Sorry this is a little late, I got caught up with going to the movies and starting my first summer semester and also writing and I lost track of time. But we are here now! Enjoy!

"This is the best day ever." I grinned, looking down at myself. Honestly, I wasn't sure why Rioichi had a spare outfit in grey hanging around, but I wasn't complaining. I was wearing a ninja outfit.

I cackled, flipping the hood up and feeling my ears poke out the top.

Crouching down so only my eyes were visible over the table, I hissed at Sly, "I am the night."

He just smirked and shook his head, "You're going to be completely insufferable, aren't you?"

"Hey, you get to be a samurai, I get to be a ninja, it's only fair."

"Enough," Rioichi barked, "We must hurry, before El Jefe discovers Madame Geisha's absence."

"Right." I started to follow him and Murray out, but then spun on one heel and pointed at Sly, "Stay."

He held his hands up placatingly, "Would I willingly incur your wrath?"

"Yes. So much yes."

"Kaia-san!"

"Coming, Rioichi!" I gave Sly the 'I'm watching you' gestured before ducking out of the Safehouse and pulling up alongside Rioichi.

"I have sent Murray-san ahead to wait for us." Rioichi explained, crossing his arms and looking down at me, "I wished to determine your level of skill before we attempt our task."

I shrugged, "Fair enough." Honestly, I could use the warm-up. Sure, I'd been in gymnastics all this time, but I could very rarely find occasion to practice the moves I'd picked up from the Thievius Raccoonus.

Rioichi narrowed his eyes at me and gestured that I followed him, staying in the shadows and close to the ground. We reached a bridge and he quickly subdued the guard patrolling it, then turned to me.

"Bentley-san tells me you possess some of the same skills as Sly, though you perform them with less proficiency."

Hey.

True, but still.

"I would like to observe your skill in crossing thin objects," he gestured to the railing of the bridge.

Oh, that was easy. Charla had had me on the balance beams for three weeks straight a couple weeks back, perfecting my balance. With my practice with the Rail Walk and Rail Slide, I'd learned much more quickly that I would have otherwise.

The railing of the bridge was thinner than a balance beam, but I probably still could have done a cartwheel or something. I didn't, though, because I got the feeling Rioichi wouldn't approve of showing off.

Not to mention the bridge was spanning a shallow chasm with a river at the bottom and I didn't want to fall.

So I just walked quickly across and Rioichi nodded, apparently satisfied. Not that I could really tell, considering his face was about as expressive as a rock.

The next test was, surprise surprise, the Ninja Spire Jump. The target was the tip of a nearby chimney.

"Can I come down now?" I asked, hacking around a mouthful of smoke. Rioichi was studying my feet intensely. This could either have been because my form was bad (possible, unfortunately) or because I should have been complaining about the heat of the chimney. Honestly, I wasn't sure I'd have been able to feel the heat. After the laser incident in the Cooper Vault, the bottoms of my feet had large patches of this scar tissue that almost entirely destroyed their usual sensitivity.

Rioichi just nodded, though, and I joined him back down on the roof, "Your skills are adequate."

"Gee, tell me how you really feel."

"I do not give undeserved praise." He said, crossing over to the next rooftop to contact Bentley via binocucom.

I rolled my eyes, "Of course not."

Bentley reiterated the plan and he and Rioichi brainstormed on a point of entry. I scanned our surroundings, marveling at how clear the sky was and how weird it was to know I was actually five hundred years in the past.

Something caught my eyes on top of a far pagoda beyond the geisha house. I frowned, squinting at it, and reached for a binocucom that wasn't there. Scowling, I made a mental note to ask Bentley for mind back before getting distracted by Rioichi.

"Follow me." He ordered, leaping from the ledge and crossing to the geisha house roof quickly.

His job was to head inside and acquire the costume. Mine was to find a way to get Murray up onto the roof so he could drop down below.

I was starting to get the feeling he was still testing me.

It took some doing to get Murray up onto the roof. We had to create an elaborate configuration of barrels and especially-springy tarps; all while ducking the guards.

Seeing Rioichi's grudgingly impressed face when Murray came down the line right on cue, though, made it totally worth it.

Right up until the point where the line gave way and Murray crashed into the display case for the costume.

And things had been going so well, too...

So imagine my surprise when things kept going well.

As in, Murray had all the guards drooling at his feet.

Having rappelled in after the hippo, I stood dumbstruck next to Rioichi before shaking my head and plucking the earbud out of his ear, "Bentley, Murray totally volunteered for this mission, didn't he?"

"How ever did you guess?"

I shook my head, handing the earbud back to Rioichi, "Shall we rob all the guards blind while we have this golden opportunity?"

The ninja gave a slight smug smile, "You are wiser than your age might suggest, Kaia-san."

"How'd it go?" Sly asked when we finally returned to the Safehouse, looking like he was completely absorbed in a map of the area. It was a lie of course, which was easily identified from the fact that he was staring very intently at a tree instead of, oh say, the Dragon Gate.

"Okay, but I'm never going to be able to look at Murray the same way again," I said with a shrug, watching Rioichi climb into a chair like he had no idea what its function was but figured it was probably sitting, "Also, I need a binocucom."

Bentley swung himself out of the van, wheelchair and all, and held one aloft, "Working on it! Need to sync it up with the rest of them, but then it'll be all yours."

"I love you best."

"You really should have grabbed one before you headed out," Sly said, giving up on the map and flopping back into his chair.

"Don't I know it. Binocucoms make the world go 'round."

"I do not believe that is the case," Rioichi said dubiously, running a finger along the edge of one of his knives in a way that was vaguely threatening.

"Okay," Bentley interrupted before I could enlighten Rioichi about the wonders of hyperbole, "Let's get back on topic here. Rioichi- I have a plan to get us to El Jefe, but it hinges on drugging the guards with your sushi. There's a plant we can use to help us with that near the secret fishing hole you use. I'll contact you with more details when you get there."

"Hai, Bentley-san."

If I hadn't been watching Rioichi leave, I never would have noticed he did. He was kind of disturbingly quiet that way.

Bentley set the binocucom by his laptop and hooked the binocucom up to it, "After this software update, your binocucom should be ready to go."

"I look forward to it," I said, pulling up a chair and sitting on it backwards.

"Can I count on you two to play nice while I go spy on El Jefe with my RC car?"

"Nah, we're gonna storm the castle cause we got bored- is your car dressed like a chicken?"

"I'm going to pretend that was a yes." Bentley rolled his eyes and himself out of the Safehouse.

I shook my head, "It will never cease to amaze me the amount of ideas he comes up with that sound ridiculous, but actually turn out to work perfectly."

"And the ones that sound totally fool-proof crash and burn?"

"Exactly!" I flashed him a grin. Shaking his head, Sly stared at the map and I watched something come over his face before his eyes flicked back to me and had to ask, "What is it?"

He took a kind of shuddery breath, "It's like... you're sitting in front of me, but it's so hard to believe you're really here, y'know? I mean, I spent all that time thinking..."

There was absolutely nothing I could possibly say to that, so I just moved my chair right up against his, kicked my feet up on top of his, and pulled Bentley's laptop to sit on our laps so we could eavesdrop on his spying.

We made fun of both El Jefe's and Bentley's tendency to talk to themselves until Sly's face lost some of that brittle look and I made a mental note to not mind too much if he was especially tactile over the next few days.

"It is just not fair that you wear a kimono better than me," I grumbled, crossing my arms and staring Murray down.

Sly raised his hand, "Um, we've never seen you in a kimono, so if you want to go get one I'm sure the rest of us can be the judge of that."

I opened my mouth to retort but was cut off by Murray.

"There is no need for such a contest, friends! It would only reduce Kaia's morale!"

After staring blankly for a few seconds I managed a, very dry, "Thanks, Murray."

Rioichi, who'd given up on sitting in his chair and was now perched atop it attempting to catch flies with chopsticks, snickered. I shot him a glare and he pretended to have done no such thing.

"Alright guys, if we can focus now?" Bentley wheeled in, dropping my binocucom in my lap. I made an embarrassingly high pitched noise and cradled it to my chest while he set up a monitor and pulled a tablet onto his lap.

"Oh, is this the new slideshow thing?"

"Yes, and I'm going to get through it without you interrupting me for once."

"You just keep telling yourself that."

Bentley glared and I just grinned widely at him, "Anyway," he said, opening up a program we could all see, "Time for Operation: Altitude Sickness. We have all the intel we need. El Jefe has played dictator for the last time and it's time to bring him down! First, we need to open those Dragon Gates. Thanks to Rioichi's special sushi rolls, the guards are out for the count-"

"Don't you mean 'down for the count'?"

"- Sly, you'll need to gain access to the switches in their mouths. Next we'll need to open the palace sword gate. However, the bridge is crawling with guards, so we'll need to create a diversion. Murray, you, Sly, Kaia, and myself will need to distract the guards, once they're occupied, Rioichi can make his way under the bridge to the switch and open the gate. Once we get that gate open, there's nothing to stop us from taking the palace and putting El Jefe in his place! Viva la Revolution!"

"That was kind of lackluster for you," Sly said, smirking over his folded arms at me.

I shrugged, "I've been out of the game for a while, I'm a bit rusty."

"For which I am very thankful." Bentley said, messing around on his tablet, probably creating destinations in the binocucom map, "Kaia, you go with Sly to the Dragon Gates. I want to make sure your binocucom is all synced up and a place where the guards are drugged into unconsciousness is probably the safest place for that to happen."

I nodded and jumped to my feet. I was all for the non-dangerous missions.

Sly stretched, standing as well, "Alright, let's see how out of practice you are."

I opened my mouth to correct him at first, but then let it drop closed. Surprising people was much more fun than correcting their misconceptions.

"Yes, let's."

"Okay, so, did you sell your soul or something since I saw you last?" Sly asked, leaning over the edge of the arch he was standing on to look down at me as I climbed up the bamboo to get there easily, "Because that would explain a lot."

"I really thought you'd learned your lesson about underestimating me Sly," I said, laying a hand over my heart and pitching my voice dramatically, "It pains me to know you think so little of me."

"Alright, you two, can we get on with the mission?"

"Spoilsport," Sly complained, but he was smiling as he pick-pocketed and stealth-slammed the only conscious guard in front of the Dragon Gates.

Stepping around the unconscious guards I looked at the chains that traveled from the dragons' mouths to the rollers in front of them, "Lemme guess, we have to have someone on the rollers and someone to get the switches?"

"I really don't think you need me to answer that."

I glanced over at Sly, but he just gave me that 'what are you looking at me for?' shrug and grin of his and said, "Hey, I'm the one with the fireproof armor."

"Yeah, armor that's three sizes too big for you," I muttered, but hopped onto the roller anyway and caught the key when Sly threw it to me.

He leaned against the roller while I unlocked it, "I haven't seen one of these things since I was eighteen."

"Well, we are back in time."

"She said with absolutely no sense of irony whatsoever." He smirked, but hefted his shield and went to hit the switches to open the Dragon Gates.

Bentley, Murray, and Rioichi had been waiting nearby to join us and did so when they saw the gates open. Sly and Rioichi nodded to each other in greeting, but I found myself staring at Murray again.

"Murray, don't get me wrong, you look great in the kimono, but do you really think it's a good idea to wear it into a fight?"

"Of course!" he bellowed, "Those chumps won't be expecting 'The Most Famous Madame Geisha' to have fists of steel!"

I glanced over at Bentley, who shook his head and waved me closer so he could hiss in my ear, "Just don't question it, he'll change eventually."

"Okay, so can we head up to the mountain now or do you two want to continue whispering sweet nothings to each other?"

Just for that, I waited until Sly turned around and pounced onto his back, wrapping my arms and legs around his torso in a way I'd learned from the especially clingy Tate.

"Hey! What-"

"You must carry Madame Zeroni up the mountain to atone for your mockery." I said in the most serious voice I could manage.

He grumbled, but wrapped his arms under my legs so I wouldn't slip or accidentally choke him, "At least it's more recent than 'The Land Before Time'."

Rioichi looked like he was just mortified to know all of us.

We made it up the mountain to the palace and I was just about to make a crack about the giant tiger statue when out of the ravine rose-

"Seriously? SERIOUSLY?!"

"Ow!" Sly leaned away as much as he could with me still hanging onto him, "What?"

"A blimp! Another bad guy has a blimp! That's it, I quit." I jumped off Sly and turned to go back down the mountain, "Goodbye, friends. I am gone."

He caught my hood without looking, nearly clothes-lining me when he yanked me to a halt, "Bentley, that symbol on the underside-"

"Yup," Bentley confirmed, "It's the same one from the museum and the computer terminal I had to hack to get access to the secret fishing hole."

"So El Jefe's boss is probably up in that blimp?" Murray asked.

"That's what it looks like," Sly swung his cane up on his shoulder, tapping it idly, "Who wants a closer look?"

"Is that an actual question? Because if we're going to vote on it-"

We didn't vote on it, Sly just tugged extra hard on my hood until I started walking with them.

I had to admit, if it weren't for the war criminal and his mysterious 'boss', I would be seriously enjoying the scenery. It was all gorgeous. So was the palace if, y'know, I ignored how it had been built.

This musing lasted until we got to the bridge and saw El Jefe standing on the other side of it.

"You know, we really should have expected this. Opening the Dragon Gates wasn't exactly subtle."

Bentley pointedly rolled his chair over my foot.

Sly took the lead, because Sly always took the lead, it was a law of the universe or something.

El Jefe didn't wait for us to get close, though, "Haha, end of the line, Cooper! Get them, you fools!" The palace gate slammed in front of the tiger just as rat troops started parachuting down from the blimp.

"Okay, you all know what to do... time to kick some butt!" Bentley shouted. I'd have been concerned about him if I didn't know that his wheelchair could probably count as a WMD of some kind.

"My favorite time of the day!" Murray crowed.

Rioichi shot off to the side and I wondered for a second if he was going to ditch us before he paused in slipping over the side of the bridge to give Sly a salute and I knew he was going for the switch under the bridge.

"More guards than I was expecting," Sly mused.

"Ten bucks says I take more of them out than you," it wasn't as stupid a bet as it could have been. Living with Ahanu and Ritsuka, while fun, was like living with paranoid conspiracy theorists. Ahanu had put me through more fighting training than I thought strictly necessary. I was just starting to understand that he'd been planning on me rejoining the Cooper gang from the start and had wanted me to be as prepared as possible.

Sly shot me an incredulous look and, seeing I was serious, shook his head with a laugh, "Let's do this!"

It turned out that Murray actually did most of the fighting, big surprise. This made a lot of sense, though, as he could hit three rats with one punch and the rats he did hit had a tendency to fly back into other rats like a violent line of dominoes.

I got in a few good hits, though, aiming for non-lethal areas. It was satisfying in a way that probably said something about my mental state.

"Kaia, heads up!"

I jerked my head up just in time to see Bentley lob a bomb towards me. Reacting on reflex, I switched to a two-handed hold on my baton and swung it like a baseball bat, sending the bomb flying into the parachute of a descending rat troop.

"That was the last of them," Sly skidded to a stop next to me, "My final tally was thirteen."

"Oh right. We were supposed to be counting."

"You owe me ten bucks by default."

I stuck my tongue out at him, but didn't comment further. I'd gotten in a few good hits, but I'd also taken a couple and I was too busy taking mental stock of whether or not the adrenaline was keeping me from feeling something serious.

Murray had piled the rat troops into an incredibly malodorous piled and Bentley was having his robotic arms give him a massage when the gate opened up and Rioichi flipped up over the railing. Sly grinned and we followed him into the palace.

It all happened so quickly. Rioichi was in the lead, a good distance ahead of the rest of us (defying long held convention of making Sly go first) when El Jefe dropped from the archway above. He was twice Rioichi's size and had no problem first flattening him, then lifting him one-handed by the throat.

"HA!" The tiger snatched the cane out of Rioichi's grasp, easily thwarting the ninja's attempts to reclaim it, "It's mine!"

We barely had time to stop running before El Jefe threw Rioichi at us- I nearly tripped over him.

Rioichi hardly seemed phased by the fairly spectacular beating, he shot up, his priorities clear, "My cane!"

El Jefe tucked the cane into some straps on his back, pulled out two katana, and-

"What!?" I turned to Bentley, who didn't appear to have any more answers than I did. I asked my questions anyway, "How does cutting wood with a katana set it on fire and destroy the bridge?"

Bentley just rolled his eyes heavenward, like he was pleading to a variety of deities for physics to be reinstated as the rulebook for reality.

"Sorry, Cooper!" El Jefe shouted as Sly pulled Rioichi to his feet, "You lose! I need to deliver this puny stick to a new owner!"

Bentley ran his hands over the wheels of his chair restlessly, "He's getting away!"

"Don't worry, Rioichi. Watch after these three- I'm going to kick some tiger tail and get your cane back!"

If I'd wanted to, I probably could have made some kind of case about the benefits of me going along with Sly. But the facts were that he was still far better than me at most everything and climbing across burning wood to face a mercenary general with fire-generating katanas was kind of completely out of my league.

Instead, I settled for saying, "Be careful, Sly. Remember Rajan? Don't let this be like Rajan. You got struck by lightning."

He looked surprised that I wasn't going to nag him to come along, but relieved too, "Yeah, that's not something I'm likely to forget anytime soon."

And then he was off.

Sly had barely made it through the next massive set of gates (I was sensing a theme) before the bridge completely collapsed.

I just sort of stared at it for a second. "We're going to have to do something about that, aren't we?"

"Yup." Bentley said, already looking back and forth between the two sides of the chasm, like he was trying to figure out the best place to secure ropes.

"Fantastic."

"Kaia?"

"Mmm?"

"How good are you with grappling hooks?"

"Is there a negative skill level?"

The turtle sighed, getting out his crossbow, "That's what I thought."

Rioichi was the brave soul who walked across the rope Bentley had managed to fire across the chasm and secure with about a dozen darts. As he said, he was a ninja master and such a task was simple for him.

He was just tying the rope more tightly when the blimp overhead started emitting some truly horrible noises then just- vanished in a flash of blue.

"Bentley," I started carefully, seeing his almost-comical gape, "Did the blimp just do the time-travel thing?"

"Uh-huh."

"Good to know."

Bentley opened up some kind of holographic program and started typing furiously into it, leaving Murray and I to exchange worried glances until Sly came back through the gates across the bridge.

We couldn't hear what he said to Rioichi, but the body language and distinct lack of Rioichi's cane made it painfully clear. The ninja looked really disappointed at first before Sly said something emphatically, prompting Rioichi to visibly shake off the displeasure. By the time they joined the rest of us, both raccoons seemed okay.

"What happened?" I asked, seeing as Bentley was still muttering to himself.

Sly retold the fight ("Lighting? Seriously, are he and Rajan related?") and explained how he'd nearly gotten Rioichi's cane back before he had to dive out of the way of a grenade.

"Then the rat-troopers dropped in, grabbed the cane, and got pulled back up before I could do anything." He reached into his leg pouch and pulled out something shiny, "One of them dropped this. Think it'll help Bentley?"

"Is that a Sheriff's star?"

Bentley snatched it before I could, "It definitely looks like it! This might show us where they're heading! I'll start programming it into the time machine right away!"

"You must rest before you go," Rioichi said firmly, "Even the strongest of trees requires water."

"Does this mean we can try some more of your sushi?" Murray asked, even as Sly was opening his mouth.

"I believe that can be arranged."

"I'm actually curious about this," I admitted to Sly as we started to make our way back towards the Safehouse and sushi restaurant, "I've never tried sushi."

Rioichi twitched and shot me a look that wasn't quite horrified but wanted to be and I mentally braced myself for an evening of being forced to try probably every kind of sushi he'd developed.

I was not disappointed.

Rioichi made us all stick around until we ate something and slept and he was seriously starting to remind me of a crotchety mother hen in the weirdest way.

Then, of course, there came the task of getting El Jefe back to the present.

"No."

"Jinx-"

"No."

"Kaia, if you just-"

"No. Buckets of no. Heaps upon heaps of no. A song of fire in the land of no. I can comprise an ode to no, if that would make the situation clearer."

As El Jefe had been stranded on a platform by his massive statue, we had to go get him. As Bentley had apparently outfitted the van to fly since I'd seen it last, they were just planning on circling the platform until Bentley pumped El Jefe full of enough sedatives to knock him out, then pick the tiger up, hop back to the present, and drop him off.

However, as someone with an extremely dislike of heights and a serious problem with motion sickness, I wasn't too keen on joining them for this little adventure in a flying van.

"Look," I said, as Bentley opened his mouth to try again. I walked over to my backpack and pulled out the belt he'd left behind for me, "Why don't I stay here for a few hours, then put this on and meet you guys in the 1880's?"

When we'd contacted Dimitri, he said that Tennessee "Kid" Cooper's pages were disappearing, which meant we were going back to the Old West, which, ever so conveniently, was where the Sheriff's badge was from. I was pretty dubious that was coincidental.

I didn't know a whole lot about Kid, just what I'd read in the Thievius Raccoonus, so I didn't really know what to expect. I wasn't particularly hopeful, though. Not for any reason in particular, just that the law of averages seemed to indicate that at least one of Sly's ancestors had to be a jerk.

It helped to keep my expectations as low as possible. That way, I'd either be right or pleasantly surprised.

"That... could work," Bentley admitted grudgingly.

"C'mon," I wheedled, "The last thing you want me to do is have a panic attack or puke on all your valuable electronics."

The turtle grimaced at the thought. Sly sighed and turned to Rioichi, "Will you make sure she stays out of trouble?"

"Sly, what do you think I'm going to do? Burn the geisha house to the ground? Or better yet, con the geishas into helping me take over Japan?"

"It seems to be in the best interest of the region for me to do so," Rioichi said in response to Sly, giving me a side-eye of suspicion.

"Seriously you guys. I'm glad you have this much faith in my abilities to incite rebellion, but I don't need a babysitter."

"Kaia-san should be able to aid me in revitalizing the sushi shop while she waits."

I squinted at Rioichi, who seemed smug without actually moving a facial muscle, "I'm not going to like this, am I?"

I didn't like it.

"My fingers are going to be pruny for the rest of time," I grumbled to myself, setting aside the last knife I'd had to wash. Rioichi had a lot of knives and they all, apparently, had to be washed in thousand degree water.

But on the bright side, it had now been long enough that I could escape before Rioichi tried to get me to wash anything else.

"Kaia-san."

Oh for the love of-

Rioichi set a small box on the table by my elbow, "I would be obliged if you would deliver this to Murray-san. I'm certain he has already made his way through the sushi I gave him before he left."

Oh. That was probably true. "Sure," I took the little box and set it carefully in my backpack before shouldering the bag and picking up the belt.

Rioichi was still hovering, like he wanted to say something, but didn't think it dignified for a 'master ninja' to say. It wasn't hard to guess.

"Don't worry," I said with a grin, fastening the belt around my waist, "We'll be back with your cane in no time."

"Master ninjas do not 'worry', Kaia-san." A little tension had seeped out of his shoulders, though, so I counted it as a win.

"Of course they don't." My mental count-down for the belt's activation told me it would be any second now, so I waved my fingers at the ninja, "Sayonara, Rioichi!"

A humoring smile came to his lips and he gave a small bow, "Sayonara, Kaia-san."

The belt jerked around my waist and I found myself in the Time Vortex again.

That's all for tonight, folks, but I know what you're all thinking and yes, we will get Tennessee in the next chapter! Hope you enjoyed and, as always, feel free to check out the blog!