(A/N: Hello, peeps! Sorry if this chapter isn't as good as the others, I'm kinda sick and my mind isn't where its supposed to be. Well, at least its a chapter.)

Sly Cooper: Armed and Dangerous

Paris, France

12:36

"You're joking."

Marty sat in the chair next to the cot, having just been told by a smug wolverine what his punishment for bringing Caroline back would be.

"I have to take down the weapons racket…by MYSELF?"

It was insane.

"Why can't you just blow the place sky high, like we planned?"

Bentley stepped in at this point, smirking and looking as equally smug as Julio.

"Well, as it turned out, there weren't as many explosives in the safe as we were counting on. We attached the concussion bomb Julio had to a bundle of dynamite, and all we managed was to blow up an office and send two or three cars flying. Not enough this time, though. Just about the entire construction on that building is stone. So, you're going to have to go in there."

"Yes, but ALONE?" Marty objected, pointedly. "That's suicide! The reason we came up with the explosives plan was because of the--I shouldn't have to remind you--half dozen shotgun packing bouncers. Whattya have to say to that?"

"Relax, comrade," said Mikhail, stepping forward. His face showed no emotion, but you could tell that inside, he was grinning ear to ear. The panther held up two items, and as soon as Marty saw them, his outlook on this job changed. In one hand, Mikhail held a Kevlar bulletproof vest. In the other, a satchel of grenades.

Mikhail saw the gleam in Marty's eye and said "Yes, beautiful, aren't they? We managed to get them from the gambling racket, hidden in a crate full of profits."

He then handed the horse both the vest and satchel, cracking a small smile. Marty looked at and held the two odd gifts like they were glass, ready to shatter any minute.

Another grin, making Caroline shift a little bit, lit his features, and he looked up, saying "You gotta deal! I'll come back with whatever weapons and ammo Shuker has locked up in there!"

It seemed as though his thoughts about this job had changed, slightly.

Bentley and Julio exchanged another smirk and then motioned for everyone to go out. Marty watched them all go, and saw that only Mikhail managed not to look smug.

As soon as they all left, he shut the door and muttered "Stupid bastards."

The look on his face, however, said something entirely different. He was grinning ear to ear, and Caroline's stomach was doing back flips, which was only made worse as Marty pulled off his shirt to put the bulletproof vest on. The poor canine's mind froze at the sight of his thickly muscled torso, from his knotted arms down to the six pack of his abs. This didn't last for long, as Marty wasted no time zipping up the Kevlar vest. However, it only made his look even stronger.

"Very little to the imagination, what was I thinking?" wondered Caroline in awe. She finally found her tongue after several attempts.

"Just what do you DO?" she finally croaked.

"Hm?" said Marty, in the process of pulling on another muscle shirt, then his wool-lined leather jacket in order to hide the Kevlar.

Caroline rephrased the question. "I mean, do you work out or something?"

A look of comprehension dawned on the horse's face and he laughed, smiling again—blast him!—and replied "Yeah, sometimes. We got a training room back at McCoy Manor in Naples. The only thing I usually use is the weight machine though."

He didn't say anymore, but Caroline was dying to learn just how much he could bench.

Finally, Marty had his leather jacket on, hanging open, and she had to admit that it over the muscle shirt concealed the vest very well. Marty then walked over to a closet and opened it, rummaging around for something, sometimes leaning over and presenting Caroline with an irresistible view. She frantically shook her head. It would definantly be difficult to get rid of THAT image.

However, so was the next one, which revealed itself as soon as Marty stepped back, holding a Thompson in one hand and a shoulder bag full of ammo in the other. Inside the closet was a gun rack, holding who knows how many of the aforementioned firearms. Caroline's mouth hung open, and as Marty turned around, closing the door behind him, he saw the look on her face.

Realizing that she wasn't gawking at him for the first time, he looked back into the gun closet, chuckled, and said "Like what you see?"

He then opened the door wider so she could get a look. Before he could do much else, though, a nasally voice, strangely crackly, said "AHEM."

Both the equine's and canine's eyes flittered around the room at this, Marty's left hand taking hold of the handgrip below the barrel of his Tommy gun. Finally, both spotted, at almost exactly the same time, the video camera and loudspeaker next to it.

Marty shut the closet door with his foot, muttering "Goddamn turtle."

Turning towards the door, he grabbed the satchel of grenades on his way over, saying "I'll just be out for a few minutes, sweetheart. Just taking a stroll." He then winked at a very takenaback Caroline, stepped out, and closed the door behind him.

Caroline blinked a few times, then lay back down, feeling the bandages on her side and back pull slightly as the material of her shirt rubbed against them. She closed her eyes, suddenly very tired from the day's events.

However, before ten minutes had gone by, the door slowly opened again, and there stood Bentley and Julio. They both came in, Bentley shutting and locking the door behind him as Julio turned off the overhead light, then set a flashlight down on a trunk, positioning it so that when Caroline sat up the beam would be right in her face, then nodded to Bentley, who started typing into the computer in his wheelchair. At once, a siren filled the room, waking Caroline up and making his snap up straight. However, as soon as she did, her face was caught in the glare of the flashlight, and she threw a hand up to shield her eyes just as the siren stopped. There was silence for a few seconds as she tried to figure out who the two figures in front of her were.

Suddenly, there was the scrape of gun metal on leather, then the click of a gun cocking and clack clack clack of a revolver cylinder turning. Then a voice spoke. A nasally voice that she instantly recognized.

"Now, Lieutenant Newkirk, while Julio here has you covered, I'm going to ask you a few questions." Caroline could tell that she was going to be here a while.

Meanwhile, Across Town

12:43 pm

Marty loaded a magazine into the Tommy gun, pulling back the cocking pin on top. Strapped to his leg was his holster with the Desert Eagle sitting loosely in it. Straight ahead was the butcher shop that he was looking for.

Activating the Comm. link in his ear, he tested the radio link by saying "Bentley? Julio?"

"They're busy right now Marty, sorry." crackled a voice in his ear.

Marty frowned as he recognized Sly's voice.

"Busy doing what?"

"They didn't tell us, but don't worry; before they left, they hacked the security cameras on the top and bottom floors and left me, Murray, Carmelita, Penelope, Guru, Mikhail and Dimitri here to watch you screw up-I mean go through the operation."

In the background, Marty could hear snickers and whispered jokes. Rolling his eyes, he said "Alright, but if I die in there, I am NEVER speaking to you guys again."

There was a momentary silence while the recipients of the joke tried to figure it out, and Marty took that time to have his own, albeit very short, private celebration.

As soon as he was finished, however, he moved towards the butcher shop, cutting them off before they even started by saying "Alright, I'm going in."

"Ten-four," responded Penelope, who had apparently wrested control of the radio away from Sly.

Marty looked up at the closed sign and grinned, taking a step or two back, then rushing forward and slamming his shoulder through the glass part of the door. He rolled to keep momentum, going past the owner, a warthog, and right into a frog, whom he flattened against the wall.

There was a moment of silence before guns went off, but Marty took it to glance at the frog, grimace, and say to the other three gunmen in the room, a duck, a beaver and a flamingo, "Oi! Somebody get the number of that bus that flattened him?"

That when guns drew and lead flew.

Marty held up the Tommy gun with one hand, pulling the trigger time and time again, sending bursts of half-dozen shots towards the gunmen before pulling a grenade out with his left hand, jerking out the safety pin with his teeth, and holding the handle for a few seconds before tossing it. This technique, used in war, is known as cooking a grenade, priming it to explode a few seconds or minutes earlier after being thrown. In this case, the effect was instantaneous.

Before the grenade hit the floor, it went off, killing the beaver, flamingo, and duck, as well as wounding the warthog. In such close proximity, the steel fragments of the grenade are hard to avoid. Marty did so, however, by knocking a table onto its side and ducking behind it. He heard said fragments drum into the table, and others into the wall behind him. Slowly, Marty raised his head above the edge of the table, gun at the ready.

But it was useless.

Everyone but the warthog, who was choking on a piece of steel caught under his collarbone, was dead. Or so he thought.

As he walked towards the warthog, intending to see what he could do for him, something rammed into him from behind. Marty realized that the frog was still alive, and was trying to get his hands around the horse's throat from behind. Marty simply ran backwards, into the wall, turned around when the frog released him, slammed a left hook into the amphibian's jaw to put him off balance, then grabbed his shirt with the same hand and put the barrel of the Tommy gun to the man's head and pulled the trigger. Blood splattered across the wall, and the frog slumped forward. Marty let go of his shirt, and the body crumpled forward, hitting the ground.

Turning back to the warthog, Marty quickly changed his mind about helping him when he saw the man's dead body, eyes wide open and hands at his neck. Sighing, the horse slung his gun over his shoulder stepping over to the warthog's body.

Gently, he closed the man's eyes, then removed the still warm hands from his neck, muttering "I don't know you, but you shouldn't have died this way. Rest in peace, friend."

Crossing himself momentarily, for his family had been Catholic, Marty then pulled the gun down from his shoulder, heading for the stairs, muttering into the Comm. link "First floor clear. One civilian fatality."

"Roger," came the voice of Carmelita. What were they doing, taking turns at the microphone?

Rolling his eyes, the equine stepped up the stairs, approaching the door. Now would be the hard part seeing as how there would be six shotgun packing bouncers, all muscle-bound gorillas according to Bentley and Julio's observations.

As Marty reached the second floor, he was rounding the corner towards the door when a pipe swung at him out of nowhere. Before it connected, Marty had drawn a bead on its owner, a frog, and his finger was about to pull the trigger when the pipe made contact…with his groin. Marty's eyes went wide, and he jerked the trigger, sending a spray of lead into the frog's torso. However, the damage was done, and Marty was hunched over, feeling wave upon wave of nerve-wracking pain.

In his ear, there was a resounding "Ooooooh," from all the males back at the safe house, and Marty's eyes flashed around, landing on the video camera in the corner of the hall.

"That looked like it hurt," came Sly's voice, sounding like his face was screwed up.

"You're telling me," came Murray's voice, sounding like his teeth were gritted, hard.

Dimitri however, was having the time of his life, howling with peals of laughter in the background.

"Hah Hah! Now that's what I call a nut-cracker!"

"DIMITRI!"

Came the yell from just about everyone standing there. Marty, however, was not focused on the argument about to take place.

Instead, his eyes were focused on the door that was swinging open, the black figure-eight eyes of gun barrels facing him, and the sound of six sawn off double-barreled shotguns being cocked.

Immediately, Marty threw himself back down the stairs as first one, then eight blasts ripped through the air, peppering the wall behind where he'd been. Recovering slightly from his injury, Marty managed to get back up before he went very far down the stairs, taking hold of his Tommy gun and pressing himself to the wall.

Quickly, another grenade appeared in his hand, and he once more pulled out the safety pin with his teeth, cooking the grenade for a few seconds before tossing it around the corner. He heard the explosive bounce off the wall with a metallic clink! before it exploded, masking the cries of pain. Marty waited and, hearing no more gunshots, peered around the corner.

The grenade had exploded in mid air, right in the doorway. All six bouncers were dead, as well as the weapons dealer. Marty would've proceeded forward, had it not been for the fire from the propane tank on the mini barbeque that the bouncers had obviously been using to cook some steak or chicken, who knew. All Marty did know was that the flames were licking towards a box of ammo, stacked next to some other.

"Oh, shit," he muttered, eyes widening as the box caught up in flames, ready to ignite the ammo.

Quickly, he scrambled back downstairs and managed to leap out the door as the gunpowder in the ammunition ignited, blowing up the rest of the ammo, which exploded in a rush of heat and light, blowing the top of the butcher shop off and catching the bottom floor aflame. Marty sat up, breathing heavily, and looked back at the now burning shop.

Standing up, he slung his Tommy gun over his shoulder and said, into the Comm. Link "Well, good news is, I got the job done; bad news is, none of you had better sent your guns to relatives as gifts."

(Like I said, sorry if this chapter isn't as good as the others. The next will be better, I promise! Oh, and a reminder, don't forget to check my profile for sneak peeks! Oh, and review!)