I remember what I said last time. A swamp would be a nice change of pace from sneaking around crowded environments?

Yeah, that was a lie. A damn. A damn, filthy lie.

That was the only thing on my mind as I tip-toed across tiny rocks through the thick, black mud to reach Mz. Ruby's hideout. The information I stole from Carmelita's desk didn't offer much on her, or her movements. Really, the only background on her made her out to be a queen of voodoo for a ancient cult. Currently, she was wanted for raising the dead, a charge I was sure didn't properly exist in the modern day world.

All I could was groan.

"How are you holding up?" Asked Bentley, completely smug.

"Perfect." I remarked as I hid a log. Oddly enough, Mz. Ruby has guards patrolling her swamp. Apparently having the ability of raising the dead doesn't help with protection. Zombies probably don't make for good security forces, anyway. "How's the red velvet cake?"

"Rich and delicious!" He smacked out. If there's one thing both my 'Fox' and 'Cooper' personas could agree on, red velvet cake was simply divine. During my assassin training while the guise of a cop, I nearly got caught after I stole a whole cake from a pastry shop owned by some mobsters. Carmelita had to pull some strings to save my rear, but I had to avoid stealing anything. It was tough, considering how many wicked souls tended to hang around places where red velvet cake was abundant.

"Look, you got anything on where I should go?" I asked as I pushed away some mossy vines.

"Mz. Ruby haz…oops…has a compound hidden about north-west from your current location. I don't have anything else. Our friendly-neighborhood necromancer is a mystery to everyone. Lived in the swamps, raised the dead in the swamps. That's it."

"It's better that way." I forced a smile on my face. "I rather not learn about her terrible childhood and feel any pang of guilt. Kill her and let the muck swallow her body and history up."

"For once, I come close to agreeing with you." Bentley muttered.

"Hmm?" I asked.

"Look, just keep your eyes open for any guards or zombies." Bentley changed the subject. During our week that lead us from the cop-infested Mesa City to the smelly armpit of the world, Bentley had learned it was better to change the subject than continue to try to bond with me. It was cold, yes, to treat him like this, but he wanted to come along with me. A assassin's life is either short or long and bloody. You don't have time to make friends, just allies. He was ally, and he was finally starting to get into it.

"You're going into this fairly blind." Bentley grumbled. "The overgrowth is masking all signals, and it would take me at least fifteen hours to hack a satellite and get into orbit over the swamp just to get something."

"No time for that." I grunted as I grew tired of swatting away vines and just sliced through the ridiculous overgrowth. "If Carmelita is as good as I remember, Ruby is preparing for a major invasion in about nine!"

"Yeah, speaking of her…"

"No."

"For a man so focused on staying hided, you seem real friendly around a cop." Bentley said through gritted teeth. "Okay for you to hang around someone who could easily expose you, but for me to know anything about the potential threat? Ooh, that's evil!"

"Oh, fine." I sighed as I sat down on a non-mossy rock. "You have come this far, so it's only fair if I tell you the truth."

"Good." Bentley grumbled. "From the top. I know about how the Fiendish Five killed your parents and stole the pages of your family history book. What's your connection to the Inspector?"

"…after my parent's death, the cops came too late for anything, except for sending me to jail. Well, a orphanage, but it felt like jail with all the bars. I wasn't there long, and I didn't care for remembering it at all. Fairly certain I was considered a suspect, but like all the children there, I was forgotten."

"I grew up in a orphanage, and I lived." He again grumbled.

"Good for you." I replied back in the same tone. "Whenever parents came over, I noticed that a great deal of them happened to be police officers. I even recognized one of them as the officer that kicked down the door I painted with my parents."

"I then developed a plan. A plan to escape the orphanage, train myself, and get revenge."

"I studied what a parent looked for in a child, and worked on my sad face and lying to get what I needed. And I did. I became a Fox. Sylvester Fox. Latter Constable Sylvester Fox. My identity as a cop provided the near-perfect cover I needed to train my assassin skills. While many turned their heads to the amount of bodies on my watch, I got my job done and all deaths were either justified or 'accidental'.

"And once you found Raleigh, you got a vacation and set out."

"Yep." I leapt off the rock and looked through the deep foliage. "My new mom is a commissioner, so I got a extended one. Three months is all I get."

"And it took us a month to get this far." Bentley counted. "At least we're half-way there."

"Agreed." I hacked through some bushes as I continued my way. "Who knows? Maybe we'll catch up with the other two in the next month. I could spend the last part of my vacation actually on vacation. After being here, I wouldn't…"

"Something wrong?"

"I…found her base."

"And?"

"How did you miss a entire village?" I shouted under my breath as I gazed upon a wooden village standing on wooden pillars in the darkest part of the swamp. Lights were on everywhere. What connection does Mz. Ruby have with this village? She lived here, normally? Were the villagers here slaves? Did she get rid of them to make this her base of operations? Again, the crocodile proved to be the most mysterious member of the Fiendish Five. She really had a way to keep people guessing.

"There's no record of a village. Either she built it, or this village is filled with natives." Some furious tapping came over the channel. "I'm going to say it was built recently, other native villages aren't this complex."

"I'm going in." I leapt onto a strong-looking vine and climbed up to one of the platforms.

"Be careful."

"Hmm." I replied.

The village had a lot of guards patrolling around. Unlike Raleigh and Muggshot's trained goons who had the look of a trained killer in their eyes, Ruby's minions looked more dead. They weren't zombies, their eyes lacked focus or clarity. It reminded me of a street-side act I saw during my beat cop days, where a hypnotist made a man think he was Jean Luc Picard and recite his speech from Drumhead. Apparently, raising the dead was boring to Ruby.

Because they traveled in the ruts Ruby dug for them, it was easy to work my way around them. I had no plan to kill any of them. They looked to be natives and held their spears like a broom; they were innocents, and I protect innocents. This only complicated things. If I didn't sneak in and kill Ruby silently, I would have to deal with a lot of insane people, and I might be forced to kill some.

"SILENCE!"

My thoughts got broke up with a screeching cry. I could have sworn that one of mindless guards broke from his trance for a second before returning to his loop. The voice sounded female, clear, and powerful. Maybe this could be Mz. Ruby. I got up into a tree and headed closer to voice.

"You have eaten our entire supply of chicken gumbo and you're still hungry?"

"…yes?"

"You brainless grès bata!" As I got closer to the two voices, I began to see a small arena made out of bricks and a throne made of bones. A giant female crocodile sat on the throne while a shivering purple hippo stood in the arena.

"But Mama Ruby!"

"Hush child!" The crocodile held out a scaly hand while closing her eyes. "I'm getting a vision." She started to eerily hum, while the hippo's shaking went even faster. "I'm thinking…you and the Beast should tangle in the arena!"

"No!" The hippo got down on his knees. "Not the Beast! Mama!"

"Oh don't worry, child." Mz. Ruby smiled. "I control the Beast. Once you learn your lesson, I'll send him back to his cage."

"Please!"

"Murray, my dear child. You want to be strong? Then let this…be a…test."

A great screech, louder than Ruby, came from behind Murray. This one would have deafen me, if not for Bentley's earpiece. But that thing shattered after the monster's cry ended, leaving me alone again. Ruby snapped her fingers, and the thick wooden gate at the mouth of the arena creaked down.

Even I felt scared. The Beast was a giant serpent, covered in moss and vines, fangs glaring, and dripping in mud. Murray screamed, the perfect reaction to seeing a dragon coming after you. I gasped. This was my first time seeing something supernatural. Up to now, I dealt with mechanical menaces. I didn't even know if I could kill that thing.

Two thoughts came over me. Me and Murray shared a familiar past. However, his parent preferred torturing than caring. I felt the need to go down and rescue him. But that would blow my cover. And that would lead me to fight through the mind-controlled natives.

Yet, my scythe had already sliced through the right eye of the Beast.

"What?" Ruby asked. I dashed around side the Beast, making sure to avoid Ruby's sight. Swinging my scythe down like a axe, I hit a vein in the creature's back, leading to a fountain of blood and a horrifying cry of pain. As Ruby cried orders to the Beast, I ducked around claws and the Beast's sweeping tail as I aimed for the neck.

Unfortunately, the Beast butted his head into my chest, knocking me down. I wasn't expecting the creature to pull off a trick like that. As I struggled to get up, I again got hit, this time by the long tail. My assassin garb prevented my ribs from being cracked, but it did knock the wind out of me. Despite the heavy bleeding from two sensitive areas, the Beast grabbed me with one claw and prepared to squeeze me like a sponge.

But it didn't come. The Beast shrieked in pain again as it got thrown into the wall nearby. The former cowardly Murray had grabbed the beast and performed the deed, roaring in reply. While I regained my balance, Murray leapt on top of the Beast and just pounded its face in with both of his meaty hands. I noticed he was huge, but I thought it was mostly fat and not muscle.

One sick crunch later, and one of the Beast's eyeballs landed next to my feet. The Beast's skull had been caved in, and the skin sagged into the many craters. Murray breathed heavily in and out, like killing a unnatural monster was nothing more than a simple exercise. The Beast never got to cry out or anything.

"Murray…" Came a clearly alarmed sounding Mz. Ruby. "…that…"

Before she could finish her sentence, I took her absolute mental break and threw down three smoke bombs. Just enough to cover me and Murray's escape. Ruby had to take a minute to recover and yelled for Murray to return. I had to wonder if she was dumb enough to angry the hippo who just killed her monster.

Unless that monster was just a appetizer.

"Wow, that….was…AWESOME"

I remained silent. Ever since we got away from the arena and landed somewhere underneath the village, Murray had done nothing but say outdated catchphrases. The one saving grace to the whole debacle? Mz. Ruby sent guards to look around the village, and nowhere else. Considering the large amount of mud and moss I had to get through to get here, it's fair to say she wasn't expecting anybody of making it through the swamp twice.

I felt like entertaining the notion of burning down the swamp so I didn't need to come back here ever again.

"You mind being quiet?" I sternly asked Murray. "We're been stalked by your mother's zombies."

"Oh, she's not my mom." He replied in a child-like voice. "My parents left me as a baby at the doorstep of a nunnery…"

"Ruby told you that."

"...and Mz. Ruby adopted me." He put his hands together and started to tap his fingers. "Sure, I had a rough life, but I became strong." He flexed his muscles. For a guy who just beat a monster to death, he seemed so child-like. Did he have bi-polar disorder?

"Look…" I took a second to get my words in order. He clearly had some sort of love for her. And he seemed like a somebody who could help me. His strength could easily get rid of some barriers in my path. "…I need to talk with your mother. Privately if possible."

"Well, she does hang around that shaman shack in the north part of the village every day for about a hour…in about a hour." He said while looking at dim sunlight that could pass through the trees. "Why do you want to talk with her about?"

"A matter of something she stole." I told the truth without telling the truth.

"Okay." He said all dejected. Apparently, I wasn't the first to try this. "What did she take this time?"

"Some pages from my family's history."

"So you come here to steal back what belongs to you." Now he sounded impressed. "I always like thieves, but I never imagined to meet one!"

"What makes me a thief?" I asked, containing the anger inside. "Stealing is taking something that doesn't belong to you. I'm here to reclaim what she took. It's…fair."

"Your clothes." Murray pointed at my gear. "You look like a thief."

"I'm not a thief." I got through my gritted teeth. Bentley, despite his constant questioning, knew better. So I decided to 'sugar-coat' some things. "Thieves are the worst kind of people out there, Murray. They…don't care for anything but things with prices on them. If a priceless item stood in the way of some child's parents, they would show the child their parent's corpses before they would leave." I held back my tears. I didn't need to show any weakness to anyone.

"…what about the thieves who only steal from thieves?" Murray then asked.

"If you mean gentleman thieves…they're worse. Do you think a smile can change facts? A tip of their hats and they could be cleared of murder? I've seen them before. They think they haven't done anything wrong."

"Oh…" Murray tapped his fingers again. He must do that when he's nervous.

"Look, just north of here is a friend of mine. A turtle named Bentley. Tell him that Sly sent you. I'll have my chat with your mother and we'll take you far away from here. You don't have to be stuck here."

"Okay." While he obviously didn't want to leave, a quick look at my glare convinced him otherwise. He bounded off. Hopefully, he lived here long enough to know what's dangerous.

As I climbed back onto the pier, I began to think about Bentley. I began to miss him, and without the earpiece, he probably started to panic. Actually, knowing my luck, he probably found something important that could help me. Like how one puddle of mud probably would explode if lit by a unnatural agent.

Still…sometimes the best way to get something done is the simple way.

Mz. Ruby apparently was a creature of habit. Exactly on the hour as Murray said, she barked some commands to her mindless minions as to prevent any further disturbances as she did her daily 'meditation.' While the hut looked liked a place that one of the mystic arts could focus, I only got a good look at it from under a thick rug. I decided to wait and watch.

Yet, she did sit in the lotus position and started to mumble out some words in some language long dead. I started to sweat a bit. From the humidity, and from the question: Was she expecting me? Did I end up in a trap? I held my scythe in one hand as I used the other one to make my way through the dark.

"Cooper." Mz. Ruby said in a rather calm voice, eyes still closed. "You come here to avenge anger and greed."

I remained in the dark and silent. Hopefully, she was grabbing straws and would attack somewhere else to give me a easy kill. While I prefer a challenge, today needed to end soon.

"During my younger years, I worked with some…ugly people. A uptight brat, a stupid mutt, a charming noble…and someone who takes the term of 'monster' and laughs at it." She got up. "I had some regrets about your family. I only wanted the pages, not bodies."

"I remember you biting my father's throat." I growled before ducking away. She played me. No wonder she got this far.

"True, but I decided me over him." She took a deep intake of air. For someone who apparently could raise the dead and rewire man's minds, she sure relied on rather simple tricks and animal instincts. "I asked the others to end your suffering…but I was denied…"

"Funny, both Muggshot and Raleigh said they wanted to kill me, but the others 'denied' that." I told her. "So…one of you is lying."

"Little man…" Another sniff. Her huge meaty head neared my location. "…it's been fifteen years. Our memories are a little muddled. Plus…" She licked her lips. Possibly, she liked the taste of raccoon flesh. "…It's possible we all wanted you dead, but Clockwerk wanted you…alive."

"I heard a lot of Clockwerk." I threw my voice to the other side of the room. Ruby didn't react. I slowly inched my way away from her, but she apparently could see me in the shadow-filled hut. "But nothing specific."

"Here's something specific." She smiled. "Clockwerk lead us to your old house. He was the one who put your parents out of their misery."

"As I recall…the Fiendish Five tended to be a leaderless gang."

"We had elections for certain jobs. But Clockwerk could be considered the leader. After all…" She got closer to me. I could feel her heated breath. Her mouth started to open, her mangled teeth ready to rip and tear into me. "...your house was the first job we ever did."

I almost came close to snapping my scythe with my gritted hand. The strain I placed on it was louder than I thought, and me and Ruby were now staring each other down. She again licked her lips in excitement. A unearthly growl emerged from her two-foot wide mouth.

"Shall we dance?" She asked.

I took the first step.

My memory of that fight usually gave me a headache. By the far the most brutal assassination I ever did. Her scaly hide deflected a good chunk of my attacks, and her soft underbelly rarely came around. Again, she never used her magic skills, as she apparently could take Muggshot with her bare hands. Her teeth would have ended me with only a graze.

But only I left the hut alive. Bleeding from various deep claw wounds, but alive. The hut started to leak blood and it seeped into the swamp mud and the color faded away. Thankfully, as my bleeding wouldn't stop even with ripped parts of my outfit, I could escape without being followed.

Don't know if anyone would though. After Ruby gasped out her last words, I could hear some confused people talking in some foreign languages. Her death must have undone her magic. As they were innocents, I left them alone. They could do whatever they wanted with Ruby's body.

I trudged through the swamp one last time, my eyes only darting away from the straight path to give any animal that dared to interfere with me. Within minutes, Bentley's camp laid nearby. Without a care, I sliced open my tent flap and fell into down onto my sleeping bag.

As I ripped off my outfit and started to apply some proper first-aid, I heard some footsteps in the thick mud. I stuck my scythe out of the death.

"Woah, WOAH! It's me!" Bentley cried out. "We need to talk!"

I retracted my scythe. "Enter."

Bentley gently crawled in, paying attention to all the bloody clothes and my stained scythe. "I take it…"

"Yes…" I groaned as I injected some antibiotics into my torn arm. Fairly certain her claws were doused in poison. Not taking any chances. "…it went well."

"So, what are we going to do with Murray?" He pointed over to the other tent. I could hear a faint sound of someone stuffing huge amounts of food into their mouth. "We can't support him unless we take some smaller, paying, jobs."

"We'll see. His strength could be useful to us in the future." I opened my rug sack and pulled out my recovered pages of the Codex. It told about one of the earliest ancestor, Slytunkhamen II. AKA, The Final Plague. When the royals of the land ordered the first born children of all the slaves to be thrown into the crocodile, he personally did the deed to all the children of the royals.

Yet, the pages were stained with tears. It was some of the first pages of the Codex, and regrets were already written in. The Codex was written from doing such a act again. Yet, what Slytunkhamen did was right. The royals were doing a horrid thing for no reasons; they became monsters. Their children would look at them and learn what was wrong to the entire world was right to them; therefore they also became monsters. It wasn't revenge, nobody died yet.

He created the code. 'Only the guilty deserved the scythe.' Why would we feel guilty about killing the guilty?

"One more thing." Bentley asked, with one hand outside. "I know that Mz. Ruby adopted Murray. What do I tell him?"

I took a second to think of a answer. "Tell him…when I got my treasure back, his mother…told me…that she hated you and never wanted to see you again." I laid down on my cot. Bentley didn't say anything, and just closed the tent as best as possible.

I could hear Murray crying his heart out just a minute later. Either he was gullible, or he knew that Ruby would say something like that. I turned away from the noise to get some rest. But I couldn't. Murray's crying woke a blood-stained memory. The one about how my mother's last words were my name in panic. And when I remembered my mother's last words, I remembered another mother's last words.

"Murray…I loved…"

SSHHLLIICCKK.

No more.