"Thanks for not pulling out any of my hair," 'Lois' said in Lois' nasal voice before shifting back into a copy of Meg, curled up to Adam's side in the middle of the massive bed.

"Just because I'm angry at Lois and have some issues doesn't mean I'm going to forget we're just doing roleplay," Meg assured her, "and really, even if I had my mom in that position I wouldn't physically harm her."

"That's a much healthier outlook than I expected," 'Meg' said.

"Yeah, psychological damage is a lot harder to heal," Meg said cheerfully.

"Or not," 'Meg' said with a sigh.

"The bitch once handed me a book of Sylvia Plath poetry and a bottle of sleeping pills and told me to 'sort things out' because she was tired of listening to my whining," Meg said dryly.

"In that case you are a lot more mentally healthy than expected," 'Meg' said.

"I really don't like your mother," Adam said, "but then she is my mother-in-law, so it's expected."

Meg snickered. "My dad is okay at times, but I'm pretty sure he has some screws loose. Chris has come through for me when I needed him and Stewie... is adorable but apparently an evil genius. Really I'm just glad to be out of there."

"Escaping the situation is the best thing you could have done," 'Meg' agreed. "So Adam... Tell me a bit about yourself."

"I'm a quarter Old One, five percent Sword, and tend to massively over prepare for things," he offered. "Child of the 80's, lost a good chunk of myself, and tend to get summoned a lot."

"Summoned a lot?" 'Meg' asked.

"Thanks to the Luminous Engine I'm basically an untrained god," Adam explained, "with the portfolio of light, secrets, healing and some other stuff. Since my soul was sliced apart and Mcguyvered back together my True Name is still forming, so I fit a lot of categories for summoning."

"That sounds frustrating," 'Meg' offered.

"More amusing than anything else," he replied. "It's given me a chance to help people and practice my powers before our mission."

"You are not anything like I expected," 'Meg' said.

"Hopefully in a good way," Meg said.

"Very much so," she agreed. "The Company isn't likely to take you off Robbie Watch even with my recommendation, but that's playing right into your plans, isn't it?"

"Pretty much," Adam agreed with a smirk. "As long as they think I might go Robbie, all the office workers will do their best to avoid fucking me, because they don't want to die and since we are Class F... There is no one in management to turn to for protection and they are all office workers."

"Are you planning on taking over Class F?" 'Meg' asked curiously, not sounding at all concerned.

"I have none of the training you'd need to even handle the paperwork," Adam said. "No, I just plan on telling the person in charge that they have to lower the amount of embezzlement to the Company standard and not the twenty percent they are currently trying to shaft us with."

"Twenty percent?" 'Meg' asked in disbelief. "How in the hell did they expect to get away with that?"

"No idea," Adam said with a shrug.

"There are sanctioned Robbie events for less than that."

"Which means when I show up, kicking in their office door and demanding they fix it, they're a lot more likely to listen," Adam said.

'Meg' stared at him for a few seconds before saying, "You are never going to be taken off the potential Robbie list."

"I know," he agreed with a grin.

'Meg' giggled. "You're probably saner and more well adjusted than most agents and yet, they'll never believe it."

"That's what I'm counting on," Adam said.

"We've got another hour until the Aura guy gets here," Meg said, "can you do my mom but way younger?"

"Sure," 'Meg' agreed. "How much younger?"

"Teenager having their first time young," Meg replied. "I'm your best friend convincing you to have unprotected sex with a rockstar who is going to knock you up and ruin your life."

"A plan you had if you ever got your hands on a time machine?" Adam guessed.

"Bingo," Meg said with a bright smile.

'Meg' shifted back into Lois and started looking younger and younger.

"Whoa," Adam said. "If you're too young you can't get pregnant which screws up the whole fantasy."

"Mid-teens is perfect," Meg agreed. "Now, I'm the pretty and popular head cheerleader who you're trying to impress because you want to be one of the cool kids."

'Lois' nodded. 'Still better than the cuck chair,' she thought to herself.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

"This has been a great weekend," Meg said as they stepped through a portal onto their island.

"Got everything you needed?" Lisa asked, moving forward to get a hug and a kiss from both of them.

"And then some," Adam agreed. "I may have gone overboard a bit..."

"Yeah, I've seen the receipts," Lisa replied, amused, "but it didn't even dent the amount in the new account. I'm surprised you didn't blow a large chunk on a super weapon or anything."

"If I need a super weapon I've screwed up," Adam said. "No, low level magic weapons and such are all we should need and most of these are just for dramatic reasons."

"Holy Avengers are not low level," Lisa pointed out.

"Compared to what was available they were," Adam replied.

"Point," she conceded. "An escort for the entire weekend?"

"Company shrink who could shapeshift and was a surprisingly good actress," Meg said. "I got her card so you can call her when you get to go."

"I'm not really that adventurous, but..." Lisa accepted the card.

Meg grinned as a blushing Lisa tucked the card in a pocket of her blue pants suit.

A gold ring appeared in Adam's hand. "A ring that casts nothing but repair and clean spells. Spill your coffee, knock over a vase, instant undo."

"That is so practical," Lisa said, eyes lighting up as she slipped it on.

"Did you get the address I need to portal into Class F headquarters?" Adam asked.

"And inputted it into the Cat's Eye Pawtal," Lisa said. "Just will it to open to headquarters and you'll be there."

Adam swept her up in a hug. "Remind me to show you how grateful I am when I get back."

Lisa gave him a kiss. "Looking forward to it," she told him as he set her down.

His clothes vanished and were replaced by the angel armor replica from the movie Dogma they'd ordered. "I should be back in time for lunch."

"I'll make lasagna," Lisa said with a smile as he placed his hand on the 'dialing device' and the portal changed from sunny LA to a dim and barren landscape.

"See you shortly," he promised, before stepping through and allowing the portal to close behind him.

The first thing he noticed was the weather, it was all but freezing with overcast skies and a chilling mist. Looking around he saw cracked black paved roads and squat square gray cement buildings. If he hadn't known better he would have guessed he was in Siberia, but the gravity was noticeably less than Earth's so he easily ruled that out.

Turning around, he saw a massive gray prison with Class F written on the front gate in red paint. "Spray paint," he said in disbelief, shivering a little in the cold before pulling on a heavy wool coat from his Wardrobe.

Adam slowly walked towards the prison with a frown. He wasn't sure what he'd expected Class F's headquarters to be, but this definitely wasn't it. His eyes took in the cracks and deterioration of his surroundings.

"They're taking twenty percent of what we earn and this is where they choose to work from?" he asked himself in confusion as he easily pulled open the heavy metal security door leading to the prisoner intake area. He kept an eye out as he entered the unlocked building, but other than old CCTV cameras mounted everywhere he saw not a hint of any other type of security, despite it being a former prison.

He paused at a security desk and looked over the monitors, showing the top floor of the prison was the only one occupied and the cells had been converted into offices, though only a fraction of them were in use. "At least they removed all the bars."

He spent a few minutes wandering around the bottom floor but was unable to find an elevator before sighing and realizing he'd have to use the stairs. "This is... What even is this?" he asked himself as he entered the stairwell. "None of this makes any sense."

Exiting the stairwell on the fifth floor, Adam headed for the far end where the small group of low level paper pushers were who could hopefully direct him to wherever the boss was hanging out while they worked their asses off like an office version of... some Dicksian story set in London, whose name he couldn't remember, about beggars and thieves.

One of the workers, a short stack goblin girl wearing several very ugly Christmas sweaters, stepped out of her office-cell right in front of him, her arms filled with papers. "Delivery?" she guessed.

"For the big boss," Adam agreed.

"Last cell on the left," the green skinned girl said, before entering another cell across the way where what looked like a clone of some girl from a Nickelodeon show was working.

Adam continued on, glancing in each office as he walked, seeing a number of clones of forgotten actresses, a couple of elves, a dwarf, and a shimmering ball of light all hard at work and dressed in heavy clothes because the place was near freezing, before reaching the Boss's office.

"Do you have a minute?" he asked the stressed out looking young woman behind the desk politely.

"I have endless paperwork, not enough resources, and eight currently active agents," she said numbly as she leaned back in her folding chair, "so it's not like I can really get further behind."

Adam thought she looked vaguely familiar, but a cute young blonde woman with glasses wasn't exactly rare. "I'm Adam Eastman and I came to inquire as to why we are at a twenty percent embezzlement level versus the Company's usual eight," he said politely, not wanting to stress her out anymore than she already was.

"Because we have almost no resources to work with," she said with a heavy sigh. "Hell, even this shithole is only on loan and is going to cost way too much when we can afford to purchase it. All the other Classes have godlike beings or actual gods, footing the bills while what we have is me and the few friends from the orphanage I could convince to help me try and make something of it and it's pretty obvious the rest of the Company just wants us to fail because they think it'll be funny."

"Okay, wow," Adam said, "that explains... pretty much everything."

"And even with twenty percent we can't afford alcohol so we're forced to do all this sober," she said. "If not for Dee Dee having done five years in a Company job due to a paperwork mix up so she's able to summon MREs, we would have probably resorted to cannibalism already."

"What do you need to improve things?" he asked.

"Some place not cold as a well digger's ass with some half decent housing so I could attract more workers would be a nice start," she said.

"I managed to claim an entire world, how does Manhattan Island sound?"

"But... none of our agents have even completed their first contract," she said, confused. "I haven't had a chance to go over your file, but there's no way you could afford to buy a world without something fucky going on."

"I have a Worldgate and located a Night of the Comet world, I dropped a claim on it and evacuated the survivors," he explained. "I have an entire world."

"A world with an immortal snail," she said, perking up. "Yeah, that would solve a large chunk of our problems."

"Immortal snail?" he asked.

"An Old One who slowly circles the galaxy wiping out intelligent life every time it appears," she explained. "It has no brain itself and moves pretty slowly like the meme about being granted immortality but a snail being granted the same and when it touched you, you would die. It's one of those deals the Fae find amusing, like the assassin with just a spoon as a weapon or the homicidal possessed radial tire."

"That sounds like something you come up with while drunk enough that you'd need a blood transfusion," Adam said, his opinion of the Fae falling.

"They throw really good parties," she told him. "I'm talking amazing here."

"Anyway, if I sign over the island of Manhattan as the Headquarters for Class F can we drop the corruption to a solid ten percent?"

"Ten? I thought you wanted eight," she said.

"From the looks of things you actually need the money and this way agents don't have to figure out anything more complicated than moving a decimal point over and really... the less math they have to do the better."

"That... isn't untrue," she said with a wince.

"In fact we can just formalize it and call it a tax," he suggested. "Class A does a tithe for the Blood War and we tax ten percent solid all stated up front so no one feels like they're getting ripped off."

"That... might work," she said with a frown. "The only problem is that everyone is so used to getting bribes and kickbacks that it'd probably tank morale."

"Everyone works better when they feel they're getting a bit extra," he said to himself, frowning in thought before shrugging. "Fuck it, let's go full disclosure then, ten percent, an open bribe, and slap a truth spell on it. Everyone feels like they're getting ahead, the Class F personnel because they get a bribe and the agents because they can't be lied to."

"That might work," she said before biting her lip. "Probably going to involve some yelling on both sides as their point of contact can't lie about things they could do to make the agent's life easier but aren't because it's a pain in the ass on their end."

"That's what the bribe is for," Adam said. "The Agent has to make it worth their while."

"And the truth spell will make them actually ask for a bribe they feel is worth it without going overboard keeping their greed in check," she said with a nod.

"That's the idea," he agreed. "Communication is the key to a successful relationship which we all suck at unless it's enforced by magic." Adam sighed. "I think I've just made myself sad."

The blonde young woman burst out laughing. "Oh god, we are either going to be really successful or the biggest dumpster fire ever. I can't wait to find out which one it is."

Typing By: Abyssal Angel

Beta By: Abyssal Angel, Mist of Shadows, and Kyrin Fireheart