Just Another Day // Phil

Her slender fingers tapping out some tuneless rhythm on her mahogany desk in annoyance, Maria's blue eyes left the post-mission reports she was reading. An extremely frustrated sigh passed her lips and she pushed the reports away from her. How hard could it be to write up an account of what happened on a mission? Given that all of the agents in the employ of SHIELD had passed all the literary tests that had been thrown at them, it shouldn't have been that hard. But oh how wrong she was.

Three reports lay on her table, each more frustrating to read than the last. The first report had been written out entirely as a limerick. The second as a sonnet, with a haiku to end it. The third had been written in green pen and was complete with illustrations in the margins of the page. There was even a red dinosaur along with the other illustrations, though how the dinosaur was relevant was beyond her.

How old were these agents? And how bored out of their minds were they to come up with such utter nonsense? Points for creativity, but creativity was not something she wanted to see in a report. Bland and to the point was what she required. She loved her job, she really did; half the time, however, it felt to her like she was dealing with toddlers who were too hyped up on sugar and were allowed to stay way past their bedtime.

Rubbing her hand over her eyes, Maria pushed her chair back and stood up. I'm surrounded by idiots... Walking over to the coat-rack that was standing by the door, she pulled down her gym bag and slung it over her shoulder. An hour of training would do wonders; or at the very least it'd stop her from kicking the butts of the incompetent morons right into next week.

Slamming the door to her office as she left, Maria started off towards the gym. If anyone needed her, they could go and look for her. At their own peril; the deputy director really did not want to deal with anyone right now. Next time, I'm setting Natasha onto them...

He was staring out the windows of The Bus, it was approaching the Helicarrier, it had been a long time since he last stepped foot on that marvel of human engineering. The last time Coulson was on the Helicarrier, he had a unfortunate incident with an Asgardian, it seemed like bad luck happens to him when ever Asgardian's are involved. The Asgardian's Mussolini, Coulson remembered that day, but the main reason he remembered the day was the destruction of his vintage Captain America trading cards. Those cards, he spent most of his life collecting them and Fury did not stop at using his death as motivation, but he also decided to destroy his cards. His death as motivation was acceptable, but the destruction of his cards was not acceptable, there was a reason he kept them in his locker, to prevent something like that from happening.

Coulson watched The Bus begin landing on the Helicarrier, the sudden jerk was most unpleasant, Coulson nearly fell, but he managed to stabilize himself. Once The Bus came to a full stop, Coulson started to walk to the rear of the plane, waiting for the cargo hold to open. Fizt and Simmons wanted to pick up some new gadgets, Ward was guarding Skye, making sure that she did not attempt to hack into S.H.I.E.L.D's databases, and May was also staying on the bus. Coulson then thought of Hill's and decided to go see her.

As he waited for the cargo doors to open, Coulson looked around the cargo hold, walking to Lola, admiring her. Lola was a fine piece of engineers, it was a old but reliable car, retrofitted with technology that came from Howard Stark. Coulson always admired those who came before him, he was sentimental, not the best trait for a S.H.I.E.L.D agent, but his abilities far outweighed the problems sentimentality causes for him.

When the doors finished opening, Coulson walked out and headed to Hill's office, this would be the first time they met since he assembled the team. When he arrived at Hill's office, he noticed it was locked. Coulson gave a small chuckle, what did the rookies do this time? Coulson then walked over to the Helicarrier's gym, and leaned on the wall, he observed Hill's and asked "What did the rookies do this time?"

It was times like these that Maria wished that her looks had the ability to seriously injure people. Not outright kill, because killing employees was wrong (she was sure it was in the handbook somewhere) and because Director Fury would be highly displeased, to say the least, regardless of how irritatingly dim-witted and useless the recruits were. But injure would have been brilliant. As she strode to the gym, her eyes held a cold spark that anyone who knew her knew it meant that any interaction with her at this point could very dangerous and might result in some very unusual (and most likely cruel) punishment. Maybe that was why no one attempted to speak to her as she walked, even scattering away from her as Maria came close. A smile curled up the corner of her mouth. Call her a Queen Bitch, but she hardly cared.

The gym was almost empty, save for a couple of agents doing stretches and push-ups in the far corner. Having changed, Maria jogged over to the punching bags, dropped her bag and started punching. It wasn't just the idiocy of the recruits that had gotten her like this. That had simply been the last straw. Once again she'd worked her butt off and not so much as a "well done" had been sent her way. She was over-worked, under-appreciated and had somehow become the baby-sitter for the new Team who almost never acted their age, opting instead to act their shoe size. Brilliant an agent as she was, sometimes she needed a break from it all, if only for an hour. She soon lost track of how many reps and punches she'd done. Now she was simply getting all her adrenalin out. And then she heard it - an all-too-familiar voice that if she was being honest, she was glad to hear right now.

"A dinosaur! Who draws a freaking dinosaur on a mission report?!" she shot back, punching the bag once more. "Not to mention the sonnet, haiku and limerick I received. I work with absolute geniuses," she added, the sarcasm dripping from her words as she walked over to her bag and rooting around in it for her water bottle. Unscrewing the top, she gulped down the clear liquid before turning to look at Phil. Brushing the hair from her eyes, Maria gave him a slight smile. "How'd your mission go? Tempted to run back to Tahiti yet?" she teased, blue eyes studying him. It was really good to see him again, and even better to see that he seemed to have recovered remarkably well, given the circumstances of his death. The woman had seriously worried that Phil's return back to work was premature and that before the end of the first mission he'd be back in the hospital bay. But Lady Luck seemed to be favouring him. Of that Maria was extremely glad.

"You did draw that poop with knives sticking out of it for Agent Ward's agent assessment under the people skills sections." Coulson said in a calm and even voice not even betraying a hint of what he was thinking, but what he did want to do is burst out laughing at what Hill's just told him and about what she had drawn. Coulson then gave an moment of thought to Hill's comments on poetry, he then said with an smile "You could write one back to them about their future, I am sure they would never write poetry for their reports again, ever." Coulson was semi serious when he said that, Maria was a terror to rookie agents, senior agents have a bit more leeway with her. If this was a cop show, Coulson would have been the good cop, and Hill's would have been the bad cop, Fury would have been the angry all the time chief.

S.H.I.E.L.D's top tiers went Fury's at the top, the World Security Council are his advisers, then comes Maria, and Philip get almost unrestricted control over all the high priority operations. The World Security Council likes to think they control S.H.I.E.L.D but Fury would have none of that, they only determine funding and when they try to cut S.H.I.E.L.D's funding, the World Security Council risks losing their jobs. Their whole nuke New York order was not exactly well thought at, if it ever got out to the public, the civilian populace may just go French Revolution on them.

"Tahiti, its a magical place, but it was dreadfully boring with just me and my physical therapist, maybe you should come with me next time, by the way one of my ex tried to hijack The Bus, we had to blow a hole in the plane, looks like being your ex home is not a good idea." Coulson said with a grin, that mission in Peru was rather interesting, especially when they recovered the Tesseract based weapon. Coulson then started to wonder whether the Peruvian government ever tried to get the Commandant out of prison.

"That was quite clearly a porcupine. My artistic skills are obviously too advanced for you to understand, Coulson," she shot back, the slightest of smiles curling up the corner of her mouth. "But porcupine or poop with swords, the point's the same - your team lacks people skills. They're like..." she trailed off, grasping for a comparison, "Captain Barbossa! They probably like people, or at least can tolerate them, but they're not actually good with them. Speaking of them, how are Team Porcupine going?"

As lacking as they might be in people skills, Maria actually liked Phil's mismatched team. Mostly. Agent May was a top-notch, (literally) kick-ass agent; Agents Fitz and Simmons were extremely talented, genius smart and very sweet. Agent Ward she still had reservations about, along with the new girl, Skye. At the back of her mind, Maria had doubts about her true loyalty. But Maria wasn't about to say anything.

She grinned at his suggestion. "Great minds think alike. A sonnet you wrote for your mission report, But I am obliged to say that of the mark it fell extremely short. If you write a report like this again you'll be thrown off the Helicarrier, And without your incompetence I'll be much merrier," she mused, before shrugging the poem off. "It's a work in progress, obviously. The final one will be much better. I'll send you a copy."

Undoing her ponytail, she ran a hand through her hair, letting it fall around her shoulders. "Well, I definitely have enough vacation time saved up. I'd like that. To go with you, I mean. I'd be begging to return back to work within three days if I went alone." Screwing the cap onto her bottle, she tossed it back to her bag. She raised an eyebrow in amused surprise. "You have really interesting  exes, Coulson. Which one was it this time?" With a soft sigh, she shook her head. "You haven't even been back a week and you're already blowing up planes and allowing hijackers aboard. What are we going to do with you?" she asked, her expression serious except for the teasing sparkle in her eyes. "What'd Fury say?"

"Fury had a mild case of anger and threatened to downgrade me to a Winnebago, he also forbid FitzSimmons from adding a fish tank during the repairs." Coulson said with a small chuckle, Coulson liked the ideas that FitzSimmons came up with, well most of them, the two at occasions come up with some rather amusing idea which he did not approve. "And it was definitely poops with swords sticking out, but your assessment of their people skill is close enough to the truth." His team did not have the best social skills, but his team were also some of the best at their jobs, the best of the best.

"Of course great minds think alike, or how would people categorize great minds." Coulson joked as he stopped leaning on the wall and walked over to Hill, "Camilla Reyes, you know the one I work with when I was stationed in Peru, turns out the 0-8-4 we were sent to recover was made by Hydra and commissioned by her government, oh hijacking the plane was not the worst thing she did, she criticized Lola." Coulson adored his car Lola, it was a brilliant car, and Coulson was very protective of his car, he did not like people touching or critizing Lola.

"Try not to kill too many recruits, we need them for certain tasks after all." Coulson said in a solemn voice, teasing Hill at her reputation among the rookies. If rookies made a mistake, they only reprive was to hope Coulson was the one in command, if it was Hill or Fury, they would be chewed out, Coulson would give them advice, then slightly chew them.

"That'll teach you to blow holes in state-of-the-art beauties," she shot back with a small smirk. "It could've been worse. At least he didn't put you in a Cola-can truck. I did that once to a coupla smart-ass agents who thought they were better than Fury and me. They ended up failing every mission because no one would take them seriously and became the laughing stock of the field office. Can't actually remember what happened to them. They ended up quitting and joined NYPD, I think. But oh it was glorious revenge," Maria told him, grinning at the memories. Very fun times indeed. Moral of the story: never screw with Maria. She would kill your career and make you regret your birth in one swoop.

“Oh, her. The feisty ones are always the hardest to resist.” She bit back a smirk at that. In her opinion it was true though – the mousy quiet ones were much too boring. Maria’s eyebrow rose slightly upon hearing that Lola had criticized. Well, that had been a big mistake on Camilla’s part; Phil loved that car more than a parent loved its child. “I hope you said back something wittingly scathing to her on Lola’s behalf. That car is brilliant. She just has no taste.” Not only did Lola look awesome, she could also fly and had flamethrowers. You couldn’t get a better car than that in her opinion.

“Y’know, I’m flattered that you think I have so much power. But you know that Fury won’t let me, no matter how good my justifications are for tossing them off the Helicarrier. I just mercilessly shatter their dreams, that’s all. Though in my defense, if I were to throw anyone off the Helicarrier, I would at least give them a parachute. I’m not that heartless.” It was by no means a big secret that Maria could not abide rookies. It wasn’t that she had something against them personally; it was because they were all useless. Though some would argue that being green and inept was all part of the rookie description, Maria begged to differ. During her years at SHIELD she had met plenty of rookies that she had come to respect and felt they were more than competent despite their newbie status. In her view just because you were a rookie didn’t mean you had to be an idiot. But some of these rookies didn’t even know how to hold a gun, let alone use it. And these were agents that were aspiring to work in the field! What was their recruitment coming to? ”And d’you wanna have a quick match before you dash off to start your mission report?”

"True, but I would have liked that fish tank." Coulson replied, lamenting that Fury forbade the inbuilt fish tank. "Cola-can truck? Well I should consider myself fortunate then, though the Cola-can truck can be quite effective if you know how to use it." Coulson joked half serious, the truth was Coulson was already trying to come up with effective ways to use a Cola-can truck, he had in the past weaponized a bag of Flour against armed thugs after all.

"I am merely using the rookies point of view here." Coulson said with a smile, he was amused by how the rookies saw S.H.I.E.L.D's upper echelon. If you mess up, pray to god that it was anyone but the Director or Deputy Director, since if they find out first those two would utterly destroy the agent's self esteem and or career. "Ah a parachute, if that happened they would panic, pull the chute right as they fall off, and then it will take a while for them to get back to the earth, oh don't forget to give them a oxygen tank and or pressure suit depending on the altitude."

"A spar should be good, I need the practice after our friend Mussolini decided to put me in physical therapy." The first few months his doctors refused to allow him to even sit up, Coulson was a bit resentful for that. Coulson then took off his coat, it was rather restrictive when it came to movement, but Coulson had grown used to moving in it, thus it was not much of a restriction.

"It's a shame really that he forbade it. R&D were working on a new fish species. Red and blue, with a white star on their side. Just like Captain Rogers's shield. I already even picked out a name - 'Agent Fanboy Swordfish'," she joked teasingly, grinning at him. "The species prototype should be ready by your birthday." It amused her how much Coulson idolised Steve Rogers. It was kind of sweet, in a way she didn't quite understand. She didn't understand the whole idolising-superheroes thing but if it made him happy, she wasn't about to judge.

"Rookies aren't allowed a view point," she remarked. "It says so in their contracts. They're allowed a point of view when they reach at least level 6. Which for the latest batch will probably take the better part of twenty years to achieve." She let out a sigh, shaking her head to herself. The latest batch of recruits were good for nothing more than latrine duty. She wouldn't even entrust them to help the janitors. "Though I've had one good recruit. I've got her shadowing Natasha. If she survives, I think she'll become Natasha's protégé."

Her smile wavered as he mentioned the incident with Loki. It definitely wasn't one of her favourite memories. She'd been a wreck after Coulson had died. Not that she would ever admit such things to anyone and if someone even suspected such preposterous things she'd throw them out of the Helicarrier. After all, her image maintained that she was not prone to shows of emotions. To everyone who wasn't in her inner circle of friends, she'd prefer to keep them thinking that she was a soulless being.

"Ooh the coat comes off. This is serious!" she teased with a laugh, jogging over to the mat and redoing her ponytail to keep stray locks of hair from falling into her eyes as she fought. "No promises I'll go easy on you," she added, a slight smirk curling up the corners of her mouth.



STATUS``: active
TAGGED``: agent fanboy
OUTFIT``: her usual SHIELD uniform
NOTES``: ---
LYRICS``: this is war by thirty seconds to mars
CREDIT``: this template was made by the amazing TAYLYNOSAURUS REX! of caution 2.0.

"It truly is a shame, I would have really liked that fish tank." Coulson said with a smile as he removed his necktie, he was also amused at the nickname Maria had for him, Agent Fanboy. That nickname was not too far from the truth, Coulson had to admit, he then added jokingly "Well Fury may be right about the fish tank, we would likely forget to feed the fish and all we would end up with is alot of experimental and very expensive Sushi."

"Were we not all once rookies?" Coulson teased as he took a moment to remember the times when he was a rookie. When Coulson did that, he could not help but feel a little bit old, he had been recruited into SHIELD just out of high school, and he had trained under Fury together with Agent John Garrett. Coulson then remembered that Garrett had also been Maria's training officer, and could not resist the opportunity to tease Maria. "Wasn't Garrett your training officer? Want me to go over to him and ask him for your embarrassing training incidents?" Coulson said jokingly but at the same time he could not help but feel a little bit curious.

Coulson also knew that if he asked, Garrett would be more than willing to give him the information. Coulson and Garrett had been friends for a long time, they had been friends for almost as long as they worked for SHIELD and trained under Fury. Their friendship was one forged in fire, one forged by the bond of danger, knowing that they had each others back when needed.

"No promises I won't go asking Garrett for stories after this." Coulson retorted as he approached Maria, he said it with a laugh and a smile, he then readied his stance and arms. "So you want me to ask him about the most embarrassing ones first, or do you want me to ask him about the most amusing ones first?"