Mara stalked down the hall toward her office, carefully ignoring how everyone she passed was carefully ignoring the smoke curling away from her charred clothing and singed hair, her face expressionless even as anger, frustration and humiliation coiled and burned inside her.
Slamming open her door hard enough to crack its glass panel, she paused at the sight of her desk, reports piled in stacks, and groaned. Carefully shutting the door, she walked over to the office chair behind the desk and flopped into it with a sigh.
I just don’t understand it. Hild’s Breasts, how do they do it?! One of Niflheim’s best field operators, up against a romance-besotted clown that can’t get her potions right and a tech-obsessed kid with no power to speak of, both with serious impulse control problems, and their sister that sees the world through rose-colored glasses so dark it’s amazing she can see at all — and still, every single time I come out looking like a complete idiot. Every single time!
Sitting up, she started sorting through the reports with a rapid-fire triage of ‘now irrelevant’, ‘review at your convenience’, and ‘read yesterday’. I think Hild assigns me these little jobs with the Norns whenever I’m getting too full of myself. I’ll have to remember not to do that in the future — though they do give me a chance to see Urd again.
For a moment, Mara’s face softened and turned wistful, then she froze at the sight of a report with a stick-it note with the name of Nabiki Tendo written on it. Quickly opening the folder, she started reading. Yeesh, Gosunkugi really is an idiot — fails to properly bargain or dominate the creatures he summons, gives impossible orders, I’ll wager he accuses Gorash of being incompetent for being unable to read minds or sneak through Nabiki’s wards. Ah, well, he’s giving us a hold on his family, or will when daddy-dearest finds out what his precious son has been up to — and flubbing horribly. Then she stiffened. A sexually shy succubus skilled in the martial arts? How did that happen?
Turning to her phone, she hit the speed dial and smiled at the face that appeared on the phone’s screen. “Hey, Calise, good to see you. They take you off of field work?”
Calise smiled back and shrugged. “Just a vacation, a chance to get away from all the assholes for a few weeks.”
“Good,” Mara said with a smirk, “wouldn’t want our second-best field agent to be retired.”
“Ah, well,” Calise said with a return smirk, “we can’t all be as good as Amora. Hey, I hear you’ve had another encounter with the Terrible Trio? How’d it go?” A look of mock-concern crossed her face as Mara winced, and she leaned closer to the screen. “Is that soot on your face?” She laughed at Mara’s grumbled response, then sobered. “And how was Urd?”
Mara sighed and failed miserably at a disapproving frown that insisted on turning into a soft smile. “As beautiful and irritating as ever.”
Calise sighed. “I’m sure she’ll join us eventually. She’s too pragmatic to be really comfortable with those dreamers.” Straightening up, she asked, “And what can Intelligence do for you?”
Mara held up the folder. “I have a report here from an imp named Gorash on assignment in Nerima.”
“Ah, the one about the succubus hanging around Nabiki Tendo.”
“Ah, you’ve seen it. Will you see what we have on the succubus?”
“Nothing.” Calise chuckled at Mara’s surprised look. “When I saw the report I knew you’d be interested and looked into it, and we don’t have anything on a succubus named Ranma. Not too surprising, seeing how we don’t really pay much attention to those scatterbrained bimbos, but something weird obviously happened to this one.”
“Yes,” Mara agreed, frowning thoughtfully, “and she’s somehow involved with my hopefully future lieutenant. I wonder how that happened? Nabiki’s always been more concerned with her safety, she hasn’t been the type to dominate someone else just for her own personal pleasure. I hope this isn’t the beginning of a trend.”
Calise shook her head. “Not likely. As soon as I saw the report I assigned some higher power surveillance and did some research. It’s been over a week since Nabiki’s summoned any imps, or anything else according to the surveillance. There’s been some summoning magic causing blips occasionally, but nothing lasting anywhere near long enough for a summoning to take place.”
“Has Research come up with an explanation for the blips?”
“No, they’re as confused as we are. As for Nabiki herself, her aura’s all wrong for someone turning sadistic — not, however, for someone falling in love.”
“Hmmm,” Mara stared unseeing at the wall for a long moment, then shook herself. “After I plow through my backlog and make sure I don’t have any other immediate fires to put out I’m going to have to make a personal reconnaissance — I have a sneaky suspicion that our plans for Nabiki are going off the rails. Meanwhile, put out the word that I want to know anything any of our contacts might know about a succubus named Ranma. And Calise? Thanks.”
Calise smiled at her old friend. “No problem, glad to help.” And the phone’s screen went black.
Mara smiled fondly at the blank screen, then groaned as she turned back to the stack of folders.
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(Posted Sat, 02 May 2009 05:58)
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