“No.”
“Well, it’s basically juice from grapes. Fermented juice...er, fermentation is a process where they turn the sugar in a substance into alcohol. Different grapes and different methods make different wines. Our bar serves many alcoholic drinks, wine’s a subset of them. It’s not for everyone though.” Dawn produced a bottle, whose top she removed before inserting a corkscrew to remove the cork. “Now, wine is set apart in that certain kinds, if you store it correctly and let it age, it gets ‘better’. For a certain value of ‘better’, anyway. Ergo, the right grapes, the right process, the right amount of time...can make these bottles very valuable. Vintages, they’re called.
“And if this sounds ridiculous, it is, but that’s just how it goes. A lot of wine’s not really so much about drinking as it is...SAVORING. There’s actually a whole process for it. Heck, there’s even a job for it. Called a sommelier. TNow, this bottle? This is a very basic wine, called Sauvignon Blanc. I made sure I picked one that would be more on the fruit side than the savoring side. They’re usually drunk from certain glasses, like this. Called stemware. Though they’re ceremonial. You can drink wine out of anything. Have a try?” Dawn had poured herself and Neeko a small glass.
Neeko, who had been on all fours during the conversation, rose to her feet and ambled over to where Dawn was. Taking the proffered glass, she held it up and inspected the liquid inside with her usual wide stare. After a moment of curious looking, she lifted to her nose and gave a sniff.
“Hmmm. Fruity. Remind Neeko of home a little.”
She lifted the glass to her lips. For a moment, Dawn might have wondered if she’d gulp it down, like so many other reckless first-time wine drinkers. But Neeko’s curiosity had always been tempered with a little caution, especially with strange new things like this. So therefore, a small sip was all she took for the moment. She rolled the liquid around her mouth for a second or so, swallowed and smacked her lips.
“Is not bad,” was her verdict.
“You actually just did a very basic wine tasting, on instinct. There’s more technique to it, but anyway, my point. Bottles of wine can be very valuable. There’s one I want. And unfortunately, I can’t just buy it and be done. It’s so rare that I’d need to show up in person to claim it, and I can’t. So I’m going to pay for it in advance, and then you are going to steal it before I can show up to claim it.”
Neeko stared in confusion. “Why can you not show up? Did you do bad thing?”
“No, except yes.” Dawn said. “You remember how when we first met you felt oddly bothered by me and it took you a little time to get used to me because I imitate a living being but technically, am not one? Well, the wine’s on a world of anthropomorphized animal people. Like Miyu and Fay. And as I’ve discovered, every body I send down there just raises their hackles. They sense something’s WRONG about me. Which leads them to think they’re being tricked in some way, which they ARE, but...It just causes more problems then its worth. Haven’t been able to get around it. So my ‘bad thing’ is existing.”
Neeko pondered. “Maybe they vastaya? Child of human and vastayashai’rei. Neeko’s mother tell her stories. Humans and vastaya, they not always get along. Much bad feeling between them. Some vastaya, they live away from humans. Not like them to come close. Like tiger telling other tiger to go away from patch.”
“Maybe. This isn’t just me tossing busywork at you either. You get the wine, I can use it to help find your people. Well, better than I am. Sort of. It involves more math, do you really want me to explain it?”
“No. Math make Neeko sleepy.”
“Then let’s get started.”
---
-Earth HASC-SPP-2002 (Per Dawn Cosineau’s Designation)-
“Okay Neeko. As said, this is a world of humanoid animals. You’ve got a lot of...primate in your facial features; I suspect as is you’d appear to them as horribly deformed. You need to lean more into your lizard aspects. And hold them. And don’t transform into anything else. Well, at least not in front of anyone.” Dawn said over the earpiece Neeko had been given.
Neeko nodded. “Neeko understands. Not have to change in such small way before. But will try.”
She took a deep breath and let the change come over her. To the outside observer, all of her vaguely humanoid aspects seemed to melt away, skin smoothness giving way to scales and rough edges. Her thin figure became more robust, the limbs thickening, her midsection becoming more barrel-shaped. Her face elongated and her hair receded til it was no more than a few plumes sticking out along her head like a gaudy headdress.
The end result looked less “chameleon” and more “product of a one-night stand between komodo dragon and alligator.” She took a moment to adjust, working her new jaw and frowning. Her thicker tail swished behind her.
“Hmmm. Neeko have to get used to new mouth quick.”
“You shouldn’t have to talk to anyone. Okay, here’s the map.” Up came a hologram. “It should be a simple matter getting in. There’s just some trigger lasers and a few guards to avoid. The main issue’s going to be finding the bottle. There’s a lot of boxes, and you’ll be looking via flashlight and night vision.”
“Flashlight? Neeko see good in dark. Why need silly tools?”
“I’d still prefer you carry it, JUST IN CASE. You don’t have to use it. Anyway. First, get in without arousing security’s attention. Second, you find the box. You remember the code on the side I told you? I can repeat it as necessary.”
“One more time, please. Just so Neeko get it right.”
“It’s 12345.” Came Springtrap’s voice.
“Phillip, don’t. It is not that.”
“It’s like the code Dawn has on her luggage.”
“I do not have that as a code for my luggage.”
“True, only a twit would have that.”
“Vent, can you please keep your uncle occupied?”
“Over what, mother?”
“Dawn’s trying to tell Neeko the code is 12345.”
“Really? That’s the same code I have on my luggage.”
“...Neeko is confused,” said Neeko, stating the obvious.
“The code is VT-YY-0970. It might be split in two across the box, so if you see one half look for the other.”
“Okay.”
No sound came from Neeko’s end for a few minutes.
“Security very lazy.”
“That’s why mine is automated. The problem with security done by minds is that it’s 99.9 percent quiet repetition. People get bored, they stop paying attention, they turn it into a process. Works for most criminals, they’re just as dull in another way, but against someone who knows what they’re doing, it’s the biggest hole in any security.”
Vent coughed in the background.
“You want to say something, son?” A false edge was in Dawn’s voice.
“...there are constant jokes about our security.”
“Half a dozen failures to hundreds of successes. Of course they call me Dawn Goatfuc-”
Vent coughed even louder.
“Right. Neeko, let me know if there’s any trouble.”
“One thing. There paint on boxes.”
“Paint?”
“Just lines. But fresh. Neeko smell it.”
“...might be nothing. Or some further marking of some sort. Keep looking.”
“Will do.” Neeko continued to explore, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible. Even in her disguise, she was prepared to throw out a decoy and bolt as soon as possible.
Time passed.
“Neeko find half code. VT-YY. Wrong numbers.”
“Check the adjacent boxes. Might be lined up.”
“It so!”
“You know what to do then…”
A faint crackle in Neeko’s ear made her pause.
“...the heck would be-”
Quiet.
“Dawn?” Neeko tapped the earpiece. “You there?”
No answer. Worry flashed through the Oovi-Kat. The signal had been fine a moment ago, so what had happened? Did something go wrong back at the Teapot? She hoped not. What if she was stuck here in this weird world, or came back to everything being on fire? Another Great Never?
...she was on her own. So she had to at least see this through.
She’d found the box, now she just had to open it. Not so hard: she knew the numbers in more than one way. Her thin, nimble fingers finished the combination on the lock. It clicked free, and she carefully pried the lid of the box open.
There were several bottles. In the end, she actually had to click on the flashlight for two seconds just to make sure she had found the correct one. Once she had actually plucked it free though, the up close look confirmed it. Lastirv Ln 1555. So rare that this bottle was the sort of treasure nations would go to wars over, in older days.
“Dawn?”
Static.
Then the hook dropped down and plucked the bottle from her hand as easily as her nimble fingers.
“Thanks for saving me some trouble, miss.”
The voice was smooth and confident...and already heading away from her.
Neeko stared blankly for a moment.
Then the realization of what happened hit her. And she let out an expletive in her language as, dropping the disguise in her panic-anger, she took off after the stranger.
A few seconds later, alarms went off. Had she tripped them, or was that due to something else? She had been expecting that somewhat, but when the lights snapped on (and darn it, her flashlight had given away her position, darn thing!), she was still disoriented for a few seconds. By the time she fully got her sight re-aligned, she could vaguely see movement as someone crawled out of a higher window.
So she went for it, running up along the side of the stacked boxes, and going right for the window, just barely tossing a Blooming Burst before her to break it. Jumping through glass was never a good idea, and jumping through a sudden shower of glass wasn’t much better. But it saved her time, and it let her catch up, as she bounced off something (might have been a street lamp, all she registered was ‘perch’) and then lunged for the form that was running across the rooftop of the warehouse next to the one Neeko had been sent into.
She made contact. She KNEW she had. The sensation of weight and ‘someone else’ still slipped away from her like she’d tried to tackle something only a tad more solid than a cloud. Still, after the desert tumbles it was simple to recover from, and as she regained her feet, she finally got a good look at her ‘companion’, as he’d had to do his own recovery-roll, into a leap and perch.
“Well, I guess you’re a connoisseur as well.”
A raccoon. And every inch a thief, from clothing, to stance, to bearing. He’d actually tossed the wine bottle up as he recovered, grabbing it again with the hooked cane he was carrying.
“Also good with disguise. Weren’t you a lizard a moment ago? Oh, but where are my manners-”
Then he turned, jumped off his perch, and ran for it.
“COME BACK!” hollered Neeko as she took off in a sprint after him. “THAT NEEKO’S BOTTLE!”
But her panic at losing the bottle and annoyance with the stranger for taking it first was mixed with frustration with herself. She should have heard something, she should have sensed somebody else was in the room! That earpiece of Dawn’s, it had dulled her hearing, and she’d been too distracted to smell anything. If and when she got back from this, she was going to give herself a good kicking. Or maybe let Joy do it.
“Oh really? Then why are we here?” Sly Cooper, though Neeko didn’t know that name, was an expert in talking and running. ESPECIALLY running, as he made his way to the edge of the roof, and promptly ran onto a wire connecting it and another distant building. He didn’t lose any speed at all, traversing the rope like solid ground. Neeko was not exactly THWARTED, but she had to go down on all fours and rapid hand over hand crawl along the rope to keep up. By the time she reached the other side he was already springing up a water tower, his feet briefly resting on barely-there brace points before he moved on. He floats through the air with the greatest of ease…
Neeko didn’t stop to think. All she knew was that she had to stop him. So she threw another Blooming Burst, this time at the water tower. Her aim was off - she was too riled up to focus. But either she hit the tower and blew it up, or she hit the struts and toppled it. Either way, she’d hit something.
After it finished crashing down, she loped around the wreckage to find the soaked, somewhat unhappy raccoon nearby, wringing out his hat.
“A tad excessive, wasn’t that? I hope you have insurance, because I don’t.”
Neeko had a lot of things she wanted to say to him at that moment. Are you a Vastaya? Your outfit looks stupid. What’s insurance? Why aren’t you wearing pants? But being exposed to such characters as Dawn and Vent had taught her to filter out the nonsense and focus on the important queries first. So even as she dropped to all fours in a defensive stance, fins shaking and tail arched, she got straight to the bone of the matter.
“Why you want bottle so bad?” she growled, suspiciously.
“Count Krabgrass wanted it so bad he sank a ship to get it. Sounds like something worth serving for dinn-”
Neeko leapt.
Sly exploded into smoke. Or rather, he tossed down a smoke bomb so fast that he seemed to. Neeko flew through it, immediately regaining her feet and inhaling. He was fast and good at hiding, so she’d have to rely on something besides her eyes.
Scent trail, off the roof, to a nearby road. He was standing on top of a car as it drove away.
“MAI’YEI!” she yelled, and leaped. But as she leaped, she shimmered, briefly…
Sly was way ahead of her, leaping across cars as easily as he would have played hopscotch, keeping ahead of Neeko as she chased him. He swapped the bottle from his cane to his hand as he jumped up, using it to pull himself up onto the back of an 18 wheeler truck, glancing behind himself to check Neeko’s position.
Then he turned around as Neeko, already on the truck ahead of him, grabbed the bottle out of his hands. Behind him, the false Neeko vanished.
“Well, that was unexpected.” Sly said, as Neeko immediately leapt off the side of the truck, transfering the bottle to her own tail as she bounced over two cars and then cleared the side of the road, running down a street.
“Dawn? Dawn!” Still no answer. She looked behind herself. No one. She changed directions twice before running down an alleyway and then climbing its wall, finally ending up on a roof. She actually paused just before she made her way up and over the edge.
There was no one there. No raccoon pulling the same trick she’d pulled on him. She relaxed.
The invisible hand again stole the bottle right out of her tail’s grip, Sly’s form shimmering back into view as he resumed running.
“This is good exercise! Can we schedule it next time though?”
Neeko gave a yell and threw some Tanglebarbs in his direction. Again, her aim was off - but she caught his tail. The shimmering thorns materialized, pinning the appendage to the roof, and he came to a stop with a sudden jerk.
“Owch!” He began tugging at his tail. “Watch the tail, I need it to escape dramatically at the last moment with.”
Neeko did several feints before she leapt in...and stopped, then feinted once more and then leapt in again, going for the bottle.
Sly STILL dodged, and as she came in, he bonked her on the nose with his cane.
A very faint blow. Barely more than a BOOP. But it was enough to disorient her, and by the time she’d shaken it off, he’d gotten his tail free and was climbing up the mass of metal that was on the adjacent roof, some sort of large communication hub. Up he went, Neeko right on his heels, finally reaching the top.
He leapt off. She stopped in mid-climb, judged the angle, braced herself, and leapt off herself, at an upward intercept.
Then he unfurled the hand-held parachute, and Neeko flew under his feet as his descent abruptly slowed.
For a moment, her stomach rose up to her chest as she plummeted.
But then instinct kicked in, and she shocked even herself by how quickly and effortlessly she called upon the sho’ma she needed. A flash of green and gold, and the eagle that she had become soared upwards on the near-constant thermals of the city, rising up after Sly.
Silly Neeko, she chided herself. Forgetting you can fly. What next?
Well, whatever else was the case, she had clearly, finally, totally caught Sly flat-footed. His face was a mix of astonishment, alarm, and even a bit of fear at Neeko’s amazing transformation.
Well, when in doubt, take away an opponent’s advantage. So she flew up and clawed through the parachute with one talonned foot.
Unfortunately, there were certain fine arts to being a bird, and Neeko found her foot catching, which snarled her momentum, which sent her into the same tumble as Sly had now entered. She, however, recovered much better, but she’d lost sight of the raccoon, as he’d fallen into yet another alleyway.
But no worries. She was getting him down. Him and his sho’ma, and that meant he couldn’t hide from her in smoke or illusions. Heck, not thirty seconds and he was running down the alleyway. The sudden landing hadn’t slowed him at all.
She came down in front of him, flashing from eagle to Neeko. He stopped.
“...Now that’s a trick and a half. By the way, I was certain you’d land fine, so, no hard feelings about the whole parachute thing?” He said with a sheepish grin.
Neeko gave a laugh.
And then she leaped. She had him down now. No more tricks, no more sudden turns of luck. This time, she had him.
He used smoke again, tossing down another bomb. But she could still see his sho’ ma…!
She HAD HIM!
Had the cardboard cutout and WHAT THE HELL A DAMN DECOY? What was he, a ninja?
But the decoy bought him a lot less time than he expected. It had saved him from being immediately grabbed but Neeko in turn knew it was a fake and lost zero time in re-locating him as he ran for a telephone pole. As he started climbing it, she was right on him.
Passing him.
Beating him to the top. When he arrived, she was there. With her tail.
Boop. Just the faintest impact on his nose. As he reacted, she swiped the bottle from his cane.
Then he swiped it back. Neeko was fast and agile, but so was Sly, and thieving was his life.
Neeko was determined. She grabbed it right back. He hooked it with his cane, and she grabbed it with her tail, the bottle shooting up as they fought over its grip. Sly, Neeko, Sly, Neeko…
Bottle. It finally shot out of Sly’s hands, Neeko leaping up to grab it.
She had it!
...slippery.
It slipped from her hands, falling.
She wasn’t sure until later what she’d done. Fired a Blooming Burst even as she turned around mid-air, it seemed. It went off right behind her, scorching her mildly but also giving her downward momentum as she lunged for the bottle. Had it…!
...slip.
Neeko registered, in the back of her head, that the bottle had been oiled with something.
Before it hit the ground, the dull shattering noise echoing across the empty, dully lit street.
Then there was silence, save for the faint roaring in Neeko’s ears.
By the time she really processed what had happened, Sly was gone.
---
“Neeko?”
Dawn’s voice, clear again. And not in her ear. She hadn’t really heard the sound of the trademark VROP, but she heard the speaking voice.
“Are you all right?”
Neeko shook her head. The smashed bottle was still in front of her, the contents spilled all over the ground like blood. She was shaking.
“Bad guy… try to take bottle,” she croaked out. “Neeko try to stop him. But he… do something to bottle. Neeko… drop it… wine everywhere…”
She buried her face into her hands.
“For awful moment… Neeko want hurt him. He trick Neeko! Make Neeko look stupid! But he gone! And Neeko hates herself for thinking that! Neeko not want to hurt anyone! But he just… get away! And now we have no wine…”
“Oh Neeko...damn. I should have been more clear. The wine talk was to try and make you understand why it would be so troublesome to acquire it...but I never wanted the wine. I wanted the BOTTLE. And I WOULD have clarified that if SOMEONE hadn’t jammed my communications. That thief had his own help, it seemed.” Dawn knelt down. “He lost. He wanted the wine itself, and now it’s gone. But the bottle’s still here...more specifically…come on where are you...ah ha. Victory in the end.”
Dawn held up a small black piece of wadded material. The wine bottle’s cork.
“This was what I wanted. Because unless my eyes have completely gone on the fritz…” Dawn produced a scalpel-like knife and cut into the material, peeling it away to reveal a small, shiny piece of metal. “Bingo. Someone hid part of a key in it. The sealing cork. I figured it would be easier for you to just bring me the whole bottle. I wasn’t expecting someone else to want it so badly as well.”
Neeko had crawled over to investigate. Her noses twitched, rabbit-fashion,as she sniffed at the cork. The smell of the wine still clung to it. But there was another, stronger smell...
“...why hide key here?” she asked, eventually. “Must be better places. Also,” she added, looking at Dawn and quirking an eyebrow, before looking back down at the ground. “this not wine. No fruit-smell. Very harsh.”
“...what did you say happened to the bottle?” Dawn knelt down, sticking a finger into the drying liquid.
“Raccoon-man did something funny to it. It keep slipping from Neeko’s hands.”
Dawn brought the finger to her mouth.
“...vinegar.”
She cocked her head, the motion mirroring Neeko.
“...spirit vinegar. That’s not right.”
Dawn produced a vial that released a cloud of nanites.
“Wine, if improperly stored, can turn into vinegar, Neeko. But that’s the wrong kind of vinegar. On the ground. It comes from fermented sugarcane, not grapes. There’s no reason that should have been inside that bottle. If the key piece wasn’t there, I’d say someone did a switcharoo, but maybe…”
Within two minutes, the bottle had been re-assembled. Dawn looked it over.
“What a thief.” Dawn showed Neeko the bottom, and the small hole that was now exposed. “Considering it didn’t leak all over the place, that probably means…”
The nanites found it a minute later. Another wad of material, this time some kind of gluey resin.
“Did you lose sight of him for any length of time?”
“Yes, when Neeko rip his parachute. He fall behind building just here. Neeko not see him for a moment.”
“Alarmingly FAST thief. He pierced the bottle, drained out the wine, replaced it with vinegar, and sealed it back up. Then he greased the bottle and ran off when you were distracted. He DID want the wine, and he got it. The old Kansas City Shuffle. Well...if you want to, Neeko, we can start trying to track him. Out of principle.”
Neeko seemed to briefly consider the idea. But something in her won over, and she shook her head.
“No. He get what he want. We get what we want. Is fair. Neeko not like how it happen, but Neeko not want to hold grudges. Elder once say is like eating poison berry and expecting other person to die. We try and get wine some other time.”
“Or just some basic beer. Merilee seems more like the type for beer, anyway. And what the hey...we’ll keep the bottle.”
“What point of that?”
----
-Somewhere Else, Later-
“For us, only the finest.”
The dark purple liquid was poured into two glasses. A pair of amused eyes shifted to not so amused.
“Sly...if that is incredibly fine wine...why are you pouring it out of an emptied soda liter bottle?”
Silence, as Sly blinked once, twice, thrice.
The downside of the lady in his life. Ever devoted to the law. And even after the craziness he’d gone through to get around it, which included faking amnesia, time travel, and literal evil clones...he still couldn’t steal without her not liking it. And noticing the threads that pulled his plans apart.
“...to surprise you?” He ventured.
She didn’t buy it. At all.
Sly might have gotten away from Neeko, but he hadn’t gotten away with it. Not entirely. Crime doesn’t pay was a false statement, but there were a lot of ways payment could come due.
---
-The Teapot. Also Later-
“We need to talk, mother.”
“I’m listening, Vent.” Dawn had several metal pieces in front of her. One from a book, one from a cork, and others from elsewhere. Now it was just a matter of figuring out how they fit together.
“This is poor behavior, even from you.”
“Oh?”
“You could have told Neeko up front that you just wanted the cork. She could have broken the bottle and saved herself a lot of grief.”
“It’d be a waste of good wine.”
“Beside the point. Bernard’s distaste of your methods hasn’t decreased. And you’re ignoring the reports I brought you.”
“Rumblings, Vent. Not solid intelligence reports. Just a step above a variety of opinions, and you know what they say about opinions.”
“The idea that you’re spying on everyone all the time is something you want to keep in circulation?”
“I’m not.”
“Yes, but too many THINK you are.”
“Even if I tripled my current observation network, I would be far away from looking into everyone’s bedrooms, washrooms, and play rooms. And I don’t SPY. I WATCH. I keep an eye out for abnormalities. You may recall that a lot of possible damage was headed off last year when Craynet made its final move because I not only had my eyes, I planted some extra ones and took suitable precautions.”
“Maybe you can tell the difference, but they can’t. They hear ‘being watched’ and think you’re prying into everything. It doesn’t matter if there’s a good reason or they’re misunderstanding. All they register is ‘she watches’. YOUR mother has the same issues. She played fast and loose with trust. If she’d erred a slightly different way, you wouldn’t exist.”
Ah yes. That long ago mess with the invisible monster that drove people crazy-murderous. Her mother using her father as bait without telling him. The Kobbers of the time being real mad over it, especially Sine's pseudo-rival Jonesy. Ancient history, but what was past was always present.
“...fair.”
“And others have talked to you about this. Then you go into your bubble and get enthused by something new and have a bad habit of forgetting. And the spying misconception is just the worst one. There’s also the beliefs about your liquid assets.”
“We have access to nigh infinite worlds, Vent. A lot of which are no longer viable through no fault of ours, nor do we have the means to renew them. If I have to choose between letting what remains just sit there until entropy claims it all or try and make some use out of it…”
“Beside the point. Mother, I know that the beliefs are exaggerated. But you like to cloak yourself in it too much. You operate a lot under ‘They can handle themselves’ and ‘I’ll help if they ask’, which is fine, but that also puts you between two unfortunates. One is that you could seemingly spare people pain, but don’t. And the other is you can do anything, and can’t, and if that ends up being severely tested…”
“So what do you suggest? Please remember, Vent, that while I’m not like the Dawn you knew first, both she and I really didn’t like exposing our throats so that other people could feel better about themselves.”
“That is not an excuse to do nothing. My satellite will be allowing universal access to Olympia. I think you should do something like that with your ‘watching’ network. If just to assure people.”
“You know what they say about multiple people keeping a secret, Vent.”
“Mother…”
“Vent. Remember. I’m not like you. You’re more advanced in a lot of ways. If I did all this, and something went wrong, I’d have regrets, but I could compartmentalize it. If I followed your suggestions and something went wrong, and yes yes, we don’t know, that cuts both ways, then the suffering is going to mirror onto you. By your own mind. It runs in the family. And it sucks.” Dawn said, as she briefly popped up a hologram of Zephyrus. “I’m sure there’s some middle ground.”
“Part of it, I’m afraid, has to be constantly poking into your bubble and whispering memento mori.”
“I think, Vent, considering your words just now, a more fitting one would be “Factum fieri infectum non potest.””
“...it is impossible for a deed to be undone,” Vent translated, after a moment’s pause.
---
Somewhere else, another phrase was prompted.
"Nemo mortalium omnibus horis sapit."
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