This project was intended to be a Sly 4 story without time travel in the style of EikaPrime's Sly 5: Thieves and Robbers, but I realized that it would likely dwarf that project in terms of word count, so instead of starting a project that would likely take up all my free time, I'm just posting the outline.
After a year of feigning amnesia and working with Interpol, Sly has decided to use the opportunity to propose to Carmelita. Unfortunately, it is around this time that a new group of master criminals have decided to seek retribution against the last of the Cooper Clan. After storming Interpol HQ in Paris and nearly assassinating Sly and Carmelita, Bentley comes to the rescue. With Sly's cover as "Constable Cooper" blown, he and Bentley are forced to flee, while Carmelita is arrested for aiding and abedding the Cooper Gang.
With a dangerous new Interpol agent (voiced by a gaming legend, The Last of Us's Ashley Johnson) assigned to arrest Sly and kill any Cooper Gang member that gets in her way, Sly is furiously denied the immediate chance to spring his love from maximum security. To make matters worse, they discover that the vault on Kaine Island has been ransacked by the same group that tried to kill Sly. Making off with his family's ancestral canes, the Klaww Syndicate's members are utilizing the powers of the canes to further their own individual schemes. Meanwhile, the Syndicate's top assassins hunt the Cooper Gang as relentlessly as Interpol, while madmen around the world are plotting and profiting from the powers of the stolen canes.
Sly decides to take the fight to the Syndicate. He and Bentley must reunite the Cooper Gang if they have any hope of freeing Carmelita, getting back the stolen canes, and stopping the maniacs that have declared war upon the Coopers and their allies.
Prologue: Preemptive Strike (Paris, France) - Sly and Carmelita's lives are in danger, as the Klaww Syndicate revals itself to the former thief and declares war on him and all his loved ones. Trapped within Interpol HQ in Paris with assassins and agents both gunning for the couple, Bentley is their only hope of escaping alive.
Episode 1: Only The Rocks Live Forever (Centennial, Colorado) - The Cooper Gang rides again! Sly and his friends are back in action, as they try to locate the missing citizens of a small Colorado town. Unfortunately, that means confronting a renegade that's sparked an uprising on the local indian reservation, and bribed the Tribal Police to aid them.
Episode 2: Safari, So Goodie (Nairobi, Kenya)
During the attempt to get back Matthew de la Coopeur's time slowing cane, Sly gets another chance to rescue Carmelita during a routine transfer between prisons, and convinces her to work against Interpol for the foreseeable future.
Episode 3: Red Skies at Morning, Aviators Take Warning (Miami, Florida) - Penelope rejoins the gang, but then tells Sly that he's contracually obliged to fight for the title in the upcoming A.C.E.S. dogfighting tournament. This will be easier said than done, when he discovers that Penelope's rival won't allow him to throw the tournament, and will kill him and anyone that stands in her way of obtaining the title. Things are going to heat up fast in the tournament's newly relocated venue of Miami, and as the other teams are made up of the world's most dangerous criminal organizations, Bentley works to find out which of them are in league with the Klaww Syndicate.
Episode 4: Long Hard Dreamtimes to Come (Lexington, Kentucky) - The gang discovers that the Guru has been abducted by a vengeful apprentice. Tracking the wannabe country star to Kentucky, the gang must liberate the Dreamtime master, who is being held in the seedy outskirts of town until the Klaw Syndicate arrives to claim him, and guarded by a vicious biker gang. And as if things couldn't get any worse, this particular gang has been trained in the ways of masterting the mystical powers of the Dreamtime, and channeling it into their weapons and motorcycles.
Episode 5: That Sinking Feeling (Mistaken Point, Newfoundland)
The Cooper Gang must stop the Klaww Syndicate's underwater salvage expert from ransacking and destroying the wreck of the Titanic (something along those lines. Not fully concrete.)
Episode 6: Join or Die (Cork, Ireland) - The Cooper Gang must prevent a rising star in the IRA from executing a major deal that would unite the pacifist splinter factions under his command. However, Sly soon learns that the charismatic terrorist has been using ancient celtic magic to aid him. Now the only way to counter the vicious madman is to gain the alliance of a legendary guardian of the crown...a werewolf!
Episode 7: In The Criminal Justice System... (New York City) - A crime boss in charge of all the Syndicate's manpower is finally located by Bentley. Unfortunately, he's soon after arrested, and quickly arraigned. The cane in his possession is locked away as evidence, and will likely remain there if he's convicted. The only way to retrive it and any info he has on the Syndicate, is for the gang to rig the trial so that the mobster gets acquitted.
Episode 8: A Shadow of a Doubt (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)
The Gang reunites with the Panda King's daughter Jing King and tries to figure out what the Syndicate was trying to gain in the first place from the Cooper Vault. Answer: Sly realizes without a shadow of a doubt they wanted the late Dr. M's genetics tech.
Episode 9: Working Through the Payne (Belgrade, Serbia)
In their last heist before a break, Sly and the gang go after one of the Syndicate founders, Miroslav "Tesla Coil" Payne. But as the Syndicate situation spirals out of control and Sly nearly gets caught by Ashley, Sly and Bentley make the decision to go completely off the grid to let things cool down. The Syndicate goes quiet, almost as if they wanted Sly to do this.
Episode 10: Cooper's Eleven (Las Vegas, Nevada) - The gang has been building to and preparing for this job, a crack at robbing a Las Vegas casino tycoon who is really the financial backbone of the Klaww Syndicate. In order to bring them down once and for all, Sly intends to pull the biggest heist yet, a criminal feat that will put the Cooper Gang back on the map. He plans on simultaneously robbing the vaults of the five casinos owned by the stage magician turned money launderer.
Episode 11: The Boys are Back in Town (Rio de Janiero, Brazil)
Sly must deal with Murphy's Law during a very unlucky day as he tries to steal a cane that can manipulate the probability of events and Bentley tries to use Interpol tech to locate the Syndicate base. The Gang infiltrates said base and finds out what the Syndicate wants with Dr. M's tech.
Episode 12: TBA (London, England)
The last stolen cane is located near Big Ben, but with Interpol on high alert after Rio, the Gang must be the most careful they have ever been as they try and locate the grave of one of their most dangerous former adversaries to stop his revival.
Episode 13: TBA (Prypiat, Ukraine)
Sly makes a last ditch attempt to stop the Syndicate from stealing Arpeggio's body as the Gang tries and fails to convince Inspector Ashley to work with them, knowing how big the threat of the Syndicate is.
Episode 14: Anatomy for Disaster II (Ciudad Juarez, Mexico)
Sly and the gang make an attempt to bring the Klaww Syndicate down for good, but in the end this operation to stop the Syndicate's final plan to revive Arpeggio using Dr. M's tech and end the Cooper line succeeds and fails at the same time due to the unthinkable: Sly being arrested by Ashley after being forced to by Interpol higher ups.
Episode 15: Escape from Alcatraz (San Francisco, California) - Sly has finally been captured by Interpol. Now the rest of the shaken and broken Cooper Gang must free him, as he struggles to survive on the newly re-opened Alcatraz Island. Refurbished and designed to house a population consisting of the world's most vicious killers and white collar masterminds, the Gang discovers the majority of them are foes from the past that they helped put out.
Epilogue: A New Age (Paris, France)
10 years after his retirement, Sly helps his daughter Selena (fun fact: she's named after Carmelita's mom) through her first heist, the robbery of a new museum built by an upstart art dealer secretly dealing in black market antiques. Does that sound like anyone Sly Cooper fans know?
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The Klaww Syndicate
A group of influental criminal masterminds decided long ago that the Cooper Clan had to be stopped. Although considered a lineage of the world's greatest thieves, they also made it their mission to bring down fellow criminals that committed much more sinister and malevolent crimes. Making enemies for centuries because of this code of conduct, the Klaww Syndicate has dedicated itself to destroying Sly and ensuring that the Cooper lineage doesn't live on.
The original founding members combined their resources and manpower to form the Klaww Syndicate. From the shadows they initiated their first attempt at Sly's destruction, by creating the threat of Clockwerk's return. With founding member Arpeggio putting together a rag-tag group of villains, the "Klaww Gang" stole the Clockwerk bodyparts, then led Sly and friends on a wild goose chase around the world to retrieve them. The plan was to have Sly killed in the attempt to stop Clockwerk from being revived by the energy of the rage-induced citizens of Paris. But upon Arpeggio's betrayal to gain immortality, and Neyla's own doublecrossing to become "Clock-La", the plan fell through.
The founders decided they would not fail again, and it was decided to recruit vast amounts of new members to the Syndicate, increasing thier resources, manpower, and overall influence in the underworld. The main body of the Syndicate would be composed of various mid-level crime lords, gang leaders, racketeers, mobsters, con-artists, and general psychopaths. All were enlisted by the gurantee that with Sly and the Cooper Gang destroyed, their criminal enterprises would survive and prosper. The founders would make up the upper echelon of the Syndicate, running the organization under heavy secrecy.
The Upper Echelon/The Founders
1. The Xeral - ???
2. The Praetor - Raccoon
3. Arpeggio - Parrot (Deceased)
4. Dr. Pariah- Dodo
5. "Scorpio" Carmine - Scorpion
6. Zergane Zyon - Wolf
7. Miroslav "Tesla Coil" Payne - Manta Ray
8. Cerebro Salazar - Anaconda
Lower Level Members
Tecumsah Thunderhide - Stallion
Angela "Bluegrass" Buchanan - English Springer Spaniel
Martin McGonigal - Atlantic Puffin
"Anchorhead" Neptune - Hammerhead Shark
The Canes of the Cooper Clan
1. "Tennessee Kid" Cooper - Expert Marksmanship, Rail Slide
2. Matthew de la Coopeur - Slowdown of Time
4. Salim al Kupar of Arabia - Sandstorm Manipulation, hides the location of a Magic Lamp
5. Slytankhamen II - Invisibility
6. Rioichi Cooper - Enhanced Agility, Ninja Spire Jump
7. Sir Galleth Cooper of the Knights of the Cooper Order - Explosive Kinetic Charging
8. Slaigh Cooper - Superhuman Strength
9. Henriette "One Eye" Cooper - Superhuman Sight, X-Ray Vision
10. Thaddeus Winslow Cooper III
11. Otto von Cooper
12. Bruce O'Coop - Expert Hacker
13. Sir Andrew Cooper - Thief Replica
15. Huckleberry Cooper - Probability Manipulation, Advanced Invisibility when in distress
16. Karen Coopergiwa - Coin Magnetism
17. Augustine Cooper - Defy Gravity
18. Rob McCooper - Hat Mine Trick
19. Dev Cooperinda - Slow Motion Jumps