The tall, thin man in a dark suit and white shirt flopped his wind blown red silk tie with LGMs (little grey men) all over it back down off his shoulder as he approached the two well dressed men, also in suits, standing beside the corpse of a little girl in the creek.
"Sam and Dean Winchester? I'm Special Agent Fox Mulder, I'd like to ask you a few questions." The mosey brown haired FBI agent said, "and this is my partner, Special Agent Dana Scully." he continued, indicating with his outstretched arm, badge in hand, toward the pretty red haired woman standing at the top of the creek embankment, staring daggers at the two brothers her partner was addressing as she finished conversing with the local sheriff's deputy, who was also looking at them with great skepticism. "But then, you already knew that, didn't you, 'agents' (and not 'eh, gents?', like it sounded, with his slow practiced cadence)?" Fox Mulder said, knowing the two brothers were as busted as they could be, because when he and his partner and fellow FBI agent, Dr. Dana Scully, arrived at the crime scene, they were informed by the deputy in charge of crowd control that they were already there, and that he was glad that he was the partner of the attractive one of the two current 'Scullys'. He extended his hand and the two brothers handed over their fake credentials for him to confiscate.
"Well, Agent Mulder, you see..." Sam tried to interject as he handed Fox Mulder his fake badge, in an effort to diffuse the situation before it started, because he was sure his brother, as always, would choose to escalate matters suddenly, due to his hot-headed, violent outbursts. But, alas, he was inevitably cut off by his brother.
"Agent, uh, Fox, is it?" He said, doing his Art of War/Command Presence intimidation thing that always seemed to work when dealing with authority figures. And if it didn't, there was always Plan B: kicking the crap out of them. But this time, he thought it best to play along. What could they do? Arrest him for impersonating a federal agent? Again? Well, yes. Yes they could. Well, they could try to. Failure is always an option. "Ya see, we were hoping you'd show up, and we figured 'what better way to arrange an impromptu meet-up than use your credentials in the town you were working a case in'?" He said, shining Mulder on. "And looky here! It worked! 'Cause here you are." He said, lying through his teeth. He did like lying. He didn't like being caught off guard, either. And he liked backpedaling even less, so he was hoping agent Mulder would buy it. No such luck. Mulder was pretty sharp, given enough clues and time to work them out.
"Mulder?" Agent Scully said, as she made her way down the embankment to join her partner and the two imposters, who, as far as she was concerned, were about to be facing ten to twenty (actually, with today's court system, it's more like three with good behavior) years for impersonating federal agents, which is a federal offense. "Who do we have here?" She said, indicating the two Winchester brothers, even though she was in the process of bending down to examine the bloated and waterlogged corpse of a headless twelve year old female body lying what would be face down in the muddy creek bed, if she still had a face to point in any direction at all.
"This is FBI Agent Fox Mulder, Scully, and his giant friend here is FBI Agent Dana Scully, according to their rather well done 'official' IDs. Take a look at these, Scully..." He said, passing them to the her, "They're really good fakes. If it was my face staring back at me, I'd think these would pass a security scanner check."
"We're Hunters, Ma'am." Sam said, wanting to sound polite as he talked over Agent Mulder, trying to change the subject, but realizing too late that he had probably made Agent Scully feel a bit old, calling her Ma'am. He was right. Dana Scully, still a vibrant beautiful woman in her mid to late forties, did feel a twinge of her years when he said it. Which was a real shame, as she thought he was the cute one.
"What kind of hunters, Mr. Winchester? Do you bag much game in a suit and tie around these parts? In July?" She said, never one to beat around the bush. Mulder, on the other hand, would keep feeding these two boys rope until they hung themselves. She preferred to be direct. But Sam's answer shook her foundations.
"Not those kinds of hunters, Agent." He decided would be a better choice to address her by. He looked to Dean for approval to continue his explanation, as he always did. Dean gave it, reluctantly as ever, and turned away with an expression that read, "Aw, man. Here we go again, Sammy. Trusting two more people with this weirdness. And it's probably gonna get them killed, like it always does." Dean had good (great) reason to be worried.
"Well, then, what kind of hunters are you?" Mulder said, picking up the interrogation as Agent Scully was obviously more interested in more closely inspecting the body.
"Look, you're not going to believe any of this..." Sam stated.
"Try me." replied Mulder, to Sam's disclaimer.
"We hunt... monsters. Real monsters. All the scary bedtime stories you've heard are true. Well, a lot of them are. Vampires, werewolves, demons, shapeshifters, windego, you name it. The legends are almost always born of truth. They're out there. And we hunt them down and kill them. We do it to save lives. Human lives." Sam explained, letting the full weight of his words hang in the air, fully expecting the "these two are off their collective rockers" expression that FBI agent Fox Mulder had plastered across his face. He also expected to be thrown in cuffs and lead to the back of a squad car. What he didn't expect was the look of thoughtful introspection that agent Scully was displaying. Not that it would be inappropriate to wear while examining a body with an unknown cause of death, but by the fact that she was staring Samuel Winchester in the eyes while wearing it. Fox had noticed her expression also.
"Excuse us for a moment, boys. Don't go far. In fact, don't go anywhere." Agent Mulder said over his shoulder as he helped his partner to her feet and began to usher her away from the immediate area to have a private word with her.
"Tell me you're not buying this, Scully." He said, incredulously.
"Mulder, I think they might be on the level. Before I was reassigned to the X-files, I had been building a case on suspected vigilante/terrorists group that traveled around the country, maybe even the globe, leaving a trail of dead bodies in their wake. They called themselves 'Hunters'. We caught five in total, over the years. They all had the same sort of delusional stories to tell. Hunting and killing monsters... angels and demons on Earth... that kind of thing. Of course, we had them all evaluated psychologically. Thing is, shortly after they were admitted, they all died in custody. Well, four of the five died in custody. One simply disappeared from a locked cell without a trace, never to be seen again. He was in his early sixties with a bad hip and missing an eye and his right arm. The other four were ruled suicides. Technically. Three of them were open and shut cases, or so we thought, until the fourth one broke her own neck. Slowly." She said, taking a breath.
"She broke her neck... slowly? How does one break their neck slowly?" Agent Mulder said, rapt in her recounting.
"Just as I said... Slowly. When I reviewed the security footage, it appeared as if she stood up, arms by her sides, walked to the center of the room, looked straight at the security camera, and slowly turned her head to the left, past the collar bone, past the scapula proper, a total of 213 degrees. When her spinal cord snapped, her body fell limp to the floor. It was ruled a suicide only because no one else was in the room with her at the time and the footage couldn't have been tampered with, as it was only ten minutes old before I arrived after that the incident occurred. I examined the body myself." She finished, letting Mulder take it all in.
"That doesn't mean that they're telling the truth about monsters, Scully. Are you seriously entertaining this boogeyman nonsense?" The ever-skeptical Fox asked.
"All I know is that this is the first solid lead on the Hunters the FBI has had since that little girl died in a padded room, all by herself, from self-inflicted cervical torsion, without the use of her hands, while looking at the wrong wall. So, whatever those two have to say about the Hunters, I want to hear it. Until they make me believe they're crazy,or dangerous, at least." Dana Scully said, feeling the sore spot that the word Hunter had caused. The Hunters case she was working on was one of the biggest contributing factors of the decision to have her transferred to the X-files so many years ago. She just couldn't let it go, even after she was told to drop it by Assistant Director Walter Skinner personally. But she could tell by looking at them that these two were dangerous. She already believed that.
"OK, Scully. We'll play this your way." Mulder said, happy to follow her lead. Happy to follow her anywhere, actually. Foxes like hen houses.
Meanwhile, as the two agents discussed matters, the Winchesters were having a conversation of their own.
"Look, Dean, we had to let them in on what we do. We were already busted impersonating federal agents. But we got busted by the very agents we were supposed to be impersonating! It was either that, or jail, right?" Sam said, confident in his logic. Dean didn't feel the same about Sam's assessment of the situation. For Dean, there was always Plan B, and then leave town. It had worked almost flawlessly for him his whole life, he lied to himself.