(A/N: Aloha! i'm back, and No, not from Hawaii. Sorry, folks, I've only been to Calirfornia, Nevada, Arizona, and some obscure island in the Pacific that I don't really want to remember the name of right now.)

Sly Cooper: Armed and Dangerous

Tampico, Mexico

5:31 am

The ship was deserted. Of all life, that is. Meaning living stuff. But no one said anything about the dead.

The captain and crew had refused to go quietly, and had fought as hard as sailors could. Armed with shotguns and pistols, as soon as the first officer had stepped on board, they'd opened fire. What was left of that first officer fell into the ocean, and that was when the Shock Guns went down and the machine guns and riot shields had come up. Their superior weapons, armor and training had proved to be all the advantage the police needed to bring the sailors down. Coupled with a few flash bang grenades and the cover of the rest of the ammunition crates on board, the police had been able to slice through the superior numbers the sailors possessed and soon left the ship a bloodbath. Captain Cannings had even made a stand in the wheelhouse, but to no avail. The sawn-off pump shotgun he'd had wasn't enough to penetrate the Interpol riot shields. The hound had been blasted through the wheelhouse window and onto the deck, where he was now laying.

The police had then simply pulled out, since they couldn't be sure of what else the ship might contain that a surviving crew member might set off. A bomb? A call for reinforcements? That was why they left everything on the ship and had simply stationed the vulture to monitor the craft.

However, as Carmelita walked on board, the deck was empty, save for the captain's body, which was sunk, slightly, into the deck, or more precisely, the dent his body had made.

Carmelita readjusted the weight of the horse on her shoulder and reached for the hatch that led into the cargo hold. The thing squeaked open, the hinges having seemingly rusted over in two hours. The hold was pitch black, but the smell of gun smoke wafted up to them, reminding what they had just lived through.

"Watch yourselves," said Carmelita over her shoulder as she descended the steps, still supporting a viciously bleeding Marty on her shoulder, which was starting to grow stained and strained. "Who knows what could have happened in two-woah!"

She slipped, toppling under the equine's mass and dropping said equine. Marty rolled away for a few feet with a dull clunk, but Carmelita had landed on something soft. And still warm…

A sickly red light suddenly sputtered into existence as Penelope lit a flare and held it up, gasping at what she saw. Carmelita looked down…and retched. She had been laying on the body of a Mexican Interpol officer…without a face. He must've been hit by a shotgun blast. She looked behind her to see a puddle of dark red. She had slipped in his blood. She couldn't hold it back this time, and vomited, all over the floor.

Penelope and Guru were now standing behind her, and while Penelope was looking as though she would have to do the same, covering her mouth with her unoccupied hand, Guru only looked slightly discomforted. Came with all that training, maybe.

Once Carmelita was able to pull her head back up and look around, she noticed that Caroline wasn't with them. It took about two seconds for the other two to also realize this.

"I'll go find her!" Penelope eagerly volunteered, and was up the steps before anyone could stop her.

Carmelita sighed and looked back at the hold. The flare had been dropped by Penelope in her dash to escape, and was now laying the pool of blood nearest the steps. By its light, the vixen and koala could see several other bodies. Most of them were crewmen, but here or there were a few bodies of police officers. It had been a helpless defense, but the sailors had managed to take a few men down.

Carmelita looked over to Marty, and saw his own blood pooling. Down here, his shallow breathing made his chest seem still, and he seemed like just another corpse from a valiant battle. That's how he would've wanted to die, anyway. She could tell that much.

Getting up, Carmelita walked over to Marty and lifted him, with a large amount of effort, back onto her shoulder. She wanted to get out of there as fast as possible. The smell of death, gunpowder and blood in the hold had that sort of effect on her. As quickly as she could, she hurried towards the Med bay.

Penelope, meanwhile, was standing with her head over the side of the ship, retching as she lost her stomach contents to the foggy waters. She finally stood up and, wiping her mouth, looked around. Bentley was still where she had left him, sitting next to the still unconscious form of Dimitri, staring mournfully into the fog. She understood his grief. He'd made that wheelchair after failing several times, and managed to use the working one for about three years. Now, one gunfight and it all fell apart. Literally.

She took her eyes off her sullen boyfriend and ventured down the gangplank, slightly, looking for Caroline. She still had her Colt, which she drew, even though the water had ruined the ammunition. It was still a gun, and people feared guns.

A brief sweep of the area showed no signs of the Labrador. No evidence she had gone anywhere at all. And then she heard it. Further down the docks, she heard a creak. Then another. Every five seconds there was a creak. Slowly, the little mouse made her way down the dock until she was practically right on top of the noise.

And she tripped over it.

Caroline made no indication that she had noticed Penelope tripping over her. In fact, she didn't show any indication to noticing much at all. Further away, deeper into the city, there came the echoes of a gun fight. A gang war, probably. But while Penelope looked over warily in the direction of the noise, Caroline didn't move a muscle. The creaking actually turned out to be from her slowly swinging her legs as she looked into the water. She was actually considering drowning herself, that's how bad she felt.

"What have I done?" she thought. "It's bad enough that I agreed to go along with Marty and the gang, and even worse that I helped kill the Shuker brothers, but this time, this time I've dug myself a hole I won't EVER be able to get out of."

Another part of Caroline's mind, the 'outlaw' part, couldn't really see what the big fuss was about. "You're in love! C'mon, don't you see your opportunity? Don't tell me you haven't noticed him gazing at you!"

"He was probably having the same perverted thoughts that all the other sons-of-bitches I meet have."

"Are you crazy?! He's protected you, and he hasn't even made an advance on you!"

"That's the point!" Caroline snarled in her mind. "He's not interested in romance at all! Why, I bet he hardly thinks of his 'friends' as more than business partners! When all this blows over, what did he say he was going to do? Oh, yes, start a new life IN AMERICA. He'll never have time for the likes of me, or any other woman. He's a tough-as-nails, down-to-business, no messing around, muscle bound gangster, for Christ's sake!"

As the canine grappled with herself in her mind, Penelope looked around, nervously, then placed a tentative hand on Caroline's shoulder, attempting to bring her back. But, at this point, only the blast of a shotgun could do anything to grab her attention.

Which it did.

Two cars came screaming into the harbor, each firing at the other. Machine gun fire peppered the door of an El Camino while a shotgun blast neatly tore the cloth top off a Mustang. Caroline jumped at the gunfire and scrambled to her feet, drawing her Webley and taking a bead.

Even before she could get it, Penelope was dragging her backwards, saying "No! If you get involved, you'll only be torn apart! That's a gang war!"

Realizing she was right, Caroline reluctantly backed up the gangplank with Penelope, revolver still pointed into the blur of screeching metal and flying lead. As soon as they were safely on deck, Penelope took Caroline's revolver and cracked it open.

Empty.

"I figured as much," said Penelope, handing the revolver back to the Labrador. "I remembered Marty's and Julio's compromise. And since you dove into the water when the shooting started, you wouldn't have been able to shoot even if you had any ammo."

Just this simple sentence laced with logic seemed to snap the Labrador out of her adrenaline fueled gun rush. She blinked, then turned as another shotgun blast, seeming to have hit the driver of the Mustang, knocked the car off the docks and into the water. The El Camino swerved around, stopped for a few minutes while its occupants cheered, then sped off.

Caroline sighed, then turned back to Penelope, accepting the Webley back.

"You better go on down into the hold," said the mouse, glancing at Bentley, who was still sitting there. "Marty's not looking too good. Carmelita took him into the Med bay, but she's not a doctor, and I don't think even Guru can do too much to help."

Caroline's face became stony, and, holstering her Webley, she began striding towards the hatch to the hold. Once she was out of sight, Penelope turned to Bentley to snap him out of reverie.

Caroline barely noticed the carnage in the hold as she made her way straight to the Med bay, one thing on her mind; Marty. He might not notice her the way she noticed him, but that didn't mean she didn't still care about him. Finally reaching the door labeled Med Bay in red paint, she turned the wheel lock, then pushed the heavy steel open to a sight that was slightly disturbing to her. Carmelita was arguing with the Guru while both were trying to patch up Marty's wounds and stop the bleeding.

"I just need you to seal them up a little, not bring his leg back out of nothing!" snarled the vixen as she continuously wrapped a roll of gauze around what was left of Marty's right leg. Guru, meanwhile, was cleaning the stumps where Marty's missing fingers had been, trying to make the horse's knuckle hair clean enough to see what he was doing. The Guru responded in annoyed Aboriginal.

Carmelita, who'd learned to understand the koala to a degree, snapped back "Oh, well excuse me, your highness, if saving a-" she hesitated a fraction of a second, then continued "Friend's life tire you out!"

They continued to argue in this fashion, until Caroline made her presence known with a sharp "Oi!"

Both fox and koala shut up and turned to Caroline, blood dripping from the red liquid coating their arms up to their elbows, blood dripping out of Marty's wounds…finally, Caroline managed to tear her eyes away from the equine's form to look up at the odd pair in front of her.

"What's the situation?" she asked as calmly as she could, fighting to keep her voice from shaking, moving over towards a blood refrigerator to give herself something to do.

Carmelita picked up a bloodstained towel and attempted to wipe her hands, but it did no good. Guru simply muttered something, and instantly, his hands were clean.

Carmelita, fed up with wasting time with the cloth, simply threw it onto the same chair she had draped her jacket on, then sighed, turned back to Caroline, and said "Well, to put it frankly, not good. He's lost a lot of blood, and while Guru can-" the vixen's eyes narrowed as they snapped over towards the koala, who ignored her, cleaning up the numerous puddles of Marty's blood on the floor.

Carmelita continued, however. "Patch up Marty's wounds enough to make the bleeding stop, I don't know if he can live with that much blood-loss."

Caroline had opened the blood refrigerator, relieved to see all the bottles of blood, but devastated when she realized that she didn't know Marty's blood type. Carmelita, meanwhile, had caught on to what the canine was up to, and had pulled out a book on basic medicine, ignoring the fact that she was getting blood all over the front and back covers.

Setting the book on the counter, she opened the cover and turned a few pages until she reached the table of contents. The book was over 1000 pages thick, and a large section was devoted to blood. Flipping to the first page of the blood section, both women gulped at the small print. Small print meant a lot of words. Carmelita sighed, then said "Well, we better get cracking, kid. We got a lot to read, and the more time we take, the faster Marty bleeds."

Mexican Highway

6:18 am

Sly woke up to an aching head, and aching back…basically, an aching EVERYTHING. He heard other groans around him, and raised his head, opening his eyes.

Murray, Julio, and Mikhail were in the van with him, each rubbing their injuries, except Julio. The wolverine was still out.

Sly rubbed the back of his head, feeling a burn mark there where one of the Shock bolts had hit him. There was a hole in the middle of Mikhail's shirt, the cloth around the burned skin scorched. Mikhail cursed in Russian, muttering "And this was my best shirt!"

Murray was rubbing his gut, looking like he was going to be sick. The bottom of his shirt and the top of his pants were burned off, a scorch mark surrounding his pink belly button. Julio's vest and shirt had both been burned through.

After looking at their surroundings for a bit, which were actually very dull, Sly stood up and looked out the barred window. Endless desert rolled away from him, the heat distortion shimmering on the horizon.

It was only when Sly looked back into the van that he realized just how hot it was. Pulling off what was left of his shirt, he was going to reach for his cap to fan himself with, only to find it gone. Of course. What would the police care if he lost his hat?

Forgetting the hat momentarily, Sly pressed his ear against the wall that led to the cab. Though he was only a beginner in Spanish, he could get the gist of where they were going, and stood up sharply, a look of panic on his face.

"They're taking us to a prison outside of Mexico City," He said. "Murray and I are to be detained and interrogated, while you and Julio" he pointed, first to the panther, then to the still unconscious wolverine, "Are to be…" He couldn't say it. He finally did, in a hoarse whisper, on his third try.

"Executed."

(Sorry for the crappy ending, I just couldn't think of anything else.)