By Deborah L. Wells
dlynn@cnsii.com

Don't ask where this one sprung from, sometimes my mind is a playground of things better left unwritten, but since I value my mind's opinion sooo little... Anyway, hope you enjoy! All comments/feedback is not only welcome, but also very much appreciated.
Please respond to author: dlynn@cnsii.com
Disclaimer: The characters and situations of the television program, "The X-Files" are the creation and property of Chris Carter, FOX Broadcasting, and Ten-Thirteen Productions, and have been used without permission. No copyright infringement is intended.

Rating: G
Classification: H

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"PR" - Part 1/1
By: Deborah L. Wells
Scully read the memo again for what had to have been the 100th time now. She just couldn't believe it. If they thought they were going to get away with it, they were sadly mistaken. All the years they had tried to break the spirit of the X-Files, all of the bureaucratic interference that they'd had to deal with, this had to be the absolute worst. She walked over to the file cabinet, opened a drawer, and then slammed it with a force borne from anger. "Dammit!" This was all Mulder's fault. He had finally gone and stepped on the wrong toes, and now because of her loyalty and association, she would also have to pay the price for his transgressions. She walked slowly back to her desk, and sat down heavily.

"I just won't do it," she said aloud to the empty room, as she reached for the memo once again.

***************

Later that week....

Mulder parted the curtain, and looked out. There sure were a lot of them. Even more than he had expected. He was surprised at how calm he felt. Actually, he was kind of looking forward to it. Here was a perfect chance to expound on some of his theories. He felt sure that he had finally found the perfect group, as he hoped their minds were not yet closed to 'extreme possibilities'. Their agendas and motives not yet corrupted by greed or power. 'PR' - what a great idea. This was going to be fun.

Scully parted the curtain, and looked out. There were too many of them. Even more than she had expected. Who the hell invited the mayor? She started hyperventilating, as she lowered her head down between her legs, trying to catch her breath. God, she didn't want to be here. She hoped it still wasn't too late to request a transfer. That would be the first thing she'd check into once they finished here. Please Mulder, she thought desperately, don't go into your theories, anything but that. I can do this. I can do this. Feeling a little better, she straightened back up. <> Oh great. <> Just perfect. <> 'PR' - what a stupid idea. This was going to be hell.

***************

"And without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, I give you Special Agent Fox Mulder, and Special Agent Dana Scully, from the X-Files Division of the FBI!" announced Principal Medina of Liberty Elementary School. He walked backwards towards the right-hand side of the stage, as he clapped furiously in the direction of the left-hand side of the stage.

Hundreds of enthusiastic hands and feet clapped, and stomped, together, as Mulder leaped unto the stage in quick bounds. He stopped when he reached the middle of the stage, placing his hands on his hips in the standard superhero pose, puffing out his chest in appreciation for the intro and applause.

The children of Liberty Elementary 'oohed' and 'ahhed' when they saw his attire, as they increased their thunderous noise. From head to foot, Mulder was a perfect ringer for a 'ghostbuster', except for the large, shiny 'X' emblazoned on his chest. The cap he wore, had a picture of Frankenstein, enclosed in a circle, with a diagonal line etched through it.

Mulder deftly reached behind him, pulled out the wand attached to the fake power pack on his back, and pointed it in the direction of the audience, waving it from left to right. The children screamed and laughed uproariously with delight whenever the wand swung their way.

"Take that, you mutant sewer dwelling monster!" yelled Mulder, as he pushed the trigger button, which emitted a loud whining sound, and a serious red glow at the tip of the wand. The children continued laughing in unison at his antics.

Scully finally emerged from the side stage, as she shuffled towards Mulder. Her costume was the exact same as Mulder's, except it was at least three sizes too big for her. The cap, hers with a Dracula on it instead, slipped down over her eyes. She tried to push it back up, with invisible hands, lost inside the too big sleeves, but as soon as she did, it would slip right back down. Her backpack hung precariously askew over her right shoulder, and her wand had fallen from its perch, as it snaked behind her with a screeching metal twang. She mumbled the whole way, alternating between curses and hiccups, amid the few death threats thrown Mulder's way.

The children, who had been so agog over Mulder's entrance, began quieting one by one, as they followed Scully's slow procession to Mulder's side. You could hear a pin drop by the time she finally reached her destination. She turned to face the quiet audience, with anger blazing, in an almost daring stance. Stubbornly, she folded her arms across her chest, the cuffs of the too big sleeves slapped her in the back where they met. She shifted her weight to her left side, and glared at her partner. At least he was pretty sure she was glaring, as her eyes were completely covered by the cap. The only other movement came when her shoulders jumped slightly in response to her case of hiccups.

"Your line, Scully," said Mulder, still smiling at the young audience, as he nudged Scully in the side. There were a few sporadic coughs from the audience, as they waited for the show to continue. "Scully, this assignment was a direct order from Skinner. You wouldn't want to disobey a direct order, would you?" he whispered urgently. Scully shifted her weight to the other side, hiccuped twice, but otherwise remained silent. Some of the kids started to fidget nervously. Mulder tried another tactic. "Insubordination sure wouldn't set well on a transfer request, you know." Desperate times called for desperate measures.

Scully's head snapped up at this. She pushed her cap up again, and this time it stayed up, but only because her hair had become tangled within the snaps of the cap. Which caused small clumps of her hair to be pushed through the side openings of her cap on each side, giving her a decidedly 'Pippi Longstocking' hair-do imitation. Which Scully was completely oblivious to, but Mulder relished with silent delight.

Scully started pulling in the cord of her power pack wand. It clanked and squealed the whole way. Once she had it back in her hands, she reluctantly turned to face the audience once more. When it looked like she still wasn't going to speak after a few moments, Mulder reached out and gently, but adamantly, pushed her in the back. Scully stumbled forward, pulled forward by the momentum, managing to catch herself before she tripped completely. She raised the wand, as she pushed up her sleeves in order to wrap her finger around the trigger. She sighed heavily, and then spoke.

"You're no match for me <>, you blood-sucking creature of the night," she said, with all the enthusiasm of a root canal, as she pushed against the trigger grip. She finished up with a round of hiccups. Unfortunately, she had the wand pointed backwards, with the tip aimed at Mulder's chest. One of the kids in the first row stood up.

"Hey lady, you just shot your partner."

"Wouldn't be the first time," she growled back at the child, who sat down immediately at the sound of her tone.

Mulder stepped up beside his partner. "Okay kids, we have a treat for you now. A slide show full of the deep, dark, mysterious secrets of the X-Files, with a quick look at Scully, who was now intent on tugging up the waistband of her trousers, trying to shrug them up towards her chest, in order to keep them from falling down. "Oh, and some very interesting educational stuff as well," he tried to attach the same playful tone he had used when he talked about the 'secrets' slides, but the kids still groaned when they heard the word educational. As the lights started dimming, Mulder and Scully moved towards the podium.

Mulder stepped in front of the large projection screen, microphone in hand. "How many of you have heard the word 'cloning' before?" he asked the children in the audience. At least two thirds raised their hands immediately. Mulder smiled. "All right, great. Now who would be willing to tell me what it means?" Most of the raised hands waved frantically, amid shouts of "Me! Oh me! I know!" Mulder picked a small pig-tailed girl from the third row. She stood up. "Is it like the pod people from 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers?" she asked in a serious tone.

"Kind of yeah," Mulder smiled down at her. Her little ten-year old knees melted under his gaze, as she sank back into her chair, a much happier girl for her troubles. Mulder clicked the remote in his hand, and the slide carousel whirred it's gears. The image of twins super-imposed over Mulder's shadow. "Imagine you have a twin brother or sister. Everything that went into making you, your hair color, your eye color, whether you have big feet....." The children snickered at his feet joke. "Well, if you had a twin, you'd both have the same blueprints. Whatever went into making you, would be exactly what went into making your twin. Now imagine if we had a machine that could copy all the information about you, and just pop out another you in no time flat. Or ten of you. Or twenty. Or even a hundred. Just think, one of you could do your homework. One could do the dishes. One could watch television, and so on. That's basically what cloning means. The children murmured and whispered among themselves. Nodding their heads in understanding.

Mulder handed the microphone over to Scully, who accepted it, with a painful feedback scream from the system. She winced at the noise. "What Agent Mulder said was very interesting, but not scientifically correct," she said this as Mulder punched the remote, and the next slide popped into view. It was a large blow-up of a petrie dish, complete with a reddish gel, spotted with what looked like mold droppings. "But, actually current science does not support the idea of human cloning. It's not feasible at this stage."

Complete silence.

Scully nervously switched the microphone to her other hand, as the one she was currently holding it in had become hot and sweaty. As the microphone passed underneath her chin, a hiccup escaped, coming across the PA system, loud, clear, and amplified to unladylike proportions. The audience erupted into spontaneous laughter. Mulder leaned over the podium, lowering his head, in an effort to not laugh out loud, but was given away by the uncontrollable shaking of his shoulders. Scully was mortified. The whole room was laughing at her. She glanced at Mulder. Her turn-coat partner as well. Mulder was wiping his suddenly tear-filled eyes, and his face was turning a lovely shade of scarlet. Scully wiped her sleeve over her brow, and was amazed when it came away wet. <> <>

The rest of the slide show went by pretty much in the same fashion. When Mulder talked of J. Edgar Hoover, and the first X-File concerning were-wolves, he tied it in nicely with 'Teen Wolf', and the ever popular 'Teen Wolf Too'. Scully tried to counter Mulder's interpretation with information on folktales, and urban legends, and only accomplished getting into a heated debate with one Jonathan Carver, third grader, who just happened to know for a fact that werewolves *were* real. This intimate knowledge gleamed from the fact that his mother's cousin's sister, had a boyfriend, whose neighbor knew a guy, who knew another guy, that had been bitten by one. And he was still roaming about, just waiting for the next full moon.

This exchange went for many uncomfortable minutes, until Scully muttered under her breath, "You little snot-nosed twit, how's about I show you something about respecting your elders...." She pushed the material on her forearms up, and balled her hands into 'nubs'. 'Nubs' being all she could ball them into, as her hands were still lost inside the voluminous material. She started heading for the side steps, leading down into the audience, but was stopped by Mulder, who grabbed her around the waist before she could inflict bodily harm. A fact Mulder was sure she would regret, when she was thinking a little more clearly.

Principal Medina hurried unto the stage. "Umm....before we close, let's open the floor to some questions." Several hands flew into the air. Principal Medina picked one at random.

A large, gap-toothed boy stood up. "Agent Mulder, do you carry a gun?" Mulder smiled widely. "Only when I don't have room to pack my handy dandy photon ion generator pack." The kids laughed again, as Mulder pulled the wand from his back-pack, quick as lightning, in parody of a quick draw.

A girl with crimped hair was next. "Agent Scully, do you believe in vamires?" she asked as she snapped her gum loudly, and studied her fingernails intently.

"No," said Scully, hitching up her pants again, which caused her back-pack to shift, slipping from her shoulders, and falling to the stage in a loud crash. The jolt caused the wand sound effect to activate, in a loud whine, which slowly descended in volume, to a death throe rattle. Scully gave the pack a resounding kick for good measure.

A cute little girl with a page-boy haircut was picked next. She blushed fiercely. "Agent Mulder...um....do you have a girlfriend?" she asked quickly, as she sat back down, collapsing in giggles, as her friends nudged her enviously for her bravery.

Mulder pretended to think on this one a moment before answering. "Well, gee I don't know. Are you married yet?"

The little girl and her friends whispered wildly among themselves over this. Eyes rolling in pleasure to the top of their heads and back, as they hid behind their hands in mock embarrassment, obviously thrilled to death with Mulder's answer.

The last question came from a skinny boy, with dark hair. "Agent Scully, you know you remind me of my mother." Scully, who had been bent over, trying to pull her pants leg from underneath her shoe, stood up straight. "Why thank you. I...."

But, before she could finish, the boy interrupted her. "Yeah, she hates her job too. She has that same look on her face, just like yours, all scrunched up and red, just like yours is right now. Have you ever thought of going into another line of work?"

"Some days more than others," Scully sighed.

Principal Medina brought the program to a merciful end, as he waved his hands in the direction of the two agents. "Let's have a big hand for Agents' Mulder and Scully!"

Mulder bowed gracefully, as the children cheered him with abandon. Scully just walked over to the deceased backpack, grabbed the wand, and started dragging it noisily towards the stage exit.

***************
 

Medina Elementary School
Bethesda, MD
November 8, 1996

Federal Bureau of Investigations
Washington, D.C.
Attn: Assistant Director Skinner

Dear Sir,

As principal of Medina Elementary, I would like to express my thanks for sending two of your employees to our school for career day. We are always pleased to be the recipients of government programs which offer educational opportunities for our children.

I would like to commend Agent Fox Mulder on his wonderful presentation. He is a natural born speaker, and has a special knack for dealing with children. He was able to communicate on their level, without ever once appearing condescending. We would like at this time, if it's not too premature, to enter our request to have Agent Mulder return next year as a guest speaker.

Agent Scully, while I'm sure she is a top notch agent, just doesn't seem to have the qualities necessary to deliver a well thought out presentation. Have you considered sending her to the Toast Masters program? Only a suggestion, but several of our students, as well as most of the teachers, expressed trepidation, and dare I say, fear, at the thought of Agent Scully returning to the career program.

Lastly, I feel it is my duty to report on an unfortunate incident. When Agent Scully was leaving the stage, she, and this is most difficult to put into words, but she 'mooned' the children. Now she tried to tell me that her outfit was to blame for this, citing that it was 'those imbeciles in procurement' who furnished her with the faulty costume. But, in lieu of her earlier behavior, I'm not sure if I am willing to accept this explanation. I will leave this last matter in your very capable hands, as I'm sure you will take whatever steps are necessary to correct Agent Scully's extremely 'spooky' behavior.

Sincerely,
Principal Franklin Medina

THE END