Hey, y'all! Short one-shot and part of my non-Davenport Lab Rats series. I figured since Special Agent Graham's character wasn't well-developed, I'd to it myself because the lab rats producers are clearly incapable of exploiting once-or-twice-appearing-characters. (No S-1 fics by me because that will become cliché too soon. So I hope you enjoy, and yes, it is very short, so sorry about that . . . No, I'm not. But oh, well. The avatar was chosen for symbiosis: you know, bionics working with humans - robotic/bionic hand shaking hands with a human hand. So, more one-shots in this one-shot series will be coming out soon! R&R and enjoy!
Disclaimer: I do not own Lab Rats.
Special Agent Graham, or, as his colleagues called him, Graham Reaper, sighed heavily and slammed down the overstuffed manila folders onto a long mahogany desk. He had just attended a conference with the rest of the special agents.
He had never fit in with them. Because he was the "silly ghost-buster" who tracked down "silly things that don't exist." Graham had always had a fascination with the paranormal beasts out there. He had insisted over and over that there simply was a monster under the bad that was invisible to the adult's eye. "Once you turned eighteen," he'd explained to his perplexed but very amused mother, "You can't see the monsters anymore because they become invisible."
"Is that so," his mother said, stroking his head. Graham knew that she hadn't been listening, "Is that so" was simply universal for, "How interesting, darling, I'm bored and not really interesting but I have to hide that fact from you so I'll say something that pretends I'm intrigued with what you're saying; now run along now and get ready for bed."
But there had always been some type of paranormal beast that Graham believed in.
When he turned three, until age five, he was highly interested with the green monsters under his bed.
At ages six to eight, fairies absorbed his attention, and Mrs. Churlish happily stamped with her big, red, bloody stamp, "NEEDS WORK. DOES NOT PAY ATTENTION IN CLASS BECAUSE HE IS BUSY DRAWING FAIRY WINGS." She had put in smaller print, "Perhaps you should send him to the school's guidance counselor. We have very good counselors." Graham's parents, of course, had lectured him.
However, Graham paid no big, red, bloody stamp got him curious about zombie blood, and sadly to say, he always carried around a safety pin or a needle-like object and pricked dead mice in the mousetraps and collected their blood. Curiosity killed the mouse.
And after age ten, from age eleven to thirteen, watching the swamp lights and the mysterious will o' the wisps was his utmost fascination. His mother would sigh and take his stagnant-water-covered clothes, sigh in disgust, throw them into the laundry, and say, "Graham, honey, don't you think this 'mystical animals' thing is getting a little old?"
"No!" He screamed, stamping his pre-teen twelve-year-old foot, and he'd tossed the neon-colored lava lamp he was looking at under a magnifying glass at his mother.
His mother had grounded him.
Which was the worst thing to do of all because that just prompted Graham to start cracking open family diary accounts on the big wall-to-wall bookcase in the house library, and he read all about hybrid creatures—the centaur, the onocentaur, the harpy, the siren, icthyocentaurs, the echidna, the manticore, the adlet, and the gorgon. But most of all, the werewolf piqued his curiosity. He read The Incorrigibles by Maryrose Wood*, a story of children raised by wolves, who were, quite technically then, half wolves.
Skip three or four years, and that was when he decided he'd get a job in the department.
And here he was, pathetic little ghost-buster, Special Agent Graham, clad in black armor, forty years old. It was a little pathetic to be hunting things that supposedly didn't exist at age forty, and even his parents agreed, and Graham retorted to his mother that it was a little ridiculous that a seventy-seven year old mother didn't know how to swim, in which is mother Ulyssa* turned red.
After returning from the conference, he had been laughed at and ridiculed to his breaking point even further, and he was angry and red-faced just like Ulyssa a few days ago, and he wasn't sure whether it was really worth it—to do what he loved to do if it meant being kicked around like a hurt puppy by co-workers and colleagues.
One time, his boss had asked him, after laughing so hard when Graham desperately claimed that there was proof of a one hundred foot-long snake, Nabu, swimming in the Baleh River in Borneo, * "Graham—what are you going to do when you actually find something worth reporting?
Be famous. I'll finally get my credit and be famous. I'll rub it in my schoolteachers' faces when I get on the six o'clock news that I was right, all along!
"Uh… you know, spread the publicity around of my colleagues and my subsection, regular, uh, humble stuff like, um, that," Graham fumbled.
The boss had laughed and tapped his fingers on the table. Graham had read the boss' face. That day will never come, when Graham becomes famous.
Oh, but if only he knew!
So here he was, mulling over his options on what to do, when a man, thin and balding, came rushing in. "Sir, I have good news!"
Graham fidgeted. "Bad or good?"
The messenger's face broke into a smile. "It's good news, sir!"
Graham mused over what to say. Something good had finally happened?
"There's been a new viral video posted online, and guess what it's about?" The messenger asked, his face red with exertion from running towards Graham's office.
"Hm… fairies?" Graham guessed.
"Try again," the messenger urged.
"Mermaids!"
"No…"
"Trolls? Zombies? Frankenstein? Nessie?"
Silence from the messenger.
"Um… swamp monsters?"
"No!" The messenger cried.
"Then spill!" Graham shouted.
"There are bionic super humans out there!" The messenger finally indulged.
Graham couldn't believe his ears. Bionic super humans?
But the messenger wouldn't torture him, not after he'd been humiliated at several press conference the week before.
Graham's head became dizzy. Here, finally, was his big break. Finally! He ignored the messenger's face as he spun around in the wheeled chair and threw his arms in the air, like he was praying and saying "halleluiah." He watched as the messenger left, and then he let it loose.
And he laughed at loud, it had come. The day was here. The time was now.
He'd bring them back, show the world who they were, and he'd subdue them till they'd be at his beck and call. The first man to have superhuman servants. It would be wonderful. And if they rebelled, well, he could always threaten to place them in jail under close watch and suicide watch.
Ah, they'd never see it coming.
Bionic targets secured in one day.
It was time to gather his men.
It was time to leave and track them down.
It was time to become famous.
So there ya go! Did you like it or dislike it? Tell me in a review! I had fun with this one-shot, as well as doing more than a little research on paranormal beasts, pun completely intended. Again, please review as they are much appreciated, and I'll be back with another one-shot/update (hopefully) soon!
Footnote No 1: Read this book series! It's very good!
Footnote No 2: Ulyssa means "hate" or "negative." Need I say more?
Footnote No 3: This is an online hoax. Look it up if you're curious 'cuz it is real! (As in I'm not making up the hoax . . . did I just create a paradox? Atomic explosion.
(I apologize for any spelling/grammatical errors and/or forgotten footnotes.)