The best way to not get your heart broken is pretending you don't have one.
"I'm starting to feel bad about what we just did."
It had been five minutes since they'd accidentally let loose a monster on the swamp grounds and then left it to its own devices while they made their way back towards the rendezvous point. Truth be told, Carmelita had actually been feeling bad for the entirety of that time, but she knew it was pointless to clarify what was too late to undo.
Her partner side-eyed her without a word in response. He'd been having random bouts of silence throughout the whole night, and it was bothering her almost as much as the snake incident. It was bizarre, the way he'd be at ease and joking with her one moment, then tense and looking ready to bolt or faint the very next. She found herself hoping it was just the dangerous place they were in and not anything she was doing.
Knowing him, he wouldn't tell her even if she asked. So she didn't ask.
"I'm just – I'm worried a lot of people might've gotten hurt," she continued when he still didn't answer. "Maybe we should go back and check…"
"Too late for that," the raccoon finally said. "If you turn back now, you'll miss your chance to catch Mz. Ruby out in the open."
It frustrated her that he was right. They were running dangerously close to the meeting time, and the mystic probably wasn't going to wait long before retreating to wherever she'd been hiding all this time. Carmelita took a deep breath and resisted the urge to glance behind them towards the factory. The screams of guards had long since stopped; she didn't know whether that was a good or bad thing.
"Hey. Look at me."
She looked at him. His eyes were a little softer than they'd been before.
"No point in speculating on something we can't change. We've got a job to do, remember?"
The fox's eyebrow's shot up, amused. "Careful, now, Ringtail. You're starting to sound like me."
Sly opened his mouth, probably to make a sarcastic remark, but then he closed it without a word and turned away. Even in the dark, she caught the tinge of pink lining his cheek fur.
Huh.
"I think this is as far as I should go, actually," he said abruptly, still not looking at her as he found a fallen log to sit down on. "Wouldn't want to make you lose your chance at stealth by accident."
"Um. Sure, this seems like a safe spot. But…" She blinked down at him, surprised. "I don't know why you'd think you might get us caught. You're way quieter than I am."
His lips thinned. "I'd rather be safe than sorry. Go ahead without me, I'll be right here."
"Okay…"
Carmelita began walking away, but not without a few glances back at him. He sat on that log with his hands on his knees and one leg bouncing almost nervously, watching her go with an intensity she couldn't figure out. She stopped and gave him one final smile.
"I'll be fine, Ringtail. Don't worry."
The raccoon managed a small smile back. "I know you will. Go kick her ass for me."
With reassurances in place, the inspector turned around and marched off, and didn't look behind her again. For now, she was going to chalk her partner's strange behavior up to his fear of the supernatural and leave it at that. She could pick apart it later, when they were both safely out of here.
It didn't take long to come across the clearing again. Carmelita crouched behind a tree right on its outskirts, checked her watch, and began to wait patiently for Mz. Ruby's arrival.
Sure enough, it was only five minutes before the alligator and two guards showed up from the direction of the giant skull-shaped temple that Sly had taken such an interest in before. The inspector made a mental note to herself to sweep that entire place for more evidence once she had secured the criminals.
The group came to a halt just a few feet away from the center of the clearing, and the guards' gazes turned to the skies above. Mz. Ruby, however, was scanning the tree line around her.
"Ma'am, are you sure he'll be here?" One of them asked her boss, wringing her hands. "I saw in the news the other day, about Muggshot –"
"He'll be here," she coolly interrupted. "I know him better than anyone. He'll come."
Inspector Fox breathed a silent sigh of relief. They were expecting Muggshot; she still had the element of surprise. Plus, Mz. Ruby wasn't a fighter. She was known for working in the shadows, and out here there was nothing but her tiny entourage to protect her.
Emboldened, the officer stepped out of her hiding place. All three pairs of eyes snapped down to stare at her silhouette in the dark.
"See? I told you he's –" the alligator cut herself off as she got a better look at their visitor. Her eyebrows flew up in surprise and she drew herself up to her full height. "Who are you?"
"I'm Inspector Carmelita Fox." Her shock pistol came up to aim at the guards before they could take a step towards her. "I'm here on behalf of Interpol to take you into custody."
Mz. Ruby tilted her head and looked the younger woman over like she was one of the bugs in the air around them. Her snout twisted in an angry sneer. "Mmm…so you're behind these strange vibes I couldn't pinpoint around my swamp. Most distastefully bad juju."
"Yeah, well, this whole place has given me the creeps, too – especially seeing illegal activities like creating an undead army!" Carmelita clicked the safety off her weapon. "Mz. Ruby, you are under arrest. Come quietly and without resisting. I have been authorized to use force if necessary."
"Oh, cher," the mystic laughed. Her hands began to glow a sickly purple. "I see your mouth movin', but all I hear is 'blah, blah, blah!' Well…if jaws need to flap, then let them flap!"
Before the fox could react, her opponent clapped her hands together in a brilliant flash of awful colors. The ground rumbled menacingly beneath them. As her guards struggled to stay on their feet, Mz. Ruby stared down the officer who dared to challenge her on her own turf with contempt and amusement.
"See you in the next world, Inspector!"
Carmelita's pistol wavered in shock as the first zombie burst out of the earth.
There were two rats watching the giant stirrer. Sly crept along the outer rail under the shadows of moving machinery while he studied them. They were too strong to fight head-on without getting overpowered, but too close to each other to take one out without alerting the other. He pursed his lips in frustration and continued his circular path, looking for an opening.
The opportunity was suddenly given to him when the ground began to shake, startling both guards and nearly unbalanced the raccoon off the railing.
"What was that? An earthquake?" Asked one of the rats, hurrying over to the far side of the platform they were both standing on.
"No," said the other, who stayed where he was with folded arms. He didn't hear the light landing of the silhouette behind him. "That's all Mz. Ruby's doing."
The first guard stared out at the dark trees as if trying to gauge where her boss had created such a dramatic occurrence. There was a heavy splash behind her, and she started to turn around.
"What's –"
She saw nothing but a flash of gold before she, too, was knocked out and sent sailing into the muddy waters below.
Sly didn't stop to catch his breath once he was alone on the platform. He rushed for the machinery with the large staff he had just swiped from the first guard he'd ambushed. Jamming the end of the staff between two gears made them stall with an awful screech, and the machine ground to a forced stop.
The raccoon stepped onto the lid that now sat unmoving in the middle of the platform. As the stirrer groaned and strained to get itself unjammed, he used his weight to angle the lid as vertically as he could towards the giant skull temple looming above him. An alarm blared in warning about unreleased pressure.
He held his breath and sent a silent "good luck" to Inspector Fox for whatever she was facing.
The staff snapped. The pressure burst. And he was sent flying upwards like a rocket.
It was by some miracle that he didn't hit the outer stone teeth of the fortress; instead going narrowly through one of the tight gaps between with barely enough reaction time to duck and roll as he hit the ground. His momentum kept him tumbling until he slammed upside down into a stone wall. Feet in the air and head against the cold floor, he hissed through his teeth as the world spun.
That's definitely going to leave a few bruises, he thought wryly, flipping over to get his legs back under him. His backpack was still snug on his back, but there was a large tear in the side of his hoodie where it must have snagged on jagged rock during his jump. He grimaced at the sizeable hole and hoped his partner wouldn't notice when they met up again.
The raccoon started making his way through the cavernous space, trying to figure out which direction would be the most promising to find where Mz. Ruby had hidden her portion of the Thievius Raccoonus. He'd been up here many times through the years, but never anywhere close to her personal quarters – but not because she thought he was a threat. She had told him, once, that his tumultuous energy would "muck things up" for her more spiritually sensitive belongings.
He'd responded by asking her if it was really his energy she was so afraid of, or the man she had killed in cold blood who might be haunting his son. She had popped him across the mouth for it.
Sly's lip curled at the memory, and he lifted his cane a little higher in anticipation. Time to show that woman exactly how much he could muck things up.
Zombies. Freakin' zombies.
Carmelita slammed the butt of her pistol into the chin of an undead lizard, closing its gaping jaw with a loud crunch before it could take a bite out of her arm. It wasn't a death sentence if she was bitten – zombification wasn't contagious, thank god – but that didn't mean they couldn't still tear her apart if she wasn't prepared.
Something bright and colorful flashed in her peripherals. The inspector ducked on instinct just as a huge glowing projectile shot overhead. It slammed into the zombie she had just fought off and sent it sprawling in a charred, smoking mess.
"What the hell!" She yelled, whipping her head around to face the alligator who had thrown it. "What was that?!"
Mz. Ruby smirked, entire body swaying in a rhythm only she could hear. Her guards huddled at her side to avoid the zombie horde that seemed to have no interest in the mystic who controlled them.
"Just a little game I like to play with all my annoying guests," she scoffed. "If you repeat what I do, you'll dodge it just fine. If not, you'll get zapped!"
The mystic cackled when her opponent tried to aim her weapon at her and was forced to retreat by several undead assailants.
"You're playing dirty!" Carmelita growled.
Mz. Ruby bared all her teeth at the fox in a terrible grin. "Life ain't fair, child. Better learn that lesson while you've still got breath to breathe."
She made a motion as if to lunge to her left, and the inspector jumped sideways towards her own left. The projectile sizzled the air almost like the electricity of her shock pistol – except she knew that this kind of shot would do a hell of a lot more damage than a simple stun.
There was no chance to fire back or even catch her breath as three more zombies rushed her. Carmelita yelled in frustration as she shot two and took the third down with one well-timed roundhouse kick. She still had a lot of ammo left over after the ghost fight, but that didn't mean much when enemies kept rising from the dirt without any sign of stopping while her real target danced around and kept her too busy to even aim at her.
The alligator lunged low out of the corner of her eye. She jumped over a set of hands breaking out of the ground that were trying to trip her, and they blew up into pieces as the mystical attack hit them instead.
A lightbulb went off in her head.
Carmelita's feet hit soil and she immediately went running for the nearest, larger group of zombies. A plan was forming in her mind, and she hoped with all her might that it would be enough to turn the tides in her favor.
Ultimately, Sly couldn't bring himself to ransack Mz. Ruby's lair.
It wasn't out of any lack of animosity – his hands tightened around his cane in a near-overwhelming urge to smash every precious, breakable object he came across – but for two other reasons.
The first was that he had no idea what kind of traps the alligator might have put up in her own space. She loved using a mix of modern tech and her own magic, and while he hadn't yet encountered any of the former, the latter wasn't something he was keen on discovering, either. No, the last thing he wanted to do was tip her off to his presence before he got what he came for.
The second reason, well…he was finding it was a little more complicated.
Sly told himself that it was to keep his name clear when Inspector Fox inevitably won and did a sweep of this place. Muggshot's office getting broken into could easily be explained away as a robbery by one of his own men. It probably had been explained that way, because the fox had accepted his story about finding those convenient emails without ever mentioning the office at all.
Here, in the middle of nowhere where most of Mz. Ruby's guards had probably never even stepped foot in her private quarters, he didn't want to risk garnering suspicion. He couldn't let Carmelita leave him behind on her globetrotting case to catch the Fiendish Five – or worse, arrest him.
An arrest meant game over, both literally and figuratively. Not to mention, he couldn't bear to think of the look in her eyes if she saw what he truly was.
Sly stopped in his tracks in the doorway to the alligator's bedroom.
Where had that thought come from? Since when did he care about what a cop thought about him? What anyone thought about him? He could count on one hand the number of people whose opinions about him mattered, and two of them were dead. The third, he doubted he would ever see again anyway, and the last was –
His chest ached under his clothes. The raccoon grimaced and forced himself to keep moving. Idle hands are a thief's greatest vice, son.
Mz. Ruby's bedroom was large and ornate, with furniture along every wall and huge tapestries hanging from a high ceiling. Sly started searching the bed, thinking it was as good a place as any to hide such a small, precious object. It wasn't enough of a distraction to keep his bizarre thoughts at bay.
So, he resigned himself to letting them flow as he worked.
The inspector was nice enough, he supposed. As nice as a cop could possibly be. Not everyone would let a stranger tag along on such a big, important part of their job like she had. It would have taken him twice as long to reach Haiti without her resources, which he could appreciate. Plus, not only did she let him travel with her, but she wasn't overbearing about the favor she'd given him.
Actually, no, that wasn't quite true. She was incredibly overbearing, and nosy, and pushy, but for some reason it didn't irritate him to quite the same level anymore as it had before. She was still all of those things, but she had given him space, and was finally learning how to back off when he wasn't in a mood for conversation.
And then there was what she'd said on that cliff…
There was nothing under the pillows, nor the mattress, nor even the bed itself. Frustrated, the raccoon began going through drawers and bookshelves, testing for false bottoms or hidden cubbies. He didn't want to be here any longer than he absolutely needed to be.
Somewhere along the last week of being around Carmelita – Inspector Fox, don't do this to yourself, call her Inspector Fox – the impression of her in his mind had gone from "naive cop who's going to get herself killed with her ridiculous morals" to "naive cop who might actually be strong enough to back up her ridiculous morals." And that wouldn't have been such a bad thing if it didn't come with the realization that he was starting to enjoy her company.
His stomach flipped, and not in a good way.
Sly was a thief by necessity. He couldn't risk attachments to anyone, especially not a member of Interpol. Not to mention, he had been a part of the Fiendish Five, even if it was completely unwilling and more as a lackey than an actual equal. If or when she found that out, the inspector wasn't going to be lenient with him. He needed to get these dangerous feelings out of his head before one of them – namely him – got hurt.
He couldn't let that happen again. He wasn't going to let it happen again.
The rest of the furniture in the room was a bust, so Sly stepped up to the nearest hanging tapestry and brushed it aside, looking for another wall safe or a secret entrance to a hidden room or anything to indicate the presence of the stolen section of the Thievius Raccoonus. He finally found success when his hand went to press against the third wall he checked and phased through it like it didn't exist.
Stepping through the illusion into a little nook of a room, the raccoon stared at the sight of the missing pages, covered in another purple barrier and sitting on a pedestal in a tidy little stack. Lit candles surrounded the pedestal in a semicircle.
Sly raised his cane without any hesitation. If he was going to stay impartial throughout his mission, this weakness couldn't be allowed to continue existing.
That was just how it had to be for both their sakes.
Dodging magical projectiles and undead hordes at the same time became infinitely easier when one realized that the former very easily mowed down the latter. In fact, with the new strategy in place, Inspector Fox had finally managed to graze Mz. Ruby twice with her shock pistol. It was enough to make the mystic lose a bit of steam in summoning more of her personal army, and now the clearing was more littered with unmoving body parts than moving body parts.
On the flip side, however, it also meant that she was growing more desperate to end the fight before Carmelita could fully gain the upper hand. Glowing bullets shot at the fox with a speed almost comparable to real bullets, and she was too busy avoiding getting zapped into oblivion to fire her own weapon again.
Gone, too, were the exchanged words from either party. Sweat was breaking across Carmelita's body in rivets. The alligator wore a pinched frown and her breath was coming out in pants. One of the guards had been knocked clean unconscious, and the other had long fled the battle.
The inspector's heart pounded with adrenaline as she sidestepped a mystical attack by a hair's breadth, feeling its crackle deep in her bones as if it had still managed to touch her. She could out-last and out-gun this criminal. She knew that with absolute certainty, watching the way her opponent's movements were starting to get sloppy and just a tad bit slower. All she needed was a single opening, and she'd have it in the bag.
Mz. Ruby's head suddenly snapped up and away, swiveling around almost one-hundred and eighty degrees to stare up at her skull temple in what could only be described as astonishment. Her expression morphed into something almost unreadable even as she let out a single incredulous laugh.
It was for only a split second of broken focus, but a split second was all Inspector Fox needed.
She got the mystic fully in her crosshairs and pulled the trigger.
A/N: And another one bites the dust...
I'm not entirely satisfied with this chapter, but I couldn't figure out exactly what was bothering me nor how to fix it in time, so it goes up as-is. Hopefully y'all like it more than I did.
Saikonohero came in clutch with even more fanart! Both of it was for the previous chapter - escaping the giant snake and also realizing they survived it. I never could've expected anything like this, and I'm so incredibly grateful to them for it. (REALLY wish this stupid site would let me share the links, but please go give their art some love if you can!)
Thanks for reading!