Miss Decibel

"I will orchestrate your demise!"

- Miss Decibel while fighting Sly Cooper

Miss Decibel was a villain in Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time, appearing as the main antagonist of "40 Thieves." She joined Le Paradox's gang as one of his lieutenants and was sent to Ancient Arabia. She planned on obtaining the lost masterpieces of classical musicians, such as Mozart and Beethoven.

She was voiced by Eliza Jane Schneider.

Background
Miss Decibel was born into a wealthy British family. As a child, she had a love of performing classical music, but she was never very good at it. Everyone who went to her recitals were unimpressed by her complete lack of musical talent.

After one notably awful performance, in which the crowd threw a rotten tomato at her and booed, the young Decibel threw a volatile temper tantrum, which caused her trumpet that she was playing to fly up into the air and get stuck in her trunk.

Trying to remove the trumpet, she blew her trunk, which caused a hypnotic note to play. The crowd now seemed to enjoy her music. When she realized that she could control people with her hypnotic notes, Miss Decibel turned to a life of crime, hypnotizing innocent people into committing crimes for her. This resulted in getting the attention of Le Paradox, who decided to hire her, hoping that her skills would help him with his schemes.

Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time
Miss Decibel lured the three members of Salim al-Kupar's gang out by having a parade in the streets of Ancient Arabia and throwing lots of money around. When Salim and the thieves broke into her palace, she was easily able to capture all of the thieves, except Salim, using her modern technology. She then used her hypnotic record players to hypnotize the thieves into forging documents that that would establish Le Paradox as an esteemed member of royalty in the future. In exchange for this, Cyrille Le Paradox claimed that he would help her find the lost masterpieces of Mozart and Beethoven. However, Miss Decibel needed Le Paradox's help to feed the three thieves. The Cooper Gang was able to exploit this by disguising Sly as a delivery boy and thus were able to convince Miss Decibel to give them the locations of the three thieves.

After the thieves were rescued, the Cooper Gang planted a bug in Miss Decibel's office to find out more about the secret door in the lamp shop. Once they managed to sneak into the lamp shop and unlock the door, they found out that it was a secret underground docking station for Le Paradox's blimp. Le Paradox and Miss Decibel confronted them there and Le Paradox revealed that he had stolen Salim's cane and taken Carmelita as hostage. He told Miss Decibel to defeat Sly before joining him on the blimp.

After being defeated by Sly, Miss Decibel clung onto a rope and begged Le Paradox to let her into his blimp. A pleading Miss Decibel reminded him of their deal: romance nights by the Riviera for the forged documents. Le Paradox responded by thanking her for the documents, but revealed that he was only using the relationship to obtain the forged documents, adding that it would not have worked out between the two of them stating he's not into big noses and revealed to her his hatred for her music, saying it stinks worse than he did, laughing cruelly at her. This angered Decibel and made her see him as the lying deviant he really was, calling him a "filthy, backstabbing two-timing scoundrel!". Le Paradox flouts the comment, saying flattery will get her nowhere. Le Paradox even called her the "fat lady that sings" before cutting the rope that she was hanging onto, which resulted in her falling from the blimp. Le Paradox then escaped and returned to the present. Salim then lodged a cork into her trunk which disabled her from hypnotizing people again.

After this turn of events, Miss Decibel was brought back to the present and incarcerated. After being sent to prison, she decided to turn her life around. Her former hypnotic trumpet was removed, she enrolled in anger management classes and began a music class in the prison, much to the dismay of the inmates as her skills had not improved over the years. With continued good behavior, she may be eligible for early parole.

Physical appearance
Miss Decibel is a green elephant (gray in cutscenes) with little ears and dark purple ear insides. She has four toes on each foot, and each toe is white. She has white hair with a black streak that looks very similar to that of Cruella De Vil. She has purple eyes with long eyelashes. She wears a big, purple robe with white fluff and yellow stripes on the arms. She wears purple glasses with transparent sky blue lenses. She has pink lipstick on her mouth, in addition to wearing a turquoise ring on her left index finger. She also has a trumpet lodged in her trunk, which gives the end of it the shape of a trumpet. At the end of Thieves in Time, the trumpet was removed, and Miss Decibel was revealed to have a normal elephant trunk, which had no real shape change since before the trumpet got stuck inside of it.

All throughout Thieves in Time, Miss Decibel had feathers lodged in the back of her robe. In prison, these feathers were replaced with porcupine quills.

Abilities
Miss Decibel is versatile fighter, combining her control over sound with her natural elephantine strength. She could easily lift and toss aside Salim al-Kupar with one arm. Decibel could even shake Le Paradox's blimp while hanging from a rope. She could withstand multiple hits from Sly Cooper and, when sufficiently angered, can shrug his attacks off completely, forcing him to lure her into the electric towers on top of Le Paradox's blimp. If an enemy gets too close, she can rapidly spin around and use her trunk to bludgeon her opponent. If angered enough, she will charge at her opponent with great speed, to the point of rivalling the speed of Sly Cooper. She is so fast that Sly himself requires his Thief Costume's ability to slow down time just to keep up with her. Even after being defeated by Sly, she survived a fall from Le Paradox's blimp to the floor of his docking station.

She can use two techniques similar to Murray's Thunder Flop. The first one is performed by jumping in the air and landing on her rear, producing an enormous shockwave in all directions. During the final phase of her boss fight, Decibel can perform two smaller shockwaves by bouncing on her rear, before producing the larger shockwave on her third bounce. However, using this move briefly stuns her, allowing an enemy an opportunity to attack during this moment of weakness. The second one is virtually identical to Thunder Flop, but it doesn't briefly stun her.

By blowing large amounts of air through her trumpet, Decibel can achieve a limited form of flight to gain altitude and cross large distances.

Using her trumpet, Decibel can release sound great enough to shatter glass. She can produce pink energy beams in the shape of a music staff called a "Music Ribbon" from her trunk. Energy spheres in the shape of chords move along them, electrocuting and instantly killing anyone unlucky enough to be in their path. She can release a stream of energy from her trunk in the shape of notes to attack enemies from a distance. She can also fire energy spheres from her trunk that home in on and electrocute her opponent, however, they will dissipate if they don't reach their target after a period of time. However, she cannot use any of her powers if something is lodged in the trumpet (Salim did this by sticking a cork in her trunk).

Miss Decibel is quite intelligent, inventing record players that play hypnotic music, forcing its victim to do whatever she commands. She used these record players on the The Tiger, The Lion, and The Panther to force them to forge documents declaring Le Paradox as a descendant of royal lineage. She claimed that the forgeries they produced were of the highest quality. These devices were able to impress a genius like Bentley and were compared to the hypno-boxes used by The Contessa to brainwash Murray. These devices have to be carefully deactivated before disconnecting the victim, otherwise they may never come out of the hypnotic trance.

Trivia

 * A decibel is a unit used to measure how loud sounds are. This suits her as a musician.
 * Early concept art shows that Miss Decibel was originally two different characters: a male elephant who appeared to be some sort of librarian or scholar, and a high society monitor lizard. The two characters were eventually merged into Miss Decibel during development.
 * Curiously, a colored version of her male original design appears on the wall during the “Open Sesame” mission when Miss Decibel and Le Paradox are talking about the last of the three thieves and before Sly enters the tent.
 * She's the third villain whose name is associated with music. The first was Arpeggio and the second was Octavio.
 * She is also the second villain who was betrayed by the final boss villain in a game, the first also being Arpeggio, and the fifth British villain in the series, the other four being Raleigh, Black Baron, Dr. M, and Arpeggio.
 * Being a "Music Snob" (according to Bentley), she is shown to have a deep dislike for Rock and Roll music which she refers to "awful screeching".
 * She is the only henchman of Le Paradox to not try and pursue her own agenda. All of the other bosses, including Penelope, had put their own goals ahead of Le Paradox's in some form.
 * Though she did have hopes to acquire lost musical masterpieces by musicians like Mozart and Beethoven. This is, of course, something she chose to put on the back burner in favor of remaining loyal to Le Paradox's cause.
 * She appears to be a homage to several villains from the original trilogy: Mz. Ruby, the Contessa and Octavio; With Mz. Ruby, her battle strategy involves heading from one platform to another after a barrage of musical attacks and both have a form of "Ms." in their names; with the Contessa, Miss Decibel is an expert hypnotist and have a high social status; with Octavio, both have names having to do with music and both were once musical performers, Octavio being a former opera singer and Miss Decibel being a former classical musician.
 * If you search Arabia carefully as Sly or Salim, you can find a tunnel that leads to a room with Miss Decibel relaxing while listening to music behind a screen. She appears here, even after completing Arabia, when she is presumably thrown in prison. Also, if detected by the guards, she will not notice the commotion.
 * She is allergic to camel hair, emitting enormous sneezes that turn her in the opposite direction.
 * There is a painting of Miss Decibel in the arcade room of the ancient Arabian safe house.
 * She is the only lieutenant that called Le Paradox by his first name.
 * She's also the only one to have a close relationship with him, though Le Paradox very likely used the relationship to get what he wanted.
 * Miss Decibel is the only character not put off by Cyrile Le Paradox's stench, due to her romantic interest in him.
 * She loves peanut butter (she even wears a perfume that smells like peanuts) and is very afraid of mice, which are stereotypical traits of elephants in popular media.
 * She is the second mammal villain without fur, the first being Toothpick.
 * Very much like Murray, Miss Decibel does not wear pants, since there are none available that are big enough for her to wear.
 * Decibel is one of three characters not to like rock music, along with Octavio and Salim al-Kupar.
 * She is one of two elephantine characters in the continuity, with the other one being Pachyderma Tuskinanny, although Tuskinanny is an unspecified type of elephant-related pachyderm.
 * Miss Decibel charges at Sly during their boss fight, even though elephants cannot run in real life.
 * The reason Decibel can handle Le Paradox's stench might be because of the trumpet stuck in her trunk

Appearances

 * Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time
 * P. "Prologue"
 * 5. "40 Thieves"
 * E. "Epilogue" (cutscene)

Miss Decibel