Title: On The Outside Author: Brunhilde Rating: Summary: Their quest from an outside POV Archive: Yes, please, anywhere, just let me know! Feedback: queenofthedeltaquadrant@hotmail.co.uk - I'd really appreciate any comments/criticisms! Disclaimer: No infringement intended - etc. etc. **** The beginning is the easiest place to start from. It's the beginning of the game, the first time I saw them - the start of a relationship. Cat and mouse. It's also pretty much the only place to start - unless you happen to be a time travel whiz. So the beginning's where I'll go from. The beginning as far as they're concerned, anyway. I suppose it all starts ten years ago, in a building in the countryside off Route 32. It was originally a chicken house - a huge, towering thing that looked as if it had dropped from the sky and set down roots where it stood. Empty by that time. There was still a faint residue of smell, lingering despite years of abandonment, and the flutter of the odd feather, dislodged by the breeze of the opening door from some crevice in the walls. That's where they found the first body, where the nightmare started. It was a sunny July morning. In the cottage across the road, a small boy was playing in the courtyard, making mud piles for garishly painted wooden cars and lorries to drive over. His parents were probably in the kitchen, or in the living room, doing what they always did at the weekends. The boy liked weekends best. His parents would clean the house, and he'd go outside because of his asthma, playing in the sunshine with his latest combination of plastic men and toy cars. At the moment, the bad men were crawling up the hill to try and find the good men's base. It was a fun game. A shadow blocked the sun. The boy looked up, freezing the game for an interested second. A man stood over him, smiling. Maybe the man asked him to show him the way to the next house. Maybe he asked him to point out something along the road. But the game in the mud was never finished. His parents, checking on him like they did every ten minutes, found an empty courtyard. There were two sets of footprints in the dust, tracks leading out on to the road, where they disappeared on the hard tarmac. One of them phoned the police, but by the time the flashing lights drew up outside, it was already too late. It took them ten minutes to find the body on the cold floor of the chicken house, blood mingled with the dust and mud, still clutching a toy soldier. Something must have seemed wrong because they brought in the FBI. Two agents - a man in a black suit and a woman in high heels and a blue skirt, badges pinned neatly to their jackets. They went in to the chicken house, stood for a minute looking around, getting a feel for the place, then the woman knelt beside the boy's small, still-warm body. Maybe something stirred inside her - pity, anger, sadness - but she did her job. Cause of death, outstanding features of the victim's body, all duly noted, then she stood up and walked over to the man, looked at the floor and said something softly. He put a hand on her arm, probably said something comforting, and after a quick word to the investigating sheriff, they left. Their car stirred the dust, and a small red toy van crunched underneath the tyres. After they'd gone, the parents wept, of course, and the police vowed to bring the killer to justice. Of course. And then they found the next body. This time, it was an abandoned warehouse, uptown Vancouver, no different from any of the other rusted, flaking giants that all towered along the road. A family lived down the street, their little boy allowed to roam the area with his little cars and aeroplanes. Be back for tea, he was told, and he ran off in to the complex maze of empty buildings, re-enacting battles and chase scenes. Halfway through the civil war, a shadow blocked the Confederates' view of the sky. The boy looked up, saw a smiling face. Maybe this time, he saw the hint of menace, tried to run away, but the neighbours were too far away to hear anything. It was only when his mother out the tea on the table and watched the road anxiously for his return that his father thought to call the local police, and it was only when the sun went down that they found his little body stuffed between two rubbish skips. The FBI turned up again, the woman gently pulling the body out and laying it on the ground. The man bent down and picked up a little aeroplane, ran his fingers over the snapped wing, and glanced over at t he pitifully small body. Probably wondering - why do this? What kind of person? What kind of mind? Maybe even, where next? This time, when they left, the car went slowly. They would try and solve the murders all night, weigh evidence, look at forensics, compare the case with the seven previous murders that had occurred three years ago. Unsolved. An MO too offbeat, a method of death too arcane to be the kind of thing any serious agent would consider. Obviously, these agents were different, willing to search in other directions to the obvious. Maybe they wondered if they could solve it in time to protect the next victim. When they found the next body, they realised they couldn't. The only clue was a little blue soldier dropped at the entrance to a boarded up supermarket, the chipboard covering the smashed windows of the door wrenched away to force an entrance. The boy had been playing in the street outside his house, the only place in their cramped dwelling with enough space for him to have a full-scale war. He played under the watchful eyes of his mother, pulling up the weeds between the house and the pavement to build a forest for the soldiers. She had only been gone for a minute, to fetch a cake from the oven, and while she was gone a man spoke to her son, maybe led him away, maybe asked him what he was playing. When she came back the boy was gone. The FBI were there in an instant, their eyes scanning the area warily for any indication of the boy's whereabouts. They seemed surer of themselves - knowledge gained overnight in an exhaustive search for the truth. The woman pointed towards the supermarket, said something. The man nodded and leaned over to speak to the sheriff. They broke down the door of the supermarket, guns at the ready. "Freeze! FBI!" yelled the woman, and I realised she had red hair. I hadn't noticed. That's where they caught me, trying to hide between the empty, rusting shelves, the boy's body stowed in the old refrigerator. It was all necessary, a by-product of order. The plastic soldiers, the battles, were a symptom of a disease, rampant, insinuating. I had to make sure it didn't spread - no more violence. God will reward my crusade. It was my calling.