FIENDS FROM THE PAST

Operation: Unwanted Guest

This time, things would be different.

They still split up to climb the mountain, Murray and Bentley up the path while the other three took the safer, more athletic route up the cliffs; they still met up at the twin boulders outside the moat, and Bentley fussed at them all about whether they had everything ready, everything equipped.

But this time, when Sly stands, it's at the head of a gang of five. Bentley and Murray, his friends from childhood, on either side, Carmelita and Slaigh a step behind them. Sly stands with his family, even if only one is actually related to him, and that only by the unbroken thread of time. He takes a step forward. "Let's go."

Rolling, walking, running, stomping, they follow him. Across the board bridging the moat (taking care to avoid both guards and alligators). Through the, uh, 'doors' Slaigh had broken into smithereens. And into the tower.

The bottom floor is curiously empty, as are the stairs up. Suspiciously so. It wasn't guarded last time, either. "Be careful, everyone," Bentley says. He looks in all directions, taking out his binoc-u-com to peer further up the stairs. "We don't know what she has up her sleeve, but there's no way it'll be pleasant."

"Don't worry, shell boy," Carmelita says. "We're ready for anything."

The landing with the door is deserted. Murray runs to the lever, straining and grunting to lift it overhead. As soon as it clicks into place, Bentley's working on the other part, firing dart after dart into the target.

The door opens in a jerky motion, rising a little more with every shot. No purple light spills out; the staircase is clear. Sly, Carmelita, and Slaigh step through.

Murray releases the lever and steps back, but as long as Bentley keeps firing, the door stays open. "Go on ahead, Murray," Bentley says. "I'll be fine back here."

"You'd better be, little buddy." Murray claps Bentley on the back, nearly knocking him from his wheelchair, and joins the others. The four of them go up the winding staircase. And up, and up. There is some security here: not guards. Heavy wooden poles, horizontal and embedded into the walls, block their way up. Murray and Slaigh take turn breaking them; the breaking blow Bentley told Murray to use comes in handy. Up and up and up they go. In circles. Until, all of a sudden, they're at the top of the tower.

There are a lot of things to notice about the room at the top of the tower. It's a perfectly round room, to begin with; windows, eight of them, take up almost the entirety of the walls. In the space between the windows, where actual walls stand, dangle orange pennants tipped in white. In the center of the room is a column, with all sorts of machinery embedded in it, for some unknown purpose. Several of the lights are lit, and a sucking sound, as though from a very small vacuum, is coming from somewhere inside.

But Sly, Murray, Carmelita, and Slaigh don't notice any of that. Their attention is on something else.

One of the windows is open. Mizz Ruby stands at it, her back to them. She's speaking to a large owl—a humongous owl, really; even with his silver wings closed he takes up almost the entire window. Razor sharp talons dig into the stone beneath the window, no doubt crumbling it with their power. Not all of the bird is silver, not yet at least; metallic gray feathers mix with tawny brown ones across his body, and his tail is almost completely brown, as is his head, save for a savage looking beak. But it won't be brown forever.

Clockwerk. The owl with a grudge against Sly's family, so much so that he replaced his body with machinery and almost achieved immortality, until Sly killed him. Clockwerk, who killed Sly's parents and dozens of other Coopers through the millennia. Clockwerk, here, and staring at them.

Sly freezes under Clockwerk's stare, his eyes (red now, still red, not yet replaced with mechanical ones) locked with Clockwerk's. And even without the mechanical eyes' hypnotizing ability, Sly can't move.

Mizz Ruby laughs.

And Clockwerk launches himself, talons first, across the room, straight at Sly.

It happens in a moment, in a breath, in a blink. Slaigh tackles Sly out the window.

Clockwerk follows.

Mizz Ruby, bent over with laughter, gasps out, "Now this is the essence of Clockwerk. Thanks, y'all, for helping me get in touch with it."

Murray roars and barrels at Mizz Ruby, knocking her across the room with one punch. "Go!" he yells at Carmelita. "Help Sly!"

So Carmelita, too, jumps out the window.

There's an awful lot happening here, all at once, and all of it is terrible. But let's start things off with a short REWIND and catch up with Sly, who was just tackled out a window.

It's a very good thing there's no fall damage in Sly games, but just as good that Slaigh is both really strong and a Cooper. Sure, they fall down the island, but as they're falling by the cliffs Slaigh uses his cane to grab a number of protruding rocks and slows his fall as they break, ending by getting a solid grip on one and wall-hooking to solid ground. All the time, he keeps a strong grip on Sly. "Get a hold o'yerself, lad," he says, giving Sly a small shake. "When the bird is around ya can sneak, ya can run, but you can never, ever freeze."

But Sly has clearly frozen. Slaigh jumps from spot to spot, holding Sly in one massive arm and wall-hooking his way down with the other... when Clockwerk appears in the sky, circling, and dives for the wall.

Slaigh drops. He lands just above the water-line and moves as fast as Cooper moves will let him, carrying Sly all the while. Clockwerk strikes, again and again: above him, below him, diving headlong into the cliff side and breaking off rocks to tumble to the water below, sending massive splashes towards the sky. Reaching solid ground—the beach, the tower overhead—is impossible; it's all Slaigh can do to keep dodging, Sly thrown over his shoulder.

One particularly violent blow stuns Clockwerk for a moment. Slaigh seizes the opportunity and leaps past him, into an area he knows well: the cave with the vampire crypt. He moves out of sight and holds Sly by the shoulders, shaking him. "Come on, Sli," Slaigh whispers. "Dinnae tell me the bird's still after your children."

The thought makes Sly shudder and take a deep breath. "No," Sly says. "I killed him. I did. But... to see him here, now, after—"

"I know, lad," says Slaigh. "Believe me, after what he did to me mam, I know. But you can't just stop. He wins, then. And a Cooper never lets that one win, not without making him pay fer every gain until one day he can't pay anymore and loses."

That startles a laugh out of Sly, but then there's a sound from the entrance. Slaigh sets Sly down. "He found us. Go down the path there," Slaigh nods to the right, "and I will draw him off."

"Absolutely not," says Sly. "I'm not leaving you to deal with—with him alone."

"Ach, lad," says Slaigh, but a smile creeps across his face. He scoops Sly up again. "Let's lose him in the tunnels, then."

And there's no time to say anything more, just time to run. All of the signs from when they went through here the first time are still in the ground and walls, and the second time; new halls, if there are any, are explored, but no matter where they turn Clockwerk is both just behind them and between them and the exit. Deeper and deeper through the maze they go, the walls shaking around them, tiny stones falling from the ceiling as Clockwerk tries to strike a blow where they would have been were it not for a turn, a dodge, backtracking that's little more than prayer that he won't find and follow them. But they can't get out.

There's only one way into or out of the room with the former vampire crypt, and when they reach it, Sly knows it's the end. But Slaigh charges through even so, finding the gear on the floor and turning it, revealing the staircase and the large room below where Carmelita had to be carried. The two of them tumble down the stairs, hearing the bird search for them above, and position themselves in the center of the room.

Sly looks at Slaigh and tightens his grip on his cane. "Time for making him pay?"

Slaigh grins, taking a hold of his cane in both hands. "Let him get closer first, lad; if we can get past him, we can still make it out."

Sly forces a smile back.

The staircase creaks. There's little light, but even so, Clockwerk's shadow precedes him, taking up the entire room as it looms over the two raccoons. "Remarkable. I never expected to get a pair of Coopers when I gave that person my assistance." His voice isn't mechanical, not here, not now, but it may as well be; he clips the ends off his words and lays them out without inflection, as though nothing can or will bother him. As though he is more machine inside than he appears to be. "I suppose this will be another pleasant day for me."

"Come over here and say that, why don'tcha?" Slaigh demands.

Clockwerk is so large the tips of his folded wings brush the ceiling. He takes one step, then another. "Taunts. An ineffective measure the inferior use to make themselves feel superior. The Cooper family always has failed at recognizing when their time has come."

A third step. A fourth. Sly drops into a fighting stance, readying his grip on his cane. Clockwerk is almost in reach—

Pounding feet from the staircase has Clockwerk turn his head to look, just fast enough that the boot hits him solidly in the beak. The force of the blow knocks him between Sly and Slaigh, past them, against the far wall, where he lays in a small cloud of dust.

"No one touches my criminal."

REWIND

"Oh no, oh no!" Bentley yells over the binoc-u-com, but Murray pays him the barest attention. All his focus is locked on Mizz Ruby.

This wasn't a fight he was meant to have, but it's a fight he's not going to lose. He jumps over Mizz Ruby's tail and uses the breaking blow to get in the first hit she actually reacts to—and what a reaction. She flies back. Murray knows he should use the portable laser emitter Bentley gave him, knows he should be thinking about capturing her and what would Bentley say, but he's Just TOO FREAKING MAD.

"They're okay! They're okay, they just—what? Oh, please don't tell me..."

Mizz Ruby laughs again, throwing voodoo magic at him left and right, but Murray hasn't been champion of underground wrestling circuits around the world to get hit by that.

"Come on, Bentley, think! What can I—gak!"

"Got you! Careful, shell boy, the cliff side's going. What's the plan?"

"I don't know, I don't have enough information! Maybe if... if..."

"If what? Say it already!"

Murray gets hit this time, knocked off his feet by Mizz Ruby's tail, and he gets back up with a roar, holding the laser emitter before he even realizes it, and when he punches her off her feet this time he turns it on and cracks one of her gems to pieces in the process.

"Maybe if... if he's caught up in whatever's going on in that tower, somehow, sending it back to our time might confuse him enough for us to escape. But my bombs can't crack those supports!"

"But Slaigh could," Carmelita says. "I'm going after them. See if you can help Murray."

Duck, dodge, weave, and punch. Murray knows how to handle this; fighting is what he LIVES for. So when Mizz Ruby dives at him, meaning to knock him to the ground for a full-on tussle, Murray jumps and thunderflops her while she's down.

From the stairway comes a commotion, bangs and thundering and groans, but Murray stays focused on the fight. Another few moves, a few good punches, and he knocks Mizz Ruby flying again, leaps on her and destroys a second gem.

With a squeak of wheels on the stairs, Bentley makes his way up. "Come on. Murray! We've got to get to the bottom and get rid of the black-light anchor!"

"But you said—"

"Change of plans."

The two of them pelt down the stairs at full speed, in circle after circle, chased by Mizz Ruby's laughter. The heavy door formerly blocking the stairs has seen about a dozen bombs too many, but as Bentley starts down the next set of stairs Murray bounces off a force field from nowhere. He turns on the spot to see Mizz Ruby's followed him down, a remote control in one hand.

MEANWHILE

"No one touches my criminal."

Carmelita stands in the center of the floor where Clockwerk was, her shock pistol out and pointed at him, breathing hard. "No one touches my criminal," she repeats, "but me."

Through the dust, Clockwerk stirs.

"We need to get out of here," says Sly.

"No, you need to get out of here," Carmelita says. "Bentley thinks we'll confuse him enough for us all to get to safety if we take out the tower, but someone has to keep him pinned or we're all in for it."

Sly's tail droops. "Fine. Then I'll stay."

"Absolutely not."

"Carm—"

"If you don't start for those stairs right this instant I will shoot you senseless and make Slaigh carry you out."

"Which I'll do, lad," Slaigh says at once, putting a hand on Sly's shoulder. "Come on."

Sly heaves a sigh that travels from his head to his toes, as Clockwerk stirs behind him, but starts for the stairs. He stops by Carmelita and puts a hand on her arm. "If you need to run, do it. I can handle him."

"So can I, Ringtail. Now get."

Slaigh grabs Sly's arm and pulls, towing the smaller raccoon along behind him, as Clockwerk stirs and at least heaves himself from the dust. He turns to Carmelita, his eyes glinting in the dim light. "You will regret ever attempting this."

"All I'll regret, is if I don't make you cry like the big baby you are." Carmelita holds steady, her gun trained on him. "One move, and you'll regret it."

Of course, this is a boss fight, so he moves. Clockwerk is fast and strong and powerful, but he's also at a disadvantage. Underground, in a room scarcely bigger than he is, he can't jump or fly. That means he can't charge or do many of his attacks. He can dive forward and try to peck her with his beak, leaving him vulnerable for a moment; if he gets close enough he can grab her with one talon and squeeze, the air leaving her in desperate gasps and her paws beating against his claws in vain. But the most important thing is one Clockwerk doesn't even consider.

He isn't all metal.

Carmelita's shots CAN hurt him.

And while her shots to his talons, his wings, his torso, his beak don't seem to do anything... Carmelita's a good enough shot to go for the eyes.

Clockwerk's screech when Carmelita takes out his first eye is painful as a dropped microphone turned up to the volume level of a heavy-metal concert. His attacks become wilder, and yet, harder to avoid; with only one eye he can't judge as well, so he swings wider, more frantically, more often. He can't fully extend his wings and yet he uses them anyway.

Carmelita is battered and bruised when she takes out his other eye.

His scream is so loud it vibrates through the rock, causing damaged stones to fall and the entire island to shake.

REWIND

Murray turns away from the staircase with Bentley on it and punches one fist into the other hand. "Some people just don't know when to quit, do they?" he demands.

"I could say the same for you, Murray." Mizz Ruby hisses, sticking out her tongue; the large ruby in her belly-button gleams. "What do you hope to get by doing this, hmmm? A shorter stay in prison, while your friends rot?"

"No one in our gang is going to prison." Murray stomps his feet and braces himself. "But YOU will, when I'm done pounding you to a pulp."

"Oh, Murray, I see your lips moving but all I hear is 'blah blah blah!' If you're so eager to fight, answer my question: who am I working for?" Mizz Ruby bats her eyelashes, just once, as she swings her tail and braces herself for the fight to continue.

"You work for a bad guy," Murray says.

"No, you idiot. I WORK FOR A COP!" And so screaming, she charges at him.

"You what?!" Bentley yelps, but Murray is beyond hearing him. Murray is in a fight. A fight for his life, and his friends. AND IT'S NOT ONE HE'S GONNA LOSE!

The fight is a lot like the one from before, except Mizz Ruby is faster and more vicious, more prone to using her magic attacks. She runs away far too often, and every attempt to catch her involves dodging zig zag voo doo, zag zig voo doo, zig zig voo voo zag zag doo. It's downright irritating, especially because the music syncs up to it.

Seriously, didn't she ever learn not to call her attacks? If she didn't teleport around the room all the time she'd be down in a heartbeat.

But with one last solid punch to the jaw, she flies backwards, the jewel in her belly-button flying out, the remote control in her hand breaking. The force fields vanish. "You okay, Murray?"

Murray's bruised and tired, but not broken. "I'm fine, little buddy."

Around them, the tower starts to shake. "Let's get out of here," Bentley says, and Murray nods and follows him down the stairs, leaving Mizz Ruby behind.

REWIND

Slaigh and Sly clamber out of the cave and up to solid ground, wall-hooking their way up with lethal care: Clockwerk did a number on the cliff side earlier, and any stone they land on has about even odds of staying put or tumbling to the water below with them still clinging to it. A scream, like a dropped microphone, vibrates through the ground as they finally reach the tower.

Slaigh laughs out loud. "That lassie knows what she's doing, aye, that she does!"

Sly smiles. "Yeah. She really does."

Without hesitation, the two of them make their way inside. The sound of a fight echoes down the staircase, along with three voices: Bentley, Murray, and Mizz Ruby. Bentley and Murray don't sound like they're in trouble, so the two Coopers head further down at a run, ready to do whatever it takes to get this tower out of here and make everything safe again.

Of course, the alligator patrol guarding the black light anchor makes things a little bit difficult.

"Ach, lad, I can take these out," Slaigh says. He puts a hand on Sly's shoulder and steps in front of him. "Just leave it to me, and then I—"

"No." Sly pushes past Slaigh. "There's no time. We need to take out those anchors, now."

"So what do ye propose we do then?" Slaigh asks. "Ask them nicely?"

"I'm going to distract them." Sly takes another step forward. "As soon as they're away from a support, you smash it. Got it?"

"That's dangerous—"

"Everything is dangerous, Slaigh," Sly says. "But the faster we do this, the faster the rest of my gang is out of danger, and for that, I'll take any chances I need to."

There's no more time to argue, no more arguing to be done. Sly darts in the center of the room, beneath the black-light anchor, and spreads his arms. "Hello assorted pin brains!"

Four alligator heads snap towards him.

Sly pinches his nose with one hand and waves his other hand in front of it with the other. "Pee-yuuu, does someone have fish breath? Oh. You all do. My bad."

I didn't know alligators could growl, but I know it now.

"Oh, I'm sorry. Did I huwt the wittle baby's feewings?"

Boy, when it comes to ticking people off, Sly really gets the job done. All the alligators go for Sly... who runs for it.

Slaigh has to use both hands and several blows to smash the rock-encased rope holding the black-light anchor, but he gets three of them destroyed before the alligators even notice. Sly just ticked them off THAT WELL. That, and he's been leading them as far away from Slaigh as possible. Nice work, Sly.

Even with the alligators after them both, it doesn't take much longer for Slaigh to smash the last pillar.

Everything starts to glow. The ground shakes, ever so slightly; the alligators float and get sucked into the ball.

"We need to get out of here," Sly says. "Come on."

The two of them run up the stairs. They're joined on the main level by Bentley and Murray, and the four of them book it out of there together.

The whole island shakes as the tower groans, purple bursts of darkness escaping from it like a color-blind kindergartner's sun rays, dragging in the spotlights and alligators all around. With one more flash, it vanishes.

And the cliff side collapses.

"CARMELITA!" Sly dashes towards the cliffs, but Slaigh grabs him and points. On the beach, far below, lies an orange figure with dark blue hair. She stirs and crawls from the ocean, but doesn't stand.

"I'd better go see if she needs medical attention," Bentley mutters, wheeling himself towards her. Murray follows. Sly stays where he is, heart pounding, Slaigh's hand still heavy on his shoulder.

As soon as the other two are out of earshot, Slaigh leans in close and speaks directly in Sly's ear: "Marry her."

HEIST COMPLETE

Sly shakes his head, blinking, as Slaigh releases him and starts down the island towards the others.

AUTHOR'S NOTES

And so finishes area 4. We still don't know where Penelope is—or when. But we did get to meet another Cooper ancestor, and have... other... events. And I'd like to note that the area name was 'Fiends from the Past'. Fiends, plural. Tiny bit of foreshadowing there ;) (RedDragon 170, I'd like to point out that Bentley said 'Based on what I got from the files I stole (picture of Bentley studying various blueprints and documents), this person is incredibly important to their operation. It may even be whoever's behind it all.' He didn't say it was the mastermind. I'm still a *tiny* bit sorry for laughing as much as I did at your comment, though.)

This past area marks an odd milestone: while incredibly bored at my second job the other day (probably two months ago, by the time you read this), I started calculating how many chapters the various games would be if I wrote them out like this. Sly 1 would come to around 60 or 61 chapters, depending on exactly how I divided up some cutscenes. Sly 4 would end at around 64 chapters, if I did my math right. If I did it wrong—and I admit, I may have miscounted the slideshows—then it's likely around 70 chapters.

Either way, this story is now a longer Sly game than two of the actual games. If this were made into a real game, they may still have more actual gameplay. And exactly what a 'job' entails changes game to game, so game 4 would probably be longer than game 1 written out. But this is still longer than BOTH of them ALREADY and that just feels weird.

Moving on... most of my updates would be about having gotten a second job and a new apartment, but my internet outage and subsequent warning a couple weeks back probably did that already. Internet seems reliable again, and I'm 90% unpacked. Writing-wise, this story is finished. I finished the ending credits June 30 (though some jobs are still untitled). There'll be a full chapter of author's notes at some point; including that, this story is... it may spoil things to give you a total number of chapters. We're not gonna reach Sly 2's 111, but we'll pass Sly 3's 83 chapters easily.

Thank you, all of you, for reading and enjoying this. I've spent some time PMing some of you, discussing your thoughts and theories and laughing at your assumptions; others, anonymous posters especially, I can't do that with. One anonymous person asked me for more Sly/Carmelita teamwork jobs... considering I was writing the final job when you asked, I couldn't exactly strive to make that happen, but there's at least one more. Maybe two.

But thank you, all of you, for your words and your theories and your support and laughter. I've reread the pile of reviews on bad days, gone back and laughed, wondered what on earth I did to make you all THAT shocked, or pleased, and checked and went 'Okay, yeah, it was THAT' and felt good about myself. I love seeing your thoughts and reading what you think. I've been anticipating your reactions to *this* for weeks, now. I'm also a little confused as to how I'm still getting favorites and follows (do we have the entire Sly fandom reading this now?) but that's just my strangeness showing.

If you don't review normally, now's the time. End of area 4—well, the heist, at least. I'll post the official ending cutscene next week... and, since it's short, the opening to area 5 on Thursday or Friday. I think you're gonna like it. I mean, I also suspect half of you have already guessed when we're going, but you'll like it anyway.

-EikaPrime