--- EPISODE FOUR --- Playfully, she pushed his head back under the water again, holding her outstretched palm over his smooth crown until both it, and her fingers, were totally immersed. Seconds later, a furious fountain of bubbles erupted through the pinkish foam, as Skinner struggled to get back up for air, flailing his arms about on either side of him. Finally, his hands found her wrists and he managed to gain enough leverage to free himself from her grip. Marita Covarrubias shook her arms free, and sat staring at him from the other end of the black marble bath. She reached out with her right foot and stroked his left forearm gently with her toes. "It's real," she murmured, her whole body trembling with anticipation. "The last time I looked," Skinner replied, dryly. "I never could resist a man with all his limbs intact," she cooed, launching herself towards him across the narrow expanse of bath foam. --- --- --- : The Doctor's Time Ship : Outside of Einsteinian space/time "No, Mulder," the Doctor shook her head adamantly, "I am *not* taking you back in time one week, just so that you can change your comments on Dana's performance appraisal!" He looked at her with the pathetic expression of a family pet waiting by the dinner table to be fed. Avoiding his gaze, she busied herself with piloting the Time Ship towards its destination; not that it needed any piloting, because it knew exactly where it was going, and precisely how to get there. Time Ships really are quite remarkable machines, as any Time Lord will tell you. "She's really pissed at me," he said, gloomily, his hands thrust deep into his pockets, and his head bowed miserably. The Doctor examined several of the control panel readouts, and made a few minor adjustments to some dials and switches, none of which had the slightest effect on the operation of the ship (other than to hurt its feelings). "I doubt it," she sighed. "What? You think she's OK with what I said?" His voice took on a more hopeful tone. She tut-tutted, and pushed carefully past him to reach the controls on the other side of the console. "Well frankly, Mulder, if I were her, which I'm not incidentally, despite what some people might think - I'd be just a *tad* peeved. Well, actually, I'd want to bury you up to your armpits in a trench filled with Oosothgian Buttock Leeches that hadn't had a good meal for six weeks - but that's just me." Her wicked grin did nothing to dispel Mulder's fear that she'd actually meant what she'd said. "Still, I know how you humans get so upset about all this interpersonal relationship business, so if it makes you feel any better, I don't think she's really *that* upset by it." She tapped a large red button, and nothing whatsoever happened. "... No, Dana has got *other* things on her mind at the moment," she concluded. He looked at her, quizzically. "She's a woman, Mulder, in case you hadn't noticed," the Doctor shook her head again, this time despairingly. "Like me ... um, well, perhaps not quite like me ... after all, there's only one *me* ... at least there's only one *me* me ... the other eight don't really count -" "And your point is?" "Oh, really, Mulder," the Doctor took a deep breath, stepped back from the console, and clasped her hands patiently behind her back, "how can you be a human being, and know so little about being a human? Isn't it obvious? She wants a chance to *be* that woman for a while, and -" she sighed deeply, and turned to look up at the scanner, "Look, Mulder, I'm a Time Lord, not a behavioural scientist, you'll just have to talk to her about it." The Time Ship lurched forwards suddenly, causing both Mulder and the Doctor to lose their balance. She just managed to grab the edge of the console and, in doing so, prevented herself from crashing into the old wooden hat stand - which was probably just as well, because the hat stand had a notoriously bad temper. Mulder would have tumbled right past her, and then probably bashed his head against the far wall, if she hadn't reached out with her free hand, and caught him by the forearm. Just as suddenly, the ship righted itself again, and she let go of his arm. "Yes, well ... she's not quite as smooth as she once was," explained the Doctor, patting the control panel affectionately, "but then what can you expect, with more than a thousand years on the clock?" "Thirty percent trade-up allowance against a new model?" Mulder ventured. "A new model?" she gasped. "A new model?!" She tapped her fingertips together, agitatedly. "This is my TARDIS, Mulder, not some rust bucket family runabout that you just *trade up* when you fancy some different coloured floor mats!" "Uh, well, I only thought -" "How can you even suggest such a thing?" "But -" "Do I tell you how to fill out performance appraisals?" "No, but -" "Do I go around saying 'Federal Agent' to everything that moves?" "Uh -" "Of course I don't!" The Doctor clapped her hands together, right in front of his face, so that he was forced to jerk his head back to avoid getting his nose squashed between them. "- So I'll thank you not to cast aspersions about my TARDIS!" She dusted off her palms and, with her fingertips, gently polished a strip of chrome bordering one of the control panels, occasionally puffing a few breaths on it to help bring up the shine. Mulder looked on with complete bewilderment. Finally, he worked up enough courage to ask: "Was it something I said?" "You might think that," she grinned, mischievously, "but I couldn't possibly comment." Suddenly she threw the door control lever, hurled the ends of her scarf over her shoulder, and marched off towards the exit at a dizzying pace. "Come along, Mulder," she called behind her, "time is the enemy." He muttered something profane under his breath, as he set off after her; but the thing that was really bugging him was why the hell he seemed to have developed such an incredible hard-on. --- --- --- : Oak Ridge Air Force Base : North Dakota "- So she said: I'll have everything on it, except the mushrooms!" Lieutenant Ken Stiles delivered the punch line with the timing and finesse that his captain had come to expect of him, i.e. exactly none whatsoever. Shaking his head with undisguised despair, Captain Mike Freeth pushed through the doors of the base cafeteria, leaving the younger man standing out in the hall; the anticipation draining quickly from his face, to be replaced by outright disappointment. "Doncha get it, Captain?" Realising that Freeth had no intention of delivering even the slightest grin in recognition of his attempts at humour, Stiles was left with no option other than to follow his commanding officer to the coffee. Sometimes Freeth could be a real pain, he decided. Entering the cafeteria, he glanced around, saw that it was almost deserted, shrugged, and picked up a tray from the stack at the end of the counter. Freeth had already collected a huge Danish pastry and filled a jumbo-sized cup from the coffee urn, before Stiles had even started to think about what would quiet his own rumbling stomach. They'd been on standby continuously for the last six hours; four of them spent sitting in their aircraft, the other two getting into, or out of, the F16s. He was hungry, and he was tired, and he wanted to know what the fuck a gigantic deep pan pepperoni pizza, four point nine kilometres in diameter, was doing hanging right over their heads. After a moment's indecision, he selected a large slice of cream pie, a Hershey Symphony bar, and, like his captain, filled a large cup with steaming hot coffee. He caught up with Freeth at the register, where the man was debating the price of the pastry with the girl serving. "You've got to be kidding!" the captain had just finished saying. The girl just held out her hand, chewed some more on the gum in her mouth, and made a face. Stiles handed her a ten-dollar bill. "Here, I'll get it." As they walked across the room, towards a table near the window, Stiles noticed that there was a new addition to the normally spartan cafeteria. "Hey, Freeth, you and Jackie still taking that holiday in Europe this year?" Freeth looked back at him, puzzled. "Over there!" Stiles pointed to the passport photograph booth, located between the cigarette machine and the door to the men's room. "You said you needed to renew your passport." The lieutenant immediately swerved over to investigate the machine. "This is great," he said, enthusiastically, "I wanted to send Becky my photo, but I didn't have anything recent -" "Stiles," Freeth shook his head, "stop it already, with this Becky Paretto business. I already told you, there's no way I'm buyin' it." Stiles set his tray down on a nearby table and started sifting through his pockets for some coins. "I'm tellin' ya, we've been exchanging letters, and she's been sayin' all the right things." He groaned. "Come off it, Stiles, she's the leading lady from the top rated US TV show. She must be on a hundred thou an episode, at least. *And* she's one hell of a hot little chick. So, why the fuck would she be interested in -" Stiles found that he had nearly five dollars in change, surely enough to get a couple of passport photographs taken? He dismissed his captain's comments with a wave of the hand, and started eagerly reading the instructions. After a moment, he stepped back, and scratched his head in confusion. "What's this, for crying out loud -" "What is it?" With a tired sigh, Freeth realised that he was unlikely to get the chance to enjoy his coffee while it was still hot. He put his tray down next to the lieutenant's, and went over to join him. "The damnedest thing," Stiles muttered, and started reading from the instructions: "Choice of one portrait, or four passport-sized prints. "Two pounds fifty!" "Ah, they must have imported the thing from England," said Freeth, as he started to pull back the curtain, "probably forgot to change the instructions, that's all." Just as he was about to pull the black curtain aside, a red- haired woman stepped out and pushed straight past him. When she realised that she'd almost knocked him over, she spun around on her heels and offered up her hand. "Terribly sorry," she said, with an amicable smile. "How do you do? I'm the Doctor, and this is my friend Mulder -" Mulder stepped through the curtain, leaving Freeth to wonder: a) how the hell the two of them had fitted in there, and b) *what* had they been up to in such a confined space that could possibly be legal in the state of North Dakota? With a sweeping motion of his right hand, Fox reached inside his jacket and pulled out his badge, opening it and holding it under the captain's nose just long enough for him to see that it looked vaguely official. "Federal Agent," he said. "Really?" said Freeth, skeptically. Stiles cleared his throat, and the Doctor turned around to face him. "Lieutenant Stiles, ma'am," he saluted. A look of confusion came over the Doctor's face for a fraction of a second, before she gave a smart salute in return. Mulder was about to make another pass with his ID, but she reached out and stopped his hand in mid-air. "Very pleased to meet you, lieutenant," she said. "And that's Captain Freeth," Stiles volunteered, only to find himself on the receiving end of a reproachful look from his senior officer. "Jolly good." The Doctor started marching away from them at a brisk pace, and, for some reason, they all followed her. "Now then, if you could just take me to see the base commander." Stiles caught up with her, pushing in front of Mulder. "Uh, that'll be Major General Ditton." She came to a sudden halt, turned to the table where the two officers had left their trays, and picked up Freeth's Danish pastry between the thumb and forefinger of her left hand. She held it up and regarded it with disgust. "Ugh. What a revolting example of human over- indulgence," she concluded. "Over-priced, too," Freeth muttered under his breath. "Well, there you are then." She dropped the cake back onto the tray, and started walking towards the door. "Ditton, you say? That wouldn't be Charles Edgar Ditton, would it?" "As a matter of fact, yes," said Stiles, reaching the door just ahead of her, and politely holding it open. "Do you know the Major?" "Not yet," she winked. "But we did have tea in the White House together, when he was Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff." "But -" "Well, come along, man," she started off down the corridor, "can't spend all day standing around reminiscing about the future, you know." --- --- --- : The Command Deck : Imperial Turtloid Battle Dreadnought: "Behemoth" Krooth, being a fine specimen of Turtloid maleness, and endowed with significantly greater physical strength and unnatural sexual urges than his nearest rivals, had taken command of the mission. Success had demanded nothing less. And so, on a balmy evening, on the outskirts of one of the ship's thirty-eight synthetic deserts, each of which served as gigantic basking zones, Krooth had quietly throttled his predecessor; and brought a fragment of the dead Turtloid's shattered carapace to the command deck, as proof of his new position as leader of the mission. Krooth had known that no one would dare challenge him then, not at such a critical juncture. The Organic Mega Dreadnought was just preparing to dimension jump; an operation that would have been doomed to failure without the precise psi control of a Z3 graded Turtloid officer, and Krooth was now the only Z3 on board! (Primarily because he had surreptitiously disposed of the other five candidates whenever an opportune moment had presented itself). Since then, the mission had gone exceptionally well. If things continued to go as planned, he would be looking at a very handsome bounty from the Oligarchy's war chest; almost certainly a Dukedom over the Earth, and, oh, at least eight wives. Maybe more. He sauntered up to the edge of his command platform, strutting his elegantly manicured flippers, and slowly moving his head from side to side in the manner of a true leader. His dark shell, freshly cleaned and polished, shone majestically beneath the off-green lights of the command deck. When he had completed his slow crawl to the edge of the platform, he looked out over the massive semi-circular chamber, and surveyed his crew. As far as his genetically augmented eyes could see, Turtloids manned their positions, their shells glistening from the steady shower of nutrient mist that continuously seeded the atmosphere of the command deck, and their heads bobbing back and forth, as they monitored their banks of sophisticated instruments. Directly ahead of him, the five-dimensional main view screen, ninety metres across, gave a crystal clear view of the human's military complex, now completely eclipsed by the vast bulk of the Organic Mega Dreadnought. Krooth looked over at the wall clock. Half past ninety two. "Excellent", he simpered. In just four basking periods, the next transmission would begin ... and the entire human race would bow before the might of the Turtloid Empire! And, of course, one Fagor Krooth, of the eightieth hatching of the family Proxlar Krooth, would become a very wealthy, and very privileged, Turtloid indeed. He could hardly wait. --- --- --- : The Walter S. Skinner Turtle Farm : Damascus, Maryland For some reason Pendrell wanted to be heroic. He had placed himself between the Skinner-headed turtle and Scully, and was now carefully training his pistol on the bizarre human/reptile amalgam, as it heaved itself out of the water with its two gigantic front flippers. "Careful, Pendrell," said Scully, keeping her Sig steady between both hands. "I'm being careful," he said, nervously taking a half-step backwards. The creature slipped and slithered on the edge of the pool, finally managing to get a purchase on the smooth tiles and hauling its bulk out of the water completely. It waited for a moment, its expressionless dark eyes flitting between Pendrell and Scully as if it were unsure what to do next. She noticed that, although the head was identical in both shape and size to that of her former boss, its skin was too smooth to be of human flesh, unlined and unformed, looking almost like molten wax where it caught the light. A long rubbery neck joined the head to the body, thickening where it projected out from under the creature's carapace. It started moving ponderously towards them. The two agents stepped back a pace, Scully checking behind them to see that the door was still clear. The turtle moved closer still. It was now making some very strange sounds indeed with its Skinner-mouth; gurgling and clucking, like a chicken finding out that it couldn't swim. "It, um, doesn't seem to be dangerous," said Pendrell. "Really, Pendrell?" Scully sounded dubious. "You don't think the fact that it's being kept in a heavily secured room, with more locks on the door than Fort Knox, and Bio Hazard warning signs as far as the eye can see, might possibly be cause for concern, then?" He looked back over his shoulder at her and grinned, keeping the gun trained on the turtle. "How do you think it got a head like that?" She shrugged with exasperation. "Craniums R Us? How the hell should I know?" "Well, could it be some sort of genetic experiment?" The Skinner-turtle had stopped moving, and Pendrell wondered whether it was exhausted from the effort of extricating itself from the pool. "Yeah, or maybe Doctor Moreau just stores his rejects here." Scully had seen the creature's apparent exhaustion too, and she stepped up to Pendrell's side to take a closer look. The other agent lowered his weapon and moved just slightly to his left, in order to keep a discrete distance from her. "Doctor Moreau?" he asked. "It's from a film," Scully sighed. "Remember 'The Island of Doctor Moreau'?" "Oh, yeah, right. Got it!" Pendrell slapped his forehead as he recalled the memory of the mad scientist experimenting with human/animal hybrids. "Say, Dana, would you do me a favour?" She had started to approach the huge turtle, but now she paused and inclined her head towards him, her eyebrows raised in suspicious anticipation. "OK, Pendrell, what is it?" "Would you call me Brian?" he asked, sheepishly. "It's just that 'Pendrell this' and 'Pendrell that' ... well, it sort of makes it sound like I've always done something wrong." She faked a look of total astonishment. "Haven't you?" "Dana!" He was about to defend himself, but she waved him quiet. "Just kidding, Brian." She turned her attention back to the mutant turtle, which was regarding both of them with a totally non-Skinner look of confusion and inquisitiveness. The drowning chicken sounds had given way to a rasping and grating at the back of its throat, although they were equally as unintelligible. Scully knelt down beside it, and stared into its eyes, searching for some consciousness or sentience, or perhaps even recognition. After all, this might now be all that now remained of Assistant Director Walter S. Skinner. "Sir?" She passed her hand slowly back and forth in front of its face. "Agent Scully!" The voice had come from across the other side of the room, clear and crisp, and with a very obviously faked Russian accent. Dana spun around and raised her weapon, supporting her elbow on her bended knee to take aim at the source. "Krycek!" said Pendrell. "How's it going, Pendrell?" The rogue agent casually waved his Uzi in their direction, and smiled with gut- wrenching insincerity. "I thought you'd been shot?" Krycek's comment caught him off guard, unbalancing him, leaving him unable to react for the vital fractions of a second that might have made all the difference. "Krycek, No!" Scully saw what was coming, and she started moving to put herself between the two men, "Brian!" "My mistake," Krycek continued, "I must have been thinking of some other poor sucker. Still, I guess we can soon fix that!" He squeezed the trigger, and kept it depressed.