King of Fire

"Panda King: I hate you Sly Cooper, you've ruined me... ruined the Panda King. Sly: And I've hated you... but that doesn't make any of this real. Years have passed and we've both changed... Come out of this trance. Let's meet each other as we are today and let go of who we were when this fight occurred. Panda King: YOU ARE... correct. Forgive me, my mind is not always my own."

- Sly trying to bring the Panda King out of his meditative trance.

"King of Fire" was a job for the Cooper Gang in "A Cold Alliance" of Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves.

Description
Find the reclusive Panda King and convince him to join the team to help break into the Cooper Vault.

Synopsis
The Cooper Gang arrived to the Panda King's meditation spot in the Kunlun Mountains to see if he would join them as their demolitions expert. Sly warned the Gang to be vigilant as he believed that the Panda King was as dangerous as ever. Bentley thought otherwise, remarking on his calmness. Murray complained about the pain his feet were in from walking all the way up the mountain. He commented that when the Gang still had the Cooper Van they never had to walk anywhere.

Bentley tried calling to the Panda King, but received no answer. He concluded that they were going to have to find a way up there if they were going to break him out of his meditative trance. Murray was up first. He used his Aboriginal Ball Form to bounce onto various pillars and onto the plateau that led to the Panda King. Sly was up next. Bentley told Penelope of Sly's ability to balance on small points and mentioned the large bamboo shoots to hint at what she should do. Penelope concluded that shoots were too far apart for Sly to traverse and needed to be split down the middle, but that the ice was too thin to do it manually. So, she used her RC car to split them in two, thereby giving Sly more points to ascend. Sly used the Ninja Spire Jump to traverse the spires and reach Murray.

For Bentley, Penelope, and The Guru to get up to Sly and Murray, the nearby pinwheels would need to be destabilized. Bentley used his sleep darts to shoot the inactive rockets on the two pinwheels. Once they were all shot and lit, the Guru detached them from their support beams with the use of other rockets found on top of the Panda King's home. One pinwheel knocked over the bridge to the Panda King's shrine and the other settled on the ground below, serving as a makeshift elevator. They used the elevator to ride up to the top.

Sly, Bentley, and the Guru confronted the Panda King at his shrine. Given a closer look, Bentley realized that the Panda King was in a super meditative trance that could only be broken by delving into his mind. He told Sly to sit beside the Panda King and had the Guru join their minds together.

Now in trance as well, Sly found himself in a familiar situation – confronting the Panda King to steal back his pages of the Thievius Raccoonus and defeat him. Sly made several attempts to break the Panda King out of his trance, explaining that the encounter was not real. Sly finally told him that he was dwelling on the moment of his greatest defeat and ignoring the reality of the situation that they were both changed individuals now. Coming to this realization, the Panda King apologized to Sly and came out of his trance.

Trivia

 * During the flashback sequence, the Panda King addresses Sly the exact same way he did during their battle in Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus, while Sly addresses him in the present to try and break him out of his trance. Also, if the player chooses "Say something from the past," Sly will refer to the Panda King as "a frustrated firework artist-turned-homicidal pyromaniac," just as he did in the first game.

Behind the scenes
Although the Panda King uses the exact same dialogue when he addresses Sly during the boss fight as he did in Sly 1, re-recorded his lines with proper grammar.