enough," mutters another.
"Do not worry, little peasants," he says, glaring over his shield at them. "It is not your place to question your betters. I need this fish, and my needs are greater than yours. And as long as I get the fish, I won't be needing another meal of turtle soup. Do you understand me?"
The other tortoises hide in their shells while the one who questioned General Tsao stutters out, "Yes, sir, I understand, sir. We—we'll have the shipment by the path in an hour."
"Very well then. I shall return to my meditations in my beautiful tower." He raises a hand in farewell, light gleaming off the gem on the back of his hand, and leaves.
Sly follows him to the edge of town. "The sooner we get rid of this guy, the better," says Sly.
"For once, I agree with you," says Carmelita. "Turtle soup?"
"Let's not tell Bentley."
"Agreed," says Carmelita. "Though I'll make sure he knows he's got to hurry. But now that Tsao's gone... feel like investigating that tea house again?"
"What, the cop's proposing breaking and entering?"
"Come back to the safe-house and I'll write you a warrant," says Carmelita.
"No thanks," Sly says, and makes his way across the roofs to the tea house "Unlike Henriette, I don't need government approval."
Oooooo... I'm going to end the conversation now because I can't think of anything to come after that. It feels like such a burn but you can just picture Carmelita wincing about it, too.
In any case, Sly sneaks back into the tea house with the spotlights and laser security. It doesn't take long to determine the secret way out can't be in the area covered by lasers, so he makes his way across them, near where the teapot was stored. Now that he thinks about it, since the tea set was being used as keys, it doesn't make sense for there to be a fully functioning stove back here. Less sense for there to be an oven. Least sense of all that it looks very, very modern.
"All right Carmelita, I'm going to try crawling in the oven," says Sly.
"Why on earth would you do that?" she asks.
"Only place I can think of for the passage. Plus, it's big enough for even him to fit," Sly adds.
"I guess that's a good reason," says Carmelita. "Just... be careful, Ringtail."
"I will be, Carm. Promise." Sly turns down the listener's sensitivity anyway, though, before he goes in the oven.
It's a SLIDE. Okay? It's a SLIDE. We've had all sorts of fun shenanigans in Sly games before with racing and arcade-style shooters and rhythm games and motion controls and BOATS and SHOOTING but we've never had a SLIDE before. One of those slides that requires jumping at specific points and aiming yourself along narrow portions and ducking and avoiding random traps because of COURSE Sly didn't turn off all the security and it's really, really fun because it's a SLIDE. And Sly laughs like a little kid the entire way down.
The slide comes out inside the ocean cave at the base of the cliff. "Huh," says Sly, gazing around. "so if General Tsao tries to escape through there, he'll come out here."
"He may also send reinforcements through there," says Bentley in his ear.
"Nice to hear from you, pal," says Sly. "How'd your mission go?"
"It was... uneventful. Come on back to the safe-house; it's time to hatch a plan."
JOB COMPLETE
Sly does a victory pose, then grins, looks back at the slide, and vanishes from the screen. A few moments later, he's seen coming out the bottom of the slide again.