Oh man, it feels like forever since I've posted a chapter, so much had happened in the last two weeks.

We're in the homestretch guys, I hop you enjoy!

"Loving the dramatic weather change," I remarked aloud, shivering against the wind as I peeled an orange. We were on the approach to Kaine Island and a thunderstorm was rolling in before us.

"Well, you know what they say about April showers," Sly remarked, throwing my jacket to me.

"They cause hypothermia?" Bentley shivered out, already wrapped in his own coat.

The raccoon sighed and shook his head, "It'll warm up when the sun comes up, won't it? Honestly, pessimists!"

"Optimists," I returned with equal exasperation, tugging my jacket around my shoulders. I bit into a slice the orange I had just peeled and grimaced, "Not ripe enough. Stupid cara cara oranges, they're either really tart or really sweet."

"And yet you're still eating it," Sly said, perching on the railing next to me.

"I don't waste food as long as it's edible." I informed him, tossing a piece of orange peel in his general direction.

He dodged with a grin before letting it fall from his face and speaking in a hushed voice, "You've been acting weird lately."

Crap, and here I'd thought I was doing a really good job of acting normally, "Yeah, I have." I agreed, because lying would send up even more red flags.

He nodded seriously, "Are you going to tell me why willingly or am I going to have to tickle you?"

I snorted with laughter and just barely avoided choking on my orange, "Can I choose secret option 'c', where you just conveniently forget about it?"

"Sorry, that's not a real option," he gave a slight smile.

Ah well, worth a shot, "In that case, what about secret option 'd', where we talk about it when we're safely back at home and not about to embark on the biggest heist of the century?"

He thought about it, "Alright, so long as you don't run off the day we get back to hide at Ahanu and Ritsuka's house for a month and hope I forget." He held out a hand.

I grimaced. He knew me too well. Ah, well, there was always Millie's house. I took his hand, "Deal."

His grin widened and eyes narrowed as his grip on my hand tightened, "I'll find you wherever you go, you know."

I leaned in to meet his advance, "I would love to see you try."

Sly was outright beaming when he let go of my hand and swiped a slice of my orange. He bit into it and coughed, "How are you still eating that?"

I laughed at his expression, "I told you, I don't waste food."

"I'm sure you feel better about yourself morally, but I'm going to go get a cookie."

"Bring me one!"

Two hours later, I was the only one left on the boat, the others had taken up positions around the perimeter of the island as dictated by The Plan. My job was to monitor everyone's status and offer assistance as needed. Or, as I put it 'sit on the boat and be very quiet, pretending I don't exist until something inevitably goes wrong and I swoop in and save the day, subsequently getting a statue commissioned in my honor'. When I put it like that, Bentley just kind of grunted at me.

"… we're running five by five here, make sure everyone's in sync."

"I hear that. Artillery, sure you can make that shot?"

"I endeavor not to miss."

"Excellent. Radio Control?"

"In position."

"Recovery Team?"

"I'm pumped!"

"Submersibles?"

"Show time, baby!"

"Telekinetics?"

"Ready when you are."

"Auxiliary Support?"

"Let's do this thing."

"Alright, it's the crime of the century and the ball's in motion!"

We'd drilled this so many time that it was weird to see it actually playing out. Sly had gone in via the least guarded point, a small dock, and taken out the three guards stationed there. He continued by going over the lowest point in the old wall.

"Agent Heartthrob, get in position for a 'Yank 86'."

"I've got a visual."

Bentley had spotted the three guards on platforms over the thin ledge Sly had to traverse to get into the entrance under the main wall. When the raccoon reached it, he halted, remaining silent.

"The ball has stopped rolling, we've got an obstruction.."

"I'm on it." The familiar RC chopper, modified on the trip here to fly nearly completely silently and masked by the rain, hovered over the guards before lurching forward and hooking the first, "First is away… Second guy is pulled… Third's skyward, roll on ball, over."

Sly did hurry onward; we had a very small window of time from the beginning of the job to the end. Dr. M was paranoid, he'd be checking for discrepancies anywhere… like the radio tower the Guru had just knocked over to give Sly a bridge.

The thief reached the entrance point we'd all studied over and over again on the blueprints, it seemed like a ventilation fan of some kind. "Ball requesting door via Agent Monarch, over."

"Launching… stand clear."

A rocket, almost invisible but extremely potent, arced from the sky down into the vent fan. When the dust cleared, the wooden frame had caved in, providing Sly with an entrance.

"I've got visual confirmation on the door. Nice shooting, over."

I watched as Sly dropped into the overlarge tunnel and broke his way through roots that had grown through the walls to get into Dr. M's lab.

"Be advised, bally is nearing the lab. Agent Deep-Six, you ready?"

"Speargun loaded."

My eyes were glued to Sly's screen now and I watched as he carefully walked a set of pipes and was then blocked by two force fields.

"Agent Deep-Six, deploy."

I'm not quite sure what Dimitri did with his speargun, to be perfectly honest, but it got the force fields down.

"Strong work, Agent Deep-Six."

"Every time."

Sly made his way across the pipes to jump on top of the elevator (the glass elevator, I spent most of the next minute praying that Dr. M wouldn't look up) and rode it up with Dr. M and one of his guards. I listened in on their conversation. It lasted less than two minutes and ended with the guard dead on the floor of the elevator. I hadn't really known or cared much about Dr. M before, but now I knew that he was one of those people who needed to be hugged. Around the neck. With a rope.

"The Cooper Vault is just across these wires. I'm en route to your position for the loot haul."

But a snag was inevitable. Apparently, Dr. M had just installed a new security system. Sly set it off, but he had fortunately overheard the code to shut it off while listening in on Dr. M and the now-deceased guard. He entered it quickly and hurried over to the Cooper Vault door as drills positioned around it moved away.

The circular door was pristine, free of even a scratch from the multitude of drills, and undoubtedly explosives, that Dr. M had used to try and get it open. I couldn't tell what sort of metal it was made of, but whatever it was, it was impressive.

Sly paused for a heartbeat. I remembered what he'd said to me, when he was talking about what might be inside the Cooper Vault, all of his ancestors' accomplishments.

'Would I measure up? Would my father be proud of me… or ashamed?'

I was sure he'd be proud. He wasn't as convinced. I then pointed out that he beat Clockwerk twice, so who cared if he didn't have as much loot. That seemed to make him feel a bit better, but I knew he was still nervous.

He stepped forward, slipping his cane into the etching and turning it. He pulled it out and the door opened. For just a moment, light spilled out.

Then a rocket, an unfamiliar one, crashed into the door, knocking it back into position. I watched Sly's camera, already on my feet, as it whipped around to reveal Dr. M hovering nearby in a jetpack.

"Cooper! … No… you must be Sly Cooper, the new keeper of the cane. Oh, how I've longed for this…"

"This island belongs to the Cooper family." Sly said with a lot more authority than he must have been feeling, "You're trespassing."

"No, my naïve boy, you're trespassing. I've got the deed to this island. This fortress is mine, everything here is mine… Which now includes the key to the vault. Hand over the cane!"

"Sorry pal, family heirloom. Buy a knock-off at the gift shop."

One of Bentley's darts knocked Dr. M away from the platform where Sly stood. "Quick, let's hurry and regroup with the others, follow me!" Bentley hurried back toward the elevator with Sly, "Agent Wild Card, Plan X! Repeat, Plan X!"

That was me and that was the plan we were to use if it became clear that we were discovered and could not access the Cooper Vault at this time. It wasn't necessarily a retreat as we weren't leaving, we were just pulling away to a safe distance to make another plan. Plan Z was full-out retreat and that was only to be used if we lost a member.

I threw on my windbreaker, put in my earbud, stashed my binocucom and my baton on my belt, and dashed out onto the deck. The rest of the team was heading my way, I could see Penelope already, she hadn't been too far away.

We were supposed to get the boat ready to sail, but we didn't even had time to get started before we saw something horrifying.

"What is that thing?" Penelope cried as I helped her over the railing.

It was some sort of… I don't want to say hybrid, just on principal, but it looked like a child had lobotomized a mole, lopped off its arms and replaced them with that of a lion, and replaced its torso and legs with different animals that I couldn't even begin to tell apart, then fed the abomination a healthy mixture of growth formulas until it was almost as large as our boat.

It dropped down by where Sly and Bentley were meant to emerge, and the panic just had time to get its claws into my chest when it reared up with something green in its grasp.

"Bentley!"

I had to bodily haul Penelope back when she tried to run for the railing of the boat. "You stay here, try and drop bombs on it with Bentley's RC chopper, I'll go help the guys!" I wasn't that sure that I could be of much help, but I would be more useful with Sly than I would be at the boat.

I leapt over the railing, jarring my knees when I landed heavily, but sprinting towards where I could see the monster taking swipes at Sly, who was desperately trying to help Bentley.

The raccoon threw his cane and it lodged in the creature's teeth. As if that wasn't enough, the creature shook its head and sent Sly's cane flying. Now, though, Sly had its attention.

I was still quite a ways away when it dropped Bentley and swept Sly up in a massive clawed hand. I'd have screamed if I had the breath, but I was still trying desperately to get close enough to help, putting on another burst of speed when I saw its thumb, attached to a claw about the size of Murray's torso, start to come down toward Sly's head. He had his arms up, holding it back, but that could only last so long, he was already gasping for air.

"Sly! Hang on!" Could he even hear me? "SLY!"

I was nearly there now. I could see Sly clearly, looking down at me. His expression wasn't what I would expect from someone slowly being crushed to death and I could not read it at all. He opened his mouth like he wanted to say something, but gasped in pain and squeezed his eyes shut, clenching his jaw and locking his elbows as the claw got closer to his head.

Dr. M was in a harness attached to the creature, I could only guess he was the one controlling it. I whipped out my baton, I'd pry him from the harness if I had to.

"Attack!"

I was tackled from the left, knocked out of the line of fire as a shock pistol bolt slammed into the creature's chest. I followed its trail, looking to a barge out on the water where Carmelita stood, shock pistol smoking, and sending a dozen ape mercenaries to engage the creature.

"Let us take care of things now, Jenks."

I looked over my shoulder at the person who still had a hold of me, "Kristian?!" He reached into his coat and pulled out a pistol of his own, aiming it not at the creature, but at Dr. M. He emptied a clip before my brain caught up with me and I started to try to get out of his grasp, "Let me go, I need to help!"

"Not with all the gunfire in the air you don't." He somehow managed to insert a new clip without loosening his grip in the slightest and leveled it again at the monster, who was currently preoccupied with Carmelita.

I was just short of sinking my teeth into Kristian's arm when a well-placed shot caused the creature to drop Sly and turn its attention completely to Carmelita , leaping over to the large stone outcropping where she stood.

My eyes were on the raccoon laying face down and unmoving on the ground. "Sly!"

Kristian swore when he saw the creature's new target, "Fox." He finally set me down and we ran off in opposite directions.

It took me four seconds and an eternity to reach the limp raccoon. I skidded to a stop next to him, dropping to my knees.

"Sly! He's over here!" Bentley had brought the boat around and now launched his wheelchair over to land next to me, "… He's still breathing?! … He's alive! Hold on, pal, you're going to be okay. We'll take you back to the ship and patch you up. Murray, Panda King, go get the stretcher from the ship! Penelope and Kaia, help me get him on his back so he can breathe more easily. Be carefully, we don't know what that creature might have done to his spine…"

We managed to get Sly into the ship and below deck. We would have put him in the captain's quarters, but there were many windows in there and we didn't want to lightning to disturb him. Instead, we headed downstairs, to where the infirmary, unused by us until now, was.

With the help of Murray, Bentley and I transferred Sly onto the small bed built into the wall. I stood by, clutching Sly's hat as Bentley checked him for broken bones and other serious injuries.

Finally, the turtle sat back, running a hand over his eyes, "He's suffered a major concussion, but he'll be fine. He doesn't even have any broken ribs, if you can believe that. He'll feel like he got hit by a truck for a few weeks, but he'll live."

I let out a sigh and stopped wringing the limp piece of cloth in my hands. "Guess that good luck finally caught up with him."

Bentley nodded, "It's about time. I'm going up on deck to talk to the rest of the gang and figure out how to get Sly's cane back. Will you stay down here and watch over him?"

"Of course," I said, already pulling a chair over to the bed.

"Thanks. Let me know if anything changes and check him for a fever every fifteen minutes or so, that's the last thing he needs."

I sighed and sat down heavily as he went up. "Well," I said aloud, "That went well."

Sly looked exactly like someone who'd just had a brush with death. His hair was plastered to his head with rain and sweat, his mouth was slightly open, like he was gasping for air even in his unconscious state.

I remembered back to when he found me in that fireworks stand in Venice with a not dissimilar injury and reached out, running my fingers through his hair. It had made me feel better then; maybe it would help him now.

"How's it going up there?" I asked when Bentley came down about a half hour later.

"The Guru managed to convince some sharks to attack the buoy where the cane was magnetized. Unfortunately, it blew up and the cane is now in the ocean. I'm having Penelope prep Dimitri to head down and retrieve it," He wheeled over next to me, "How is he?"

I ran a hand through my hair, "Well, he doesn't have a fever as of yet. He seemed to have, I don't know, a bad dream or something earlier, but he calmed down after a few minutes." I watched as he checked for a fever himself, "Bentley, what they say about people with concussions falling into comas if they fall asleep…"

He sighed, obviously having already considered the question, "I know. But I don't think it'll happen to Sly, he's too determined."

I thought that over. It was true that the state of someone's mind could have a lot to do with their physical health. Happy people lived longer, and people who had no will to live died more easily. But determination keeping Sly from a coma?

"Is there anything I can do to help?"

Bentley took off his glasses and cleaned them as he thought, "Well, you could try talking to him. He talked to you while you were under that trance and you woke up sooner than you were supposed to."

I sat straight up, "Really?"

"Yeah, whenever he wasn't in the middle of a job or asleep, he was in there talking to you. I think he was telling you stories or something." He put his glasses back on. "It's worth a shot anyway, right?"

"Yeah…" I said quietly as he headed back above deck, looking over at the bedridden thief. He'd really spent all that time talking to me? I wished I could remember what he said.

So I talked to him. I didn't really have any cool stories to tell him, so I just talked about anything I could think of. I told him about my friends, about how Roger was a foster kid, how Kurt looked like an emo kid but really wasn't, and how Millie was well on her way to being a crazy cat lady. I talked about school, about the teachers I hated and the ones I liked. I told him about my family, how my parents split up when I was six, how I'd wanted to stay with my dad because his birthday was the next week and I'd already bought his present, how I really hadn't understood what was going on, and how I hadn't seen my mother since I was nine or even talked to her since I was fourteen.

I was just trying to think of what to tell him next and nearly fell out of my chair when his eyes opened. "Sly?"

At first I thought he didn't hear me. His eyes took way too long to focus on the beams above his head, but then he turned and looked at me, "… Kaia?"

I stood up, "Sly, how are you feeling?"

"I-" He shifted and winced, "I feel like I went a few rounds against Muggshot. Unarmed."

"Careful," I warned as he started to sit up, "You took a really bad hit to the head."

"Yeah," he grimaced, "I feel that."

"I'll go see if I can find some painkillers," I turned to go, but he caught my wrist.

"… Wait."

I looked back to him to see the weirdest expression on his face, "Yeah? …Sly? … Sly, what are you doing?"

Sly pressed a hand to his head, wincing. Nothing was broken, but it sure felt as if someone had picked him up by the feet and swung him headfirst through a brick wall.

Still, the air coming off the waves and the cold rain felt good.

"Sly, you're up!"

He looked over at Penelope and tried to look as uninjured as possible. Unfortunately, Bentley was standing right next to her.

"He should be back in bed after the thrashing he took. Another blow to the head and your brain could snap!" Bentley scolded, before peering around Sly, "Where's Kaia?"

Sly tried for a natural 'nothing-to-see-here' smile, "Quit your worrying, I feel fine. Did Dimitri find my cane?"

"No, Dr. M managed to get away with it." Penelope said gently.

Sly frowned, "Then… we gotta go."

"You're going nowhere, pal. Any attempt on Dr. M or the Cooper Vault will be impossible with these radar towers linked to the missile turrets… wait a second. Penelope, have you completed that work we talked about on your RC car?"

"Yeah…? Oh, I see where you're going! That'll work! Smash the drones, siphon their power and fry the tower's matrix!"

"Perfect, let's get your car onto a drone patrol pipe."

"Not to be too obvious in exposing my ignorance," Sly broke in, "But what in the world are you two talking about?"

"Explaining it would include a lot of multisyllabic words." Penelope said with a small grin, "I could just show you."

"Bring on the demo."

"Panda King," she called over to the fireworks artist, "Can you launch my RC car onto to that pipe?"

"Ha! With the fireworks it will fly, as the bird." He quickly hurried over to the car and rigged it with fireworks, launching it into the air, "Fly, bird, fly!"

As soon as the car reached its destination, Bentley turned to Penelope, "Alright, my sweet princess of electronic dominance, time to smash things up."

"You sure know how to sweet talk a girl, Bentley." Penelope's eyes were glued to her monitor, "Once I get enough power, we can send my car through the tower's satellite dish, causing an overload."

"You know, that actually makes sense." Sly said, wincing as a particularly bright bolt of lightning arced across the sky.

Bentley turned to his friend and leveled a flat, stern look at him, "You really should still be in bed. And where is Kaia?"

"She's…" Sly suddenly took great interest in the sails overhead, "She's asleep."

"Of her own free will?"

"Well, that depends on your definition of 'free will'."

The turtle let out a heavy breath, "She's going to murder you."

"Not in the next few minutes," the raccoon grinned.

That's all for now, folks! Yes, I know I'm evil and no, I'm not telling you what happened, you're not supposed to know yet. Hope you enjoyed!