Sly Cooper: On Equal Ground ch 2

Author's Note: Sly Cooper, the events concerned, and the characters are all copyright of Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc., Sucker Punch Productions 2005-2012, Sanzaru Games 2012-2013, and any other groups/people who deserve the credit. This is a non-profit work of fanfiction.

Chapter Three: The Fall of Dr. M

"No one hurts my criminal!"

The words came out of their own accord as Carmelita aimed her Shock Pistol at Dr. M, driven by the same surge of unknown emotion that had coursed through her veins when she saw Sly in the brutal grasp of the mad doctor's giant monster. It was impulsive, it went completely against everything she believed in as a cop...but even so, Carmelita didn't care. Not now.

Hearing her outburst, Dr. M stopped laughing and turned his attention from Sly's distant body back to her. "Oh, please!" the mandrill scoffed, working the controls on his headgear so that the spider-legged contraption turned back towards her with a screech of damaged hydraulics. "If that pitiful thief means so much to you, I'll bury you two together" With that, Dr. M squeezed the triggers, and the row of gun muzzles on his headset spat a salvo of crimson energy bolts in Carmelita's direction.

But the time-honed skills that the Interpol detective had gained over the years were already coming into play as she dove to one side, and Dr. M's blasts hit nothing but the far wall of the Cooper Vault's inner sanctum. Even as she hit the ground and rolled, Carmelita was returning fire with her Shock Pistol. The recoil from the massive gun vibrated up her arm, but it was something she had gotten used to over the years—it no longer shoved her arm backwards as it had done a few years ago, and she was able to squeeze off multiple shots with considerable accuracy. The volley of crackling blue "lightning bullets" forced Dr. M to backpedal, the metal spider-legs of his head-mounted contraption digging into the ground as he scuttled backwards. The shock rounds hit the floor and burst in flashes of electricity, the audible crack of their impact barely noticed over the increasingly violent vibrations that rocked the Cooper Vault as the damage from earlier began to take its toll on the Vault's ancient supports.

Even as he was driven back by his opponent's assault, the crazed mandrill genius retaliated—with his more advanced weaponry destroyed in the fight with Sly, and he himself battered and bruised from both Sly's attacks and the damage dealt to him earlier by the Cooper Vault's security system, Dr, M had nothing left to rely on but the triple blasters. Ignoring the urgent beeping of some internal warning system on his spider-walker and re-routing all available power into his one remaining weapon, he gave an incoherent scream of rage and fired wildly, unleashing a storm of pulse bolts that turned the air into a hail of blazing scarlet.

But Carmelita was ready for the attack. Aided by the same speed and athletic prowess that had allowed her to keep up with Sly Cooper all these years, the vixen strafed and dodged from side to side, causing the deadly energy bolts to miss her by scant inches. Even as she dodged, the Interpol vixen was taking aim with her Shock Pistol, amber-brown eyes narrowing as she chose her targets. Despite the danger she was in from the energy bolts, the vixen couldn't help but feel a fierce surge of satisfaction; as fast as Dr. M's head-mounted spider-walker was, he was no Sly Cooper.

All she needed now was some kind of opening...

Abruptly, the triple blaster on Dr. M's walker sputtered and died, plumes of smoke trailing from the red-hot barrels. This elicited a cry of frustration from the simian madman, who worked his controls in attempt to fix whatever had gone wrong with his last weapon. Had the guns overheated from the extensive use? Had they run out whatever form of ammunition they used?

Carmeilita didn't care. It was just the opening that she'd needed! Just as Dr. M started to let out a cry of triumph, having evidently found and corrected the source of the problem, the Latina vixen sighted along the barrel of her gun and fired.

BZAM!

BZAM!

BZAM!

The three expertly-aimed blasts hit clean and true, punching holes in the joints of three of the contraption's four metal legs and reducing delicate inner circuitry and wiring to slag. With its balancing servos destroyed and hydraulic fluid spraying all over the place, Dr. M's machine lurched violently to one side, its fall made all the worse by the momentum of its one good leg and the constant shaking that threatened to bring the ceiling down before long. With an indignant snarl, the insane genius worked the controls to his headset frantically, trying to compensate for the damage by re-locating the weight and poise of the one undamaged leg.

But it was too little, too late. With the wildfire rush of adrenaline and vengeance surging through her veins, part of her mind still seeing Sly take a bullet for her, Carmelita whipped up her Shock Pistol and drew a bead on the struggling mastermind. "Try making me suffer now, you creep," she growled through clenched teeth as she squeezed the trigger.

BZAM!

Dr. M saw the shock blast coming, but with his spider-walker damaged, there was no way for him to dodge. A scream of abject rage had just started to emerge from his gaping mouth when the crackling "lightning bullet" struck him dead center, sending a torrent of electricity surging through his nerves and changing his cry of rage into an incoherent screech of pain as he was knocked back several steps; the only thing that kept him from being blown clear off his feet was the mechanical spider-walker's legs.

For a moment, the simian madman screamed and twisted wildly, his limbs kicking and flailing spasmodically in mid-air as the lightning from the high-voltage round crackled across his body. Then his eyes rolled upward in their sockets, and he sagged forward. The plug-like apparatus on his head disconnected from the spider-walker, and the simian madman dropped to the floor in an unconscious heap, his coarse fur still puffed out from Carmelita's shock blast. Without any form of control from its creator, the spider-walker wobbled for a moment, then listed heavily to one side, dropping into a half-kneeling slump on two of its damaged legs.

For a moment, Carmelita just stood there and caught her breath, viewing Dr, M's insensate form with grim satisfaction. But in the next moment, she was looking up towards the walkway where Sly had landed, a sense of dread gnawing at her gut that had nothing to do with the increased rumbling that signified the impending collapse of the Cooper Vault. How long had it been since he had been shot? How long would the support beams hold? And was Sly still even alive?

She had to get up there. But even a talented gymnast like her was going to have trouble pulling it off...

Then Carmelita noticed that the defunct spider-walker happened to be adjacent to the walkway, and she got an idea. Taking a few steps back to give herself room for a running start, the vixen sprinted towards the machine, willing her leg muscles into coiled steel springs for the leap to come. About five feet from impact, she sprang into the air, landing with cat-like grace on top of the spider-walker. Carried along by momentum, she pushed off again, leaping towards the catwalk with all the grace of a gymnast. That extra force disrupted the precarious balance of the spider-legged contraption, and it toppled like a felled tree to crash to the ground, narrowly avoiding flattening the unconscious Dr. M in the process.

But Carmelita hardly noticed—she was already landing squarely on her feet on the catwalk. The impact from the landing jolted up her legs, but she barely it as she sprinted forward, running over to the prone form of Sly Cooper. Dropping to her knees next to him, the vixen had to suppress a wince as she saw his injuries. His cobalt-blue shirt had been scorched away on one side from Dr. M's energy blast, exposing singed and bloody gray fur; but Caremlita had no way of telling how bad the wound was in this lighting. To make matters worse, a cursory probing of his torso revealed that several ribs had been cracked, and that the flesh beneath his fur was badly bruised from where he's landed on the catwalk. The most alarming thing, however, was that Sly hadn't curled up to prevent any further harm...instead, he just lay there, as limp and uncaring as a rag doll.

Carmelita had never seen her most elusive quarry this badly hurt, before...aand she didn't like it.

"Sly?" she asked softly, shaking the raccoon gently. "Come on, Ringtail, can you hear me?"

For a moment, there was nothing. Then Sly groaned softly, his eyes flickering open as he stirred in her arms. "Nnngh...wha...?" he muttered groggily, blinking as he tried to focus on the world around him. Then his eyes found hers, and recognition dawned. "C...Carmelita? That you?"

Carmelita nodded, trying to ignore the way her heart tightened at how his voice seemed so quiet and weak, so very different from the confident, charming tone she was so used to hearing from him. "I'm right here, Sly," she murmured softly, not knowing what else to say.

For a moment, Sly was so quiet that Carmelita wasn't sure that he'd heard her. Then he managed a small, weary smile. Small as it was, there was such open, undisguised relief in that subtle curve of his lips that Carmelita's heart skipped a beat. Then, with a soft sigh, the master thief's head rolled to one side as his eyes closed, and his body went limp in her arms.

Carmelita's heart froze in her chest.

"COOPER!"

...
...
...

For a bird flying over Kaine Island that night, the scene was one of utter chaos. Smoke was pluming upward from the superstructure of Dr. M's fortress, steel and concrete cracked and battered from untold amounts of damage. Scorched craters from Dr. M's energy cannons as he shot at Sly and Bentley in their first attempt to open the Cooper Vault; myriad bullet holes from the twin Vulcan guns of Sly's customized biplane as he tore through the base's antiaircraft defenses; the shattered metallic remains of the magnetic buoys and the antiaircraft coordinator that drifted aimlessly in the waves; etc.

It wasn't over, though. As the tall, imposing mountain that housed the Cooper Vault began to collapse in on itself, taking out both the catwalk that had been built around it and the intimidating drills and turrets that Dr. M had been using to try and crack open the near-indestructible vault door, chunks of the mountain began to slough away, turning into runaway catapult stones that tumbled down the rocky expanse to collide with Dr. M's fortress, sending up showers of debris and scrap metal as they smashed into guard towers, storage bunkers, and fortifying walls.

But that wasn't all, either. While Sly, Bentley, and Murray (and unknown to them, Carmelita) had been inside the Cooper Vault, the rest of the gang hadn't been resting idly—on the suggestion of their R.C. specialist, Penelope, they had decided to ensure that Dr. M couldn't send the full might of his personal army into the vault after the trio. To that end, they had been causing sabotage all across the island fortress—Dimitri had suited up and gone underwater again to place explosive charges on the underwater support struts, and the Panda King had set up his special brand of fireworks in the munition sheds. Then, on Penelope's signal, Dimitri hit the demolition switch, and the Panda King lit the fuses.

The resulting explosions were nothing short of chaotic—geysers of water burst skywards as the underwater struts collapsed inward, and the exploding fireworks unleashed destructive "flower-blooms" of fire and multi-colored sparks. It was the final straw. A few moments later, the whole fortress went up in a series of explosions that briefly turned the night to day. At the same time, the mountain collapsed inward, burying the Cooper Vault—and with it, both the legacy of the Cooper line and the crazed mandrill who had refused to give up the treasure that had been his obsession for so many years.

The battle had ended. And it had been won at a bittersweet cost—the legacy of the infamous Cooper clan was lost again, possibly for good.

But it wasn't the end of the story…

To Be Continued…