Chapter 12 Trains, Canes, and Automobiles
To say I was nothappy to see Sly stealing again is a vastunderstatement!
The thought that he could lie to me. That he might have faked his amnesia. That he would play me like a fool for yearswhile working alongside me! OH, it just made me want to wring his neck!
But then I confronted him, and it became clear he hadn't lied. Instead… he found out Iwas the one who lied and he now knew the truth… It was not a pleasant conversation.
Then, to top it all off, he had another one of his recent attacks. But that one was worse. That one seemed to make him start to disappear! I was so stunned I couldn't react in time to stop the newly reformed Cooper Gang from escaping.
But once they were gone, I decided to follow my nose. Sly may not remember his own thieving pattern, but I did, and I knew Bentley and Murray would make sure it was upheld.
If Sly was stealing from here, then that had to mean there was more going on than I was aware of.
I'd almost forgotten how the Cooper Gang's heists made it so easy to get into places and look around. I'd barely turned a corner before I came upon a room filled to the brim with all the stolen art and antiquities I had been searching for. Of course, it took Sly coming out of retirement to crack my case.
Not that I had the chance to arrest that stinking weasel, Cyrille Le Paradox. Instead, I was so shocked by everything that had happened between Sly and this discovery, that before I'd had the chance to react I was surrounded.
Now, obviously, Le Paradox was not about to let me go on and tell everybody what I'd found, and it seems having a time machine was a convenient way to make people disappear. Trap me in the past and it won't matter what I know, I'd be long dead before the present ever came around to stop him.
Then, the next thing I knew I was playing cowboys and criminals. I knew my life wasn't normal by any means, but it was never this completely loco.
So now, here I am, trapped in the Wild West with no way home until the Cooper Gang recovers Murray's van, and in uncomfortably close quarters with Sly while we were both (justifiably, I'll admit that) mad at each other.
To make matters worse, when Bentley explained whythey had pulled Sly out of retirement, well… Stealing is wrong. I wanted Sly at my side, or at least see the Ringtail arrested for the crimes he can't seem to quit or even talk to me about to find a better solution. I don't care if Bentley says there was no time, there hadto be a better way!
… But, still, I don't want to see him erased from existence either, nor his gentleman of an ancestor. No one deserves that…
… I need to get back to Paris. If I do, I can stop Le Paradox and this whole crazy scheme.
And it looks like to do that I will actually need to help the Cooper Gang pull a train heist to get history back on track.
*Sigh* Working with criminals as a criminal. How has my life come to this?
Getting back to the hideout was rough. Neither Tennessee nor Sly were as steady on their feet as they could be. That last attack was definitely the worst one yet.
To make matters even worse, when they reached the hideout it was just in time to receive a call.
"Oh, please don't tell me Dimitri has more bad news," Bentley muttered as he moved to their communicator and activated it.
But instead of the iguana, a hooded raccoon appeared over the communicator's green gem instead. "Ah, I see you… Is this contraption finally on?"
"Yes, Rioichi, we hear you," said Bentley.
Carmelita looked confused, but Tennessee's eyes widened when he heard that name. "Well, Ah'll be!" he exclaimed, moving over for a closer look. "Rioichi Cooper as Ah live and breathe! Ya know yous was one of my favorite ancestors to hear about when I was a kid. You're a legend!" He tipped his hat respectfully and said, "Tennessee Kid Cooper, at your service,"
Rioichi smiled at the praise and bowed to Tennessee. "Your words humble me, Tennessee-kun, and it is an honor to meet another of our family."
"Same to you, Rioichi," said Tennessee, sounding a bit star-struck.
However, Rioichi's expression then sombered. "Unfortunately, welcome as it is, I did not call to meet our family tree, " he said. "Before Bentley-san left he asked me to contact him if more pains occurred, so we may map when in time our family line is in danger. I am sorry to say I felt an attack on myself recently, and a violent one at that."
"Yeah, we felt it too," Sly confirmed. "So whatever happened was before you in the time stream."
Rioichi nodded. " Indeed. However, I am pleased to add that I have seen no sign of El Jefe's ilk since you left."
"That's good to hear," Bentley said. "We'll try to finish things here and then go further back in time to find what's happening. Take care of yourself, Rioichi."
Rioichi gave a nod, and the call ended.
"Well, that's a fine little doohickey," said Tennessee, still examining the time communicator with interest.
"Thanks," Bentley said. "I built it to be able to talk to people across time no matter where or when we go. Speaking of…" He reached under the table and brought out another communicator to hand to Tennessee. "This one is for you after we leave. If Sly has any attacks but you don't we'll know we need to locate a time period closer to our present."
Tennessee lit up excitedly as he examined the little green gem on the transceiver. "Fer me? Aw shucks, ya shouldn't have," he said, sounding like a kid at Christmas.
Bentley chuckled at his enthusiasm. "Come on, I'll show you how to use it."
Meanwhile, Carmelita was still stuck on something she'd heard."El Jefe? The mercenary general?" she asked in surprise.
"Yeah, we had to take him down in the time period we stole that dagger for," Sly said dully. "Guess my last act as an Interpol officer was to arrest him. Good to go out on a high note."
"Oh," was all she said as Carmelita avoided his gaze, not that he noticed, as Sly was avoiding looking at her too.
Murray glanced between the two of them and slowly backed away. "Um, I'm gonna go see if I can help Bentley teach Tennessee," he said before beating a hasty retreat.
There were just some things you did NOT want to be in the middle of.
Thanks to the bug in Toothpick's office, they knew the armadillo was about to skip town soon with all the gold he'd stolen and their van, so they needed a plan and fast.
And if part of that plan involved taking part in some local festival games to fleece some keys off Toothpick's top goons, Sly wasn't going to complain. The look on that jackalope's face when he won that race was priceless.
It all culminated in a massive train heist, where they all had to work together to stop it and get the gold Tennessee was supposed to have stolen originally.
Now it all came down to putting their plan into action, and they all waited on a bridge above the train tracks to make that happen.
"Ah almost wanna thank Toothpick for this," Tennessee said as they waited for the train to approach.
Everyone else looked at him like he was crazy.
Seeing that, Tennessee's grin widened. "Originally, Ah was just gonna steal that gold from a crooked swindlin' bank, but now-" He spread his hands out in a grand gesture. "It's a whole train heist from a crooked swindlin' sheriff. Any ol' fool can rob a bank. It takes guts to go for a locomotive. This is one for the record books."
Murray and Bentley nodded in complete agreement, Sly could see his point, and Carmelita looked sour at the idea of making history this way.
However, before she could make any comment about it, the train came barreling down the tracks towards them.
Knowing they couldn't miss it, all five of them immediately prepared themselves and then jumped the second the train passed under the bridge.
Thankfully, all of them made it. They quickly hurried to play their roles. Murray was at the back of the train getting his van back (which he did gleefully). Carmelita was watching Bentley's back as the turtle hacked the train's computer system and activated its whistle (Toothpick apparently had very sensitive ears and hated whistles). Tennessee would be making his way through the rest of the train, stealing all the gold he found along the way with Sly watching his back from the train's roof.
"This is more fun than square dancin' with a donkey!" Tennessee cried gleefully as he climbed along a pipe from one train car to another after tossing one wagon full of gold to the van.
"I'll take your word for it," Sly called back as he followed him from above. He then noticed movement up ahead. "Heads up! More incoming."
"Ah see 'em," Tennessee called back, raising his gun. The guard made the mistake of popping out from behind a barrel of dynamite, which Tennessee quickly shot, sending the goon flying off the train.
Sly winced at the thought of the road-rash that the guard was sure to feel in the morning. He was relieved that their bug had picked up that Toothpick's thugs were from the present day and brought with him for their loyalty. He'd hate if they made anyone else go through the pains he and his family had been feeling.
But there wasn't time to focus on it, as even without the guards, there was still plenty of danger between them and the gold, and there was still Toothpick to deal with.
Still, Tennessee seemed to be in his element. He ran, jumped, climbed, and shot his way through any obstacle in his path, and seemed to be having a blast doing it.
And like with Rioichi, it was amazing to watch him in action.
Sly may have been a little too caught up with watching, as he almost didn't notice some of the guards had caught on to him, and were climbing up onto the roof of the train to come after him. Not good, as he could hear Tennessee confronting Toothpick on a train platform just ahead of them.
Unfortunately for them, fighting atop the train took a good sense of balance, something Sly had a lot more talent for than the guards, and it wasn't hard to knock them back off the roof.
But by the time Sly could focus on Tennessee again, he was alarmed to see the other raccoon was now being pinned between two more of the hazmat suit-wearing mice like the ones that had been guarding the museum and Paris and stole Rioichi's cane off El Jefe.
Realizing they might be here to do that again, Sly sprinted towards them.
But before he could reach them, Toothpick rolled up and caught Tennessee right in the gut, winding the raccoon and knocking his gun/cane from his hand.
"My GUN!" Tennessee cried as he tried to regain his breath, but the mice had him pinned in a vice grip, and there wasn't anything he could do but watch as a cackling Toothpick caught the gun and handed it over to another mouse.
"Thanks, Kid," Toothpick taunted, striding closer as the mouse ran off. "Le Paradox sends his regards."
The mice holding Tennessee forced him to hunch over so he was closer to Toothpick's short height, and the armadillo pointed his revolver directly at Tennessee's forehead. "Adios, idjit."
Sly Cooper was no quick draw. He'd never even been able to even touch Carmelita's score at the shooting range. He was just good enough she didn't see him as a total embarrassment…
And yet he'd never drawn his shock pistol faster than he did at that moment.
The two mice hit the ground before they'd even realized they'd been shot, and Toothpick's revolver went flying after stinging his hand with several volts of electricity.
Toothpick jumped back and screeched in rage, but seeing Sly getting closer with his shock pistol still in hand, the fake sheriff beat a hasty retreat.
With the armadillo gone, Sly turned his attention to his ancestor and holstered his pistol to go help him. "Are you okay, Tennessee? Anything hurt?"
"Jus' my pride," said Tennessee from where he'd fallen after the mice were zapped unconscious, having gotten some electric feedback from their shocks on top of the hit to the gut he'd taken. "And a few other things," he added as he tried to stand, but fell back with a wince.
"Sorry," Sly said, knowing he was the cause of some of it.
"Now, don't apologize, son! Ah'd much rather be sore than what ol'Toothpick had planned," Tennessee said with an amused roll of his eyes. "Thanks fer savin' my hide."
Towards the front of the train, they could hear Toothpick still cackling at getting one over on Tennessee.
Sly scowled at the sound, and said, "Just stay here until the jitters wear off. I'll go get your cane back."
Tennessee opened his mouth to reply, but Sly was already running ahead.
He caught up to Toothpick at the front of the train on a flat empty car right behind the engine.
Toothpick grinned nastily as if he'd been waiting for him. "You know, Cooper?" he said almost conversationally as he played with a new pistol before holstering it. "You're actually not too bad a shot. My gun went whoosh, right out of my hand." He grinned in a way that would be wistful if it wasn't so bloodthirsty. "Ah, reminds me of when I was young. As a kid, my favorite thing to watch was the cowboy movies."
Sly glared back at him but didn't see Tennessee's cane anywhere. "Oh, what? Is this the part where you tell me your life story?" he asked dryly. "Can't say I'm interested."
Toothpick laughed at his words, before he cut himself off with a sharp, " No! " He then grinned nastily and took a pose that anyone with even a passing awareness of Westerns would recognize. "This is the part where you make my childhood dream come to life," he said, his hand hovering over his gun like he was ready to draw in an instant. "This town ain't big enough for the both of us!"
Sly immediately cursed himself for holstering his own weapon before, and not having it already in hand.
Well if Toothpick wanted a Mexican Standoff, he'll get one.
And thus there was a long tense moment as they both waited for the other to make the first move. The slightest hint the other was about to draw their firearm.
Then, the com in Sly's ear cracked to life.
" Sly! I hacked the train's whistle controls. All you need to do is hit the button next to them and give Toothpick a screaming headache!" Bentley said excitedly, before yelping as Carmelita followed the rest of their plan and threw him off the train into the van, which Murray was driving alongside the tracks.
Sly made sure he gave no visible reaction to the news, but his eyes couldn't help but flicker towards the button Bentley spoke of.
Toothpick saw this minute distraction and snatched up his gun.
Realizing what he was doing, Sly dove to the side while drawing his own shock pistol.
The bullet barely grazed past his ear where his head was a second ago, but instead of focusing on that, Sly aimed his pistol at the whistle button and fired.
The train's whistle went off with a deafening blast that had Toothpick clutching his ears and yowling. Sly ignored the ringing in his own ears as he now aimed his shock pistol at Toothpick. The electricity didn't seem to do much harm to the armadillo's tough hide, but the force of it was enough to send the already off-balance sheriff falling backward and getting his butt caught in the train's furnace.
Toothpick screeched again at being stuck in a literal hot seat, but Sly didn't give him a chance to escape. The raccoon rushed forward, and this time used his cane to smack the armadillo over the head hard enough to knock him out.
Toothpick popped back out of the furnace as his body went limp, and Sly sighed in relief thinking it was over.
Oh, how wrong he was.
Tennessee, who had gotten back to his feet in time to see the grand finale, smirked as he walked over to look down at Toothpick. "Well, well, lookee what the cat drug in," he said, before turning to Sly. "Did'ya find my gun?"
Sly shook his head. There had been no sign of Tennessee's weapon or the mouse who had likely taken it.
Tennessee grumbled a curse hearing that before hefting the unconscious Toothpick up. "Looks like this here's our stop," he said before drop-kicking the armadillo off the train and taking a running jump to land himself in a passing bale of hay.
Sly chuckled and began looking for his own hay bale to land on when the entire train jolted and seemed to speed up.
"Uh, what's going on?" he asked. At the speed the train was going now, there was no way he could safely jump off like his ancestor had.
" Sly!" Bentley cried in alarm in his ear. " We got a real problem!"
"Yeah," Sly agreed, bracing himself as the train picked up more speed. "This thing just started going too fast. I don't know how I'll get off."
"It's worse than that!" Bentley said, still sounding frantic. " Toothpick has better cyber security than I thought. Someone is remotely making the train speed up, and it's headed directly for a broken bridge."
Sly paled beneath his fur and looked over the train's engine to see the bridge Bentley was talking about looming up from the distance before a flash of blue caught the corner of his eye. He looked down to see Murray's van was now speeding parallel to him with its rocket boosters at full power.
Bentley threw the side door open. "Sly!" the turtle shouted, waving his arms frantically. "You have to get off that train! Jump to the van!" He then yelped as the van went over a bump and nearly made him fall out, but Carmelita managed to catch the back of his wheelchair in time, but as she pulled Bentley back in. But while she did that, the gold they had collected for Tennessee came spilling out and scattered across the ground in their wake.
But there was no time to worry about that now. Sly hurried to climb across the engine until he was as close to the van as he could be.
Seeing this, Carmelita secured Bentley inside before leaning back out and extending her hand to catch him.
Sly backed up a few steps before taking a running jump to reach her.
His hand caught hers, but at the speed the van was going, she had to hold on tightly to both him and the van's interior just to pull him in.
The two landed in a heap inside the van, groaning from the effort.
However, the second Sly realized he had landed on top of Carmelita in a compromising position, he quickly pulled himself off to give her some space. It did nothing to quell her glaring.
With everyone accounted for, Bentley yelled, "Murray! Hit the brakes!"
But everyone quickly grew terrified as the thumping sound of Murray stomping on the brake pedal to no avail hit their ears.
"They're not working!" Murray shouted in a panicked voice. "And I can't stop the rockets!"
"WHAT?" Carmelita shrieked as she realized what that meant. "You idi-!" she was cut off as Sly clapped a hand over her mouth, knowing she'd been about to go on a tirade.
"Not the time," he hissed to her before she could give Bentley and Murray an earful. "Find a solution now, tell us we're idiots afterward."
Carmelita glowered at him and shoved his hand away as she grumbled about how she knew she should have had them send her back to Paris, but her complaints were short-lived, as both she and Sly instead had to brace themselves as the van jolted again, and nearly sent them flying out the still open side door.
"Bentley?" Sly called, hoping the turtle once again had a plan.
Fortunately, it seems he managed to come up with one on the fly.
"Sorry, Murray," he said, sending one of his chair's arms up to the driver's seat. "This has to work!"
"Hey! That's my necklace!" Murray yelped as the robotic hand returned with a string of fossilized sea shells that he'd plucked off Murray's neck.
Bentley wasted no time in tossing the necklace into the time receptacle. "Here goes nothing!" he said even as the van launched itself off a cliff next to the broken bridge.
With the train crashing down beside them, everyone in the van screamed as the van took a nosedive down the gorge.
But just when it looked like they would crash to the ground, the entire van vanished from sight.
A few minutes later, a very out-of-breath Tennessee came running to the edge of the ravine, having seen what was happening, and chased after them.
"What in tarnation?" he said, peering down into the gorge, almost afraid of what he would see.
But to his surprise, while he saw plenty of wreckage from the train, he didn't see any sign of the Cooper Gang's ride at the bottom. And with the van's bright blue sides and painted-on flames, he would think something like that would be easy to spot.
He quickly scaled down the edge of the cliff until he reached the bottom. But no matter how hard he searched, there was no sign of his future descendant or his strange friends. It was like they'd vanished into thin air.
Tennessee breathed a sigh of relief. If they weren't here, then chances are they weren't dead. Maybe that odd machine Murray was so fond of was actually a flying machine of some sort. Or, wait, Bentley said it was their way of traveling through time. With all the odd doohickies that turtle could come up with, the raccoon honestly wouldn't be surprised.
Wait… doohickies! That's it!
Bentley left him one of those doohickies that let you talk across time. If he could get it working, he could talk to them himself no matter where they'd vanished to.
With more spring in his step, Tennessee quickly climbed back up the cliff.
He had a call to make, but first he needed to collect up that gold he'd stolen and get Toothpick turned in to an actual lawman.
Wherever Sly and his friends were, he was sure they'd be alright.
And that's the end of the Wild West. I had fun adding in the Mexican Stand-off scene with Toothpick.
