Work Text:
At first, Carmelita thought the package in her mailbox was a bomb.
It was a square box small enough to hold in one hand, covered in plain brown wrapping and what looked like an entire roll of tape. There were no markings whatsoever, not even her address – which would have been an indication that it had been delivered by less-than-legal means, except that her mailbox lock had appeared completely untampered with.
If ever there was a prime example of something sent to do her harm, it should have been this.
The fox had a bomb detection kit at home – every inspector worth their salt had one, in her humble opinion – and the box had come up clean despite the highly suspicious nature of it all. The logical thing would have been to throw it away at that point, knowing that it likely wouldn’t hurt any innocent people if she did so, but Carmelita’s curiosity was almost on par with her tenacity. Against her better judgment, she brought the package inside with the rest of her mail and started stripping away the taping hack job.
All that was in the box was a DVD case cocooned in bubble wrap. She opened it and immediately froze. Sly Cooper’s calling card logo stared back at her in the form of an innocent little sticker on the front of the DVD. A note was taped to the opposite side of the case.
Happy April Fool’s Day, Inspector Fox.
Carmelita suddenly wished it had been a bomb after all.
She dropped the thing onto her kitchen counter in disgust and ran to the window, wondering if she could catch a glimpse of the ringtailed thief who surely had to be lurking outside in the shadows somewhere, waiting for her reaction to whatever he had sent her. But there was no sign of him anywhere, and after an entire minute of searching, the inspector gave up with an audible huff and turned back to glare at the cursed disk.
I’m not falling for this, she told herself firmly. I’m not playing his game again. I won’t even acknowledge that I got it next time we cross paths. With that inner assertion made, the fox left the DVD and went about getting her house chores done, determined to put the thing entirely out of her mind.
It lasted all of two hours before she was putting the disk in her DVD player, cursing out Sly Cooper for setting up such an obvious trap and herself for always falling for it.
The DVD began to play. At first, there was no sound and the feed was black. Then, someone started giggling.
“Shh!” Another person whispered, urgent but still just as amused. “You’ll give us away!”
Carmelita sat down on her couch without taking her eyes off the screen, confused. Neither of those voices were Cooper, but they also sounded vaguely familiar. The giggling continued, albeit a little quieter, as someone finally removed whatever was covering the lens of the camera they were holding and she suddenly had a grainy view of old carpet flooring.
“Is it recording?” Asked the second person again.
“Uh-huh.”
“Good. Let’s go – and remember to be quiet!”
The camera started moving, still aimed at the floor, and the fox caught a glimpse of a pink thumb cover the lens for half a second as it was adjusted in the owner’s grip. It was finally enough for the familiarity of the two to click in her head.
Bentley and Murray.
Beyond confused but now on high alert, the inspector studied the footage as the other members of the Cooper gang shuffled down a hallway as silently as they could. Whatever reason they had to have recorded this, it had been monumentally stupid to send it to her – all she needed was a glimpse through a window and she’d be able to pinpoint their location in a heartbeat. She stared without blinking, waiting for the single clue she needed to find their safehouse.
And then lost her focus entirely as a third voice appeared. An infuriatingly recognizable voice, muffled as it was behind the door that Bentley and Murray had stopped in front of. Sly’s voice.
Singing.
Carmelita’s mouth nearly fell open. It was quiet, and a little off-key at points, but it was undeniably his, and she realized with no small amount of irritation that she liked the sound of it. Damn Cooper for being able to sing on top of everything else.
Bentley and Murray had started gigging like schoolgirls, and one of them pushed open the door to reveal the master thief lounging in a hammock bed, holding up a binder full of newspaper articles above his head. He was turned away from the camera and seemed to be so deep in his own world that he didn’t even notice he had intruders in his room.
“She'll make you take your clothes off and go dancing in the rain…” With the door open, it was suddenly all too clear what song he was singing. Carmelita felt heat rise to her cheeks and couldn’t figure out why. “She'll make you live her crazy life, but she'll take away your pain - like a bullet to your brain!”
The upward lilt at the last word was the straw that broke the camel’s back, because Murray started laughing so hard the camera shook. It didn’t stop the fox from seeing how fast Sly’s head whipped around as he laid eyes on his friends and the recording device between them.
She also saw the way he tried to jump out of the hammock and ended up with a face full of floor as his legs got tangled up in it, just in time for Bentley and Murray to flee back down the hallway, cackling their heads off.
It was incredible.
The video ended, leaving the inspector staring at a black screen as she struggled to comprehend what she had just witnessed. After a few moments, she rewound the DVD and stopped it at the image of Sly reading his newspaper articles. When she squinted, she could just make out the title.
Hot Chick With Gun Busts Amphibious Yuckmouth!
Oh. Oh.
Carmelita looked back down at the DVD case, where that April Fool’s note stared back up at her. She should be mad. She really should be furious.
Instead of being that, she played the video again, watching as the ever refined and graceful Sly Cooper got stuck in a hammock and face-planted with comically wide eyes. Then she played it back again. And again. And again.
A giggle bubbled up out of her throat, followed by a laugh, and then a full-blown guffaw. After a few minutes of letting her levity out, the fox took the disk out of the player and made to put it back in its case.
Then, she stopped. Looked at the note.
Had a better idea.
It was dark outside when the window of Inspector Fox’s living room window slid slowly open from the outside and a dark figure slipped in without a single sound. He paused a moment, surveying the room, then headed into the kitchen. A small brown box covered in tape sat atop the center counter, and the figure would have breathed a sigh of relief that it appeared untouched if it didn’t put him at risk of being heard. He swiped the package and doubled back towards the same window he had come in through without even bothering to leave a calling card.
Across rooftops he sprinted with the box tucked safely under his arm. The chill of the late-night air did nothing to deter his speed as he ran from one end of Paris to the other in record time, and it was only once he came to a specific house that he slowed down just enough to drop gracefully through an open skylight on its roof.
The figure no longer bothered with stealth. He stomped loudly through the house, alerting one of its residents – a turtle – who peered his head out of the nearest doorway with a truly exasperated expression.
“Do you really need to announce your return like that at two in the morning?”
In response, the figure – a raccoon – held the box up for the other to see. He didn’t answer verbally, but the look on his face more than made up for it.
“Ah.” Bentley adjusted his glasses with a sigh, obviously disappointed that the package appeared unopened. “Well, it was worth a shot.”
The raccoon turned away and stalked towards his own room, ignoring his roommate’s call of “I still consider this proper payback for your prank from last year!” He slammed the door shut behind him, grabbed the nearest sharp object, and sat down at his desk to start tearing open the box.
“Stupid Bentley and his stupid backups,” he muttered as he worked. “’Don’t worry, Sly, I deleted the only copy of the video, cross my heart!’ Tomorrow I’m going to make him go through every damn file on his laptop. ‘No one will ever see it!’ What an absolute load of bullsh-”
Sly stopped his grumbling when he finally cut through enough tape to open the thing. He did so immediately and felt his ire begin to fade as he saw the DVD case sitting not-so-innocently inside.
Then he opened it, and that ire turned to mortification.
Cute video, Cooper, said the note in Carmelita’s handwriting, with the disk nowhere to be found. Didn’t know I could sweep you off your feet so easily. Next year, I’d love to hear your rendition of “Jailhouse Rock.”
Despite the embarrassed blush under his fur, Sly couldn’t help the tiny huff of a chuckle at that. After a moment, he stood up and pinned the note to his wall, right next to the framed photo of her from her last press conference.
Happy April Fool’s Day, Sly.
~ Carmelita