"Not too many, uh..." Isaac thought for a moment. His encounter with a vengeful spirit at Amorton Manor counted as one, but it probably wasn't appropriate to mention it here. "I encountered Mary the 'Shepherd.' Does that count?"
"Mary the 'Shepherd'? Calamity Sequence No. 83?" Daisy froze.
"Yeah, she chased me the whole way last night..."
Daisy looked up at Isaac, then at Carlo by the window, making sure she hadn't misheard.
Carlo shrugged. Daisy fell silent for a moment, then lowered her head, wrote something down, and closed the folder. "That completes your registration. Your credentials as an outside employee will take a few days to make. I'll notify Mr. Schuster when they're ready for collection. In the meantime, if you need to enter the Joint Investigation Bureau, Mr. Lessing, you can use a temporary pass."
Daisy took a slip of paper from a drawer, wrote the date on it, stamped and signed it, then handed it to Isaac.
Isaac took it, and Daisy stood up. "That takes care of the formalities, then."
"Good efficiency. If you could keep that up in your regular work, you wouldn't have to worry about your monthly bonus evaluations," Carlo remarked.
Daisy's smile stiffened. "Um, Mr. Schuster, if there's nothing else, I'll be going."
"Go on. I won't keep you from shining for the Joint Investigation Bureau." Carlo waved her off.
Daisy immediately turned and left, almost as if she were fleeing.
Isaac watched her go. "She really is... in awe of you."
"Only natural. Most people at the Joint Investigation Bureau are aware of that. Probably because they have some misunderstanding about my personal charm." Carlo thought nothing of it.
Isaac thought Carlo was quite optimistic in his self-assessment.
"Come on. Since we're here, let's take a look at my office." Carlo left the archives room and headed down the corridor.
"You have an office?" Isaac followed, a little surprised. He had assumed Carlo held only a nominal position at the Joint Investigation Bureau.
"Of course. I have a private office all to myself." Carlo turned and continued down the corridor. "It's empty and unused most of the time, but I have to have one."
At the end of the corridor, Carlo stopped in front of a door and pointed at it. "This is the storeroom. It's stocked with refreshments and the like: coffee, tea, biscuits, canned food. The Joint Investigation Bureau replenishes it regularly. You can take whatever you need, as long as you don't clear the place out."
"That wouldn't be appropriate, would it...?"
"True, it wouldn't be appropriate, because you couldn't carry it all."
"...That's the problem? Not being able to carry it all?"
"If you can clear it out in one trip, that's a skill in itself. I could even be in awe of you."
As Carlo spoke, he walked over to the door opposite, pulled a key from his pocket, and inserted it into the lock.
Isaac glanced at the sign on the door: Western Territory Joint Investigation Bureau of Anomalous Incidents, Ninth Special Investigation Section.
"Ninth Special Investigation Section..."
"The Joint Investigation Bureau has several investigation sections. Sections One through Eight handle different types of routine anomalous incidents. Section Nine... handles things the other sections can't, and occasionally takes part in joint investigations."
Carlo entered the office, and Isaac followed him in.
A desk stood in the middle of the room, and a bookcase against the wall was crammed with folders and thick hardbacks. A map of Vista's urban districts hung on the opposite wall. The whole room had the feel of a place used occasionally but not regularly occupied.
Carlo went behind the desk and settled into the leather chair. He leaned back, tilting the backrest slightly, then propped his feet on the corner of the desk and folded his hands behind his head. "Well? Not a bad office, is it?"
Isaac looked around. "It's more... normal than I imagined."
"What's that supposed to mean? Did you expect me to hang a few monsters' heads on the wall for decoration?" Carlo pointed to an empty spot beside the door. "I'll have someone bring in a desk tomorrow and put it there. That'll be your desk from now on."
"I get one too?"
"I can't have you crouching in a corner to work every day, can I?" Carlo said. "Though I don't use this office much either. Most of the time, I come here after mooching a meal because I'm too lazy to go back to the agency, and kill time until dinner."
So that's it, Isaac thought. The office's main purpose was as a waiting room for meals.
He walked a few steps around the room, glancing over the folders on the bookcase. Their spines bore different numbers and years; they appeared to be case files archived by date.
He looked again at the map on the wall. Red pins marked it, mostly clustered in several of Vista's urban districts.
"What do those pins mean?" Isaac asked.
"They mark places where anomalous incidents have occurred, so I have a visual reference when I review them. If you find any locations worth recording in the future, you can pin them up there too."
Isaac nodded and went to look out the window. A side street lay below, and he could see the spire of a church in the distance.
He stood there looking out for a while, then turned around. "Boss, how is the Joint Investigation Bureau organized internally?"
"What, concerned about your future career prospects?"
"Ahem, I just want to know how things work."
Carlo yawned and thought for a moment. "The Joint Investigation Bureau has a director and two deputy directors. The director is appointed by the grand duke and serves an oversight role, mainly handling appearances: attending ceremonies and meetings, and dealing with the church and the nobles. He hardly gets involved in the actual work.
"The two deputy directors are the ones really in charge. One oversees investigations, and the other handles administration and logistics. Below them are several main departments: investigations, logistics, archives, technical, and so on. Each department has a head, and below them are the various sections and offices.
"Sections One through Eight all fall under the investigations department, and each handles different types of anomalous incidents. Section One, for example, deals with spirit-related incidents, Section Two handles curses, and Section Three handles anomalous objects, and so on. The division of work isn't rigid. When an incident spans categories, personnel are drawn from different sections to form a temporary team.
"The logistics department handles resource allocation and personnel support. Archives handles case filing and information management. Technical is responsible for identification, analysis, and experimental research, and also provides technical support to field agents."
Isaac sorted through the information. "What about Section Nine, then? You said it handles things the other sections can't. Which department does it fall under in the organizational structure?"
"On paper, Section Nine falls under investigations, but in practice it's a semi-independent unit. It is my territory, after all," Carlo said. "The matters Section Nine handles often fall under the authority of several departments. If I had to wait for approval through the proper procedures for every little thing, I might as well sleep in the office all day."
Looks like Carlo has a lot of authority... Isaac nodded. "Then how much authority does the Joint Investigation Bureau actually have? I heard about it when I was in Palmer, but I've never really known what it can do."