"Explain it to me in a way I can understand Emily." The new Chief Director asked her in as neutral a tone as someone visibly rubbing one temple could manage.
Director Emily Piggot of the Protectorate ENE had to restrain the urge to frown at the petite woman who had taken over when Alexandria had stepped down from the position. Emily still couldn't bring herself to refer to the previous Chief Director as Rebecca Costa Brown. She had respected Rebecca. Now, knowing that Rebecca might as well have been a fabrication, it felt too much like insulting a dead woman to think of her.
And her replacement was, so far, not to Emily's tastes. She was overly familiar, and not nearly as strict or disciplined as the previous Chief Director. She had the feeling of someone who had great power, but for some reason was unwilling to exercise it to get the job done. She tried entirely too hard to be 'friends' with those under her.
"At roughly midday today, hundreds, possibly thousands, of Case 96's were spotted in and around past Endbringer sites. I've already forwarded the relevant documentation for handling them." Emily said blandly, reaching off screen for her mug full of delicious steaming coffee with too much sugar and cream in it just to punctuate her utter lack of surprise or concern.
Contrary to popular movie depictions of the Protectorate's Directors, she was not in a shadow room seated at a round table with other holographic depictions of her coworkers. That might have been nice, but it would have been an excessive and distasteful waste of tinkertech to make function.
So instead she observed her fellow Directors the way God intended.
Through two dozens tiny windows on her laptop, all of varying video and audio quality.
Her fellows, including the Chief Director herself, all looked extremely harried. She knew the look well, as it was all but perpetual for most people in their positions. Except for Emily. Today, Emily wore a navy blue pant suit over a cream coloured blouse, and had her blond hair tied up in a neat little bun.
It wasn't that there was no reason to be worried. It was just, she wasn't personally worried. For as much contempt as she held for Nexus' continued upheaval of everything she thought she knew about parahumans and the world in general, she was now beginning to reap dividends on that early exposure.
Emily Piggot, Director of the Protectorate ENE, had seen some shit.
"Is this supposed to be a joke Emily? We all saw you file for those dead capes of yours, and I was happy to keep my mouth shut about it, but whatever insane plan led you to lying about your guys being alive and replacing them with new Parahumans has no bearing on this situation!" The Vegas Director snarled at her.
She took another sip of coffee before answering, surreptitiously putting the mug down off screen so she could pour more of that delicious cinnamon bun flavoured creamer into it.
God she loved being able to eat whatever she wanted again.
"First off, I didn't replace them, and I certainly don't have the pull to force the Chief Director to approve a new case number just to sell a ruse. Who would I even be trying to trick? None of this is even public information. Did you read the briefing before this meeting or does Vegas need an army of Thinkers just to read three pages of plain english?" She snarked back at him, perhaps a bit more annoyed at his insinuation than she would willingly admit.
"You want me to believe that dead capes have just been getting up and walking around for months now? And no one leaked that? Pull the other one, I don't have time for bullshit." He responded instantly.
"Actually, she is correct. The previous Chief Director briefed me directly on it. She was concerned that I wasn't taking the new regs seriously." The Texas director added in, turning to send a nod Emily's way.
Perhaps as a side effect of constantly begging for reinforcements, money, and just general aid from all the surrounding Protectorate Departments, Emily got along well with Directors from further away - who understood but genuinely couldn't help her - and poorly with the nearer branches.
Largely because they'd left her high and dry for so long it took an act of god to get her city cleaned up.
"What the ghostbusters shit? Are you kidding me right now!? Is anyone else hearing this?! I move to have the whole damn lot of you checked for mastering!" Vegas insisted, slamming a wrinkled hand in his desk and causing his video stream to cut out for a moment.
"Director Lawrence please control yourself. You need to have read and enacted the training from the manual you were given by the end of the month or your tenure as a Director will be cut short. Emily, I appreciate that you've provided a handy framework for reintegrating Case 96's and we will follow through on it, but the public has to be told something. Costa Brown read me in on some things but not everything, so now I'm asking you, why exactly is there a line in the budget listed as 'Case 96 Expert', and why is it worth five times my salary?" The new Chief demanded, instantly calming the murmurs that had exploded across the call.
'Because a teenager with mommy issues has sole control the ability to make them.' Was what she thought inwardly.
Outwardly, she said;
"My department recently proved magic is real and that - theoretically - anyone can learn it. You have a pamphlet on that too, if you are curious. My expert is what you might call a Wizard of some capability. It costs a lot to keep them on retainer." She explained blandly.
Silence descended on the call as everyone in it paused to boggle at her mind numbingly juvenile sounding statement.
Even though she knew for a fact that it was absolutely true.
"I recommend finding one for yourselves actually. They work excellently on Case 100 situations." She added with the ghost if a smirk on her face.
A Director - she couldn't place exactly where the woman was from but Emily thought she must have been one of the Canadian Directors - quickly pulled open a ring binder that had been sitting nearby and paged through it until she landed on - presumably - the Case 100 briefing she had sent out weeks ago.
"Ghosts?" She muttered incredulously.
"Even odds you have a sudden rash of crimes with no discernible cause right? It's probably ghosts. Actually, it's almost always ghosts." She said with a shrug.
Emily felt a moment of blissful schadenfreude at the flabbergasted and confused expressions on the faces of most of her compatriots, remembering all too well what this moment felt like to be on the other end of.
Then she felt a chill run down her spine as she happily beat people over the head with the presence of the supernatural.
Was that girl rubbing off on her? Surely not.
Shaking away the disturbing thought, Emily settled in to weather the rest of the meeting, secure in the knowledge that the coffee machine in her office was only two steps away - and that she had quite a bit more of that delicious coffee creamer left.
Emily Piggot's home was - at least at one point - a spartan affair. The tiny home might not suit the dignity of a highly paid Protectorate, but it did have certain benefits. The Captain's Hill area was largely full of the affluent, which meant there was very little crime there. So the location itself was nice.
But what Emily really loved about it was that there were no other people in it to bother or annoy her. It was a small detached house at the very end of a cul de sac, with no other houses behind it. Just open space before you hit the road up to the lighthouse.
She unlocked the front door of the house, and slipped inside, hucking her jacket off and tossing it onto a chair by the door. She passed the living room - which contained only gym equipment and ripped up bits of furniture she couldn't get thrown out in time - and stepped into the kitchen, kicking her shoes off and leaving them in the hallway behind her. As usual, there was no actual food in the fridge, just aggravatingly bland nutrient shakes she had bought enough of to last months.
How was she supposed to know her renewed body would hate the bland tasteless sludge so much? It wasn't her fault the numbers for a bunch of fast food places kept finding their way onto her fridge.
It wasn't like she had much to spend her money on anyway. She didn't exactly have a social life. She got along well enough with Daniel Hebert, if only because they shared a mutual tormentor in the form of the man's daughter, but other than that… nothing.
Maybe that was why she tolerated the man that appeared behind her the minute she turned her back on one corner of the room.
"The hell do you want now?" She asked the ghost grouchily, eyeing the thing with a critical eye.
It had no face. It had no face, but the way its head bobbed and moved as it spoke made the blank expanse of flesh that sat where eyes and a mouth should be seem almost fake. Like an animatronic in a movie. Besides its face the thing had surprisingly little to make it stand out. It wore slacks and suspenders over a stained white shirt. Its arms were too long - they dragged along the ground behind it - but other than that… eh.
She had seen worse.
"Entry procedure. Too fast." It complained to her, and she couldn't help but roll its eyes at it.
"Set up a department for processing the paperwork, then set up a different department for informing new applicants that they've been approved, then a different department from that to actually let people in. Then give every department opposing hours so its impossible to get through all three in the same day. Oh, and don't actually train your pencil pushers. They'll figure the dumbest way to do things out on their own." She rattled off, turning back around to decide if she wanted chinese or indian food for dinner.
Maybe both?
"Evil. Like." The ghost rasped at her, lifting one overlong arm to pat her on the back.
"I'm sure." She responded distractedly. She largely didn't believe this ghost was actually doing anything with this information. Rather, she took its requests for help running an inefficient bureaucracy - as in deliberately inefficient - as the lament of a dead office worker who had found a kindred spirit in her.
So mostly she just used it to complain about how horribly designed the PRT was.
"Want. Come?" The ghost asked, which brought her pause, it had never actually asked to take her anywhere before. Just shown up, ignored the fact that she had shot it twelve times, and asked for help. She'd practically gotten used to the thing at this point. Like a cat she didn't have to feed or clean up after.
"Come… where? Where do ghosts go anyway?" She asked, tentatively turning to keep the creature in the corner of her vision as she switched over to trying to pump it for information.
To her surprise, it laughed at her. A burbling, sickening sound that reminded Emily of boiling tar.
"Not. Ghost. Work. Hell. Middle Manager." It explained with a snicker, before patting her on the shoulder again, and vanishing from sight.
Emily blinked at the sudden departure. Then sighed and got out a notepad.
At the top she wrote; 'Case 101. Probably Demons.'