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FIGHT THE FUTURE

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Modell: “When did you turn into Clint Eastwood?” Oh, it was sometime in S3, dude. I think it was before your first episode – did you miss that? I can't really remember the order, though. Scully leans into Mulder's face again and begs him not to let Modell rope him in. Modell's still talking, trying to make Mulder listen to whatever the heck he's got to say. I would think it would be easier to just say it and get it over with, but it's not my hypnotic phone conversation, I guess. He mentions that he knows the call is being traced, and doesn't care.

Scully tells Mulder to hang up the phone as Skinner looks on nervously. Mulder closes his eyes, and hangs up in the middle of Modell blabbing on and on about what he needs Mulder to hear. They all look at the agent running the trace. She says they got it.

Mulder, Scully, and some marshals bust into the sporting goods store, guns drawn. Mulder notices the carbo bar wrapper. But there's no other sign of anything, and Skinner wonders how far he could have gotten. Then Mulder looks out the window and sees a man in prison garb, wandering down the street. We can only see his back. “Outside!” he yells, except for some reason Duchovny's yell is back to sounding like it did in S1 or 2, and it's just not very convincingly intense. Heh.

But they all run outside, anyway, Mulder almost getting hit by a minivan as he runs out into the road. I'm suddenly quite distracted because I recognize one of the many skyscraper hotels of Vancouver behind the guy. I've totally been on that street. Mulder claps a hand on the guy's shoulder and turns him around, putting his gun to his chest.

It's not Modell, of course. It's Todd from the store, and he looks very, very confused. As the other agents surround them, Mulder lets go of him and Skinner asks, “Where is he?” Todd: “He had to go.” Mulder does his frustrated stalk off, and Scully looks pensive.

We cut to a blonde-haired woman in a picture frame. Modell puts the picture down, leaving a fingerprint in blue paint. We hear him leave the house we're now in, and the camera pans over an empty bucket of blue paint (I believe the brand name is “Breeze”, which: hee!), several blue footprints, and a paintbrush covered in the same hue. Paint is also dripping off a man who is sitting on the couch, completely coated in it. Eew. Fade to black.

The camera pans around the same house again, with police radio chatter in the background. We can see this time that there are characters (as in, symbols used for Japanese or Chinese writing) painted over the walls and curtains. Mulder: “I'm going to take a wild stab here and guess this is a clue.” Heh.

Scully is looking at the paint-covered corpse. With a gloved hand, she opens his mouth, and blue paint pours out. Eeeeww. She makes a face and states that it looks like he died from ingesting it. She guesses that he did all the painting and then drank the rest of it. Just then Skinner walks in with an Asian-looking woman, to whom he directs, “See what you can make of all this.” Then he asks Mulder and Scully, “Modell?”

Scully points out that the paint (actually “Gulf Breeze” brand, my mistake) is Cerulean Blue. Skinner wants to know the point of all this. Scully explains, as Mulder chews his lip pensively in the background, that it could be because the victim, Nathan Bowman, was the man who prosecuted him back in 1996.

The Asian woman interrupts the discussion to announce that it's not a manifesto, just the same ideogram over and over. It's sloppy, but it says, “ 'kitsunegari' - 'fox hunt.'”

Mulder raises his eyebrows slightly, and Scully wryly exposits, “Fox Mulder.” No, really? Wait, you mean Mulder's first name is Fox? And Pusher has some sort of agenda against him?? WHEN DID THIS HAPPEN?? Sorry, I just think that scene would have been a lot more subtle if they'd just shown Mulder and Scully getting it, without trying to make sure we weren't too stupid to do the same.

Mulder notices the picture with the fingerprint on it, and asks if Nathan Bowman was married. Scully uncovers his left ring finger, and answers in the affirmative. Skinner, to Mulder: “What are you thinking?” Mulder doesn't reply, of course, but walks over to the phone and sees that one of the speed-dial numbers is listed as “Linda office”. He surmises that it's the wife, then dials the number.

Upon learning that Mrs. Bowman is out to meet with a client, he asks who. “It's, uh, Mr. Fox Mulder,” says the secretary. Scully quietly says, since she's apparently stuck with the exposition for this scene, “It's him.” Skinner tells him to find out where. When he hears that it's a commercial property in Falls Church, Skinner gets the Falls Church PD on the phone.