Thief's Beginning

Fire in the Sky

Sly's POV

Born Penniless the Panda King was fascinated by the many fireworks the rich nobleman set off every New Year's. He spent a decade learning the art, but when he offered his fireworks to the nobleman they couldn't see past his shabby clothes and turned him away.

Humiliated the Panda King used his fireworks as an act of revenge to those who shunned him; he was recruited by the fiendish five as a demolitions expert and from then on became feared worldwide, he's last to be located high up in the unstable Kunlun Mountains where he's supposed to be perfecting some new firework technique.

Arriving in China the snow was covering the ground making it more difficult to move in the deep snow. Especially with giant snow covered monkeys rolling at me.

The Panda King has a lot of guards in this place. After getting past icicles, climbing through snow and scaling mountains, I approached Panda Kings hideout.

I saw in the distance a Panda statue and a firework was shooting from that direction I took a closer look on my binocucom.

"Would you look at that a firework show!" Bentley said.

As I took a closer look we could see a destroyed village.

"Oh my gosh, that's awful! That poor village just got buried alive in freezing snow." Bentley said.

"The rocket came from that giant statue, and you can bet the Panda King lit the fuse. I've got to find my way up there fast before that lunatic squashes another town." I replied.

I hurried to get to the Panda Kings hideout, once I was inside the stronghold, I scanned the area; it was pretty fancy for a mountain lair. The temples were nice to look at but trying to get through them was a bit more difficult, like I said a lot of guards.

Our first objective was to collect enough keys so we could set off some fireworks and break into the second part of the Panda Kings hideout.

Murray was back on the field but needed protection from Panda Kings guards and after a rush of guards by one of the temples Murray managed to retrieve a key.

I was making my way through temples and towers, the security was tight in this place, and there was barely a room without either a guard or lasers. Plus my feet were starting to go numb from the cold.

After collecting the keys we managed to break into the second part of the Panda kings lair and closer to the statue.

"I've calculated the trajectory of these rockets and... I'm 99% sure you'll be able to use the fireworks to ride all the way to the top of that statue before they explode." Bentley said as I looked towards the group of locked fireworks nearby.

"What about that other one percent?" I asked.

"Well in that case, Sly, you'll be blown to bits - but the experience will no doubt be spectacular."

"Nice."

"Now we need more keys to unlock those fireworks"

"Right, I'll steal 'em in no time."

Although getting the keys wouldn't be too easy I ran into Inspector Fox on the way.

"Freeze Raccoon." Carmelita said.

"How can I freeze when my heart warms at the sight of you" I replied.

"Shut it Cooper, I don't know what you're doing here in China, but I'm sure it can't be good for whoever runs this place."

"You must only have eyes for me if you're too blind to see what's really going on around here." I replied.

"All I see if a pathetic thief who's escaped justice for far too long."