Chapter 38 : The One with the RBA (Patreon)

A/N - I am down with the flu and so, this will be the last chapter for the week. Good news is that I have completed the 4/week quota. The bad news is that no more updates for the week.

See you guys, hopefully, on Monday.

Disclaimer - The rights of the respective characters are with their respective owners. I don’t mean to violate their intellectual property rights and thus, only my original characters are my IP. 

The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 38- [December 2009]

Shield Safehouse in Manhattan

–Random Beautiful Agent–

Hmm. This is nice, actually. She thought to herself as she lounged on the sofa, once again, clad in her PJs, scrolling through a catalog of TV Shows and Movies that had been provided to her by the higher ups at SHIELD.

Of Course, her beloved MySpace profile was still out of reach so she probably was hemorrhaging followers as of right now, but the job was still her number one priority. The validation from online strangers was nice but it didn't pay her bills…yet.

Someday, hopefully, in the near future, she hoped to turn her MySpace profile into some sort of revenue generation stream. She didn’t even want it to cover all of her expenses. Just the start of it would be more than enough for her to ditch her current job.

She had to jump in through a lot of hoops for this job. Technically, she was being paid by some private company but as far as she was aware, this was a government gig and ever since childhood, her father had drilled it into her head that a government job was the ONE thing, the one thing that would set her and her parents up for life.

Well, she had the job now but she didn’t have her parents to set them up with a nice cozy retirement somewhere warm and pleasant. Now, she had all the money coming from the gig and nowhere to spend it. Currently, it is all parked up in some investment fund that SHIELD recommends to all its agents.

Hey, if the literal spy agency advised someone to invest in something, then there is no other thing to do. Just invest and leave it because if the people hoarding national security interests didn’t know about the stock market, then who would?

She made a cool 100K a year, with all the benefits one could possibly get. As of right now, she wasn’t even paying for her living expenses, even. Even after the total fiasco last time where she fainted at the first contact attempt of the Invisible Man, causing her senior to come here in person and then leading to a massive shootout, the marks of which were still visible now, SHIELD had seen fit to not just continue her tenure at SHIELD, but also send her on the same mission.

She didn’t know if it was a punishment or if the Invisible Man requested it specifically. All she knew was that her senior was very upset and she didn’t want to upset her more by asking for more information. So, she had just asked Agent Ross’ assistant for more information and came here…to her work location.

She then read everything and then totally did not abuse the privilege given to her in the form of  SHIELD Site Service or SSS privilege that was only given to Level 7 and above operations. SSS was basically a logistics geek’s wet dream. 

It is the wing of SHIELD that is responsible for procuring, preparing, transporting, and delivering basically anything from any part of the world in under 16 hours, to her SHIELD Safehouse.

So far, she has tried French Pastries, Italian Pizzas and pasta, Indian Butter Chicken, and more. She was cautious at first but over the weeks, she had grown brazen until one fine day, she saw the bill that she had accrued because of her spending spree.

Well, safe to say that she never opened that application on the SHIELD issued phone again. She wondered why nobody had contacted her to yell at her about the extravagant spending but apparently, this mission had more budget than she could fathom. Still, it was not as if she could abuse it for long, after all, she liked, no, loved the French Pastries, but not more than her cushy job.

The job was fine and all, and the current assignment was very dreamlike. It’s just that….

“Ugh, it’s so boring,” She muttered to herself as she shut the TV off and threw away the remote. She didn't understand why there could be no live cable in the safehouse.

It was not as if watching Live News was going to threaten her mission or anything.

She would just have to make do with watching another rerun of the Star Wars prequel trilogy. Though, she wondered why some of the higher ups at the NYC HQ liked to watch it in their down time and laughed, very loudly, when any scene of Mace Windu came on the TV.

She liked his character, if only for the purple lightsaber that only he seems to have but other than that, the movie was fine for her.

She was about to turn on the TV again when…

“Ah!” She yelped as a small, very small man made up of paper was standing on top of the coffee table, on top of which her legs were resting on.

She hastily stood up and stumbled behind the sofa. She would have fallen on her head had the city’s guardian not been in front of her, in the flesh. Well, more like in the paper, but she got her point across.

“Ahem. Um, what can I do for you, Mr.Invisble Man, sir?” She coughed out into her hand and said, at least what she hoped it to be, in a professional enough tone, as if he had not just caught her in her PJs.

God, she really had to stop wearing this stuff as if it was her home and not the workplace. In her defense, the standard shield suit was very tight now. When she had given the physicals in the beginning, she was very…fit. Now, she had put on some French Pastries weight and she would not be shamed for it, dammit!

Oh no! She forgot she was in the presence of the Invisible Man and still, her thoughts wandered off, away from the current situation and as it had been told to her numerous times, she had a very expressive face.

Would the Invisible Man be offended by her?

“Ahem,” An electronic voice snapped her out of her thoughts. She looked to see the paper avatar was now floating mid-air, almost at face height. The avatar somehow looked….concerned?

“Hello, I am sorry for the last incident. I should not have startled you,” The paper avatar spoke. Her mind short circuited for a moment as she tried to process the words he had just uttered. She took a moment to find her words before replying to the all powerful entity present in front of her.

“Ah! No need for that. Actually, it was my fault, I was too distracted and did not carry out the proper procedure for the mission. Speaking of proper procedure, what can I do for you?” She repeated her previous question in a much more professional manner this time.

The avatar tilted its head at her before replying, “If you say so. Anyway, I have a message for your superior. Just pass this on to Fury or Coulson, if you can. Tell them that “Ross has made his move,””

She nodded her head, determined not to screw it up this time, “Understood. I’ll make sure it is passed on. Anything else I can help you with?”

The avatar just shook his head and dispersed slowly, revealing a small burner phone that had her immediately scrambling for one of the cabinets.

She put on some gloves and immediately secured the evidence. The phone was easy enough to store but the pieces of paper were very difficult to store, especially since it was basically shredded.

Well, not her headache if nothing came from the evidence but it was her job to secure it, and just for safety, she also rang the button that would alert her handler at SHIELD who would be looking at the security cameras of this place 24/7.

“Phew, finally done right,” She collapsed on the sofa once all the evidence was marked and bagged properly.

She wondered what he meant by that though. Something about Agent Ross, the NYC HQ Head?

She shook her head, dismissing those questions. She had learned from the plenty of spy movies she watched, foolishly thinking that it would help her prepare to work in an actual spy organisation, that one should not question what is above one’s pay grade.

And it was definitely above her pay grade, considering that the Invisible Man blatantly told her to pass it on to Fury or Coulson, both of whom were legendary names in the agency, and also because she was at the very bottom of the totem pole, a level 2 agent.

The only ones below here were the garbage incinerator people. She would have thought that Janitors would have lower clearance but apparently, they were the ones who had access to very sensitive areas and were present in those locations when there was no other staff on duty, making their security clearance quite an issue.

The agent who onboarded her told her that most Janitors have a clearance level of 5 and above. The ones that work at sensitive locations might even have 7 or more.

It had broken her mind back then but as all things do, the thought left her mind soon after.