Bob was not, technically, supposed to be reading RIP's alliance chat. He wasn't in RIP. This had never stopped him before.
He was three scrolls deep into an unrelated argument about lanes when he saw it, and the moment he saw it, everything else stopped mattering.
HostileTakeOver: "That's it," she wrote. "Next time I leave this alliance, I'm sending Bob after you."
Bob read it twice. Then a third time, slower, mouthing the words.
"She said my name," he said, to no one, in a voice usually reserved for prophecy. "As a punishment."
He did not know what had prompted the threat. He did not care. Somewhere in RIP, someone had done something bad enough that the natural, escalating, final consequence — worse than a kick, worse than a demotion — was him. This was, by any reasonable measure, the single greatest honor Bob had ever been paid, and he intended to accept it formally.
"I am no longer a rumor," he announced to an empty tent. "I am a punishment tier."
He opened a fresh document. At the top, in size 40 font, bolded, underlined, he typed:
THE BOB ATTACK PROTOCOL — OFFICIAL
He stared at it for a long moment, deeply moved by his own handwriting, and then went looking for a crime to solve.
Bob's first instinct — his only instinct, really — was that a threat this severe had to be attached to a specific, documented offense.
He didn't have to dig far. Two scrolls up sat the original crime scene, right there in chat, plain as day.
HostileTakeOver: "Mehrdad. You hit me in arena. Again." HostileTakeOver: "And sandman got me too. Three times. I'm keeping a list." Mehrdad: "In my defense, it's genuinely hard not to. You can't refresh that fast without landing on somebody." HostileTakeOver: "Cute theory. No gems for you."
Bob read this with the slow, dawning satisfaction of a man watching a puzzle assemble itself. "Arena," he said. "The Bob attack was about arena."
He typed it into the case file as INCIDENT #1: THE MEHRDAD HIT, and immediately summoned Mehrdad for questioning, using the only interrogation technique he knew, which was typing very loudly.
Bob: "MEHRDAD. EXPLAIN THE HIT." Mehrdad: "I already explained it. Arena refreshes fast. Sometimes you land on someone. It's not personal, it's just math." Bob: "'Just math.' That is exactly the kind of thing a man with an alibi would say." Mehrdad: "It's not an alibi, it's how the feature works." Bob: "Noted. Suspicious. Noted again."
Mehrdad, who had done nothing wrong beyond having reasonable reflexes, did not dignify this with a further response, which Bob also wrote down, under a new heading: SUSPECT WENT SILENT — SUSPICIOUS.
Bob's investigation might have ended there — a tidy, one-suspect case — if he hadn't kept scrolling and found an entire second arena conflict already simmering, this one between Envy and Miranda.
Envy: "You've been slipping in arena lately. I'm just saying — it tracks." Miranda: "I'd love it if we could keep this at least a little grounded in reality." Envy: "I am grounded in reality. You're three or four spots above me. That's not slipping, that's dreaming." Miranda: "You're the one dreaming." Envy: "Landed 17th today. Only got two attacks in before I ran out of time." Envy: "We'll see soon enough who's actually been lacking."
"Two victims," Bob said, standing up in his chair for no functional reason. "Possibly a pattern. Possibly a ring."
He immediately merged the files. INCIDENT #1: THE MEHRDAD HIT became INCIDENT #1: THE MEHRDAD HIT (PART OF A LARGER ARENA CONSPIRACY, SEE BELOW).
Bob: "@Envy. This is an official investigation. State your involvement in the arena conspiracy." Envy: "The what." Bob: "The rankings. The slipping. The lacking. I have all of it documented, cross-referenced, and underlined." Envy: "I said Miranda's ranked below me. That's a fact, not a conspiracy." Bob: "That is exactly what a co-conspirator would say."
Envy did not reply, which Bob filed under the same growing heading, now retitled for efficiency: PEOPLE WHO WENT SILENT (CONSPIRACY-ADJACENT).
"State your name for the record," Bob said, holding his phone up like it was recording something.
"Miranda."
"And your relationship to Envy."
"He's insufferable. We compare arena ranks sometimes. That is the entire relationship."
"Do you deny being ranked below him?"
"I was ranked seventh," Miranda said, with the flat patience of someone explaining this for the second time and hoping there wouldn't be a third. "He said thirty places isn't close. It wasn't a conspiracy, Bob. It was him being smug about arena. That's just a Tuesday."
"Smug," Bob repeated, writing it down and underlining it three times. "That is a motive."
"It is not a motive for anything."
"Do you also deny knowledge of the Mehrdad hit?"
Miranda blinked. "The what?"
"THE MEHRDAD HIT," Bob said, louder, as though volume were evidence. "HostileTakeOver was struck in arena. By Mehrdad. Possibly as a favor to the ranking conspiracy."
"Those two things have nothing to do with each other," Miranda said. "Mehrdad refreshes fast and sometimes lands on people. It happens to literally everyone who's ever played arena."
"That," Bob said, writing faster now, "is precisely what someone protecting a co-conspirator would say."
Miranda opened her mouth, closed it again, and decided — wisely, correctly — that this deposition was never going to end in anything resembling clarity. She left to go actually play arena, which was, notably, the one thing Bob had not yet done.
By the time Bob reconvened his suspects — Mehrdad, Envy, Miranda, and HostileTakeOver herself, who had shown up purely to find out why her own offhand joke now had a seven-page case file — Bob had reached a verdict, and worse, a plan.
"After extensive investigation," he announced, "I have concluded the following: there is no conspiracy. Mehrdad hit HostileTakeOver by accident, exactly as he said from the beginning, which is a boring and entirely correct answer that I deeply resent. Envy and Miranda's rivalry is unrelated, petty, and ongoing, and will remain so regardless of my involvement."
"Finally," Miranda said.
"HOWEVER," Bob continued, and everyone's stomach sank in unison, "a Bob attack was formally invoked. A threat like that cannot simply go unfulfilled — that would set a terrible precedent. So, effective immediately, I am deploying it."
"Deploying it on what," HostileTakeOver said, already regretting every choice that had led to this sentence existing.
"Arena," Bob said, with the calm certainty of a man who had never once opened the arena screen in his life. "I will personally attack, on behalf of the alliance, to settle the ranking dispute once and for all."
He did not know how arena worked. He clicked the first button he saw. It was not the attack button. It was, in fact, the button that instantly burned through every one of Miranda's remaining arena attempts for the day, since he had — through means nobody present could later explain — somehow ended up logged into her session, over her shoulder, without anyone noticing the swap.
"BOB."
"I HAVE ATTACKED," Bob announced, triumphant, to a screen displaying a loss, a second loss, and a bright red "no attempts remaining" banner.
"Those were my attempts. You lost. Twice."
"The Bob attack has been deployed," Bob said, closing the laptop with the finality of a man who considered the case fully and permanently solved. "HostileTakeOver's threat is now fulfilled. Everyone else's arena problems remain exactly where they started. I am calling this a complete victory."
"For who," Envy asked, flatly.
"The case file," Bob said. "It is now closed. Undefeated."
Author's note (in-world): Mehrdad's arena reflexes remain, to Bob's enduring disappointment, exactly as accidental as he originally claimed. HostileTakeOver has since learned never to threaten a Bob attack in alliance chat again, joke or otherwise. Miranda's daily arena attempts have not recovered. Envy and Miranda's ranking rivalry is, as of this writing, still ongoing, still petty, and now permanently on record in a case file titled, against everyone's wishes, THE BOB ATTACK PROTOCOL — OFFICIAL.