Murph took a sip from his stained coffee mug and set it down on his desk, grimacing. After thinking for a moment, he burst into speech. "He can shoot fire from his hands."
"The new guy. The Doc just hired him. He can shoot fire from his hands. That's his power. And call me Murph. Everyone else does."
Hector Murphy, a normally jovial man in his early 30s, was somewhat less than jovial at the moment. Leaning toward the man with the camera sitting next to him in his poorly-lit office, he sighed and resumed speaking.
"Strictly, I'm told, it isn't fire. It's a sort of barely-visible ectoplasm that emanates from his hands. The ectoplasm, however, is highly flammable, which of course he discovered on accident while trying to light a cigarette, drunk." Murph pulled a partly crumpled pack of Marlboro Reds from his shirt pocket, winced and dropped them back in. Overhead, the ceiling fan began to creak a little annoyingly, but the crew would be able to remove that back at the station. The reporter sat silently and let Hector Murphy collect himself, recorder still rolling.
"Fortunately," Murph continued, "the asshole is completely immune to fire as well. He discovered that, I'm told, at almost exactly the same time." He couldn't quite suppress a grin, but he did his best.
"Yeah. So he was just fine afterward, even though the burning ectoplasmic emission was covering his face and burning at probably a few hundred degrees. The 'plasm evaporates on its own if he's not consciously maintaining it, though, so everything was fine. However, he made the mistake of drunkenly covering himself in flames, then being completely unharmed, in a public park. At about 4 PM."
This time, Murph took the pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, fished one out, and lit it. After smoking for a moment, he continued.
"Well, of course Endgame, Inc. called him up. We've been looking to expand. And what do you know - rather than get slammed for indecent exposure, he let the Doc and I pull some strings with the D.A. in exchange for signing on with us... at what you might call a bargain-basement price."
"Hang on, Murph, hang on." The reporter spoke up. "Indecent exposure?"
Murph raised his eyebrows, took a final drag, and put his cigarette out in the well-used ashtray before turning back to the camera, letting the pause wear on. "Well, the guy's clothes weren't fireproof, obviously."
"...Ah."
"Yeah. So Endgame's been training him. Fitted him with some custom-designed electrical actuators. Actually... the way they did it was rather funny." Murphy chuckled, and leaned back, looking up at the ceiling fan, remembering. "They just gave him the actuators. Put them in the palms of his hands. They said 'Here, buddy. These will help you ignite your ectoplasm.' and left him locked in a room for a while while he figured it out."
"Wow. Kind of a brutal hazing ritual, isn't it?"
"Well, there's nothing like it to teach a fellow how to use his power. Trap him in a room and just let him fuck around with it, out of the public's sight, unable to harm anyone or himself. If they get furious and start throwing a fit in there? Most do, so much the better. They can use that to focus their ability. It never takes long; it's largely instinctive."
Murphy stopped leaning back, put his hands on the arms of his chair, and looked at the camera earnestly. "I know it sounds a little fucked up, but Endgame doesn't do it this way to be assholes. We do it this way because it gets results." He lit another cigarette. "And we don't start the process, of course, until they've signed. Signed away any right to complain about it, that is." He chuckled sourly. "It's in the fine print."
"For a mutant like me, it's not so bad, but for ol' Kurt, it was quite painful. You see, he could figure out how to emanate the ectoplasm... and he figured out how to activate the actuators... but he couldn't figure out how to apply force to the flames." Murph made an effort not to chuckle, but one came out anyway, gritty and full of lung-noise. He coughed a couple times, hard, doubling over.
"Alliteration, wonderful; always nice to have a comedian in the interview." the reporter commented with dry amusement. "So... he torched himself with his own ectoplasm trying to figure out how to throw it."
Murph recovered, a smile touching his lips as he straightened up in his chair. "Oh, only a couple hundred times he torched himself, before he managed to launch a fireball at the wall a couple times and they let him out."
"OK. Look, Murph, you seem like a really solid guy. I'm sitting here interviewing you and I've gotta say, this relatively unbiased reporter can tell you're a good sort. And I've read your crew's past record. The city's lucky to have people like you on the other end of the big red phone. But this question has to be asked: Why do you hate this guy so much?"
Murphy winced awkwardly, his amusement visibly fading. He reached over, took another sip of his coffee, and began to answer, looking a bit shamefaced. "Look, Farsight..." he began. He set his coffee cup down again. "It's not that I hate him, exactly. Let me say that I hate what he represents as far as the future of this company."
"I'm not sure I follow."
"Well... do you know why they keep me on the payroll, here?"
"Can't say I came across that information during my research, Murph. Where are you going with this?"
"Humor me. Just gimme that camera, will you?"
Reporter Farsight handed over the vidcorder, a look of confusion on his face, and also a wordless message to Murphy that the recorder didn't catch, in his eyes. This better be good, we're live. Murph caught it just fine, though, and he nodded back. It would be.
Murph ran his hands over the vidcorder's shape, holding it between his knees, pointing the camera toward the floor. He seemed to be just observing its form, noticing the few dents on the metal matte gray housing. He closed his eyes.
"I can tell you a lot of things about this vidcorder," Murph began. "I can tell you its model. This is a Dakrom 540. It's been customized with an aftermarket wide-angle lens. It was built six years ago, at the factory down in New Farnston."
Farsight leaned forward with some interest, off camera but still on record. The red light still blinked in the telltales at the back. "OK, Murph, that's true, but all that stuff is pretty easy to know if you know your cameras. This isn't exactly top-secret equipment."
"I'm not done, Reporter, be patient." Murphy interrupted, his eyes still closed, learning more. After a few moments of silence, he resumed speaking. "You are the third person this camera has been assigned to. You have had it the longest. The first thing you ever recorded with this camera was a parade. You routinely let this camera sit perilously close to the little coffee maker on your desk. It's a bad idea, Reporter. I'd move that coffee maker as soon as you get back to the news station. If you manage to spill coffee on this and you wreck it, the producer - ahhh, the producer. Jessie. Jessie will have your ass. You'll be stuck covering high school basketball games for months." He grinned, irrepressibly. Murphy liked this part of his job, obviously.
The reporter for THENEWS.9 found himself with nothing to say. The man holding his vidcorder continued, his tone slightly sharper. "Don't date Jessie, by the way. She's trouble, and I am not just saying that because she's your boss."
The reporter made a quiet noise of alarm. This was not going in any good direction; he reached out and gently took the vidcorder back. Hector Murphy opened his eyes and came out of his trance, a knowing look of satisfaction on his face as he let the recorder go. "Don't date her," he mouthed seriously before the vidcorder was back in position.
"Hector Murphy, or 'Murph' as he prefers to be called, has just demonstrated the ability that keeps him hired at the mercenary firm Endgame, Inc. - This reporter assures the audience that everything he ... detected... while holding the vidcorder was completely accurate." His voice lost a bit of formality as he went on hastily. "Uhhh, excepting, of course, Hector Murphy's statement that this reporter's producer, Jessie, is 'trouble.'" Live TV... Farsight thought to himself. He sighed inwardly.
"So, Murph... you can touch objects and know about them?"
"Know them, Reporter. I touch objects and know them."
"That's fairly incredible, Murph. If you're any indication, you guys are certainly worth the money."
Again, Murph grinned. "It is, and we are, and I know you want to know why I hate Kurt -- oh, excuse me, I guess I should use his handle -- operative named 'Mister Burns' -- so much. It's simple."
His grin faded. "Our newest guy can throw fire from his hands. We can also field an operative that can just dissolve solid objects by touching them. Tanks are not a problem for Sizzle. Capture is not a problem for Sizzle. And, yes, her reaction time is so good that indeed bullets are not a problem for Sizzle.
We have available multiple six-operative teams of crack-shot normals with ordnance ranging from critical-range extreme-lethality Disaster Cannons, to fully automatic laser rifles with an effective range of over six miles. We usually field along with these teams one mutant who serves as the 'communicator' - he or she binds them together psychically, allowing for seamless, effective action across the entire arena of engagement, taking place under cover of total audio and radio silence. Lately this operative usually also carries the bazooka, for when tact fails."
He took a deep breath. "Sometimes they come back, and they bring me a piece of something metal. Sometimes it's still hot. And they say, 'Here, Murph. Tell us who this belonged to... we need to inform next of kin.' That's some very vital shit you're having me do, guys, I appreciate it. Maybe someday you'll let me go out to the field and tell you who has been watering the plants."
He coughed noisily, into his fist. Rattling. Farsight sat, a little stunned yet by the revelations his vidcorder had offered to his mutant interviewee. He recognized good TV, though, and this was good TV. The recorder rolled as Murph resumed speaking, looking into the lens once again.
"The direction of Endgame, Inc. appears to have changed. We're still doing our very best for our clients' dollars, as is our policy, and we do minimize collateral damage. I'm not saying we're getting sloppy. I'm saying... it seems that I, personally, have a critical shortage of exploding blood or psychic missile diversion abilities. This shortage has kept me out of play."
"As one of the founding members of Endgame, Inc., I am, I feel, understandably bitter."
Murph leaned over, took a drink of his coffee, grimaced, and set the mug down where it was, on the corner of the cluttered desk. "We done here, Farsight?"
They were done.
