Subject:	NEW: Six of a Kind
From:	"jerry" <jerrynospamcanary@worldnet.att.net>
Date:	Tue, 27 Jun 2000 02:13:34 GMT

TITLE: Six of a Kind
AUTHORS: Cincoflex and Jerry
RATING: PG
CATEGORY: S, H
KEYWORDS: Gunmen, Chuck, Scully, MSR(implied)
SPOILERS: Through Requiem
DISCLAIMER: Not ours, just for fun
FEEDBACK: Yes, please! Send to Cincoflex@aol.com
THANKS: To Plausible Deniability for da beta and one particular line.
SUMMARY: Friends gather; storytelling ensues.

*********

The rain was a steady rumble outside the bolted windows, but the soft sound
of it was a soothing undercurrent to the other comforting noises in the
room: the rattling click of dice, the creak of a chair, the hiss of a soda
bottle being opened. Chuck glanced at Scully, who was seated at one of the
many computers along the wall of the Gunmen's headquarters.

"Com'on, Burks, *move*!" Langley growled over the top of his Jolt.

"Calm down," came the thoughtful reply. Chuck reached out and grabbed his
token, marching it methodically four spaces and landing on St. James Place.

Byers stroked his beard, hiding a grin.

Chuck sighed. "Who owns it?"

"It's mine," said Byers. "Don't complain, it's undeveloped."

Frohike snorted as the scientist handed over the rent to Byers.

"Undeveloped--right. You probably have a missile silo under the orange
band."

Byers ignored his partner as he tucked the colored bills neatly under his
side of the board, all denominations in their own stacks.

Frohike cupped the dice and shook them out across the board; they rattled up
against the stack of Chance cards, revealing a three.

"Lawrence Welk..." he murmured, leaning forward to move his token. Chuck
shot him a curious look, and Byers explained.

"It's a joke of Mulder's -- a one an' a two. Get it?"

"That's his sorry sense of humor, all right." Chuck smiled, but glanced at
Scully, uncertain that this mention of her partner was acceptable. He saw,
however, that she had turned her head slightly toward them and was smiling.
He supposed it was good for her to hear Mulder's name spoken in such
matter-of-fact tones.

Frohike had moved his token and was groaning. "Freak'in income tax. Great."

"Only place he *will* pay it," Langly commented.

Frohike glared at him. "Try and remember that there's a federal agent in the
room, will ya, blondie?"

"Pay up and let me roll, you whiner."

"So roll already!" Frohike slapped the dice into the younger man's
outstretched hand.

Chuck rolled his eyes then looked at Scully, who was shaking her head at
their antics. Same song, fortieth verse. He heard the clatter of the cubes
and the thump of the token and turned back to the game. Langley was leaning
back in his chair and crowing. "Illinois. Mine, all mine."

"The man lands on his own property again," Frohike grumbled. "It's an
X-file."

"Speaking of," said Byers, making his move, "does *this* remind you of
anything?"

Scully turned to look at the group as they checked Byers' token. Langley
hooted as he saw the space and the other gunmen laughed with him.

"Marvin Gardens! What a wacko!"

"Certifiable. But he did give us a chance to test that software," Byers
murmured with a soft grin.

"Which failed. The guy was psychic, no doubt about it."

Scully waved her hand to get their attention. "Marvin Gardens was a person?"

Everyone turned to Byers, who met her gaze and nodded.

"It was one of Mulder's first X-Files cases and the first one on which we
assisted," he began. "Somebody from the VCU sent Mulder the file on this guy
who had offered tips on several cases. This informant --"

"Marvin Gardens," said Frohike.

"-- had provided accurate, but ultimately irrelevant, information on twenty
different crimes. VCU had checked him out and he hadn't been anywhere near
the crime scenes and didn't know the victims or perps. Of course, with his
information being immaterial to the investigation, they hadn't followed up."

Chuck hadn't heard this story. "What kind of things did he tell them?"

Langley started laughing and Byers smiled again as he continued.

"Marvin would call the VCU and say things like 'You know that double murder
you're working -- the one under the 15th street bridge? That victim was
wearing a clip-on tie from Woolworth's. What kind of bank executive wears a
clip-on tie from Woolworth's?' Another time he called and said 'That guy you
just picked up for the Philadelphia  murders? He hasn't called his mother in
four months. Tell him to call his mother.'"

Chuck and Scully exchanged glances and bemused smiles. "Mulder must have
*loved* this guy," Chuck said.

"Oh yeah," said Langley. "He interviewed Marvin ten times before he brought
him over here, but he couldn't get the guy to actually predict anything.
All his information was about old stuff."

"He could tell Mulder what videos he'd watched the previous night, but not
who would call him that day," Frohike added. "What Mulder's last car repair
had been, but not what would break down next."

"We tested him on some new software we'd picked up..."

"Borrowed, if you want to be accurate," Byers interjected.

"They never knew it was missing --"

"-- but it didn't reveal anything about Marvin's thought processes --"

"-- or brain activity... such as it was --" Frohike snorted.

" --that would explain his ability," Langley concluded.

Scully smiled at the gunmen's usual method of talking like a three-headed
person. "So whatever happened to Marvin?"

Frohike waved a gloved hand in the air. "Oh, he went back to his farm up in
northern Maryland and communed with his cows. But he used to write Mulder
all the time. Remember that one letter, Byers?"

"The one about Scully?"

"Yeah."

Scully raised an eyebrow. "What about me?"

Byers grinned. "Marvin wrote Mulder soon after you joined the X-Files,
Scully. At the end of the letter, he said 'I guess you've started walking
slower.'"

There was a moment of silence and Chuck grimaced as he looked over at
Scully. For a moment, she looked cross; but then she shrugged and turned
back to her computer screen, ignoring the muffled chuckles behind her.

Chuck quickly picked up the dice and began shaking them in his hand. "I'll
bet we could come up with an X-File for every space on the board," he
suggested.

"Six degrees of Fox Mulder?" Frohike asked.

"Sure." Chuck threw the dice. "Double Six! Make way, Langley!" He moved his
Scotty and landed on Water Works.

"Flukeman," everyone said in unison.

"See?" said Chuck as he rolled again. "One-two-three-four-five. Community
Chest for me."

"You know, Chuckster," Langley said with a mischievous look, "that's the
term Frohike uses to describe his favorite babe." He gestured at the large
poster on the wall behind them. Byers groaned and put a hand on his
forehead. Scully turned and looked with them at the well-endowed, scantily
clad woman posing on a tropical beach. Bright pink cursive letters at the
bottom of the photo identified her as "Tara Reid."

Frohike sighed. "She is sooo hot."

Chuck looked at Langley and realized they were in on the same joke. He held
up his card and read it out loud.

"You have won second prize in a beauty contest . . . "

"Fix! Fix!" Langley hooted. "I demand a recount."

"Hey, I'll have you know that beauty runs in my family, thank you very
much," Chuck protested in an exaggerated tone, drawing his $25 from the
bank.

"Yeah, runs as far as possible," Frohike snickered.

Chuck shook his head, stood up and walked over to the poster, pointing to it
and then back to himself.

"Can't you see the family resemblance?"

Frohike and Scully stared at him and then at the picture. Langley and Byers
looked at each other and Chuck could tell they were choking on their
laughter.

"Yeah, right." Frohike waved him off. Scully raised an eyebrow and nodded
slowly.

"Alright, fine, Frohike. I have to swear you all to secrecy, because she'll
kill me if she knows I've showed you this picture . . ." Chuck sat down and
took out a battered brown wallet. "Two years ago on our parents' wedding
anniversary, Tar wanted to give them a portrait of us. Just for fun, we
snuck out to Sears. I thought that minimum wage photographer was going to
have a heart attack when he saw --"

"--*HER*" Frohike gasped, staring at the three-by-five snapshot. Langley and
Byers burst out laughing and Frohike glared at them as he handed Chuck the
wallet. Chuck promptly held it up so Scully could see the picture.

"Tara Reid is your sister. That settles it. There is no God," Frohike
announced. "And you two jerkwads knew it and let me put that up?" he
demanded, pointing at the poster.

"We only found out last week, man," Langley protested, "and by then we knew
Chuck was coming over..."

"I'm sorry, Frohike." Byers was still wiping tears from his eyes. "It was
irresistible."

Chuck patted Frohike on the shoulder. "Buck up, young man, and roll the
dice. You've got to look at the bright side. If you treat me right in this
game, you might get an invitation to Thanksgiving dinner."

Frohike shot him a look that moved quickly from irritation to hope and back
again, then shrugged his shoulders and shook the dice, mumbling "St.
Charles, baby, gimme St. Charles. I want that Monopoly."

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

Two hours later, Byers was sitting pretty with large stacks of play money
neatly arranged in front of him, and Chuck was hanging by the same lucky
thread holding Frohike and Langley. Chuck had seen Scully make only two
notations on the pad to her right -- a sure sign that her current search was
not bearing fruit -- yet she seemed unusually relaxed.

His prediction had been right: there had been an X-File or Mulder story for
every square on the board, even with each of them trying to stick to cases
with which Scully wasn't familiar.

Oriental Avenue: "I still say your spook-meter sparked and burnt that place
to the ground, Langley. Best damn egg rolls in town, too."

Virginia: "I'll never forget Mulder and Byers standing at the Williamsburg
exit wearing those colonial uniforms. Byers, you looked so pissed, man..."

Indiana: "Frohike, I thought Mulder was going to kiss you when you finagled
those tickets to the Knicks/Pacers game. Who knew that owner would be in
such a good mood after we dug up his entire lawn? Guess he never saw that
vampire again, though."

Chuck shook his head. He was down to his final roll. There was nothing he
could reach that wouldn't bankrupt him. Frohike chuckled.

"Be brave, my son. Face your destiny."

The roll landed Chuck a spot on the Short Line Railroad and bankruptcy
courtesy of John Fitzgerald Byers. The real estate magnate/railroad baron
questioned him as he collected what was left of the scientist's property.

"Didn't you meet Mulder on that case that started at that park? The one
where the younger brother got run down by the kiddie train?"

"No, we already knew each other. That was the first time I met Dr. Scully,
however." Chuck tipped an imaginary hat in Scully's direction. She had
turned around at the mention of the Calusari case. "She was skeptical but I
was overcome with her beau-- um, her intelligence and investigative
talents." His correction earned him a smile.

"So when did you meet Mulder?" Langley asked.

"About nine years ago. We were both trying to catch a ghost." Chuck's eyes
lit up as he thought back to the case.

"Corporeal or spectral?" asked Frohike.

Chuck laughed. "No, no...GHOST was an acronym for a Government-Hosted
Overseas Special Technician. There was one on the loose in D.C. -- a little
Chinese national who was bringing in some natural history artifacts from
Mongolia. Somewhere between Dulles and the Smithsonian he disappeared, and
the FBI needed to find him before his superiors decided it was a defection."

"Sounds pretty routine," Byers ventured. The other man wryly shook his head.

"This is *Mulder* we're talking about, man -- with him, nothing's routine.
Turns out that the artifacts ate the guy."

"Say what?" Langley burst out, spilling his soda.

"Yeah, sort of my reaction too. They were dinosaur bones from the Chapman
dig  back in the '30s. A set of juvenile Carnotaur jaws, about two feet in
diameter. Mulder noticed they were stained, and had me run them through some
tests. I found evidence of human blood on them, and some completely
off-the-wall radioactivity signatures."

"But they could have been used as a murder weapon somehow, couldn't they?"
Byers ventured.

"Yeah, we were considering that, but--after we'd found them, the the damn
things..." Chuck drew in a deep breath. "They... *lunged* at me! Right off
the exam table. Took a chunk out of my tie before I could get out of the
lab." He looked up. "Mulder upended a garbage can and trapped them."

Frohike grimaced, "Oh God--like the world's biggest chattering teeth --"

Chuck heard a small snort from Scully's direction.

"Something like that. Naturally it wasn't the sort of thing the ADs or the
Chinese embassy wanted to hear about. Mulder theorized that the bones might
have been used in Mongolian black magic ceremonies, but I have to admit I
wasn't listening too closely. Finally the two of us sealed up that trash can
with cement, and dumped it in the Potomac."

"Holy Mastication, Batman." Langley was chuckling now. It was infectious and
soon the four players were roaring with laughter and toasting each other
with the clinking of soda bottles.

Chuck recovered first. "Ok, Frohike, enough stalling. You might as well roll
the dice and get it over with, because I can see your future."

Scully's serious voice broke through the lingering chortles. "You better
listen to him, Frohike -- he's telling the truth."

The shortest Gunman, always attentive to Agent Scully, stopped in mid-reach
and looked at her inquiringly. She answered his unspoken question by saying,
"Chuck told our future -- Mulder's and mine."

She had their attention.

"He had some new equipment he wanted to try out," she began, looking at
Chuck. He nodded his permission for her to continue. "New plates for Kirlean
photography."

"Auras, man," Langley said. "Very cool stuff."

"The Chi, or Reike," offered Byers, "a life energy. The aura can also
indicate illness and be directed toward healing."

"A natural phenomena," countered Scully firmly, "altered by changes in
moisture, barometric pressure or voltage." She waved her hand in the air.
"Whatever. Anyway, we went up to the University two days before that
internal audit. Chuck had each of us place one hand on the photographic
plate. Mulder put his right hand down and I put down my left. When the
photograph was developed--"

Chuck couldn't hold back any longer. "-- of course we saw the auras for each
of them outlining their fingers and palms. Really nice ones, too, vivid
color, great contrast, distinct overlap toward the center...Mulder had lots
of red as usual, but Scully had more blue than I expected..."

Scully continued without a pause, and her eyes were fixed not on her
listeners, but on a point beyond them. "And in the triangle formed by our
index fingers and thumbs, there was...another image..."

The Gunmen were looking at each other with expressions ranging from confused
to concerned, but Scully didn't see them. She was reaching into one of the
pockets in her briefcase. Retrieving a small glossy square, she left her
place at the computer for the first time that evening and pulled a chair up
to the game table. Without a word, she placed the photograph in the center
of the board. She watched with Chuck as their three friends leaned over it.

"It's..." started Byers.

"I see it," Langley whispered.

Frohike nodded and reached over to pat Scully's shoulder. Chuck saw him
start when Scully reached up and, just for a second, covered the gloved hand
with her own. The moment passed and Frohike grinned at Chuck.

"A Kirlean sonogram. You done good, Professor."

Scully picked up the photograph and looked at it. "He certainly did." She
stood up and returned it to the briefcase, then turned around suddenly.

"Looks like J. F. Byers has you all whipped, boys. How about you concede and
let a Federal Agent kick your ass at poker?" She held up a deck of cards and
wiggled it in the air.

Chuck opened his mouth to consent but was interrupted by groans from his
tablemates.

"Not again!" wailed Langley.

"I thought this was supposed to be *my* lucky night," moaned Byers.

Frohike glowered. "Fine. I'm not gonna argue with a pregnant woman,
especially a card shark, but I'm telling you this..." He started grinning.
"You can have the pants and the shirt, but I'm not taking off the gloves."

"E-nough," Scully scolded. She started shuffling as Chuck pulled the
Monopoly game and its components off the table. "Gentlemen, the game is five
card stud, jacks or better to open. Ante up."

Chuck sat back in his chair and watched the deal.  Mulder, you're gonna be
sorry you missed this evening, he thought.  Get here for the next one, huh?

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

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