The disclaimer telling all of you that I don't own any Archer characters has been shredded. Just a mad fic inspired by real life madness in the news.
How to Get Away With Scandal
"When did we get a TV in the breakroom?" Lana asked as she walked in with Ray. Pam and Cheryl were sitting down watching a small portable black and white television set on the table.
"I brought it in," Cheryl said. "I got it from somewhere. I don't really know where."
"We thought we'd watch TV so we'd have something to do around here for once!" Pam said as she ate a bear claw.
"Besides work?" Lana asked.
"What work?" Ray asked. "Where have you been the past few months?"
"Please tell me you're at least not watching porn," Lana sighed.
"No! But only because this is network TV and we can't get cable," Pam scoffed.
"Yeah we're watching this really boring soap opera about rich people getting arrested and fires and earthquakes," Cheryl said. "And for some reason the story line repeats itself every thirty minutes or so. Like the exact same storyline almost word for word."
"That's because this is the news channel," Pam looked at her.
"Oh," Cheryl said. "I thought it was a soap opera for people who can't remember stuff."
"No, it's not," Pam sighed.
"Awww, because I kind of like that actor who was arrested just now," Cheryl frowned. "Look there he is again! He must be a really popular character because he's been on all day."
"He's not a character! He's a congressman that just got busted for illegal campaign contributions," Pam snorted.
"Which one?" Ray's ears perked up.
"Congressman Alfred Whiner," Pam pointed to the television. "And this douchebag lives up to his name!"
There was a blonde well-dressed newscaster on screen. "This is Samantha Stone reporting live from News Desk. "Our top story this hour is the arrest of Congressman Alfred Whiner. The congressman is accused of racketeering, corruption and embezzlement of money from questionable campaign contributions."
"Ladies and gentlemen our tax dollars at work," Lana sighed.
"Whiner is only one of several high ranking politicians under scrutiny," Stone reported. "It has also been rumored that these politicians may have laundered money through an unknown private security firm. But no one knows for sure if that is true and if it is, which one?"
"Uh oh…" Ray blinked. "Cyril…Cyril!"
"What's going on?" Cyril walked in. "Is that a new TV?"
"Yes and Congressman Alfred Whiner has just been arrested for illegal campaign contributions," Ray glared at him. "And possible other crimes. Like money laundering!"
"Uh oh…" Cyril gulped. "Ms. Archer…Ms. Archer!"
"What?" Mallory snapped as she walked in, drink in hand. "What are you whining about? Is that a TV? Who brought a TV into this office? What you need to be entertained now while slacking off?"
"Pretty much yes," Cheryl snorted.
"Ms. Archer," Cyril's voice went up an octave in a very worried tone. "Congressman Alfred Whiner has just been arrested!"
"Arrested? For what?" Mallory asked.
"Illegal campaign contributions for starters," Ray said. "From an unknown private security firm."
"Uh oh," Mallory gulped. "Cyril…Ray…"
"We're on it!" They both said at the same time. They ran out of the room.
"Oh no…" Lana winced. "Oh dear God please no…"
"You know what this office needs?" Mallory said in an uncharacteristically nice voice. "A team building exercise! And a party! Yes! A pizza party during our little team building exercise! Isn't that fun?"
"Yeah! Pizza!" Pam whooped. "Wait a minute…Who's paying?"
"I am!" Mallory said cheerfully. "We'll get it from the Real Famous Ray's and you can have as much as your little gullet can stomach!"
"Uh oh…" Pam blinked. "Red flag alert here!"
"This is another evidence shredding party isn't it?" Lana sighed.
"Uh shredding may not be sufficient," Mallory gulped. "Cheryl! Guess what? You get to burn something today!"
"YAY! Wait a minute…" Cheryl did a double take. "You never let me burn things unless…Uh oh."
"Yeah uh oh," Lana sighed. "Do I even want to know…No wait, I don't! I don't want to be charged as an accessory after the fact."
"That might not matter to the prosecuting attorney if this ever gets out," Mallory sighed.
"Mallory…" Lana held the bridge of her nose anticipating a headache.
"Lana you know how this works," Mallory said. "Sometimes you have to grease a few palms, contribute a little bit to the campaign fund under the table, and do a few favors. Like Sterling and that hooker incident."
"Archer was supplying hookers to congressmen?" Lana shouted.
"Technically no," Mallory said. "He just gave them the number and a referral on who to call. I was referring to another incident. More like a cleaning incident."
"Holy Hooker Hijinks!" Pam's jaw dropped. "Archer killed a hooker?"
"No! He had to help cover up an unfortunate hooker's demise," Mallory coughed. "Which just happened to be in a Senator's home when his wife was out of town."
"Unbelievable…" Lana groaned.
"Excuse me! But how the hell do you think you idiots have gotten away with your idiocy all these years?" Mallory snapped. "What? Did you think that the Air Force would just forget about you idiots invading their base and stealing a plane under an assumed name?"
"I did," Cheryl said.
"You also forgot your little trip to Branson and that TV host you set on fire!" Mallory snapped. "Not to mention you lot haven't exactly been figuratively on fire during your missions! So as usual I have to cover your asses!"
"There's a phrasing joke in there somewhere," Archer snorted as he walked in. "Hey when did we get a new TV?"
"Bad news Sterling you actually have to do some work today," Mallory said.
"Well you say that," Archer scoffed.
"Congressman Alfred Whiner was just indicted today," Mallory glared at him. "On several charges."
"Including money laundering through an unknown private security firm," Lana glared at Archer.
"Another politician got his hand caught in the cookie jar!" Archer scoffed. "So what?"
"So what? Has your booze addled brain completely forgotten about that meeting a few years ago?" Mallory shouted. "In the Tuntmore Hotel bar?"
"Uh…" Archer frowned.
"With those politicians and the hookers…" Mallory hissed. "And the pictures I took with my hidden camera?"
"Uh…" Archer frowned. "I'm going to need a little more than that."
"You have got to be kidding me!" Mallory bristled as she threw down her empty glass. "How could you forget that?"
"It's not like we've done that only once!" Sterling protested.
"Whiner's the one who threw up on your shoes!" Mallory snapped.
"Oh now I remember!" Archer lightly slapped his forehead. "That's right. For a politician he couldn't hold his liquor. Kind of a lightweight."
"Exactly," Mallory folded her arms.
"He really lived up to his name! Whiner!" Archer laughed. "God what a baby!"
"So you do remember him?" Mallory asked sarcastically.
"How could you forget a guy who spilled the beans on every little thing?" Archer laughed. "Remember he got so drunk he talked for hours about how he cheated on his fifth grade test and how he still feels guilty about it to this day? Which is very ironic considering what else he's cheated on and doesn't feel any remorse about."
"Uh huh," Mallory glared at her son.
"Look at all the dirt he told us about his friends in Congress and the Senate," Archer snorted. "It made it a lot easier for you to get access to them."
"Uh huh," Mallory was frustrated that her son was so dense.
"I mean this guy is such a spineless wimp!" Archer laughed. "Just a little pressure on this guy and he spills the beans on…"
Realization hit Archer like a semi-trailer. "Ohhhhhh…" He gulped. "You think this guy might say something about us?"
"God it's like trying to explain physics to a drunken gerbil!" Mallory shouted.
"Just in also indicted on campaign fraud charges is Senator Benjamin Bender," Stone read on the TV. "Senator Bender is also charged with corruption, racketeering and the procuring of several prostitutes for secret parties in his Long Island home. Both male and female."
"Wait is that the guy from the other time who you…?" Archer did a double take.
"Uh huh," Mallory sighed.
"And then you had me and Ray…?" Archer began.
"Uh huh," Mallory sighed.
"Uh oh," Archer blinked. "This could be a problem."
"YOU THINK?" Mallory shouted.
"Here we go!" Ray brought up some folders.
"Senator Bender just got indicted too!" Mallory told him.
"Uh oh…" Ray blinked. "That's not good."
"How not good are we talking about?" Lana sighed.
"Cop Rock not good," Ray admitted. "You know that one song 'He's Guilty' they did? That so applies in this situation."
"I remember watching that show," Archer said. "You know what really bummed me out the most about it? They never did a 'He's Innocent' song! I mean, they did a guilty one it stands to reason they should do an innocent one right?"
"That does sound logical to me," Cheryl said.
"This from a woman that thinks microwaves can talk!" Pam gave her a look.
"The microwave oven clearly ordered me to stab Brett with the scissors!" Cheryl snapped. "I swear!"
"New plan," Mallory said. "Move all the papers to Krieger's lab. In case we need to do a controlled burn. Like last time."
"I'll tell Cyril to get the forklift," Ray sighed as he turned around and brought the files he was carrying out of the office.
"Sterling you know that law office we went to after we met with Whiner?" Mallory asked. "The one where we signed those papers. I need you to get them. After hours."
"I'm on it," Archer sighed. "Do you want me to pick up the pizza on the way back?"
"That would be nice," Mallory said.
"Same order as last time?" Archer sighed.
"Two cheese, two pepperoni, one vegetarian," Mallory ordered. "And two with everything but the kitchen sink on it. And if you can bring some wine or some alcohol it would help."
"Well duh," Archer shrugged as he started to leave.
"Get the papers first then the pizza!" Pam called out. "I don't want to eat it cold."
"I know the drill!" Archer shouted as he left. "This is not my first evidence shredding party!"
"Sadly it is not ours either," Lana sighed.
Later that evening…
"Krieger get out from behind that evidence!" Mallory groaned. The gang had moved the shredding party to Krieger's lab.
"Your authority is not recognized in Fort Kick Ass 2!" Krieger whooped from behind the fort of boxes of papers.
"All of this can't be evidence!" Lana groaned as she worked the shredder with papers from another box. There was a huge pile of shredded documents on the floor.
"Well not for Whiner or Bender, no…" Mallory admitted. "But there's a few other documented incidents that I think it might be best to cover our tracks. Like the whole incident at Sez and the murdered Albanian ambassador. Some minor paperwork connecting us to the whole CIA drug scam and San Marcos. A few pipeline bombing and assassination contracts. Some paperwork with some deceased members of organized crime…"
"Oh God," Lana groaned. "Just when I think my job can't get any worse…"
"Not to mention some correspondence with Nicolai I really should have burned by now…" Mallory finished.
"That's at least a quarter of these files," Ray gave her a look.
"That party in New Jersey!" Mallory glared at Ray.
"You told me to organize that event!" Ray snapped.
"I didn't tell you to kill that man!" Mallory shouted.
"I didn't kill him," Ray snapped. "I made him happy like you wanted!"
"You made him so happy he had a heart attack!" Mallory shouted back.
"How was I supposed to know that he had a weak heart?" Ray snapped. "He didn't look it! There wasn't an ounce of fat on him! It's not like what happened with you at the Brownstone!"
"You swore to me you'd never bring that up!" Mallory snapped.
"For God's sake the man was over three hundred pounds and was eating a box of donuts when he died!" Ray snapped. "While you were…"
"Yes Miss Gillette! I was there!" Mallory snapped. "God that was a horrible weekend. We lost three backers and two of them died!"
"Wait when was this?" Archer asked.
"Do you really want to know?" Cyril asked him.
Archer thought a moment. "No. No, I do not."
"Let's just say evidence that implicates all of us is in this fort of fraud, failure and…" Mallory looked at the boxes of evidence. "Tomfoolery."
Mallory poured herself a drink from a nearby bottle on a table. "It's bad enough I have now officially lost two more contacts in the government. And the fact that I have to cover my ass so there's no proof of my involvement with those squealing rats! But these particular two had some pull with the CIA so now our position is even more tenuous than before! If it's even possible."
"Well it's not like the CIA could hate us any more than they do now," Lana shrugged.
"You say that but…" Pam spoke up.
"The only silver lining is that neither Whiner nor Bender can implicate us without implicating the CIA," Mallory sighed. "And as Hawley explained when I called him an hour ago he made provisions to ensure that those two won't say a word about either of our organizations. Still…It pays to be cautious."
"Make it rain!" Ray quipped as he took some of the shredded documents and threw them at Krieger's fort.
"Ray!" Krieger snapped as some paper went on him. "Fort Kick Ass 2 will not stand for this insubordination!"
"Oh yeah? Shredded evidence fight!" Archer whooped as he grabbed handfuls of evidence and threw them at Krieger.
The gang cheered and started to throw handfuls of evidence at Krieger and each other. "Oh well…Since I'm probably going to be indicted anyway," Lana sighed as she picked up a handful of shredded evidence. She then threw it at Archer.
"Oh is that how it's gonna be? Let's get it on!" Archer laughed as he started to throw shredded evidence at Lana.
"Phrasing! Boom!" Ray called out. Only to have shredded evidence thrown in his face. "Hey!"
"Oh my God!" Mallory laughed as she threw shredded evidence. She had put her drink down to do it. "This takes me back to the end of the Second World War! We had such a wild shredded evidence party fight it lasted two days!"
"Hey! Come on! No fair!" Krieger protested as the gang ran around throwing shredded evidence all over the place, (mostly at him.) "Come on guys!"
After a while of wild evidence throwing abandon, the gang stopped to relax and drink some refreshing alcohol. "Now that was a shredded evidence fight!" Cyril snickered as he drank some vodka.
"And this pizza's bitchin'," Pam admitted as she chomped on a slice of pepperoni pizza. "This is one of our better parties."
"You know we really needed this," Mallory said as she casually brushed off some shredded evidence from her clothes. "Just to blow off some steam."
"We did," Archer nodded. "We totally did."
"Well Fort Kick Ass 2 is still standing!" Krieger protested.
"Not for long," Mallory said as she handed a lighter to Cheryl.
"You might want to get out now," Ray said to Krieger.
"I will never surrender Fort Kick Ass 2!" Krieger crowed as he raised his fist in defiance.
Then Cheryl lit one side of the fort.
"Uh oh…" Krieger gulped. He jumped out of the fort. "I SURRENDER! I SURRENDER!"
FOOOOOOOOOOOM!
"Wow the paper we use is really cheap isn't it?" Ray blinked as the fort went up in flames extremely fast.
"Yeah it really is," Cyril remarked as he grabbed a fire extinguisher.
"NOOOO!" Krieger got to his knees and pounded the floor. "You burned it all! Damn you all to hell!"
"I am starting to think you've been watching way too many Planet of the Apes movies," Archer remarked as he grabbed a fire extinguisher.
"The one after the first one was too many," Mallory grumbled. "A planet populated by insane monkeys. Sounds like another day at the office to me."
"Well at least we got something accomplished today," Ray shrugged.
"Yeah destroying evidence of extremely possible criminal activity is always a productive activity in the office," Lana said sarcastically.
"Well you can't say we never do any real work around here," Pam told Mallory.
"Okay guys hit the extinguishers before this baby explodes!" Archer ordered Ray and Cyril who had fire extinguishers too. They started to put the fire out.
"One good thing about cheap paper is that it burns in half the time," Ray remarked.
"Yeah. God I love my job!" Archer whooped. "I can't wait until AJ is older and I tell her about all the fun things her Dad does at work!"
"Sure tell your daughter about the good old days when you were a spy and had shredded evidence fights," Cyril said sarcastically.
"Oh dear God I can never tell her about this," Lana realized.
"Oh yeah right," Archer blinked. "Want to keep her out of the treason and corruption loop. Might not be a bad idea!"
"You think?" Mallory snapped. "Ugh…Pam go check the news. See if anyone else we know has been indicted."
"Well let's see…" Pam checked the news app on her phone. "Anybody know anything about Congressman Paul Pancake?"
"Unless he makes light fluffy breakfasts, no," Archer snorted. "What's he charged with?"
"The usual plus something else," Pam read. "Apparently there's a picture going around with him at a table at a fancy restaurant with two women but it's blurry. One's a greyish blob and the other looks like a giant black tranny…"
"Uh oh…" Lana and Mallory said at the same time.
"Anything you want to confess?" Ray asked.
"Not especially no," Mallory said.
"It's not what you think!" Lana protested.
"Lana!" Mallory snapped.
"He just wanted to hire us to investigate his wife and see if she was sleeping around on her!" Lana protested.
"But it turned out he was sleeping around on her so you blackmailed him," Archer folded his arms.
"Technically his wife is blackmailing him," Lana coughed.
"You went to the wife because she had more cash," Archer looked at Mallory.
"Pretty much," Mallory admitted.
"So it is what we thought," Pam said. "That and/or a threesome…"
"Stop right there!" Mallory snapped. "Before I burn you as well. Cyril…"
"I'll get the files," Cyril sighed as he left.
"I'll get more alcohol," Archer said as he followed. "We're running low. This party's gonna last longer than I thought."
"Mallory you know how you don't always tell Archer everything you did in your past?" Lana sighed.
"Yes," Mallory raised an eyebrow.
"I think I understand why," Lana groaned.