FIENDS FROM THE PAST

Job 6: Fangs For The Memories

Sly leaves the safe-house and clambers to the top of the safe-house to look around. The way point he wants is across from the place where Murray had a sword fight; he makes his way towards it.

As he travels, he hears Bentley in his ear. "Sly, all the water coming from all the houses is making this place a muddy mess. If you leave footprints, guards may be able to follow them."

"Not to mention this makes it harder to run," Sly grumbles. He stays to the scattered rocks and blocks of salt when he can, or the sides of the house-mounds without water streaming down them. Or he walks in the water, but that's cold and uncomfortable. Not to mention the water's deeper than it was when he was rescuing Slaigh.

He hopes they finish with this before the entire gang needs to swim to navigate.

He climbs onto a roof to reach the way point and shakes water out of his shoes before pulling out his binoc-u-com. "So, what do I need to do here?" As he speaks, someone comes out of the sword fighting house.

"Sly, do you see that vampire?" Sly zooms his binoc-u-com in on a terrier with a mustache. "That's General Drak. He doesn't do regular patrols; he just checks on his men, then returns to the vampire crypts."

"Wow, what a life," Sly says, keeping tabs on the guy as he starts to walk. "You want me to follow him?"

"Yep. Tail him without being seen. Once we know where the vampire's crypt is, we can destroy it. That'll get rid of most of their reserves, and leave us with fewer guards to deal with."

"Not to mention restoring the laws of nature." Sly tucks his binoc-u-com back in his pouch. "I'm on it."

Without another word, Sly starts following General Drak. General Drak doesn't have his own personal set of guards, like the Contessa did, but that doesn't mean this is easy. Under normal circumstances, Sly wouldn't have any trouble. Sure, there are guard patrols around. Sure, the guy stops and checks behind him and even backtracks now and then. And yes, every now and then he goes over a building, not around it. But Sly's dealt with all that before. None of that would be an issue.

No, the problem is the thrice-cursed stinking mud. Every time a patrolling guard sees so much as half a boot print they sound the alarm and start to search for the boot print's owner, and every time General Drak comes to help. That means three guards, and the general, trying to find him. And the boot prints take time to fade, even with the rush of water around. Sly's sometimes followed the guy two streets away when a vampire cries the alarm and he has to hide before General Drak runs to investigate.

By the time the general's reached rock beach, Sly swears he has a headache coming on. He stays back, as far as he can, but he's still close enough to see when the guy shakes his head and jumps to one of the partial cliff paths.

Sly bites back a growl and ninja-spire jumps out to sea, where he watches the guy walk partway up one cliff side path before jumping to another. Sly wallhooks his way up, grabs onto hook-like rocks, and stays off the paths himself; with the amount of backtracking and randomness this guy does, landing on any of them would almost certainly get him caught. Not that he doesn't (still) have to be careful.

He has his back pressed to the wall, inching sideways across it, when General Drak lands on the partial path just a few feet to his right. Sly drops at once, grabbing onto a hook a few feet below and staring up.

General Drak does a cursory check left and right, then nods and makes his way into a cave near the end of the path, about three-quarters of the way up the mountain. Sly hoists himself up and follows.

Only to stop short at the first split in the path. A solid wall of ghosts parts for General Drak to walk through, then reforms to guard the way forward. Lasers, spotlights, heck, he could even deal with booby-traps, but this?

Sly pulls out his binoc-u-com and takes several pictures. Over a dozen ghosts vanish into its lens, but there are always more ready to take their place.

"It's no use, Sly. Come on back to the safe-house," says Bentley in his ear. "We know the crypt is somewhere in this cave. You can explore it after we deal with the ghost generators."

JOB COMPLETE

Sly stands in the job complete screen, still taking photo after photo, ghosts rushing into his camera and vanishing again and again.

Available Jobs:

A Thrown Charge