Work Text:
Place: Agency Headquarters, somewhere [REDACTED] in Immaterial Houston
Time: Late Season 24 after she entered the Shadows but before everything blew up and the Coin was slagged.
Paula Mason sits behind her desk in room 773 of Agency Headquarters, which makes things difficult for fellow agents to find her because anywhere she moves in the building somehow automatically becomes room 773. She isn’t sure why this happens, but she thinks it’s somehow related to her always getting room 773 in the Hotel Umbra when she’s back in Hades for a road series against the Tigers. The immaterial plane is weird that way. Grabbing some snacks in the lunchroom is one thing, but when she has to go to the restroom, having some other agents interrupt her “me time” because they only have “room 773” to go by is awkward as hell at best.
After she entered the Spies Shadows, she got a memo from Personnel (unsigned) saying that she was now on desk duty in the Agency. Room 773 (office) has the not so lovely industrial lack of style that screams “BULK PURCHASE FROM OFFICE EQUIPMENT HELL”. She mutters something dark about whoever chose her desk chair making unholy kickback deals with some malign force. Obviously that skanky girlboss Coin is getting some extra payoffs.
She’s got her Firefighter jacket hanging on a coat stand, and Mx. Choppy, her labrys, is hanging on the wall behind her chair in a quick release mount for easy access when she needs to go deliver some deserved smackdown to especially annoying patriarchs. There’s a few pictures from her days in Chicago, Dallas, and Seattle, and quite a few from all those seasons in Hades. It’s bothering her a bit that she doesn’t seem to have too many pictures taken with her teammates here in Houston even though she’s been a Spy for over three seasons. Is it operational security?
Deep in thought and reclining back in her desk chair, she ponders what kind of assignment she can dream up to better serve the Agency and her fellow Spies. Suddenly, she pulls her chair up straight and opens up her laptop. A flyer template opens up in Gloogle Docs and the words “Anger Management 101” take form. Paula’s noticed that her fellow Spies seem to carry a whole lot of pent up emotions wherever they go and she’s aware that eventually that burden is going to make her fellow agents snap.
If she was still in Seattle, she’d go run off, grab her guitar, and start screaming to the accompaniment of the loudest heavy metal or raucous riot grrl music she could find, And invariably, there would be a teammate or two ready to shred with Bandma P.
She turns to look at Mx. Choppy and an idea takes shape. Somewhere in these labyrinthine corridors, there must be a room somewhere that has extra soundproofing. Aha! Maybe one of the debriefing rooms? She then visits the website for the company that provides firefighting equipment to her old Chicago comrades and orders a bunch of hatchets. All the blaseball bats are in the stadium, and a nice hatchet would be just the thing to hand fellow agents when something dearly needs to get the shit smacked out of it. And *nobody* else gets to wield Mx. Choppy, which was a treasured gift from the Lady Persephone when she arrived in Hades back in late Season 8.
She then makes a recurring order at Wlalmart.com for cheap shoddy figurines, beverage glasses, plates, and even some firewood. One stop shopping is so convenient.
As her workday ends, she starts wondering about who gets invited to the first round of seminars.