Phase FIVE: Gorilla

Ryan had been trying his best to remain inconspicuous today, but that never seemed to work at this job.

"Hey, Temp," Dwight began, sidling up to Ryan closer than he was really comfortable with, "I need your help with something."

"I've kind of got a lot to do today," Ryan protested with as much conviction as he could muster. In truth, he had absolutely nothing to do today except perhaps some research into what it was that attracted certain coworkers to him. Could it have been pheromonal?

"But I need your help if we're going to bring Michael back," Dwight pleaded.

"He's going to be back in a few days anyway." Was he giving off pheromones?

"Not if Jim isn't stopped..." Dwight realized the soft touch wasn't working, he needed to lean on him a bit more. "Michael has been like a father to you."

"Um, I already have a father..." Ryan really tried his best not to get involve in the pranks or the rivalries.

"He's trained you," Dwight insisted, "took you in like Batman and Robin."

Ryan nodded, wishing he could just learn how to disappear completely.

"Wait..." Dwight mused, "I should be Robin..."

"Yeah, I got to get back to work," Ryan said, slipping away before Dwight had a chance to wake from his superhero delusion.

----

Ryan: It's not that I don't like Michael. It's just that...

He tries for some time to find a way to finish this thought, but falls short.

Eventually the camera gives up and moves on.

----

"So..." Pam handled her words as though they were made of inordinately slippery porcelain "what's up with you today?"

"Um... how do you mean?" He had hoped that she wasn't going call him on any of his behavior today. He supposed it was his own fault for letting things escalate as far as they.

"In all the time I've known you... you've never taken a prank this far." She gestures around them "into his home territory," she continued, seemingly blind to how uncomfortable he was suddenly feeling. "I'm starting to think maybe you really are going mad with power."

"Well..." he trailed, praying to any and all gods that he happened to remember to just let this one slip.

"Yeah?" Apparently he had forgotten the right deity. It was probably one of the Norse gods. He was always forgetting them.

"Really, I didn't expect you to go along with this..." He kept his voice slow in a failed attempt to remain completely silent and spoke honestly because he couldn't quite think of anything else to say. "...I guess I just wanted to see how far you'd follow me."

Pam thought then that if she were in a film or a book, right then she might have said something to the effect that she would follow Jim anywhere and, what's more, she would mean what she said. Instead, all she felt was a growing unease, as if she were standing on top of a very tall building. She had absolutely no desire to pursue this line of conversation further, certainly not now, while the cameras were filming. So she did what she always did when she thought things were about to get change between Jim and herself and she made her escape. "Now, you're sure this isn't the sort of thing we could be arrested for?"

"Pam," Jim shook his and jimmed at the obviousness of it, "we have diplomatic immunity."

"Of course," Pam chuckled, happy on most levels to be back on solid ground.

Then, as she sunk another plastic flamingo into the soft turf outside the Schrute family farmhouse, treasuring for a moment the light "trrft" sound as it sank into old Pennsylvanian tundra, she had another thought. "Then..."

"Hmm?" Part of him was hoping she was going to bring back their previous topic, but he knew that wasn't going to happen. Probably for the best, anyway.

She proceeded with caution. "...Do you think this could be seen as an act of war?" She had to keep the game going, that was all.

"Against Dwight?" Jim really didn't think that constituted much of a threat.

"No," Pam corrected him, "against the United States."

This had slightly more troubling implications. Sure, it was all well and good separate from a major world power and steal their resources for your own, no one ever came to a bad end doing that; but entering into an active war against the most powerful military power in the world, that was possibly not the best move right now.

"Well..." Jim began, taking his time with each syllable. "When I was a kid... my mom took me to see The Mouse That Roared..." he turned to face Pam, keeping his voice completely deadpan "...I think I remember enough to get everyone out of this alive."

Pam shook her head and got back to embedding flamingos. Sometimes, the key was to focus on the small things.

----

Pam, a bit too eagerly: Things are fine with me and Roy right now.

Pause.

Pam: Really.

----

"What are you doing?" Angela whispered from the other end the kitchen.

"No one ever has the right to rebel like that," Dwight told his coffee mug, "I thought you respected the rules."

"Things are different now," Angela patiently explained to the wall. "I've risen in the Party... I make the rules now."

Dwight bit his lip, he couldn't begin to state how much it pained him to see her turn away from the very values and morals that made him decide to start screwing her in the first place. "I thought you respected authority," he said, every word dripping with his disappointment and feeling of betrayal.

"Jim is the authority now," she replied sternly. She didn't bother to suggest that life was better now than it had been under Michael, or how much more work she was able to get done without having to deal with the single most objectionable human being in an office full of incredibly objectionable people; his loyalty to Michael was too great for that to ever work. Instead, she appealed to one of the features that attracted her to him in the first place: his logic. "If you try to overthrow him, you'll be guilty of the same crimes."

Dwight froze. This was something he had to give some thought to. Certainly he would always have moral superiority over Jim, but Angela had a point. As long as he was a citizen of this office, he was a subject to the sitting government. Since transferring was out of the question, he would either have respect that authority or risk becoming that which he had spent his whole life fighting against.

"I can't let Jim get away with this," he finally decided.

Then something in Angela changed. She turned to face him for the first time and she saw her face had become red with fury. She ran to the door and screamed for Kevin and Oscar. Dwight knew then that she had chosen her loyalty to the Party over her feelings for him. He'd always admired her conviction.

"What's up?" Oscar nearly yawned. The day was really catching up with him.

"Dwight is trying to topple the New Order," she spat with cold disgust, leaving Dwight paralyzed with fear and curious arousal.

Oscar and Kevin nodded, he sure was.

"He needs to be detained!" Angela ordered when it became clear that neither man was about to take action in the matter.

Oscar sighed. He didn't relish this unfortunate duty, but he knew if he didn't follow through a vocal segment of his constituency would never let it go. Sometimes he wondered why he entered politics in the first place. "Where do you want us to put him?"

There was, of course, only one place for sinners and insurrectionists. "The annex," she demanded, smiling.

As they dragged him away, she looked him in the face and met the nearly-crying puppy-dog eyes of one of the very few men she had ever consented to give cookie to, her smile merely widened. She turned her back and walked back to her desk, putting him out of her thoughts.

----

Angela: I am the Law.

----

When Jim and Pam finally got back to the office, there was less enthusiasm for the return of the de facto ruling couple of the office than there was for the fact that they brought bagels. But this was to be expected, Jim reflected. After all, they had been in time to get enough Asiago-Parmesan bagels for everyone to have at least one, which was an Herculean achievement in and of itself. But then, Jim was the type of leader who took care of his people.

"How did it go when while we were abroad?" he asked Oscar. "No internal strife, right?"

Oscar shrugged. "Same as any other country," he reasoned. "Small but vocal fundamentalist lobby."

Jim started, he did not like where this was going. "What did she make you do?"

"I had to exile Dwight," he explained, his voice more amused than remorseful.

"Wow," Jim gasped. "Today is not going very well for him at all."

"Yeah, I know," Oscar laughed.

----

Dwight, sinister: Things might be going well for Jim now, but in the end his followers will abandon him, his nation will fall, and he will be left with nothing.

----

Jim, amused: He really said that?

He shakes his head and smiles.

Jim: Wow.

Pause.

Jim, letting a bit of darkness seep in: He's not usually right about stuff like that.