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The Department of Problem-Solving was a department of the Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids' Cupid Intelligence Institute. Headed by Prefect Pythagoras-858, it was tasked with finding practical solutions to problems of various sorts which other Departments of the Crew faced.
History
Origins
The Department of Problem-Solving was founded around two decades prior to the Lord Thymon affair. Pythagoras-858 was awarded headship of the newly-formed department after a particular demonstration of common sense, where he had advocated the use of forbidium manacles on targets resistant to romanticisation. (PROSE: Lord Thymon and the Department of Problem-Solving)
At some point, the Supreme Quaestor awarded them the use of five laboratories, of which the biggest was Lab 5. (PROSE: Lord Thymon and the Department of Problem-Solving)
The Lord Thymon affair
In 2019, the Department of Impossible Things shuffled off the assignment of dealing with Lord Thymon to the Department of Problem-Solving. Pythagoras-858 left his Problem-Solvers — including Valerius-1497, Juliet-178, Carter-1277 and Edwin-750 — to develop solutions. When Pythe returned to Lab 5, the Problem-Solvers, following an idea developed by Valerius had filled it with clocks, with the intent to summon Thymon, only for him to be frozen due to the short supply of time energy that would result.
Deeming the idea mad enough to have some chances of working on a conceptual entity like Thymon, Pythe allowed them to go forwards, threatening to detonate a Reality Bomb to lure Thymon to the Cupid Homeworld. After he was indeed summoned, Juliet ended up taking it upon herself to simply hit him with a Cupid Arrow, romanticising him and solving the issue decisively. (PROSE: Lord Thymon and the Department of Problem-Solving)
Some time later, however, Juliet tried to wriggle out of a day's work at the Department of Problem-Solving. Her convoluted scheme to get out from under her responsibilities ended up crating over 1500 duplicates of herself, who then spread out across the Multiverse to collectively carry out the punitive assignment given to Juliet by the Department of Discipline. (PROSE: The Labors of Juliet) In their subsequent mopping up of the situation, the Cupid Parliament took Juliet's essential role in the Department of Problem-Solving under consideration, which was why they did not exile her to Dimension 1579 with her duplicates. (PROSE: Of Romeos and Juliets)
Mandragora's Great Experiment
- See main article: Mandragora's Great Experiment
When a mysterious S.O.S. was picked up in the Cupid Homeworld, seemingly coming from the Morningstar 1 Base in the 97th Cosmos, the Cupid Parliament decided to send in the Department, consisting in this instance of Pythagoras-858, Juliet-178, Carter-1277 and Edwin-750. The latter was drowsy through the whole endeavour, having recently created a psychic link between himself and a sloth, and failed to properly lock the Department of Problem-Solving's first Fog Ship when they parked some way outside the base. In Morningstar proper, they were greeted by Juliet's brother Dactylopius-177 and gradually discovered that Governor-105 harboured intentions of seceding from the Crew and launching an attempt to conquer the Multiverse, using the power of the seven Wellsians unearthed from beneath the base by Mandragora-257 and Digger-291, whom the former, a disgraced alchemist, had been working on reviving via “Mandragora's Great Experiment”.
After failing to convince either Cupid that the Wellsians were too dangerous to deal with, the Problem-Solvers attempted to get word to the Homeworld, but found that the Governor had emptied out the communications room. They were then confronted by Mandragora and the Governor, assisted by a Wellsian. The situation turned into a three-way standoff when Dactylopius also arrived, flanked by Digger and a second Wellsian, as Digger explained that he'd been on the rebellion's side all along, smuggling out one Wellsian (and its Heat Ray) to match their enemies' new weapons. The Problem-Solvers were unable to stop the situation escalating until andragora double-crossed the Governor, ordering “his” Wellsian to kill him, but was in turn betrayed by the Wellsian as both aliens revealed that they had no true loyalty to any of the Cupids. They turned their weapons onto Mandragora, seemingly destroying him and causing an explosion which destroyed the two Wellsians as well as the base itself.
In the aftermath, loyalists and rebels worked together to unlock the Governor's three Fog Ships to make their way back home. Pythagoras-858 berated himself for not having worked out the truth sooner, and also expressed a belief that Mandragora had survived in some shape or form, even if his body had been destroyed. (PROSE: The Resurrection of the Wellsians) When reports came in from “Colony World #2” that the Wellsians had returned, the Cupid Parliament made an official statement to the Crew, claiming that it was “nothing to worry about”. However, other parties within the Crew disagreed, and arranged to republicise the old video Fact File about the Wellsians. (PROSE: The Wellsians) The Department was subsequently given a new Fog Ship. (PROSE: Magic Trick)
Protecting the Homeworld
Some time later, while walking around the Cupid Homeworld, Pythagoras-858 spotted Conquest-932 sneaking around in hooded black robes and stopped him on his authority as Prefect of the Department of Problem-Solving, reasoning that he certainly looked like a problem in the making. Conquest tried to claim that his robes were not an emblem of evil but merely a way to protect his identity, something Pythe instantly disproved by pointing out that with such a relatively low overall number of Cupids, everybody knew everybody else and Pythe was well aware that he was talking to Conquest. (COMIC: Suspicious)
When the faceless magician's magic hat caused the Cupid Homeworld to be overwhelmed by a flood of white rabbits, the main five members of the Department of Problem-Solving (who had been working “on the best way to romanticize anthropomorphic eigengrau eggshells”, save for Pythe, who was attending Cupid Parliament) and Lord Thymon took refuge in an empty warehouse while most of the Crew took refuge outside the Homeworld, with the Cupid Prime having ordered them to solve the problem right before he fled in his own Fog Ship. After three days, having concluded that only a Deus Ex Machina could save the Homeworld, Valerius-1497 told the others that they should summon Aphrodite herself to help. The plan worked, but before she used her powers to make the rabbits and hat vanish, the goddess took out her anger at being summoned without permission on Valerius, turning him into a (mechanical) parakeet. The Problem-Solvers elected not to tempt fate by asking Aphrodite to reverse the transformation, content to add returning Valerius to his natural form to their list of problems to be solved. (PROSE: Magic Trick)
On Halloween 2019, after the Great Ghost's legion invaded, Pythagoras-858 gathered up the Problem-Solvers. After the One-Way Forced Spirit Realm Gateway transported a few Cupids including Pythe to the Spirit Realm by accident, the remaining Problem-Solvers inspected it, but were unable to find the reverse switch until Pythe himself managed to materialise in Juliet-178's house like a ghost and tell her how to do it. Subsequently, the Problem-Solvers, Technophile-963 and Igor-1612 boarded a Fog Ship and flew it to the abandoned Prime Universe theatre where the spirits had retreated to make the kidnapped Frankenstein-818 create a Reverse Spirit Realm Gateway. There, the Problem-Solvers managed to sneak Frankenstein safely off the stage while the ghosts were defeated. (PROSE: The Ghosts and the Machine)
When the Skirmish at the Cupid Theatre broke out between Paintbrush-122 and Sketchbook-430, Valerius was the only member of the Department of Problem-Solving who could be reached at short notice. Observing the fight and the argument on which it rested, Valerius merely commented that “one of them was probably lying about the other being the plagiarist — unless he wasn’t, in which case it was out of his hands and the Department of Paradoxes should be notified”, and did not actually achieve anything in terms of breaking up the fight itself. (PROSE: Plagiarism of the SavageMen)
Christmas 2021
The whole Department of Problem-Solving reminisced about some of their past cases together at the Christmas party organised in 2021 in the Cupid Homeworld by CS-NA. (PROSE: The Winter Quests)