Hollis had made a number of mistakes over the past few weeks, but, arguably, the first of them was sending the agents Motif off on a wild goose chase.
It wouldn’t do any harm; on the job, they were as efficient as could be, and whatever mess they might get themselves into, they could reasonably extract themselves from. So long as they were offsite, there was no way they could worsen the headache that was the Psychonauts’ financial situation, in the exact same way they wouldn’t help her by hovering.
If Emmet had reminded her about one more meeting, she’d been planning to tangle him in web of thought so convoluted that even Ingo’s patience would’ve run out before he was free. Really, in sending them a continent over, she was doing everyone a favor.
Or so she’d thought.
She’d enjoyed exactly thirty hours of peace before the news of Truman’s kidnapping broke.
It would have been incredibly convenient to have them onsite and let them deal with Razputin.
It would have saved everyone some trouble if the heads of transportation had been available to perform their foremost duties.
And it would have made all the difference in the world to have a hydrokinetic on their side when faced with The Deluge of Grulovia.
But Hollis had played a bad hand, and–
Ahem.
Hollis’s plan hadn’t accounted for all of the variables, no matter how unlikely they were to factor in; fortunately, nobody had been seriously hurt and the water damage had mostly been confined to Green Needle Gulch. Whatever else cropped up in the aftermath, she’d been blissfully unaware of it for the past two weeks.
But all vacations had to come to an end sometime, and, now that she’d had a chance to decompress, Hollis was ready to tackle the responsibilities of the Second Head. There was plenty to focus on, already lined up on her desk when she returned to her office, but her attention was drawn to the neatly-stacked mission report and the unrelated forms lined up beneath it.
She picked the first up and skimmed it over; it was labeled with both Motifs’ names, as was standard for them, but the slant of the writing suggested Ingo had been the one to pen it this time.
The subject has been secured. The report promised, followed shortly by, Though perhaps the esteemed Second Head might tell certain agents to allow her breathing room next time, instead of finding busywork to keep them occupied.
Hollis wasn’t surprised on either front. If those men were on a mission, then by god they were going to see it through, whether or not it was actually feasible. She was grateful Ingo had humored her, at least, and not called her on her crap where Emmet could hear.
If the past couple of weeks had taught her anything, it was that she’d really needed the break. It was nice to know that someone else had seen it.
Her eyes flickered down to the second set of papers. They were, in fact, a color-coded series of forms from the transportation department, some fields filled in an opposite slant, others left very pointedly blank. As she flipped through them, she found backdated requisition forms, incident reports and repair requests, each ramping up in passive-aggression until she reached the last one, which had been helpfully filled out in her name, pertaining to the jet’s use. She could actually feel the echo of annoyance radiating off of it.
Despite herself, she felt a smirk tugging at her lips.
Not as much fun when other agents didn’t stay in their lane, was it Motif?
She set both sets of papers aside– the first to be tastefully redacted and then filed, the second to be completed. Both were slightly more familiar in tone than she’d tolerate from most, but she was in a good mood, and they were funnier than they were insolent; besides, they confirmed that the pair was back on base, which she was willing to consider a positive thing, today.
Hollis Forsythe did not have favorites among her agents, but the twins were certainly up there.
The tug at her lips faded as she laid eyes on the foremost pile of papers. On top– meaning most recently submitted– she saw Razputin’s name, and took an anticipatory breath as something very important occurred to her.
Two of her problems had– how would they put it? ‘Returned to station’?
And she had one newly-arrived problem without a destination.
Surely a couple of conductors could help with that.