Miranda had exactly one item left on her to-do list, and it had been sitting there for two weeks like a bill she was pretending not to see: Q2 Self-Reflection — Due.
She was an analyst at a big corporate company. She did a lot of VBA. A lot of SQL. She was, by her own admission, extremely good at making Excel do things Excel did not want to do. And she did not know how to write a single line of any of it herself. "I just use AI," she'd told Beef once, with the shrug of someone who had made peace with this a long time ago.
So naturally, when Bob overheard "I need help finishing a report" from three rooms away in the alliance hall, he sprinted over so fast he knocked over a supply crate, apologized to the crate, and skidded to a stop in front of Miranda's desk.
"I HEARD REPORT. I HEARD HELP. I AM HERE."
Miranda did not look up from her blank document. "Bob, this is a corporate self-review. For my actual job. Not a Kingshot thing."
"Even better," Bob said, pulling up a chair that did not belong to him. "I am extremely qualified in accomplishing things that did not need to be accomplished."
Beef wandered by moments later, saw the chair, saw Bob, saw the blank document, and immediately understood he was about to witness a disaster.
"What's Q2," he asked, even though he already knew.
"Achievements," Miranda said flatly. "I have to list mine."
Apexx caught the tail end of it on his way past. "Quarter 2👀"
"Thank you finance bro," Beef said.
"Should've realized it was rhetorical, my bad lol," Apexx said, already walking away.
Bob, meanwhile, had opened the document and typed, in size 40 font, bolded, underlined:
ACHIEVEMENT #1: SURVIVED.
Miranda deleted it.
"I am not finance lady," Beef informed the room, unprompted.
"Nobody said you were," Miranda said.
"I am not finance lady," Beef repeated, louder, as if the first denial hadn't landed with sufficient authority.
Bob, undeterred by his first achievement getting deleted, tried a new approach: interviewing Miranda directly, like a very small, very intense HR representative.
"Miranda. What do you do."
"I'm an analyst. Lot of Excel work."
Beef reappeared instantly, drawn to the word "Excel" the way Bob was drawn to disasters. "Do you know all the Excel tricks?"
"Not really," Miranda admitted. "I do a lot of VBA and SQL coding, but honestly? I don't know how to write any of it myself. I just use AI."
"Ohhhh Sharepoint ftw lol," Apexx said, drifting back into range.
"Not Sharepoint," Miranda said.
Bob, watching all of this with the focused intensity of a man conducting field research, turned back to the blank document and typed:
ACHIEVEMENT #2: WORKS WITH A TEAM.
Miranda actually considered leaving that one in. Then deleted it too, because it was, technically, a lie.
That's when Beef decided Miranda's job needed a title upgrade, and once Beef decided something, there was no talking him out of it. It started small.
"CEO soon," he said.
"She's not becoming CEO," Apexx said.
But Beef was already building momentum. "She is finance lady. She saves the corporate world every day."
"Oh, hedge fund type shiii👀," Apexx said, unable to resist.
"She does money," Beef continued. "Landering."
"That's not a—" Miranda started.
"You ever see Ozark? That's what Miranda does."
"Thats believable," Apexx said, entirely too fast.
"The state drg catel," Beef added. Then, one message later, correcting himself as if it clarified anything: "Cartel."
Bob leaned over and whispered, dead serious, "Are you secretly extremely dangerous?"
"No, Bob."
"The cow says otherwise."
"The cow is wrong."
Apexx, watching Beef's entire criminal-empire narrative unfold, could only offer one final word of tribute: "Slayyyy💅."
Bob's third attempt at an achievement read:
ACHIEVEMENT #3: SUCCESSFULLY EVADED HER OWN REVIEW FOR FOURTEEN DAYS. THIS IS ADVANCED PROJECT MANAGEMENT.
Miranda actually laughed out loud at that one. She didn't delete it immediately, which for Bob's track record was practically a standing ovation.
"Demoted for bad behavior," she said, mostly to herself, staring at the empty bullet points still waiting below it. "But yes — I'm supposed to list all my achievements for the second quarter."
"Shame habibi," Beef said. "How many achievements did you have?"
"Does R4 count as achievement👀," Apexx said.
"Does R5 count as achievement👀," SUAN added, arriving late but perfectly on-theme.
"Not many," Miranda admitted. "I fuqqed off quite a bit. That's why I've been procrastinating completing it."
"You are still number 1 in company," Beef said, with the unwavering confidence of a man who had contributed zero real achievements to this document and several fake criminal enterprises.
Not to be outdone, Apexx pulled up his own imaginary highlight reel. "Here in Q2, Mr. Corpo, I achieved a sick comet march👀 wanna see lol." A pause, for effect. "@Miranda, legen... wait for it..."
Everyone waited.
"...DARY," Apexx finished, roughly a full minute later, having apparently wandered off and come back specifically to land the punchline.
In the end, it was Bob — improbably, infuriatingly, Bob — who got the report finished. Not because anything he wrote was usable. Every single suggestion had been deleted, replaced, or physically crossed out on a printed copy Bob insisted on making "for dramatic effect."
But somewhere between the fake achievements, the Ozark accusations, and Apexx's minute-long "legen...DARY," Miranda had stopped staring at a blank page and started actually typing. Real bullet points. True ones, even.
She hit submit at 9:47 PM, two weeks late, flanked by a cow who insisted he wasn't in finance, a man who had achieved nothing but claimed everything, and Bob, who was already halfway into asking if her next project needed a chaos consultant.
"Bob," Miranda said, "you didn't actually help."
Bob placed a hand over his heart, wounded. "I provided emotional structure."
"You provided four fake achievements and a diagram of a horse."
"The horse was a metaphor."
"For what?"
"I don't know yet. I'll circle back next quarter."