Paris, France. 10:21pm 23 July 2013.
The gang arrive in Paris with only one goal, finding the time where Sly is. All of this is based on a single piece of card with one picture on it. But it's more than they could ever hope for. As they drive into Paris and along the river, Carmelita remembers all those nights spent here, looking for any trace. Any piece of debris could hold clues, but nothing can replace the hole that is left in her heart. They are going to steal something, an object that could lead them to the end of all their angst, all their worrying, and all the heartbreak. They drive into the same alley that the graffiti tag is, it's outline still visible around all the other graffiti that covers it. Bentley breaks out his laptop to show them his plan.
"Ok, we know that she must have stolen something from here, but since no thefts have been reported, there must be a fake somewhere in this building. Our job is to find out what that is. To do this, I fitted a device into the binocucom that detects the age of anything it analyses. By detecting the percentage of Carbon-14 atoms in the structure, it will give us an accurate readout of the date it was made. Once you find something that doesn't match, flag it. It will save the location of the object so we can go back to it or for all of you to find it. I've looked at the plans and I've split up each part of the museum for each of us to check. Carmelita, you will take the upper floors, your entrance is via the roof the adjacent building. Murray, you take the lower floors, and we can enter via a service elevator, which should take you straight inside. I will take the rest. We do this as quickly as possible and get out. Let's go."
The gang splits up to perform their roles. Carmelita turns to the adjacent building and ascends via the emergency staircase on the outside of the building. 'This is something which Sly would have loved' she thinks to herself as she makes it to the top, with only a small gap separating her from the entrance to the museum. She makes it no problem and heads for the skylight that gives her passage inside.
"Usually Sly would do this but we have no other options." Bentley chimes in on the radio. Just the very mention of his name makes Carmelita slightly more emotional but there is no time for that now, she has to channel Sly into herself to perform a duty which no one though the best agent at Interpol thought possible. She leaps into the top floor of the museum; there must be a thousand exhibits on this level alone. She takes out a binocucom and turns it on. She points it at a cabinet of ancient Indian arrowheads, it dates them all in one second and all of them are accurate, maybe it will take less time that she would have thought. Carmelita walks past cabinet after shelf after table full of little items mainly from the early American period but nothing is out of place. After 10 minutes the entire top floor is checked and she moves methodically down to the next floor. There are no lasers or traps set up to protect the museum, they are free to walk around all they like.
Murray and Bentley do the same, they make their way in via the service elevator, Bentley didn't mean to think of it as a weight issue, but it worked out the best for the gang. The frantically check the items with nothing being out of place, the placards all roughly match the readout on the carbon dating device. Bentley is the one to come across the fraudulent artefact, in the Egyptian history section on the third floor. It appears to be a golden scimitar of some sort, only more curved to look like a sickle, that's what most people would think it is. Bentley knows what this is; it's a Cooper relic, the cane head from one of Sly's Egyptian ancestors. There are two in the cabinet that contains them, one is dated back to 1298 B.C and the other was made just last week.
"Come over here, I found it." Bentley announces over the radio. The rest of the gang comes over to look at the artefact.
"It looks like…" Carmelita starts.
"A cane." Bentley finishes.
"Sly is in Egypt?" Murray asks.
"I think so, we must hurry if we are to beat that mouse to Sly." Bentley replies.
The taking, the part that Sly would relish being the thief he is, is up to Bentley now. Despite they're being no security to stop movement, there is one particular trap to stop people from stealing, a laser embedded in the leg of the cabinet pointing towards the glass case. If the case were moved, the laser would detect the change in distance and set off alarms. Bentley has the perfect tool to combat this, is called a bed sheet, more specifically a small piece of one folded over each other. For all the technology that Bentley has invented, there is a place for the ingenious and the odd. The bed sheet will absorb the laser beam, meaning that the laser never returns to the sensor, which makes the alarms stay quiet. Using his robotic arms, he places them on the case, Bentley slides in the fabric as soon as there is room to fit it in. To everyone else's surprise the alarms don't go off as the arms lift the case off for Carmelita to reach in and take the key to the past, and her love interest.
Once the case is lowered and the sheet removed. They remove themselves from the scene, careful not to leave any evidence. This would be especially damaging for Carmelita if the police were to find out. They make their way to the service elevator and reach the ground floor, ready to head off to Amsterdam to get Dimitri then onto Bentley's lab. But that plan is cut short before they are even in the van. Agents surround the van from all sides. Police cars park themselves in front of the van to prevent its escape.
"Some of your friends have shown up." Bentley says.
"Don't start." Threatens Carmelita.
"I'll handle this." Bentley says. The paraplegic turtle wheels himself towards the law enforcement while Murray and Carmelita hide behind the corner. The agents are all checking the van for something, for anything. They saw the van drive away from the scene, but no sign of the occupants inside.
"Hello officers." Bentley greets the frantically searching officers and agents. But this surprises them; they all draw their guns. Bentley doesn't react; all agents are jumpy types. One of them recognises who he is, from his badge, he looks like the leader of this operation. He has never met Bentley before, but knows of him.
When Sly disappeared, Bentley needed some escape, a way to deal with the anxiety of the situation. Finding Sly became an obsession, with nothing being found. But after about week after the incident, he was contacted by mysterious sources, claiming that they want his technology, Bentley had this on a trace and found this was Interpol themselves, begging and pleading for his technology and genius. Did Bentley want to increase the capability of the law enforcement to trap his greatest friend? It wasn't the money or the prestige that convinced him to do it. But it was the fact he needed to deal with his anxiety, not get rid of it. His anxiety is what has kept him searching; the fact that he would not accept that Sly was dead; that he was missing forever was fuelling it. Some may call it unhealthy. To him it was necessary. Bentley was careful about what he did. He never once mentioned anything about Carmelita, or that he works with Sly. What he doesn't know is how they found him in the first place. But the technology he gave was, in Bentley's opinion, not very impressive. To Interpol, it was a revelation. He had only begun work on the first prototype when he received those postcards. But they knew already what brilliance he had.
"Ah, Bentley good to see you." The lead agent says. "What makes you come here to Paris?"
"Work." Bentley replies. "I would like you to do one thing please."
"Anything." He says. There is desperation in his voice; mirroring the desperation that Interpol have to keep him.
"I'm testing some prototypes in the area and your cars and radios are drastically affecting the sensitive equipment I have. I need you to go back to the police station for about an hour while I conduct the tests." Bentley explains calmly. The lead agent turns to his underlings.
"You heard him, back to the station." He shouts. Some of them obediently go back to their cars and drive off. Others are sceptical about the whole incident, but orders are orders. They go off as well.
The rest of the gang goes up to Bentley; surprised he wasn't immediately turned into turtle soup.
"How did you…?" Carmelita asks, confused at what happened.
"Your organisation is heavily reliant on technology, the people like me are the ones with power." Bentley explains in a way that tries to hide the true reason, it might make Carmelita jealous or worried that he's working for the same organisation.
"You can just do that?" Murray asks.
"Yeah, it's great isn't it?" Bentley replies happily. They all get into the van, there is one thing they must do before leaving Paris. Sly might not appreciate the van being pink on arrival. So it's a visit to the paint shop in the night. Murray knows all the garages and part shops around the city. He even paints that car himself, he has it down to a fine art; the spraying is done in a motion akin to a robot painter on a production line. But it creates the near perfect finish that Murray is aiming for. Being a frequent customer, he knows about all of the 'other' products that come in. One such item is QD15 paint, as the name implies, it dries in 15 minutes. Using that blue colour on the van only brings more memories of Sly, but they are happy ones, as they are only as far away from Sly as the distance to Bentley's lab, wherever it is. Murrays gets the signature flames on the front as well and after 40 minutes, they are on the move again. They are long gone before the police arrive to find what has happened.
Murray plows on through the night in the fast lane, the only lane worth driving for 'The Murray'. Carmelita is sitting back, catching up on some sleep. Busting criminals is hard work, let alone the amount that she gets through. But her dreams are only filled with one thing. Sly, Sly, Sly. The knowledge that they will be together soon brings warmth to her heart. No matter how much of a cold-hearted vixen she is at Interpol. Bentley is still making calculations and looking at the museum artefact. The size and shape are particularly important, as it can shed light on the history of the Cooper cane. Together with his research on the Thievius Raccoonus, it could lead to a more detailed history of the Coopers. As the kilometres fly by, they all slowly fall asleep, but they don't have to stop. Bentley has another gadget for that, at the next turn off, he gets into the drivers seat and places his wheelchair at the controls, allowing them all to be fresh for the morning. They don't want to meet Sly looking like wrecks.
No one batters an eye on the outside to the fact that this van has no living driver. The long metal arms protruding from the chair hold the steering wheel, and radar guided cruise control does the pedals. Even at toll checkpoints, they slip through; electronic tagging systems help with that. At the Border crossing, Bentley is woken up by a beeping in his ear. This prompts him to show their passports to immigration and they pass through, the Schengen Area has allowed for easy travel across Europe, for all types. Bentley is surprised that Carmelita didn't get checked, considering they are searching for her but he knows why. He has experienced the bureaucracy that plagues every government organisation, even if it was for 2 weeks. He couldn't just simply build something, it has to be checked against several accreditations and OH&S. It's another reason he prefers working with Sly, not that he needs another reason to. They have been best friends since the age of eight. What other reason do you need to need? Working with your mates doing the things you love is something that most people could only dream of.