AN: Well, its been awhile, so I don't want to delay this any longer. Fannus Obscurus proudly presents:

Sly 5: Return of The Thievious Raccoonus

Part 2 Anime Ja Nai

Ch 9: The Manipulator

Sly's POV: He lead me across the shattered rooftops to a small building near Tokyo Tower. It was only two stories tall, but the ACES suit informed me that it was more than it appeared. We went in and to the unassuming, it was a simple Internet cafe, albeit in shambles. Shadow walked over to a wall and pulled of one of his gauntlets. For the briefest moment, I swore that there was no fur on his hand, but pale white skin instead. I figured that I was hallucinating due to what was going on outside, because when I saw it next, black fur covered the hand, with its odd light sandy blond coat. The hand went up near the wall and his fingers began to fly around the air like they were on a keyboard. When they stopped, the wall panel slid into the wall and a long staircase appeared. We began to walk down it in silence, all the questions in my mind running around like sugar crazed toddlers. Who was he? Where did he get his suit? What the hell is going on here?!

Shadow's POV: We finally arrived in my local haunt, about 400ft below the surface to block out any signals of my presence. No lights were on, save for a glow from a monitor. I turned to face Sly in the nearly dark room, and could tell that he was about to go nuts from everything that he was thinking about. I figured he had at least deserved to hear the very carefully abridged version. " Well, it think a few things need to be explained. Ask me anything, and I will answer to the best of my abilities."

"What the hell were those things? They looked like something from an anime!"

"Well, those would be grunts of the person who I'm fighting. I call them Zakus, and the small ones Zaku Armors. The big ones are a bit slow and easy to fight, but as you know, the small ones can match even your own athletic prowess. They are what laid waste to Tokyo." The truth, if not all of it.

"What is keeping everyone from seeing this? When I was outside, I saw the city as it normally is!"

Well, that answered a few of my questions. She had figured out how to reproduce the reactors, and they worked. "I'm not sure what it is made of, but it somehow projects a view of the city as it is to people that enter it." Partial truth, I doubted he would believe the reality behind the barrier."How did you get in?" I must know if it showed him anything.

"When I approached the city, my suit said it detected a massive ring of energy. When I got up close, I could partially see a field of swirling and sparkling greens and purple." He could see the energies? Well, that was one I didn't expect. The reactor must have released a pulse for him to see it, but when? "when I touched the field, arcs of energy began to fly from my suit, two greens, a purple, a weird pink, and yellow. Two different colored green ones and a purple one came off of the field and impacted the like colored ones I emitted and canceled each other out. The others touched the field and began to disintegrate it. A vacuum sucked me into the city, and a minute later, here I was"

"When you went through, did you see anything?

Sly's POV: Well, moment of truth. Do I tell him about the hallucination, or not? After what I had seen in here, I figured it would be almost normal to Shadow. " When I went through the barrier, I saw two beings, male and female. They were standing in front of the planet, with weapons in hand, each the size of the world. The woman, she sounded like a crazed god from mythology, almost completely insane sounding at times, but with intelligence in her eyes. The male was almost the opposite in terms of mentality, but with the same air of intelligence. They spoke of something called an SRW and of Verses, and you must think I'm crazy don't you?" He looked almost shocked. Did I sound like a loon or a prophet?

Shadow's POV: Well, that was more than expected. Indeed, it was almost shocking what he had heard. He will find out a few things sooner than planned, but I was not impossible to keep them obscured for a while. Things will be accelerated though. Time for a question of my own. "Do you remember anything at all before you came here? Some people have had intense memory loss after being near the field." A quick way to cover the question, and true.

" A few things, but they came from an object that I stole." A weird look, completely fake, crossed my face. He quickly explained his appearance in Paris, and his encounters there. A few things I had wished not happened, but nothing the plans had not taken into account.

" Well, that is a weird story, but weird is the norm inside this thing. So you came hear after the Fire Stone of India, the monster ruby? Well, I think I know who has it. The crazed woman who is in charge of this army of mechs. Li-Chan. I know a bit about her..."

Third Person POV: Li-Chan was an octopus, a blue ringed one, one of the deadliest creatures on earth. Unlike a lot of her kind, she had two pairs of arms tied together to act as bipedal legs. The others were free to act as she wished them to. She was a master of mechanical engineering, and was the designer of innumerable. She was once a friendly caring The two had a history of some sorts. A few years ago, they were in Prague. Shadow wouldn't say why they were there, but what he did have to was... disturbing to say the least. They had ran across the Contessa, the same monstrous spider from my flashback with the eye. Shadow managed to escape, but Li was taken in for... a visit with the not so good doctor. When Shadow blasted her out of the prison, she was begging for him to kill her to put her out of her misery. He hadn't done it. At first she was recovering well. Then one day, she snapped and wiped out a small city in Russia. She had built an army of giant anime mecha and was waging a maniacal war against the world.

Sly's POV: What Li needed the ruby for, I had no clue. But she had something of Shadow's as well. She had an electric guitar that he said was very important to fight her with. He needed my help to get it. I had no clue why he needed it, but it sounded important. We shook on our understanding of partnership. Shadow reached for a switch and flicked it. All throughout the underground base, lights flickered into life anew and a wall of monitors came to life. It looked like the war room of a major world power down here.

"If we are going to be fighting Li, we need a base, and this is the best I got." He reached for a small bottle of scotch and pulled it out, along with two small glasses. Pouring some into each glass, he raised one to me. "To our partnership." We drank on it, and the world was never the same again.

New friends, or new foes? How does

Shadow know about all these things?

And what of this old friendship of Li?

What of these things that he speaks

of? All will be revealed in time.

AN: Well, sorry I have been a bit late, got a math teacher that thinks you need over 90 complex problems a night to do. Its been eating up a lot of my time. Well, anyone willing to come up with any thoughts on Shadow? He is about as mysterious as a room full of them. Or Li-Chan for that matter. Speaking of Li-Chan, the OC I based off of you has now finally appeared. I'm a bit nervous since you seem to be in your crazy mood again, if your most recent post is any reason to be concerned. Well, that is all I have left to write for the night. Fanus Obscurus, signing off for the night.