So, it happened. It really, truly happened. Just as Saga and Athan had planned, with a little bit of luck and a truck-ton of mental manipulation, the emergency resolution was passed, and we were the official interim directors of the XPCA through the crisis.

The actual deputy director was probably livid, not that we much cared. I heard that he got yelled down at the meeting over the final decision by generals screaming that this was a crisis, damn it, and they didn't want some mamby-pamby fresh-faced little idiot running the whole organization. Probably didn't help with the feeling livid thing.

Ironic, because now it was us, the freshest, mambiest, idiots out there. It was official. And I had to admit, it was exactly as I thought it might be. I dunno what Athan was thinking, that we'd be out there on the battlefields holding flags and leading our armies on death-or-glory charges, because that's not at all how leadership works. Instead, this.

He looked up at the rest of us with a face etched with despair. We'd been directors for less than a day now, and he already looked at his breaking point. Inwardly, I kind of giggled in schadenfreude, even though my lot was just as awful as his.

"Doesn't it ever end?" he groaned. "Can't I just sign all these and be done with it?"

"I don't know, did you read them all?" AEGIS replied.

"No. That's the point."

"Well, if you want to sign off on policies or provisos that you don't understand, then by all means."

He looked at her glumly for a moment and then started to sign various forms at random.

"I WAS KIDDING. READ THEM," she ripped the sheets out of his hands.

"If we don't like something, we can just have Saga correct that mistake," he grumbled. "Or you can go in and make the records disappear."

"You know," Whitney cleared her throat. "I was all on-board with moving things towards legitimacy. I thought we agreed that leaning on Saga and...Saga's methods...was a bad thing."

"Yeah." Athan's grumbling sounded like anything but agreement.

"So...we just have to do it right," I finished the thought. "It can't be that bad, there's...six of us...and there's normally only one director."

It was Athan, AEGIS, Cosette, Whitney, Kaori, and me. Saga had literally laughed in Athan's face when he asked, and Karu stated she'd rather go public and turn herself in than rejoin the bureaucracy. For some reason, nobody thought to ask Tem.

"I get the impression Director Hall wasn't a fan of paperwork," Cosette sighed. "And by 'get the impression', I mean, I knew him when he was a Lieutenant General, and he was always trying to get out from behind his desk and go 'lead by inspiration', he called it.

"Yeah, so why can't I do that?" Athan asked.

"Because," AEGIS fumed, "It's part of your job. You want this job, you'll do it properly. This is the kind of insidious killer that, if you ignore for too long, will poison everything you try to do and cripple the agency." She put a flourish on a report she finished reading and reached for another in the stack. I wasn't entirely convinced she wasn't getting off on this somehow. She seemed grumpy enough as the rest of us, but she was also the one pushing for us to catch up on paperwork.

"I kind of doubt that a lack of paperwork is what's going to kill the agency," I shrugged. "Not when we've got real issues like...a war. And a flying super-powered dude. And murmurs of uprising in the super-powered prison. And tides of discontent amongst the populace. To, y'know, name a few things."

"Oh really?" AEGIS asked, with a superior smirk as she handed a sheaf of papers over to me. I was smart enough not to touch them and left them hanging in the air. "Read it." The papers bounced in my periphery.

"Thanks, already got some," I bounced my own papers back at her.

She harrumphed at me, and then began reading aloud. Literally everyone at the table groaned her down at suddenly having two things they didn't want to be reading going on for them at once.

"Fine, I'll summarize," she said bitterly. "These are requisitions for more armaments from alternative sources. They'd go a long way towards the shortages we're facing."

"Why are they on our desk? Why isn't that kind of thing handled by like, some middle-manager?" I asked, my eyes glazing over words as I flipped through my pages.

"Because the source is…" AEGIS frowned as she flipped pages. "Well, maybe more controversial than people would like."

"What, like the mafia?" Athan asked.

"No, just abroad. Not supporting American industry."

The sheaf in Athan's hands was thick enough to make more of a bang than a flop as it hit the table. "Seriously? We have to sign off on that shit?"

"Athan, it's important."

"It's bullshit."

AEGIS frowned down at her forms. I could tell she was getting disproportionately butthurt by this, but wasn't exactly sure why. Maybe two parts putting in a good-faith effort and having it pooped on, four parts trying to be the cheerleader of the team and having it pooped on, and ten parts this has been her life for the last few weeks, and getting zero appreciation. And also being pooped on.

I could tell she was getting close to a breaking point, and we really, really needed her not to. Even if there were five others of us here, she was still getting more done than the rest of us put together. A big part of that was just being superhuman, sure, but I thought she was honestly just more familiar with the issues than us. Athan was more interested in who needed shooting, frankly, than where the bullets came from.

"Whether it's BS or not, you should still do it, Athan," I chided. "Lots of things are BS, but they still need to get done, right?"

AEGIS brightened noticeably, which was my aim.

"That's right," she agreed, joining me to turn on him.

"Shit like this should just be sorted already. We're in a crisis, who cares if our guns are domestic or not? Why should this land on my desk?"

"It's exactly because it's a crisis, Athan," I explained. "I bet normally this kind of bill would get shot down, long before it got anywhere near the director. The fact that it's up here despite not lining any businessman's pockets just goes to show how seriously the XPCA staff are taking these crises."

He frowned at the sheaf in his hands like he hadn't thought of it that way, and AEGIS gave me half a grin while he was distracted. I offered her back a tiny wink before refocusing on my own papers. Something about revisions to some kind of share-space radio frequency something that literally nobody cared about.

Athan sighed as he flipped more pages, before eventually putting down a signature and then putting down the papers. He slumped in his chair.

"Yeah, I can't do this. I feel useless in here. I need to be out there, doing something."

"You sound like Karu," Whitney said.

"Well maybe I should. She didn't want to be a bureaucrat and became a hunter instead. In her shoes, I'd have done the same thing."

"Except you chose to become Director," she replied. "In fact, you put a lot of effort and other people's suffering and manipulation into it. Now you have it, and you're already ready to quit?"

"I didn't think it'd be like this!" Athan threw up his hands before rising to stare out the glossy windows. "Did Blackett put up with all this shit while he was pulling the strings on a million shadowy things?"

"Probably," AEGIS shrugged.

Kaori glanced over her pages, her focus finally broken from her work. "It is almost as though there is a reason they would promote a relative outsider to this position. As though those most familiar with the post may know the extent to which its luster is glamour."

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

Athan rolled his eyes. "They did it because we made them. Saga made them."

"Saga is merely poking at minds. She does not have the bandwidth to rewrite the whole of the agency. Perhaps possible, but unlikely. The generals knew."

Cosette cleared her throat. "There's also the unfortunate record you're facing down, too. Last three directors have all died in the office under tragic circumstances now. Probably a lot less appeal to move up. In fact, I think Hall only did it out of duty and obligation."

"The deputy director wanted to ascend though," I mused.

"True," Cosette turned to face me. "But you've gotta consider the personalities and the politics of this place. Some people just want to move up because it's the direction their mommy's uterus was pointed the last time they got a shove in their lives. These are the people that lifers like the generals -- like me, formerly -- do not want moving up."

"But you also don't want to move up," Whitney finished. "Because it sucks."

"Pretty much. So a stopgap measure like a temporary crisis management unit? Shit, that's the dream right there."

Athan seemed to have rekindled his fire, though I didn't think it had anything to do with Cosette's aside. He sat back down and began flipping through different packets at random.

I let him go at it for a minute while I finished mine, but when he was still doing that as I pulled up another, I had to ask. "Looking for something, bro?"

"Yeah," he said, moving around more papers.

"Very descriptive."

"Thanks."

I cleared my throat. "So, uh, what would you happen to be looking for?"

"For the good stuff. You know, like...you were right, Blackett was right here once. And he changed a lot of policies. He instituted the 'New Exhuman Deal', founded New Eden, established the P-Force. I'm wondering where the proposals are for shit like that. Instead of--" he picked up a form and read with disgust aloud. "Reprioritizing auto-gun target priority queues to minimize collateral damage by overpenetration."

"Oh that sounds interesting, hand that one here," AEGIS said. Athan seemed quite happy to be rid of that packet.

"I think the 'good stuff' was all penned by Blackett, or at his request," Cosette said, scratching her head as her eyes darted over another form. "Nobody's going to just randomly submit something like that up the chain for approval. At the very least, if they were going to, they'd have a proposal meeting."

"None of these have proposal meetings," Athan replied.

"Lots of them probably did, at some point. Most of 'em probably didn't. This is just the backlog of shit that Hall didn't want to do."

"Well," Athan said, doing the opposite of admiring the spread before him. "Fuck that guy. I'm glad he's dead."

"Athan," Whitney chided.

"Seriously. Look at all the bitch work he was shirking. The whole agency was going to fall apart because he couldn't keep his shit in order."

"And you're any better?" she challenged. "Just a minute ago, you were saying you couldn't do this, you had to leave and be like Karu, out there 'doing something'. Isn't that what Hall did to create this mess?"

"I guess," Athan slumped.

"Look, we're more than halfway through," I said. "And yeah, we're gonna have to keep doing this stuff throughout, but for burning through this backlog, we're making it."

AEGIS froze for a second. "Um, actually...the backlogs might be getting worse, not better."

"Huh?" I asked.

"Well...I've been chipping away at it until now, but I don't...really have the time, anymore," she eyed Athan. "I caught up on the paperwork every night there for a while, but I'm not working nights anymore. Also, it's not really my job to do everything...if we're all director--"

Athan sighed enormously. "You're saying that we're only doing this because you have to stop at five every night?"

She seemed to swell with pouting. "Yes, if you want to blame me for not being able to do your job."

"She is kinda running everything already, it's sorta garbage of you to expect her to do this too," I told Athan. Which was true, but I still only said it because I was still worried Athan was going to push AEGIS to quitting entirely, like an idiot.

He sighed again and ran his hands through his hair before rising again, this time, teetering towards the door like he wanted to escape but wasn't sure that was allowed. He barely made it halfway there before Whitney pulled out her chair in front of him and stared him down.

"Where do you think you're going?" she asked, her voice more curious than steely, despite her words.

"Just...gonna get some air."

"How 'bout you sit your ass down, Chariot," Cosette informed him, not looking up.

"How about 'this is stupid'," he retorted, with just the most cunning wit.

"And it will continue to be so whether you do it or we do. So buckle down like the rest of us."

"Buckle...this is paperwork, Cosette."

"I've noticed."

"I'm willing to throw my life on the line for the XPCA. I'm willing to endure pain and physical suffering, I'm willing to kill, or to die."

"...and your point is?"

He looked around like we were all crazy. "That this is insane. This is a huge waste of the time and talent of everyone here. Each of you is among the most brilliant, talented people I've ever heard of, and none of you should be wasting your time on the most bitch-ass paperwork I've ever heard of in my life. Karu's right, we need to be out there, making a difference, not shoved in some office worrying about how many lumens the new batch of exosuit front-lights need to put out."

"Athan," Cosette replied, finally looking up.

'Yes?"

"Sit down."

He looked around for a moment with a frown, and then pulled up a seat near her.

"Why'd you have us take this position?"

"Honestly? I thought...I thought legitimizing our leadership would make things easier on Saga. I thought doing things above the table was probably better than operating in the shadows. I thought we'd be making policy decisions and big changes like Blackett, not just...swimming in filth like we are."

She nodded as she listened. "Good points. Valid. But you're missing something important."

"What's that?"

"That shit is only ten percent of this job. At best. I don't know how you haven't learned this by now, maybe I was too effective a central for you, but ninety-nine percent of military service is showing up, waiting, or paperwork."

"But we're special," he argued.

"And maybe that's how you've avoided this bitch-work so far. But you're signing up for an ordinary position, granted, one at the top, but still ordinary. And with it comes the perfectly ordinary amount of bullshit. Do it, or get out. But stop bitching."

He frowned in thought for a moment. "Or, if we are the director, we can...establish a new order. We can...streamline the system, cut out all this crap, make it so the XPCA only focuses on what's important."

He picked up a paper and began to scrawl on the back his inane ideas.

"And I suppose, that involves, what? Getting someone else to do all this for you?"

"No," he answered. "We won't have to do it at all. Nobody cares about this stuff."

She shook her head. "How are you going to run the XPCA if none of the exosuits have lights on 'em? If nobody's evaluating the auto-guns targeting? If nobody's buying new arms from Cuba to fill the deficit?"

"I mean, the agency's running right now, and Hall didn't review any of that shit."

"Yeah. Until five months from now and you have a bunch of strike units stumbling in the dark on an op because they've got no lights, and they've got no weapons, and the auto-cannons they deployed are shooting at them because it can't recognize them with their lights off and their hands empty."

"That's just made-up. You're cherry-picking."

She shook her head. "Maybe. But how many things do you think you can let slip through the cracks before shit like that starts happening?"

"Maybe," Kaori spoke up again. "You should believe the woman who was responsible for maintaining our ops, instead of assuming that things worked flawlessly by magic."

"Fine then," Athan said, scratching out his scrawlings and starting over. "We get an intermediary body to handle this shit while we focus on the bigger picture stuff."

"That doesn't work either," AEGIS sighed. "Same problem Cosette said as before."

"What, that we won't have lightbars? I said someone will do it."

"Not that. The goldbricker oxygen-thief problem. The only people who would want this position are people not qualified for it. Petty losers who'd get off on basically having the power of attorney within the XPCA. People who'd reject or accept proposals only based on who they could help or harm by them. Or worse," she glanced at Athan meaningfully. "People who would shirk the work-part of this just so they could abuse the power and station of it."

"They wouldn't have power and station. They'd just be doing this. We'd keep the power and station."

She smiled and laughed. "Right. Because when you can sign actions into being, you're powerless."

"Apparently so," he yelled. "Because I can't sign an action into being which makes this shit go away."

"Bro," I told him, about at the end of my rope. I looked up and caught his eye. "Look. I know that since the day you turned, your powers and all the world have been teaching you that there's always a better, smarter way of doing things. And you're super well-trained to look for that sneaky third option. We all know it, and it's one of the things that makes you so dang smart and nasty to fight against. And we love that about you."

He frowned at the compliment but nodded.

"But there's no sneaky-sneak or tricky-trick or sideways-ways to get around this problem. If you don't do it, we have to, and you're gonna feel like shit about dumping it on us. If we don't, someone else has to, or else the agency goes to shit. And if someone else does, they're the one with the power, not us. So if you want the power of being XPCA director, and you don't wanna feel like shit, do as Cosette says and buckle down with the rest of us to power through this nonsense."

"And stop bitching, most importantly," Cosette added.

As the thought hung in the air, everyone ignored it to keep focused on their work. Everyone except me, making my plea, Athan, thinking hard about it, and Whitney, who was studying his face so hard it looked like she might melt it with the intensity her focus.

At long last, he sighed and picked up a paper at random. "If everyone says so, I guess you have to be right."

"Think of the bright side," AEGIS said with a smile. "It's almost five, and we can clock out and forget all about it until tomorrow. Isn't that something to look forward to?"

"Hooray," he intoned. "Saving the world on a nine-to-five. Just what I always wanted."