Title: Devices Author: HG Frank Genre: H Rating: PG for the slightest of language Summary: I actually have no idea; probably involves a short escapade with the truth behind Pendrell's height. Disclaimer: PendrellMulderScully belong to ChrisCarter10-13Vancouver. Happy belongs to me and stereotypes everywhere. *** Pendrell hated being short. People naively assumed he was tall, and he live in dread of people naively assuming such an atrocity. He hated mind games, and while he liked being in the Big Brother role sometimes, he hated mind games. But he still hated being short, just as much as he hated people thinking he was tall and just as much as he hated mind games. He often wondered why people naively assumed such an audacious thing. Perhaps it was the stilts. Pendrell remembered in horror the annual growth check his father administered on him. He remembered in horror as his father, in some William Tellesque manuever, rammed the end of his screwdriver into the wall just a centimeter above Pendrell's head, and then measured the results. Pendrell had never liked apples after that. And yet, despite his hatreds, Pendrell still wore his wooden stilts to work everyday. Even with his clunking footsteps and daily stumbles, people never suspected a thing. They just went on naively assuming he was tall. So, with a crease on his forehead and sigh just escaping his throat, Pendrell decided to erase and eradicate the naiveness of the world and publically toss those darned stilts aside. Maybe he'd even eat them in front of everybody, while they lay squirming in his hands, half-dead, half-alive, half-comatose, warm with writhing blood... Pendrell shook his head. Enough early morning PBS vigils for him. Bill Nye didn't do him any good, nor that Nova crap. And that meant no more MonsterPiece Theatre either... *** "Holy moly. Holy moly woly. Holy moly woly holy moly!" Pendrell sobbed. "Fer chrissake, waz wreng wit yu, yu retbasterd?" Happy, deli meatmonger dirtified, mumbled. "Happy...if only you knew." "Gnew wat, yu retbasterd?" Happy grumbled. "Knew the secrets of...of. Of the world's na•veness. Oo, the apocalypse, the apocalypse!" Pendrell slammed his head into the glass viewing case. "Oo! Oo!" "Wot neive -- yu men yer skilts?" "Kilts?" "Skilts. Ward thungs, skilts, luk wouden cokaroaches wit latder lags." "Kilts?" "Shaddup, yu retbasterd. Du yu went yur sanchwit er nat?" "Er, of course." Pendrell took the white bag that had been hurled at him. Happy prodded a finger in his customer's nose. "Pandra, E'll se yu temorrew...seme kend ot sanchwit, reight?" "Yes. Of course, Happy." "Sheddup, yu retbasterd." (Sheesh.) *** The plan was in place. He'd reveal his vertically incapability right after his sanchwit had disappeared into his stomach. Maybe it would add more girth to him. Maybe people wouldn't even notice the difference. Maybe he'd start a cult of stilt wearing doofs. Pendrell pushed himself back in his lab chair. One minute to initiation and the busload of maybes. He unwrapped his sandwich and laid it across his computer keyboard. So it was against FBI computer keyboard policy, but screw FBI keyboard policies. The karma of the wooden elevator was the topic at hand here. The minute ticked by. Tick tick tick ticked. Tick tick tick. And his sandwich was devoured. And so was the white paper bag. Pendrell was hungry. And how perfect. Just then, just has the last corner of the bag slipped into his mouth, the curls of the black Sharpie writing rubbing onto his teeth, Agent Scully walked through the LabDoor. "Pendrell!" She gasped in astonishment. "Omigod!" Pendrell blushed heavily. This was his chance to reveal his deep an dark secret. He clicked his wooden heels together like some Judy Garland. "Scully..." He started, but she leaped into the conversation with a resounding gasp. "Agent Pendrell!" She lifted her upper lip and tapped her teeth knowingly. Pendrell gasped even louder than Scully had. She was sneering at him! "Scully!" he cried in distress. "Yes, Agent Pendrell?" She tapped her teeth again. "What is it, Scully? What is it?!" She tapped her teeth again. He looked dumbfounded. Mulder skipped in through the LabDoor like a Kramer on wheels. "Ech! Agent Pendrell! Your teeth!" He said as he hopped purposefully around the room. Scully smiled. "Yes, your teeth," she added. "My teeth?" Mulder looked at Pendrell, eyes narrowed, head at a tilt. "Yeah...those pearly whites. Some of the smallest bones in your body, nay? They say, in black ink of the indelible maker, uh, 'S on Rye: MTP.' Tsk, Tsk, Pendy, salami and mustard and tomatoes and pickles, deadly combination." Pendrell cringed in protest. "It isn't tomatoes...Happy doesn't do tomatoes. Happy does marmalade and tartar sauce and peanut butter and..." He started to sob into his arms. Mulder winked over the shaking redhead at Scully. *** Scully put her arm on Pendrell's shoulder, forebodingly. "Agent Pendrell, do you, er, have the technobabble?" "Technobabble?" "Yeah. Technobabble," said Mulder, leaning over Scully's head. "Uh, er, yeah, er, I guess so..." Pendrell whistled. And then he remembered. His mission. "Er, Scully, Mulder, I have something important to tell all of you." Mulder elbowed Scully in the temple, knowingly. "My legs," he continued, "are not as they seem." "Y'mean you get wobbly knees whenever you see Special Agent Dana? Hells, we knew that, Pendy." Scully gave Mulder her Skeptic!Eyebrow. "No, Agent Mulder, that isn't it. Y'see..." he started again. "You mean you crushed the technobabble report with your toe and..." Scully burst in. "NO! It isn't that." Pendrell cried, exasperated. "Then what is it?" Scully and Mulder chimed. Pendrell started to explain. He started. He started again. He started again. *** "Ittz te skilts," came a voice from the background. "Kilts?" questioned Scully. "Kilts?" questioned Mulder. "Kil" questarted Pendrell. "Skilts." Happy walked in through the LabDoor. "Happy?" Pendrell wowed. "Holy moly!" "Ye, yu retbestard. End hwo er yu peples?" Happy pointed a jagged finger at Mulder and Scully. "I'm Mulder and she's Special Agent Dana Scully." "Yuk. Yu peple er stoopit. End wot em Ei duing ere, yu esk? Ei hev noo idia, ektualy, bot yu ken bett dis es ah plott devish." "A plot device? You mean, like, one of us will be shot or something?" "Or you'll turn out to be Pendy's son?" "Or dead Uncle Sasha?" "Wot? Nu! Jest dat thee pursun behynd dis hes nu bette idia tu end hur stery wit." "Oh." Silence fell on the lab. *** Scully finally asked Pendrell something. "What are skilts?" "Stilts. Happy means stilts. I wear stilts." "STILTS? You wear stilts? I'm sorry, Agent Pendrell, but that is just a poor excuse. Stilts are a scientific abomination; even the Bible had disproved their existence." "Oh," said Pendrell half-heartedly. He removed his loafers, tennis socks - "Mm, erotic," Krycek, from nowhere, lisped. - and his stilts and stood up. "Scully, I guess I'm a scientific abomination then. Gallileo Pendrell. Am I anti-The Church?" "Yes, Pendrell, yes. And you're also a midget." "I'll run away to the carnival then, runaway Pendy runaway. Maybe my parents will die on the trapeze and I'll become Robin," Pendrell sobbed, for the third time that day. Happy cackled, Mulder chuckled, Scully snarled. A police officer walked in. "Is Agent Pendrell here?" "Y-y-yes," whispered Pendrell in his squeaky voice. He was shrinking, metamorphising into a dwarf. "You have violated Sector 16-12, Chapter 32: FBI Keyboard Policies. Please come with me." The officer hooked a leash around Pendrell and dragged him out the door. Happy shrugged. "Als wall dat endz wall." *** Pendrell hated being short. He was in jail now, his stilts auctioned off and under attack by a group of Puritans. Happy had replaced him in the Sci-Fi Lab; how that had happened no one had mentioned. And he still hated being short. Growth hormones, PT Barnum, insane asylums, Seinfeld? Anything to boost his short little self-esteem. Maybe he could look into that doof-stilt-cult thing when he got out of jail. Big Brother Pendrell, messiah of the losers? Wotta thot. *** To be continued...when I find the time. e-mail comments to enragedcat@aol.com or visit my website at http://www.geocities.com/TelevisionCity/5163/index.html