"..." Scully was as equally put off by Deans attitude as she was with his assessment, no matter how right he might be. She refused to react to his nickname. Not because he had offended her with it. Far from it. It was her favorite nickname, after all. She just hadn't given him permission to use it. But she could tell Dean Winchester was the type of guy that got what he wanted. No, that wasn't quite it. Her years as a criminal profiler have taught her how to read people accurately, more or less. In Dean, she saw a wild animal, barely contained by a cage of decency and honor. He was the type of man who got things done when he got his way. Whether that was what he wanted was a whole other matter entirely. But she had the feeling the two were mutually exclusive. No. Dean didn't ask permission for anything. But he never took anything that wasn't freely given, either. Nor did he take any crap from anybody. And of all the things that she refused to react to, she certainly didn't want him to see that she had also enjoyed those last thoughts a tiny wee bit.
"Well, Scully, they have us, dead to rights." Mulder said, pretending to placate the angry monster-in-his-own-right, Dean Winchester. "You're right, Dean, we didn't find anything you didn't already know. Feel better now? Or do you want to yell at your agent for not getting you that modeling gig for the next LL Bean catalog first? You name-calling, overzealous, drama-queen." Fox Mulder said, hand on his standard issue .9mm pistol in his shoulder harness holster. Like I said, Mulder wasn't stupid, just a bit slow on the uptake at times. This wasn't one of those times. He could tell that even if everything else Sam Winchester had said about hunting and killing monsters was a complete lie, the one true kernel of truth was the part about being killers. Maybe not Sam, but Dean for sure. Fox had no doubt in his mind whatsoever about that being a matter of fact. "Now how about you remember who the federal government has empowered to uphold the law on their behalf around here, and start explaining what the hell these dead kids' parents have to do with anything -- and don't even think about leaving this diner, let alone town, until I say you can, or I'll haul you in on enough obstruction of justice charges that when they're through with you, they won't let you see the light of day for the next ten years before your first parole hearing. Have I made myself clear?" Fox Mulder said, and dropped the mic.
"I really don't think that will be necessary, Agent..." Sam began.
"Shut up, Sam. Not another word until this dickhole understands who he's screwing with."
"Dean, NO." Sam said, standing up and blocking Dean from closing the distance between himself and the soon-to-be-late Fox Mulder. "He's just saying it to get a rise out of you."
"And it worked." Mulder said, now that his theory was all but confirmed. "C'mon, Scully. Now that the 'Mighty Hunters' have given us a lead, we don't really need them to figure the rest out." He said confident that their whole monster hunting crap was just that.
That's when a man screamed from far away in the background, barely audible over the music being played on the juke box by the far wall opposite the restroom doors. Then it came again, much louder, and as everyone turned their heads toward the scream, there was a small explosion and a barrage of splintered wooden plank shards that flew into the diner half-full of people. The explosion, Mulder thought, looked like it had been done with a rocket launcher, but he didn't smell smoke. A rocket launcher that fired meat missiles. That made the twelve year old in him giggle. Then he remembered why he thought that, and he threw up in his mouth a little. Thankfully, Dana didn't notice. There, at the center of the debris was a lump of red gore. Something had thrown(?) a... Mulder wasn't sure what it was. It was wet with blood, wood splintered and stuck out at odd angles and in random places. It resembled a giant red porcupine that had been caught in the rain. And it was pooling on the floor around where it lay sleeping now. Then it moved. A twitch, but Mulder couldn't tell what the part that twitched had once been. And then it died. It was obvious to everyone now that whatever it was now, it used to be a man. More specifically, the man they had heard screaming outside mere seconds before was a good bet. The last sound anyone heard before the panic set in was what sounded like a metallic hum, like that of a huge generator powering up, approaching maximum RPMs, and then deafening silence. Had any of them that survived unharmed, of which there were only three (not including the two FBI agents and equal amount of Winchesters), ventured outside before the sound disappeared, they would have seen the same things all those dead kids had seen right before losing their heads. Sam and Dean were halfway across the diner before Mulder had noticed they'd moved, and they were through the hole in the wall, guns drawn, Dean with his pearl handled chrome .45 Colt 1911, and Sam with his chrome and maplewood accented Python .357 Magnum revolver, before Agent Scully had time to turn around and stand up. She'd only taken three steps toward the heap of viscera on the diner's linoleum flooring, but Fox Mulder had taken four or five steps toward her. He was just as concerned about the mess near the hole as anyone, and also just as concerned about who had done this to it as anyone could be, but he was much more concerned with Dana Scully's safety. He once swore he'd never let anything happen to her. He intended to keep that promise. Much like Dean Winchester, did he but know it, Fox Mulder was a man of his word. In the gravel parking lot, Dean and Sam began searching between the parked cars, looking under them, around them, everywhere for someone, some...thing... hiding, lying in wait for a second victim. "They just love to set traps by injuring somebody, then preying on the crowd that gathers around to help." Dean thought. "Sam-may!" Dean bellowed from the other end of the parking lot. Their standard plan of action was to split up and cover more ground. They moved like a well-oiled machine. "You see anything?!"
"Nothin', Dean. This place is clean. No tracks, nothin'." Sam replied as the two brothers met in the middle of the parking lot, after finishing their initial sweep of the immediate threat area, adjacent to the hole in the wall that Fox Mulder just edged out Dana Scully to be the first to step through, guns also drawn by both FBI agents.
"Boys? Anything?" Mulder had the nerves to say. Meaning both audacity and that he was visibly shaken.
"Well, look who it is! Why so late to the party, Tod? Did Copper hold you up, running from Ol' Amos Slade?" Dean quipped. In a much better mood, now that he had his gun out and Mulder had a look in his eye that said, "I'm smart enough not to piss off a man who is named after a gun-maker while he's holding a gun." And Fox Mulder was right to choose that path.
"You know, you're actually really funny, once you start to grow on someone. Like a fungus." Mulder said, regaining his confidence briefly. "Now, are there any monsters hiding out here, or what?" Fox said, actually sort of impressed at Dean's Fox and the Hound reference. Dean would have been equally impressed if he had known Mulder had gotten the reference.
"They're gone. You can come out now." Sam said, getting Dean's back and implying that Mulder was a 'wait-till-the-smoke-clears kind of guy. Sam, a bit over-protective when someone threatens his brother, hadn't forgotten what Fox said about locking Dean away for a decade back in the diner, before the explosion. It took more that that to rattle a Winchester. Dean smirked and looked at Sammy with bemused approval. That's all Sam really wanted. His brother knew he had his back. That was good enough for Sam.
"I'm going to examine the body, you boys play nice. Don't make me come out there." Dana Scully said. Usually reserved, she was enjoying the banter. Having the dire Fox Mulder as your partner could be exhausting at times. But, she couldn't imagine life without him by her side. Or watching her back. She knew he would never let anything happen to her.
She turned back and walked toward the body, leaving the boys to play with their guns, since they'd already pulled them out to wave around. As she suspected, the body was headless. And the body was turned inside-out. "All the organs have been removed and the remaining arteries are cauterized." She observed. This didn't fit the pattern. Maybe the Winchesters had more to share than she thought. She really wished Mulder would stop trying to be such an alpha male all the time. She'd seen him cry. He didn't need to act macho around her. It was borderline ridiculous at this point.
"Oh, boys, can I see you over here for a minute?" She called as they sulkily walked through the hole in the wall, guns now holstered.
A bit later, just outside the diner, in an area of the parking lot now filled with emergency vehicles of all kinds, while the Sheriff's Department took witness statements and talked to survivors that the EMTs were trying to either patching up or send for more advanced medical attention, Sam approached Agent Dana Scully for a quick aside.
"Agent Scully, I don't know if you and Agent Mulder even believe me and my brother's story, or what, but you have to admit, whatever's going on here is as weird as it gets." Sam offered.
"I can't disagree with you, there, Mr. Winchester. However, if you and your brother are unwilling to help my partner and I in our investigation, I don't see what good either of us we'll be to your own efforts."
"That's what I wanted to talk to you about. I think you and Agent Mulder need to know what the parents of these kids have in common. They're all former kidnap victims."
"All of them? Kidnapping? So you suspect their abductors?"
"Yes, but it's not as simple as that."