Disclaimer: I don't own the characters or the anime. And I borrowed the 'evaluations' from the Things People Said site at Rinkworks.
Dedicated: To Kidi-chan, who's feeling a bit under-the-weather today. Cheer up and get well soon, dearie!
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Who Hired These People?
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Lady Une sighed, setting aside her cup of tea as she pulled the next batch of folders towards her. Really, it was late at night, but this promised certain... fun.
Agents Yuy and Maxwell's reviews of their subordinates were always... something. Three years, now, she'd had four of the five gundam pilots working for her full-time, and another part-time. Together with Sally, Noin, and Zechs, she figured her force of Preventer's was pretty well established. And with them training the new recruits... things were bound to get better, right?
Lady Une disagreed, flicking open the first folder. She knew some of the new agents were... less than bright. She'd asked Duo two years ago not to be writing performance reviews like 'this recruit sucks ass. Fire him.' And since then, neither Duo nor any of the others wrote such vulgar reviews.
But they had, however, taken artistic flair to criticize the new agents.
Lady Une sighed, resigning herself to another night of hilarity caused by the rambunctious reviews by her top agents. Thus fortified, she began to scan the first folder, the file of a brand new recruit named Laura Englewood. She'd been under Duo Maxwell's tutelage in the high-explosives training. This promised to be...
Lady Une blinked at Maxwell's scribblings under 'supervisor comments'. Surely... no. But... yes.
"This recruit is depriving a village somewhere of it's idiot." She blinked, reading further... and laughed. True enough, she guessed, if the girl used four pounds of C-4 just to try to create a small, person-sized entrance in two-foot cinderblock wall during an 'infiltration simulation'.
Setting aside that folder in what she dubbed her 'must re-test these agents' pile. Reading on, she found nothing but a few well-accomplished recruits... until...
"Tony Tibbar," she murmured, reading another folder, and noticing Heero's almost machine-like print.
"He certainly takes a long time to make his pointless." She had to read the script twice before it hit her, and then she laughed. Yes, Recruit Tibbar, despite being smart and kind, was rather long-winded, with barely any point behind his ramblings sometimes. But, that's why she was transferring him to 'politics' next quarter. He'd fit in great over there.
"This woman is not so much of a 'has-been', but more of a 'definitely won't be'," Wufei wrote concerning a middle-aged, supposedly battle-hardened colonel who seemed to be falling behind the younger recruits considerably in the physical training aspects. Une couldn't help it, but laughed aloud.
"Commander?" A dark head peeped in her door, and Une looked up into the concerned blue eyes of Lucreiza Noin. "Is everything alright?"
"Just fine, Agent Fire. It's just that time of year again. Quarterly Trainee Performance Reviews," she clarified.
"Oh, God help us," Noin said, eyes going wide. She laughed and came into the office, settling down in a chair and tossing her feet up on her boss's desk. "So... let's see what new insults they've come up with for those poor trainees."
Une held up another folder. "Listen to this. Marguerite Vandiver. Yuy's computer hacking course. 'This young lady had delusions of adequacy,'" Une quoted.
Noin snorted. "Ack. Pretty harsh, huh?"
"Apparently she managed to completely fry not only hers, but the entire training system's computers. All while trying to hack into a low-security computer system." She shook her head, placing the file in her 'why did I ever hire these morons' pile. With a second thought, she plucked Laura Englewood's folder and thunked it down in that pile, too.
"Since my last report, this employee has hit rock bottom and started to dig," Une read with a giggle.
"Oh, dear... what'd this one do?" Noin asked curiously.
"Destroyed three of Zech's new drills... in less than a week."
Noin's eyes widened. "But... those things are neo-titanium, and laced with traces of gundanium! It's nearly impossible to break them."
"Which is why this trainee is a moron," Une sighed, adding the file to the 'moron' pile. Noin shook her head and reached across the desk, pulling a few files towards her. Might as well help her boss if she was going to stay late anyway. Yeah, she smirked in her mind. And it had nothing to do with searching for hilarious comments from her co-workers.
"Works well when under constant supervision and cornered like a rat in a trap," she read, scanning down the first file. "Apparently she messes up something every time Duo turns his back on her," Noin hummed, and tossed the folder into the 'must re-test' pile.
Une agreed with the decision, and flipped to the comment section of the next file, one Patricia Thompson. And promptly started to giggle.
"When she opens her mouth, it seems this is only to change feet," she managed in between laughs. "Zechs really doesn't like her..."
"Re-test?" Noin asked, scanning through a few more files.
"No. Her scores are adequate on everything. She just lacks certain social skills." She scribbled on a post-it and tacked it to the front. "I'll just see to it that she's transferred to a nice, cushy, boring desk job where she doesn't have to interact with the public. That should take care of it."
But her musing was interrupted by Noin's sudden outburst of laughter. 'Must be one of Duo's,' Une figured, waiting for her friend and employee to enlighten her.
"Adam Christiansen," Noin finally managed. "Duo's trainee. Not only did he fail his physical, but he scored below average on his most recent IQ tests, and they *still* sent him to Duo. Get this... 'This man has the whole six-pack, but he's missing the little plastic thingy that holds them together...' That's Duo for you!"
Une blinked. "He actually wrote 'thingy' on an evaluation? I need to have a talk with him about grammar. But, before that... chunk that man's file into the moron stack, please. I do not need idiotic and un-fit agents!"
Noin continued to chuckle as Une pulled up another file, this time from Zechs. "This employee should not be allowed to breed," she read curiously. She took one look at the list of follies to his name and tossed the file into the 're-test' stack.
"He doesn't have ulcers, but he's a carrier," Noin chuckled. "Courtesy of Heero." She glared at the 're-test' stack as she made it grow again.
"This one's better," Une retorted. "From Heero, as well. 'His men would follow him anywhere... but only out of morbid curiosity.' How did some of these people manage to make it through the hiring process, I wonder? Remind me to go over our hiring policies this week. Something is truly messed up somewhere," she commented, tossing the file on top of the 'moron' stack.
"Duo thinks this guy would be 'out of his depth in a parking lot puddle'. And considering the depth of those puddles... it wouldn't take much," Noin laughed.
"Hilarious," Une replied. "But Zechs says this associate has been working around glue too much..."
"This employee should go far," Noin countered, holding up a file. "And the sooner he starts, the better off we'll be."
"Must be Heero," Une nodded. "Zechs thinks this one sets low personal standards, and consistently fails to achieve them."
"At least he's consistent about it," Noin chuckled, holding her stomach to try to quieten her laughter.
"These boys are consistent in making us laugh- especially Duo. This lady is very careful with her equipment," Une smiled, placing a folder into the 're-test' pile. "As her tools show very little sign of use..."
"When his IQ reaches 50, he should sell." Noin discarded yet another file.
"He has a knack for making strangers immediately."
Noin couldn't help it. She broke out laughing as she read the last file in her hand.
Une groaned, lifting her cup of tea. "Who is it, who said it... and what did they do?"
Noin held out the folder to her boss, who read through it as she took a sip of tea. Immediately, she sprayed a fine mist of Earl Gray all over the file as she fell into a fit of laughter.
"Like Heero has any room to talk," Noin chuckled. "He's almost as bad. And really, does anyone expect anything different from either of them?"
Une just shook her head, still trying to stop laughing as she set down the file and wiped tea off of the pages.
She didn't remember asking Heero to submit a performance review of Duo's work, but since Duo did begin taking lessons in hacking, she supposed it was only natural. And the six little words printed in the box were simple, completely un-funny. Unless you knew Duo and knew how accurate they were. Especially when Duo was around Heero for more than five seconds at a time.
Noin laughed.
"He would argue with a signpost!"