Dressed to Steal

by Tatsurou


Time Out: Do What You Want

Once we were ready to make a move, we knew there were two things we needed to do immediately. The first was to retrieve Henriette's Hook before LeFwee could pass it on to Le Paradox. The second was to take LeFwee's treasure charts, so we could find a way to prove him a fraud before all the pirates he'd managed to bamboozle into his service. Of no less importance but of slightly less urgency was locating where LeFwee was holding Admiral Kyuubi and freeing him, along with his crew. After that, we needed to foment a proper pirate rebellion so LeFwee's 'power base' would be destroyed before the Royal Navy arrived en masse to deal with it, as that would drastically alter history no matter what the outcome of the battle.

From what we were able to observe and what Henriette could tell us, there were only two possible locations where anything LeFwee considered of importance would be kept. The first was on LeFwee's personal flagship, which resembled the ships of the present era but was equipped with modern engines and weaponry hidden in the wood. The second was the Skull Keep of Bloodbath Bay, which LeFwee had usurped as his personal fortress. Unfortunately, getting onto his flagship wasn't possible yet.

As such, all we were able to do was investigate the keep as best we could, which meant not using anything that would draw a lot of attention or freak out any of the locals, since the last thing we wanted was for LeFwee to realize he had active opposition before we had achieved at least some sort of victory. That meant no technology, and no sight of a ringtail that couldn't be explained.

Penelope volunteered to make the first investigation attempt. None of us were entirely comfortable with the idea, but it was plain she felt she needed to make up for what she'd done, and to prove herself all over again. Eventually, it was decided the first excursion to the keep would be Uncle Bentley, Penelope, and I, and hoping between the three of us we could manage...


Coco, Bentley, and Penelope carefully made their way from rooftop to rooftop towards the skull keep, each hiding their presence in their own way. While Bentley's wheelchair was difficult to camouflage, he'd managed to give it a cloaking field that would make it resemble an ordinary chair as long as it wasn't in motion. Coco had her invisibility technique in full force, and could not be seen at all. Penelope still had her jump suit and goggles, but with Coco's help had colored both a pattern of mixed browns that exactly matched the tiling of the roofs they were leaping across, along with an added hood. With the hood pulled up, she could lay flat on a rooftop and vanish almost completely from sight.

When they managed to get in sight of the skull keep, however, their preparations seemed to be a moot point. The drawbridges were all up, and guards were patrolling the visible roofs and the path around the small island it was built on. "Well," Penelope murmured thoughtfully, "there's certainly something important there."

"The hard part is getting in and out with whatever it is, and our hides intact," Coco observed worriedly. "Still, one step at a time..."

"There's bound to be a back way in and out," Bentley observed idly. "LeFwee styles himself the smartest man on the seven seas. No way he'd trust his men if he has to boast about that."

"Well, you're certainly the smartest man I know," Penelope purred playfully. "Where would you put the back way in and out, and how would you hide it?"

Bentley blushed happily at the flirtatious praise, then turned to look. "Well, the big issue is the water. It makes a good defense since it's deep enough to be dangerous for swimmers, too shallow for ships, and with too many eyes to sneak in via a rowboat. So the best way to have a hidden back way in would be some floating wood - like crates and the like - to leap across like stepping stones, but anchored to the bottom with the exact right length of chain so they don't move too far beyond where they need to be for the path...and positioned such that they're just out of sight of the patrols."

"Like that?" Coco asked, pointing to a crate floating under a rocky arch...with another crate just barely visible around one side of the arch within jumping distance.

"Looks like it," Bentley agreed as the trio made their way over, carefully leaping from crate to crate until they made their way all the way around to the back of the island, and a hidden platform with a door into the keep. A quick check, however, revealed that the door was locked. "Didn't think it'd be that easy-"

Penelope pulled out a small tool and stuck it into the keyhole. It vibrated for a time, and the door clicked silently open. "There we go," she offered warmly.

"Penelope, what is that?" Bentley asked in shock.

"Do you know how many times my key to the lab wound up inside one of our experiments and getting bent ever so slightly out of shape?" Penelope responded wryly. "I eventually got tired of constantly having to replace any number of keys and invented something that could open any keyhole door by scanning the internal mechanisms of the lock and mimicking the key shape." She smirked as she held up what looked like an oddly configured Swiss army knife. "I call it my Bad Key Machine."

"Did you get that from a video game?" Coco asked curiously.

"N-no!" Penelope stammered quickly. "I absolutely did not get it from a video game! Come on, we need to get inside!" Turning, she quickly opened the door and ducked inside. Smiling to each other, Coco and Bentley quickly followed her inside.


Yeah, she totally got that invention name from a video game. Heck, she introduced me to the game she got it from.