Ill-mannered guests

Raleigh's ship had seen better days.

The wood was rotten and covered with a carpet of algae and tiny crusty animals that huddled together for safety. There were holes on the side of the hull, exposing the skeletal timber and the hellish fires that fuelled the machine. It looked like it had been sentenced for the scrapyard years ago, and had barely escaped its fate.

Sly gripped the rope, and managed to climb three feet before putting his foot through the bulwark.

Raleigh apparently had no concept of worker safety regulations. A true British nobleman.

Just as Sly reached the deck, loudspeakers blared.

"I say, chaps, my heartiest congratulations to you all. The storm machine sunk its fiftieth ship last night and the loot has already been unloaded. Our operation is moving along splendidly, with the possible exception being THE GROSS NEGLIGENCE DISPLAYED BELOW DECKS. I demand the boiler stay at full pressure at all times. If you lazy, low-browed, TEHNICALLY INCOMPETENT PACK OF GUTTERSNIPES DID YOUR JOB RIGHT, WE'D HAVE SOME UPPER-CLASS SHIPS BY NOW AND… But, of course, fifty ships is a fine, fine achievement. Carry on, my boys, carry on."

Sly peeked over the edge, careful not to make sudden movements, and took in his surroundings.

Something about the décor of Raleigh's hideout screamed of bad taste. It might have been the red velvet carpet slowly rotting away in the endless rain, or the tacky statue of an anglerfish sulking in the middle of the broken fountain.

Sly shook his head. There was no helping some people.

A couple of walruses in blue overalls were walking past his spot. They had the sullen look of underpaid, unappreciated blue-collar workers everywhere.

"Bloody insane, the boss is," said one. He coughed up a lump of phlegm and spat. There was a distant metallic thunk. "One of these days, I'm going to march up to him and speak my mind," he continued, flexing his biceps with all the confidence that came from knowing the boss was nowhere near to hear him.

The other walrus looked nervous. "Should we head up, Joe? The game's about to start."

"You just watch," said Joe, cracking his knuckles. "I'm going to show him what's what."

"Reception is still shite like always, but the ale's cold," said not-Joe. "And one of the lads from the gunboat graveyard fixed the water heater."

Joe hesitated, torn between toothless spite and the siren call of football. "Yeah, all right. I could use a pint."

Then, they were gone. Sly waited for a moment to be sure, and climbed on the deck proper. First of all, he had to find Raleigh's office. In the absence of blueprints, Sly had to take the old fashioned way to recon – poke his nose everywhere it wasn't wanted.

Sly followed the ratty velvet carpet and went through the pair of doors that overlooked the courtyard. Behind them was a corridor lined with more terrible velvet and gaudy artwork.

While Raleigh had abandoned his life of luxury and privilege, he seemed determined to remind everyone of his roots. Everywhere were statues of frogs, paintings of frogs, suits of armour suitable for frogs, family trees of frog nobility and glass-cases full of priceless heirlooms that, while not actually frog-shaped, were definitely of the stumpy and gloomy persuasion.

Beyond the sloppy laser defences was not an office, but a round room filled with water and lily pads and piles of treasure. Firelight danced on the surface of the water and made the gold and jewels glow like embers. Lily pads swayed gently on the current.

"This is what he does with his treasure? I don't know if I should be disturbed or… no, no, definitely disturbed."

"What? What are you talking about?" Bentley's voice crackled in Sly's ear.

"Nothing, Bentley. I'll need to try another door."

Sly went back to the deck. Most of the other doors seemed to be for maintenance, but there was one likely-looking pair on a ledge above.

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Beyond the doors was a library, one of those where books seem to be more for decoration than reading. There were rows and rows of bookshelves, towering on both sides of the narrow hallway. And, unlike nearly everything else on Raleigh's ship, the place was both well-tended and dry.

However, with all ships come rats. They squeaked at Sly and scurried away, jumping out of the metaphorical frying pan and into the fire. As soon as they stepped on the rug, two finely painted globes opened up and pegged them down. Blood splattered on the carpet.

Sly whistled. "Would you look at that," he said. "Raleigh has the latest state-of-the-art laser security at his disposal and he goes and booby-traps his library with dart guns."

"He does seem to be a bit of a traditionalist," Bentley said, sounding like he was probably rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "He takes pride in his mechanical contraptions. Using lasers would be like admitting that his own work is not sufficient. But I won't be able to disable them from the distance. If we are to destroy his storm machine, I will need to see the blueprints."

"That's what I'm here for, pal."

Sly considered. He could probably find a way around the dart machines; this would not be the first or the last time he climbed bookshelves. But all it would take was one hit. The darts had not just killed the rats, they'd nailed the vermin on the floor.

Sly nudged one with his foot. The corpse didn't budge.

There was always another way. Sir Galleth had had his armour, Tennessee Kid had had his guns…

There were several barrels stacked up next to a service entrance. Sly rolled out the one that looked to be in the best condition. He knocked on wood, and it made a satisfying solid thump. Sly slammed his cane against the bottom, creating a hole large enough to slip through. The stench of wine hit him like a physical presence, but he slipped into his makeshift disguise and took a cautious step on the booby-trapped rug. The dart guns fired. The barrel trembled, but held.

This is my life, Sly thought, amused, as he inched over the carpet. I am hiding in a barrel to avoid becoming a glorified pincushion. Somehow, his father's stories had failed to prepare him for this particular reality of a thief's life.

However, there were still guards. In any normal situation, Sly could have melted into the shadows and snuck past them. However, with his barrel, all he could do was… well, melt into the shadows and sneak past. But slower.

After two hours of careful sneaking, Sly found Raleigh's office. It was a tiny room that overflowed with blueprints, notes and miscellaneous correspondence. For whatever reason, there were even notes inside green glass bottles.

Sly carefully inched one piece of paper out through the slippery bottleneck. It was a note, apparently written in some sort of code. He pocketed it for Bentley.

There were blueprints lying about, but none of them had to do with the storm machine. However, hidden under the general clutter was a safe. Sly pressed his ear against the metal and rolled the combination lock, inch by careful inch.

shurr – shurr – shurr – click

Sly opened the safe. There were more blueprints, possibly of interest. He pocketed them. Lying innocently on the upper shelf was also, for some reason, a horseshoe.

Sly tilted it in the light of the fireplace – and how about that, a roaring fire in a library, Raleigh hadn't heard of fire safety regulations either – but the horseshoe didn't seem to be anything special. Just an ordinary horseshoe.

Sly pocketed it anyway.

There were also documents, most of them of the vaguely incriminating kind. Some of them mentioned 'spice', some were trade manifestos for antiques.

Sly left those papers behind. Raleigh's other business wasn't important. When Sly was done with his revenge, Raleigh would be behind bars and stuck trading favours for cigarettes.

There were no pages of the Thievius Raccoonus in the safe. Sly went through everything again, just in case, and even patted down the corners.

Nothing.

He hadn't expected to find them so easily, but it was still a little disheartening.

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Sly climbed out through another window. He was near the front of the rotting ship. Water had gathered in a hole, and there were crates and timber floating inside. There was also something that looked like a submarine.

Sly grinned.

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"I'm back!"

Bentley startled, suddenly torn from his inner world of shapes and numbers and angles. The real world was a damp cave and a moist wool blanket around his shoulders, and somehow both less and more pleasant than the inner world.

"Sly! You're… you're back," he said, adjusting his glasses. Sly looked different, somehow. Energetic, excited, yes, and all of that was to be expected, but…

There was something about his eyes. Bentley couldn't put his finger on it.

Sly grinned, tapping his cane on the great machine floating in the water. "Look what I found, guys!"

"Is that a submarine?" Murray asked, sounding like his birthday had arrived early.

"Yeah. Found it at the ship and drove it back here. There are tons of crabs on the seafloor, you wouldn't believe it. I think they work for Raleigh; saw them carry these great hulking chests around. Also, a lot of pipes."

"Interesting," Bentley said, adjusting his glasses thoughtfully. "This could be useful for our purposes. Raleigh's machine must consume great quantities of water every second in order to fuel his storm and cool down the machinery. If we can… let's see, the coefficient…"

"Before you disappear to the science world, here's the blueprints you wanted," Sly said, and dropped a stack of papers next to Bentley. "I also found coded messages. And a horseshoe."

"Secret code, yes, I'll get to that and… what? Horseshoe?"

"Yeah, I don't really know either. But it was stashed in the safe, so I took it."

"I… see. Well, leave the codes to me. Just give me a while, there's a lot of, er, ground to cover."

"Do you want some tea to warm you up? Raleigh used to have a pretty amazing collection of it."

"Used to? No, never mind. Of course you took it."

"You know me so well. Oi, Murray, we have any more of those butter biscuits left?"

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"So, here's the plan," Bentley said, munching on the last biscuit. "The conditions are too terrible to attempt a direct assault at Raleigh's blimp. First, we need to incapacitate the storm machine, and cut off its sources of water and power. This must be done with care to avoid the possibility of the machinery overheating and damaging the hull. Ideally I would do this in person, but only Sly can move around the ship at will.

"After we are done with the machine, Raleigh will no doubt be forced to land and attempt to repair it. Sly will take this chance to perform a direct assault, defeat Raleigh and steal back the pages of Thievius Raccoonus. Should we need to make a quick getaway afterwards, I have no doubt that the submarine Sly appropriated will prove to be useful."

"Any idea on how I'm supposed to destroy that machine? I know nothing about engineering."

"Well, a storm machine cannot afford to be delicate," Bentley said, drawing circles and arrows around the blueprints and adding comments in his wiry handwriting. Presumably they meant something for him; Sly didn't understand anything. "The mechanism must withstand considerable strain and high temperatures. Even so, all parts are likely replaced and maintained continuously. Brute force seems like the best option."

"Force, huh? I'm always up for some ransacking."

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Raleigh's storm machine seemed to consist of nothing but spinning crankshafts, electrically charged spinning blades, and large containers of lava. Steam rose from the boiling seawater, obscuring the jagged edges, the rust and the loose metallurgy that plagued the machinery.

"This place seems like a huge health hazard," Sly said. The smell of burning metal and ozone invaded his nostrils. "I'm sensing a pattern. In fact, I'm choking on it."

"Well, atmospheric imbalances and a high humidity are the necessary perquisites for a storm," Bentley said. Sly thought he could hear the faint sound of a pen scratching on paper in the background. "If you trace the spinning crankshaft, I'm sure you will the heart of the machine."

"Uh-huh. I'm on it."

Sly put away his binocucom and climbed up a rope that was almost burnt through in several places. He hoped it wasn't an omen of things to come.

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Half an hour later, Sly was quite sure his burns had developed burns. The faint smell of singed tail fur suggested he'd swung a little close to that last lava pit, and there was also that ominous smoke coming from the bottoms of his shoes.

But he'd found the heart of the machine.

The room looked a little like a massive smelter, spraying fire in a sea of lava. There was a single worker, a walrus who was sweating and welding something on one of the gears. Sly sneaked past him and dropped down to the metal scaffold.

There was a piston, moving up and down, up and down, up and down, so that a massive gear above it could rotate. It made for a decent platform, so Sly climbed on top of it and hauled himself on the spinning gear.

From this vantage point, he could see a contraption of a sort, across the room, that spun around with bewildering speed. Sly lifted his binocucom to take a closer look.

"Bentley, is that—?"

"That's it! You've found it, Sly! Now, you will need to find some heavy machinery."

On instinct, Sly glanced up. There was a heavy crane, sulking right above him. It looked heavy and capable of breaking things. It looked mean.

"I think I've got something that'll do the trick."

Sly jumped and hooked his cane on the catch, throwing his weight down. The crane lurched and moved, slowly at first but gaining speed as it raced across the room. The spinning inferno of the storm machine loomed ever closer, like the gates of hell.

And then, finally, the crane crashed against the storm machine. It groaned and complained, staggering to a halt.

The silence was deafening.

And Sly remembered broken glass under his feet and blood seeping into an expensive rug, and something dark and satisfied bloomed inside his chest.

Revenge, Sly decided, was underrated.

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Sly made his way out of the engine room, fur smoking and eyes stinging. He found himself in a room of metal walls and metal grating, suspended over yet more lava. The temperature was somehow even higher than in the engine room.

"This must be the power source," Bentley said, his voice faint with disturbance. "The temperature is way off the charts. Better do this quickly, Sly, or we will run into some serious problems with the building steam pressure."

"My blisters aren't serious?" Sly said absently, mostly by habit.

"Uh, Sly? You all right there? You sounded a little…"

"I'm fine, pal," Sly said. "See you later."

"Wait–"

Sly cut off the connection and ventured deeper into the machine. There was more lava, and furnaces and some magma, and more metal patched together with scraps, and some machinery and volcanic rocks and more lava. Workers were sweating down in their pits, shovelling coal and welding patches on the metal to keep it together.

Sly went past them, climbing pipes and swinging from hooks and edging along the ceiling, unseen by them all.

Raleigh's workers, Raleigh's machine, Raleigh's scheme. Probably some of it had been funded with his father's money.

And resentment burned, too.

Eventually Sly found a great room full of conveyor belts, moving lumps of coal into the main furnace. Sly wedged one chunk into a nook between the conveyor belt and its machinery. The belts whirred, bunched up against the obstruction and went still with a shower of sparks and a cloud of smoke.

There was no particular reason to do that. It wasn't important in the grander scheme of things. Sly did it because he felt like doing it.

A collection of pipes ran across the walls. Cooling water, Bentley had explained, in case the machine overheated and had to be doused.

Sly jammed one of Bentley's home-made explosives on the side a cluster of pipes and set the timer. He was out of the room before the bomb exploded.

And then, the ocean rushed in.

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Murray twiddled his thumbs, whistling a broken tune. It was often dull, being the getaway driver. But Murray saw no reason to complain. The exciting parts generally made up for the boring ones.

He'd never have seen the ocean if he'd stayed in the village. There were all sorts of interesting fish in the water. Murray had seen a starfish, too. It had waved its tentacles at him.

"Sly! Answer me, Sly," Bentley said, his voice increasingly worried. "What are you doing? Have you flooded the power source yet? Sly!"

There was no answer. Bentley chewed his lip and turned to his laptop. The sound of his tapping filled the cave.

Murray, too, hoped that Sly would contact them soon. Bentley's thoughts were complicated, and usually it worked out for him because the things he thought about were complicated, too. But sometimes he just thought himself into a knot.

Sometimes, Sly disappeared because he had to do something on his own. He'd done that before, back when Bentley was at school and Murray and Sly shared the night.

But Murray didn't know how to put that in words, so he said nothing. Things would sort themselves out.

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Sly made it to the deck just ahead of the first workers, and hid on the rooftop as they scrambled to evacuate.

Once the coast was clear, metaphorically, Sly found a ledge to perch on. He turned on his earpiece. Rain pelted his fur and evaporated into steam. "Bentley? How are things going back there?"

"Sly!" Bentley said. His relief was obvious, even through the bad connection. "Did you finish the job? Come back to the cave, so we can—"

"No," Sly said. "I can't wait. It's now or never. I'm going after Raleigh."

"B-but, Sly," Bentley protested. "The plan! Raleigh's blimp is still high up in the sky, there's no way up there!"

"I'll come up with something," Sly said. "I'll climb the chain if I have to."

That dark thing still burned in his gut. It made him twitchy, limbs trembling with nervous energy. He didn't want to calm down, he wanted to spend it.

Bentley was silent for a moment.

"Well, there is one more option," he eventually said. "But it is a highly dangerous one. See that cannon over there?"

"Yeah? You're not suggesting I shoot myself out of it, are you?"

"Unfortunately, that's the only option," Bentley said. "On short notice," he added sourly.

"Now we're talking."

"You're really scaring me, man. Just so you know."

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Following Bentley's instructions, Sly positioned the cannon. He lit the fuse, climbed in and stuffed his fingers in his ears.

And—

BOOM

There was the roar of the explosion. There was the smell of smoke. There were yellow and orange flames. And Sly was flying through the air.

"Sly! Are you all right?"

"Don't worry so much! This is amazing!"

"Amazingly dangerous!"

It was, of course. If Bentley's calculations had been just a little bit off, if the cannon had been damaged, if the wind had knocked him off course... his flight would have ended ignominiously.

But in his heart of hearts, Sly was a gambling man. This time, his luck held. He caught onto the blimp. The wind howled, trying to pry Sly off and strike him down, but he managed to hold on.

And then, the thief entered the building.

Well, entered the blimp, anyway.

Outside, the storm still raged against the windows, painting a raw scenery to the confrontation that must come.

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Raleigh's blimp only had one, large room. It was crackling with electricity. The lights flickered on and off, reflecting off the surface of the water. Two massive fans spun at the back, creaking and whining.

Raleigh sat on his throne on the other end of the room. He looked furious: gnashing his bad, yellow teeth together and glaring with his beady little eyes and twirling his glass of brandy so fast that the liquid spilled over the edges. But he did not look particularly surprised.

He had been a nobleman once, Sly thought. Maybe he knew how these things worked. What goes around, comes around, and blood feuds and revenge are the enduring inheritance of blue blood. An eye for an eye and blood for blood… One of them would lose everything tonight.

"How delightful," Raleigh sneered, his voice suggesting he was anything but. "We have a guest. I hate uninvited guests."

"Wipe out my family, steal what's mine, and you'd better expect company," Sly said, adjusting his grip on his cane.

"Oh, I am ever so sorry," Raleigh said with mock sincerity. "Obviously, we should have done the job properly and snuffed you out as well. Please allow me to make amends."

He shot out his tongue and swallowed a bee. In an instant, his body swelled and deformed, becoming a great teeming mass of muscle. He leaped from his perch, and Sly dodged just in time to avoid being squashed like something small and furry stuck on the pavement.

Sly dodged another jump, then another and another and another. His blood was on fire, war drums beat in his chest. This, this was it. He would finally avenge his parents.

Raleigh's bloated form was powerful, but also slow andheavy. He was growing tired, every move taking more effort.

And Sly saw his chance. He swung the cane, slamming it squarely into Raleigh's stomach. Raleigh spewed out a fountain of water with a sputtering, bleating noise. Sly caught his jaw in the upswing, sending him flying through the room with a wet, heavy smack.

And then, just like that, it was over.

Raleigh hit the wall and landed in the water, making a muffled gurgle. Sly waited for a moment, leaped to the closest platform and prodded the still form with his cane. Raleigh didn't seem inclined to move.

Sly raised his cane to…

…to what?

Sly lowered his cane.

Was this all there was? A nightmare of ten years ago was nothing but a pathetic little heap of slime and skin, floating in the water. Revenge had burned so very brightly, had charred his guts and scalded his mind. And it had consumed, like all fires do. There seemed to be an empty place where it had burned.

There should have been more.

And… what now?

Sly turned on his earpiece

"Sly!" cried Bentley's voice. "Sly, are you all right? What happened? What about Raleigh? Did you defeat him? Where are you?"

"I'm fine, Bentley. It's done."

"It… it is? That's… that's great! You need to get the pages of Thievius Raccoonus and get out of there. That blimp is descending at a decidedly alarming rate."

And there it was, that something more. He still had something to reclaim.

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Raleigh was a traditionalist. In an age where connections and technology were everything, he had isolated himself in the middle of nowhere and, of all things, practised piracy. Even the security in Raleigh's ship was archaic, based more on mechanical contraptions than motion detectors or security cameras. The only exceptions had been the occasional laser beam or spotlight, thrown in with the attitude of someone half-heartedly trying to paint over that inconvenient burn mark in the kitchen wall.

Raleigh had also, from the look of it, spent the last ten years sitting on top of his hoard of trophies like a jealous dragon. Underneath his strange metallic throne was a safe. Inside it were pages, yellowed and old, their margins uneven like they had been ripped from a book.

Sly reached in and took out the pages of Thievius Raccoonus.

Something was caught in his throat. His hands trembled.

He should get out. The blimp was descending, and he'd worried his friends. He should read the pages later, somewhere safe.

But he might as well have tried to tell his heart to stop beating.

There were the notes of Drake Cooper, a contradictory soul who had written down detailed instructions for advanced combat manoeuvres despite his stated abhorrence of all violence. His signature move was a quick knock-out dive that left most targets stunned. He had signed his entries with exact dates—by the hour even—through years 1770 to 1779, but never a location.

Then, the disjointed, jumbled ramblings of Christopher Cooper, who had lived a fast, dangerous life in the streets of New York during the prohibition of 1920s. He had been infamous in the underworld, even for a Cooper, for brazenly mugging gangsters in broad daylight. Apparently his special trick was a modification to Drake's knock-out move, now used to both stun the target and rob them blind in one fell swoop.

And then, the careless, exuberant writings of Old Salomé 'Sally' Cooper, who had lived in Spain during the 16th century and made her name stealing Inca gold from the crown. She had apparently been possessed of a certain dramatic flair and had enjoyed literally rolling her way out of trouble. She had written down many helpful hints for acrobatic manoeuvring. Her section ended abruptly, with no explanation added by whoever inherited the book.

Then, the occasionally incomprehensible notes of Dev Cooperinda from the 13th century India. In contrast to his grandiose name (derived from the Hindi word deva, representing "god"), he had been a humble man who had devoted much of his time to meditation and spiritual observations, which he had written down in thin, cramped Sanskrit. He was famed for his technique of slow motion, a meditative technique that sped up the user's perception of the surrounding world.

And, finally, the pages written by Rioichi Cooper who had, in fact, written quite a lot of them in tidy, meticulous kanji. There was an image of him, too, painted with a careful, flowing hand. A Japanese ink wash painting, sumi-e... Rioichi had probably painted it himself. An outsider wouldn't be allowed to even see the pages of Thievius Raccoonus. Sly brushed his fingers across the ancient ink, trying to imagine it.

Once, his ancestor's hands had held these pages. And though the ink was old now, once it had been fresh and wet, left to dry so it would not smudge. Once upon a time, Rioichi Cooper had really lived. These pages were the proof.

Slowly, Sly began to smile.

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Author's notes: Posted because I am so done with this chapter.