August 1997
It's a hot summer day on the outskirts of D.C., and the Lone Gunmen are feeling the heat more than usual. The cause could be the different environs and company they keep, a large mansion-like home and three small children, that's causing their armpits to sweat more than normal and tempers to flare. Even the normally-affable Byers has gotten to the point where he'd rather sweep the Mulder house for surveillance devices than spend another minute with his friends or Mulder's kids. Frohike has sought refuge in the kitchen doing repairs, which leaves Langly with munchkin duty. Finally, even he gives in as he runs into the kitchen.
"Dude, one more second with that stupid purple dinosaur and I'm gonna blow my brains out!" he exclaims to a pair of legs poking out from under the sink.
"I thought you said you could handle it," Frohike's muffled voice comes eerily through the pipes.
"Yeah, but Barney's no Cap'n Toby," the long-haired blond man scowls.
"Come on, I'll fix the pipes, you can listen to some inane dude in a costume sing."
"No, thanks," Frohike replies, "I don't want the lovely Scully to blame me if the sink suddenly turns on when she starts the microwave."
"It was just that one time!" Langly sputters, his forthcoming argument cut short by a new arrival. "Oh, you."
Byers ignores the venom dripping from his compatriot's words or glare. "Top to bottom, there are no bugs," he says briskly, "at least surveillance-wise." Due to the heat, his jacket is draped on his arm, but he is still clad in his trademark buttoned-up shirt, tie and dress slacks.
"Greaaaaaaat," Langly drawls, "it's your turn to look after the rugrats."
The bearded man looks shocked when he sees Frohike's legs from under the sink. "If we're all in here, who's looking after the children?"
Frohike bangs his head as he gets out of the sink. "What? You guys!" he yells when April starts crying.
The three men look at each other. "Not me!" they all chorus. Then they point at each other, "You do it!"
"Fine, fine," Frohike mumbles, giving up trying to decipher Mulder's messy handwritten instructions, "I swear decrypting top secret documents is easier than reading that chicken scratch." Still, he must've done something right, because April is finally quiet, sucking noisily away at a bottle, her diaper fresh and clean.
"You two look good together," Langly says in the calm following the storm, "even if you guys aren't related."
"She could've been," Frohike says, as he carries the littlest one with her bald head and dark brown eyes. "April's got my eyes." He beams down at her proudly as if he had a hand in her creation.
"You better not let Mulder hear you say that," Langly smirks, until Sammy smears some baby food on his shirt. "Ugh, gross," he says, making a face as he wipes it off, making Page and Sammy laugh. "I can't believe the one day they decide to take a little 'me-time' is the same one their babysitter does the same."
"Nannies are people, too," Byers says, unperturbed when Page grabs the remote to turn on the TV. He frowns when the remote doesn't turn the set on, then walks over to manually press the power button. Nothing. He checks in the back to see if everything's hooked up properly, and they are. Having already checked the set for bugs, he realizes it's not the fault of some shadowy third party, but rather an internal problem. "I think it's broken," he says finally.
Page's face crumples, and it isn't long before the house is filled with the sound of wailing. Not just from the three Mulder and Scully children, but also at least one Gunman.
Frohike's panicked mind thinks of a number of solutions to the problem, all of which would result in their getting jailed, or at least, on the FBI's most wanted. Bitterly, he puts aside thoughts of rope and duct tape, multi-purpose childcare machines, and simple abandonment, looking desperately at his friends. Okay, so it's his fault that he got them into this mess, but does it always have to be him to get them out? "Byers," he pleads under the incessant crying. How is it possible for such little kids to have such big lungs?
Even Byers is looking panicky, which isn't good. But the sight of Langly losing it with the kids has caused something within the suit-and-tie man to snap, and in a tone rarely heard from the normally-sanguine man, he says sharply, "All of you, QUIET!" Startled, Page subsides with a startled hiccup, Sammy's mouth hangs open, and Langly freezes. "Langly, I want you to go into the kitchen and get snacks and drinks. Page, I want you to be a big girl and put the toys away. Sammy, stay there. And Frohike," he pauses.
"Yeah?" the balding man asks uneasily, shifting the baby girl in his arms as he rocks her.
"You've got storytelling detail."
Frohike's bulging eyes behind his glasses make him resemble a comical frog.
"What?"
"There's no brewskis, so everybody gets fruit juice," the blond man comes strolling in with colorful sippy cups and a box of donuts. "Hey, are donuts cool?" he looks speculatively at the little redheaded boy. In reply, Sammy grabs a donut and promptly powders his face with the white sugar. "I'll take that as a yes," Langly notes, handing out drinks and donuts.
Frohike's wracking his brains for something suitable to talk about, although most of what comes to mind are conspiracy theories, which would probably go over the kids' heads, or hot chicks, which would get him in trouble with the luscious and unfortunately-married Scully. He looks at Byers, who shrugs, and an evil thought comes to mind. "Okay, boys and girls," he says in a storytelling voice, and everyone perks up, "Uncle Frohike's gonna tell you about how we saved a pretty lady called Susanne, met your father, and saved the world."
"Oh, no," Byers sighs, while Langly grins, "Oh, yeah."
"You saved the world?" Page asks.
"Of course," Frohike beams, but his smile droops when he sees Byers glare.
"Well, maybe just Baltimore," he amends, and is about to go on when the blonde girl interrupts again.
"Who's Susanne?" Page wonders.
The Lone Gunmen look at each other. "Once upon a time, well, about eight years ago, on a lovely May afternoon, Uncle Byers met a beautiful blonde lady named Susanne," Frohike says, ignoring the fact that he's drinking from a sippy cup, "at a computer convention in nearby Baltimore. All sorts of people were there, but somehow, your straightlaced Uncle Byers managed to catch the attention of the damsel in distress."
"I didn't know that yet," Byers corrects him, and Frohike shoves a donut into his mouth.
"Anyways," Frohike ignores the interruption, "Uncle Byers followed the lady with the sunglasses all the way to where the dashing and debonair Uncle Frohike, that's yours truly," he makes a little bow, "was working hard at his cable company booth." He ignores his compatriot's coughing and goes on. "Unfortunately, Uncle Langly was in the next booth, trying to sell Susanne a terrible version of cable, which was very, very bad."
"Very, very bad," Page repeats, and Sammy mumbles "Bad bad."
"Hey!" Langly yelps. "You were the one who was selling crappy coax cable--"
"When Uncle Langly butted in, we both lost a sale," Frohike glares at him behind his glasses, holding up a fist, "and Uncle Byers kept following Susanne like a stalker. Susanne let him bump into her and she dropped her purse. Because he's actually got some manners, he said sorry and saw a picture of a little girl fall out of her purse."
"Susanne was a mommy?"
Frohike makes a face. "Well, that's what she wanted ol' Uncle Byers to think. So she told Uncle Byers about some crazy and very, very bad ex-boyfriend who stole her little girl named Susanne."
"Susanne and Susanne!" Page laughs, delighted.
"Not quite," Frohike says as Byers sighs, "she told Uncle Byers her name was
Holly."
"Like sugar?" Sammy asks, reaching for another donut.
"Like the sugar," Frohike agrees.
"Who was the bad man?" Page asks.
The Lone Gunmen exchange glances. "We're getting there," Frohike says.
"Anyways, Susanne-who-called-herself-Holly said she needed help with computer stuff that would help her find her fake-daughter-called-Susanne, so they went back to where Uncle Byers was working. And you know what?"
"What?" Sammy falls for the prompt.
The short man has an evil grin on his face. "It was the first time Uncle
Byers hacked into a system! Aren't you proud?"
"Yay, Uncle!" the children cheer, while Byers puts a hand over his face and
Langly shares an evil grin with Frohike.
"It wasn't like that," Byers says half-heartedly.
"Hey, take the kudos while you can," Frohike says blithely, "so anyway,
Uncle Byers found Susanne's file and printed it out. Unfortunately, it was encrypted, which means that it was in a special computer language."
The little girl blinks. "Co'puters can talk?"
"Of course," Frohike nods. "Anything smart can talk. Just when Uncle Byers realized he needed help turning this computer language into English, Susanne saw her scary ex-boyfriend."
"Oh no!"
"That's right," the short man says with relish. "And they realized they needed more help than ever, so they went to the man with the plan, the hero when you're zero, senor numero uno." He pats his leather-vested chest. "Uncle Frohike!"
"Yaaaaaayyyyyyy!!!!"
"Really," Byers says, rolling his eyes.
"Hey, I call 'em like I see 'em," Frohike says, enjoying the adulation from the mini-Mulders. "So anyways, I was ready to do the hero thing and beat the guy up so we could save the little girl, but Susanne said the bad guy was not only bad, he was dangerous, so we had to be very, very careful."
Both kids are nodding, and Byers, wishing his friend would skip over this part, says, "Frohike, could you check on April?"
"Sure," the balding man says, holding up the baby girl and takes a careful sniff near the general direction of her diapers. "All clear," he says, not bothering to hide his relief. "So anyways, me and Uncle Byers decide to check out the scary boyfriend, just in case, see what he's like. Problem was, it's hard to do the secret agent thing with Mr. Boy Scout here," and Byers purses his lips, "so the bad guy saw us."
"Run away!" Sammy yells, as if he could change past events.
"In a way, it was a good thing," Frohike says, inadvertently putting both feet in his mouth, "because the bad guy turned out to be your father."
"NOOOOOOO!!! My daddy's good!" Page promptly starts crying, her siblings following suit for at least the second time that day.
"Hey, hey, hey," Frohike panics, handing April and her bottle over to Byers and hugging the little girl, "Page, you're right, you're right, your daddy's a good guy. But back then, we didn't know, okay? We didn't know him, and that why we thought he wasn't."
"Uncles are dum-dums," Page sniffles. It takes a little while longer, but
Sammy and April calm down as well, much to the Gunmen's relief.
"Yeah, well, like the man said, we didn't know," Frohike continues in a placating tone. "But he didn't know Susanne was our friend first and said he was the bad guy. So we said we were lost and were looking for the bathroom," and is relieved when the girl giggles at the word. "So he told us where it was, then showed us his FBI badge, and then he showed us a picture of Susanne."
"Uh-oh," Page says. "Susanne bad girl."
"You said it," Frohike agrees, overriding Byers' indignant "Hey!" "So we went back to the booth to talk to Susanne, but when we got there, they were arresting Uncle Byers' friend."
"They got the bad lady?" Page asks.
"Uh, not quite," Frohike says, "they got his coworker, Ken. Susanne was already gone."
''Uh-oh," Sammy says, and Page agrees. They notice that their sometimes-invisible friends have joined them, but none of the grownups see extra children wander in the room. All the Gunmen can sense is that the room has gotten slightly, but thankfully, cooler, and Byers feels comfortable donning his suit jacket again.
"Yeah, and Uncle Byers was about to make another dumb move and turn himself in." Frohike pauses and adopts a teacherly tone. "Hackers never, ever turn themselves in. Got that?"
"Got it," Page nods solemnly, and so does Sammy.
"I don't think we should be telling them that," Byers argues, but Langly kicks his leg. "Ow," he frowns, glad the children are paying attention to Frohike than to himself.
"Anyway, that's when I suggested that we hack into the FBI database to do a little checkup on Susanne and your daddy. Uncle Byers didn't want to at first, but then he saw the light. And that's when he officially became a hacker."
"Yay, Uncle Byers!"
"So, even though your Uncle Frohike's kung foo is pretty good, I figured we needed someone else to cover our bases, just in case," Frohike goes on, "and that's where Uncle Langly comes in." The short man smirks as he does a mock Vanna White-like wave at the blond hacker, who bows. "Me and Uncle Byers saved him from a mind-numbing D&D game to get into a class hack."
"Hey!" Langly protests. "You ladies came asking for *my* help, even though I was on a hot streak, got it? Hey, you even had to tell me my kung foo was the best."
"Anyways," Frohike says, clearly disgruntled, "we didn't have the cool digs we do now, so we rented a hotel room to hide all of Langly's questionable equipment in."
"Watch it," Langly growls.
"Ooh, I'm scared," Frohike says, mocking him, and Page laughs. "But the scary part's yet to come. So we look up your daddy, and what do we find? That not only is he FBI, but he's a really smart good guy, and that the person he's chasing down is Holly, whose real name is Susanne Modeski. According to the computer, it said Susanne was crazy, killed lots of people and lied a lot, too."
"Ohhhhhhh," Page says. "Susanne's a bad girl."
"Got that right," Langly says, only to be elbowed by Byers. "Hey!"
"And that's when Susanne walked into the room."
"Uh-oh."
"Okay, so there we were," Frohike says, and they're all practically touching foreheads, they're leaning so close to hear his words, "we just found out that Susanne was a bad guy, and she walks into the room. We planned on playing it cool, but she reached into her purse, and a gun fell out!"
"How come she had a gun?" Sammy asks.
"She had it for her own protection against the real villains," Byers explains.
"Hey, who's telling the story, you or me?" the short man glares, and his friend subsides. "So Susanne was waving the gun around, saying she's innocent, that she's being framed and people are following her, and you know what happened next?"
"What?"
"She said people knew where she was through her teeth!" Frohike's eyes are huge. "So she grabbed some pliers, ran into the bathroom, and pulled her tooth out without any medicine!"
"Owie!" Page puts her hand to her mouth. The other day Sammy ran into her and her front teeth hit the floor. She can't imagine anyone wanting to pull their teeth out on purpose.
"But you know what? There was a little radio transmitter inside her tooth, kinda what you'd find in there," he points to the stereo system, "and so we flushed it down the toilet so the bad guys wouldn't find us."
"Susanne not bad guy?" Sammy is confused now, along with his older sister.
"Nope," Frohike shrugs, earning another glower from his suited friend. "There were bad guys who made her cook up some crazy gas that wanted to spray it on innocent Americans. So we decided to help her and go to the warehouse where the real bad guys put the real weapon. We tracked it down to a bunch of boxes full of asthma inhalers and we were ready to share the story with the world. And then the bad guys showed up."
The leftover donuts are forgotten now that Frohike's rolling towards the end of the story. "The bad guys grabbed Susanne and pointed their guns at us. And then your dad showed up."
"Daddyyyyyyyyyy!" the kids crow, bouncing up and down on the couch.
"Whoa, whoa," Frohike says, wanting to keep the baby in his arms on the quiet level, "okay, so yeah, your dad came in with his own gun. Unfortunately, the bad guys started shooting, he shot back, everybody was shooting, and so, being smart, we got out of the way."
"Okay, and now we sound like chickens," Langly drawls.
"Shut up, Langly," the short man mutters, "we were making a tactical rendezvous, that's all."
"Like the kids know what that means," the blond man rolls his eyes.
"ANYways," Frohike plows on, "everybody was shooting, boxes were being ripped apart, everything was crazy, and then one of the boxes with the secret weapon got shot open and sprayed your daddy with the gas! He started screaming and tearing off his clothes, the gas was too much for him!"
"Oh, no!" Sammy's eyes are wide.
"Oh, yes!" Frohike shouts, forgetting about the baby in his arms. As he absently rocks her, he says, "So your father was down for the count, and the bad guys had us surrounded. They were just about to shoot us, but they got shot instead." He pauses, looking at Byers. "Susanne saved us."
"Yay, Susanne!" the kids yell, forgetful of the fact that only ten minutes ago, she was the bad guy.
"Uh, yeah," the leather-vested man says, bouncing the baby in his arms to keep her happy. "So, uh, she got out of there, because it wasn't safe, and your uncles thought we'd grab some bottles of the secret weapon for evidence, you know, but more bad guys came in. The bad guys cleaned up most of the mess, took out the first set of bad guys, and were about to shoot your daddy--"
"NO!"
"Whoa," Langly rushes in to calm the older kids, "look, your dad's alive, and you guys are here. That means there's gonna be a happy ending soon, right?"
Frohike's relieved when Page doesn't fuss anymore, and goes on. "Yeah, so this tall black guy with a beard and moustache tells his goons not to shoot your dad. So your dad was a little nuts with the gas, but he was alive. Bad news, the black dude saw us, lined us up to kill us, and pulled the trigger." The kids are silent, wide-eyed. "Good news, even though your Uncle Byers had a big mouth, the black guy was cool enough to let us live, even gave us our nickname. The Lone Gunmen."
"He was cool?" Byers frowns.
Frohike rolls his eyes. "All the evidence was gone, cleaned up by the bad guys, but we were alive. Our luck went down again, because the cops came in and arrested us. We spent a loooooooong night in the stinking joint, but luckily, your dad sprang us the next morning. And we've been friends ever since. The End."
"What about Susanne?" Page asks.
Byers pauses before he answers. "We don't know," he says honestly, "we saw her not long after we left the police station, but the black man took her away in a black car. She's probably still working for the bad guys, against her will, maybe planning another escape from the wicked men as we speak." He doesn't look at anyone, his gaze drifting out the window, the sky darkening to a rich orange as the sun sets. Behind him, ghostly children of another time fade away, and the temperature warms, but only slightly.
Later that night, Scully is trying to put her still-excitable children to bed. She's fairly certain that, despite her instructions, Mulder had forgotten to put "no sugary snacks or drinks" on the list they gave the Gunmen. "Uncles saved the world," Page insists sleepily, even as her mother struggles to pull her nightgown over her head.
"Of course," Scully says in a placating tone, freeing her daughter's blonde hair from the neckline.
"And Daddy's not a bad guy, he's a good guy," she argues, her face a miniature of her mother's when debating with her father.
"What have the Gun--, I mean, what have your uncles been telling you?" Scully frowns, sitting next to her daughter.
"There was guns, an' bad guys, an' a lady los' her toot', an' Daddy, an' uncles," Sammy says breathlessly, at the same time trying to free himself from the hot nightclothes.
Scully sighs, re-clothing her squirmy little boy. "What lady lost her tooth?" she asks.
"Susanne," Page answers, as if the answer is obvious. "Uncle Byers' girlfriend."
"Really?" Scully's jaw drops.
"Uncle Langly said so," the little blonde girl says, oblivious to any bomb-dropping she may have caused to her mother's perception of the Gunmen. "'Cause she's smart and pretty."
The redhead smiles, noting the order of the compliment. "Well, Uncle Byers is a smart man," she says, "so when can we meet her?"
"Susanne not here," Sammy says, kicking his feet as if that would free his legs from the cotton pajama pants. "Bad guys got her."
"Oh," Scully says, absently hitting the button for the ceiling fan. "That's sad."
"Uh-huh," Page agrees. She's under her thin sheet, her body still as if ready for sleep, but her eyes are wide open. "Mommy, I wanna be a hacker when I grow up," she says, her hands holding the blanket under her chin.
"Why?" her startled mother asks.
"So I can talk to co'puters and rescue Susanne," the blonde girl says practically.
"Me, too!" Sammy echoes, also diving under his sheet. If his sister's going to sleep, he doesn't want her to beat him.
I may not understand them sometimes, Scully thinks, but I know they've got good hearts. "Good night," she smiles and kisses her daughter's forehead, who exhales peacefully. "Goooooood night," she tells Sammy, who's still a squirmy worm under the sheet, holding his forehead in place so she can kiss it. He giggles, still squirming, but squeezes his eyes tightly shut as if to hasten sleep.
"Sweet dreams," she says softly, clicking off the overhead light, but leaving the plug-in light on. She's going to ask Mulder about this "Susanne," and what on earth happened that the Gunmen supposedly saved the world, but weren't able to save their friend.
