As soon as we got the message from Bentley, Dad moved to go meet up with him. I tagged along, worried about what the message could mean. Mom was out on assignment when we got the message, so she couldn't join us then. For a moment, it felt just like how it had all started out...but I was older and wiser now. And I had opinions to share.
Now if only that meant anyone listened to me...
"The pages are disappearing?" Sly demanded of Bentley as the four of them sat down.
"Not the pages themselves," Bentley corrected, "but the writing on them. From what I've been able to determine, someone is messing with time to specifically erase the Cooper Clan's history. Given how intimately involved in history the Cooper Clan has been behind the scenes with what I saw about the various ancestors while researching the book, the consequences could be disastrous for the entire world! We need to find whoever's making these changes and stop them."
"But wouldn't that mean going through time?" Murray asked curiously.
"That it will," Bentley confirmed, turning to wheel his chair over to a covered pile of equipment he'd brought with him from his lab to the old Paris hideout where they were meeting. While he was able to move with a great deal less pain than before and had more movement with his back, the treatments had not yet fully restored his spine. He couldn't leave his chair yet. "Which is why I've come up with a solution, the very project Penelope and I were working on before she...went missing."
As Bentley reached for the cover, Coco blinked. For a brief moment, it seemed like Bentley wasn't there anymore. It looked like a chicken stood in his place, a tall skinny chicken in overalls and glasses looking somewhat elderly. She'd never met the chicken before...and yet in that moment she felt she knew him, and great sadness. The moment passed as Bentley pulled the cover back, revealing a large clock face with a great deal of technological parts built into it. "Behold the time machine!" Bentley declared proudly. "The original planned model could take us to any date just by inputting it...but as our goal here is to undo changes to the timeline, I tweaked it to instead hunt down alterations in the timeline. To do so, it needs artifacts from the eras where time has been altered, which we'll be able to determine due to the high concentration of chroniton radiation within the artifact due to the temporal disruption. I've also designed a system to scan the Thievius Raccoonus for the source point of changes, so we can know what artifacts to look for."
"That's amazing, Bentley!" Sly praised. "Any idea what artifact we should go after first?"
"There's a priceless 17th century Japanese dagger stored here in a museum owned by a skunk named La Paradox," Bentley explained readily, showing an image of the artifact in question. He paused, noticing that both Sly and Coco had stiffened. "Is there something you both want to say?" he asked curiously.
Sly rubbed the back of his head. "Well...as my memory has started to come back, I've been...getting the urge to pull another heist," he explained. "I'd been trying to keep it in check, but...I guess once a thief, always a thief. I'd gathered enough information to determine that La Paradox was a real crook, and had pinned him as the target of my heist...hitting that museum. I've been secretly casing it the past few weeks..." He cleared his throat carefully. "When Carmelita and I haven't been...otherwise occupied." That got a chuckle from Murray.
"Well that's convenient," Bentley offered with a playful grin.
"More like ironic," Coco grumbled irritably. "Investigating La Paradox - and that museum in particular - is the assignment Mom is on that meant she wasn't with us to get the message to come to this meeting!"
"Definitely not convenient," Sly murmured worriedly. "That means we need to complete the heist tonight, probably dodging Carmelita the entire way-OW!" He winced and rubbed his side as Coco withdrew the butt of her cane. "Coco!"
"Seriously, Dad?" Coco demanded angrily. "I may not know the law as well as you, but I'm pretty sure messing with the time stream like this is a crime. Infringing your civil liberties minimum, probably world terrorism on top of that. And Mom's used to working with you to deal with worse criminals. If you've got the information that La Paradox is that bad, tell her you're doing a job and she'll plan around you, just like when we were going after the Klaaw Gang! The deal from back then is still in effect, even if you are engaged now!"
"And if we go that way, the bond between us will be obvious," Sly replied firmly. "If whoever's doing this is out to erase my family's past, what makes you think they won't work to erase the future? Or work on Carmelita's family history while they're at it just to make things harder?"
Coco frowned irritably. "Dad, that sounds completely nuts. You know that, right?"
"We are dealing with someone trying to attack us through time," Sly countered. "They are nuts."
"And you think Mom will accept you running a heist under her nose without you telling her?" Coco pointed out aggressively.
"Better to beg forgiveness than ask permission this time," Sly insisted firmly.
"While you two sort this out, I'm going to help Murray install the time machine in the van," Bentley spoke up calmly. "To get the time machine as mobile as we need it, I had to design it to work around a moving vehicle, generating the quantum fields when it hits the right speed." He glanced between parent and child as they glowered at each other, then sighed and wheeled after Murray. "And no one's listening to make an 88 miles per hour joke..."
Dad stayed completely firm on not telling Mom, and nothing I could say would sway him on that. He was dead set that he would not tell Mom about the job.
...so I told her anyway myself. Like Dad said, better for me to beg his forgiveness instead of asking permission. After all, Dad still wasn't telling her anything.