I don't own any of 'em. Well, except for the bad guy and the Sheriff, and the coroner, okay, anyone you don't recognise, I own. There. Happy? Good. Oh, and this chapter is kinda short, but don't worry, you'll be getting more of them soon.
Filed Under X
Mutants aren't very well known in this day and age. Most of it has been hushed up by the highest levels of the government, while the rest has been reported to be nothing more then a mad man with some kind of strange machine or something like that. Therefore, no one really believes the X-men are anything but terrorists with really good technology.
Snow Valley,
March 5, 12:15 am
Deana looked around, trembling, cold sweat rolling down her back.
'Maybe it got bored. Maybe it left.'
Slipping carefully through the woods, stumbling only slightly over the tree roots, she extended her senses and asked the trees where the creature was. The trees refused to answer. Even more frightened now, she tried to call the nearest telepath.
Ms Frost? Jono? M? Her mind screamed the words, begging for someone to hear her.
De…where…you…omin…hid…Jubi…
Deana drew a sharp breath, shocked that a telepath as strong as Emma Frost couldn't cut through the static. Something bad was going on if the astral was sending this much static through the communication lines. The only comfort she had was the sense that Ms Frost had sent Jubilee out. Jubes was the only one with the experience and power to take on this creature, seeing as she was the only one it wouldn't attack.
Grrrrrrr
Deana stifled a scream and began to run again. It wasn't enough. The creature had her. This time she screamed for real and the trees around her responded finally.
With a blinding flash of green light, Deana died, and the creature released her body. Dead meat was not what it needed. With an almost human like sigh the creature padded off, knowing full well that the Other One was coming to look for her pack mate. While the other two leggers were considered prey, the Other One was not a thing to be messed with.
Jubilee watched as it walked away, head hanging down as if it had been shamefully defeated. For a moment she almost attacked, but she knew she'd never reach it before it disappeared. Besides this was unusual. The Weyr was not one who normally gave up on anything. And this time it hadn't even ripped an arm off or anything. Turning back to where Deana was lying, Jubilee was about to go and take her back to the med lab when she heard the voices coming from the other side of the woods.
"Over here! I think I see something!" First one, then two, then three men ran out into the small clearing and gathered around the young mutant girls' body.
"Geeze, is she alive?" The first man bent down to check her pulse, and Jubilee finally recognised him as Jonas Marshal. He was one of the few hunters who still worked around the Snow Valley area.
"No pulse. She's already going cold. Dead. Mike, go back and call the cops. And keep your gun ready, these look like some kind of wolf bite."
Jubilee moved back into the shadows as Joe scanned the area, glad that her new Gen X uniform was black and dark blue rather then the bright red and yellow that would have shown her up straight away. She waited until he turned back to the corpse in front of him then slipped away. Frosty was going to blow a gasket over this.
FBI Headquarters, New York,
March 5, 08:12 am
Scully knew as soon as she walked into the office that she was about to get roped into something bad. The very look on Mulder's face as she walked through the door told her so.
"What is it this time?" Mulder chuckled at her dry tone and handed over the case file.
"Werewolves in Massachusetts. A young girl, 15 years old, found in the woods just out side of her boarding school. Unknown cause of death. Suspected that she died of fear, because there are wolf bites all over her, but none that could have caused her to die. Second case in two months."
"And this leads to werewolf? There are still normal everyday wolves around the smaller towns you know."
"I know, but on the first case, where the body was found torn to pieces, a witness reported that a creature that seemed to be half wolf, half human had been seen running away from the body. Again, in this mornings case, the local trackers found that the wolf prints around the girls body were too big to be normal and the shape was slightly distorted." He got out of his chair and grabbed his car keys. "And both deaths happened on the night of the full moon." With a happy smile, he walked out and gestured for her to hurry up. Scully rolled her eyes at him, but followed. This sounded like another one of their normal everyday X-files.
Snow Valley,
10:20 am
Dana Scully parked the rented car outside the medical lab and gestured to it.
"Why does this town need a separate lab from the hospital? I mean, it's just a small town, and there isn't bound to be any medical research going on up here."
"Maybe they get a lot of strange deaths around here. It's half lab, half morgue right? Maybe the locals don't like the thought of having dead bodies so close to their hospital patients so they asked the government to fund a little out of the way morgue."
"Okay, when you start sounding like the rational one, something scary is about to happen." Mulder grinned, but otherwise ignored the statement and hopped out of the car. Scully grabbed her briefcase and followed him into the building. Two men were leaning over a desk, looking at some medical records when they walked in. The taller, younger one stood up and nodded grimly to them.
"You must be the FBI we were promised. 'Bout time someone took this seriously. I'm Sheriff Michael Walter. The police chief is out on his long overdue vacation so I was left in charge of this case. This is our local coroner, Dr William Macleod."
Scully nodded and pulled out her badge in a long time ritual, aware that Mulder was doing the same thing.
"I'm Special Agent Dana Scully, this is Special Agent Fox Mulder. Has the body already been autopsied?"
"Just finished five minutes ago actually. It's still on the exam table if you want to have a look now." Dr Macleod gestured for the two agents to follow him, leaving the sheriff to continue looking at the other medical records.
"Is there anything special about the body I should know? Something that may have indicated the cause of death?" Macleod winced slightly then looked over his should at the agents as he stopped at the lab door.
"I think you'd better actually see the body before I explain the unusual circumstances we have at the moment." He pushed his way through the door, leaving Mulder and Scully to exchange confused glances. When they followed him through, they finally realised why he was so nervous.
The girl lying on the exam table had bright green hair, and her skin was a strange shade of brownish green that looked like tree bark. Macleod didn't even blink at the sight; he just reached over to a shelf on the wall and picked up a small jar of green sap. He handed it to Scully and waited for the questions.
"What is this?"
"That, my friend, is our young ladies blood. Her guardian has, on behalf of the girls parents, refused to let us do an internal autopsy, but it wouldn't really mater, as nothing in her body would be recognisable to us. She's not exactly human you see." Mulder was staring at the body, surprised.
"She's not little, and she's female. Well that blows that theory." The two doctors blinked at him, though Scully snapped out of it fairly quickly.
"You aren't seriously suggesting that she's some kind of alien, Dr Macleod?"
The old man blinked at her and then barked a short laugh. He ran a hand through his brown/grey hair and stared at the two of them.
"Agent Scully, I can't believe that you live in New York of all places, and have yet to hear of a mutant. Deana Wendel is a mutant. Or should I say, was a mutant."
"A mutant?" Mulder frowned, trying to remember where he had heard that word before. "You mean one of those people that Senator Creed had been raging about?"
"Of course. Well, now that I think about it, I suppose most mutants wouldn't stay in the larger cities when the government was actively hunting them. But we get quite a lot of mutants out this way. They normally don't stay long, but no one really holds a grudge against them. Not enough to do what they did to Deana here or the little boy who got torn up last month." He frowned at them again then walked over to the office on the other side of the lab and came back with a stack of sheets.
"Here, Agents. You'd better have a read through these before you go tackling the job of trying to find a mutant killer." He pulled some keys out of his pocket and threw them to Mulder. "There's a little apartment building out the back of the labs you can stay in. You'll both have full access to what's in here. Agent Scully, I'll put Deana back in her box until you've read through that stuff. Until you have a better understanding of mutant physiology, it won't do much good to leave her out." Scully nodded, already engrossed in what she was reading.
Sheriff Walter walked in, keeping his eyes on anything except the corpse on the table and nodded to the three living people in the room.
"I was going to go up to the school this morning, ask a few questions about what Deana was doing out that late, you know the normal questions. Figured I might wait for you two. Anyone want to come?" His voice was pleading one of them to come. Scully ignored him, frowning at the stuff in her hands. Mulder sighed and shook his head at his partner.
"I'll come. Don't bother about her. Once she starts reading this sort of stuff she'll be completely out of it until she's finished." Mulder dangled the apartment keys in front of her and grinned as she took them with out looking. "Lead the way Sheriff."
