Disclaimer: Not mine.

Author's Note: The talking heads are different in this chapter than in the others. I thought I'd try something a bit different. Just a warning. And thanks very much to everyone who reviewed! Feedback is really helpful/delicious.

Chapter 10: Kryptonite

"Okay!" Michael cried. "Ready to get your charade on, Andy?"

"I don't think continuing with charades is a very good idea, Michael," Phyllis warned, inconspicuously jilting her head toward the moping Dwight.

Michael took the hint. "Fine," he grumbled. "I guess we could always move onto the next activity.

"Aww, c'mon!" Andy whined. "I want a turn!"

Michael looked pointedly at Dwight. "Well, somebody has ruined this game for all of us, Andy, so you're going to have to suck it up and move on." Andy sulked with his arms crossed over his chest.

"Fine," Andy huffed.

"I think we should engage in one of my creative, beach-specific events instead!" Michael continued, perking up at the thought of another game.

Karen winced at the word "creative." "This can't be good," she whispered in Phyllis's ear.

"What kind of game do you have in mind, Michael?" Oscar asked in a manner that suggested he'd rather not find out.

"A sandcastle building contest! We're gonna get down and dir-tay!" Michael cried. He beamed around at the crowd for a moment, obviously expecting lots of enthusiasm and bubbling excitement. Crickets chirped, but, other than that….

Angela broke the silence first. "I don't want to get my hands dirty," Angela declared.

"Well, suck it up, Angela, because you're building a sandcastle whether you want to or not," Michael huffed.

"Little kids build sand castles, and we're all adults!" Andy complained. Then he grinned. "Except for maybe Dwight, who's acting like a big baby!" Andy chuckled at his own joke. Dwight glared daggers at him.

"I wish I had laser vision…" he muttered under his breath, continuing to stare down his coworker. Angela patted his arm sympathetically.

Michael suddenly came up with an alternative to dirty hands: dirty everything.

"We could bury each other in the sand instead!" he offered.

"No!" the employees protested in unison.

"It'd be fun! We could time and see who takes the longest to dig themselves out of the ground!"

"I think building sandcastles is a great idea," Karen backtracked hastily.

Michael grinned; that was exactly what he had wanted to hear. "Well, then, sandcastle contest it is!"

There was a collective sigh from his weary audience.

"How does this work?" said Kelly.

"That's what she said!" Michael giggled. Everyone looked confused.

"I don't get it," Toby confessed.

Ignoring him, Michael continued, "I'm the judge, because I'm the boss. Everyone will have a partner, and each pair will spread out along the beach so that you can't see each other; we don't want any copy cats! Originality, people! That's the key! After an hour, I'll come around and pick the coolest one. The winners will get a super amazing prize!"

"What's the prize?" Andy inquired eagerly.

"You'll see in an hour!" Michael chirped. "Now pair up!"

The employees all gravitated toward their preferred partners.

"Okay, ready? Set? G – wait! Never mind! I need a watch!" Michael looked around. "Dwight, can I borrow your stop watch?"

The internal struggle between Dwight's anger with Michael and dog-like loyalty to his boss lasted a good minute. The butt-kissing, devoted part of the beet farmer won.

"Here," he said, yanking his clock from around his neck and handing it over grudgingly.

Michael pressed a few buttons. "GO!" he yelled suddenly.

Startled, Andy jumped a little before snatching Karen's hand and positively skipping toward the far end of the beach. Karen looked like she was about to cry.

"Poor Karen, stuck with Andy again," a sympathetic Phyllis whispered to Stanley as they shuffled to their own spot.
"She's not the only one I feel bad for," Stanley drawled. He jerked his thumb to their left, where Kelly was leading Toby past them, jabbering excitedly in his ear. Toby shot them a pained expression that clearly read, "I want to die," as he shuffled past.

"Well, at least you have a good partner, Stanley!" Phyllis said.

Stanley grunted.

"Yeah, I thought of the sandcastle contest all on my own!" Michael boasted in front of the camera. "I thought it was pretty clever. And I'm not going to tell you what the prize is! Secrets, secrets are so fun when I am the keeper of one!" He frowned at something the camera man said. "That's how the rhyme goes!" Michael replied indignantly, "just not word for word! But I have poetic license. I'm distantly related to Shakespeare. And Sacagawea, but I don't think she was a poet…."

After Michael's talking head, the camera man realized that he had a whole hour to kill. Sighing wistfully, and wondering why he ever took this moderately dull job in the first place, he decided to make rounds of the sandcastle builders. He visited Karen and Andy's plot of sand first.

Andy and Karen were at the end of the beach that was the farthest to the left of the trail. Enthusiasm radiated from Andy; the camera man was afraid to come to close and catch it, like it was some sort of infectious disease. Karen, sitting with her knees drawn to her chin a few feet away from Andy, seemed to be of the same opinion.

Wrist-deep in a moat, Andy felt the camera on him and looked up, beaming. "This is going to be so much fun!" he chirped.

Over his shoulder, Karen mouthed, "Help me!"

Next in line were Creed and Meredith. Both were reclining in the sand. Creed replied nonchalantly to the camera man's question. "We already built our sandcastle."

Meredith grinned and pointed to her right. There, snug in a little hole in the sand, sat the giant, lidded paper cup containing her morning drink. Out of the straw protruded a stick with a leaf attached to the top. The leaf fluttered slightly in the breeze. Meredith pointed at it proudly. "It even has a flag," she said.

Toby and Kelly were found working in the wet sand near the water. Kelly responded to the camera man's question in her usual overly-perky manner. "Can't you tell what kind of castle we're building?" she bubbled rhetorically. "It's Johnny Depp's mansion! It's easy to tell because…" she went off into some spiel about exterior design, number of bedrooms, and landscaping. "I'm going to go find some plants to stick in the garden!" she concluded, skipping off to a cluster of vegetation a few yards away.

Toby looked forlornly at they're sandy mansion. "Listening to her makes my ears bleed…."

When the camera man spotted Jim and Pam, the sandy couple had not yet noticed him. Half-heartedly telling himself that no, he wasn't snooping, but merely doing his job, the camera man stealthily tip toed closer to the pair. Lens peeking through the water reeds, the camera man crouched and adjusted the focus so that Pam and Jim's outlines were clear. Ah, modern technology. Watching them through the camera, he proceeded to eavesdrop.

"I still don't see why we have to build behind these specific water reeds," Pam complained, patting some damp sand into place.

Jim smiled crookedly. "Are you telling me that Michael's little vegetation dance didn't turn you on? I picked this spot because they water reeds jog my memory enough to make me feel hot and sweaty – "

"Ew, stop! No!" Pam protested.

Grinning, Jim continued as if he had never been interrupted. "– and sexy and giddy and – ouch!"

Armed with a reed, Pam launched herself over the sandcastle that separated them and beat upon Jim.

"First a pillow, then Michael's makeshift pole!" Jim cried, laughing, as Pam ceased fire and collapsed in a giggling heap beside him. "Quit hitting on me, Beesly," he joked.

Pam rolled her eyes at him. "That was so corny!"

He smiled. "What do you expect?"

She thought for a moment. "You're right. You're just corny in general."

Jim waggled his eye brows at her. "You know you like it," he growled, pushing her backwards onto their now-ruined sandcastle. Looming over her, he pinned her arms down with one hand and used his other to tickle her mercilessly.

Pam writhed on the sand. "Stop! Jim! The sandcastle! Stop tickling me!" she laughed.

Ignoring her pleas, he continued to tickle her. "Not until you admit that every corny thing I say turns you on! Say I'm the corniest!" His roving fingers elicited another peal of laughter from her. "Say it!"

"You win! You win!" she screeched, attempting and failing to fend off his hands. "You're the corniest!"

Jim stopped tickling her, but didn't unpin her. "That's what I thought," he muttered impishly, and he leaned down for a kiss.

Gulping, the camera man hastily extracted his lens from the brush. He quickly fled the scene, feeling immensely guilty for intruding on such a personal moment. He also felt a bit nauseous. Ugh, he thought, fluffy new love…. Vowing to announce his presence to the rest of the pairs, he rushed off to find his next victims, keeping in mind that he owed Jim and Pam one for witnessing something private.

Phyllis and Stanley were arguing far enough down the beach so that Pam and Jim's lovey-dovey-ness was inaudible, rendering them oblivious to their coworkers' ministrations. Clearing his throat, the camera man stepped clearly into Phyllis and Stanley's line of site before turning on his camera. Phyllis noticed the camera first.

"I think Stanley should help build the castle!" Phyllis announced. She pointed at Stanley, who was stretched out in the sand with his crossword puzzle.

"What's a seven letter word for 'grumpy?'" he said indifferently.

Phyllis scowled at him and decorated her pathetic lump of a castle with pebbles. "Stanley," she breathed fiercely.

Stanley didn't hear her slight, and continued to frown at his puzzle with furrowed brows. Finally, he cried triumphantly, "Grouchy!"

"Grouchy…Stanley…same thing," Phyllis muttered, fed up with her disinterested partner.

Oscar and Kevin, the camera man was happy to see, were actually engaged in building a castle. The main part was about as thick as Kevin's thigh (which is saying a lot), and flanked by several smaller towers. Colorful pebbles and water vegetation brightened up the scene. A wide moat meandered around the spectacle.

"Thanks!" Oscar said when the camera man complimented their handy work.
"Want to know how we did it?" Kevin said with a mysterious, toothless smile. Prompted by the camera man's nod, Kevin continued, "We stole Dwight's empty soft soap bottles" – he pointed at the little towers – "and Angela's back pack" – Oscar gestured at the main tower – "and then we covered them in sand!"

"That's why they're so tall!" Oscar beamed.

"That prize has my name all over it," Kevin declared. "Kevin Malone…nice…."

The camera man was lucky that he found Dwight and Angela at all. The only thing that alerted him to their presence deep with in a cluster of bushes was their carrying voices.

Dwight's sounded frustrated. "No, that's not good enough," he muttered.

Angela's cold voice responded to Dwight's flat one. "Well, why don't you think of a plan to get Jim back, then, if you're so clever!"

A yard from the bushes, the camera man halted abruptly. He bit his lip. He knew that the conversation would end as soon as he stepped into view, but he wanted to keep listening, despite his earlier vow to quit eavesdropping. They're planning to get back at Jim, he justified his snooping, so maybe if I listen and tell Jim, I won't feel so guilty for watching him and Pam earlier! He crept forward slightly as Dwight rejoined Angela's comment.

"Sorry, monkey," he apologized. "I'm just angry. I really want to get Jim back but I don't know how…unless…." Dwight lowered his voice, and the camera man strained his ears to hear the salesman's excited whisper. "Maybe this is more of a Spiderman situation than anything else! Maybe the reason that Jim keeps on coming even when I try to get back at him is because hurting him isn't the way to bring his downfall…oh, no! His kryptonite is the one that he loves!"

"Isn't kryptonite from Superman?"

"Whatever," Dwight snapped. "But do you get what I mean?"

There was a pause, and then Angela breathed, "Do you mean we should do something awful to Pam?"

"Exactly!" Dwight said. "I say that we convince her that Jim really is in love with me! Then they'll be mad at each other, and Jim will be miserable!"

Angela sighed. "You're so smart."

Suddenly, Michael screamed, breaking up the conspirators' exchange. "Time's up! Meet me at the middle of the beach!" he boomed.

The camera man scampered away before Dwight and Angela could spot him, thinking giddily, I've got to tell Jim!