I'm aware Neshomeh has already said this, so I'll try not to repeat anything. I also, obviously, won't say anything about Permission - I think Nesh's post constitutes a reply to that question.
Okay, starting with the agents... I'm rather concerned that you went from 'I'm not sure what Jean's going to be like' to posting a bio in 12 minutes. That doesn't seem to be long enough to put together a full character - and, in fact, the really tiny bio seems to support that idea. A few specific points:
-You asked 'is this a good contrast with Valon?', which is a decent question - but shouldn't be the core of your character design. A character needs to stand by itself, not solely as part of a pair.
-Um... since Jean in English is a female name, but in French is a male one (and shows up a lot in English usage that way)... is your character male or female? This actually doesn't matter, but it's one of the first things most people decide on making a character. The fact that you didn't mention it suggests you were rushing (or that you have a deliberately genderless character, but I doubt it).
-You just... haven't said very much. We can tell that Jean is probably fairly headstrong - but does 'hotheaded' and 'inquisitive' come out as 'impulsive', or do 'serious' and 'dedicated' make 'painstaking'? Both are reasonable conclusions. There are heaps of other unanswered questions, too.
Moving onto Valon, then... I have only one real question:
-What sort of colourblind is he? Because there's a lot of difference. 'New Lodgings' suggests he might be at least red-green, since he apparently missed the Big Red Button that turns off the console (and if you didn't do that deliberately, you should have!). On the other hand, as someone who actually is r-g colourblind, I suspect that would make him incapable of seeing urple (since r-g means I can't see a difference between purple and blue - or pink, depending on the purple). If he's fully colourblind, all these apply even more - I know someone who is, and yes, everything is literally shades of grey. There's also blue-yellow, which is rare, and I don't know much about it.
If you're putting something into a character, you need to know how it works - how it will affect them. Every time I write a story with Dafydd, I have to remind myself that he only has one hand now. If you have a fully-colourblind Valon, but have him marvelling at the vivid greenness of the trees... well. (An example: we have a camellia bush. Every spring, my family insist they can see those flowers from the far end of the garden. They're clearly lying - I have to be within five meters to notice them...)
Moving onto the story... Nesh is right that there's something faintly off about Valon's lines. Partly, that's also a storytelling issue: his monologue actually repeats something the narration has already told us. It may be a perfectly natural reaction for him, but consider this.
The horse slid slowly backwards into the crevasse as my partner approached.
I shook my head. "That's not something you see often - a horse falling into a pit."
Mortic arrived at my side. "Okay, what'd I miss?"
"Well, a horse just fell into a hole in the ground," I filled him in.
Mortic's brow furrowed. "A horse? Into a chasm?"
Yes, they might well say those if they were real people - but by this point the audience are screaming "GET ON WITH IT!". In your specific case, I'd probably have cut out the recap altogether:
... he looked around the Response Centre.
"Well," he decided, "Lovecraft nods his silent approval. I guess this place got imported from Innsmouth or something."
And another point on continuity (to go with the colourblindness): are you keeping all that stuff? Are you going to use it? What I mean is, are your agents going to hang things on the skeleton, perch on the table, complain that the sofa's rotting and throw darts at Cthulhu - or are they going to exist in a vague, generic space with a console, a cupboard, and maybe a chair or two?
If you actually use it, I think the Response Centre Of Terror could be a brilliant way to liven up the intros and extros of your missions. If you don't, it'll be a somewhat jarring waste.
A few more points:
-Most people on the Internet paragraph by leaving an empty line. It's a lot easier to read. You have got indenting going on (which is incredibly rare online - probably because most places don't support tabbing in!), which is the usual approach in print - but I think I still prefer blank lines for the screen. That may be just preference, though.
-Marking comments as resolved doesn't get rid of them. ;) The best way to publish things through GDrive is to, well, publish them. You'll find it at File>Publish to the web, and it strips out a lot of the user interface to leave a nice clean page like this.
-Some of your description is a bit confusing. I'm looking at Valon dragging his bags into 'what could charitably be called a broom closet'. Is that supposed to mean the RC is tiny, in which case you've got a lot of stuff in there? Is there an actual broom closet, clearly marked so he could find it, but too dirty or something to be a proper broom closet? Is there a bedroom or something which is very small, and also very easy to find? I can't tell.
-... I'll leave a newline for this one...
--> ALL THAT BEING SAID... I actually quite liked your intro piece. I'm nitpicking because I'm currently wearing my Permission Giver Hat, but I think Valon has potential to be pretty funny, given the chance. And I do like the RC Of Terror.
hS
