A/N: I'm quite pleased with this chapter, I hope you all are too. More blood and action will come soon, I promise. :P
Enjoy.

Washington, D.C.
FBI Headquarters
10:53 A.M.

It was a beautiful, cloudless day. The morning was greeted by a lovely sunrise, filling the air with its joyful warmth, abounding soft colors to the night skies until it all melted away into a baby blue. Vegetation had become vividly green after the overnight rain, coating everything with a thin layer of dew. This pleased the birds which allowed them to spread their cheerful songs, promising spring time would come soon…

…So thought Dana Scully, as she gazed out the tiny, sorry excuse for a window in her basement office.

"Hello? Hello? Are you still there?"

The frantic, disembodied voice snapped her back into reality. "I apologize, ma'am. But after you accused your husband of being a, uhm… zombie. I had trouble processing such an idea."

Scully immediately pulled the phone away from her ear, cringing as she hoped for the loud ranting to come to an end. She waited patiently for a few moments until she guessed that this deranged woman would never give it a rest. She slowly set the phone down until it clicked and there was silence at last.

She sat still for a few moments and closed her eyes, indulging in the wonderful sound of nothing. Her poor ear had been talked off after many, many days of taking in calls. Some of them were pointless, and the rest of them were just down right insane. She couldn't believe how many nutcases there were in this world. The reason she had taken on this burden was due to the lack of any assignments for nearly two weeks. She was on the verge of going crazy herself.

The red-head opened her eyes again, letting them overlook the scenery out the window once more. "A gorgeous day, and I'm in here wasting my time and doing Mulder's half of this work." She complained to no one in particular.

Where the hell was that slacker anyway? Not that she was too surprised he was late; he was always late, but not this late. Almost everyday she would check in at 8:00am, if not earlier. He would usually stumble in around 9:00-9:30am, if not later. But it was nearly eleven o'clock and she had yet to be greeted by that impish grin and those hasty apologies of his.

Sure enough, she spoke to soon. "Well speak of the devil."

"You'll be calling me an angel soon enough," Fox Mulder grinned, impishly of course. "Sorry I'm late; I got caught up with some things."

"Well it better have been damn important, because not only do I have to take in more calls, but I got to catch up on that paper work you stole from me three days ago."

"Don't worry about the paper work; I finished it up for you, that's partially why I'm late. Think of it as an early Christmas present." He tossed the large stack of paper onto her desk, winking at his last sentence.

Scully smiled thankfully. "Mulder, I could kiss you."

"Well pucker on up, 'cause that's not all I brought you." He pulled out a few files from behind his back. "This was the other reason I was late."

She stood up, almost rushing over to his side. "You got us an assignment?" She asked anxiously, having to stand on her toes to look at the files he held close to his face.

"Yep, a good one too. It seems to revolve around some barbaric and animalistic murders," He lowered a file for her to see as he spoke. "This is Jonathan Pierce, age sixty-two, resides in Ross County, Ohio. He was found dead a couple days ago, cause of death is pretty obvious."

Scully scanned the picture of the bearded man. There was a good sized gash on his head, long claw mark along his arms, and much larger and deep claw marks across his abdomen. "Looks like an animal attack, a large one that is…" She murmured thoughtfully as she grazed her fingers along the photo.

"Spot on. A bear attack to be exact though."

She looked up at her partner with a puzzled look, obviously not impressed. "So what are we going to do? Arrest a bear?"

"Keep your socks on; I'm getting to the good part," He assured her, tucking in the file under his arm and opening up another one. "I took up the liberty in looking in the X-Files for something familiar. I came across these cases from West Virginia that happened sometime in the 70's. Here are four more with a similar cause of death, and these two people are the only known survivors."

She took a file of one of the survivors, eyebrows furrowing as she observed the unfortunate photo. "What happened to this woman's eyes?"

"Ripped out, by a crow she claims. Her husband, the other survivor, came in time to scare the bird off. He was attacked a few days later, but it was too dark to see what it was he says."

"Alright, I'm still not convinced. Get to the good part."

He smiled slowly. "Are you sure?"

"Yes, Mulder. I'm starting to get impatient, quick, so shoot." She handed back the files to him, making her way back to her desk.

"These couldn't just be simple animal attacks, because each of the victims was in enclosed spaces. Take for instance, Jonathan Pierce was in his car, and it was locked. There was no sign of damage to the car."

She stopped at her desk, tapping it lightly as she contemplated for a moment. "But how could that be?"

"That's exactly what I want to find out."

Scully sunk into her chair, bringing a well manicured nail to her teeth, a bad little habit of hers. She snuck a peek back out the window to remind herself of warm, sunny skies. The answer was easy:

"Well make sure to grab me a plane ticket to Ohio," She couldn't pass up the chance of getting out of this cold, stuffy basement. "But you better be at the airport on time. I don't want to have to stall the captain for you again."

Mulder lifted his hands in defense at her warning. "Hey, most of the time I have a good reason to be late."

"Right, most of the time…" She mumbled with a roll of the eyes. "Before you run off again, why don't you take some calls?"

"Oh but Scully, I did do that paperwork for you." He uttered innocently.

"Yeah, and that was your choice." She replied with a smile and shooed him over to his mess of a desk.

He hung his head in mock defeat and slumped into his seat, stretching his long legs to the side and lifted the black phone to his ear, twirling the cord. "Good morning this is the FBI, where your every problem is our concern. Please do hold, you're a valued customer."

Scully shook her head as he grinned boyishly at her. Today was going to be a long day.