As the results of her latest failed search came up on her laptop, Carmelita pounded one hand against the wooden table and brutally massaged her forehead with the other as she snarled at the screen. She let out a long breath full of frustration through her clenched teeth. She threw her head back, shoving all of her weight at the cheap wooden chair she sat on. It had been thirty-five minutes since she and Bryce had gotten into the hotel room, thirty-four minutes since they had decided who got which of the parallel twin beds. Thirty-three minutes since she had placed her laptop on the dinky table against the wall and heard the horrible wooden chair screech against the floor as she sat in it, all the while informing Bryce that she didn't care what channels the shitty CRT TV in the room got. Thirty-two minutes since he had gone to take a shower while she decided to do a little more research on why Cooper might be going after Rainier, and thirty minutes since she started going through Interpol's database to try and find out more about the diamond. In order for her to navigate said database, she had to use the horrible, terrible, spawn-of-Satan search engine that Interpol used.
It took fourteen minutes of unfruitful searching for her to grow annoyed at the Interpol logo taunting her in the top-left corner. It only took three more for her to loathe it.
At twenty minutes in, she had started to curse at it under her breath as the same results kept on popping up no matter how she adjusted the search terms.
Within twenty-four her voice had risen and she had foregone English for her native tongue of Spanish .
At the twenty-seven minute mark, she ceased using any recognizable language as she yelled at it.
By the time Bryce came out of the bathroom it had been a full half hour of Carmelita slamming head-first into the brick wall that was the Interpol search engine, and at this point she hated the stupid search bar, the stupid font, the stupid layout, the stupid programmers of the stupid thing, the stupid diamond, her stupid badge for having the same logo as the stupid thing, her stupid laptop for being the stupid thing to expose her to the stupid thing, and the hotel room's stupid wallpaper, although to be fair, that wasn't the search engine's fault. It was quite horrendous.
Bryce, now in a pair of boxers and a pajama tee, saw Carmelita fuming in the chair, looking like she was about to bounce on her laptop and go for the throat. He went towards Carmelita. "Something wrong?" he asked as he walked, stopping when he was just outside of her reach.
"Gah!" Carmelita growl-screamed as she made a gesture with her hands like she was throwing a pair of invisible yo-yos at the laptop screen. Taking this as an invitation to look, Bryce strode up next to her.
He understood the moment the screen came into view. "Oh that damn thing. Sucks, doesn't it."
Carmelita angrily nodded.
"What are you even searching for?" he asked.
Carmelita sighed and ran her hand down her face. She tried to turn around and face him, but, not being in a swivel chair, only succeeded in thrusting her shoulder forward a bit. She recovered and covered began to rub her eyes. "I was trying to look up the diamond, see if it was maybe stolen or something to explain why Rainier lied to me."
"And, what?" Bryce asked, "You can't find anything about it in the database? Maybe it's legit."
"It's not that there's nothing about it in the database," Carmelita said, her voice rising on every word. "It's that I can't get the database to tell me if there's nothing about it in the database! I don't know it's name so I can only look it up by describing it and it keeps on matching the description with things that have nothing to do with it! Here, look at this!" Carmelita pushed the laptop over so Bryce could see it more clearly. Bryce looked at the search terms: blood diamond, red, hexagon, twelve triangular planes, 1 ½ cm thin. He looked down. The first five results were: A crown with twelve gems in it, a gemstone checker set, a ruby that was not 1 ½ cm thin, another gem-studded crown, and a stolen car with gems in the tires. Bryce had no words.
"Why are you keen on finding this out?" he asked, changing the subject. "I thought you just wanted to catch Cooper and his gang?"
"I don't like being lied to," Carmelita said. "More importantly, if Rainier got the diamond illegally, it's our job to bring him to justice and return it to its rightful owners."
Bryce looked annoyed for a second before feeling guilty and wiping it off his face. Carmelita was right. "I know someone who can tell you for sure if the diamond's a big deal or not," he said.
"What?" Carmelita asked in surprise. "You do?"
"Yeah, an old friend of mine. If that diamond's important to anyone, he'll know."
Carmelita looked at him skeptically. "Really? You're sure?"
"Absolutely, one-hundred percent," Bryce swore. "He's never failed me before on something like this."
Carmelita still felt a bit uneasy about it, but it was late, she was tired, and she wanted a change of scenery and a shower. "Okay, I'll trust you," she said, her words carrying a hint of warning.
"Great. Just write down the best description of it you can right now so you don't forget in the morning."
"In the morning?" Carmelita asked. "Why not call them right now?"
Bryce looked at her like she was crazy. "Carmelita, if I called him this late, he'd personally swim across the English channel, hike through all of France, jump the French-Spanish border, and come straight here to bust down our doors and try to kick my ass. And I don't feel like paying for a new hotel door."
Carmelita was so tired, and Bryce had said all of that so seriously, that she had to laugh. Bryce dropped his serious face and smiled once the first got past her lips. She turned back to her laptop, quickly typed out a description of the diamond, very easily considering how much she had just had to do that, and went off to take a shower as Bryce grabbed his tablet and headphones and flopped down onto his bed.
Carmelita turned on the shower and stripped, making sure all of her dirty clothes were in a distinct pile from the clean ones she brought in. Fortunately, the shower water was still hot from Bryce and she was able to jump right in. As she let the water beat against her face, she felt all of the anger and stress she had built up ooze away. Once she was able to breath calmly for the first time in twenty minutes, she let her mind go blank as she started cleaning herself. By the time she turned off the water, she was herself again.
She toweled herself off and put on her nightclothes. She took a look in the mirror and smiled at herself, a habit she had picked up from her mother back when she was little. The faint smile still on her face, she stepped out of the bathroom and back into the hotel room proper.
She heard Bryce speaking. She turned and saw him on his bed with his headphones in, under the covers but propping his upper body against his headrest. He was smiling and talking to someone on his tablet.
"Well, in the poor kid's defense, pulling pigtails never stops being fun." He paused for a moment. "Oh no, my great secret, you've figured it out!" he said teasingly. He glanced up from his tablet and saw Carmelita awkwardly standing in front of the bathroom door. He turned back down to the screen. "I think it's time for me to go to sleep." His teasing smirk shifted to a heartfelt smile. "I love you, too. Sweet dreams." He hit the end call button. He looked up at Carmelita, still smiling happily. A few seconds passed. Carmelita felt embarrassed, like she had just seen Bryce naked.
"Who was that?" Carmelita asked.
"My fianceè." Bryce looked back down at the screen as he started gesturing with it in his hand. "She was telling me about one of her students who kept going up behind this girl and revving her ponytails like a motorcycle."
"Oh." Carmelita was finally able to move her body. She went over to turn off the main light in the room. "Do you mind?" she asked.
"No, not at all," Bryce said as he turned on his desk lamp and began carefully arranging his bedside table for the morning.
Carmelita began crawling under the covers of her bed. "Your fianceè's a teacher?" she asked, still feeling a little awkward.
"Yeah. She teaches teens back in Lyon."
"Oh. That's nice."
Bryce made a noise in the affirmative. "I'm going to sleep." He clicked off his lamp. "G'night."
"Yeah, I should too," Carmelita said, thankful for a way out of the conversation. "Good night."
Earlier, At the Safehouse
"Come on, Bentley!" Murray said. "Get outta that corner and face The Murray like a man!"
"Why don't you come and push me out?" Bentley said.
Sly placed another clean plate onto the stack on the countertop next to him. As he started rinsing the next, he turned to look over his shoulder at his friends' battle. Murray and Bentley were sitting next to each other with massive controllers in their hands, focusing on the two tiny cars in the square outline at their feet.
Murray was slowly growing more incensed, muscles bulging as he gripped his controller to the point of leaving small indents in the plastic, rocking back in forth in his little chair as he tried and failed to coax Bentley's car out of the corner and back to middle of the ring where they could fight without possibly ringing out. Every time Murray tried to ram his car out of the ring, Bentley would turn his car just enough that he could get out of the way and Murray would drive straight past him out of the ring. Bentley was the picture of smirking composure, slouching in his wheelchair with only one hand loosely gripping the controller as the other propped his head up.
Sly shook his head and turned back to the sink. It was his night to do the dishes, and Murray and Bentley had decided to stay up a little while to keep him company in the safehouse's main room. After they got bored watching him wash dishes, Murray thought it might be fun to get out a couple of Penelope's RC cars and have them sumo fight. Sly had to admit it was nice to have some background noise while he hunched over the sink, even if Murray's moans of anguish got old after the fourth straight time he lost.
"No!" said Murray. Sly turned around to see what had happened. Murray was slouched in his seat, with one arm loosely gripping his controller as it hung at his side while Bentley did a little victory dance with his controller in his lap. Both of them were looking at the floor, where Bentley's car was just inside the ring, having pushed Murray's out when it tried backing up to get some room to build up speed.
Bentley finished off his dance and turned to his friend. "Well done!" he said as he extended a hand which the pink hippo shook without hesitation. "Wanna go again?"
"No, thanks!" Murray said, holding his hands up in a position of surrender. "The Murray has been humbled enough for one evening. Besides," Murray yawned. "I need to sleep."
Bentley nodded before letting out a yawn of his own. "I should get some rest as well, if I want to be able to give you all a sensible plan in the morning," he said. "Good night, Sly."
"I'll see you guys in the morning," Sly said as his friends went to the sleeping room in the safehouse, where the gang had set up all of their temporary beds, and he began washing the last of the dirty plates. He smirked, remembering what happened last time Bentley stayed up all night working on a plan. The turtle had needed to prop himself up on his desk as he explained to Sly and Murray exactly how many sparrows they would need to get from the pumpkin seller to distract him so that he wouldn't call for help as they robbed the jewelry store, refusing to listen when Murray gently tried to explain to him that they were robbing a casino.
We were all such idiots back then, Sly thought as he remembered how gung ho he was with the plan, confident that he could convince an octopus to follow him through the forest. He placed the last plate onto the stack and turned off the sink. Sly lifted his arms and stretched his back out with a triumphant sigh, working out the kinks that had appeared from being hunched over for so long. He began stretching his other body parts as he tried to think of a way to kill a few minutes.
This was a long standing problem for Sly. He always went to bed later than everyone else, which meant that there was always a stretch of time where he had to amuse himself every day, all while taking care not to disturb any of his friends or alert anyone that there was a gang of thieves in whatever safehouse they were in, which meant he couldn't make too much noise.
He twirled his hat around one of his fingers, throwing it up into the air and catching it on a different finger, but that quickly got boring. He considered organizing his tool pouch to avoid another situation like the one he had faced on the rooftop, but dismissed the idea on account of being lazy. He picked up his cane and began doing practice swings with it, trying to tire himself out enough to go to sleep, but the more he exercised the more awake he felt. He put the cane down with a sigh, leaning it against the wall before sitting down on a chair across from it.
He let out another, deeper, sigh as he started tapping his foot. Sly was a man of action, always working towards some purpose, whether it was serious, like reclaiming the Thievius Raccoonus or taking a jar of cookies, or for fun, like teasing Carmelita or even just running towards the next rooftop. Sitting in a room, counting the seconds until he could start doing something again, was torture.
As he sat, his eyes started tracing out the hook on his cane. The symbol of his family. All the ancient techniques for dealing with every kind of obstacle imaginable, and they never came up with a way to deal with boredom? Sly idly wondered. How did Dad deal with it? Sly thought, surprising himself. But, once the trail of thought began, he couldn't stop it. Did he flip cards into his hat? Tiddlywinks? Maybe he meditated. Maybe his dad taught him a trick, passed down through the family.
There was a very good reason Sly didn't think about his father much. Sly had dedicated his early life to reclaiming his family's legacy and proving himself worthy of the name, trying to become everything a Cooper was meant to be. He'd nearly killed himself several times trying to get the Thievius Raccoonus back, and eventually he'd done it, a feat he'd followed up on by permanently getting rid of his family's worst enemy. But after all of that, he still had one niggling doubt in the back of his mind that wouldn't go away.
As he sat in his rickety chair, drifting to sleep, separated from his surrogate family by a wall, Sly Cooper wondered what he was missing; what parts of being a Cooper his ancestors had neglected to put into the book.