You're the future I pretended I no longer wanted.

Krakarov was perhaps the world's only forgotten volcano.

Officially declared too dangerous for public access for well over two hundred years, it sat amid an uninhabited stretch of land in the northwest corner of Russia, so far from civilization that it had quietly slipped out of collective memory. Scientists did not study it when there were much more accessible ones. Local and international governments found no need to warn people about it because it was only taught in the most thorough geological studies. Any thrill-seekers looking to climb it were few and far between, and those few who tried never came back. It was a mystery among mysteries, so obscure that the only agreed-upon thing was that it was to be left alone for reasons lost to time.

There were only a handful of people who knew what those reasons actually were, and not a single one of them had ever actually entered the volcano itself.

Until now.

Sly was exhausted. He had left Kunlun by Interpol escort, posing as one of the town survivors and given a ride down the mountain until they reached a proper city. He'd slipped easily away with all of Inspector Fox's gear, hid in the first abandoned building he could find, and had promptly had a breakdown. Then, he'd locked everything down in the same mental vault that held his parents' deaths and the source of the scars on his chest, looked over the stuff he had stolen, considered his options, and began planning.

Leaving Carmelita to die at the hands of his greatest nightmare had not been an option. Even if Clockwerk had killed her the instant he'd realized he hadn't grabbed his real target, the raccoon couldn't handle the uncertainty of not knowing. If it turned out she was still alive and he had turned tail and ran without even trying to save her, he wouldn't be able to live with himself.

And so here he was nearly fourteen hours later, standing at the base of a forgotten volcano, armed with his cane and an assortment of Interpol equipment, running on what little sleep he'd managed to get on the airplane he'd snuck onto to get this far north, and feeling as though he'd just taken a beating from every Fiendish Five member at once.

It was a small price to pay for the quelling of his conscience.

The outer perimeter of Krakarov had a large metal fence wrapped around it, almost two kilometers from the volcano proper. Faded warning signs detailing hazards like falling rocks as well as threats of criminal fines and detainment for trespassing littered the fence in both directions as far as the eye could see, but there were no security measures to reinforce it. No barbed wire, no electric currents, no cameras or guards or anything of the sort.

Just a single, taller than average fence, and for some reason that alone scared him more than anything. Either Clockwerk was that adept at defending his home, or he had anticipated Sly's arrival and was holding the metaphorical door open in invitation.

Well, if it was an invitation, then there were going to be a lot more visitors than the owl expected. Sly reached into his backpack, slightly smushed underneath the jetpack strapped to his back, and pulled out the GPS tracker he'd stolen from the Interpol truck. He turned it on, stared at it a moment to make sure it was working, then tucked it away again. With any luck, Interpol would come running the moment they realized it belonged to their missing inspector.

Maybe, if he was really lucky, they'd arrive in time to save her before Clockwerk finished him off. She deserved to survive this mess he had gotten her into, even if he didn't. Especially if he didn't.

Sly looked the fence up and down with both his hands curled around the jetpack's harness. There were no signs of life here; not a single person, unevolved animal, or even plant to be found. Everything around him was dust and dark rock in the shadow of the volcano ahead.

With one last glance to the left and the right just to be certain that he was alone, the raccoon began climbing. It was difficult with all the equipment weight, and he winced with every rattle of metal as he had to sacrifice stealth just to be able to scale the thing at all, but after a few minutes he had finally cleared the top and jumped down to the other side. Here, he paused for a moment to catch his breath and wipe away the sweat that had been creeping up his neck for far longer than it took to climb that fence.

Then he began to walk towards the volcano.

It was eerily quiet as he picked his way through the rocky terrain. The air was still and thick with distant heat; there was no wind to blow relief against his fur or his clothes. He kept his stress clamped tight under a lid and stayed alert to the slightest changes around him. The sky was a gloomy grey but devoid of clouds – and concerning silhouettes – and he periodically looked up to scan it in his vigilance. No one ever looked up until it was too late, and he'd made that mistake twice in his life.

Never again. Nothing was going to catch him off guard anymore. He refused to let it until he knew for sure what had happened to –

There.

A change in the landscape.

Among the cracked, uneven ground, he saw a shred of orange. Sly approached it, confused and then immediately alarmed as he realized it was a small tattered piece of Inspector Fox's heavy coat she had worn in Kunlun. Eyes wide, he dropped to his knees to pick it up, terrified that he would find blood – or worse. It was clean, thank god, but it did little to ease his fear for her safety. All it meant was that she had been here at some point, alive or dead.

Clenching the cloth tightly in his left hand, the raccoon began to stand, but a strange glint between the rocks nearby caught his attention. He tilted his head, catching the light of the shrouded sun just so to find its source. Then his heart stopped for a completely different reason than when he'd found the scrap of coat.

It was a camera. There was a camera embedded in the ground.

Panic seized Sly's chest. Before a single conscious thought could cross his mind, he had already jumped to his feet and started sprinting away, back towards the fence – back towards that flimsy physical barrier outlining the ancient owl's territory. Clockwerk knew he was here. He knew he was here and he was going to come after him again if he stayed here, those claws would come after him again, he'd be dead and Carmelita would be doomed –

Carmelita would be doomed if he ran away, too.

He skidded to a halt. Looked down at the ripped fabric in his hand. Looked at the fence, then to the empty sky. Closed his eyes and forced all his panic away, stuffed in that familiar box with the rest of his emotions until he did what he had come here to do.

Turned around and began walking again.

It didn't matter if Clockwerk had confirmation that he was here. Clearly, he had expected Sly to show, because leaving such obvious evidence out in the open was sloppy at best, and to insinuate that about the owl was an insult of the highest degree. Everything he did was calculated. Everything he did was for a reason. It was a taunt, plain and simple, and it had worked.

It didn't stop the raccoon from glancing up more often, though.

When he finally reached the base of the volcano, his eyes jumped across the harsh rock to look for a way inside. He found it about five meters to his right; the rock curled inward in a way that was definitely not natural. It was a cave, and it led straight to the heart of Krakarov if the sudden spike of heat was any indication.

The cave opening was deceptively large – it was wide, not tall, so that someone like Muggshot or bigger would have to duck their heads as they entered it but could easily stretch their arms horizontally. For Sly, who was small in both ways, there was no issue at all. He pressed himself against one wall, held his breath to turn invisible just in case of more hidden cameras he couldn't see, and headed in.

It was slow going. The ground was hard to walk on and often dipped both uphill and downhill for long stretches of time. Every few minutes he paused and crouched to catch his breath, holding perfectly still and perfectly silent in fear of detection until he was ready to move on invisibly again. The temperature was rising steadily the farther inside he got, and all the extra stuff he was carrying – the jetpack, the GPS, Carmelita's shock pistol and radio, and the two "special" homemade gadgets in his hoodie pocket – added to his fatigue and the sweat trapped under his fur.

It felt a little like he was going into hell. Not too far from the truth if he thought about it too hard, and he was doing everything he could to avoid that.

Nearly half an hour into his trek, the slope evened out into something manageable for once. It was his only warning before he came upon a giant double door blocking him from continuing. The raccoon stopped, craning his head upwards to study the sudden obstruction. It was embedded in both walls and the ceiling, similar to how the camera had been, with no cracks to shimmy through to get around it. In the center of the door were two large handles – built for someone with talons to grab ahold of – and locking them in place was a single, bulky padlock.

The most straightforward barrier ever, and yet Sly was wary to take it at face value. He approached it cautiously, still invisible, and scrutinized it for any sign of unseen security measures or even some of Mz. Ruby's magic, but no matter where he looked or how much he strained his eyes, there was nothing to be found. For all intents and purposes, it really was just a simple gate.

Still not trusting the circumstances of this first true roadblock set up by the Five's leader, he pressed into the corner where the wall and the gate met, making himself as small as possible as he became visible again, and stared up at the padlock. It looked standard and easy to pick, but it was too high to reach while his feet were on the ground, and he refused to use the jetpack for fear of draining its fuel prematurely.

That left only one option. The raccoon did one more cursory search for traps, cameras, or anything else, then shoved himself off the wall with as much speed as he was capable of. He took a running leap towards the gate and hooked onto one of the handles by his cane; the momentum of his jump was enough to swing him high enough to grab the padlock with his free hand. With his shoes braced against the metal of the door, he began working the lock suspended a solid three meters in the air.

When it clicked open, he carefully pulled it free of both handles before twisting around to throw it as hard as he could down the tunnel he'd come from. It landed out of sight with a quiet clang, which made him wince, but he wasn't going to touch anything of Clockwerk's for more than strictly necessary. There was no telling what might or might not be boobytrapped.

Padlock discarded, Sly turned back to the door he was still clinging to like a barnacle. It hadn't budged much under his weight until he'd removed the lock, but he could feel how it seemed to want to move inward instead of outward. Crouching with all his weight coiled into his legs, he launched himself off the door with a powerful two-footed kick. It did the trick; the gate shifted open just enough for him to shimmy through after he picked himself back up, and he continued further into the dark cave.

For the first time since Kunlun – since Wales, really – the shaky confidence that had built itself up during his time with Inspector Fox began to trickle back. He had successfully gotten through the first of the ancient owl's obstacles, simple as it seemed, and that made his heart beat a little faster for different reasons than fear. It was only the first step, but he'd done it.

So caught up in his momentary victory, he very nearly walked onto death.

Sly froze with his foot hovering a centimeter above the ground, having barely caught the glint of metal with his sharp nocturnal vision. He looked down at the slightest displacement in the earth – uneven dirt that had been dug up recently, covering a lump that seemed just as natural as every other lump along the bumpy cave floor if not for that tiny, damning bit of metal that had made itself visible. Feeling suddenly sick as he realized how close he'd been to stepping on it, he backed up and very gingerly pushed aside the dirt with the tip of his cane, careful not to touch the metal. It revealed a round device big enough that he'd have to hold it with both hands, with a red blinking light in its center.

He'd almost just stepped on a land mine.

Nausea growing ever deeper, he looked up towards the path ahead, where he could now pick out more of those unassuming mounds scattered across the ground, just waiting to be triggered by one careless intruder. The raccoon swallowed, hard, and began to reach for his backpack – for the shock pistol tucked safely away within. Then he aborted the action before even touching the zipper. There was no telling how powerful these things were; if he shot one, it could cause a cave-in or set off the rest in a fatal chain reaction. And even if neither of those were to happen, the noise alone would surely be enough to bring the owl swooping in. Using Carmelita's equipment would have to wait. Again.

He crouched in front of the bomb he had unearthed, taking a mental measurement of its size and comparing that to the litany of still-hidden ones in his way. They had all been placed with just enough space between them that he could theoretically maneuver through so long as he was sure-footed and precise, and he had a sneaking suspicion that it had been set up that way on purpose. Clockwerk had goaded him inside his lair with evidence of the inspector's survival, and now he was deliberately testing him. Seeing how far he had come on his own; pushing him to prove that he hadn't just stolen back the Thievius Raccoonus, but was actively taking its lessons to heart.

It was time to trust his ancestors. Sly stood up, backed up a few paces, then sprinted forward and took his first jump.

It became a dance. On the world's deadliest stage, not a single audience member to witness his act, the raccoon flitted across the landmine field with the grace of a ballerina. His feet barely touched the ground when he found a safe place to land, only there for seconds until his gaze had found the next one, and then he was already leaping again.

By the time he finally reached the end of the buried bombs, there was a thin sheen of sweat down his back and he was panting from exertion, but it was accompanied by the bittersweet sting of success. Bittersweet, because he'd proven himself as capable as any other prior Cooper – had been proving that for weeks – but it was at the cost of his former partner. He had wanted the confidence, but not at this price. Never, ever at this price.

After a few minutes of catching his breath, he shook his head to clear his lamenting and continued on. Every second he wasted was less of a chance to fix his mistakes.

One sharp turn left, another right, and then very suddenly, the tunnel opened up and Sly found himself standing over an enormous pit of lava. He nearly staggered at the sudden spike of heat, strong enough to steal his breath, and could only gawk at the very heart of Krakarov.

Rock paths – either naturally formed or intentionally carved – twisted out from where he stood for as far as the eye could see in a dozen directions. Some veered off in towards other caves in the inner cliffside of the volcano, while others went on and on beyond the limits of his vision. There was no ceiling or cover above him, yet the open sky seemed confined from inside the crater. The glow of lava overpowered everything to the point that it was almost painful to look at directly.

And on the opposite end, easily two or more kilometers away, was a cluster of metal structures that could, technically, be classified as buildings. They looked more like the owl had dragged an entire scrapyard into the space, then smashed it all together to save space.

The raccoon scanned the sky for a solid minute, nervous about how much he was now out in the open even with all of his precautions. Then, he took another minute to study all the branching paths ahead of him. There were a lot of places here that could be hiding a kidnapped inspector, and there was no clue as to which direction to search first. If it took all night to find her, he'd do it without a second thought, but the longer he was here then the more likely it was that Clockwerk showed his face in one way or another.

Wasn't anything to be done about it except to push on. Taking as deep a breath as he could manage, Sly began walking along the biggest path in the vague direction of the distant metal architecture. Every time he came across a particularly large boulder or an especially deep crack in the ground, he hunkered down behind or in them to get his breath back, and never took his eyes off the sky while he did so. It was excruciatingly slow going, even worse than traversing the landmines had been, and he could practically feel the minutes ticking away from whatever remained of Carmelita's limited safety.

Halfway across the crater, a familiar sense of foreboding made him stop. Up ahead, the path continued towards the metal buildings, and he could finally see another cave that presumably led straight to them. Nothing had changed since he'd started his trek, nothing was out of place and now shadow loomed from above, but instincts honed from half a lifetime of tiptoeing around volatile people kept him from moving another centimeter further. On a whim, knowing all too well how much Clockwerk loved his patterns, the raccoon began suspiciously sweeping along the ground with his cane like he had done in that first tunnel.

It was with expectation, not surprise, when he uncovered metal and tiny blinking lights for a second time.

Sly inhaled quick and sharp through his teeth, painfully aware of the fact that he had become visible from the reaction, and peered farther down the path. Unlike before, there were no identifiers for where the bombs had been buried here. No bumps in the ground, no glints of metal, not a single speck of dirt out of place. Without a metal detector or some other tech he didn't have, nothing could tell him what was safe to walk on and what would blow him sky high.

He glanced behind him, where the rocky ground had branched off to the left a few meters back in a diverging pathway. It had led to another tunnel in the cliffside; he had ignored it – along with every other separate path – in favor of heading towards the most obvious man-made structure, but now it was looking far more tempting in lieu of walking through another literal minefield.

Sly doubled back to the other path after only a moment of consideration. He'd chosen his original route because it had seemed logical to head that way, but Carmelita could be stuck in any of the dozen other caves. There was no way to know for certain without checking each until he found her – or at least another clue pointing him in the right direction – and he wasn't in the mood to test his luck with hidden mines a second time just yet. He was careful to sweep the ground for them on this new road, but nothing came up no matter how much he checked, and that innate sense of danger rapidly disappeared the farther he walked.

When he reached the opening of the new cave, he ducked just inside the shadow of it to get some air, a mild reprieve from the heat, and to scan the open crater. Still no sign of Clockwerk, which was either really good or really bad, but so long as he stayed alert, the raccoon was sure that the Five's leader couldn't catch him off gua–

Two bright red lights flickered to life within the pitch black of the tunnel. Then a second pair. A third. A fourth.

Six. Nine. Fourteen.

Sly stared in mounting horror as things began to move and shift in the dark. Metal clanged against rock, against other metal, and the raccoon backed out into open space again with his hackles raised and his cane at the ready. So startled that he'd remained visible, his reaction caused every set of lights – eyes, they were eyes – to zero in on him immediately. A synchronous chorus of screeching was his only warning to turn and flee before an entire flock of robotic birds exploded out of the cave after him.

He ran for all he was worth as they chased him. Panic sent his thoughts into overdrive, his mind desperately trying to come up with an escape before they could catch up. He swerved right towards the cave he had arrived into the crater by, hoping that they had a limit to how far they could follow, or at least make it harder for them to fly in the confined space.

Movement flitted in and out of the corner of his eye barely ten steps in; Sly pivoted on his heel on instinct and whipped around with his cane arcing outward in a defensive swing. His reaction saved him from being disemboweled. A silver falcon, much smaller than Clockwerk but still deadly by the glint of its talons, screeched as its body was struck and swerved backwards in the air to right itself before it could fall into the lava below. Three more took its place immediately, cutting him off from moving any closer to his goal and forcing him to backpedal. He ducked raised claws by the skin of his teeth and turned left instead towards the metal structures.

Towards the landmines he couldn't see.

There was no time to do anything else. There was nowhere else to go. Over a dozen frenzied robots bore down on him with intent to kill, and only one path was clear. He had to risk death to avoid a certain one. Sly barreled into the minefield –

And something strange happened.

Blue erupted across his vision; a spattering of sparkles that were sprinkled seemingly at random throughout the path ahead. Something about them tugged at his soul, urging him closer, to connect with them wherever possible. The raccoon didn't think twice about it – he let that pull lead him forward and he leapt.

He landed perfectly on a cluster of sparkles. Nothing exploded under his feet. A screech to his left gave him enough forewarning to keep running, to jump to the next array while he still had momentum, and he narrowly avoided two falcons trying to slam into his shoulder. The way ahead was free of robotic birds as they came at him from behind and both sides, trying to snatch him up or knock him off balance and onto a waiting landmine.

The odd twinkles protected him from the ground, his dexterity protected him from fatal claw strikes, and his cane made up for those that veered too close in attempts to body-check him. Somehow, miraculously, Sly kept going through the bombardment from above and below without ever getting a scratch, and when the blue sparkling finally faded away, he stopped leaping and went right back to sprinting. He had no idea if he was clear of the bombs, but something in him said that he was, and that same something had just kept him from being blown into a hundred little raccoon pieces. He couldn't slow down to question it when there was still an entire bloodthirsty flock gunning for him.

Up ahead, he could see the tunnel entrance that surely led to the buildings he'd been so focused on before, but it looked large enough to welcome the robots on his tail. Already, Sly could feel his adrenaline waning under heat and his low reserves of energy, and he knew that he'd be either caught or mauled within minutes if they continued their chase unless something changed. Another screech and whoosh of hot wind made him whirl around to block claws with cane. He continued his three-sixty turn to redirect the screaming falcon sideways into one of its brethren, then stuck his free hand into his hoodie's front pocket as he righted himself to face forward again.

His fingers found one of the two devices hidden there – as well as the button on it. He pressed down on it at the same time that he pulled the device out, coming closer and closer to the yawning cave mouth. Right before he rushed through, Sly threw the thing as hard as he could at the rocky overhang looming over his dark escape.

It hit its mark. The device – the bomb exploded above him as he threw himself forward, narrowly missing the tumbling rocks that instead came down on the robotic birds right behind him. He hit the ground but staggered back to his feet, not daring to stand still in the blast radius of the cave-in he had just caused. Dust kicked up the air around him so thick that he could barely see even with his nocturnal vision, and the entire tunnel shook as boulders fell in an overwhelming cacophony of noise.

As suddenly as it had started, it was over just as fast. The last of the rocks hit the ground, the rumbling ceased around him, and silence took its place save for the strained breaths of one frazzled raccoon. He leaned heavily against a wall and risked a glance back, grimacing when he realized that the entire opening had been completely blocked off by the cave-in. There was not a single shred of light from the outside crater he could see, and he wasn't about to tempt his tenuous luck further by trying to move the rocks aside.

The robo-falcons weren't anywhere to be seen or heard, which he hoped meant they had either all been crushed or had given up pursuit now that their target was impossible to reach. Even so, he kept his cane at the ready and remained alert to the point of jumpiness as he began walking down this new tunnel that he'd trapped himself in.

It occurred to him, belatedly, that they might have been leading him down that single path and not letting him stray for more reasons than killing him with landmines. It was very possible that they had intentionally funneled him this way because it was where he needed to go to find Carmelita. The realization made him nervous at the same time that it gave him hope; if she was dead, they'd have no reason to do this. Clockwerk could have let him wander aimlessly through the volcano until he collapsed from exhaustion or the heat, and then finished him off without any effort. Surely, the fact that he was going to all this trouble to string Sly along meant that she was still alive, and he was still on the right track.

But it also meant the owl was lying in wait for him somewhere or somehow, and he had just wasted one of his precious few means of fighting back. He didn't know if bombs even worked on whatever Clockwerk was made of, but having some semblance of perceived power in his hands had given him courage. Now, he only had a single chance left to leave a dent in the monster's armor.

There was nothing to do but keep going and hope that it didn't come to that. If he could find Carmelita and free her before Clockwerk bared down on them, there was still the jetpack. They could still make a clean getaway into the night, and then she could come back with the full force of Interpol to take down the final member of the Fiendish Five for good. As for what happened to him, well…he doubted the inspector would let him go free after putting her life in danger. If she wanted to arrest him for the part he played in this entire mess, he'd already given her his word that he wouldn't run anymore. Before, it had been out of despair from the realization that his life was forfeited no matter what he did. Now, even if he made it out of here alive, he didn't have anything left to return to. A criminal, raised by other criminals, who only knew how to steal and lie and cause problems; there was no "normal" he could even pretend to mimic, and he was done hurting innocent people for his own survival.

Sly was either leaving this volcano in cuffs, or he wasn't leaving at all. His only goal was living long enough to save the person whose life had been irreparably damaged just by knowing him, just by trusting him.

His train of thought halted as his surroundings caught his attention.

Something was different about the walls. He frowned, unable to place what it was with the limited details his gaze could provide in the dark, and moved to the nearest one to press his hand against it. The fabric of his glove threatened to snag on the craggy surface as he trailed his fingers along it while he walked; until suddenly, it became smooth under his touch. Semi-cool rock had cut off into warm metal instead, and continued that way ahead as far as he could tell. Cautiously excited in the change, the raccoon picked up the pace, grateful to feel the temperature slowly dropping the farther he went.

Then, in the distance, there was light at the end of the tunnel – literally. He trapped the air in his lungs and disappeared from sight before it came anywhere near him, and then stepped out into the blinding glare.

As his eyes adjusted to the harsh light of the new room, the first thing he noticed was machinery everywhere. Computers and processors lined the walls, cords of all shapes and sizes hung from the ceiling, and the ground was alight with security lasers and overhead spotlights. Perches large enough for a particular owl to land on were littered everywhere, and a quick glance up showed a giant metal door that no doubt would have led out into the sky if it had been open.

And then he saw Carmelita.

She was in another, smaller room, separated from this one by a layer of glass, and he could see even from here that she had been trapped there in a tall, see-through cylinder. Her back was to him as she pounded on the glass, clearly trying to break out of her prison, and his heart swelled to see that she was still alive, still fighting.

Sly didn't shout or whistle to attempt to get her attention. Even if she could hear him through the distance and multiple barriers between them, Clockwerk had eyes on her. He could see cameras in the room that was holding her – although, bizarrely, not in this one – and if she reacted to his presence too early, it would alert the owl. Nothing to do but hope she could hold on a little longer while he made his way through the maze in front of him. The most straight-forward path was a death trap. Even without the lasers and the spotlights, he could see metal tiles across the floor that he recognized from his time working on Raleigh's ship; they were pressure plates, highly sensitive to touch and guaranteed to set off alarms at best and automated weapons at worst. Invisibility was no help against that.

His eyes trailed left, where one of the large iron perches sat several meters above him and the traps ahead. The faintest hint of blue began to creep across it the longer he stared. It wouldn't get him all the way across the room to where Carmelita was being held, but it was certainly a start. The raccoon rolled his shoulders, cracked his neck, readjusted the weight of the jetpack, and started running.

He jumped for the perch and caught its end by his outstretched hands, dangling for only a moment before pulling himself up onto it. It was round and precariously slippery, threatening to send him falling with the slightest misstep, but he kept his mind on everything he'd learned from the Thievius Raccoonus instead of letting the nerves overtake him. Centimeter by centimeter, he edged along the perch until he reached the other end without so much as a teeter.

Here, he could see the rest of the room and all its hazards very clearly. But with the addition of those sparkles popping up everywhere, he could also now see all the possibilities, too. Sly's gaze jumped back and forth, calculating the best way to work around the security and reach the glass separating him from the inspector.

A spire jump here, a rail slide there – he'd done this a million times. Now he just had to do it a million and one.

Onto a hanging cable he latched, scaling up it like a monkey on a vine. From there, a leap to land delicately on top of a roving spotlight. Springing off of crouched legs to throw himself halfway across the room, to a second perch several meters from Carmelita's "room." Flattening himself against a computer to avoid a rotating laser that could probably saw him in half, then taking advantage of the gap in its cycle to find and move towards the next waypoint.

On and up and down and around he went, until finally his feet touched lightly down in front of the glass wall through which he could see the fox. She had turned around sometime in his maneuvers so that she should have caught sight of him, but her eyes remained fixed on the container she was still trying to get out of, and never once glanced his way.

The raccoon had a few guesses as to why she seemed unaware of his presence, but they didn't matter when he was about to make himself known. After one quick glance behind and above to make sure nothing robotic had snuck up on him through his complicated balancing act, he pressed his hand to the glass and tested it with his bodily weight. It shifted under the sudden force. Emboldened, he took a few steps back, braced himself, then swung his cane into it with all his might.

It shattered instantly. Carmelita's head whipped around to stare at him with wide eyes as he picked his way through the glass-littered ground and into the room with her. Before he could do anything – say anything, even – she slammed her hands against the last barrier separating them with more panic than he had ever seen on her face.

"Sly, you can't be here!" She cried. "It's a trap!"

There was a strange hissing in the air as something green and noxious began spilling into the room from the vents all around them. The raccoon whirled on his heel at the sound of a reinforced metal door slamming shut behind him, sealing the hole in the glass he had made. He pulled his mask out from beneath his shirt collar and pressed it against his nose and mouth, heart hammering in his chest, just as every screen in the room lit up to reveal Clockwerk's hateful, patient gaze.

"You sentimental fool!" He chuckled, sounding more like he had just won a bet than any stronger emotion. "Empathy has always been the downfall of the Cooper clan."

The thin layer of protection Sly had tried to give himself wasn't enough. Already, dizziness was overwhelming him and he felt the treacherous urge to cough as the fatal gas filled both the room and his lungs. Carmelita, momentarily spared from the trap because of the container she was trapped in, began throwing her shoulder against the glass, screaming at him to find a way out before it was too late. His eyes darted all over the room, trying to do exactly that, but there was only one exit, surrounded by machinery and the mocking camera feed of his worst nightmare.

He turned around to swing his cane at the door that had sealed him in. The reverberating shockwave that traveled up his arms and through his body staggered him instead, sending him to one knee as he gasped on instinct. The gas greedily took advantage of his mistake, and suddenly the entire room was spinning. The raccoon tried and failed to stand back up; he could barely hear Inspector Fox's desperate voice through the ringing in his ears. He lifted his head just enough to lock eyes with her.

There were tears in her eyes. She was crying. She was crying over him.

It was like a stream of ice down his neck, jolting him to just enough awareness to remember the second bomb still in his pocket. With fumbling fingers and spotty vision, Sly pulled it out and somehow managed to turn it on, already feeling his brief energy bump disappearing just as quickly as it had appeared. He looked back at the metal door, reinforced and impossible to penetrate, then forward, beyond Carmelita's glass prison to the handful of computer screens where Clockwerk watched everything with cold, detached delight.

Blue sparkles.

Sly didn't think twice. With the last of his strength, choking on his own breath, he threw his last trump card.

The resulting explosion flattened him even further than he already was. His head hit the metal floor and it would have made him see stars if his vision wasn't already going dark. He didn't know if it had worked. He didn't know if it had broken open the wall, or Carmelita's prison, or if she had even survived. All he knew was that he couldn't breathe, he was choking, he was dying –

Warm hands wrapped around his middle, hoisting him up against a warm body. His cheek lolled into the crook of a shoulder – her shoulder – and he decided that this was a very nice place to be.

"C'mon, Ringtail, don't give up on me yet. We're almost out. Stay awake. Please."

Stay awake. That sounded so hard, but her voice was so very nice. Sly moaned in protest but forced himself to open his eyes, watching wisps of green gas disappear around him as Inspector Fox carried him through the hole in the wall and into the unknown.

A/N: The Ao3 Author's Curse is real and it finally got me. In the month since the last update, I have 1) been stranded at work for a few days because of bad weather, 2) been in two separate car wrecks (no one involved hurt, thank goodness) and 3) had a close family member rushed to the ER after a bad accident. Chronologically. It's been a time.

Enough about that though - Sly is finally seeing our favorite hint to Jump and Press the Circle Button! Betcha thought I wasn't going to include that little mechanic, huh? It's a little different in this version; instead of literal thieving opportunities, it's more of a realm of possibilities for self-preservation. Was incredibly fun to figure out where best to apply them throughout this chapter. As for why they didn't manifest until now...eh, we'll call it the power of love or something. I'm tired lol.

Also! I got an amazing gift fic from the lovely brainsforbreakfast over on Ao3 that's set in this AU! Please please please give it a read if you haven't seen it, it made my entire week and they worked very hard on it. It's titled "Tear Me Apart"!