KvK erupted between 1507 and 1514, and for once, the top alliances of Kingdom 1507 did something almost suspicious: they coordinated. TTK, APX, ONE, SOV, and FAR synced their battle plans, timed their rallies, and lined up their siege waves like they'd rehearsed it. Bob took one look at this unprecedented display of teamwork and concluded, correctly, that it meant nothing was stopping him from getting personally involved. "If everyone is working together," he announced to no one, "then everyone needs a garrison commander. I will be that commander." He had not been asked. He would not be asked. This did not slow him down.
Bob marched up to ONE's castle gates with the swagger of a man who had already been promoted in his own head. Inside, two names he didn't recognize were running the show: Guruya and Andy ww, recent transfers from another server who had inherited the castle garrison duties and were, by all accounts, extremely serious about doing them correctly. Bob did not know this. Bob knew nothing about them except that they were standing near a garrison slot, which made them, in his mind, an obstacle.
"I AM HERE TO GARRISON THE CASTLE," Bob declared, and before anyone could stop him, he shoved a hero into the nearest open slot. Guruya looked at the assignment, looked at Bob, and said nothing, because there is no known phrase in any language for "you have garrisoned the castle with a hero whose only skill boosts gathering speed." Andy ww simply pointed at the exit. Bob was removed.
He came back five minutes later with a different hero. This one had excellent defense stats and absolutely no business being anywhere near a KvK garrison, since Bob had, for reasons known only to him, selected his healer. "SHE HEALS THE WALLS," Bob explained. "Walls do not have health bars," Guruya said, in what Bob would later describe as "the meanest true statement anyone has ever said to me." He was removed a second time.
Undeterred, Bob returned a third time. And a fourth. Each attempt involved a new and increasingly wrong hero — a rally-speed specialist, a resource hero still wearing his gathering cart like it was armor, and, memorably, a hero Bob insisted was "secretly very strong" but who ONE's roster sheet listed as "unassigned, do not use, this is a placeholder." Each time, Andy ww silently escorted him back through the gate. By the fifth expulsion, ONE's garrison log simply read: "Bob — denied. Again." Guruya began keeping a tally on a scrap of parchment. It reached seven before the battle even began in earnest. "We don't know this man," Andy ww said at one point. "We would like to keep it that way," Guruya agreed. Somewhere off in the distance, Ian sighed the sigh of a man who had seen this exact energy before under a different name.
Finally banned from the garrison entirely — a first in ONE's short history under its new name — Bob stood outside the gate, arms crossed. "Fine," he said. "ONE does not deserve my heroes." He was, in fact, correct, though not for the reason he thought.
Bob stomped over to APX next, muttering about garrison politics the whole way. APX was mid-rally, formations tight, Lady Kara barking timing calls while Mallo ran supplies and Funky Eagle scouted overhead. "APX!" Bob bellowed. "I have been rejected by ONE. I will now overcorrect by helping you TWICE as hard." Lady Kara did not look up. "Bob, no." Bob interpreted this as "Bob, yes, urgently."
He grabbed the nearest siege cart to "assist with alignment" and pushed it four feet off its mark, ruining a timing window that had taken Mallo twenty minutes to calculate. Mallo, ever the optimist, tried to laugh it off — right up until Bob "fixed" it further by climbing onto the cart itself, at which point it rolled downhill and collided with a supply tent. Funky Lion, watching from a rooftop he had climbed for no strategic reason, simply said, "Yep," and kept climbing. By the time Bob left, APX's rally was three minutes delayed, one tent needed re-pitching, and Lady Kara had developed a new tic in her left eye that only appeared around him.
TTK's siege lane was its usual controlled roar, and this time it had a new addition: Mira, freshly arrived from ONE and now answering to "John Pork" as often as her old KvK alias Barry McKockiner. TwinTaco welcomed her with the calm efficiency of someone slotting a very powerful piece into a very well-oiled machine. Bob arrived moments later, still smelling faintly of ONE's rejection.
"JOHN PORK!" Bob shouted, delighted, as if he'd personally arranged the defection. "You have seen the light! Welcome to the alliance that will not throw you out seven times!" Mira, unbothered, replied, "It was five, actually," and went back to lining up a strike. Bob, taking this as an invitation to help, grabbed a battering ram to "assist with momentum," dragging half its crew sideways and very nearly into a ditch. HoneyBadger — Lady Kara's KvK alias, visiting from APX — pinched the bridge of her nose. "Bob, you just left APX." "I am now optimizing TTK instead," Bob said. "It is a promotion." By the time he wandered off, the siege line was crooked, one rally had launched four seconds early, and TwinTaco was very quietly making a note never to let Bob near "momentum" again.
FAR's support line was calm and precise right up until Bob arrived, at which point it became neither. "FAR!" he shouted. "Do not panic. I am simply here to observe." Rambo growled something that translated roughly to "leave." Bob did not leave. He nudged a siege engine two inches to the left "for symmetry," snapped a tension rope while trying to help Jonnycolumbia, and — in an act of chaos so consistent it was practically tradition at this point — managed to set a bush on fire while attempting to demonstrate "battlefield awareness." Snapback, mid-yell at an inanimate object as usual, simply redirected the yelling toward the bush. By the time Bob left, the siege line needed realignment and two FAR members were once again stomping out small flames.
Bob's final stop was SOV, where Aladdin's long-standing policy greeted him at the gate like a physical wall. "No parties. No Bob. No exceptions," Aladdin said, without looking up. "This is not a party," Bob said. "It is a KvK." "The exception clause does not cover KvKs," Aladdin replied. Bob was allowed in anyway, on the theory — voiced quietly by Rynnik — that it was easier to supervise him than to argue with him. This theory was wrong within four minutes, when Bob "reinforced" a flank by guiding a squad of troops directly into a drainage ditch. RearAdmiral watched this happen in real time and said only, "I am retiring after this war," a statement he had made, by Rynnik's count, eleven times previously.
Despite Bob — or, depending on who you ask, in spite of Bob, around Bob, and at one point directly over Bob, who had fallen asleep against a supply crate by the final push — 1507's coordinated assault reached the castle gates of 1514 exactly on schedule. ONE's garrison held under Guruya and Andy ww's steady (Bob-free) command. APX's rally recovered its timing. TTK's siege wave, with Mira now fighting alongside TwinTaco, landed clean. FAR's volley synced despite the earlier bush fire. SOV's flank held, ditch and all. The castle wall cracked, buckled, and came down.
1507 roared. Somewhere near the rubble, Bob woke up, looked around at the collapsing fortress, and immediately misread the entire situation. "I HAVE WON THE WAR," he announced, standing and dusting himself off with the confidence of a man who had contributed nothing and remembered it as everything. "MY GARRISON STRATEGY AT ONE — though ultimately rejected — CLEARLY DEMORALIZED THE ENEMY THROUGH SHEER UNPREDICTABILITY." Guruya, arriving just in time to hear this, turned to Andy ww and said, "We should have let him keep the healer." "No," Andy ww said. "We really shouldn't have."
And so, 1507 defeated 1514 — decisively, and largely because five alliances finally worked together like they meant it. Bob, naturally, remains convinced it was all him.