"Give me the Cane."
"No."
"Give me the Cane."
"No."
"Give. Me. The Cane!"
"No!"
Raphael and Bentley were currently bickering over the cane as my son was not wanting to let go of the cane and Bentley was wanting to do some tests on it to see what it was made off and when it was made. Me and Murray just stood there as we watched the two play their little game of tug-of-war before I finally decided to step in and sort things out. "Raphael, give him the Cane."
"I don't wanna!"
"Listen to your father and give Bentley the cane."
"How do I know if you're really my dad?"
I'll give him one thing, he had his mother's stubbornness and didn't want to give up. I had to somehow convince him that I was his father, but how exactly was I supposed to do that? I needed something that he could understand and believe in, so I took a look at my son and did a little scan to see what I could link between us. He was a fox so the species idea is out of the window, his clothes were a similar colour scheme to me but that could just be a coincidence.
Bentley went ahead and went for the logical response, brining out some of the data from interpol that he stored onto his laptop somehow. "Here, take a look at this. It says that your DNA is a mix between Sly's and your mother's, and when a boy and a girl get together then a kid comes along. So that means that Sly is your father."
"Then where does the kid come from?" Raphael asked Bentley, who didn't bother to answer that question as he just raised his hand before putting it back down and frowning, shaking his head as he didn't answer and just continued to hold onto the Cane.
And while I was looking at his clothes, I saw something that made me smile as I was finally able to find something to connect us somewhat. I pulled out one of my signature 'calling cards' I leave whenever I steal something from someone else and showed it to Raphael before speaking to him yet again to explain why I was showing this. "See this? It's my signature card I leave behind, no-one else uses it. Now look at the back of your shirt." I said as the fox boy turned his head so that then he can get somewhat of a look at his back and saw the mask print that was on there. It was quite similar and although not fully like mine, it was probably because the mask drawn on the back of his shirt was poorly drawn, and I had a feeling that Raphael did it when he was younger, just by two years or so, and with that done Raphael acknowledged it somehow as he might have recognized the drawing and then let go of the cane, seeing as he didn't want to disobey his father.
"Thank you sly. Now I can find out when exactly this cane and kid come from, along with what kind of material this thing is made of since it was apparently messing with the electronics and making them react in an unusual way." Bentley said as he took the cane and went into his lab part of the safe house so he could conduct some experiments, meanwhile I decided to have a little father-son catch up with Raphael.
I went over to the young fox and kneeled down so then we can be near the same eye level as I tried to talk with him and get whatever information I could get from him. "Hey there kiddo, so... how's your mother been?" I asked before I heard a humming noise behind me.
"I've been just fine Cooper. Apart from the fact that you TOOK MY SON!" I turned around to see the most scariest thing there is in this world. A pissed off Carmelita with a Shock Pistol charged and ready. I was confused however as to how exactly she found us.
"Carmelita! How nice of you to drop in. Umm... a couple of things. One, technically he's our son." after I said that I heard her growl and look even more fierce, so I dropped that one, and went to the other question. "What are you doing here? And how did you get here?"
"Oh you know... just passing by after some shopping, thought I might pay you idiots a visit-WHY DO YOU THINK I'M HERE?! As for your other question, I was roaming about the area where the cameras last saw you and heard my son and Bentley bickering." She said, and her fur seemed a bit fuzzed up so I decided to try and calm her down with small talk.
"So... are you alright? You seem a bit stressed, with your fur all heckled up I just assumed." I said, only to have Carmelita fire her shock gun and just barely miss me by the fur on my neck.
"I'm sorry, I'm usually a bit more accurate than that, and better composed. It's just that since you took my child I'm just a little ABSOLUTELY LIVID." Carmelita said, obviously not one for joking around currently, but I had a counter to what she was saying.
"Well, officer. Should you have perhaps looked at the cameras a bit closer or keep an eye on Raphael during our escape, then maybe you would've seen that we didn't take him. He snuck with us and was persistent to get the cane back." I replied, only to see Miss Fox try and take another shot, and wasn't intent on backing down. Just like Carmelita to hold a grudge and not listen to reason.
"You think I'm going to believe that?! Even if we did take down Paradox together, even if you might tell the truth sometimes… That… does not mean, that I will believe you when MY CHILD goes missing…. and the first place I find him, IS WITH A TWO-FACED LYING SCHEMING NO-GOOD RINGTAIL THEIF!" Yup, should've known. Once her fire gets started, there's no stopping Carmelita. Especially considering our…. 'relationship', despite apparently having a child later down the line.
And just like the old times, she started running after me and firing shots constantly while I ran and hid away from her wrath. She's been getting better with her aiming, even grazed my tail more than once with the shock shots, and that meant that I had to train soon otherwise she might actually tag me and arrest me!
"Dad's telling the truth! I was trying to get the cane thing back since it was yours, sorry I snuck away without telling you Mama, just stop shooting him!" Raphael said, not quite getting the full picture that it actually belongs to me, but he still managed to back up the fact that we didn't take this kid on purpose and instead he came on his own will in order to get the cane to Carmelita. Only problem is, now that Miss Fox was in her rage mode, she wasn't going to stop even for her own son. Since she grabbed Raphael by the ear and tugged him a bit.
"Don't you do that ever again Raphael! Do you know how worried I was to know that my son was missing?! I swear once this is all over YOU ARE GROUNDED!" The officer said with a stern cold voice, then she took a more gentle tone and looked down at our fox son whom she then brought close and hugged. "What were you thinking Raphael? I was so worried. Please don't EVER do that again." she was tearing up a bit, surprisingly enough. The sight was rather heartwarming, and I wanted to join in on the family hug, but since Carmelita growled when I tried to get close, I'm assuming that I'm not on her good side just yet. "Well, I guess I'll be taking my cane then."
"You mean my cane?" I asked, feeling a bit offended at Miss Fox just claiming my family cane for her own.
"It's my cane for evidence. I need it." She retorted firmly, to which we then started bickering like Bently and Raphael were before, that is before my good buddy Bently came in holding the cane.
"Actually, I hate to disappoint you two but it doesn't belong to either one of you. It's Raphael's cane." he said handing the cane to my son, who then thanked Bently for giving it back and held it close. "I was checking the age on the cane and found the numbers to be negatives, so I changed a few numbers in the equations and did some more complex ones, and lo-behold I figured out that this cane was originally from the future. Using a mix of the device we used to talk with Dimitri while time traveling, and a few VCH recorders, I was able to speed time up on the viewer briefly and see how this happened." he said pulling out the time-communicator we used in our past adventure and flipped it on. At first it was a static haze but then it cleared up and we could see the image of an older Raphael (Around mid to late teen age) fighting someone or something wearing a cloak with his cane, at one point when he was losing Raphael slammed the base of the cane into the ground and it seemed like the video rewinded and went back a few seconds before things went back to normal. Things happened like it did before but this time my son was taking less hits and got more hits on his opponent, almost like Raphael knew what was going to happen before it did. Though after a while his cane got busted up and looked a bit broken, but he still slammed it into the ground again but something different happened. Sparks flew from his cane like lighting in a storm and a sphere of energy engulfed him and the cane before disappearing. The cloaked figure turned around and we could see some of his, or should I say her, face. One that we thought was gone forever.
"Neyla?!" Carmelita said, taking the words right out of my mouth. Though I was more composed and curious, I was still shocked to see her back and in her original form no-less. We thought she was gone when we destroyed Clock-La's hate chip. But apparently not.
"I know, I was shocked too. But take a look at this." Bentley said as he zoomed in on Neyla's hand and saw a certain signature symbol on it that we all knew from our most recent adventure. It was Penelope's symbol. She escaped from prison and went missing for a while but was haunting Bentley with pictures and letters with her insignia on it. If she knew how to make a time machine, she could've been able to take Neyla from the past and into the future. Though nothing has changed in our timeline so far. Bentley was still in a wheelchair from Clock-La's last ditch effort. So what was off? Well, my disabled friend explained that. "Now what you're seeing here isn't the Neyla that we know. She's long gone. But technically this is the same one that we had to deal with, or should I say, the one that our other timeline had to deal with. You see. Each time we used the time-machine, and Paradox used his, it created multiple timelines and alternative dimensions where different events occurred. And it seems that Penelope has taken Neyla out of one of the timelines, but not the one that we're in. So luckily there aren't any anomalies for us. But we still have the problem that she's gathering past villains and opponents of ours and bringing them into the future, that's causing time-space to become more unstable as it is already! So not only is our future looking bad from a conflict with every person we've fought in the past before hand, but if we don't stop this then time as we know it might come to a halt! At least the only time distortion so-far was Raphael's memory, age, and his cane's condition. That, we're lucky with."
So, there we have it. Our future holds an army of every villain and person we've fought, if we don't stop it then time itself will stop. And our son was the first victim of this time-space distortion. We needed to stop this fast. But all we can do is either wait, or wait for Bentley to come up with a plan. "Alright. So You're working on the plan then?" I asked, with my friend nodding in response. "Carmelita, I know things aren't going well with us but we'll need you on the team. Can you help us?" At first she hesitated, but then let out a sigh and defeated look as she nodded too and told us about how 'it's only this one time since the world is at stake'. And finally I turned to Murray who seemed eager to get started. "Murray, you'll need to keep fit for the upcoming fights. But first I need you to do something that'll test your endurance for sure."
"The Murray backs down from no challenge! Come on Sly lay it on me!" He said, the excitement in his eyes. And I felt sorry for doing this to him. But it had to be done.
"I need you to take care of Raphael and keep him somewhere for a while. Carmelita wants him grounded, and if he tries to pull a Cooper escape, I need you to chase after him and get him back. If you can chase after him for a day, then that'll be a good amount of training right? You'll be doing a good amount of running around. And it'll be fun." At first he didn't take the bait, but at the sound of training and having fun at the same time, Murray smiled and said yes as it was a new kind of challenge for him. Besides, Raphael seems to trust Murray more ever since the blood test at Interpol HQ, so it'd be best if he kept an eye on him and not Bentley, and Carmelita had to do her job so he was the only one. And since my son likes Murray he's less likely to try to escape as he'd rather try and convince Murray to grab him something or play some board games-wait. No games, gotta remember how strict Carmelita is, so I gotta guess how she wants things. So I guess it's a game of If he can escape past Murray, or if our purple friend here can keep him in bay for a while. Though knowing my family, racoon or not, he probably can get his way out one way or another
As for me, I had some recon to do and friends to gather. Time is not on our side this time.
(I return! (Hopefully _) and starting things off with an edit of an already existing chapter! Huzzah! But a new one will come soon enough, once the tests settle down and I get enough breath. Not to mention I have to study my Sly locations if I want to give you guys the best result for a story! Expect drama! Romance! Comedy! Cross-overs! And much more!)