Chapter 1
"DAMMIT JIM!"
Jim looked up from his keyboard, totally unfazed by the hollering of his co-worker. "Hey, Dwight, what's up?" he said calmly.
Dwight ignored the greeting. His hands roamed greedily across the surface of his desk and plunged into his drawers. Breathless and flushed, he retracted his hands and turned to face Jim.
"Where are my glasses!?" he demanded.
"How would I know?" Jim brushed him off, winking at Pam before returning to his work. She giggled as Dwight frowned at him, diving back into the mess on his desk. Suddenly, Dwight gave a triumphant yell.
"Got 'em!" he cried, snatching the glasses up from where they had been hibernating under some files. He began to clean the lenses using his horrible orange tie, but in the middle of doing so realized that something was amiss. Holding the glasses close to his face, he squinted at them for a moment before shoving them on his nose.
"Dammit Jim," he repeated, softer this time, as he swiveled his chair to face the other salesman once more. Jim fought to suppress a smile, but it was tough to keep a straight face while having a staring contest with a man wearing half moon spectacles.
His smile did him in. "See!" Dwight cried, brandishing his pointer finger at him. "I knew it was you!" As an afterthought he added, "How did you know my prescription?"
"Dwight, I'm telling you, I didn't do anything," Jim professed.
"You're lying," Dwight accused. "If you didn't do it, then would my usual glasses have been switched for half moon Albus Dumbledore spectacles in my exact prescription?"
Jim grinned. "It must have been magic."
Dwight scowled.
Kevin swore colorfully as the tip of yet another pencil splintered, smearing a dark smudge across his quarterly report. Oscar patted his friend's arm sympathetically as Kevin shoved his work to the other end of the break room's table. Angrily, he pulled his Cup-O-Noodles towards himself instead.
"I hate quarterly reports," Kevin muttered into his lunch.
"I can tell," Oscar smiled, grabbing a fifth pencil for his friend. "But stabbing them isn't going to make them go away. Violence isn't the answer, Kev."
Kevin glared at him briefly, then returned to his noodles.
The two men looked up from the table as Angela stormed through the door, a sheaf of papers clenched in her fist. She stared them down for a moment, her eyes narrowed and her lips pressed white.
Kevin gulped.
"Hey Angela…" Oscar ventured tentatively.
Strike one for Oscar.
"What do you think you're doing!?" she screamed.
Oscar flinched. Kevin frowned. "Um…quarterly reports?" Kevin supplied.
"No," Angela seethed. "That's what you're supposed to be doing!" She threw the papers she held onto the table. "These are not quarterly reports!"
"What's wrong with them?"
"What's wrong with them?" she repeated, purpling with rage. "I'll tell you what's wrong with them, Kevin. Everything! I need expenses, billing, and a list of every and any affiliate or employee of Dunder-Mifflin, and I need it now. FIX THIS!"
She stormed out and slammed the door, leaving the two in stunned silence.
Oscar pushed away his salad and cleared his throat. "Maybe we should get going on this."
"Yeah."
"I'll work on the billing if you work on the list."
Kevin sighed. "Fine."
They worked quietly for a while…until Kevin's pencil broke again.
"That's…it!" Kevin growled. "I'm all done being pushed around by Angela! This is stupid. She needs to help, too!" With a frustrated growl, he took up his list and began to shred it. He pulled off each individual name and balled it up tight.
Oscar watched Kevin flip out with wide eyes. It was unlike the big man to react with this much emotion towards anything that wasn't Italian, edible, or nude.
"Kevin, you probably shouldn't do that," Oscar warned.
Kevin kept tearing. "This is so dumb!" he cried. "We don't need a list of employees and affiliates! I'M DONE!"
Oscar watched him angrily toss the tiny paper balls into his Cup-O-Noodles. Realizing there was no way he could do damage control at this point, Oscar shrugged and returned back to his own work.
Dwight waltzed into the break room just as Kevin heaved a sigh of satisfaction and leaned back in his chair.
"Done," Kevin smiled.
Oscar leaned over and peered into his Cup-O-Noodles. "Gross," he said.
"What's gross?" Dwight wondered, fishing his Baby Ruth out of the vending machine.
"Kevin's lunch," Oscar said, looking around at Dwight. Oscar scoffed. "Nice glasses."
Dwight ignored him. "What happened to Kevin's lunch? Did it go bad? I told Michael we needed to make the refrigerator cooler…."
"Nah, it's not old. I put paper in it," Kevin informed him proudly.
Dwight nearly keeled over. "You did WHAT?!"
"I…put paper in it?"
Dwight gestured angrily at Kevin with his candy bar. "You don't deserve to work for a paper company! You defile the product that we work so hard to create!"
"We don't make the paper," Kevin reminded him. "We just sell it."
"We should sell you," Dwight spat. "You're worthless."
"Hey…" Kevin whined.
"Shut up!" Oscar piped up.
"What's wrong?" Kevin asked, turning from Dwight to Oscar.
"Kev…" Oscar said. "Your lunch...it's…smoking."
"What?"
"No, look," Oscar said. "There's smoke coming out of your Cup-O-Noodles!"
Indeed there was.
"I'll get the fire extinguisher!" Dwight volunteered, making to run out the door.
"Wait!" Kevin said. "Wait! Look!"
The three crowded around the Styrofoam cup, which had begun to whistle. Suddenly, there was a pop and a tiny ball of paper shot up from the noodles and hit Kevin square between the eyes. Three more followed in quick succession.
"Ow," Kevin muttered, massaging the bridge of his nose.
Oscar scrambled for the pieces of paper, but Dwight held him back. "Stop!" he cried. "As a volunteer sheriff, it's my duty to determine if these papers are harmful!"
Oscar rolled his eyes and gathered the papers in his hands anyways.
"If you die, I'm just going to say 'I told you so,'" Dwight mumbled.
Oscar peeled open the soggy bits of paper and spread them on the table.
"Hey," Kevin said, "that's my handwriting."
"They're names," Oscar realized, "from the list you were writing."
"Oh my god," Dwight breathed, pushing his half moon specs higher up on his nose. "I know what this is."
"What?"
"The people who shot out of the Cup-O-Noodles…they're the new competitors!"
"Competitors for what?"
Dwight gazed meaningfully from Oscar to Kevin and then back to the papers. "For the Tri-Departmental Tournament, of course."
Author's Note: The idea for this story just sort of popped into my head and I figured that it's kind of dumb, but it's more fun than doing my English homework, so…let me know if it's worth continuing. I have a really good idea of where it will end up going if people are interested.