Bentley's Lab, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. 5:58pm 1st August 2013.
"Are you sure that this will work Bentley? I'm sure this is what the Director wanted me to do in the first place." Sly asks as he stands in front of a green screen with the gang watching from behind a camera.
"I don't think that the people want to have a 'murderer' on the loose. Besides, they'll only come after you harder and harder, each time getting closer and closer and I don't want you to take that risk. Especially with what you have to loose." Bentley replies while looking at Carmelita.
"You told them?" Sly asks.
"Sure, everyone was going to find out eventually. You're good at hiding things from me but not everything can be hidden forever." She explains. Sly takes a deep breath as he tries to comprehend what he is about to do, go against everything that he knows about being a thief, about being stealthy and sneaky. This is the opposite of all those things.
"I'm not sure I can do this." Sly argues.
"Think of the future." Bentley counters and Carmelita echoes that sentiment with a look that says you must do this but not forcefully. Sly takes a deep breath and returns to the camera. Bentley flicks on the teleprompter below with the first words shown, ready for Sly to speak. Carmelita comes up quickly and gives him a short kiss that Sly receives. It's just what he needs.
"1 minute everyone." Bentley shouts as the rest of the gang are gathered on the couches that they have moved from the TV area to this empty room that is a makeshift studio. Sly looks at his feet and checks himself. He stares into the lens of the camera, not knowing who might be on the other end exactly. He checks his blue-gloved hands to see if they are there as well. He is not fading away so the time machine worked precisely as it should. He settles himself and concentrates on the large white square font on the teleprompter.
"30 seconds." Bentley yells as he prepares his part of the job. He has the world's communications satellites at his whim, ready to transmit the message around the world. Sly thinks about the magnitude of what he is doing here. Revealing him to the world and showing who he is not what he would have wanted, but it's the only way to get this Director off his back once and for all. For the sake of his child.
"10 seconds." Bentley shouts.
Meanwhile on every TV channel in the world
The screen has gone dark, the normal programming has stopped suddenly. Everything from the daily news to late light infomercials has stopped. A large bright circle appears with the countdown clock. 5, 4, 3, 2. The screen turns black and the beeps subside. Screen fades in to reveal that thief from the news and the broadcasts that they have heard about. He is standing in the Louvre museum, right in front of the world most famous painting for all the same reasons as Sly is; it was stolen by a thief. No one else is in the room despite it being 6pm in France right now. The Mona Lisa ripe for the taking.
"Good evening, morning or night to everyone depending on the region you are watching this message. If you are hearing it now, don't be alarmed. For I am safe in here with some fine artwork surrounding me." Sly begins as confidently as he can fake to the world.
At Interpol, the Director is stunned as he is sitting at his office with the TV mounted in the corner up at full volume to hear what he has to say.
"Get me museum security!" He shouts into the phone, angered by such a show of arrogance towards him.
"I'm only here to do one thing. Prove to you and to the world that these are nothing but lies that have been perpetrated by the law enforcement agency Interpol." Sly continues.
"Shut him down!" The Director shouts into the phone.
"You see, I'm not just a thief. I'm a master thief which means I only steal from other criminals, just like your chief of Interpol." Sly continues, confidence building.
Police in Paris are rushing to the glass pyramid that marks the entrance to the Louvre. Cars screech to a halt on the cobblestone path outside and teams of armed policemen and women rush towards the entrance but the staff are closing it for the day.
"Open it up!" They shout, banging on the glass to get inside. The staff member fumbles with the keys to unlock the glass sliding door and drops it. They have no patience for this so they shoot open the door, causing the glass to tamper and shatter onto the ground all over the staff member whose arm is now bleeding from the sharp edges of the glass. The police don't pay any attention to her and just move down the stairs to the lobby in single file.
"This man is not a law enforcement master, he is a corrupt official who has deceived you all. And I have the evidence to prove it." Sly continues.
The director is already getting contingency plans into operation. He locks the door to his office and shuts the blinds. Having shielded himself from the outside, he turns to the inside.
"You see, being a master criminal, I get a lot of envy and jealously about my position. Your director was directly facilitating it. Pictures, which should be on the screen show the full extent of his secret network of underground connections, each one linked to me in the centre." Sly continues.
The police run up the stairs to the Leonardo di Vinci section, running as fast as they can past all of the staff who are cleaning up the floor from another day of visitors.
The Director scans the wardrobe for any sign of a break-in, nothing. He enters through the hole and into the room and checks for anything missing.
"Pass…?" The computer speaks.
"I know the goddamn password okay!" He shouts.
"Access granted." She says and turns the lights on.
He fumbles around all of the drawers and the tabletops, checking for any missing items.
"If you're so hell bent on chasing after criminals, forget about me and go after the real thief in this world, the one who has taken your money." Sly continues, really getting the tone perfect.
The corkboard that is hanging on the wall is taken down and smashed into several little pieces until they are unrecognisable and throws them down the hole in the bottom of this secret room.
"Police, open up!" They shout at the door leading into the Mona Lisa exhibit.
"10 million, 20 million, perhaps 50 million. Nope, 1 billion dollars has been spent to try and capture me, not to mention the extra hundreds of millions of bounty he would receive from criminal organisations the world over." Sly says, taking the moral high ground.
The Director works as methodically as possible even though his palms become sweaty from the nervousness, removing everything that could be used as evidence and throwing it in the hole. The room becomes devoid of everything that can be thrown down a hole.
"Okay guys, bust it open." The commander shouts as the biggest guy on the team comes to bust the door down, the door does not budge at all. The door is secure; it's protecting the Mona Lisa so it has to be secure. He returns with a broken collarbone.
"I wonder how you feel, knowing that the people you entrust to keep you safe are just making themselves safer." Sly continues.
The director makes his way down the ladder.
The police rush to find someone with the access key to enter the room.
"I'd like to know as well." Sly continues.
All of the items he threw down there are piled up at the bottom of the ladder. The director kicks some of the pile down the tunnel to make space for himself.
A policewoman snatches the keys off one of the staff that are leaving from work and races back to the door as fast as she can.
"But what are they feeling right now?" Sly says, giving the cue for Bentley to step into phase 3.
The director reaches into a fuse box and gets a lighter and kerosene that he planted earlier for such a plan.
The key card is swiped and the door opens, the police rush inside with guns drawn.
And everyone has seen it all.
"As you can see, on the left is your Director of Interpol, on the right is the police. I'll let you decide what to make of this." Sly says.
A set of red lights are seen at intervals along the tunnel, the lights of many security cameras pointing right at the Director. He is stunned and tries to destroy them all, when one goes, Bentley switches to another one.
The police fan out to look around but only see a tripod with a camera attached to it with the light on for record. It has a note attached to it. They stop and look at it while they destroy the camera.
Two screens behind the camera allow Sly to see what is going on.
"I don't think burning evidence is strictly illegal, but I'll need to check on that." Sly comments sarcastically.
The items go up in flames, the kerosene burns fast and bright as the director decides to make a run for it to the escape exit.
The note says. "Lat. 45.784 Long. 4.850 don't miss out." Someone quickly bashes this into a phone and finds the location of this GPS coordinate.
"I've done a lot of things over my career." Sly starts, getting into the part he is having the most doubts about.
The Director runs and runs until he reaches the room, there is no boat. Someone has stolen the boat! Instantly he blames Sly but there is no turning back, he jumps into the freezing waters and swims down the long channel in an undignified escape attempt.
The police are on their phones trying to send this message across.
"Police, how may I help?"
"It's Paris, has anyone been sent to the shore of Le Rhone, near the Interpol building?"
"We have 4 squad cars there now." She replies. The police in the room are dumbstruck at the way this has been planned out. They look around to see if there are any more tricks in store for them.
"Been to places that no one has ever been." Sly continues.
The director swims as fast as he can to get across the river but as he gets out of the tunnel, teams of guards turn on their flashlights and watch from the shore.
"You're under arrest!" One shouts.
"You can't do this, I'll fire you." He shouts as he tries to swim further out where they can't catch him. But someone throws a floatation ring on a rope out just in front of him to offer some safety. But he rejects this and keeps going out into the river.
The police fan out along the room to look around for anything unfamiliar. They look around all of the paintings and around all of the corners; nothing looks unfamiliar apart from the camera that lies on the ground in many pieces.
"Seen things that one no one has ever seen." Sly continues.
The Director makes it almost to the other side of the river but the police just stand there ready to capture him. Frantically, he tries to swim away from them but the police just walk alongside the river, preventing any escape.
The police are satisfied that nothing else has been taken or put there and walk out of the room, ready to return to their posts.
"Done things that no one has ever done." Sly says.
The Director is tiring fast, his shoulders sag and his arms look like they have nothing left inside them. A helicopter arrives from Interpol bearing a winch to lift him out of the river.
The police walk slowly, admiring all of these paintings gone by the great masters of their time. The giant ceiling allows for truly huge behemoths to fit in here. But it's not one of the larger paintings that catch their eye. A small one just looks off. They lift it off its hangar and a card falls out from behind.
"But now, for me, the time has come to finish all of that." Sly says, almost with tears.
The winch comes down to the river with a special agent going to hook up the Director and attach him to the helicopter. The winch lifts the director slowly out of the water and places him in the centre of all of the police waiting on the side of the bank of the river.
The blue calling card, the infamous blue calling card. They look at the painting, it looks perfect, no evidence of being forged at all until they look at the signature on the back of the canvas.
"This is hard for me to say, but it's the right time." Sly continues.
The police surround him and the Director thinks that he can break through this barricade of policemen and women. But he knows better then that, he gets into the car unassisted and so do the other police men and women, ready to drive back to the police station.
A second card drops down from the back of another painting. And another, and another. They look at every small painting and find the same occurrence. Another card, another replica painting.
"I now have other things to do that are more important." Sly says.
The police car drives along the river to take him not to Interpol but to the local police station where he will not have any power. The cars move quietly in single file along the road. Fading into obscurity just like the Director will in prison. Does he enjoy rap?
They are already running out of the building, trying to alert their colleagues about one of the biggest art thefts in history. But they have forgotten one of the paintings, the one that sits inside its bulletproof glass frame in a humidity controlled chamber with special lighting to protect its paint. It looks the same, but it was made by another dead painter, just like the others.
D. Lousteau.
"So that's it from me, goodbye." Sly says.
The screen of the world fades to black and then jumps back to normal programming as if it was a temporary glitch. Some people wonder what has happened and what this means, but whatever comes on the TV now engulfs them. On the Internet, social media has erupted in a frenzy, breaking the world record for most tweets per minute and most Facebook statuses per minute as well. Most people are calling for the Directors immediate sacking. The punishment? Death, life in jail and manual labour are some of the suggestions that people have. People try to find Sly Cooper's twitter account, despite him not owning one, in order to express their gratitude and support. It's such a paradox of modern life. Wanting the law overthrown and praising criminals in the same sentence. There is no contradiction in this. One is a corrupt official who embezzled billions for his own pursuits. The other, is not a thief.
But a master thief.
A raccoon.
A Cooper.
A friend.
An enemy.
A soft touch.
A brutal strike.
A compassionate being.
A cold hearted bastard.
A silent sneaker.
A proud defeater.
But now
He will be…
A father.