A/N: We will get back to the imprisoned Harley in the Contessa's prison at a later time. For now, I want to reimagine the fith and final level of Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time: 40 Thieves. It will take place after the events of Go West, Young Raccoon, where Murray drove the Cooper Van off a cliff. Bentley threw something into the time machine, saving the Cooper Gang's life and they ended up in the Ice Age. What if that exact same scenario happened, but instead of the Cooper Gang going to the Ice Age, they instead went to the late 1950s in the town of Nashville, Tennessee, where they meet Harley Keener's grandfather in the summer of 1958. Miss Decibel will be a somewhat popular jazz and pop music star who will influence people into doing nuetral things. This chapter and subsequent chapters will be called 45, in reference to the standard speed of vinyl records that were popular during the 1950s. I will plan on doing a seperate stand alone version of this chapter whch will focus on the DB Cooper plane highjacking event that occured in 1971 in a future chapter later on.
August 19, 1958. Nashville, Tennessee. The Keener Residence. Mid Afternoon. The human world.
The 1950s. A glorious and often overlooked time period in American and world history. A simpler time, where TV was all the rage, B movies ruled the cinemas, cars were simple and cars weren't equipped with seatbelts (I'm not kidding), radio shows like Fibber McGee and Molly, The Shadow, Lassie and Red Ryder were popular. TV shows like I Love Lucy, The Adventures of Superman, Howdy Doody, Perry Mason, The Price is Right, Lassie, Crusader Rabbit and The Honeymooners were all the rage. Life was simple in the 1950s. Cars were stylish back then. Fast food mega corporations like McDonald's and Burger King were first established in the 1950s.
In a suburbs lived the Keener family, consisting of a mother, father, a 14 year old boy and a 18 year old girl. The boy's name was Henry Jesse Keener, the future paternal grandfather of Harley and Emily Keener. Henry looked somewhat similar to Harley, albiet with a different eye color and dental scructure as Harley's. He had the same wavy brown hair as his grandson Harley. Whereas Harley Keener's eye color was half hazel half brown, Henry Keener's eyes were dark blue, almost the same blue color as Carmelita Fox's hair. Henry was Caucasian. Henry Keener lived a simple life with his family. Everything was peaceful back in the 1950s. Nobody was at war in other countries, except North and South korea, who were in the midst of the Korean War.
Henry Keener was reading Psycho by Robert Bloch, which would be later turned into an insanely popular movie by Alfred Hitchcock two years later. (I know the Psycho novel was technically published in 1959, but nobody cares about literary publishing continuity. Plus, it came around the same time frame in 1958/1959). Henry Keener was a huge fan of Alfred Hitchcock, having watched Vertigo a couple weeks ago with his Uncle Danny. He was looking forward to seeing Hitchcock's next movie North By Northwest next year. Henry was outside in the front yard listening to some boring radio show whilst reading. He had a stack of Flash and Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) comics next to him. There was a cool breeze in the summertime air. It was mid afternoon. The sky was cloudless. The sun was sunning bright in the sky.
All of a sudden, there was a great big crash as something landed in the driveway of the Keener house. The crash was deafening. The human boy nearly fell out of his chair in astonishment. There was a cyan blue Volkswagen type van with what looked like a raccoon symbol on the side of the van. The van looked slightly damaged. Henry got up from his chair and set his book to the side where his comics were. He was wearing sunglasses that had a straight line on top of the two frames. He could see that there were people in the van. Riding shotgun was a human woman with long, wavy azure blue hair who worre a earring on her right ear. The woman wore a tan jacket with a dark blue middriff top that hid her breasts that left her furless chest completely exposed from the waist up. The woman's name was Carmelita Montoya Fox. She used to be an anthropomorphic vixen. Now, she looked like a Latino human woman with light brown skin.
She, along with the other occupants in the van used to be anthropomorphic animals that inhabited a world that looked almost identical to the human world, with the only difference being the entire population (with the exception of Harley and Emily Keener) were all anthropomorphic animals. The occupants in the Cooper Van were suddenly changed from their original animal selves to human beings upon landing in the human world in the 1950s. It wouldn't make any sense logistically to have anthropomorphic animals from another world retain their animal forms in the human world. Roger Rabbit had yet to be invented. So all of the members of the Cooper Gang were now human beings.
On the driver side, was a overweight human man who wore an aviators cap with goggles over his eyes and head. He was Caucasian. The man was wearing a cyan T shirt with a white scarf draped around his neck. His name was Murray. Murray used to be a pink hippo. Now, he was a Caucasian human. Murray now wore pants. (With the Cooper Gang being human beings in the human world, it's only appropriate for Murray to wear pants in the human world. It's not gonna be like the movie Showgirls were public explicit nudity was a okay). In the back of the van, there was a guy with short blonde hair with glasses. He was Bentley. Last but not least, there was a boy who looked to be around the age of seventeen. He had wild wavy light brown hsir with half hazel and brown eyes. The boy was wearing a loose fitting shirt that looked like it was ripped straight out of a Mark Twain novel. His name was Harley Keener. He came from the year 2018.
Henry looked at the strange clock like apparatus that was on top of the van. He was perplexed as to why there was a clock on top of a van like that. Henry was even more perplexed as to how a vehicle could just fall from the sky in broad daylight in the middle of his driveway.
"Are you guys okay?" Henry Keener asked the people inside the van.
"Yeah, we're okay." the guy in the driver seat said.
"What the hell happened to you guys? You guys look like you've been in a terrible accident!" Henry said astonishingly.
"It's kind of a long, convoluted story. We'll tell you it later." Henry heard a nasally voice say. Henry then turned around to see a person falling on the grass in front of the house. His mother stepped outside of the house and saw the mysterious van and a man laying on the ground. The man on the ground had on all blue clothing: a blue hat, blue shirt, and blue boots. The person had brown eyes. He had short, copper colored hair that was curly. Beside the man lay a strange looking yellow and brown cane that looped into a downward curl, like a hook. His name was Sly Cooper. He was turned into a human like the rest of his friends. He was originally a raccoon.
Sly started to get up off the ground. He standed on his two feet. He noticed that there was no tail on his rear area, as he was a human. He walked towards his cane. He picked it up. Harley exited the vehicle along with Bentley. Bentley looked like as dwarf like Warwick Davis or Peter Dinklage. Harley walked up to the brown haired boy. He seemed vaguely familiar to Harley. Then, it hit Harley like a ton of bricks. The boy standing in front of him was the young version of his grandfather: Henry Keener!
"Where are we? When are we?" the handicapped man asked everybody.
"You're in Nashville Tennessee. It's August 19, 1958. Why'd you ask?" Henry Keener asked Bentley. It was then that he noticed that the man was in a wheelchair. Henry wondered why that man was in the wheelchair and how he got handicapped.
"Do you got polio?" Henry asked the handicapped man. "Is that why you're in a wheelchair?"
"No. How I ended up in a wheelchair is kind of complicated." Bentley said to the 14 year old kid.
"Who are you?" A feminine Latino voice asked Henry.
"Henry. Henry Keener." the boy said. "Who are you guys?"
All of the members of the Cooper Gang introduced themselves to Henry. Harley introduced himself under the pseudonym Harvey Weinstein, who was one Harley's favorite filmmakers. He secretly liked what Harvey Weinstein did to become infamous. He found the Harvey Weinstein scandal to be amusing.
"It's nice to meet you Mr. Weinstein." Henry said to his future grandson. "I bet you guys are pretty hungry and thirsty. Won't you guys come on in and watch TV."
"Why are you inviting a bunch of strangers into our house?" Henry Keener's mother asked her son.
"Because I feel like it." Henry said "It's the least I can do. Where the hell do you expect them to go? At a five star hotel?"
Emily Keener (whom Harley Keener's little sister was named after) thought about the decision to let five random strangers into their house. They literally just fell out of the sky after nearly driving off a cliff to their deaths in the Old West. If it weren't for Bentley throwing one of Harley's Ritchie Valens records into the time machine, they'd all be dead.
"They can stay with us for now." Mrs. Keener said to Henry. Henry welcomed the Cooper Gang into his house to bask in the glory of life in the 1950s.
A/N: That was the first chapter of my reimaging of Sly Cooper 40 Thieves. I will flip back and forth between the present day Sly 2 events and the 1950s events with Harley's grandfather.