WANTED

Mutations that can help solve mysteries.

Our renowned private investigations agency is interested in the following:

-Being able to see the future
-Being able to see the past
-Being able to see the present
-Telepathy
-Enhanced Olfactory abilities
-Astral projection

People with mutations that can be harmful to your coworkers or destructive to private property whether due to lack of control or any other reasons need not apply.

If you fill these requirements, please give a call to the following numbers or visit us at...

The ad went out on newspapers for three days only and Harlan was interested to see how many REAL mutants would show up in that time frame. He expected to end up with more phonies than real deals by the end of the day, but this was only a test to see if this approach was viable. He didn't know how may psychics lived in New York or if they'd be interested in this sort of work, but it was worth a shot. Just like he was interested in taking up 'mutant cases' he was also interested in working with mutants, depending on how useful their skills were.

Ellie, his lovely receptionist (just as long as you didn't call her Penny Mae) had been instructed to let any candidates answering the ads to show up by his office, where Harlan waited patiently for his fishnets to come up with the catch of the day.

Little did Harlan know, his 'fishnets' would land a Fish. The redhead pickpocket had seen an interesting ad in the paper, and figured it would at least be worth looking into. Hey, in his mind, he could not only make money off of this, but it would also be a good way to hone and train his powers. Not that he planned on letting his possible employer in on that last little tidbit.

Since the young man didn't have a phone, he decided to head to the address, dressed in his usual denim jacket, tee shirt and jeans combo. His hands were wearing their usual bandage and glove, and his hair was for once neatly combed, parted down the middle.

Stepping inside, Ty approached the receptionist and held out the newspaper ad. "I'm here about the job?" he said as politely as he could while trying to hide his underlying unprofessional Southern accent.

A small light on his desk phone lit up as Harlan was reviewing some cases in his computer he hadn't had any progress with. One of them was a small bank which had been the target of thieves that made the local cops suspect it was the work of a mutant. The bank didn't hire Harlan's agency, opting to let the police handle it, but the insurance company did. Ever since he had let his contacts and regular clients in different banks, law firms and insurance companies know he was taking 'mutant' cases, he'd get a call from them whenever 'something out of the ordinary' popped up.

One of his hands flew off his wrist and pressed the speaker button on his phone as he talked.

"Yes, Penny Mae?"

"You have a visitor interested in that ad of yours and my name is not Penny Mae."

"Splendid. Have him come in" he said, ignoring her corrections like he always did.

The visitor would be pointed to the end of the hallway where Harlan's office was. The detective wore a white, long sleeved shirt, his tie was loose and the blue suit jacket was on the back rest of his desk chair. He quickly popped his hand back to his wrist, pulled the hems of his shirt to hide the lines in them and prepared to meet the newcomer, hoping he wasn't the first fraud to step into his office today.

Of course he'd be pointed somewhere else. Of course Ty didn't expect to walk in and instantly be told yay or nay. That was too easy. But oh well, if he got the job, it would help with both his money issues and his powers. If not, well...if not he totally wasted his time.

Hands stuffed in his jacket pockets, his right hand closed around a brand new bottle of aspirin. That, he knew he was going to need. Making his way down the hall, he found himself getting a little nervous, knowing he couldn't have looked all that professional. Knocking on the door felt weird, but he was trying to make a good impression--even if he did his usual goofy rhythm with the knock. He stepped inside, approaching the man at the desk and putting the ad in front of him.

"Ty Fisher. I'm here to see about the job."

"Harlan Crowe. I'm here to see what you've got" he said, extending a hand attached to his arm. He wasn't fond of creeping people out as soon as he met them. "Have a seat"

He glanced back at the ad Ty brought, remembering what they had asked of the applicants, so he was quick to cut to the chase.

"You do realize that we won't just take your word for granted and some experimentation needs to be done in order to verify that whatever mutation you claim to have is real" he said, just so if he were a phony, he'd know he wouldn't have it easy. Behind Harlan's desk there were some trinkets, carefully selected and prepared to do tests with, like the small MP3 player Harlan definitely intended to play later on and then throw out the window. It was designated to test those who could claim to see the future.

"So, what is it that you can do exactly and what are your limitations with it?"

Ty sat down, looking at the man who called himself Harlan. Man, he went right to the point, didn't he?

"Basically, if I touch something, I can see its past. Drawbacks are it gives me headaches and I seem to only be able to use it on a specific object once." And I can't exactly control it, but you're going to help with that.

At the thought of a test, Ty smiled, despite being partially nervous. Perfect. "Sounds reasonable, I guess," Ty replied removing his hands from his pockets, taking the glove off of his right hand and pocketing it, then unwrapping his left hand, trying to relax because he had a theory that his powers worked better that way.

When Mr. Fisher described what he could do, Harlan raised an eyebrow. That was quite a claim the young man made and it was difficult to believe. He'd expect someone with such a talent to have exploited it enough to make a decent living, but the man's looks didn't seem to match Harlan's expectations. Maybe the headaches he got were quite impairing, enough for him not to abuse his gift or he was simply the first phony of the day. Nevertheless, the private eye had a trinket prepared for the ocasion.

They had decided to look for people with specific skills and prepared for each of these, so psychometry was no exception. Harlan turned his chair around and when he turned it back towards Ty, he had a small box in hand. He opened the box and there was a lighter inside, quite the recent acquisition, so it didn't have much history besides its own making at the factory.

It was easy to assume that the lighter had been used to light a cigarrete, a candle or a fire and that would have been the easiest way to determine if the applicant was a fraud. In reality, the device had never been used to light anything. Harlan had taped it to his forehead last night and slept with it placed between his hairline and his eyebrows the whole night through. He cleaned it and his forehead from any traces of tape or glue the next morning. It would take a mutant who could see the past to know what he had done with it, since the odds of someone taking a wild guess and nailing it were infinitesimal.

"Very well. I didn't know any of the applicants would have drawbacks like headaches or such, and I didn't prepare for that, so if you'd rather not do this, feel free to back down. However, if you are up to it, I have this little object here and I would like you to tell me what I did with it last night" he said, keeping his tone as neutral as possible while looking at Ty straight into his eyes, to see if he was trying to cold read him or get any clues from eslewhere.

Harlan then placed the box in his desk and with a wave of his hand, he gave permission to Ty to pick up the lighter and do his thing.

Ty nodded, listening. He didn't come all the way here just to back down now. He knew his power gave him headaches. The thing about training was, it wasn't always pretty. The young man had to snort at the phrase 'what I did with it last night,' but aside from that and a small chuckle, he managed not to giggle immaturely.

Ty's smile calmed when he saw it was a lighter. Okay, that wasn't as bad. His body relaxed and he took deep breaths as he reached for the small object. His hand enclosed around the lighter, and when it made contact with his palm...

~Bought from the store, then taped to Harlan's forehead, then...wait...the man was sleeping, and his head popped off, after that he woke up, got dressed, cleaned the lighter and put it in a box.~ Okay that was....weird. Ty had to chuckle, and the headache that came with it was barely an annoying buzz. He shook his head at the absurdity of the vision.

"Wow...So...tell me. Does your head always pop off or is it just when you sleep with things taped to your forehead? Really?" Ty asked, chuckling softly to hide the fact that it was mildly creepy. But somehow kind of cool. And yet really freaky. But in a weird way, awesome...

Harlan raised an eyebrow... oh wait, no, he raised BOTH eyebrows this time around. Ty not only had known what he had done with the lighter, he also knew about his head rolling to one side of the bed while his body rolled to the other. He eventually woke up, put himself together, then fell right back asleep, but this sort of thing was one of the nuisances that sometimes happened in his life as a mutant.

"I'm impressed" he admitted. "I'm seriously impressed. Not just about the taped lighter, but about the head. Many people know about my... condition, but I've rarely told anyone about the sort of mishaps that having a detachable head brings in bed. You should have seen me the first few days, when I was still getting used to sticking it firmly to my neck. Let's just say I didn't like sneezing all that much back then" he said, instinctively rubbing his temple.

He turned his swivelling chair towards the computer screen now as he kept asking Ty some questions. "Would you say you have a size limit to the objects you touch? Does an object's age affect you in any way? How many objects in a day can you touch without going down with a major headache?..."

As he talked, his cursor moved back to the files he had been looking at. He had been working closely at first with a friend of his in the police precinct, who had shared the video feed from the security camera and the pictures his department had taken of the crime scene, but as soon as they suspected the case involved a mutant, they moved it to the MRC unit and he'd lost track of it. If he wanted them to share information, he'd have to give some of his own as well, since sharing worked both ways and so far, he had zip, zilch, nada.

Not for long though. Mr. Fisher here could easily tip the scales in his favor.

"By the way, how willing would you be to leaving this office behind and putting your wonderful talent to the test with a real life, unsolved case?"

Ty chuckled slightly. "And I thought I had some issues," he murmured. Well, it was obvious that the joke he cracked was also meant to serve as extra-credit, proving without a doubt that Ty was in fact, legit.

"I would guess size doesn't matter as long as it's not a tree or something. The older the object is, the more I have to see. The more I have to see, the greater the headache. I don't know, but I once used my power on a stick and an old pocketwatch in a few hours and I passed out for a minute." He shrugged, trying to remember all he could and figure out the details just as Harlan was.

Ty didn't have to think so much about the next question. "Does it count as a job?" Ty asked, raising his eyebrow. "Though I am interested. Can't say I've used my abilities in this sense before."

Though he worried that Ty's headaches could limit him somewhat, he was pretty sure that the man's assistance could be incredibly valuable in his line of work. He would have to be selective and try not to have him touch old relics, but a bank vault seemed like something the man could handle.

"You haven't used them like this before? Well, I figure it's one of the most obvious ways of using it, unless you're considering industrial espionage. And yes, this is a job, though more of a 'test run' than a real job. You'll get paid for your services if it delivers useful information that can move the case forward. You should look at it as a 'one-shot', on the side sort of job and not a monthly salary one, but that's better than nothing, right? If things work out well enough, we could be talking payroll" Harlan said as he got up from his chair and started to put on his coat. As he did, he started debriefing Ty on what they had to do.

"I get handed some cases where things get a little weird and mutants are suspected. There was a bank heist recently where the perpetrators, shall we say... used unconventional ways of opening safety deposit boxes?" he said as he grabbed and pocketed his car keys.

He urged Ty to follow him out of his office and towards the parking lot, but as he did, he kept asking him questions, which was typical of him: "So, how have you used your abilities before? Are you employed? Do you have any other talents I should know about?"

Ty listened carefully, nodding as he processed the information. "Nah. I mean it's helped me figure some things out before, but I don't exactly hire myself out to investigators often. I'm currently unemployed, and I figured this would be a good thing to do on the side, if everything works out."

Standing up, he followed his potential boss, weighing what they were investigating. It sounded interesting, and even though his girlfriend had once told him he didn't seem like the investigator type, he thought it could be fun. Though judging as how he was going to be on the right side of the law for once, a small part of him was kind of starting to hate himself.

"Special talents? Not really. But I was into urban exploration some years back, so if you ever need to chase somebody down I can prolly catch, em," he answered with a small shrug, grinning. "My powers I've only really used however it suited me at the time. Though there was this one time it accidentally kicked in on a stick. That was interesting..."

They traveled on Harlan's car on the way to the bank. During the trip, Harlan managed to get in contact with the manager to let him know he was on his way and he also let Ty look at the pictures the cops had shared with him, as he put him up to speed.

"Those pieces of plastic and metal on the floor? That's the security camera. The video feed shows the last second of filming and you can see bits of it flying off everywhere, blown to pieces, before getting cut off. The cops found no bullet and it doesn't look like it got hit by a blunt object" he said as he took glimpses of the pictures Ty had on his hands while trying not to lose focus on his driving.

"The perpetrator entered through the roof. Whoever did this managed to 'pop' open locks from the safe deposit boxes and from the top door. The inside of some of the locks were bent a little, enough for those not to work anymore and the key that opens the top door no longer can do so, so the thief managed to violently move the inside of the locks somehow. That made the cops suspect they were dealing with a mutant, since they found no traces of explosives anywhere, but what clinched it was the alarm box..." he said, waiting for Ty to get to the picture of the box that had been smashed in.

"You'd think someone took a hammer to it, but if you look closely, you won't notice a round shape like most hammers have. See those dents on top? That small, rectangular-ish shape? That's not the shape of a hammer's head, the dents are knuckles and that's a fist. The same fist that smashed in the rest of the boxes, so the cops are suspecting a super strong mutant who has some sort of 'violent magnetism' power, since the locks are metal and the camera has metal parts, but I have a different theory" he said, now pausing for effect. "You rarely ever see that sort of mutant combo. Super strength and magnetism? No, mutation usually pushes a person down a specific path and those two don't seem to match, unless... there were two mutants."

It made perfect sense. One mutant delicately popped locks open and the other was a musclebound oaf who got tired of waiting around and smashed the rest of the safety deposit boxes in. The approach almost implied the genders of the mutants but that was inconclusive. It could perfectly well be a she-bear and a magnetic dude and there was no way of telling... until now.

"What do you think?" he asked, not really expecting much since Ty was just now looking at the pictures instead of having them for days like Harlan had. "If you touch the case where the safety deposit boxes were in, can you see the mutants?"

Ty chewed his lip, looking at the pictures, taking in the damage and trying to get his brain to process all the information. This was new; it was like Harlan had a handful of pieces to the puzzle, and what he had seemed to fit together. "So my job is to find the missing pieces to your puzzle and put it together..." he murmured, studying the picture of the box. He couldn't help but think some of the damage looked familiar, especially after Harlan said the word 'explosives.' No...it couldn't be...could it?

Wait, actually yes it could, that was very likely that his suspicions were correct. But if they were he'd be faced with a choice. He just prayed it wouldn't go that route. Then he said something about magnetism and Ty inwardly released a sigh of relief. Maybe that was it.

"Yeah. If I were to touch that case I'd see not only your mutants, but I'd see every granny and every prick in a suit that ever used those safety deposit boxes," he answered with a smirk.

Harlan was glad that Ty was quickly getting it, but when he mentioned being able to see every single person going to check on the safety boxes he frowned a little. "Best not tell that to the bank manager" he said, thinking that permission to enter the vault and mess around in such a way with the privacy of their clients could be revoked. "I'm hoping getting that load of information doesn't give you too massive a headache" he added. For anyone who heard him say that it might have seemed like he cared, but in reality he was hoping to use Ty on several objects if the first didn't pan out any results and headaches could hinder them greatly.

When they arrived to the bank, Harlan talked to the manager and explained to him a little what they intended to do. The manager was pretty neutral about the whole thing as he led them to the vault, but Harlan kept a friendly and positive attitude that this could yield results. They had already prepared the vault for their visit and the detective was quick to pester the manager with questions.

"Have you got a list of what was taken yet?

"Well, they left a terrible mess and most of the contents in the boxes is private, so it's difficult to sort out. We DO know of some things they took though and it might not have been that much, but the list is not complete."

Harlan turned to Ty, trying to put him up to speed on his suspicions.

"The mutant or mutants didn't take much, leaving a whole lot of money and valuables around, but they did have the time to burn something. I think they weren't that interested in stealing from the place, but on destroying evidence or something important from one of the boxes"

"They stole a ring among other things. The owner reported it missing when we contacted her and it does show up on our records."

Harlan clapped his hands.

"Hah! I told you, didn't I? I told you!" he said to the manager, who actually responded with a small smirk. The detective once again tried to put Ty up to speed.

"I not only suspect there were two mutants, but I've had an inkling feeling that they're not just mutants and friends, but they're also..." Harlan said, making a hand motion to the manager to finish the sentence, which he did.

"...Lovers as well."

Harlan smiled. "A heist is usually a job people plan over with folks you trust. You don't just rob a bank along with a guy you've just met! If the bank was stolen by a duo, however, it makes me wonder, what's the one person people usually trust the most?"

"A lover?" the manager asked, well aware that was the answer Harlan expected.

"A lover" he confirmed. "There's money and valuables all over the place and it gets left alone but a ring gets stolen? I bet the girl took it. Or the guy to give it to the girl. Or the guy to give it to the guy or the girl to the girl if... you know, but any way you see it, there's passion in the mix and an attraction to glitter."

They reached the vault and entered it in the company of two security guards. The large box of twisted metal that held the safety boxes was still there, but other than that, the whole place was clean and all the boxes had been removed. The manager then addressed Harlan.

"The police will be taking this away this week to their lab, but if your... uncommon approach can give you quicker results, then I see no harm in trying it."

"I hope so as well" Harlan replied. "I wouldn't be surprised if my friend here sees this couple working on your box. It just makes sense that they planned this together. Over several nights. Intimately plotting, for the adrenaline rush and the thrills, like a mutant version of Bonnie and Clyde. Love at first crime."

He then urged Ty to touch the twisted metal frame and do his magic.