Bob had been in [RIP] WhiteFalcons' orbit for exactly long enough to know everyone's business, which is to say: three days. He was scrolling alliance chat, minding absolutely nobody's business, when he saw it.
Apexx: Partial torn bicep 💀
Bob sat up so fast he knocked over a mug that didn't exist, because he was reading this on his phone in a Discord voice channel with Hoot, who sighed audibly.
"Hoot," Bob said. "Hoot. A man is injured."
"A man is always injured in this alliance, Bob. It's Tuesday."
"Not just injured. Mysteriously injured. Nobody knows how. Prison Mike asked him outright — 'why are you crippled' — and he wouldn't say!"
Hoot, who had been RIP's de facto recruitment coordinator for exactly long enough to recognize the specific pitch of Bob's voice that meant disaster incoming, made the mistake of asking, "And what, exactly, are you going to do about a bicep?"
"I," said Bob, standing up in his chair for no functional reason, "am going to get to the bottom of this. Officially."
"You're not HR."
"I am about to be."
Bob's first move was to open a spreadsheet. His second move was to name the spreadsheet APEXX_INCIDENT_REPORT_FINAL_v1.xlsx, which he understood, on some level, to be a lie, since there would never be a v2 because there had never been a v0.
His third move was to interview the suspect directly.
Bob: @Apexx this is an official investigation. Explain the bicep. Apexx: Moving a piece of equipment at work lol. That's it. That's the whole story. Bob: …that's suspiciously mundane. Apexx: IT'S TRUE. I've told you like four times. Bob: interesting. noting that down.
Bob typed "SUSPECT #1 (APEXX): Confessed to a workplace incident. Story deemed suspiciously boring. Further investigation required." into cell A1 and felt, for the first time all week, like a man of purpose.
Prison Mike, for his part, treated the whole thing as a spectator sport. Even after Apexx had explained himself — clearly, calmly, more than once — Prison Mike cut back in with the confidence of a man who had said this line before and fully intended to say it again: "He is too scared to tell us how he tore his bicep."
"I LITERALLY JUST TOLD YOU," Apexx said, to the group at large.
"Sure," said Prison Mike, unmoved.
Miranda — RIP's resident R4 and, in Bob's private assessment, "the only person here who could plausibly run a small business" — offered the leading theory without being asked twice:
"Beating off too much, maybe."
Bob wrote this down verbatim, underlined it twice, and added a footnote reading "CREDIBLE?", directly beneath the equipment story he had already decided not to believe.
Bob requested a formal sit-down with Miranda. Miranda agreed, mostly because it was the fastest way to make Bob stop typing in all caps in alliance chat.
"State your name for the record," Bob said, holding up his phone like it was recording something.
"Miranda."
"And your relationship to the suspect."
"He works for me. Allegedly."
"Do you believe Apexx is capable of workplace injury?"
"I think he's strong. I think I'm strong. I think between the two of us we could probably lift a Toyota Camry, combined, if we had to." She paused. "I don't think that's evidence of anything, Bob. He told you what happened."
"It's evidence of capacity," Bob said, writing SUSPECT'S BOSS CLAIMS SUPERHUMAN STRENGTH — RELEVANT?? under the earlier notes. "Does he get workers' comp?"
"Not crazily," Miranda said. "And also I'm pretty sure they drug-test you if you actually file, so. Good luck with that whole plan."
Bob had not, in fact, had a plan beyond find out and had now acquired one by accident, which was his preferred way of acquiring plans. "We're filing," he announced.
"We are not filing anything," Miranda said, already regretting every choice that had led her to sit down for this.
"I am strong too," came a new voice — Prison Mike, who had wandered into what was very clearly not his deposition and decided to make it about him anyway. "Two strong girls, one CEO who compares carts with people in parking lots, and me. We could open a moving company." He paused, pleased with himself. "Fitting, honestly, given the whole equipment thing."
"This isn't a moving company pitch meeting," Bob said. "This is APEXX'S INVESTIGATION."
"Say less," said Apexx, from somewhere off to the side, mostly just to see if anyone would react. "Thirty dollars an hour, he starts tomorrow."
"NOBODY IS HIRING ANYBODY," Miranda said, to absolutely no effect, because everyone had already moved on to arguing about benefits packages.
Word of the investigation reached BEER, who did not so much walk into the conversation as detonate into it, the way BEER did most things.
"I heard there's a case file," BEER said.
"There is a thorough case file," Bob confirmed.
"Good. I've got a beef DM I need looked at too, while you're at it."
Bob's eyes lit up with the specific, terrible joy of a man whose caseload had just doubled. "A SEPARATE incident. Unrelated to the bicep. This changes everything."
"It's not related to the bicep," BEER said, flatly, already regretting bringing it up.
"Everything is related to the bicep until proven otherwise," Bob said, and wrote SUSPECT #2 (BEER): possible unrelated beef, cross-referencing into the spreadsheet, in a cell that did not logically connect to any other cell.
BEER, wisely, declined to elaborate further, cracked something open that made a sound like the end of the conversation, and wandered off toward world chat, muttering something about needing "to show" someone something, which Bob also wrote down, unsure what it meant but certain it was important.
By the time Bob reconvened everyone — Prison Mike, Apexx, Miranda, BEER, and Hoot, who had shown up purely to witness the collapse — the spreadsheet had grown to eleven tabs, none of which agreed with each other.
Bob stood, cleared his throat, and delivered his findings.
"After extensive investigation," he announced, "I have concluded the following: Apexx's bicep injury is exactly what he told us on day one — a workplace equipment incident — which is, frankly, an unacceptably boring answer for an alliance of this caliber, and I am formally requesting a more interesting version be adopted going forward."
"It's not going to get more interesting, Bob, it's what happened," Apexx said.
"Noted and rejected," Bob said. "Workers' comp is denied regardless, on account of nobody actually working here in any legally recognized sense, and also because Miranda is right that they'd drug-test you and none of us want that."
"Finally," Miranda said.
"HOWEVER," Bob continued, undeterred, "I am opening a NEW case. Effective immediately. Regarding BEER's beef DM."
BEER put his head in his hands.
"I would want to talk to BEER about it," Bob added, to the room, as though this were a natural next step and not something everyone in the alliance had watched him invent in real time.
"He talks to everyone," Apexx said, to nobody in particular, with the weary tone of a man who had already accepted his fate as a recurring witness in whatever this was.
"Speaking of which," Hoot said, squinting at Bob's spreadsheet over his shoulder, "why does the file say APEXX_INCIDENT_REPORT but the case is titled 'The Prison Mike Workers' Comp Crusade' in your notes?"
Bob considered this for a moment. "Prison Mike was the loudest," he said, as if this settled something. "The case is named after whoever made the most noise about it. That's just how casework works."
"That is not how anything works," Apexx said.
"Even the gays," Prison Mike said, apropos of absolutely nothing, and the alliance chat — and, somewhere off-screen, the entire kingdom — moved on, no wiser about the bicep than it had been at the start, but significantly more entertained.
Bob closed the spreadsheet without saving it. Some mysteries, he decided, were meant to stay open. Besides — he already had a new case file to name.
Author's note (in-world): Apexx's bicep story remains, to Bob's enduring disappointment, exactly as boring as it originally sounded. RIP has, by unspoken agreement, stopped trying to convince him otherwise. The case file itself remains permanently and incorrectly named after Prison Mike, who has expressed no interest in correcting it.