Warnings: This chapter is about sex scandals, including the recent Secret Service prostitution scandal, so it stands to reason that this chapter would be a bit above average for the story. I do not think it warrants bumping the rating up, however.

Chapter Thirty-Seven: Put Your Damn Pants Back On!

Over the past two hundred or so years, Alfred had come to the unavoidable conclusion that sex scandals were going to happen no matter what. No amount of him imploring politicians to keep their pants zipped up, or at the very least make sure they committed their indiscretions off the clock, was going to make any impact on their behavior. No matter who it was, whether it was presidents, or Congresspeople, or even the interns, someone was going to do something stupid, and it was going to make Alfred look bad and divide the country even further. Back in the 2oth century, Alfred had to ban J. Edgar Hoover from bringing him tapes of different politicians involved in... well, performing the horizontal tango. "Please, please, for the love of everything liberty-related, stop bringing me tapes and documents of people with their mistresses!" he'd finally exploded at the first FBI director one day, when he'd brought his country more of the incriminating tapes. "I don't care!"

"But Alfred," Hoover had replied, "this is JFK we're talking about here! He's cheating on Mrs. Kennedy!"

"Well, that's Mrs. Kennedy's problem now," Alfred retorted. "I have work to do, and so do you! Stop being a Peeping Tom and actually do some work for once! You're in charge of the FBI, for god's sake! Act like it! Do something related to national security!"

"Fine," the FBI director had pouted, shuffling off. Alfred rolled his eyes- he knew Hoover (probably) meant well, but at the same time, he really did need to get back to work. The FBI wasn't going to direct itself. And Alfred really did not want to know what the president did in his private moments. He'd been traumatized enough when he accidentally stumbled across a Presidential porn stash in the early 1900s. He really did not want to picture his boss- ANY of his bosses- in their most personal moments. Although Hoover had been correct about one thing- it wasn't a very good thing for the President of the United States to have an extramarital affair.

Then came the whole debacle with Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. That had come after the advent of mass media, including televisions and the Internet. Before long, everyone he knew was either making jokes at his expense, about blowjobs and Oval Offices and the duties of interns, or thinking he was a philandering asshole. Thankfully that had died down, although Ivan did sometimes think it was funny to ask him if he'd gotten any in the Oval Office recently.

Since then, it seemed like there was a new incident every year. Senators in airplane bathrooms, Congressmen Tweeting their dongs... it had become par for the course. It was embarrassing, sure, but Alfred had learned to live with it. He was also used to his people doing some pretty boneheaded things- it seemed to come with the territory with being human, and Alfred would be lying if he said he hadn't done his own share of boneheaded things. But this… this really took the cake, in terms of boneheaded-ness. In what universe was it a good idea to bring a bunch of unknown quantities into a supposedly secured area? And that went double for Secret Service agents bringing a score of prostitutes into their hotel rooms. Hotel rooms where they would be completely unguarded. Hotel rooms where they had hard copies of the President's schedule for the trip. Hotel rooms where they kept their weapons. Alfred resisted the urge to bang his head on the desk. Maybe a concussion would take away this painful headache his absolutely brilliant citizens had caused for him.

Not only had they put national security in jeopardy, they had also created something of an international incident. Alfred wasn't exactly on the best of terms with Colombia anyway- there were many things they didn't see eye-to-eye on. But there was one thing that both Alfred and Juan agreed with, and that was that they were concerned with the well-being of their citizens. Unfortunately, this time, it landed them on opposing sides. Juan was not pleased that a group of his citizens had been taken advantage of, and to add insult to injury, had been cheated out of their rightful wages by a couple of American agents. Alfred was attempting to do damage control with the other country, but it wasn't going… really, much of anywhere. No matter how many times Alfred apologized on behalf of his citizens, no matter how many times he offered to pay the money the prostitute had been denied himself, nothing was enough to calm Colombia's irate ranting. "Are your own morals so lax that your people think they can get away with whatever when they leave their country?" Juan had shouted. "Do they think that the rules just don't apply when they're no longer on American soil? It's important to be upstanding members of the community at home, but as soon as the landing gear goes down, the wedding rings come off? Do your people not value marriage vows at all?"

Alfred wanted to retort that of course his people didn't think that, of course they knew better, this was just a small sample of his population, but he knew that this looked really bad. The men involved in this incident were agents of the Secret Service, the institution that was supposed to protect the President. If they were just running around like a bunch of frat boys on Spring Break, of course it wouldn't look good to the rest of the world. And it also made him wonder what other shenanigans members of his government got up to that he never even found out about.

Finally deciding that he was going to take a stand, once and for all, Alfred called a meeting with the disgraced agents, some of whom had already resigned or been given the pink slip. As the group of men stood in front of his desk, looking at the floor, Alfred felt something he rarely ever felt towards his citizens creep up his spine: rage. "I hope you know what you did was incredibly stupid," he said, a lot more calmly than he felt.

"Uh, sir, we can-" one started to try to explain away what had happened, but Alfred was having none of it.

"You can what?" he spat. "You can explain? How can you possibly explain this? You put yourselves, your colleagues, and the President in danger with this stunt! And I know you have a wife and kids- can you imagine how hard it will be to explain to them why you no longer have a job?" The agent flinched, having been one of the ones to so far escape being fired. "Oh yeah, dad lost his job because he couldn't keep his pants zipped up on a business trip! Oh, and he also endangered national security while doing so, no biggie. Just hope that woman didn't get pregnant, or you'll be explaining to your kids how they have a new half-sibling in nine months!" Alfred was really on a roll- he hadn't let loose like this in a long time, and this sorry excuse for law enforcement and physical protection deserved it. "You all are damn lucky nothing else happened."

None of the assembled agents had anything to say in response. In their minds, they knew the truth, that Alfred was right. What started out as a supposedly fun way to get some stress relief could have gone catastrophically wrong. Which it did, but it could have gone even more catastrophically wrong. All in all, they were getting off easy.

"Abraham Lincoln would be so disappointed if he could see how far the agency he created has fallen," Alfred said sadly. "And I thought Operation Sundevil was bad, when you lot disrupted the telecom network in the name of catching hackers! But this really is the epitome of stupid." Again, the agents shuffled uncomfortably, knowing their country was right. "Just… just get out of my sight, I don't want to see any of you idiots for the next forty years," Alfred sighed.

Just before they all left, though, Alfred called out- "wait a minute." The agents froze. "You're all fired," Alfred said simply, not caring that technically, he wasn't their boss. He was the United Freaking States of America- who was going to say he couldn't?

TBC

Author's Comments:

Fun fact: the Secret Service actually was created by Abraham Lincoln a few days after Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Courthouse, ending the Civil War. Operation Sundevil was a sting conducted by the Secret Service in the mid-1990s that was intended to catch hackers that were disrupting the nation's telecommunications, but they didn't actually catch any hackers and just made the problem worse, causing major damages in the process.

I don't have a whole lot to say about this chapter other than just when I wasn't sure what I was going to do with the rest of this story, the whole Secret Service sex scandal went down. Bam. New chapter.

That said, this will probably be the last chapter for the better part of the next month, since I have exams coming up, as well as extra work to do. I got promoted, which is good, but it also means I have to work more. So… yeah. I will try to update as soon as possible, but at the very earliest it won't be before my exams are completed.

EDIT: Somehow I accidentally merged this document with my database administration homework. I think I got everything that's not supposed to be in the chapter out of it, but if you see random MySQL commands, that's what that is, and I'd appreciate if you would let me know so I can get rid of them once and for all.

-Kaboom