Main Street U.S.A.

Chapter 24

Jafar stalked out of his office and spotted his prey.

Aha.

There the idiot boy was, sitting at his desk like a mindless drone. Time to pounce.

"This is shoddy workmanship," Jafar snarled as he threw Phillip's memorandum onto the young man's desk. Phillip flinched and Jafar felt satisfaction curl inside him like a sleepy cat resting in the sun.

"What's wrong with it, sir," the boy asked politely. The brunette threw a glance at the sheet before looking back up at Jafar.

Jafar sneered, "What isn't wrong with it? The format is incorrect, you misspelled several words, and you were much too personal in your address. It isn't that hard to write a memo, boy!"

Phillip pursed his lips as though he wanted to retort, but he said nothing. However, Jafar did notice that the boy had grabbed the memo in question and was staring at it as if he expected it to burn from his glare.

This pleased Jafar – he loved knowing that his insults were working. The stupid boy was sure to reach his breaking point soon and he had barely been working here a week! It was probably going to break one of Jafar's records. The last time this had happened was when that graduate student, Milo, worked under him a few years back. Milo left in two weeks, muttering that he could get a better internship at the university. Jafar loved breaking them early.

He slid away from Phillip's desk and pushed open the door to his own office. The room was repugnant, all white and sterile. There was only a photo portrait of himself with Mayor Frollo hanging behind his desk. There was also a stuffed animal toy on top of his desk, some sort of colorful parrot that he was forced to receive at some stupid zoo event a few years back. But he liked the way the parrot's eyes looked menacing and so he called him Iago as tribute to his favorite Shakespearean drama, Othello.

He mostly used Iago as a stress ball, Jafar would grab the toy until it felt like the stuffing was going to pop out and then he'd relax. But he didn't need it now. When there was an intern in the office there wasn't a need to de-stress, torturing the intern would alleviate any stress that popped up during his workday.

And there would be stress. Maleficent was depending on him to get more dirt on Frollo (and she didn't care if he made up the dirt as long as it was convincing) and to discover Frollo's plans. And Frollo believed that Jafar was his stooge.

In reality, he was no one's stooge. Neither Frollo or Maleficent knew this, but they were both under investigation by the newspaper due to Jafar's conniving. When Frollo had thought about dropping a hint to the newspaper about Maleficent and her rather interesting history he had wussed out – the holy man realized that he had to focus on the election. Trying to outsmart Maleficent would do him no good if he didn't get the votes he needed. And Maleficent was always thinking of new ways to torture Frollo and the thought of telling the Quasi story did enter her mind a few times (enough for her to confide to Jafar about the possibility) she was entertaining other ideas at the moment - such as sabotage. It's what Jafar was working on right now for her (he was deleting important emails in Frollo's inbox on his computer this very instant) not that it mattered anymore. Neither of them was going to win against their stooge.

Hades thought that Maleficent and Frollo wanted each other's heads on a silver platter because Jafar arranged it that way. He emailed Hades from their personal email accounts (as he had access to both - neither realized this) and then deleted all evidence of such emails.

With Maleficent and Frollo out of the game, Jafar could finally rise up and take this town by storm. Perhaps he could even take the city.

He just had to escape from their mistakes unscathed. Perhaps he'd frame himself as a victim of their schemes when the reporter came to snoop around or maybe he'd give the reporter vital information in return for good press.

He'd figure it out. But meanwhile it was time for sabotage.

With a smile that looked more like a scowl, Jafar deleted an important council email about Mayor Frollo's speech at the beginning of the Annual Disney celebration. The Mayor was supposed to make a speech before the parade began or something, Jafar didn't follow it too closely because he didn't actually care. And now Frollo wouldn't either. And he'd look like an idiot in front of everyone. Jafar's smirk grew - it was almost too easy.

The damnable intern burst through as soon as Jafar signed out of Frollo's email account. Jafar's smirk disappeared and turned into a frown, "What do you want, boy?"

Phillip scowled back, "I just wanted to inform you that it's four o'clock and that's when I leave."

Jafar rolled his eyes and waved his hand as if he was shooing a fly, "Get out then."

Phillip closed his eyes for a moment before opening them and speaking again, "I guess I'll see you tomorrow."

Jafar snorted and went back to his computer.

The sooner he could get rid of this goody-two shoes intern the better.

After Phillip left, however, nothing could really keep Jafar's attention. He had done his daily sabotage and Frollo hadn't called him in. But that was because Frollo was out and about schmoozing some political idiots that had money, which meant Frollo would have money to spend on his campaign. A campaign that was due to fail as soon as Jafar's plan kicked in.

Oh, how he loved scheming.

He would have mused on his other plans for world domination if he didn't hear a lilting laugh outside his window.

Jafar's office was the third floor so it was unusual to hear anything other than birds chirping (Jafar despised their happy songs – it felt as if they were mocking him). But the laughter continued. He pushed himself up from his seat so he could scowl at the window at whoever was disturbing his peace and quiet.

It was Phillip. Or rather it was a girl who was accompanying Phillip. She was tall and blonde and that traditionally perfect looking girl that always made Jafar uncomfortable.

She did look a bit familiar though. He squinted at her and remembered meeting Mrs. Perrault so long ago at some sort of cocktail party. This girl must have been her daughter.

But did the Perrault's have a daughter? He vaguely recalled Maleficent talking about them a few weeks earlier. Maybe she was talking about her.

Jafar's nose wrinkled as he speculated the reasons for Maleficent's interest in this dull teenage girl.

But then he remembered the newspaper article that he had arranged. He smiled, his eyes turning dark. He supposed he'd have to find out in the paper… once he gave the paper another tip, that is.

Although, he thought as he watched the intern and the Perrault girl walk away, he should probably keep a closer eye on Phillip and that girl.

It wouldn't do to have something complicate matters, especially something as dull as a common girl.

(A/N) I'm in the middle of writing the next chapter but the next few chapters might be slow moving. Sorry about that, I'm working on a lot at once (2 original stories, and 2 fanfics including this one) and personal stuff is also going on at the moment (as of right now my Grandma is having surgery on her lungs for cancer, this is just one ex. of some of the stuff that's going on at the moment in my life), so I am very sorry about the future tardiness of chapters but it can't really be helped. I do hope you enjoyed this chapter. Especially with some of the twists in there. I was very pleased with it, personally, but I have no idea if you'll like it! I hope you do!

Have a great day/night! And I'll try to write as fast and as well as possible so you can get the next chapter in a timely manner.