I'm not too sure about this one myself, but I would like to have a hack at a Mutt centric story. I'd like to keep this one in the shadows while I work on my longer Indy fic, but if it proves to be okay I might consider speeding up its updates. I like Mutt - but I don't think I've got him down right yet - practice makes perfect. The premise for this is Mutt has received that 'gift' from the aliens at Akator - sort of like Spalko but toned down a bit. I might solve this through a huge Indy adventure or a more subtle solution - depends on the response ;D The title is subject to change and no characters belong to me etc. This first chapter is literally just setting the scene really. Hope it's okay - didn't put my all into it.

Ghosts

Mutt was walking, no, strolling… no, waltzing down the hallway, schoolbag slung across his jacketed shoulder and scowl planted firmly across his features. The keys to his bike swinging casually from a finger, Mutt was determined to come across as defiant and confident as physically possible. He grinned smarmily at passers by, male or female, there was no differentiation between the two today. His patronising glares received similar looks in return. The drop-out was back, they were uttering. He could hear their sharp whispers as well as their louder comments. He shrugged them off. He could shrug them all off.

With a smirk he approached his first class. His first class in a long time. The door flew open, and like the billowing sail of a ship in the winds, he whirled into the classroom, raising a daring eyebrow at the teacher as she opened her mouth to ask why he was late. She rolled her eyes and clicked her tongue. She had hoped she wouldn't need to teach this boy again once he had ceased to exist on her register. Now, she stopped over the roster and scrawled 'Mutt Williams' underneath the printed names of the other pupils, staring longingly at the black line she had crossed through his name before. She didn't care she never used his real name. The boy really was a mutt.

What an anticlimax, Mutt heard himself think. He'd crossed swords with Russians atop speeding vehicles, fought natives armed with blow-darts in a graveyard that was the epitome of pathetic fallacy, and he could still see the crystal skeletons of the extra-terrestrials, sitting and waiting in silence on their golden thrones. Yet here he was, in a class he had no interest in, forced to attend school by a man he barely knew but claimed to be his father.

As he pondered his unsatisfactory fate and let things mull over in his mind, settling there to become stagnant later, he felt something brush his shoulder. A crude paper plane had landed on his desk, skittering across its surface for a moment before Mutt snatched it up. He unfurled it noisily and met a poor drawing that he had to guess was of himself.

"Hey Arty, you must draw the same amount of masterpieces as you pull chicks!" he called back after having spied the artist's signature at the bottom of the wing.

"Hey Mutt, you must return to the same amount of schools you drop out of!" came the rapid reply, the speaker a feathery haired individual flanked by three others, varying each other in the same way a crocodile varied from the birds that picked at its teeth. One was more monster than teenager, the second had a bean-pole physique and probably a nickname to match, the third was a dark-haired, sneaky looking, weasel resembling—

Mutt squared his shoulders and leaned over his desk, unwilling to verbally battle it out with Arty. He stretched his arms across the desk and basked in the sunlight filtering through the blinded windows. He sat out the rest of the lesson yawning and waiting for his eyelids to completely close over. With a snort he woke up suddenly, aware that there was no-one left in the classroom bar the teacher lurking by her desk, head bowed over homework as she marked it.

"You fell asleep, Mr. Williams. But don't worry," she stated, looking up and adjusting her thick glasses, "It was a welcome relief."

Mutt had forgotten what she had even been teaching, so he slipped his bag onto his back and exited the classroom with a final yawn. His boots squeaked on the polished floor. He closed his eyes when he remembered how they had sounded on ruddy dirt, scuffing across the ground littered with leaves and debris, on the worn stones of the hidden temple at Akator…

A teacher emerged from his office, arms laden with papers and folders, and tilted his head at the boy standing in the middle of the corridor as he approached. "Go outside to lunch and enjoy the sunshine, young man. No sense standing about in here, unless you need to be? Here, if you want to stay inside then take these files down the hall there, first door on your left. Stick 'em on the desk and someone will collect them later." he asked, slowing his pace and, without waiting for an answer, he thrust the files into Mutt's middle, the boy's hands clutching them feverishly.

"I'm your man, sir." Mutt answered, his tone dripping in subtle sarcasm. The teacher marched away, glad to have one more job done. Mutt adjusted the mass of papers obscuring his vision all of a sudden and set off. He used his elbow to painfully open the door, pushing down on the handle with it, and promptly dumped the files on the desk. The papers on the top began to slide from the pile. Mutt reached out with a sigh to steady them when suddenly, with an ear-peircing scream that sounded as if it had begun before he'd heard it, a vision, a ghost, a person for a split second, flickered before him. It disappeared as soon as it had arrived, but the scream still lingered in the air before being sharply stopped, like a hand had clapped across a mouth. The papers flew to the floor and Mutt stumbled back with a yelp, adrenaline coursing through his being. He slipped on an exam paper beneath his feet and grasped the handle fervently, yanking open the door and spilling out onto the shining hall floor with a grunt.

He looked up, and his eyes widened at what they saw.

More ghosts were drifting in and out of sight, their colours washed out and their forms translucent as they flickered, pacing the hall, babbling and voices coming and going as they did. They looked like damaged film recordings, and Mutt stood up with a panicked yell, racing through the hall, not stopping to avoid more figures, which he found instead of passing through, he bowled over and knocked into. He could see the startled expressions on their misty faces. He risked a glance back when he slammed into his teacher as she left her classroom. She staggered back, gripping his shoulders and holding him away from her.

"What is the matter, Mr Williams?!" she breathed, worried for him, until a second later in which the worry became frustration.

"Did you see that?! Did you see 'em?! They were all over the place Miss Fitzpatrick! They were all over the hall! Like rats!" he responded, ripping free from her and careering forward to the main doors, lockers passing by in coloured blurs.

Miss Fitzpatrick had stood stock still as his footsteps receded, before squeaking and racing back into her classroom with a shriek of 'Rats!'

Mutt jumped down the stone steps two at a time before landing hard on the sidewalk and just about retaining his balance. He heaved in the fresh breeze and bent double, resting his hands on his knees. His legs were kicked out from under him a moment later, and he was forced to throw his hands to the ground to cushion his fall. He got up with a disgruntled expression and turned his head to hear mad cackling before he spotted Arty and his cronies sauntering away. Brushing down his jeans, the keys to his bike already biting into his fingers, he rushed to his beloved vehicle and gave her an affectionate pat before settling down on the saddle and catching his breath. The engine roared to life and the bike flew flat out down the street, wheels spinning, and its chrome gleaming and winking in the afternoon sun, and all the while Mutt was blinking back panic and instead concentrating on keeping his eyes on the road.

The road home.