That afternoon, when Jeanne handed over Nine's compiled reports to Talulah, she noticed a decidedly lethal glint in the Draco's eyes.
It was an unfiltered, burning desire to commit murder—the look of an exhausted beast staring directly at the culprit who had just thrown an extra mountain of workload onto his desk.
Exhausted to the bone, Talulah didn't just want to throttle Jeanne right then and there; she seriously considered stringing her up from the ceiling beams and giving her a solid thrashing with a riding crop just to vent the sheer frustration of having extra problems dumped in her lap.
"You've been gone for half a day, and you managed to cook up an entire district development plan? Do you think the Draco species is immune to dying from overwork, so you're trying to pioneer a new entry in the history books?"
Thumbing through the newly minted Victoria-Taran Residential District Project—which happened to be thicker than her own remaining pile of paperwork—Talulah lightly smacked Jeanne over the head with the bound stack, her tone dripping with exasperation.
"Heheheh..." Jeanne rubbed the back of her head, offering an apologetic grin as she glanced at the neat towers of documents still waiting on Talulah's desk.
It seemed she had accidentally handed over a massive workload, heaping even more burden onto an already overworked leader. Letting her vent a little was probably the least she could do.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
True to form, Talulah spent the next minute using Jeanne's head like a wooden practice block, steadily whacking away. Who knew how many merits this young Draco was earning by treating Jeanne's skull like a drum?
"Alright, alright! I'll help you get through the parts I can manage, okay?" Dizzied after racking up a few thousand merit points for Talulah's soul, Jeanne quickly threw up her hands and offered a proposal that was impossible to refuse.
It was almost as if Talulah had been waiting for precisely those words. The moment the offer left Jeanne's lips, Talulah dragged up a spare chair, shoved Jeanne down beside her, and locked her in place without giving her the slightest chance to retract the statement.
Was all that hammering just a psychological play to back me into making that promise? Jeanne wondered, blinking at the smug Draco sitting next to her. She had a strong, sinking suspicion she had just been thoroughly played.
What else could she do now, though? She had already volunteered. There was no backing out of this debt. Gritting her teeth, she pulled the stack of documents closer and dove in.
"I'm not asking you to memorize the whole thing. Come on, use that ridiculous intuition of yours and tell me which of these approaches makes the most sense."
Talulah eagerly flipped to the back section of the proposal, where multiple branching paths were outlined. That was precisely where she had stalled out earlier; she simply didn't have the mental bandwidth to weigh the long-term consequences of every single option.
She didn't possess any clairvoyant powers, meaning every decision she made carried the risk of triggering unintended fallout down the line. Most days, she spent hours deliberating alone or dragging advisors in for endless debates.
Starting today, however, those headaches were officially over. Watching Jeanne lazily flick through the choices and pick options with the nonchalant rhythm of drawing lots, Talulah couldn't help wondering why she hadn't thought of outsourcing her decision-making sooner.
"Why do I suddenly feel like I'm a Beast Lord used for forecasting match outcomes, or some glowing rock at the bottom of a wishing well? This is deeply humiliating."
With a vacant, lifeless stare, Jeanne skimmed through the paperwork, letting her passive intuition guide her hands as she rapidly selected the optimal paths and handed them over to Talulah.
The dynamic duo's combined efficiency skyrocketed several times over. Freed from the suffocating nightmare of administrative indecision, Talulah leaned back and took a leisurely sip of her tea.
"You know, looking at how this is panning out, it feels a lot like you're just dumping all your current work onto me," Jeanne muttered, casting a sidelong glare at the suddenly relaxed Draco beside her.
"I've already reviewed all of these. I just needed a second opinion to confirm my judgment," Talulah replied smoothly, completely ignoring Jeanne's aggrieved expression while a genuine sense of satisfaction bloomed in her chest.
How long had it been since she last managed to corner Jeanne like this? She turned the pages of the proposals Jeanne had finalized, carefully reviewing the logic behind each choice.
Every time Jeanne offered a suggestion, Talulah found herself instantly agreeing with it. It was that profound, lightbulb-moment feeling of reading the answer key in the back of a textbook and finally understanding the math problem.
Outside the office, the Chernobog administrative staff were staring in sheer disbelief at the rate proposals were getting approved under Talulah's signature today. Had their boss suddenly broken through some sort of unprecedented bottleneck in operational speed?
A few staffers had privately worried that Talulah was simply cracking under the crushing volume of paperwork and blindly stamping files just to clear the queue without reading them.
Yet when they actually checked the documents, an eerie silence fell over the room. The self-proclaimed workaholics realized a sovereign truth: their own slow pace was not due to a lack of effort, but a lack of raw talent.
Not only were these proposals brilliantly tailored to the situation, but the interlocking strategies allowed different municipal departments to coordinate and support each other, drastically cutting down on redundant labor.
No wonder she had enough spare time to go gallivanting off to Victoria! At this rate of output, Talulah could take a year-long vacation and still clear an entire year's backlog of projects in a single week.
Leader Talulah is a truly terrifying woman.
Inside the office, however, the terrifying woman in question was currently looking at Jeanne the way a dragon looked at her most prized hoard of gold.
Physical affection, as it turned out, was the reward of choice. Jeanne sat there with a thoroughly drained expression, letting Talulah casually ruffle her hair while the Draco muttered indistinctly to herself.
"Let's get one thing straight: I'm only doing this to bail you out of the massive backlog you accumulated while I was away. I am not becoming your permanent administrative assistant," Jeanne huffed, stubbornly turning her head away. She wasn't quite used to having her hair aggressively petted like this. Was this the classic 'what goes around comes around'?
Talulah didn't seem to mind Jeanne's half-hearted petulance. She knew Jeanne well enough by now: since the precedent was set, the next time a pile of paperwork threatened to bury her alive, Jeanne would probably show up to help without even needing to be asked.
"I never realized your hair was this soft to touch. Why didn't I notice this before? This is a fantastic way to relieve stress," Talulah murmured, her eyes dancing with amusement and a playful lilt in her voice.
"Talulah, the Victorian relocation process is basically complete—"
The office door swung open, and Frost Nova strode in, freezing mid-sentence as she took in the bizarre scene unfolding before her.
What on earth am I witnessing? Is Talulah actually getting hands-on with Jeanne in broad daylight? Seeing Jeanne sitting there with the absolute soul-leaving expression of a burnt-out candle, FrostNova suddenly found herself deeply regretting her life choices.
"I think I came at a bad time. I'll just... come back later." FrostNova figured that staying another second might permanently warp her worldview. It was safer to retreat and let them finish whatever domestic drama they were staging.
She should probably go ask Alina how to handle this specific social scenario.
Turning on her heel, the white-furred Cautus tried to slip out the door as fast as her snowshoe-clad feet could carry her. But how could a simple snow hare possibly outrun a desperate Jeanne fighting for her last shred of dignity?
Before she even made it fifty meters down the corridor, FrostNova felt her back collide with a pair of remarkably soft, substantial barriers. Absorbed into that suffocating embrace, any remaining power to struggle instantly evaporated.
No matter how hard she fought, escaping from Jeanne when she was this desperate was simply impossible. Having learned that painful lesson, the white hare was unceremoniously scooped up, carried backward into Talulah's office, and the door clicked shut behind them.
"Hey, isn't that Big Sis? Why did Jeanne just drag her into Talulah's office? Their relationship is getting... awfully interesting!"
A young Ursus girl who had tagged along with FrostNova blinked in sheer bewilderment, completely devoid of any instinct to rescue her captain as she immediately leaned in to gossip with her squadmate.
Wild, highly convoluted dramatic triangles instantly sprouted in the minds of the two young soldiers, and they stared at the closed office door with expressions that grew more conspiratorial by the second.
As for the current Princess of the Yeti Squadron, she remained completely oblivious to the dramatic fanfiction currently being written about her outside.