The War on the IT Department
An Avengers Fanficion
by Pheather McKelle
I do not own the Avengers nor the characters, I'm just a girl with a dream. :3
This is based off a little quirky thought I had whilst in the computer lab, hope you guys enjoy! This might turn into more than a oneshot but I don't know.
To the general public, SHIELD was an agency which specialized in people with specific talents, who got specific jobs. There were agents who performed a wide variety of gristly tasks, from interrogating war lords to stopping shipments of contraband, and they did this in almost every country all over the world. There was no person who could stop a determined SHIELD agent, and while their means of achieving their goals might be considered "off the book" in most agencies, to SHIELD it was an every-day mission. Everyone knew about the spies, the assassins, the field agents, even the SOs that trained them in those special skills. It was no secret that SHIELD employed people who knew fifteen different ways to kill someone with only a spoon. They made stories, movies, comic books, even bobble heads in the most famous ones' likenesses. Yet the one part of SHIELD that the public lacked interest in was the IT department.
An IT department is a division or branch that concerned the maintenance and update of electronic communications. Phones, email, and internet was all part of the department, and though important in the long-run, the job received very little attention, either from the media or from SHIELD itself. The agency was based off spies running around like chickens with their heads cut off on missions whose importance would only be revealed later and discreetly, though the mission itself promised to be spectacularly explosive. And since that was the most interesting aspect of the notoriously tight-lipped government agency, it was no real secret as to why the IT department garnered little, if any respect.
The employees of the department were shady little creatures, with their beards that remained constantly in a half-shaven state that contained the crusty remains of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and chinese take-out, who more often than not wore glasses, the lenses of which seemed to be stained with the faint imprint of the computer monitors they seemed to live with, and who sometimes took off a day or two but not often, since the average employee's social life consisted of two or three facebook statuses a month and possibly a World of Warcraft convention. The director of the department differed from her charges in one distinct way: she was a woman.
The ordered life of your average IT worker was well-managed and usually predictable. So it caused quite a stir when, one morning, they heard heels clicking down the hall. They squinted, unused to the glare of the sun streaming through the hallway windows.
As Agent Hill marched down the hall, she sensed the tension in the air. The computer rats that inhabited the bowels of SHIELD had no place in the world when the sun was out just as she had no place here. Being one of SHIELD's top-ranked agents, walking into the IT building was akin to a queen attempting to infiltrate the den of a group of gnomes and attempt to take one of their own away. They often bit, spit, and refused to let go. As she passed a cluster of some men, she could have sworn she heard one hiss.
The office of the head of the department, Julie Hunt, was dark and quiet, sparsely decorated, with a flickering fluorescent light in the ceiling and a squat desk in the corner. The dusty blinds hadn't been opened in ages. The meeting table was strewn with loose papers and an old pizza box, the white board behind which was decorated with streaks of multicolored marker, both old and new. Hunt resembled a troll herself, with an old, wrinkly face that bulged in odd places, with her thin gray hair pulled in a tight bun that yanked the sagging skin on her forehead up so that her eyebrows seemed to remain in a comical surprised appearance. The rest of her body was similarly structured.
"Agent Hill, Jones told me I'd be expecting you. Come to take another one?" Hunt's voice was low and raspy. She fidgeted with the papers on her desk, the agitation clear in the way she sat in her office chair.
"We aren't taking your employees, we're simply reassigning them." Hill reminded her, already annoyed with the woman. Shouldn't she be proud to see her employees go on to become something better than this? Whatever this is, Hill thought, glancing around the room with distaste. This was the first time she had visited this particular woman, but the stories her colleagues told about previous meetings let her to believe that Hunt would be a difficult woman to converse with.
"Seems as though there's a war on the IT department." Hunt grumbled as she leaned below her desk, rummaging around in a filing cabinet. Agent Hill sighed. "This is the fifth employee this year. Getting desparate, huh?" Hunt grinned a little, the sides of her fleshy mouth parting like thick curtains to reveal yellowing teeth.
"The employee in question has showed outstanding numbers in all the testing catagories, oustripping some very talented trainees." Hill said, wishing that Hunt would just hand over the file and get it over with, but she seemed to be taking her own time. Hunt scowled and ran her gray tongue over her teeth. Hill thought she saw the stubbly hairs of what looked like a prepubescent beard on the woman's chin.
"She's my best employee too." Hunt grumbled, laying the file on her desk. Evidently Hill would have to walk over and retrieve it. "She has this way with computers, it's like magic or something."
"Fascinating." Hill's response was curt and signaled her displeasure with the conversation at hand. She strode over, snatched the thin file off the desk, turned on her heel, and briskly walked out, unwilling to continue the conversation. Turning down a hall, she passed several nondescript doors that led to other offices until she reached the middle of the hallway. She knocked three times and opened the door.
This office was much cheerier than Hunt's, but only comparatively. The mustard color on the walls reflected the naked incandescent bulb attached to a rod in the corner. There were no windows in the drab, depressing room, but the occupant had evidently tried to spice up the decor by adding a few paintings, presumably their own, which depicted natural scenes and lush gardens. A desk took up most of the small room, littered with not only paper, but little knick-knacks that seemed to have been collected from nerd conventions across the country. Vintage Doctor Who sonic screwdrivers, still in their protective cases, stood on a shelf next to a stuffed Fluffy from Harry Potter and a Sherlock bobble-head. The computer monitor had all kinds of sticky notes on it, and about half contained beautifully done sketches of whatever the illustrator happened to have on her mind: birds, horses, globes, humans, presumably fellow co-workers, and dogs.
There was a jingle of dog tags and a large black german shepherd stretched from his cramped position on the floor, hobbling over on stiff legs and sniffing Hill's hand with a silver muzzle.
"Joanne Smith?" Agent Hill asked, unsure if this was the right office number.
"That's me!" A woman with dark wavy hair brushed a tangle out of her green eyes peeked out from behind the screen. Hill tried to smile, but it came out like more of a grimace. She was never good at being enthusiastic.
"My name is Agent Hill. I'll get straight to the point. Your test scores were higher than some agents who have trained most of their lives to get what you've had since birth. You've been reassigned. Congratulations." Hill cringed; she sounded almost disappointed, and wished she could muster more enthusiasm.
Joanne was taken aback. She did that well? "Really?"
"Well if you had failed, I would be here." Hill thumbed through her file and handed her a briefing packet. "This is your briefing packet. It tells you what to do, where to be, and who to be with. Don't lose it. You have a week to clear out your office and finish any urgent projects." Hill had never beaten around the bush with anything, her career of giving orders had seeped into her personal life and casual way of speaking until she had become so direct it seemed to lack verve or emotion of any kind.
"Thanks." Joanne replied, taking the proffered packet and experimentally flipped through, pausing when she caught sight of a heading entitled "Bathroom Procedures." These people had protocol for breathing.
"After your week is up you'll report to the trainee campus to begin your twenty-week training period. After you'll be considered a junior agent, and given a supervising officer. There are more details in the packet." Hill said, appraising the elderly german shepherd critically.
Joanne smiled. "I trained him myself, he used to be a narcotics dog."
"Fascinating." was Agent Hill's reply.
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