Sly Cooper: Armed and Dangerous

Paris, France

5:30 am

3 hours after the end of the previous chapter

Dimitri sat up in his bed in fascination as Bentley finished bandaging his newly doctored wound. But that wasn't what caught his interest. What he was really watching was a horse, a wolverine, and a black panther sitting in a corner, cleaning some guns, even though they hadn't been used in hours. Enough ammunition to start a small revolution sat around them. Black shotgun shells, brass rifle cartridges, copper-slugged pistol rounds, even clips and magazines for automatics.

Having reached a sort of truce with the Cooper Gang, the McCoy Gang had brought in all their possessions. Sly watched with slight curiosity as each one contributed in silence. They had formed a pack line of sorts and, without asking for any help from the Cooper Gang, tossed the luggage down the line, until it was inside the safe house. Now, they just sat there, cleaning the well oiled guns, saying nothing.

Sly still sat at Carmelita's side. The vixen was still unconscious, but Bentley had bound her to her bed anyways, for when she woke up, as soon as she saw both the Cooper Gang and the McCoy Gang in front of her, the first thing she would do would be to try and arrest them. Sly absently brushed a strand of hair from her face as his thoughts turned of what had happened in the last two years.

"Now, remember, Sly, Chief Stern is, well-"

"Stern?" Sly suggested, half joking, half serious.

Carmelita rolled her eyes, but nonetheless said "Yes, he is, and I don't want to lose my job, or for you to lose yours, so make sure you behave."

Sly gave a mock salute and said "Aye, aye captain."

Carmelita sighed, then opened Chief Stern's door. The German Shepard sat at his desk, doing some paperwork. As soon as Carmelita opened the door, he looked up, over the tops of his reading glasses, then flicked his eyes past the vixen to Sly, then frowned. Sighing, the dog took off his glasses and motioned for them to come in. Sly shut the door behind him and took a seat next to Carmelita.

There was silence for a few seconds, while the Chief looked Sly over, then said "Do you remember anything?"

This was the moment. Sly had to be the world's best actor. He put a puzzled look on his face and screwed up his face, pretending to be thinking.

"Not much," he said after a few minutes. "All I remember was waking up in that cave on that island. Carm- I mean, Inspector Fox, found me and told me who she was, then who I was, and we got out of there. I lost the pouch I wore and that weird stick I was holding. I haven't a clue where they came from or where they went."

Silence.

Finally, Chief Stern smiled slightly and said "Do you really know who you are?"

Sly put on a bewildered expression as panic rose inside of him. Would the Chief slap the cuffs on him and send him straight to prison anyways?

"Well, Inspector Fox told me I was Constable Sly Cooper, one of the best in the Interpol force."

Okay, so maybe he was overdoing it. Chief Stern, however, nodded and said "And let's not forget that you were in line for a promotion to Inspector. However, in light of your amnesia, I'm giving you a two year drop from that list to get everything in order. But first, could you step outside while I speak with Inspector Fox?"

Sly blinked as if confused, then nodded, got up, and went for the door. As expected, just about the entire Paris force was crowded outside the door, listening in.

The Chief, pounding his desk with a fist, yelled "BACK TO WORK!"

The officers all scrambled away, and Sly stepped out into the now empty hallway, closing the door behind him, then immediately gluing his ear to it and listening in.

He could hear the Chief say "His skills could be of some value. What I want to know is how did you manage to catch that sonovabitch in China, then let him get away, only to catch him again?"

Sly growled at the insult.

"Chief, look, all due respect, don't insult Cooper. He has no idea what's going on and what's happened. All he will know is what we tell him. So, if we can set that straight and maybe get him to remember some of his techniques, he could be one good cop." said Carmelita, arguing in his defense.

Silence.

Then, Stern chuckled and said "What happened to the hostile fox whose favorite catchphrase was 'Once a criminal, always a criminal,' and do I detect a hint of annoyance in your voice? Have you gone soft Inspector? Or maybe," The Chief's next few words were so soft, Sly had trouble hearing them. "You're starting to like him."

Sly could tell that Carmelita was blushing, since he could hear the squeaks of the chair she was sitting in as she shifted her weight uncomfortably.

Sly could also tell that the Chief was grinning broadly as his voice said "How's this; you're to watch over him, and he'll be your partner. He'll learn the ropes from the best. Now go. Get outta here."

Sly quickly moved away from the door a split second before a grinning Carmelita threw it open. As soon as she walked out, she regained some composure and grabbed Sly's arm, pulling him down the hall and saying "C'mon, ringtail, we got some work to do."

Sly was jerked off memory lane as Bentley slapped him over the head with a fly swatter, saying "Hello, Earth to Sly, do you copy? Geez, I knew you could sleep through anything, but this is just ridiculous."

Wheeling away, muttering a few choice curses, Bentley stood next to Penelope. Murray and the Guru were standing there as well. Sighing, Sly walked over next to them, and all of them focused on the wolverine in front of them. He had a smug sort of grin on his face, as though he thought he had everything organized to the exact detail.

"Good day, everyone," he said. He sounded Hispanic, but there was something odd about it.

"Since my…uh…teammates are still arguing over which guns should go to whom, I will start the introductions. I am Julio an Raz Benedeck, the brains and sniper of the gang. If you'll come this way, please."

Julio turned towards the stairs that led to the basement, where the McCoy Gang would be taking up residence. During Sly's lapse into Memory Town, all the guns had been moved downstairs, and they could hear the arguing voices through the door. Julio opened it, exposing Bentley's lab. The McCoy Gang would be staying in a large storage room off to the side, as long as they didn't break anything in the lab.

The door to the room was open, and they could see horse and panther arguing over something in front of them. Suddenly, the horse threw a punch, which the panther barely dodged, and the horse's fist rammed into the wall, creating a small spider web in the bricks. The horse either wasn't affected, or simply chose to ignore any pain he may have felt, for he took another swing at the panther, who ducked, but only barely managed to dodge the would-be blow. It went on like this until, suddenly, both of them had drawn guns and had them pointing at each others heads. Julio decided to step in at this point and play peacekeeper.

"What the hell are you two arguing about? It's just a small matter of who gets which gun. Does it really matter enough to do this?"

Turning to the panther, Julio said "Mikhail, are you willing to make a birdhouse out of Marty's skull just because you think Sly should have an automatic handgun?"

The panther suddenly looked unsure.

Julio turned to the horse and said "And Marty, is it really worth making a canoe out of Mikhail's head because you think Sly should have an M-16, which, by the way, would be very hard to carry and use while he pulls off those tricks."

The horse looked uneasy, his trigger finger relaxing slightly. There was silence for a few minutes, and Sly could've sworn that it was so still it could've been a photograph. Then, Marty and Mikhail put their guns away and shook hands, smiles on their faces again.

Once everything was settled, the Cooper Gang lined up in the lab, since there wasn't enough room for that inside the McCoy room. Marty started looking the Cooper Gang over, one by one, and started throwing occasional comments and questions back to his teammates, like "What gauge is that shotgun?"

"Ten."

"I would've liked something more powerful. Can we modify the choke ourselves?"

"Yes, but then the chance of it imploding increases by about ten to sixty percent, depending on how much you modify it."

Or something like "How much ammo have we got for the BAR?"

"Just a little over three hundred."

"That's not nearly enough."

"Well, we could always substitute it with some ammo from the Enfield, or all of it if it isn't used."

It seemed that Penelope was part right, in a way; the McCoy Gang definantly knew guns.

Finally, Marty nodded, and Julio disappeared into their room, then reappeared, tottering under the weight of all the guns they had brought. Marty smacked him with his brown peasant's cap and snarled "Get some help from Mikhail next time" once the guns were in a heap. Marty then sorted through the pile, setting a few aside, discarding others, and pulling their regulars out.

Then, he turned, holding the shotgun, and said "Get the shotgun ammo belts and ten boxes of ammo."

Mikhail disappeared, then reappeared with belts that had empty loops on them for ammo, as well as a crate with the boxes of shells in them. The boxes each held fifteen rounds, so there were easily 150 shells in there. Murray was even more surprised when Marty unceremoniously handed him the scatter gun, the belts, and the ammo.

Murray dropped everything but the belts and said "Two belts? But-"

"Put them across your chest. In an X shape." Said Mikhail.

Murray did as he was told and the result made him look like a bandit.

Marty picked the shotgun and ammo up and handed them to him, saying "You got earplugs?"

Murray nodded, pointing at the ear holes in the mask he was wearing. Bentley had long ago made special electronic earplugs that blocked out loud sounds, but allowed softer sounds like regular speech. This way, none of the gang would go deaf from gunshots or explosions.

Marty pointed to the belts and said "Start filling those up."

Murray nodded and sat down on a seat, ignoring the loud protest it made as his weight settled.

Sly was next. As well as getting his cane back from Bentley, he also got a Beretta semi-automatic. Apparently, Marty and Mikhail had come to a truce, for it had been modified to be an automatic, and also had a longer clip, so instead of six shots, there were eighteen now.

"Wow," he said simply, once he heard about this.

"Yes, it wasn't easy," said Mikhail, drawling slightly in his Russian accent. "Marty, whose passion for firearms is enough to make him dissect every new gun he gets, and Julio, who just plain knows a helluva lot about everything, spent hours fixing it to have more ammo, but still stay the same proportions."

Mikhail seemed to like to go into details when he was laid back, but he almost never smiled.

Penelope, after much discussion and arguing between the McCoy Gang, got a .45 Colt handgun from Julio, who said she needed a form of protection in case she was without her teammates and gadgets.

All of the Cooper Gang noticed that the McCoy Gang never referred to each other as 'friends,' just teammates or comrades or, in Marty's case 'boys.'

Guru didn't get a gun, and that suited him just fine, and he said so in that annoyingly cryptic language he spoke. Marty called it gibberish, Julio called it Aboriginal, and Mikhail said nothing about it at all.

They had no idea what to give Bentley, but the turtle had some ideas of his own. Wheeling over to one of the lab benches, he opened a panel and showed them the experimental retractable machine guns he was creating. They would slide in and out of panels on the arms of his wheelchair, with the barrels pointing out the front. This seemed to fascinate Julio, get Marty interested to a degree, and Mikhail just plain bored.

Heading back upstairs with their new toys, Marty showed Dimitri a new version of his spear gun. With an increased ammo capacity of ten spearsper tube he loaded in, Dimitri could easily use it for above water fighting, as well as still effectively use it underwater.

The Panda King had been unable to come at all, leaving Julio and Bentley to have to team together to try and replace his explosive skills. Sly was thinking of showing Mikhail a few basic moves from the Thievius Raccoonus, and Murray, wanting to see how strong Marty was, challenged him to a boxing match, which caught everyone's attention. Mikhail and Julio looked at their boss with keen interest, for apparently, Marty had never had an opponent in a friendly brawl. Finally, after a few minutes, Marty agreed.

"We can hold off target practice until tomorrow." He said, tipping his peasant's cap back on his head.

"Target practice?" said Sly, holding up his gun, which was fully loaded. "Don't you just point and fire?"

Mikhail, cursing,darted forward, seizing the Beretta, and pulled the clip out, then handed both back to Sly, saying "Don't aim a gun at all unless you intend to destroy your target. Did you want to destroy Marty? No? Good, then keep your gun holstered and unloaded until we're out in the field."

Marty sighed at Sly's question and said "No, you see, that's with a shotgun."

He looked pointedly at Murray, who pulled said shotgun from the sheath attached to one of the belts and showed, barrel pointing down, that it was unloaded.

Satisfied, Marty turned back to Sly and said "With a rifle or pistol, you get one bullet, and it just doesn't make sense to simply point the gun in the direction of your target and fire. Unless you're swinging an automatic, there's going to be a thousand to one odds that you'll hit your target. You all need to get some practice. Even if you don't for a short time, your skills could get rusty. It happens to everyone. Now, as long as no one's intending to blow anyone up, Murray, let's get some boxing equipment and get started, shall we?"