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Chapter Text

It was a few weeks after they had both been released from the hospital that Captian Xiao let them know that he had finished setting up his supernatural task force. He wanted to bring the three of them in to meet with the other members, and brief them about and prove their powers and the other supernatural powers they had encountered.
"I will also make it clear to them that you are civilian informants, and that ensuring your safety, mentally and physically, is a top priority. We will also need to work out the terms of compensation for any work you take with us, but that can wait for a later date. Be prepared for questions, but feel free to ask any of your own. I will vouch for you."
"Thank you, Captian Xiao. We will need some time to think things over. When are you proposing that we meet?" Qiao Ling said, her mind already starting to work things out.
"We were hoping next Thursday at 5:30 AM, if that time works for you. I realize it's early, but I figured it would be better to start before both of our workdays to avoid the chance of work getting in the way of our meetings."
Qiao Ling looks around for any objections. Cheng Xiaoshi thinks for a bit and then shakes his head. Lu Guang is scrolling on his phone, presumably checking his calendar, until he looks up and also shakes his head.
"I will see you then. Please contact me if you have any questions or need to reschedule anything." Captain Xiao then heads out.
Cheng Xiaoshi smirks a little as he says "Landlady, make sure you bring your A-game when it comes to negotiating."
"There's only so much we can charge without drawing unwanted attention. Don't get your hopes too high." Lu Guang interjects.
"But the situation is slightly different, isn't it? This is our abilities being used to solve crimes by the police. Surely this is worth more than getting a secret noodle recipe," Cheng Xiaoshi counters.
"The problem isn't how much the service is worth, but how to report the money. We are a small photo shop, if we suddenly brought in a lot of money it would look rather suspicious."
"But we are getting the money from the police. We can be honest about where we are getting the money from rather than needing to report it as a special service of the shop like we usually do, and be limited to how much we can charge based on that."
"A lot of extra money would still draw attention. We still might want to obscure the source of the funding to avoid attracting those who would exploit us. Not to mention that a police task force investigating the supernatural hiring psychics would look bad on their end too if it were made public."
"That's true, but we still should charge more than we usually do, since the jobs might have more risk and importance. We also want to make sure we don't imply that we will take every job. They will still need to go through Lu Guang and me to vet the jobs first. We should also discuss, just amongst ourselves, what we want to do going forward for our regular side business... Do you still want me to try and find other clients? Or should we only do business with the police?"
".... I think we still should. We have been able to help people and pay off part of the debt through this already. Most of the jobs we have taken thus far have not brought us trouble, and I don't want us to be entirely reliant on one client. What do you think?"
"I agree."
"We might want to just give a rough range for an estimate and a method for how we would like them to pay us, with the expectation that we will charge based on each job, with the right to not take any job we do not want to. We will let them know that we will continue seeing other clients for low-stakes missions."
"Sounds like a plan. Thanks, landlady!"

Chapter Text

There were 7 other people in the task force Captian Xiao had gathered, not including Wang Juan, who was still recuperating. It was pretty small, as far as task forces go, but there were likely only so many officers interested in even entertaining the notion of spending their time solving supernatural crimes. Tea and coffee were thankfully available. The trio sat on some chairs near the front of the room. They had decided on their price estimates, key things they wanted to be included in any agreements they made, and also that, for now, Qiao Ling should keep her abilities a secret.

"Are we sure we shouldn't tell them? This ability could be among the most useful of ours for solving crimes or finding missing people."

"I think it's best to initially only tell them about our powers for now, since they would already learn about them from the past cases with Qian Jin and Liu Min. If there is anyone on that team who ends up being untrustworthy, or gets compromised by the use of another person's ability, then it's best to limit the spread of information. The fact that powers can be transferred by death is an especially dangerous piece of information that we don't want falling into the wrong hands."

"We don't know what other abilities we may encounter working with them, so it's best to be cautious about who knows what. I just gained the power recently, so I also think I will need time to perfect my usage of it and what the drawbacks will be like before I try using it with the police. Besides, I suspect they will use us mainly for cold cases where other investigative techniques have already failed, especially at first, so the usefulness of this ability will be less than you are probably thinking."

She had told them a bit about the ability she gained shortly after they returned home. Lu Guang's expression had been indecipherable then and Cheng Xiaoshi had exploded with questions. They spent some time testing things out, but she did not think she was at a comparable place to the two of them. She had tried her power out a few times, but deepening the connection between herself and her target to see what they were thinking and feeling besides surface thoughts was harder the less she knew about them, even if she had a photograph. It also required a lot of focus to keep the connection going for long periods of time. Privately, she had tried to test the powers on some photographs of Cheng Xiaoshi's parents, but it felt like something was blocking her when she did. Until she figured out why that was, she was not inclined to reveal this, or feel confident using her powers.

"We can always tell them later about the power and our reasons for keeping it secret. Given our experiences, I think they will understand."

No one was very happy about keeping secrets, but they agreed that this was the best case for now.

Captian Xiao introduced them and described the events that led to them working together and the recent troubles with Qian Jin and Li Tianchen, passing copies of the relevant case files to the other attendees for them to review. At the end of it, the officers were able to ask questions.

As could be expected, there were many questions. How they had discovered their powers, how far back they could see/jump, if there were any cooldown periods necessary for using their powers, and similar questions. One detective presented a photo on his phone, claiming it was from an old case of his and asking the two to find out who committed the crime shown in the image. The scene was actually a mock crime scene created by that officer, with his family members standing in and helping to create the other elements of the scene, and answering as such, including describing which family members created what elements and the specific words the officer had praised them with while they were cleaning it up helped clear any suspicions of Lu Guang merely being a skilled cold reader. Lu Guang and Cheng Xiaoshi also took a photo a day before the meeting and showed the diving aspect of his powers, though cautioned that due to the inherent risks of this power they were not keen to use it, and that all cases would need to be vetted first, and that only cases that could not be solved through conventional means or Lu Guang's powers being passed on to Cheng Xiaoshi. During this demonstration, officers looked around the room to check for any kind of tricks, and obviously found none.
"Well, I think you have disproven most people's doubts about your powers. Now the only concern is a bit of a background check to see if there are any elements of your past that will complicate investigations or would prevent us from trusting you with certain police materials. We will contact you if we have any further questions."
Lu Guang was not looking forward to this.