I laughed triumphantly. My hair blew around my face in the wind as I coasted downwards rapidly and then started up. When I reached the top I pitched forward, trying to stay up, but the wheels slipped over the bar and I started backwards, losing my balance.

I fell down onto the ramp again, rolling down towards the bottom while my skateboard followed me, passing me and moving back and forth like a pendulum before slowing and just rocking back and forth on the slope. I groaned, rolling over onto my back and rubbing my arm where my elbow had collided with the ramp.

It was barely light out – the perfect time for a person like me to hit a Walmart and then a skate park before heading off to work. I'd bought a cheap but effective skateboard in the sports section and then taken the single running bus back to this area of town. I hadn't gotten a helmet (if I got a concussion, it's my own fault – you'd think I'd have learned better after failing at skateboarding with Shawn and David Cook!), but I had still managed to enjoy about fifteen minutes of learning to skateboard standing up. I was slowly but surely getting better at keeping my balance.

Why did I decide to wake up at four in the morning? Well, actually, I hadn't. I woke up screaming, bolting upright on my couch, with stray tears falling from my eyes, a ghosting image of myself hovering over a man while I stabbed him in the shoulder flashing before my eyes before I blinked it away. It had been a horrible nightmare of the previous day's "rescue mission" of Donovan Decker. Having turned in my gun and carrying license already, I had felt unsafe in my own apartment, so I'd gotten ready early and left, thinking of skateboarding to kill time while reflecting on previous cases.

I got back up to my feet and grabbed the skateboard, holding it under my arm while I climbed back up to one side of the ramp. Once at the top I set it down and got one foot on it, looking out over the park. Still empty. I took a deep breath and pushed off, throwing my leg around on top of the front of the skateboard and bending my knees, coasting down the slope. It reached the lowest point and then started to tilt, going up again. When it got up to the top, I jumped off, landing on the opposite starting point while the skateboard flipped over and slid down to the bottom.

I cheered and threw my arms in the air for a moment before screaming met my ears.

I paused, stopping dead and listening closely. I was tired – maybe I was just hearing things? No. A minute later, the same noise of children screaming met my ears. My head snapped around to the source – a street down and in the alley. Children screaming.

I jumped down off of the landing and the soles of my shoes slid down the slope for a few feet before I jumped down onto the arch. I picked up my skateboard and left the park, running down the block and to the noise.

I found a group of children halfway down a side alley. One of them screamed again, her hands covering her mouth. "Hey!" I yelled, throwing the skateboard down to the side and running over to the three children. They couldn't have been older than ten or eleven. Two were girls and one was a boy. They seemed pretty familiar – her blonde curls, his long brown hair and his dark skin. They were probably neighborhood children. "Hey, what's the matter?"

The girl screamed again and one of the boys hugged her while the other stared at me defiantly. I stopped in my tracks for a moment before holding up my hands and walking forward more suddenly, a bad feeling growing in the pit of my stomach as the stench hit my nose. "Hey. I'm not going to hurt you. What's wrong?"

I looked over their heads and my stomach churned. If I'd been considering breakfast before, I definitely wasn't now.

I'd been correct when I'd identified the smell as the odor of organic decomposition. "Oh, dear," I whispered, before ushering the kids over to me. The form was kind of small but was clad in what seemed like dirtied black and grey plastics, like the armor from a comic book. The face was slightly crushed, the eye sockets empty and the muscle tissue of the face peeling back to show a crookedly-smiling skull. No wonder the children had been screeching at the tops of their lungs. How was I the first one to come see what was wrong? Now that they didn't deem me a threat, one of the boys ran to hide behind me and the girl hugged my legs. I set my hand on top of her hair soothingly after just a moment of hesitation. "Come here, kids. It's okay. Don't look at it, don't look at it."

I couldn't have been more relieved when I saw Booth, even though Cullen was with him. "I'm so glad you got here," I said honestly, rushing forward to greet the man who I'd helped to kill a dozen – No! That wasn't my fault! I can't focus on that right now! "I don't know how long it's been here."

Cullen rolled his eyes in exasperation, motioning to me with one hand. "Miss Kirkland is the one that called it in. She's already given her statement to the officers that arrived first on scene. Would you like to repeat it to Agent Booth here?" Cullen asked. "I'm assuming you'll manage to weasel into this one, just like the others you've managed to get involved in."

"I gave you my gun and I only shot it once! What more do you want from me?!" I demanded desperately. Is there really nothing I can do to make him let it go?! I rolled my eyes, throwing my head back, before looking back to Booth and summarizing my day. "I woke up early and wanted to kill time before my shift at the bar started. I went to Walmart, bought a skateboard, and went to the park down the street, and yes, I know you seem to think that it's not a good idea for me to use a skateboard. And for your information, I only fell seventeen out of twenty-nine times!" Yes, I actually counted. "I heard children screaming and came to see what the problem was. Three of the neighborhood kids had found a decomposing body. I got them into the house next door and used the woman's phone to call the police, who I instructed to call the FBI."

"Then what?" Cullen prompted with an air of boredom.

I sighed and continued. "I came back to the alley and did a cursory examination. I didn't touch anything," I stressed to Cullen. "It's an adolescent Caucasian male. He's wearing some sort of composite that takes longer to degrade than organics, which makes me think it's a type of costume. By rate of decomposition I'd say he's been dead at least a month – Hodgins could tell you more. There's maggots in a bag along with a degraded organic which may be cellulose, but I'm not sure. I didn't want to touch the bag, even if I was allowed to," I added to Cullen pointedly. "I mean, ew. Maggots."

Booth looked over at Cullen with a raised eyebrow. "See? There's a reason she's on these cases. Could any of our guys do that when they were seventeen?" I rolled my eyes and ducked my head for a minute, pleased but a bit embarrassed that he seemed to be showing me off. "Oh, I hate press cases."

"Yes, sir," Cullen groaned in agreement. "More than three cameras show up, some homicide detective kicks it up to his captain, who kicks it up to the chief, who kicks it to the FBI-"

"And you," I started, before clapping my hands together suddenly. "-Bang! – Kick it right on down to Agent Booth."

"Which I thank you for!" Booth urgently interrupted me. I rolled my eyes; suck up. "I thank you, sir, for the opportunity."

We stopped at the entrance to the alley again, once more by the crime scene tape. Brennan was getting ready to start working over by the body, snapping on their latex gloves and getting ready to do a cursory, on-scene inventory and observation. "Booth…" Cullen started, before taking a deep breath and surveying me for a moment before he had to include me, too. "…Kirkland, I want this closed. I don't want to pick up next Sunday's post and read, "Neighborhood Kids Find Mystery Corpse Dressed for Halloween, FBI Remains Clueless.""

Booth held up his hands in the 'defenseless and truthful' gesture. "I guarantee you won't read that, sir. Okay? I-I'm on it."

Cullen gave him a 'look' before turning and walking off away towards his own van again. I grinned up at Booth, almost as a challenge. "What's wrong there, Booth?" I asked in amusement. It was funny seeing the tough guy surrender to Cullen, who Booth could easily beat in a fight. "Got a bit of a stutter?"

Brennan looked up and hurried over to the two of us, smiling in excitement for the newest case. "I got here as soon as I could."

"Yeah," Booth agreed, clearly knowing already that she had gotten here quite fast. "Thanks for coming, Bones. Did I pull you from anything important?" He asked, and the two of them resumed their walk back over to the remains. I smiled softly at the two of them falling into step before picking up my pace behind them.

Brennan sighed in a little bit of disappointed longing. "A nine thousand, six hundred year old Caucasoid female skeleton was found in the Kunlun Mountains in China last month. An international investigation is underway. I'm contributing stress marker analysis," she added with pride.

I followed behind the two of them and did my best to mimic Brennan's voice. "In other words: "To me, yes, to you, no, and don't call me Bones!"" I said, hissing out the 'do not' order and snapping my consonants sharply before I stopped and raised my eyebrows smugly. "I totally just owned that."

"That was a surprisingly accurate imitation," Brennan said, looking at me over her shoulder, mildly impressed. This only boosted my ego and I smirked, lifting my chin proudly.

Booth chuckled and shook his head. "I think that you guys are going to find this, uh, very interesting, too," he assured Brennan confidently.

Brennan frowned deeply when she saw the body and Booth turned a little uncomfortable, covering his mouth and looking away. "Oh…" he groaned, unsettled, and shoving his other hand into his pocket.

Brennan knelt by the body, touching the front of the fake armor lightly, moving her fingers down the front curiously, investigating. "What the hell is he wearing?" She asked, staring down at the armor in distaste. "It's lightweight… Composite."

Booth and I both looked at each other and didn't even have to speak. At the very same time, we both snapped our fingers and pointed at each other with raised eyebrows, making the "oh!" sound when we both realized that my initial guess had actually been correct. Of course, once we realized that we had done the exact same thing, we both did our own thing to pretend it hadn't happened. I crossed my arms and looked up away and he shoved his hands in his pockets, looking back down towards the body.

"I think it was some kind of sexual bondage suit," Booth commented as an awkward explanation. "And then there's that bag. It's full of maggots."

I rolled my eyes in irritation. "Hey, I'm the one that told you that. And by the way, for a sexual bondage costume," I repeated after him, "The maggot-filled bag is definitely not very sexy."

Brennan gently peeled the bag open further. Looking over her shoulder, I flinched and drew back, pretending to stick my fingers down my throat to gag. Ew. The bag was full of mush and insect larvae. "It looks like cellulose in there, degraded from bodily tissues and decomposing fat," Brennan reported, not seeming to notice what I was doing.

"And maggots," I added in disgust. You know, just in case she had forgotten.

Brennan moved back over to the bones, looking over the arms and legs, pushing back some of the decomposed flesh. "Plateau fractures on the tibia and ground disturbance suggest a total body impact scenario," she said, objective and not flinching.

"Okay," Booth nodded, showing that he was still keeping up. "So did he jump or was he pushed, Bones?"

"That's what we have to figure out." Brennan agreed with a brisk nod, leaning back over the remains. "We can take the skeleton in and give you a report… maybe after next week."

"No, no, no, no, no," Booth quickly started to deny her, holding up his hands and trying to dissuade her from that suggestion. He just wants to get Cullen off of his back! "You don't have to solve the whole case! Just tell me if I'm looking at a murder," he suggested, holding out his arms. "Maybe… you know. Pull a quick ID?" He gave her that winning smile, showing off his teeth and wagging his eyebrows.

Brennan was amused although she was trying not to show it. She was having trouble holding back her own smile as she slowly shook her head at him. "Don't use your charm smile on me," she told him, pretending not to seem like she liked the charm.

"What?" Booth protested, losing the "charm" smile. "It's a mark of respect, that's all!"

I scoffed. "Yeah, respect," I laughed, before they both looked at me. I blinked and coughed into my arm, trying to cover up the derision. "That's what it is."

It seemed like I was put on this case without anyone questioning it. I was a little bothered with how the Jeffersonian employees and Booth (and hell, even Cullen!) were seemingly getting kind of used to having me around. I don't know what it means for when my funds drain and I have to stop doing this – it'll hurt them, while I only want to do the opposite, if going crazy on Angela's former boyfriend meant anything. And it'll hurt me by prolonging what seems inevitable. It was perplexing how no one was questioning my right to be there anymore. I asked for some gloves and one of the techies that happened to be passing by in the hall got some for me without blinking, which, while cool, was a little unsettling.

The body from the alley was lain out on the exam table and Zach, Brennan, and I were going over it and creating a basic profile to get an ID with on the missing persons database. "Epiphyseal union with the diaphysis on the wrist, knees, and ankles suggest the victim was between fourteen and eighteen years old."

"Ah!" I didn't stop myself before I exclaimed in pleased surprise, "I was right!" I'm getting good at this forensic stuff!

Brennan and Zach didn't verbally reply, but Brennan was fighting back a small smile and Zach's tone seemed brighter as he continued. "One point six meters tall and a slight build suggests he was at the younger end of the scale."

The security system bleeped as Hodgins swiped his card and walked up the stairs with the bouncy energy that came from a long night's sleep with the fuzzy feeling of saving a life, without the firsthand knowledge of the slaughter that had gone down. "That tracks with the bag," he said, in response to Zach's later comment. "The degraded cellulose we found is a graphic novel."

"Ooh." As Hodgins started to walk past the exam table and towards his desk on the platform, I turned around to the body and followed, doggedly throwing names of manga that I liked at him. "InuYasha? Ouran High School Host Club? Death Note? Skip Beat? Sailor Moon? Axis Powers Hetalia? Hetalia: World Series?" In response to my suggestions, all three of the scientists stopped what they were doing and gave me surprised looks. "What?" I asked defensively. "First, you complain about me being tough, and now you want to complain about me being a nerd? Any other parts of my personality you want to criticize?"

"Settle down, Xena," Hodgins urged, looking over at Zach. "After all, if you get worked up, you can't vent by shooting people anymore."

"Very, very funny," I sarcastically praised.

"Can we back up?" Brennan interrupted. I looked over to her again; if she hadn't been wearing gloves that had been used to touch decomposing body parts, then she probably would have been crossing her arms. "What is a graphic novel?"

"A comic book," I translated with an offhanded shrug.

"I never read comic books," Zach stated with a bit of a sigh.

"Really?" Hodgins asked in surprise, looking over at Zach with big eyes. "I had you pegged for a graphic novel nut!"

"The face and cranial vault are badly fractured. Blows to the parietal have sent radiating fracture lines between the mid, frontal, and anterior temporal buttresses." Zach spoke to Brennan for a few seconds before he looked back over to Hodgins. "Why?"

Hodgins tipped his head and crossed his eyes, raising his eyebrows as he started to list things off. "Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate, Battlestar Galactica."

"Firefly," I added helpfully, recalling how Zach had seemed to think that if you don't see Firefly, then your life is missing something.

Brennan looked up briefly for a moment, rolling the tibia over gently. "Focusing, gentlemen and Holly," she chastened.

"Sorry, Dr. B.."

"What he said."

Zach nodded to the bones before taking a step back, moving his hands to his sides calmly. "Conclusion: brutal assault killed him."

"He was dropped after he was already dead." I looked between Hodgins and Brennan, the joking mood from the graphic novel discussion fading into solemnity. "Someone wanted this to look like a suicide, which means…" I paused before continuing, seeing that Brennan wasn't about to jump on me for making an assumption. "This was most likely a murder."

There was a heavy-hearted sigh that went through the room. Of course, chances had already been that it was foul play, but no one liked to prove that someone was murdered. There had still been the chance that it was a suicide. As sad as it is, it's something to leave the police to investigate, and it means that someone hadn't actually decided, for whatever reason, that killing another human being was justified.

"Let's get his dentals into the N.C.I.C. and see if we can find a match," Brennan instructed, breaking the silence as she started from the beginning of a new homicide investigation. "Zach, call Stockholm and Beijing – our research data on the other thing is going to be delayed."

I held the file on my lap, flipping through it casually while Booth drove and Brennan rode in front. "The boy's name is Warren Granger." We'd found a match in the missing persons database. "He was… seventeen." My age. That information gave me a bit of pause. It was obvious to me that anyone could be killed no matter how old they were, but it was still a bit uneasy when a murder victim turned out to be my age or really close (like Nester Olivos). It just reminded me of the mortality, and that, combined with all of the people I'd seen killed yesterday, just… well, today really isn't my day.

"Seventeen," Brennan repeated, before remarking, "He was small for his age."

"Yeah," I said with a nod. I'm about a foot taller than he was. I looked back down to the folder I balanced on my legs. "He was homeschooled and obtained his G.E.D. last summer. His mother and stepfather reported him missing two months ago. It's a wonder his body wasn't discovered sooner."

Booth leaned to the side slightly to look out the window as the car slowed and he parallel parked on the street across from Granger's parents' house. "Hey, listen, Bones. You know, if you want, you can sit this part out. I know you just got some ancient Chinese bones waiting."

Brennan gave him a disappointed, mildly offended look. "No," she rejected the idea quickly and without room for argument. "I'm on this now."

Booth nodded slightly to her before putting the car in park and twisting to look at me, his arm moving around the back of Brennan's seat. "And Holly, you know, after yesterday, if you want to take the day off and rest, that's okay, too. You know… get your bearings together. Yesterday was not a walk in the park."

Really? I didn't notice. In the span of one day, I'd been rather rudely collected and taken to a crime scene, where I'd learned that not only were we striving to catch a murderer, but we were racing to save a child's life. Then I'd been in the middle of a standoff, which just barely ended without anything more than an unconscious secretary, and the child's safety and the testimony against a criminal company had depended on me getting the child safely out of danger myself. Then I'd had to hide and watch a slaughter, stab someone in the shoulder, and get a frightened kid out and shield him from the long line of gurneys carrying corpses of murdered mercenaries.

Although I wouldn't have objected to a day to curl up on the sofa with a book and a large Dairy Queen blizzard, I had to shoot down the offer. "I can't just take a day off and rest because something bad happened, Booth. I have to work for the bar or the FBI in order to get my boss to sign my paycheck. I live alone and I don't know where the hell my financers got to, so I like to save up in case of emergencies."

Booth sighed but turned back around to pull the keys out of the ignition. Brennan looked out the window to the house. "It looks like every other house in the neighborhood," she noted.

"Every family has its secrets, Bones," Booth said softly.

I leaned up between them, tossing the file to the side and resting either of my elbows on the edges of the front seats. "Some more than others," I murmured as a dog barked, muffled by the closed doors.

I stepped inside Granger's room after Booth and Brennan and immediately started to grin before I wiped it off of my face. His room was neat on one side, cluttered on the others, with posters hung on the wall and a ceiling fan and light fixture with one light bulb blown. Around the bed and on the nightstands were stacks of comics and other science-fiction related apparel. His closet was ajar and I saw several things I recognized from popular comics; little articles of clothing one bought to show their love for something in public, like some Doctor Who fans wear bowties or long scarves (or both) for no particular reason. His bed was made up of dark blue sheets, with the pillowcases the faces of Superman and Batman and another comic book character I didn't recognize. The other side had been kept neater, probably because of the desk, which had its own lamp and a chair, and the carpet under the chair was rugged and pressed down, and several pencils and sheets of paper sat off-center. A computer was pushed to the back.

"This was Warren's room," Granger's mother spoke with a choked voice. "No one's been up here since the detective first looked it over."

The stepfather was an older man, probably around ten years older than the boy's mother. He wore glasses and parts of his hair was beginning to turn lighter, and his body seemed not just thin, but a little frail. "The news said there was hardly anything left of him," he said, glancing at his wife out of the corner of his eye. She covered her mouth and shut her eyes, tears falling as she openly sobbed, hurrying from the room.

I frowned at the stepfather. "There was no need for that," I said coldly. It would have been one thing to ask her to leave with a subtle distraction, like getting drinks or finding his phone, but that was just mean.

Booth himself seemed a little disgruntled by the man's rude treatment of his wife. "Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to harm Warren in any way?"

The stepfather shrugged, looking around the room like he was seeing a ghost. "He was always by himself. No enemies."

"No friends, either," I interjected softly. If you don't have enemies then you don't have friends. No one can get along with everyone without being pushed around and miserable. Granger's room showed signs of isolation and antisocial behavior, but nothing like depression or repressed anger.

He shrugged at me offhandedly, like that didn't particularly mean much to him. I could tell he was upset at what had happened to his legal son, but I don't think he particularly loved Warren the way that a parent should. "He spent all his time up here with his comic books and toys. He was a lonely kid. He died before he even had a life. I… I really thought he had just run away," he confessed, and I relaxed slightly. His detachment could be a sort of shocked way of dealing with it, if he hadn't seriously considered that Warren was dead. "We tried to get him out of this place, into some kind of real life. I even got him a job at the bowling alley, but… he just spent all his money on this… stuff," he added, looking around the room now in distaste at the cartoon drawings and pictures on the walls before turning and walking back down the hall, leaving us alone.

I shook my head. "Unbelievable," I sighed. If someone is going through teenage angst or the typical drama of an adolescent, then it's okay to let them have some space for a few days, but if you let them live for years without friends and with a distant family, then that's no longer on them, it's on you.

Booth nodded slightly in agreement before he reached over to the nightstand and picked up a comic. "He's got quite the collection of comic books."

"Hodgins said the cellulose was a graphic novel. He sent it to Angela for analysis and recovery," Brennan told us, speaking for the first time since asking to see Granger's room.

"It could have been a comic. A comic book geek dressed in cosplay and carrying a comic book? Seems legit," I reasoned, my eye catching the front of a special edition Captain America comic.

"What's cosplay?" Brennan asked me, frowning slightly at the word.

"Cosplay is short for costumed play," I explained quickly. "The term is used most often in relation to people dressing in honor of Japanese animations and manga."

"Sweet!" Booth exclaimed suddenly, grinning as he held up a book.

"Sweet?" Brennan asked, looking to him with an arched eyebrow.

Booth flipped around one of the comics so that we could see the front. I recognized the yellow and black bat symbol. "This is Batman number one twenty-seven, featuring the hammer of Thor. It's worth about three hundred bucks!"

I smirked and Brennan crossed her arms, looking Booth up and down and seeing him in a new light. "Booth, are you a nerd?"

Booth frowned at her. "First of all, you mean 'geek.' And no, I'm not. Okay? It's quite normal for an American male to read comic books."

I opened another graphic novel, having seen the cover on a bookshelf and been pleased to read the Japanese characters and English words that announced the manga of Fullmetal Alchemist. I grinned, delighted to indulge in a little nerd spree, and opened the manga to the bookmarked place, pulling out the narrow slip. "This is an advertisement to last summer's anime convention!" I announced, waving it around excitedly.

"Are you a geek, too?" Brennan asked in amusement.

I shook my head quickly, my ponytail flying around wildly. "No, I'm a nerd!"

"What's the difference?"

I chuckled. So naïve. "Geeks like superheroes and Marvel, and their fantasy heroes are men who get their briefs and their pants mixed up," I said with a pointed smirk in Booth's direction at the slight to his comics. "Nerds like anime, manga, and science fiction, and their fantasy heroes are nine hundred-some year old Time Lords from the planet Gallifrey who change their faces roughly every four years." I sighed and smiled slightly, remembering the good days of when I didn't have to work for money to live on and spent free time watching Doctor Who with Aaron and the miscellaneous other nerds I managed to find temporary homes with.

Booth gave me an incredulous, 'I don't believe this' look. "That's your fantasy hero?"

I replaced the bookmark and set the Fullmetal Alchemist volume back onto the shelf to cross my arms defensively. "No matter how many times you seem to forget, I'm seventeen and I'm a girl. All girls love Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Matthew Waterhouse, Paul McGann, Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant, Matt Smith, Arthur Darvill, and any associated actors thereof. It's a fact of life. Anyone who has seen the awesome, non-crazy characters of Doctor Who is forever a fan of Doctor Who, even if they don't obsess constantly."

Booth chuckled at me, shaking his head. "You're such a nerd. You try to hide it behind this tough 'I don't care' front, but you are so much more typical than you let on," he teased.

"Excuse me?" I asked with a scoff. "If you surf the net for Doctor Who, there are all sorts of fan-written stories where people fall through time and end up in the TARDIS, or where they get sent to the Whoniverse by the Weeping Angels or an experiment by Davros, or their universe and the Doctor's collides." I held up my hands in front of me. "Personally, I am perfectly fine with the Whoniverse being fake, because to get incredibly ho- intelligent and awesome Time Lords and companions you also have to deal with Daleks and Cybermen and Weeping Angels and psychopathic Time Lords." Good thing I caught myself there, or Booth would never have let me forget it! I laughed to myself, at ease by the familiar and playful conversation. It wasn't about anything serious, it was just… fun and relaxing.

Brennan shook her head at the completely non-serious argument. "I find it hard to believe you have anything in common with Warren Granger."

"Oh, you mean isolated with an inner secret life?" Booth quipped. "No, I'd say you were more like Warren."

Brennan started to frown so I jumped in again. "Well, he appreciated sci-fi. I'd say that gives him brownie points."

Brennan's cell phone buzzed in her pocket and she pulled it out with a last look at Booth to read the text, and a moment later I looked to her from the bookcase as she shared. "Zach discovered some significant hairline parry fractures on the right and left ulnae," she announced, tucking her phone back in her pocket. "That's the arms," Brennan added to Booth as he didn't reply, instead picking up an empty bag with the Karma Comics comic book store logo.

Booth frowned at her, pouting at the implication that he didn't already know. "I know that 'ulna' means forearm," he told her indignantly. "I pay attention."

"What do you know," I said, shaking my head and pretending to be dazed, touching my forehead in surprise. "Miracles do happen!"

"I also know that 'parry fracture' means that the kid fought back, Holly," Booth added to me with a smirk of victory.

"Small stature, a geek, and he fought back," Brennan mused, while I shrugged at Booth, not very impressed.

"Yeah," I added, putting my hands in the pockets of my sweater, which was a lighter color of blue than the other, which had been ruined with bloodstains. I'd figured I'd just buy a new one if I was really that torn up about it in a week. "He also got thrown from a roof. Let's not forget about that part."

Brennan wiggled the mouse on the desk and the computer monitor glowed to life. While Booth and I continued to peruse the comics and manga, she looked through it for several minutes before she called the two of us back to the desk. "There's nothing but games on here," she said in disappointment. "There's no journal, no documents, nothing personal. Then what did he do at his desk? There's a light, the rug's worn. He used this area for something."

I slid into the chair and looked out over the desk, narrowing my eyes. "Probably where he read his comic books," Booth suggested.

"Yeah," I started to agree, but stopped, closing my mouth quickly. I swiveled the chair back the way it had been and looked at the desk closely, squinting. The light hit it just right and it looked like there was some sort of imprint on the wood. "Ooh. Now this is where it gets interesting," I said out loud.

"What?" Brennan asked.

I pulled the drawers open and found a clean sheet of printer paper in the lower left drawer. I flattened it on the desk surface and picked up a graphite pencil from the desktop. I turned it onto the side and started quickly moving the side of the graphite across the paper lightly, covering a spot of the paper.

It worked well, just like I'd hoped it would. The imprints from pressing hard on paper above the desk prevented the paper from coloring above them, and slowly some words formed. I smirked and lifted my hand, keeping my other hand and the paper in place to rub out some more words if I needed to. "What were you saying about me being a typical nerd, Booth?" I asked smugly. "This is something I learned from Criminal Minds, a show about murder."

Brennan leaned over my shoulder. "I think Warren sat here and wrote longhand… with a ballpoint pen," she deduced."

"That's pretty retro for a geek," Booth commented. "Hm. Well, at least we know where he got the idea for a costume." He dropped one of the comics in his hands onto the desk, and the cover title matched the inscription I'd rubbed up. "Citizen Fourteen. A superhero."

Angela's computer screen looked like it had been turned into a comic store window. Pages of the comic she'd analyzed and re-digitized were shown on the large screen. "Hodgins dried out and separated the pages," she explained. "I digitized them and adjusted for ink seepage."

I nodded. That seemed like a good explanation as for why I suddenly felt like I was looking at part of Granger's room extrapolated and shoved into Angela's office.

"Was this printed commercially?" Brennan asked, looking over the digital pages with a frown.

"No," Angela denied, sounding slightly surprised. "It's a prototype. It's handmade."

"That must be what he was doing at his desk," I stated.

"A comic book starring himself," Booth murmured.

"A shy adolescent young man renders himself as a superhero," Goodman agreed with a nod.

I shook my head sadly. I'm okay with people making comics and it's healthy for people to daydream sometimes – to imagine what it would be like to live in Gotham City, or to meet the Doctor, or to fall through a well to the Japanese Feudal Era with demons and humans constantly at odds. I think it's part of why people use original characters when they make fanfictions – it's their way of inserting themselves into an idealized persona, to console themselves over qualities they lack, and control the society that they write about while having other clearly-defined roles to interact with. But to spend all of your time reading and making comics without any friends to share it with… that was sad.

"He was alone in his room constantly, his parents said," I voiced, crossing my arms. "Maybe Warren Granger got consumed by his own idealized version of reality, and deluded himself into thinking he was his fictional alter-ego. Maybe he thought he'd enjoy being Citizen Fourteen more than he enjoyed being Warren Granger."

"Do you think he was actually out fighting crime?" Brennan looked at me, surprised at the suggestion.

I waved to the pages. "He was dressed as a superhero from a comic he created and he was beaten to a bloody corpse while wearing a superhero outfit in the heaviest crime area of the city – and I should know about that last point, because I live there."

"As you know, being a writer yourself, Dr. Brennan, Warren Granger's comic book could be infused with his real-life fears and conflicts," Goodman pointed out kindly.

"Especially in the case of an adolescent writer," the anthropologist nodded in agreement.

"Can you retrieve any more of this?" Booth asked, looking over at Angela hopefully.

"Yeah, sure."

Brennan nodded decisively and turned away from the pages, no longer interested. "Fine. What's our next step?"

Booth motioned to me with a small wave of his hand to get ready to leave. "We'll go see if Warren had any friends his mother didn't know about."