"These ‘jobs’ aren’t hard to find at all!” exclaimed Thor, pointing to an Office Building, labelled Conical Structures R' Us. “Now let’s go in there and find one.” It was early in the morning, and after a refreshing sleep on the sole park bench that could fit Thor on it, he was ready to get out and go job hunting.

“I told you, Thor, these Office Jobs aren’t as easy to acquire as you think. You can’t just stroll into the building and expect them to give you one.”

“Says who?” Thor folded his arms and walked to the doors.

“Brother, wait-”

The glass doors slid open and Thor walked through. Loki sighed. Once again he was reduced to following Thor into a stupid plan and there was nothing he could do about it. One of these days he was going to drag Thor into a not-so-stupid plan and Thor was going to have to do Loki's plan.

Loki tied Fenrir’s leash to a pole outside and followed Thor in.

Inside the building was a desk and several small plants in bowls. Humans were weird. Why would they want dirt inside their buildings? Thor didn’t know, but he wasn’t about to ask. It didn’t concern him.

“Excuse me,” said Thor, loudly. “Is there a human here who might give me their job?”

There was a silence. No humans were around here.

“Excuse me! Humans!”

When there was no response again Thor looked around for a way to get their attention. On the desk was a strange looking button that said ‘Press Only If Nobody Is Here’. Which was obviously for them to press. No human was at this desk when there was obviously a chair for a human to be seated.

Thor pressed the button. No human came. He pressed the button. Again and again. This was stupid. Humans were stupid.

Thor stormed off and walked into a glass door.

“Brother, that one isn’t automatic.”

He rubbed his face. The impact had hurt more than he'd expected. There were many downsides to being human. “I know, Loki.” He turned around to be angry at Loki but found himself facing someone else instead. “Ah. Human.”

“Who are you?” asked the human.

“We, me and my brother here,” Thor said, pointing to himself and Loki, “Are looking for a human job. An Office Job. I want yours.”

They scoffed. “Sure, buddy, whatever you want. What’s your name?”

“Brad Humanson,” said Thor.

“Mhmm,” they said. “And you?”

This was a problem. Loki had never considered needing his own name. He had always planned on stealing Thor’s at the last minute. He looked around for something he could use as a name.

Pencil...ruler...water…

“Soap,” said Loki confidently.

They raised an eyebrow. “Last name?”

Oh, shit, he hadn’t thought about that either. “Suds...on. Sudson. Soap Sudson.”

“Soap Hudson. Right.”

“No, no. Soap Sudson.”

The person wrote something down and shrugged. “Alright, I’ll talk to my boss. Listen, most companies usually don't hire people who just turn up but considering our business model...you might be in luck.” They opened a door and walked away.

“Hear that, Loki?” Thor jumped up and down. “We’re getting an office job!”

It took half an hour and several free mints from the bowl on the front desk to stop Thor from bouncing around like an excited puppy. Loki had brought Fenrir back inside to show Thor exactly how he should be acting, and it was honestly disappointing that he’d had to use the bringer of Ragnarok as a role model for his older brother. Eventually, Loki had got him calmed down and sitting on a chair.

It was then that The Boss walked out. Thor jumped up.

“Thor!” shouted Loki. “Sit.”

Thor sat down.

“H-hey guys,” said The Boss, rubbing his hands together. His voice was high pitched and nasally. Like a teenager at the Mr. Donald’s counter. Not the deep, demanding voice Loki had come to expect from a leader. “I’m so glad you could come. We’ve been really short staffed lately.”

“Not to worry!” boomed Thor. He was showing off now. “Now you shall have tall staff too! I, Brad Humanson and my brother, Soap Hudson are happy to join your escapades.”

“Soap Sudson,” muttered Loki.

“My brother Soap Sudson are happy to join you in whatever it is you’re doing.”

"That's great!" said the Boss. "You're hired."

Thor started jumping for joy again.

It probably should have been a red flag for Loki that they had been hired without even knowing what they were doing here. No one had checked to see if they could use a computer, or sit in an office, or anything like that. Loki didn’t know how to water a pot plant or browse a human internet and his excessive binging of human TV had told him that these were essential to working in an office.

“Come right this way.” The boss gestured to the non-automatic door. “I’ll get you started.”

“After you,” Thor said, glaring at Loki. He was not going to walk into the door again.

Loki opened the door and walked in, Fenrir following at his feet. The door swung shut. Loki heard a bang from behind him, then a few bad words, then Thor opened the door and walked into the room. 

“So that’s Paul,” said the boss. “He’s in recruiting.” Paul waved and smiled at them. Thor smiled back. Paul was holding a telephone. Thor did not know how to use one of those.

“That’s Steve. He’s in recruiting.” Steve gave a small nod and went back to staring at his computer. Thor did not know how to use a computer either.

“This lovely young lady here is Eclipse. She’s in recruiting.”

“Sup,” she said.

"Greetings, human," said Thor.

“And over in that corner there,” said The Boss, pointing to a shadowy room, “Is Pheneroth.”

Pheneroth, at the sound of their name, leered at them. Neither Thor nor Loki could see their face, but there seemed to be a cloud of evil fuming off them and two red dots blazed from inside a plague doctor mask.

“We don’t quite know what Pheneroth does, but last time we tried to ask that, there was an earthquake, our microwave exploded, and Dave disappeared, so I would say to just not do that.”

As if they had heard, Pheneroth's eyes burned brighter red and black smoke filled their room, coming out from under the door and into the rest of the office.

The Boss laughed nervously and showed them to an empty room. “Here’s where you’ll be. You’ll be in recruiting.”

Had Thor or Loki known anything more about marketing, they would have recognised that this was suspiciously similar to a pyramid scheme. In fact, it was a new, more jazzed-up version of the pyramid scheme, called a cone scheme. It worked very similarly to a pyramid scheme, except the guy who ran it obviously didn’t know how to run a pyramid scheme and wasn’t profiting from it at all.

“Welcome to Conical Structures R’ Us, Mr Humanson and Mr Sudson.”

The Boss shook their hands. “I’ll leave you to it, then.” He walked out of the office. Thor and Loki took a moment to gaze around the office. It was just like all the other offices in the building, with pot plants and telephones and computers.

“He didn’t tell us what to do, Loki,” said Thor.

Loki cracked his knuckles and looked at the pot plant in the corner. “Leave it to me, Brother.”

That night, not so far away from the Conical Structures office building, a meteor sailed through the sky and landed in an empty field. Had anyone been paying attention, they would have noticed, but the people of Newport were not the type of party animal to stay up until three in the morning. Even the devoted astrologists and astronomists and stargazers wouldn’t have stayed up, because this meteor was not one that had been planned. It was a surprise meteor.

It was not, in fact, a meteor at all.

It was a hammer.

Thor awoke in the middle of the night. “Loki.”

Loki groaned. “What is it, brother?”

“Mjolnir,” said Thor. “It’s near. I can feel it.”

"No it isn't," said Loki. "Go back to sleep."