“Now here’s a strange phenomeon, Jerry. There has been a recent spike in suits recently and more surprisingly with gray jackets and pants.” The anchorwoman forced a smile at the camera before continuing, hoping she had given the proper amount of suspense. “It seems that a new cult group is buying grey suits to wear. They say there goal is to pass a ball all around the country. Here’s Brett with more details.”

“Thanks, Donna. I’m here right now with a member of the grey suit clan. Dan, can you explain to us what’s going on here?” Brett handed the microphone to the man wearing a gray suit. Dan was slightly overweight; his cheeks sagged a little on the side of his head. He was bald, but had thick eyebrows and excitement in his eyes.

“Well, you see,” he started, “I received a text message a couple of weeks ago that said I had an important job. It was actually pretty specific. It told me that my job was to throw a ball into that park over there. It even said the park by name.”

“And who was that message from, Dan?”

“I have no idea. I just did what it told me to do.”

“Did you ever consider not doing it? Not throwing the ball into the park?”

“Yeah, I guess I did, but part of the message said that if I didn’t do it someone else would. I had nothing better to do, so I did it.”

“So Dan, where did you buy the ball from?” asked Brett.

“Oh, I didn’t buy it. I was standing here when it rolled to me. I picked it up and threw it into that park over there. And then that was that.”

“You didn’t follow the ball?”

Dan stopped to take a deep inhale before continuing, “Well, I did. After I threw it, I walked over to see where it had gone. When I got into the park, there was another guy there who had already thrown it. So I thought, well that’s that.”

“Was he wearing the same gray suit as you?”

“Yes, yes he was.”

“So why the gray suit, Dan?” pushed Brett for one last question.

“Well, that was part of the message. We had to wear a suit and jacket. And it had to be gray. We’ve actually been talking in an online forum and some people have received the same message that I’ve received, they accepted the job, and then they went out without a gray suit. You know what happened? The ball never came to them. It’s only gone to people wearing gray suits.”

“Very interesting, Dan,” said Brett sarcastically. “Is this a new gang on the rise? You can be sure that News Team 5 is going to keep up with this interesting scandal. Back to you, Donna.”

“Thanks, Brett. We would like to note that the forum is real and you can find it at http://www.graysuit.com. Dan wasn’t the only one to get these weird cryptic messages. Seeing as there has been no violence involved, I guess ball’s well that ends well.” Jerry looked at Donna and gave a forced laugh.

Jake turned away from the news program and looked at Chris. He was eating a burger while they were waiting to meet a possible person with abilities.

Chris was interested in the news. He commented, “Weird things going on in this city.”

Jake nodded. He was more interested in the new mutant than anything else. He asked, “What do we know about this guy?”

“Well, he called us, which means it’s probably an easier case. I don’t think he was too specific, he just said that he was having weird sensations and didn’t know what to make of them.”

With that response, Jake’s hopes were shattered. He wanted to meet someone with a cool ability, especially one that he could control. He looked down at the photo that they were given and looked up at the bar. He saw the guy. He hit Chris on the elbow and and nodded towards the slender man at the bar. Chris put his burger down and both of the agents stood up and made their way towards the bar. They grabbed two seats next to the man. Looking at his face, he seemed worried, but his shaking hands showed how nervous he really was.

Chris started, “Hey, Paul, want to go grab a table?”

Hearing someone who knew his name immediately relaxed him. He replied, “Sure. Thank you so much for coming.”

The two agents returned to their booth with their new acquaintance. Chris picked up the conversation again. “So what seems to be the problem?” Jake was already looking for the problem. He saw himself through Paul’s eyes. He felt Paul’s arms tremble lightly, his foot tapping against the leg of the table. Jake didn’t feel anything out of the ordinary physically. He let go of Paul and closed his eyes and folded his hands. He could feel his mental waves going in all directions. He focused them to align with Paul’s. Again, he didn’t recognize anything out of the ordinary. Although Paul did have a stronger mental force than regular humans, it was not nearly as strong as most mutants with mental abilities. Jake opened his eyes and returned to the conversation.

Apparently, Paul had a headache that wouldn’t go away. When he focused on the headache, it got stronger, but was finer. When he didn’t focus on it, the headache hurt less, but moved around his head.

“Has anything, uh, let’s say outside of your body happened because of this headache?” prompted Jake hoping for something interesting. He was really beginning to feel like they were wasting their time with this one.

“Well, a couple of nights ago, before I had the headache, I was trying to fall asleep and I felt something funny. I thought nothing of it, but the next day all of my neighbors were knocking on my door.”

“What happened?” inquired Chris, “What had you done?”

“Nothing!” he yelled and then started to whisper, “I did absolutely nothing. And they weren’t knocking because they were mad. They were knocking in unison. Boom…boom…boom all in the same rhythm. And when I opened the door. When I opened the door, they just stared at me. They didn’t say anything. I looked at them and they didn’t move, so I just said ‘Go away’ and in unison they left. But that’s not even the weirdest part, when I went to leave the building they were all together outside. Waiting for me again. That’s when the headaches started. And the moment that the headache started, they were back to normal questioning why they were outside.”

Immediately, Jake realized why Paul didn’t have the signature mental waves of a normal mental ability. Paul was holding it in so not to use it on anybody. Jake thought for a second like he and Chris might be in trouble and he tried to strengthen his grasp on the people in the bar. If Paul did control them, maybe Jake could get there first in order to prevent any damage. Then, he heard Paul scream.

“Ooooow.” He yelled and all of the bar patrons turned to the table of three. Jake felt a sharp jab in his head and lost his grasp on the customers. He put up his mental shield and looked at Paul. Paul was worried and looking from side to side. The bar patrons were coming closer to the table, their arms in front of them.

Paul yelled, “Don’t get me, get them!” and pointed at Jake and Chris. Paul jumped from his seat and ran to the exit. Jake went to look at Chris, but Chris already had his arms around Jake’s throat. Jake tried to get in his head, but he couldn’t lend his attention to anything but throwing Chris off of him. Now there were even more people surrounding the table. Jake jumped and ran for the exit as well. He saw Paul enter a building and followed him.

Jake yelled up the stairwell, “Paul we can figure this out, don’t run.” Paul didn’t heed the help and continued going upstairs. Jake chased after him.

When he was more than halfway up, Jake heard the door to the roof open and close. Jake ran up and found the door. He opened it as well. There was no Paul in sight, but he did see a shorter man wearing a gray suit. Instinctively, Jake entered the man’s brain. He froze the man and looked around for Paul. If not a half a minute later, Jake heard something that sounded like faucet, but louder and then felt an enormous pain in his head. He collapsed to the ground and grabbed his forehead. He was in tears as he looked to his side and saw that the man with the gray suit also had a bullet wound in his forehead. The man was most certainly dead.

Jake fought hard to stand up to find the assassin but couldn’t. He crawled over to the dead body. Next to him was a phone with a message that told the man to be up at the top of this building and to throw a blue ball to the other side of the building when it came on the roof. Jake looked around for a blue ball but found nothing. A moment later a blue ball came flying up from the street. Jake looked at it, picked it up and threw it over the building and it fell out of sight.

Then, Jake’s phone rang. He looked at it and saw that it was from Prinz. He answered it, “This was just to remind you that I’m here for when you’re ready.” Jake looked around and tried to find someone in a building watching him. He tried sending out mental waves, but it was no use. He would be out of commission for a while.

“You killed an innocent man just so I would join you?”

The voice on the other end answered, “Actually, we just wanted to remind you that you too have weaknesses and that we have found another one.” Jake slammed the phone on the ground and thought about planning revenge for Prinz when he remembered that he was dealing with another mutant before all of this action had happened.

“Paul!” he yelled and looked around the rooftop. From underneath some solar panels came Paul who had witnessed what had happened without knowing what any of it meant. “Paul,” Jake continued, “We can help you.”