FIENDS FROM THE PAST
Job 1: An Island Tour
1450 AD
An Island in Scotland
Shadowy figures move around a dark room. A large, round shape that could only be Murray walks towards one side and pulls open the back door of the van; a small square figure, Bentley, jumps inside. After a moment of irritated mumbling, light pours out the van's back doors and all its windows, so bright Murray jumps backwards, and there's a cry of shock from inside the van: Sly sounds like someone pulled his tail. Bentley wheels himself back out, carrying two fluorescent lamps; one he hooks to the back of the van, the other he carries over to a small table across the room. Carmelita sits there, a steaming mug at her elbow, a shock pistol cleaning kit spread out amidst complex blueprints, a plate full of sandwiches, and a handful of crayons. Sly's cane leans on the chair next to hers, his hat perched on it. By the light of the lamps, it seems there are no windows, the floor is bare boards, and the domed walls and ceiling appear to be dirt. The sound of rushing water fills the whole area, though the room is snug and dry.
Sly emerges from the van, his hat missing, his tail rumpled, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. He grabs a sandwich and bites into it, sliding into the seat by Carmelita and glaring at Bentley, who rolls his eyes and shoves another mug over to Sly, then turns back to his blueprints. Murray offers the sandwich plate to Bentley, who shakes his head, then Murray eats the rest of the sandwiches.
When Sly's finished with his meal, he pulls on his hat, picks up his cane, and heads out the door. There's a hanging lip over the door, and a steady stream of water—not quite a waterfall, but close—streams down it, keeping Sly from seeing through to the other side, though he could just step through it. He takes a sharp right and squeezes through a gap in the water. From there, it looks like he just walked out of the side of a small hill, one of ten or fifteen scattered around this section of the island; each hill has water streaming out of it somewhere, whether from the top or partway down, cascading over one or three sections before reaching the ground and heading downhill to the beach. If you can call the thing to the left a beach. It would be just as accurate to call it a rocky boulder-strewn cliff that just happens to slope to the water.
Sly climbs to the top of the hill the safehouse is in, avoiding water and a red-eyed terrier who stops his patrolling to scratch. Getting to the top of the hill requires bouncing on a large mushroom near one of the water spouts; from the top of the hill, he has a full view of the area. Several other hills have exposed pipes here and there. In addition to the gentle rise and muddy, water-covered ground in the vicinity, there's a small mountain on the far side of the island, a steep slope reminiscent of the Black Baron's hill but twice as tall, the slope itself covered with spotlights, guards—too far away to make out their species—and so much security that even Sly would hesitate trying to climb it. At the top of that mountain is a tower.
Sly pulls out his binoc-u-com. "Okay, there's gotta be someone from our time here," he says. "Just look at all this!"
"I am, and I find it infinitely fascinating," Bentley says. "We're really gonna have our work cut out for us here, Sly. Even without an in-depth analysis, I can guarantee that, at some point, you're going to have to swim."
Sly focuses his binoc-u-com on one of several clear pools littered around the island. "Ugh, really?"
"Let's not worry about that yet," Bentley says. "Right now, I need recon photos, and lots of them."
"What do you have in mind?"
"Let's start with the area around here," Bentley says. "Don't try for the death hill until you've got a number of photos of the main area, including some of the guards. Once you've done that, make your way up to that tower, and get pictures of all the security in the area."
"Sounds good; I'll get started." Sly tucks away his binoc-u-com and looks around. It may be best to start by the rocky beach and work his way up, literally and figuratively: it's the only way to the water that doesn't involve a cliff. A few flashlight guards wander the beach, going around the larger boulders or strolling along the coast; Sly's jaw drops when he finally sees one clearly. "You have got to be kidding me," he mutters, wall-hooking his way up a boulder so he can take a picture in safety.
His reaction is echoed by Bentley. "Is that zombie unicorn wielding a PULSE LASER RIFLE?!"
Sly rubs his ear. "Volume, Bentley! And, see, I was still caught up in the whole 'zombie unicorn' bit." Sly zooms in on the unicorn, who's removed his horn to use it as a back scratcher.
"Oh, well, that's not entirely unexpected. The unicorn is Scotland's national animal, even if it has been extinct for a few hundred years, and summoning zombies won't be illegal until the 1900's." Bentley adjusts his glasses; the unicorn shoves his horn back in his head. "They're not the problem. But pulse laser rifles shoot twice as fast, twice as far, and they really pack a punch. Even Murray'll have a problem with those guys."
"Just what I wanted to hear," Sly mutters, putting his binoc-u-com away. He makes sure to stay well away from all the zombie unicorn guards (ugh, when does anyone ever want to hear that phrase?) as he makes his way past them and to the beach.
A gleam of metal catches his eye along the coast. Sly checks for guards before taking another picture: a small island with some sort of generator sticking out of it. "That shouldn't be in this time period," Bentley confirms. "Carmelita may be able to jump there and check it for us."
The only other thing of note, the whole of the beach, is some conical rocks sticking out of the water near the edges of it; Sly may be able to jump on those to get on the seaside of the cliffs around the island. Or reach those messages in bottles some silly people sent, for Bentley-knows what purpose.
With that done, Sly turns his attention to the rest of the island. Once he's off the rocky beach and back on the grassy slope, feet squishing with all the extra water, he takes a picture of one of the many grassy mounds with water streaming out the top. "Interesting," Bentley says. "They seem to have covered all the buildings with dirt and grass. No windows, so they can't see us, but we'll have to be careful. There's no telling how many guards will come rushing out if we get in a fight."
"Don't you have any good news?" Sly quips, zooming in on another mound and taking a picture of the pipe.
"Interesting," Bentley says. "Based on that water's chemical composition, it's definitely sea water. But there isn't any salt in it. They must be pumping the water up from the sea, and using a desalination process before pumping it back out. But why?"
Sly figures that question doesn't need an answer. He uses some salt blocks as a stairway to get to a 'rooftop' and takes a picture of a red-eyed kilted terrier. "Sly, that guard isn't giving off a heat signature. And he's got fangs! With the Zombie Unicorns running around already, I think it's safe to say the dogs are vampires."
"I haven't dealt with those since Tsao," says Sly, putting away his binoc-u-com.
"Indeed. Keep an eye open for their crypt; we may be able to lower the number of guards around if we destroy it."
Sly tried not to grumble as he kept moving. They hadn't even done anything yet, and already they were looking at a capital-s situation. With italics. And underlined. Though not bolded; that'd be too much. Situation.
With that accomplished, Sly keeps moving, exploring the gently sloping grassy area before the trail of spotlights and security. Right at the base of it, before the grass turns to bare dirt and stone and the rise steepens to doom trail, is an unusually large watery hill, easily twice the size of any other. Two zombie unicorns stand at the entrance. Sly takes a picture of it.
"Sly, my X-ray scanner says that that building is used for some sort of training ground. If we can sneak inside, we may be able to find some useful information."
All right, that may be useful later.
Sly scales the side of that massive thing, jumping off blocks of salt and bouncing off mushrooms, to snap one more picture: the 'path' up the mountain. "That looks more like a death trap than anything else," Bentley confirms. "Not even you can go up that unless we disable some of the security. See if you can find a way around."
That sounds like a plan. Finding a way around takes a while, though. The only real way to do it involves wall-hooking and spire-jumping around the edges of the island, the sea mercilessly churning far below as he skirts the cliffs. Some rough paths seem to be in the cliffside, none going anywhere in particular, each patrolled by vampire terriers. When Sly is behind the island—sheer cliff before him, sea at his back, and way above, the tower—he stops to take a picture. "These cliffs are covered in caves and tunnels," Bentley says. "I'm detecting radio signals, but I can't tell which ones they're coming from. We'll have to investigate them later."
That sounds fun. Sly eyes the cliffs. Right now, he's probably the only one who could reach them. Well, maybe Carmelita, if one of those paths is in jumping reach. Maybe he should teach her to spire jump.
An image rises in his mind, unbidden, of Inspector Fox chasing him down and knowing exactly how to get across the gaps she couldn't jump over, those times he'd had to use them to get away. Sly gulps. Maybe not.
A bit of a scramble up the cliff later, Sly's reached the top of the mountain and base of the tower. This area is patrolled, too, with zombie unicorns swinging their lanterns and terriers trotting here and there and... Sly's jaw drops. "Seriously?" he asks no one, pulling out his binoc-u-com. "It's like they dropped a bad Halloween movie in here." With that, he snaps a picture.
The ghost of a pine marten vanishes when he does so. "Ghosts, too?" asks Bentley. "This person's pulling out all the paranormal security."
"Bentley, does my binoc-u-com still have that special lens we used in Prague?" Sly asks, giving his a shake.
"The ghost capturing one? Of course; it's a standard feature. Probably the safest way to deal with them, since they resist physical attacks. Cameras or natural forces—fire, water, electricity—will be more effective."
"But, what do we do with them?" Sly holds his binoc-u-com at arm's length and examines it. "It doesn't seem safe, or right, to leave them trapped in these things forever."
"Oh, each binoc-u-com could store a thousand ghosts for weeks, no problem. We'll properly exorcise them later, but I'll show you how to extract the ghost storage compartment when you get back, in case you find a chimney to throw it down."
Sly sighs, but ends the discussion. He dodges through and around the guards, looking for a good vantage point. He finally finds one on top of one of the massive spotlights aimed at death hill. He takes a picture of another spotlight, while he's at it. "Those spotlights make it impossible for any living creature to come up that path undetected," Bentley declares. "But they don't look particularly sturdy."
That's useful to know. With that done, Sly takes two shots of the tower. The first, the area around the tower: the water dripping from this tower seems to have collected in a moat, still and deep and clear enough to see the bottom. "We'll have to cross that to get inside," Bentley confirms.
The second is of the tower itself. It stands straight and tall to the sky, as Rajan's and Tsao's did, but while the height is the same, the outside decorations are largely different. Giant protruding platforms, like a giant's spiral staircase, circle the tower; each is held upright by a single sturdy pillar, as though they may tilt without it. Decorative ropes, covered in orange pennants with white tips—the same ones found in the last two towers—connect stair to stair, struggling to free themselves in the stiff wind.
"That's all the pictures I need," says Bentley. "Head back to the safehouse, and we can start working on a plan."
JOB COMPLETE
Sly spins his cane and poses with it dramatically balanced on one finger, until it wobbles and falls, nearly conking him on the head.