• Published 29th Aug 2020
  • 2,162 Views, 1,129 Comments

Baa-Ram-Ewe! - Darkonshadows



"Baa-Ram-Ewe!" - The ancient war cry of the lambkin.

  • ...
13
 1,129
 2,162

PreviousChapters Next
82. Mugging Muggshot.

-Equus, Fluttershy, Outside Sugar Cube Corner-

“Oh my goodness, what happened to you Rainbow Dash?!” My friend looked a badly bruised and was covered in scratches, the fact she was limping along the ground meant that she currently either couldn’t fly or it hurt too much to do so.

“When a unicorn says not to disturb them and they are in the middle of something… then you listen to them.” Rainbow stated slowly and methodically. “I learned this lesson the hard way, I’m just going to the hospital and then I’m going home… provided I can even fly there.”

“Do you need help Rainbow?” I asked worriedly.

“Yes.” Rainbow promptly flops onto her face.

-Earth, Mesa City Vegas, rooftops. Shanty-

I had already grabbed one key, all I needed to do was avoid a few biped dogs in suits and climb up a building to it while Sly cleared a path for me coming back. We also found out the Boneyard Casino was slightly flooded, but sly took care of most of that as he didn’t want me going near the electrified water or exposed wiring.

Muggshot be a brawny boneheaded bipedal bulldog to let his entire casino get flooded and he wasn’t big on maintenance either, but he still be very dangerous and I wouldn’t want to get too close to the guy that could rip me in half with his bare hands that he can walk around on. He was almost as terrifying as an Evil Core, but he probably didn’t have the same aura of death about him. You could easily see his ugly image plastered all over Mesa city.

Right now I be situated high up.

“Okay, I be in position.” These binoculars were really nifty, wouldn’t find anything like them back on Equus. “What do I do now?”

“Okay Shanty, I currently have Sly searching the far rooftops for the remaining keys. Murray is getting into a race with Muggshot’s goons for their key at the racetrack and Mopsy is being a lookout for me here at the hideout. As for Dodo… I’m going to be honest he makes me a bit nervous.” Bentley didn’t be liking Dodo very much, but Dodo be liking him. “Dodo is protecting Mopsy’s orphanage, if anything happens there Dodo will be able to alert you right?”

“Yes, that be a thing with familiars, as long as we are in the same world, we can be feeling where each other are at all times… among a few other small things like quickly coming to understandings.” I can be feeling Dodo right now, he be quietly minding his own business and he was happy that I be thinking of him. I be giving mental head pats and he be sending me back joy. “He’s okay, I don’t honestly think he knows the meaning of bored. I certainly do though!”

“Do you see anything Shanty? Remember, we’re searching for the treasure keys. Heading out to get these keys, we showed you what they look like and gave you an area where one could be found, your area is the least guarded and mostly safe.” As Bentley spoke over the binoculars, which were interesting in that they weren’t magic, I glanced around from my spot and gave a solid glare to the large fire hydrant penthouse over at the Boneyard Casino. Bentley could see what we did through the binoculars and I eventually focused them on The Murray. “You know, it’s actually kind of nice to have some extra help like this.”

“Murray’s race is getting started.” I focused on the ‘Cooper Van’ surrounded by several other vehicles. “Do you think he’ll win?”

“Murray drives like crazy, best getaway driver we could ask for. He could also be a good bruiser, but he needs to work out more and until then we will have to leave most of the fighting to Sly.” Bentley be a bit annoying in almost insinuating that I can’t fight, but he is being good at what he does as being the brains of this group. “That Muggshot’s guys are going to be rough is fairly obvious, I’m quite sure Murray will still win the treasure key anyway.”

I be turning my gaze to see Sly prowling the rooftops looking for another treasure key when a ball of energy shot past him.

“Bentley I think we have trouble, it looks like a fox and she seems particularly angry with Sly!” I zoomed in on Sly and the blue haired, reddish furred fox that was pointing her energy pistol at him.

“That’s Inspector Carmelita Montoya Fox, Sly will have to figure out a way to get her off our backs without harm coming to either of them. He’ll likely be keeping her busy for the foreseeable future since Murray is busy with the race. Make of her what you will, but she’s actually fairly nice outside of work hours, provided that she doesn’t know that we’re around.” At least I know that Bentley wouldn’t mind Pom being a Guard, she was only one of my friends that had a job. Had, because who would let her keep her job after being gone for this long? It’s a good thing that Pom knows how to readily find temporary jobs. “She’s all black and white as far as criminals are concerned when it comes to her enforcing the law, if you’ve done something illegal then everything else doesn’t matter to her. We’ve only ever seriously stolen from criminals and she is seriously out to catch us. To think Sly can’t help but tease her, I swear his attraction to her is going to bite him in the butt one of these days.”

“There they go.” I said, as Sly started running and Carmelita immediately started shooting after him.

“Sly will be fine, Murray looks to be doing alright and as for you… keep looking around and be careful Shanty, I don’t want you getting hurt on my conscience.” As Bentley talked, I surveyed the surrounding buildings. Not much be going on up here. “Muggshot doesn’t have much in the way of security measures, but he does have a lot of goons, so where should we expect him to stick one of the treasure keys?”

“Why do these Treasure Keys end up in so many odd places anyway? How is he to open his vault in an emergency if they are being all over the place like this?” I asked before I spotted something and zoomed my binoculars in on it. “I see one, it’s between two windows at the top of a building… why would someone put it there?”

“Hold on, yeah it’s in the skylight alright. You’re in a good position to go grab it Shanty, but I don’t think your blade hoof technique is good enough to cut through that reinforced glass. I can see you on the tower above the green neon sign spelling out Muggshot’s name. Give me a second…” I waited and I heard Bentley grunting about something. “Okay, I think I have an idea as to how you can get it, but you’re going to need to climb over to the wrecking ball crane I’m highlighting on the binoculars. If you do things right you’ll only have one obstacle in your way, one poker dog that has metal edged cards, up there.”

I looked at both things Bentley highlighted.

“Is she doing alright?” I heard Mopsy’s voice asked, she was Bentley’s lookout in case thugs came after him. She wasn’t going to do any fighting though.

“She’s fine Mops, she just needs to move the crane into position above the glass and drop an old time wrecking ball on some glass to get at the treasure key we need. It should be simple enough for her that it’s actually insulting to her intelligence to be worried for her safety. She’s got a good head on her… hold that thought.” After a moment I heard Bentley say something else. “What… oh, hold on a second Sly… thankfully I know Navajo code talk let’s see… try five, three, two… okay, that’ll be useful to have.”

It sounded like Sly be opening a safe, but how did he be doing that in the middle of a chase? I shook my head and leapt from the tower to the building and climbed along the wall towards the crane, I poked my head up to look at the top of the roof where I saw the poker dog Bentley mentioned.

A nice flying buck to the head should knock him out, oh hey there’s a safe up here! Funny place to put one of those though.

I was also not asking the question of how they got something as heavy as a crane on the roof of this place. It was here and I didn’t need to be knowing how Muggshot’s guys did it… just that they did for some weird reason.

Clambering up on top of the crane, I crouched down and then leapt for the back of the tall white and black spotted bipedal dog. He gasped as he turned to the side and dodged out of the way of flying buck by accident.

I rolled along the rooftop, got my hooves under me to skid to a stop and hopped over the numerous edged cards he started throwing my way. When I landed I leapt and launched a jumping uppercut like Pom taught me, my hoof slammed home into his chin with a nasty bone crunching sound and his head be smacking into a nearby trash can on the rooftop. I grabbed the fallen trash can lid with my left hoof and got a good grip on it with both my front hooves as I brought it around and knocked the bipedal dog out.

Taking a glance at the metal edged cards that dug themselves the into concrete and brick roof, I could have probably blocked all of those with my hooves… but better safe than sorry.

I stole a few packs of card, some local world money to give to Sly, Bentley and Murray and thought about the bipedal dogs clothing, but left that to the dog.

I stowed my stolen goods away in my satchel, pirates and thieves make for good friends like I currently was with Cooper gang. I be needing help and they be traveling around, we would be doing each other some big favors to eventually finding my way back to Pom and the others somewhere on this world.

“Okay, I took care of the poker dog and there’s a safe up here.” I pointed the binoculars at the safe. “I also be wondering how they got a crane up here.”

“Huh, a safe is there, really?! Good news at least, that means you just found another page of the Thievius Raccoonus for us, thanks Shanty! As for the question about the crane, well things have gone to the dogs since Muggshot started his takeover of Mesa City and we’ve seen how bad maintenance has been around here. Even his security systems are poorly thought out enough that a five year old could haphazardly wander through them and come out unscathed, so we really shouldn’t be surprised that his guys somehow managed to get a crane on top of a building even if it’s a really a weird place for an old rope and ball crane.” It’s a good thing Bentley be knowing that I’m fairly smart myself, he be knowing I can climb past most of the security systems on the ground. “Okay… huh, you needed at least an I.Q. of 140 to figure this one out… Shanty the code is four, six and eight.”

I moved up to the safe and inserted the code left to right and spun the wheel. Once it opened up, I pulled out a bit of paper and looked it over.

“This not being an exciting thief move like the others I be hearing about… I hold up the binoculars to page to show Bentley.” It was about water safety, I still read a bit of it and upon doing so I think I learned something I didn’t think I knew previously. I already be knowing a lot about water already, but there was just something about this page that tickled at my mind. So I looked it over more thoroughly. “Water Safety doesn’t scream very helpful to me, I was born to be a pirate and I’m not worried about water as I’m already a great swimmer.”

“You might not be worried, but it’s still a page in our book Shanty, one that Sly could really make use of. Huh… oh… hold on… its Suzanne Cooper’s notes on ‘Water Safety’ Sly. We did miss swimming class in the orphanage.” I could almost hear Sly making dry comments about the page in question, but Bentley thought otherwise. “At a guess you’re family has always had a problem with swimming and if enough Coopers have drowned to require it to be in the Thievius Raccoonus, then you are bound to learn something from it… now let’s see about that crane! Oh, Shanty is on course for getting a key from a skylight by herself. Well that means we won’t have to do much more searching around the city, I think I got a location on the last one and will have Shanty meet you there. Now Shanty point your binoculars at the wrecking ball. Okay can you jump at it and land a flying buck around… here… and jump off to still grab onto the wall afterwards?”

“That be child’s play, I be doing things like that with coconut trees a lot in my youth! I know the perfect way to do it too… I’ll just use my goat fly technique.” It has been a while since I’ve done it, I looked through the binoculars to see the spot he wanted me to give a hard kick. “Before you ask it’s a technique I can only do off of walls or vertical surfaces, doesn’t work when I’m standing on the ground or on a ceiling though. Never figured out why it works this way, even my friends are confused by how it works and even I’m unsure of how I do it.”

I carefully climbed off the building’s roof and slid down the wall a few feet and stopped to look behind me to the wrecking ball and looked through my binoculars at it.

Bentley be making me a pirate themed set of binoculars just for me with a goat skull and crossbones on it. It made me feel like I was a friend of theirs already, these thieves did really cool stuff and had cool equipment too.

I stowed the binoculars in my satchel, I’m glad Dodo had most of our stuff… especially the food. I prepared myself and then launched a Goat Fly assisted at the large metal ball. Upon impact I be kicking off it and landed back on the wall as the ball swung outwards and destroyed the entire neon sign proclaiming Muggshot’s name and part of a brick building.

I be wincing at the damage to the nearby building and watched as the ball be swinging back to position right over the skylight with the key.

“Okay now I need to…” The ball instantly dropped and went straight through the skylight entirely breaking both bits of reinforced glass and it be making crashing sounds and… it is now going through several floors downwards. Each floor it went through made me cringe, I hoped nobody was in the building… then again Muggshot has evicted most of the people so at least nobody nice could be hurt by this. “Slight issue… I might need to… no, wait, I see the key. It still be a little dangerous, but nothing I can’t handle. Where do you need me to meet up with Sly? I be needing to be out of the area and very quickly, might have destroyed several floors of a building that the key was located on and may have drawn a bit of attention to myself… heh heh.”

The key was dangling on a bit of metal over the gaping hole the fairly small wrecking ball left in its wake. Quickly climbing down, I snatched the key before it fell several floors down onto the wrecking ball below me and made my way back up.

“Okay, look to your left, the last key should be in that back alley area… meet Sly on the roof here and Murray will be by to pick you up with his key, then we should be able to open the vault Muggshot is guarding… but we’ll have to deal with him first.” Bentley’s voice sounded a bit strained when he be saying that and I winced loudly. “Yeah, don’t want you anywhere near the guys guns, by that I mean both literal and figurative guns, but we need him out of the way if we want to get the rest of Sly’s family history back. I have an idea how to do this, but you need to meet up with Sly first and bring those keys back to the hideout.”

Their hideout being near The Prance Dance.

“Right, I just quickly be on my merry way before those well-armed guards be finding me up here!” I stated as I looked towards a building heading in that direction. I hopped onto the nearest wall. “Goat fly!”

I shot off the building horizontally and defied gravity by flying straight until I slammed hoof first into a different building a fair distance away. I sighed in relief as the doors to the rooftop I had been on bursts open and they be looking around for me.

Already being long gone from there!

-Ten minutes later-

“Could have broken this code in my sleep, it’s five six five.” Bentley stated proudly from the hideout as I climbed up to where I saw Sly pulling a page from a safe. “Sly, Shanty has made it to your location and Murray should be there real soon to pick both of you up. Ah ha, it’s Sir Andrew Cooper’s ‘thief replica technique’. He made fake stand-ups of himself to confuse guards while pulling heists. He used a lot of cheap lightweight materials using this technique, but if it works, then it really isn’t as silly as some people might think it sounds.”

“Here you go Sly, this is all for you!” I passed him the page I got, the treasure key and some money. “Just use the money to feed me if you feel guilty about taking it from me, I won’t be needing it when we find my friends.”

“Thanks for the help Shanty. I was a little worried you were a bit young for this kind of thing, but you’ve been a big help and I believe you’ll make a great pirate someday. Now I’ll go get the last key and we’ll drop down to the streets to meet up with Murray.” Nodding to Sly, I watched as he carefully walked over a plank towards the key on top of a tall pillar in these darkened alleyways. I will be keeping all the poker cards of course… “We can start looking for news of your friends soon after, Smolder and Ocellus obviously won’t go unnoticed from what you described… though since Pom looks like an animalistic that already exists, she’ll be a little bit tougher to find.”

Animal, Animalistic and Biped, this world was kind of weird. I would be considered an animalistic since I could talk.

At least I wasn’t being bored to tears here.

-An hour later, early morning, Inside Boneyard Casino-

I poked my head up over the counter to look out for any guards as sly used the keys to reveal a switch. When he pulled it, the giant Muggshot head nearby seemed to spit out its tongue revealing hidden doors.

“What’s be the plan Sly?” I asked as he was the leader here.

“I plan to go up there and take back what’s mine from Muggshot, you can stay safe with Murray or go with me. I want to know if I have some help in this coming fight, because I don’t think my cane is going to do any damage to the brute.” Sly is being quite honest for a thief. “So are you with me or do you want to wait with Murray?”

“I be good backup, in case something be happening.” We were on the cusp of a battle with the gangster that be running people out of their homes. We approached the doors and they opened up, Muggshot be waiting for us up inside the fire hydrant. “I’ll stick to the roof and will help when needed.”

“Alright, you knew what I was about to suggest anyway, let’s go.” We got on the elevator and be riding it up to the penthouse. Sly be walking off into the room and Muggshot be talking to him, while he was focused on Sly I crawled up the wall while looking around. This place be really big vertically and having a lot of crystals. “Bentley why are there so many crystals here?”

“That’s because Muggshot created a crystal garden… huh…” I hear the sounds of explosions. “Sly is starting his fight with Muggshot… Shanty can you goat fly over to the crystals on the floor above them and flip all but one of those sun reflecting mirrors around?”

“Yes, I can be doing that, but why?” I asked looked down and saw Sly was caged in and making the crystals take shots for him as he ran around avoiding the slower Muggshot.

“You’ll see for yourself, there’s a good reason all these mirrors are pointing outwards around his crystal garden. After you’ve quickly done that, get up to that last crystal and do the same there before Sly and Muggshot get up there.” Bentley exclaimed, I nodded and silently launched a goat fly and slammed against one of the crystals on the second floor and began flipping the mirrors. “Afterwards take cover and wait for Sly to be finish him off.”

I spun the mirrors like Bentley asked and left one alone. I crawled up the crystal and launched myself back towards the wall as Sly and Muggshot came up after painfully bright flash of light from below, I quickly scrambled out of sight upwards towards the larger crystal and the last few mirrors.

Looking back, I saw that Muggshot looked a bit sunburned. The muscular purple bulldog is being treated a like vampire? Heh, that’s kind of funny, by the dawning of the sun we will have taken him down like vampire slayers!

I goat fly to the big crystal and crawled around it spinning all the mirrors except for one, I noted where Sly might come up and left that mirror unturned and shot back to the wall and climbed up to the ceiling to watch what would happen.

-Later that morning-

“Thanks for helping Mesa City guys, that Carmelita is busting Muggshot as we speak. Is it going to be hard to get out of here?” Mopsy asked as Dodo took to sitting on top of the Cooper Van, it can be handling his weight and The Murray wasn’t complaining. “Also how about a kiss from a fair maiden as an extra bonus?”

“Yeah, leaving might be problematic. Thanks for helping us as a lookout Mops, but we need to be going!” Bentley replied to Mopsy while looking away from the looks she was giving the three blushing guys.

“Great, because I’m coming with you to make sure that Shanty finds her friends!” Mopsy stated succinctly as she throws two travel bags into the back of the van and closes the doors behind her. “I’ve already arranged for everything to be taken care of with the girls, let’s get going!”

Author's Note:

It was always weird that Muggshot was weak to sunlight and you fight him in a crystal garden with mirrors that bounce the sunlight away from the crystals.

Still he yells about his guns breaking or not working, when it's his skin and eyes that he should be worried about after being assault by the light in the boss fight.

Okay, Shanty is a bit of a cheat code against Muggshot and in an urban environment there are a lot of ways she could hop from building to building quickly, so really her assistance speeds up the Sly Cooper plot.

PreviousChapters Next