Chapter 12 – Tea with the End of the WorldTheo awoke to the sound of a kettle screaming.At first, he thought the world was ending. Then he realized it was just the Department’s communal kitchen, where the kettle had been boiling for exactly three hours because Steve had put it on, forgotten about it, and then left to wrestle a paper shredder that had somehow achieved sentience.Theo stumbled in wearing pajama pants covered in ducks and found Brie already there, calmly buttering a scone as if the kettle’s desperate wail were nothing more than background noise.“Morning,” Brie said, without looking up.Theo pointed at the kettle. “That… is not healthy.”Brie nodded. “Neither is working here, but you’ve adjusted.”Before Theo could reply, the break room door swung open and Captain Porridge marched in, fully armored, carrying a scroll the size of his torso. “Good! You’re both awake! We’ve been summoned.”Theo eyed the scroll. “By whom?”“The Prophets of Doom,” Porridge announced dramati

Chapter 14 – The Case of the Vanishing Souvenir MugsThe Bureau was calm.Which, as Brie reminded everyone, was never a good sign.Calm meant something was brewing — the kind of something that usually left a crater, a talking goat, or a police report the Bureau had to “politely adjust” to avoid panic.Theo was in the break room, pouring coffee, when Steve burst in like a caffeinated hurricane.“They’re gone!” he gasped.Theo looked up. “Who’s gone?”“Not who, what! The mugs! The commemorative mugs from last year’s ‘We Accidentally Saved the World’ barbecue!”Theo blinked. “Steve… why are you acting like this is a national emergency?”“Because it is!” Steve said, clutching the counter for support. “Those mugs are Bureau history! And I’m pretty sure they were cursed — in a good way. We can’t just let them vanish!”Step One: InvestigationBrie gathered the team in the conference room.On the whiteboard, she wrote in big red letters: MUGGATE.“I’ve checked the security feed,” Brie began.

Chapter 16: The Tea That Should Not Be BrewedThe Department cafeteria was normally a place of relative calm, where civil servants of chaos could sip coffee, chew questionable muffins, and pretend their lives weren’t an ongoing spiral of paperwork and peril. But today, the smell of something… otherworldly drifted through the air vents, making even the self-heating soup quiver nervously in its bowl.Theo sniffed.“What in the name of flaming insurance premiums is that smell? It’s like cinnamon, despair, and someone’s bad decisions boiled together.”Steve, munching loudly on a croissant of uncertain legality, squinted.“That, my young apprentice of nonsense, is the smell of destiny. Or possibly mildew. Hard to tell the difference before noon.”From across the cafeteria, a crowd had gathered around the tea counter. In the middle of it all, Brie was holding a porcelain teapot aloft like a victorious knight showing off a dragon’s head.“I HAVE DONE IT!” she proclaimed, eyes wild, hair slig

Chapter 18: The Whispering KeysThe Department’s HQ smelled faintly of burned toast, ozone, and the sort of ancient bureaucracy that never aired out its filing cabinets. Theo, Brie, Steve, and Doris stumbled in through the revolving door portal, still dripping mud from the Swamp of Unreasonable Eels.“—and that,” Steve grumbled, pulling an eel out of his boot, “is the LAST time I agree to a side-quest involving creatures with the word unreasonable in their name.”“You didn’t have to bite it back,” Brie snapped, wringing out her hair. “Now we’re banned from eel territory for life.”Theo, still trying to shake swamp water out of his ears, barely had time to process their eel debacle before a stack of folders floated in front of him and smacked him square in the chest.“Whuh—?”Agent Inkling, a six-foot-tall humanoid squid in a trench coat, adjusted his glasses with one tentacle. “Congratulations, recruits. The High Desk has assigned you your first independent mission. Try not to collaps

Chapter 20: The Retirement Party of DoomThe headquarters of the Department of Unintentional Heroics was usually a place of mild chaos—files floating in the air because no one could remember where the cabinets were, missions being accidentally assigned to the mailroom intern, and Steve brewing coffee that somehow tasted like onion soup. But tonight, it was party chaos.Streamers hung crookedly from the ceiling, balloons floated in defiance of gravity spells (some sticking ominously to the ceiling tiles), and a long banner stretched across the main hall:“HAPPY RETIREMENT, GERALD—DON’T DIE!”Gerald, the department’s longest-surviving janitor (38 years without dying once, which was practically a miracle here), stood in the middle of the room looking equal parts proud and terrified. His mop leaned against the punch bowl, which was a bad sign.“Gerald,” Theo said, handing him a paper plate stacked with questionable hors d’oeuvres, “you deserve this. You’ve cleaned up after exploding demon