Letting Go
Eliwood shuffled through some papers and cleared his throat. Sighing thoughtfully, he leaned back in his big, important leather chair.
There was another long, rather awkward silence before he turned his chair to the right so that we could all see his intensely thinking profile.
He took a deep breath. "Jordan, do you have any idea why I called you here?"
". . ."
He was answered by dead silence. That was really odd, because Jordan was never silent. He turned around to do some sleuthing, but his question was answered about as quickly as it was formed by the total emptiness of his candy dish . . . And the altogether absence of his M&M's jar.
A vein popped out of his forehead, a very professional looking one, but a vein nonetheless. "You could at least leave the jar."
Jordan set it back on his professionally polished mahogany desk (made to match his lovely red hair), with only the echoing of the three remaining candy coated chocolates rolling about in the glass jar lingering in the office air.
Eliwood, not trusting Jordan farther than he could throw her (which, considering his options, was pretty dang far), he settled on the idea of keeping his large leather chair facing forward.
"Now, can you answer my question?"
Jordan tilted her head to one side, and then grinned as she shook her head, snickering to herself as would a young child.
"Well, we've been reviewing your Annual Yearly Performance-"
Jordan grabbed Eliwood's novelty smiley mug full of pens. "Cool! Hey, can I have a pen!"
He had spent many grueling hours coping with her obnoxious antics and was well equipped to deal with the problem.
"And we've come to a conclusion." He continued as he reached across the desk and slapped the pens out of her hands. "It'd be nice if you could leave one or two for Athos. He's scheduled for a meeting at four."
Jordan glanced down at her watch. "But that's like, three hours away! Does that mean I have to fill all that time?"
"You'd be surprised how time just . . . Disappears spending it with you." Eliwood groaned.
"What's that supposed to mean?" She asked, scratching her elbow.
"It means that we never seem to get anything done because your attention span is practically nonexistent."
"Ha ha ha. . . That's probably true!" Suddenly, she switched subjects. "Hey, does it look like I'm getting a rash or something?" She asked, pointing to her elbow. "It's all dry and flaky and stuff, and it itches like heck!"
Eliwood began snapping his fingers in front of her face. "Laser, laser! Focus! C'mon, stay with me, Jordan!"
"Oh, right!" She said, straightening up.
He sighed. "Now, where was I?"
Jordan shrugged her shoulders. "I wasn't really paying attention!"
He folded his arms and looked his script over. If he didn't have everything written out beforehand, there would be no chance of accomplishing anything. He speed read to himself just over a hum and reached his last sentence on subject which was about a half-page ago.
"Anyway, we've compiled your Yearly Performance Report, and it's not looking good-"
"Sweet! They write red!"
Eliwood threw his hands in the air out of frustration. "That's it!" He shouted as his hand slammed onto the intercom button. "Ninian! Get Hector in here, and tell him it's urgent!"
Jordan continued writing on her arm contentedly. "That's real clever of you to hold up the whole red theme. You know, just 'cause that's the color of your hair…"
Hector suddenly barged in. "What is it, Eliwood? I was just in middle of a…" His eyes widened as soon as Jordan, who was kneeling in her chair backwards with her chin on the backrest, came into view.
She lazily waved a hand in the air. "Sup, H-Dawg."
Hector began to back off towards the door. "Oh… I'll be back." Then he left.
Jordan frowned. "Is Hector coming back?"
"Yes." Eliwood answered absentmindedly.
"Hey, are my fingernails pretty? I colored them with your crazy cool red pens."
". . ."
"When's he gonna be back?"
"Soon."
Her eyes brightened. "Does he have a surprise for me?"
Eliwood thought hard. "… Sure."
She put her elbow on the desk as a playful grin spread across her face. "Would this surprise involve cookies?"
He rubbed his temples and thought it best not to dignify that with an answer.
"Do you remember that one time when Harken thought he had eleven toes?"
"No."
"Oh, well he did, and he kept on telling everyone that he had eleven toes, when in fact he only had the regular ten."
"Wow." Eliwood's enthusiasm couldn't have fooled a deaf man.
"Yeah, we had to count his toes a million times before he finally realized that he had been counting his left pinky toe twice."
To Eliwood's relief, somebody finally knocked.
"Who is it?" He called out, sounding WAY too relieved. "Come on in!"
Hector opened the door, poked his head in, and took a deep breath.
"What? What's wrong?"
"Hello Hector!" Jordan squealed, waving her hands wildly.
Hector could only respond with a groan.
Eliwood's eye twitched. "Get in here, Hector."
Hector gritted his teeth, stomped into the room and sat behind Eliwood's desk.
Jordan stood up on her chair and looked over the desk. "Hector!" He winced at the sound of his own name. "What's in the box?"
Eliwood smiled. "It's a part of something we're tinkering with, kind of a… an experiment with communications!"
"Ooooo!" She was sold.
"Would you like to see what's inside?"
She squealed and clapped her hands.
"What's going to happen is, all of us are going to have one puppet, and we're going to have to talk using the puppet. Speaking at all is no good if you don't move the puppet, are you following me?"
She had a glazed look on her face. "Uh-huh. Can I have my puppet now?"
Both Eliwood and Hector grinned widely at the success of 'Plan B'. This was one of those moments that would merit a totally righteous high-five.
They handed her the puppet, made to her likeness with its short brown hair and brown button eyes wearing the trademark green Tactician's cloak. Eliwood and Hector had their puppets, both of which were also made in the image of their makers.
"Ok," Eli-puppet began. "Now let's get down to business!"
"Yessir!" Jo-puppet and Hec-puppet said in unison.
"Jo-puppet, we need to talk." Eli-puppet said
"About what?" Jo-puppet asked.
Hec-puppet covered his eyes irritably.
"Remember that Annual Performance Review that Eliwood was talking about earlier?" Eli-puppet asked, resting his hands on his stomach.
"Don't you mean YOU were talking about it?" Jo-puppet asked, scratching her head.
"What?"
"I mean since you're him, doesn't that make you look weird referring to yourself in third person?"
"No. You're thinking too hard." Hec-puppet said with a frustrated sigh.
"Ok. Yeah I remember it." Jo-puppet said, shrugging her shoulders.
"You see, this report is different for every employee in the big, Eliwood's Army family,"
"Yeah,"
"So Guy, for example, wouldn't receive the same report as Nils,"
"Uh- huh."
"This is good, but at the same time-"
Jo-puppet stretched. "Yeah, can you get to the point?"
Eli-puppet rubbed his temples and Hec-puppet braced himself for Eliwood to deliver the blow.
"Alright," Eli-puppet sighed. "Jordan, your performance this year was not satisfactory."
"What? What was wrong with it!"
Eliwood ran a hand through his hair, careful not to disturb his cute lil'tiara. "To be honest-"
"He wants to say that you suck at your job and we want you out!" Hector barked impatiently.
Jordan's lower lip trembled. "I'm… Fired?"
"Well, you just aren't meeting our expectations-"
"You know absolutely nothing of tactics, and you've broken the record for the number of units lost in one year! Beside all that, you're as weird as they come!"
"B-b-but isn't there anything I can do to fix it?" She whimpered before violently blowing her nose.
Hector and Eliwood simultaneously recoiled in disgust.
"I'm afraid not." Eliwood replied kindly, sounding just a touch relieved. "You aren't as qualified as we previously thought."
Hector stood up. "We have a lot of stuff to get done, so do us a favor and take a hike!"
Jordan's mopey face contorted into a face of fury. "FINE! I WAS PLANNING ON QUITTING ANYWAY!"
She marched off towards the door, ran into it, and then threw it open as if nothing had happened.
Eliwood let out a deep breath. "I am so glad that's over!"
"Yeah, good riddance!" Hector snorted.
The door suddenly opened, and Jordan came charging back in. She walked straight up to Eliwood's desk and stopped.
"Erm, can I help you?" Eliwood asked uneasily.
Her eyes welled up with tears again. "I-I'M TAKING THIS WITH ME!" She bawled, snatching the M&M's jar and marching right back out of the door.
The two of them, for a moment, sat in stunned silence.
"Um…"
"Yeah, she sure showed you." Hector snickered, grabbed his paperwork, and calmly took his leave.