A/N: Welcome to part two of my Human Clockwerk duology. Last time we left off, Harley Keener, an ally of the Cooper Gang woke up in the body of Neyla after the soul of Clockwerk was exorcised from his body. He found himself in aternate reality where Neyla has been seen as the good guy as Harley once was while Harley Keener is percieved as a bad guy who had betrayed the Cooper Gang, Interpol and Arpeggio to merge himself with the mainframe of Clockwerk to become a being known as "Clock-ley", almost like how Neyla had done in the past before the events of the previous story had altered reality like an episode of The Twilight Zone. Now, Harley has the difficult task of trying to fix reality back to the way it was and try to get his body back from Neyla before reality gets altered again.
This story, along with the previous story: Human Clockwerk are standalone spin offs to A Human's Descent Into Madness. They're barely related. They both share the character of Harley Keener and is set in the universe as A Human's Descent Into Madness. Other than that, the events of this story and Human Clockwerk are almost completely unrelated to the events of A Human's Descent Into Madness.
Four Seasons Hotel. Cairo, Egypt. 2004.
Neyla P.O.V.
My name is Constable Neyla. I used to be alive. I used to be evil. Then, one day, I woke up to find myself in the body of a sixteen year old human boy named Harley Keener with no memory how I got there. All back then was I wanted to achieve immortality by merging my body with that of Clockwerk to become more powerful than any Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings character. I was defeated by a raccoon thief named Sly Cooper and Inspector Carmelita Fox. They teamed up together to defeat me and to ruin my reign of terror that I was planning on inflicting on the people of Paris, France by using the Nothern Lights as a hynoptic light show of hate upon the citizens of Paris. They foiled my plan. They took me down. I needed to do something before I died. Me and Clockwerk decided at the last minute to transfer both of our souls into Harley Keener as revenge for the Cooper Gang constantly defeating me and Clockwerk. I figured nobody would ever suspect an innocent 16 year old boy like Harley to inhabit mine and Clockwerk's soul. Nobody would ever suspect someone like Harley to snap and suddenly turn evil out of nowhere.
I wanted Sly Cooper and his friends to hate Harley just like how they hated me and Clockwerk. It would've been a flawless scheme, if it weren't for the fact that I had to share my soul with both Harley and Clockwerk. Sometimes I would be able to take over Harley's body. Other times Clockwerk took over Harley's body, while at random times Harley would revert to his normal self. This went on for about a year or so. I barely knew anything about Harley Keener before me and Clockwerk took over his body. All I knew was that he was a member of the Cooper Gang, he had a little sister named Emily and that he was handsome. That's all I knew abour him before I took over his body. I had the bright idea to make Harley hang an Italian mob boss named Octavio using my whip. Octavio deserved to be hung for the heinous misdeeds that he did in Venice, Italy. He had poisoned Venice's water supply with tar in an attempt to make people like opera music again, as he was a former opera singer. I like opera as much as the next person, but forcing people to like opera music again via poisoning their water supply is beyond too far. That'd be like saying if a former reggae singer wanted to get people interested in reggae music again. But instead of throwing a concert or making an reggae album or a single, he decided it would be a great idea to poison peoples food with narcotics and e coli in an effort to get them to like reggae music again. It's not going to end well.
Needless to say, I had a justifiable reason to hang Octavio for what he did to the city of Venice, Italy. I hung Octavio while he was singing a duet with a turtle I'd previously handicapped named Bentley. Their plan was to drop a chandelier on Octavio's head to get the demolition switch he was planning on using to literally sink a building. I wanted to hang Octavio to the chandelier using my whip, which I did. Then that bitch Carmelita Fox had to ruin everything as always. I'm starting to wonder if Carmelita has bipolar. That would explain her black-and-white view towards criminals and crime. I always didn't like her black-and-white view on crime. As Michael Jackson once said: "I tell it to my baby. It don't matter if it's black or white."
I was reborn in Harley Keener's human body. I figured that nobody would discover me if I hid myself within Harley's body as a sort of disguise. Everybody would think that Harley had gone bad or was evil without ever knowing that I was in him all alone. Clockwerk was also in him as well. The Cooper Gang once again for the third and final time had managed to defeat Clockwerk. They used a giant mirror to make Clockwerk hypnotize himself to get his soul out of Harley's body. It worked. Clockwerk was permanently gone forever. I was still in Harley Keener's body. It was after Clockwerk had left Harley's body that I started panicking. I needed to do something to alter reality before it was too late. I then had this crazy idea: What if I could physically switch bodies with Harley so that way I was perceived as Harley while Harley was perceived as me. Everybody would think that Harley was evil and that he had betrayed Interpol, the Cooper Gang and Arpeggio to gain immortality by merging his body with Clockwerk, just has what I did previously. Nobody would suspect a thing.
I opened my eyes. Sunlight was pouring through the window of my hotel room. I stretched my body. It was then that I noticed that my body felt different. It felt masculine. I slowly got out of bed to go to the bathroom to get ready for the day. I opened the bathroom door and turned on the lights, locking the bathroom door behind me and closing it. As soon as the lights turned on, I knew something was wrong. I looked at myself in the mirror. Somebody else stared back at me. The face was looking at in the bathroom mirror wasn't my own. A guy who looked to be in his late teens stared back at me. The boy had no fur on his body. His dark brown hair was in a mullet style haircut. The boy had my green eyes. His skin was beige colored. He was wearing a heavy metal T-Shirt. I immediately knew that I wasn't in my body. I was in the body of a teenage human boy. I looked a lot like Harley Keener. I couldn't be sure though. It was weird, me a female being inside of a male body. Now I know how Jodie Foster felt when she swapped bodies with Barbara Harris in the movie Freaky Friday (1976).
I looked down to see if I still had my breasts or vagina. I had no breasts and I had a penis. It meant that I was indeed in the body of a male human boy. I exited the bathroom. I heard the door knocking. I walked over to the front door. I looked through the peephole and ssw Inspector Carmelita Fox standing on the other side of the door. She was the last person I wanted to see. Me and her are kind of enemies. Last time I checked, Carmelita hated me with every fiber in her body. That was when I had betrayed Interpol to gain immortality before my physical body died.
I opened the door for Carmelita. The vixen was wearing her usual attire: leather jacket, bustier, long dark blue pants and knee length boots. She had her usual azure blue hair that may or may not have not have been dyed. Carmelita looked beautiful. Carmelita walked into my hotel room.
"Nice room you have here, Harley." Carmelita said enthusiastically. Did she just call me Harley? I thought. My name was Neyla, not Harley. Harley was the name of a teenage human boy who was in the Cooper Gang.
"My name is not Harley. It's Constable Neyla." I told the vixen. My voice didn't sound like my usual British accent feminine voice. It was a deep, baritone voice that sounded rather rough. I recognized that voice before. It was the voice of Harley Keener. I know because I've been inside his body so long to know what Harley Keener's voice sounded like. He had an American Midwestern accent to his voice.
"Who's Neyla?" Carmelita asked me. It was then that I realized where and when I was. I was in Cairo, Egypt on the day that Sly Cooper and his friends were going to steal the Clockwerk parts from the Cairo Museum of Natural History. I was there once before with Carmelita Fox as a "favor" for the Contessa. That was where I met Sly Cooper in person. I've heard of Sly Cooper before. I'd heard Carmelita talk about him nonstop like he was some famous celebrity.
"Nobody that's of any concern to you. She's somebody that I used to know." I said to Inspector Fox. I realized that I was in the body of Harley Keener, who I could assume was now a cop working for Interpol like how I was originally. If I was in the body of Harley Keener, then that meant that Harley Keener is in my original female Bengal tiger body using my real name. It meant that I was going to end up dying in Harley's body when I eventually end up merging my body with Clockwerk later on. I had to somehow remember what I did when me and Harley swapped bodies with each other. I was assuming my former Interpol role as Harley Keener while Harley was assuming the role of himself using my body and name. I have to somehow find Harley and switch bodies with each other quickly before I end up meeting my future demise in the body of Harley Keener and Harley gets stuck in my body forever. Question is: Where the hell is the real Harley Keener at?
I quickly put on my usual attire of clothing: shorts, boots, my hijab, my blue tank top, which now fit my new male body and my whip, which I put on my hip like Indiana Jones. I looked more or less like my former self, except more masculine and I no longer had my purple fur. I followed Inspector Fox out the door of my room as we got ready to go to the Cairo Museum of Natural History to stop the Cooper Gang from trying to steal the Clockwerk parts. It was deja vu all over again. I seriously hope that Harley and his sister Emily will show up in the museum like last time.