We're all of us haunted and haunting.

The swamps where the mystic of the Fiendish Five had hid herself were just as cold, wet, and clammy as the last time Sly had been here. He understood the want for privacy from prying eyes, but god was he almost starting to miss Muggshot's stupid penthouse as he trudged after Inspector Fox through mud and slime and swiped at mosquitos almost as big as him.

At least their impromptu chicken heist had lifted his spirits. It was like a catharsis after so many years of having to clean coops and feed hens and dodge aggressive roosters every time he was dumped here.

After a few minutes of prowling around buildings, tents, and fences, the two of them found themselves on the edge of a drop-off overlooking another large clearing, where trees had been cut down in swathes to make room for what Sly knew was Muggshot's personal plane. Besides a few lit tiki torches along the outer perimeter, the area was almost untouched by anything man-made or supernatural.

"That must be where the exchange is supposed to take place," the fox said as she stared out at the empty clearing. "I wonder why the Fiendish Five would ever drop off such a precious object all the way out here. Wouldn't they be afraid of it getting dirty, or lost?"

Dirty? No. Lost? Absolutely, but the alligator had certainly known how to scare her captive into staying close to "home" over the years – he had witnessed far too many unexplainable things out here to work up the courage to make a break for it as a teenager. In the distance, he could still see Mz. Ruby's skull temple even through the swamp's dark haze. It seemed to follow them everywhere no matter where they were in this accursed place.

Fear and uncertainty suddenly prickled Sly's skin. If she knew he was coming, she could already be lying in wait for him. He could be walking straight into a trap, right back into the metaphorical jaws of hell. The mystic would snap him right up and then there'd be nothing left of him to ever find again.

"– can't risk compromising this place." The cop's voice filtered into his awareness, still talking despite his silence. "We'll see what else we can find and come back here when it's time for Mz. Ruby to show her face."

Oblivious to the raccoon's tumultuous thoughts, she turned on her heel and practically marched off to her right, eyes on a cluster of glowing lights a ways away.

"Over there, you see that? I bet that's something worth checking out. Let's go see what it is."

Sly didn't find it necessary to tell her that he knew this area on a personal level he would have really preferred not to. He knew exactly what had caught her attention and why, but at this point anything was better than the place where he was supposed to be handed off between members of the Five like the stolen goods they liked to pretend he was.

So, he followed her away from the clearing, back into the trees and into a place that was probably not great for two trespassers to encounter, and did so without a single word of protest. He could only hope that Mz. Ruby was too busy to notice any disturbances in her territory until it was too late.

Inspector Fox, to her credit, seemed to pick up on the fact that there was something considerably more off about the area than the rest. Maybe it was because of the strange lack of artificial architecture in what was the heart of Mz. Ruby's base, or that her superstitious partner had gone from "solemn quiet" to "nervous quiet" the more they walked.

Or maybe it was the sudden appearance of all the gravestones.

She stopped again after a few minutes, when the air had grown thick and almost suffocating around them. Sly stopped behind her, watching a nearby cluster of graves that he thought he had seen glow for the quickest blink of an eye.

"What…what's wrong with this place?" She asked in barely a whisper, having the actual foresight not to disturb the atmosphere that seemed ready to strike at any disruption. "It feels like we're being watched, but I can't see or hear any guards around…"

The raccoon leaned in close, careful not to touch her at all even as his mouth came right next to her swiveling right ear. "Do you believe in ghosts?"

His eyes remained locked on those tombstones.

"Um…" Her gaze followed his, just in time to see a ripple split the air above them. "…Why?"

"Because if you don't, you're about to."

As if on cue, the gravestones glowed a violent turquoise, and a horrible, bone-chilling wail broke across the swamp and through their cores. A blue ghostly body erupted out of the nearest stone, vaguely feline-shaped, moaning with arms outstretched as if its only goal was to turn the trespassers into the thing that it itself had become.

Inspector Fox shouted in shock, swinging her shock pistol up automatically to shoot at the attacker before it could come any closer. The electric charge exploded on impact with the ghost's chest – and the ghost exploded in turn.

It was quiet for all of three seconds as they tried to process what the hell just happened, and then suddenly every grave was conjuring up ghosts, all dead set on harming the intruders. Sly didn't have time to think as he grabbed the inspector by the wrist and yanked her backwards before they were surrounded with no escape.

A dozen haunting screams followed them in an octave that shouldn't exist in the living world.

The fox barely stumbled at his pull; she twisted every which way and shot as rapidly as she could at each and every specter coming after them, either unphased by the supernatural or running on autopilot just to survive. For every ghost that she blasted apart, two more took its place. Sly knew that the only way to stop the onslaught was to either destroy the tombstones they were coming from or escape the ghosts' "territory", marked by the glowing lights that had drawn in Inspector Fox in the first place.

A ghost's breath chilled the fur of his tail from behind and he turned around as fast as he could, backpack sliding off his shoulders into his right hand just in time to slam it into the translucent jaw of the specter before it could grab him. The blow was enough to burst it apart, but he didn't have time to be grateful for it as he immediately had to swing his pack at another attacker. He didn't know if the backpack was actually strong enough to blow them up or if it was the Cooper cane tucked inside, but he wasn't about to question it.

His back hit that of the inspector's, who was still shooting wildly to keep the worst of the swarm at bay.

"We've got to get out of here!" He yelled over the howling around them.

She shook her head and he could feel it against the back of his skull. "No! We have to destroy them all! They're part of her army!"

"They'll just keep coming forever! There's no way we can –"

His eyes landed on a glowing gravestone spewing up ghosts at the exact same time her own body stilled behind him. She had seen the same thing he had.

"Separate on three!" The fox called out. "Break as many as you can, I'll cover you!"

He nodded, knowing she would feel it, and slammed another ghost out of existence.

"One!"

His body coiled into a spring.

"Two!"

She shifted her weight with a growl.

"Three! Go!"

Sly took off running for the nearest gravestone just as Inspector Fox's pistol shot an opening for him through the wall of specters. He ducked furious swipes, all his fur standing on end, and smashed his backpack into the stone with all his might and momentum. It shattered with a force that sent tremors up his hand.

But he didn't stop. Didn't even slow down.

"Left!" He screamed, veering that very direction towards the next tombstone. The fox took his directional cue perfectly, cutting another swathe down just in time for him to reach it and break it into as many pieces as the previous.

With every step he took he could hear his partner shooting, keeping ghosts off herself and off of him at a speed that must have been a sight to see. But he didn't dare even turn his head to risk a glance while he kept moving, darting between ghosts in the spaces she left and taking down gravestones the moment he was close enough to swing. Slowly, amazingly, the discordant wailing fell from an overwhelming cacophony to a handful of screeches as Inspector Fox mowed down ghosts and Sly took down their sources.

Finally, after a minute and eternity, he broke the last glowing stone before its final ghost could even pull its moaning head out of the ground. It disappeared instantly, and the dark swamp went quiet.

Breathing heavily, feeling a sheen of sweat on his brow, the raccoon didn't allow himself to relax until he turned a full circle, looking for any sign of supernatural strays ready to grab him while his guard was down. His companion did the same, and their eyes locked as nothing came up between them. She heaved out a long breath and came up to him with her weapon still halfway raised for more combat.

"That was insane," she huffed as she began checking the pistol. "I never thought in my life that I'd fight a horde of ghosts. I think that was the most I've ever had to shoot this thing at one time."

"Well, it's a good thing you know how to use it, or else we would've been toast."

Sly did another glance around just to make sure they'd destroyed every single glowing gravestone. He saw a non-glowing one a few feet away, picked up a large rock, and threw it at the harmless thing. It crumbled just as easily as every other one. Inspector Fox eyed him as he did it.

"What?" He asked, already defensive, "you got a problem with me desecrating graves all of a sudden?"

"No. Just wondering if you're alright."

"Course I'm alright. Didn't get grabbed once thanks to you."

"Yeah, but it was still intense, even for me. Most people have never experienced anything like…that."

She gestured to the wreckage around them, seemingly at a loss for words for how to describe it. The raccoon snorted.

"Trust me, inspector, it's going to take a lot more than a tangle with the supernatural to shake me. I'm not going to be dead weight for you."

"That's not what I meant, Ringtail." Her hand came up and clamped down haltingly onto his shoulder. She patted him a few times, rather awkwardly, before stepping back out of his space. "I'm just checking in. That's what partners do."

Something twisted in his stomach that wasn't entirely unpleasant. He pushed it away to think about when he wasn't in the heart of Mz. Ruby's territory. "Sure. I know that. Thanks."

"Of course." The fox gave him a small smile before turning back to survey the area. "Now that we've gotten that whole ghost…army…thing, out of the way, shall we keep going? There's probably more of those ghost generators out there."

"Ghost generators?"

"Don't start getting snarky! You know what I meant."

He slid his backpack over his shoulders again as they began to walk. "I know what you meant. I just think it's funny."

"It's an apt description!"

"And it's funny."

They went back and forth like that for a few minutes, letting the familiar ribbing smooth their hackles and stop the mild tremors that were still going through both their bodies. One could deal with the supernatural for their entire lives and still feel they were going to have their souls stolen after such a close encounter.

Just as Inspector Fox suspected, there were a few more tombstones that spit up ghosts when they came too close, but all were too scattered to bombard them like the first wave had, and they were easily taken care of by a few of the fox's well-placed kicks. The pervasive thickness over the whole place lessened with each removed 'generator', until eventually they could start to hear the natural sounds of the swamp around them again.

"Well, I think this whole area is probably free of hauntings now," she announced after another five minutes of leaving no gravestone unturned. "I don't see any more glowing and we've gone pretty far from the camp. Do you think we should turn back now?"

Sly looked ahead, where he could just faintly see the outline of the mystic's spiky perimeter fence in the distance. Then he looked behind them, where her skull temple loomed in the darkness – still visible even from out here.

"Probably a good idea. We don't want to stray too far off-course before your rendezvous with Mz. Ruby. Might make you late to your date."

"Please don't ever call it that again."

"No promises."

A companionable silence fell between them after that. The inspector kept her pistol out of her holster, but she walked with loose shoulders and assured steps that hadn't been unsettled by what was probably her first real experience with the supernatural, if Sly had to guess. He caught himself looking at her out of the corner of his eye more than once as they began making their way back towards the center of the base. It was the way she carried herself; the way she was simultaneously on-guard for danger and yet so confident in her abilities to fight that danger that she seemed almost relaxed.

A week ago, he wouldn't have even bothered studying her, much less take note of anything that wasn't important to his own wellbeing. Now, he found that there was something almost calming about it. Knowing there was someone here who could not only handle herself but also look out for him, who had already been looking out for him. It made the impossible task he was facing feel a little less daunting.

Not a whole lot. But a little. Just enough that maybe he could get used to the idea of referring to her as "Carmelita" in his head instead of "cop". Since they were partners and all that.

He'd just never admit that to her out loud.

It didn't take much longer for man-made lights to begin popping up around them again, and they both began trekking more cautiously for fear of alerting any guards in the area. Strangely, however, there was still no sign of any other life despite the fact that all the ghosts were long-gone. It made something itch under Sly's skin, and he started glancing around more often only to still come up with nothing.

Then they came across the river.

It wasn't a very large or fast-moving river by any means, but it was thick with green and looked a lot more like a bog than what it actually was. The raccoon poked at the water with a long stick while his companion squinted into the foggy distance.

"I think I see something out that way…" she mumbled, pulling out a pair of fancy night-vision binoculars to help her look. "Yep. There's a huge compound on the other side of this river, and I can see a bunch of…uh…"

The way the fox trailed off sounded more like she wasn't sure how to describe something than that she couldn't see it. Sly held out a hand and was mildly surprised when she gave the binoculars to him without any hesitation. He put them to his face and caught sight of what she was talking about; a group of buildings surrounded a bog not too different from this one, but what really grabbed his attention was the thing in the center of it.

It looked like a giant egg beater. Rotating machine parts in an unnatural combination of technology and the occult, stirring up the soupy liquid making up the bog that most definitely could not be called "water" anymore.

"I see it," he replied, keeping his eyes trained on the odd contraption. Two guards were perched on a platform in the center, safe from the equipment while they made sure everything was going smoothly. Every now and then, one of them pulled gunk from between the gears while the other checked a large, bouncing lid that seemed to want to jump out of place without the rats' constant attention to keep it in check.

Sly wasn't an engineer by any means of the word, but he'd spent a lot of time doing dirty work with Raleigh's machinery, and he knew how much the frog loved to use pressurized steam on everything he touched. He'd recognize a place for potential build-up in his sleep.

The skull temple's snout, he also noticed, was looming almost directly above the enormous stirring machine.

"Ringtail?" Carmelita said, breaking him out of his thoughts. "What do you think?"

He handed her binoculars back to her. The way the temple shadowed over that whole area was beginning to ruminate in his head. Not unlike the egg beater, actually. "I think we should head that way. It looks important to Mz. Ruby's plans."

"Agreed." She put her gear away, then grimaced as she looked out at the river in front of them. "Bleck. I'm going to smell like swamp for a month after this."

The raccoon hesitated as he too looked down at it. "How, uh, how deep does that look like to you?"

The inspector stopped with her boots already ankle-deep in the water. She turned to him with a pensive expression.

"Sly," she said, very slowly, "please don't tell me that you can't swim."

"Okay. I won't tell you that."

"This is not the time for jokes. I'm serious."

"I know you are." He pinched the bridge of his nose and ignored the growing irritation on her face. Ignored the way it made him feel inadequate. "Look, it's fine, alright? I'll just find another way across."

"How? We haven't seen a single bridge and I don't want you to have to walk until you find one. We shouldn't split up this deep in enemy territory."

Sly gestured up towards the trees around them. "I'll do what I did at the gate. It won't be hard."

Despite the dubious look she shot him, Carmelita seemed to accept that he was capable enough to pull it off, because she turned back towards the river and began wading forward with only the slightest hesitation. The raccoon, meanwhile, started climbing the nearest tree.

Once he found his footing, he took a moment before hopping each branch to simply enjoy the fact that he could. Being able to use a technique from the Thievius Raccoonus as it was truly meant to be used – and to use it successfully – made him feel like he was invincible. Up here, surrounded by opportunities on all sides, he could practically feel the itch to move in rhythm with a kind of music that was ancient and extraordinary; a legacy that was so much greater than him, that he was lucky enough to just be a part of at all.

Sly jumped from branch to branch with ease, giving into that hypnotic feeling and being rewarded with a flow of movement that gave him more assurance than anything else he'd ever done before. For the first time in a long time, he felt confident in himself despite everything the Five had done to prevent it.

"Estúpida agua turbia!"

Of course, he couldn't give the Thievius Raccoonus the entire credit for that.

The raccoon paused on a particularly long branch to glance down in amusement at the inspector, who was cursing out the water that currently sat up to her waist. She wrinkled her nose as she picked a long trail of green slime out of her tail and tossed it away, oblivious to her partner who was silently snickering above her.

"Having fun down there?" He called.

Carmelita threw him a withering glare that only had him grinning wider. He made a show of lightly stepping across his natural wooden tightrope like it was the easiest thing in the world – because it was.

"Lovely weather up here. You should join me next time."

"If I go up there it will be to knock that smug smile off your face by knocking you off your stupid perch," she muttered without any heat behind her words. "And then we'll see if you still feel like laughing."

"Oh, come on, Inspector! Lighten up! It's not every day I can say I have the high ground over someone as morally perfect as you!" He reached the end of the branch and angled himself for a jump for the next tree. They were both over halfway across the river, now.

"You're not going to have the high ground in a minute if you keep goading me, Ringtail. Haven't you ever heard of the phrase 'pride comes before a fall'?"

"Sure, but I never fall."

Sly jumped.

And landed.

There was exactly one moment, as his feet hit what should have been steady wood, for the wrongness to burst up his spine in a familiar chill of dread right before the tree began to move of its own accord.

It came to life under him like some twisted fairy tale straight out of a nightmare – two hateful, glowing eyes opened centimeters from his face as the "tree" let out a noiseless snarl and suddenly there were branches reaching for him from all sides. Sly backpedaled as fast as he can, barely avoiding the angry swipe that would've taken off his arm entirely if it had hit, but the thing kept reaching, kept coming, looking to ensnare him in its countless limbs and either tear him apart or trap him forever.

He didn't think twice. He couldn't.

He dove for the river.

"Sly!"

It was deceptively warm, the water. He plunged into it expecting the cold and nearly choked when it felt instead like a thick soup, bogging down his body and turning his movements sluggish. He twisted in a circle, trying to find the surface or at least a foothold at the bottom, but the murky water held him tight in its suffocating limbo.

Then there was an arm around his neck.

Sly stopped flailing as Inspector Fox pulled him close against her chest, letting her propel them upwards with speed and power he could never hope to match. Their heads broke through the grimy surface together, but he remained limp as she swam towards the opposite shore, knowing that any attempts to help would only make things harder for her.

As soon as they touched solid ground, the fox sat them both on the muddy bank as they caught their breaths together. Waterlogged and miserable, Sly carefully removed himself from her hold so he didn't have to feel her heart beating rapidly against his skin.

"Are you okay?" She asked, running a hand through her hair to pull out muck as if she hadn't just carried him halfway across a river. Good compartmentalizing or trying to get rid of nervous energy; he didn't know which.

"I'm fine."

And he was fine, even if his nerves were shot to hell. He glanced up at the trees, but the monstrosity among them had gone back to blending in so seamlessly that he couldn't pick it out no matter how hard he looked. All of a sudden it didn't feel like such a good idea to be climbing trees anymore.

"Just got a little spooked. What about you?"

"I'm alright. Also just a little spooked." The fox peeled her jacket off to shake it out, and he decided he should probably do the same with his own hoodie when he felt slime sticking to his stomach fur.

"Well, at least now we know why we haven't encountered any guards around here," he said as he began lifting it up towards his head. "They probably didn't want to tangle with –"

His shirt rode up with his hoodie before he could realize what was happening.

She gasped.

He froze for half a second, brain stalling on her stunned face, before understanding hit him like a freight train and he hastily brought his clothes right back down again.

"Sorry about that, I wasn't thinking," he spoke rapidly, slipping a crooked smile into place with a dismissive wave of his hand like it might erase what he feared she'd seen. "Didn't mean to flash you."

Carmelita's mouth opened, then closed, seemingly at a loss for words. When she finally spoke, it was with a voice softer than anything the raccoon had ever heard from her.

"Sly…what happened?"

Fuck. His hands clenched the hem of the shirt he was still holding onto. "Just slipped and took a tumble in the swamp. You saw it. I'm not hurt."

The inspector locked her jaw in that way he'd learned meant she was about to be stubborn. "What was that on your chest?"

She took a step forward, and although there was no indication she'd reach for him, he shied away regardless.

"Probably some swamp gunk. It felt like I was wading in a big pot of –"

"The scars, Sly."

"Oh. Those. Right." He laughed. The pitch was all wrong. "Accident with a machine years ago. It's been so long, I pretty much forgot about it. I don't even notice they're there anymore. Don't worry about it."

His skin burned under his soaked shirt, just like her eyes did as she stared at him with a pinched expression he couldn't figure out.

"That doesn't…look like a machinery accident," Carmelita said tentatively, carefully, like he was a fragile thing about to shatter under the wrong words. "That looks more like a –"

"What can I say!" Sly cut her off a little too fast. "I was young and stupid. It was my fault, anyway."

The edge in his voice left no room for argument, and the raccoon stood up and pushed past her before she could make one in spite of it.

"We shouldn't waste any more time. The longer we dawdle, the more likely Mz. Ruby will know we're here."

He didn't turn around when he heard her get to her feet. He didn't turn around to see if she would follow. He didn't turn around at the quiet way she called his name again, the plea and worry and apology all wrapped up in one dangerous word that he pretended not to hear. Sly kept walking, ignoring the burning eyes on his back and the burning scars on his chest.

So much for feeling confident.

A/N: SO sorry for the radio silence. July ended up being hectic as hell and I had to rewrite both this chapter and the next because they were a little too similar for my liking. Much happier with this draft, though, and we finally got to something I've been waiting for since well before I was posting. Fun fact: that scene at the end was one of the first things I wrote when I started planning out this fic last November.

It wouldn't be a Mz. Ruby level without ghosts and those stupid tree monsters giving us heart attacks. Hope I did it justice in written form cause it was a struggle to map out.

Anyway, posting schedule should resume weekly again now! I really didn't mean for time to fly by that fast, but what can ya do? Thanks for reading!