There is a devil, and he knows my name.
Things had been going according to Clockwerk's plan.
The Fiendish Five had killed Conner Cooper and his insignificant spouse, and Raleigh had found the Thievius Raccoonus behind a family portrait rather easily. It was almost pathetic how unprepared his nemesis had been for the assault on his home. Oh, he had done his best to fight back, but the Fiendish Five were top of their class, hand-picked for this moment even if they didn't realize it. The raccoon hadn't stood a chance.
Yes, everything was going perfectly. They were splitting the book into five equal distributions right there in the living room above the master thief's body, the last defilement to the Cooper family name, and were planning to make a quick getaway soon afterwards when there was a loud thump from the coat closet, followed by a child's gasp.
The Five grew deathly silent.
Clockwerk knew the child was there, of course. He had seen the innocent eyes through the cracked door; had taken great pleasure in eviscerating Cooper in full view of that closet. He'd been planning to let the kit live - to show the world that without their precious book, the Cooper line was nothing, and then once it was proven he would destroy this last living descendant. End the cursed family for good.
But the rest of his team hadn't known about Cooper's son. And now, with the child's foolish mistake, it might be too late for this plan. But Clockwerk would not have his victory taken away so easily.
It was Muggshot who ripped the closet door open, pulling out the famous Cooper cane in one hand and the struggling kit in the other. He held them both aloft by his head with a scowl on his face.
"What the hell? Cooper had a brat!" He growled, completely unconcerned by the tiny feet kicking at his arm. "Whaddya we do with 'im?"
"Well obviously we finish the job, you dullard," Raleigh scoffed, barely giving the child a glance before looking over the pages he'd claimed. "Otherwise he'll go running his mouth to the authorities and tie this back to us."
"Or claim vengeance, as would be his right." The Panda King said it solemnly from his place at the owl's side.
"King's right about that," Mz. Ruby hummed, claws already contorting as she read into the future. "If we let this child go tonight, it won't be near ten years 'fore he comes lookin' to do us harm."
Muggshot scowled harder. He shook the kit by the scruff. "That true, brat? You gonna pick a fight with the likes of us? Huh?!"
He tossed the child to the bloodstained carpet and dropped the Cooper cane right after. It fell in the kit's lap, who latched onto it like a lifeline.
"There you go, yer all ready to fight us right now. Why wait a century?"
"Ten years is a decade, you blasted idiot," the frog jeered.
"Shut up! I know that!"
"Enough."
They all stopped at the metallic voice. Even the child froze. The leader of the Fiendish Five regarded the scene in detail, considering how best to recapture his carefully-laid plan. This was not how it was supposed to go, and he'd be damned if the Cooper line ended on anything other than his terms, and his alone.
Clockwerk stepped over the elder Cooper's corpse and bent his head to study his offspring. The kit shook head to tail, smart enough to fear for its life, but it clutched its family cane with fierce protectiveness and locked its jaw audaciously. The tears in its eyes were not just from grief.
"I think," the owl mused in slow thought, already calculating the parameters of a new idea, "we should ask Cooper's son what it wants."
Raleigh and Muggshot began protesting immediately, so Clockwerk gave them a single look to silence them again. The Panda King remained soundless from behind. Mz. Ruby's eyes narrowed and she started tapping out deliberate patterns into the air. The leader lowered his talon and placed it under the kit's chin, forcing it to look up at him. The tip of his claw was wider than its neck.
"Well, Cooper child? What do you want? Be honest."
It shuddered, eyes flickering briefly towards its dead father. Then those eyes came back up, angry and hurting. "I…I want you to g-go away."
"And so the cycle continues," the Panda King said as he came up beside the owl and regarded Cooper's son. "This child will fight for his family's honor and the blood that has been spilled tonight. We do not need Mz. Ruby's foretelling to know that."
"It will not have been the first time a Cooper has tried to do so," Clockwerk responded quietly. "But none have succeeded, and none ever shall."
"I don't want some orphaned waif causing me trouble!" Raleigh hissed. "I don't care how young he is. Let me squish him and be done with it!"
"No."
Clockwerk stretched one giant wing out to prevent the frog from carrying out his threat. He did not want the Fiendish Five to kill the last of the Coopers for him, or even with him, and certainly not in this...anticlimactic manner.
"No," he said again, that idea in his head growing insidiously. "I have something better in mind." He tilted the kit's chin up further, addressing it directly now. "You want us to go away, Cooper child?"
The little raccoon nodded, mindful of the razor claw at its throat. Clockwerk watched its careful swallow.
"I suppose it could be enough to do that. To leave you with only our shadows to fear in your mind, and the knowledge that we would be ready to take your life if you ever came after us. Unfortunately for you," Clockwerk flipped his talon and knocked the kit on its back, pinning it effortlessly under his foot. "I've never abided by what a Cooper wants, and I will not start tonight."
The rest of the Five tensed as one, perhaps anticipating a third death this night. But the owl wasn't done. He raised his head and met each of their gazes; two were solemn, two were bloodthirsty.
"We won't kill Cooper's son. Not now." He clicked his beak to keep any counter-arguments quiet. "But neither will we leave him be."
Mz. Ruby's claws drew out predictions and then stopped abruptly. She stared at her leader, intrigued. "You gonna do that? You sure?"
"Do what? What are we doin', boss?" Muggshot scratched his head with his gun.
"We agreed, before arriving here tonight, that we would share Cooper's legacy among us and lay claim to what pieces we wanted." Clockwerk pressed the kit a little further against the carpet, making it cry out. "His child is part of that legacy. And we will be claiming him as well."
Everything was quiet for a single moment. And then it wasn't.
"You can't be serious!" Raleigh screeched in outrage. "Are you suggesting we - we what, we adopt him?"
"I'm with Raleigh on this one, boss." Muggshot crossed his arms with a scowl. "No one ever said nothin' about this being a babysittin' job."
The great owl breathed in and out in a single, patient, barely-restrained emotion. He had chosen his team for their abilities, but their short-sightedness was often…vexing. His yellow gaze strayed to Mz. Ruby, who nodded and looked into the future again.
"If Clockwerk takes the child tonight," she murmured, eyebrows furrowed in concentration, "he'll kill him within a month at most."
Ah. He couldn't say he was truly surprised. Even now, feeling the tiny, rapid heartbeat reverberating against the metal of his foot was pushing all his self-control to its greatest limits. To hold out a full month sounded nigh unbearable.
"I don't see you volunteering, though!" Raleigh rounded on the alligator, puffed up in indignation and agitation. "Why don't you take the waif since you're so concerned about whether he lives or dies, hmmm?"
She narrowed her eyes at him, lip curling. "My work is sensitive. A troubled soul like his will spoil it unless I change him, and I don't make it a habit to torment children."
"Your work is sensitive? Yours?! I'm the one building our bloody tech, you ungrateful, unsophisticated-!"
"I will take him."
The words were said much quieter than the arguing, but the whole group heard it. They all turned to stare at the Panda King.
"I will take him," he repeated, crouching to study the sobbing, trapped kit. It tried desperately to hush its cries as it realized it had someone's full attention again. "I have a…relative, who is close to his age. He would make a suitable servant."
The fireworks forger reached forward, grabbing the Cooper child's chin and turning its head so they could meet each other's gaze. The raccoon's breath hitched, caught on a whine, but the sobbing ceased. Clockwerk watched the exchange with narrowed eyes.
"That's all well and good," Raleigh grumbled, "but how long are you going to keep him? Until he's old enough that your conscience won't guilt you for snuffing out a child?"
The Panda King looked up at his leader, waiting for his answer.
"Until he is old enough to prove whether he will be a help or a hindrance to us," the owl said. "Are you so quick to forget what he is a part of? The reason we came here? The legacy we drove to destroy, and the secrets we are claiming?"
Collectively, the Five each glanced at the pages they had taken for themselves. Mz. Ruby clicked her tongue and eyed her boss in disbelief.
"You want us to teach him his family's ways?"
"No." Everyone in the room went stiff, but Clockwerk did not act on the threat. "He will not learn a single thing from that book. He will learn and struggle like the rest of us did, and we shall see what a Cooper is truly worth."
"Yeah? When do we figure he'll be ready to swim with the big boys?" Muggshot asked. "Cause some of us got places to be, and I don't wanna wait ten or twenty or whatever years till he's all grown up. What if we retire by then?"
"There ain't been a future I've seen where that happens," Mz. Ruby tittered. "You'll be up to your shoulders in crime 'til the day you die, Tony."
The leader of the Five lifted his wing to bring back his associates' attention before they could be pulled further away from the matter at hand.
"We will know with certainty when he is ready - or when he is not. Coopers have always had an infuriating talent at boasting such things." Clockwerk lowered his head to stare at the kit, who stared back without a sound. "What is your name, Cooper child?"
The racoon shivered. The owl resisted the powerful urge to close his talons into a fist.
"S-S-Sly…"
"Sly Cooper." He said it like he didn't already know; like he wasn't acutely aware of every detail of this child's life, the last Cooper that had taunted him since its birth. "Your skills, your future, your very existence belongs to us now. We, the Fiendish Five, lay claim to your life just as we have laid claim to your Thievius Raccoonus."
The kit's eyes filled with tears, but they didn't spill over. Instead, its head fell back against the bloodstained carpet as it looked away. Clockwerk followed its gaze and would have smiled if he was still capable.
"Let us see how well you measure up to your father."
A/N: First things first: cover artwork commissioned and posted with permission by the fantastic slightly-gay-pogohammer over on Tumblr! Please check out her stuff, she's an incredible artist!
I've been slowly and surely working on this story for the better part of six months. It started as a what-if scenario while I was first working on Silent as the Grave (if the prologue feels similar, it's because I wrote pretty much the entire thing at the same time as the earliest chapters of that fic), and I'd kinda half-heartedly toyed with a few ideas over the years but didn't really do much with it. When I showed what I'd written to a friend who was also into the Sly series, she persuaded me to give it a serious shot, so now here we are. Thank her (blame her) for this thing's existence.
If it hasn't already become apparent, this fic is a lot darker than SatG. It's going to cover some pretty uncomfortable stuff (although most of it will be more implied) and at times Sly is going to be a very different character than he is in canon. He's not going to be all doom and gloom, don't worry, but keep that in mind as we move forward. I've got the majority of it all either written or planned out so expect weekly updates on Fridays.
Hopefully you all enjoy reading this as much as I've been while writing it!