TITLE: Bombardier Boy: Or, The Metamorphosis of a Superhero (1/) AUTHOR: Jess EMAIL ADDRESS: snarkypup@mindspring.com DISCLAIMER: Um, you’re kidding right? DISTRIBUTION STATEMENT: Anywhere, just let me know. SPOILER WARNING: Up through season six, but nothing too obvious. RATING: PG (it’s ok, Darla. We’ve discussed this possibility) CONTENT WARNING: None, though lots of ass references CLASSIFICATION: X-File, a little UST, and hopefully, Humor SUMMARY: Mulder and Scully (who else? As if I’ve ever written Krycek fic) investigate the mysterious deaths of members of the Russian Mafia and the appearance of a new “breed” of crime fighter. AUTHOR’S NOTE: I am not an entomologist. I hate doing research. Draw your own conclusions. This idea was my husband’s, so this is dedicated to him. He is a beetle fanatic. As I’ve mentioned on some lists, but not others, I have a new, permanent email: snarkypup@mindspring.com. The hotmail address still works, so don’t panic (as if you were). Bombardier Boy: Or, The Metamorphosis of a Superhero Entomology Lab University of Arkansas at Little Rock Early October “Look Out!… Radioactive Man!” Bart Simpson rolled gracefully across the counter as research student Oscar Wilder sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. These “favors” for Professor Mendelson were really getting to be a pain in the ass, literally. He was now numb from the waist down. You would think, Oscar pondered, that a million-dollar research facility could afford a comfortable chair. “Marge, do you have other men in this house? Radioactive men?” Oscar snickered and reached forward to turn up the TV. That thing was his saving grace, really. If it weren’t for the good old Fox Network and their syndication scam, he’d probably have told Mendelson to shove this assistantship up his fat, white ass. Sure, Mendelson was the finest entomologist the university, and possibly the entire insect world, had ever seen, but Oscar was really not a particular fan of Coleoptera. He was an ant man, himself. Oh sure, he admired beetles, for their proliferance, for their tenacity, but in the end, there was nothing so amazing as watching a colony of Brazilian fire ants make their way across the leaf litter of the Amazonian jungle. Speaking of which… Oscar glanced down at the terrarium he was assembling for yet another of Professor Mendelson’s pet projects, the life cycle of Pheropsophus Aequinoctialis. Now, where had he put that fern? “Look Out!… Radioactive Man! The sun is exploding again!” There, next to the “river”, which was really just an aquarium pump and a gradated gravel bed with declorinated water to flow over it. These Brazilian beetles were actually quite picky, not so much in habitat, but in diet. The adults were opportunistic feeders, but the larvae would only develop if fed an exclusive diet of mole cricket eggs. How anything could be so specialized was beyond Oscar, who liked creatures that weren’t threatened with extinction every time you turned around. Which begged the question, where were the little buggers? The large white porcelain petrie dish he had been using to keep them in (with a piece of glass for a lid) showed three little Pheropsophus Aequinoctialises scrambling futilely against the sides. There were supposed to be four. “Shit, shit, shit.” Muttering, Oscar slid off the stool and peered under the bench. If he lost one of these guys, it was deep shit indeed. Imported directly from Brazil, they were difficult to breed in captivity and expensive to acquire live. “Beetle! Hey beetle!” he called, crawling along the floor with his eye practically pressed to the linoleum. “Here beetle beetle beetle… here little beetle. Where the hell did you go?” Pheropsophus Aequinoctialises were not large insects, growing to no more than half an inch, and being brown and yellow, weren’t exactly the easiest thing to see in the dark corners of the old lab. Fortunately, like most flying insects, they were attracted to light. Straight ahead of his nose, Oscar could see the inch-high crack at the bottom of the lab door. From somewhere in the hallway, a bright light radiated into the darkened entomology lab and like a weary traveler heading for a tavern, the missing Pheropsophus Aequinoctialis was making his sturdy little way under the door toward the glow. “Gotcha!” Oscar crowed, opening the door just in time to watch the beetle take flight into a neighboring lab. From inside, a nearly pulsing glow drew Oscar through the door. “Yo, dude!” Philip Cravel, Dr. Parsenini’s research assistant, greeted Oscar from a stool in the corner. He lowered his headphones, but kept on a pair of sunglasses. “What’s up?” “Hey Philip, how’s it hanging?” “Low and loose, my friend, low and loose. You still over there building little beetle houses?” Philip asked, nodding his head to the tinny music sounding from his lowered headphones. “That’s me. Habitat for f-ing humanity. What’s up in here?” Philip glanced at the banks of bright lights ringing the sides of the room. “We’re looking at the effect of long-term UVB radiation exposure on chicken fetuses, dude.” “Cool,” Oscar said. “These tanning lights?” Philip nodded. “I should be wicked brown for the surfing season, except that I have to wear this stupid lab coat. So dude, what’s up?” Oscar searched the ring of light for any movement. “Lost a Pheropsophus Aequinoctialis. Crawled right out under the door. I watched him fly in here.” “Dude, you are welcome to take a look around, but I gotta get back to work if I’m gonna get home in time for the Sci-Fi Channel’s Next Generation marathon.” “That’s fine,” Oscar said. “I appreciate it.” Moving from light bank to light bank, he peered as closely as seemed safe. Finally, on the last bank, he saw a tell-tale black dot, moving along one of the fluorescent tubes. “There we go,” he said, plucking the insect from the tube with a pair of tweezers. “You get him?” Philip asked. “Got him,” Oscar confirmed. “Hey, don’t work too hard, man. Go home, y’know, expose yourself to a little friendly radiation.” “I will,” Philip called. “You too, man.” Opening the door to the lab, Oscar heard a strange little pop from the tweezers. Fearing he had crushed his subject, he lifted it up to the light from the TV. The insect appeared fine, wiggling angrily. Oscar grinned at him, and heard the pop again, just before he felt the fine chemical mist hit his face. “Shit,” he said, “shit, shit, shit!” “My eyes!” Rainier Wolfcastle shouted from the TV. “The goggles! They do nothing!” xxxxx J. Edgar Hoover Building One Week Later Dana Scully yawned wearily and leaned against the side of the elevator as it trundled, groaning, to the basement. She was exhausted. If she had to spend one more night in a cold autopsy room dissecting another overweight jogger who’d died of a heart attack, though Mulder insisted it might be alien abduction… “There were lights, Scully!”, she would scream. Her legs ached, her back throbbed, and worst of all, the insides of her arches felt like someone was jabbing red-hot sticks of dynamite inside and then setting them off at random. It was excruciating, especially to a woman who, let’s face it, relied a little heavily on non-sensible shoes. Last week she had actually walked into a Florsheim shop in the local mall and bought a pair of those hideous little sneakers nurses wear. He was so treading on thin ice. “Good morning, Scully. Let me ask you something… what do you think of when you hear the words Little Rock, Arkansas? Besides cheap property by a very scenic river?” Stifling another yawn, she regarded her preternaturally perky partner. God, what was he on? “To be honest, Mulder, I don’t think of anything.” “Come on, Scully, chicken capital of the country.” “Mulder, the last time we ventured into chicken country, I was very nearly beheaded by the members of a cannibalistic cult, if you recall.” “I do, Scully,” he said, handing her the plane ticket anyway. “And it’s not that I don’t care, but I think you may actually be interested in this. It’s right up your little forensic… alley.” And there on the screen in front of her appeared two skeletons lying on their backs in an alley. “Fine,” she said, perching on the edge of her desk and lifting one weary foot up from the floor. “What happened to them?” Mulder grinned and nodded to the screen, urging her to take a closer look. “I thought you might tell me,” he said, changing the slide to show a closer view. “Looks like… it looks like their flesh was eaten away by some sort of acid.” “Bingo!” He was delighted, advancing the slides to show several views of the dissolved victims. “The precise substance has yet to be established, but a preliminary report states the acid to be a combination of hydroquinones and hydrogen peroxide.” “Ouch,” Scully said dully, staring at the bubbling flesh left on one set of bones. “Who were they?” “Sergei and Ivan Ivanov, card carrying members of that little organization known as the Russian Mafia.” Scully looked at the two rather beefy blond men in the mug shots Mulder had punched up. “So, you intrigued?” he asked. “Why would I be? These two gentlemen are dumped in an alley in what looks like a less-than-savory section of Little Rock after being killed and submerged in acid. Classic gang hit, Mulder. Haven’t you seen La Femme Nikita?” “Sorry Scully, but unless it’s subtitled: ‘The Uncut Version’…” he said, flipping back several slides. “What’s that there?” He was pointing to something dark in front of each of the bodies. “I don’t know… it looks like…” “An acid trail? Scully, these guys weren’t dipped in acid, they were hosed down with it.” She stepped up and looked at the slide, at the black trails of acid spreading forward from each of the bodies. Pinching the bridge of her nose and trying to remind herself that she was paid to do this, though not well enough, certainly, she said: “That’s crazy, Mulder. Even if you could come up with a delivery system, why would anyone bother to spray someone with acid when a bullet will work equally well?” “Good question. Here’s another. How do you develop a way to spray two people with boiling hot acid?” “Boiling hot?” she asked. “How do they know that?” Mulder looked at her, knowing he had her, grinning widely. “Come on, Mulder, stop gloating. How do they know?” “Because the composition of the acid isn’t strong enough to have killed these men. Their flesh was literally burned off, right there in the alley.” Scully sighed. “Isn’t it hot in Little Rock this time of year?” “Damn hot,” Mulder agreed, still smirking. “Tight, little, white t-shirt weather, Scully.” Hitting him in the chest with the tickets, she rolled her eyes. “Shut up, Mulder.” xxxxx Somewhere in Little Rock Later that Same Day Mulder looked over at his sleeping partner, her face a peachy-pink under the light from the halogen street lamp. She must be exhausted, after spending all night slicing and dicing. He shouldn’t feel guilty, after all, there had been a strange pattern of yellow throbbing lights in the sky above Mr. Hooper’s house. How was he supposed to know the Hoopers lived right on top of an old landfill, not only leading to the mysterious lights, but to the illness that had weakened Mr. Hooper’s overtaxed heart? Now it seemed cruel to wake her, but this wasn’t the sort of place he’d like to leave a nearly unconscious woman alone in a nice car. If you considered Tauruses nice, which he suspected, from the look of some of the hoochie-mobiles cruising past them, this neighborhood would. “Scully,” he said gently, not wanting to startle her. “Scully, wake up.” “Go away,” she said, her voice muffled by her hair, which had curled up over the course of the day into a nice little Orphan Annie ‘fro from the humidity. “Scully, don’t you want to check out the crime scene?” “Mulder,” her voice was soft, but he could hear the edge to it. “If you really want to see a crime scene, you’ll keep trying to wake me up.” “It’s night now,” he said. “It’s cooler outside than in this car.” “Like hell it is,” she said, but she was sitting up. “Jesus, Mulder, are you nuts?” Indeed, it was not one of the better areas of the fine city of Little Rock. Crack whores wandered by, followed by pimps in giant purple Cadillacs and mean-looking little lowered Honda Preludes. From somewhere down the block, a woman was shouting “Shut the hell up! Shut the hell up!” over and over. “I’m sure that man is just opening his trench coat to get a breeze. Come on, G-woman, let’s go.” Stepping out into the steaming night air, Mulder watched as a car full of teenage boys wearing backward baseball caps cruised very slowly by. He grinned and flashed them his badge, gloating as they sped up and away. “All right, Mulder, stop scaring the locals and let’s go.” He stepped around the car and followed Scully back into the alley behind an apartment building. The foyer of the building was brightly lit and welcoming, except for the iron bars and security guard sitting behind them. Mulder nodded to him and also flashed his badge that way, figuring hell, why not alert the whole city? The alley proved to be rather seedy and unexciting. The acid had etched a dark puddle where the bodies had been, but other than that, Mulder noted, the place was about as clueless as Alicia Silverstone. Scully knelt and briefly ran her fingers over the trail, then stood up and glared at him. “Well, this is elucidating. Let’s go, Mulder. There’s nothing left to see here that won’t wait for the light of day.” Drifting around the building to peer along its side, a bright flash of red and purple caught his eye. “I don’t know about that, Scully. Stay there, I’ll be right back.” She snorted. “I’ll be in the car.” Mulder nodded and hurried around to where he had seen movement. Sure enough, a thin blond woman in a very tight red bustier and purple satin miniskirt stood in the pool of light from the street lamp. “Well, hi there,” she said, spotting him. “You lookin’ for somebody?” “I might be,” he answered. The woman was achingly thin, with a straggly poodle perm and a missing canine tooth. “Oh yeah? You a business man?” she asked, stepping closer. “In a way,” he said. “You look like a professional.” She grinned and edged over to stand directly in front of him. She smelled disarmingly nice, actually, like flowers and water. “Well ain’t you clever?” she said. “And handsome too. You need a date tonight, honey? I wouldn’t cost you much of nothin’.” He shrugged. “I don’t have much of anything to give you. But you might have something I’d be very interested in.” She narrowed her eyes and cocked her head, giving her the look of a scruffy little bird. “Oh yeah? What’s that?” “Information,” he answered and she sighed. “You’re a cop.” He shook his head and retrieved the badge. “Damn,” she muttered, and turned around, offering him her hands. He found this rather endearing, though he wasn’t sure why. “No, no,” he told her, gently turning her to face him again. “I don’t want to arrest you. I want to ask you some questions. We’ll just pretend I didn’t hear that part about how much you’d cost me, ok? That’s if you’re willing to be honest with me.” She shrugged and eyed him warily. “You mind if I smoke?” He shook his head and waited while she lit up, inhaling as if the cigarette were the only sensual pleasure in her life, which it probably was. “Ok,” she said. “Shoot.” “What’s your name?” Mulder asked. “Sylvia Riminsky,” she answered and for the first time, Mulder heard the trace of an accent. “Russian?” he asked and she nodded. “Twenty-five years ago,” she said. “Been white trash Arkansan ever since. What you need from me?” “Is this your corner?” he asked. “Guess so,” she answered. “It pays the bills, y’know?” “There was a murder here, two days ago. Do you know anything about it?” She shook her head immediately, blowing out little nervous puffs of smoke. “Nope, I was… takin’ the night off. Stayed home, watched some must-see TV, ate some ice cream… Don’t know nothing at all about those men.” “Men?” he asked. “I don’t think I mentioned they were men.” Her face changed then, sinking miserably. “I told the police I didn’t see nothing,” she whined. “Why you got to come around here asking questions?” “Because I want to know what happened to them.” “Fine,” she said, and in her resignation, she reminded him a bit of Scully. He immediately erased the association, feeling dirty. “I’ll tell you, but you won’t believe me, so I don’t know what the point is.” “You’d be surprised what I’ll believe,” he told her and nodded in the direction of the car. “Why don’t we go get my partner and head over to an all-night place and get a cup of coffee? On me.” “Waffle House,” she said. “Ok, we can go there.” Stubbing out her cigarette with one cracked leather stiletto, she followed him. “I want waffles,” she said. “Can’t get anything good ‘round here. ‘Specially for breakfast.” “No problem,” Mulder said, watching Scully step out of the car as they approached, her face a practiced mask of non-surprise. He smiled warmly at her. “Mulder,” she whispered as he passed, “what’s this?” He glanced at Sylvia, who was now sitting in the back of the Taurus rolling her eyes and picking at her fake nails. Grinning, he patted Scully’s arm. “Happy birthday, Scully.” “Just what I always wanted,” she said. “A crack whore for a witness. That ought to hold about as much water with a jury as ‘he’s 120 years old and eats human livers.’” xxxxx Waffle House Restaurant Highway 30, just before Benton Little Rock, Arkansas “So,” Sylvia said, shoveling another piece of “Belgian” waffle into her mouth, “Mickey’s sitting out there in the parking lot in his car, right? And these guys come up and shoot at him. They don’t hit him, and they drive off. Well, two hours later, back they come and this time they put six bullets in him. So here’s what I don’t get: Why the hell was he still sittin’ in the parking lot of the Waffle House two hours after the first shot, you know? That’s just stupid. That’s the kind of guys they were, though. Stupid.” Scully sighed and nodded, sipping at her nearly tepid coffee. The waitress didn’t seem to believe in refills. It had to be nearly two in the morning. How the hell did she end up like this, wired on coffee in an all-night waffle house, for heaven’s sake? Who wanted waffles at two in the morning? “Anyway, Mickey was my pimp, you know? But once he got whacked, there wasn’t no point in getting someone else, so I just went out on my own. But the boys in the gang don’t like girls to be out on their own, so they come around sometimes to try an’ persuade me to accept their help.” “So that’s what they were doing on Friday night?” Mulder asked. “Trying to get you to work for them?” “Yeah,” Sylvia nodded, pursing her lips together and looking in her purse for yet another cigarette. Scully was getting a serious smoke headache. No matter how many times she had her suit dry-cleaned, she knew, the smell would come out every time she overheated on a case for months. “They come ‘round about one and started hasslin’ me. I told them I didn’t want no pimp, that I was fine on my own, but they was getting kinda violent. I was sure they was gonna kill me.” “So then what happened?” Mulder asked. “I started screamin’, y’know? And that’s when I saw him.” “Who?” Scully said, fairly sure she didn’t want to know. “I don’t know his name or nothin’, just that I was lyin’ on the ground waiting for Sergei to put a bullet in my head when I see this silhouette, y’know? Against the light from the street lamp. And he was standing there, his coat flappin’ around him like a cape… ‘cept he was wearing a baseball cap, I woulda thought he was Superman. Seriously. And he said ‘I suggest you let her go, boys.’ Just like that. ‘I suggest you let her go.’ I mean, who talks like that, you know?” Mulder nodded. Scully signaled to the waitress, perhaps at last securing some hot coffee. The woman stared at her from across the expanse of yellow checked vinyl like it was the arctic tundra. “And Sergei just looks at him, like, who the hell are you? And that’s what he says: ‘Who the hell are you?’ And the guy says ‘Someone concerned with justice.’ Can you believe it?” No, Scully thought, I can’t. But Mulder was nodding away, like one of those damn dippy drinking birds her grandfather bought them all one Christmas. The kind that just kept nodding and nodding and drinking and drinking… she sighed and shifted until her aching tailbone stopped twinging. “And then Sergei says: ‘You better get the hell away from here, justice boy.’ But he just turns around.” “Turns around?” Mulder said. “Why did he do that?” “I’m getting there,” Sylvia answered, blowing smoke through her nose onto her next bite of waffle. “He turns around, and starts to undo his pants. And I’m thinkin’ maybe he’s going to moon us, you know? Maybe he’s just some crazy guy who’s going to moon us. And I guess that’s what Sergei and Ivan are thinking too, ‘cause they just start laughin’ at him. But then they get sick of him fumblin’ around and Sergei charges at him and the guy… he bends over… and shoots this… stuff at them.” “What?” Scully said, incredulous. “He shot boiling hot acid out of his butt?” The waitress, who was making her way over to their table with the pot of coffee, simply turned around and walked away. “That’s right,” Sylvia said defensively. “I told you you wouldn’t believe it. That’s what I saw. He bent right over and out it came in a big cloud. And the two of ‘em, Sergei and Ivan, go down screamin’ and writhin’ all over the place.” Mulder looked on, enraptured. Scully sighed and rolled her eyes. She was going to need a hell of a lot more coffee. “So then what happened?” Mulder asked. “Well, he stood up and turned around and looked at his pants, and there was this big hole in them. And he said: ‘Shit, that’s the third pair this week’. And then he left.” Sylvia finished the last bite of waffle and looked at the two agents belligerently. “I told you, she don’t believe a word of it.” The desire to put her head down on the table and bang it slowly there was nearly overwhelming. Scully grinned through gritted teeth and said something that sounded like “fascinating”. Mulder paid the bill and got a number from Sylvia. “You can call me anytime,” she told him, leaning through the window when they dropped her back on her corner. “I’ll be happy to do somethin’ for free, if you want. I know all sortsa tricks. Oh, and…” Sylvia hesitated and looked at Scully, then grinned as if to say, what the hell, “… I do threesomes.” “Um,” Mulder said, turning several shades of pink in the dark of the car. Scully let her head fall back against the seat. He was such a puppy dog. “I don’t think so, Sylvia. Upholding the law and all that.” “Oh, very diplomatic of you,” Scully said dryly as they drove away. “If it was just embarrassment that was holding you back, Mulder, don’t let me stop you.” “Scully,” he said, chewing on a coffee stirring stick from the restaurant, “if I didn’t know better, I’d say you were slightly incredulous of Sylvia’s story.” “Oh no, Mulder…” she said, watching the all-night strip joints roll by. “I’ve never heard anything more believable than a man who shoots boiling acid from his anus.” “You never met my Uncle Miltie after a few too many stuffed peppers.” “Bite me, Mulder,” she replied, though the urge to laugh made her voice less effective. “An open mind, Scully, is the first step on the road to enlightenment,” was all he said as they pulled into the parking lot of the motel. xxxxx Apartment 2B The Burning Tree Apartments Little Rock, Arkansas Oscar Wilder was just putting a little more duct tape on the seat of his old velour Lazy-boy recliner when the doorbell rang. He had heard the door open down in the foyer two stories below, and listened as they went from door to door in his hallway like Jehovah’s Witnesses. “Oscar Wilder?” the red-haired woman asked when he answered. “Agents Scully and Mulder with the FBI. We’d like to ask you a few questions.” Oscar examined them. The woman was small, with a tired but pretty face that benefited from her severe black suit, making her red lips and blue eyes more striking. Her voice was low and soft, but with a seriously no-nonsense edge. A ball-breaker through and through. The man, standing behind her with his hands on his hips, looked like he might be gay, but didn’t really carry himself that way. Athletic but not macho, his smirk said smart ass with low self-esteem. Oscar opened the door a bit wider and nodded. They stood, staring at him, as if they were reluctant to move. Both of them were looking at his… legs. Shit, Oscar thought. The tights. “I was about to go for a run, but come on in.” “Thanks,” the man said. “Where do you run around here?” They were buying it, sort of. Well, there was no law against being a geek, was there? And lots of men ran in tights. Right? “Um… I usually head up to campus and do it there.” “Really?” Agent Mulder said. “You’re a student there?” “Research student,” Oscar nodded, “entomology department. Do you run, Agent Mulder?” Mulder looked up and nodded. “Mostly after someone, but yeah, I do. You live here alone?” Oscar nodded and gestured to the couch. “Please, have a seat.” Agent Mulder sat down on the couch, stretching his long legs under the coffee table and nodding as if to say, ok, let’s get to it. But Agent Scully made the fatal mistake of trying to sit in the velour Lazy-boy recliner. Oscar’s eyes widened and he started to warn her, when, with a small pop, the duct tape gave way. She sank into the seat cushion, her legs flying up and her little feet waving in the air. “Sorry,” Oscar said sheepishly, trying not to giggle. “Seat’s kinda worn out on that one.” She gave a small grunt and tried to hoist her body from the chair, but she had settled almost to the floor. Agent Mulder, nearly purple with contained laughter, finally rose to help her. Oscar watched the tall man take in the sight of his partner, bent nearly in half, one four-inch stacked heel waving dangerously off the tips of her toes. When Agent Mulder bent down and gently slid her shoe back onto her foot, grasping her ankle with his hand, Oscar detected something that surprised him. He wondered if Agent Scully had picked up on it yet? At last she was free, standing up and straightening her jacket, her face the color of a very ripe tomato. It was sort of cute, Oscar thought. Agent Mulder stood close by, biting his lip and peeking around her at the chair. “This seat’s been burned, Oscar. How did you do that?” Agent Mulder asked. Shit, Oscar thought. Think quick. They bought the running thing, they’ll buy… “Cigarettes,” Oscar said. “Runners shouldn’t smoke,” Agent Mulder noted mildly. “It wasn’t me. Rowdy frat boy types, you know how it is. Two beers and they’re dropping their shit all over the place. No offence, Ma’am.” “None taken,” Agent Scully said politely, her face back to its normal peach and cream. “Is the couch safe?” Oscar nodded and waited while both agents sat down. Agent Mulder, he noticed, sat far too close to Agent Scully and her reaction… “So, what can I do for the FBI today?” Oscar asked as pleasantly as possible. Agent Scully leaned forward, affording Oscar a brief glimpse of her cleavage. That’s got to be a Wonderbra, he thought and smiled. Agent Mulder had also noticed and was unabashedly using this opportunity to stare. Funny the things you noticed, Oscar thought, when your eyes were starting to widen and divide into multiple facets. “Well,” Agent Scully began, “we’re just canvassing this building to find out if any of the residents might have witnessed an… altercation in the alley three nights ago.” “An altercation?” Oscar asked innocently, he hoped. So was that what they were going to call it? Jesus, establishing some sort of legitimate reputation was going to be harder than he had thought, if that was how his heroics were going to be classified. “Resulting in the deaths of two members of the Russian Mafia,” Agent Mulder added. “It’s very important, if you know anything about this, Oscar, that you let us know. Your life could be in danger if you don’t step forward.” Oh good, he thought, threaten your witnesses. Very nice. “I see. Well, I was in the lab three nights ago.” Agent Mulder nodded and Agent Scully noted it in her little notebook. Even at the odd angle, he could read it: Oscar Wilder – lab. “Right,” Agent Mulder said. “Did anyone see you there?” “Why?” Oscar asked. “Am I under suspicion for something? I thought you just wanted to know if I’d seen anything.” “What Agent Mulder wants to know, Oscar… ” Agent Scully soothed, shooting a glance at her partner that would have left a lesser man wincing. Oscar guessed that Agent Mulder got such glances frequently enough to have developed some sort of immunity to the blue haze. “… is whether or not you were home around two am?” “Two?” He pretended to ponder it for a moment. She smelled… she smelled like cinnamon and musk. He hadn’t thought of this aspect of the transformation. After all, they knew so little about the olfactory abilities of insects. Who knew he would suddenly be able to smell the exact nuances of Agent Scully’s womanly body? Of course, he could also smell Agent Mulder, who seemed not to have showered since his last run. “I think I was probably home in bed by then.” “Right,” Agent Scully said, standing. “I guess that’s it for now, Oscar, but if you think of anything else, let me know.” “I sure will,” Oscar said, rising to accompany them to the door. It wasn’t their fault he could smell the disappointment rolling off Agent Mulder in little foggy clouds. “Oscar, would you mind if I used your bathroom?” Agent Mulder said suddenly. Agent Scully stared at him as if he had just crawled from beneath the floorboards. What the hell, Oscar thought, maybe the guy just really has to go? “Sure,” he said. Besides, without Agent Mulder there, he was alone with Agent Scully and the sweet, oranges-with-cloves scent she seemed to be throwing off like a perfume girl at the mall. “So…” Agent Scully said, “what do you plan to do with your degree?” “I thought I might go down to the Amazonian jungle and work on cataloging a few new species before they disappear from the face of the earth,” Oscar answered, though that was no longer really in his game plan. “Really?” she said. “I never really enjoyed field research.” He tried to picture someone as clean as she was foraging in the leaf litter and it just wasn’t happening. He nodded. “Were you a scientist?” he asked. “Forensic pathologist,” she answered and he had a sudden creepy vision of the lovely Agent Scully slicing him open on a big autopsy table and examining his rapidly mutating innards. He was enormously glad when Agent Mulder returned from the bathroom, smirking as always. “Oscar…” Agent Mulder said, pausing at the door and hanging onto the frame like Agent Scully might be preparing to drag him away, which she might, come to think of it. “What sort of insects are you studying?” “Beetles,” Oscar said. “I prefer ants, but we don’t have a specialist in that department.” “Ah,” was all Mulder said and let Oscar close the door. From the small bathroom of his apartment, he could hear them walk a few feet and then stop. Oscar had come in to pee, but decided that could wait. “Say it, Mulder,” Agent Scully’s voice filtered through the brick. “You think you’ve found our man.” She was whispering, but without his hat, Oscar’s antennae were able to pick up the light thumping of her steady little heart. He ran his hand over the two protrusions rising from his head and smoothed them back like a cat washing its fur. They sprang back up immediately. Oscar figured he’d never get quite used to that. “Oh come on, Scully. How do you think he made that giant hole in his chair?” Agent Mulder whined. “Mulder, the explanation he provided was perfectly reasonable. I see no reason to suspect that Oscar Wilder had anything to do with this… this murder.” “Fine, Scully, but did you see his outfit?” Oscar glanced down at the tights. Perhaps he shouldn’t have put those green shiny bikini underwear over the top like that. He was only trying it out to see how it looked, after all, how could he have known he was going to have visitors? “Mulder, you are not going to convince me that young man thinks he’s turning into some sort of superhero. He may have excruciatingly bad fashion sense, but then, I happen to know someone prone to wearing Mickey Mouse ties.” “Scully, those are very expensive Italian silk. But I think you’re wrong. Check this out…” There was a moment’s silence and then she said: “Mulder, you didn’t rip that off…” “I did, Scully. What do you think that means?” “I have no idea,” she said. “But again, poor taste in clothing does not necessarily make him our man.” They continued down the hall. He could just make out Agent Mulder’s nasal whine as they reached the bottom of the stairs. “98.9 percent, Scully. Just remember that.” Now, what the hell did that mean? xxxxx State Pathology Lab Federal Bureau of Investigation Little Rock Office Scully closed her eyes and tried not to sound shrill. “Ok,” she said into the phone, “repeat that again.” “The acid,” said the FBI technician on the other end of the line, “is identical to that produced by certain members of the insect order Coleoptera.” “I see.” Her own voice was acid, spewing onto the receiver and drenching that little nerd back at headquarters. She pictured him sizzling and it gave her a moment of relief. “Well, thanks a lot.” Mulder was leaning on the edge of the autopsy table, having pushed aside a few bones she had very carefully placed there. “So?” he said. “So,” she said, clicking off the phone and shoving it into her pocket viciously. “I have come to believe that you do this to me on purpose.” “Do what?” he asked, all big Bambi eyes. “That was Mike back in the lab. The acid…” “Yes?” He was leaning forward, knowing what he was going to hear. “Bombardier beetles shoot it from their rears, Mulder, when frightened or disturbed.” “Really?” he said, raising one eyebrow in a pretty good imitation of her own incredulous face. “What a coincidence, Scully. We just happen to have spoken to someone today who works with beetles on a daily basis and lives… gee, in the building next to crime scene. I wonder what that could mean?” “Look,” she said, gathering an armful of the tagged and sorted bones from the table. “I understand that you are feeling triumphant, Mulder, but gloating doesn’t become you.” “Oh Scully, I happen to think it suits me very well.” She dumped the bones into a box marked “Ivanov, Sergei” and glared at him. “I don’t see how you can make the leap from ‘works with bugs’ to ‘IS a bug’ that easily, Mulder. People, of which Oscar seems to be one, do not emit clouds of noxious, boiling gas, even after a thousand spicy peppers. It just doesn’t make sense.” “I agree, Scully,” he said, handing her a femur from the wrong body, which she ignored. “I’m just saying that it’s worth investigating, isn’t it?” Setting the remains of Sergei Ivanov on a shelf in the morgue, Scully wiped her brow and stared at her partner. “Mulder, has it ever occurred to you that we’ve been in this business far too long?” “Yes, Scully,” he said earnestly. “It has.” Reaching into his jacket pocket, Mulder extracted a t-shirt and held it up in front of his body. The letters “BB” were ironed-on to the front in blue. Right on top of the green, shield-shaped crest. “So what do you think, now, Scully? Beetle Boy?” Scully stared at the initials boldly displayed across her partner’s chest. “Nope,” she said. “If I had to put money on it, Mulder, I’d guess Bombardier Boy.” How, how did she get herself into these situations, damnit? xxxxx The Next Day Federal Criminal Holding Facility Little Rock, Arkansas He had tried to avoid it, Oscar thought. He wasn’t really ready. But what was he supposed to do, when they came to his apartment and broke down the door? Just stand there in his tights and face death like a man? Well… instead he turned his back to them and faced death like… like a beetle. The jail cell was small and he felt a strange wave of claustrophobia. Funny, he’d never had such an intense desire to be outdoors before. From down the hall, he could hear the lovely Agent Scully whispering furiously to her partner. Here they came, Laurel and Hardy, Fred and Wilma, Lucy and Desi… whatever, they were arguing. “Mulder,” she said. “I cannot believe you’re proposing what you’re proposing.” “Just hear me out, Scully.” “No.” There was a moment’s silence and then Agent Mulder said, in a small voice: “No?” “No, Mulder, means no. I refuse to have my intelligence insulted any further. Oscar Wilder is not Peter Parker. He was not bitten by… Jesus, Mulder, I can’t even believe I’m saying this. He was not bitten by a radioactive Bombardier Beetle. He is not Beetle Boy.” Oscar snickered and adjusted his antennae, which were quite long, really, under his baseball hat. They were now picking up conversations blocks away. It was really a bit distracting, until you got used to it. But not nearly as strange as when his waist began to nip in like a Gibson Girl. “Bombardier Boy,” Agent Mulder replied coldly. “Ok, so you explain what the hell he did to those men in his apartment, Scully. I’d love to hear your theory.” She huffed lightly and they stopped, still whispering, several hundred feet away. “All right, Mulder. I think Oscar Wilder has found some way to synthesize the chemical produced by Bombardier beetles and that he has also created…” she sighed and Oscar smiled. This ought to be good. “… a portable delivery system.” “A what?” Agent Mulder asked, incredulous. “You heard me, Mulder. A portable delivery system.” “Yeah,” Agent Mulder sputtered, “his butt.” She was moving again, ignoring her partner. It must be trying, Oscar thought, to be a skeptic at times like this. He was fairly sure what 98.9 percent meant now. He wondered what their escort was thinking. “Scully,” Agent Mulder hissed. This was not a man who liked to be ignored, which was, of course, precisely why she did it. “Scully.” “What?” she hissed back. “Why don’t you go back to the lab and finish up those autopsies. Spare yourself the indignity of dealing with Beetle Boy.” There was a slight note of tenderness in Agent Mulder’s voice. So he might be right, that didn’t mean he enjoyed it when she was wrong. “All right,” she said, finally. “I suppose you can question the Human Bug in there on your own.” “I think so, Scully. I have questioned the occasional mutant.” Oscar bristled slightly then thought, well, that’s what he was, in the end. “Watch your ass,” she said and Agent Mulder actually chuckled. Her footsteps echoed the other way, toward the door. Damn, Oscar thought. He had been looking forward to revealing his “feelers” to her. Snickering in his jail cell, he waited for Agent Mulder, who had, at last, taken a shower. Oscar wondered if his sweet little partner knew Agent Mulder used Head and Shoulders Extra Dandruff Control shampoo? Well, he supposed it would be hard to be a rock-solid G-man with flakes on the lapels of your Armani suits. Agent Mulder stepped up to the jail cell. Inside, Oscar waited, arms crossed and smiling at him. “You knew I was coming,” Agent Mulder observed. “Of course I did,” Oscar said. “I could hear every word you and the ravishing Agent Scully exchanged in the hall.” “Right,” Agent Mulder said and watched as the correctional officer opened the door and waved him inside. “Sure you could.” Oscar nodded slightly. “You sound just like Agent Scully. But I know you believe.” “I believe nothing,” Agent Mulder said, stepping into the light from the single overhead bulb. He looked tired and Oscar wondered if perhaps chasing mutants disrupted your sleep patterns? More likely lusting after your perky little partner did. “So, you want to talk about what happened back there at your apartment?” Agent Mulder asked. “You already know. They arrived, probably to kill me, broke down my door and I…” “You sprayed them,” Agent Mulder said slowly. “Yes, with my patented ‘portable delivery system,’ otherwise known as my colon,” Oscar grinned and Agent Mulder stared. “And then I laid eggs in their body cavity, though I swear, I had no intention of doing that when I started out. It just kind of happened.” “You,” Agent Mulder said, blinking wildly as if he were having trouble wrapping his mind around what he was about to say, “are a bug.” “No…” Oscar said, “not entirely. I’m in the process of becoming one.” Agent Mulder motioned to the bench along the wall. “How Kafka-esque. You mind if I sit down?” He sounded like a man who had just swallowed a great deal of helium. Oscar shook his head and then removed his hat. “What do you think of these?” he asked, setting them up to their full, two-foot height. Agent Mulder swallowed and whispered: “Magnificent. That’s how you heard us.” “Yes,” Oscar said quietly. “And you were right, it was a radioactive beetle, but it didn’t bite me. It sprayed me in the eye.” Nodding, Agent Mulder slid a bit further down the bench as if his back had turned to jello. “Is that it?” he asked. “That and the… spraying thing?” Oscar shook his head, grinning, and slowly unbuttoned his shirt. “You’ll like these too, I imagine,” Oscar said, waving his extra limbs, still blanched from hiding beneath his clothing. “Oh my God,” Agent Mulder said. “I can’t believe I sent Scully back to the lab.” “If it’s all the same to you…” Oscar said, buttoning the limbs back in. He didn’t really have full control of them yet, and didn’t like they way they were always waving around his face like flies. “… I’d rather not be sliced up just yet.” “No, no,” Agent Mulder replied. “I didn’t mean to study you, I meant she might… she just won’t…” “She’s not going to believe you,” Oscar finished. “Hell no,” Agent Mulder affirmed. “Even after she finds the… eggs.” He shook his head as if trying to clear a particularly unpleasant image. Oscar watched sympathetically. The egg thing kinda grossed him out too. Who knew he would be hermaphroditic? Though there were… advantages, if you looked at it the right way. “Look, Oscar, what are you going to do now?” Oscar sat down next to Agent Mulder, slipping his antennae back under the hat. He really liked this guy, strange as he was. And he felt a bit sorry for him. “I suppose I’ll finish the transformation and then… I thought I might use my powers for good, if you know what I mean.” Agent Mulder nodded and examined Oscar’s fracturing eyes. “I guess there’s not much else you can do now, huh?” “Yeah, I’d say accountancy or even entomology would be out.” For a moment they sat in companionable silence, absorbing the reality of the situation. Then Oscar spoke. “You realize her heart rate increases nearly 38 percent every time you touch her.” “What?” Agent Mulder said. “How the hell do you know that?” “I can hear it,” Oscar said gently. “And so would yours, if you stopped eating all that junk food. Trans-fatty acids, you know.” Agent Mulder simply stared at him. “I noticed you start to sweat when you put her shoe back on in the apartment. It’s not like she doesn’t start musking up the place whenever you stand too close, you know.” “That’s… that’s disgusting. Stop smelling Agent Scully!” Agent Mulder was indignant. “I can’t help it. My olfactory abilities have increased about one hundred-fold. Believe me, it was nice at first but now I find you all a bit… overwhelming.” Agent Mulder shook his head. “Look Oscar, I’ll do what I can to get you out of here. Though I have to confess, my track record as far as convincing law enforcement in these situations is a bit… spotty.” Oscar nodded. “I understand. You’ve met a few mutants before?” “One or two,” Agent Mulder said coolly. “I’ve even met a few, Oscar, that would make you positively squeamish.” “Really?” Oscar was intrigued. “Were any of them interested in vigilante justice?” “No…” Agent Mulder said. “But one of them did have his own comic book.” “Cool,” Oscar said, leaning back. He could see it now. “Bombardier Boy: Adventures of a Superhero”. Then, suddenly, he could hear something in the corridor, down the hall in the main lobby. It sounded like a scuffle. “Hey Agent Mulder?” “Yeah?” the older man answered. “You wouldn’t happen to be packing heat, would you?” xxxxx Two Minutes Later Federal Holding Facility Little Rock, Arkansas Shit, Mulder thought. How did he get himself into these situations? Creeping down the hallway like a human cockroach, gun drawn, he rounded the corner and stared in disbelief at the unconscious bodies of the two prison guards. Leaning over one of them, a large blond man was busily tying the guard’s hands behind his back. Great, Mulder thought, he hasn’t seen me. I’ll just… But he had forgotten one essential thing in his haste to investigate the sounds Oscar had heard from his jail cell. Trilling loudly, his cell phone jumped in his pocket like an animal. “Shit,” Mulder said aloud, just as someone conked him on the back of his now very exposed head. When he opened his eyes, he was staring at the carpet in the superintendent’s office and just beyond that, the scuffed tips of a pair of ridiculous little nurse’s shoes. “Scully,” he groaned. “Untie me.” “I am, so lie still,” he heard her say. “What happened?” “Oscar thought he heard a disturbance,” Mulder said to the carpet. “I came down to check it out and forgot to turn off my phone, thereby spoiling that essential element to effective crime busting… surprise.” “That was me,” she said sheepishly. “I was just calling to tell you I found something in the body cavities of the two men.” “Eggs,” Mulder said, finally sitting up. She was still wearing her scrubs. “Oscar told me.” “Well,” she said quietly, “when you didn’t answer, I just thought… I don’t know, call it women’s intuition.” “Or it may be the result of just knowing me too well,” he said, rubbing his numb wrists. “How are they?” he asked, pointing to the two prostrate guards. “I don’t know yet,” she admitted. “They look worse off than you. Here’s my weapon. Leave me the one in your ankle holster and get going. You’ve got to save Oscar.” “Scully…” he said, feeling enormously grateful. She smiled at him, her face dotted with some sort of strange white goo, like white freckles. He might have kissed her if he hadn’t been fairly sure it was from Oscar’s renal cavity. “Get going, Mulder.” Knocking back the safety on her pistol, he slipped carefully down the corridor toward Oscar’s cell. Nothing stirred in the hall. How long had he been out, he wondered? At the end of the hall he simply stood and stared for a moment. There, where the bars to Oscar’s cell had been just a short time before, was a still-steaming, gaping hole. At Mulder’s feet the bones of a man lay in a heap, as if he’d been standing when he was… melted. Well, Mulder thought, guess he’s got that down to a science. Walking back the direction he’d come, he heard what was almost certainly a series of gunshots and suddenly the door to the stairway shuddered, as if someone had opened another door further up. Why, he thought, is it always in the f-ing stairs? Throwing open the door, he galloped up the steps, hearing the bang of a door being opened over his head. A moment later it was opened again and then he was there, staring at the metal door to the roof. Cautiously, he pulled it open and peered out onto the tarmacked surface, bright in the last rays of the October sunset. A light rain had fallen earlier in the day and the roof gleamed and glittered, momentarily blinding him. He shifted his angle and looked again, this time spotting a strange drama unfolding at the edge of the roof. Oscar Wilder stood, the tips of his toes on the edge, ready to plunge off the building, his back to Mulder and his assailant. Just beyond him, the same burly blond man he had seen binding the officer’s hands stood holding what appeared to be Mulder’s own service weapon at Oscar’s head. Before he could say a thing, the blond man fired two shots which bounced, actually bounced off of Oscar’s back, ricocheting off the stairwell beside Mulder’s head. For a moment all three men were still, shocked, and then Oscar reached down and pulled his own tattered shirt from his body, revealing… what? Mulder wasn’t sure, but the setting sun seemed to glint off Oscar’s back as if it were made of metal. Oscar turned, looked briefly at Mulder and then jumped, disappearing from sight. The blond man was already running toward the spot where his prey had been as Mulder shouted Oscar’s name. Spinning, the blond man seemed to lose his footing in the puddles of rainwater and stumbled backwards, arms flailing. Mulder watched in horror as he simply slid right off the roof. “Shit,” Mulder shouted and walked, at a fast pace, certainly, but with caution, to the edge of the building. Looking down, he expected to see two broken bodies on the street below. Instead, he felt a great rush of air. Suddenly, as if rising from the ocean, Oscar Wilder appeared before him, hovering on massive gossamer wings. “Agent Mulder,” he said, his voice deeper now. “I believe this is yours?” And with that, he deposited the sniveling criminal at Mulder’s feet. Mulder stared at the man for a moment and then looked up at Oscar. Already, the sun has slid behind the horizon and Oscar was a dusky silhouette in the night sky. “You’re flying,” Mulder said. “I know,” Oscar replied. “The final step. Isn’t it wonderful?” Mulder nodded. It truly was. “Don’t you think you’d better cuff him?” Oscar asked gently. “Probably,” Mulder agreed, bending down and slapping the cuffs on the man’s shaking wrists. “You saved his life,” Mulder noted. “Well,” Oscar said. “It’s not always about saving the damsel in distress, you know. Sometimes it’s just about bringing the bad guys to justice.” “Right,” Mulder said. “Well, I guess this is good-bye, then?” Oscar nodded and extended a new hand for Mulder to shake. It was as cold as steel on a winter day. “Good luck with your… um… crime fighting efforts,” Mulder said. “Thanks,” Oscar replied. “And good luck to you too, with… everything.” And then he was gone, a great blast of air and he was gone into the night sky. Mulder looked down at the weeping Russian and shook his head. “You probably won’t believe it either, in an hour or two,” he said. A bang from the other side of the roof attracted his attention. “Mulder?” Scully stood at the doorway, a dark shape against the light from the building’s interior. “I thought I heard gunshots. Is everything ok?” “Yeah,” he said and bent down to pick up Oscar’s shirt. Holding it out to her with one finger through a bullet hole, he stepped up to where she waited. “Where’s Oscar?” she asked as he paused in front of her. “Who’s that over there?” Behind her small, bright head, a new moon had risen, white against the black southern sky. Mulder watched a strange shape fly slowly across it. Sighing, he handed her the shirt and shook his head. “Mulder?” she asked, cocking her head and looking up at him. “What’s going on?” Smiling, he placed one warm hand on her chest, just above her heart. She raised her eyebrow. Slowly, he leaned over and with great relish, sniffed her neck. “Thirty-eight percent,” he told her. “I’ll take that over 98.9 anytime.”