First off, let it be said that Mercy Maven was an assassin, and a damn good one at that. Second, let it be said that Mercy Maven was not Mercy Maven's real name, but an alias. Her "real" name is of no consequence, as she has not been called such in almost a decade.

Everybody who's ever looked at Mercy Maven has had the same thought: she could have been pretty, once. Mercy had worked at her trade far too long to be truly pretty. Her features are delicate, but over the years they've sharpened, hardened, taken on the fierceness of a hawk. Her skin is porcelain pale, but is perpetually swathed in scars-fresh, healing, and permanent. Her full lips are frozen in a sneer. She is a hunter, and her appearance is as such. There is little in Mercy's life that is untouched by her job. Her job is her life.

Her job is also the reason that she is stranded in some cabin in East Bumfuck, Nowhere on Christmas Eve. Her most recent target had been hiding here, and no wonder. The cabin was buried among acres of thick fir trees and would have melted into the wilderness if not for the gaudy Christmas lights swarming over every square inch of the outer walls like so many primary-colored cockroaches.

When Mercy had found it, snowflakes were beginning to tumble to the ground. In the fifteen minutes it'd taken her to finish this job, the view from the cabin windows was a punishing swirl of white and black. A blizzard. She would be stuck here tonight.

Mercy spared a glance at her most recent mark. The man had been thirty-something and had committed no other crime than knowing too much about a major pharmaceutical company with a few secrets they couldn't risk getting out. This was Mercy Maven's job-killing so that important people could keep their manicured little hands clean.

Obviously her victim had been peculiar, to hole up in the woods and then to bespackle his residence with Christmas paraphernalia. Maybe he was a Walden-nut, or a Sasquatch-hunter, or just eccentric. He didn't look crazy, though. Indeed, he looked completely average, if mousy. That's right, he was a little white mouse, and Mercy was the hawk. She felt almost pitying of the man-dying in a shack in the middle of nowhere on Christmas Eve. But she got over it pretty quick. No one would know that this man had died-they hadn't even known he was alive to begin with.

Mercy sighed. Later she would complete the rest of the job. She would find the man's camera and all evidence against her client. Then she would make a nice fire out of it. She would spend the night watching paper view on the man's television and cleaning her weapons. On Christmas morning, weather providing, she would light this whole stinking cabin ablaze and watch hundreds upon hundreds of Christmas lights explode with a pop and the wax Santas' faces melt into comical expressions of terror. Merry freakin' Christmas. Before all of this, Mercy would have to dump the body outside before it started to reek. First she would have some eggnog.