Sly 5: Thieves Forever Part 5

Penelope POV: They're finished! And a fine craftsmanship if I say so myself! The Clockwerk Talons 2.0, now with 35% sharper edges, and serrated razor blades. Penelope, you genius! Soon, there will be no stopping our partnership and the Cooper Gang will pay dearly for the humiliation they have caused me. And yet, I still feel it. Me and Bentley. The spark is still there, and I can't shake it. This is only the third time this evening I've considered throwing in the towel and trying to convince him to be mine again. And for the third time I convince myself that I am being foolish. Clockwerk will be here soon. And then, it begins…

(Celtic Scotland, 700 BC) – The Cooper Gang plus Wolfgang (and minus Panda King...) arrive in Scotland in Slaigh MacCooper's time. Wolfgang is the first to notice the heavy machinery in the area, much to Bentley's annoyance. He points out that the Iron Age settlements had only just began to use tools, and these construction works are long before their time. The gang heads into a nearby barn and sets up. Murray is eager to meet Slaigh MacCooper, the only Cooper (Except maybe Bob) who specializes in brawn rather than brains. He goes with Sly to the town centre where the construction is thinnest to look for him. The pair watches as the workers line up for rollcall, inspected by an English sheep. He bleats on about the task at hand, and that the deadline is in two days. A worker on the far side of the line begins to snigger at his posh accent. The sheep glares furiously at him, and pulls out a huge laser with an hourglass in the centre, and fires it at the worker. The worker disappears in a cloud of tachyons. The sheep dares anyone else to jest, but they all stay silent. After dismissal, Sly notices a shape moving along the rooftop, in pursuit of the sheep. Sly follows, whilst Murray reports the findings back to HQ.

Sly catches up to the figure, which turns sharply and almost knocks Sly's head off with a huge stone cane. It was Slaigh MacCooper, without any doubt. "What yer doin' followin' me laddie?" he asked in a strong Scottish dialect. "Think I wouldn't notice, didye? I'm a Cooper, son!" Sly replied "And so am I!" He then went on to explain his background to Slaigh. Slaigh laughs and says he has a good humour, and reveals that the sheep he is tailing is nicknamed Doc, due to his technical proficiency. Doc had appeared a couple of months ago and enslaved the town's leader in an underground cell, and construction and followed in days. Slaigh reveals he had been nearly caught sabotaging one of the diggers, which he calls a "metal monster". Slaigh asks whether Sly wishes to accompany him on a mission to clobber Doc, but Sly triers to talk him out of it, as he doesn't stand a chance. Slaigh agrees to meet the gang, but never promises to stay out of trouble. The two return to HQ.

Bentley has pulled up a database of criminal sheep, and Sly helps him narrow down the suspects. Slaigh watches out of the corner, confused. Wolfgang brings him a mug of ale, and Slaigh downs it without hesitation. Bentley brings up Doc's profile. Apparently an eager student of the scientific arts, he attended the same college as Dr. M, and was a constant academic rival with the monkey. When Dr. M' science project beat his, he swore revenge on him, and later his affiliates, the Cooper gang, also. Bentley plans to get Murray and Slaigh to demolish the crane in the east so that construction will be severely hampered. Sly has to find a bagpipes costume to compete in a pub contest to win a job in Doc's works. Bentley will work with Dimitri to collect data on underwater hydraulics, using Bentley's hacking to power down security mines and gates in the river. Slaigh decides to go along with the plan, although Bentley is worried by his headstrong, reckless nature. Sly meanwhile addresses his fears about Clockwerk to Wolfgang. Wolfgang finally opens up about his mission. He comes from a time in the not-so-distant future where all hope is crushed by cyborgs led by a highly advanced upgraded Clockwerk. Clockwerk controls all time travel in the land, but Wolfgang worked with some rebels and acquired his pocket device, and set about acquiring information on Clockwerk. He met Sly's dad, Connor Cooper, in 1980'S Russia on a mission to undermine the Fiendish Fives operation, and Connor told Wolfgang to meet all the Cooper ancestors and gather information on Clockwerk. And so Wolfgang had travelled to Egypt, where he met Sly. He also reveals that he is Sly's unofficial "uncle", granted the status by Connor for helping the Cooper's. Sly is overjoyed to have a living relative, and finally trusts Wolfgang completely.

As Slaigh and Murray demolish the crane, they are attacked by Doc in a huge plough. Eventually the plough is powered down by Murray's Thunder flop and crashes through a layer of construction, and disappearing into the ground. Slaigh tells Murray he considers him a kindred soul, and the two go to get ale. Sly with Carmelita manage to trick some local guards into parting with their bagpipes and Sly competes against Angus McDawgle, the reigning champion in an epic music duel. Eventually emerging victorious, Sly shakes hands with Doc (who has re-emerged from supposed death in the plough) and Doc gives him a job as promised. Sly also discovers that the bagpipes have a unique frequency that can open locked doors. Dimitri, with assistance from Bentley, reverses the hydraulics in the river, causing a huge explosion in all the toilets in the works. We see the guards running around screaming with toilet paper on their legs and Doc emerges from his workhouse, furious, cursing Slaigh MacCooper.

Back in Cooper HQ, Bentley plans an assault on Doc's workhouse, to destroy whatever he has been building, and ruin his operation. Bentley then wants to calmly interrogate Doc on Penelope and the time travel syndicate. Murray and Sly, now firm friends, set off together to capture Doc. What they are blissfully unaware of as they arrive at the town centre is the assassin waiting for them on a nearby roof. So they are completely unprepared for the darts which hit them in the heads and send their world to black.

Meanwhile Sly and Bentley discover that Doc has hired a mercenary assassin called Cartwright, a lemur with incredible agility and combat skills that rival even Sly's. Bentley believes he is behind Murray and Sleigh's disappearance. To catch out Cartwright and claim his key to the workhouse, Sly must masterfully use Slytunkhamen's Shadow Power ability to become invisible. In the meantime Bentley works with the Guru to break the security turrets blocking the workhouse's main doors. Sly confronts Cartwright, and a long battle ensues, with Cartwright wielding throwing knives and a long spear. Eventually the two tackle each other and fall from the rooftop and through the foundations of the underground tunnel. Dazed, Cartwright prepares to kill Sly with his spear, but is knocked out by a surprise entry from Wolfgang, who pulls Sly up. Sly is grateful for his intervention, and Wolfgang tells him that Connor would not be happy with him if he let anything happen to his son. The pair carries Cartwright out of the tunnel, but not before Sly released the angry occupants of the town from their holding cells. They go on to clubber all the guards in the main town and retake their properties.

The ball now in motion for the heist, the Cooper Gang prepares to enter the workhouse, only to discover a huge futuristic craft hovering over the town. A dozen ladders drop down onto the streets, and goons sporting the Penelope symbol shimmy down them. Murray and Slaigh fight them off whilst Sly and Bentley break into the workhouse with Wolfgang in pursuit. They arrive to discover (To their horror) the fully assembled and completed Clockwerk frame 2.0 strung up from the ceiling, and Penelope and Doc hauling it up to the roof for pickup by the craft. Penelope turns to face the gang, and laughs and tells them that they are too late. Bentley tries to convince her to stop the madness, but she wouldn't listen. She brags about the strength of her time travel syndicate, revealing herself as the "benefactor". She claims that her plan to destroy the Cooper clan is now unstoppable. Doc yells at them that he is off with Penelope, to be her husband, as she promised, and given a position of power in her new organization. Penelope laughed at him, telling him that she no longer needed him, and so is useless to her and betrayed him by pushing him from the top layer of the workhouse, where he hits the floor hard and breaks through it to the tunnels below. Bentley goes off in pursuit of Penelope. Sly and Wolfgang destroy any future technology and free Murray and Slaigh before following suit.

On the rooftop of the workhouse, Bentley manages to catch up with Penelope as she reaches the crafts landing gear. She turns to face him, and expresses her sense of regret at betraying him specifically, before zapping him with the original Clockwerk Eye she had concealed in her pocket. Murray arrives and is horrified to see Bentley on the floor in a trance. He runs furiously after Penelope, and manages to miss the landing pad narrowly, and falls on down to the ground, landing in a pile of cabbages below. Sly and Wolfgang reach the rooftop and Wolfgang picks up the concussed Bentley. Without warning Doc suddenly bursts through the rooftop, beam in hand. He begins to scream about his reward that has been stolen ungraciously from him, and we learn that his first name is Lawrence. Sly tells him that he has no honour for a thief, and Doc fights him. Sly uses the Bagpipe costume to blast him into collapsible foundations and Doc is eventually defeated. Guru holds him in an aura bubble, where he was last seen pounding the floor in protest and sobbing.

The gang is in low spirits. They know that the cooper clan's greatest threat ever is emerging, in the form of the reincarnated archenemy of the clan, Clockwerk the Russian eagle owl. Wolfgang eventually breaks the silence and suggests that they go and find Le Paradox, and interrogate him about the plan. The gang agrees, and the plans are set in stone. Slaigh thanks the gang for their help in freeing the Celts from Doc, and tells them that they when (NOT IF) they find Murray, to tell him he is always welcome at the pub. Then he leaves, stone cane in hand. Calibrations complete, with Carmelita's shock pistol in the time machine, the rapidly decreasing Cooper gang travel to modern day Paris to stop Penelope.

Penelope POV: I heard him coming before he landed, in that terror-instilling way he does, wings outstretched, and eyes soul-piercingly yellow. He spoke in his guttural voice: "The plans are complete, are they not?" to which I agreed. Inspecting them, Clockwerk's eyes shifted to a look of pure evil, and his knife-like talons flexed. His beak broke into the cruellest smile I have ever seen. "You have been a great help". I told him that we had work to do yet, but suddenly I was no longer able to stay cool under his glare. He laughed in a way which froze my blood cold in my veins. "You have no work to do any more, mouse" and he stepped menacingly towards me. "You think a person who has lived for hundreds of years with only one thought: hatred for the Cooper legacy, wouldn't notice the mind-control implants you've installed in my eyes?" I began to shake. The owl had seen right through me, and I felt bile rising in my stomach. "I am no 'ones puppet. I am Clockwerk, the one true master thief. I don't take well to betrayal, as you'll soon discover." I turned to run, barely feeling my legs, but his ever-sharpened talons whisked me off my feet and into his direct line of sight. His eyes bore holes in me, as the grip on my body tightened. "Thank you. And goodbye". His grip intensified and as my world faded to black forever, my last thoughts were of Bentley.

Clockwerk POV: As the lifeless body of the mouse dropped to the floor, I flexed my talons in appreciation of my first real kill in a while. The primal instincts overwhelmed me. I needed more, and soon I would have it. I turned to the workbench, and spread out my robotic body before me. I lay inside the metallic coffin as the bindings snapped shut around me, and clamped into my skin. The pain was only momentary, and as my biology rapidly changed, I no longer felt anything. As my new enhanced eyes wired into my sockets, the room returned to me in the sharpest focus I have ever seen. A rat scurried across the floor. With lightning reflexes I whipped it off the floor and crushed in my serrated talons. A smile curled on my lips. Clockwerk was born again. The Cooper Line would never be safe again. My greatest scheme ever. As I turned to the window, a lifeless city lay before me. Moscow, my home. Soon, though, it would be so much more. The clouds above began to crackle and a lightning bolt struck a spire. A storm was coming. I smashed through the window and felt new life course through me as my new metal wings took flight for the first time. I had an impulse to terrorise the sleeping city below, but that would have to wait. History awaits…

PREVIEW OF THE CONCLUDING PART: "Clockwerk's master engine is well guarded. But we can break in. Thieves like us can do anything" said Connor. Sly looked with admiration at this father rallying his troops. He was intensely proud to be the child of this brave, brave man. Connor landed a spire jump on the jagged broken fencing next to where Sly was standing. He tuned to face Sly. "You know, I may be approaching fifty but I am not stupid." He smiled warmly, "You may hide your acne but there is no mistaking a Cooper" He grabbed Sly's shoulders and looked closely into his eyes. "Sly?" he said. "Hi, dad" said Sly, his voice wobbling…

PART 6 OUT 30/3/13