Mickey looked at the less than pleased faces of Professor Panchal and Agent Brown.

‘Now I know you’re thinking something along the lines of “How dare he try to come in and steal this national asset?” but think of it this way. There’s going to be a big argument over who gets to control it like you said Agent Brown, but if I’m in control it means everyone will get a slice of the cake.Where the military will want full control for military purposes, the Universities will want full control for research and the corporations will want full control for profits i’ll just set up a system so everybody gets a share. Plus I’ll ensure that the region itself isn’t damaged by overexploitation or invasive research. ’

Brown took a deep breath and frowned.

‘And how exactly are you going to do that?’

Mickey grinned.

‘ I’m going to roll with the video game theme and found a adventurer’s guild! Wanna get some specimens for study? Post a quest, hire an adventurer or join the guild. Want to secure a valuable metamaterial? Post, hire or join. Wanna gain some skills and level? Join the guild, hire a bodyguard and kill some monsters. The army can run squads through giving them metasoldiers, the academics can outsource a lot of the dangerous labour and companies can still make their profits by buying and selling to adventurers. And people won’t bitch about only the military or researchers getting in.’

The agent considered this.

‘You know what? Fine. Not my problem, I’ll kick it up to the lord mayor and my superiors. They’ll deal with it. Professor, if you or the university wants control of the metaregion I recommend getting in contact with the lord mayor's office and the federal government. The last thing I have to do is get everyone to fill out these incident reports and fill out the after action paperwork.’

Agent Brown gestured to several stacks of paper on a nearby table.

As the rest of the group got to filling in a thick stack of paper Mickey spent six seconds storing the paperwork in his pocket dimension for a few seconds before withdrawing the completed forms.

Laminae paused as he put the completed stack on the table.

‘Cargo?’

‘What?’

‘How did you complete those forms so quickly?’

‘I just put them in my pocket and let my subconscious fill them out for me.’

Laminae hovered between amazed and furious.

‘You have super paperwork powers?’

‘Eh, it’s more like real life autocomplete and copy paste powers. It doesn’t do any thinking, it just fills out answers I already know. I had to copy things from my journal directly for the action summary.’

‘For every five minutes of action it takes me half an hour to fill out the paperwork. And you can do it in thirty fucking seconds?’

Laminae ground out her hands clenching.

‘How is that fair?’

‘Hey now all powers are unfair. You can glow, cut a truck in half and fly on wings of golden energy, I can carry a lot of crap and fill in paperwork extra fast. Let's not get jealous here.’

He looked around at the rest of the group.

‘Well if thats done, I’ll go get started on talking to the mayor on this whole… Thing. Later!’

Mickey left the tent with the stares of everyone else stabbing into his back.

‘Haven’t even finished the first page.’

Officer Strathpine muttered.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

As Mickey walked in through the door to the Lord Mayors office a dead eyed receptionist with an unhealthy pallor immediately motioned to the door.

‘It’s expecting you, Mr Cargo.’

They intoned soulessly.

Mickey entered wordlessly.

‘ I don’t think that receptionist is going to last much longer, Mayor Lachesis.She seems a bit squeamish.’

After a certain amount of clicking and tapping on a keyboard a digital voice replied.

‘I do tend to go through them. Shame I can’t discriminate based on arachnophobia.’

Mickey looked at where the Honorable Lord Mayor Kerreschi Lachesis was suspended in their web behind his desk, typing their side of the conversation into a text to speech program.

The size of a large dog, Mayor Lachesis was a meta-spider who manifested increased size, intelligence and precognitive abilities. As it turns out it was particularly easy to run for office on a platform of ‘I can see and work to prevent disasters before they happen.’

One of the benefits of having a large spider for a mayor was the total lack of scandal.

The downside of having a large arachnid for a mayor was having a large arachnid for a mayor.