HEART, AND EAR, AND EYE

Job 3: Shooting The Breeze

Carmelita stops on the roof of a squat building opposite the shooting gallery and pulls out her binoc-u-com. "Okay, Bentley. Why did you want me to stop here?"

"To give you a few warnings," he says, adjusting his glasses. "There are four different shooting games in there, and the grand prize for each is a ticket to that theater. The score to beat in each game is high enough that only an expert marksman could reach it."

"So?" Carmelita spins her shock pistol on one finger. "They don't call me 'crackshot' at Interpol for nothing. I've won our shooting competition—"

"Five years in a row, I am well aware. Murray wandered by there earlier and swapped out some of their rigged guns for proper ones. Make sure you always pick up the red gun, understand? With the aiming sight off, not even you'd have a hope of beating it."

"Carnival tricks, huh?" Carmelita growls. "I'd write them a ticket, but I don't have that sort of authority here."

"Besides that, be on the lookout for distractions. These people are notorious for trying to send their guards to distract anyone who seems to be doing well."

"I can't turn my back on someone in trouble, Bentley," Carmelita says. "If I hear a scream, then—"

"I'm sending Murray to watch the area around the shooting gallery for any major disasters," says Bentley. "He'll shout if there's anything you'd want to care about."

Carmelita actually smiles. "Thanks, shell boy."

"Yes, well..." Bentley adjusts his glasses. "Just get with the shooting."

Carmelita tucks the binoc-u-com away, holsters her gun, and walks into the shooting gallery.

The middle-aged rabbit running the thing has a potbelly and hearing aids. He beams at Carmelita and hops over to her. "Welcome, welcome! Another young lady proving her independence, I see."

Carmelita hesitates, then shrugs. "I suppose that's one way to put it."

"Couldn't say it better. You win one of my challenges, no husband of yours will be able to say you can't handle a gun. What better way to keep the children safe, after all?"

Carmelita laughs and looks around. There are four stations, each located in a corner of the oversized room; they seem to be wooden frames covered in cloths. Streamers dangle between the stalls, balloons struggle to escape one corner, and guards litter the area, one in the center keeping an eye on everything while others patrol the floor. "I don't think that will be a problem."

She heads for the nearest stall. Something catches her eye, and she glances up, but it's just an escaped balloon. "A dollar a play, ma'am," says the rabbit behind the counter, three guns—red, yellow, and blue—before him.

Carmelita smiles and puts down her money. The man hands her a fake blue pistol, but she hands it back. "Red is my lucky color," she says. "Would you mind?"

The man's grin widens. "Not a bit."

With that, Carmelita settles in to the business of shooting. The first game was very much like the one she'd played in the old west, with targets rising from behind 'bushes' and 'trees' or strolling along sideways. She has two minutes to get the score she needed.

Carmelita beats it in ninety seconds because of COURSE she does, it's Carmelita.

The rabbit behind the counter is a bit shocked, if his ears are anything to go by, but hands her the ticket with a flourish. "Wonderful shooting, ma'am, just wonderful."

Carmelita pockets the ticket with a smile. "One for me," she says, then moves clockwise around the room to the next stall.

The challenge here involves reflexes. The targets will only appear directly in front of her, no aiming needed, but only for a second or two each. She needs to hit some colors and avoid others. To a cop with years of practice in split-second decision making with a gun, it's child's play.

The rabbit hands her a ticket, and she pockets it with another smile. "This one is for... Murray," she decides out loud. Murray's a lot less likely to steal things on her watch than the other two, after all.

As she moves clockwise again, some of the pennants overhead flap. She looks up, one hand going for her holstered shock pistol, but it looks like it was just a blast of wind from the open window. She scans the roofs of all the stalls to be sure, then shrugs. This establishment is filled with security (and it's no wonder, with the prizes they're giving out!) so the odds of a thief getting in are unlikely. And Bentley even had Sly doing legal activity as part of the slideshow, so it's not like Sly was going to be breaking and entering to steal the prizes she's winning.

You can take the cop off the case, but you can't keep her from the chase.

On to the next challenge! This one, she discovers, involves the lob shot. The gun she's using shoots rubber balls, and she has to get them to land inside jars different distances away... and with barriers preventing straight shots. To get the shots to land, she has to judge the distance and arch almost perfectly, and to earn the ticket, she has to get her shots in nine of the ten different jars... an almost impossible feat when you only have ten shots.

"I must say, ma'am, I've never seen a perfect score before," says the rabbit who offers her the third ticket. The rabbit's smile is plastered on his face; if you ignore that, he looks downright irritated that she shot so well. "I am pleased to see it."

"Thank you," Carmelita says politely. She tries to take the ticket, but the rabbit won't let go; she has to pull it from his hand. "This one's for Bentley." He'll be harder to keep track of than Murray, with his gadgets and hacking skills, but unlikely to get into trouble.

On to the last challenge! This one is... it looks like the people in charge of the shooting gallery ran out of ideas and stole some from pool. Using her gun, she shoots rubber balls at other balls, trying to propel them down a table and through targets with various point values on the far end. Getting a good score requires bouncing balls off the walls, a study in angles she's unfamiliar with.

On her first attempt, she wins an oversized stuffed owl with hearts for eyes. Another three points, and she'd have gotten the ticket. She hands the aging, balding rabbit another dollar and tries again.

This time she succeeds. Just as the rabbit's handing her the ticket, Sly appears at her elbow, triggering a cutscene. "You already got one!" he says.

"What are you doing here?" she demands.

He leans on his cane and grins at her. "I finished with my job, so I came to cheer you on. What are you going to do next?"

"I'm all finished," she says, pulling out the other tickets. "One for me, one for Murray, one for Bentley..."

"Oh, is there something for me, too?" he asks, looking at the newest ticket.

Carmelita shoves the owl at him; it stretches from Sly's waist to over his head. "Yeah. This. I don't trust you at a theater, ringtail."

"...This guy is adorable." Sly actually hugs the owl, then lowers it to peer at her. "Is it really for me?"

"I—uh, yes," says Carmelita. "You act like you never got a prize before."

"Not from a carnival, or something like this." Sly starts towards the exit, and Carmelita follows him. "And no one ever gave me one. They didn't do that at the orphanage. I don't think I've had a stuffed animal since I was a kid."

"Well, you've got one now," Carmelita snaps.

JOB COMPLETE

Carmelita doesn't bother with a victory pose, just walks—VERY quickly—out of the shooting gallery. Sly follows her, holding the stuffed animal and his cane, grinning.