Chapter 9

After Fire in the Sky

Café Le Da Vinci

I was sitting in the lovely café, sipping on it's wonderful coffee, until my pager's intercom started going off. I looked at it and smirked a little seeing that the Inspector found my little present back from the Bayous. I clicked a button and spoke into the pager, "Inspector?" Immediately I had to pull my ear away from it as the Inspector's lovely voice came in on the other end. "DARN YOU DYLAN! I COULD'VE BEEN ABLE TO FIND SOMETHING OUT TO HELP YOU, BUT YOU JUST HAD TO GO AND RUN!" I sweated a bit with a smile. Glad to know she hadn't lost her fire. "Sorry Carmelita, but I doubt even you could've convinced the Contessa to not put me away." I heard her sigh on the other end of the intercom. "Listen Dylan…me and you need to talk. Where are you?" Something doesn't seem right. She knows that the manhunt is still going on. Hmmm, "I'm at Café Le Da Vinci. I'll order you a latte." After that, the pager went silent. I just went back to sipping my own cup of coffee.

An hour later, I heard Carmelita's car pull up and out popped the lovely Vixen herself. From the window I lifted my cup to her as a smile came to her lips, walking in. "Dylan, are you ok? Is Kip alright?" She asked worriedly as she sat down across from me.

"She's fine. Trust me it'll take more than a couple of brainless apes to catch her, physically and mentally." I smirked, taking another sip. Carmelita seemed to have a worried look on her face, "Um anyway, were you able to find anything on the Fiendish Five?"

"Panda King has been taken down."

"Darn! That leaves only one last guy left, and we don't even have anything on him except shadowy images in the sky."

"Hm?...Shadowy images in the sky?" My eyes narrowed. "Inspector, how much do you know about Clockwerk?..."

"Ngh, v-very little. Like I said, all we have are the shadow pictures." I fixed myself up in the seat and leaned my arms onto the table, placing my fingers in between each other. "Clockwerk is a…being of vengeance from what Connor has told me. Ever since the beginning of time there was this Owl who had hatred towards the Cooper family and there legendary outings in history. For years he has hunted down each individual Cooper, stalking them from the shadows, always finding a chance to…" To demonstrate, I took one of the toothpicks from the center holder and snapped it in two. Carmelita gulped and nodded, obviously getting my presentation. "Now today, Clockwerk is continuing his work on Sly."

"So one of Clockwerk's descendants is-"

"No, no, no Carmelita. Not a descendant…Clockwerk is the same bird of prey that first started hate on the very first Cooper in history…" Carmelita choked on some of her coffee as she coughed some, "Wh-What?! Th-That's impossible! H-How can he-"

"I dug up some info. It was actually really hard, even for someone of my expertise. Apparently Clockwerk embedded himself with mechanical that was solely charged by his anger, making him live for eternity until he has completely wiped out the Coopers."

"D-Do you know where this guy is?"

"Carmelita…I'm not stupid."

"Huh?! Wh-What do you-"

"Don't act like I don't have five snipers aiming at me right now." Carmelita's eyes widened as she looked down. "I'm sorry…the Contessa twisted my wrist and said she'd put you on the "Kill on Sight" list."

"Well I hope you can forgive me."

"Huh? For what?"

"This." I pushed the table up, shocking Carmelita off her guard as I quickly rushed to the side and held my stun baton to her from behind. "D-Dylan?!"

"Shh. Give me the walkie talkie to your sniper boys and hidden cops. If not, then you get 10,000 volts coursed through you. And trust me, it doesn't feel good." Carmelita glared at me as she handed me what I wanted. I clicked on the the walkie talkie and spoke in, "Alright boys, where's the Contessa? I know she wouldn't leave Carmelita alone to deal with me, as you can clearly see how that went."

"Dylan I swear if I get out of this I'm going to make your right eye go black!" Carmelita sneered. I really do hope she forgives me for this. A few minutes later, the Contessa walked out into the street, making me walk out the door with Carmelita. "What do you want leech?" The Contessa insulted.

"Only to warn you about something."

"Warn us?"

"While I was in China tracking down the Panda King, I made contact with Sly Cooper."

"What?! Why didn't you tell me this before you two-timer!?" Carmelita thrashed about.

"Not now Carmelita!" I said, charging the baton a little. "Now, while I was…negotiating with the Cooper gang, they got a threat message from the leader of the Fiendish Five, Clockwerk. He's made a Doomsday Laser that he'll use to obliterate every major city if he's not stopped. Sly and them are already on their way there. So you both stop Clockwerk and capture Sly Cooper. Kill two birds with one stone."

"And where will they be leech?" Contessa crossed her arms.

"Ah, now you see that's where we make a deal. First, I want you to call your men off." The Contessa gritted her teeth before she raised up a walkie talkie and spoke into it. "There. What else?"

"Second, I want the man hunt called off." I could tell her eyes weren't the only things that were red this time. "Don't comply and I fry your best inspector's head off." I bluffed. I could never hurt Carmelita. I just hope it works. The Contessa looked down before looking back up, "Ok…you can have your freedom, IF we actually get them! Now, the location!"

"Krack-Karov Volcano, Russia." I said before releasing Carmelita. She then gave me a huge fist to the face.

Outskirts of Paris; Dylan's Hideout, Secret Room

I had an ice pack held over my eye as Kip was going over the plans to get into Clockwerk's Krack-Karov base. Or….trying to at least. "Aaaah! It's no use! Clockwerk has the place completely sealed down! We can't go through the top opening since he has anti-air missiles and the only way we can get through is the front door. Even if we ended up going through the front, he has lasers, mines, and minions waiting for us! We'd need an army!" Kip finally threw herself back into her chair as she sighed. Not a moment too soon, an email notice popped up on our screen from Bentley. I smiled, "Or maybe just a good team of thieves." I opened up the email:

To Dylan Asmadus,

We need your help. From what Sly told us about you that he heard from his father, not only are you a good info seeker, but you also made some pretty high maintenance devices that you used for more hands on info seeking. Here's the deal. We need your gadgets to hack into Clockwerk's mainframe and we need an extra man to blow his Doomsday Laser sky high. In exchange, we can give you a base that's under the police's search radars and is without a doubt completely hidden from the eyes of public. We'll wait twenty four hours for your response before we go ahead and attack Clockwerk.

Sincerely, Bentley

I smirked and typed in, "When it comes to new bases, I got it covered. The only reward I want out of this is to just see the look on Clockwerk's face when he finds out it's me who foiled his plans. Now….are we talking Plutonium or Utonium based explosives? :)"