#BUT WALTER JUMPED ME FROM ACROSS THE MAP

[sirithesilly]

buckys quivering in the barrel while im scrolling through tumblr bc im too scared to leave the bucket

[animecinnamonroll99]

Octane x FEM! Reader part 17

So sorry about the long delay. Life kinda got in the way after a bout of writer's block. Should I start a tag list for those who are really invested in this?

A bit angsty but it resolves itself!

Masterlist

After about three hours of helping Ramya I headed back to the compound. The weather was nice and cool after the rain the night prior and I used it as an opportunity to think things over a little more clearly. Tavi has always been a man of action over words and seeing as he’s not the biggest fan of any emotion unless it's the joy from his adrenaline rushes, it could have been his way of telling me that things were over. 

As I walked into the compound everyone’s attention fell onto me and it started to make me feel a little uncomfortable. “What’s up?” I hesitantly asked. There was a collective pause as everyone looked at each other and seemed to come to the same conclusion. After a few more moments of silence there was a general murmur of 'nothing' before everyone went back to what they were doing before I walked in. Giving my head a shake I head off to my room in the complex for a quick shower and a change of clothes. 

As hours, days and several games passed, Tavi seemed to have been avoiding me as much as possible. When we're placed on the same team he only talked to me when he needed to and without any of his normal banter. The drastic change didn't go unnoticed by fans and media alike and they were all asking the same question, 'what happened to Apex's speediest couple.' 

There happened to be a duo game today and I was hoping and praying that I got anyone, but Tavi. At this point I'd gladly trade him for Caustic if I could, or listen to Revenant talk about how many different ways he would kill me if I failed to help him win a game, but alas the odds weren't in my favor as the list of partners popped up. 

Today's game also happened to be a charity game where everyone got to pay to pick a theme. Which just so happened to be 'beach day'. Walking over to my dresser I start digging through the bathing suits I have when a knock sounds at my door before it opens. I turn to come face to face with Loba in a striking red bikini and a matching sheer tied cover across her hips. 

"Hello beautiful, I decided you need my help getting back at lover boy after what happened." She stated as she walked over and hip checked me away from the drawer I was previously digging through. "Me, I need to get back at Tavi? Are we sure this isn't to take your mind off your failing relationship with Valk?" I question as Loba pulls out bikinis and one piece alike shaking her head at each one before chucking it to a random corner. Instead of answering me she finishes going through the drawer and produces a pair of black side corset bikini bottoms with a scrunched but and a black bikini top with green fishnet on the cups and extra long strings that wrap around the torso. "Wear this with some strappy black sandals." Is all she says before exiting my room, still avoiding my questions.

Getting on the dropship half an hour later I'm greeted by wolf whistles from the majority of the male population. I just roll my eyes and head over to Fuse and Bloodhound. "Think you can run in those flip flops Walter?" I question, to which he replies with a full bellied laugh. "If I need ta run I'll ditch the shoes." He replies and Hound shakes their head in dismay. Giving them a once over I realized that they decided to sport a full body surf suit. 

Drop ship reached its destination: 'King's Canyon'.  The metallic female voice announced above us as a holographic map appeared in the center of the drop ship. My wrist gear lights up as my earpiece buzzes to life with Octane's voice "let's land over here." I glanced down to see that he decided on the Market. "Sure, just don't die too quick," I ok and walk towards one of the pads that'll lower for the jump. 

Seconds later I'm soaring down to the building and taking notice of the 6 other teams that land nearby. Hitting the ground running I'm quick to grab the first gun I see. A Mozambique and a CAR thinking fast, I rush up the steps in front of me and into the room on my left. In the room I find a set of syringes and a shield battery. Walking in a bit further I spot a Sentinel which I'm quick to swap for the Mozambique. Just as I get ready to leave the room Tavi’s voice is in my ears again, "enemy trap here." A quick glance tells me it's right outside the corner of my room, just before the stairs. "Thanks." I say before the line goes dead.

Sighing I walk out the other door and right into an enemy. The guy is stalky at best with no real discernible features due to the strange mask he wore. "Enemy attacking." I just barely shout into my coms before the guy lifts me off the ground by my neck. I grapple around trying to get my hands on one of my guns while simultaneously trying to land a kick on the male so he'll drop me. A rapid succession of fire and the guy drops me and falls down to shield himself with the knock down. 

Before I can register what happened I'm dragged back into the room I just left so I can regain my breath. I stand up just in time to see Tavi’s green trunks and bare back as he ducks out the door and back into the fights happening all around us. It's been months and he's still this cold to me? I don't think there's a chance to save any of this. I think to myself as I head back into the fray just in time to save him from getting a Mastiff shot to the back from Caustic. 

After the fighting finished off in Market we quickly moved to rotate to Pit in a quick succession of fights and little to no talking. Taking cover in the building near Pit we take a moment to breathe as I look at the feed. "Four squads left." I inform Octane, only to be met yet again with silence. At this point I can't hold it anymore.

"What the hell is wrong with you?!" I shouted, causing Tavi to jolt and spin so he was facing me. "We have one little fucking fight and you just up and leave me. No explanation, no chances to make things right, nothing. You left me in the damn rain to find my own way back all because you couldn't take what I was saying. Pathetic for the man who chooses to risk his life for people's entertainment-" Octane held up his hands and started to try and speak up "-no you've had your chance to speak, to try and make things right. This is my time to speak and you're going to stand there and fucking listen-" my rant gets cut off by a siren and bombs. Needing to get the anger out in a more constructive way (and to hide my frustrated tears)  I rushed out of the building and into the fray. 

I open fire at Gibraltar, my vision red and blood list rushing through my veins, I failed to hear Octane's warning or notice Rampart approaching with Sheila at the ready. The next thing I knew everything was black. 

Waking up I find myself in the medbay on the ship. I groaned and let my head fall back onto the pillow just as the door to the room opened. “Chica?” his familiar voice called out to me. I know that he knows I’m awake, but I honestly don’t feel like talking to him at the moment. “Go away Octavio.” I state as I turn onto my side facing away from the door. “Back to the first name, damn you must be really hurt.” in that sentence something inside me just snaps. Sitting up I turn and glare at the green haired devil “Hurt?” I questioned, “Hurt you say, I must be hurt?” I rhetorically asked again. “It’s not like my boyfriend had left me in a park absolutely confused as to if he broke up with me or not, all because he couldn’t stand what I was saying. Or could it be that AFTER all of that he gave me the cold shoulder for MONTHS with no reason, nothing, not even telling me if he just needed space for a while to sort things out. So, yeah, maybe just maybe I AM HURTING LIKE HELL.” I ranted. During the outburst I had unknowingly gotten up from the bed and stalked Tavi into a corner. Before either one of us could say something further, Ajay walked into the room. “I was just coming in to check up on (y/n), but since you’re here O we also need ta talk.” Ajay interjected into the tensed silence. 

As Ajay talked to Tavi, she checked out my injuries that were having some difficulties healing after the match. I just tuned them out wondering if the woman wrapping my torso with clean dressings will still be talking to the guy I’m avoiding for me to run back to my room or take him away with her so, I didn’t have to continue the inevitable conversation pertaining to the current strain in whatever relationship we have. I was silently praying to Bloodhound's old gods all the while. Once Ajay was finished with me, she stated that I had to stay in medbay until we got back to the compound. 

Once Ajay was gone I kept my eyes pointedly on my lap. “We really need to talk this out since you seem to be all in your head about it.” Before I could snap back Octane pushed forward not giving me an opportunity, “I know I stranded you there, but it was only momentarily. You were gone before I came back for you. Yes i didn't like what you were saying, was it the truth,” he shrugs noncommittally “maybe, I don't know for sure. Pops hasn't been answering any questions I ask about that night. When I got back to the compound everyone was telling me to give you space and that you'd come to me when you were ready. I wanted to apologize, completely out of character I know. I've been trying to figure out who I can trust and how much I can give back in return. What I learned is that I don't like fighting with you, nor do I like being able to talk to you or hold you. Do you think you could forgive me for my foolishness?” I decided to sit there and truly think over what Tavi said before replying, “I think it'll take more than just this and that we'll have to reestablish our trust in each other, eventually yes i think i can.”

[sergeantsporks]

Swapped

Ch 3/5

Ch 1, Ch 2

Ao3

Or read under the cut

It was a small patch on his knee, like a scrape, but it wasn’t a scrape. It was stone. Blue stone.

And suddenly, worries and anxieties he hadn’t felt for CENTURIES came flooding back in a rush.

What if they saw?

What if they found out?

What if they realized that he wasn’t the real Hisirdoux?!

And now, now there were new anxieties, things he hadn’t worried about centuries ago.

What if they hated him?

What if they turned him away?

What if they never wanted to see him again?

What if Zoe’s face curled up in disgust as she realized she’d been kissing a troll mouth. Worse, a changeling mouth?

What was going on?! Why, why now, after centuries of no problems, was he turning to stone? He hadn’t once transformed back to his troll form—what if he was supposed to do that every so often, or it would start to leak through?

There had to be someone he could contact to find out. The Janus order—they’d know. Right?

So he snuck out.

When Archie’s snoring started, and Zoe’s breathing slowed down to the little puffs he knew meant she was deep in dreamland.

Douxie felt a weird ache in his chest at the thought of not hearing those little sounds again. He needed to fix this problem. Now. Before it spread.

So he crept through the streets, almost certain that he’d seen a bar with a sign that had two faces on it. Two faces. The Janus order. It was worth a shot, right?

So he went inside. There was only one solitary bar girl, and she gave him an odd glance. “Sorry. We’re closed tonight, kiddo. Reserved.”

“Gunmar,” he blurted. He didn’t know any changeling code, because that wasn’t one of the things Dictatious—Dictatious, he hadn’t thought about the many-eyed troll for so long—had told him. So he just blurted out the first thing that popped into his head.

The bar girl’s eyes widened. “Oh! Sorry. What’s the problem?”

“I’m turning to stone,” Douxie babbled, “I’m turning into stone, but I’m not trying to transform, it just happened, and I don’t know what’s going on!”

“Ooookay, you’re obviously new to this. Slow down. Show me.”

Douxie rolled up his pant leg to show her the blue stone spot on his knee. “Why’s it doing that?!”

She peered closely at it. “If I had to guess? I’d say your familiar scraped a knee. Weird. Normally the goblins take such good care of them.”

Douxie grabbed her sleeve as she turned to go. “How do I find out?”

She blinked at him. “Wow. You really don’t know anything about being a changeling, huh? Okay. Look. You can check in on your familiar any time you like. You just gotta.” She screwed her face up, made a retching noise, and spat at a mirror. Douxie jumped back.

“That’s disgusting!”

“Nah, look!”

Douxie steeled himself to look at the glob of spit on the mirror, and saw that it had transformed into an image of a little baby girl, asleep in a crib. “That’s…”

“My familiar. Cute little thing, isn’t she?” The image faded away. “You try.”

Douxie’s spitting wasn’t nearly as impressive as hers, but the image appeared. Hisirdoux was in a stasis trap, a bloody scrape on his knee. “That’s him!”

“An adult? Wow. You are a weird little changeling, aren’t you?”

“I wonder what happened…”

“Well, usually the familiars are babies. They don’t go anywhere. Yours probably just got loose, and fell before they got control of him again. If it’s really bothering you…” The changeling looked around. “Go to America. Arcadia Oaks. The leader of the Order lives there, Waltholomew Stricklander. He might be able to figure out what’s going on. Watch out, though, there’s a troll colony living there, and it is the homeplace of the trollhunter. Good luck.”

Douxie nodded and slipped away, creeping back inside the house he shared with Archie and Zoe before they woke up. It was just one scraped knee—like the changeling bar girl had said, it was probably just a problem with doing the sleeping spell on someone a little older. Nothing to worry about.

Until he woke up with thick lines of stone lashed across his chest.

No. No, no, no, no!

Douxie touched the stone lines delicately. They were just the right distance apart for a set of Gum-Gum claws. He yanked a shirt over his head, fast before Zoe or Archie saw. This was getting out of hand. He needed to get in contact with Stricklander.

Xxx

“America?” Archie asked, sounding slightly-disgusted, “Why America?”

Zoe grabbed his hand. “New York?! I’ve heard things about New York—we could be vigilantes! Do you know the crime rates there, Douxie? And we have to go to at least one rock concert, promise me!”

“We’re already vigilantes,” Douxie laughed, “Just the magical kind. What, you want to add muggers to our resume? No, not New York. I’ve got somewhere else in mind. Arcadia Oaks. Supposedly, it has a troll colony. And where there’s a colony of trolls, there’s bound to be… pest problems.” He gave Zoe’s hand a squeeze, some of her excitement leeching into him. And it was exciting! Leaving Europe for a totally new continent? Once he got this whole familiar thing sorted out, there wasn’t any reason not to have fun. “But I promise that we will go to New York and see a rock concert first.”

“Yessssss!”

Xxx

“Okay. Our first order of business ought to be looking for stable employment and—”

Douxie and Zoe both ignored Archie, hopping off of the bus and tearing around the city. “It’s so sunny here,” Zoe complained, “It’s like Italy all over again!”

“Oh, you liked Italy,” Douxie replied, “It is a bit bright, but—”

“Hey! What are you two kids doing out of school?!”

Douxie jumped as a police officer approached them. “Oh—we’re… new in town?”

The officer snorted. “I can tell.”

“I’m an adult. Actually.” Zoe offered, “I don’t have to be in school.” She pulled out an ID—when had she gotten a driver’s license?!

The officer squinted at it, then shrugged. “Alright, Miss Zoe, you’re off the hook. What about Skippy here?” He jabbed a thumb at Douxie.

“Wha—Skippy?!”

“Him?” Zoe said with a grin. “Oh, no. He’s a minor. Tiny little baby. Ship him off to school.”

The officer nodded, turning to Douxie. “And which school are you enrolled in?”

“Uhhhhh Aaarcaaadia Oaaaksss…. Academy?” Douxie tried, shooting Zoe a dirty look.

“Haven’t gotten your uniform yet? Alright, come on, in the squad car, I’ll take you to school. And you, Miss Zoe, try to be a better influence on him, will you?”

The officer dragged Douxie into the car, and Douxie mouthed “I’ll kill you” at a snickering Zoe. Actually, though, this was a good opportunity, while he was separated. “Hey, do you know anyone named Waltholomew Stricklander?” he asked the cop as he drove through the streets.

“No. Odd name. Closest we’ve got is a Walter Strickler. Teaches at the other school. Why?”

“Uhm. Just… looking for an old family friend. Thanks anyway.” Just his luck that there really was an Arcadia Oaks Academy, he thought gloomily as the car pulled into a school. He got marched to the principal’s office.

“Are you missing a new student? Possibly an exchange student?”

Right. The principal would say no, he’d make a getaway, and then he’d hunt Zoe down and throw her into the nearest body of water.

“As a matter of fact, we are! We didn’t have time to get his uniform, but…” A schedule, a map, and a stack of books was thrust into Douxie’s hands. “You should be in Calculus right now, young man.”

No way! Seriously? Douxie gave him his best apologetic grin. “Yes sir!”

Great. Now he just had to figure out what calculus was.

Douxie would have bolted, but the cop was watching him all the way to the classroom, so he edged inside. The door creaked far more than he thought was necessary, and the teacher turned to face him.

“May I help you?”

Douxie brushed his bangs back behind his ears nervously. “Um. Hello? I’m… new here?”

“Ahhhh, the transfer student! We weren’t expecting you until tomorrow.”

“Heh. Well, try telling the cops that.”

“Hm, yes. Set your things down, and then why don’t you come up to the board and fill in the radian coordinates on this unit circle!”

Douxie could speak elvish, orcish, trollish, a number of human languages, and decipher wizard code, but he didn’t have any idea what she’d just said. He scooted ever-so-slowly to the back of the classroom and set his books down, then shuffled to the front of the classroom, taking the marker from the teacher like it was a poisonous snake. The giant circle covered in indecipherable markings loomed up at him. He hesitantly wrote a 2 on one of the blank spaces, earning a snort from someone in the front row. He ignored them and kept writing random numbers in the blanks. More snickers made his ears burn, and finally he capped the marker and set it down.

“Alright, class, hands up if you think he’s right.”

No hands went up.

“Sit back down, please.”

Douxie trudged back to his seat in what was possibly the most shameful walk of his entire life while the teacher spouted more calculus nonsense that went over his head. He tried to pay attention for a bit—he really did—but it became pretty obvious pretty fast that he was missing about 4 years worth of previous math that he should know in order to understand this, so he put his head down on the desk, praying for it all to end.

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you that punk’s dead?” someone else in the back hissed to him with a snicker, “Where’s your uniform?”

“Hank, shut up!” someone else responded, “I’m pretty sure he’s one of the public school kids sneaking in! His accent is so obviously faked!”

“My accent is not—” Douxie shook his head. What did it matter? He was a centuries old magician who knew arcane secrets of the universe that the Calculus teacher could never hope to understand. The opinion of a few regular human teenagers shouldn’t have mattered.

It shouldn’t have.

At lunch, he hopped the fence and ran for it, beelining for the public school. The academy kids whooped and cheered as he ran away. Excited that something interesting was happening? Or glad that he in particular was leaving? Not that it mattered to him.

He had to check in on this Walter Strickler, just in case. And sure enough, when he peered in the office windows, he could spot magical items lying about with regular things. Douxie cracked open the window and slipped inside. Wow. This guy really did have quite the collection of magic books. It wouldn’t hurt to read a few while he was waiting, would it?

He was halfway through his third book and the last school bell had rung for the day when he heard footsteps echoing down the hallway. He hastily shoved the books back in their spots and waited, suddenly realizing that if Walter Strickler wasn’t a changeling, he was going to have to talk his way out of a nasty breaking and entering situation.

But when the door did open, Douxie could recognize the changeling in him—it was something about the way he carried himself, like he had centuries of experience.

“Hey there,” Douxie said casually, “Got a little changeling question for you.”

Strickler didn’t seem too concerned by his presence, fiddling with a pen. “You are drawing far too much attention to yourself. Getting dragged off by the police? Skipping school? And that accent-! What kind of a sad excuse for a changeling are you?”

“No one exactly gave me a crash course in being a changeling!” Douxie protested, “And besides, I’m a changeling masquerading as a wizard masquerading as a human. I think I’m doing pretty well, all things considered!”

“The special assignment. Hisirdoux. I thought you were a myth. What with having no way of contacting you and all.”

“Uh—well—yeah. Not the point. I’ve got a bit of a situation. My familiar seems to keep injuring himself somehow? I want to contact Dictatious. Make sure everything is alright.”

Strickler snapped the pen shut. “Contact the darklands?!”

“Uh… yeah?”

“No one can do that! Do you think I’d be searching tirelessly for the eyestone if I could simply ring for Gunmar on the telephone?!”

“How come? Changelings seem to get in and out pretty easily.”

“It’s not the same. I’m afraid I cannot help you—it may be frustrating, but you will simply have to operate on less than ideal information. And, ah, Hisirdoux? Do try not to draw any more attention to yourself.”

Xxx

“You are not funny,” Douxie grumbled as he pushed open the door to some kind of tech shop.

Zoe grinned, hopping off of her place on a bench and going on tiptoes to give him a kiss on the cheek. “Awww, did someone not have a good day at school?

“No kisses. According to you, I’m a minor and you’re an adult.”

“Don’t be irritated at Zoe,” Archie piped up, “I’m the one who enrolled you in school.”

“You did what?!”

“There are things I cannot teach you, Douxie!”

“Like calculus?! Get real, Arch, I’m never going to need calculus! Besides, when am I going to have the time?! I’ll need a job, and—wait a second, why are you talking in here?”

“Oh, this place?” Zoe said affectionately, “This is run by hedge wizards. Aaaaand there’s no customers at the moment, so we’re good. I have a job here now, actually. They’ll be able to use more money for their magical projects now that they won’t be paying an electric bill anymore.”

“Okay. Fantastic. School, Archie?!”

“Just stick it out for a year, alright? You’re listed as a senior, so you’ll graduate, and you can do whatever you want after that.”

“Assuming I can graduate! I don’t know any of this stuff, Arch! I’m going to fail everything!”

“You’re a quick learner. I’m sure you’ll figure it out. You’ve spent centuries doing nothing but bouncing around the world hunting monsters. I’m sure one year of schooling will pass in a flash.

[deathsmallcaps]

June’s Story

My fourteenth Win a Commission is The Twelve Dancing Princesses! If you’d like to see my illustrations and read the chapter, please 

Once upon a time there was a king who had twelve daughters, each one more beautiful than the last. They slept together in one room, where their beds stood next to each other. At night when they were lying there, the king closed their door and barred it. However, when he opened it the next morning he saw that their shoes had been danced to pieces, their socks threadbare, their feet more callused than ever. No one could determine how it had happened, as their rooms were as silent as a tomb every night. 

So the king proclaimed that whoever could discover where they went dancing each night could choose one of them for his wife and become prince consort after his death. However, anyone who attempted this, but failed to make the discovery after three days and nights, would forfeit his life. The king had only proclaimed that so no one could put on a disguise and try again, and that no one unworthy would try. After all, this would all be solved soon! Little did he know, that his assumptions were gravely wrong.

A prince soon presented himself, offering to undertake the venture. He was well received, and that evening was taken to a bed next to all of theirs. He was told to watch where they went and danced. So they would not be able to do anything in secret, or go out to some other place, the door to their room was left open. However, the prince's eyes felt as heavy as lead, and he fell asleep. When he awoke the next morning, the twelve had been dancing, for their shoes all had holes in their soles. The same thing happened the second and the third evenings, and his head was chopped off without mercy. Many others came to try this risky venture, but they too all lost their lives.

Now it happened that a poor soldier named Walter, who was an amputee and could no longer serve in the army, was making his way to the city where the king lived, hoping to find work. His soul seemed restless, wanting to move and never stop, but he needed shelter, and rest. He had once dreamed of being an cartographer, mapping the wastes and strange lands surrounding the kingdom. He had thought joining the army would give him the freedom and money to visit other lands. However, the recent civil war had squished out his dreams and left his soul flapping almost untethered, like a flag in a storm. He had to keep moving. It was winter, the wind howling into his face and across the plains, scraping off the bare skin on anything alive and uncovered. And since there was no shelter, the only thing he had left was to keep going. Going. Going. 

On the way there, shivering and miserable, but unable to stop, he met an old woman going the other way. She only wore a threadbare dress, ecloak, a single shoe and an empty water skin. She was old enough to be his mother, but at the sight of her something, perhaps unpleasant and perhaps not, stirred in half of his heart, something that hadn’t been touched in a long, long time. Despite the odd feeling, the soldier, a kind and honorable man, stopped and offered the last of his meager food and water supply, and one of his shoes (he only needed the one, for he had lost his other foot). He ignored the strange flickers, and thought only After all, my destination is closer than hers, and I can use my crutches to make sure my foot does not touch the ground. The next town in the direction she was going was miles and miles away, and his was finally visible. 

Grateful, the woman made conversation despite the bitter chill. “So you’re going to the capital?”. Her high and rough voice seemed to be like a slightly more mellow version of the wind’s. He merely nodded. She queried, “Why?”

"I'm not exactly sure myself," he said, then jokingly added, "But I would like to discover where the princesses are dancing their shoes to pieces, and then become king."

"Good luck," said the old woman. 

The soldier smiled and thought, Perhaps I will go to the palace. They will be honor-bound to accept me as a contender and give me food and shelter, and it IS my only chance at survival during such a storm. By the time that I could find a family willing to put up a stranger for a night, I might well be dead. I will certainly die if I stay out here. Out loud, he thanked the woman, and said, “Are you sure you do not want to come back to the city? I’m sure if I said you were my mother, the palace would also put you up for a couple nights. My name is Private Walter Johnson, ma’am. You can be Mary Johnson. That was my mother’s name, bless her heart, and I don’t think she’d mind if you impersonate her. She’d probably want someone alive because of it rather than dead like her.”

The old woman smiled back, her face crinkling in ways it seemed it wasn’t accustomed to, and replied, “No, but thank you. I’ll be going now.” 

They made their goodbyes, and as the soldier turned his back to the woman, he felt her hands grasp his shoulders. 

The sudden contact made him freeze up, not in fear, oh no. He was not being triggered. Something - someone - was holding him in place. A cold sensation traveled his spine. The old woman’s voice, suddenly youthful, but still rough, breathed into his left ear, “Not many would show such kindness to the North Wind. You are fortunate that you did. Here is some advice: Do not drink the wine that they will bring you in the evening.” Then she clasped a cloak onto his shirt and said, "When you put this on you will become invisible, and you can follow the twelve girls."

The contact on his shoulders suddenly disappeared, whatever holding him in place gone. He whirled around, and all he heard was a cackle as he saw a white burst of snow in the silhouette of a beautiful lady dissipate in the wind. 

Having received this good advice while feeling cold and quite scared, Walter carefully placed the mysterious cloak (it didn’t warm him - in fact, it seemed to make him colder) into his bag, became serious, took heart, went to the king, and announced himself as a suitor. He, like the others, was well received, and was given royal clothes to wear. 

Walter tried on the cloak after a bath. It was still cold, but no longer unpleasantly so, and when he held it over his hand, all he could see was the floor underneath. When he covered himself in it (it was quite a long cloak) and looked toward a mirror, he had no reflection. Ecstatic that he might actually win, he whooped for joy and went to eat with the king. 

That evening he was escorted to the bedroom. Just as Walter was going to bed, the oldest princess brought him a goblet of wine. However, he had tied a sponge that he had borrowed from the bathroom beneath his chin and let the wine run into it, drinking not a single drop himself. He lay down, and after a little while began to snore as if he were in the deepest sleep. The twelve princesses heard him and laughed. The oldest one said, "Poor cripple! He could have spared his life as well!"

Then they got up, opened their wardrobes, chests, and closets, took out their best clothes, and made themselves beautiful in front of their mirrors, all the time jumping about in anticipation of the dance. Only the youngest one said, "I'm not sure. You are all very happy, but I'm afraid that something bad is going to happen!"

"You goose," said the oldest one. "You are always afraid! Have you forgotten how many princes have been here for nothing? I wouldn't even have had to give this soldier a sleeping potion. He fell asleep deeper and faster than any of the others."

When they were ready, they first approached Walter, but he did not move at all, and as soon as they thought it was safe, the oldest one went to her bed and knocked on it. It immediately sank beneath the floor, and they all climbed down through the opening, one after the other, the oldest one leading the way. The soldier saw everything, and without hesitating he put on the cloak and followed after the youngest one. Halfway down the stairs one of his crutches caught on her dress. Frightened, she called out, "Who's there? Who is holding my dress?"

"Don't be so stupid," said the oldest one. "You just caught yourself on a splinter."

They continued until they came to a warm, magnificent walkway between rows of trees. Their leaves were all made of silver, and they shone and glistened. 

The other half of his heart stirred, and Walter realized this was what he had been missing all his life. Magic. He thought to himself, "You'd better take some proof," and he broke off a twig.

A loud cracking sound came from the tree. The youngest one called out again, "It's not right. Didn't you hear that sound?"

The oldest one said, "That is just a joyful salute that they are firing because soon we will have our princes."

Then they came to a walkway where the trees were all made of gold, and finally to a third one, where they were made of clear diamonds. He broke a twig from each of these. The cracking sound frightened the youngest one each time, but the oldest one insisted that it was only the sounds of joyful salutes of guns. They continued on until they came to a large body of water. Twelve boats were there, and in each boat there sat a handsome prince waiting for them. Each prince took a princess into his boat.

Walter sat next to the youngest princess, and her prince said, "I don't know why the boat is so much heavier today. I have to row with all my strength in order to make it go."

"It must be the cold weather," said the youngest princess. "It's too cold for me as well."

On the other side of the water there was a beautiful, brightly illuminated castle. Joyful music, kettle drums, and trumpets sounded forth. They rowed over and went inside. Each prince danced with his princess. The invisible soldier danced (as best he could) along as well, and whenever the youngest princess held up a goblet of water, he drank it empty as she lifted it to her mouth. This always frightened the youngest one, but the oldest one silenced her every time. They danced there until three o'clock the next morning when their shoes were danced to pieces and they had to stop. The princes rowed them back across the water. This time Walter took a seat next to the oldest princess in the lead boat. They took leave from their princes on the bank and promised to come back the next night.

When they were on the steps Walter went quickly ahead and got into bed. When the twelve tired princesses came in slowly, he was again snoring so loudly that they all could hear him halfway up the steps. "We are safe from him," they said. Then they took off their beautiful clothes behind folding screens and put them away, placed their worn out shoes under their beds, and went to bed, the magic of the party making them not need much sleep.

The next morning the soldier said nothing, for he wanted to see the amazing cave once again. He went along the second and third nights, and everything happened as before. Each time they danced until their shoes were in pieces.

The hour came when he was to give his answer, and he brought the three twigs under his cloak. The twelve princesses stood behind the door and listened to what he had to say. The king asked, "Where did my daughters dance their shoes to pieces?"

Walter answered, "In an underground castle with twelve princes." Then he told the whole story and brought forth the pieces of evidence. The king summoned his daughters and asked them if Walter had told the truth. Seeing that they had been betrayed, and that their denials did no good, they had to admit everything.

Then the king asked him which one he wanted for a wife. He answered, "I wish to not pursue any of your daughters, begging your pardon your majesty. All of them are already in relationships, and I wish to pursue someone else. So with your permission, sir, I would like to lead a well-funded and comfortable expedition up North. 

The King, shrugging, agreed. The twelve dancing princesses were punished, for all the lives of the men that had died for their dancing. They were made to work for 3 years, their hands becoming as callused as their feet and hearts. All but the youngest sister hated and complained about the work, for only she understood the punishment and knew she owed those who lost their lives. The King made her his heir, recognizing her penitence and intelligence, and banished the rest to lonely castles at the edges of his country. The magical princes were never seen again. 

Walter headed North. 

He gave every person in need he met a meal and a chance to tell their story, despite his rapidly depleting resources, mapping out the lands as he went. He at first gave food, and then money, and then his warm clothes, giving and giving, happy to just be living his life and dream, his soul almost complete.

Eventually, Walter made it to a solemn, lonely palace, more north than anything else in the world, starving and thirsty, his money gone, his clothes almost in the same condition as that fateful day on the road. He knocked on the door.

It swung open. The North Wind stood just inside the hall. “Hello,” Walter greeted. 

“Hello,” said the North Wind, and let him in.

THE END

My Notes

I don’t know if you noticed, but I sure did change some aspects of the story!

When I picked this story, it was past midnight in Fall 2017 and I was TIRED. Also, my friend had me briefly hooked on a show called Sherlock. Somehow, my man the soldier, became named Walter Johnson because that is the kind of opposite of John Watson. I don’t exactly remember my thought process behind that, but I’ve thought it was funny ever since.

I’ve fleshed out Walter’s character as well. He is an amputee, I have given him more lines and motivations, and he is a trans man. I don’t think you could tell, as it is not the point of the story, but I realized that I was sorely lacking LGBT+ characters in my coloring books. So yes, I realize this is kind of a Word of God addition, but I think it works! I liked the idea of him being a kind, helpful wanderer, and I especially liked the idea that he found a home with the North Wind. 

I have also fleshed out the ‘hag’ character. Originally, she was just a random magical hag. But I love the idea of the Snow Queen/North Wind (she comes back later) so I decided that she is both the cause of the cold weather which drives Walter to the castle with the tools to save himself (thus resolving the kingdom’s deadly vow situation) and the reason he leaves the castle.  

Ok! Now onto the art explanations.

You cannot understand the temptation I had to just make the North Wind look like Elsa. But after I saw Frozen II, I had the idea that I could make her look like the Sámi people (who the Northuldra people were based off of). So that’s why she has that really cool, complicated hat! It’s part of their traditional attire. She has wind swirls because she’s disappearing.

Walter has a wicked scar. I just wanted him to look super cool. Combined with his little earring, I think he looks kind of like an adventurer. So I think he looks super appropriate for his personality. If he was a modern dude, he’d wear a leather jacket with bright colored inner lining and cool pins on the outside.

Originally, I kind of wanted to draw the pretty forest, but then I realized I would have to draw a bunch of humans, branches, leaves AND even more details. That was intimidating. Instead, I drew the passageway down - and that got a little hard too! Spirals are hard, dude! Less hard than a forest, but still! It even has a spiderweb!

I figure a stairway on one leg, while trying to hide your crutches and yourself under one cloak, all while trying to be quiet (it isn’t a cloak of indetectability after all), would be totally exhausting. So that’s while Walter is chilling for a bit on the stairs. His stump is poking out a bit in the picture. 

The dotted line for the invisibility is a pretty traditional display. I think the earliest example I’ve come across is a Fantastic Four comic (Marvel superheroes) where the Invisible Girl is represented by the dotted lines.  

The third picture made me realize I had no clue what I wanted the princesses to look like. So I just watched some TV and drew two characters I saw there lol. 

As for the title, I just wanted to get geometric about it. You may have noticed all the names in the petals - I just wanted to think of a bunch of pretty names, lol. I’ve been drawing a lot of flowers lately. 

I hope you had fun coloring!

@boopboopboopbadoop​ 

[peakwealth]

The Year 2020

'Cos when the madman flips the switch The nuclear will go for me The lunatics have taken over the asylum

(Lyrics from The Fun Boy Three, British pop group, 1981)

*  *  *

The world has been in one crisis or another for so long now, it gets harder to remember when things still seemed to be in balance, or when they started to spin out of control. When did this slow agony start, the malaise that won't go away, the chaos and distopia year after year?

Or was it always like this?

I'm not thinking so much about the coronavirus epidemic, but about the other man-made disaster that kept us on edge throughout the year, the US elections.

Looking for answers, my first, intuitive stop remains the morning of September 11, 2001 when the world order was convulsed in that split second needed for an airliner to fly into the World Trade Center. It may be that our understanding of that day is still skewed by the deep symbolism of the visuals: the fire ball, the people jumping to their deaths, the towers collapsing on themselves, the mountain of smoking rubble. Images that came to define our age. But what seems certain is that the big wheel of history ground to a standstill on that day and when it started up again, it had gone into reverse. That regression has not stopped, indeed it is still gathering pace and is very much in evidence as 2020 comes to a chaotic end.

Of course, 9/11 was the outcome of forces set in motion much earlier including the Iranian revolution in 1979 when an unsmiling, bearded imam left Paris and arrived in Tehran. The world would never be the same, but we in the West did not realize it.

Donald Trump's seemingly farcical plea to Make America Great Again can be traced back to either of those events and to the American failure to make sense of them -- the end of the pax Americana, the myth of American exceptionalism, the twilight of the colonial world order that had been in the making for five hundred years. Americans closed ranks and reacted with defiant nationalism after 9 /11. Then they took their revenge to the world and declared War on Terror - just as the terrorists had intended.

Those events are still within living memory. Looking back further, historians like to point to the invention of moveable type which ushered in the information age and, with it, modernity. The first books 'rolling off' Johannes Gutenberg's press were bibles. But not for long. Since the printing press couldn't be controlled, books conveyed a profusion of radically new ideas. They brought democratization and they spread dissent. Think Martin Luther, or Copernicus, great disrupters of the sixteenth century.

But Donald Trump?

Was Trump the accidental result of reality TV, celebrity culture and internet-driven narcissism? Or did his flirtation with autocratic rule herald the necrosis of western democracies? Was Trump merely the symbol of America's irreconcilable differences, of the slow dissolution of white patriarchy or was he the inevitable outcome of late-stage capitalism, as some have suggested?

Where should we look? The Trump years have produced a cottage industry of scholarly attemtps to explain how something like this could happen, how the United States could start to degenerate like that. Where do we find the logic that would lead to this turning point in history?

Without pretending that I could add to this (lack of) understanding, I must admit that the question is compelling. It kept me busy all year, or at least until the American presidential election was finally over.

I have tried to approach the matter from a few angles.

*  *  *

The problem with books. (Bejar, Spain, November 2020)

*  *  *

Attempt A

Multiplication of the box

I remember the deep dark varnish of our first television set, an imposing piece of furniture sitting on rather slender round legs. The cardboard box it had arrived in was large enough to serve as my play house, with a door and windows, until it got rained on one day. The TV set itself started to hum when you turned it on and needed time to warm up before the picture appeared, monochrome of course. From the back you could see the glowing tubes inside and smell the dusty heat they emitted. When one of the tubes failed, the repairman had to come.

There was one channel, run by the Belgian state and broadcasting for a few hours in the evening. It seemed adequate at the time. More would have been too much. Programming was low-tech. The national weatherman stood in front of a flip chart and drew the weather map by hand: rainclouds here, sunshine there (though not so much) and low or high pressure fronts further afield, most likely over the Azores.

In fact there was another state channel but it was for the French speaking part of Belgium and thus foreign to us in Flanders. Furthermore there was a knob to switch the unit from standard definition (625  lines) to the broadcast standard in France which had 819 lines and allowed us, in theory, to capture programming from RTF, la Radio-télévision française across the border. Although we never did, I remember le général Charles de Gaulle addressing the French nation with a grandiloquent 'Françaises, Français!' followed by a theatrical pause. I used to imitate him as a child. 'Françaises, Français!'. I had never been to France.

This went on for some years until we upgraded to colour. The new set also allowed us to watch two channels from Holland. Although the programming rotated between party-political and religious organizations, everything that was Dutch looked more sophisticated. It probably was. Eventually cable TV came along and, like everyone else, we moved to twelve channels, then twenty-four, then hundreds after which the numbers became meaningless. Today the distinction between television and the internet has faded as billions of people have become broadcasters, sending and receiving videos on their phones every day.

In a matter of only two or three generations technology has increased our awareness and our exposure to reality from the very local to the infinitely global. From smudgy local newspapers to single-channel black-and-white TV to the torrent of youTube and Whatsapp. Each increment, each multiplication of channels and choices has fragmented our common understanding of what the world is like. This means not only that every problem in every corner of the world has become our problem, it also signals that reality itself has split into a billion pieces and has become complex, uncertain and unstable. We all live in our own bubble of perception, increasingly removed from the broader context that used to bring coherence to society. While some of us embrace the complexity of the 21st century, to others it translates as confusion and anxiety. It is a reality they have retreated from.

Personally, I put my last TV on the sidewalk fifteen years ago, the very set I had used to watch the unfolding history on the morning of 9/11. It was still working, someone picked it up.

*  *  *

Gone in 2020 but not forgotten.

*  *  *

Attempt B

Entertainment Forever

Long ago, when General Electric was one of America's preeminent industrial giants, it owned the Radio Corporation of America (known by the once ubiquitous acronym RCA) which in turn owned the National Broadcasting Company or NBC. America's first radio network was founded in New York City in 1926 "in the interest of the listening public" and in order to transmit, among other things, baseball scores. NBC television started in 1939 and (fuzzy) colour came in 1954. Announcing the birth of broadcast television in the USA, David Sarnoff, NBC's pioneering founder, described it as 'so important in its implications that it is bound to affect all society'.

Indeed it has.

Like Donald Trump, Roone Arledge (1931-2002) was born in Queens, New York. After a stint at NBC television he joined the rival ABC network as a sports producer in 1960. He soon started to rewrite the book on television production, putting his stamp on the world we live in. Starting at the Munich Olympic games in 1972, ABC ran a series of intimate portraits of Olympic athletes, called 'Up Close and Personal'. The words became shorthand for what sports would look like on American TV. The visual grammar shifted from being 'coverage' of events to a one-on-one experience with the viewer, a personal touch.

The formula jumped species in 1977 when Arledge became president of ABC News, one of the three commercial US networks with large news operations. The avuncular news readers of old (Walter Cronkite on CBS) gave way to a personality driven approach. Anyone remember Barbara Walters or Mike Wallace? As production values became a lot flashier, all of television became more like entertainment, including the news - just another 'show' looking for an audience and revenue.

The next milestone on the road to trash TV was 'Entertainment Tonight' (launched in 1981 and still going today, making it the longest running syndicated show on American cable TV). Shockingly and confusingly, it used a news format without being actual news. As the boundaries between news and entertainment started to blur, so did the distinction between gossip and verifiable fact. Credibility and substance faded from televison news, replaced by looks, celebrity, lifestyle, etc. Network comedy shows became major purveyors of political commentary. This cross-pollination of genres is still spreading today as journalists are being replaced by content originators, human today, most likely virtual tomorrow. In other words: commerce is still gaining ground while reality is losing traction.

When 'Big Brother' came along in 1997, so-called reality shows moved to the centre of the entertainment landscape. By that time the medium had evolved well beyond UC&P. Four-and-a-half years ago, I reflected on how reality TV had become "manipulative, sadistic and liberating - from caution, from human empathy and from rational thought. What wasn’t perhaps so crystal clear at the beginning was how trash TV would inflect politics, how it tapped into the disillusionment of a burgeoning global underclass. Barely perceptible then, the phenomenon eventually turned into rage against the political establishment and anything associated with it. The anger came from both sides of the political divide, from the rebelliousness of the Occupy movement on the left and from the fear-driven populism on the right."

Out of this fantasy world of uninhibited entertainment, celebrity and alienation stepped Donald Trump and declared he was running for the presidency of the United States. Four years of monosyllabic misrule later, he left America as damaged goods, a nation at war with itself.

Attempt C

Fact check till you drop

Watching the news on commercial TV at the local coffee shop few weeks ago, I was struck by the rough, frenzied pace of the editing. The stories were cut with an axe, as we used to say in the business. No shot lasted more than a second and the interview clips did not exceed three seconds. Far from being careful storytelling, it was pure media mash, exhausting to watch and obviously designed to keep the viewers hooked and the ratings up.

I wondered how anyone subjected to such visual bombardment could make sense of the news, complicated as it is, and not become neurotic or disoriented in one way or another? OK, I may be a little naive for it can be argued it's been like this since the invention of the cinema in 1895. Our brains have had more than a century to adapt to the stimulus of the ever moving, ever accelerating image. We've had manic TV commercials and split-second music videos for forty years, ever since MTV was launched in New York in 1981. People scroll trough their devices as fast as their thumbs will let them, consuming hundreds of images per minute.

But information programming should be different, or it used to be. News was supposed to be 'readable' as fact-based information viewers could easily de-code to figure out what was happening around them. Except that, for many, it isn't anymore.

Post-truthism didn't start with Donald Trump, but the perversion of reality took an ugly turn with him. The very words, 'truth', 'lies', have come to seem quaint, suspect, disfigured. In the early days of his presidency, armies of diligent fact checkers went to work to expose each and every presidential lie. They toiled in vain. Trump, the real estate salesman and former casino owner, lied without fear or favour, he had nothing but contempt for evidence-based reality and for those whose job it was to convey it. He scolded journalists, telling them they should be ashamed of themselves. His followers loved it. They were grateful for the steady stream of twisted thinking, incoherence and outright lies because they were in sync with their own prejudices - no, make that their own beliefs.

*  *  *

Disinformation and antisemitism. (Spanish pamphlet, claiming George Soros is the driving force behind Catalan separatism, displayed in the window of a local bookshop. Málaga, July 2020)

*  *  *

Attempt D

 Put God back into the USA

"To a great many Americans, digital communication has already rendered empirical, observable reality beside the point." 

Farhad Manjoo, writing in the New York Times, Oct 21, 2020.

Those Americans, it seems, believed that Donald Trump was divinely appointed to be president of the USA and to make America great again. God's will had been done and should not be thwarted by voters. Clearly, if they believed that, they believed anything. That the coronavirus was an evil plot or that COVID 19 could be stopped by injecting yourself with Lysol disinfectant or eating pods of laundry detergent. If Bill Gates was funding vaccines that would turn god-fearing dairy farmers into atheists, then George Soros was the mastermind behind it all. Or was it Warren Buffett?  Communists were plotting a coup. Why not?

The mood got more unhinged and delusional as the year unfolded. Pro life, pro God, pro gun. Stop socialism. Put God back into the USA. When election day finally came, Democrats and Republicans rushed to the polls to save the country from the other side. Country hicks to one side, big-city satanists to the other. Although sanity eventually prevailed, it was touch and go. Far from repudiating Trump and holding him to account, more than seventy-four million Americans voted to let him stay in office.

In other words, although Trump and his royal court have been sidelined for now, the threat of an erratic America remains, driven by suspicion, ready to go off the rails again. The unbending fervour of fundamentalist Christians, focused on the abomination of abortion and the deviancy of LGBTQ+ rights has reached an intensity that is ever more reminiscent of Islamist extremism.

Mis and disinformation aren't new. Nor are they specific to any country. Most advertising qualifies as such. But the impaired thinking, the decline of reason and the contempt for manifest reality reached bizarre heights in 2020 and not only because Donald Trump used disinformation with such abandon. It looked more like a crisis of mental health propagated by social media. An American study found that young people were more likely to believe online conspiracy theories while only those over 65 had a secure grip on reality.

Social media drove the loss of empathy and civility, they normalized hate speech, they empowered virus deniers and antivaxxers. Finally they legitimized many Americans in their belief that the election had been ‘stolen’.

It was obvious, four years ago, that a Trump presidency would have incalculable consequences. But it was worse than almost anyone could have predicted. It wasn't about his vulgarity or his philistinism. The power vacuum created by having an idiot king in the White House made the world a more dangerous place where malevolent autocrats could do as they pleased because the West had lost whatever credibility and leverage it used to have.

The new era of impunity pushed hundreds of millions of citizens further into the arms of dictators and autocrats, plunderers and torturers around the world, from North Korea to Belarus, from Egypt to Myanmar because they knew they had a like-minded colleague in the White House. Political rivals could be poisoned and journalists jailed or disappared, it no longer mattered. Rather than restore America to greatness, Trump's monosyllabic rule brought decadence to the United States and ruin to global stability.

It still hasn't been widely grasped just how much power has shifted towards Russia and even more to China. The People's Republic is forging ahead in AI and machine learning, in aerospace, in digital currency, in quantum computing and in G6 data mobility. It is likely to give China an unassailable lead in technology and leave the West standing in the dust, complaining about totalitarianism.

The American election and the pandemic pushed almost everything else off the table in 2020, the explosion of Beirut's harbour, the Chinese clampdown in Hong Kong, quick-and-dirty wars in Ethiopia and Azerbaijan, global warming (open water near the north pole, smouldering Siberia, biblical wildfires in Australia), the popular uprisings in Minsk, Lagos, Kampala, Bangkok, etc.

Until the very end of this most difficult, gruesome year, the president of the Unted States did nothing but talk nonsense. He cared about nothing or anyone except himself.

As the cracks in American society widened and the disenchanted masses turned on each other, Donald Trump played golf and watched America burn. Already the race is on to stop him from being reelected four years from now.

*  *  *

Better luck next year.

[gayhistoryarchive-blog]

The Dean of American Gay Journalism

December 11, 1973. 60 million Americans are watching the CBS Evening News With Walter Cronkite when gay activist Mark Segal jumps in front of the camera and sits on Cronkite’s desk, holding a sign that reads “Gays Protest C.B.S. Prejudice.”

TVs across the country go dark for a few seconds as Segal is tackled to the floor and restrained with cable wire until the police arrive. When the broadcast resumes, the unshaken Cronkite lives up to his reputation of objective reporting and calmly informs audiences of what happened. “A rather interesting development in the studio here – a protest demonstration right in the middle of the CBS News studio,” he says matter-of-factly. “The young man was identified as a member of something called the Gay Raiders, an organization protesting alleged defamation of homosexuals on entertainment programs.”

Cronkite wasn’t the only target of the Gay Raiders’ “zaps”. Segal used similar tactics on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, The Mike Douglas Show, and The Today Show. In his 2015 memoir And Then I Danced, Segal recalls that when he crashed The Today Show, “The news anchor actually got up out of his chair, and as some people described, looked like he was trying to climb the walls. My first thought was to comfort the guy, but I was there for a reason. I had to stay on mission.”

Segal is tackled mid-sentence and restrained with camera cables, then taken out into the hallway by a security guard. “As we’re walking away, me expecting to head off to jail once again…a woman yelled at the guard and told him to stop. Barbara Walters…with pen and pad in hand, walked over and asked me why we were protesting the show. My explanation was that it wasn’t just The Today Show, but all of network TV that censors us on their news, stereotypes us on their entertainment shows, and keeps us invisible by not having LGBT people on their programs.” During the exchange, a producer came into the hallway and told Walters to get back to the studio, as she was about to go on. Walters refused, saying that this was a story and she wasn’t going back in until she had it.

LGBT representation in the media isn’t great now, but in 1973, it was nonexistent. This was a pre-Internet, pre-cable world. Queer people truly were invisible. “If you wanted to find something out about gay people,” Segal said in 2015, “You went to the library. If your library carried gay books, and most times they didn’t. So therefore, what the world knew about us, they heard from churches, they heard from police, or they heard from the psychiatric community.” Needless to say, none of these sources were very sympathetic.

So, Segal explains, queer people decided to change that. They first tried calling TV networks to arrange meetings between gay rights groups and network representatives. When that failed, the “zap” was born.

After being escorted off the set of the CBS Evening News, Segal was charged with trespassing. His lawyer responded by subpoenaing Cronkite to testify at the trial. After lawyers at CBS blocked several attempts to deliver the document, Segal’s lawyer informed them of a little-known New York law which stated that copies of a subpoena are just as valid as the original. He then threatened to make 100 copies of the document, then give half to Hell’s Angels and half to members of the Gay Activists’ Alliance, and offer a $1,000 reward to whoever could deliver one to Cronkite. The lawyers relented, and allowed Segal’s lawyer to present Cronkite with the subpoena the following morning, which he readily accepted.

The trial took place in April 1974, five months after the incident. Segal felt a tap on his shoulder during the proceedings, and turned around to see the Most Trusted Man in America sitting behind him, notepad ready.

“Why did you do it?” Cronkite asked. Segal told him it was because CBS censored news about gay people.

Cronkite was surprised. He told Segal it wasn’t true.

“If I can prove it, would you do something to change it?” Segal asked. He cited examples of CBS censorship. “Last month you did a story about 6,000 women walking up 6th Avenue proclaiming International Women’s Day.”

Cronkite affirmed that he did, and said it was a valid news story. Segal agreed, then asked why CBS didn’t cover 50,000 queer people walking down that same street sixth months prior proclaiming Gay Pride Day. Cronkite was silent.

Segal continued that after his zap, CBS did a report on New York City rejecting a gay rights bill for the second time.

“Yes, I believe I wrote that story myself,” Cronkite said.

“Well, why haven’t you reported on the 23 cities that have passed gay rights bills?”

Cronkite was genuinely moved. The Most Trusted Man in America shook Segal’s hand and thanked him.

After Segal paid the $450 fine the court saddled him with (he later referred to it as “the happiest check I ever wrote”), Cronkite arranged to meet with him privately to further discuss CBS coverage of gay news. He even introduced Segal to the brass at CBS as a “constructive viewer”. It was a turning point in the coverage of the LGBT community in media.

“After that incident,” Segal recalled, “CBS News agreed to look into the ‘possibility’ that they were censoring or had a bias in reporting news. Walter showed a map on the Evening News of the US and pointed out cities that had passed gay rights legislation. Network news was never the same after that.”

Starting May 6, 1974, Walter Cronkite was regularly airing stories on LGBT rights. He became the antithesis of Anita Bryant: a well-known, well-respected straight person who was willing to listen to and support the queer community. Segal later referred to him as his “friend and mentor”, and “a bridge between the gay movement and major media”.

Speaking of Segal, he went on to found the Philadelphia Gay News in 1975. He’s currently the president of the National Gay Newspaper Guild. And his history of activism stretches far beyond his influence on Walter Cronkite.

Growing up Jewish in a non-Jewish neighborhood taught Segal what it’s like to be “different” before he even realized he was gay. And being the grandson of an activist taught him how to fight back.

Segal has discussed on more than one occasion the influence his grandmother, Fannie Weinstein, had on him as a child. In her youth, she marched for women’s right to vote. And forty years later, she took Segal to his first civil rights demonstration in 1964. She instilled in him the fighting spirit that defined his life of activism.

His first “zap” came eight years later, in August 1972. Segal, then 21, and a male friend were kicked off a local Philadelphia dance program after the host saw them dancing together. A few days later, Segal retaliated by barging into the studio during the evening newscast. Like The Today Show, the crew tackled him, tied him up with a microphone cable, and called the police.

He didn’t give up. He founded the Gay Raiders and continued his “zaps” until he finally saw results with Walter Cronkite and CBS. And after that, he remained an important figure in LGBT news media, earning the nickname “The Dean of American Gay Journalism”. He’s still active in journalism. For example, in 2016, he and Philadelphia Gay News covered the presidential election.

The Democratic side, he notes, was quite accommodating. Philadelphia Gay News was able to interview just about everyone except Clinton, who ended up writing an original op-ed piece for the paper instead. The Republicans were…less helpful. PGN made Trump the same offer as Clinton, but his team instead offered up an interview with the openly gay editor of a conservative blog that most Americans hadn’t heard of yet. But, as Segal wrote in a Facebook post last week, “We had, and didn’t want to give it any more publicity or credibility than it deserved.” And so they decided not to interview Milo Yiannopoulos, then-editor of Breitbart.

“In hindsight, we made a good call,” Segal finished.

[Sources under cut.]

More about Segal, Cronkite, and the 1973 “Zap”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljyMyqWagRw, https://www.queerty.com/the-time-gay-activists-interrupted-walter-cronkite-on-the-cbs-evening-news-20120605, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/24/AR2009072402084.html

Segal’s Facebook post on the 2016 election: https://www.facebook.com/MarkSegalPGN/posts/1537091099731599

Segal on his grandmother and being “Gay, Jewish, and Old”: http://www.philly.com/philly/columnists/mark_segal/Mark_Segal_Im_Gay_Jewish_and_old.html

[mldrgrl]

Not Again: Part 1

by: mldrgrl Rated: PG-13 Summary: A rewrite of season 8 from an anon request for Scully to have been the one to have been abducted instead of Mulder.

Behind the cut is part 1 in full, in preparation for the start of part 2.

Part 1: Gone

Prologue:

He should’ve fought her, trusted his gut instincts and fought her.  Or, he should’ve just left her behind, even though he’d promised her he never would.  He could’ve gotten down on his knees the next day and begged for her forgiveness.

“They’re taking abductees,” he’d told her, taking her in his arms even though they were in the hallway outside Skinner’s office.  “You’re an abductee.  I’m not going to risk...losing you.”

She’d pushed him away, defiant.  Her jaw was set, mouth a grim line.  Her eyes blazed with what could’ve been fury or fever.  He’d heard her throwing up that morning, but they’d both ignored it.  

“I’m not letting you go alone,” she said.

“I can take Skinner.  Or the gunmen.”

“I’m your partner.  You go, I go.”

He’d relented.  Against his better judgment, he’d just nodded his head and relented.

And now, as runs through the forest towards the bright white light, kicking up dead leaves and tripping over branches, trying desperately to reach her and convince himself that this is not happening, this is not happening, he knows it’s his fault in the first place for taking her back to Bellefleur.

******

Chapter 1, Day 1:

Mulder waits in the pocket-sized interrogation room of the Bellefleur PD for Skinner, his head in his hands.  He doesn’t look up when the door opens, just closes his eyes and presses his fingers deeper into his scalp.  He hears the chair across from him slide back and then silence.

“She’s gone,” Mulder says, his voice hoarse from screaming Scully’s name for hours the night before.  “I lost her.  Again.”

“You wanna tell me what you mean by that, Agent Mulder?”

Mulder looks up.  The man across from him isn’t Skinner.  He looks military.  Hard features, chiseled jaw.  Close-cropped dark blonde hair.  A hint of an accent in the way he pronounces Mulder’s name - Mold-ah - New York or New Jersey native, maybe.  Piercing blue eyes.  He’s sitting back with his arms crossed and his head tipped back to look down at Mulder like he’s passing judgment.

“Who are you?” Mulder asks.  “Where’s Skinner?”

“Skinner will be along.  Why don’t you tell me what you mean by that last thing you said.  You were referring to Agent Scully, weren’t you?  You lost her?  Again?”

Mulder bristles at being treated like a suspect.  If he didn’t have other things on his mind, finding Scully being one of them, he thinks he may have already thrown a punch at the guy.  Knocked the smug off his face.

“You’re wasting your time,” Mulder says.

“How’s that?”

Mulder shakes his head.  He purses his lips and rubs them together, wanting to tell this jerk across the table to go to hell, but knows he should keep his mouth shut.  The man takes a file out from under his arm in the silence and drops it on the table.  He flips it open, browses it casually, and then looks at Mulder.

“Eight years together,” he says.

Mulder says nothing, but he drops his eyes to try to read what’s on the paper in the file.

“Rumor is you didn’t want Agent Scully on this case.  You wanna tell me about that?”

“I’m not interested in telling you anything, quite frankly.  I don’t know who you are or what you’re getting at, but the only person I want to talk to right now is Assistant Director Walter Skinner.”

“Easy, Agent Mulder.”

“Get me Skinner or get out.”

“Just how have you and Agent Scully been lovers?”

“Excuse me?”

“Is all this because of the baby?”

Mulder can’t stop himself from jumping up out of his seat at this point.  “What the hell does that mean?” he yells, kicking his chair back and pushing the table away as the other man gets up and takes a step back.

Suddenly, Skinner bursts into the room and steps between the two men, both hands on Mulder’s chest pushing him back.  “That’s enough,” he says, turning his head down and away from Mulder.  “John, that’s enough.”

“Were you out there this whole time?” Mulder yells, effectively pushing at Skinner’s arms.  “You sonofabitch!”

“Get out, Agent Doggett,” Skinner barks.

The man, Agent Doggett, glares at Mulder before leaving them alone.  Skinner takes a painfully tight grip on Mulder’s shoulders, urging him to calm down.  They both know he’s stronger and could forcibly subdue Mulder if he needs to.  Mulder stops fighting, but he doesn’t relax.

“What the hell is going on?” Mulder hisses.

“He’s following Kersh’s orders,” Skinner says, his voice low.  “Right now they’re looking into this as a possible homicide.”

“Homicide!”  Mulder yells.  “They think I killed Scully?”

“Keep your voice down.”

“Fourteen people went missing last night in those woods, did I kill them too?”

“No one thinks that.”

“I can show you the site.  We need to get the gunmen the coordinates.”

“Mulder, we’ve got a task force-”

“You and I both know there isn’t a task force in the world qualified for this.”  Mulder makes a plea to his boss with his eyes.  He needs to get out of this interrogation room and back on the hunt for Scully.  He’s wasted too much time trying to follow protocol.

“Alright,” Skinner relents.  “Show me.”

“Sir.”  Mulder stops Skinner from turning away and squeezes his upper arm.  “What did that man, Agent Doggett, mean when he asked if it was about the baby?”

Skinner takes off his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose.  He hesitates before he hooks them back over his ears and looks Mulder directly in the eyes.  “Agent Scully used the bureau labs yesterday afternoon to run some bloodwork on herself,” he says.

“She wasn’t feeling well.”

“According to the results of those tests, she was pregnant.”

Mulder feels like the wind has been knocked out of his chest.  He leans over, bracing his hands on his knees, and takes shallow breaths.  Skinner’s hand drops to his back for a moment, but then he pulls him up by his shoulders.

“You didn’t know?” Skinner asks.

“It’s not possible,” Mulder says, shaking his head.

“She ran the test herself, Mulder.”

“But, it’s not possible.”

“How do you know that?”

“We tried...we...last year we tried three times to get pregnant by in vitro.  It wasn’t...it just isn’t possible.”

“So, you didn’t know?”

“No, I didn’t know.”

“It’s better that you didn’t.  Do you have records of your attempts to corroborate your story?”

Mulder looks at Skinner with a bit of contempt.  “It isn’t a story.  And I don’t exactly feel comfortable sharing that kind of information with the rest of the bureau.”

“You may have to Mulder.  Right now, the theory is, you found out about the baby and couldn’t handle it.  That you used this investigation as a way to cover up something.”

“Scully’s not dead.  She was taken.”

“Show me the place.”

*****

The clearing looks different in daylight.  The tops of the trees circling the perimeter are singed and black.  An ashy substance dusts the ground.  Skinner and Mulder stand at the outer ring, where the foliage is still thick enough to warrant flashlights.  Skinner tucks his flashlight under his chin and checks his GPS.

Mulder feels absolutely helpless.  He can’t do much of anything except stare at the vacant circle of forest where he last saw Scully, looking up into a beam of light with group of strangers before they all vanished before his eyes, along with the light.  It’s not like tracking down a deranged kidnapper.  He can’t put out an APB on a spaceship.  

Skinner walks the perimeter like there’s evidence to be catalogued, but Mulder stands and stares.  If only he’d been quicker.  If only he’d seen the light ten seconds sooner.  If only he’d made Scully listen to reason.  If only Scully had told him about the baby.  He can’t imagine what she’d been thinking, knowing she was pregnant and following him anyway.

“I’m gonna call this in,” Skinner says.  “Have it marked off as a crime scene.”

“They won’t find anything,” Mulder answers.

“No, I don’t imagine they will, but for your sake, Mulder, it’s better they find nothing than something.”

“I need to get those coordinates to the gunmen.  And if Krycek-”

“Krycek is gone.  He slipped out after you and Scully left.”

“Of course he did.”

“Do you have any...contacts left.”

Mulder shakes his head.  “The last one died helping me get to Antarctica.”

“I don’t know what to do here, Mulder.  Where do we even look?”

“Get the coordinates to the gunmen,” he says, dead leaves crumbling under his feet as he walks away.  “If they can’t find anything, I don’t know either.”

*****

Chapter 2, Day 2:

Mulder hasn’t slept, hasn’t eaten, hasn’t showered or shaved.  He waits for a phone call from the gunmen that hasn’t come and he stares blankly at maps and profiles of fourteen missing people.  Inside his mind, he’s frantically searching for Scully, trying desperately to come up with something, anything that could help find her.  He also knows, deep down, that this is going to be a long, torturous waiting game, one that could last weeks, months, years, or forever.  And this isn’t like two years ago, or five years ago.  The deputy director would like nothing more than to toss Mulder out on his ass.  If he doesn’t toe the line, the resources afforded to him in the FBI will be gone.

Agent Doggett has been demanding an interview with Mulder, and Mulder can’t refuse, and he’s afraid his temper will get the better of him.  The guy rubs him in too much of the wrong way not to get worked up over.  To Mulder’s surprise, a woman comes in instead, with dark hair and the perpetual hint of a smile.  Where Doggett was too aggressive, she is too relaxed.

“Agent Mulder,” she says congenially.  “It's nice to meet you.  I'm Agent Reyes.”

“Where’s Agent Doggett?” he asks.

“We thought it might be better if I spoke to you instead.”  She sits across from him.  She doesn't carry a notepad or a file with her.  She looks like she's here for tea and conversation, not an interrogation.  “I've been assigned to the task force to find the missing fourteen.”

“Good luck.”

“I’m sorry about your partner.”

He wants to answer her politeness with sarcasm, but he hears Skinner in the back of his head telling him to play nice if he wants any hope of being allowed in on the investigation.  The sooner they could clear him of any wrongdoing or negligence, the sooner he could do something substantive.

“I appreciate that,” he says.  “Sorry won't help me find her though.”

“What will?”

“What's your specialty, Agent Reyes?  What do you know about alien abduction?”

“Not much.  I work in the ritualistic crime division in New Orleans.”

Mulder pauses and thinks for a moment.  “Monica Reyes?”

“Yes.”

“You worked the Lafontaine murders last year.”

“I did.”

“I wanted that case.  Submitted a requisition for it, but got denied.  Kersh had us working shit detail at that time.”

“Why would you have wanted that case?  It was horrible.”

“It bore a striking similarity to a mass murder in 1979.”

It's Reyes’ turn to pause and she tilts her head slightly.  “Were you my anonymous tip with the news article from The Times-Picayune?”

“Anonymous tips are meant to be anonymous for a reason.  I read your report.  You didn't find a connection.”

“No, I didn't.”

“I didn't kill my partner.  So ask me what you think you need to know so I can get out of here.”

“You and Agent Scully were close?”

“Yes, we are close.”

“Right.”

“To pick up where Agent Doggett left off, yes, we’re more than just partners, though that's been a more recent development in our relationship.”

“How recent?”

“About four months recent.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did you decide to become intimate with your partner?”

“It wasn't so much of a decision as...it just happened.”  

Mulder sits back and closes his eyes.  He thinks about the first night they spent together, when he put his arm around her as they watched a movie, when she looked up at him with surprise, but smiled.  When he’d let his thumb graze her arm past her short sleeved top.  When she’d shifted closer and cautiously rested her hand on his thigh.  When she'd looked at his mouth and he had to know what it would be like to kiss her.  No, it hadn’t been a decision, it had been a compulsion.

“I'm sorry if this is uncomfortable or embarrassing for you.”

“If?”  Mulder gives a little snort.  “People have talked about me behind my back for years.  I'm not worried about what anyone says or thinks about me, it's what they might say about Scully that bothers me.”

“I'm told she's a good agent.”

“The best.”  A headache that Mulder has been fighting starts to pulse behind his eyes and he pinches the top of his nose before rubbing his brows.  “I have medical records I'm supposed to give you.  Of our attempts to have a baby, and her infertility.  I didn't know she was pregnant until yesterday.  I'm not even quite sure I believe it, but I would never, ever hurt her.”

“If you were trying to have a baby, why didn't she tell you she was pregnant before you went to Bellefleur?”

“I can only imagine it was because she knew I wouldn't let her come.”

“Wouldn't let her?”

Mulder puts his hand down and looks Agent Reyes in the eyes.  She looks at him neutrally, but he has the feeling she thinks she's caught him in an admission of guilt.   He tried not to clench his jaw, but it's hard not to.

“I had a bad feeling about coming back,” he says.  “I tried to talk her out of going, but she insisted.  If she had told me about the baby, I would’ve tried a lot harder.”

“What would you have done?”

“Not come at all, probably.”

“You would stay behind and not chase a lead?”

“For her I would.”

“That's not what I've heard about you.”

Mulder swallows.  The even tone in Reyes’ voice is unsettling.  She has a way of stating things without malice or surprise, but the judgment is still there in what she says.  He was wrong about her being too relaxed.  Perhaps she's even more calculating than Agent Doggett.

“Let’s just say I haven’t felt the need to go haring off on my own lately.”

“But, she has, hasn’t she?  Wasn’t it just a few months ago that she followed the lead in an investigation without telling you where she was going or that she was with a man you’ve described as an enemy of the government.”

“Jesus, how did you even-”

“And you said you’ve only been together intimately for four months.  Was she running out on you then, or was this before you were together?  Did she run off on you now?”

Mulder can’t take it anymore.  He stands up and slaps both hands down on the table, but Agent Reyes doesn’t flinch.  “This is insane,” he shouts.

“No, fourteen people vanishing without a trace is insane, Agent Mulder.”

“Not if you’ve seen what I’ve seen.”

“According to you, you didn’t see anything more than a bright light in the sky.”

Mulder scrubs his face with both hands, frustrated and tense.  He pushes his hands back through his hair and tightens his grip as he turns away from Agent Reyes and paces the room.

“I’m here to help you, Agent Mulder,” Agent Reyes says.

“Help me?”  Mulder turns towards her and shakes his head.  “You can’t help me if you don’t believe me.”

“I never said I didn’t believe you.”

The door opens and Agent Doggett enters, followed by Skinner.  Agent Reyes stands and pushes her chair back into place under the table.

“You’re gonna accompany the task force to Arizona,” Doggett says.

Mulder cuts his eyes to Skinner, whose face reveals nothing.  “What’s in Arizona?” he asks.

“Boy by the name of Gibson Praise,” Agent Doggett answers.

“What do you want with Gibson?”

“I don’t know,” Doggett says, holding a red file up in his hand.  “But, someone wants us to find him.”

*****

The sun is still high when the caravan of black SUVs stops in front of the tiny desert boarding school for the deaf.  The air is hot and thick with the dust the cars have kicked up.  Mulder wipes a gritty sheen of sweat off the back of his neck.  He hasn’t had a chance to be alone with Skinner, to find out what this is about.  He still hasn’t heard back from the gunmen.  He’s flying blind in this situation and he feels like he needs to proceed with the utmost caution.

Agent Doggett is on one side of Mulder, Agent Reyes the other, like a police escort.  Mulder thinks they may as well just put him in handcuffs.  He feels like they’d like to.  There are at least ten other agents in the task force behind them, buzzing with adrenaline and excitement, like invading a school for deaf kids is going to be the high point of their careers.  He wonders if any of them has ever been out of the bullpen.  It wouldn’t surprise them if they hadn’t.  Kersh likes to keep his agents on a tight leash.

“I thought we were only here to talk to him,” Mulder says to Doggett, glancing back over his shoulder at the team behind them.

“They’re not here for the boy,” Doggett answers, eyes forward.  His face glistens in the heat.

Mulder takes another look back.  It becomes clear to him then.  They’re there to make sure he doesn’t get away.  He searches for Skinner amongst them, and then sees his boss standing alone and apart from the group, his cell phone pressed to one ear and a hand over the other.  It looks like he’s shouting something, but there’s a strong desert wind blowing that carries his voice away.

“Wait,” Mulder says, stopping and turning fully to watch Skinner.  “Something’s wrong.”

“What is it?” Agent Reyes asks.

Mulder takes a step away from the two agents and squints out at the desert.  There’s a glimmer of something in the distance, but he’s distracted when Skinner pockets his phone and starts briskly for them, his face red and wet, tie billowing over his shoulder in the wind.

“Someone breached the FBI database overnight using Agent Scully’s credentials,” Skinner says.

“What were they looking for?” Mulder asks.

“Files on Gibson Praise.”

Mulder turns to go back to the school, but Skinner stops him.  “There’s something else,” he says.

“What?”

“I heard from your...friends…”  Skinner pauses and glances at Agent Doggett and then back at Mulder.  “They say they’re getting reports of activity in Clifton.”

“Clifton?  How far is that from where we are?”

“Thirty miles, maybe.”

“We need to find Gibson.  Now.”

With Agents Doggett and Reyes hot on his heels, Mulder rushes towards the entrance of the school and throws open the door.  There’s a receptionist at the front desk that looks up with puzzlement, but it’s clear she can’t hear the commotion that follows him.  He starts yelling Gibson’s name, trusting that at least Doggett or Reyes has flashed a badge by now to someone, and searches the school room by room.

“He’s not here,” Mulder says to the agents that trail after him.  “He knew what was coming.”

“Where could he go?” Agent Reyes asks.

Mulder shakes his head and pushes open the back exit.  He squints out at the desert again and then looks down at the ground.  There are footprints in the dirt, two sets of shoes, tennis shoes and what looks like high-heeled boots.  The imprints are clean at first, even steps out towards the open desert, but they soon grow messier and more chaotic.  Mulder follows the tracks, slowly at first, and then picking up speed.

“Agent Mulder!”  Agent Doggett calls after him.

Mulder doesn’t stop.  He runs alongside the fading footprints and doesn’t have to look back to know Agent Doggett is behind him.  Through the desert brush and tumbleweeds, he spots something in the distance, taking shape the closer he gets.  He sees what looks like Scully, dragging a stumbling Gibson Praise behind her, marching defiantly towards the edge of a cliff.  Agent Doggett must see what he sees at the same time, because he calls her name.

“Agent Scully!”

Scully doesn’t slow or stop or acknowledge Agent Doggett’s call to her.  Gibson is resisting her pull as best he can, but she’s relentless in her hold.  Mulder stops in his tracks about twenty feet away and puts an arm out to stop Agent Doggett as well.  He didn’t notice Agent Reyes behind them, who skids to a stop on the other side of Mulder.

“Agent Scully, stop right there!”  Agent Doggett shouts.

Scully finally pauses and looks towards them.  There’s something cold and dead in her eyes.  She’s unmoved by the boy struggling in her grip and her hold on him is effortless.  She blinks slowly as though she’s studying the three agents.  Mulder can hear Gibson wheezing, trying to say something.

“Sssnoter,” Gibson croaks, staring at Mulder with wide, fearful eyes.

“Sssnoter,” Mulder murmurs to himself, repeating it and forming the shape of the words with his mouth.  “Sssnoter.  Snot ter.  Snot her.  It’s not her!  It’s not her!”

Instinctually, Mulder moves his hand to his hip to reach for his weapon, only remembering that his gun was taken from him by Skinner before they left Oregon.  Agent Doggett, following Mulder’s lead, draws his weapon and Agent Reyes follows.

“Let him go!” Mulder yells.

“Hands in the air,” Agent Doggett orders.

The Scully imposter still looks unmoved, but she releases Gibson, who falls to his knees and starts to crawl away.  Agent Reyes breaks away from Mulder and Agent Doggett, her gun still pointed at Scully, and steps to the side to where Gibson is crawling.

“I’m not gonna ask you again, put your hands in the air!”  Agent Doggett takes aim, ready to fire.

“Don’t shoot unless you can hit the base of the neck,” Mulder says to him.

“What?”

Agent Reyes has knelt to pull Gibson out of harm’s way and Mulder moves behind Agent Doggett as he stalks forward.  The Scully imposter cocks her head to the side and then almost with a shrug, turns and steps off the edge of the cliff.

“No!”  Mulder screams, knowing full well it isn’t Scully who’s just fallen, but it looks like her, and he knows it’s an image he’ll never be able to shake.  He stands rooted to his spot while Agent Doggett runs to the drop site and peers over the edge.

There’s the sound of activity surrounding him, of Skinner rushing past to join Agent Doggett, of members of the task force trying to help Agent Reyes with Gibson, of Agent Doggett shouting orders to people, but it all blends into a cacophony.  It’s Skinner that breaks the spell by pulling Mulder to the side and asking him what happened.

“It was a bounty hunter,” Mulder says.  “They’re after Gibson.”

“Why?” Skinner asks.

“I don’t know.  He needs protection.”

“He needs a hospital.  They think his leg might be broken.”

“Someone’s got to stay with him.”

“Are you asking me?”

“You’re the only one with any idea of what we’re dealing with here.”  Mulder looks towards Agent Doggett, who’s organizing a team to head down into the canyon and retrieve the body of the Scully imposter.  “I don’t trust anyone else at the moment.”

“What will you do?”

“Keep searching.”

Skinner looks away, contemplative.  He finally nods once, but doesn’t say anything to Mulder before he walks away.  Mulder watches as he lifts Gibson into his arms and orders another agent to get to one of the SUVs to go to the hospital.  No one but Agent Reyes notices when Mulder heads further out into the desert.

*****

Mulder has been walking for over an hour.  He’s been feeling lethargic for awhile, his throat is dry and he has a headache.  He hears Scully in his head, can’t even leave you for a day, Mulder, and you’ve gotten yourself dehydrated.  He stops and hunches over, his hands on his knees.  The sun has gotten low and the air has cooled somewhat, but he’s still hot all over.  Dirty sweat has dried on his skin, making him itch.

Even in the middle of the desert, he has the feeling of being watched.  Several times, he’s paused to search all sides of the vast landscape, but it’s hard to see through the brush and cactus.  He’s completely alone save for the few lizards he’s passed, a low-flying vulture, and a scorpion he nearly stepped on from not being attentive enough.  It only now starts to occur to him that he could die out here and no one would know.  He wonders if there’s anyone left to care at this point.

He hears a noise he can’t identify close by and he goes still, immediately fearing a snake of some kind.  When he finally dares to glance over, he’s more relieved than he cares to let on seeing Agent Reyes approaching.  He straightens and sways a little on his feet.

“Have you been following me?” Mulder asks.  He notices a canteen at Agent Reyes’ hip and unconsciously lips his chapped lips.

“Water?” she asks.

“Please.”

Agent Reyes pulls the strap holding the canteen over her head and hands it to Mulder.  His grip is almost too weak to unscrew the cap and he fights the urge to gulp at the water.  Slowly, Scully’s voice reminds him.  Small sips, Mulder.

“I grew up in New Mexico,” she says.  “Most parents probably tell their kids never to talk to strangers.  Mine told me never to go into the desert alone.”

He coughs on a sip of water and screws the cap back on the canteen before he hands it back to her.  “Yeah, well…”

“What exactly are we looking for?”

“Aircraft.  A force field.”  He shrugs.  “You don’t really find it, it finds you.”

“What happened back there on the cliff?”

“That wasn’t Scully.”

“Then who was it?”

“Not who.  It.”

“It looked like Agent Scully.”

“It can look like whoever it wants.”  

Mulder turns away from Agent Reyes and looks out into the grey nothingness.  There’s an orange glow behind the mountains in the distance.  It will be pitch black soon.  He wasn’t thinking earlier.

“Agent Mulder?”  Agent Reyes asks.  “If that wasn’t Agent Scully, who was it?”

“An alien.”

“How did you know?”

Mulder hesitates.  He isn’t sure of how much he should tell Agent Reyes.  He doesn’t know that he can trust her, but there doesn’t seem to be much of a point in being discreet now.  Keeping quiet certainly won’t bring Scully back.

“Gibson Praise is part alien,” he says.  “At least, that’s what I think.  He knows what they’re thinking.  He knows what all of us are thinking, actually.  We should head back.  It’s getting dark.”

Agent Reyes cups her hand at Mulder’s elbow when he walks one way and pulls him in a slightly different direction without comment.  He follows her, sensing that her confidence comes from experience.  When it starts to get darker, she pulls a flashlight out from her pocket and points it at the ground in front of their feet.  After some time of silence, she speaks.

“I first met Agent Doggett about eight years ago,” she says.  He was NYPD at the time.  Did you know that?”

“I don't know anything about Agent Doggett,” he answers.

“He was a suspect at one point for the murder of his son.”

“That's...that's awful.”

“Yes.  Luke was seven.  Agent Doggett was cleared very early on.  I was in the New York City field office at the time and I was on the investigation.”

“What happened?”

“Stranger abduction, we think.  Never made an arrest.”

Mulder quietly contemplates this bit of information.  He wonders what Agent Doggett was like as a cop.  He wonders if that incident in his life propelled him into joining the FBI.  If Agent Doggett was also there for a personal cause.

“I only tell you this so that you'll know that Agent Doggett is on your side,” she says.  “He’s been in your shoes.”

“Scully isn’t dead.”

“It’s about loss, Agent Mulder.  He knows what it’s like.  And I think he must have felt a particular way about this case to call me in on it.  He doesn’t keep in touch.  I’m sure I remind him of Luke, and why we met.  He will call though, if he needs the help.  He’s here to help.”

“Like I told you before, you can’t help me if you don’t believe me.”

“And like I told you, I never said I didn’t.”

“Wait,” Mulder whispers, putting his arm out and catching Agent Reyes’ wrist to stop her.  “Do you see that?”

In the sky up ahead is a light, slowly moving closer, growing larger.  He thought at first it might be a shooting star, but it’s not falling across the sky, it’s heading towards them.

“I see it,” Agent Reyes says.  “What is it?”

“I’m not sure.”  

Mulder steps ahead and holds his arm up over his head to block the light from his eyes.  His heart pounds with hopeful anticipation, but it soon becomes apparent what’s approaching them is a helicopter.  He deflates a little and drops his arm as he turns to Agent Reyes.  There’s a look of deep sympathy in her eyes when he looks at her.

The helicopter descends and Agent Doggett hops out, beckoning to the two of them.  Agent Reyes comes forward and pauses next to Mulder.  She doesn’t say anything, let’s him make the decision to cooperate and follow her, which he does.  She gets into the helicopter and he pulls himself inside as well, Agent Doggett behind them both.

“We didn’t recover a body from the bottom of the canyon,” Agent Doggett shouts over the noise of the helicopter.  “And we haven’t been able to reach AD Skinner.”

“When was the last time you spoke to him?” Mulder asks.

“As he was putting the boy in the SUV.  I’ve got men searching the hospital now, but they can’t find him.”

“Can we land there?”

“Guess we’ll find out.”

*****

The hospital seems to be even smaller than the school, and equally as quiet.  The only staff is a doctor and a night nurse and a janitor.  One of the task force agents meets the helicopter as it lands on the highway and drives them across the main road to the building.  Agent Shaffer, who drove Skinner and Gibson to the hospital, is posted outside of Gibson’s room on watch.

“Sir,” Agent Shaffer says to Agent Doggett as the trio approaches Gibson’s room.

“You were the last to see AD Skinner?”  Agent Doggett asks him.

“I entered the hospital with AD Skinner and the boy,” he confirms.  “AD Skinner hasn’t been seen since leaving this room to take a phone call approximately half an hour ago.”

“Any idea who that phone call was from?”  Agent Doggett asks.

“No, Sir.”

“He wouldn’t leave,” Mulder says.  “He’s still here.”

“So, we’ll do another search,” Agent Reyes says.

“I want to talk to Gibson,” Mulder says.

Agent Doggett seems to mull the request over, his piercing blue eyes staring hard at Mulder.  He finally nods once and turns to Agent Shaffer.  “No one enters or leaves this room,” he says, glancing at Mulder.  “You got that?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Monica, you’ll search with me.”

Mulder slips into Gibson’s room and watches through the small window beside the door as Agents Doggett and Reyes head down the hall.  Agent Shaffer blocks the door with his body and assumes a crossed-arm pose.  Mulder rolls his eyes a little as he turns around.  Gibson is lying in a hospital bed that makes him look even smaller than he is, his leg propped up in a fresh white cast, eyes closed.

“Gibson?” Mulder says, moving closer to the hospital bed.  He can tell the boy isn’t sleeping, but feigning.

Gibson opens his eyes.  “I don’t know where Agent Scully is,” he says.

“I wasn’t...nevermind, you’d know I’m lying.”

“I know they have her.  But, I don’t know where.”

“Do you know if she’s close?”

“I’m sorry Agent Mulder, I can’t tell you anything.”

“Can you tell me what they want with you?”

“They want what anyone wants, to study me, keep me like a lab rat, cut me open, kill me if they have to.”

“Gibson, no one wants...you’re not a lab rat.”

“Sure.  The only reason you’re in here is because she’s gone.”

“Yes, I want to find Agent Scully, but I want to protect you too, Gibson.”

“You know, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

“I’m certifiable, Gibson.”

Gibson snorts, but it isn’t with humor, it’s with derision.  He shakes his head a little and looks away.  Mulder pulls a plastic chair over to the side of the bed and sits down.  He’s starting to feel the effects of the lack of sleep, food, and water on his body.  He still has the headache that started in the desert and now his bloodshot eyes are starting to feel dry and irritated.

Suddenly, Gibson turns his head again, sharply, like he was startled by a noise.  He sits up and Mulder straightens, turning his head in the direction Gibson is staring.  The boy is listening to something, Mulder’s sure of it.

“What is it?” Mulder asks.

“It’s coming,” Gibson answers.

Mulder looks around the room for a place to hide.  The window is too small to climb out of.  The cupboards next to the bed are too narrow.  It’s too late anyway, the door opens and Skinner walks in.  Behind him, Mulder sees Agent Shaffer, slumped on the floor.  He pulls Gibson from the bed and stands in front of him, backing up slowly as Gibson hobbles behind him on his cast.

“Agent Doggett!”  Mulder yells.  “Agent Reyes!”

The thing that’s posing as Skinner moves slowly, but purposefully towards Mulder.  Mulder stands his ground and blocks the thing from reaching Gibson.  The imposter reaches out and grabs Mulder by the throat.  Mulder scratches ineffectually at the hand choking him.

“Stop,” Mulder wheezes, just before he’s lifted into the air by his neck and tossed to the side.  He hits his head and his shoulder.  There’s an explosion of pain throughout his entire body.  He manages to stand, though his knees are shaking and he’s seeing double.

“What the hell is this?” Agent Doggett shouts, rushing into the room with his gun drawn.  “Get away from the boy!”

“Base of the neck,” Mulder croaks, losing his balance and stumbling against the cupboards.  

It’s Agent Reyes that fires, her aim remarkably accurate.  The bullet hole oozes a sizzling green sludge.  The body falls and moments later, begins to liquify.  Agent Doggett stands perplexed, a look of shock and horror on his face.  Gibson is huddled against the wall, inching away to escape the toxic blood that pools closer to his feet.

“John, the boy,” Agent Reyes says.

Doggett holsters his weapon and rushes over to Gibson, stepping over the liquid corpse to escort the boy to a safer place.  Agent Reyes goes to Mulder, who has lost the ability to stand and has slumped against the side of the bed.

“It can look like whoever it wants to,” she says.  “Isn’t that what you said?”

Mulder nods and his throat tightens with a surge of nausea.  

“We just found AD Skinner in a storage closet,” she continues.  “He was unconscious, but alive.”

Mulder coughs and retches bile.

“We need a medic in here!” she shouts.

Mulder loses consciousness.

*****

Chapter 3, Day 5:

The hospital wants to keep Mulder longer, but he refuses any more treatment.  He has a mild concussion and bruised trachea, but nothing serious.  He thought he may have fractured his shoulder, but his x-rays were clear.  He’s still sore and his wrist aches from the saline IV used to treat his dehydration, but he feels well enough to travel.  Besides, Skinner was released the previous day and it will be easier to travel back to DC together.

He sleeps better on the flight than he has in the past few days.  There’s no one waking him up every two hours to check his vitals.  He misses both beverage carts and meal service, but he doesn’t care.  When they land, he realizes that Scully’s car is the one in long-term parking and he doesn’t have her keys.  He has a set at home.  He can pick up the car later.  He takes a taxi to his apartment.

The bed is still rumpled and messy.  Scully had actually admonished him for leaving it that way the morning they went to Bellefleur.  This was after she'd woken him before the alarm had gone off with her fingers trailing down his chest and her hand slipping inside his boxers.  He'd feigned indignation at having been pulled from sleep fifteen minutes before he had to be and she pretended to let him pin her down as penitence.  She wore a slow, easy smile as he moved inside her and the alarm later punctured the leftover euphoria.

Mulder touches the pillow on the left side of the bed which still bears the indentation of her head.  He's sure if he looks, he could probably find a strand or two of her hair.  Her underwear, pulled off and kicked from her restless legs, peeks out from under the crumpled sheets.

Eventually, he’ll have to do simple things like change his sheets and throw out the soy milk inside his refrigerator that only she uses.  He’ll have to see her shampoo and conditioner in his shower and either resist the urge to close his eyes and remember what her hair smells like, or give in to the temptation.  He’ll have to find the little items she’s left around his apartment like a trail of bedcrumbs marking her existence in his life.  There will be a bobby pin on the floor next to the toilet in the bathroom.  There will be the coffee mug with her lipstick on the rim in the sink.  There will be the extra toothbrush in the cupholder.  There will be the balled up pantyhose under his bed that she was going to throw out because of the run in the calf when they were both too hasty to get her out of them.

Mulder can’t face any of that right now.  He’s too tired and he still doesn’t want to believe she’s not just away for the weekend, but coming home soon.  He closes the door to his bedroom and spends the rest of the night on the couch, in the dark.  He doesn't sleep.

*****

Chapter 4, Day 6:

Mulder’s shoulder is still sore as he dresses for work.  Skinner called him early in the morning and let him know he had a meeting with Kersh at nine and not to be late.  He wonders if he’s getting fired.  He checks in with the gunmen before he leaves, but they tell him things have been quiet.  No reports of any activity at all.

Kersh’s secretary looks at Mulder with curiosity while she announces his arrival.  He’s early, for once, and he wishes he’d been late.  

“Can I get you anything, Agent Mulder?” she asks, sweetly.

“No.”

“Are you feeling better?”

“I’m fine.”

He knows this woman is only pretending to care when all she wants is for some gossip she can spread around the secretarial pool.  She’s never liked him, and she’s certainly made it clear she’s never liked Scully.  The feeling is mutual on both their behalves.

Agent Doggett arrives and looks just as surprised to see Mulder as Mulder is to see him.  He takes a seat next to Mulder on the couch with nothing more than a nod to acknowledge his presence.  Kersh finally calls them both in a few minutes later.  He doesn’t offer either of them a chair in his office, so they both stand in front of his desk.

“I read your report, Agent Doggett,” Kersh says, leaning back in his chair and folding his hands together with an air of smug superiority.  “I have to say I’m disappointed.”

“Sir?”  Agent Doggett’s expression doesn’t change, but Mulder can tell he’s bewildered.  This experience of being called to the carpet must be new to him.

“I sent you to Oregon to find a missing Agent and to explain the disappearance of not just her, but fourteen individuals.  I gave you free rein to select a task force to take with you, and you come back here with stories of shape shifters and psychic children.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Mulder can see Agent Doggett clench his jaw.  He’s irritated, but he won’t argue, good soldier that he is.  

“That’s something I expect from Agent Mulder,” Kersh says.  “Not from you, John.  I thought you were more level-headed.”

“What’s in my report is the truth,” Agent Doggett says.  “I’m sorry if that’s not what you want to hear.”

At least he has integrity, Mulder thinks.

“And if you need witnesses to corroborate,” Agent Doggett continues.  “Agent Reyes, Agent Shaffer, AD Skinner, and at least ten other agents have submitted their reports on the incidents in Bellefleur and Flemington.”

“That’s all, John.”

“And the fact remains, the case of the missing fourteen is still active.  This is only a preliminary report.  With time-”

“Not for you, John.  Effective immediately, you’ve been reassigned to the x-files division as senior investigator.”

“Sir?”

“That’s all.  You’re both dismissed.”

Mulder can tell Agent Doggett wants to say more, but he clenches his jaw shut and stares at Kersh with the same kind of incredulous contempt Mulder’s had for the man for nearly two years.  And for once, the brunt of Kersh’s scorn isn’t directed at him.  Without having even said a word, Mulder walks out of the office and hopes Agent Doggett is smart enough to follow.

At the elevators, Agent Doggett grabs Mulder’s arm, the same expression of bewilderment on his face that he’d had in the hospital watching the bounty hunter dissolve into a puddle.  Mulder could almost feel bad for him, but not quite.

“What the hell just happened?”  Agent Doggett asks.

“I was punished for being me,” Mulder answers.  “You were punished for doing your job.”

The elevator opens, but Agent Doggett doesn’t follow Mulder inside.  Mulder doesn’t head for the basement though, he presses the button for the parking garage.

*****

Mulder has done a lot of difficult things in his life, but driving to Mrs. Scully’s house to tell her that her daughter is missing, again, is right up there in the top ten list of difficult things he’s done.  Part of him wishes Mrs. Scully won’t be home so that he doesn’t have to go through it, but on the other hand, he would prefer getting it done with as soon as possible.  Procrastinating won’t change the situation.

Mrs. Scully doesn’t look too surprised to see him at her door in the middle of the afternoon on a Thursday.  She looks as weary as he feels, which means, someone has already told her what’s happened.  She lets Mulder in anyway and asks if he’d like to take a seat in the dining room, but doesn’t offer him anything to drink or cookies or freshly baked muffins, as she’s been known to do in the past.

“I wanted to come in person to tell you,” Mulder says, trying but unable to look Mrs. Scully in the eye.  

“I already know,” she answers.  There’s coldness in her voice.  “Your boss, Mr. Skinner, informed me.”

“I’m doing everything I can.”

“Yes.  I’m sure you probably are.”

“Whatever I find, I’ll let you know every step of the way.”

“No.”  Mrs. Scully shakes her head and he finally looks at her in surprise.  

“No?”

Mrs. Scully gets up from her chair and wraps her arms around her middle, slowly making her way to the window that overlooks the backyard.  She gazes out at the lawn and speaks to the window.  Mulder watches her reflection.

“I know there’s a lot that Dana hasn’t told me,” she says.  “About the work you do and the danger you’ve been in.  But, what she has made abundantly clear to me, is that she doesn’t want me to know or to be involved or share my opinions on the matter.  And so she’s gone again?  Well, she chose to stay when I asked her not to.  Just as she chose not to tell me about her illness or her gunshot wound or probably countless things I still know nothing about.  I’ve always had to find out from a hospital, or from you, or from the FBI.  I asked Mr. Skinner to remove me as Dana’s personal contact.  I don’t want to know these things anymore, Fox.  I don’t want you to call me to tell me what you know or don’t know.”

Mulder is stunned.  He’s always thought of Margaret Scully as a pillar of strength.  He was unaware of the toll their work had taken on her.  Scully never made any indication that there was turmoil between her and her mother, but clearly there was.

“I don’t think she ever meant to exclude you,” he says.

“Yes.  She meant to exclude me.  Dana thinks about the consequences of every action she takes.  I’m sure you know that.”

He does know that.  He nods unconsciously, but hopes Mrs. Scully hasn’t seen him in the reflection.  He can see her toying with the cross she wears at her neck, just like Scully does when she’s anxious or deep in thought.  He decides right then, that he’s not going to tell Mrs. Scully about the pregnancy, or about his relationship with Scully.  He was going to, but now it feels like it would be throwing salt into an open wound.

The silence tells Mulder the conversation is finished.  He gets up to leave, but hesitates, shoves his hands into his pockets.  Mrs. Scully turns and gives him a brief glance before she walks away.  

“You can let yourself out, Fox,” she says.

“I will find her,” he answers.

“If you do, you have her call me.”

Mulder sees himself out, but sits in his car in front of Mrs. Scully’s house for quite awhile, hoping that maybe she’ll change her mind, but she doesn’t come out.  She is as stubborn as her daughter.

*****

Chapter 5, Day 12 and 13:

Agent Doggett has insisted on spending a week in the office getting to know the x-files, if he’s to be the senior agent.  Mulder tells him to suit himself and spends his time searching message boards and underground networks the gunmen have contact with for patterns in UFO sightings.  He also spends time checking into every single John Doe and Jane Doe intake notification that comes through from the missing persons databank supplied by national hospitals.  There are more of them than he would have thought, and also less than he imagined.

Agent Reyes, to his surprise, contacts him almost immediately upon his return to the office.  She lets him know her AD has given her permission to continue working on the missing fourteen in some capacity and that she will provide him with updates when she can.  He has the gunmen set up an encrypted email for her to use.  The only information she has so far is related to background information on the abductees.  Nothing that’s going to help find them.

Skinner issues their first case.  It has the appearance of routine homicide, which Mulder can tell leaves Agent Doggett feeling rather relieved.  As Mulder reads the file, he comes to the conclusion it’s anything but routine homicide.  The victims have human bite marks with secretions of anti-coagulants that only exist in bat saliva.  It’s obvious what they’re dealing with is a half-man, half-bat.

Batboy, Mulder?  Scully’s voice says in his head.  Seriously?  You picking up cases from the Weekly World News again?

Agent Doggett doesn’t comment much about Mulder’s theory.  It isn’t hard for Mulder to imagine John Doggett as a cop.  He thinks the man would be so much more comfortable in a uniform, patrolling streets and keeping order.  Agent Doggett is very by the book.  Black is black and white is white.  A person is good, or they are bad.  A man is a man and a bat is a bat.  No grey areas.

By chance, Agent Doggett discovers a newspaper article that helps put the pieces of the puzzle together.  They track down surviving members of a hunting party from fifty years ago who were written up for the killing of a creature the county coroner could only describe as not quite a man, not quite a bat.  Shortly thereafter, the coroner was killed and the creature disappeared.

Mulder and Agent Doggett split up to interview the men they track down.  During Mulder’s interview, the creature appears and attacks both Mulder and the man he’s interviewing.  Mulder manages to get a shot in before he’s knocked down and Agent Doggett arrives just in time to get in a few more shots, but ultimately, the creature gets away.

“What the hell am I going to put in my report?” Agent Doggett asks on their way out of Idaho.

“What you saw, what you did, what you stopped,” Mulder answers.

“I don’t know what I saw.  I sure as hell don’t know what I stopped.”

At least he didn’t tell me there was a more rational, scientific explanation for it, Mulder thinks.

*****

Chapter 6, Day 17:

Agent Reyes calls Mulder, not about Scully or the missing fourteen, but to ask his advice on a case that’s come to her way.  She’s currently in Utah, where a young hitchhiker was found murdered, stoned to death, possibly as the result of some sort of cultish ritual, however the strangest thing was, that the body showed signs of decay usually attributed to the elderly.  She mentions the word ‘glycoprotein’ and he knows it sounds familiar to him.  He tells her he’ll check his files and get back to her.

When Mulder can’t reach Agent Reyes on her cell phone a few hours later, he tries the local sheriff’s office, but they tell him Agent Reyes never showed up.  He tells Agent Doggett he has an errand to run and heads to the airport.  He catches the first flight out to Las Vegas, rents a car, and drives over to the sheriff’s office in Utah with a x-file on a stoning death that’s similar to the hitchhiker’s case.  Agent Reyes is still nowhere to be found.

Thinking it might be possible that she’s had a breakdown on the road somewhere, Mulder sets off again in the area he thinks she might have traveled.  Dusk comes quickly, and he stops at a gas station to question the attendant, and though the man says no, he hasn’t seen a dark-haired FBI lady come through here, Mulder spots a slightly dusty Ford Taurus parked at the side of the station with a Nevada license plate.  He thanks the man, hides his car back down the road a bit, and then sneaks over to a cluster of clapboard houses beyond the gas station.

He hears muffled screams as he approaches one of the houses, and he draws his weapon and crouches low.  He cautiously peeks into a window and sees a group of people, at least ten, kneeling together in a circle.  Whatever they’re murmuring is so monotonous, that it just sounds like a low hum.  Mulder moves to the next window at the back of the house and spots Agent Reyes, gagged and tied to a headboard on a sagging mattress.  Her back is exposed and she writhes in pain as her spine ripples in an unnatural way.  She screams around her gag.

There isn’t a lot of time to stop and think.  His priority is getting Agent Reyes out of harm’s way.  He holsters his gun and slowly pushes the window open, trying to be as quiet as he can.  Agent Reyes turns her head to the sound.  Her eyes are wide and full of panic.  Mulder puts his finger to his lips to remind her to stay quiet, and hoists himself through the window.

Swiftly, with the aid of a pocket knife, Mulder cuts through the binding on Agent Reyes’ wrists.  He pulls the gag out of her mouth and helps her sit up.  She’s wincing and moaning and actually shoves the gag back in her mouth to scream in pain when Mulder tries to get her to stand.

Mulder stops to regroup.  He moves to the door, leaving Agent Reyes where she sits on the bed, and puts his ear against it to listen.  The group in the next room is still in prayer, or whatever it is they’re doing.  The low hum comes back at him through the door.  He doesn’t think he’ll be able to get Agent Reyes through the window, but he’s not going to be able to sneak her past ten people either.

There’s an oil lamp on a bedside table, flame low.  Mulder tests it by turning the flame up a little and then down again.  He crouches in front of Agent Reyes and squeezes her arms.  She’s panting hard and sweating, but she looks at him.

“Can you walk with my help?” he asks.

Agent Reyes shakes her head and shrugs, but then she nods slightly.  Mulder doesn’t wait for her to change her mind, but pulls her up and slings her arm over his shoulder.  She’s still hunched, and he has to lower himself a little, but she walks with him as he takes most of her weight.  He has to let go of her arm to grab the oil lamp, but he keeps one arm around her waist and then whispers to her to open the door.

After a few heavy breaths, Agent Reyes pulls the door open and without hesitating, Mulder throws the oil lamp out towards the front room.  The glass shatters and there is shrieking and yelling behind him as he hurries in the other direction towards a door at the back of the house.  He kicks it open and rushes down the stairs.  Tucked into his side, Agent Reyes is sobbing and growling.  She can’t keep up and Mulder knows they’ll never make it to his car.

There are people appearing out of nowhere on all sides of them.  If he doesn’t act fast, they’ll be surrounded.  He drags Agent Reyes into a barn where he finds an abandoned bus.  He locks them inside, deposits Agent Reyes onto one of the bus seats, and turns the key in the ignition, but it won’t start.

“Get it out of me,” Agent Reyes moans, scraping at the back of her neck with both hands.  She slides out of the seat into the center aisle of the bus and starts crawling to the back.  “Oh God, get it out of me.”

Mulder steps over Agent Reyes and pulls her up so that she’s kneeling in the aisle and she drapes herself across one of the seats as she moans.  Her neck bulges and pulsates and she screams.

Outside of the bus, a hand slaps at the window where they’re at, then another, and another, until the bus is rocking from the force of all the hands banging on the side and on the glass.  Agent Reyes begs Mulder to kill her.  To please, oh God, just kill her.  He can only ask himself, what would Scully do?

“Hold on, Reyes,” Mulder says, flipping open his pocket knife.  “Just hold on.”

Quickly, so he can’t talk himself out of it, Mulder grasps the back of Reyes’ head and pushes her face down into the seat.  He makes a slice in her neck with the pocket knife, just above the spot where it’s bulging, and screws up his face before he pushes his fingers under her open skin.  He doesn’t know how he accomplishes it, but he manages to pull a pink, squirming slug out of Reyes’ neck, tossing it onto the floor and kicking it away from them as Reyes sags against the seat.

The slug starts wiggling its way down the aisle and Mulder pulls his gun and shoots it.  As soon the slug stops twitching, so does the banging on the side of the bus.  The people outside stand mute and stunned and make no move towards them when Mulder hoists a limp and exhausted Reyes back to his side and drags her from the bus.  The back of her tank top is covered with blood and it seeps down her back and soaks Mulder’s jacket as well.

If it was Scully that was stumbling beside him, he would pick her up and carry her to the car, but he can’t carry Reyes.  He tries to encourage her by telling her they��re almost there, almost there, every step they take, but she can barely stand and she’s losing blood.  He’s momentarily blinded by a pair of headlights that swing in their direction and he tightens his grip on Reyes and shifts his hip, ready to pull his weapon if he needs to.

The car lurches to a stop and the door swings open.  It’s too dark for Mulder to clearly see the man that springs out, but he can see his silhouette.  Strangely, it looks like Agent Doggett to him.

“Agent Mulder!”

It sounds like Agent Doggett too.  Reyes lifts her head at the sound of his voice and murmurs his name.  And then Agent Doggett is beside them, taking Reyes from Mulder and lifting her up in his arms as she collapses.

“We need to get her to a hospital,” Mulder says.

They rush Reyes to the car and Agent Doggett puts her in the back seat.  Mulder climbs in behind her and tries to staunch the blood flow by tearing a strip of his shirt off and pressing it to her neck while Agent Doggett drives.

“You want to do me a favor, Agent Mulder,” Agent Doggett says.  “The next time you want to run an errand in Utah or wherever the hell else isn't the same block as the Hoover building, you want to let me know?”

“How did you find us?” Mulder asks.

“The sheriff you spoke to called the office after you left and wanted to let you know that he sent a deputy out along the highway to look for Agent Reyes, but didn't find her.”

“Obviously that deputy did a piss poor job of looking.”

“You should've had back up.  You both should've.”

“That's why she was headed to the sheriff’s office.”

“Yeah?  What's your excuse?”

Mulder meets Agent Doggett’s gaze in the rear view mirror and then looks away, back down at the blood-soaked cloth under his hand.  The dome light in the car makes the blood look darker than it is.

“Like it or not,” Agent Doggett says.  “We’re partners.”

Scully is my partner, Mulder thinks.  You're temporary.

*****

Chapter 7, Day 19:

Every day that Mulder can, he’s stops by Scully’s apartment on his way home.  He’s already met with the super and told the landlord that Scully would be away indefinitely, and that he would take care of the rent and be picking up her mail.  He’s been particularly concerned about one of the plants in her kitchen window.  He waters it and he gives it pep talks, but the leaves keep getting more and more shriveled.

It’s obviously dead now.  There is nothing left but bare, brown stems.  All the leaves have fallen off and litter the inside of the pot.  He sits with it at the kitchen table and puts his head down.  What good is he?  It hasn’t even been three weeks and he can’t even keep one of her plants alive.  

He thinks about Scully’s pregnancy as he presses his thumb into the damp soil inside the pot.  He wonders why Scully asked him to father her child when she wanted to try in vitro.  He said yes to her, but not because he wanted a child, he actually didn’t, but he said yes because he would do anything for her.  Maybe she knew that, and maybe that’s why.  He was relieved, at the time, when it didn’t work, but also sad for her.

Now, he thinks how unfair it is that he would like nothing more than to be sitting with her and reading pregnancy books, rubbing her feet, holding her hair back during morning sickness, rushing out in the middle of the night for pickles and ice cream, shopping for cribs and car seats, or arguing about baby names.  How unfair that when he doesn’t just want a baby for her, but for him and for them, it’s taken away.   They’d had a discussion about fate a few months ago and about choice and all paths leading to one destination.  Maybe the universe is trying to tell him something.  After all, he can’t even keep a plant alive.

Mulder tips the potted plant over and pounds his fist into the dirt.

*****

Chapter 8, Day 32:

Mulder is doing everything he can possibly think of to do.  He’s got the gunmen broadening the scope on abductees, looking for more than just patterns, but trying to put himself ahead of another abduction by looking at hot spots of the past and clusters of activity.  Without a syndicate communicating with aliens though, he can’t do much more than work on hunches.  If it was possible to profile an alien, he would’ve done so a long time ago.

Cases come and go.  He doesn’t feel the same motivation he usually does to investigate.  He lets Agent Doggett lead and he follows, which is very unlike him.  He keeps his sarcasm and opinions to a minimum and maintains a superficial, arms-length kind of relationship with the guy.  He wouldn’t say he dislikes him, but he wouldn’t say he likes him either.

Reyes is the only person he talks to on a regular basis, aside from the gunmen.  She hasn’t found anything pertinent in the investigation of the missing fourteen, but he appreciates that she keeps him informed and she’s interested in his working theories whenever he’s out on a case.  All things considered, he wishes that she was his temporary partner instead of Agent Doggett.

They take a case involving a kidnapped child that returns ten years later as the same age he was when he was taken.  Initially, Mulder’s interest in the case is purely selfish.  He thinks it’s possible the boy might have been an abductee, but a lot of things don’t sit right with him once he meets the boy.  He can tell it rattles Agent Doggett, working on a kidnapping case.  He calls Reyes to join them on the investigation because he knows the boy isn’t what he seems to be, and he also knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that they’re on the verge of finding a dead child and putting to rest a ten year old mystery.  The family will soon have the closure Agent Doggett never had and he knows it will be hard.

The end of the case does hit Agent Doggett hard, but he takes it stoically and heads off by himself.  Mulder and Reyes are sitting in a diner near their motel when Agent Doggett returns and silently slides into the booth next to Reyes.  He keeps his eyes down and his hands are squeezed into loose fists on the table.

“Did you know about my son?” he asks.  

“Yeah,” Mulder answers.

“Have you been lookin’ into me?”

“No.”

“I told him, John,” Reyes says.

“Why the hell would you do that, Monica?  He’s my son.  Mine.”

“She was trying to tell me that I wasn’t alone in my suffering,” Mulder says.  “For some reason she thinks it’s important that I trust you.”

Agent Doggett snorts, clenches his fists for a moment and then relaxes them.  Reyes puts a hand on his back and they all sit in silence for awhile.  You’re a lucky man, Doggett, and you don’t even know it, Mulder thinks.  Then again, it took him seven years too long to realize what was right under his nose the whole time too.

*****

Chapter 9, Day 47:

Mulder has a fickle relationship with dreams.  They disrupt his sleep more often than not, but he sees value in them.  He once told Scully that he believed dreams were the answer to a question one hadn’t yet learned to ask.  He still believes it, even during the hardest of nights, he still believes that.

Since she was taken, Mulder’s dreams are exclusively about Scully.  Sometimes they’re happy dreams of happy times they had or that he wanted to have with her.  He dreams of flirting with her until she laughs more freely than she normally does.  He dreams of making love to her in other impossible places and scenarios.  But, he also dreams of what’s happening to her out there on the spaceship.  He dreams of her torture and her screams and her begging for him to help her.

He hasn’t slept in his bed since Scully disappeared.  He sleeps on his couch or at his desk or, on a few occasions, at the gunmen’s lair.  Once, and only once, he fell asleep on Scully’s couch and he had the sweetest dream about her he’s ever had.  They were making love under a canopy of shooting stars and she held his face and looked him in the eyes and asked him not to look away, not to look at the stars, but look at her.  So, he did.  As he held her gaze, he began to see the stars in her eyes and he realized, he never had to look elsewhere.  He cried when he woke up.

Mulder sits and listens to the gunmen give their little spiel on the history of the third eye and its significance.  It’s not new information to him, but he likes the way Frohike tells the story.  He’d actually asked the three to put together a presentation for him, with visual aids, that he could present to Doggett to explain what he thought was happening with their latest case, but they did such a good job with it, he asked them to show it to Doggett.  It all boils down to dreams and how their suspect has the ability to inflict his will upon others through when they’re asleep.  

“I see where you guys are going with this,” Doggett says.  “Tipet believes he opened his third eye.”

Mulder waits for the eye-rolling and the Mulder, you’re crazy, speech, but Doggett remains quiet and thoughtful.  The gunmen look to Mulder, as though also waiting for an argument that doesn’t come.  Byers continues with the presentation by moving on to the CIA’s experimentation with mind control portion.  Again, Doggett stays quiet and thoughtful.

“What if Tipet could invade his victim’s consciousness in their sleep?”  Doggett asks.  “That’s what you’re getting at here isn’t it?  I mean, that's why you'd be afraid to fall asleep, right?  If you thought your nightmares might come true?”

That’s not the only reason, Mulder thinks.

When Mulder and Doggett go to make their arrest of the suspect, Tipet, he tries to take his own life by slamming his head into a table saw.  Despite seeming receptive to Mulder’s theory, Doggett still believes it was an act to avoid arrest and not to obliterate the third eye.

Before Mulder goes home, he stops at Scully’s to collect the mail.  Her apartment is filled with a strange, blue glow.  The hair on the back of his neck stands up and he get the feeling he’s not alone.  He goes to reach for his weapon, but discovers there’s an axe in his hand and he’s not sure why.  He creeps down the hall and pushes open the bedroom door.

Scully is asleep in her bed, a slice of moonlight across her cheek.  He’s angry that she came back and didn’t even bother to tell him.  He goes up to the side of the bed and stares down at her, breathing heavily.  He raises the axe, ready to bring it down on Scully’s head, but he’s startled awake by a touch on his shoulder.

“You sleepin’ in the office these days?” Doggett asks.

Mulder blinks and shakes his head to clear the haze of sleep away.  His heart is pounding like he’d just run a mile.  The phone rings and he picks it up on reflex, mumbling a gravelly hello into the receiver.  It’s the agent posted at the hospital where Tipet was taken, wanting him to know that Tipet died just minutes ago of his injuries.  Mulder thanks him, hangs up, and gives Doggett the update.

“I’m gonna go splash some water on my face,” Mulder says.

In the bathroom, Mulder brings cold water up to his face and holds his hands against his cheeks.  He looks up at his reflection and rubs his dripping wet thumb into the space between his brows for a moment and then looks again.  He hasn’t realized just how angry he is with Scully for being taken until now.

*****

Chapter 10, Day 75:

The body of one of the missing fourteen is found by a hiker in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, approximately 2,400 miles from Bellefleur.  The coroner hasn’t made a determination on the cause of death, but puts the time to be roughly six to eight hours before discovery.  The crime scene was highly contaminated, and the forensic team sent out to collect evidence returns with next to nothing.

Reyes sends Mulder photos of the crime scene and of the body.  The wounds evidence nothing short of torture.  There are scars that look both old and new on the chest, abdomen, and face.  To Mulder, it looks as though someone attempted an autopsy on the person while they were still alive.  He has to leave the office to be sick.  

The gunmen don't find any chatter about UFO activity in the area, or even remotely nearby.  The channels are quiet and they’re no closer to finding Scully now than when they started.

*****

Chapter 11, Day 83:

The second body of the missing fourteen washes up on the beach at Gulf Shores, Alabama.  It’s ruled a drowning.  There is salt water in the lungs, which means that the victim was returned alive, though unfortunately, in the middle of the ocean.  This body has undergone a bit more decomposition, and the consensus is that, he was probably returned prior to when the first body was found.  The same scars are noted on the face, chest, and abdomen.

The gunmen are sorry to say there are still no reports of any activity that they can find.

*****

Chapter 12, Day 96:

Theresa Hoese is the first of the missing fourteen to be found alive, but barely.  She’s found by a family vacationing at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.  She’s unconscious and wrapped in a blanket.  The husband reports to police that there’s a woman off the side of the road with a head wound, bleeding from the nose, and he thinks she may have been hit by a car.

Before Mulder and Reyes make it to the hospital in Salt Lake City that Theresa was brought to, she disappears.  The intake nurse explains that a doctor from another hospital came by not more than an hour ago with transfer papers to take her to a facility in Boise.  They review footage from a security camera, but neither the man who took Theresa from the hospital, nor the man who loaded her into a waiting ambulance, is identifiable.

Two days later, Theresa Hoese walks into her parent’s home in Bellefleur as though nothing happened.  She remembers nothing about her experience, how long she was gone, how she ended up in Utah, or how she even got back home.  The last thing she says she remembers is putting her baby to bed.

*****

Chapter 13, Day 132:

One of the missing fourteen are found every seven to ten days for the next few weeks.  Out of seven abductees returned, three are found alive.  It doesn’t quite put the odds at 50/50, but it’s something to hope for.

Mulder studies the photos of the bodies and of the crime scenes day and night.  He isn’t very helpful to Doggett with the cases that come through the office, but Skinner turns a blind eye.  As long as he keeps his head down and off of Kersh’s radar, he’s allowed to pursue the investigation as much as he can from DC.  Reyes is extremely helpful, his eyes and ears in places he can’t go.

He notices something while studying the photos of the sites where victims were returned.  The same shoe print amongst the dozens that are catalogued comes up in four of the sites, not least of which, the three where the victims were found alive.  The pattern of the print is unique enough to be distinguishable from the rest, but ordinary enough not to be identifiable.  There are straight lines across the full length of the shoe and a circular stamp of some sort just off-center at the heel.  He wonders the bodies aren’t being returned so much as someone is placing them in these locations to be found.

*****

Chapter 14, Day 161:

Mrs. Scully calls Mulder and asks if he will come to the house.  He agrees without hesitation.  She doesn’t tell him what she wants, but it’s Scully’s birthday, so he thinks that might have something to do with it.  He’s been trying not to think too much about the date, but as it looms closer, it’s constantly on his mind.

He doesn’t feel as anxious knocking on Mrs. Scully’s door this time as he did before.  Now that the missing fourteen have been appearing so frequently, he’s been more hopeful than when they’d had nothing to work from.

“Hello, Fox,” Mrs. Scully says, pulling the door back to admit him into the house.

“It’s nice to see you,” Mulder says.

This time, Mrs. Scully directs him to sit with her in the front room.  He takes a seat in one of the chairs that frame the picture window and before she sits opposite him, she retrieves a manilla folder from the the coffee table and holds it on her lap.

“I need to know that I appreciate your dedication to Dana,” Mrs. Scully says.  “Through the years and now in this disappearance, I do appreciate your dedication.”

“Of course.”

“It’s been nearly six months.  I think it’s time that we all move on.”

“I can’t do that.”

“I need to move on, and Dana’s brothers need to move on.”

Mulder feels his skin grow clammy.  He’s afraid Mrs. Scully has done something rash.  “Look,” he says.  “You asked me not to share any part of the investigation with you, and I’ve respected that.”

“I know, Fox.  But, obviously Dana still isn’t here, so I think it’s time to put this behind us.”

“I disagree.”

“My son didn’t think I should call you.”

Bill, of course, Mulder thinks.

“But, I thought you at least deserved the courtesy,” Mrs. Scully continues.

“Courtesy of what, exactly?”

“I’ll be submitting papers to have Dana declared legally dead.”

“Please, don’t do that.”

“Fox, look at you.  You look like you haven’t slept.  You’ve lost weight.  When was the last time you had a hair cut?”

“I don’t know.”  Mulder rubs his sweaty palms against his knees.  He doesn’t need Mrs. Scully to point out how badly he looks.  He feels worse inside, so it doesn’t really matter.

“You can’t keep doing this to yourself.  Dana wouldn’t want you to.  You know that.”

Spanning a hand across his forehead, Mulder rubs at his temples and squeezes his eyes shut.  He feels awash with desperation.  He can’t let Mrs. Scully do this.  He keeps his hand over his face and his eyes closed as he begs for her to reconsider.

“Just give me until May,” he says.  “Please.”

“What difference will nine months make from six, Fox?”

“Seven abductees have been returned so far.”  He thinks he hears a slight gasp from Mrs. Scully, but she doesn’t reply.  “I have reason to believe that when Scully is returned, she will be of the last to come back.”

“Why?  How could you know that?”

“Scully was pregnant when she was taken.”

This time, he definitely hears a gasp come from Mrs. Scully and he takes his hand down from his face to look at her.  She has her fist at her mouth and it looks like she might be biting the side of her finger.  Her other hand moves to the chain at her neck and the folder of papers slips from her lap.  Mulder thinks that as long as he’s opening the door to revealing this information to Mrs. Scully, he might as well share all.

“It’s not something she kept from you,” he says.  “She only found out the morning we left for Oregon, and I didn’t even know until after she was taken.”

“She knew?”

“Yes, I think so.”

Mrs. Scully takes a deep breath over her fist and shakes her head slightly.

“We’d...been together for about four months.  But, about a year prior, I helped her attempt in vitro fertilization and we weren’t successful.”

“My God,” Mrs. Scully murmurs.  Her fingers work restlessly at the cross at her throat.

“I should have told you.  I wanted to tell you.”

“These people that have come back.  Have they told you where Dana is?  How to find her?”

Mulder pauses for a moment with his lips pursed.  Mrs. Scully must sense that he’s hesitating to choose his words carefully and she relaxes her wet gaze on his face.

“They’re dead, aren’t they?” she asks.

“No,” he says.  “Not all of them.  Three of the seven were found alive.”

“But, they can’t tell you where Dana is?”

“They can’t remember anything.”

Mrs. Scully nods and then folds her hands over her face for a few moments with her eyes closed.  She drops her hands, blinks open her eyes and then picks up the spilled envelope from the floor.

“I’ll give you until May,” she says.  “But, then I will be submitting these papers and next time, I won’t call you ahead of time.”

“Thank you.”

*****

Chapter 15, Day 169:

Reyes calls Mulder and asks him how quickly he can get to Montana.  She doesn’t tell him why, doesn’t want to say over the phone.  Doggett is in the hospital under a short quarantine from possible exposure to a biological agent.  With no one to make excuses to, he tells her he’ll be there right away.

When Mulder arrives in Helena, Reyes gives him the file of a suspect in custody who was arrested the night before for trespassing on a rancher’s property.  While the police were arresting the young man, another call came in from a rancher a few miles away that he’d found a body in a field on his property.  No body was recovered, but the neighbor of the rancher spotted two men coming out of the field shortly before the police arrived.

“The boy in custody, Richie Szalay, claims he was chasing a UFO and followed it onto the rancher’s property,” Reyes tells Mulder.  “He says his best friend was abducted in Oregon, just a few days before the others.”

“That’s true,” Mulder says, nodding.  “I know him.  Scully and I met Richie in Bellefleur a few days before the abduction.  Gary was already taken at that time.”

“I thought you’d be the best person to interrogate him.  He may not know anything about our missing fourteen, but he may still know something.”

“Hello again, Richie,” Mulder says as he enters the interrogation room.  “Do you remember me?”

Richie takes a moment and then nods.  “The FBI Agent.  Scully?”

“Scully’s my partner.  I’m Agent Mulder.”

“Oh, right.”

Mulder nods towards Reyes.  “You met Agent Reyes.  We want to ask you a few questions.”

“I didn’t kill anyone,” Richie says.  “I swear!”

“I believe you, Richie.  I just want to ask you a few questions.”

“You should be out there looking for Gary.  He’s been gone six months and no one’s done anything about it!”

“Believe me, Richie, I can tell you that’s not the case.”

Richie is momentarily subdued, but jittery.  His knee bounces constantly and he wrings his hands together under the table.  His dark brown hair is greasy and unkempt.  There are dark smudges under his eyes.  He looks older than his nineteen years.  Mulder feels sorry for him.  His desperation is palpable.

“You told the officers that picked you up you were chasing a UFO,” Mulder says.

“I’m not crazy.”

“No one thinks you’re crazy.”

“I thought you believed me about Gary.”

“I do believe you, Richie.”

“Agent Mulder and I are here to help you,” Reyes says.

Richie scrunches his face and shakes his head.  Mulder can tell Richie is as skeptical and distrusting as he is impatient.

“You can help us help you, Richie,” Mulder says.  “And you can start by telling me what you know about that UFO and how you found it.”

“Chat rooms, mostly.  I made friends with a few people who track that kind of stuff.  One of them is an abductee like Gary.  He wanted to help me find him.”

“Do you know how they get their information?”

“Sightings and stuff, I guess.”

“But, those would be after the fact,” Reyes says.  “You came to Montana because they told you a UFO would be here.  How did they know that?”

“I don’t know.  Algorithms?”

“What’s the name of the man who helped you?” Mulder asks.

Richie hesitates.  “I don’t know if I should...is he in trouble?”

“He’s not in trouble.  Neither are you.  You’re being let go with a fine for trespassing, but no charges are being pressed.  You’re talking to us of your own free will right now.”

“I can go?”

“You’re free to leave anytime.  I’d like it if you stayed for a bit to talk to us though.”

Richie is torn.  Mulder can see it in his face.  He takes advantage of Richie’s indecision and gets up from his chair to lean against the table in front of the boy.

“You want to help your friend,” Mulder says.  “I also want to help your friend, and the rest of the people who went missing in Oregon.”

“Is it true that half of them have already been returned?”

“Where did you hear that?”

“The man in the chat room.”  Richie pauses and he shifts his eyes back and forth between Mulder and Reyes.  “His screenname is Absalom.”

“Absalom?” Reyes asks, a look of recognition in her eyes when she looks up at Mulder.

“Yeah, I mean...that’s not really a name, you know?  It’s what he calls himself.  I don’t know his real name.”

By the way Reyes is shifting in her seat, Mulder can tell she’s anxious for the interview to be over.  He’s confident that Richie doesn’t really know anything past what he’s told them, so he pushes away from the table and takes his seat again.

“Richie, I’m going to ask you to do me a favor,” Mulder says.

“Okay,” Richie answers.

“Stay in town for a few days.  Give your contact information to the Sheriff so we can reach you if we need you.”

“I can only stay until tomorrow.  I gotta be back in Oregon by Friday.”

Mulder nods and Richie stands slowly, as though waiting for someone to stop him.  When no one does, he heads to the door, taking glances back over his shoulder along the way.  He finally rushes out, hastily slamming the door behind him.

“What do you know about Absalom?” Mulder asks Reyes, as soon as the door closes.

“He’s the leader of a doomsday cult.  I was part of a team that investigated him a few years back.  At that time he had a compound in Baton Rouge where he and his followers were preparing for an alien invasion at the start of the new millennium.  He claimed that first Y2K would cripple the world, and while we were trying to rebuild our technologies, an alien army would begin systematically abducting prominent citizens, returning them as super soldiers to eventually wipe out the human race.”

“Hm.”  It doesn’t sound that illogical to Mulder.  “And what happened?”

“Well, the group disbanded when there was no Y2K.  He lost the faith of his followers and just disappeared.”

“But, now he’s back.  With apparently credible information on UFO activity.”

“Should we find him?  Bring him in?”

“Let’s see if we can’t get him to talk voluntarily.”  Mulder already has an idea of who he’ll get to reach out to try to contact Absalom.  Who better to speak his language than three like-minded conspiracy theorists in a converted warehouse office?

*****  

The gunmen waste no time in finding Absalom and begin sending Mulder archives of newsgroup postings and chat logs they are able dig up.  They reach out to him under the guise of official magazine business, requesting an interview of him, and then wait for a response.

In the meantime, Mulder and Reyes drive out to inspect the field where the rancher says he discovered a body.  The air is cold and crisp, even though the sun is high.  There's still a bit of frost on the ground even though it's midday.

The two agents make separate tracks through the field, parting ways to inspect patches of ground more closely, coming back together to silently ask if they'd found anything.  A shake of the head.  Not yet.

Mulder is crouched down, running his hand across a line of flattened grass, when Reyes calls his name.  He looks up and sees her stand from her own crouch and turn to him.  She cocks her head for him to come take a look at whatever she's got.  He brushes dirt from his knees as he rises.

“Footprints,” Reyes says, pointing out two sets of tracks that almost seem to overlap each other, but they're pointed in opposite directions.

“If we were carrying something heavy,” Mulder says.

“Like a body?” Reyes interjects.

Mulder nods.  “Like a body.  Someone would probably be moving backwards.”

“And someone would be moving forwards.”

The tracks are smudged, as though the two individuals were dragging their feet.  Mulder follows the backwards steps as they head in the direction of the nearest highway.  At one point, he stops, bending to squint at the most clear footprint he can see.  He can't be absolutely certain, but he's almost positive the lines in the shoe match the footprints of the other photos.

“That's the same shoe,” Reyes says.

“That's what I was thinking,” Mulder answers.  He looks out into the field and turns to check all angles.  A hill slopes in the distance to the north.  The highway to the south is empty and calm.  The neighbors house, the one who reported seeing two men in the field, is about fifty yards to the east.  

Something seems to be clicking into place in Mulder's mind.  A missing body.  Two men.  Footprints heading south.  The highway.  The hill.  The land.

“He's not placing the bodies,” Mulder says.

“Who?”

“The man with the shoes.  I thought he was placing the bodies in areas they'd be found.”

“What's he doing then?”

“Taking them.  Or, trying to.”

“And bringing them back?”

“I think...I think it depends on how bad off the person is who's returned.  I think he's...healing them.”

“How?”

“I've seen it before.  I need to call Doggett.  No, I can't call Doggett, he's still in quarantine.  I need to call Skinner and have him pull my files on a man named Jeremiah Smith.”

*****

Skinner is none too pleased that Mulder is in Montana, but not only does he send the files to Mulder, he lets him know in his email that he’ll be on the first flight out to Helena.  Mulder shares the material with Reyes in the small conference room the Helena PD has allowed them to utilize.  He paces the room, rolling up his shirt sleeves as Reyes reads bits of the file out loud.  When she finishes, he turns one of the chairs around and sits backwards, draping his arms over the back.

“I don’t understand how this guy is any different from the bounty hunter,” Reyes says.

“I don’t quite know myself,” Mulder answers.  “Only that while they can both take on the forms of anyone they choose, Jeremiah Smith is, at least, a healer.  He saves lives, he doesn’t take them.”

“So you think he’s essentially rescuing the abductees after they’re returned.  Or, attempting to?”

“It’s the only thing I can think of that makes sense to me right now.”

“How does he know where to find them?”

“I don’t know.”  Mulder shrugs and pushes up from the chair in frustration.  He puts his hands on his hips and paces the room again.

“Is there a possibility that this is related to the doomsday cult?”

“How so?”

“What if those people weren’t taken by a UFO?”

Mulder gapes at Reyes and shakes his head.  “I know what I saw.”

“I know, but hear me out.  What if that’s what they wanted you to see?  What if Absalom staged the abduction and took these people to reignite the interest in his prophecies.  If they’re not coming true organically, he’s going to make it happen.”

“No.”  Mulder shakes his head again.  “That’s not possible.”

“And what if Absalom is giving the same information to Jeremiah Smith that he gave to Richie Szalay?  What if he’s controlling this whole thing?”

Mulder laces his fingers together at the back of his head and puffs his cheeks.  He circles the room once and bobs his head a little.  He sits down and scratches his bottom lip with his teeth.

“All right,” he says.  “Let’s explore that theory.  An abduction hoax to regain the trust of his disciples.  It’s pretty elaborate, and risky.  How has he gotten this far without getting caught?  How has he done any of it?”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s too much for one person.  There’d have to be dozens of people involved.  People that would kidnap and torture without asking questions.”

“Like a cult?”

“Like a cult.  That still doesn’t explain how they would’ve pulled it off.  And I know what I saw.”

“Let’s hope your friends can find Absalom and maybe we can ask.”

*****

Skinner arrives that evening and knocks on Mulder’s motel room.  He has a grim look on his face and asks Mulder to take a walk with him.  Mulder follows his boss out to the edge of the parking lot, where concrete ends and nothing but the dark expanse of empty fields begins.  The stars are as luminous as Mulder has ever seen them, large and bright and plentiful.

“I’ve come to escort you back to DC,” Skinner says, without preamble.  “Kersh caught wind of your trip out here.”

“I can’t leave, Walter,” Mulder says.  “Not now.”

Skinner rubs the back of his head for a few moments.  “What have you really found that’s going to make a difference in the investigation?”

Mulder tells him, briefly, about Reyes’ theory, and about the gunmen working to find Absalom, and the missing body and the footprints in the field.  Skinner listens without reacting or asking questions.  It’s too cold out for the thin sweater Mulder is wearing and he rubs his arms briskly with both hands.

“What we’ve got right now are seven returned abductees,” Skinner says.  “Seven still missing.  Half of those returned are dead.”

“I know.”

“And nothing tangible but theories.”

“Even if Reyes’ theory doesn’t pan out, we have a lead with Absalom.”

“Maybe.”  Skinner sighs and puts a hand on Mulder’s shoulder and squeezes lightly.  “These bodies are appearing rather quickly now.  Are you prepared for what might happen?”

Mulder pulls his shoulder away from Skinner’s grasp and crosses his arms tightly across his chest.  He looks up at the sky and blinks back the tears that fill his eyes every time he has to think about the worst case scenario.

“I once had a conversation with Scully about starlight,” Mulder says.  “How it’s billions of years old and how, even after they’re long dead, their light won’t die.  I told her it’s where I thought that souls resided.  If I’m wrong about everything else, I hope I’m right about that.  Because, I would need to know that whenever I look up, she...”

Mulder lowers his head and bites his lip.  His throat has closed too much to continue.  Skinner puts an arm around him and squeezes his shoulder again.

“She will be,” Skinner says.  “You don’t have to worry about that.”

*****

Chapter 16, Day 170:

Things happen quickly the next morning.  As Mulder and Skinner are loading the car to head to the airport, Mulder gets a call from the gunmen.  They're on speakerphone, talking over each other with excitement until Mulder tells them to calm down.  He moves away from the open car door and puts a hand on his hip.

“We made contact,” Byers says.

“With Absalom,” Langly adds.  “Dude fell for our line like flies to cow turds”

“I gathered that,” Mulder says.  “And get a better metaphor, please.”

“We pinged his ISP in Helena,” Frohike cuts in, getting to the point.

“He's here?”  Mulder turns to face the car and raises his brows at Skinner.  Skinner frowns.

“We can't tell you where,” Byers says.  “But he's definitely in the Helena area.”

“What else can you tell me?  Give me something less vague.”

“That's all we've got,” Frohike says.  “Sorry, man.  So far all he’ll talk about is spreading the word that prior abductees are in danger.”

“Danger from what?”

“Being taken again.  Returned as something other than what they were.”

“Super soldiers?”

“That's what he called them,” Langly says.  “An army of super soldiers that will destroy the human race.”

“Ask him what he knows about the missing fourteen.  Get back to me.”

Mulder disconnects the call and slips his cell phone back into his pocket.  He tells Skinner what the gunmen have just told him, but before Skinner even opens his mouth to ask questions, Richie comes running across the parking lot towards them.

“Agent Mulder!”

Mulder steps out from behind the car and walks towards him.  The boy is agitated and jittery.  He's sweaty and wild eyed, but Mulder doesn't think it's from the short run he just made.

“What is it, Richie?” he asks.

“I saw him!  I saw Gary!”

“Where?  When?”

“Like an hour ago.  I was at the gas station and I seen him in the back of a car.”

“Are you sure?”

“Totally sure.  I followed him.”

“Okay, okay.”  Mulder looks to Skinner who shuts his car door and comes around to the back side to stand next to Mulder.

“Did you write down the license plate of the car he was in?” Skinner asks, taking a notepad out of his breast pocket.

“Yeah, yeah,” Richie answers.  “I have that, but I think they're getting ready to leave.”

“Who?” Mulder asks.

“A bunch of people.  I followed them off the highway to a cabin behind the hills.  They're all packing or something, and Gary was with them.”

“Did you see the guy driving the car?” Mulder asks.

“No, but I saw the guy in the passenger seat.  He was old, kind of sunburnt face, with grey hair.”

“Can you show us where they're at?”

“Yeah yeah.  That's why I came to find you.  I was kinda scared to go by myself.”

“You did the right thing.”  Mulder nods to Richie and then looks at Skinner.  They're due at the airport in an hour.  

Skinner puts his notepad away and then adjusts his glasses.  His jaw is clenched, but he doesn't look angry, just indecisive.  Finally, he nods to Mulder.

“You better go get Agent Reyes,” Skinner says.  “I'll call the local PD and have them run the plate.”

Mulder spins around and heads to Reyes’ room at the end of the motel before Skinner can change his mind.

*****

The cabin Richie guides them to is only hidden by virtue of its position amongst the hills.  The trees are sparse.  Richie shows them where he stopped his car and where he hid so he wouldn’t be caught spying on the group.

Reyes stays with Richie at the car while Mulder and Skinner take the sloping, curved path towards the cabin.  There’s not a lot of cover, unless you were to count the clouds that have blocked out the sun and blanketed the area in grey shadows.  It will sleet or snow within the next few hours.

A man and a woman come around the side of the cabin as Mulder and Skinner approach.  They look startled and the woman nearly drops the pile of blankets she carries in her arms.  Mulder waves his hand in a friendly, calming gesture.

“We’re looking for a man named Gary Cory,” Mulder says.  “We heard he might be here.”

Neither the man or woman say anything, but they turn around and hurry back behind the cabin the way they came.  Mulder and Skinner glance at each other, but keep going towards the front porch.  The wood is old and rotted in parts, making the trip up the flight of stairs a bit precarious.  They test the weight of each step and tread lightly.  The screen door rattles with each rap of Skinner’s knuckles.

A young man answers the door, barely out of his teens.  He’s got dirty blonde hair and a dazed look in his eyes.

“Gary Cory?” Skinner asks.

“Yeah,” he answers.  “Do I know you?”

“We’re FBI.”  Skinner reaches for his badge and Mulder does the same.  “I’m AD Skinner, and this is Agent Mulder.  Would you come out here, son, so we could ask you a few questions?”

“Okay.”

Skinner and Mulder step back as Gary opens the door.  He’s barefoot, wearing jeans that are too big for his hips and the cuffs of his sweatshirt dangle past his hands.  The porch creaks as he shuffles towards the rail.  Mulder and Skinner glance at each other again and follow.

“Son, are you aware that you’re a missing person?” Skinner asks.

“Missing?” Gary asks, his brows sliding together into a divot above his nose.  “How can I be missing?”

“You disappeared six months ago,” Mulder says.  “Your friend Richie has been very worried about you.”

Gary tips his head in puzzlement.  “Richie and I hung out like two days ago in his basement,” he says.  “We played video games and ate pizza.”

“Do you know what day it is?” Skinner asks.

Gary shrugs.  “Friday?”

“What month, what year?”

Gary shrugs again.  “I don’t really pay attention to that stuff.”

“Do you know how you got to Montana?” Mulder asks.

“I wake up in weird places a lot.”

“What kind of weird places?”

“I don’t know.”  Gary shrugs.  “Back yards, on top of picnic tables, the beach.  Ever since the first time they took me, it just happens sometimes.”

“Who took you?” Skinner asks.  “These people here?”

“Oh, no, the guy that lives here found me in a field.  He’s going to drive me home today.  I mean, the aliens.”

Mulder bites into his upper lip and nods.

“You think we could talk to that man?” Skinner asks.  

“I don’t think he’s here right now.”

Skinner nods curtly and then looks at Mulder.  Mulder is chomping at the bit to search the house and the grounds.  He tries to keep it contained, but Skinner must see it in his face.

“We’ve got your friend Richie with us up the road,” Skinner says.  “How about you come with me right now?”

“Okay.”

“You have shoes inside, son?”

“I’ll check.”

Gary shuffles back across the porch and goes inside.  Skinner immediately pulls Mulder back to the railing by the elbow.

“I’m sending Reyes back here as soon as we get to the car,” Skinner says.  “Do not do anything foolish.”

“Me, Sir?”  Mulder gives Skinner his best mask of innocence.

“I mean it, Mulder.  I don’t want you going inside, I don’t want you taking a tour of the perimeter, I don’t want you to move a muscle beyond the bottom of this porch.  The only reason I’m leaving you here at all is to keep watch that no one gets in or out of here.”

Mulder raises his hand up to salute Skinner.  Skinner lets him go.  The screen door bangs open again and Gary steps out in shoes that are also too big for him.  They all make their way gingerly down the steps and Mulder hangs back once they get down the stairs as Skinner and Gary head back to the road.

Skinner must know Mulder better than to stay still in one place, though.  He wanders to the right side of the cabin where they saw the man and woman earlier and peers around the corner.  Seeing nothing of interest, he wanders to the left side and peers around that corner as well.  The left side is tucked up against the slope of hill, but the ridge is angled back behind the house.  He hikes his way up to the side so that he’s just about the same level with the roof of the cabin and he spots a man going over the back ridge.

Mulder looks back and sees Reyes, just turning the bend to approach the cabin.  He waves his arms at her and then points at the back side of the house before he takes off running.  He doesn’t think about whether Reyes saw him, will follow him, or if she’s able to keep up.  His goal is to find the man over the ridge.

The dirt softens under Mulder’s feet as he hits the high point and he slides down a few feet and has to catch himself before he loses balance.  He pauses and looks over the top of the ridge down the other side.  The man he saw earlier is almost half-way down, moving at a slow angle, trying not to stumble.

“Jeremiah Smith!” Mulder calls.

The man looks up and freezes.  Mulder scrabbles at the sliding earth to get up and Jeremiah starts hurrying down the hill again.

“Wait!” Mulder calls.  He claws at the dirt and crawls forward enough to hurl himself over the side of the hill.  He comes down, bringing a landslide of dirt and rock with him as he slides his way down towards Jeremiah.

Mulder is only a few yards behind when Jeremiah reaches the flat end of the canyon of hills.  He heads towards a grove of trees and rocks, but slips and Mulder easily catches up and grabs his arm.  They’re both out of breath.  Jeremiah doesn’t struggle.

“Are you responsible for this?” Mulder asks.

“I’m only here to help,” Jeremiah says.

“What's your part in all of it?”  Mulder gets no response but a blink of Jeremiah’s eyes.  “Answer me!”

“I'm only here to help,” Jeremiah repeats.

“You're picking up the abductees after they're returned.  How do you know where to find them?  Are you communicating with them?”

“No.  They want me too badly for me to try that.”

“Then how?”

“Absalom knows.  He offers me protection from being taken and in return, I heal the ones who are returned.”

“What's his interest in it?  More followers for his cult?”

“He's also a former abductee.  One of the first I healed.”

“How does he know where to find them?”

“I don't ask.”

“You have to know something.”

“I don't know anything.”

“Where's Scully?”

“I don't know.”

“When will she be returned?”

“I don't know.”

Mulder kicks one foot in the dirt in frustration.  He takes out his handcuffs and Jeremiah shakes his head.

“I can't go with you, Agent Mulder.”

“You can if I arrest you.”

“If you stop us, you'll never see Scully alive again.”

“Is that a threat?”

“It's a prophecy.  They're not returning this group alive.  The only way to ensure she'll live is if you let us get to her first.”

Indecision pulls at Mulder's gut.  He wants more answers that only Jeremiah and Absalom can give him, but not at the expense of Scully’s life.  He would sacrifice his own life for her, if he could, would trade himself for her in a heartbeat, but he doesn't have that choice.  Behind him, he hears Reyes calling his name over the hill and he looks back, but she's not there.

“Go,” Mulder says, nodding at the trees and rocks up ahead.  “Go.”

“I'll do my best,” Jeremiah says, and takes off for the grove, disappearing amongst the foliage.

Mulder waits until he can't see anything more of Jeremiah and then he backtracks to the middle of the canyon, making it there just as Reyes reaches the ridge.

“Agent Mulder!”

Mulder waves at her to stay where she is and he slip-slides his way back up the hill.  He's covered in dirt by the time he reaches her and it's beginning to rain ever so slightly.  He hopes his footprints, and Jeremiah’s, will be washed out soon.

“He's gone,” Mulder says.

“Who?  Absalom?”  Reyes asks.

“We’re too late.”

“We'll interrogate those people at the cabin.  We’ll-”

“Let it go,” he says, shaking his head.  “Just let it go.”

*****

Chapter 17, Day 179:

Billy Miles is found alive, wandering down a highway outside of Miami.  Of all the abductees, he's the only one with a memory of his abduction.  Not of his time away, but of the moments leading up to their disappearance.  Reyes sends Mulder the transcript of his interview.  He reads it out loud to Agent Doggett in the office.

REYES: Whenever you’re ready, Detective Miles.

MILES: You can call me Billy.  Everyone does.

REYES: Whenever you’re ready.  Just start from what you remember.

MILES: I remember being pulled to the spot in the woods.

REYES:  Pulled by who?

MILES: Not by a person, by a force.  I had to go out there.  I couldn't stop.  It was like I didn't have control over my body.

REYES: What did you see?

MILES: I saw Theresa there.  I wanted to talk to her, but I couldn't do anything more than just stand and wait.  I saw Agent Scully as well.  She was the last one to come into the circle.

REYES: What circle?

MILES: We were standing in a circle.  Like we were placed where we were purposefully.  When I walked up, I just suddenly stopped, but I don't know why.  Only that it's where I had to be.

REYES: And then what?

MILES: And then it seemed like everything was gone.  The woods were gone and we were all looking up at a light.  The light, it was bright, but it didn't hurt to look at.

REYES: And that's the last thing you remember?

MILES: Just looking up at the light.  And feeling like I was weightless.  And it's like I fell asleep.  When I woke up, there was a man holding a hand to my head, telling me that I would be okay.  

REYES: What did the man look like?

MILES: Greyish whitish hair.  Small eyes.  His hands felt ancient, but maybe he was in his 60s or 70s.

REYES: We can go ahead and stop now.  Please call us if you remember anything else.

MILES: I will.

“Something seems off about that interview,” Doggett says, when Mulder’s finished.

“I agree,” Mulder says.

“None of the other abductees have any memory about what happened.”

“I know.”

“And then this guy shows up walkin’ down a highway.  Doesn’t really fit in with all the others.”

“I agree.”

“Huh.”

“Yeah.”

*****

Chapter 18, Day 186:

It’s a Sunday night.  Mulder is staring up at the ceiling above his couch, listening to the low drone of a sitcom on TV.  He only turned on his TV for the noise, not to watch.  There’s a nice warm, orange glow lighting the room from the sun setting through the windows.  The stain of masking tape puts a light x-shaped shadow on the wall.

On the coffee table, Mulder’s cell phone rings and he reaches out to grab for it.  It’s Agent Reyes’ number.  He sighs and then connects the call.

“Mulder.”

There’s a beat of silence on the end of the line, then two.  “I’m in Roanoke,” she says.  “We found her.”

Mulder sits up quickly and springs from the couch.  His throat goes dry and every muscle in his body tenses, waiting for the news.  He thinks, if she’s alive, Reyes would’ve already told him.  He thinks, if she’s dead, Reyes would’ve called Skinner to tell him in person.  He swallows the lump in his throat and finally asks.  

“Is she…?”

To be continued in Part 2

[daleisgreat]

National Treasure

In my high school and college days, history was always my favorite class. In elementary school I would learn the order of all the US Presidents and all the US capitols and in down time would look up presidential election results and population sizes on state atlases. For fun! Yup, I was that kid. I also like treasure hunter type films like Indiana Jones (which I plan on covering here down the line), so I was absolutely giddy when history and treasure hunting combined for 2004’s National Treasure (trailer). National Treasure features Nicolas Cage as Benjamin Gates, who is a modern day treasure hunter spending most of his life chasing after a long lost family treasure that has ties all the way back to the original founding fathers of the country. The film kicks off with Gates, his assistant tech wiz, Riley (Justin Bartha) and his investor partner Ian (Sean Bean) finding a major clue to the family treasure they spent decades searching for. Their discovery contains a riddle that Cage does a masterful job hamming it up like only he can when he solves the riddle and deduces that the Declaration of Independence has a secret treasure map on it. Ian matter-of-factly states “ok, time to steal this sacred document” and of course Gates is not about that so Ian turns on him right there. Now, both men are off to steal the Declaration and set about a greater chase with Ian right on Ben’s tail to track down the sought-after family treasure.

The history fan in me is incredibly biased towards this movie. Gates is constantly spouting quick history anecdotes as him, Riley and Declaration expert Abigail (Diane Kruger) venture on their expedition across historical US cities such as Philadelphia, Boston and Washington DC. There is a big setup for the Declaration heist, and as far-fetched as the whole ordeal is, I still enjoyed the big heist scene. Cage is perfect as treasure hunter in over his head, and is awesome whenever he shows off his uncanny acting ability at solving riddles. Ian is a serviceable antagonist, and as expected is always one step behind Gates, but he has a few tricks up his sleeve later on in the film to keep the heroes constantly watching their back. As much as I love this film I could see why others would dislike it. If you do not have an interest in US History, I can see how some would dismiss National Treasure with a ‘hard pass.’ Like other treasure hunter franchises such as Indiana Jones and Uncharted expect many ‘yeah right’ and ‘BS’ stunts/heroics throughout the film. If those kinds of stunts can ruin a film for you than there are a few eyebrow-raising scenes in National Treasure that will most likely infuriate you. Again, the history nut in me made it easy to justify these faults with some convenient lines of dialogue or other Hollywood tricks, but be forewarned, expect some ridiculous-ness.

The BluRay is stacked with extra features. There is 75 minutes of bonus material broken up into 10 parts. I would recommend cruising through the deleted scenes with director introductions as there are a few fun scenes I wished that would have made the cut with a unique strip club scene standing out the most! Of the many behind-the-scene features included the two I would recommend the most are Ciphers, Codes & Codebreakers and To Steal a National Treasure. The former is about how deciphering codes has evolved over time and the latter is about how the filmmakers researched breaking into the National Archives with its then severely-outdated security system. There is also an entertaining commentary with director Jon Turtleaub and Justin Bartha worth checking out. It is one of the better commentary tracks I have endured as the duo are constantly self-deprecating and have a good rapport throughout. They react to criticism to the film, jest about how dated the film’s effects will look in several years and Jon recites old high school stories of Nicolas Cage. Finally, there is an interactive Declaration of Independence where you can use your BluRay remote to ‘decode’ various phrases from it to unlock mini-documentaries relating to Colonial life at the time of the document’s inception. If you are patient enough with it, there is a ton to unlock and check out!

13 years later National Treasure still holds up. The special effects are not as dated as Jon & Justin hint they might be, and it is a fun, by-the-numbers treasure hunt/chase film. Again, being at least a little bit of a fan of US History is recommended going into this, but if you are not you may be into this if all you are looking for is a good ‘ol fashion treasure hunting film. I plan on covering the sequel, Book of Secrets next month so please join me again in a few weeks for one more round with Cage and company! Other Random Backlog Movie Blogs 3 12 Angry Men (1957) 12 Rounds 3: Lockdown 21 Jump Street Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie Atari: Game Over The Avengers: Age of Ultron Batman: The Killing Joke Batman: Mask of the Phantasm Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice Bounty Hunters Cabin in the Woods Captain America: The First Avenger Captain America: The Winter Soldier Christmas Eve Clash of the Titans (1981) Clint Eastwood 11-pack Special The Condemned 2 Creed Dirty Work Faster Fast and Furious I-VIII Field of Dreams Fight Club The Fighter For Love of the Game Good Will Hunting Gravity Guardians of the Galaxy Hercules: Reborn Hitman Ink The Interrogation Interstellar Jobs Man of Steel Marine 3-5 Mortal Kombat The Replacements Rocky I-VII Running Films Part 1 Running Films Part 2 San Andreas ScoobyDoo Wrestlemania Mystery The Secret Life of Walter Mitty Steve Jobs Source Code Star Trek I-XIII Take Me Home Tonight TMNT The Tooth Fairy 1 & 2 UHF Veronica Mars The War Wild The Wrestler (2008) X-Men: Days of Future Past

[asunafairywizardessheart]

Magic Creatures and Books - Part 1

Klaus/Asana

Requested: Anon.

Summary: Despite being Professors at the academy, their expertise is required on two separate cases for the Ministry. Asana assists Walter and Julius in capturing a wizard selling magical creatures on the black market for dark wizards and Klaus assists Elias and Luca, taking over from his father, to track down a dark wizard using ancient dark magic to commit murder. Though, she might be pregnant with their first child.

There will be a Part 2 to this story, it was getting very long. 

Behind him, the refrigerator door closed with a soft thud. Having quietly read through the morning paper and halfway through drafting essays for his classes, a slender arm reached over his shoulder.

“Is this today’s paper?” a sweet voice snapped his concentration.

He broke into a small smile hearing her voice in his ear, “Since when do you read the paper?”  

“When a story on my field, taking my interest, is published,” she hinted and gave his cheek a quick peck with her puckered lips.

Of course, they were married, the sixth-year anniversary a shy two months away, and were now employees of the academy where they first met and owned a home in the neighbouring city. However, Asana had only been in her positon for the last five months after being recruited by the Headmaster to take over the classes of a retiring teacher, transferring from the Ministry as a veterinarian and specialist consultant to magic creatures. Here, she taught beginner and advanced classes in magical creature ecology, magic cooking, medical pharmaceutics and potions and taught special classes like spell singing and advanced time wizardry.

At Klaus’ request, he and Asana shared an office. When reaching over his shoulder to steal the paper from his desk, she balanced a slice of chocolate cake on a small plate in her other hand but Klaus gently caught her arm before she ran off to her side of the desk, the polished oak and heavy desks backing onto each other in the centre of the room, “What?” her lips broke into a guilty smile.

“What do you mean ‘what’?” he had latched his hand onto her arm holding the plated slice of cake, “Is that my slice of cake you are stealing?” her face contorting into a guilty smile confessing to her crime, “You ate yours during class or so I hear?”

She had a certain adorableness to her expression Klaus could not bring himself to become mad at her, “…Pretty please?” she begged him to let her have it, “I will make you another cake. In fact, my afternoon class is magic cooking and I plan to teach them how to make a medicinal cake.”

“I am not sick,” he slowly pulled her body closer to his to the point where she hovered over his lap, “My mind has not forgotten our conversation this morning,” his hands collected the plate from her hands where he set it down on the surface of his desk.

“Klaus, I promise you I am feeling fine and I don’t need to see a doctor.”

“It is because of what happened this morning that you have an appetite that won’t stop today,” he argued, his hands skimming up the side of her body through her figure-hugging sophisticated blue dress and resting at the sides of her waist, “You threw up yesterday too. Are you going to pretend it is not happening?”

His strong arms pulled her body closer to his, her legs standing between his and her balance becoming wobbly where she minded where she stood to not step on his shoes where she would likely trip. Placing her hands on his shoulders to maintain her balance, she giggled at his needless worry, “I appreciate you thinking of me, darling, but I promise you I am feeling fine.”

“I am not going to be satisfied until you see a doctor.”

Finding she was not going to find a way out of this conversation, she opted to compromise, “Fine but on one condition,” she proposed, her smile stretching across her face as he looked quite adorable in his pleas for her to go consult a doctor.

Intrigued, he could tell where this proposal was going, “What would that be?” he wondered, his money betting on the cake he confiscated from her hands a moment ago.

Those large and round pink eyes of hers darted to his left, “You give me that slice of cake.”

Her pink eyes sparkled like little jewels from the excitement of tasting the sweet chocolaty sponge of the cake and the chocolate and vanilla icing layered across the top of her bakery-level pastry. Having her in his embrace and the beauty of her adorable face made it hard for him to let her go without a kiss but he had a counter-offer, “Hmm…I was really looking forward to eating it but I suppose you can have it if you pay for it.”

“What! But, I agreed to go to the doctor!”

“Why should you have to hustle a slice of cake from me to make that happen?” Klaus counter-argued and heard her adorable groan, “Haha, you’re like a child who has been told no.”

“I am not a child!” she denied, averting her gaze, “…I’m hungry because I threw up my breakfast this morning, remember?”

“Normal people go to the doctor, Asana.”

“Ugh, whatever. I will make the appointment this afternoon if it will put your mind at ease.”

“Thank you, it does put my mind at ease,” his smile stretching into a larger grin, “Now, I promise you can have my slice of cake if you pay for it,” he pointed to his lips.

“You should have said you wanted a kiss to begin with,” she laughed.

Brushing her brown hair to the side with her finger, her face hovered just above his as she bent down to pay for her cake with a sweet kiss on his lips, “Paid,” she said and went to reach for the plate.

The kiss left him unsatisfied that he stopped her hand from taking the cake, “Not even close,” he smiled, “You can do better than that, right? After all, we are married.”

She kissed him again but it still was not enough. “Try again.” She couldn’t help but feel her body growing hot with embarrassment and her lips uncontrollably curling into a huge smiling.

Composing herself, she deepened the kiss. “Almost.”

His arms cheekily pulled her over onto his lap as her lips touched his again, her little tongue flicking at his lips. “Getting there,” he muttered between kisses and parted his lips to feel her tongue slither between them and map his mouth. An appreciative but faint moan tickling in his throat. The kiss lasted several minutes until she eventually pulled away to catch her breath, “Can I have it now?”

“I suppose but if you don’t make that appointment today I will do it for you and drag you there if I have to,” he threatened while pushing the plated cake towards her and smiling up at her.

Removing her body from his lap, she took the paper and the cake to her side of the desk. Quickly, she opened the large newspaper over her desk and took a large bite from the cake at the same time, her hands flicking to a top news story of an urgent plea published by the Ministry. “Huh!” the news surprised her.

His curiosity peaked about the story which had her entranced but he could guess it since he had already read through it twice, “I take it you are reading the story on that famous veterinarian and tamer who used to work at the Ministry? I don’t know how true the rumours are though.”

“Yeah,” she bobbed her head to confirm his assumption, “It’s crazy to think a respected man in his field would abuse his position to treat magical creatures with such unforgiveable cruelty.”

“That is if the rumours are true, don’t jump to conclusions,” Klaus commented. “No names are mentioned in the article to make a clear judgement ourselves and he had not heard anything specific from his father, agents or other teachers.

“Well, I know who they are investigating because it was a direct result of a misconduct report I filed with my supervisors,” she admitted to Klaus, and tilted her head at him knowing he had met the man once during an event, “Do you remember Edric Vitkevich?”

Hearing the man’s name made Klaus twitch with despise of the man but he kept his calm, “You mean that creep near the same age as my brother who continuously attempted to sleep with you at that fundraiser to protect endangered creatures, even though he knew who you were?”

“That’s him,” she smiled, “He’s being investigated and he has since done a runner on the Ministry. Does that not incriminate him as being guilty of the crimes he is being investigated for?”

Klaus needed to be filled in if he was going to have a fair comment on the case, “What is he being investigated for anyway to be facing serious charges? I understand he’s a respected doctor in your field, doesn’t make sense why he would destroy his reputation if he has nothing to hide.”

“He was originally investigated for professional misconduct against the creatures he was assigned to be taking care of,” she explained, “However, it turned into something bigger than a simple misconduct case. The Magical Creatures Division were trying to stop the exportation of living creatures or magical creature parts, like horns and scales, things like that, from going to the black market for dark wizards. Apparently, the supplier is allegedly him.”

“Those are some serious charges,” Klaus commented, “Why would he do something pathetically stupid?”

“Money,” Asana confidently revealed the motive, “Living magical creatures and body parts, or even harvested magic, of magical creatures sells for extremely high prices on the black market and can be used for some really dark crimes.”

“You worked with him, what do you think?” he asked, “I mean it’s a heap leap from professional misconduct to supplying and supporting dark magical practices.”

She had to think carefully, “Well, I filed the report because of the way he treated the creatures we were assigned to help. When he was working at the hospital governed by the Ministry, I noticed he was misdiagnosing creatures’ illnesses and doubted his testing methods.”

“What did you doubt?”

“Specifically, his handling of the creatures and the misdiagnosis’ leading to the wrong medications being administered to the creatures,” she replied, “After checking with the other staff, they told me he had been reported several times, some were sexual harassment complaints and the others were for misdiagnosis and malpractice. I asked a favour of Julius and then requested a formal investigation after he had misdiagnosed a winged rabbit.”

“An illness common in winged rabbits is hepatic coccidiosis. It is a disease caused by parasites in the intestine and can be contagious through urine, faeces, shared bedding and water,” she remembered back to this particular case, “Typically to diagnosis coccidiosis you would have to run a stool test but he had not done one to determine.”

She still had Klaus’ attention as she continued, “I organised the test myself to rule out the illness and the test came back clear of hepatic coccidiosis. In fact, he had no other symptoms besides diarrhoea so I spoke to the rabbit myself and he told me he devoured an entire chocolate cake.”

“In other words he had a severe stomach ache?” Klaus concluded.

She nodded, “When I confronted Edric about it he laughed it off as being an accident but when your brother told me of the other misdiagnosed creatures I began to see a pattern. It was not an unknown fact, either, that living and deceased creatures were going missing from the rehabilitation centre and morgue of the hospital. So, I asked the Ministry to launch an official inquiry into his professional conduct.”

“Could he just be incompetent with his job?”

“At the end of the day, it is my decision to determine if he is fit for the job. The falls on the Ministry’s discretion,” Asana replied, “Human resources took the case and not long after the inquiry was launched he resigned from his position and transferred to a private research and medical facility for magic creatures. Though, the Ministry kept a close eye on him.”

A moment of silence ensued and after several minutes she looked up to Klaus, “…I did the right thing, right?” she asked, afraid of how her actions might have been perceived by her colleagues, “I only did it because I was concerned for the creatures coming into our care.”

“You protected the creatures which came into your care from a person, who employed to replenish their health, was putting their lives at risk and could have provided the key information for the Ministry to stop the illegal trading of our endangered creatures going into the wrong hands,” the sharp tip of his pen scratched against the white page of the essay before his eyes as he spoke to her and raised his head to gaze softly across to her, “You did the right thing, who cares about perception.”

Several minutes of silence passed but during that moment, his mind was reminded of how she mentioned a few women had filed sexual harassment complaints against the same man who had tried to sleep with his wife at a fundraiser. His mind would not be put at ease without asking her if he tried any moves on her. Looking across at her, he kept his jealous thoughts in check and asked her directly.

“You mentioned he had been reported several times for sexual harassment,” his topic of conversation had he raising her head despite the chocolate crumbs falling from her mouth, “He…didn’t try anything on you, did he?”

She brushed the chocolate crumbs caught on the side of her mouth off but they fell to her desk, “No, I would never let him. I’m a married woman with only one man on her mind,” her words were honest as she cleaned up the crumbs off her desk, “Besides, after the fundraiser I think he got the picture.”

Watching her adorably clean herself up he began to chuckle, “Well, the further he is from you the better. I would never be happy if another man saw you the way you are now,” he pointed to the tip of her nose.

“Huh?” she touched the tip of her nose.

His teasing laughter rumbled in the pit of his stomach with his smile stretching across his face. Putting her finger to the tip of her nose, she felt something smooth and wet cover the fingertip. Her cheeks turned a slight of shade of embarrassed pink as she spotted the chocolate icing on her finger and used a tissue to wipe the icing from her nose, “Is it gone?”

He laughed at her again, “Sometimes I wonder if I have a wife or a child,” he rose from his chair to move his body around to her side of the desk, “You have some right here,” he poked her cheek, “And here,” and poked her chin.

“Ah!” she went to wipe her face but Klaus stopped her, “Klaus?”

“Allow me,” he insisted, trapping her within her office chair, “I don’t want any man to see you being this cute,” he whispered and moved his face closer to lick up the icing smeared across her cheek.

Feeling his body close to hers already ignited her heart beat into a slow drumming but her self-control was fading as she felt his tongue clean up the icing smeared across her cheek and chin, “Klaus…,” she knew this was not the time or the place to be engaging in such activity but she made no move to stop his trail of open mouth kisses going down her neck to her chest, “…Should we be doing this here? Someone could walk in.”

“We have a spare lesson next and I wanted to play with you more this morning.”

Her giggles soon turned into a gasp of pleasure when she felt his hand glide up her thigh but they shouldn’t be doing something this naughty in case a student or the Headmaster came into the room, “We are at work but I promise tonight you can have as much of me as you want.”

“Your heart and mind are saying two different things,” he teased her with his trademark smirk but encouraged her to give into her desire by pressing his lips against hers to clean the chocolate icing left on the lining of her delicate pink lips.

“Mnm!” her faint moan was swallowed by his kiss but she pushed him away. “We can’t, not here,” she reached forward to press her lips onto his, “As much as I want to, we can’t but…,” she kissed him again, “I promise you can do whatever you want to me later when we are at home.”

Her words set a fire to his mind, “Anything, huh?”

His frightening smile made her heart pound in faster beat than before, “What are you thinking of doing to me?” she sounded terrified.

“Why ruin the surprise?” he kissed her lips one last time and pulled his body away from hers, “Be sure to finish work on time today, Bunnyhead,” he bobbed his finger on her nose.

“Oh,” her heart skipped a beat half from fear and half from excitement, “Be nice to me.”

“You said I can do anything you can’t take it back,” his voice echoed from behind her by the stove, “Let’s say, thank goodness tomorrow is the weekend because you are going to be mine all night.”

The sound of the kettle being filled with water did not settle her racing heart but it invited a change of conversation, “If you are having a cup of tea, I would like a cup too,” hopefully a warm cup of Klaus’ delicious tea would ease her racing heart.

Folding the newspaper, she tossed the paper to the side of her desk to pick up where she had left her research into the study of impacts affecting the unicorns of the country and ways to enhance their population numbers. However, before she could even start a heavy and loud knock on their door distracted her from her task.

Waiting for the water to boil in the teapot, Asana smirked at him, “Told you,” she whispered as he crossed the room, walking behind her figure to answer the door.

“Be quiet,” he groaned at her quietly and reached for the door knob.

Pulling the door inwards, two familiar faces greeted him on the other side, “Father, Headmaster,” his father’s presence only raised further questions and Asana turned her head to wave at the men on the other side of the door. “To what do we owe this visit?”

No smiles etched upon the faces of the other two men as they invited themselves into the office. “I apologise for coming by so soon and without any notice but I need both of you to help out at the Ministry,” his father wasted no time in getting to the point of his visit. “Don’t worry about your classes, I already discussed the circumstances with Randolph.”

Randolph had his arms folded across his chest but his usual cheery smile had disappeared behind his serious expression, “The Prefects are already preparing to take over both of your afternoon classes.”

While their names were already volunteered to take the job, Klaus and Asana exchanged curious glances trying to gauge what dangerous job they were being told to take on Walter’s recommendation, “Before we go anywhere, mind filling us in on the case we are being told to do?” Klaus prompted and closing his door for privacy.

“It sounds too serious for us to go in blindly,” Asana supported her husband’s prompt for answers to suffice their curious minds.

Walter nodded and pointed to the teapot, “Were you making a cup of tea?”

“Did you want one too Headmaster?”

“Sure, your tea is always delicious Klaus,” his trademark charismatic smile curled across his face again.

Several minutes of silence passed between them as the tension briefly left the room only to return to the original point of the unexpected visit and recruitment for their assistance on this complex case. “How is your research coming along?” Walter was reading over Asana’s shoulder, “This is a different paper than what you were working on during the holidays?”

“Oh, that was to determine a formula to create a new vaccine to prevent the spread of Anthrakitis, a vaccine I am still perfecting,” she explained, “But, I am revisiting research on the impacts of unicorns in our country and possible ways to enhance their numbers.”

“I see,” Walter nodded but had only a limited knowledge regarding magical creatures, “Well, I hope I will not take you away from your important research for too long.”

Klaus stirred the four cups of tea behind her desk, “That depends on what kind of case you are having us working, Father. You haven’t told us anything about the case,” he turned around and moved a few steps forward to place her hot cup on her desk and handed his father his, lastly the Headmaster sitting on the sofa.

Appreciative words were spoken but Walter began to speak, “Asana, how much do you know about Edric Vitkevich?” he took a slight sip from his porcelain cup, his chapped lips only just touching the edges in a trained eloquent movement, “I understand you were the one who asked for the initial investigation into his misconduct and malpractice when he worked at the Ministry’s hospital?”

His question surprised Asana with her head tilting to the side in confusion, “Why are you dealing with a magical creatures’ case and not the division?” she asked him.

“Your original inquiry has gone missing and the chief suspects someone within the division could be corrupted to help Edric or is involved with the creatures going missing?” he assumed, “Hence, this case has been passed over to me but I am currently short staffed.”

She thought hard and clicked her fingers, “Julius should have a copy of the original report because I went to him for help when I was suspecting Edric of misconduct. He might still have it in his filing cabinet because I know he likes to keep a record.”

“It’s been stolen. He checked,” Walter said, “This is where I need your help, Asana.”

“With what?”

“To find Edric,” Walter concluded, “Specifically, to help locate magical creatures that have gone missing from shelters and hospitals over the recent months. Several endangered species are going missing from forests too. We need to find out why and we have a strong theory this is linked with Mr Vitkevich.”

Asana mulled over the objectives of the case but thought the connections are a fifty to fifty chance of being relative to Edric, “Isn’t that just speculation?” she wondered, but quickly adding a defensive stance to her question, “Does the Ministry have any concrete evidence the creatures disappearing are a result of human interference?”

“As I said, it is a strong theory and one worth pursuing,” his reply was short.

She had already half-heartedly agreed to do the case in her mind but was not a strong person in a fight, “I can treat and tame magical creatures but my fighting skills against a human is beyond my level,” she commented, casting her eyes downward.

A shallow chuckle reverberated from Walter’s throat as the warm tea cleansed his mouth and relaxed his mind putting him in a lighter mood. Silently, he swallowed the black tea, “I have no intentions of putting you in a position as dangerous as fighting against a human but it is unnecessary for you to sell yourself so short when it comes to your magic, my child. Randolph, Klaus and I have nurtured the rare magical gifts which live within you, don’t doubt to turn to them when you need to.”

“He is right,” Randolph nodded along, “Fearing your own power will only make you hesitant to use them. You are a level-headed and mature young lady who follows her own heart, do not allow the fear of using your power prevent you from stopping the darkness which threatens innocent life from flourishing.”

A powerful wizard these days, Asana listened to their wise words and carefully absorbed them in her mind but it did not budge the fear she held within her heart when it came to the rare magical aptitude she possessed. Walter sensed her unwavering anxiety and smiled down at her from where he stood by her desk, “Besides, it should not go to that extent,” he said, “Julius and I will be right beside you and I ensure you that we will protect you. All we need in return is a trusted expert who can assist us with dealing with the creatures since Julius and I primarily deal with dark wizards themselves and not beasts.”

She understood her role in this mission was to tame and treat for any creatures they may find along their investigations into this mystery. His explanation put her mind at ease, “Alright then, will you and Julius explain to me what you know so far when we get to the office?”

“Of course,” though scary by nature, Walter’s natural smile had a charming sophistication expected of a higher society gentleman but he was glad she agreed to help on the case, “Thank you, Asana.”

Listening to the conversation, Klaus cleared his throat of the droplets of tea stuck between going down his throat and down his air pipe and distracted his father’s attention, “By the way you are talking, I am particularly needed on this case but she is my wife and I would rather assist you than stay behind where I am not near her.”

“As your father, I am proud knowing I have raised a gentleman who treats his wife with respect, love and care,” he said after swallowing another warm sip of the black tea, “However, I have another case I want you to lead while we deal with this one.”

After a short silence, Klaus, not offended but anxious about leaving his wife’s side on a potentially dangerous case, disguised his unhappiness from his father, “What case would that be?”

It did not go unnoticed by Walter, “You sound unimpressed with my decision, Klaus.”

“Of course I am,” he wasn’t going to deny he didn’t feel comfortable allowing his wife to be put in a dangerous position, “What husband would be happy of the idea his wife could be heading into a dangerous job?”

“I assure you I will protect her as will your brother,” Walter promised in a firm voice, “Now, before I was given this case as top priority by the Chief I had recruited Elias to assist us in the theft of ancient textbooks confiscated in previous cases because of their dark magic origins. I figured you could help us since you had permission by the Ministry to study dark magic to help us combat it. Someone are using these books and if they fall into the wrong hands, it can be problematic.”

Immediately, his violet eyes connected with his wife’s, “Before anything is agreed upon, are you sure you are feeling well enough to do this?” he asked, concerned over her recent illness, “I don’t want to be under any stress if you are sick.”

Running her fingers through her hair falling down her shoulder like a curtain from its angled tilt as she rested her chin upon her palm, she softly smiled at him, “You worry too much but I will be fine with your father and brother beside me.”

He turned to his father, “Please keep an eye on her and don’t let anything happen to her.”

“Why would I bring harm to a woman I consider my daughter, Klaus?” his deep voice almost sounded offended by Klaus’ begging plea to watch her as if he wouldn’t do that much, “I would never allow harm on my family.”

“So, when do we leave?” Asana confidently asked, seeing they were expected to agree to help and had willingly accepted the challenging missions with an open mind.

“Right now.”

Finishing the last of the tea, Randolph handed Asana a slip of paper, “I have an extensive understanding of the mission before you and have arranged for Conrad to organise a collection of dried potion ingredients which may be helpful to you along with some already developed vials of tranquilliser potions to assist in the rescuing of any magical creatures. He should have a bag prepared.”

As he said so, a loud knock rattled the door, “It is Conrad.”

“Come in,” Randolph invited his old friend inside the room.

With a twist of the door knob, the black coats layered over his body stood out in the bright room. In his hand, a large and brown leather bag with a secure silver zip looked full with everything she could need to succeed in this job. “Thank you,” kindly she thanked Conrad for going to the trouble and then delivering it to the office.

“If there is nothing more,” Walter bowed his head in respectful appreciation for the Headmaster’s assistance, “Thank you for helping us as always Randolph but we shall be leaving now.”

“I am more than willing to assist the Ministry with whatever they need,” the charismatic and usual smile he had not walked into the room with reappeared on his face as he left the office with Conrad in toe, the black clothed professor leaving the bag in her capable hands.

After cleaning the used tea cups and grabbing their wands, they were ready to leave the academy with Walter. “Ready?” he left the room first and walked down the hallway, creating some distance between Klaus and Asana as he locked the office door and she comfortably gripped the handle of the bag with one hand.

Taking her hands in his and out of earshot of his father, he quietly voiced his worry to her, “Listen, I want you to be cautious with this case and stay close as possible to my father or brother,” he said, “Whatever is going on feels…strange and I don’t like him involving you in this at all.”

“You think so?”

“My father does not pursue ‘strong theories’, as he called it, without having hard evidence,” he squeezed her hand, “You were the one to ask for a formal investigation into his misconduct and malpractice of magical creatures, then he suddenly leaves and several months’ magic creatures have been going missing. Tell me you don’t see the link here.”

She thought for a moment and the theory made sense. Stopping in her tracks she turned to Klaus and gave his cheek a sweet kiss, “I promise I will not be reckless, please don’t worry too much.”

“I love you Asana and the thought of something happening to you where I am helpless to protect you makes me quite anxious, especially when you are unwell.”

Hearing his caring words touched her heart and sent a warm bubbly feeling through her body. This time her lips pressed against his in another sweet kiss, “I love you too Klaus and I love you for caring about me,” her lips pressed against his again and her body hugged against his, “But, I am going to be surrounded by powerful wizards so there is no reason for you to worry about me. Okay?”

“I am always going to worry even if you tell me not to,” he replied and bumped his forehead gently against hers, “I wish we were on the same case that why I can protect you myself.”

She giggled, “Why do I feel—.”

“Klaus! Asana! Hurry it up!” Walter interrupted her with his loud roar from down the end of the corridor where the sun brightens the long hall to accentuate its ancient architecture.

“Coming!” she replied, “We better get moving.”

Hurrying to catch up to Walter, they made it to their express train back to the city. Occupying a cabin, Walter sound-proofed the walls with his magic and kept the half-glass half-wood cabin door closed with venetian blinds for extra privacy. Klaus and Asana sat across from him as he began to speak freely about Klaus’ case. “Let me tell you more about the case I want you to lead with your brother.”

“Yes, you said something about ancient dark magic textbooks being stolen?”

Walter nodded, “Yes, they were stolen from the country’s Universal Library of Magic.”

Klaus expression turned to surprise, “How did they manage to smuggle books out the Universal Library. Not only can you not use magic when you enter the premises but only people with special permission can enter the place.”

“Isn’t it also heavily guarded?” Asana asked.

Walter nodded, “Everything you have said is true which is why we are quite anxious of the identity who stole these books. It is not an amateur, these thieves knew exactly what they were after,” he said, “Nothing else was touched, just these textbooks.”

“What type of magic is used in the textbooks they have stolen?” switching into investigator mode, Klaus wondered what type of magic they were after they could track the thieves using those different avenues.

Disappointing news awaited Klaus, “We went down that avenue but the descriptions of the books were stolen along with the books. They knew what they were doing,” but he had another idea for an avenue to pursue, “Your brother is sniffing a trail to find someone who knows about the books and Luca is with him. He is doing that today. Otherwise, the thieves knew the layout of the library.”

“Sounds…professional,” Asana, who had been listening, suddenly blurted out her honest thought.

“We were thinking that too,” across from them, Walter’s stomach growled in hunger but he ignored it, “We were about to go speak with the curator of the library before the Chief handed us this job dealing with Edric and these creatures. Though, I should tell you, there is quite a market value for these books.”

“You think someone sold them for the money and not to use the magic?” Klaus thought about it, “That doesn’t make sense,” he doubted money was the possible motive for the crime.

“I agree. There are dozens of books in that library that would have a significant market value,” Asana agreed, “It doesn’t make sense to steal ancient textbooks into the practice of dark magic to simply sell them for a quick buck. If someone wanted money without drawing attention to themselves, I highly doubt they’d choose a book that would give them this much attention.”

Walter’s stomach growled again but he still ignored it, “Very true,” he agreed, “However, I will have you speak to the curator at the library and meet up with your brother in the afternoon when he returns from Silver City. He’s meeting with a professor who deals with ancient language and culture of the civilisation who wrote the dark magic.”

“Sure,” Klaus nodded, “Who have you interviewed so far?”

“The theft occurred during broad daylight,” his father replied, “We are going over where the theft occurred including speaking to several guards, running through the security feed and trying to determine if the thieves broke through the magic barrier to be able to use their magic to steal the books.”

Again, Walter’s belly let out a louder grumble causing him to sigh, “Dad, you shouldn’t skip meals,” Asana lectured, “It’s not good for your health or your mind.”

“What are you trying to say, Asana?” Walter cut a glare across to her.

She giggled and turned to Klaus, “I now see where you get it from.”

“Get what from?”

“FWS,” she abbreviated her made up illness, “Stands for Famished Workaholic Syndrome.”

“No, the reason for my lack of lunch is because I suffer from what every other husband suffers from.”

“Oh, what’s that?”

“I have a wife.”

Walter struggled to contain his laughter with his son’s complaint and her narrowed pink eyes.

“Do I make you suffer, Klaus?”

“Not all the time but the only reason why I skipped lunch today was because someone stole my cake from the fridge,” he argued, “You stole my lunch yesterday too.”

She had a reasonable excuse, “Hey, I have been sick in the mornings which means my breakfast isn’t being digested and then I am hungry by the time lunch comes along.”

“That makes no sense, but good excuse,” Klaus chuckled and weaved his fingers between hers, “Anyway, if you are going to lecture my father and I about not skipping meals to stay healthy you should not hesitate to consult a doctor if you are throwing up in the mornings. There’s something wrong with you and you should get it treated.”

“Hey! It’s not nice to say something is wrong with me,” she protested, “It’s probably just a virus, it will pass.”

“Why are you so stubborn?”

“The pot calling the kettle black is calling me stubborn,” she retorted, “You are no better Klaus.”

“We aren’t discussing me right now, we are discussing you and your refusal to consult a doctor.”

“I am a doctor.”

“To animals.”

“Are humans not animals too?”

Suddenly, Walter erupted into a fit of laughter. It was rare to hear Klaus being challenged but these small disagreements reminded him of the earlier years of his own marriage and the same little disagreements they still had, “You two remind me of Mary and I.”

Slightly embarrassed by their small disagreement, Klaus’ cheeks turned a shade of pink but he stood to his feet, “I am going to the dining car,” he said, “Do either of you want anything?”

“Salt and vinegar chips!” Asana cheered.

“Are you serious?” Klaus looked into her eyes with a confused look, “You just ate?”

“But I want salt and vinegar chips.”

His head tilted in further confusion because her request was strange, “I thought you don’t like salt and vinegar chips?”

“I don’t, but I really want some.”

“You are such a weirdo,” Klaus decided to go along with it and turned to his father, “Dad?”

“Surprise me.”

Sliding the door open with a loud noise, Klaus stepped out onto the vacant corridor and closed their cabin door again with the latch catching to secure their privacy. Remembering the cabin was soundproof, Walter apologised to Asana, “I had no knowledge you were unwell. For my lack of awareness, I apologise.”

“It’s not a virus,” Asana smiled across to him.

“You already went to see someone?” Walter asked, confused and worried, “I do hope it is nothing serious.”

Though it is unconfirmed, she had a feeling her symptoms were a result of a hot and long shower she shared with Klaus a few weeks back. “It’s nothing serious in a bad way,” her gazed longed into the thin air as her hand came to rest across her abdomen, she didn’t need a doctor to feel the life growing inside of her, “It’s happy news.”

Connecting her body gestures with her words, Walter stared at her in complete surprise and he could not speak for several minutes as he processed the idea of becoming a grandfather for the first time, “Have you told him?”

“Not yet, I want to wait and confirm I am first before I say anything to him.”

Her smile was contagious but he could only imagine how Mary would react to the news of possibly their first grandchild coming into the world, “You are not to leave my side during this mission, understand?”

“Understood, but please don’t say anything to him,” she smiled, “I want to tell him once I am one hundred percent sure.”

“I will keep your secret.”

For another hour and half, they would remain in the confined cabin of the express train to the city with further discussions over their cases and sometimes sitting in comfortable silence. Closer and closer, the city’s skyline came to view and the hard work would begin.

Before leaving the train as it rolled into the underground platform, Klaus turned to his father, “I will familiarise myself with all the intelligence you have collected on the case and then I will meet with the curator. You said Elias will be back by the afternoon?”

“He should be, yes,” Walter had no problems with his course of action and turned to Asana, “We have a meeting in the conference room. We will get you up to speed with the details of the case too.”

Unlike the large town near the academy, coming to the capital city was like moving in a never-ending sea of people, especially during businesses days. Skyscrapers were like human constructed trees, reaching the heights of the clouds. She held Klaus’ hand so not to lose him in the crowd since she wasn’t comfortable with wandering on her own. They walked from the train station to the headquarters of the Ministry, a large and tall building occupying a corner between two streets with a polished foyer.

Being escorted into the building by Walter, no one would challenge Klaus or Asana for going beyond the foyer without an identification card. The elevator played classical music on low volume, it was intended to relax the people who rode the lift but it only agitated Klaus, “Are they ever going to change the music?” he complained.

“I think it’s nice,” Asana smiled, “You can dance to your destination.”

“Do you see me dancing in the street, Asana?” Klaus raised an eyebrow up at her.

“It would be an interesting thing to see,” she laughed.

“Stop being silly,” he chuckled and pulled her into his embrace, “Balls are for dancing not elevators,” he gave her a quick kiss as the door opened on their floor.

Administration staff and agents worked hard to complete their tasks but they all made a clear path for Walter, the boss of his division and a feared and respected wizard across the kingdom. Julius had been waiting for him inside his office and had a coffee in one hand as he slouched across the sofa reading through new evidence.

“Julius,” Walter tapped him on the head, “Would you bring Klaus up to speed on the theft case while I bring Asana up to speed on the case with the magic creatures,” he ordered without room for him to question.

“There is a new development in the theft of the books too,” Julius’ voice faded into the background as he escorted his brother from their father’s office to somewhere quieter, “Elias just called and he is on his way back from his meeting with a professor, apparently an expert in the ancient language and culture of the Arminitian civilisation, but he’s dead.”

“Dead, how?”

“Murdered,” Julius pulled out a photo from the paper he had been reading from and showed his brother, “There’s weird markings all over the body but Elias and Luca agree it is a magic circle.”

Klaus analysed the picture for himself and could see where the lines began to curve around the torso and line with the markings across the arms. However, the markings were in a language he had never seen before. “Well, I would agree it is a magic circle but is this the ancient language of the Arminitian people?”

“Elias said it is.”

“Right,” Klaus nodded, “I suppose it is too early to ask why someone would use the book to commit murder but we need to be clear that these markings came from the book which was stolen.”

He opened the door to his own office but entered before Klaus, “Elias has been using my office to help us with the case so naturally he has left everything here. We have a list of the theft books from the universal library but we are yet to speak with the curator. Since Elias and Luca are already at the scene with the dead professor, you can revisit the library and speak with the curator, see if you can pick up anything we might have missed. We are still in the early stages of this investigation but until Dad and I return from this case, it’s all yours.”

“So, I am simply standing in until Dad and you return from the exciting job,” he sarcastically accepted the file from his brother’s hands.

Julius leaned against the front of his desk and smiled at his little brother’s sarcastic joke, “Well, I don’t consider being outside my comfort zone exciting that’s why we recruited Asana to assist us,” he sighed, “Dealing with humans is quite different than dealing with creatures.”

“True,” Klaus couldn’t disagree and respected Asana for being able to handle magical creatures, “I respect her strength and bravery to be able to handle those beasts but if a Tamer can’t than who can.”

Several minutes of silence passed between them as Klaus read over the new evidence but his attention returned to the report which started this complicated issue, “Asana told me how she came to you for help to launch the initial investigation into Vitkevich. Do you think he stole your copy of the original report?”

Julius began to chuckle, “As the saying goes, a gazelle can get a head start on the cheetah but eventually the cheetah will catch him. He’s the gazelle and we are the cheetahs,” his analogy made Klaus smile.

“Do you think Edric has something to do with the missing creatures?”

“No doubt in my mind he has,” Julius said, “After Asana launched the initial investigation, we had several other tamers, agents and magical creature nurses and vets come to us and put in their own complaints regarding his conduct and mistreatment of the creatures in his care. Complaints of wrong diagnosis and medical treatment. After investigating him, we found strong links between him, a high-ranked agent in the creature’s division and black market auctions, selling, living magical creatures as well as parts of deceased creatures, to dark wizards.”

“So, this is the strong theory?”

Julius nodded, “Edric and his accomplice, Jeanine Duvall, ran.”

“What about the creatures disappearing from the forest and from hospitals?”

“Thefts,” Julius answered, “The creatures in the forest were scared into traps. It is hard to trace them since there is no magical trail, they are covering up their tracks quite well but I have no doubt in my mind they are behind these crimes.”

“You need evidence too,” Klaus reminded him.

“I am aware of that and I will get it,” Julius’ tone was determined.

“You are annoyed because he stole something from your cabinet, aren’t you?” Klaus chuckled.

His question brought back a memory from when they were kids, “You of all people know I don’t like it when my things are touched let alone stolen from under my nose.”

“Yes, I remember,” Klaus chuckled, “Though, you allowed Elias to do whatever he wanted.”

“Ah, but Elias asked me first and between the two of you, he’s nicer.”

Klaus rolled his eyes, “Whatever. If you don’t mind, I have work to do.”

“This is my office.”

“Not at the moment it’s not,” Klaus moved behind the desk to sit in the comfort of the leather seat to read through the new evidence.

“Don’t get too comfortable and don’t move anything out of place,” Julius teased and motioned to leave the room to allow his brother to think in peace, “Good luck.”

Re-entering his father’s office, Walter was catching Asana up on everything they already knew. “What creatures have been stolen and is there a way to find out what parts are being sold on the black market?” she wondered.

“High to low creatures have gone missing,” Walter handed her a list of creatures, “There may be more than what is listed but I hope there is a chance we can find some of these creatures alive and unharmed.”

“Well, if these creatures are still alive there might be a way for us to track their magical residue if their magic has not been sealed.”

“Sealing the magic of a high-end creature would take a considerable amount of power,” Julius commented, “Wouldn’t it?” though, he wasn’t sure.

“Usually,” Asana began to explain, “Years ago, Randy developed these cages to assist the magical creature unit in helping to restrain the magic within high-end creatures in cases where they were injured yet to agitated to allow humans close to them. Sealing their magic by wand is incredibly difficult. Only exceptional tamers like Randy and myself could do something that powerful.”

“We will start there,” Walter said, “Find out who last had those cages and nets or if the tool was reinvented by anybody recently.”

Meanwhile, Klaus had quickly caught up with the evidence and intelligence collected on the theft of the ancient textbooks and gathered his materials to revisit the library to talk to the curator in charge of the collection. Leaving the floor at the same time, Klaus met his wife, brother and father at the elevator.

“Promise me you will not be reckless?” Klaus turned to her.

She giggled, “I won’t be, stop worrying.”

“It is natural for a husband to worry.”

Leaning over on the tip of her toes, she planted her lips on his cheek, “Thank you for worrying about me Klaus,” she understood his worry and felt his love fluttering through her heart but she gazed around her, “Besides, I am surrounded by powerful wizards who have my back. Please concentrate on your job so you don’t get hurt.”

“Who do you think I am? I won’t get hurt.”

The elevator chimed as the doors opened. After the group of people filed out through the doors, they entered with Asana turning to Walter with an idea, “If it is alright with you, while you and Julius go to inventory to see who last checked out the creature cages, I think I would be more useful going to the hospitals and shelters where the creatures were taken and then going to the Natural Reserve to speak with the ranger there. That way I can determine which creatures were taken.”

“Take Julius with you, I can check inventory myself,” Walter agreed.

Like that, the plans changed but Walter was not about to leave her alone with the secret she’s keeping in the back of his mind, “Take care of your sister,” Walter ordered Julius and was the first to vacate the elevator.

Leaning backwards into Klaus, she looked at him from a slight upside-down angle, “Where are you going?”

“Universal Library to talk to the curator of the ancient textbooks and to try and establish how the robbery was committed in the first place,” he smiled at her adorably framed face, “Elias and Luca will be late on coming back since there has been a murder.”

“Murder? By the spells from the book?”

“Possibly, at least that is what Elias has told Julius.”

“I wonder if it is random or a targeted act?” she pondered, “Either way, sounds unpleasant.”

“Murders aren’t supposed to be pleasant, darling,” Klaus bobbed his finger on her nose, “Remember what you promised this morning, you keep looking at me like that you will hurt your neck.”

She regained her posture and turned her body around to face him, “You can’t be serious?” she tried to gauge if he was teasing her, “I promised myself to you tonight on the basis we would be returning to our home tonight. It’s different now we are here.”

“What’s the difference?” he smirked, “We will be staying at my parents’ house.”

Suddenly, Julius felt like he was in an awkward position and was possibly forgotten with the two talking in their own world. He cleared his throat and hoped the door would open at any second, but it didn’t. Instead, it stopped at a few more floors on the way down and he was relegated to the back of the elevator with Klaus and Asana continuing to talk. He spoke up instead, “While I am proud my little brother is not going to die a virgin,” he whispered so strangers would not hear him, “I do not wish to hear it.”

“I don’t recall including you in this conversation,” Klaus retorted.

At last the elevator door opened to the carpark and it felt strange for Asana to jump into the passenger seat with Julius, in place of Klaus, as he drove carefully from the parking lot. Klaus opting to fly to the library by broom.

The real work had started and both cases would take multiple days to solve.

Brown – that was the best word to describe the old library. The building was several stories high but it was a depressing place to visit or to work within. Unlike a public library, this library was more of a storage home for old books that are not used often but are too important to destroy.

Polished wooden brown shelves, likely made several centuries ago, shined under the light orbs of the poorly ventilated location. Noticing the lack of ventilation, Klaus could smell the dust and ink of the old books, most having brown spines with an inviting golden inlay, and it ruled out the old-fashioned breaking in through the vents. As he stepped along the floor seeking the curator, the wooden planks below his feet deceivingly echoed his light footsteps as being heavy. Past many shelves, he noticed magic gates locked the most restricted areas of the library.

“Ah, you must be Klaus Goldstein, Walter’s boy?” Snapping Klaus from his senses, an elegantly suited old man, easily beyond his sixties, with hair as white as a bed sheet extended his hand for a handshake.

“Yes, you must be the curator of this library?”

“Curator?” the old man laughed, “That is a rather nice way to put being the caretaker. As for calling this place a library, it is more a museum for unused but important books but no can come here simply to view these relics whenever they would like. Please, call me Alfred Goldsmith.”

His early perception of the old man that he was agreeable and willing to help the investigators do their job without much restriction, “Mr Goldsmith, I understand magic is unable to be used in the library due to the nature of the spell books housed here—.”

“Ah! You are talking about the magic barrier,” he interrupted Klaus, “Follow me, young man.”

With a lantern in hand, the elderly man escorted Klaus down several flights of stairs. From the exercise, the old man coughed unpleasantly and breathed heavily but he continued without a complaint. Compared to the darkness of the library above, the basement was as dark as night with the odd streetlight illuminating a fraction of path.

“Is there a barrier device which prevents wizards from using their magic within the library?”

In the basement, Klaus struggled to see but could hear the running of equipment which kept library operating. “Yes,” the old man stood next to a pole and near a locked box, “However, this device runs on an algorithm. Walter Goldstein created this device in his very young days before he was married and had children, such a talented man your father is, but it prevented the use of magic as people walk through the building but does not restrict the magic to run the lights and the gates in the restricted sections of the library.”

Klaus looked from the old man to the device secured in the box. Without looking at the device, Klaus could tell it was working because he could not feel his magic energy flowing through his body. However, he had an idea, “Is it possible for the device’s algorithm to be altered?” he asked.

“Yes,” the older man nodded, “But, it would take time.”

Ignoring the old man, Klaus pressed a button on the device. Suddenly, his own powers previously sealed began to flow once again through his body. On the screen of the tool, a countdown clock counted backwards from five minutes. Curiously, the old man watched his experiment and remembered something years ago, Walter had told him, “Oh, this is an emergency feature,” the older man stated.

“I know,” Klaus now knew how the thieves managed to disable the magical barrier surrounding the library, “Someone who knows the place knew how the device worked and knew the layout of the library.”

It felt like a short five minutes, but once the clock had finished counting down to zero the screen went black and he felt his own magic being sealed once again. He pressed the button again and timed how fast he could get from the basement to the shelf using his magic. Taking a book from the shelf, he teleported well within a few minutes and not a sensor sounded an alarm when he had taken a restricted book outside. With the system back in place, his teleportation into the building was blocked.

Meeting with the curator again, Klaus asked a question, “In total how many books were taken?”

“A total of twelve books were stolen,” he said, “They were all from the same collection of ancient Arminitian Dark Culture. This civilisation existed centuries ago and pioneered many dark magic practices from curses and potions which modern dark wizards use to this day. The Ministry managed to find all twelve books but kept them in case they needed to reference dark magic during their cases.”

“Who has access to these books?”

“Myself and only high ranking Ministerial agents with a court clearance to consult the books,” his impressionable humorous attitude Klaus had met with had no vanished, “They are kept not only behind a magic gate but also a glass shelf enhanced with magic. It is near impossible to penetrate with magic.”

“This is certainly a calculated theft, they knew what they were after,” he muttered, “Assuming there is special access to this library, is there a daily record of people who enter the building?”

“Ah, yes, right this way,” the older man now escorted Klaus to a back office, likely belonging to the curator where he worked on his many duties in peace, privacy and comfort. “Run by the Ministry, there is tight security on this library because of the nature of some of these books.”

“Try looking as far back as one month,” Klaus recommended.

“Right,” the old man agreed and then set the records down in front of Klaus, “Not to be rude, I have a matter I must attend to in the library but I will return soon.”

“That’s fine,” not giving as much as a smile, Klaus remained in the office where he could look over the records naming people who had come into the library. “Elias Goldstein,” he was surprised to see how often his brother came to the library, “That seems normal,” he chuckled.

Still, he continued to list names which occurred the most, even his own brother despite knowing Elias wouldn’t have a bone in his body to dare use dark magic. Other names which recurred the most were two – Sadie Laurence and Edgar Renieri. Of course, he did not rule out any guards either and had each person provide him with an alibi on the night the books had disappeared.

He spent most of the afternoon at the library running through his own experiments to determine how the barrier system could be tricked but even under a magic disguise, the record system could reveal the true identity of the person beneath the mask.

“Mr Goldsmith,” Klaus spoke to him several times during his individual investigation but he had everything he needed for to continue the investigation, “I will be leaving now. Thank you for your time.”

Startled, the old man stood to his feet from his desk and extended a gentlemanly handshake, “Any Goldstein is welcomed here,” he laughed, “Your little brother, Elias, comes here often too. He’s a nice young lad, also interested in these old tomes and grimoires to help with his work at the Ministry and inventing magic tools. He reminds me of your father when he was young.”

“I will be sure to tell him,” inside his mind, Klaus laughed at his brother’s predictability and would immediately cross him from the list, “Expect us to come and go Mr Goldsmith.”

“I will be here.”

Farewells completed, he was shocked to learn the sun had begun to set from when he had arrived to conduct his own investigation. However, with a library poorly ventilated and shrouded in darkness, it would be easy for anyone to lose track of time and suspected the old man’s dry cough was likely caused by the dust trapped within the air. He could see his own suit was dirty from spending those few hours inside.

The skies were clear of clouds but a cool afternoon breeze lingered in the air as it gently brushed across his face. Temporarily, his thoughts wandered away from his own investigation and he thought about how Asana was coping with his father and brother. Soon, they would be reunited for the night.

Majority of her day was speaking to the workers at the hospital and the national park ranger to determine how many creatures and what species of creatures were captured unnoticed. At her former place of employment, she noticed the alarm system had been disarmed with magic and the nets and cages were reported missing several months ago to the division.

“No one asked why there was no investigation into the theft?” Julius asked the manager of the hospital.

“I had made the initial report but we were simply issued new nets and cages,” she replied, “I didn’t think anything of it and that’s when we heard creatures were disappearing from the forest too.”

Although it was an honest and carless mistake, Julius didn’t linger on it too long despite his exasperated sigh. Asana roamed around the holding area where the injured animals were left to recover under observation, she left Julius to the interview. “Psst, girl!” something called out to her.

“Huh?” she turned her head to the cages behind her.

With an injured wing and paw, the creature had deep emerald eyes and black bristly fur, the shade of an ash-obsidian. His size and body shape was the same weight and sleekness of an ordinary wild panther. They are fairy cats or Cait Sith. “Yes,” she walked to the cage giving the beautiful creature her attention.

“You are hunting the human killing creatures?”

“Yes, do you know something?”

His deep green eyes were captivating, “I do because I escaped his net in time but my clan were captured,” he said, his head bowing in defeat.

“That’s right,” she remembered everything she had studied on these critically endangered species. Once a lone hunter, they formed prides like lions to combat their declining numbers and now travelled in clans to help each other survive. The large boy in front of her was the dominate male of the clan. “Tell me what happened, I can help you.”

“Can you save my clan?”

“Yes, I will,” she promised the creature.

The big cat leaned forward, “We were minding our own business when we were ambushed by four large foxes, magical creatures too. We tried to fight them, but they were too powerful. Many of my young children were mustered into cages and nets were thrown over the females trying to protect their cubs. Our magic was useless and eventually sealed.”

“Large foxes?” she tilted her head trying to think, “How many tails did they have?”

“Nine, each of them,” it chuckled, “They are Kitsunes, I believe they are under the command of the humans who captured my clan. A man and a woman controlled them but I followed them to a building in the forest it was near water. So many creatures are caged.”

“Where in which forest?” she asked calmly.

“In the northern part by the ocean near a castle,” being a wild creature he could not name the forest but he could tell her its details, “The forest is like a jungle with a leafy and bark ground. I apologise for I can’t name the forests since I don’t know the names, it is my home.”

“No, you have been more than helpful,” she wasn’t at a disadvantage since he described it she could find forests in the region to match, “The people here will take good care of you and I will try to get your clan back.”

She reached her hand inside the cage and gave him a gentle stroke on the head.

“Julius!” she quickly returned to her brother-in-law’s side and dragged him away by the arm, “One of the creatures in the hospital was an escaped victim of Edric and Jeanine. His clan was not so lucky but he followed their scent and found a building nearby an ocean where magical creatures are being caged.”

“Did he say which forest?”

“No, creatures don’t know the name of forests Julius,” she repeated the words of the creature, “However, he did mention seeing a castle and the forest was like a jungle,” her mind was ticking away, “It’s not enough for us to go on the words of what a creature told me but I have another way where we can find the evidence we need.”

“How?”

“I don’t know.”

“Let’s investigate by talking to some more people,” he said.

Interviewing shelter and hospital managers as well as the national park ranger, they uncovered how the creatures were disappearing. Using ambush tactics and surprise attacks, creatures were being captured or killed in the dark wizards grab for easy cash on the black market. They had a considerable list after Asana assessed the ecology of the forests around the city with Walter phoning ahead to other officials managing the ecology of creature populations across the kingdom for further insight.

Before long, it was dark but the next step they would take was unclear making the car ride back to the Goldstein residence evermore quiet as they mulled over the investigation.

[delicatelysublimeforester]

Please educate yourself about the seasons when deer – vehicle collisions occur – the peak months (Nov-Dec rut and May-July fawn rearing)

White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus)

Mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus)

White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus)

White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus)

White-tail Deer

Mule Deer Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada

      The number of vehicles on Valley Road and Township Road 362A (Cedar Villa Road) has increased exponentially. There is a greenspace at Chappell Marsh Conservation Area, and right across the road is the  forest at Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area.  It is wise to slow down; if a deer jumps out from between the trees of the forest to the farmers field, or to the conservation area, it is best to take precautions, and be safe. The number of deers killed on Valley Road and on Township Road 362A (Cedar Villa Road) is taking its toll on the animal population over the last few months, and can be disastrous for drivers.

Please be careful out there!  See also Deer – Vehicle Accidents

“The human cost of vehicle collisions with wildlife is substantial. On average 387 people are injured and 4 killed in animal related collisions on Saskatchewan roads…The peak times for collisions are dawn and dusk. Yellow wildlife warning signs indicate areas of high risk. No matter the season or time of day, it’s important to watch for signs of wildlife and reduce your speed accordingly. Slowing down reduces the distance required to stop and decreases the force of impact in the event of a collision. ”

“Reduce Speed

Speed is one of the most common factors in vehicle collisions.

Speed:Reduces the drivers ability to steer away from objects in the roadway

Speed: Extends the distance required to stop Speed: Increases the force of impact, in the event of a collision With good road conditions, drivers tend to increase their speed. Some studies suggest that wildlife vehicle collisions occur more than expected on clear nights, on dry road conditions and on long straight stretches. Drivers may tend to be more cautious on curves or in poor weather“ Wildlife Collision Prevention Program.

“It happens so quickly. It’s just like somebody cutting you off or something like that,” Jordan Goodlad told CBC News in describing his encounter with a deer on the road… “You almost don’t realize it ’til it’s done.” CBC News

If we are willing to be still and open enough to listen, wilderness itself will teach us. Steven Harper

“If you’ve driven on North American roads, you’ve seen roadkill – animals that have been killed by passing traffic. At some time, you may have run over a small animal on the road. You may even have had the harrowing experience of striking a large animal. “ Canada Safety Council

“Roads attract wildlife because they provide a travel corridor, easy access to vegetation and in the winter, a source of salt. ..[Fish and Wildlife] Officers advise drivers to reduce their speed at night and around water or on tree-lined roads. Scan the road and ditches for animals and use high beams when possible; deer eyes glow when struck by light. “ Tim Evans.

“The fall/winter season is a busy time of year for wildlife. While we always recommend keeping an eye out, your chances of colliding with a wild animal increase from October to January. (In the spring, wildlife collisions also increase between May and June.)

Think it can’t happen to you? Check out the statistics: Every 38 minutes in Canada, there’s 1 collision between a motor vehicle and a wild animal. 89% of collisions with wildlife happen on two-lane roads just outside cities and towns. 86% of wildlife collisions happen in on warm weather days.” SGI Canada 2017

“While a vehicular collision with a deer can be very costly and sometimes cause personal injury, a collision with a moose can have very dire consequences” says Darrell Crabbe. “That’s why we engage in this annual campaign. It is our hope that the message will save lives, both human and wildlife.” Saskatchewan Wildlife Federation

Please be careful out there!  Save a deer, and protect yourself.

Grandfather, Look at our brokenness. We know that in all creation Only the human family has strayed from the Sacred Way. We know that we are the ones who are divided. And we are the ones who must come back together, To walk in the Sacred Way.

Grandfather, O Sacred One, Teach us love, compassion and honor That we may heal the earth And heal each other. Ojibway Prayer

Bibliography: Caution: Animals Crossing Traffic Safety Canada Safety CouncilCollisions involving deer, semi carring hazardous materials shut down highway south of Saskatoon. CBC News October 27 2018 Oh, deer: What to do if there’s an animal on the road Tim Evans. Oct 24 2017 Stay safe during wildlife collision season SGI Canada. Nove 27 2017 Collisions with wildlife up in Saskatchewan 980 CJME Spike in Vehicle – Wildlife collisions causes concern Chelsea Walters. Saskatchewan Wildlife Federation. Wildlife Collision Prevention Program When Do Collisions with Wildlife Occur? Reducing the Risk Wildlife Collisions SGI Wildlife collisions rising:SGI CBC News Wildlife-Vehicle Collisions in Canada: A Review of the Literature and a Compendium of Existing Data Sources Traffic Injury Research Foundation.

I always thought of deer as solitary animals that weren’t very interesting. But my goodness, that was very wrong. The big eye-opener for me was that they’re social. They have family groups. Elizabeth Marshall Thomas

For directions as to how to drive to “George Genereux” Urban Regional Park

For directions on how to drive to Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area

For more information:

Blairmore Sector Plan Report; planning for the Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area,  George Genereux Urban Regional Park and West Swale and areas around them inside of Saskatoon city limits

P4G Saskatoon North Partnership for Growth The P4G consists of the Cities of Saskatoon, Warman, and Martensville, the Town of Osler and the Rural Municipality of Corman Park; planning for areas around the afforestation area and West Swale outside of Saskatoon city limits

Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area is located in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada north of Cedar Villa Road, within city limits, in the furthest south west area of the city. 52° 06′ 106° 45′ Addresses: Part SE 23-36-6 – Afforestation Area – 241 Township Road 362-A Part SE 23-36-6 – SW Off-Leash Recreation Area (Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area ) – 355 Township Road 362-A S ½ 22-36-6 Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area (West of SW OLRA) – 467 Township Road 362-A NE 21-36-6 “George Genereux” Afforestation Area – 133 Range Road 3063 Wikimapia Map: type in Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area Google Maps South West Off Leash area location pin at parking lot Web page: https://stbarbebaker.wordpress.com Where is the Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area? with map Where is the George Genereux Urban Regional Park (Afforestation Area)? with map

Pinterest richardstbarbeb

Facebook Group Page: Users of the George Genereux Urban Regional Park

Facebook: StBarbeBaker

Facebook group page : Users of the St Barbe Baker Afforestation Area

Facebook: South West OLRA

Twitter: StBarbeBaker

Please help protect / enhance your afforestation areas, please contact the Friends of the Saskatoon Afforestation Areas Inc. (e-mail / e-transfers )

Support the afforestation areas with your donation or membership ($20.00/year).  Please donate by paypal using the e-mail friendsafforestation AT gmail.com, or by using e-transfers  Please and thank you!  Your donation and membership is greatly appreciated.  Members e-mail your contact information to be kept up to date!

Canada Helps

1./ Learn.

2./ Experience

3./ Do Something: ***

“The future of the planet concerns all of us, and all of us should do what we can to protect it. ” Wangari Maathai.

“The science of forestry arose from the recognition of a universal need. It embodies the spirit of service to mankind in attempting to provide a means of supplying forever a necessity of life and, in addition, ministering to man’s aesthetic tastes and recreational interests. Besides, the spiritual side of human nature needs the refreshing inspiration which comes from trees and woodlands. If a nations saves its trees, the trees will save the nation. And nations as well as tribes may be brought together in this great movement, based on the ideal of beautifying the world by the cultivation of one of God’s loveliest creatures – the tree.” ~ Richard St. Barbe Baker.

Grandfather, Look at our brokenness. Please educate yourself about the seasons when deer – vehicle collisions occur – the peak months (Nov-Dec rut and May-July fawn rearing)

[constructionaccounting]

0296: Top 5 Online Marketing Trends In 2019 With Actionable Tips For Contractors

This Podcast Is Episode Number 0296, And It Will Be About The Top 5 Online Marketing Trends In 2019 With Actionable Tips For Contractors

Today more than ever, we live in a world where information is accessible at the touch of a button, a few clicks on your keyboard, or even just a voice command. Although it's hard to predict where new technologies will lead us, one thing is for certain - we are now all digitally connected. The internet has caused our businesses to thrive and survive and there's no way of blocking its impact in our day-to-day lives. 

With that said, it is helpful to keep an eye out on these marketing trends that could influence how your target audience search and consume data along with actionable tips that could jump start your new year "to-do list":

    Trend #1: A Functional Website (Content Is Everything)

Your online storefront is your landing page. Although there's no manual for creating a high-converting copy and building a foolproof design, there is no denying that to establish your online presence, you need to have a business website. People don't usually go for the best products and services in the market (especially the ones who are new to your site), they opt for the one whose information they can digest quickly and easily. 

Actionable Tip: Donald Miller, founder of StoryBrand, has an easy and powerful way of evaluating your website. As a rule, upon visiting your website, one should understand what you offer within five seconds. Does your website pass the "Grunt Test" (Assuming a caveman were to open a laptop, look at your site for 5 seconds, and close the laptop, will it be able to grunt what is your website about?) With just a quick glance at your homepage, can your visitor answer these three questions:

What is it that you offer?

How will it make my life better?

What do I need to do to buy your product/hire of your services?

Give your website a quick make-over by:

Making your headline direct (easy-to-understand tagline)

Displaying the convenience your client will experience if they hire your services

Including an obvious call-to-action button ("Contact Us", "Call Now" in bright, visible colors)

Trend #2: Optimize For Local User Intent

Have you ever reached for your phone, opened your browser, and typed "Where can I find Mexican food near me?" when looking for a place to eat? You have a specific "intent" in mind (food) and would like to eat nearby because, well, you're starving. The page result will bring you a list of restaurant names and maps with their service hours. Google's dominance in search traffic revolutionized the way we look for answers online and we as users, has become more conversational with our queries (whether we are typing it or doing a voice search). Thus, it is crucial for your company to appear on Local SERPs (Search Engine Result Page) to remain search relevancy and build authority while generating better leads for your business.

Actionable Tip: If you haven't done so, claim your Google My Business listing and create a Google My Business profile. Fill out your business page properly and be sure to include all the important details: address, contact number, business hours, and a unique, formatted description of your company with links to your online site. Also, you can maximize your Google presence by creating a free website with an updated profile image (logo), post your services with high-resolution photos for visually appealing content.

Trend #3: Social Media Community

If Google is for "intent", the use of social media is for "interest". According to Hootsuite, 66% of monthly Facebook users use it daily, with Americans spending 58 minutes per day on Facebook. Likewise, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and YouTube have amassed millions of users who are sharing micro-content every second in any given day. Since social networking sites have an easy-to-use interface with downloadable mobile apps, it is convenient and handy, and offers more personalized interaction between you and your patrons. The rise of social networking sites paved the way for small businesses and solopreneurs to advertise their brand without spending a fortune and establish their influence by being part of an online community.

Actionable Tip: Develop a Social Media Marketing strategy. Easier said than done, I know, but every step counts. Start by posting meaningful and engaging content. "Before and after" photos works wonders to curious browsers, but what else can you post? Ongoing promotions, what's your day like at work, your current project, seasonal reminders (for example, you're a plumber: winterize your outdoor kitchen), tips and tricks (how to better take care of your carpet), etc. Monitor where and when you are getting the most feedback from your followers so you can interact with them. The key here is delivering the right message, to the right person, at the right time - every time. 

Trend #4: Videos

One of the most credible ways of connecting with your audience and building trust in your company is the use of videos. Live-stream content is flourishing and has become a powerful tool for online marketers to convey their message. It's no wonder why mobile devices and apps support and feature video tools in their products. According to HubSpot, more than 50% of consumers want to see videos from brands more than any other type of content. 

Actionable Tip: A quick search on Google will give you thousands of results about video marketing and video creation process. You can hire services when you want it professionally done or do it yourself without the complexities of technology by being raw and going "live" on a social media platform. Bear in mind, as with any project, focus on one thing at a time. List down your target audience, the purpose of your video, and the time and resources needed to produce it.

Trend #5: Client/Customer Centricity

As a service-based industry, this concept is integral to your construction company. What does it mean to be client-centric? It is more than just offering an exceptional customer service, it means nurturing relationships with your clients by being part of their "buyer's journey".  Clients in turn, will not only provide you positive feedback but becomes a loyal follower and advocate of your brand. Randal talked about Customers Vs Clients, and how taking care of your clients is essential not just for acquisition but also for sustainability. After all, it is easier to maintain a client than to gain a new one.

Actionable Tip: Empathize with your client when addressing their needs. Make their experience easy, from reaching out to you (remember the "call-to-action" button on your website?) to handing payments. 

In conclusion: Let's keep in mind that trends fade away. Invest in yourself and expand your skills. Develop a growth-mind set because there's still no one-size-fits-all marketing solution for every type of business nor will there ever be. As a construction contractor, I trust that you are adaptable to change and resilient in all the challenges that comes your way. May this year bring you more exciting opportunities and financial blessings. Happy 2019!

  Thank you for stopping by. Please know that we do care about you and your construction company regardless of whether you hire our services or not. For help with your accounting and bookkeeping needs please fill out the form on the right and we'll be in touch with you shortly.

In Conclusion:

Helping Contractors around the world is one of the reasons we added the FastEasyAccountingStore.com Follow our blogs, listen to Contractor Success M.A.P. Podcast. We Appreciate Our Visitors, Listeners, and Subscribers. – Thank You!!

Please feel free to download all the Free Forms and Resources that you find useful for your business.  

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Simply scan the QR code below or search for ‘MyAccountants’ in the App Store and enter the Access code: FEAHEROS to utilize the powerful App features and capabilities, and benefit from having our Construction Accounting App at your fingertips, 24/7.

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About The Author:

  Randal DeHart, PMP, QPA is the co-founder of Business Consulting And Accounting in Lynnwood Washington. He is the leading expert in outsourced construction bookkeeping and accounting services for small construction companies across the USA. He is experienced as a Contractor, Project Management Professional, Construction Accountant, Intuit ProAdvisor, QuickBooks For Contractors Expert and Xero Accounting Specialist. This combination of experience and skill sets provides a unique perspective which allows him to see the world through the eyes of a contractor, Project Manager, Accountant, and construction accountant. This quadruple understanding is what sets him apart from other Intuit ProAdvisors and Xero accountants to the benefit of all of the construction contractors he serves across the USA. Visit http://www.fasteasyaccounting.com/randal-dehart/ to learn more.

Our Co-Founder Randal DeHart - Is a Certified PMP (Project Management Professional) with several years of construction project management experience. His expertise is construction accounting systems engineering and process development. His exhaustive study of several leading experts including the work of Dr. W. Edward Deming, Michael Gerber, Walter A. Shewhart, James Lewis and dozens of others was the foundation upon which our Construction Bookkeeping System is based and continues to evolve and improve. Check out our Contractor Success Map Podcast on iTunes and Follow Randal on Google+ 

We are here to Help “A Little or A Lot” depending on your needs.

I trust this podcast helps you understand that outsourcing your contractor's bookkeeping services to us is about more than just “doing the bookkeeping”; it is about taking a holistic approach to your entire construction company and helping support you as a contractor and as a person.

We Remove Contractor's Unique Paperwork Frustrations

We understand the good, bad and the ugly about owning and operating construction companies because we have had several of them and we sincerely care about you and your construction company!

That is all I have for now, and if you have listened to this far please do me the honor of commenting and rating the Podcast  www.FastEasyAccounting.com/podcast Tell me what you liked, did not like, tell it as you see it because your feedback is crucial and I thank you in advance.

You Deserve To Be Wealthy Because You Bring Value To Other People's Lives!

I trust this will be of value to you and your feedback is always welcome at www.FastEasyAccounting.com/podcast

This Is One more example of how Fast Easy Accounting is helping construction company owners across the USA including Alaska and Hawaii put more money in the bank to operate and grow your construction company. Construction accounting is not rocket science; it is a lot harder than that, and a lot more valuable to construction contractors like you so stop missing out and call Sharie 206-361-3950 or email sharie@fasteasyaccounting.com

Contractor Bookkeeping Done For You!

Thinking About Outsourcing Your Contractors Bookkeeping Services?

Click On The Link Below:

www.FastEasyAccounting.com/hs

This guide will help you learn what to look for in outsourced construction accounting.

Need Help Now?

Call Sharie 206-361-3950

sharie@fasteasyaccounting.com

Thank you very much, and I hope you understand we do care about you and all contractors regardless of whether or not you ever hire our services. Bye for now until our next episode here on the Contractors Success MAP Podcast.

  Our Workflow Removes Your Paperwork Frustrations

For Contractors Who Prefer

To Do Your Bookkeeping

Fast Easy Accounting Do-It-Yourself

Construction Accounting Store Is Open

Most Contractors Setup QuickBooks Or Xero Online Accounting Using:

#1 EZ Step Interview inside QuickBooks Setup #2 Asked Their Tax Accountant To Setup QuickBooks #3 They Attended A How To Setup QuickBooks Class Or Seminar

And QuickBooks Does Not Work The Way They Want It Too!

The Answer:

#1 Click Here To Buy An Entire QuickBooks Setup For Your Specific Contracting Company

#2 Click Here To Buy Just The Chart Of Accounts For Your Specific Contracting Company

Short List Of Construction Contractors We Serve

Asphalt ContractorAsphalt Contractor Brand New ContractorBrand New ContractorBrick And Stone ContractorBrick And Stone ContractorCabinet Installation ContractorCabinet Installation ContractorCarpentry ContractorCarpentry ContractorCarpet And Tile ContractorCarpet And Tile ContractorCommercial Tenant Improvement ContractorCommercial Tenant Improvement ContractorConcrete ContractorConcrete ContractorConstruction EmployeesConstruction EmployeesConstruction ManagerConstruction ManagerConstruction Support SpecialistConstruction Support SpecialistCustom Deck ContractorCustom Deck ContractorCustom Home BuilderCustom Home BuilderDemolition ContractorDemolition ContractorDrywall ContractorDrywall ContractorElectrical ContractorElectrical ContractorEmerging ContractorEmerging ContractorExcavation ContractorExcavation ContractorFinish Millwork ContractorFinish Millwork ContractorFlipper House ContractorFlipper House ContractorFlooring ContractorFlooring ContractorFoundation ContractorFoundation ContractorFraming ContractorFraming ContractorGeneral ContractorGeneral ContractorGlass Installation ContractorGlass Installation ContractorGutter ContractorGutter ContractorHandyman ContractorHandyman ContractorHot Tub ContractorHot Tub ContractorHVAC ContractorHVAC ContractorInsulation ContractorInsulation ContractorInterior Designer ContractorInterior Designer ContractorLand Development ContractorLand Development ContractorLandscape ContractorLandscape ContractorLawn And Yard Maintenance ContractorLawn And Yard Maintenance ContractorMasonry ContractorMasonry ContractorMold Remediation ContractorMold Remediation ContractorMoss Removal ContractorMoss Removal ContractorPainting ContractorPainting ContractorPlaster ContractorPlaster ContractorPlaster And Stucco ContractorPlaster And Stucco ContractorPlumbing ContractorPlumbing ContractorPressure Washing ContractorPressure Washing ContractorRemodel ContractorRemodel ContractorRenovation ContractorRenovation ContractorRestoration ContractorRestoration ContractorRoofing ContractorRoofing ContractorSiding ContractorSiding ContractorSpec Home BuilderSpec Home BuilderSpecialty ContractorSpecialty ContractorStone Mason ContractorStone Mason ContractorStucco ContractorStucco ContractorSubcontractorSubcontractorSwimming Pool ContractorSwimming Pool ContractorSwimming Pool And Hot Tub ContractorSwimming Pool And Hot Tub ContractorTile And Carpet ContractorTile And Carpet ContractorTrade ContractorTrade ContractorTree ContractorTree ContractorUnderground ContractorUnderground ContractorUtility ContractorUtility ContractorWaterproofing ContractorWaterproofing ContractorWindow ContractorWindow Contractor

Additional QuickBooks Templates, Resources, And Services

QuickBooks Set Up TemplatesSolopreneurQuickBooks Chart Of AccountsFree StuffQuickBooks Item Lists TemplatesConsulting

We Serve Over 100 Types Of Contractors So If Your Type Of Company Is Not Listed

Please Do Not Be Concerned Because If You Are A Contractor

There Is A Good Chance We Can Help You!

Call Now: 206-361-3950

  Additional QuickBooks Templates, Resources, And Services

QuickBooks Set Up Templates   Solopreneur

QuickBooks Chart Of Accounts     Free Stuff

QuickBooks Item Lists Templates     Consulting

  We Serve Over 100 Types Of Contractors So If Your Type Of Company Is Not Listed

Please Do Not Be Concerned Because If You Are A Contractor

There Is A Good Chance We Can Help You!

Call Now: 206-361-3950

If you are a blogger, who writes about construction we would like to hear from you.

https://www.fasteasyaccounting.com/guestblogger

      Check out this episode about Contractors Marketing - Accounting - Production (M.A.P.)!