CHAPTER 5: Scully Goes to Skool

I'm back, and I'm finally working on some of my unfinished fics. So here is the long anticipated chapter 5 for your reading pleasure. Enjoy, I own nothing.

City School,

Feb 12, 12:52pm

Agent Scully's shoes clicked against the linoleum tile as she walked down the dimly lit hall of the school building. The sound of her own footsteps reverberated through the corridor. Scully was a trained medical doctor, a seasoned FBI field agent, and had seen her fair share of the strange, the terrifying, and the disturbing during her partnership with Mulder, but something about this school creeped her out just a little bit. Scully was wondering what a teacher would be doing at school at 1:00pm on a Sunday, when she happened to walk by a large glass display shelf. Her eyes were immediately drawn to an old, yellowed photograph on the center shelf. She squinted in the low light to read the plaque below it. It read: "Skool, First Year faculty, 1918" Scully read the names: "Albertson, Albert A.; Andrews, Thomas; Bitters…"

"Hmm" Scully said. "Must be her mother or grandmother." She smiled a little at the thought of a mother loving to teach, and passing the torch to her daughter. Maybe that's why Miss Bitters was her today, preparing lessons for tomorrow out of devotion to her job. Scully turned and continued down the hall. If she had looked closer, she would've seen the old derraugetype picture on the bottom shelf of an old woman in a black dress, standing in front of a one-room schoolhouse. It had a small plaque that read "Miss Bitters, 1879"

Scully reached the door she was looking for, and knocked lightly.

"Who is it?!" An angry voice rasped from inside the room.

"FBI." Scully said. "My partner called earl…" The door opened into the room, and Scully looked around. A skinny old woman sat at the desk at the head of the classroom, staring up at Scully malevolently from a stack of papers before her. There was no indication that anyone had been responsible for opening the door, but Scully brushed off the strangeness of the situation, and entered the classroom. Miss Bitters stood and walked around the desk. Her shadow seemed to deviate from the movements of her body, as though it had a life of its own. Scully took a deep gulp, but stood stoically.

"You had a question about one of my students." Miss bitters said, making it into a statement instead of a question.

"Y-yes." Scully replied, mentally chiding herself for displaying nervousness. "I wanted to ask you about a student named Zim."

"Zim?" Miss Bitters asked in a gravelly voice. "The little green child?"

"Yes. He would have green skin." Scully replied. "What can you tell me about him?" Miss Bitters rubbed her chin for a moment.

"He's a hopeless, loudmouthed drag on our society…just like all of the other students." Scully's eyes widened a little. "But I do enjoy it when he starts screaming about doom, so I suppose there is some hope for the child."

"Doom?" Scully asked.

"Yes," Miss Bitters replied. "Doom. The basest force in our universe. The binding tie of all things. Doom. This planet is doomed. You are doomed. That tree outside the window is doomed. And the universe is doomed." Scully backed up a couple of steps.

"I see." She said.

"I try to work doom into every lesson." Miss Bitters said.

"About Zim…"

"He shows some promise if he'd stop fighting with the Dib child."

"Zim and Dib fight often?" Scully asked, scribbling into her notepad.

"Eh. Nearly every day. Those two are constantly interrupting my important lessons with their arguing and fighting."

"What do they fight about, Miss Bitters?" Scully asked.

"The Dib child keeps haranguing the green child about being an alien. The Dib child is insane, you see. In fact, I've already sent him to the crazy school for boys, but the next day, the child was back in this classroom."

"Okay…have you noticed any strange behavior out of Zim?"

"I notice nothing but strange behavior out of these children." Miss Bitters replied. "Zim is no exception."

"But certainly he's done something out of the ordinary."

"He laughs like a maniac in the middle of class. He goes to the bathroom sometimes three times a period, and he came to class one day covered in meat." Scully wrote all of this down. "Now is there anything else you want to know?" Miss Bitters asked. For a moment, Scully could have sworn she heard "Get out, I grow tired of you" within the question, but she quickly decided it was just her nerves.

"No," Scully replied. "This actually helped a lot. Thank you, Miss Bitters." Bitters simply grunted in reply. Scully walked to the door, then turned back around. In the three seconds it had taken Scully to reach the door, Miss Bitters had somehow resumed her original position, sitting at her desk. Scully narrowed her eyes a bit. "By the way, Miss Bitters?"

"Yes?" The irritated reply came.

"How long have you been teaching here?"

"There is more in Heaven and Earth than dreamed of in your philosophies." Miss Bitters said lowly, quoting Shakespeare's 'Hamlet'. Scully backed out of the room, and the door closed on its own.

Writing the character of Miss Bitters in this chapter was quite fun. Little is known about her canon past, although I have heard the theory that she was always there, they just built the school around her. Keeping both characters as in character as possible, it was comedic and a little scary to see how they would interact. The line: "There is more in Heaven and Earth than dreamed of in your philosophies", is from Hamlet, and in the play was said to Horatio upon his disbelief in ghosts. If you fail to "get it", I was implying that Miss Bitters is a being that defies all know science and religious thought. Well, anyway, I must sign off. Much to write, little time to dally here. Until next chapter, cheerio.