What Can and Can't Be Replaced

Jumping across the roof tops, Karin checked to make sure her young cousin and Lady were busy still. They had fallen into one of their squabbles again—it had been long enough that it was inevitable. At least they were keeping quiet about it as they waited for the turtle and the hippo to return from their own mission.

It was too soon for there to be any actual effect, but Karin couldn't help herself. She had to know if things were better, if the danger to her and her children had passed. The villagers had never exactly welcomed them with open arms, but if she could avoid a mob…

She paused, looking out over this small village that had been her home for so many years now. Her family's compound was much further inland, but Shinji had persuaded her to come further out, closer to his family and yet still in easy travel to her parents if invited. It was the perfect balance, and she loved him even more for finding it. It had been a fresh start for her too, not only as a young bride to her husband, but here, no one knew of the shame to the Coopergiwa clan, or about her own fearsome reputation. Here she was supposed to be allowed to raise her children, to train them, and then to finally step back herself—

A shuriken flew through the air, landing in front of her and into the thatch of the roof. She scrambled to a stop, sliding on the slick straw. But she knew how to fall, and made sure that when she reached the end, she tumbled down to the ground with no injury, if perhaps a lot of noise. Thankfully, the guards weren't around, distracted by the dams' fall no doubt.

As she got her feet back under her, she heard several squeaks, and black blobs landed on the roof. Big ears twitched with the squeaking, and she scowled. Bats, it had to be bats. While they were almost blind with their weak eyesight, it was their only weakness.

And they traveled in swarms.

Karin swung her naginata, trying to keep room to maneuver as they converged on her. But they weren't attacking like she expected. Some had kunai in hand, they used the hooks on their wings to ward off her glaive, but... She eyed one's belt. Yes, they all were wearing short swords. Why would none of them meet her in combat like honorable men? She pushed it out of her mind, stepping into the pattern of the glaive, as graceful as any dance and as deadly as a swordsman, with twice the reach.

But it was hard to defend herself from all sides. One got in close, and wrapped itself around her back, holding a foul-smelling cloth to her nose and mouth. It left her no choice but to hold her breath or breathe it in.

Karin's eyes widened in understanding. This wasn't a fight, this was a kidnapping attempt!

"Now chers, that ain't nice!" a familiar voice drawled, and the bat behind her let go with a pained screech.

Karin collapsed on the ground, choking on clean air. When she looked up, she saw that her cousin was beside her, making sure she was okay, before they set about defending her from the ninja. Between the two of them, they managed to at least scatter her attackers off into the dark.

"Flyin' rats, I swear," Lady grumbled, moving to help Karin stand up. "Coopergiwa-san, yah doin' okay?"

"Yes, thank you," she managed to tell her, holding her pounding head. "My glaive, where…?"

"Sorry, it looks like they wanted to make sure you couldn't fight back once they got you away," Sly told her grimly, holding out…what remained of her glaive. The blade was distorted and dented, no doubt ruined unless it was melted down, and that could weaken it. The wood was unevenly shattered in two, with ragged splinters as the strong limb had tried to stay together until it finally gave up, large shards missing as newly freed splinters.

She held the ruined pieces in her hands, and Sly wondered, for a moment, how long she'd had it. He was using his father's cane, and while it showed its age, it had lasted for two lifetimes. It had to be heart-wrenching. But he glanced up over the roofs. "We can't stay here," he told Lady softly.

"Were they just more guards?" she asked, sounding unsure.

He shook his head. "No, they didn't seem to have the same goal." Sly hadn't been involved in any kidnapping schemes (to his knowledge), but the signs were pretty clear, sparking memories of the incident at the ballet with Lady. He wasn't sure if the parallels were deliberate or not.

"Well ain't that comfortin'." Lady shook her head, letting her sarcasm drop, and moved to where she could support an obviously exhausted and emotionally numb Karin. "Come on, let's get back to the compound. She might need to rest a bit, get whatever that gunk was outta her system."

"Right," he agreed, moving to help her carrying his ancestress back home. Murray and Bentley could just catch up with them.

Lady slid open the shoji screen carefully. She'd barely gotten it open enough before the twins were on her, taking the tray and carrying it inside. Karin was propped up in a large futon, probably hers and her husband's, with Rioichi curled up next to her. Sly and his boys were respectfully sitting a safe distance away.

"Thank you, Lady-san," Karin said softly, taking a cup of tea from the tray.

"Any word on if yer cane is gonna be salvageable?" she asked genuinely, taking a seat nearby.

Karin sighed, shaking her head.

Bentley adjusted his glasses. "We have notes in the Thievus Racoonus about building a cane, though I am not sure of all of the instructions. We could probably have a new glaive ready for her tomorrow."

"If you have not made a glaive before, I will not have you use mine as a learning process," Karin snapped. She reached up and rubbed her forehead slightly. "Sly-san, surely you have had to make a new cane already."

Sly looked up at the ceiling. "Um, nope. I inherited my father's, and I've just been using it." He eyed Lady. "And I have no idea how she got her hands on one."

Karin made a noise of genuine disgust. She gave Rioichi a nudge, pushing him to stand up. "Kiyo-tan, Rioichi-kun, go fetch Chichi-ue for me."

"Hai, Haha-ue," they agreed in sync, scurrying out of the room.

Kaya immediately occupied Rioichi's place, and while running her fingers through her daughter's fur, Karin began to explain. "Forget your instructions," she said firmly. "I am going to walk my young cousin through the process of forging the type of weapons my clan is well known for, that which I sense is the base for your own. While you are still amateurs, I can guide you and it will be better than attempting to follow instructions."

Bentley shifted in his chair. "Coopergiwa-san, we are more than able to make a weapon," he tried to temporize.

Lady's snort immediately undermined him. "Speak for yerself, turtle. I don' know nothin' 'bout Japanese smithin' techniques, aside from they are complicated and fussy and it takes learnin' under a master to get them right. Sounds like somethin' yer boy needs."

Sly coughed and decided to stay out of the conflict between his brain and Lady. He had a feeling it was safer that way. They were kept from devolving into all-out-war by Rioichi returning, hopping up on to his mother's bed to join his sister for cuddles. The other twin was easily spotted in the arms of the raccoon who entered. Grey toned like Sly, he favored muted blues for his hakama that made him seem rather drab.

But then he smiled at Karin, tickling his daughter to make her giggle, and Sly could almost see why Karin liked this guy enough to marry him, just from that alone. "Are you feeling better, dear?" he asked, his voice closer to being without an accent than Karin's as well.

"Yes, darling," she assured him, and then gestured towards the gaggle of time travelers. "Come meet our guests. The male raccoon is Sly Cooper, your cousin, if perhaps distantly. He travels with the Lady Masque, the Murray, and Bentley."

Shinji looked over them and gave a short bow. "A pleasure to meet you," he said politely. "My children have spoken much of all of you, and Karin says that she is teaching you some skills."

Sly grimaced. "Trying to, anyway." He and Lady really needed to practice walking on nightingale floors some more before either could be considered proficient.

"We are letting his sneaking skills go for a moment to focus on another," Karin butted in. "My glaive needs repaired, and he needs to learn the craft."

Shinji's expression immediately brightened. "I see, so you will need bronze."

"Hmm, and some of the blessed wood," Karin added, as if making a list.

"Blessed?" Lady repeated skeptically. "Yer odds of gettin' this particular Cooper," she pointed at Sly with her thumb, "into a church or temple for any reason besides stealin' from it seems low, chere."

Shinji laughed, flopping over on to the futon, while Karin sniffed. The kits decided to follow their father's example, also giggling. "I am sorry, my flower, that your spiritual awareness appears to not extend towards my cousin," he apologized, sounding both sincere and a little mocking at the same time. Straightening up, he smiled at Sly. "I am not sure what help I can be in finding glaive wood, but I do have something to help with the bronze."

"You do?" Sly asked cautiously, a little unnerved by this talk of spiritual awareness running through his family tree. He remembered Rioichi's meditations, but… He'd never felt anything like that. Had he? His head hurt…

Shinji hummed and nodded. "Yes, yes. It is a little tool I have been working on, to help my fierce wife with the way loose change seems to keep rolling uphill," he said with a wave of his hand. "It attracts the metal, you see."

"The coin magnet!" Bentley blurted out, his eyes wide. "You're the one who invites her coin magnet!"

"Will invent," Shinji corrected his verb tense good-naturedly. "It is giving me a little trouble still, but now that I have proper incentive, I will work to have it up and running tomorrow."

"Bentley, mind helping him with that?" Sly asked, though it felt completely unnecessary. If he could, the turtle would be bouncing in his wheelchair. Hopefully they wouldn't lose Bentley to this time period and the latest person he could bond with over inventing things.

"The Murray can go and find the sacred wood, Sly," their muscle volunteered, surprising Sly for only a second.

The same could not be said for Lady. "You can?" she asked, but unlike whenever she questioned Bentley, there was genuine curiosity in her tone rather than derision. It was obvious that the hippo had her actual affection rather than just tolerance like she exhibited for the turtle.

He nodded and gave her a wide smile. "I was an apprentice to an Aboriginal mystic for a while. I gave it up to come back to the gang, but I haven't completely lost my edge. If Karin-san can tell me what to sense, I can knock over the tree with my Ball form and bring the wood back here for shaping."

Karin nodded. "He has already proven that he and I can sense similar things, if perhaps differently due to our differences in training and upbringing."

"Great, so what are we supposed to do?" Lady asked Sly, sounding bored.

She may have meant it rhetorically, but he knew what the answer was. "Work on nightingale floors," he said with a sigh. "Come on, you help me with body memory, I'll help you with perception."

Grumbling, she accepted the hand up, and the group slowly separated. Shinji helped wheel Bentley after him to go to his workshop, Sly and Lady went to the nearest entry way with the floor patterns, already bickering over each other's flaws and strengths. Murray stayed behind, not only to help corral the youngsters to bed in a bit, but also to find out from Karin exactly what he was looking for. Comparing Japanese Shinto to Australian Aboriginal required a little bit of communication, but he thought he had the gist of it.

By the time he finished, Murray headed back to the room their little gang had taken over. He saw Bentley was muttering as he helped get the bedding out for the night. Lady had managed to find futon pads somewhere, one actually large enough for Murray and another about the same size. While she was waiting on Bentley, she had produced a wooden comb from somewhere and was attacking her tail fur with cranky mutterings in French as she hit knots.

It made Murray glad he didn't have hair. "Hey, Bentley, let me get those," he insisted, coming over to grab blankets to distribute out. He claimed his pile, handed the ones that Bentley had used last night, and then waited on Lady to finish with her grooming.

Sly came into the room before that happened, taking the bedding from Murray to plop it down next to Lady. "Here you go, your highness," he said with an edge of sarcasm.

"Don' go gettin' spiteful 'cause I'm learnin' the floors faster than you," she quipped back, finishing her current stroke with a flourish. She swept her legs to the side, knocking Sly down in the process, and grabbed his tail.

"What are you doing?!" he sputtered, trying to yank it free, but she just held on tighter and smacked his reaching hands with the comb.

"Ye're as raggedy as a tumbleweed, sugah," she drawled, deftly beginning to groom his tail. He flushed and settled down with ill-grace, crossing his arms and turning his back on her…and therefore making her job easier, but she wasn't going to tell him that. She eyed his stiff back, noting how it slowly lost at least some of the tension as she worked. Huh, so there was that theory confirmed. She couldn't do all of his fur, she had some boundaries, but if she tackled his tail and his hair when she did hers, maybe it would create a link between his brain and 'time to sleep.'

Finishing his tail with a similar flourish as she did her own, she didn't let go till she was up on her knees. As soon as she released his tail, she grabbed his shoulders, and pulled.

Sly toppled backwards with a yelp, his head landing in Lady's tummy. He blinked up at her, but she had already pulled off his hat and had her fingers in his hair. "Sugah, you have the worst hat hair I have ever seen," she told him bluntly, but the comb was highly distracting. It shouldn't have felt this good, but Sly found himself melting as the wooden teeth tingled against his scalp.

"Murray, cher, would yah help me get the blankets over him?" she asked quietly.

That snapped him out of it. "Oh no, we are not doing this again!" he said firmly, immediately trying to sit up.

Lady grabbed his shoulders and pinned him back down. "I mean, I could always drug yah with one of the turtle's darts again, but yah got so upset about that last time…" she drawled.

"No, you are not drugging me, I'm fine," he argued.

"You are sleep deprived, and if I took off that mask of yers, there'd be big old bags under yer eyes," she said, poking him right between them as if to make a point.

"You can't go another night without sleep," Sly tried to argue, hoping to get out of this.

She flicked her fingers to lightly tap him enough that he flinched with a hiss. "And you ain't gettin' out of gettin' some shut-eye yerself. Now, if I were to ask yer friends how you've been sleepin' up till last night…?" She looked towards them as if to prove a point.

Bentley adjusted his glasses nervously. "According to the security system, Sly has been sleeping in small snippets and then doing work for another hour or two before attempting sleep again. If I were to guess, it is leading to an inadequate amount of time in REM sleep, though it is better than nothing, and it is an improvement since his return from… a mission," he ended delicately, probably deciding it wasn't safe to tell the one who was leery of time travel that it was possible to get lost in time and space.

"Uh huh." Lady looked down at Sly, and not for the first time, he cursed that mask. It was hard to argue with something that didn't show expression. "And last night, yah slept clean through the night. Any time you started up, I was there to soothe yah out of it."

He scowled up at her, trying to ignore his embarrassed flush at needing comforting from a nightmare like a kit. She was not winning this argument. "You still need sleep."

"I'm a light sleeper, Cooper. I'll wake up if we both sleep on this futon," she pointed out, tail twitching in her annoyance as he continued to be unnecessarily stubborn. "I will get a dart," she added her threat, moving as if to push him off her lap to get one.

"You could always use one of the old music boxes," Murray pointed out.

"Murray!" Sly snapped, tail bristling. The hippo shrugged, not in the least upset by his tone. Collapsing downwards, he scowled. "Traitor."

"No, I just like you better when you are well-rested, Sly," his friend assured him.

"Be nice," Lady scolded on top of that and looked to Murray. "Music boxes?"

"Yeah, we used to throw them at guards, the music puts the guards to sleep, no problem," he said, nodding his head. Bentley's fingers twitched anxiously at the reminder of this old tool, and Lady spotted it.

She didn't blame him. Being put to sleep like that, and in this small of an area? There was a chance that all of them would be asleep, and if they couldn't wake up in case of an attack, that just spelled disaster. "I think under threat of a music box, Monsieur Cooper is gonna behave," she drawled instead, raising her brows even though she knew he couldn't see them.

With a sigh, he rolled until he was lying on the futon, his back turned towards her. "Fine, fine," he grumbled. "We'll sleep on the same mat."

"Thank yah for yer cooperation," she said sarcastically. She made funny gestures towards Murray, which at least got him to chuckle, and finished getting them settled with blankets, their canes in easy reach…and twining her tail with his, she made sure that even though they were facing opposite directions, he knew she was there. It was easier than trying to be the big spoon when he was so much bigger than her!

Unbeknownst to those who slept inside the Coopergiwa house, a series of shadows watched from the bamboo forest, beady eyes narrowing as they squeaked, big ears twitching as they appraised the home.

shuriken—Japanese, a throwing knife shaped like a star
chers—French, plural of cher, dears
shoji—Japanese, paper screens that were commonly used for walls and doors in traditional Japanese homes
futon—Japanese, a floor mattress for a traditional style bed
Chichi/-ue—Japanese, Father