Trust is the antidote that overcomes fear

Sly scaled one of the ramshackle buildings on the deck and crouched on its roof, taking a moment to scan the area for anything different from the last time he'd been here. He could see Carmelita making a beeline for the front half of the ship from his perch; her silhouette was obscured in the dark of the storm but the way she moved was like a bright beacon compared to everyone else he knew was onboard. He waited until she was gone from his line of sight before turning his attention towards the stern.

He had told her that he didn't know much about boats, and that wasn't a lie. But he did know a lot about this one, and that was going to make all the difference.

Without any further dallying, the raccoon dropped down the other side of the building and sprinted for a large iron door tucked far out of sight that led to a descending stairwell. It was unlocked, just like he knew it would be, and he slipped inside and started heading downward.

The temperature increased tenfold from freezing outside rain to sweltering machinery air the deeper he got into the bowels of the ship. It was a heat he was both very familiar with and didn't miss at all, and immediately his brow broke out in sweat as he dashed through steam-filled rooms and shimmied between scalding metal and open flames. There were a multitude of workers down here, too, but avoiding them was the easiest part – most of them were too absorbed in their work to even notice him, and he held his breath to slip by those that were a little more observant.

After only a few minutes of sneaking and dodging and hiding, Sly found himself in a place he hadn't been to in weeks: the boiler room.

He stopped just inside, surprised to see the place empty, and looked around to make sure he was well and truly alone. All the engines were humming in a state of standby, ready and able to be pushed into overdrive at the single press of a button. They weren't what he was here for, though – that prize was in the center of the room, larger than any of its kin and chugging along at max capacity.

Sly ran his fingers along the tiniest of dents in its outer shell. His eyes trailed to the ground, but no red stains could be found. Those dents were the only physical reminder of what had happened here only days before the raccoon had been picked up and sent to the States. He wondered, morbidly curious, whether the bodies had been disposed of in one of the open furnaces or if they'd been thrown out to sea.

There was no use dwelling on bad memories when he had a job to do, so he pulled out his cane and raised it over his head.

Heavy footsteps from behind him. The raccoon stiffened and turned around to see the walrus welder he had once been paired with standing just inside the doorway. She stared at him in shock before her expression hardened and her hand started going towards the radio at her hip.

"Wait! Just – wait," he pleaded, holding his hands up like there was nothing wrong with the picture in front of her. It wasn't quite as effective with his cane out, and he could see it in the way her eyes kept darting between it and his face with visible, suspicious confusion.

The look on her face suggested she wasn't sure if he was going to jump her. If she were just a little bit closer, he probably would have.

"What are you doing here, kid?" She asked warily. One foot was bouncing erratically as though she was torn between retreating or advancing. "The boss never said anything about you coming back."

"You're right, this wasn't planned. I wasn't supposed to be back yet." Lies were always more convincing with a grain of truth to them, he'd long ago discovered. The raccoon hoped with all his might that it would be enough this time. "But Raleigh brought me here because some of his colleagues have gotten caught, and he didn't want me accidentally leaking info if I was caught, too."

For a few seconds, it seemed like his deception was going to be successful. The walrus was starting to relax, bit by bit, and he slowly put his hands down in response. But then her gaze drifted to the machinery behind him, and her confused frown grew deeper and deeper.

"Isn't that…" The moment realization hit her, the welder's eyes went wide with shock and anger. She raised a finger at Sly that trembled with rage. "You're trying to stall the ship."

"What are you talking about?" Sweat trickled down his temple. "I'm just doing my job down here, same as you and everyone else."

It wasn't enough. She snarled – but instead of rushing forward to stop him like he thought, she turned on her heel and fled the room, and Sly's entire body was flooded with ice in the middle of an inferno.

"Shit! Fuck!" He started to run after her, then stopped and glanced back at the chugging engine. It had to be destroyed, and this might be his only chance to do so safely – but if the walrus got away from him before her could stop her from making a call, then Raleigh was going to learn there was an intruder onboard.

Raleigh was going to learn he was onboard. He couldn't let the frog know he was here, couldn't be found, couldn't be caught – because if he was caught then there'd never be a chance to escape again.

But the only way to truly escape was if the ship was trapped in the bay.

Sly inhaled and turned back around, swinging his cane with all his might at the machinery. The jolt of the impact ricocheted up his arms not unlike the tombstones in Mz. Ruby's swamp, but he couldn't afford to be unbalanced by it. He swung again, and again, and again, until the engine was a smoking, sputtering mess and he could hear everything around him start to power down.

Then he sprinted after the woman.

Through rooms, between furnaces, dodging heat and smoke and startled workers, the raccoon ran for all he was worth. There was only one way out of the engine room, which he raced for while praying to anything that might listen that he could catch her before it was too late. The stairwell was empty as he took the stairs two at a time, and his heart was in his throat when he burst out onto the deck.

Nothing. Not even a fleeing shadow. The walrus was gone.

Fuck! Fuck! Cào! Fuck!

Overwhelmed by terrified failure, Sly's knees gave out beneath him and he was forced to prop himself up against the iron door as static crept up his limbs and into his lungs. It was over. She was going to tell Raleigh, and Raleigh was going to find him here. The frog would drag him kicking and screaming back into hell – if he was feeling forgiving about everything the raccoon had done to his colleagues.

And if he wasn't feeling forgiving, if he decided to treat Sly like the thief that he was, then it was over.

You're caught you're caught you're caught you're dead –

His chest was burning.

Somehow, through a haze of panic, he reached into his hoodie pocket and pulled out his burner phone, shaking so hard that he nearly dropped the tiny thing. As if on autopilot, staring out at the empty deck and the ocean waves beyond, he found one of two saved numbers and pressed the dial button.

"Ringtail?" Carmelita's answering voice was a shock to his system, but not nearly enough to break him out of his distress. He held the phone close and struggled to stop hyperventilating. "Is that you? What's that sound?"

"It's – it's me," he managed between shallow gulps of air. "I'm – it's – there's a – a problem, I can't…"

"A problem?" The sharp uptick in her tone made him flinch. "What kind of problem? Did someone see you?"

seen seen seen caught caught caught dead dead dead

"Yes! Seen, I was seen, we have to get out of here, kāi zǒu, we need to –"

"Okay, whoa, first you need to calm down. I'm going to count to ten and I need you to breathe in and out along with me. Okay?"

He wanted to scream. They needed to leave immediately, not stop to make him feel better!

"Sly. I need you to listen to me. We can't make a plan until you've stopped panicking." Her words left no room for argument. "I'm starting now. One."

"Inspector –"

"One."

Sly promptly shut up and inhaled as deeply as he could.

"Two."

He exhaled.

"Three."

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. By the time she uttered "ten", the raccoon felt like he could actually move his body again. The explosion of panic in his head had lessened to a storm he could almost weather by himself.

His chest still ached.

"How are you feeling, Ringtail?"

"…Better." It shamed him to admit it. How stupid he must look now; how unreliable he was when just the threat of getting caught had him shattering into pieces.

Even if it was over a very justified threat, it was still absolutely pathetic.

"Good." There was no scolding or even mocking him for his weakness. The fox was all business, like usual, and he was eternally grateful for it. "Now, you said something about someone seeing you?"

"Yeah…" He tried to swallow the dryness in his mouth. "One of Raleigh's goons saw me and ran off, and I lost track of her. She's probably already told him or is on her way to."

"Shit. Okay, we're going to have to expedite our process, then. I'm going to call for reinforcements and warn them about the storm. Hopefully, either they'll be able to make it through regardless or we can find a way to shut it down before they come."

She sounded stressed but not angry, which threw him for a loop. She should've been furious over the sudden change in plans. That he had probably put the entire ship on red alert any minute now and forced them to improvise and risk more lives was enough reason to tell him to get lost until she cleaned up his mess.

But she didn't do that, and she wasn't angry – as much as he could tell over a call, anyway – and he pressed the phone a little closer to his ear in silent, secret gratitude.

"I…I don't think they'll have to worry about the storm for too much longer," he tentatively added, looking up at the giant blimp. "The reason I was caught was because I stumbled onto what I think was an engine room, and I sorta…destroyed a machine or two."

Even now, he could see the artificial vortex beginning to abate. It was more gradual than he'd thought, but it was still a victory, and he knew for a fact that the ship itself was dead in the water for the time being.

"Oh, great job! You sure got a lot done in fifteen minutes. I found a way into the bow where I think they haul in wrecks straight into the ship itself, but this place is so big that I'm probably going to be here a while."

The idea of the inspector trapped below deck when the frog sounded the alarm sent a spear of worry straight through his chest. "What about Raleigh knowing we're here? Are you sure that's safe?"

"Please, Ringtail, give me some credit." Her voice was nothing but teasing. "If I can handle mob bosses and voodoo priestesses all by myself, I can handle however many lowlifes who are scavenging stolen parts. As long as you keep yourself safe and out of sight, which I know you can, I think we'll be okay."

She sounded so sure of it all; their new plan and their safety and his capabilities. The underlying stress was still present, he could hear it no matter how much she was probably trying not to let it seep through, but just the fact that she could stay so level-headed made him both envious and awed.

She was so much better than him, he was beginning to realize. So much better in so many ways. Maybe she had been right to try to refuse his help back in Mesa.

"Cào, I'm sorry," he mumbled, not noticing the lapse as he was too busy wrestling with sudden, crippling inferiority. "I told you I'd be fine and then I screwed things up for you."

"It's…it's fine, Sly. Mistakes happen and we plan accordingly." There was a significant pause. "I have a question, though – what was that language you were speaking earlier?"

"What? What did I say?"

"When you were saying we had to leave, you said something I didn't understand, and also right before you apologized just now – it sounded like…ta-ow?"

The butchering of the pronunciation made him wince before he even registered that he had just slipped into another language in front of her, and that she had caught it. Of course, she had; she caught everything.

"Oh, you heard that, huh?" He began walking, now filled with nervous energy on top of the inadequacy and desperately needing an outlet. "That was Mandarin. You probably shouldn't repeat that last word out loud. It's, uh, not very nice."

"Is that the source of your accent?"

Sly's eyebrows jumped up and he stopped in his tracks. "I have an accent?"

"You do. It's very faint, but I noticed it the first time we met. I couldn't place it."

"…Huh."

"You didn't know?"

No, he very much did not. Another aspect of his identity, stripped away against his will by the monsters who had raised him. The raccoon's stressed walking turned into an angry trot as he stopped pacing aimlessly and instead headed for a part of the ship that he knew for a fact had something he wanted.

"It's not my first language," he said curtly as he moved. The haze of bitterness kept him talking, too heated to stop himself from blurting out the words. "I lived in Kunlun as a kid for a while. Picked up enough to get by."

Immediately he regretted it – if she was even half the detective he knew her to be, she'd start connecting dots as soon as they went looking for the Panda King. Maybe if he was lucky enough, he could convince her it was just a coincidence. Kunlun was a big area, after all. It was merely chance he had been in the same place that a crime lord had set up shop.

That had worked in Mesa City, hadn't it?

"Anyway, sorry to give you a heart attack. I promise I'll be more careful until your officer friends show up. Are we still meeting up again soon if nothing else changes?"

"Wh – yeah, we can do that." His abrupt change in topic had clearly thrown her for a loop, but the fox recovered quickly like he knew she would. "Just look out for yourself, okay, Ringtail?"

"I will."

Sly ended the call before he said anything else incriminating, and crammed his phone back in his pocket. His cane he gripped tightly in his right hand as he laid eyes on a particular set of doors belonging to a particular building on the left side of the deck.

They were on a real time crunch, now, and Raleigh probably already knew he was here. The time for subtlety was gone. If any of those incoming cops questioned him about the mess he was probably going to make, he was simply going to tell them that there had been a struggle, he had panicked, and he had feared for his life.

Carmelita would vouch for him. He was almost completely sure of that, now.

Raleigh's "treasure chamber", as he liked to call it, was a long ornate hallway that led to a large room filled with water. The walls were filled floor to ceiling with shelves full of stolen goods and decadent prizes. It was the frog's tailored art gallery of ego while he immersed himself in his personal swimming pool. Sly had been in that room exactly once in his life, the very first time he had stepped foot on the ship – forced to get a good look at each and every item on display as Raleigh bragged about his vast collection and taunted the young kit with something he could never hope to achieve.

It had been both a dare and a threat that day. Daring him to prove his worth as a Cooper by stealing even a single item in that room, and threatening him with a fate worse than death if he so much as tried. Sly, barely thirteen and terrified out of his wits, had not been willing to risk his life to protect his self-worth, and the memory of the frog sneering down at him had stuck so strongly in his mind that he hadn't ever worked up the courage to attempt it in all the years since.

There had been one other thing about the treasure chamber that had stayed with him, though, and that was the sight of a heavy iron safe on a raised platform in the very center of the pool. The raccoon had no doubt that safe was where Raleigh's stolen pages of the Thievius Raccoonus were being held.

He pushed through the doors into the fancy hallway and almost immediately was forced to freeze, vanishing from sight just in time for a spotlight to illuminate the exact spot where he was standing. It swung away a few moments later, giving him just enough space to take a better breath and inch forward until it returned, and then he was still again. The thing seemed to be automated, sweeping back and forth down the length of the hall with no room for even the smallest of rats to skirt around the edge of its light.

Sly didn't know whether being seen by the thing would trigger an alarm or shoot him down, but he wasn't eager to find out. He moved cautiously, not daring to take any risks, and slowly worked his way down the hall that suddenly felt a lot longer than it looked. Just as he remembered, the walls were covered in shiny baubles and lavish wealth, but none of them caught his attention. None of them were worth anything to someone who was after something truly irreplaceable.

At the other end of the hallway, the room opened up into the swimming pool. It was untouched and seemingly unguarded, but the raccoon knew better than to underestimate the chief machinist of the Fiendish Five. He took the deepest breath he could manage and readied his reflexes as he crossed the threshold, and his foresight paid off when his movement triggered an entire wall of yellow lasers that barreled down on him too fast to blink.

The raccoon turned invisible just a hairs-breadth faster, unable to even wonder if it would work on lasers, and watched wide-eyed as it passed over him just as harmlessly as the spotlight had. He would have breathed a sigh of relief if it didn't put his life in danger and stealthily continued without letting himself appear visible again. It was only when he reached the edge of the pool that he exhaled, and only because no other security measures had been triggered. He eyed the deep water, then looked past it to the safe that was still where he'd last remembered it, sitting innocently quite a ways away from where Sly was standing.

What the raccoon hadn't remembered – and what he was very grateful for now – were the lily pads. A dozen or so large, round, green cushions floated on top of the water, looking a lot more stable than they had any right to. After a moment of hesitance, knowing there would be no one nearby to save him this time if he fell into the water again, he made a running leap onto the closest pad. It bounced a little under his weight but otherwise was unbothered, and Sly wasted no time aiming for the next one.

Hopping from lily pad to lily pad was not something he had pictured himself doing in his mission to put the book back together, but it was a far easier task to focus on than the security lasers, and he didn't dare complain even in his head, afraid to jinx it. The only thing that would have made it even more interesting was if Carmelita was jumping alongside him. No doubt, she would have gotten a kick out of the unusual situation at the exact same time she would've taken it extremely seriously. It was one of her odd little contradictions that he found himself liking a lot.

As soon as he made it to the center platform, Sly got on one knee next to the safe and pressed his ear against the door, repeating the technique he had used in Muggshot's office. Every subtle difference in sound seemed to echo through the cavernous room, which made his job feel easier at the same time it made him paranoid. None of Raleigh's goons were allowed in here, but that didn't mean their boss might not decide on an impromptu visit to ensure his treasure was safe when he learned Sly was causing problems.

The frog didn't show up, thank god, and the raccoon heard the last number fall under his careful hand. His heart swelled with triumph as he opened the safe and began rummaging through it. There was an entire pile of centuries-old gold coins that were probably each worth a fortune, and a series of blueprints of the ship and the storm machine, but when Sly sifted beyond all that, he was shocked to find nothing else. Not a single page of the Thievius Raccoonus had been stashed here.

He had come all the way here only to turn up empty-handed.

Stress began creeping back up his spine, threatening to seep into his skull and into his mind, but he gritted his teeth and smothered it down with sheer willpower and Carmelita's helpful breathing technique. The worst thing right now was for him to panic again. It wouldn't help him, it wouldn't help his partner, and it most certainly wouldn't find what he was looking for.

With a growl that was teetering dangerously close to a whine, Sly closed the safe door and spun the dial a few times to reset it, then tapped the end of his cane against the concrete floor as he wracked his brain for any idea of where the missing pages might be. There were only so many places on a ship like this that were safe enough to keep such old, delicate artifacts, and although Raleigh was an arrogant windbag, he was not the kind of person to lose something priceless through a careless mistake.

But the only other place as feasibly secure enough as this room wasn't technically part of the ship. It was floating several meters above the ship, and it never came down for anything. Anything, of course, except for a high-and-mighty frog deciding to grace his crew with his temporary presence before returning to his reclusive lair for weeks at a time.

Sly dissected the dilemma for a solid minute, trying and failing to think of a way to reach the storm machine while it was still in the air. Short of shooting himself out of one of the cannons along the outside railing – which he might have been tempted to do if it wasn't going to draw the wrong kind of attention from his partner – there was really only one solution.

They'd have to bring the blimp down somehow.

His phone was already coming out of his pocket as he began his trek back towards the deck.

A/N: It's honestly a miracle I got this chapter out on time. I was busy all week and I only had a simple outline for the entire chapter; pretty much wrote the whole thing from scratch today and yesterday. Hoo. Combine that with SlyFox week and I'm amazed I have any creative juices left in me.

But oh boy, not even ten minutes on the ship and things are already starting to go to shit! I hope Sly's reaction didn't feel too jarring - this is the first time he's fallen apart like this (at least while he was with Carmelita...) but I'd say he has very good reason for it. Luckily he can rely on her to be his rock, and he still won't let his stress get in the way of his goal.

Next week, we'll get to see our favorite Inspector's side of things! Thanks for reading!