(As a note: this is a pet-project, and the poll winner will be written once my imagination takes down some rather annoying road blocks.)

I love the agents, and I thought they deserved their own fic. And just so you know, all the agents I mention were named in the movie, except for the agents I named (Rucker and Carlisle) and the one of my own invention (Lynch…anybody recognize him?). Maybe the first two were given names, but I didn't hear them. (sweatdrop) And I refer to a deleted scene from NT2, the long one outside Mt. Rushmore—it was SO much better than what was in the movie. If you haven't seen it, borrow somebody's second disc. To me, it's just as good as canon, and Turteltaub can get over it. (smiles)

Another note: exploring the internet tells me I was grossly wrong with some of these names! AGH! So...apparently Rucker is Johnson, Michaels is Colfax (since when? I'm so confused.), and Carlisle is Spellman. I will fix this eventually! Sorry!

Disclaimer: It's—gasp—not mine.

Amputee

Of course there was more to be done, seeing as it was early morning and we worked in for the federal police department, but we still crowded into Agent Dawes' office, silent and idle. Mugs of half-stale coffee were gripped in some hands while file folders of important or classified documents laid forgotten at our feet. Like always, we took out same seats or positions, which meant more than one were empty.

"Where is everybody?" Agent Michaels finally inquired, leaning back a bit on his stool.

"Busy," Dawes sighed. "Like we should be."

We all agreed, but halfheartedly. How could we even begin to focus our minds once we heard the news? It was almost better, we implicitly decided, to ignore a case for an hour or so than to make blunders caused by distraction. And if this news didn't fall under that category, we didn't know what did.

"Lynch," Dawes continued. "Where did you hear this rumor?"

Agent Lynch, a young, scrawny redhead, was the newest addition to our squad, and he silently stammered some before answering. "I was, uh…in the bathroom and I overheard some executive agents talking about it. I swear it's not a rumor."

Bathroom gossip not a rumor?—we muttered to ourselves. It was a new concept, but the fact that Hendrix had yet to show up added a few points of credibility.

"What exactly did they say?" asked Agent Rucker as he ran a hand through his blond hair.

"I didn't catch all of it," Lynch admitted. "But it sounded like—"

"You can't do much with 'sounded like' here, Lynch," Michaels said.

"It just sounded like Hendrix was getting promoted," the young agent finished hastily.

We tossed the idea around casually. Hendrix had been on the squad as long as any of us, except for maybe Rucker or Dawes. And he was the only one out of all of us who had been on both of the Gates cases.

"I think it makes sense," Lynch shrugged.

"Have you seen him in the field?" Dawes asked pointedly.

Again silence overtook us—we all stared at different corners of Dawes' office, Lynch batting absently at a desk trinket until her stare forced his hand back. Newbie, we think to ourselves. You don't touch another person's paraphernalia just because it looks entertaining.

"What do you think he got promoted to?" Michaels wondered aloud with a sigh.

"We don't even know if it's true," Dawes muttered.

"But I heard it—"

Cutting across Lynch, Michaels continued, "Yeah, but hypothetically. If he got promoted in the field, then he'd be on the same level as the boss, with his own squad."

Without a doubt, we all immediately agreed that was a scary prospect for the entire nation. No one in their right mind would give Hendrix that position, especially over Rucker, who had long ago been given the unofficial title of the boss' right-hand man.

"Do you suppose he was switched to intel?" Rucker suggested.

"More plausible," Dawes muttered, playing with the ornament Lynch had been preoccupied with. "Even if he didn't think to open a file for someone claiming the Declaration of Independence would be stolen."

"Yeah," Michaels said with a dismissive wave. "But all that worked out in the end, didn't it? Either way you work it, that same Howe guy would have gone to jail. No harm done."

"One of Howe's henchmen was killed in the process," Rucker said. "So yes, there was harm done."

"Forgot about that."

Despite that, like Rucker pointed out, there was "harm done," we all came to the consensus it was so indirect that it could be disregarded. Wrong place at the wrong time, right? It very well could have been any of that group, so an accident it was. Hendrix didn't need the blame.

The door clicked open—in stepped a stressed Agent Carlisle, who had transferred to our unit a few months before the second Gates case. There wasn't a doubt in anyone's mind that besides Michaels, she was the closest to Hendrix.

"Hey," she said quickly. "Why is everyone in here? I just got all these new faxes on that new hacker case"—she motioned to the documents in her hand—"and I couldn't find anybody."

We've just been sitting in here for a few minutes, we told her. That seemed to ease her nerves a little to more normal levels, for her anyways.

"So what are you all doing again?" she asked.

We said Lynch heard Hendrix was getting promoted.

"And why did that warrant a gathering like this?" she asked again.

We were just discussing it, we insisted. Honest. After all, wasn't it a sort of random, slightly peculiar thing to happen to a sort of random, slightly peculiar person?

"He is not peculiar," she said. "But yeah, I see your point. What's his new position?"

"That was something Lynch failed to get," Dawes supplied.

We watched as Carlisle ruminated silently on the subject. Over the three minutes or so that she sat in her usual plastic chair, the oh-so-important faxes found their way to the floor and mingled with those of the rest of us. "Jesus, where would they put him?" she finally wondered. "He didn't even know what OBE meant."

Quite immediately our eyebrows shot up in surprise. That was such a standard acronym; how could he have forgotten it?

"What does OBE stand for?" Lynch asked tentatively, mouth rightly turned into a grimace.

"Overtaken by events," Dawes and Carlisle said in unison.

"And he was running around Mount Rushmore with his baseball cap on backwards," Carlisle continued. "The boss said something about it being unprofessional…but he dropped it after a while, humored him, y'know?"

Yeah, we all agreed. That was really the only thing we could do with him sometimes. Sometimes—the word stuck in our thoughts. Half the time he really wasn't that bad, was he? Of course not, no, not Hendrix; maybe Lynch, we thought to ourselves, but that's only because he's new. Not Hendrix.

"We had been thinking they were sending him to intel as a desk job," Michaels told Carlisle. "Though on second thought, intel doesn't have any open spots."

"They could make one," Dawes mumbled.

"I don't know why you all are being so negative about him; he handled himself fine in that second Gates case," Carlisle said, rolling her eyes. "Just because most of you were on that special case in Alaska during that time doesn't mean you can ignore it."

Most of us remembered him as an awkward rookie agent—Rucker gazed discreetly over at Lynch at this—who occasionally broke the main search computer.

"Yeah, but that only happened once," Michaels insisted. "At least to him. The boss spilled coffee on it the second time." That earned a stifled snigger or two. It was a rare occasion when the boss was clumsy.

"He used it just fine in the Gates case," Carlisle said. "He found all the information on that Wilkinson guy, plus…we wouldn't have even been on the case if he hadn't found the newspaper article on Gates' ancestor."

Dawes and Rucker balked; since when had Hendrix become so efficient? Unable to really contribute to the conversation, Lynch sat back and tried every so often to interject a thought, but we just watched in muted pity. We all had to go through that phase—hell, some thought Hendrix went through relapses on a regular basis. How could he be getting promoted?

"Speaking of that," Carlisle sighed, running a hand through her dark hair. "I think one day he forgot the way to the boss' office."

Silence—for quite a long moment there was nothing we could think to say.

"How do you…" Rucker started, a look of confusion crossing his normally composed face. "…forget that?"

She shrugged, and we tensed, almost literally on the edge of our seat, to hear this tale. "I'm lost too. See, I was telling the boss about Hendrix's findings on Wilkinson and he was walking in front of us; all of a sudden he stopped, and I saw him try to open this door for a solid five seconds before he realized we were still moving."

We instantly agreed—that was kind of pathetic. Even Lynch knew where the boss' office was.

"Yeah, even I know…" The rookie stopped before he embarrassed himself further. "Well," he tried again. "The look on his face must have been priceless."

"Probably not unlike when he saw Gates leap off the Intrepid in New York," Michaels laughed.

We chuckled along with him, some more out of incredulity about the idea—Gates jumped off an aircraft carrier?

"You can't be serious," Lynch said, shaking his head.

"He is," Rucker muttered.

"Yeah, that case was full of crazy shit like that," Michaels laughed again, earning himself many perked eyebrows. "I'm sorry," he said. "But how else would you describe it?"

Certainly not with a phrase like "crazy shit," but that's OK. Really. But we still scanned the room and saw that not everyone had the capacity to reminisce about said "crazy shit," like Carlisle and Lynch. They only stared at the rest of us with looks that shouted their indecision on whether they really wanted to be in the know. But didn't at least Carlisle know some from talking to Hendrix?

"He never really said much about the first one," she shrugged.

On second thought, "crazy shit" truly did seem like a fitting name, especially as we merely listed the course of events. Someone stole the Declaration of Independence; went immediately to his father's house and subsequently duct-taped him to a chair during Wheel of Fortune and stole his car; ran around, getting arrested in Philadelphia; escaped in New York by jumping off the USS Intrepid; and, last but certainly not least, found one of the world's largest, most valuable treasures.

It was definitely a break from the usual humdrum—high profile crimes could only get so creative, and Gates' entourage set new highs. What could be worse than stealing the Declaration?

"Kidnapping the president," Carlisle rattled off in a heartbeat.

"The man's a freaking maniac," Michaels muttered loudly.

"I second that," Dawes said.

"He's not a maniac," Rucker sighed. "He's just, well…y'know—"

"A maniac," Michaels completed.

"A smart one, too, and that makes him even more threatening," said Dawes.

"Hendrix did say Gates seemed like a very normal person, and not a maniac. And isn't the boss somewhat a friend of his?" Carlisle asserted. "But I thought we were talking about this so-called promotion."

Oh, right. We all agreed that it was in the Bureau's best interest if they moved him to intel if they moved him at all. If—that was the big question. Wouldn't the boss know something about it? Turning to him was quickly shot down, for suddenly no one wanted the rumor to be confirmed. Who would we joke with when times became stressed and we needed a release, a dose of light in a profession of pressured toil? We all know we could laugh at Lynch, but it wouldn't be the same, and it would only last until he was no longer completely inept.

"They can't move Hendrix," Dawes said finally, and much to our surprise. "Any other unit wouldn't know what to do with him!"

"What do you mean?"

From how fast our necks whipped around, it was a miracle we didn't experience some form of whiplash. Hendrix stood in the doorway, briefcase in hand and looking more solemn than we've ever seen him. There was a hint of his determination that often took hold during the throes of a case, but something was a little off-kilter. Behind his calm façade, a shadow of dejection fell over his eyes. We thought to ourselves, could the rumors be true, then?

"What do you mean, Dawes?" he tried again; we tried to hide our tingeing cheeks.

"Are you…did your position get changed?" she asked tentatively.

His gaze swept around the room, falling on Carlisle the longest, before returning to her. We didn't like this, this new Hendrix. Honestly, he was acting too much like us. "Well, yeah, kind of…" he sighed.

"Like a promotion?" Lynch piped up—silently we snapped our fingers in disappointment, as it had looked for a moment as if Dawes was about to shoot a rubber band at him to prevent any of that unnecessary nonsense spewing from his mouth. Better luck next time.

"Not really," Hendrix sighed. "It's more like a transfer."

"To intel?" This time she was a little faster with her reflexes—not half a second went by after that comment did a sharp rubber-on-skin sound reverberate in the office. "Hey! What was that for, Dawes?"

"My hand slipped," she said innocently but in a way that implied, "you better shut the hell up." We had discovered that when you've been an agent for as long as she and Rucker have, you can say one thing and mean something else completely unrelated. Once we witnessed Rucker say, "My, those are some lovely begonias" and get across the message of "The files are in the desk drawer upstairs." To this day, we didn't know how he did it, but he did, honest to God.

"Where'd you get transferred to?" Carlisle asked with the trepidation seeping from our brows like sweat. So it was true? Hendrix was, in fact, leaving us?

"Homeland Security," he mumbled, shuffling his feet.

Harsh—it was the first thing off any of our lips. Those were mainly desk jobs over there, a bore to someone who had worked with the Gates cases, someone with quirks like Hendrix.

"That makes no sense," Michaels said sadly, shaking his head. "You're trained in the field—it's wasting you, sending you over there."

And technically, they're not even a police force, we said. They're a cabinet position for crying out loud. And really, who's going to induce more fear in a criminal: an agent from the FBI or an official from the Department of Homeland Security? We all agreed that the Bureau agent would have the guy in custody before the other would have enough time to spit out all those syllables.

"Did they give you a reason?" Rucker asked carefully.

"No…"

As agents who had worked together for so long, his grief soon became our own. It was fine to add new siblings to the family, but no one had the right to kidnap them. People get arrested for that.

"I appreciate what you're saying," Hendrix said. "But there's nothing that can be done."

Appeal to the boss! He'll vouch for you on all the work you've done!

"Nobody's told him yet."

Nobody's told him yet?—the phrase drifted around Dawes' office like a buzzing wind, if wind could do such a thing.

"If it was infested with locusts," Lynch offered.

Anyway. We pestered Hendrix with questioning that left his already battered mood severely pockmarked. He hadn't told the boss? Had anyone?

He shook his head. "Could you guys pass along the message?"

No, we most certainly could not.

"Why not?"

"You're the one who's leaving, Hendrix," Rucker stated calmly. "Being roundabout never helps anything in the field…or in life." Leave it to Rucker to make a nice sentimental-ish metaphor. Around the office, he did that a lot, at classic Hallmark moments. It was so annoyingly frequent that occasionally we caught ourselves checking our rears for a copyrighted golden crown.

"I know," Hendrix sighed. "I just—and I know this sounds really weird…I just didn't want to see his reaction."

The thought struck an off-key, out-of-tune chord with us. To the boss, everyone had a different function and purpose, for lack of some better terms. Dawes was straightforward, observant, catching details that flew under most radars. Rucker was, as we had already determined, the boss' right-hand man and was in a way the squad's vice-president. On the other hand, Michaels was a constant who did a fair to above-average job on a regular basis. Then there was Lynch—the boss was there to save the rookie from himself. But Hendrix was different, and we all recognized and accepted it. Whenever he spoke to Hendrix, whether it was a reprimanding or otherwise, the boss took on more of an air of a benevolent uncle—to a degree.

It was weird.

But with that in mind, not one of us wanted to be the one to tell him. It would be snappy and sour moods for a long time, we bet wordlessly.

"Do you…do you have to leave right now?" Carlisle asked quietly, a description that was usually used on her with the word "not" in there somewhere.

"I think it'd be best before the boss showed up," he replied. On any other day, the boss would have already berated us ten times over for wasting time. But it was the second Thursday of the month, which meant it was Free Bagels from the Boss Day. He was always a little late on Bagel Day.

"Don't you want your bagel?" Lynch asked.

Hendrix smiled grimly. "That's OK." If that question had been asked of any of us, we wouldn't have handled it nearly that peacefully.

"But the boss always gets you that strange cinnamon walnut butter pecan thing you like," Michaels piped up. "Pre-toasted," he added.

"It's fine, really. I'll pick one up later."

"But those things are expensive," Rucker said. "The boss is probably buying it this very minute, and no one else but you will eat it. It'll just go to waste."

It was bizarre how suddenly something as mundane as a bagel could seem so life-alteringly important. Why couldn't the guy wait long enough to eat the damn thing, really?

"Come on, Hendrix, just stay. Why would you not want to say good bye?" The words had popped out of Dawes' mouth and surprised her just as much as the rest of us. Hanging in the silence, they spoke what had been flowing through our brains since he got the silly idea.

"I know, I know, but…" he sighed in his usual fashion, mouth scrunched up in a flat, nervous frown. "I just can't. It's complicated, and…well, you see…" Oh great. He was floundering again. "The thing is…I just can't. I'm sorry…" With a last glance at all of us and especially one strangely-silent Carlisle, he swiveled around haphazardly, laden with the emotion we were all feeling, and walked straight into Dawes' office door with a thunk.

None of us said a word—he simply paused, checked the status of his nose and forehead, and in take two opened the door, making it out successfully. The silence was kept for another good ten seconds before Dawes pierced it with a depressed sigh.

"Oh my god," she moaned. "What a fitting exit."

"Are you…OK, Carlisle?" Lynch asked softly.

From what we could tell, she didn't look OK—in fact, she looked quite the opposite. Eyes staring at nothing but aimed at the carpeted floor, he right hand stuck in mid-motion running through her hair.

"Carlisle?" Dawes tried.

"He can't leave!" she exclaimed abruptly.

"He kind of already did," Rucker said, pointing toward the door.

"No, no, no…" she sighed frantically. "Do you think he's left the building?" Without even waiting for a response, she leapt up and flung open the door, dashing madly out. Something was up.

"What did they put in the coffee today?"

We all looked up and found a frazzled boss in the doorway, one arm hugged around a crinkled paper bag. In wafted the lingering toasted scent of cinnamon walnut butter pecan.

"What do you mean?" Lynch asked all too innocently after an awkward pause.

"Well…" the boss sighed as he set the bag down on the corner of Dawes' desk. "I passed Agent Hendrix on the way in by the front entrance and he barely said hello, and you saw Agent Carlisle almost trample me."

He waited expectantly, hand half in the bagel bag and eyes surveying over us like a searchlight. He knew that we knew. We knew that he knew that we knew. And he was acutely aware of that as well. But we clearly did not want to say a word. So instead we were given our bagels, some accompanied by mini to-go cartons of butter and an ineffective plastic knife.

"Why do you think Carlisle was so…?" Rucker said to Dawes, waving his hands on either side of his face as replacement for an elusive adjective.

With our specially-trained ears, we honed in on their conversation, but there was none, only more silence as Dawes contemplated his inquiry. Suddenly her index finger flew up in a revelation, and she stood with a small grin. "Michaels, your office looks out over the sidewalk by the front, right?"

"Yeah…?"

She briskly walked out, the rest of us following close in her wake, the boss at the tail.

We arrived at his cluttered office and made for the two windows at the back wall, fighting for a view. OK, Dawes, what were we supposed to be looking at?

"Right there," she said with a point.

If it had been a cartoon, our mouths would have stretched to the ground. To put it bluntly, Hendrix and Carlisle were making out.

Smiling in a way we thought was most unusual for her, Dawes relinquished her spot and gave it to the boss, who squinted around blindly for a second without his glasses. Once he focused in on the sight, his eyes bulged.

"Would someone please explain to me why two of my agents are engaging in this extreme act of PDA on the streets of Washington?" he finally managed to choke out, gazing to Rucker on his right.

"No, see, sir," Michaels said on his other side. "That's not extreme. If it was extreme, then they'd be—"

"Thank you, Agent Michaels," the boss said curtly before he turned back to Rucker.

"Well, uh…" he started. Despite being Mr. Greeting Card, Rucker was known to be extremely uncomfortable when witnessing romantic encounters. We all knew he had a soft spot for Dawes—except her, of course. Maybe that had something to do with it. "Technically, sir…there's only one of your agents down there."

And leave it to Rucker to take the hit.

"What do you mean, Agent Rucker?" the boss said quickly.

"Hendrix got transferred to Homeland security this morning, sir," Michaels said quietly.

The spectacle on the streets was forgotten as we all eyed the boss carefully—he leaned back from the window, unreadable, and lightly brought his fingertips to his temple. From our experience, he was a very unpredictable man, and therefore none of us knew how close or far away we should have been—would he explode, or would he not? To explode or not to explode: Hamlet had nothing on us.

"Why didn't anybody tell me about this?" he said. We exchanged blank glances.

"Sir, we only found out ourselves a few minutes ago," Dawes said along the opposite wall of the office.

"I know that, Agent Dawes," he continued. "I was talking about my superiors." Briskly he walked out of the room and back into Dawes' office where the bagel bag sat abandoned. Not knowing what else to do, we followed him, and sinking feelings pervaded our systems. The boss' sight fell upon our classified documents that had been scattered about, and our sinking feelings fully capsized in a dramatic, Titanic-like manner. Leonardo DiCaprio was filming a death scene somewhere.

"Um, what is this?" he asked in that quiet, somewhat dangerous tone of his. He rarely yelled—we would have almost preferred that to this.

Thankfully Rucker stepped forward again. "Agent Carlisle came to us with some new files on that hacker—"

"And instead you all sat here swapping gossip?" The boss' gaze swept over each of us in turn, and we felt a tinge of pink rise to our cheeks. "While you were sitting here, the guy could've hacked into Asia and drained Japan of yen for Christ's sake!"

Catching Rucker's eye, Dawes mouthed discretely, "Hacked into Asia?" We, too, weren't aware that continents had CPUs, but we kept that to ourselves.

"Yes, Agent Dawes," the boss continued, much to her embarrassment. "Hack into Asia. Get to work. Now." And at that, he turned on his heel and escaped to the confines of his own office, though these types of "confines" weren't at all private. Most of our offices' walls were glass, equipped with blinds. The boss' was just down the hall, and we all silently watched as he fell into his cushioned chair and slammed his fist on the table, face twisted in frustration and a thousand other things.

"Can we still have our bagels?" Lynch asked carefully after a moment.

"Sure, Lynch, here," Michaels sighed, handing him the bread along with some papers. "Just take it back to your office, all right?"

One by one, we came to the same consensus, but we succeeded in dragging our feet. It was long enough for Carlisle to come breathlessly running back to join us—needless to say, she was met with our knowing but fleeting smirks.

"What?" she said suspiciously.

We advised her to avoid the boss for a while and to say good-byes in more private locations.

"Uh…OK. Why?" Hopefully she was inquiring about the former.

"We told him about Hendrix," Lynch said.

Nodding, we all quickly departed, as Michaels had spotted the boss inspecting us curiously from one of his many windows. With bagels in hand and work to be done, we hoped to block the slew of thoughts until after Japan's almost-crisis of yen drainage was resolved, though this strategy was not working all that well. Many a time when we hit a wall, we would be halfway out of our seats, aching for a relieving laugh, when we'd remember Hendrix's office was collecting dust.

Later, Michaels told us he had watched Hendrix down on the sidewalk after he had returned to his desk. It was odd to think that Hendrix stayed down there so long after Carlisle left, and more so to think that Michaels would watch. We kept our accusations of being a stalker at bay. But according to his story, our fallen agent had stared up at the J. Edgar Hoover Building for a good five minutes, had paced about, and had stared some more before finally stepping across the street and calling a cab. It had been nine-oh-eight in the morning, and eerily enough we all agreed we had felt a depressing pall fog up our windows at approximately that moment.

XXX

Did you like it? I hope so. The POV was a sort of experimentation—the first person collective. I recently read a book like that and thought this was a good instance to try it out. (shrugs)

Please review—I want to continue this (it's idea city in my head right now) and I'd like to hear your thoughts, as I usually do. (smiles) It'll push me to stop being lazy about chapter 2.