Chapter 6: 6 Gathering

The three of them met at Luke's parents' home. It was a large single-family house in the suburbs. His parents were relatively wealthy, with his father working as an Engineer for an aerospace company and his mother as a chemist in the laboratory of a major pharmaceutical company. Both of them were quite busy, so the house was taken care of by the housekeeper, who is pleased that the boy has finally found friends to play with. Finally, it is not study alone that man lives.

Currently they were sitting in Luka's room, trying not to shout at each other too loudly.

"From the beginning I didn't like this intervention in crimes, you were only supposed to monitor them, not prevent them, now potential enemies know of our existence." Luke said, while adding 6 sugar cubes to his cup of tea.

"He was only supposed to observe them! It's obvious that we should help if we can!" Exclaimed Richard. "Why should we do it if we can't be involved!"

"It's my fault, I should have been more vigilant, he surprised me." Replied a despondent Philip. "But here I agree with Richard, why did we start this if we don't want to help?"

"Of course I want to help, but first we need information, as a ninja you should know best how much intelligence is worth." Luke countered. "But let's get it over with, shouting at each other won't help us anything, the fact is that through this we also succeeded in gathering some information. Are you sure that no one saw you?"

"Yes, I made sure there were no cameras in the alley before I moved. Besides, it was dark and the smog from the chimneys made the area more dense."

"That's good, if the people out there know what's good for them too, they won't want to go out on a limb. I'll follow up on this news descent. Now let's summarize what we have: There are probably two groups of people who use extraordinary abilities. The first is a person who can control people's minds to some degree and give them orders. The second is the boss of the man you fought with. Although we can't exclude the possibility that they are not one and the same person, for now it is safer to assume otherwise. They both use crime to get rich and probably train their powers. As for this guy, for ease of reference, let's call him Archer. His physical abilities are not impressive, but he can enhance them using unknown energy. He can summon weapons from nowhere and infuse them with the same energy, which is probably how he did the exploding arrow. He is well trained in hand-to-hand and ranged combat and has keen eyes that can quickly locate an opponent. I want to create classifications of people with powers. At the moment, we don't have a lot of targets to compare, but I will temporarily give him a grade of S, where I would put myself at E and the two of you around B+/A-. This is just a preconception, I'll need more information for a full database."

"Hey, don't judge me as this pimped out guy, I'm sure I would have done better!"

Here Luke stopped for a moment to sip his tea, completely ignoring Richard, before continuing. "The key point is that Archer wasn't a child, although I think we can't make hasty conclusions on that basis. I can think of 13 answers to this state of affairs. For example, the Henge no Jutsu that Philip teaches us could have caused this. So too, none is more likely than another. Anyone want to add anything?"

"What about Philip's injuries? We can't go to the hospital if we want to avoid all the questions."

"Although I'm not a medic and it will take some time, but I can heal myself by channeling the chakra in the body properly. I told my parents that I will stay here tonight so they won't see anything, by tomorrow I won't have marks on my body. The question is what are we planning next?"

"We will continue to gather information. Since each of us will soon be going to a different school, I propose to continue our conversations via IM. Later I will send you an application that should not be tracked in any way, but just in case we will talk in a cipher, learn it." Luke handed everyone a dozen pieces of paper.

"What a headache..." Sighs Richard.

"I won't forbid you to intervene, but I would ask you to make sure no one knows about you every time." Luke continued, pulling out a white board and writing out the subpoints. "As for long-term plans, at this point I distinguish three most important aspects: increasing individual strength, acquiring resources - which can be divided into: money, contacts and informants - as well as finding and recruiting talented individuals - I assume that not everyone will want to become criminals. Are you interested in anything specific? I will be focusing on the second point - resources."

"Recruitment is my specialty, finally, I was once the captain of my own ship!" Exclaimed a self-satisfied Richard.

"I'll stay with getting information in the field. Besides, I'll write down the techniques I remember for you to learn." Philip replied.

"Okay then, we have made initial plans. Now if you'll excuse me, my parents will be back soon, so we have to go. They want to send me to a private school for the exceptionally talented, so I have to pretend to study a lot..."

...

"Okay then, someone tell me why I was dragged out of bed at this hour?" Frank asked the question, yawning.

He was currently in a conference room at CIA headquarters in Langley. FBI agents are unlikely to be invited here often, he thought. Next to him sat two more people, a man and a woman, but much younger than him.

Frank himself was a middle-aged black man with balding hair. Both of his cheeks were scarred from being shot. It looked as if a bullet had entered one and exited the other. He was dressed in a black coat and jeans.

"I think it's about that video of..." The man next to him started to say, but the woman covered his mouth.

"Shut up, we were not supposed to say anything!"

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"But..." His next statement was also interrupted this time by the sound of the door opening.

"Good evening everyone." Said the older man as he entered.

An elegant woman with Asian features walked in behind him, she looked to be younger, but Frank knew it was a tyke's deception. She is the same age as him. Of course Frank recognized these pair. Dominic Redmond the current director of the CIA, and Nazeeha Pearce, his ex-wife and CIA analyst (and really an agent).

"Let me introduce everyone first." Dominik replied to Frank's inquiring gaze.

It appeared that the younger couple next to him were Jonathan Rees an NSA analyst and PhD Lexie Mills a consultant and MIT graduate.

"Well the incredible crème de la crème of society has gathered here, but for what?" Frank yawned again, saying.

"I'm just back from a meeting in the Oval Office." Started Dominik "At the discussion we talked about a certain video posted on YouTube..."

"The president has started watching Youtubers? I can recommend him some interesting channels, but he could have just waited until the morning!" Joked Frank, interrupting the statement.

"Yesterday at 6:49 PM a video of a birthday party was sent to the service... Mr. Pearce please do not interrupt. Ekhem. The video was of course initially ignored until Mr. Rees brought it to his attention. Can you say what motivated you?"

"Well, because... I..." Rees began, stammering. "I mean... over a month ago I was interested in the fire arson in Central Park. As you know, 1/10th of it burned down at the time, and the cameras did not register any perpetrators. The most popular conclusion of the investigators, which was rejected at the time because of how absurd it sounded, was that the fire was breathed. Although it seems impossible, all traces did not point to anything else." After he got going, he began spitting out words with machine-gun speed. "After I saw the video I recalled it, and then I dug into the original and checked the authenticity of the recording. When I tentatively confirmed that my analysis made sense, I went to my boss with it..."

"And so a storm was unleashed that woke you up Mr. Pearce." Dominik concluded. "The NSA told to get the material and analyze it again. At that point it was already in the possession of the New York Police Department as evidence in the case of an explosion on one of the streets, so the authenticity was confirmed by several independent groups. By that time, every intelligence agency had begun to interfere, until the case was taken over by the president. Before we go any further you'd probably like to see what we're talking about, Jonathan, if you'd be so kind..."

At this point Frank was amazed at the absurdity of the situation. A simple YouTube video had touched all the major intelligence agencies and reached the president. I wonder how many subscriptions the author will get?

At this point, the material was played off the screen in the room. At first glance, it presented nothing significant. Just a family celebrating their son's birthday, singing a happy birthday, and then the kid blows out the candles from the cake. Probably even the author wouldn't have uploaded it to the Internet, if not for the ending, where suddenly a flash of light can be seen through the window, and then a big boom is heard. However, a careful eye can see the reflection in the mirror, which happened to be facing the window. Here you can clearly see a person blowing a huge fireball in the middle of the street. Probably in someone's direction. The strange thing was that the moment the fire appeared was without any sound, and the blast didn't happen until half a minute later, when it was completely dark.

"We processed the material to make the scene as clear as possible, but we didn't get anything else. There was smog outside the window, which darkened the image even more. However, this one scene seems to be authentic. Police investigators deployed on the blast discovered several clues that suggest a "shooting" had taken place. Of course, witnesses did not hear any shots. A total of 7 holes were found in the buildings suggesting that they were created after some kind of bullet was fired, though so far analysts can't agree on what exactly it was. There are no bullets or shell casings. The blast itself came from an explosion equivalent to the power of a c4, but it was directed enough to leave no damage beyond a hole in the street. Not far from the location, something resembling a shuriken was found in one of the trash cans. We tried to trace its origin, but the specific marks were obliterated. There are also no fingerprints."

As Redmond spoke, photos showing all the information scrolled on the screen.

"All right, I get it, big deal, but so many agencies were already involved, why else me?"

"Well... They all wanted to get their hands on it so the president decided to create a new department to deal with this case and the arson in Central Park, so far at least let's consider them related. Oversight of the new department is temporarily taken over by the CIA, until otherwise stated, and since this is a homeland security matter it was decided to choose someone from the FBI as the head, and Agent Pearce recommended you. The NSA also got a bite because they were the first to take notice, and of course the New York Police Department also wants its own man here, who you will probably meet on the spot. PhD Mills, on the other hand, is a consultant on high-tech matters that we believe could have been used here."

"Holy shit this has no right to work. I'm waiting to see how else the Army will get involved..."

Everyone ignored Frank's comment.

"That's it, you're booked on a flight to New York at 5 AM. If there are any updates you will find out on the spot from the police contact. You don't have much time, disperse!".

As everyone was leaving, his ex-wife, who hadn't spoken a word so far, looked at him and smiled as she walked out.

"Fuck!"

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