::/The Chosen/::
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A/N: Drumroll for me please! Thank you. Because this time (for the first time ever since I first started posting here) I am ABSOLUTELY sure no one will have any kind of problem with this story, because the only actual CID officers I'm using are Vivek, Tasha and Dr. Niyati, with some glimpses of Freddy and Rajat in between.
Also, since there is really nothing at all to bash here, if anyone bothers to bash I will merely have a good laugh at their expense. :)
Hope everyone who reads enjoys (at least a bit)!
Oh, and disclaimer, since apparently it's necessary: I own only the characters you don't recognise from CID, namely the following 6 and a few in the upcoming chapters.
Inspiration credits to Harry Potter and Peeta Mellark (for UV), Leo Valdez and Neville Longbottom (for Vijay), Sherlock Holmes and Luna Lovegood (for Sakhi), Katniss Everdeen and Ginny Weasley (for Naina), Percy Jackson and Ron Weasley (for Mandy) and John Watson and Nico di Angelo (for Sanju).
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Introducing:
UV
Age 20. The resident Spidey (or as the boys privately refer to him, the monkey) of the team- he can climb almost anywhere and jump off considerable heights without injuring himself. Vivek found him while he was trying to escape a pack of goons whose territory he'd mistakenly entered. With his troublemaker charm and poster-boy looks, he's also known as the 'pretty-boy' of the team, and finds undercover operations particularly annoying because of always having to wear dark contacts to hide his brilliant blue eyes. His full name is Udayveer, but no one ever calls him that except Naina whenever he succeeds in exceptionally annoying her.
Vijay
Age almost-21. Looking at him, one wouldn't guess that he can fix (and build) nearly anything and everything mechanical, right down to making entirely new devices for the team to use in their work- which is how Vivek and Tasha find him, tinkering at a garage. In spite of his incredible talent, however, he's known to be the most insecure one in the group, not just because he's a bit socially awkward but also because of the fact that his right cheek is scarred from being slashed some years previously. The only one in the team he really feels comfortable talking to is Sanju, but everyone determinedly keeps trying to get him to open up more (and succeeding more often than not).
Sakhi
Age 20. Known very simply as the brains of the team, Sakhi's department is mainly detection, but she's not a bad fighter when necessary. Vivek and Tasha find her in a library with her baby brother during a case investigation, and she ends up solving half the case for them. An incorrigible bookworm and certified grade-A nerd, she's shy and reticent around strangers but completely and utterly crazy when with her friends. Despite being more 'girly' than Naina, she's got no problem being one of the boys, but sometimes she gets it into her head that no one takes her seriously.
Naina
Age 21. The first thing one generally notices about Naina is her unconventional beauty, but once they see her shoot, all else flies out the window. She can shoot like a huntress, even in the dark, and that's how Vivek and Tasha find her- she shoots down a criminal they're chasing and that too from across the road, at midnight. Despite her beauty she's very tomboyish and doesn't bother much about her looks. UV falls for her almost straightaway, but she doesn't take him seriously because he's a year younger than her and plus she thinks he's too full of himself sometimes. She's also very fast and agile, much like UV himself, and has a deadly temper when aggravated.
Mandy
Age 21 and a half. As goofy and endearingly clueless as he is around his friends, in the face of danger he turns into a complete terror, earning him the nickname 'Hulk' from UV. His specialty is good old-fashioned fighting, from years of fending for himself on the streets. In fact, that's where Tasha finds him- single-handedly battling three goons all at once to save a little boy who was being kidnapped. Being the oldest, he has a tendency to get very protective of his friends, particularly Sanju. His full name is Mandeep, but hardly anyone ever calls him that.
Sanju
Age 18 and a half. Sanju may be the baby of the team, but he's a true prodigy, a technological genius unlike any other. In UV's words, there's barely any technology invented that Sanju can't crack. Out of the six, he's the only one who finds Vivek and Tasha instead of the other way around- overhearing them discussing how to prevent people hacking the CID database, he came up and offered to help. Since then, of course, there was no looking back. Being the youngest in the team, everyone loves him, but he's a little closer to Sakhi than any of the others, though Mandy unofficially takes on the big brother/papa bear role.
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Like most stories that promise adventure, thrill and a good dose of OMG-we're-screwed-what-now, this one started with a knock at the door, one fine Saturday morning.
As usual, this event was followed by a small game of passing-the-parcel, in which the 'parcel' was the responsibility of getting up and opening the door. And as usual, it was UV who started, from where he lay on the floor playing Angry Birds with his legs propped up on the sofa. "Get the door, Mandy."
Across the room, Mandy didn't even bother pausing in his diligent push-ups. "57, 58, get the door, Vijay, 61, 62..."
"I'm kind of in the middle of something here," Vijay retorted without looking up, absently brushing his bangs back from his forehead as he intently scrutinised the gears and screws that lay on the floor in front of him. "Get the-"
"Oh, for goodness sake," Sakhi cut in, shutting her book and setting it aside. "I'll get it." She hopped off the table she had been perched on and went over to open the door. "Vivek sir and Tasha ma'am are here!" she bellowed over her shoulder, and as though a switch had been flicked on in their heads, everyone automatically dropped whatever it was they had been doing and hurried over. Tasha smiled wryly around at everyone. "That always happens, doesn't it."
"Every single time," Sanju emphasised, earning him a surreptitious poke in the ribs from Vijay. Vivek raised his eyebrows at the teenager, who grinned back at him, the very picture of innocence. Indeed, that was what made Sanju such an excellent spy- he never got caught, simply because no one ever suspected that childishly innocent face with its wide dark Puss-in-Boots eyes.
"Right," Tasha said, clapping her hands for attention once everyone had taken their positions. In layman's terms, this meant that Vivek and Tasha sat on the sofa and everyone else just plonked themselves down wherever they could find a comfortable space. "We have a new case." At such an announcement, one would normally expect a group of young college-age people to snap to attention in full seriousness, or ruefully resign themselves to their fate, but not so these six.
"Yes!" Naina cheered, gleefully flinging her arms around Sakhi, who was beaming next to her.
"Finally!" Mandy exclaimed, flailing his hands heavenward and narrowly missing smacking a grinning Vijay in the face.
"Thank goodness, I was beginning to think we'd all grow old here!" UV laughed.
"What's the case?" Sanju asked, leaning forward with his eyes shining in excitement and ears pricked up like an eager puppy.
"Well," Vivek said. "Have you all heard of the recent smuggling cases of drugs and weapons?"
"You mean the one in which the shipping company was accused?" Sakhi asked, and Vivek nodded. "That's the one. We recently got information that the company was actually just a smokescreen, set up to take the fall if the racket was busted."
Mandy blinked. "Uh, Vivek sir, please say that again, only in normal-people language this time because I seem to have lost my copy of Crime Investigation for Dummies?"
(A/N: See what I did there? ;) Yeah, I'm incorrigible when it comes to bad puns. xD)
"He means," Tasha explained, "that the shipping company wasn't really responsible. There's some other power at work here. We suspect the company was involved only at a minor level, and when the whole thing was exposed, they were framed by the real culprit who got away scot-free."
"Meaning the four different cases were all actually masterminded by one and the same person?" Naina wanted to know.
"Person, or people," UV said thoughtfully. He glanced at the CID officers. "Do we have any leads?" he asked, and Tasha nodded. "Yup. There's going to be an exchange tonight at 11." She grimaced. "At the harbour, of all the clichéd places."
"No, really?" Vijay was incredulous, and doubt crept across his scarred face. "Wait, is it just me, or does that seem a little too obvious-slash-convenient?" Across from him, Sakhi shook her head, her brow furrowed. "It isn't just you. I was thinking the same thing." She looked around at the others, and then back at Vivek and Tasha as Vivek spoke up. "Exactly. Which is why we need you kids to do a little scouting."
All six of them exchanged looks, and Sanju was the first to punch the air and whoop. "Disguise time!"
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"Stop, stop, staaaaahp," begged Mandy as UV ruthlessly attacked his bicep with a big black sketch pen, the kind used by kindergarteners. "Sakhiye!" he wailed, holding out his arms to the girl in question with the desperately pleading look of a dying animal. "Save me from this psycho! He can't draw for nuts!"
"Oh, UV, just give me the marker before he bursts a vein," Sakhi said patiently, and UV was only too glad to relinquish the sketch pen to her before rushing off to do his hair. "Right, hold still, Mandy," she instructed, and carefully began to draw a simple yet convincing graphic tattoo design on the painstakingly developed muscles of his right arm.
"Remind me again why I have to be the random drunkard?" Vijay demanded ruefully as Naina held him down firmly in a chair so that Sanju could douse the front of his rumpled, threadbare plaid shirt in 'local-wali daaru', as Mandy termed it, from a bottle Vivek and Tasha had succeeded in nicking from one of their informers. Vijay winced as the pungent alcoholic fumes rose from his chest and smacked him powerfully in the nose. "Guys, just as a general thing... That. Is. Freaking. Disgusting." He punctuated each word with a thump on the arm of the chair to emphasise his point.
Sakhi giggled as she went around Mandy to draw another marker-tattoo on the back of his neck. "Well, look on the bright side, Vijay, this'll probably put you off drinking for the rest of your life." Straightening up, she left Mandy to admire her work and came over to Vijay, coughing slightly as the rather overwhelming stench hit her. Still, she bravely stood over him and ruffled his hair, adding to the drunken-vagabond look. Vijay smiled faintly, his eyes half-shutting. "Keep doing that, it feels nice," he mumbled contentedly, unable to stop himself grinning.
The wit earned him a whack on the shoulder from Naina. "She's not your personal masseuse or something, you chauvinistic dinosaur."
"Hurry up, people!" Sanju called. He stood in the middle of the room, dressed entirely in black, right down to his sneakers. With his dark-chocolate skin, this made him resemble an overgrown panther cub. "We've got less than an hour before Vivek sir and Tasha ma'am expect us at the harbour! Girls!" he rounded on them, his hands on his hips. "Why aren't you ready yet?"
Naina gave him a look, and cocked her gun before slipping it into the holster that hung at her waist. "In case you've forgotten, I'm supposed to come with you, little man." Her hair was French-braided down her back, and like Sanju, she was in black from head to toe.
"And I have to sit in the car and coordinate with all of you, so I think I am ready," Sakhi informed him, holding up an elaborate device that connected all the microphones that would be hidden under everyone's shirt collars.
"Oh, no wonder," Vijay remarked as he slipped the bottle of liquor into his back pocket. "For a minute there, I thought you were going with Sanju too, Sakhi." He indicated her clothes- she was wearing black as well, her hair hanging in a ponytail over her shoulder. "The last thing he needs is two mother lionesses fussing over him," he remarked.
"Lucky we aren't putting his papa bear here with him too," UV said drily, punching Mandy in the shoulder as he passed him. Naina seemed to be having a dreadful time fighting down her laughter- all decked up in his disguise, UV made a very charming fisherman indeed. Too charming, in fact, as Mandy voiced the next minute. "Yaar, no one's going to believe this pretty-boy here is a fisherman." He himself, thanks to Sakhi's handiwork, looked very convincing, with his spiky hair, sunglasses, numerous chains and bracelets, devilish smirk and jeans even more ripped than his newly tattooed muscles. No one would have let their daughters- or even sons, really- anywhere near such a disreputable-looking young man.
Once Sanju had been assured, in increasingly loud voices, that everyone was ready, the six of them piled into the van. It was a second-hand vehicle, a gift from Vivek and Tasha, but Vijay's regular tune-ups made sure it ran as well as any brand-new automobile.
"Sakhi, status update," UV called from the front, where he sat next to Mandy, who was driving. Sakhi, wedged in between Sanju and Naina (Vijay having been banished to the back because no one wanted to smell like stale booze), pulled out her phone. "Tasha ma'am just messaged me. She and Vivek sir are ready, and she's asking if we've left."
"Tell her we'll be there in ten minutes," Mandy said as he turned a corner. The moonlight filtering through the windshield gave his face a ghostly look that was strangely attractive at the same time. Naina, from the back seat, watched the pale light reflect off the blue of UV's eyes for a good several minutes before snapping out of it and mentally kicking herself for even noticing. The next second, however, she jumped nearly a foot off her seat as something occurred to her. "UV!" she hissed, reaching over and tugging frantically at his T-shirt sleeve. "Udayveer!"
"Ouch," Vijay muttered, peering interestedly over Sakhi's shoulder to witness the scene, as UV turned slowly to give Naina a look that gave him a more-than-slight resemblance to a Basilisk in boy form. "What," he said, and Naina made frantic gestures at him. "Lenses!" she growled, and he looked genuinely confused. "You forgot your contact lenses, you nitwitted ninepin!" she elaborated, and he smacked himself on the forehead, swearing loudly.
"I'll say," snorted Mandy, and UV quickly dug around in the pockets of his shorts for the little container which held the dark contacts he desperately needed to hide the brilliant and very conspicuous blue of his irises. "How's that mike coordinator thingy coming, Sakhi?" he wanted to know as he carefully put in the lenses, peering into the rear-view mirror.
"I'm working on it, yaar, have some patience," Sakhi said irritably. "I hope you guys didn't bring the South Indian girl along thinking she's a science whiz. Because I'm not."
"Oh, you mean like how you guys bring the Sardar boy along thinking he's a pro fighter?" Mandy was quick to retort, and Sakhi gave the back of his head a look. "Uh, Mands, you are a pro fighter."
"Point to be noted," UV agreed. "But seriously. Like it isn't bad enough you guys expect the Pahadi guy to do the climbing and all that Spiderman stuff. Even though, admittedly, I actually am the best at it in this team."
"Ey, hello!" Naina barked. "Leave the Rajasthani girl to take charge of encounters thinking she's some Rajput warrior princess, why don't you?"
"None of your problems are any worse than the Bengali kid having to do the cooking. I win," Vijay interjected drily, and Sanju burst out laughing. "OK, we have a clear winner here, guys. But it's OK, Sakhi, I'm on your side. Southern solidarity," he said, giving her a fist bump just as Mandy pulled the Qualis to a halt. "Everybody in position," he ordered. "UV, you first. Get down to the docks." UV had vanished before he finished speaking. "Naina, Sanju, out of the car and in the woods, please."
"Take care, you lot," Naina said grimly before zipping up her black jacket and getting down from the van, Sanju coming around to join her. Within seconds, the two of them had melted into the darkness of the woods. Mandy gave the surroundings a sweeping glance to make sure the coast was clear, and swiftly got down, handing the keys to Sakhi. "In case of any emergency, you know what to do, right?"
Sakhi nodded. "I know." She then smiled. "Now go on before they see you."
Mandy flashed her his best poster-boy grin as he donned his sunglasses. "That's the whole point." With that, he strode off, and Vijay tilted his head at a very odd angle to see Sakhi's watch. "It's almost ten-thirty. I think I've got about twenty minutes before my role starts."
She smiled faintly as she fiddled with the dials of the machine on her lap, tuning it to receive the mike signals of their friends. "Good for me, I can't breathe with your very interesting yet overwhelming new cologne of local daaru hovering over me."
"Not fair, girl," Vijay grumbled, and coughed slightly as the aforementioned 'cologne' hit his olfactory lobes rather powerfully all of a sudden courtesy of his slight movement forward. "OK, while we're here..." He grinned, an idea occurring to him. "Hey, Sakhi, deduce something about me just by looking at me."
The girl's smile was almost lazy as she turned slightly to face him. "Already have, my friend. A long time ago, in fact."
"Whoa." Vijay blinked. "Well, never mind. Do it again. Let's see if you're really as great a detective as Vivek sir and Tasha ma'am seem to think you are," he said teasingly, and Sakhi smirked. "Challenge accepted." Her face grew thoughtful as she surveyed him, her eyes narrowing as she tilted her head slightly to the side. The next second, her eyebrows flipped upward in mild surprise. It crossed Vijay's mind that with such myriad expressions within fractions of seconds, she would probably have done well as a classical dancer. Sadly enough, she didn't quite have the build for it, being a little chubbier than was considered appropriate for a girl her age.
Just as he was thinking this, Sakhi spoke. "You have mixed parentage."
"Wh-" Vijay's mouth fell open. "How on earth did you-"
Sakhi didn't bother letting him finish, even if he had been capable of it. "Your features are predominantly Bengali, but your kind of facial bone structure definitely isn't common among the typical Bengali boys I've seen. In such a case I would hazard a guess at either you being a biological sport or more likely, your parents being of different cultures, seeing as how you have a tendency to experiment like crazy with the cooking, which other boys, whom I shall not refer to as UV, Mandy and Sanju, find perplexing on occasions."
Vijay merely gaped at her as she ploughed on relentlessly. "You were also uncommonly averse to being disguised as a drunkard and notably flinched at several instances while Sanju was dousing you with liquor, all behaviour suggesting that you follow, at least partially, a religious code of law that bans alcoholism and denounces it as a sin. I also see that while you don't openly practice either of the two religions to which you can claim allegiance, you've somehow worked the essentials of both of them into a hybrid that seems to work pretty well for you." She smiled. "Well?"
An entire minute passed before Vijay found his voice. "You got all that... within two minutes?"
Sakhi laughed. "Of course not. I made the deduction about your mixed parentage the very day I met you. Oh, hey!" she exclaimed suddenly, her head snapping back around to the machine on her lap. One of the dials had lit up and was blinking. Sakhi quickly put on her earphones and established the connection. "Yeah?"
"Sakhi," Sanju's voice hissed, crackling slightly as Sakhi adjusted the tuning. "Send Vijay out. We think they're coming now."
"OK," Sakhi said, and leaned over to swiftly push the car door open. "Out," she directed, shoving Vijay lightly towards the open door. He jumped out, sliding the door shut behind him, and glanced at her with something like hesitation. "You'll be OK, won't you?"
Sakhi rolled her eyes. "How many times have we all done this routine before, mate? Of course I'll be fine." She smiled slightly. "Now go on, before they come here under the impression that it's a portable liquor store."
He gave her a long-suffering look. "OK, OK. First thing I need to do when we get home is take a good bath," he grumbled under his breath as he went towards the road, deliberately adding a swaying teeter to his steps and humming under his breath.
Mandy, meanwhile, was leaning against a tree, idly rolling an unlit cigarette between his fingers. As languid a demeanour as he was maintaining, his gaze was sharp as he scanned the area. Soon enough, a black van came down the road a few minutes later, pulling smoothly to a halt near the harbour. Out the corner of his eye, Mandy saw a flash of white and blue, and knew that UV had taken his position. A faint whiff of cheap liquor told him Vijay was in the picture as well.
"Hurry up," barked a gruff voice, and a tall, bulky man in a raincoat got down swiftly from the black van, taking long, heavy strides across the road to the harbour. UV, sitting half-concealed behind a fishing boat, narrowed his eyes- the man was obviously making no effort to be discreet. From behind the trees, Naina voiced this sentiment to Sanju, who was crouching beside her. "What the hell is he doing?" she hissed. "Does he intend to wake up the whole neighbourhood?"
"Actually," Sanju whispered back, "I'm pretty sure he's trying to intimidate whoever he's meeting." His teeth flashed momentarily in the darkness. "Can't resist a bit of showing off, these mafia types."
"You've been watching The Godfather with UV way too much," Naina replied drily, and quickly grabbed his wrist with a gasp as she saw the man uncover a bundle of what turned out to be rather antique-looking guns. "Look!"
"Sakhi!" UV muttered frantically into his mike. "Alert Vivek sir and Tasha ma'am now!" There was silence at the other end, and he frowned. "Sakhi? Are you there?" he asked, wariness seeping into his voice. "Sakhi, if you can hear me, say something!"
No response. "Dammit," UV mumbled, and pulled out his mobile, swiftly sending a text. Unfortunately, the light of the mobile screen, although brief, attracted the attention of the smugglers.
"What's that?" barked the man in the raincoat, looking suspiciously over at the boat behind which UV was crouching with bated breath.
"What's going on? What are they all looking at?" Sanju asked sharply, tapping Naina on the shoulder to direct her attention to the sight in question. She, who had been scanning the area for any sign of Vivek and Tasha, turned to look, but had barely got a glimpse when her mobile vibrated in her pocket. Frowning, she picked up. "Hello?"
"Naina," UV whispered, his voice squeaky with terror, "help!"
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A/N: End of chapter one! :P As always, only on the basis of public vote will I continue. :D