DISCLAIMER: "Hey Chris, Ol' Buddy, you asked for honest feedback about the spin-off ideas. They're interesting, I'll grant you that. Frankly, "The Prime of Miss Dana Scully" smacks of being too cerebral, and "Mulder, P.I."...well, Duchovny's no Tom Selleck, if you get my meaning. But "The Skinner Bunch," a mad-cap comedy about an FBI Assistant Director and his 'family' of Agents, sounds like a winner. Go for it!"

Every time he poked his head up from behind the counter, the grid of colorful blister-packed plastic game accessories at his back swayed and shivered. She was still out there, cackling hysterically, like a hen watching the making of a "this is your brain on drugs" commercial. When she'd first come in, Arnie wouldn't have taken her for an escaped mental patient, more for a well paid, no-imagination suited government employee. When she'd started to laugh, Arnie hadn't paid it any mind: lots of folks got a good laugh out of the electronic games and players here in the boutique.

But five minutes later, helpless laughter still going strong and all other customers sidling for the doors, Arnie had watched as the red-haired lady breathlessly fished around her suit coat for a tissue to wipe her eyes. He'd seen a brief flash of a shoulder holster when she'd checked the coat's inside pockets.

Loony Louise had a gun.

Arnie inched over to the phone, grabbed the receiver, pressed the speed dial for Mall Security, and dove back down out of sight. He was oddly relieved that it was only his knees knocking with fear. It could be worse. His teeth could be chattering, and that was the last thing he needed. After all, that dental bonding had been expensive.

Arnie of the Bright White Smile hunkered down to wait for the cavalry.

Mulder looked up from the briefing report, sensing a change in the air. Maybe it was just having fallen asleep watching the Disney Channel last night, he decided, perhaps some bizarre effect of "Mary Poppins" on the unwary subconscious. Or maybe Holman Hardt was in town for a meteorological convention.

That idea had been closer to the mark, for two minutes later Hurricane Scully blew in with gale force winds.

"Of all the asinine, insipid, moronic--" Scully stomped back and forth, ranting in a sub-scream, shaking a lime-green fist at the heavens. She steamrollered ahead in her imprecations while Mulder sat soundlessly in shock.

Finally pausing long enough to catch her breath, Scully glared at Mulder when he ventured "Me?" in rather fearful tones.

"Nooo!" With disgust, Scully threw the large wad of green paper she'd been clutching at Mulder. He smoothed it out on the desk, the paper's top corners jaggedly and conspicuously absent. She must have ripped this off a wall somewhere. What could be so provocative that Scully would--

Mulder later realized that his outburst of laughter could well have been the last thing he'd ever done, if Scully's weapon hadn't been locked in the desk drawer. As it was, her look could have welded steel. Or fried nuts. His, in fact.

The lime green announcement bore a hackneyed representation of the classic Roswell alien under the headline "APRIL FOOLS' DAY!" Beneath the graphic were reminders about alien-theme parties and get-togethers scheduled for the 1st. Mulder noted the repeated use of terms like "spooky" and "xtreme" and "UFO hunters."

"I guess this means they have a lot of that green beer left over from the St. Paddy's Day party."

"It means they consider the X-Files a joke!" Scully seethed. "Public ridicule, Mulder! As if the deliberate embarrassment of traipsing across the Great American Heartland counting cow patties wasn't enough, they resort to crap like this to humiliate us even further. What sick pleasure do they get, making us the butt of their pathetic jokes, when we've put our hearts and souls into solving these cases--"

It wasn't the first time the X-Files had come in for ridicule at the Bureau, and it certainly wasn't news that the Powers That Be had turned a blind eye to the harassment. One thing, though, stood out this time around as changed and unique.

Scully had said "us." She finally, in her heart, accepted the X-Files as hers as well. It was no longer a matter of being his minder, or a sidekick, a Robin to his Batman. No more waiting for him to validate what she had invested, heart and soul, in the endeavor. She considered herself his partner, co-owner of the X-Files in all their dubious glory.

It took a couple of cups of chamomile tea to calm Scully down. She still had enough of a head of steam to tell Mulder about cornering Miller from the Archives Section as he was taping up the announcement sheets next to the elevator.

Scully bristled angrily at the memory. "I grabbed Scott-The-Snot by his tiny little dick--"

Mulder narrowly missed incurring severe head injuries as he leaned too far in his chair and went over backwards. Scully didn't miss a beat.

"--by his tiny little dickey and dragged him into the elevator. I informed him that the whispers, kidding, innuendoes, jokes, puns, and other assorted revelry at our expense would stop, NOW, or by all that was holy, Dr. Scully was going to show him a whole new and frightening meaning for 'cut and paste.' Then I got a spare evidence baggie out of my pocket, handed it to him, and said--"

"--'Got Balls'?" Mulder finished for her. Scully nodded, a satisfied smile on her lips, and sipped her tea.

"You know, Scully...I can't think of another division of the FBI that has its own special day. Maybe we should get behind this idea, you know, ask Skinner if we get time-and-a-half or combat pay or something--or perhaps decorate the office. How about black lights and my Elvis on Velvet picture right *there*?"

"Mulder--"

"You're a 'Dogs Playing Poker' girl, aren't you? Admit it. It's okay, I have dark secrets too."

"Mulderrrrrrrr." Scully heaved a theatrical sigh, which lapsed into Scully-twitters of laughter. "Are you serious? Tomorrow we celebrate...what, Alien Fools' Day?"

"Absolutely," Mulder agreed, with a pious Scout's honor salute thrown in as a bonus. "And Scully...if you're very lucky, I'll show you my Roswell briefs."

The escalator to the second floor of the mall seemed to move at a snail's pace, and the thickness of the crowd prevented Scully from bobbing and weaving through the riders. At least, she consoled herself, she'd been able to make good time on the Metro ride from downtown DC. Judging from the conversation she'd overheard in the elevator three weeks ago, the store for which she was headed was *the* place to acquire the perfect Alien Fools' Day gift for Mulder.

It had been impossible *not* to eavesdrop on the elevator conversation. One of the administrative assistants had been recounting her son's all too obvious campaign of hint dropping as his birthday approached. He wanted just one thing, a video game called "Gray Matter." It was not, as Scully had guessed, a tutorial about brain surgery, but rather a new and exciting game about the invasion of little gray aliens from a distant planet. Replete with challenge levels for both action and skill play as well as shoot-em-up arcade humor, the game had sounded perfect to her for her conspiracy focused, X-File loving partner.

Of course, the game ran only on the Nintendo 64 platform. Which meant that the perfect gift was the game *and* the system on which to run it.

Sighing over the specialty shop's choice of moniker--Relativistique--Scully entered through the glass and neon-bedecked doorway, bypassing the stacks of guides and comic series for the display shelves of boxed equipment. Scanning the brand names quickly, she found the Nintendo 64 section halfway down the aisle. Console units, controls, add-on enhancements--everything you could possibly spend money on for Nintendo video gaming was here and in plentiful supply. Scully picked up a medium-sized box emblazoned with NINTENDO 64 and, in smaller letters, "Red Controller."

The box cover depicted a three-pronged control unit in no-nonsense red, and there, tethered by a security chain to the shelf, rested the display sample. Scully hefted the unit in one hand while comparing it to the product image on the box. The body or central prong sported a control stick with a textured surface, while the side prongs, looking for all the world like chunky arms coming off broad shoulders of the body prong, were festooned with directional buttons or pads. Scully rested her thumb on the control stick protruding from the body prong, feeling the extraordinary play in the movement of the device. She had to agree with the PR hype: "Reacts to the slightest pressure or the quickest move."

The controller *was* really responsive, and she continued her testing, using her thumb to pilot the protruding stick in circles, first slowly, as if circling the alien prey, then faster, at last moving her thumb in hot tight circuits on the stick. Her right hand continued the manipulation of the stick while she read the box legend:

A niggling sense of something awry began to gnaw at Scully. Her thumb persisted in its path, tracing tight circles and rhythmic patterns on this oversized protuberance on the red control unit. Which, now that she thought about it, actually looked like a squat red alien with very broad shoulders and endowed with a big jutting control stick that made it look for all the world like the red alien had a huge gray erection--

Her eyes widened as her thumb kept going, stroking the stick in tighter and tighter circles--

"Anatomically"? Scully's eyes flashed back through the copy. She'd read it wrong. "Ergonomically designed." Not "Anatomically designed." A simple mistake. An understandable mistake, really. Her mind had filled in a more suitable word to describe the situation.

Scully was standing in a store manually stimulating a broad-shouldered red alien with a generously-sized 'stick.'

A bubble of laughter burst from her lips, and Scully almost threw the controller back onto the shelf. It just lay there. Smug. Endowed.

Satisfied.

That last thought broke the dam, and a cascade of laughter began to spill forth. Putting her hand over her mouth only made it worse. As she lost total control, and needed to lean on the shelf for support, Scully vowed to get even with the person she knew was somehow ultimately responsible for this thoroughly embarrassing situation--

--Mulder.

Officer Brandon Stofield sprinted to the door of the video gaming boutique, the wax paper surrounding the uneaten half of his Big Cookie from Edna's Bakery crinkling merrily in his pants pocket. He left the next officer on the scene--he spied Bernie Peterson battling his way through the mob on the escalator--the task of dispersing the gathering crowds. With a hasty admonishment to those mall patrons closest to the entrance to keep back, Stofield slipped inside the boutique.

He heard a woman's laughter coming from the center of the store. Meanwhile, young Arnie, taking a page from old war flicks about crossing 'No-Man's Land,' was crawling on his belly across the vinyl floor. Stofield reached down and hauled Arnie up by the collar, marching the clerk back to the checkout counter.

"She's over there." Arnie's trembling hand pointed in the direction of an auburn-haired woman in a conservative suit, and then abruptly followed the rest of his body to hide behind the counter once more. Stofield rolled his eyes, and walked around the end of the counter, hunching down to address poor petrified Arnie.

"Arnie, you called and said there was a deranged woman with a gun. I haul ass up here and all I see is a nice-looking business lady who thinks something is hilarious. Me...I don't think there's anything funny here at all."

---

The end of the laughing fit had come when one of the mall rent-a-cops with a more than passing resemblance to AD Skinner had entered the store and dragged the escaping clerk back to the front counter. The thought of Skinner rendered Scully as sober as a judge: the mental image of the AD asking why she'd been "three rounds shy of a full clip" in a video game store was just too scary. The laughter faucet dripped once, twice, then was blessedly silent.

'Mulder Cooties'--that was Scully's conclusion as she selected a Nintendo console unit, an extra controller, and a couple of rumble packs, along with a copy of "Gray Matter." It had to be some sort of bizarre MulderEffect that had been responsible for her maniacal outburst. She hugged the tiny mountain of boxes close to her chest. Mulder attracted anomalous events like a magnet attracted iron filings. Had she been 'Mulderized,' she wondered. Had she been around him so long that it had rubbed off, giving her strange and awesome powers of impractical magnetism?

Actually, at this point, she'd settle for a good cover story to explain acting like a hyena in an upscale entertainment boutique. Scully headed toward the checkout counter with feelings of dread. It was a wonder the white suits with the butterfly nets weren't already there, offering to usher her to the waiting limo to the Psychiatric Ward. She'd seen Mulder extricate himself from too many of those scenarios not to recognize the tell-tales, having to vouch for him only on the few occasions when he hadn't been able to charm his way out of--

Of course, Scully realized with a smile. It was Mulder's fault she was in this predicament, so it was thoroughly appropriate that Mulder get her out of this. She simply had to "be" Mulder. All she had to do was think tall, dark...and utterly charming.

Yes, indeedy. Dana Katherine Scully...powered by Mulder Cooties.

It was Walter Skinner's considered opinion that the April Fools' Day celebration was turning into an unmitigated disaster. A gag intended by Kersh's division as a digging slight to the X-Files had been adopted by the armchair psychologists in Human Resources. They had turned the event, sponsored now by the Public Affairs Office, into a morale-boosting exercise. The whole thing had grown all out of proportion to become a day's worth of Bureau-wide puns, pranks, and silliness. The Gold Badge portal was unaccountably locked and barred today, forcing high-ranking staff to come in through the metal detectors at the public entrance. He'd received a rude awakening when going through the detector and having the alarm howl not with its usual klaxon squeal but instead with the unmistakable sound of intestinal flatulence of a rather squeaky feminine type and accompanied by someone's surreptitious squirt of Bullshit in a Can. Unable to pin the blame on any of the employees in the vicinity--all of them portraits of studied innocence--Skinner had stalked off down the corridor.

There was such a thing as cosmic payback, though: Kersh went through the detector ten seconds later and the flatulence report sounded like the eruption of Mount St. Helens, with the punsters giving the bastard a three-can 'salute.'

Kimberley had called in sick, leaving Skinner to fend for himself. The pranksters had gotten to his office phone and mapped all of his outgoing calls to random extensions instead of to the ones he dialed. Incoming calls to his extension consisted chiefly of requests for the day's cafeteria menu. Skinner threw the receiver into the desk drawer and slammed it shut.

In desperation, Skinner rode the elevator to the basement, hoping to hide in the X-Files office for the rest of the day. News of Agent Scully's energetic remonstration with some guy in Archives had traveled quickly through the building. Employees who were already unnerved by "Spooky" Mulder did not want to be unmanned by his "Ice Queen" partner. Skinner had not quashed the previous day's late afternoon rumor about the delivery of a rush order of disposable scalpels and evidence bags for Agent Scully. He considered it added incentive for April Fool miscreants to steer clear of the X-Files domain.

It was, of course, the purest coincidence that the rumor had *started* in his office.

Skinner turned the door knob and walked into a chill blue-purple blackness. A life-sized image of a sequin-adorned Elvis seemed to waver in the dark, while along the far wall a beagle upped the ante in a high-stakes game of canine poker. Skinner's entry was noticed by the office's occupants. The first was a man wearing a propeller beanie on his head and boxers emblazoned with UFOs over his pants. The second, his female colleague, wore a short skirt and a Roswell alien t-shirt. The alien's bulging eyes were positioned strategically over her--

"Wrong office." Skinner pivoted and walked out, closing the door behind him. That was not the X-Files office. Those were not his Agents. He did not want to know. He hadn't seen it, he hadn't been here. Today was probably one of those existential anomalies Mulder was always trying to invoke to cover his entertainment expenses while on assignment. Well, he'd get through the day, he'd tough it out--once a Marine, always a Marine. He'd use Kimberley's desk to get work done. As for the phone issue, a quick trip to Communications would fix that: he could think of no one who deserved the cafeteria menu calls more than Assistant Director Alvin Methuen Kersh.

"Mulder...Ooooo, Mulder, no more. I can't. It's too much."

"Come on, Scully, just a little more. Please. You know you want to. You need it. You've needed it for six years." He was poised, ready for her to open wider.

Scully glared at him with mock reproach. "You heartless brute, teasing me about my chocolate addiction. I adore hazelnut creme, but honestly Mulder, I can't eat another UFO truffle. Even one more white chocolate alien and I'll explode." Defeated, Mulder popped the confection into his mouth.

With soulful regret Scully settled the lid back on the Godiva Abductions box. Mulder shot and scored, the crumpled napkins disappearing into the trash can. "There, all cleaned up." He picked up the wine glasses and began to head out of the kitchen.

Scully nodded at the open box containing four untouched slices of pizza.

"'All cleaned up'? Mulder, what do you call that?"

"The Breakfast of Champions, Scully."

"I'm sorry I asked."

He didn't spill a drop of the wine, even when she punched him in the arm.

Mulder was thrilled with his gift from the moment he ripped away the wrappings in a whirlwind of silvered shreds of paper and ribbon. He was such a little kid about it, itching to take every last component out and fit it all together without reading the directions.

"You are soooooo male, Mulder."

"Why, thank you, Scully. So much for those strange looks I get at the urinals. Here, hold this for me."

Deja vu knocked twice as Scully realized Mulder had given her the red controller to hold while he stuffed plastic sleeves and multi-lingual instruction guides into the empty carton. She bit her lip in anticipation as her thumb, of its own accord, stole up to stroke the control stick. Rocking side to side, a lazy sweet swirl to the right, powering on the down stroke to come again to midnight, 'round the clock, faster and faster--

It was a strangled little sound that turned her head, to see Fox Mulder, beet red, wide-eyed and mouth hanging open, watching her thumb make love to the control stick. Then his eyes darted back to the wording on the carton, and she watched his eyes seek that phrase that she herself had misread. It was at that moment Scully knew what she was going to do, and she would almost certainly pay for it later--but it would be worth it.

"Ohhhhhhhhhhh!" Her orgasmic exclamation sent a shock like electricity through Mulder. Empty Nintendo boxes tumbled off the coffee table and wrapping paper tumbleweeds scattered for refuge under chairs and in corners. Mulder recovered quickly, his embarrassment fading within minutes. In the meantime Scully was careful to keep her hands to herself, as it were.

Mulder's gift to her was a gorgeous crystal platter, and she'd been halfway to giving him a hug when he presented her with a second box, slick velvet black sides with a silver lift-away box lid. Black tissue excelsior hid the contents from view. With a look that promised dire consequences if anything bit her, Scully reached down into the paper--

--and pulled out a life-sized apple crafted in blown glass. Clouds of red and pink waltzed with streaks of gold in the glass itself, and the apple was correct in exquisite detail, right down to the delicate leaf clinging to the stubby stem. Gently she set the apple on the platter.

Sheer perfection.

Diving into the box again and again, her hand next retrieved an orange, another apple, a carrot, five strawberries, two stalks of celery, and a bunch of grapes blown grape by grape onto gold wire but so cunningly assembled that they appeared to have been magically grown in a fairy tale vineyard.

A farmer's market in glass had taken shape on the platter.

Under the black tissue there was one last glass shape. She lifted it out of the excelsior, her fingers clasped around the shape's middle. The glass surface was smooth, but with an undercurrent of texture. Scully cupped it in her hand and noted how the light reflected from her red shirt gave the object a pinkish hue on its garden green glass. He couldn't see her eyes--she'd bent her head in thought.

"That one have you stumped?" Mulder set the empty box aside. Time slid away in silent seconds.

Finally Scully found her voice, and looked at him.

"No, Mulder, I know what it is." She balanced the cucumber easily in her palm. "What I would like to know, though...is whether this eight-incher is ergonomically or anatomically correct."

He did not breathe or blink as the tip of her tongue snaked teasingly from bottom to top of the cucumber she held upright. He convulsively gasped as Scully took the tip of the cucumber into her mouth and sucked softly.

This was no longer a matter of pretense or revelry, but of design and intent. His voice was quiet and earnest.

"In matters of the unexplained or inexplicable, Scully, you know as well as I that...coming...to the truth usually requires the most thorough investigation."

"So?"

Mulder leaned close to whisper.

"So put down that vegetable, and get ready for some applied research."

"You don't mean--"

"Yes, I do," he purred in her ear, his smile making her deliciously warm. "It's time to let you have a look at what's in my Roswell briefs."