Updating a little early today so I can go to bed and actually get some sleep before work tomorrow.

Or, alternatively, I could update early, plan on going to bed, then start writing and suddenly it's 3 am. Probably that.

Enjoy the chapter!

It was four hours later when I was woken up. I suspected that Bentley had waited until the very last second and probably delayed the slideshow a bit, but I also suspected he'd lie if I asked him about it, so I kept quiet.

"Thankfully, we've managed to retrieve the ThiefNet computer. However, all the plans stored inside are now compromised. For now, Jing King remains Tsao's prisoner. Yes, we are going to free her, but that's not enough. Oh no, for this heist, we really need to put the screws to this guy, he's earned it."

"Amen to that." I said, stretching as much as possible in my tiny little chair in the corner without accidentally kicking the Guru.

"So we're cleaning out his treasury as well, as feat impossible without Murray's van. Unfortunately, all that time in the ice has ruined its poly-cellular battery. I'll need Sly's help to acquire a new one, which won't be easy as Tsao's gone all out with security. He's even resorted to black magic dragons and hopping vampires patrolling the streets. We need to even the odds before the wedding."

I sighed and shook my head. You'd think I'd be used to unnatural phenomena by now, but no, I still wanted to run screaming through the streets. I yawned instead.

"Sly, you and the Panda King will work to gather fireworks to blow up the vampires' crypt. No crypt, no more vampires."

"Where's Buffy when you need her?"

"Kaia, you'll be manning the binocucom station. I know, I know, not your favorite option, but we need someone to keep an eye on all of the goings-on while we're separated in the field."

I actually didn't mind too much. I was still a bit tired and black magic and vampires were the last things I wanted to deal with. Still, I wasn't going to tell him that, "Fine, but you all owe me your lives!"

"Whatever. All right, team, let's get to it!"

"There are going to be fangs everywhere!"

"…"

"… right… I'm just going to head back to the Safehouse."

"… yes… do that…"

"Aw, don't worry, Sly, I'm looking forward to the rain of fangs too!" I was doing the rubber pen trick as I spoke when I paused, thinking of something, "Wait, wouldn't that be dangerous? How are these vampires created, are they the bite you and you turn into a vampire sort or do they have to suck your blood and then you suck their blood, like in Buffy the Vampire Slayer?"

I heard him sigh, but when he spoke, it sounded like he was smiling, "You know about Buffy, but you don't know who Ringo Starr is. What would I do without you?"

"Hey, Buffy is a classic." I grinned, settling my chin on my crossed arms, "And I know that Ringo Starr is a famous person, but I don't know specifically which famous person. And you'd die of boredom." I frowned as I saw the icon popup of a conversation going on via binocucom that I didn't know about. Penelope and Murray? "Sly, I'll see you in a bit, I have to monitor whatever tomfoolery is about to go down."

"'Tomfoolery'? What are you, ninety?"

I turned off his channel and switched over to the one Penelope and Murray were using, "Uh, guys, what are you up to?"

"I found a way to listen in on Tsao's phone conversations." Penelope sounded pleased with herself, "I'm having Murray break open the General's phone router and I'm on my way to go rewire it."

"Um, are you sure that's a good idea?" I mentally flashed back to the slideshow, "Bentley didn't say anything about that being necessary."

"Well every little bit helps, right?"

'Not when you don't run it past Bentley!' I screamed in my head. I opened my mouth to produce a much nicer version of this when, via Murray's binocucom screen, I saw him break the box open and immediately the view-screen fogged up.

There were the sounds of much coughing and hacking, before he fell to the ground and wheezed, "That's… bad… gas…"

Penelope gasped, "This is all my fault! Hang on, Murray, I'm coming!"

I bit my lip hard and watched helplessly as Murray was loaded and tied onto a cart and powder keg, being pulled to the top of the mountain. I wanted to run out and help, but there was no way I could catch up to those guards in time or take them on my own.

I switched to Sly's channel and tried to call him, but received silence in response. His screen said he was fine, but for some reason he wasn't responding. Then I tried to call Bentley and got the same result.

Of all the times for them not to be listening! I was really starting to panic when I heard Penelope start talking again, having reached where she expected to find Murray.

"I'm too late! He's as good as dead!"

I opened my mouth to reply, with what, I had no idea, but I was overruled.

"No, there's still a chance! Use your RC car, it should be fast enough to beat the lit fuse up the mountain. It's the only tool we've got to save Murray."

"Bentley? … Bentley, did you… did you- lock me out of the binocucom station?" I saw red. "How did you even do that remotely?!"

He didn't respond, but I know he heard me. I watched as Penelope's RC car chased, passed, and ultimately beat the lit fuse to Murray, managing to somehow, against all odds, run into a wall and knock an icicle free just in time for it to snuff out the fuse.

"Yes! The Murray lives! I will never forget you, brave little RC car! We will be friends forever! You can ride in my van!"

"Bentley, why did you lock me out?" I asked, "You'll notice I'm being very calm. The only reason I'm being so very calm is because I can still see your screen and know you were three feet from Murray and could have saved him at any time, but let Penelope do it. I assume you have an explanation."

There was a bit of silence before he replied, "Penelope messed up, but we need the ingenuity she is capable of. In order for us to see that, she had to fix her mistake. I locked you out because you would have prevented her from doing that and I'm fairly certain the amount of yelling you would do would be detrimental to her voicing her ideas in the future."

"…" That made sense, but I was still mad. I had to have the last word, "… And you have a crush on her." I disconnected the binocucom, everyone was on their way back to the Safehouse, and sat back, sighing.

Sly and Bentley returned first and I took the opportunity to say, "Sly, that was mean, letting Carmelita think she'd finally caught you."

"It was Bentley's idea."

"Devious."

"Thank you."

"But since she's here," this had been gnawing at me since I saw her patrolling, "Do you think Inspector Garter is here too?"

The Safehouse fell silent. "It's possible." Bentley admitted finally, "We'll certainly have to be on the lookout for him. He's somehow managed to keep completely off the grid since being assigned to your case, I can't track him at all. Not even a train ticket."

"Do you think he's doing that incase you're tracking him," Sly asked, trying to balance his cane, "Or because you are?"

I was confused by this question, but it cause Bentley to think hard, "I don't know, but if I had to choose, I'd say because of me."

Now I was even more confused, "Why would Inspector Garter know you'd be tracking him?"

"Because Kristian grew up at the same orphanage that we did." I almost fell out of my chair, but Bentley kept talking, "I was there long before Sly or Murray and so was he. He was one of the oldest kids to come to the orphanage, at thirteen. I was… I think I was seven or eight. I idolized him for a long time and, for his part, he didn't tell me to get lost. He became distant in high school, but I guess he remembered enough of my love for electronics to know to go completely off-grid when he started to track us."

"And I didn't know this until now… because?"

"Well, you didn't ask. Ooh, acid glare, but really, it just didn't have a chance to come up." Sly gave a disarming grin that probably would have had Penelope swooning at his feet, "But you know now, right?"

I opened my mouth to deliver a biting retort, but then the Panda King came in and I shut up, returning to willing the cup of snow in front of me to melt faster. Okay, so I'd gotten a bit paranoid from my cyanide scare. I didn't want to drink any of the water we'd brought with us and I was scared of the tap, so I was melting snow. Shut up, snow is good. Now it was all a matter of how long I could go without eating…

Bentley cleared his throat and began the final slideshow with a sadistic little smile, "Time to free Jing King, rob General Tsao blind, and send him up the river. I call it Operation: Wedding Crasher. This will be a multi-pronged job, with two groups running simultaneously. I'm sure I don't need to stress the importance of the schedule to anyone?"

"Us, somehow deviate from the original plan? Never."

"First, Sly, Murray, and Penelope will make their way through all the security in Tsao's treasure temple, then hand off the goods to me for loading into the van. Meanwhile, the Panda King and Guru will tunnel beneath the palace, creating an escape route for Jing King. Sly, you'll have to pull double duty, taking care of any topside security designed to detect subterranean assaults."

"I can't help but notice that I'm on neither of these teams."

"I'm getting to you. With all that done, I'll use my grapple-cam to lure Carmelita into the palace, where we'll try to get her to take Jing King's place. Then, with the girl and loot in hand, we run for it!"

"Into the sunset?"

"Actually, we'll be doing this in the early hours of the morning, so-" sigh, "Yes, Kaia, into the sunset."

"Okay, and what's my job?"

"Oh, I think you'll like this." He hefted a large backpack from underneath the table, "How would you like to cause an avalanche?"

I gave him my most charming smile.

"… Well." I said aloud, looking up at the dragon twisting itself into convoluted shapes in the sky. "There's something I never thought I'd see."

Everything had gone precisely to plan. And then, one fateful day, Murray was born. And then, some twenty-five odd years later, he decided to cannonball into a treasury with foundations so rotted through you could see out the other side.

I'd heard the crash like a giant firecracker just as I finished setting the explosives. My job was to cause a small, controlled avalanche to prevent General Tsao from giving chase after the van by filling in the only road out of the valley with snow after the van had passed through.

At the sound of everything going wrong, though, I ran back into the valley. This was just in time for me to witness the massive red dragon rise from the water. No fair, how come the stone dragon came for Tsao and not Mulan?

Wait, focus, it just grabbed Penelope.

I stuck the detonator for the explosives into my backpack and ran for the pagoda. The hole in the wall was on the top level, I might be able to figure something out from there.

There was no need, though. When I got up to the fourth level and the small, empty room, I saw Sly shoot up, towed by a firework. He landed on the spines on the dragon's back and spire jumped up to its head, where he proceeded to beat it senseless with his cane.

He fell once or twice when the dragon rolled, but his paraglider carried him to safety and he was back up there on the next firework he could find. I cheered with everyone else when he glided back down with Penelope.

Then, as the van started to drive off into the 'sunset', I realized that I'd been an idiot.

Bentley, along with everyone else in the van, jumped when they heard the explosions and two tons of snow barely missed burying them alive as they squeezed through the pass.

"Cut it a little closer there, Jinx, I couldn't feel the wind on the back of my neck," Sly said into his binocucom.

"Sorry, Tsao's guards were right on your tail, I had to detonate right then."

Bentley pulled out his laptop and booted it up, "Never mind that right now, where are we picking you up?"

"Well, you see, that's a funny story…"

His binocucom tracker program came up and for one whole second, he could not process what he was seeing. When he did, his breath left him all at once, "Kaia, you didn't."

A little window opened as she turned on her camera and she smiled, "Tell me there was another way and I'll lie to you, then we'll both feel better."

"Tell me where I need to go, little buddy."

"Murray's right, that snowfall won't take too long to clear if Tsao's goons are determined. Where's Jinx?"

Bentley couldn't seem to unstick his tongue from the top of his mouth, so Kaia spoke, "Just keep driving, Murray."

"What?" Sly shouldered his way into the frame of Bentley's camera, "What are you talking about?"

"You'll have to forgive me, I kind of jumped the gun earlier when I heard the treasure temple fall. I came running to see if you guys could use my help." She turned her binocucom outward, so they could see what she saw. She was on the far side of the estate from the exit, up high somewhere, and managed to zoom in on a squawking Tsao, shaking his fist at the wall of snow blocking him from giving chase. "I couldn't get back out in time and I couldn't delay detonation. Sorry."

Sly had frozen, so Bentley turned his laptop back to face him, "Kaia, we can-"

"No you can't." Her expression was set, "You don't have time. Tsao seems to think Jing King is still in the palace, but you still need to get her somewhere safe. Interpol will be crawling all over this place by midday tomorrow. I'll think of something, I'm pretty sure Kristian is lurking around here somewhere."

"He'll arrest you!"

"I'm kind of counting on that to get out of here. Better Interpol than Tsao finding out I'm still here. And Bentley? Stop Sly."

The raccoon had strapped back on his leg pouch and paraglider and was headed for the back door of the van before Kaia pointed him out to Bentley. The turtle knew he was going to regret this later, but pried a dart from the spring-launched he'd built into his chair and jabbed it into the back of Sly's leg as he opened the door.

With those darts specifically designed to stop over-built guards in their tracks, Sly didn't stand a chance. He pitched forward and only the reflexes of the Panda King kept him from tumbling out of the van.

"He's going to kill me later, you know."

"Tell him it was my idea."

"Listen," the situation was just really sinking in and Bentley felt sick, "We'll find you. Wherever they put you, we'll get you out."

She blinked and smiled, "I know. I was there when Sly and Murray were taken, remember? I have no doubt that my imprisonment will be temporary. Don't take risks, though."

"We're thieves. Taking risks is our lifestyle."

"Alright, fine. Just don't take unnecessary ones. I'll hide my gear near the abandoned Safehouse so Sly has something to do while you're fleshing out a plan, but I'm going to have to sink my binocucom. I don't want anyone, especially Interpol, getting their hands on your tech."

"I'd have to agree."

"Take care, all of you. And tell Sly…" She checked her watch and grinned, "Tell Sly 'Merry Christmas'."

Kristian showed up as soon as I had hidden my gear, tied my faithful binocucom and a rock together, and watched them sink slowly into the hypothermic waters.

He looked at me, at my lack of gang, and the fact that I wasn't running away, and sighed, reaching into his coat, "I really don't appreciate this, Jenks." He said, producing a pair of handcuffs. "I like you well enough. All I wanted was Cooper."

I managed to smile at him as I put my hands on the back of my head, "I appreciate the sentiment, I'm sure the two of you will meet eventually."

I've handcuffed people before. I learned at a young age, after bugging Uncle John until his ears nearly started bleeding, right after my parents had split and he was new to his babysitting duty. For the rest of the night, my stuffed animals were convicted felons. I'd had the opportunity to use handcuffs several times since then, my dad let me carry a pair when I was in high school.

However, up until that particular point in my life, I couldn't say I'd ever been handcuffed. I'd expected the metal to be cold, but it was warm, having been in Kristian's inner coat pocket. Having my hands bound wasn't a pleasant experience. The self-preservation instincts that I'd ignored for the past seven months kicked up an unholy fuss, but I fought them down to the point where they were just a bit annoying.

I was right, by the way. By midday, Interpol was all over the tiny little village surrounding Tsao's palace. As soon as Carmelita had broken her cover and arrested Tsao, the area was swarming.

Kristian and I stayed out of the thick of it, he was 'guarding' me and I was studying the insides of my eyelids. When Carmelita stormed in to demand her impromptu partner's assistance, she was… surprised, shall we say, to see me.

I woke up to her giving Kristian the third degree, then rolled over, crushed my pillow around my ears, and went back to sleep.

Interpol had a royal fit over what to do with me. First they fought over where I would be taken with the contenders being London and Paris; London, because that was where Kristian had claimed my case, or Paris, because that was the center of the investigation on the Cooper gang.

They decided Paris for some reason I wasn't privy to and bundled me into a snazzy jet that totally beat out coach in my recommendation. After a long, albeit comfortable, and annoying (Carmelita was trying to subtly weasel out the location of The Safehouse from me) plane ride, we landed in Paris.

Then came the discussion about just what they were going to do about me. There was zero evidence of me participating in any sort of wrong doing. I was a bit surprised at this, then thanked my lucky stars that Bentley had been given advanced warning of my impending arrest and that I'd been voted as photographer back in Australia and there was no photographic evidence of me living it up with the gang.

Unfortunately, they weren't stupid and they knew that letting me go and trying to follow me to the gang was laughable. They also knew that there was a veritable wealth of info on the gang just waiting to be tapped inside my head.

What they didn't know was how stubborn I was about giving it up.

They offered Kristian the chance to interrogate me first. To this, he reportedly laughed (which I did not previously believe him capable of) so hard that he ran out of breath and politely declined, though he requested to be on the other side of the two way mirror to observe the interrogation.

I went through five agents by merely commenting on the different splotches on the ceiling and what I thought they looked like, then Carmelita came in. She left within five minutes, red faced after I mentioned loudly that incident on the volcano and not-so-subtly threatened to go into detail on record. It wouldn't really do anything bad to her, except take her off the Sly Cooper case.

Mwahaha.

Still, Interpol was stubborn. They couldn't get really heavy handed on me because the Cooper case wasn't exactly a matter of international security, just annoying, but they weren't going to let me go so easily.

After a long, closed door meeting with their prosecutors and some grey-haired guys in expensive looking suits, the higher-ups emerged and my sentence was handed down.

I was the first person to be institutionalized with a case of Stockholm Syndrome.

And another chapter done! I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and enjoyed their break! Feel free to let me know what you thought of the chapter and I will see you in two weeks!