While the others returned to their work, Skye immediately took Stan for a tour of the building. Throughout the first half of the day, Skye busied herself with showing her new partner around the facilities and introducing him to a couple of people from other units that he would most likely collaborate with at one point or another. The people from Tactical, most of them guys with a background that resembled Stan’s, were almost all of them quite easy-going, fun and caring once one got past their crass attitude. There was also the administrative group who, although they often seemed tiresomely meticulous with paperwork, actually deserved a lot of credit for the massive amount of work they had been dealing with ever since the ASA had been launched.
If Skye had doubted that Stan would remember all the names of his own team members, she highly suspected that he hardly even tried to process all of the information she threw at him. She foresaw that he would probably run and ask her questions that she had already answered, but she made a silent promise to herself to be as understanding as possible. Skye knew that it was hard being thrown into an eclectic group of people and expected to get to work at once. In fact, she hardly remembered her first days at the ASA herself, only that she had been incredibly overwhelmed.
After the tour, Skye decided to go ahead with a case that seemed relatively straightforward, and, while perhaps not particularly exciting, would give Stan the opportunity to grow into his role. Quite frankly, Skye also chose the case for her own sake. She had never led anyone new and wanted to make sure that she kept her head above water. While she had worked for the agency for a couple of years, she had always been kept under the guidance of one of the more experienced agents—especially the recently departed idiot who Skye, although she disliked him, must admit had been quite good at his work.
Suddenly erupting from another door into the room where she had left Stan, Skye waved a folder crammed with papers at her new partner. "Here we go. I just briefed it with Agent Granderson and it should be alright for the two of us—nothing major, just something to get you into this whole thing that we do here.” Skye opened the folder, but before looking through the papers she gazed gravely with her light green eyes at Stan. ”Honestly, I have no idea how experienced you are with investigations of this kind, but you’ll get the hang of it. It’s really not that complicated, and once you get into it, I promise it gets really interesting—perhaps not this case, but it usually does. It’s nothing like working in Tactical, where it’s all brawns—here you might get a bit of that, but it’s mostly your head doing all the hard work.”
She gave him another one of her slightly visible smiles, mentally biting her tongue not to make a rude comment about his background in the military and the police probably making him a better fit for Tactical, before pulling out the first paper in the file. ”Take a look at this. It’s a complaint filed by a woman who’s property has been ravaged by what she suspects is a supernatural.” Skye couldn’t help but to roll her eyes at the thought that ever since the supernaturals were revealed, mundanes had become too quick to judge animals or oddballs to be cases of supernatural people, while most of the time, weird occurrences had perfectly normal explanations. Often, that judgment could have severe consequences on either people’s lives or the cluttered work schedules of already busy ASA teams across the country. ”Apparently it’s not the first time this has happened in the neighbourhood”.
Pulling out another paper, she read on. ”Another victim reports that there is this old man in a neighbourhood close to town who’s been acting weird lately—throwing tantrums and behaving aggressively, even threatening people. According to the source, the old man has always been a bit of a recluse, so it might just be anxious neighbours, but he has never been aggressive. Recently, the man was reported lost, but the property damage reports have continued. The rumour around the neighbourhood is that he has turned into some kind of were-beast still running around—you know how people talk, it's ridiculous. Hopefully though, his neighbours are wrong, and there’s some animal living in the area and the old man might just have a case of severe dementia kicking in, in which case he shouldn’t do the Test or report to the League of Magic, but simply go to the hospital.”
She handed Stan the papers and continued without waiting for any intervention from his side. ”Anyway, there’s a lot of things we can do from here. Talk to people, ask around, look for evidence, examine any records or lawsuits related to the man, you know the drill. I suggest we start as we usually do once all the paperworks' started—head out into the area and take a look around. If we’re lucky, we might see something interesting or meet someone who can tell us something. Either way, it’s always good to get acquainted with your case."
Skye looked curiously at him, as if she was testing to see whether he would be brave enough to go against any of her conclusions and suggestions, or facile enough to go with the flow. She wasn’t sure which option she preferred.