Hi, everyone! Sorry this chapter is a little late!

I beat Sly 4! It was soooooo good! If I hadn't known that a different company made it, I never would have guessed. I've been getting a lot of questions about this, so I'm just going to say broadly, even though I've answered this on the blog, YES I am going to write the sequel to Lima Syndrome based on Sly 4. I'm already doing it, in fact!

But enough about that, on with the chapter!

After Sly cleared out the night guard on the ship Bentley had deemed the best candidate for theft, Murray rowed the team over individually; first the Guru, then the Panda King, then Penelope, and Bentley and I went last.

"I have to say," I remarked, hauling myself over the railing, "I'm loving the dragon motif on this ship. Better than a mermaid, for sure."

"Oh, I don't know," Sly replied, lowering the hatch to below deck, "I always thought mermaids were classy."

I opened my mouth to say something scathing and no doubt stupendously witty, but Bentley interrupted me, "Once we raise the sails, it won't be long before someone onshore raises an alarm."

"No problem!" Murray declared, punching one fist into the opposite hand, "We wasted that harbor patrol!"

"You guys did a great job, but they still have cannons mounted up in Skull Keep. I figure it's long odds they get a gun crew in position before we're out of range… but it's worth mentioning."

Sly flicked his eyes over at the large gap of rocks that lead out of the bay, "Then let's make full sail for the mouth of the harbor. If you guys are ready, I say we do it now. Every second we dilly-dally just puts us at more risk."

"Agreed." I nodded along with Bentley.

Apparently, Sly had been reading up on sailing and now it showed, "Murray, you take up the anchor. Bentley, get below deck and adjust the ballast. I'll hoist the sails and get this thing moving." He turned to me, "Jinx, I know I'm going to regret this, but you take the helm."

My grin could likely have powered a New York city block.

"Aye-aye, Captain."

It was only after we were fifteen minutes out of harbor that I felt relaxed enough to do my happy dance and perform a stunning, though modified and censored, version of 'I'm On A Boat', after which Sly offered me half the take of the Cooper Vault in exchange for a solemn oath to never sing in his presence again.

I hit him with an oar for that.

I was then forced to turn over the helm to Murray in penance. This actually wasn't such a bad thing, especially considering the boat was considerably more wobbly than the cruise ship and I was already starting to get a little woozy.

Downstairs I went, into the lovely, dim light of below deck. I found a hammock that didn't smell too bad, took some medicine and fell asleep within minutes.

The first thing I did when I woke up at mid-morning was steal Sly's cane and spend the hour and a half before he managed to crawl out into the sunlight finding a good place to hide.

Yes, it was childish, but I felt like things had been getting a little tense lately with the gang and I desperately wanted to diffuse any stewing conflicts before they began. I wasn't sure why, exactly, because there weren't clear cut signs of discontent, but Bentley seemed to be getting a little short with, well, everyone and Sly seemed like he was just waiting for something awful to happen at the drop of a hat.

Bentley and Sly were the core of the Cooper gang. If something went wrong there, the fabric of the universe was likely to unravel at our feet.

So childish I was and childish I would continue to be until such a time as my friends no longer required me to be so. And I was totally going to mercilessly abuse my position, of course.

"JINX!"

Ah, it sounded like Sly was awake.

I glanced up at the thin boards that separated me from the deck above. I was chilling below deck in a tiny space I'd managed to squeeze into that wasn't really a room and was also extremely difficult to see. I was sitting on a beam, the purpose of which I little knew, with Sly's cane balanced across my knees and my head tiled back to better enjoy the sound of Sly raising hell trying to find both myself and his cane.

It was glorious.

Until Penelope poked her head into my hideaway.

"Why did you steal Sly's cane?"

I frantically shushed her and motioned her fully inside as I heard Sly make for the hatch below deck. After he had finished prowling around and making disconcerting growls of frustration, I answered her question in a whisper, "Because it is wonderfully shiny and there is legitimately no other way to get the upper hand with him."

She frowned and tilted her head, "I dunno, it seems to just get him mad."

"Maybe, but Sly mad is better than Sly brooding, the art of which he has perfected doing with a smile. He won't totally relax until the Cooper Vault thing is over and done with, I'm just distracting until we get to Dagger Island and he gets to dig up buried treasure."

She was silent for a moment, kicking her legs in empty space, "Do you… do you like Sly? In a romantic context, I mean."

I resisted the urge to sigh and instead looked at her sidelong, trying to discern her motives for asking. "I'm not going to get between you if you want to try for it if that's what you're asking." In all honesty, if Penelope told Sly that she liked him, he'd rather take a dive over the side of the boat than answer her in any way. Flirting may have been his main channel of communication in regards to the opposite sex, but I could not see him really taking it well if a girl confessed to him. Mostly because he was too nice to confront the idea of hurting someone's feelings in that way.

But Penelope shook her head, her eyes overlarge under her thick glass as she looked up at me and gave a sheepish little grin, "No, I really don't think Sly's my type. He's nice and everything, but from an intellectual aspect, I don't think we're really on the same level."

That actually kind of made me mad. She was just stating something she saw as fact, but every loyal fiber in my body (I had quite a lot of fibers in my body, and a good deal of them were loyal as well) wanted to rise up in Sly's defense, to inform her that he was brilliant, especially under pressure, but I bit my tongue at the last second. It wasn't like I wanted to convince her that Sly was worth her attentions. If I turned her that direction, Sly would kill me, then Bentley would find a way to bring me back to life just so he could kill me again.

I shook my head away from the thought and returned to our conversation, "So why do you ask?"

She toyed with a remote control and a tiny screwdriver she'd brought with her, "Out of curiosity, the two of you seem really close and I think you'd be a cute couple."

I pinched the bridge of my nose and let out a controlled breath, rallying my thoughts for what would likely be a taxing conversation, but it was either this or give Sly his cane back early. That was just not happening, though I probably wouldn't have stolen the thing in the first place if I'd thought Penelope would come down for girl talk. "That's not really a question that is answerable. First of all, my ideas of romance are so radically different from the typical that we'd be talking about two separate things. Second, Sly's my closest friend, trying to view him from a romantic standpoint is just asking for trouble. Third, he's the best friend anyone could ever possibly have ever and for me that is enough. Objectively, yes, he'd be a fantastic significant other," I refused to use the word boyfriend, refused, "but thinking that way seriously would ruin the best relationship I'd ever had in my life, especially if I started pining and he didn't feel the same way."

There was silence, then, "So you like him so much you refuse to think about it."

Now, Penelope was a smart girl and everything, but she is bad with tact and people and relationship talk and at that particular moment I wanted to double-slap her and demand to know if she'd even been listening to my little tirade. She was spared my ire by the sound of Sly yelling from above.

"Jinx if you don't bring me back my cane right now I'm going to kill you in the Hazard Room when we get home!" There was silence as he presumably waited for my reappearance and I bit my lip hard to keep from laughing, "KAIA- … Bentley, what's Jinx's middle name? I need to know so I can yell at her."

"I don't know, I'll have to look it up."

I was out of my hidey-hole in less than a second, making for the hatch to get on deck. "Don't do it, Bentley!"

Unfortunately, I wasn't fast enough.

I squinted against the glare of the sun to see Sly half collapsed with laughter, using Bentley's chair for support. The turtle also seemed to be muffling snickers.

"You are bad people and should feel bad about it."

"I'd totally forgotten that was your middle name," Bentley confided, shaking his head with a smile.

Smugness was just radiating out of Sly's every pore, "Kaia Gardenia Jenks. You know, it's kind of catchy. Sort of rolls off the tongue…"

I threw my hands in the air, "My dad picked it, okay? My mom picked my first name and my dad picked my middle name, it's some sort of good luck flower or something."

"'Good luck Jinx', I love it." He looked over Bentley's shoulder again, "And your birthday is coming up! Why didn't you say anything, do you have any idea how hard it's going to be to get a cake in the middle of the ocean on such short notice?"

I threw his cane at him, "Take your stupid cane! I'm going to go back to sleep and forget waking up this morning."

"Bentley! Bentley, Google gardenias!"

I resisted the urge to push Sly off of the boat.

We were almost to Dagger Island when the other ship appeared. From the Jolly Roger they were flying and the fact that they were bringing their canons to bear, we figured they probably weren't in the mood to just conveniently ignore us.

"Jinx, get below deck!"

"Like hell! How do you fire these things?" I ran my hands over the canons like I could find some magical canon-firing button.

"I got it!" Bentley came zooming over in his magic wheelchair of magic with a coil of copper wire and flint. He was MacGyvering something together when the first cannonball hit.

Murray flung himself into the geyser of water to help the Panda Kind seal the breech, which left me wrestling with the wheel of the ship. It was a difficult balance to maintain, I couldn't let them hit us head on, but turning away provided them with a bigger target. I was more than happy to pass the wheel over to Murray as soon as I could.

"Alright, done! Canons are ready for firing, just pull the ring attached to the wire on any of them."

"Perfect timing, pal. Jinx, fire the portside canons!"

I seized the ring nearest me and pulled. The kickback of the canon caught me in the side and knocked my clear off my feet.

"Their mast is down! We can either go ahead and sink them, or you can go try and capture their ship."

"Let's just hit them one more time, I don't think we could handle two ships," Sly gave me a hand up, "That'll teach you to stand directly behind a canon."

"That canon attacked me unjustly," I insisted, putting a hand over my side. That was going to bruise.

"Let's go ahead and drop anchor," Bentley suggested, "I spotted another ship around on the other side of the island, LeFwee must have gotten here before us."

"Lovely. At least he doesn't have the map." I tightened my ponytail, "Let's go treasure hunting!"

"Sorry Jinx, just me this time. Too many bad guys on the island for a group to go sneaking around."

"Spoilsport."

It took Sly a little less than an hour to find the place where the treasure was supposedly buried. I took advantage of the time to change into a pair of cargo shorts and a short-sleeved button-down. Jogging pants and tank tops were great, but it was getting hot for March.

When Sly called in that he'd found the spot to dig, no force on Earth could have stopped Dimitri from heading over to help dig it up and of course, everyone else wanted to go too. Except the Panda King and the Guru, for some reason. They were meditating or something.

Bentley, Penelope, Murray, and I stuck to the coast as we followed the trail of Dimitri, who had just been too impatient to wait for us and had run off with the shovels. By the time we caught up, he and Sly were heaving a chest out of a hole in the sand.

"Well Dimitri," Sly said, wiping the sweat off of his forehead with one hand, "It's your loot, I think you should have the honor."

Dimitri, horror of horrors, looked like he was on the verge of tears, "I open with joy. You Cooper gang is a tight groove." He opened up the chest and pulled out some hideous spandex monstrosity, "Van Gogh bull's-eye! The primo diving gear to accentuate my deep-down diving style!"

"It's so intricate!" Penelope gasped, "Your grandfather was an artist, I've never seen such fine craftsmanship!"

"Penelope," I whispered, taking a few steps over and throwing an arm around her shoulders, "Remember that talk we had about not encouraging Dimitri?"

But the damage was done, "He had the juice, check it! The gear even matches my suit! I can dance, dive, and accessorize!"

Sly craned his neck at the treasure, "What else is in this chest?"

"Aye! Let's get a good look."

My head was turning to look at the voice that came from where Penelope should have been, but I barely caught sight of something red before one of my arms was forcefully wrenched behind my back.

LeFwee was to my left, standing just behind Penelope. He had his cutlass out; just close enough to the trembling mouse to make everyone uncomfortable. He didn't even have to go the traditional route of holding it to her throat, his meaning was clear. He had three of his officers with him, one of which was the fine chap who was trying to see how far he could force my arm up behind my back before my elbow shattered.

He cackled, "Avast lubbers! Didn't think you could steal from the smartest man in the seven seas and not face the repercussions." He took a moment for some evil laughter, "I might be late for the opening of the chest, but I'm just on time for the stealing of the gold."

The initial shock had past and Sly had his leader hat on, "Let Penelope and Kaia go, we can work out a deal." His voice held no fear, just authority and the slightest hint of anger.

"'Penelope' be the lass's name… purdy as a sonnet, and such a rich, sweet scent from the wench's hair."

Ewww, poor Penelope.

"Let's thump this chump!" Murray looked like he'd really enjoy getting into a fistfight with our new arrivals, but Bentley stopped him.

"No, he'll hurt them! This guy's a killer."

"Aye, ye summed me up with but a word… 'killer'." LeFwee inhaled deeply, as though savoring the term. Fortunately, he seemed to want to avoid letting Murray get his wish for a fistfight. "Away with ye, back to your ship. This gold is mine, or their death is yours… take yer choice."

"Ow! Okay, seriously," I tried to look over my shoulder at the guy who had a hold of me, "Jerking harder at that particular moment is dramatic and all, but no one can tell but me and I'm fully capable of breaking your foot."

"Kaia, shut up." Sly was thinking hard, I could see it, he didn't want to leave us there. Finally, he squared his jaw and gripped his cane tighter, "Guys, we don't have any options here. Everyone, back to the ship."

I felt my heart plummet just as Penelope burst out, "You can't just abandon us! Help, please! … I'm so scared." She whimpered.

I felt for her, I really did, she was obviously terrified, but I also wished she hadn't decided to show such blatant weakness in front of LeFwee. I didn't want to be left alone with Goreface McStabby and his merry band of murderers any more than her, but if we were going to get through this, we'd have to keep our wits.

Fortunately, Bentley took over, "Penelope, do what he says. Stay alive… we will save you."

"I…" The blonde visibly swallowed her fear, "I trust you."

LeFwee was apparently done being ignored, "And I trust you're still planning on lugging back to your ship. Away with ye!"

The walk to LeFwee's ship could not have been more than a few minutes, but it felt like an hour.

For this moment, I'm going to set my pride aside and admit that I'd never been more afraid in my life. Somehow, this was different than any another life threatening situation I'd been in before.

My heart was fluttering around in my chest cavity like a trapped bird, my mind was racing, trying to find a way out of this situation, and I could barely feel my arm anymore.

We reached the boat that would row us out to the ship, and one of the retrievers carrying the chest cleared his throat nervously, "Cap'n, I'm not sure the boat will hold six of us and the treasure."

"Wow, for the self-proclaimed smartest man on the seven seas, you sure don't plan ahead." It's official, I have the worst reaction to fear ever.

LeFwee slowly turned to look at me with narrow eyes, "You know, lass… I don't like you."

"Well, I don't like you either, so that's fine." Some people go completely silent, but the filter between my brain and my mouth disappears.

LeFwee turned to the crewmember who'd spoken, "Well, it's a good thing I never intended to take both of them, aye?" He pulled out a pistol, "Besides, bringing witch-eyes onboard is like to be bad luck."

My mind did not process the implications until the pistol went off.

In fact, the first thing I processed at all was that my hands were free. I looked down at where they'd clamped over a spot just under my ribs and saw red start to stream from between my fingers.

Then the pain came.

I'm more than willing to discuss Sly 4 with anyone who wants to message me! No spoilers about the secret ending, though, I haven't gotten it yet.