Hazardous Technology and the Minds Who Break It

by ukulele_villian

Summary:

Viktor was instructed to remove any potentially dangerous materials from Jayce Talis’ apartment. He did not expect this task to lead to the Undercity's independence.

 

An alternate universe where Powder was caught in one of the explosions at Jayce's apartment. The ramifications of these events continue.

Chapter 1: Prologue

A week after the Noxian annexation of Piltover’s Undercity...

 

Ekko saw the passage of time in a series of conflicting and ever fluid metaphors. It was a world of rivers, ticker-tape outputs, and braids. Heimerdinger had not approved. 

 

But Ekko saw no concern, unless it was the braids. The braids were the most annoying, troublesome, weird...The braids followed him everywhere. 

 

He thought he could hear her giggling somewhere nearby…Or he’d finally cracked. 

 

As a result of this fluidity, and these metaphors, he felt like he was always having to manage three worlds at once.

 

Sometimes he worried about the future, and the duress of such a task; he was afraid he'd wake up and be able to hear the world in reverse, like a countdown he’d be unable to stop or pause. 

It would be like a bomb before an explosion. 

 

It’s what he imagined the inside of Powder’s head felt like. 

 

Ekko counted the squeaks of his boots on the marble of the Council room floor as two enforcer’s herded him forward into the meeting chambers.

In some parts of the walk, they were stepping on broken glass, in others, he could tell that the marble had been recently polished. 

 

Elsewhere in the building, he could smell the burning pages, and hear the sounds of stress and general panic. Alliances were being shifted in real time, and the faces of new villains were taking shape. It was best to burn the evidence of corruption now, lest the new world order actually took problem with it or needed a scapegoat.

 

He was confused by this contrast in the same way he was lost on why they hadn’t just executed him yet. Piltover hadn’t had time for banishment since the year that Jayce Talis was on trial; times had gotten worse. 

 

Ekko wasn’t even hand-cuffed, something that made him more nervous than assured.

 

When Ekko and his jailers arrived in the main atrium room, he noticed one of the windows in the upper dome was missing a substantial portion, letting the afternoon sunlight stream in with a wicked and warm vengeance. 

 

It was nearly comforting. He could make do with even the smallest iota of sunlight. 

 

Before him--awaiting him--was Piltover’s Council and an army of enforcers surrounding the scene; their weapons glowed a bright blue, and runic matrices decorated both the holsters and handles of their pistols, batons, and various gadgets. 

 

You shouldn’t have come alone. But he was unsure who was left alive. Sky and Ziggs? Eve and Vas? Scar?

These were the types of mistakes he’d made in the early days--like when he tried to convince Vi to leave Silco’s side and join him. 

 

Stop that. Stop that. Stop that right now. It was an age-old mantra. The people sitting before him were already subjecting him to plenty of critical judgements, and there was no need to help them. 

Ekko found his calm center, an imagined force he could harness, and held it tight.

 

He realized their round table was shaped like a gear…

 

He could put good coin on the bet that Heimerdinger had made that design choice. He struggled to imagine the yordle sitting alongside the people before him, controlling them or having a say in the world that he'd created it. 

 

Unlike most citizens of Zaun, Ekko had known the people before him for years, even before he knew their names, he knew their mines, their laws, their shipping exports, and their enforcers corps: Kiramman, Hoskel, Bolbok, Shoola, Salo, Ferros, and Talis–

 

Talis’ seat, at the center most notch of the table, was empty. 

 

Ekko counted back from four and kept his eyes forward; usually, his mask and voice modulator hid his atrocious poker face. 

 

It wasn’t just Ekko who was affected by the empty seat, though; it seemed the entirety of the Council was at a loss without Talis. They were all older than Ekko, but shifting at times in their seats like impatient children.

 

There’s no way they know. And Jayce was nowhere to be seen. 

An upstart enforcer, in full masked gear, took it upon himself to exit to an alcove to the left. Ekko listened for the tell tale signs of a hidden wall panel and was rewarded by the enforcer returning with a wheeled cart carrying a series of objects under a hextech blue shimmering shield. Each of the objects was labeled with a letter, like crime scene evidence. 

 

The Z-Drive was there among them. Viktor had commented that the name, 'Zaun-Drive' was a little too on the nose. Ekko had said right back to him that Hextech sounded corporatized. They'd settled and compromised.

 

Ekko could now envision a world where he survived this encounter. 

 

The council looked to each other, having no clear demarcated leader meant they realized they had to make their own agenda, a role none of them seemed to actually want. 

 

It was Salo who tried taking initiative, by starting to tap his wrist with impatience at Kiramman, she shook her head lightly before she began to address Ekko, “We were promised the appearance of the others.” 

 

Her Piltover accent was exactly like her daughter’s. 

 

“And I was promised Jayce Talis, and some form of immunity when I was arrested,” Ekko spoke, while simultaneously timing the seconds in between each word and sentence. “I guess we’ll just have to wait.” 

 

The councilors continued looking around angrily and awkwardly. 

 

Powder where are you? Her voice had called him here, only to abandon him. This whole plan was her’s in reality. 

 

Ekko, in some sad and hypocritical way, was glad she’d never become a Firelight; she was too distracting, and her not challenging his plans or crowding his mind was what he needed to make the difficult choices that kept his friends alive. 

 

Ekko wondered how many of these councilors had fireplaces, where they got the timber, and how they’d continued to grow and cultivate trees after Noxus burned everything to the ground. 

 

The burning pages in the other room started to make him dizzy with dread. 

 

“Mister Ekko?” Cassandra Kiramman was speaking to him again, when she noticed he’d not heard her, she repeated herself, “Forgive us if you were under the assumption that this was a diplomatic consultation, Mister Ekko, but your continued presence here is part of an investigation into indications of a Noxian fifth column in Piltover, not a place for treaties.” 

 

Total sentence delivery was eleven seconds. The last ten words were a little over three seconds…

 

“Look, I want to help,” Ekko hoped they assumed the speed of his speech was due to nerves, “but exonerating my Firelights has always been my goal, I can’t help without some level of negotiation.” Four seconds exactly. 

 

Let them believe he was rushing his words because he was young and nervous. 

 

Salo, a man who’d done a significant amount to erase his laugh-lines and the wrinkles at his forehead, “There it is! See, the Undercity can be made to co-operate through this.” 

 

Shoola clicked her golden nail caps together when she spoke, “You’d help, even if it means you give us information on those within your own ranks?”

 

“I’ll need to see your findings first.” No. Never. Absolutely not. He wanted his mask back immediately. 

 

Kiramman clasped her hands together before she spoke, “As you can guess, we have reason to believe that the actions of Powder Fishers and her mentor Viktor lead to the circumstances that made it possible for Piltover to face invasion, that while the Noxian dignitaries stayed within our harbors, airspaces, and utilized our Hexgates, they were being fed steady information about Piltover from the former Hextech assistants-”

 

“Founders,” Ekko corrected. He kept his eyes forward; he would not look to the door, though he needed her more than ever to make one of her grand, stupid, and sweeping entrances. 

 

“It matters not,” continued Cassandra Kiramman, “initially, we’d assumed Jayce’s partner was kidnapped. As more evidence comes to light, we can only see the truth that he went willingly. The mass slaughter of enforcers, the creation of a bomb to blackmail the city, the interruption of Jayce Talis’ work in stopping shimmer production, and then the usage of said bomb to generate the sickness in the Undercity--”

 

Ekko almost laughed, “But it's been a year! Why now is this being investigated? You all were fine to let him and her die quietly for the last year!”

 

Because now they’ve been hurt. And they need someone to blame. Noxus had been tracking in mud for the last year, it was only now that the whole of Piltover realized what their uninvited guests could do. 

 

The enforcers and guards in the room all tensed in unison. A horrible silence punctured by the sounds outside was only interrupted by the elegant and gentle laughter of Councillor Ferros. It was like a punctuation mark on the threat of violence. 

 

He marked another opportunity. The laughter had been a second or so long.

 

Camille Ferros was a woman who was always pretending to be an enforcer, while having to remind the world she was allowed to do that by virtue of being a noblewoman. 

She’d run for lower Piltover office multiple times, usually always ended her speeches with their family’s house motto (‘ For family, I will give.’), and then finally had to settle on purchasing a minor land duchy near the failing oceanic and river import system. 

 

The Noxians would have ruined her, if not for her suddenly lucky ability to be at the right place and the right open Councillor seat upon her brother’s death. 

The shadowy and steely woman spoke up, “Sheriff Kiramman and I worked tirelessly in the last year to reconstruct the situation on the bridge where she was unconscious,” she then paused and Ekko wanted to scream as the seconds slipped carelessly from two, to three, “our investigations-”

 

“Your investigations are still based on the idea that Vi was-” the council appeared confused at that, “that Violet--the Atlas--truly wanted to be an Undercity enforcer, that she wasn’t playing you, and Silco wasn’t playing her, and Powder happened to be an unexpected element. If you want to talk fifth column, then you need to look within your own halls.”

 

Kiramman rolled her eyes and began to speak over Ferros on their inability to proceed without the other two ‘suspects’; this started a chain reaction where the councilors began to speak over each other. Ekko had to make them each into a monolith where their sounds, as a collective, were a tether and unit of time.

 

 The loss of them as individual resources meant little to him. 

 

This is a joke court. They’re biding their time with bureaucracy because they have no idea what to do. 

 

He got very lucky in the span of two more seconds of loud brawling banter; the two large doors slammed open. 

 

He turned, the first syllables of Powder’s name on his lips–

 

Jayce Giapora-Talis entered the room in a flourish, hammer at the ready, and a proclamation that gave Ekko another line in the braid he was weaving. “You’re all under arrest.”

 

Kirramman stood shakily, “Magistrate Giapora-Talis,” but her greeting was cut short by the sight of the entourage behind the man they’d made into their leader. 

 

At the door, in position behind Jayce Talis, holding her head high, despite the fact that her make up was smeared and a stranger had one hand on her shoulder, was Mel Medarda. 

 

Ekko was tilted by her expression. It was both regal and almost terrified.

 

 The stranger behind Medarda was elegant looking in a different manner, dressed in all black, and with a long mane of white and straight hair. He seemed to be assessing the room while Jayce stood in the foreground. 

 

Ekko’s condemnation was interrupted by the fact that most of the council seemed to know the stranger, and they were less than happy at his appearance. And even moreso furious at Jayce’s late entrance and command to the enforcers to arrest them. 

 

Hoskel, who’s bald spot was of great size, gestured to the domineering individual, “Well, it seems we have one of our culprits. The boy protector of Hextech has invited the grand general, and the daughter of the navy captain of the invading army into our midst. Now we have the three suspects! Enforcers, take all of them away.” 

 

The stranger raised his hand, and Ekko almost threw up. A wave of color, bloody and crimson red, swept over the scene and Ekko thought he felt his toes curl and his ribs crack.

When he could breathe again, he looked to see that Bolbok had gone completely inert, Shoola had passed out as well. 

 

Hoskel yelled for the enforcers. 

 

And not a single one heeded his words. 

 

They were all turned expectantly and devotedly to Jayce and the stranger. The stranger hummed to himself, happily. 

 

Ekko looked to the enforcer’s who’d led him in, they now seemed…quieter, maybe muted…but it was almost impossible to tell on account of the masks they wore. 

 

Hoskel repeated his order, smacking one of the enforcer’s beside him on the arm. They remained statuesque, all awaiting the commands of someone who hadn’t yet spoken. Ekko watched the stranger grip Mel Medarda’s shoulder, tight enough to bruise. 

 

“Lieutenants? Guards?” Shoola asked the straight standing zombies. 

 

The stranger muttered something to Jayce that Ekko couldn’t hear. 

 

One. Two. Three. Four. Ekko counted back to remain calm. Sky was somewhere in his mind screaming at him to look back, to consider what he was doing. 

 

Ferros pinched her brow, trying to alleviate whatever strange thing had happened to their enforcers, “You are an imbecile, Hoskel. It’s not that we need to meet a quota for suspects, it’s that we are investigating the scientists! We need the scientists!” But she still looked towards the stranger with worry that was unchartistic of her haughty demeanor. She quickly reached up to wipe her nose, coming away with blood. 

 

It was an interesting scene, whereas the enforcer’s initially had seemed like protection, now seemed like a danger when it was obvious who’s side they were on.

 

When they could be possessed like puppets… The stranger watched them with continued aloof and an almost unharmful aura. 

 

One. Two. Three. Four.  Ekko was struggling to keep his expressions from revealing every sudden fear that rose up from the depths. We are not surrounded. Not yet. 

 

Kirramman sought to take back control of the room despite the horror of the scene around her, “N-No matter, Magistrate Giapora-Talis, you can’t just barge into the room with two criminals in tow, this is an active investigation into the crimes of colleagues you once possessed. You should have sent word–”

 

“With all due respect, I don’t give a shit.” Jayce spoke with no nerves or fear. “The time for us to demonstrate our compassion, our dedication, our solidarity, has passed and the wolves and crows at our doors need an answer I don’t believe any of you are willing to supply.” 

 

It felt good to know that even when Jayce-Whatever-His-Last-Name-Was spoke, Ekko couldn’t take him seriously.

 

A metaphorical knife was being held to his jugular and Ekko was doing everything in his power to not roll his eyes. 

 

“You’re towing a fine line, Jayce,” Kirramman said while she tried to not nervously look to her left at the enforcer with a nasty looking weapon, “we know we cannot proceed without understanding who among us in the Undercity were our betrayers.” She was implying something to Jayce, like a plea for mercy. 

 

“That’s why we sent you initially to locate your partner and this young man.” She gestured to Ekko, who she suddenly seemed to be trying to get on her side. 

 

Jayce chuckled, more bitter than vial of denatonium, “Is that why you sent me to the Undercity a week ago?”

 

And with that bit of sarcasm from Jayce, everything became clear to Ekko with a revelation that was like a slap to the face. 

 

Did the council send him to die?  

 

The stranger-- the grand general --noticed Ekko. “Strange times, hm?” He spoke to Ekko, but made his comment loud enough that the whole room could hear it. A bird cawed from the rafters and then gracefully flew through the hole in the ceiling. 

 

Everyone (sans Jayce, the stranger, and the enforcers) grimaced. 

 

Mel Medarda met Ekko’s eyes. She mouthed two words: ‘I’m sorry.’ 

 

Any warnings that Sky had given Ekko, any advice from Viktor, and any promises from Heimerdinger became null and void with those two words. 

 

What are you sorry for?

 

Three weeks earlier, the disgraced politician had hired Powder to do some dirty work. Three weeks earlier, everything had been okay. Three weeks earlier they’d gone to look for Vi, he admitted to himself begrudgingly. He’d watched her leave…They’d all just let her go, again. 

 

Like a child, Ekko wanted to cry that it was unfair. That he wanted Vi back. That he wanted his home back. That he wanted Powder to come and save him. 

 

Where was she? Why was Talis here and she not? All her pretending and acting as Jinx. All her schemes and isolations. All her lies. All of it.

 

He wanted it all back even if it was pain and pain exports shipped at a premium bargain.

 

Even if she was alive, even if he’d followed her voice to this nightmare, Ekko knew she wasn’t coming to save him. 

 

He looked at the Z-Drive--a rotation gravity cylinder and a hexcore gem disguised as a side-satchel thermos--and decided to go for it. 

 

He would have to save himself. He was always saving himself. Ekko had been doing it for a long time. 

 

He leapt forward with only four seconds.

 

Four. Three. Two. One. 

 

Four. An enforcer reached for his pistol at the command of the stranger, like puppet strings being pulled a minute too late. 

Three. Jayce and the entirety of the council shouted. 

Two. He thought he heard Mel Medarda laugh. 

One. He grabbed ahold of the Z-Drive. 

 

---

A decade, and a year, and then some, before the Noxian annexation of Piltover’s Undercity...

“Woah…” 

 

Viktor cursed when he heard Powder at the lavatory door while he attempted to adjust his back brace. “A second, Powder!”

 

“Is that in your spine?” Powder in her first two weeks in Piltover had fluctuated between shyness, silence, and a burgeoning curiosity that was unabashed. 

 

He sighed. When he’d lived in the Academy, he’d often had to wait for the dormitory bathrooms to be completely empty, usually in the early hours of the morning or the deep night. The heavy prodding of the doctors--their hands lacking gentleness, trying to straighten his leg to a proper shape--had made it abundantly clear that the Undercity and Piltover had the same opinion of his body. 

 

He tried to remain casual as he spoke, “The bolts are part of my spine, the brace and corset can be removed-”

 

“Does it…does it hurt?”

 

“You should knock next time.” At least he wasn’t sans pants. 

 

“Does it hurt?” Power repeated, peering from behind the half ajar door. She would not be side-stepped on this, it seemed. Like most Undercity kids, that Powder was used to living in close quarters with others, and was proving to be even sneakier than he’d thought. 

 

Viktor steadied himself against the sink before he said, “Sometimes.” 

 

“Like right now?” 

 

In the corner of the lavatory mirror, right over the sink he could see her round, gray, owlish eyes dissecting him. “Yes…Right now…” He flinched back when she slunk forward and started to reach for the latches around the shoulder piece. 

 

She paused before contact, though; they both stood completely still, like animals waiting for the right moment to dart back into the shadows. 

 

Powder then rubbed her nose, “Which one do you need fixed?”

 

He could not bring himself to tell her no, “It’s the one closest to my hip; it’s because we’ve been sleeping on the floor a lot.” The astronomy department’s sleeping bags were a poor substitute while they waited for the furniture to be delivered to the apartment. He was unsure why he’d assumed it would be furnished. 

 

Powder hummed in response and twisted the latch to the right, Viktor almost leapt out of his skin, “Sorry! Sorry!” Powder hastily corrected by loosening the latch and then taking the initiative to tighten the one above, restoring a sense of equilibrium. 

 

He couldn’t keep himself from sagging forward and muttering thanks. “That was-” he took a deep breath, it was incredible how quickly he could fluctuate from pain to relief, “--that was clever, adjusting the one above to account for the one below.” 

 

Powder refused to leave, “How often do you have to do this?”

 

She’s going to live with you. She’s going to live with you for some time. You need to tell her something. It doesn’t have to be everything. Just something. 

 

“Well, maybe once a month, sometimes more depending on stress or if I spend too much time on my feet,” he saw her worrying her lip under her canines, “it’s nothing for a small child to worry over.”

 

The way in which she scowled at him, like an adult in a miniature form...

“I’m not small, jackass,” and the second the words left her mouth she looked profoundly ashamed and shocked with herself, “Sorry, sorry-” her hands went up, almost like she expected him to hit her. 

 

He suddenly felt very tired. And very lost. 

 

“It’s okay…It’s been a very strange time for me, too.” Viktor said, but noticed she looked unconvinced. “How about a different nickname? I don’t know if you can, uh, well, get away with calling me jackass around others, it might catch on and then I don’t think they’ll let me put my name on any of my inventions.” 

 

She snorted, the tension easing, “Really? I don’t have to call you ‘Mister Viktor’?”

 

“I think I’d almost prefer ‘jackass’ to that.” 

 

She hummed and then shifted from foot to foot, “Okay, Vicky.”

 

And as the days went by, there seemed to be hope that life could progress without falter or issue.

 

Until Viktor forgot to retrieve Powder and was paid back in her beating up a boy who was a ward of a stronger noble clan. 

 

It was only Heimerdinger who had the power to wave his hand, correct the situation after Powder’s fight; a week suspension for Powder and some intern work for the boy that would lead to a full time position in the Academy if he behaved. 

 

The yordle summoned Viktor away for the briefest of moments and to a hallway where he believed they would not be heard,“I believe I have overestimated how much free time you had, Viktor.”

 

He immediately knew what the man was insinuating. “Professor, I fail to see how that is relevant now.” These were the more ludicrous parts of Piltover, the parts that he persisted through and did his best to avoid. 

 

Heimerdinger gave him a pitying look, “When I assigned you to watch out for her, you initially failed; the girl running away would have caused more of a stir if not for Jayce being quite bombastic at the trial and in the days that followed.”

 

Viktor tried to steer the conversation away from the jagged rocks it was sailing towards, “Powder returned to me.”

 

“Yes, and Jayce made another great stride in diverting the public’s fears and attention away from the break in, from what caused the explosion in the first place.” The professor’s voice had become gentle as he spoke. “I don’t know if Jayce will always be there to draw the attention away.”

 

Though Viktor had continued to assure Powder that there was no danger and no further concern surrounding her and the explosion in Jayce’s apartment, she’d still continued to bring up Stillwater. He’d done his best to not dismiss her concerns, pivoting to attempting to assuage them. “I don’t understand, sir.” 

 

“I think, perhaps, it’s best if we give over her stewardship to another. I recently met with our new chief deputy, a fellow named Marcus who has a two year old child already-” 

 

Viktor had too many things he wanted to say, so he settled on, “No.” 

 

Heimerdinger was so taken aback he was rendered momentarily speechless, “My boy, you’ve only known her for a brief time, and you’re not much older than a child yourself. And with Jayce needing your checks and balances…” It was all very ironic, almost hypocritical, but Heimerdinger still failed to see the problem or how much this contrasted with his earlier wants for Viktor and his future. 

 

“And I would not be where I am if she’d not discovered the gems in Jayce’s apartment.” He knew, as sure as he’d believed in Jayce’s theories and in the Undercity’s strange stories. “Powder will see me leaving her as a betrayal, and when that happens, she’ll run back into the Undercity.” And surely die. Hopefully, he would not have to say that second part to his former mentor.

 

Heimerdinger let out a put upon sigh. “And what if her family returns for her? There is always that possibility that those she left behind are still looking for her.”

 

“Then…Then that will be fine.” He was certain there was no family. At least, none left alive. There was no possibility of that. He tried to envision the world where a woman or a man knocked on the laboratory door and retrieved Powder from him. He shuddered away from it. 

 

“You’ve been quite headstrong and mischievous as of late, Viktor.”

 

I’ve always been this way, Professor, Viktor thought and kept to himself.

 

The argument dissipated. Though, Viktor had a feeling it would return. And he was a bit terrified, still, that Heimerdinger wouldn’t allow him to take her back; but eventually, with the angry teachers and Academy staff appeased, Powder was released back to him.

 

On the walk back to the nice apartment that he now owned--with nothing else really to do--Viktor said, “I’ll send word to Jayce for him to visit another night.”

 

“What? No, no-” Powder had been opening and closing her mouth every so often, as if she’d found something to confess, and then lost it, “I’m fine, okay, I’m fine.” Her uniform had grass stains and mud splattered across the white and creme colored palette. Her home-made hair pins, and mis-matching short braids, had been divested of, but with the scrape across her face and all the dirt she looked a little like she had when he’d first found her. 

 

Powder waited for him to respond, but when he wouldn’t she said, “I had to okay? I promise I won’t keep fuck-- I mean screwing up.” 

 

He looked down at her and noticed that her nails had been bitten down to the plate. The nervousness and her flighty demeanor confused him. “How?” he asked. 

 

“How? I- I’ll just teach myself, you don’t even need to worry! I don’t need to go there anymore and-”

 

“No, that boy was much taller than you, how did you punch him? I’ve been struggling to understand that little detail.”

 

Powder stopped in the middle of the path and made him turn back to face her a few feet away. He was reminded that she could bolt, run at any time, and he’d surely never find her again, “I hid, and then I bit him right when he passed by.”

 

He nodded, “So you chose to remain and fight, not to flee? Why?”

 

She shrugged, “I have to live here now. There’s nowhere left to run to.”

 

That took him completely by surprise.

 

He walked back to her and leaned to her level again, “You know how to scale a window, get up a gutter lining?”

 

“Yeah, of course,” an iota of pride rose to the surface of her expression, “everyone from the Undercity can do that-” she looked at his leg and then closed her mouth tightly. 

 

 “I work on the third floor, you and your classes are on the second. Run there: Miss Young will help, or Jayce who you get to meet tonight.” Viktor watched her brighten a bit. 

 

“What about you?” 

 

Viktor wondered if Heimerdinger remembered the wagon ride (there had even been a horse) from the Undercity to Piltover’s hub. All the children found by the Academy had been crammed into a tight space and there had been a boy who’d thought Viktor’s walking stick, barely a cane, was something worth coveting. 

 

The boy kept trying to grab it from Viktor, testing to see how strong the smaller boy was and also planning to yank the cane forward and get Viktor on his knees. 

But the boy made a grave error, and reached for Viktor’s cane right as the wagon had stopped at the bridge crossing. Viktor had let inertia and the boy’s over-eagerness do the work of sending the cane, now a staff, right into his nose. 

 

The boy had slammed into another child who’d been jittery and eager to fight; a few of the children in the wagon, though initially interviewed well and brilliant in some way, were unclear as to where they were being taken (there were rumors that they would be slaves, or worse) and the scene was akin to sweating dynamite. 

 

 Heimerdinger had been shocked to find an array of children, many of which he’d thought gentle and demure, tangled and biting one another.

 

 Viktor and Sky had hidden under a bench in the wagon, only a little scuffed from it all.

 

He answered her, “Whoever is chasing you should hope they do not meet me.”

 

“Me, too.”

 

He was confused now.

 

And with wisened eyes, too serious for a child, Powder said, “Anyone who chases you should be worried about meeting me, too.” She delivered it with the same severity and finality in which she’d given him a nickname--a deathly serious proclamation that could have been written in magic and blood. 

 

---

A week after the Noxian annexation of Piltover’s Undercity...

 

Ekko opened his eyes, the taste in his mouth resembling what it was like to bite his tongue too hard. 

 

He was walking over broken glass and polished floors, being pushed forward by oblivious enforcers. 

 

He almost started laughing. Hysterically laughing and whooping and dancing. 

 

“Move it,” the enforcer pushed him forward into a room he’d just been in; the glimmer of afternoon sunlight was still there, unchanged. No crows, yet. No Jayce to destroy the world with a stranger who the whole room feared. 

 

If Sky was somehow still alive, Ekko was going to brag about this for years. For decades. For centuries as he traveled back and forth constantly. The scene almost felt like a play, a pantomime that Ekko was paying attention to. 

 

Ekko was going to pop a champagne bottle in Heimerdinger’s face.

 

Oh, shit, now I really sound like her. And if he could go back this far, could he go back further? There was no other iteration of him there to welcome him or fight him for his place in the past, like his body had left a space behind for him to occupy. 

 

The secret had been jumping back through four second segments, like a lily-pad. Ekko just had to weave the events one between the other, he’d almost stumbled in his travels and snagged himself on Ferros’ long and dawdling speech, but had found his way right when he’d entered the room. 

 

The council was in the same state of duress and ill will and worry; so much so that he was sure they failed to realize he had the Z-Drive on him. Their incompetence was enough to open old wounds over the Undercity…Zaun…but it gave him the same level of faith he needed. 

 

He was here, again, back to the start, except this time Ekko knew the context and what was to come. 

 

And he had the Z-drive in his stupid hands. 

 

Little Man, why do you think everything is so stupid all the time? Powder had asked him that often. He couldn’t help but agree. He couldn’t help but smile right at the council room, adding a ripple to their discomfort. 

 

Before they could address him. Ekko said with the confidence of a man who had cheated gods, death, and time itself, “We need to discuss your failed assassination of Jayce Talis.”

 

“These accusations--”

 

“--what evidence--”

 

“--and to what degree--”

 

It seemed everyone was in on it except Hoskel who started to choke on his own spit and ask why hadn’t he been included in on the plans to off the golden boy. 

 

Salo made an off-handed joke about Hoskel being allergic to a type of berry. 

 

We’re getting off track. 

 

“I don’t need to explain how I know. I just do.” If Ekko needed to go back he would. “And we have little time to waste before he arrives. Tell the enforcers to bar the doors and prepare a counter strike immediately for when he enters, he has Mel Medarda as a hostage and some Noxian general–”

 

“You’re speaking the words of a crazed man,” Ferros of course interrupted him. But she was now nervous; Ekko watched her grip the side of the table while she spoke. 

 

Ekko could feel time, an object that once was his to control, slipping away, “Please, listen to me, I want to help, but any second now the man you tried to kill a week ago is going to appear at your doorstep and he’s not going to buy this fake trial you’re trying to have for me and Powder.” 

 

"--it's technically for the one with the cane, too--"

"--how you are aware of state secrets--"

"--enforcers why was he allowed his side satchel--"

 

Ekko shouted over them again, they were a useless chorus, "It doesn't matter! If we can buy ourselves some time I can find a way to ensure this never happens. There's a world where we all get what we want, I just need an escape and some time to find it!"

 

“Young man,” Kiramman suddenly looked, mournful. “There is only this world. And in this one, you and your friend have evaded trouble for too long." 

 

He couldn't help himself, "And who's fault is that, Councillor?"

 

Her eyes darkened, but she still looked sad, almost afraid. 

 

The doors slammed open. 

 

Four. Three. Two. One. 

 

Four. Jayce entered the room

Three. Ekko hit the floor. 

Two. He thought he heard Mel Medarda exclaim in confusion.

One. He activated the Z-drive and let the beautiful blue light grab him, taking him to the next try. 

 

He had all the time in the world to save them, maybe in one go around they would thank him for it. 

 

---

Six years ago, and then some, before the Noxian annexation of Piltover’s Undercity...

“Tell them the lobster story, Powder,” Jayce was smiling at her, but Viktor could tell he was throwing down the gauntlet in challenge. The smiling faces of donors, patrons, and the visitors for the Distinguished Innovators Competition that were turned to Jayce, now directed their attention to Powder. She pushed her glasses up from them leaning across the bridge of her nose with her middle finger.

 

The competition had three categories: single represented inventions, duo inventions, and scholarship written by cohorts of six or more. With Powder and Jayce present, there was no way Viktor and his new water filtration system would place in the single represented works. 

 

In fact, it had initially seemed that Jayce was going to win that category again without opposition. It had been that way for the last five years. 

 

Except, Powder had impressed the judges from Demacia. 

 

There had been a severe sickness in their citrus crops and the yield had harmed the island nation, scurvy going rampant.

 

 While Powder took after Viktor with a focus on mechanical engineering, she still sometimes found ways to include chemistry in her work. She’d made a machine that peeled the fruits and then developed a fermented formula that drew the entirety of the vitamins and minerals from a lemon or a lime, and preserved it for months on end. 

 

It was good, but not her usual bombastic fare and the type of invention that went mostly unnoticed in these venues. “I was too busy this year,” she’d claimed, “hey, I bet they’ll love this in their cocktails.” 

 

Viktor hadn’t believed her at all; she had a tell that she vigorously denied that cropped up with a small chuckle at the end of her words. 

 

And as the competition continued, she seemed agitated to be in the rankings. She hid it behind being agitated by the crowd, instead. 

 

Jayce, though he promised Viktor he wasn’t, seemed similarly irked. Or perhaps not irked, but instead confused. 

 

The problem was that Viktor’s partner and friend still failed to conceptualize how far Powder could go; Jayce would start it, but Viktor had no doubt Powder would finish it. 

 

Viktor was too far on the edge of the gathering, too far from her to reach and squeeze her wrist to remind her to try and not assume the worst. Too far to help his partner from the maelstrom he’d walked into. 

 

Jayce on the other hand was just purposefully not looking at him. 

 

Must be karma for all the times I’ve ignored him in the lab…

 

Powder whistled back at Jayce, her glasses in place again, “I’m shocked you haven't told them already.” She was grinning like a shark, like she’d been holding her tongue the entire evening not because Viktor had begged her to, but because she was waiting for the perfect opportunity. 

 

Heimerdinger was also smiling from behind his mustache, but on an edge that the others could not pick up on; the yordle was short and stout, but he would share the attention between himself and Jayce. Even he seemed to feel the pressure of the scene and the shift in power dynamic. 

 

“When I was little, they found me in a dump with all these other lame legged horses. They were going to send me to the Piltover glue factory for processing,” Powder could see the others were struggling to follow her dark joke, but Viktor knew that would not deter her.

 “I won’t go into all of it, but I got rescued at the last second--see I was next on the conveyor belt, but it broke down. So while I’m in recovery from the glue factory in the stables, Jayce is making his rounds and he thinks, ‘No way! It’s an Undercity Orphan!’” 

 

Jayce, somehow being the brilliant man he is, has to hide his shock that Powder would find a path to completely derail his attempts to tell a story at her expense. 

 

Jayce cleared his throat before Powder could say anymore, “What my associate Powder is trying to say is I’ve known her since she was small. When I first met her, I brought with me a live lobster since that’s a popular dish in the Undercity–”

 

“Popular with prisoners,” Powder laughed and a few of the spectators began to awkwardly fiddle with their cuffs, or nod their heads as if paying attention without really hearing the words. 

 

 Jayce had brought the wooden cage into the apartment, the live creature slowly asphyxiating in the trap. Viktor still wondered if it had been better for Powder to have met Jayce with a few days post the fight, post the suspension, with some tension eased off from the concept of Undercity versus Topside. 

 

Jayce could feel the audience pulling away from him; Viktor could see it in the way his smile sort of went lofty, trying to remind him that only seconds earlier he’d had them in his full attention. “Yeah, Powder was this cute little kid, and she started crying–”

 

Whatever plan Jayce had had to tease her, to give him an edge in the competition, was now fumbled beyond belief. 

 

Why did he not consider that he’d have to tell them exactly why she started crying?  

 

“I had no idea how to cook a lobster so I just started to shove it into the pot…” Jayce grimaced as the joke trailed off. 

 

Heimerdinger looked horrified. 

 

Powder was gleaming. “Did you know that a lobster doesn’t actually scream when it's put into boiling water? But boy, howdy, does it sound like it though!” 

 

“Would you look at the time,” Heimerdinger’s interjection might as well have been kerosene on a fire, “why don’t we let our kind judges get to their stations and make the difficult choice of choosing?”

“Why do you always do this?” Jayce asked. 

 

“And why do you always care?” 

 

“Because this is everything. It represents the City of Progress at a fundamental level and it’s not something to be joked about. We need to represent ourselves and the technology as approachable, as sane. ”

 

Viktor finally had the space to reach them, but too late, too slow. As per usual. 

 

“Then why’d you bring up me crying?” Powder’s voice cracked and she did a full flinch when Viktor touched her shoulder. 

 

Viktor made eye contact with Jayce and he looked momentarily ashamed, until he remembered himself, “It’s a story about our two worlds colliding, about me connecting with the Undercity–”

 

“You don’t talk like a real person half the time.” 

 

“And you don’t treat anyone around you like a real person!” 

 

Viktor cleared his throat, simultaneously looking at both Jayce and Powder and the stage, “It seems they’ve come to a decision on the winner…”

 

These competitions were as much about the invention as they were politics. Whatever Powder and Jayce had done had made the decision easy for the judges. 

 

They said a name through a microphone. Garbled and atonal syllables that were taken in by the transducer and mass projected to the audience made a large swath of the crowd look left and right in confusion. 

 

Only Jayce and Powder weren’t searching for the strange name spoken aloud. 

 

Powder knocked her wrist against his, “Vicky, they said you!” 

 

Jayce was smiling again. The forgotten argument between him and Powder abandoned in some other world. 

With the stunt over the story, Powder had pulled her and Jayce into the second and third categories, pushing Viktor into first and up on a stage where he explained how in another ten years water might be made drinkable in the Undercity. 

 

The lights were bright. The stage’s stairs were precarious. Someone in the audience laughed at something as a figure to their left whispered into their ear; it surely wasn’t a joke about him. 

 

Or maybe it was. The judges from Piltover must have known what a stir this would cause, but apparently the distaste Powder and Jayce had left in their mouths was too great; Viktor was at least quiet it seemed, inoffensive. 

 

 He almost threw up. It was not that he could not do this, it was that he needed more preparation, and had to be sure that his hair wasn’t poking up in spikes and cowlicks from twirling it as a nervous tick. 

They will eat you alive if you are anything less than perfect. And for him he had to be perfect and then some. 

 

Powder from the audience stuck her tongue out at him right as he said, “This concludes my presentation…”

 

As he tried to escape (so many people were touching him) Jayce shackled him with champagne and apologies upon his descent from the stage, “I didn’t mean to- I thought the story was funny. I didn’t mean to set her off.” 

 

“Of course not.” Viktor looked to the doorway where Powder was reaping the reward of getting to flee the scene. “She is, uh, often pressed by the desire to not show her hand.”

 

Jayce nodded, no longer wanting to talk about Powder, though, “I think I’m just sad this was our last opportunity to be a team. We should have done separate projects last year and teamed up this year.”

 

This stopped him, “But we are always a team.” 

 

Jayce laughed shakily, but then found his footing. “You’re- You’re right.” 

 

Councillor Medarda arrived subtly; Viktor knew this because Jayce looked over his shoulder like he was a shy boy combined with a man who’d just been told what sunlight was. “I have to go.”

 

“I know.” Viktor was secretly grateful Medarda had rescued him, even if she failed to realize it.

 

Viktor followed an assumption (it was the closest place from the gathering hall) and intuition (she’d carelessly left her keys in the door’s lock) to find Powder. 

Powder either moved through a room like a great wave over the shore, or she was completely quiet and unseen. Whatever music had been playing on the gramophone had been conveniently shut off right as he entered the room; Viktor called up into the ceiling arches, “Your keys are in the door...”

 

There was initially no response. He moved to leave, but the thunk of Powder landing atop her work station brought him back.

 

She’d undone her braids, the very one’s he’d fought to get into shape and form, and let the dangerous length cascade to the floor. Instead of answering his question, she said, “Jayce isn’t mad at you, right?”

 

“No…” he hadn’t expected that to be her first concern. “I think you scare him sometimes.”

 

“Me? Little ol’ me?” She scooted towards a stool at the workstation and then spun about on the chair, sending loose lab note pages across the room. “Wanna see something cool?”It was a question in set up and punctuation, not in intention; she would show him no matter what he said. “It costs this much to harvest a Hextech gem, it costs even more to get it here, we’ve been using gems of this exact size and such, so if we could split the stone and get the same amount of output, we could really be cooking.”

 

He shook his head, “Fuel is fuel. We’d be splitting an energy cell in half.” 

 

“Okay, but there’s so much in each of these little rock candy explosives, what if it’s our machines that are just struggling to draw from them in efficient ways?” She held up her note book, doodles smeared the rune equations. “We keep over-using runes from schools of precision and domination; there’s too many of them and they’re dampening the energy in a mad-dash to control it.”

 

There had been multiple rules from Heimerdinger on what they were and were not allowed to do; one of the core being was to not let the Arcane get too ahead of itself. Everything they utilized the energy for had to be gilded and controlled to a degree that it could not act in chaotic and erratic ways. 

 

Viktors feet pained him from a day of standing. He approached her and pulled a chair for himself, always dimly aware that she could vanish as easily as light on the horizon.“Can I ask how you knew the Demacia’s wouldn’t put in their votes for anything Hextech?”

 

She shrugged. “They hate magic.” 

 

Deflection. Deflection. Deflection.

 

“And so you played to their needs.”

 

She scowled, “No, no, I didn’t want to do something big this year. I had no idea those puritans would think orange presses and peelers were the second coming of Stanwick Padidly.”

 

“You’re never one to shy away from your achievements…”

 

She groaned and leaned over her desk with her back to him. 

 

“Enlighten me,” Viktor said. He knew her braggadocious nature wouldn’t let her keep a secret for long.

 

“This is the last year you and Jayce get to compete.” Her glasses went up to her forehead, then down to her nose, then into her hands, then up back onto her forehead. 

 

“It is.” He’d nearly been on the planet for thirty years. Truly no time at all and so much time. 

 

“It seemed like it was time for a shake-up; especially since I plan to win the next year, and the next, and the one after that, and you know, all of them for as long as I can.” 

 

“Hm, this approach of your’s feels borderline conspiratorial...You could have told me what you were going to do, instead of throwing me to the sharks with my hair in a mess.” 

 

“I knew you’d say that, and my plan was about to be foiled, too. Who would have guessed…fucking lemons. Good thing Jayce came to the rescue; reminded me that half of these competitions are based on not telling stories about being twelve and throwing up at birthday parties or crying over lobsters.”

 

She could have tried making herself more endearing, instead she’d taken down Jayce with her. “I was shocked when you did; many children where we come from see worse by our ages.”

 

Her workstation was littered with empty canisters, rolled up pieces of metal, glass soda bottles; she spun one in her hand. She started to fidget, “It’s not my fault: lobsters are highly intelligent, they exhibit mourning practices, and they scream really loud.”

 

Powder could be overly affectionate with Sky, and then shout at Elora when she came to deliver messages from Councillor Medarda. “Lobsters don’t scream. You said that yourself.”

 

“You sure he’s not mad at you?” she asked again. 

 

Jayce rarely seemed the type to be angry; his eagerness was too often mistaken for arrogance and that was where Powder misinterpreted him, “No, he’s got too much on his mind to ever be too mad with me.”

 

"At least someone's above all his bullshit."

 

As he was leaving she chirped up. 

 

“Hey,” she rolled the canister back and forth across the desk, “have you ever wondered about what it would be like if you hadn’t found me?”

 

“No.” 

 

She stilled the canister with the flat of her palm, “Really? Not even as a thought experiment. Never ever?”

 

Never and ever were poor metrics to measure the world. In truth, there had only been one incident where he ever considered Heimerdinger’s proposal, or Jayce’s suggestions, that he was unfit to take care of her. 

 

Who could have guessed that a small child could be so deathly allergic to peppermint candy? 

 

What is her blood type? I don’t know. 

 

Is there any history of heart problems in her family? I don’t know. 

 

Is she allergic to any medicines? I don’t know. 

 

It was wrong to be afraid of a doctor and medicine. Nearly unscientific. When Powder had come to in the clinic bed, she’d caught sight of his weary eyes and shaking hands and asked when they would return to the lab. 

 

He’d thought of her as the catalyst for everything good and strange and concerning and terrifying and compromising that had happened to him in the last years. It was like asking if he wanted to live in a world where it hadn’t rained the day prior. 

 

“I do not concern myself with worlds I don’t wish to achieve or join.” he said with certainty.

 

She shook her head at him. It was as if the idea would not stick. 

---

A week after the Noxian annexation of Piltover’s Undercity...

 

On the fifth attempt, he felt his heart lurch. On the sixth, he spat out a tooth. On the eighth, he threw up. On the ninth, his vision started to gather spots. 

 

On the thirteenth attempt, they had to drag Ekko into the meeting hall; he used to be able to make five foot vertical leaps like it was nothing. He now wasn’t sure whether he could stand without throwing up. 

 

Upon arrival, he could hear Kiramman calling for a medic as the floor rushed to meet him. The room spun in all sorts of colors, as the afternoon sun-light now seemed imposing and was making him sweat through every pore on his body. 

 

“He was fine, he just collapsed!” Enforcers were stepping away from him as Kiramman’s face came into view. Her coming to his aid was a violation of what he held to be true. Her concern was sacrosanct to such a degree that he wished she would just let him die on the floor in peace. 

 

Everything felt like it was wheezing and leaking blood. Everything felt hot and horrid. 

 

He called out for Benzo as the councilor yelled again for someone to retrieve a medic, help, anything. 

 

His whole soul was flinching, every molecule screaming out. 

 

But he was Ekko, he was truly himself and all he could ever be, and Powder would have made fun of him for it, but he said through the haze, “Jayce Talis is coming here with the Noxian General.”

 

Cassandra Kiramman’s eyes widened, for some reason in this universe she believed him; he hated her for being too late. He could not say why in the other twelve she’d been a skeptic; maybe the only way to get these people to care was when there was a disaster. 

 

And on cue the doors opened and it was too late. 

 

I’m out of time. What a joke. 

 

Jayce went to call for the arrest of the council for the thirteenth time, but the stranger stopped him. “Step away from the child, please.” The stranger had already taken control of the room, and any shouts to the contrary were immediately silenced. 

 

This was the first time in all the second chances that Ekko had heard the man so clearly. He had a deep voice, a tad gravelly, but it was disarming. 

 

The man leaned close to Ekko, pushing Kiramman to the side, “Have you gotten your rebellion out of your system?”

 

Ekko felt blood pouring down his nose, “Not sure. Maybe one more go.” 

 

“I would not recommend that; you’ve pushed yourself to the edge of the mortal coil;, you could have faced fate normally, but instead you’ve betrayed yourself for,” he looked around and from the floor ekko realized he was looking disdainfully at the councilors, “ copper pieces. ” 

 

“Hey, copper can still buy you a lot in Zaun.”

 

The stranger frowned, like Vander would sometimes frown when Powder and Ekko would spill paint across the seats in the Last Drop’s booths. “Magic comes at a price. That’s the difference between me and you clever scientists; I don’t let my debts stack up.”

 

Ekko heard Jayce clear his throat and say, “What’s happening?”

 

“Mister Giaporra-Talis, ‘what’s happening’ is that we are waiting for the point of no return. Either the girl arrives with the others, or she dies. In the meantime, we hope one of the promising young scientists you promised me does not die on the floor from overexposure to the Arcane and violation of the natural order.” 

 

Jayce sounded furious, “But you said–”

 

He’s too susceptible to being told what he wants to hear. If Ekko had realized that earlier, he wouldn’t be melting on the floor now. 

 

“All in good time. I foresaw that we would have a fork in the road, but if everything you’ve told me of her is true, then I would put money on her escaping my clutches to land right back into them. I’m sure she’s doing everything in her power to rescue this one.” The stranger waved his hand in a motion that made Ekko momentarily forget he was in pain. 

 

“And then what?” Ekko spat blood at the stranger. He wondered if this was how Viktor felt when he was dying. 

 

The stranger looked down at Ekko, and from under his cloak his hidden right hand and arm appeared; something crimson and ruby colored, sharp as the gem-tech and crystal bombs Ekko had developed. He ran the hand down the side of Ekko’s face, “We’re going to have a family reunion of sorts. Or perhaps a trial. Whatever the scene, the out-come will be the same; we’re going to decide the fate of this tiny peninsula nation, and its terrible little Undercity.” 

 

From somewhere far away Hoskel, or maybe Salo, ordered for one of the mute, charmed guards to move to action. Whichever man made the call, was rewarded with the stranger raising their red right hand and waving with a lackadaisical flourish. Screaming erupted from the room. 

 

Don’t look. Don’t look. Don’t look. Ekko could still smell blood, nevertheless. 

 

He pulled himself up to sitting, ignoring the hand the stranger offered him. “Who are you?” 

 

It was a useless question to ask, but Ekko hated to have this object of his hatred be “the stranger” any longer. 

 

“My friends call me Jericho. My colleagues defer to me as their general. To the dead: I am Swain.” 

Chapter 2: Part One: No Problems in Paradise

 

A week before the Noxian Annexation of Piltover’s Undercity…

The Herald 

 

They cleared the temple of the strange monstrosities, leaving behind bluebirds in the home of the dead goddess. 

 

Not real bluebirds, just illustrations on the gray marble stone. Sometimes Viktor swore he could feel them moving in between the pillars of the derelict settings; the fog was rich in the temple and occasionally moved into the naos, reinforcing the optical illusion. 

 

It was incredible that their color has persisted for so long, the material used to paint them must have included gemstones, or perhaps a chemical with an extremely long life. 

 

Or perhaps it was the lack of sun that was characteristic of the valley of Zaun that had kept them timeless and untouched, like butterflies frozen in amber or pinned to a board. 

 

Ekko allowed and encouraged his Firelights to draw wherever and whatever they wanted--he just asked they leave the bluebirds as they were. 

 

“Superstitious?” Viktor had asked, as Ekko and the rest of her merry band helped move parts of a workshop into the new space. 

 

Ekko had shaken his head, “History is important.” 

 

“That it is.” Viktor had just started having dreams again at the juncture that they were setting up the laboratory. They were wild things, twitches that he could not label either psychosis or stress. “That it is…” he’d repeated. 

 

He’d then toed at a puddle of ichor left from one of the Noxian monstrosities, strange little beasts that were half made of eating the raw Arcane from Powder’s explosion of the old core. The other half was some other terrible magic that was still very alien to Zaun and Piltover. 

 

Shortly after the set-up for the test, Powder told him her sister had returned. 

 

And on that same night, the night after Powder had left, Ekko had been able to push the Z-Drive into the manipulation of what he believed was four seconds. 

 

Nearly the entire Firelight base had come to watch--a sea of teenagers breaking through into their twenties like weeds on the pavement, alongside a gaggle of far too many children. 

 

A hush had fallen over the audience at the scene, many of the Firelights remained wearing their masks as a shudder in the room reached its penultimate scene; Ekko pulled the chain on the side of the device, and the runes glowed a bright blue. 

 

He was on one side of a crumbling pillar to the left, then in a brief snap, he was on the opposite end of the temple atrium. 

 

It was so subtle, it was as if nothing had happened at all. Beautiful in its tricky and quiet cleverness.A pause passed as the audience realized what they’d just seen before cheering had erupted and echoed loud enough that the whole of Zaun must have heard them. 

 

Some of the children rushed to catch Ekko before he stumbled forward, fist raised high and happy. 

 

It was faster than even Powder was with her Shimmer manipulations.

 

  And all powered by one Hexcore gem and three interlocking equations of runes that favored sorcery. Powder’s old theory of splitting hexgems and the potential for less being more was coming back into his memory. 

 

Viktor had then thought of Jayce, nothing in particular, but his old partner’s memory weighed on the space just above his ribs. 

 

As Ekko had greeted all of his followers, the Arcane runes on Ekko’s satchel had hummed; Viktor had assumed he was the only one of them to notice the way the Firelight leader had stumbled a tad to the side after the test.  

 

But apparently not, because Sky had pulled Viktor aside as the Firelights had popped bottles of stolen mead and goodies from a comadered shipment meant for someone finding a way to pay heavily for fancy goods during war-time. 

 

“When do we stop this?” Sky had looked up at him with his strange limbs, and the ever growing void making his fingers long, his legs strong, and his neck discolored with shimmer and the Arcane. 

 

The Z-Drive project had been proposed by Ekko shortly after Viktor had helped with the clean-up of active material around a vein in the labyrinth of pipes under the Undercity. The setting had nearly given Viktor a fit, murals of Violet had been upon every other surface. 

 

 The creatures that were of greatest threat to their work jutted through the world at a speed that was the difference between life or death, and Ekko had wanted to take the fight to a speed safer for them all. “Stop?” he’d asked her, foolishly. 

 

Sometimes he felt her looking at his crutch, now a staff, like it was a load bearing object keeping her past perceptions of him from toppling forward into a dust made of Shimmer and strange runes. But she would always catch the Arcane core in the corner of her eye. 

 

“This is quickly becoming less of a tool, and more of a weapon.” The line between the two was growing murkier and murkier as the skies grew dim, Noxus neared, and Piltover seemingly worked to their own secretive tunes. 

 

Viktor had blinked twice back at her. “We agreed on four seconds.” Ekko’s project had been born of two necessities: longevity, and a shrinking time-table. The ever increasing exposure to raw Arcane was causing illnesses unseen in the Zaun community. "And putting technology into the hands of the people was always what we had planned for." 

 

Sky had then bluntly said, “We have no guard rails, no council, no rules to control how this technology is used. It could be a tool today to help clean the Undercity, but tomorrow it could be used as a weapon.”

 

“Hextech has already been weaponized, that does not mean we should cease using what we have…” There were still phantom sensations--a pathway left untouched--from his last meeting with his Hextech partner. When Ekko and Sky had found them at the water wheel lab, Viktor had almost believed that Jayce would follow as well. 

 

But Jayce had looked back towards Piltover, back towards the Hexgates. 

 

Those were his first loves, one of his greatest aspirations in inventing Hextech, part of his grand aspirations to put the technology into the hands of all. He’d once told Viktor the story of his first encounter with magic, that if he and his mother had had more reliable transport, they would have not been caught in the blizzard that almost took both of their lives. 

 

‘Come back with me.’ Jayce hadn’t wanted to leave him, but he’d not wanted to follow where Viktor’s new trajectory was headed. ‘Follow me, Viktor.’

 

Up until the very last second, Jayce had not noticed the strange augmentations his best friends had become. 

 

Viktor had felt an ending had come and gone without him agreeing to it. 

 

Sky had looked him up and down again, making him feel the sensation of pins and needles in his non-Arcane irradiated hand. “He wants to go further back and he will; you’re the only person I know who can explain why that’s a problem. It’s so much more than a chemical burn or a lab explosion--”

 

“I rebuilt the very thing that destroyed Zaun...” When Ekko and him had rescued Powder from the rubble around the Last Drop, the pieces of runic work had glowed brightly in the aftermath, like graphite that had absorbed dangerous energy. It had been pulling towards him for the last year. Allowing him to clean the strange and corrupted world, but also fueling the device further, almost bringing it back to what it once was. “Trust must be maintained across channels. He has given much to me, and I will pay in full back to him.” 

 

And he was terrified to learn if without the Arcane core he could live or not. Each day he woke up, alive, seemed more surreal than the last. 

 

He’d wondered if Powder had had that same feeling in Piltover; it was weird to expect death and then for it to loudly proclaim, ‘No thank you.’

 

Sky had then sighed through her nose and said to him, “You told Jayce years ago about your theories on the Arcane and the unseen force–”

 

“And I doubt they are of much use.” He’d spoken quickly and curtly. 

 

There is no way she knows of my dreams, he'd thought, though he reminded himself that they often found themselves now sharing a cot. An awkward arrangement that had revealed the terrible truth that boyish crushes can sometimes rear their head with a terrible vengeance.

 

His visions and eccentricities were now on his skin. And he’d worried that it made it all the easier to crack open his skull and see inside his head. He’d only once told Powder…briefly…in the past. 

 

 Viktor’s interest in the Arcane, and by extension his interest in magic, had led to a few visions, some loose ideas that would pop up like floaters in the iris of his pupils and then stay for some time, re-occuring in his adulthood. 

 

Lunacy. They would call it lunacy. The dreams were an added flaw. 

 

When Powder had brought up the runic disparity with him all those years ago, he’d briefly toyed with the idea of re-working the algorithms they used to crack Hextech with a focus on sorcery based and inspiration based runes. 

 

The problem was that those were the ones most commonly used by mages, and though Heimerdinger’s opinion changed as the years went by, he remained consistent; mages were abominations. Their work was to be studied, not to replicate, but to prevent ever dabbling in similar hubrises. 

 

Sky and his harsh whispering had attracted the attention of the shy yordle boy, Ziggs. 

 

He’d been shifting from foot to foot before slinking over to Viktor to tug on his cloak. His goggles were huge, his mind active, and he had a terrible crush on Powder that manifested in him 

 

“Yes?” he asked the small boy, looking aside to Sky in mute pleading to not continue the fight in front of the fragile thing. 

 

The retrospect each of Ekko’s cohort gave him, to his own youth, to even the youth that Powder had left behind, was always a shocking and strange thing. Zigg’s emerald lens, big and wide and round like Powder’s had been, reflected back Viktor’s curious and surprised face when a package was pushed into Viktor’s knees until he acquiesced to easily squatting (something he could only recently do) to take it. 

 

“It’s for you.” Ekko had waltzed forward, a little drunk it seemed, and ran a hand over Ziggs head. It wasn’t often you got to see Ekko smile with teeth, he was similar to Viktor in that regard…already closing up the shop that housed a more open emotional spectrum. 

 

But the problem with trying to maintain an aura of indifference when you’ve lived with your whole heart on your sleeve? Substances were a by-pass mechanism. 

 

The mead had helped turn Ekko’s face into an open tomb, but instead of treasure, there were copious amounts of emotions. Viktor had watched the fearless leader of the Firelights lose at cards one too many times from the way his intentions always shone true. 

 

And even more so than Ziggs, it seemed that Ekko was desperate for Viktor to open the gift. 

 

He lifted the paper off--

 

“I can’t accept this.” Viktor hurried his explanation at the heels of Ekko’s disappointment. “This is clearly for Powder.”

 

Ekko’s face had darkened with a blush. Sky had pinched her brow. 

 

“How did you know?” Ziggs, in the year that Viktor had been with the Firelights, and for most of the month of study, had rarely spoken, but when he did, it was like a gunshot. 

 

He would start to find his voice later on in their work at the temple, after the second and third test, and after Viktor allowed him to climb onto his back like he was a piece of jungle-gym equipment, and not a dangerous being. Often he’d asked Viktor, ‘What’s the difference between cobalt and powder-blue?’ No subtlety from the little scamp. 

 

But when they tried to give him the mask, everyone around Viktor had rapidly accelerated towards the actual age they were meant to be.

 

He’d explained, “It’s nearly blank, the bifurcated lines tell me it was originally something that poked forward like a shark, perhaps? And I know one person who loves sharks very dearly and I don’t think it’s me.” 

 

“Too many people have frog masks, already…” Ziggs had muttered. 

 

Ekko had groaned at Ziggs, who’s shoulder had shot up around his ears shyly, the two of them had entered a silent round of ‘face-journey’ and were simultaneously giving each other grief while Viktor looked to locate a good second to interrupt. 

 

Not finding one, he’d said, “What did you say to her before she went on her adventure?” This conversation had been held a day after she’d gone off to follow the ghostly echos of her sister. 

 

“Can we talk for a second?” Ekko had glanced over at Sky, “In private?”

 

Ekko had then led him over to the peristyle on the edge of the temple; Viktor hadn’t been sure, but he’d felt Sky watching them both from a distance. 

 

“Do you think Vi is back?”

 

Viktor had sputtered, “I cannot say.” It had been difficult to not wake up and imagine Violet’s hands pressed around his throat. It was still difficult. So Viktor deferred to the sister, “Powder believed it was so, but she… doubted it was so simple.” 

 

“I can’t believe she actually left.” Ekko had tried to sound bitter, but all Viktor had heard was a wounded grievance…sadness was easy to hear. 

 

“She’s always closer than she appears.”

 

“You’re always so blase’ about this…About her…”

 

Viktor had squeezed his staff, “Because I know she’s safe.” Ekko had then given him a look--something skeptical, nearly fearful, perceptive of the core at Viktor’s side--that was becoming the norm. “I did say I had a test of technology of my own to show you when you were not busy.”

 

It was simple; he moved his staff in three motions. Often, back in Piltover, Arcane calculations had taken days when they’d only relied on the allowed guidelines of Heimerdinger and the Council. The Arcane core had pulsated and convulsed until it flattened into a black mirror looking glass. 

 

Like watching through a foggy window, he’d seen Powder from above, the tops of her head, her hair pulled tight so that you could see the line of her scalp. It was the same as if they were on a rooftop looking down. Viktor willed Powder to look up, but she had not and instead had run from view. 

 

Ekko’s mouth had opened in awe, except he’d still found a way to say longingly, dejectedly, and with a hint of agitation, “She really needs to take better care of her hair.” And after a few moments, the image had fizzled out of existence, “You’re supposed to be born with magical capabilities...Not able to obtain them...” 

 

“Being born lucky is something I’ve never excelled at.” He’d cleared his throat and quickly added, “I’m working on how to project my voice across the distance. I think you and I have a long ways to go before Zaun is fully cleaned, but I have already begun to consider the future.” 

 

The Firelight leader hadn’t smiled, but he also hadn't disagreed. 

 

“You haven’t told anyone else about this, right?” Ekko’s tone had added all the other unsaid details, ‘Things are becoming complicated again. This is our pact between us that our allegiances and our science will withstand. When you’re going to change the world, don’t ask for permission.’ 

---

 

And a month later, Viktor awoke from a dream where all of his teeth were falling out.

 

 It was still early, even under artificial and bioluminescent lights fixtures in the temple, he could tell because Ekko started everyday practicing with some hoverboard work before beginning calculations or mapping out routes that needed to be cleaned. 

 In the semi-dark, he ran his tongue over them, feeling the small gap in the back and the place where one of his molars had to be removed when he was a teenager. 

 

He stuck his arms out above him, like he was going to catch the ceiling if it should fall down. Both of his hands were fully the Arcane core’s sinewy and purple texture, neither flesh nor machine, but somewhere in between. 

 

It wasn’t scaring him anymore, not like how it was supposed to. 

 

He’d been struggling to chastise himself; the chorus in his mind that kept him in check (Heimerdinger, Jayce, Sky, the stock-card props that were his parents before their deaths) was oddly silent. 

 

The only person who’d told him to embrace this, was Powder. The irony of her blue hair, the color of the Arcane, made him flex his fingers, crack his knuckles, and worry. 

 

His staff hummed from the corner; in the early days he might have considered prescribing emotion to it, but that was foolhardy. It was a living thing in the same way a tree was or a bug. It just wanted to live. 

 

Sky, shortly after the second test, had told Ekko she was moving the younger Firelights back to the tree; she'd claimed that someone had to be there. 

Unsaid was a resignation letter, the very thing she’d never been able to give to Jayce Talis upon his making of weapons. 

 

He missed her, though it was foolish to do so. She was less than an hour from him, and with his new limbs, he could probably walk to her, a task that would have been hellish before. 

 

He dressed, still slowly, though. Even with the augmentations he had to take time to steady himself and find a center of equilibrium, make sure nothing was broken or faulty. 

 

There was no perfect body for him. No other world he’d escape to. 

 

His room in the temple might have once belonged to an anchorite, or a scholar, maybe the person had been both. The stone desk was like a massive obelisk turned onto its side, allowing him to spread out calculations, vials of hazardous biomaterial from the exploded Arcane, or the Noxian demons, and then the notes he’d write about the dreams. 

 

There was no mirror in his room. He worried he might look into it and not be able to think, It’s still me. 

 

He turned back to the dreams. One detailed a series of equations he’d seen, half finished, a trail of old symbols and sensations across the walls of the Hexgates runic towers. 

 

That particular vision would be filed into the useful category. 

 

Opposite of useful was cathartic. These dreams had large hex-gauntlets wrapped around his jugular, deep water with something brushing his leg, and cave in’s in deep tunnel labyrinths. 

 

The worst, and the one that made little sense to him, was a great metal bell sporting stumpy legs and long arms. Its eyes would glow upon him and before he could do anything in the phantom memory he would awaken. 

 

The teeth falling out? That had to be sorted into the cathartic category. It was a strange dream, not very useful, but almost certainly a sign of his weary mind exorcizing demons from his head. 

 

He scratched down a line of simple inspiration runes: insight. He then scratched down the building block arithmetic for sorcery runes’ summoning and speed fluctuation: celerity.

 

How he was able to see Powder across great distances was a combination of sorcery and precision, so adding inspiration could–

 

The Arcane core fluctuated like an alarm, like a screeching bird. He looked to the door, a stone and wooden feature built by Ekko when it was clear that temple cells had very little privacy. 

 

He thought he’d heard something, but could not be sure. His hearing played tricks on him as he set his fountain-pen down. The Arcane Core and staff flew towards his open hand, a thing it had started doing on its own a week after Ekko got the Z-Drive functional. 

 

Memories of where this all started came rushing in: a quiet laboratory, Viktor alone, a girl with pink hair who stole him away. 

 

They flashed some fine, pompous sun into your eyes, aluminerd–

 

They’re the ugliest, sun-adverse shits I’ve ever seen–

 

I’m going to find her and I’m going to erase whatever fucked up delusions you and Topside put in her head–

 

There was a terrible part of him, more metaphorical than the physical changes to his body. 

 

It was one that he hadn’t accepted until recently, until after he’d walked in on Ekko drawing Vi’s face on the walls of the temple. 

 

This thought scared him more than his ever changing form and what final evolution would become him. 

 

I let Powder go because I want her to kill her sister. 

 

And then came the bigger question, one he had not considered: would Powder forgive him if Vi walked through that door to steal him away again and he killed her? 

 

Would it even matter if it was in self-defense?

 

Or was there something unravelable, a great tangle, between the two sisters? 

 

Was it a behemoth that crushed a decade of walking to class together, and living in a home together, and nearly dying together?

 

No other logical explanation willing to stand up to ebb or stopper its instantaneous crescendo’s rise–

 

The door flew open and Viktor threw his hand forward—

 

But no magic came to save him and no pink haired Atlas came to finish him off. 

 

A canister of noxious gas flung into the room, and Viktor started to cough. The staff pulsated as if to remove the offending toxin from his lungs, but it could not keep up. 

 

The smog was stronger than the Zaun gray. His staff worked to clear his lungs, but not before a serpent of a billowing cloud of toxin reared itself around him and a strike team of masked figures breached the room. 

 

Through the clouds, there was clearly a leader. 

 

“Viktor?” The man had well kept hair, and for a moment Viktor did not recognize him; a respirator blocked the face that had been on every billboard across Piltover. 

 

This man had been Viktor’s first true and everlasting friend from Topside.

 

 “Shit! Viktor!” Jayce Talis ran forward to catch his friend from falling to the floor. 

 

“You’re different,” Viktor said before he passed out for the first time in over a year. 

 

---

The Loose Cannon

 

Powder flipped through Mel Medarda’s pocket sized sketch pad while Caitlyn argued that they should be given another chance to find Vi. 

 

The red sails on the edge of the horizon matched the crimson early morning sky; it was forcing Powder to squint against the light to read. 

 

“We’ve cornered her around the islands of Stillwater.” Caitlyn, through everything, never faltered to sound imperious. “Letting her go now means losing her again in the Lanes.”

 

“The forces on the horizon are circling,” the problem was that Medarda had invented the very concept of imperiousness, “all evidence points to a sea invasion in the next forty-eight hours; Piltover needs you as its sheriff more than it needs the potential resource that is Violet and the rallying of the Undercity’s chembarons.” And the woman, even in a lowered state of political power, wielded her manner and pride like a sword. 

 

“They’ve been here for the last year, with no signs of movement, why now?” Caitlyn stood as straight as a pillar. “And I’m not a general, or some brigadier, Councillor Medarda.” 

 

 Mel Medara’s dress fluttered in the wind, while Powder’s cloak was having a fit like a bird in a hail storm. “And the sister of a Hextech founder is?”

 

Powder rolled her eyes at that and flipped to a page that depicted the pieces of a caravel hull alongside doodles with words written in a language that Powder had never learned. 

 

What caught her eye was the way the figureheads of each sailboat had a statue of a woman lashed to the bow, with a sea-monster creeping and tangled around her. It felt very Zaun to her--reminded her of the graffiti of the giant squids and krakens that used to be around The Last Drop. 

 

She hadn’t gotten to check if they’d still been there when Silco took control. Hadn’t wanted to get too close now that Viktor was the only one truly safe to be so near the inclusion zone. 

 

“If you don’t go back to Piltover proper, Jayce could have you replaced as sheriff. I suspect he’s already been made aware of our plans under his nose” Medarda knew where to stab. “But if you go now and rally your fellow enforcers, you’ll have an established role in any thing that occurs, and going forward.” She knew how to twist it, too. 

 

Caitlyn pursed her lips and scowled; she and Powder had traveled for the last month, moving, running, avoiding demons, fighting, and worst of all… failing. Lots of failing. Failing here. Failing there. Failing everywhere. 

 

Powder let her sister’s former groupie of the week have one more say before she intervened. “Not if we all die! If this invasion is as bad as you think then an evacuation of the city should come first. I need to contact my mother immediately and tell them to start sending out Piltover’s coast guard.”

 

Powder snapped Mel Medarda’s notebook shut. 

 

“They’re not invading from the harbor,” Powder missed her glasses in times like this; she turned back to Caitlyn and Medarda, “they’re going to come through the Hexgates, just like they did before. We probably don’t even have until the end of the week to stop them.” 

 

Caitlyn scowled, but Medarda tilted her head in interest. Powder elaborated, trying to not slur the words together, she often got too excited or defensive to get her point across, “All those boats in the harbor, they won’t fit, it’s over kill. They could destroy half of Piltover with that single gigantic flagship in the middle; the reason they have everyone out in the water is probably so no one important makes a run for it, and to distract from the Gates. It worked last time, why not do it again?”

 

“You assume the Gates haven’t been updated since their last entrance on the continent?”

 

“You’re the one who’s been here longer; you tell me.” Powder had heard that Heimerdinger had gone missing. Jayce was on his own. Powder and Viktor hadn’t touched an Academy sanctioned or Piltover board room in a year. 

 

There was no way that Piltover had the time to properly reinforce the Gates. 

 

Powder realized that Mel’s eyes were green as the woman calmly walked over and held out her open hand, “And when did you find the time to pickpocket me, Miss Jinx?” 

 

“Ah,” Powder shrugged, “the hug wasn’t just to throw you off your rhythm.” It had also been so that Powder could see the entrance way to the flying ship, the vehicle Medarda had been living in and occupying since it had supposedly no longer been safe for her to hold court in her penthouse. 

 

The entire hugging-exchange had made Powder feel jittery to her core, but she’d effectively won a great deal of information for a small amount of strange and uncomfortable touch. 

 

Powder expected Mel Medarda to now start acting like Caitlyn, maybe she’d finally make an offended face. 

 

Instead, the woman simply smiled tightly, “And what do you suggest we do about the decoys in the harbor, and the impending doom on the horizon?” She sounded so calm, panic only showing in the speed in which she asked Powder the question. 

 

“I suggest? Nah, not my job.” Powder hated how shy she could feel in front of Medarda. The woman was worse than any professor Powder had ever had. “Though, uh, maybe you could talk to your old side squeeze?”

 

Medarda worried her lip under her thumb, briefly, thinking to herself. The moment passed, though. 

 

“Good,” Medarda then smiled and Powder realized the woman had been testing her, “Caitlyn, I’m rescinding the order to gather the enforcers for the time being.” Or maybe she’d just been pretending; this could be what she wanted all along. 

 

She isn’t from either place…

 

“What?” Caitlyn was voicing Powder’s exact thoughts. Mel Medarda’s steadfast nature was now being conflicted with a side-ways veering of course, all dependent on Powder’s recommendation. 

 

“If I succeed then I’ll get Jayce to gather them under your banner, he’ll owe me.” She sounded like she wanted to add, ‘ He still does.’ 

 

She’s too classy for her own good, Powder thought. Her head was getting pinched by the thoughts. 

 

“Then you need to immediately send word to my mother as well,” Caitlyn said. “He’s nostalgic over her.” 

 

“Your mother has been hard to reach.” It was an accusation. 

 

Caitlyn played her part well, “She’s been struggling to maintain power. Just as you have.” 

 

“I don’t know if I believe you.”

 

Powder loved seeing Caitlyn squirm, but she had to interrupt, “Hey, Shiny-Lady,” the nickname failed to flummox Medarda (Powder guessed that the hug had been too big of a show early on), “if we’re going to get to Stillwater Hold, we’ll have to use your flying ship. That way they won’t shoot us.” 

 

“And what makes you believe that my vessel is safe and yours is not?” Mel turned her attention back to Powder. 

 

No matter her beef with Caitlyn, she still listened to Powder. 

 

Weird…

 

“It’s faster. It’s not on the water. And you’re Noxian.” The notes in the journal were not in cipher, nor code, but instead a language she’d done extremely poorly in. She hadn't learned it, but she could recognize it. “They won’t fire on us.”

 

The wind whistled through Powder’s long hair, Caitlyn shifted from foot to foot; only the former councilor remained statuesque, but even that told Powder that she’d won another concession. 

 

When she’d risked hugging the woman it had felt like hugging raw metallic ore. 

 

Medarda said, “I threatened you only once, Jinx, it seems that was a mistake.” All of her attention was back on Powder. 

 

Powder ran her tongue over the fronts of her teeth; she still hadn’t discovered why exactly Medarda wanted her sister. And why Powder had been allowed to stay on the pay-roll when she hadn’t done much but shoot hostile aberrations going after Caitlyn’s head and leading her around particularly high volatile zones of the Undercity. 

 

Zaun. Zaun. Zaaaaaaaaaaaaauuuuuunnnnnn. The name was somehow sticking better with Viktor than it was with her. 

 

In the few weeks since she’d seen him, he hadn’t even used the two interchangeably anymore; it was just Zaun in his mind. She wondered if Mel, or Caitlyn thought it was Zaun. 

 

Powder put on her best shark’s grin to deflect, “Just keep your end of the bargain and be glad you’re not traveling with me, like poor blueberry beret over here.” 

 

“I wonder if we’d met earlier, what would have become of it.” Medarda said. 

 

“Would you have seduced me, like Jayce?” 

 

Medarda chuckled, “Is that what you would have wanted?” 

 

Another point in the ‘dick-measuring-hauteur-off’ went to Medarda. 

 

But Powder had at least three more cards she’d been holding onto to rile up the woman. She used one quickly before her face could flush any more, “Hey, where’s this line from, ‘I only remember how I questioned Command. For this weakness, this wavering, I was shot like an underling’?” It was the first thing written in Medarda’s journal, scratched hastily in the Common tongue used in Piltover and Zaun. 

 

Powder decided to let the woman ruminate and worry over the fact that Powder had seen her full first name.

 

 That would be a story and discussion for later. 

 

Medarda said, “It’s from an old poem. One my mother used to read to me.”

 

“Is she out there? Out on the water and the wind?”

 

“You should pray she is not.” Mel Medarda looked back at her air schooner, “Please at least tell me you can pilot it before you rob me of it.” 

 

“I helped build your Hexgates, I’m sure we’ll be fine.” 

---

A long time ago, Powder had said that she was going to ride in one of the airships that flew over Piltover. Her brother, Mylo, had then joked that he would be the one to shoot it down. 

 

Get fucked, Mylo. 

 

He already has. Littered by enforcer caps in his lanky corpse. No more lock-picking, Mylo. The way seeing him and Claggor dead had pushed her back up to Piltover and into Viktor’s arms. 

 

There were a lot of dead and nearly dead brothers in her head. 

 

When the entire world changed for the first time, not with Viktor, but on the bridge…Vi had told Powder that she would call Mylo and Claggor her brothers from then on out. 

 

Powder had then asked, Do we call Vander dad?

 

Vi had been adamant that they would never call Vander anything but Vander; she explained that it would make him look weak in the bar if ‘dad’ was thrown around casually. 

 

Though, the sentiment still reached everyone as soon as they realized the ‘tots’ and ‘small chips’ were not going anywhere; they would be trained to do jobs and hustle the Lanes like their king, but the favoritism Vander showed to Violet and Powder was so obvious. 

 

She never did get to the point where she felt comfortable calling Mylo or Claggor ‘brother’. 

 

Even with Viktor it felt… sacrosanct to try and put a label on it. It was other people who called what they had ‘sister’ and ‘brother’. 

 

With the golden woman gone, Powder returned to being shackled to Caitlyn Kiramman. 

 

The sheriff had started their adventure with optimism. Now, she stared out at the water with hate and nervousness. War was a son-of-a-bitch. 

 

For most of the trip, Powder had refused to speak to her. Now that the sheriff was giving the cold shoulder, Powder thought it best to shake up her annoyance attempts. 

 

Always zig when they zag. Sometimes zag when they zig. She ignored the sensation of missing that little yordle boy who lived with Ekko. 

 

“Hey, know any good jokes?” Powder asked. She was at the wheel, Caitlyn was looking to ensure no one shot at them. 

 

“You asked me that already. I told you the only joke I know.” Caitlyn adjusted her hat for the millionth time; maybe in another life the two of them could have played Chess or Poker…Then Powder would have made the other blue haired girl wear a hat and she would know all her tells.

 

“Oh, shit, you really only know the hikers and the bear joke? Oof.” 

 

“I need to focus, please keep piloting the ship.” 

 

No way…

 

“Hey, I’ve got a great joke-”

 

“I don’t want to hear any of your jokes.” 

 

“Good! Because this isn’t one of my jokes. This is one of Vicky’s jokes…In the night, a fire broke in the city of fools,” Powder imitated Viktor accent as she retold the first part of his story, but faltered when she reached the second segment, this had been a terrible idea, “and upon the blaze being put down, their wisest man stood atop a table and shouted: ‘My friends, this fire was a gift from the heavens!’”

 

Caitlyn stopped staring ahead down at the waters choked by red sailboats to hear Powder finish. Viktor had once said Powder was far better at delivering the punch-line, “The wise man clarified when he saw his village did not understand: ‘ If it were not for the bright flames, how would we have been able to see how to put the fire out on such a dark night?’” 

 

Caitlyn turned back to the water below, “I don’t get it.” 

 

For a second, Powder couldn’t bring herself to care over Kiramman’s attitude; it was only fair…A month of pure radioactive Powder and all the edges were appearing. She was an acquired taste--like the smell of skunk or the taste of oysters. 

 

Except, it wasn’t a Powder joke--it was a Viktor joke. A joke given to Powder when she was fourteen and everything felt like it was ending and beginning. 

 

So Powder pulled the air-horn lift and cackled as Caitlyn jumped out of her skin at the sudden noise. 

 

“What are you doing you psycho?” Caitlyn shifted her beret back into place and cursed. 

 

“Just keeping you on your toes.” 

 

“You know,” Caitlyn shifted the glowing rifle in her hands, “you could leave if you wanted to.”

 

“Aw, but who would take care of you, sweetie?” It was the most words they’d spoken to each other on their journey. Powder hadn’t been very chatty, on account of the whole enforcer-awkwardness, but now that a real argument seemed to be brewing, she let herself speak freely. 

 

And finally, with the enforcer’s mouth running out of anger, she might get more clues on Medarda and Caitlyn’s true goals. 

 

Caitlyn remained steadfast and steady, “If Noxus intends to make good on their cold war, then you should be with your family.”

 

“Don’t pretend like you’re trying to do me a solid.” Powder wiped her hand across her nose, “If I leave, and you do find something valuable, I’ll then have to worry about the next guy who wants to dangle Viktor and Ekko’s safety over my head.”

 

Powder had envisioned Ekko’s test; it had surely been a success, no news of his casket came to her door. They were safer with distance between them--and he could handle himself. 

 

Caitlyn’s back and stance became ram-rod straight and defensive. “We never intended that–”

 

“No, you didn’t. Medarda absolutely did. Talis would have eventually. You’re just here because you think my sister owed you something.”

 

And that was the big kicker. 

 

“Your sister could be the thing that saves us all; the people of the Undercity love her and if she’s alive, she can unite them and be the liaison we need so that Noxus doesn’t catch this city in disparate pieces.” 

 

“It’s always been in pieces.” Powder had to stop the chuckle in her throat from erupting into a full and overwhelming cantankerous laughter. “I want to be there when it’s not her. When we find whatever monster Singed created and it’s not my sister…and you have to accept that you’re never going to get that closure, toots. You’re just going to have to rule the world on your own.” 

 

“It’s not about ruling the world; it’s about keeping everyone safe.” 

 

And by all known rules of the universe, Caitlyn sounded like she believed herself. Powder hated it. 

 

Powder maneuvered them over a particular patch of clouds. Like a child, she wanted to leave the helm and go over to the ledge to touch the water vapor. But she had a real goal, and she needed to keep pressing. 

 

Powder said, “You know he was– he was nervous to tell me that joke that flopped with you. Me, a fucking kid, some nobody, a little sump rat. And now I’m here, working with a girl who runs the greatest group of thugs this world has ever seen.”

 

“The enforcers have protected this city for years!” 

 

“Sure, they did a bang up job when they dumped my parents' corpses over the edge of the Sungates and into the water.”

 

And like an actual gunshot, the silence afterwards was deafening. Caitlyn’s eyes went momentarily bewildered and misty. Powder’s throat felt sore. 

 

Little more. Little more. Keep pushing. Just a little more. 

 

Powder had never told Viktor. 

 

Vi and her had never talked of it. 

 

She was sometimes unsure if it had been real…She’d only been eight…Maybe seven?

 

Caitlyn squeezed her weapon, “How?”

 

The pinch in her forehead made Powder’s mouth move on its own, “The Ravine Massacre…” There was little written on it; Piltover had a short memory. 

 

“The Ravine Revolt, you mean.” 

 

“Yeah, sure, revolt, massacre, whatever you want to call it.”

 

The wind whistled, but Powder still heard Caitlyn ask, “Do you remember them at all?”

 

“What does it matter?” This part was not performative. 

 

“I just want to ask. This is the most you’ve talked to me in our time working together…Vi never told me and I didn’t know…Did you- Do you even remember when you lived with them? Anything?”

 

That was the big question. There were the walls of her and Vi’s old house, and the time Vi had gotten sick and the purple haired woman had to lean over and help her get better, but then there was the strange memory, one that Powder half thought she had made up. 

 

“My mom, mostly.” Powder said. The purple haired woman was your mom. 

 

Vi had said the memory hadn’t been real when Powder had told her, and had insisted that Powder must have misinterpreted what she’d seen. And for all these years of her life, Powder had believed it to be false. 

 

But then Vi kidnapped Viktor and tried to hurt Ekko and so maybe her sister was a liar. 

 

She can’t even be honest about being dead…

 

A purple haired woman lifts a violet haired girl up onto the edge of a countertop. She tells her to wait there, that girl listens, but the powder-blue child does not. Powder-blue follows the purple haired woman from her hiding spot above the home, climbing the rafters of the rickety structure until she watches the woman pull the brown-haired man aside into an alcove. 

 

The brown haired man is not the powder-blue or the violet girl’s father; he has bruised knuckles and hands that looked like they could hurt someone. But he looks very sad, you can see it in the eyes. 

 

The purple haired woman presses him against the wall of the cavern where her home meets rock and dust. The purple haired woman puts her face close to the man and before she bites into the man’s lips she says, “You didn’t have to hurt him, but I guess that’s all you really know how to do, huh?” 

 

“Jinx?” Caitlyn sounded closer. “Powder?”

 

“Vi remembered them more, but I did have a mom…”

 

“Was she like Vi?” Because of course Caitlyn would ask that. The illusion broke and Powder took back control.

 

She gripped the steering wheel until her knuckles turned pale; the family history wasn’t a peep-show tragedy to make the enforcer feel a little better, it wasn’t anything. It was just a weird sad story on top of a weird sad story on top of a disconnected series of events that Powder had no one to ask about. 

 

Powder laughed a little before she finally found the answer that let her revel in her wrath, “Yeah, I mean, I probably saw mine more than you ever have your’s.”

 

Let’s see what she does now. 

 

The barrel of the rifle pressed against the small of Powder’s back. Caitlyn said levelly into the shell of Powder’s ear, “Do you want to know the real reason why I brought you with me?” 

 

There it is. The enforcer had moved so quickly. 

 

“Yeah,” Powder chuckled; she could taste Shimmer in the back of her throat. She wondered if her body secreted sweat or Shimmer. Her strange and alien form showed her new ways she wasn’t meant to be alive all the time. “I’ve been wanting to know since we started this shit-show.”

 

“I want you and your sister to be together, I really do, and I’ve been doing quite a lot to keep you and her out of Stillwater. You didn’t think the Council would just forget about you, about the bridge and those dead enforcers, or about Jayce?” 

 

“You left us alone for a year.” Powder hated to admit that it almost made her sad. She nearly, nearly, thought Caitlyn hadn’t gotten so high off the smell of enforcer’s shits that she was a goodie-goodie and not capable of being a monster. “Why come back now?”

 

“Because the Undercity was riddled with Arcane toxicity and Noxus was of greater concern.” Caitlyn stepped away from Powder and the pressure on her back disappeared. “Initially, Silco ended up taking blame, like your sister wanted…Vi was a good storyteller, but now, there’s been questions brewing. And Jayce has faced danger because of you, as have I, and my mother won’t take excuses any longer. Her city is under siege.”

 

“Her city? Damn, does Medarda know about this? I should have figured you were a better actor than you were letting on. Your mom and you planning to take the throne? Sheesh.”

 

Caitlyn pulled the rifle away hastily, like she realized that the threat of the gun only got Powder excited and proved her point. “You’re exactly like he said you’d be.”

 

“Who’s talking shit about me now? Jayce?”

 

“No, Viktor. When I became sheriff, I found a file on you from Marcus…It’s all in there: erratic, temperamental, unempathetic, and terribly gifted. Marcus and him discussed plans for you to be placed under the sheriff’s care because they were going to send you to Stillwater Hold, but they stopped proceeding suddenly.”

 

Her stomach felt weird. “You're playing me.” This was worse than the gun held to her back. She couldn’t fake her way through this. 

 

“No, I’m not. I’m trying to talk to you. I’m trying to tell you how precarious your situation always was. This is why I want to help you!” 

 

“No! You just want my sister! And now you’re trying to fuck with what’s mine again!” 

 

The boat melted away, though she could still feel the steering wheel. 

 

There was a tent. And there was an audience. And she’d won the competition. Powder had won and they hated her. They wanted to see her torn down. They wanted to see her brought low. And not a friendly face in the audience. And not a single kind look. 

 

Only pity and misunderstanding and the hunger for her downfall. 

 

Called it, Mylo had said. 

 

I’ll go get her, Claggor had said. 

 

Powder, look at me, remember what we talked about, Vi had said.

 

Your curiosity led to an incredible good, Viktor had said. 

 

“I-” Caitlyn’s voice joined the chorus, “I’m sorry…What I meant was--”

 

“Quiet! I’m in no mood!” Powder spun and shot the bow of the airship with a carelessness she regretted faster than the bullet. 

 

The gun had gone from her belt to her hand, Shimmer making violence too easy. 

 

A crow, black and glossy, and with a beautiful sharp beak, fell forward in a heap of feathers. 

 

Viktor used to release even the bugs that got lost in their lab. No place for them, he’d joked. Living things were of great importance to him.

 

Your curiosity led to an incredible good, Viktor had said. 

 

I do not concern myself with worlds I don’t wish to achieve or join, Viktor had also said. 

 

 A surge of guilt, shaken into a cocktail of shame that mingled well with whispers that tickled the place where her neck, met the rest of her cranium and surged through her. She went to put away her gun, the anger leaving as quickly as it had come--

 

Until another crow landed right where the first had been. 

 

And then another. And another. 

 

One cawed ominously and the other’s tilted their heads in unison to the left, peering at the two women with something like playfulness. 

 

Caitlyn raised her rifle and took a shot, the sound of her gun, fueled by Arcane energy, sounded like an avenging angel. 

 

It did nothing to deter the ten crows who landed on the deck after the death of their friend. They didn’t break into a murder like a normal series of beasts. 

 

Powder grabbed the steering wheel right as another set of crows latched to the handles. They screeched and one got close enough to bite her fingers, slicing into the tendons and making her smash her fist into its body. 

 

Caitlyn was pulling the charging handle, never missing, but never gaining any measure of traction; it was like trying to bail out a boat that was already halfway under the waves. 

 

One fallen crow would be met with a six– a dozen –more. Powder maneuvered the ship's starboard, but the wind and the release of the sails was not fast enough to avoid what was flying towards them. 

 

The dark cloud of caws and feathers was a gargantuan whale, as dangerous as if Caitlyn and Powder had taken to the seas instead of the skies. 

 

Powder watched in awe as the murder shifted into a mouth and the darkness swallowed their ship whole. 

Notes:

Another long chapter, gang! We are so behind on the imaginary Arcane schedule in my mind, but we persist nevertheless. I have a thesis to defend this October so you might not hear from me for a tad.

In the mean time, enjoy this cliff hanger.

Chapter 3: Part One: The Leash or the Laser Wins

The Machine Herald

 

Viktor had once done an analysis on the longevity of the Sungates. He’d estimated they’d have another forty years before necessary and serious repairs needed to occur and structural decay became deadly; still, they could prevent this future if additional up-keep methods were taken to maintain the structure in the present time period. 

 

He’d had to do a similar analysis of the Hexgates; his estimations rounding to a distant future that Heimerdinger--when the man had been around and assumed alive--was surely going to be privy to, but none of them. 

 

Powder had looked over Viktor’s analysis and started hysterically laughing because, ‘Oh shit, oh fuck. What if when we’re all dead Heimerdinger just destroys the Hexgates? Fuck. We never thought of that, huh? If I were him I’d just let us blow ourselves up, and then come back with a vengeance a hundred years later. We’re doomed. We are soooooo getting written as bad guys in the musical about us.’

 

She’d been so frail when Ekko and him had pulled her from the rubble of the Last Drop, so small looking all over again…The levitating rubble and her being a mirror of when the industrialist Silco had brought her to Singed laboratory to be healed and harmed…

 

All these blue lights surrounded me, protected me. 

 

She’d destroyed the Arcane core…killed that malevolent thing for him…

 

She'd always been the first, in the years of Hextech's genesis, to insist to Heimerdinger and Jayce that personifying the Arcane was not a path they should walk upon because it was like blaming fire for burning or water for drowning…Well, she'd never said it exactly like that, but in a sense...

 

A great chasm opens before you…Someone tries to carry you across it, but they fail to understand that to do so they must first carry you through the valley. We can build a bridge, they say. But again…They fail to comprehend what you’re saying. You must go through the valley…Through the fissures…

---

An enforcer opened a crate of their food supply.

 

Viktor flinched as a gloved hand held his chin in place and shown a flashlight down his throat. 

 

Ekko to Viktor’s left, looked upon Jayce like he knew him, recognized Jayce past the face that had been blocked by a mask and now seemed to have a trimmed beard and slicked back hair--past even the face of the Man of Progress.

 

Under all the frustration and hatred, though, was someone doing his best not to touch his eyes, which were reddened by the gas concoction and occasionally tearing up. Ekko, like Powder, had raced into adulthood with all the gusto that a Zaun child had to muster and offer to make it to the next day. 

 

Viktor coughed a few times as well, but the core would not let him remain ill for long. 

 

The individual responsible for his “care” seemed to be nervously doing everything in her power to not look below Viktor’s chin, her red hair bobbing every so often when she swallowed.

She removed herself from Viktor and loudly reported to Jayce that, ‘all appears stable.’

 

Viktor looked down at his hands. He was not sure what baseline the young woman had used to judge him and come to the conclusion of stability. 

 

He concluded, from his own experiences, that they were not under arrest, but certainly not free. 

 

The whole time, Jayce was fiddling with the Z-Drive. 

 

 Viktor’s partner walked about the room with a new authority, and tinkered with a hand that reminded Viktor he'd often worked primarily by forge and anvil. 

 

A strange trifecta appeared--one that on paper, and in another life--Viktor wouldn’t have minded occurring.

 

Ekko, Jayce, and himself.

 

Brilliant minds sharing the same space in a happier world would have lead to better things.

He’d also used to believe that Powder and Jayce would one day bury the hatchet and see what a full cooperation could entail.

 

That had been a hope with little to no backing. A false hypothesis with no laboratory to look for repeatable results. 

 

His head started to spin from the gas that he could still taste on his tongue, coming through his nasal passages and lacing his throat…

 

 But then the new Arcane core twitched and sparked in the corner it had been relegated to. 

 

The enforcers seemed to hate the core more than the Z-drive and even more than Viktor. 

 

From behind their masks, Viktor had the suspicion they were waiting for permission. 

 

Permission for what was still to be determined. 

 

The Man of Progress had been silent for the better part of the two hours it had taken for him to gather each piece of their equipment, carole the few Firelights present, and awaken Viktor from the gas. 

 

They were all in a crowd of sorts, tension keeping them all quiet alongside the effects of what had been done to them. 

 

Finally, Jayce spoke, “Is it a bomb?” He hadn’t moved to pull the chain, only adjusted the dial and examined the work as a whole. That was a rare thing for Jayce, who Viktor knew always loved to get his hands deep into the wires. 

 

“Yes,” Ekko lied poorly, but to the rest of the room that didn’t know him, it seemed like guilt was the reason for his reactions, “we’ve been trying to destroy as many of those…monsters as we can.” 

 

That second part was true in the same fashion they were trying to clear the Undercity of the toxic Arcane remnants.  

 

Jayce made a noise of contemplation,  “Well, it’s not not a cult.” 

 

Viktor wondered if it was supposed to be a joke of sorts. 

 

Ekko frowned, deeply, but straightened his face into a painfully neutral stare before anyone could call the action. 

 

“But why here?” Jayce then asked Ekko, his tone seemed to incense the room, but Viktor had known the muscled and charismatic scientist for too long; Jayce was hiding his curiosity and the wonder that usually took hold of him when faced with something incredible, even if it frightened him a bit. 

 

There was still hope, then. 

 

Ekko shrugged, “It's quiet and secure.” He looked again to the enforcers tampering with their notes, their research, and their very lives. The calmness that had descended over Ekko was surely an illusion of numbness, hiding a carefully planning mind. 

 

The profoundest of profound deja-vus settled across the room for Viktor; he could almost believe he was dreaming.

 

Viktor remembered Jayce being more agitated the decade and some years ago when the enforcers came to shut his research down after an intrusion by a series of Zaunite kids who’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

 

Another enforcer held before him one of the hoverboards from the Firelights.

 

And right when the enforcer accidentally dropped the device on his foot by trying to spin it around--Ekko flinched and looked to the ceiling, awaiting something. 

 

Whatever miracle was up there was nearly perfect at hiding. 

 

Except, apparently the Arcane core had improved Viktor’s eye-sight; the temple's broken infrastructure made it so that there were many nooks and crannies over the vaulted gigantic ceilings. 

 

And the spaces were Yordle sized; Ziggs’ quiet movements made no noises and disturbed no dust up in the rafters. 

 

The boy waved at Viktor and he almost screamed. 

 

If he slipped, or tried to throw a grenade into the audience--

 

“Jayce,” Viktor said with feigned indifference and camaraderie, “Could we perhaps speak in private?

 

The enforcers guarding them turned their attention towards Viktor with renewed disbelief. 

 

Ekko’s face also curled into a Powder-like expression that usually (and desperately) wanted to tell Viktor, ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ 

 

But Jayce looked up from the Z-Drive, “Of course, of course.” He went to Viktor and offered a hand so that he could stand.

 

Phantom fingers from a lifetime of pain, concessions, and negations with his body rebelled against the idea of taking Jayce’s hand and standing so easily despite their supremacy having made his life what it was for so long. His lungs still hurt from the gas, but even he could now not deny the differences between himself now and himself in the before eras. 

 

Healthy. What an idea. Now, when he was injured he could better see the differences. 

 

The enforcers moved to follow the two partners, but their leader held a hand up to stop them.  Jayce ordered that if anyone moved or tried anything to call for him before acting. 

 

And like that, Jayce and Viktor were alone in a prayer alcove, where a miniature statue of Janna stood on crumbling legs with one of her arms broken and missing. 

 

Fading words, letters in an old language Viktor could barely read, spelled out the phrase: ‘...the blue bird is with me.’

 

And before anything else could ruin the moment, Jayce eagerly turned to him and spoke as if they were in the lab all over again. 

 

A youthful and nostalgic glow enveloped Viktor. Even the pain from the gas seemed to make the scene more like before. 

 

“Viktor, this is incredible. In less than a year you’ve built things that would have taken us a decade.”

 

Easy praise. Lovingly delivered. Ambition without competition. Jayce’s magnetic energy was alive after all this time.

 

The excitement was somehow still so infectious, “We’ve had to move quickly on account of the toxicity. The explosion spread from the epicenter and has somehow emboldened these other monstrous creatures.”

 

“And you’ve been recycling the excess materials to remake the Core? It’s amazing. Your runic work completely challenges what we initially expected to be the rules of Hextech.”

 

“It’s incredibly proactive as well, anytime I endure pain or begin to physically suffer it almost jumps into action of its own accord.” 

 

“That’s why you were able to bounce back so quickly from the gas!”

 

Viktor felt his shock register and then the realization hit. He’s lonely. Jayce had often been crowded by the whole world, and many times been put off by it. 

 

It was a tad surreal. “We- So much has happened in a year. I worried I was never going to see you again. You sent a letter to Powder?” We can save this. We can save this. We can save this. 

 

“My associates did,” he shifted from foot to foot, and in a way he looked like yet another young and hopeful Academy pledge, “I wanted to come find you. I really did. When I left I was out of my head after that woman attacked me and kidnapped you. Not a day has gone by that I haven’t thought of you going out to deal with the explosion in the Undercity and me just…leaving you again…while you were sick…I’m sorry. I’ve wanted to apologize for so long.”

 

“Sometimes we are called to…to do things beyond our initial wants.” 

 

“Yeah, you can say that.” A bit of bitterness dimmed him and Viktor felt… exhausted all over again, the infatuating and empathetic force of Jayce leaving as quickly as it had arrived. 

 

No, come back. Please, come back. 

 

“Did you get married?” Viktor asked because he couldn’t find a way to even begin a conversation about how Piltover had been surviving, how Jayce had dealt with the violation that was the Noxians using the Hexgates for their occupation, or why they were under arrest and who’s authority they were being taken under. 

 

Jayce blinked in surprise at the question, “I did…I wish you had been there. It was…well, strange without you. She’s uh, really sweet when you get to know her. It wasn’t even anything big. And we didn't even have a ceremony. We just signed a certificate to keep her clan from falling into ruin after the invasion.” 

 

Viktor had seen this before. 

 

When Jayce felt safe to be blunt, and often he did, he would speak his mind and push forward into the next conversation. But when foreign nobility was first brought by Mel Medarda to the table, in the face of her negotiations, Jayce would begin to weave his words into shorter and choppier sentences to avoid rocks in the water. 

 

Something shackled his partner. If it was the strange birds in the sky, or the Arcane toxicity, or the monsters, Viktor could not tell. 

 

He’s not even talking about Mel Medarda. That was the biggest clue to Viktor. That his partner would just let himself be beholden to an outside,  when he loved Medarda so fervently…

 

“Your mother was surely there for you.” The facts were the facts, but there was a discrepancy in the air: Powder, Sky, and I have not been back to Piltover in a year…

 

“She passed away three months ago.” 

 

“I’m sorry. She was kind.” Viktor had only met her a few times, and she often kept to herself at gatherings and events. Years of being a widow and being pushed around by other merchant clans’ demands had made her quiet and fragile. 

 

Often Viktor had felt very sad for her, but he’d never admitted that to Jayce; the Man of Progress had always been stressed enough at the gatherings, the public settings, and the guild negotiations. If Viktor had pointed out Ximena’s condition or her frailty, it would have been like taking a pipe to Jayce’s emotional state, as well as Viktor’s own. 

 

Viktor reached his hand forward, unsure what to do, or if Jayce even wanted to be touched. His hand never made it to his friend’s bicep, though, as Jayce moved away to look upon the statue of Jana. 

 

“I- I’m so glad to see you. To see you’re alive.” Jayce started to gush again, but it was too late. “You look incredible; Viktor, the core and staff you’ve built. I’m sorry, I sound like a kid right now. Your spine has been completely reformed and you’re not limping or slouched! When we return to Piltover we can start to bring these innovations to the table.” 

 

“Return to Piltover? Jayce, I’m- I cannot.” 

 

Unsaid was the lingering detail: my body has been changed by magic. Piltover detested stagnation, but also the bloody past. 

 

Mages and the Arcane outside of the safety of Hextech were the enemy of progress and security. 

 

And Viktor could hardly understand himself what he’d started changing into…He wasn’t sure how he’d even explain what had happened if he was put before the Council on trial. 

 

“Viktor, I can only hold off the public for so long, Viktor, I’m–” Jayce twisted the handle of his hammer, “I came for two reasons, but the most important one is that I need your help.” 

 

“I’m not a soldier or a politician, Jayce…” 

 

“But you’re my partner. And I promised them you would cooperate..the things they’re saying about you, Viktor. I told them that I would prove them wrong and that you’d–”

 

“Build their weapons.”

 

“Give us Powder.” 

 

Viktor’s new form had changed many things, but it had not touched certain sentiments. It instead left them on the shelf to gather dust until an unwanted force came to knock at them about, reminding him of an anger he still feared. 

 

He squashed the sensation under the heel of his rationale, and after a moment of pausing and nearly laughing he said, “What do they want with Powder?”

 

Jayce’s explanation was in patches: Council, Noxus, killings on the bridge, ships in harbor, Hextech. The greater good. 

 

“Those were Silco’s crimes. Her sister's crimes, too.” Viktor said tersely. 

 

“And they’re both dead; inheritance isn’t always a good thing.” It was as if Jayce could empathize. 

 

“I will go with you. Let the Firelights here go and I’ll make what you need.” 

 

And as the words left his mouth, Viktor realized they would not be received or heeded.

“Viktor, I would love that, I hope you do anyway after all this nonsense is done, but that’s not what the Council wants. They’re determined to get a hold of her because they think she’s been feeding information to our new Noxian neighbors in the harbor. But I told them that you knew where she was and would cooperate–”

 

“She fled for this very reason.” And in many ways she had been right. He hated that she was right, that fleeing from him had been right. He wanted her back right at that instant, childishly he was furious she wasn’t there to tell him: I told you so, Vicky. 

 

“Viktor, telling me where she went is all I need. Powder did save me and I want to make that clear to the Council; from there she can atone by helping us with Noxus.” 

 

"And what of the others?"

 

"Viktor, these people are dangerous." 

 

Viktor saw a small girl with blue hair cut in all sorts of patches reluctantly handing over her grenades. She’d looked up at him skeptically and he’d promised her she would never have to pick up another weapon. He’d told her that he would safeguard a world for her where she could just build things for herself and the edification of others. “I don’t know.” 

 

Jayce flinched, fully clenching his fists. “Nothing? Viktor, you’ll have others build weapons for you, but you won’t let Powder build anything for Piltover?” 

 

“We’re not building weapons here. Ekko is-” 

 

“You can’t convince me that the device out there isn’t a bomb. I read some of the runes along the seam, one miss turn of the device, or even pushing the core too much, and it could go off like your old Hexcore did.”

 

“The Arcane core was fired upon by a bullet, forgive me for not considering that in my calculations.” 

 

Jayce quickly added, “I didn’t mean that. That’s not even what I’m here about.” His voice echoed through the halls, bouncing about the alcove. 

 

“I know. I know, you didn’t. I'm sorry.”

 

And this was where it all circled back to Sky being right. Always right. The Z-Drive could be utilized as a weapon and once it was, well…It was as if Viktor’s imagination was not strong enough to name all the problems that could arise from the Z-drive, or count the stars in the sky of troubles, and even begin to list the flaws. 

 

It was not a flaw in character or morals that this had happened, only a flaw in the situation.

 

Ekko and him and Powder backed into yet another corner, bypassing guard-rails and the nagging worries because they weren’t blessed with hindsight or the luxury of waiting. 

 

At least Jayce didn’t accuse me of lying. 

 

“Are you so certain that she isn’t closer than she appears? Powder has been avoiding most of us for the last year.” Does he not realize she is working with his former beloved? With the girl he took as a momentary pupil?  “Or has she already rejected you and you’re trying to convince her through me?”

 

“Viktor, gods, I would never! Please, I have no clues, other than you.” Jayce clenched the handle of his hammer again, “Viktor, they know where your friend’s tree is.” Jayce spoke and Viktor realized he could not even begin to comprehend the storm of chaos circling in his soul. 

 

Flaw: if they intended no harm to Powder--if they only wanted the weaponry--they could just take me. 

 

Solution: unforeseen at this juncture. 

 

Must buy more time.  With what currency?

 

Viktor said, “What tree?” 

 

Jayce ran a hand over his jaw. 

 

“Please, if you can’t give me Powder," Jayce spoke slowly, as if to give Viktor time to stop the threat that was surely coming, "they’re going to flood the tunnels with gas, with everyone down here…and I don’t know if that tree is going to survive. I’ve heard it’s gorgeous, extremely rare, too.”

 

Viktor followed the thread off a cliff, going into free fall. “How did you find it?”

 

“Sky,” Jayce smiled pityingly, “she got ahold of me. She wouldn’t say what you were doing, but she wanted me to talk with you.”

 

And with that, Viktor felt something fall away from himself. Like ice falling away from a glacier into the water, bobbing on the surface. He saw a young woman chasing a series of dreams, always on the precipice, but never quite getting there. Always loyal, always loving, always self sacrificing. 

 

He breathed in and out. Even the air against his lungs whistled in new ways he could not exactly describe. 

 

What a luxury it had been, for a whole year to go by and for him to have been relatively safe, surrounded by colleagues, enjoying himself and living.

 

Powder in a sense had given that to him, at her expense and isolation. Like Sky, loving in the way one was after so much time watching everything fall apart.

 

Because nothing in Zaun was free in the same way nothing in Piltover had exactly been free, either. 

 

“I think I can find her,” he kept his voice quiet and lamented that there was not enough time to take in Jayce’s smile at him, “allow me my staff. I have to show you something.” 

 

---

The Loose Cannon

 

Her stomach went all the way into her throat, and all of the saliva in her mouth evaporated.

 

 It was the opposite of what Powder imagined drowning was like.

 

As every pretty thing that Medarda had left on the vessel surrounded them in a tidal wave of glossy feathers and beady eyes, Powder lost sensation in her legs, gravity grabbing a hold of the ship faster than her body could fall. 

 

But Powder still tasted Shimmer from the back of her throat to the front of her teeth. It spoke to her like a friend, coaxing her to use its power for the small price of realizing she was barely a human-being anymore. 

 

Or she could let herself go free fall. This could be it. She’d tried it once before, foiled only by Ekko and his stupid hero-complex–

 

And there Caitlyn went into the air, too. Her head slamming against the bulkhead cabana of the airship with a crack that Powder heard even over the cawing. 

 

Have you had enough yet?

 

I guess not. 

 

Powder’s right hand caught the steering wheel, she must have looked like she was standing on her hand while her legs were above her. Her left hand yanked the emergency blast valve, sending hot air from the engines into the large balloons at the sides of the ship. 

 

She couldn’t see if they succeeded, could only assume something good had accrued as the ship’s deck violently rose to meet their bodies and another tendril of ravens hit the deck dead and screaming. 

 

The steering wheel slipped from Powder’s digits, though, and her palm hit against the handles with enough force that she felt something give under her skin. The Shimmer had her thrown back in the ring, though, no breaks for her. She grabbed control of the ship, and they cascaded through cloud vapor and high winds. 

 

A bead of red sky through the darkness beckoned. Powder pulled at the main-aft sails and roared to the surface. 

 

They crested, before the bow dipped back. 

 

Stillwater Island was fast approaching, the land accelerating ahead as the ravens then went for the balloon support. Pops were the harbinger of doom. 

 

The mechanical dials and indicators were spinning as wildly as the wheel, but the ship was level, no longer dipped upward or downward, and no longer at risk of capsizing. 

 

The bottom of the vessel descended, skimmed against the water, bouncing as a stone does across the surface. It was like the vehicle couldn't decide whether it wanted to be semi-aquatic or air-borne. 

 

They crashed onto the sandbar, then into the rocks of the shore. The vehicle screamed as it broke its hull against a courtyard or marble and stone steps. The inertia threw Caitlyn forward, but Shimmer threw Powder further and faster, turning her into a human landing cushion for the Piltover scion. 

 

Their tangle of limbs must have looked hilarious, but Powder wasn't laughing.

 

Peace lasted for all of four seconds as Powder cursed. Footsteps of a welcome committee were arriving. 

 

"Hello, officers-" Powder said, but then saw the crowd that greeted her. 

 

The click of a gun’s safety being removed and holsters becoming empty was their big greeting on Stillwater. 

---

It was not hard to recognize a chembaron; they were ostentatious and dressed like deadly flowers. Their petals made of the finest cybernetics, Undercity tattoos, and parodies of what Topside, wealthy fashions looked like.

 

They marveled at Caitlyn’s hextech rifle and barely noticed Powder’s pepperbox pistol. Her prized weapon landed in a jetty, gone forever.

 

There was a yordle with a top-hat that must have dreamed of better days, he twisted his copper augmented hands and smiled while his goons dragged Powder and Caitlyn forward; a woman dressed in all sorts of black-matte material, with a pulmonary drip tube that she had made into a dark nose piece that highlighted the green plastic tubes coming out the sides, looked down at the women before her with disdain. 

 

But standing beside the best dressed individual of the group--a man with long black hair and his entire jaw gilded in gold--was a dark skinned woman with a plain haircut and dark eyes. 

 

There were three others ahead in the leadership circle, but through the crowd of hired help Powder couldn't see them

They were dragged into a courtyard. The whole way through, Powder could see the blood stains every few feet and bullet holes from whatever negotiations had made it possible for the barons to take the island from Piltover. 

 

The way they hadn’t heard a thing about this take-over, made Powder itchy to the core. Did Jayce know? Medarda, maybe, but she hadn’t thought to tell them? 

 

Has Piltover really fallen apart? Powder looked towards Caitlyn in all her fancy clothes, now covered in bird-shit and blood. 

 

Stillwater Hold was eighty flights of horror, and the place that Undercity kids spoke about in the same whispers they used to describe drakes and vampires. 

 

In the same way that most Fissure folk knew someone close to them who had died young, they also knew someone who’d gone to Stillwater. It was rare to know someone who’d come back; allegedly Vander had done a stint there as a teenager, but Powder had never gotten confirmation on that mythology. 

 

Caitlyn was now groaning, not awake, but not dead. Like Powder, she just wouldn’t fucking die. 

 

It was commendable. 

 

They dumped the two women to the stone floor, and goon’s boots went to their backs. 

 

“Hey, Sevika,” Powder still remembered the last time she’d been on the ground, in the dirt, before the former friend of Vander. The fist that was paired with Silco’s keen eye was now looking down at her with an expression she couldn’t place, “I love what you and the rest of the club has done with the place. We missed you back home…Thought you’d all fled to somewhere with brighter shores by now…” 

 

The call of that long jump, of the ability to let go, not catch herself or have someone else grab her before she went splat against the pavement…oh it was singing again… always there…coming on strong…

 

The gilded jaw spoke up first, “They weren’t exaggerating,” he leaned down to pick up one of Powder’s braids, “you’re a clown.” He stood back up, still holding onto her braid, like a leash. 

 

“You couldn’t have chosen a place with less dead kids, junkies, and Zaunites in it to make your castle?” Powder spat. When she’d first come to, after the explosion, Viktor had asked of Silco and Vi. And when she’d answered that they were dead, Viktor had solemnly explained that Ekko and the Firelights were terrified now of what that meant for turf wars, everyone grabbing for a little bit of the Lanes. 

 

Vultures and scavengers thrived off of the corpses of the powerful. 

 

“After you and your sister bombed the Lanes, it turned into a little oasis, most of our men were holed up in here anyway…Piltover abandoned them when Noxus came knocking.” The smile of gold looked surreal against his cheeks. “And now I’ve caught you, a Noxian puppet who murdered Silco. Your sister used to wave your picture in our faces, glad to see you’re as pathetic as she always said.” 

 

The man was putting on a show. Powder had seen Jayce and her sister act the same way, drumming up the crowd. 

 

Powder strained under the boot, glaring at Sevika. “You think I could open my mouth around Noxus and not get my head severed from my neck? They’d take one look at my pants and kill me for having too many colors in my wardrobe. And either I’m pathetic or I killed Silco, choose one.” 

 

A boot from behind came down against the back of her head, rattling her teeth. The Shimmer came to her aid yet again, but she wasn’t sure how many more favors it was willing to grant. 

 

He’s stable for now, but his life is held on by tethers, Powder. What happens when he’s all metal and no man?

 

Then he’ll be all Viktor. 

 

“I’m a hypocrite…I’m a fucking hypocrite…” She muttered to herself, laughing as her eyes cleared and the dent in her head healed back, bouncing to normalcy with such violent ping-pong antics. “But I’m not working for Noxus,” she started to yell over her fear and the laugh in her throat, “I wouldn’t even know where to start working for anyone! Nobody wants my sorry ass!” 

 

“Then why were you trying to make a blockade run at us in one of their air-ships?” Sevika almost seemed to be genuinely asking. 

 

"Ask her where Talis is! Did Talis send her?" The woman with the pulmonary drip was in hysterics and the rest of the leaders shouted at her for silence. 

 

Powder wracked her brain for the names of the cretins: Smeech, Chross, Renni, Finn-

 

The equations all spelled the same message: I’m fucked!

 

Silco had been mad, but through his one good eye he’d seemed to have a vision of a place called Zaun. Though, his vision was a tad cloudy in the other eye and included Shimmer alongside a whole barrel of profits and industrial hell-holes. 

 

But it had made these nouveau aristocrats bow. 

 

“Look, for the last year I’ve been busting my ass to clean up the Undercity,” Powder stared hard at Sevika while she spoke, “I left my very lovely abyss-side-view apartment and laboratory to try and deal with the ghost of my sister. But I’m not just here for her, I’m trying to get Piltover off our backs forever, for good.” 

 

The reactions of the chembarons was unexpected: they flinched. 

 

“Oh, don’t tell me you are all in on this too? Look, whatever it is, I can kill it. I’ve slain way worse before. Hells, I practically made Hextech, I know what sort of horrors it can bring and I can undo them. And hey, if it actually is my sister, then I’m the best qualified to deal with her.”

 

A woman who couldn’t have been more than Viktor’s age with blonde hair, pigtails, and the messiest eyeliner Powder had ever seen said, “I think we should keep her alive. She’s a Firelight and we can get it out of her where their hideout it.”

 

The woman was promptly told to shut her mouth. Powder internally thanked whatever gods there were in the world for the reliable stupidity of others. 

 

“Not a Firelight, by the way. And look, you guys can kill me, it’s what you’re best at, but do the Lanes a favor and leave the poor blueberry muffin alone. Ransom her to her mom and maybe they’ll only murder some of your families. Though, if they let you guys have this place, then maybe there’s something to it with this whole Zaun experiment.”

 

The woman Powder assumed was Renni shrieked, "They've already killed my son!"

 

It was Sevika, shockingly, who sighed with a weariness that showed she understood Powder’s words. 

 

The golden jawed man chuckled ignorantly, “Negotiating from the dirt?” 

 

“No, I’m trying to talk from one Undercity sump rat to another,” she stared hard at Sevika again while she spoke to the golden jaw. “It’s funny, you’ve gone and made yourself a nice little castle while the cats are away. If you don’t do something now, you think once Piltove gets rid of the Noxians they’ll just let you keep it, though? I give this island another year, at best.”

 

The golden jaw wasn’t listening. 

 

“Sweetie, you’re the rat, and always have been. The one thing Piltover got right was that there’s a structure to things. There’s a table for the adults, and if you get up from your seat, you lose your place.The thing is, you’ve never had a seat to begin with. And if someone did give you one, you’d forget yourself and someone would pull it out from under you.” 

 

Powder smiled plainly, trying to channel a smooth combination of the dead king of Zaun and Viktor, “I haven’t forgotten shit. I spend my days remembering what counts, dipshit. I watched people beat each other in the alleyways outside of Vander’s bar, and then I lived with a man who tried to clean the waters of Zaun, even though he would never be able to swim in them himself. I remember it all. I remember them all. That’s why for the last year I’ve at least been keeping my head low in my own fucking backyard, instead of playing king out here. I can’t believe I’m winning the award for least selfish-prick.”

 

A few laughed at her, but Powder couldn’t bring herself to care. She just kept staring at Sevika. Powder continued, “Nah, while the rest of you folks have been forgetting. I’ve been forced to remember. The least you chumps could have recalled was loyalty to Zaun, but I guess Silco took the last of that with him on the way out trying to get rid of my traitor-sister.” 

 

The golden jawed man rolled his eyes. “Sevika, clean up this mess.”

 

The strange sword slid from her augments, glowing as red as the sky. “Of course, Finn.” 

 

Powder couldn’t tell if she’d won. She closed her eyes and laid her head against the ground. She bit into her tongue hard enough to taste blood and Shimmer. 

 

The slice of the sword, the sound of it connecting with flesh, made her gasp. 

 

She felt something wet hit the back of her neck and when she raised her face from the gritty tiles of the courtyard she got to see the shape that Sevika had carved into the golden jaw.

 

The sparkly augment hit the ground and a fountain of blood poured down his shirt, the lackeys in similar fashion stood frozen. 

 

Shimmer had one more favor to give. 

 

Their fear gave Powder all the time she needed to roll, and snatch the hextech rifle from Sevika’s toss. 

 

It was a cumbersome and overdeveloped thing. Aw, just like Jayce Talis. Brings back old memories. She aimed for the chembaron with the top hat. He seemed the least likely to want to be reasoned with. 

 

But a woman in all black from the blonde woman’s trope of freaks beat Powder to the punch and sliced him with sword augments coming out of her feet. 

 

He was now twinning with the golden-jaw. Powder cursed, having not loaded a weapon like this for some time, and swung the butt of the rifle into a lackey’s stomach while she tried to remember all the time and effort she’d wasted training for Piltover conventions and competitions. 

 

For the last months Powder had been trying to discern how Jayce had engineered the stock portion to be so light, except when it went into the stomach of a human being it had the weight and heft necessary. Convenient. 

 

Shimmer burned behind her eyes as she duked forward away from another attack, now from Renni who was swinging with claws sewn into her fingernails. Sevika had goons of her own who had taken the hint (a bald man with strange tattoos all over his head and face, a man with lazy-eyes, a dark-haired gutter-punk who looked ready to bite someone’s ear off and then committed to that very act). 

 

It seemed the entirety of the gangs, who’d come for Powder’s funeral and execution, had also been preparing for the funerals’ of their competitors. 

 

They’d been prepped for this, to turn on each other and eat each other alive. 

 

Piltover had never needed to do much about them, and anytime news from home had hit Viktor and Powder it had been about how another “sharp” industrialist had met his unfortunate end. 

 

“Fuck,” she watched Sevika smash her fist into the bald head of the elder chembaron, his skull concaving, he screamed and tried to pull Shimmer from his pocket too late. No one was even paying attention to Caitlyn still groaning on the ground. “Fuck.” 

 

Old habits kicked in, a cold and rainy day with Viktor in the forest while he struggled to keep up with her. They’d taken frequent breaks with him all the while trying to wave her ahead, getting more agitated when she’d tell him to sit down. She’d pulled him down finally into the leaves and he’d said with some consternation, ‘Well now you’re going to have to carry me home.’ 

 

‘That can’t be too hard, you weigh less than me.’ 

 

And he’d looked down at that little practice rifle, the one she’d been using for the competition, and said to her, 'You know you’re so much more than this?’

 

And she’d laughed at him, but not really said anything in response. 

 

Powder raised the Hextech rifle and shot the air above her head. The sound, she imagined, was like nothing the Zaunites had ever heard. 

 

Half the fight stopped. Even Renni froze. Powder reloaded again and this time the entire fight ceased. 

 

Hextech, though Piltover took it for granted, was still the Arcane. And magic had a hold on the world like no other. The sound of the weapon was a bell tolling, bringing the Zaunites to a freeze and to reverent silence. 

 

Powder suddenly hated the way they were looking towards her. 

 

Sevika marched forward, letting the corpse of the second to last chembaron slip from her fingers. 

 

The woman with the blonde hair was alive, but she wasn’t making any moves, and none of her black and leather clad servants were either. 

 

And as Silco’s right hand stood before Powder, she put one hand upon the rifle and the other on Powder’s shoulder. 

 

They stood toe to toe looking each other over. History was about to ruin their pause all over again, and words unsaid began to breach from Powder’s mouth–

 

But a raindrop overhead landed against the courtyard, and a million more coming down hard from the crimson sky. Thunder, the sound traveling slower than the rain, arrived in tow. 

 

And like children being called in from the Academy gardens, the Zaunites still alive from the miniature battle began to flee to the cover of the prison they’d turned into their capitol. 

 

Powder watched a raven land upon the golden jaw. The ruddy colors on the ground pooled into puddles. 

---

And just like Piltover, Powder realized how dire the situation was for the former nobility of the Undercity. 

 

There was Shimmer everywhere. Barrels. Cartons. Jugs. Vases of it. It smelled sweet. It smelled rotting. Stacks upon stacks in cells and in barrack areas. 

 

As they walked through Stillwater’s main level, Powder realized the one thing that wasn’t in quick supply seemed to be food and fresh water. 

 

The smell of waste from broken plumbing permeated a few cells, as well. 

 

But Sevika had been busy. The ones who had not come to see Powder’s execution (there were so fucking many of them…) all seemed to be pleased, and expectant, that Sevika came back unscathed. 

 

The shock of Powder being with her was muted by their intrigue and trust. Powder had to laugh, it was like arriving at the Firelight tree for the first time, except instead of a beautiful tree, it was like Sevika and the rest had leaned into a hellish aesthetic of the dismal fortress. 

 

“Anytime we try and go to shore,” Sevika’s sharp and keen eyes kept looking towards the Hextech rifle as she spoke while also having one of her fellows carry Caitlyn into a room that was a poor excuse for a med bay, “we’re attacked either by Noxians or–”

 

“Big monster thing?”

 

“Your sister.” The woman sneered at Powder and she remembered how it felt to be handcuffed on the ground or attacked in an elevator.

 

“What does it even look like? I’ve gotten conflicting reports from every loser who’s said to have seen her.” And her misadventures with Caitlyn had been blocked by reports, by good people and sad people and scared people and–

 

Powder swayed and hit the side wall. She could no longer tell which way the floor was. 

 

Sevika sighed and took two purple vials from a holster on her waist, “You haven’t been dosing?” 

 

Powder flinched against Sevika’s familiarity. The woman was a true survivor, she moved and ebbed and swayed and spoke like history wasn’t even real. 

 

“Haven’t really needed to go to the darkside since the incident,” she admitted and let the woman ply open her mouth with strong hands that reminded her of Vander; she was not fighting anymore as the strange substance went down her throat, “no spoonful of sugar?” Powder slurred. 

 

Sevika’s face emoted as much as a blank canvas, which was why Powder felt a whole new level of fear when the woman looked at her in shock and awe over the news that she’s just been living without Shimmer until recently. The stoicism returned, but it was too late. 

 

Sevika yanked a free chair for herself, then threw a floor cushion of some kind out to Powder. 

 

"What's Renni's deal with me?" Powder asked, swallowing the spit flooding her mouth. 

 

"You know her?" Sevika asked. 

 

"I've known most of you fucks since I was a kid. Vander made sure we recognized you all and avoided your dirty dealings."

 

"Vander wasn't so clean himself," Sevika retorted, "Renni hates your Golden Boy in Piltover. You worked for him. So she hates you." 

 

The woman had to be pulled away from Powder as they'd walked in after the fight. She'd been weeping. "Jayce- Jayce killed a kid?"

 

"Surprised that a Topsider killed a trencher?"

 

She wanted to be. "Just tell me why the hell everyone thinks my sister is alive." 

 

“The creature wears your sister’s face. It’s blue, just like Piltie-tech, just like that thing in your arms.” Sevika said while pointing at the rifle. “Sometimes the Noxians have it on a boat, sometimes it’s walking around the shores, but if you get too close, it vanishes. It shines this awful blue light and–” she scoffed, “look, at this rate we are five days out of running out of food. A week away from running out of water.”

 

"It's not like, uh, a wolf?"

 

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

 

"Yeah, okay, sorry for interupting." Powder was going to mock Medarda forever and ever. 

 

"It's smart enough to focus, to send signals back to the other boats in the harbor," Sevika continued. "We've been beginning to feel like test subjects for it out here." 

 

“That’s why those chembarons were so eager to put me in some cinderblock shoes? I was gonna be their way to hold onto power, but you took the opportunity to off them instead? You feel your grip slipping, Sevika? You turned all these dudes against their useless masters, but you’ve got no plan afterwards?”

 

Sevika hissed and ignored her, “If you think you can stop their creature, then we can get back to Zaun. And when we do get back…You have my word I’ll support you and whatever plan you’re cooking.” 

 

The room swayed and Powder laughed maniacally. “Sevika, baby, you don’t even know half of what I’ve been trying to cook up for the last few months.” 

 

Sevika rolled her eyes. “You can give the other vial to your… friend …” The woman pointed to Caitlyn. 

 

Caitlyn was still limp on a metal waiting room chair. 

 

Powder obliged, making a meal of standing up from the floor, but was nervous to be so close to the sheriff and touching her mouth. 

 

Don’t be weird. Don’t be weird. Don’t be weird. Her fingers brushed perfect white teeth and she quickly dumped the substance down the sheriff’s throat. 

 

Sevika took out a cream of sorts, purple like Shimmer, but some other make, and started to rub it up and down her biceps. Sevika waved off another dark-skinned woman who came into the room with the intention to help and coddle. With her gone, the silence was too strong. 

 

“Singed isn’t here?” Powder asked.

 

Sevika stopped tending to herself, “No. It seems we were only right about fifty-percent of the traitors. With that thing in the harbor and him over with your sister we thought–”

 

Powder caught her meaning, “No- No way…”

 

“When we saw your ship we were sure we were done for, thought you were going to bomb us from the air, but then the crows…You know, I always told Silco that scientist was a loose card we couldn’t account for.” 

 

“Not a cannon?” 

 

“I don’t need to be lectured right now, kid.” 

 

Rich coming from the queen turn-coat . “Why did you leave Vander? And why Silco?” Powder picked herself up, but landed against a series of metal cabinets. She barely made her way to the floor, the pillow softening her fall to the floor so she could inelegantly find a place sitting  in front of Sevika. 

 

The Shimmer was angry and needed a nap, apparently. 

 

Caitlyn, in a similar state, groaned. She blinked with glossy eyes; the Shimmer making its way through her body was having a blast. 

 

Powder wondered if Caitlyn ever even drank booze…

 

Sevika rubbed her biceps harder with her own Shimmer concoction. “Vander got himself killed because of your sister. Silco was willing to take the reins all those years ago. It’s the way of the Under– of Zaun…” Sevika rolled her shoulder and added, “And I didn’t betray Silco. I was taking care of his interests and you were a threat to them--sorry. That’s just how it went. If it makes you feel better, I got my karma ten-fold. I’ve been running this dump with Finn plowing us into the ground, losing fights every time the Noxians unleash whatever it is they’re doing.”

 

“What about Piltover?”

 

“They abandoned their enforcers and they’ve abandoned us. We’ve been trapped. One of our boats got out, but when it was destroyed by your– by that creature they have, Finn clammed up and didn’t want to lose face and sacrifice anymore, worried about losing their faith, but the food and water shortages have done a fine job of that.” 

 

Powder dug little crescents into her palms. “You know, I was all yours back then. I would have given all of Hextech to you freaks.”

 

“And you stopped me…” Sevika cracked her knuckles, then, and Powder could swear she saw the little hints of Vi; it was chicken and egg. “Consider us even?”

 

Powder wanted to fight more. 

 

But something clicked. The wry expression? The outreach? Powder had seen that Sevika hated the chembarons, obviously, but sewn into all of that was a feeling of something more anamorphic, though. 

 

And very desperate. 

 

It was sort of like love. And because it was for the Lanes, it made it almost pure, almost noble. It flew in spite of the blood all over the both of them. 

 

Maybe it was because of the blood all over them…

 

Ambition had never looked so valiant on anyone else…

 

Well, maybe Viktor…or Medarda…Definitely Ekko. 

 

From her shitty throne, half awake, Caitlyn spoke for the first time, “You’re going to make a deal with this diabolical wench?” It was way too many syllables from a half-dead lunatic, but the miracles of Shimmer were everlasting. 

 

Powder blew air through her lips, “We’re just talking.” 

 

And she saved our lives…

 

Sevika laughed, “You killed Silco. Finish your sister for us, and by all rights, you’re the new leader of the chembarons and the Undercity.” The chumminess and candor was so shocking, that it was breathtakingly refreshing. 

 

“Look, I didn’t mean to kill Silco.” Powder was so relieved by this that she felt no fear or dread when she said, “I didn’t want that. I’m here to clean up my end of the street. You can have this island, and your games, and your nation of Zaun.” 

 

And she wasn’t even lying to herself; sure, Powder was greedy and had plenty of wants, but the space where a throne was meant to live just felt juvenile. What would she do? It would be like forcing an elephant into a tiny pool. All hail Queen Jinx. The biggest and worst thing to have ever happened to this tiny peninsula. 

 

“What about those enforcers on the bridge?” Sevika pushed. 

 

Powder could feel Caitlyn staring, burrowing her anger into Powder from behind. “It was to stop Vi from blowing everyone up.”

 

"So you blew everyone up?" 

 

"Harsh, but I stick to what I'm good at." 

 

“Well, whatever you do want, you can have if you’re at the top of the hill. You can have it with the Lanes..With all of the Undercity...With Zaun.” Sevika sounded half like she believed it, but another half of her spoke of something too hardened to preach or fall for the miracles that Vander used to sell. Silco must have been preaching Zaun for a while, but even Sevika was struggling to use the new name. 

 

Maybe Sevika had loved Silco, sure, but like a scientist, Sevika had also probably believed in continuous and repeated results. Powder being the anomaly to Silco’s success just meant she was more worthy of a person to bet on. 

 

“You’re not going to take control?” Powder asked her. 

 

Sevika gave her a look that could have evaporated the blood from Powder’s veins, “We’ll see how you do in the harbor, Jinx.” 

 

“Oh. Oh, you’re a scary lady, Sevika…When you get back, Ekko’s going to want to have a nice and long chat with you.” It felt bad using him as a threat, but what else could she do? Ekko, was Zaun’s greatest caretaker. This woman had placed all her bets with a couple of worms addicted to pretending they were from Piltover. It just felt good to brag about being loved by someone with power. 

 

Sevika faltered, but she shrugged it away and said, “You need at least one bit of ink." She then pointed to Powder’s bare arms, “you look like a child.” 

 

“I know plenty of successful adults without tattoos.” 

 

“No one who leads or saves Zaun is without them.” 

 

“Silco had a tattoo?” 

 

“Several.” 

 

“I don’t even wanna know how you know that.” Powder looked towards the needles and the rusty dentist's chair in Stillwater that she hoped had only been used for minorly invasive things, but she knew better than to hope. 

 

Sevika with a snap called to three of her men outside the door. Powder burned with hatred at the thought that they'd been listening to the whole conversation.

 

A spooked looking guy was ushered and ordered to get Powder colored in ink, something to commemorate the fight, but also her coming of age. A bit late, someone joked, but Sevika shut them up fast. 

 

She then looked at Powder, “We go over strategies for dealing with what’s in the harbor afterwards. Don’t let your sheriff get out from under you; that was Silco’s mistake as well.” 

 

Powder used that thought to ground herself against the implicit threat in Caitlyn’s actions and then in her words when she raised her head and said, “What are you doing?”

 

“Keeping us alive.” Powder smiled at the tattoo artist holding a needle against the top of her arm and shoulder. He might have been her age, maybe a little older. “And making new friends! What’s your name?”

 

“Uh, it’s Thieram-”

 

“Cool, I’m gonna call you Chuck, capiche?” 

 

“S-Sure…But who’s ka-peesh?”

 

“You’re doing great, Chuck. Hey, you know how to do a cloud? I’ve always wanted a bunch of blue clouds along my shoulders, or like smoke maybe? Can you do both? Sorry, I don’t have any reference images for you.” Powder said and turned to Caitlyn to give her ‘look-at-me-go’ eyes. 

 

Caitlyn gave Powder ‘you’re-scaring-me-I-hate-you’ eyes right back and said, “This isn’t what we agreed on at all. We need to find a way to get back into contact with Mel Medarda--”

 

“I don’t really think we agreed on anything, toots, but Melinoe sent us to kill a thing and that’s what I plan to do. I save the day like a big fat hero and you have second thoughts about sending the Zaun Science Trio to hell with a bullet between their eyes.” 

 

“Piltover has never executed criminals! And who is Melinoe? Not to mention your plan sounds like suicide. It’s barely a plan at all! You’re going to set yourself up as bait? Sail directly into a Noxian harbor stronghold?”

 

“One: that we know of.” Powder winked at Thieram who looked like he really wished he’d learned a different skill than tattooing, like basket-weaving or bartending, “Two: a piece of Mel Medarda’s full name before she came to Piltover. Three: if my plan is suicide, then looking for my sister is like slitting your wrists.” 

 

As Thieram worked, Caitlyn tried to do the equivalent of hate-eye-fuck Powder from across the room. The Sheriff’s trigger finger looked itchy, but there was no way she could rush over and grab her weapon back from Powder. 

 

The tattooist was quick, the pain as minimal as it could be from being forced to sit still for two hours and be stabbed with ink, and he even applied a solvent across the design. 

 

“Sorry,” Thieram said, “It- It took longer because you have so much Shimmer. Sometimes it wants to heal over the- the needle stabbing.” He held a mirror to her and she got a good look at herself for the first time in a long time. 

 

She was weirdly pale, zombie-like. Her eyes shone a sickening pink. She missed her glasses for the million and first time.

 

Powder had no real date of birth; Vander hadn't known, and Vi had been too small to remember any date that wasn't her own birthday. Viktor had just sort of asked her one day what she preferred and they'd stuck to it. 

 

And when the topic of tattoos had come up, Viktor hadn't even tried to stand in her way. 

 

It had been that fucking bridge. There were no tattooists in Piltover, only the Undercity. She'd frozen on the way, an invisible barrier in her childhood stopping her. 

 

Viktor had kept squeezing her hand, waiting for her for what must have been an hour before he gently had pulled her back to the district in Piltover where they lived. 

 

Power stared hard at the dirty mirror, in it the blue of her hair hadn’t faded, and the blue of the clouds that the artists had dressed her with shone just as vibrantly. 

 

Powder smiled, “Wowie Zowie…Wait, you’re really good, actually…This looks great…”

 

But he winced at her and only fled in response. 

 

Caitlyn paused and scowled again before she finally asked, “You got all of that from Medarda’s journal?”

 

“I had to speed-read. I bet I missed what really mattered there…”

 

Caitlyn lowered her voice, “Attacking those vessels in the harbor, which you will inevitably do, would be escalating the situation between Piltover and Noxus. Are you sure you want to go down that path?”

 

“Are you sure there’s any other? Like we’ve been walking down a long tunnel, blueberry, and I don’t think turning back is going to work this time. And they’re already going for the Hexgates–”

 

“You don’t know that! I cannot believe you convinced Medarda of your conjectures!”

 

And then Powder suddenly got it. “Wait, do you know where they’ll attack next?” 

 

Caitlyn recoiled as Powder laughed. “I can’t believe I keep underestimating you…egg on my face, Caitlyn…Egg on my face…” Powder said. “Oh common, don’t look so shocked that I caught on. Did you think our pair-up was going to go any other way than this? I’m not my sister, toots, I’m not so good at showing my good side. I just got really lucky and happened to be surrounded by a bunch of nerds who really wanted to see it.”

 

“Then try,” Caitlyn said, “prove to me that aligning with these animals isn’t insane.”

 

“Tell me first where they’ll attack from next.” 

 

Caitlyn snorted, “I asked you first.”

 

“You have Shimmer running down your nose.” 

 

“Damn you!”

 

“We don’t have any damns in Piltover or Zaun.” Powder grinned. 

 

Caitlyn wiped her nose and clenched her fists, “It’s the tunnels of the Undercity.” 

 

Powder blinked twice, the cloying noise of the tattoo needle ringing in her ears, “What?”

 

“There’s a series of tunnels below the Undercity. We think they infiltrated subtly by using a sludge gate at the edge of the peninsula. It’s the same where they kept Viktor and where your sister and Silco operated for so long. My mother years ago created a specific series of ventilation and maintenance routes. These routes lead to an area of pure and concentrated industrial waste and gas. Evidence of high levels of activity in the tunnels has us believe that they’ll attack from there. If we release the valves and let the gas out, though, we’ll take out a heavy amount of their fighting forces.” The eloquence of the Sheriff was rejuvenated by Shimmer, and stronger than ever. You would barely know she’d almost died. 

 

Powder had felt free fall, literal free fall twice in the last year. This was so much worse, “You’re a fool.”

 

“Excuse me?”

 

“You’re a fucking fool.” Powder had had to be smart to save her own life; any lapse in her brilliance could have led to her not being able to go to the Academy, to someone taking her place on the Hextech team, to the world abandoning her or hurting her. Caitlyn Kiramman just got be be a fucking idiot because why not. She was a Kiramman. “Those high levels of activity? Those are just Zaunites. Regular Zaunites working and living down there.” 

 

“That’s impossible.” 

 

“You don’t think maybe your mom lied to you? How about that?”

 

“If you’re trying to get under my skin again–”

 

“I’m going to kill what remains of my family and stop Noxus from pulling their final big stunt on us. If you want to be there with me, and show your mother or Jayce what’s for and what a real Sheriff is like, then you’re gonna get on whatever bum-fuck boat or set of diving gear I can rustle up and you’ll be in that harbor when the shit hits the fan.”

 

“And if I say no?”

 

“You’re not gonna want to say no, cupcake. Because when I say ‘jump’ I think I can get these folks to jump. And when I say ‘attack Noxus’ I think they’ll do it. And I really really think you’re gonna want to be the one who’s shaking Ekko’s hand when we’re signing whatever document ensures Piltover doesn’t send an enforcer to the Undercity ever again.”

 

Caitlyn’s eyes darkened. “Fancying yourself the new Silco?” 

 

“No way,” Powder wanted to itch her new tattoos desperately, “you’d be dead by now if I was.”

Notes:

Hello! Long time no see. This is a lengthy chapter on account of my changing writing style and my insistence that we stick to the outline. Life has made things extra busy, so I believe it will be another long wait for the Intermission segment that follows and then Part Two and Three.

I had this crazy idea that I would somehow do a Masters degree, have a job, write original fiction, and finish this project by the end of 2024. No way. That was insane. That wasn't even the devil talking; that was some next level hubris talking.

I really cannot thank readers enough for sticking with this work, being encouraging, and also tagging along for a ride that is simultaneously pretty grim-dark, but also my best attempts at sticking to the tone of the show.

To the folks who talked about this story on YouTube? You are my heroes. To the folks who talked about this story on Reddit? Also my heroes. To the cool people I've met on Tumblr and who have watched me post a lot of memes about this story? Heroes.

Chapter 4: Intermission

The Man of Tomorrow

 

The best thing that had ever happened to Jayce Talis was his mother and him getting lost in the mountains of ​​Freljord. 

 

It was more than just a catalyst. It was the event that had also forged him; the shape of the runes the mage had used were burned into his memory. The inexplicable reason he’d been saved as a child was a mystery that had followed him through the Academy and into his life building Hextech. 

 

It was the type of story he was able to tell at dinners, fundraisers, and Progress Day gatherings. 

 

He’d once told Viktor the whole story --the details that would have scared anyone but his partner--while they both were trapped on the lift to the Hexgates. 

 

The metal device had shuttered to a stop, Viktor had one hand gripping his cane and the other grabbing ahold of Jayce’s arm to steady himself. Viktor’s whole body had tensed painfully, completely overtaken by a fear that he’d not even expressed while working with the unstable hexgems. 

 

The two men had nothing to do but wait, and after fifteen minutes, Jayce had convinced Viktor to sit, though the other scientists had flinched the whole way down to the floor before having to massage his leg. 

 

It became kind of funny after a while of being trapped, waiting for someone to rescue them from what was a standard inconvenience. Viktor had muttered after an hour, “I guess we’ll have to fix this as well.” 

 

But when Jayce had told him the story of being stuck in the snow and rescued--Viktor had stopped joking entirely. “Is that why your mother is–”

 

“She was already sick when I was young, but after the storm and my father’s death she worsened. I hate putting her through it all, but I don’t think she’ll be getting breaks anytime soon with Hextech and the new interest in our factories…It’s like father’s alive all over again. The curse of competency...I just can’t imagine where I’d be without that day, or without you or Councillor Medarda…” 

 

“Or Powder.” Viktor had rubbed his malformed leg and smiled to himself, a strange expression, “these lucky moments that define us…what blessings…”

Jayce at this juncture hadn’t known what to say; Viktor would always be perfect at shocking him into silence and contemplation.

 

It might have been no more than five minutes, but after some time, Viktor had said, “My father used to hate the elevators in the mines.” And that was all that was spoken on the matter before the rescue crew opened the doors and the subject lapsed from Jayce’s memory. 

 

The trudge in the snow, redefined by Viktor, though, had been a blessing. 

 

Jayce had considered it for years, until realizing that like Piltover, some things came from hard work, whereas other things were simply luck and blessings. 

 

It was one of the many reasons he loved Piltover; it was naive to pretend luck wasn’t part of the equation, but Piltover lowered the necessity for luck at all, and instead was a place built on progress and meritocracy to the core. 

 

But what was the worst thing that had ever happened to him? 

 

If nearly dying in the snow had produced miracles, then what could be the event in opposition to such a dream? 

 

Jayce would have once would have said nearly being banished from Piltover.

 

No, even that had been another step from the catalyst. 

 

The worst thing that had ever happened to Jayce Talis was Powder setting off the Arcane bomb in the Undercity; she’d made him choose between Viktor and Piltover, and for a whole year after he’d had to keep making the same choice. 

 

It was an infinite circle that wounded him. 

 

What had Viktor said to him before he’d put the shackles of his city back on his own wrists? If Jayce circled the memory he could just abouts pin the dialogue in place and hear his friend speaking over the chain reaction occurring across the Undercity. 

 

Why didn’t he come home with me? Because Viktor had been choosing between the Undercity and Jayce. It was like an inverted mirror between the partners. Jayce and Piltover. Viktor and the Undercity. 

 

Or, he was choosing between you and Powder. Jayce’s mind would circle that thought forevermore…

 

At the blockade, Jayce had walked through the remnants of the blooded crystals still embedded into the ground, past the remaining enforcers and the crowds on either side who failed to realize who he was (they’d been too enraptured in terrific awe at the ever growing, gargantuan cloud of blue lights coming up from the valley that was the Undercity). 

 

It had taken him an hour to find home, not his apartment near the laboratory, to his childhood home. He’d been lost in the streets he’d loved so dearly and wandered with an aimless, half broken sensation. 

 

His mother had woken him fourteen hours later, in the dead of the night; the Council had been searching for him; someone from afar had arrived right before the explosion and she’d been sitting in the seat of Councillor Mel Medarda, the room empty only because her battalion had filled it. 

 

He’d asked his mother, “And Mel?” She hadn’t known at the time. 

 

“Please,” she’d begged him, not even asking him to stay just begging him for something she could not articulate.

 

But Jayce hadn’t-- couldn’t --listen and had followed a new trail of bodies to the Council room. The enforcers had each been dealt with through arrows that left streams of blood upon the ground. Bright bursts of flowers in red like miniature explosions upon the face of the ground. 

 

With no time to truly prepare, and entering the halls he’d known so well, Jayce had met with the elegant woman from Noxus: her red cape had been lined with what could have been a direwolf’s pelt and her dark skin was decorated by various old scars that told Jayce she had survived--not been victimized.  

 

He’d suddenly known who she was; she had been sitting in her daughter’s chair. 

 

“You’re trespassing,” he’d said to the wolf who occupied his lover’s seat, “diplomatic immunity I don’t think allows this, Miss Medarda.” His own joke hadn’t sounded right and the room had felt oppressive in its quiet. 

 

The elder Medarda had pulled her crimson cloak behind her shoulder and said, “I hope then, the information I have can be used to earn your forgiveness.” She’d snapped, and her servants had materialized a scroll from what had been a wide map case.

 

 The paper had been of vellum make and upon the unleashment of it from the casing, Jayce had felt himself drawn further from a path he’d felt safe walking on and towards something entirely different. 

 

The wide expanse of page had covered the entire gear segment of the table Medarda occupied and upon it, he’d seen ink lines that blotted and moved, as if compelled by magic. 

 

The swirls showcased runic work that was unique, a steady hand had created it, perhaps with the assistance of another. The combination of both Hextech arithmetic structure and its own foreign understanding of magic drew Jayce closer to the sketches and the dark structures. 

 

Miss Medarda had watched his observations then said, “If you’re wondering how…wonder no more and accept that Noxus may not have your brand of magic, but we do have your ambitious strive towards progress.”

 

“What am I looking at?”

 

“Can you not tell? It is how my enemy plans to use your Hexgates to infiltrate your city.” 

 

“Piltover isn’t my city…” 

 

“Please, my daughter wouldn’t waste her time if she didn’t believe that to be true.” 

 

“Why isn’t she here?”

 

“She’s trying to smooth over your mistake in your Undercity with the Kiramman clan and the others; don’t be too worried, though. They love you. That is--” Ambessa Medarda’s eyes grew distant for a moment before sharpening, “--that is rare. I would move very carefully, and think about what it would be like to lose their love.”

 

“The explosion?” Jayce swallowed the word after speaking it, feeling it lodge into his throat. 

 

“Oh, child, I just arrived. For once, the nation of Noxus is not responsible for such an event. I respect your efforts to hit the problem head on, but you’ve let not only your Undercity grow out of control, but you’ve let your underlings have free reign; they have forgotten who is the father of Hextech.” 

 

“I’m not–” he was losing that argument, so he pivoted to another, “--your people can’t be in our harbors. As per the law of Piltover you need a formal dignitary invitation.”

 

Ambessa Medarda laughed, “My child, I think you are now misunderstanding the powers of diplomacy and diplomatic immunity. These are peacetime tools. My daughter is wonderful and lovely when the world is warm and good, but when the situation grows cold, and you hunger, I am who you want guarding your door.”

 

“So you killed a dozen or so more of our enforcers to prove how good an ally you can be?” He was being brazen, but that was the only way he knew how to be when faced with such opposition. 

 

“Be grateful I did not slay more. Our mutual enemy will not show the leniency I did.” 

 

“We will close Hexgate access to you if you continue with this pathway, Miss Medarda.”

 

She’d laughed warmly, “Oh, no, not my vineyards . Mister Talis, I think I expected you to be a better negotiator. I’m showing you both the arithmetic that is already being utilized and tested to hack your Hexgates, alongside culling the weakest of your enforcers. Your city is vulnerable and I’m showing you the truth of that.” 

 

The jab at Piltover had felt like a strike between his own ribs. “I’m not exactly being endeared to here.” No, he’d been pushed, and blackmailed. 

 

She cocked her head condescendingly, “Surprising, I would have thought the man who killed two crime lords in his Undercity as vengeance for his friend’s abduction would be impressed,” she’d raised a finger to her lips to silence him when he’d moved to speak further, “I would do your best to keep it so that is the story they continue to tell once this sun sets and the next rises and the cycle continues.”

 

Jayce Talis had only felt the way he’d felt in that room the first time he’d met Mel, “I’m not so naive to just see a bunch of numbers on a piece of paper and roll over.” 

 

“How do you think I would even fabricate such a fake? My mathematics are different from yours. I deal directly in the lives of men, how they die, and how they serve on the battlefield. I don’t toil runes when a sword is the greatest technology of our time. Look closer, see that you have been betrayed.” 

 

The runes were celerity based, heavily utilizing more sorcery and inspiration focused Arcane, but they’d been distinctively in the hand writing of his partner--

 

His mind had shut down for an instant, like a seizure, and refused to accept what he’d seen. 

 

Jayce had clenched his jaw between every word, “Ambessa Medarda of House Medarda, I hereby ask that you move your vessels to a safer distance from our shores.” 

 

“You’ll have to do more than ask.” Ambessa Medarda hadn’t blinked, hadn’t even seemed angry, she’d stood and left the room with her retinue, walking with a soldier’s confidence and a god’s grace. “I’m shocked that the smartest man in this city still fails to see that. I’m going to tell you what will happen next as succinctly as I can. Right now, two of my fine vessels will occupy your harbor. Each day that you do not align yourself with us, a new ship will come to land upon your shores. When my enemy finally arrives, I will fight him with everything I have. I would like Hextech to be in my arsenal when that happens. If you want your city to have something salvageable by the end of my war, then I recommend that you and my daughter give your resources willingly.”

 

The smoke in his mind had blown every which way, never settling, only increasing. The blue clouds above them, neon and vibrant as Powder’s hair had flashed against his vision. 

The streets had been empty as every citizen in Piltover had hid from the Arcane dust and smog. 

 

Mel found him in the forge afterwards; he’d been drinking and thinking of Viktor. 

 

Gone was her elegant white dress in favor of darker shades. She’d donned a slim tunic that made her look like a bride for a funeral. 

 

She’d embraced him like he was the only thing in the world that mattered, squeezed his arms affectionately, gently touched his face as if checking every follicle and pore of him was unharmed. 

 

At one point she’d even touched at the bruising Violet had left upon his face. 

 

And then she’d taken both of his shoulders and held him at a distance while she hissed through clenched teeth, “What happened in the Undercity?”

 

“I don’t know.” Jayce had slurred and thought of Heimerdinger’s hard stance that there should be no substances being anywhere near the Academy. 

 

Mel had then slipped from him and her absence left him cold. “You need to tell me exactly, Jayce, exactly what you did. Everything little thing you said even. Ambessa is going to try and destabilize the Council. We need to consolidate, ensure the Undercity has adequate Piltover presence without alienating their leadership or making them feel compelled by us, only protected; the industrialist Silco was Violet’s enemy and surely did not intend this. There’s still a chance that if he lives we can discuss a true deal with him. ” 

 

Jayce thumbed at the half empty bottle. “I’m raising the Sungates.”

 

He’d been unable to read her tone and her face as she’d said, “Jayce, the blockade was a failure.” 

 

“Yes, because their fate was ours.” He had to swallow a bit of bile and acid in his throat. “They hate us, and they have every right to. We’d crush them if they ever really tried to fight back, and their one weapon just blew up in their faces. With our Hextech? It would be a massacre. We’ve already let them govern themselves for years, they can do it now while we protect our own and our own is Piltover.” 

 

“Independence for the Undercity at this current moment would just give them to my mother on a serving dish. They have no standing army, and we’re not even sure who the current leadership would be if Silco is dead.” 

 

“He is.” Jayce had turned back to the bottle, but not yet drank. “And so is Violet.” 

 

He hadn’t been sure at the time of that statement, but when it would later be reported from their spies, his intuition and trust in his own gut had increased. 

 

Mel’s eyes had narrowed, everything coming so easily to her as her understanding of the situation shifted, “Jayce, then there’s even more of a reason to not abandon the Undercity.”

 

“Just tell me it wasn’t you.” He’d said, and that had been the part of the conversation she’d failed to catch on. That was evidence she hadn’t done it, but he needed to make sure, “Tell me you didn’t sell Hextech formulas to Noxus, that you didn’t give them to your mother. Please, tell me this is real.” 

 

She’d been angry, and for a second he’d felt only hot shame until Mel had clarified, “My mother is a snake…of course she would try to stir your doubts to cover her own ass…”

 

The crude swears and angry scowls had been so unlike the version of her he’d known as elegant and completely and entirely in control. “It was a strange piece of paper, the ink swirled without anything animating it, Mel.” 

 

Her golden earrings and jewelry had clinked together as she’d put a hand to her mouth to contemplate, muttering that it was surely a trick. 

 

“Then it was either Viktor or Powder. There’s no other way.” Jayce had said, pushing the bottle away from himself until it spilled, rolling off the table and smashing to the floor. 

 

“I can assure you, there are too many ways Ambessa Medarda can get under your skin and make you doubt even what you see in front of you.” 

 

They’d argued for an hour afterwards. 

 

At the end she’d promised him one thing, “I won’t let them destroy your dream. I was wrong to demand Hextech weapons from you, Jayce. Whoever my mother is running from, they scare her, we need to be worried more about them then we do of her. Making weapons with Hextech is exactly what she wants, so let the threat consume her instead of us. We must focus on consolidation and a union with the Undercity, barricade our hatches, observe every facet of our home--”

 

“You’re just going to abandon her?” 

 

Mel had winced, “I’m not going to be another coin for her to spend, or another sword for her to point.” 

 

And then he’d kissed her and everything else had felt extraneous. 

 

Mel had been wrong, though, Ambessa Medarda’s enemy was more than willing to snack on Piltover while it attacked her. 

 

Then the crows came. 

 

The sky would go dark for days. 

 

The strange enemy that Ambessa Medarda was running from had followed her to Piltover and he saw no difference in who he and his warriors attacked. 

 

The comfort when fighting the strange General’s armies, versus Ambessa Medarda, was that they weren’t people. 

 

They were beastly things, alien and strange monsters, phantoms. Like ghosts given form. 

 

And when the Hexgates failed Piltover, Jayce was the one to blame, though he had not been the only builder of the Hexgates. 

 

But somehow. The council seemed to still cling to him. 

 

He didn’t even hesitate to leave me. He ran right into the Undercity without a care, Jayce had squashed those thoughts as best he could, until they started poking like the glowing blue weeds sprouting through the cracks of the streets of Piltover. 

 

His arithmetic on his own, without the help that Viktor had given him, slowed with the weight of his political obligations; all the time he’d been able to spin the plates of funding, he’d had Sky and Viktor doing the crunching. 

 

And Powder too.  

 

It became obvious that in the past, when the Council had felt pressured or Piltover threatened, their wrath would turn to the Undercity, but they were now fighting a strange army from far away who’d never been in on the relationship between the two sister cities. 

 

It’s not a sister city. It’s the Undercity. It’s Piltover’s undercity. 

 

“We have Hextech. We have always had Hextech.” This point of argument had come at hour-eight of a Council meeting in a hidden chamber underneath the Kirramman estate Salo had turned to stare down Mel, oddly not turning his attention or scorn to Jayce. 

 

Jayce, exhausted, had spoken up, “If we close the Sungates, then we can better conserve rationing and cut down on any groups in the Undercity scavenging.” He’d just wanted to contribute at that point, too exhausted and too quiet. 

 

Mel had been pushing for the training of the enforcer’s corps into a proper navy that could run the blockade her mother had set up. “Jayce, we talked of this–”

 

“Talking without us?” Hoskel had grown sick after the explosion, the rest of his hair had started to come off and he’s been trying to hide the sickness with wigs and experimental cosmetics that Jayce worried were exacerbating the sickness instead of helping. “From the daughter of the enemy no less–”

 

“I have half a brain to trap you in that puzzle box you still refuse to put down, Councillor.” And that was when Mel’s decade long hold on Piltover gave out under its own weight. 

 

It mattered not that she’d funded Hextech, that she’d contributed to the city’s Progress long before even Jayce really had; she was of Noxus. And it had been her mother, a wolf with a mouth covered in blood, that had attracted the carrion crows and vulture like enemies with the scent of Hextech weaponry. 

 

While the two forces squabbled, they used Piltover as their arena and planned to divvy her up, not even considering that Piltover would at all fight for its sovereignty. 

 

Cassandra Kiramman seized on this fact. Years of operating quietly had served the woman well, and youth suddenly seemed no longer as powerful in the face of long held deals and the stasis of collective information. 

 

Her daughter’s usurpation as to the role of sheriff had initially seemed like a boon for Mel, as the two had apparently been somewhat close, but now her fate slipped and fell through cracked ice into freezing waters. 

 

Medarda versus Kiramman became the new status quo…and then finally, the retirement they had given to Heimerdinger, was passed onto Mel Medarda. 

 

Jayce at least had made sure she’d not been exiled, or worse, held in Stillwater as a political criminal. 

 

Cassandra came to him and had gripped his shoulder after the vote. 

 

“You’re our architect, Jayce. Without Heimerdinger here, we cannot afford to lose your brilliant mind. Medarda is implicated in too much–”

 

We both know Heimerdinger would have had what it took to stand up to you. Same with Mel. You don’t value them, you fear them. You just pretend to love me because I’m easy and don’t fight back. “I understand,” he’d said and left it at that. 

 

Her threat had been so painfully obvious it had Jayce accidentally ripping off his Councilor’s jacket when he’d returned to his penthouse. 

 

One late night of an endless parade of late nights, Jayce had gone to the closed Sungates and began collecting what samples remained from the disaster. The only reason they hadn’t scrubbed the carnage off of the bridge immediately was that the blue mushroom cloud had seemed a more pressing matter and each member of the Council had been preoccupied with their rapidly failing fortunes. 

 

The rains had burned, clotted with pollution and blue dust. 

 

The blockade in the harbor halted their remaining ability to import and export. Food began to run low--

 

And then--

 

And when--

 

And then--

 

And when--

 

And then as the Council’s love began to give under the weight of more and more disasters, Jayce found himself top-heavy with power and nowhere to go; with Mel abandoning him, the solution to his problems came in the shape of a girl with blue braids, and the shy scientist who’d raised her. 

 

They both had saved him before, he’d thought, why could they not save him again?

 

It was a risk; if the Council decided that they’d rather have prisoners as scientists, then Jayce could be disposed of, too…

 

Still…they’d perhaps have him as an intermediary…that meant he couldn’t give them Viktor…Viktor was too easily bruised and easily swayed. 

 

While these dark thoughts sprouted from his temporal lobe, Jayce felt his principals, his very self, sliding away with his desperation increasing. 

 

It had scared him, but not as much as the thought of losing what little control he had on the Council. 

 

But Powder. Oh, Powder was a powder keg. A little research revealed she’d already started to make a name for herself in the Undercity. 

 

Of course she’d cast herself at the witch…so dramatic. Then what am I? His mother had brought many of his old things to him in the wake of his sleepless nights and inability to cope. 

 

She’d collapsed on the way out of his apartment and he’d rushed her to an overworked hospital. They’d cleared out some of the rooms just for her, but the care hadn’t been enough. 

He’d held on for one more week before making three new Hextech powered rifles, refurbishing his hammer. Production on Hextech crystals had ceased, but he had more than enough, even some of the unrefined ones as well. 

 

Jayce had burned the blueprints for the Atlas Gauntlets. 

 

He admitted to the Council that Powder had been a long time creator of weapons, and that she often resented him for his successes, too. 

 

And they were interested. 

 

Initially, they were a bit angry that Jayce had not introduced her to them, but very interested. And they were hungry, too; they hungered after months of burning Silco’s effigy and chewing on his bones. 

 

A new villain from the Undercity needed to be made for Jayce to fight. 

 

They asked why this girl had never been part of negotiations before, and Jayce had to remind them that she’d often been sitting with Viktor. 

 

She’d always been there. Always moving from the shadows. That was a story to tell the Council. Cassandra Kiramman only remembered Powder from the shooting tournament from so many years ago. 

 

A task force invasion began to become part of the plans, a rehash of the past. Jayce would go into the Undercity again. Everything moved too quickly for him to check the finer details. 

 

Find Mel, his mind had shouted at him, but she’d walked from that secret Councillor’s chamber with a strength and purpose and anger he’d not known how to hold. 

 

And then his thoughts had turned desperate again. 

 

“What happened to you?!” Caityln’s judgment had stung most of all. “She’s innocent and you’ve framed her! You said yourself this matches more of Viktor’s hand-writing than her’s!”

 

“She hasn’t been innocent since the day she stepped into Piltover, Cait.” 

 

“You sound insane.”

 

“Well, you’re the one who raised the gates with me, Caitlyn!”

 

“Ha! And now like a child, too!” The new Sheriff of Piltover was a title donned by the young woman he’d practically raised himself and she was floundering as much as him. 

 

“A child who made the gun you have strapped to your back.” 

 

“Even if my mother has sanctioned this, you’ll never find her, or Viktor, only I know the Undercity.”

 

“Do you? Or did Violet show us both what we wanted to see.” 

 

This single comment had been a matchstick on a gasoline can attached to a fibrous thread holding him together with his loved ones and his allies. 

---

 

When he saw Viktor again, the anger and the weight of all of his sadness dissipated in an instant the second his truest friend in the entire planet keeled over coughing and struggling. 

 

He had…well, Jayce had expected something much grander. He’d expected Viktor to be god-like, ranting, raving, needing assistance that Jayce was ready to force upon him if necessary…

 

When he’d come to, they’d talked, and well…It was still Viktor.​​ That had been all that mattered to him; the way home wasn’t completely shut off. 

---

Viktor explained the runic work as such, “It’s communicative. I was initially thinking we could engrave the runes on something like a mirror…”

 

He doesn’t seem to be hiding anything from me. The relief at that thought lifted something off of Jayce’s spine that had been growing at a tumor’s rate.

 

Enforcers lifted the mirror out of Viktor’s quarters, a humble stone room that made Jayce a tad uncomfortable if he thought too much about his friend effectively living in a cave like a hermit all this time. 

 

“It’s truly magic.” It sounded folkloric-- physics breaking --speaking to someone across a great distance using a transitive summoning and an intimate knowledge of the individual. 

 

It could also be easily used as a spy technique. They’d have to generate protective runes for themselves in the case. That would come later.

 

“It’s still a technology.” 

 

“Heimerdinger isn’t here,” Jayce’s chest hurt at that thought, another missing in the conflict or surely now another casualty, “you don’t have to be shy about your achievements.” The corners he’d cut since his mentor and partner and Mel hadn’t been there to help him–

 

“I am not a mage, Jayce.” 

 

“I wouldn’t mind even if you were.” For one had saved his life, and the magic they’d done had been what had made Piltover what it was. 

 

Viktor looked up from the staff. A passing expression graced his lips, and he opened his mouth to say something more. The initial thought seemed to leave him, though, and he said instead, “What happens to us if I cannot find Powder?”

 

“Then we try again. I can extend the time table.” The lie slipped from him wrapped in a partial truth and a guilty necessity to do anything to keep his partner as close to him as possible; he’d have to arrest Viktor, make a show of it, make like they were still looking for Powder…but if Viktor produced results in other ways…well, the two of them had acted together, snuck into Heimerdinger’s lab together, pushed each other. 

 

Viktor’s eyes grew distant and the man said in a hoarse voice, “Of course…” 

 

As Viktor’s apprentice saw the mirror, he shouted in dismay. Whatever relationship the pair had, Jayce feels childishly relieved that it paled in comparison to him and Viktor’s partnership. 

 

He’s finally choosing me. Finally. 

 

The enforcers set the mirror to standing, being careful not to break it and heeding Jayce’s stern warning of its importance. 

 

The Man of Progress mumbled to himself at the sight, “I guess it really is the era of magic…”

 

This angered the young apprentice further; he pulled against his captors, not yet dulled by the realization that Viktor was choosing his Hextech partner over him, “She’ll never survive in Stillwater, not with Vander’s past; not with what her sister and Silco have done! Viktor, please!” 

 

Viktor paused and turned to the young man who was now being held back by enforcers. “I never told you, Ekko, but when she awoke, after we found her, she joked that you should have been the one to grow up with me…I disagreed with the specifics, but the sentiment was nice in a way…she always struggles to lift others up without putting herself down…maybe that is a flaw we both have.”

 

The young scientist tried to interrupt. “Stop– Just stop–”

 

“No,” Viktor squeezed his staff, “for the last year I have put the skies on your shoulders, Ekko. I’d hoped we could stay hidden from the consequences of our actions, but that is no longer the case.” His accent hitched, struggling around the words.  

 

The young man looked towards Jayce for a second. “Viktor, you don’t owe him anything.” 

 

“No, I owe him everything. ” Viktor’s face morphed between multiple masks to try and hide the way the lines around his mouth screamed that he was in pain. 

 

Viktor turned away, then towards the mirror. The reflection of a man who was more magical property and strangeness looked back. The crowd behind him was warped in the faded background, reduced to simulacrums distorted in the mirror’s flaws. 

 

Purple and blue light twisted around Viktor as he moved his staff in a circular motion, this way and that, in his cloak he looked like the reincarnation of that strange mage who had saved Jayce as a boy. 

 

The mythological awe of the temple and of the audience beheld that which they had feared for generations. 

 

The light then settled and the room was quiet. 

 

The shimmer across the surface of the mirror warped, revealing the face of a young woman… 

 

But she was not the one Jayce had asked Viktor to find.

 

“Sky,” Viktor said and for one last miraculous instant he and Jayce were still on the same team, “Run!” 

 

Half of Jayce’s enforcers had no idea what was going on, but a select few must have not trusted the Undercity mage because they were quick on the draw not to shoot, just instead disarm. Jayce shouted to hold their fire; he would have never called an enforcer trigger happy, but he still shouted for order, for control, for.. anything but this!

The woman in the mirror’s eyes went wide from wherever she was. Somewhere green…somewhere bright and beautiful…

They’re going to gas--” Viktor’s next sentence was met with a red-haired officer (Jayce hadn’t the time to try and remember their names) tackling him; her chokehold around Viktor failed to cover his mouth, though, as he spoke-- shouted --louder than Jayce had ever heard him speak, “--the tree! Sky, run! Take the Firelights--” the red haired officer got her hand in between Viktor’s canines and Jayce’s demure, shy, quizzical lab partner bit into the meat of her wrist and palm like he was a feral dog. 

 

The enforcer let go with a shout, and Viktor had the last words, “I will find you! I will find you!” 

 

Viktor’s apprentice had looked up from his wrathful tears, and a half-choked laugh left his open mouth while the other enforcer’s continued to hold him back; Jayce felt like the world’s greatest fool. 

 

Because of course Viktor would choose Powder over him. Even more so, he would choose Powder over any greater good that happened to include Jayce. 

 

“I had to choose...” The spell had clearly exhausted him, “I’m sorry, but I had to choose…”

 

“I was trying to protect you!” Every iteration of the words simply sounded childish in the face of Viktor having both tricked him and chosen someone else yet again.

 

The disbelief on Viktor’s face was alien to anything Jayce could have imagined, “These people…they’re the only ones who will have me, Jayce–”

 

“No, you had me. You’ve always had me. I put up the blockade for you. I fought half the Undercity for you. I’m here for you right now and am asking you to help me. We all have our shitty parts to play, but you and her were always unable to accept that!” 

 

Viktor half smiled then, “So it goes…”

 

This man was always inscrutable and confusing and always two steps ahead of Jayce. 

 

He was still Viktor and he’d always loved Sky, always loved Powder, and most of all…he had always loved the Undercity. And with Powder out of Jayce grasp, and Sky escaping too, Viktor was laying down on the tracks and letting Jayce run him over. 

 

Jayce let the words leave him, only partially trying to stop himself, “You’re under arrest.” 

 

The enforcers had pushed Viktor to his knees, his face was of resigned happiness and pointed towards the ceiling–

 

And morphed into horror. 

 

Jayce turned in time, ready to fire his Hammer. 

 

It was a yordle in the rafters, holding a grenade with a pin about to be pulled. 

 

Guns were pulled, shouting erupted, before Jayce could pull the handle trigger, arms wrapped around him in the worst approximation of a choke and hug. 

 

Viktor had leapt forward, at an unnatural speed, like a flicker in the world. His magic was laced with something Jayce remembered destroying with Vi--

The purple glow of Shimmer could be smelled in the air and the two suddenly grappled like children instead of the founders of Hextech

 

He’d always had to be gentle with Viktor, careful to not break him, watching his friend’s gentle movements–

 

It’s barely him. It’s all him. 

 

A metallic hand smacked him across the cheek; even Viktor looked shocked, staring down at his hand while the gun fire continued. 

 

But Jayce’s hammer was still cocked, and the bolt--

 

When it hit Viktor squarely in the chest, it also sent Jayce flying back with the force of recoil. 

 

There was more screaming, so much screaming until Jayce’s back hit the pillar of the temple and he moaned, wondering why he was cursed to feel the pain of a tailbone and the break of his ribs. 

 

 Enforcers were firing at random now. From the floor, the young apprentice Viktor had taken in was curled in a ball to keep away from the firing squad, protecting something in his arms. 

 

Jayce searched for his friend and saw him gasping, half way on his knees like a supplicant before the goddess in the temple. The blast from Jayce’s hammer that had killed a boy a year ago, that had robbed him of the light in his eyes, the substance of his life going up in little flickers of blue; Jayce saw Viktor instead aglow from within with it, his whole frame a window into something bright and terrifying. 

 

He realized his friend was holding back a phenomenal tidal wave of energy. If he unleashed what he was attempting to absorb, though…

 

Jayce’s last valiant attempt to have the story go any other way yelled, “Hold fire! Hold fire!” And when the world failed to bend to his will he yelled, “No!” 

 

It was a stupid thing to yell. Because who had ever really cared what Jayce had wantedaside from maybe Mel and Viktor

 

It had been a bullet that had destroyed the last Hexcore. And now a bullet seemed to finally graze Viktor’s shoulder, fate ordained and tragic. 

 

The explosion rocked through the temple and the whole world became blue.

---

The Sheriff of Piltover

 

“I know you are skeptical of your birthrights,” after the Hexcore explosion, Caitlyn’s mother had brought her into the family study--a four floor area of their home with tomes and documents dating back to before the city’s founding--and lifted the Kiramman key from around her own neck. “As you should be, that is the sign of a good leader, but I need you to stop fighting me.”

 

“Fine.” And her mother had frozen at her daughter’s bitter acquiescence so Caitlyn had clarified, “it’s like you’re only happy when the world is bloody enough for you to finally get your hands dirty.” 

 

“Your assessment is both rude and wrong, Caitlyn.” Her mother had said. “If House Kiramman is to survive we need to lean into both decorum, but also our wiles. We are a team. I am the body of the Council, you are the Sheriff of Piltover. I was initially skeptical of Jayce’s quick promotion of you to investigate this disaster in its infancy, I was even more skeptical when you brought home a stray dog, but we are in a war time now, and perhaps I have underestimated your unique visions of the world…” 

 

It was the closest thing her mother had probably ever given her to a compliment. 

 

Caitlyn had ascended, but without Vi, she felt like one of her limbs was severed from her body. 

 

Jayce had had the audacity, the utter hellish gumption, the utter insanity to look Caitlyn in the eye and tell her, ‘You knew her for barely a week.’

 

Had she been made? Had it all been desperation? Hextech was a miracle that allowed travel across the continent in minutes, was a perfect partnership for Caitlyn not in that same realm of the simultaneously fantastic and possible. 

 

Her family’s archives had been a balm during these times. Sluice gate construction, ventilation shafts, old rail-way cart tracks. House Talis had supplied the hammers and tools to build the sites, Kiramman had supplied the other materials, the manual labor from the Undercity, and the finances. 

 

Apparently, her family and his had been intertwined for decades, nearly a century. 

 

The reality that every one of her relationships, from birth, had been a construction and pre-planned event struck Caitlyn across the jaw most truly during Jayce’s wedding to the young Giapora noblewoman. 

 

The cake had been chalky…But Piltover elite were remiss to not make a spectacle of such a union. 

 

Caitlyn’s mother had been…sullen…the entire evening, while the Giapora clan had been oddly gloating. They’d loss their independence, technically, as house Talis was surely now going to inhale them and make them an appendix nobility. 

 

Her mother refused to drink the one allotted champagne flute she’d been given. She said to her only daughter then, “Investing in this boy really has been a game of rifle roulette…”

 

“He’s being kind. They would have been destitute without him.” 

 

Her mother had grown more fraught under the fighting and the constant challenges; the erudite woman was leaning into more of the features of the austere to cope. “No, he’s forgetting who got him to where he stands. If he was wise, he’d have married Medarda to try and reign her in, or finally proposed to you after all this time to showcase an iota of gratitude.” 

A memory of meeting Jayce for the first time at a tea ceremony had fluttered up from the bottom of Caitlyn’s mind. Every other dignitary ignoring her, except for the old Sheriff of Piltover, Grayson, and except for Jayce…

 

Shortly after, Caitlyn’s tutors had all but been replaced by Jayce, no more literature or music classes, no more painting lessons. She’d had no aptitude for engineering, and Jayce had known very little about her favorite biology textbooks. Her gun collecting hobbies had been tolerated because her mother and father still enjoyed a good pheasant chase in the seasons…

 

Caitlyn hadn’t stayed for the full wedding ceremony. 

 

It was Mel Medarda who’d rescued her from the deep well of despair and anger that had captured her. 

 

Caitlyn had been skeptical, “There is little chance Vi survived the explosion that killed her.”

 

And Mel Medarda had responded, “But in our lifetime we have seen miracles of an incredible caliber: Hextech, the resurgence of mage powers, the unknown has been bleeding into our world for some time. Heimerdinger was an immortal. I don’t know if it is her, or something much worse, but my spies have reported that the man who helped build the bomb may now be building technologies for my mother. Don’t you want to be certain?”

 

In truth, Caitlyn had just wanted to be free. 

---

Piltover had crowned Caitlyn as Sheriff, General, and Commander all in one ceremony. The rapidity of the entire event had shocked her deeply, but that feeling was nowhere near comparable to watching Powder become the leader to the criminals who’d taken over their own island on Stillwater in the last year. 

 

Powder spoke in deranged elegance while nervously twitching every so often, “See, our boats are shit. Bye-bye boatie if we even try it. Those guys are working with some advanced sailing and wind craft. The vessels themselves don’t have any big weapons, it’s the people on them who are the muscle and the mayhem.”

 

And when the Undercity woman named Sevika asked how Powder knew all of this, Powder exclaimed easily that she’d done an intense interrogation of a Noxian princess. 

 

The crowd had had one to two on-lookers smile painfully; starvation made the jokes land against an impenetrable wall. 

 

Powder continued her speech: “I’m thinking we sabotage from the water itself, forcing them onto their rinky dink lift rafts. From there, anyone not fighting alongside us can start to use the distraction to get back to the Undercity.” 

 

“And what about us?”

 

“I’m banking on our buddies picking us up so we don’t drown, but I have a few plans up my sleeve to ensure no one fucks us over and we’re good. Hey, worse case scenario, hopefully we aren’t too exhausted to just swim back to shore.” Powder seemed cagey at that point, but Caitlyn had seen the younger woman pulling aside a series of buoys and other flotation devices for some plan or other. 

 

And in an ironic fashion, the crowd’s attention on the girl was not the reverence they had had for her sister; this was the equivalent of a drowning man grabbing for a plank of driftwood. 

 

---

 

Caitlyn had never swam in the waters around Piltover; she had done diving once or twice in her life on vacation. The water felt cold and she felt awkward in the fins and suit. 

 

Powder struggled with the gear; when she noticed Caitlyn staring she retorted, “Careful not to come up too fast up. Your lungs will explode: balloon style.” 

 

“You’re leading us all to our deaths.”

 

“You don’t seem bothered.” Powder waved her arms wide, “You can leave, you know.”

 

The parroting back of the words she’d said to Powder hours prior stung in the way only this girl could stab and inject her venom. “No, you’re my responsibility. And I’m stranded here otherwise.” The young woman’s shoulders rolled at that comment and when Caitlyn wasn’t sure if she’d been truly heard-- if Powder believed her- -Caitlyn said with all the pride she’d once so easily felt come to her. Caitlyn said, “Even if it’s not Vi, even if we fail, I don’t want to see you return to Piltover in chains.” Her whole body ached from the crash. Caitlyn’s spine and torso and hips all felt bruised and burdened in the same way the explosion on the bridge with Vi had hurt. 

 

Except now she could really taste the Shimmer trying to cover the bruises. Caitlyn continued, “I couldn’t even make it in time to my mother if I wanted…” Powder had been right about one thing, if she tried to get into a rowboat herself, the Noxians would have her. 

 

Powder tutted, “Tell me one truth before we get into the water,” she ran a hand over her long braids, “who’s working with who?”

 

“I don’t know what you mean?”

 

“I mean, I joined you and Medarda because I didn’t want you coming to hurt Ekko and Viktor, but Jayce isn’t on either of your leashes, and you only told me about your mom now, and what about whoever’s pulling Mel’s strings from Noxus? Am I going to have to win your war and then Mel’s war and then Jayce’s too?” The girl looked at her with pink and purple flashing eyes, half hidden under long, dark blue and grey eyelashes. 

 

“I serve Piltover, and the Undercity, both my homes. I’m a representative given my position from the Council, Powder.” 

 

“Fine, no gun for you.”

 

“Wait–”

 

“Guns are for people who can tell me if I should stay and fight, or if I should start running back to my friends fast, because the tunnels that lead to their treehouse are about to become toxic.” An ancient bitterness coated her childish words. “This plans works not with you, but with the information you provided.”

 

Caitlyn straightened her protesting back and body that had only barely survived the crash, “I gave you that opportunity already.” 

 

“You gave it without context, because you felt guilty and are tired of me.” Powder spoke over any defenses Caitlyn began to try on her, “I’m going to be frank, I don’t know what it is about me that keeps you coming back for more. Oh, my god, wait, are you in love with me–” 

 

“Stop, ” Caitlyn’s volume had attracted eyes so she dared to get in close to Powder. The girl was a head shorter than her and about the same age she had been when she’d first really started the enforcers, “If we find your sister, I’ll be in your life forever more.  Violet, even with her flaws, saw me and she knows me. When I came to the Undercity, I had no allies, but your sister saw to it that I was protected and that there could be a future for enforcers and the Zaunite government alike.”

 

Powder huffed, a sound that was a cross between a hiccup and a skip in her throat. It was quiet and Caitlyn nearly missed what it was. 

 

She realized that Powder was laughing at her. 

 

“Did you not hear what everyone's been saying?” And there was that cruel glint in Powder that scared Caitlyn more than the way the young woman had bounced back from the crash with few wounds and fewer fears. “It’s not her. It’s a monster. It’s a phantom. It’s a spite against the permanence of death. Blueberry, cupcake, sweet-pea, darling, gravy-girl, what nickname will I call you before you finally start to understand that my sister is gone? ”

 

Like you. An anxiety that Caitlyn had been harboring started to grow.

 

So Caitlyn lied, “Then give me a weapon. I’ll help you keep her memory from being tainted any further. I liked her, I really did--” 

 

“You knew her for a week.”

 

“I know. And that’s how special she was.” It took too much effort to make the sentence past tense. She was not the liar her mother was. “And when I met her, all she wanted was to be with you, to talk about you, to mention you and the memories of your childhood with her.” 

 

Powder’s nose twitched and her mouth moved like it was chewing on its own spit, but Caitlyn started to see the cracks in the same way she’d been able to push the girl nearly off a cliff with the mention of Viktor. The lighter blue haired girl said something to deflect, but Caitlyn continued to promise, to swear, to make allegiances and then she gave the girl exactly what she wanted, “You’re right, you know, if we do this, then I don’t think my mother or anyone will have any more negotiating tools. You’ll be able to ask for whatever you want. You could even take them and leave.” 

 

“Where would we even go?”

 

“I know it feels like it, but the Undercity and Piltover aren’t the world.” The world was literally at their door and banging it down, tired of them ignoring it. 

 

Powder finally threw the Hextech rifle her way, “Don’t kill any actual trenchers if you can help it. Follow me, we’re taking the leftmost running ship. Once on board. I need to get its motors working, then we start causing mayhem. Crash as many ships as we can.”

 

“Your plan is chaos?” Of course it is…What else could it be? The girl was not her sister at all. She was a hollow walking puppet, more like Silco and more like a twisted version of Viktor. 

 

“We need to be loud enough that they don’t feel safe going for the Hexgates like the crow’s owner did a year or so ago. We make a big enough show and get the Council to see that the occupation in the harbor has been using us as a meat shield.” 

 

She followed Powder and her new fiends-- friends was a stretch --into the water; the respirator and the goggles reacted against Caitlyn’s claustrophobia and her whole discomfort caught fire and could not be doused as she went under sloshing liquid that surrounded their peninsula city state. 

 

Even injured Caitlyn could still out swim most of the people around her. Many enforcers bulked up or physically trained for their entrance exams, but languished if they didn’t have patrols they felt up to it. Caitlyn had kept her mind and her body sharp in defiance of that trend. 

 

Did Jayce design the rifle to withstand the water? Of course he did. Of course. Hextech had already survived so much. 

 

Sevika was the only one who was keeping up with her. The strange augmentations on her arms also weren’t reacting negatively to the water, and her muscle was finely tuned. 

 

If something brushed against her ankle, Caitlyn told herself it was seaweed. If something swam past her knee, Caitlyn reminded herself of the types of fish she’d studied with Jayce for a week before returning to engineering and arithmetic. 

 

Nothing could truly live in these waters. Nothing that could hurt her. 

 

She imagined her mother for the upteenth time yelling at her for being covered in diseases and sludge. A few times, spot lights would shine across the waves, but the watchmen were arrogant, or perhaps not looking into the shapes below. Their concerns were for things above, for Piltover itself, and for the sky. 

 

Powder’s target was a mid-sized vessel, she’d abandoned her diving gear to the bottom of the lake and deftly pulled herself against the hull of the vessel using the anchor line and a few hanging flotation devices on the side. 

 

The girl had been dexterous and strong enough to climb the trees for the rifle competition all those years ago. And now her quickness was sharpened like a spear. 

 

How did she survive that crash? Her and Viktor had made reputations for themselves…They’d said Powder was like a monster, or a witch. In Piltover, she’d been somewhat muscled, enough to be active, or at least more active than most Academy students…

 

Caitlyn had just seen her as annoying for so long, but now she could see the lack of humanity in every acrobatic movement. 

 

The deck was…quiet as Powder helped Caitlyn up with a hand, then Sevika, then the four other Undercity criminals who were with them. 

 

And they’ll walk free after this. How many of them worked with Silco? 

 

The creak of the deck, the silence of the scene…

 

“There’s no one here…” she said and immediately she knew they’d somehow been fooled… “Powder, we need to jump back into the water.”

 

“Keep your voice down–” Powder looked towards the others and realized they were similarly confused, “Okay, okay, you got me. It’s the medic ship. I imagine they don’t have many fighters on here–”

 

Caitlyn nearly shot her then and there. “We are not crashing a civilian vessel.” 

 

“Not until we get them in the life boats; I’m not that crazy.” 

 

Caitlyn could not believe her, nor believe that the allies around them wouldn’t have simply dumped the sick and injured soldiers into the bay water. 

 

The others around them shifted uncomfortably, but they weren’t leaving or mutinying. Caitlyn said, “Please, don’t put innocent blood on my hands.” 

 

“You really are daft sometimes,” Powder’s eyes glowed pink and purple in the dark, “you’re a modern major officer for Piltover in a siege, Cupcake. You’re telling me you’ve never killed someone?” 

 

“That’s not what I said.”

 

Everything began to move too quickly as they ventured towards the sickward and the inner cabin of the ship. Below decks went a few of the Undercity goons (Caitlyn doubted they would be kind to those they found there), while Sevika, Powder, and Caitlyn ascended a set of stairs into an inner chamber. 

 

They barred the door shut and began to commandeer control. Everything smelled of fine incense and good wine and fancy paper, but not a single individual occupied the cabins. Caitlyn looked towards the desk where there was a set of brass knuckles left haphazardly as a paper weight to a series of letters. Powder and Sevika were flipping switches at the front of the vessel, but the craftwork was a combination of old and new. 

 

The runic designs at the wheel confused Sevika, but Powder had been studying magic with Jayce and Viktor her whole life and could identify which sigils locked the device and which didn’t. 

 

“This thing doesn’t even have a traditional engine…” Powder’s eyes flashed in the dark. 

Sevika hummed and opened what appeared to be a box of tobacco and rolling paper near the center console, “No one has been here for a few hours. I can’t smell any fresh smoke.” 

 

A minute passed with none of the Undercity goons returning, then another. And in Caitlyn’s investigations, rapid fire rifling through papers, there were sketches of gauntlets that sent a pressure to the base of her skull and ghosting its fingers up and down the parts of her that felt fear. 

 

“We need to leave,” Caitlyn cocked her gun and was more sure of that now than ever before. 

 

A silhouette at the door, only visible through the glass round window, politely knocked. Its fist sounded heavier than humanly possible.

 

Sevika summoned her swords from her augments. 

 

The figure politely knocked again. 

 

“Caitlyn,” Powder said on the third knock,”fire–”

 

The door flew off its hinges, all three women in the inner captain’s chair dodging to the left and to the right. 

 

The figure wore military garb, epaulets, fine clothes, armed with a ceremonial saber at her belt and a few knives at the opposite side of her waist. 

 

She looked wonderful in red. She looked terrifying with the glow of her strange gauntleted hands, fused into her with no sign they could be removed. 

 

But it was her, or perhaps it was as much as her as Caitlyn had been able to hold onto. Violet. Violet. Violet. Vi stands for violence. What a stupid joke. What a silly thing to say while she’d conned Caitlyn the entire time through their adventure. 

 

She’d lied to Powder. Caitlyn had known more than one joke. Vi stands for violence. Shamefully the pun had stuck around. 

 

“Caitlyn, shoot!” Powder screamed. 

 

The gauntlet swung high, the sheriff ducked and crouched and the second fist went low to meet her there. The sheriff propelled herself backwards from the other woman and stumbled into the cabin's navigational desk beside Powder.

 

Sevika in opposition rushed forward with a strange Shimmer and swords. 

 

Powder, with no working weapons, sent the ship forward and the inertia threw the grappling Undercity women flying backwards out of the open door and onto the sidewalks of the vessel. 

 

It was supposed to be a sailing ship, but with the strange magic on board, Powder was driving it like a high speed tug boat. Caitlyn from the floor tried to stand without proper sea legs and saw the girl spinning the wheel. 

 

They all felt the collision--Caitlyn went on one knee--with the other vessel, screaming, if Noxus had known they were coming, they must have not expected Powder to get this far. 

 

Powder pulled the acceleration lever in reverse and the boat squealed in agony away from what it had hit; she revved its engine and they careened, driving again into another and another vessel. 

 

The creature that was Violet slammed into her sister and pinned her to the navigational segment. 

 

Powder screamed as strange digits dug into her throat and in the dark, broken glass was crushed into further fragments under the woman’s military boots. 

 

“Vi,” the girl struggled for air, “Vi.” Powder wouldn’t even say please. Perhaps she was too prideful to beg. Perhaps she didn’t think she had to beg. 

 

Perhaps she still thought her sister was her sister and was going to snap forth from this strange purgatory glow of blue. 

 

The barrel of Caitlyn’s gun lowered from the phantom creature, towards the struggling blue-haired woman. 

 

It would be a clean shot. The thought was a strange beast that nipped. 

 

But Caitlyn had no partner to spot for her; Sevika’s strength crashed against the sheriff and threw her forward again. They grappled and Caitlyn shouted, “You imbecile, we’re on the same side!” 

 

The blue haired girl had gone limp under her sister’s choking, face discolored and neck completely bruised. Both Sevika and Caitlyn saw the subtle twitch of Powder’s hand, though, close to her sister’s waist, where a knife was in a holster. 

 

The blade met Vi’s neck and the gore gushed down from her veins. Powder stumbled away, crawling and crying, as the strange being clawed at its own neck to get the knife out. 

 

Sevika struck Caitlyn again and they tumbled. Caitlyn twisted away, not wanting to lose sight of Vi or Powder. 

 

She couldn’t say how she’d pulled the trigger or if her hands of their own accord had fired. 

 

Sevika rolled off of her, clutching her stomach. 

 

Someone was crying. Caitlyn felt tracks of wetness against her own face as she dragged herself out the door. Someone was still crying. 

 

She crawled over the dead that Vi had killed and dumped unceremoniously; every individual who’d been sent below decks looked to the sky with nothing animating their eyes. 

 

It was in the dark, that a flash of blue inland, towards the nation that had once been called Zaun, drew Caitlyn’s attention. 

 

It took two seconds, maybe less, to grow into a bulbous and mushroom-like cloud. 

 

The rolling of blue dust traveled from the Undercity below, rising up from the valley, and cascaded over them like a tsunami. She didn’t stay conscious enough to hear the noise the explosion made. 

---

When Caitlyn had been little, she’d sliced open her knee and her father had bundled her close, pulled her into their kitchen, and tended to her wounds alongside a dozen other servants and minders. 

 

She was there again, strangers’ hands this time, but still kind ones. 

 

Every time she shifted in the dark: Vi.

 

Every sound at the back of her neck: Powder. 

 

Jayce was there briefly. Then her parents. The rocking of waves threw her out of the depths and into the light. 

 

She found herself in a cabin, on a good bed, surrounded by flowers. She nearly believed herself to be home. 

 

A man, she believed she recognized (thin, Piltover accent, but with burns), was adjusting an IV and fluid bag attached to her. His face was impassive when he once looked at her and then walked over to the other side of the room where a tall and regal woman had entered. 

 

Caitlyn started to shift again, to try and sit up at the approaching enemy. This was hell, surely, and she’d died. 

 

But Powder isn’t here, so it cannot be hell…

 

“Good, struggle,” the woman’s voice was warm, “struggle until you awaken.”

 

“Powder– Powder, where is she–”

 

“Gone.” The dark-skinned woman wore ceremonial ropes around metallic armor and her coiled hair was swung back into a tight and ornate ensemble. “She, and the Undercity woman, Sevika Fissures, who attacked you have vanished. Gone into the blue void that I tried to warn your Man of Tomorrow over. Even Talis– excuse me, Giopara, has been declared potentially missing.” 

 

Caitlyn knew who she was speaking too instantly, and yet, with another near death experience on the heels of the first, she boldly and foolishly spoke back to the Noxian lord and noblewoman, “You’ve starved my city. You’ve led a monster here on your heels. You didn’t ask for our help, you asked for our obeisance .”

 

Ambessa Medarda was fifty-three years old, had undertaken over thirteen campaigns on Ionian soil, and came from a historical legacy that left such a shadow, that even her daughter, when she’d arrived in Piltover as an exile, had found merchant clans willing to help her and booster her. 

 

It had always been naive, and a little funny, to Caitlyn that Jayce had danced around royalty like a puppy dog. He was no commoner, and neither was Caitlyn, but being the child of a Councillor had taught her to sense the auras of power and wisdom. 

 

Sometimes, a person walked into the room and you knew. 

 

It was how Caitlyn had seen Vi.  

 

“Am I to be ransomed now?” Caitlyn asked. 

 

“No.”

 

“Executed, then.”

 

“Also no.”

 

Torture was not uncommon for Noxian prisoners. “I am a decorated officer. I presume then I will be siphoned for information?”

 

The woman smiled at that. “No, and I have not done a single of the crimes you’ve accused me of. My enemy has done all of that onto you.” 

 

Caitlyn tasted feathers and fear. “You won’t even say his name?”

 

“A little superstition never hurts.”

 

“I beg to differ.” Caitlyn pressed her palms into her eyes and heard the voice of her own mother telling her to stand straighter, be better, be stronger. 

 

“Well, I was going to next ask if you believed in ghosts, General Kiramman, but I presume the point is lost then.” 

 

Caitlyn swallowed. If she asked anymore outright, she’d reveal herself as weakened. 

 

You’re in a cot. You’re alone. You were weakened the moment Powder crashed Mel’s ship. 

 

So she asked something that felt as safe as she could muster, “The explosion? Was it another Hexdevice?”

 

The candor came easy and shocked Caitlyn into biting her tongue when Medarda said, “We believe it was something worse, a massive source of energy, like the one before and then additional power, as if saved and honed over time. You have been in and out of consciousness for a little more than five days and we have only been able to observe the anomaly from a distance..” 

 

“Has relief been given to the Undercity? What is the death toll?”

 

“We know none of those details,” from a closet in the cabin, Ambessa Medarda brought out crutches for Caitlyn and seemed to not care that the Piltover sheriff was in a thin medical gown, “follow, you’ll have new questions once you see the anomaly.”

 

It was clear to Caitlyn that Powder had done damage to this flagship; engineers and masked soldiers were repairing the decks and floors as 

 

“How did you have the intel of Powder’s plan?”

 

“Please, save your questions until you see it.” 

 

Soldiers saluted them both, like Caitlyn was already on their side. For a second, Caitlyn thought it was night again, the light had gone out as they exited onto the deck, her crutches clacking all the way, and she saw what had become of the Undercity. 

 

To call it a dome would be incorrect, more like a blot of blue, sucking in light. The gargantuan and strange shimmer or it made Caitlyn taste iron in her throat and her mind had to bend to comprehend it. 

 

House Kiramman will break before we bend… That had been a quote from her grandfather that had once adorned their halls, but was removed by his wife and Caitlyn’s grandmother. 

 

Caitlyn’s own mother had restored it once the conflict started. 

 

“Do we need protective gear at this distance?” Caitlyn was panicked. The amount of raw exposure to magic, to the Arcane…surely they’d all be dead in the next twelve hours–

 

Ambessa shrugged, “We have sent soldiers into it. We have brushed right up against it without going within its halo; if we are to die from the power it’s radiating, then I believe we would have shown symptoms by now. Unlike the last explosion, this is being tempered by someone within, as if they are holding it back before it can extend into Piltover and across the water.” 

 

“How does this change your position in the conflict?”

 

“It doesn’t.” Ambessa clutched the railing and stared into the blue with open awe and hunger. “I am still in opposition to the man who chases me and I still believe fate can be changed.”

 

A strange and eerie calm had come over the woman. “I came here knowing, but knowing without comprehending. Mages within Noxus had been collecting data, information through the Arcane. It’s how my enemy knew to hack the Hexgates to enter your city to get to me. I knew this anomaly, this ceaseless destruction would come to pass, but I had thought it would come from the Hexgates again. I was gone while you and the girl attacked, but our secret weapon caught sight of the prison and the initial crash of my daughter’s stolen ship.”

 

“Your daughter gave it to us.”

 

Ambessa’s eyes flashed. “Clever.”

 

“I’m confused,” Caitlyn admitted, “I wasn’t– I wasn’t made to play such games. Piltover wasn’t made to dabble at all with magic.”

 

“Exactly. Heimerdinger sought to create a place of austere logic and reason, but my daughter opened the door and for the past decade, plans have been made without her fully realizing the consequences.” 

 

The young Sheriff felt sick at again being beholden to forces that had planned her very life. 

 

“Caitlyn,” Medarda used the first name, not as an insult, but as an olive branch, “I want you on my side. My daughter does not invest in those who are not deserving. Help me show her that, help me save your city, and before you even have to make such a promise…know that I have what you have been looking for.”

 

The warlord brought her around to the stern, where a silhouette stood against the blue glow. 

It wasn’t her, but it was. She had her vibrant hair, firm arms, and proud stance. She was exactly as wonderful and unique and new to Caitlyn as when she’d first challenged the enforcer who’d claimed to know her sister. 

 

She’d attacked them last night and it frankly mattered little to Caitlyn. Powder had been doing more damage for a year now. 

 

“We’ve left so much of our logic and grounding behind…” Caitlyn said and looked towards the dome of blue that had encircled the entirety of the Undercity one last time. 

 

“It’s the era of magic, if you want it, take it, bend the world to its knees. My enemy already has, the only way is to meet him right in the middle and claw until you’re the only one standing.”

 

Caitlyn tried to turn away, “She- she clouds my judgment. With her, I make the wrong choice every time. How are you not terrified of this? Of all of the magic in the world--” 

 

“Because Noxus has always been willing. It might seem overly reckless to always rely on the ends justifying the means, but I promise you, Piltover was always on this path with Hextech, my enemy has simply accelerated the time table.” 

 

Ambessa Medarda stood at six feet tall, war-weathered and gorgeous and confident and unafraid of the reality bending scene around her and Caitlyn admired her and was envious of her all in one. 

 

“That is why I can be here at your side,” Ambessa continued to say, “I’ve come to like this young woman. You could say she reminds me of my daughter in a sense. What has just occurred, is historic, and the new era we enter means I need allies on my side.” 

 

“Why haven’t you answered your own daughter, though?”

 

“It was better that I initially stayed away. When this is all settled, I’ll come to her as a savior, not the villain she assumes I am.” She crossed to the side of the vessel and the dark skinned woman leaned on the railing like she was young again, no more than Caitlyn’s age. 

“Go, go meet your second in command. We will go to Piltover, a meeting is being held over a device and a young man arrested. We should be there. Prepare yourself and be ready to see the world in new shades of blue, hm?” 

 

---

The Boy Who Broke Time

 

The first time a Firelight died under Ekko’s leadership--she hadn’t even been killed by Silco or his goons, she’d been fleeing from an enforcer when she’d dropped from a gutter--he’d needed a month to come back. 

 

Scar had taken the reins over while he’d laid in his workshop. 

 

And then he’d gone to paint the trunk of the tree. 

 

Now, Ziggs felt warm, but every corpse Ekko had ever held hadn’t gone cold until many days after being held and prepared for burial. They were running and running and--

 

The tunnel of blue was ongoing, never ending. 

 

The explosion had thrown them both and they’d crawled to one another in the darkness until a blue light had decided to spare them. 

 

Was he religious? His parents had been. Vander had initially, too, had even still told Janna stories, but after what had happened on the bridge…and from what Ekko had learned of what had happened with him and Silco before…

 

It had gotten harder and harder to hope for rescue and in this strange blue world, Ekko dared not complain or think too logically about what he was seeing. 

 

“You’re so quiet, Ziggs,” the tunnel of blue was a maw and they were going further and further into the mouth of the unknown, but behind him and Ziggs was ruin and hellish darkness and death, “just say something Ziggs, anything, anything, please. Make one of your weird noises, Ziggs, please, please--” 

 

He turned to look over his shoulder, his foot hitting its next step at an odd angle against the glass like ground, equilibrium abandoning him as he spun to take the impact of the fall and to keep Ziggs off of the ground. 

 

He groaned in agony, alive, so terribly alive. He wasn’t Powder with her strange pallor of skin and pink eyes, nor was he Viktor with an even stranger body and new life. 

 

Ekko gave up; he’d grown the tree, he’d tamed the Zaun airs and flown through the skies, he’d painted the home of a goddess, he’d bent time to his will, and now he’d chased the dragon too far and was too far gone to care. 

 

He laid on the ground, cradling Ziggs, and thought of clever, good, and right words to say in this situation. 

 

Nothing came to him. 

 

“Ekko,” Ziggs whispered against his ear, “it’s not your fault.” The yordle then closed his eyes and laid his head against Ekko’s chest. 

 

And then Ekko didn’t give up. 

 

He curled onto his side, then went to his knees, left foot first, right foot was slow to follow and dragged like a leaden pipe. He would march to the end of hell. 

 

There was a horizon line. He swore there was an end. And a hint of movement that dangerously gave him hope. 

 

“Help!” he called out, “Help!” 

 

You never wanted to call out, admit vulnerability. That had been Vi’s number one rule. You never know who will come running to you, and they might not actually be there to help. 

 

He swore that he and Ziggs had both exited into the room together. He’d been holding on tightly and with enough certainty that when he’d awoken in the strange laboratory of the yordle named Heimderdinger, Ekko had started screaming until his voice had gone hoarse when the man had said that he’d found Ekko alone in the entryway. 

---

Heimerdinger’s office was one part whimsical, two parts messy. Ekko could tell the yordle had a set of aesthetics and he hated to deviate. 

 

“I worried I would be trapped here forever! A karmic injustice based upon my detestment for the Arcane and its horrid explosive nature in the face of my life being always at its beck and call!” The yordle had not stopped speaking for over three hours; he wasn’t starving in the traditional way in his prison and was now devouring Ekko’s company to feed himself. “This tower is actually much like my old home! Its design would become what I used to encourage architectural practices and styles in the City of Progress, alongside the fashions of the days of old.” 

 

Ekko could look out the window, but everytime he leapt from it he just landed back somehow in the same room. He’d repeated it ad nauseam. A horrible cycle had claimed him. 

 

“Are we dead?” Ekko finally interrupted. He was singed from the blue and Heimerdinger’s insanity wasn’t making it seem anymore like he was alive. 

 

“Ha! No, my boy, we are not dead. As I said: I’ve done quite a few spots of tests and unfortunately we are simply trapped.” 

 

“So it would be better if we were dead?!”

 

“Yes! We would prove the existence of an afterlife. What an incredible good for us as scientists to have discovered it first. I cannot fathom what would happen if a murderer, a general, a sheriff, or a murderer would have gotten to it before us.” 

 

“What about a mage?” Ekko, even in purgatory, wanted to start an academic debate with the man who detested magic. 

 

“Mages have already found everything else. Leave something for the scientists, perhaps.”

 

Sleep came eventually. In pieces. In fragments. 

 

Heimerdinger pushed calculations at him like one pushes an untouched plate towards a beaten animal. 

 

“Did you love Viktor?” Ekko asked while he and Heimerdinger were trying to launch a stone across the imaginary horizon line of their prison with a catapult they’d been testing. Viktor had often spoken on Heimerdinger when he and Ekko had worked alongside each other. 

 

“Viktor? My assistant?” Heimerdinger watched the stone disappear into nothing. There were no exits to the tower, a stairway that led to a stonewall that when attacked by explosions or tools, simply grew more stone. 

 

“Nevermind.” Ekko didn’t even try to ask about Powder. He made a similar mistake, though, and asked, “Did you love Jayce?”

 

“Oh, poor Jayce. That poor boy is always getting himself wrapped up in other’s schemes…”

 

There was Ekko’s answer, but he wanted more, “Do you like any of your pupils.”

 

“I trained them! I watched them grow! I fueled their minds! What is this malarky?!”

 

“Not the same as liking someone. I don’t even think loving someone is the same as liking them.” 

 

When they’d saved Powder from that first explosion, Viktor had sat by her side and simultaneously fretted and been statuesque; it was incredible that Powder still thought they all hated her. 

 

Sometimes, Ekko sort of did, but never in the simplistic ways that she assumed everyone else hated her. Viktor had been a good guy because he’d not just loved her, but Ekko had legitimately believed the guy had liked the way’s she’d been snippy with him and shy and sarcastic and messy. 

 

Heimerdinger had kept talking, whatever subject they were on had escaped him while Ekko tried to listen to the world outside, “I thought it better to wait out whatever calamity my former pupils were generating within the safety of these walls! Siege may come to my doors, but they will be locked tight!”

 

“Quiet,” the boy who’d broken time had started to hear it in the timeline between eternity and three months of being trapped, “do you hear that?”

 

It sounded like braids getting tangled. It sounded like gunpowder. It sounded like the color blue. 

 

---

 

The Era of Magic

 

When she’d been five, Lord Urgot, a man in her mother’s personal retinue, had given her a bracelet made of finger bones. She’d dropped it with a shriek as her older brother laughed with a nervous air around him and apologized to the imposing, pale skinned warrior.     

 

 “No need for apologies. She’ll have to learn on her own one day where her clothes and food come from. Today is too early it seems.”

 

The truth had come eight years later as Ambessa Medarda had severed the head of a princess who was the same age as Mel.

 

 From there, Mel had slid from favoritism and into an increasingly isolated realm until she was cast all the way aside and into Piltover. 

 

In fashion, when her mother had come to their shores, she’d not included Mel in her strategies, her plans, her bartering. That was for Jayce, that was for the others who knew none of Ambessa’s tricks. 

 

And when Jayce ousted her from power, she’d taken to the sad Kiramman girl and the even sadder Hextech witch. 

 

For them both, she was now sitting in the Giopora penthouse, alone at a table where servants had given her tea. 

 

They had little time, but Mel could not show the staff that. She played lackadaisical and escaped into her mind, into analyzing the colors and layout of the room. 

 

She identified three exits should she need an escape. She then identified the window, for a bird had landed on it. 

 

The raven cawed at her, obnoxiously. 

 

Her realization went off like a bomb, but not faster than the bird’s shadow grew, morphing and blocking the red sun, until from the darkened blanket, a three dimensional figure rose to prominence and blocked two of the three exits from the room. 

 

His shockingly white hair (why was it always those with strange hair colors?) and the red clawed hand that were enough of a calling card to identify him. 

 

Mel rose back from her chair, the thing clattering behind her and drew a dagger. 

 

She could get to the door–

 

The room was all in red and garish hues then, and her escape was blocked by more shadow. 

 

Urgot had once tried to hand her a bracelet made of fingerbones. Noxian mages had often blocked the sun for days in an attempt to starve out Medarda forces. Beasts from the mountains and witches in the hills. 

 

How naive had she grown?

 

She turned back to Swain and the first thing he said to her, nearly placidly, was, “I saw through my sources that you were seeking an audience. I’m sorry if you were waiting.” 

 

Mel’s voice cracked under the strain of her mind holding the weight of the strange world she'd been ignoring from her childhood, “That’s not possible. Where is Jayce and his wife–”

 

“Possibility is a fickle thing in the era of magic, Miss Medarda.” He was simultaneously elegant and also anachronistic, fantastical, unmodern. “Please, I didn't mean to frighten, sit back down. The dramatics of this meeting were an unfortunate mistake on my part. I forget, this beautiful city has leashed most of its sorcery.”

 

Mel knew the answer, surely the poor bride was gone and dead, but she asked, “Where–”

 

“Magister Talis Giopora, or is it Giopora Talis? Hm, nevermind. Mister Talis is in the Undercity at this moment on a covert mission. His wife fled to her relatives two weeks ago. She paid off your mother to let her through the blockade.” 

 

“Jayce would realize his wife was missing.” She wasn’t entirely sure of her own declaration, though. 

 

The man smiled at her and looked to the side then, as if ashamed. “You’re so merciful to him.” 

 

She felt her face heat. “Are you a mage?”

 

He was distracting her, “I wanted to be one when I was a small boy. I was quite the dreamer.” His fluctuations between casual and strange were tactics she’d once utilized herself. “Dreamers are hard to come by even now; I am happy to meet one before me and to meet one who has encouraged a city of dreamers in defiance of your family legacy.”

 

He stood to pick up the seat she’d fallen back against and gestured for her to return to the table. 

 

Across from her, he looked a tad weary, clearly erudite, arrogant, but not in the traditional manner. Petulance could be arrogance, but they were not always linked.

 

This was a quiet and distant sentiment. 

 

He smiled again, “I will first apologize. I should have come to you sooner, but I believed I could prevent the disaster as a single entity; that was my own hubris and many have suffered in your city as a result. I will be even more frank, Miss Medarda, I have seen the path that will lead to your greatest happiness and it is one where you give me Piltover’s Undercity. You and Mister Talis are reunited in that world, your mother is no longer a problem for you, and Piltover is under your central authority. I come to you now, on the heels of an explosion that will fundamentally altar your city, asking to be your ally.”

 

She had to count to three as she approached the seat he’d put forward for her. “I don’t use soothsaying in a political negotiation.” 

 

She remembered what home was like. Mel remembered the gardens that could float and the glass mirrors that allowed you to communicate across great distances. 

 

And she remembered the bodies, mutated by magic and weaponry and war. 

 

“But you make your money from the Arcane? And you run your city from it. You’re strange, Miss Medarda.” 

 

It had been too long since she’d been home. Home had been strange and alien and brutal and Piltover had always been warm and lush and full of promise. 

 

Her exile had been her freedom and her safety. 

 

“Miss Medarda,” his voice was still casual, “your friend, Powder, wasn’t wrong. I was going to initially lead another assault on Piltover through the Hexgates. That was until I was told of your lovely paramore and his lovesickness over his dear friend.”

 

How much does he know? How many names, how many faces and places?

 

“I would say you’re trying to scare me, as my mother did with Jayce. You're here to tell me of some terrible disaster?” 

 

“I am frightening enough in appearance. I don’t need to lie to articulate it. The disaster is preventable and I am trying to prevent it.” 

 

She looked at the door again. It was still blocked. “You’re keen,” she wished she had something to casually sip, something to bring modernity to the fray, “to have my aid, but it has been a year, why now?”

 

“I thought I could still make the narrative play entirely in my favor. I was wrong. I see one last future, and it is with you.”

 

She decided to take a new approach at that. It was the equivalent of having her skin peel off, to have to stoop so low as to utilize, “My mother–” 

 

“Thinks that her presence in the harbor is enough to stave my hand from harming you. She was always so careless with you and your brother…even when you were little ones.” 

 

“Was it you?” Kino’s death had reached her in a letter two weeks after the explosion in the Undercity. 

 

She still believed he would kill her. 

 

“Your brother was a good man and I will not take the entirety of the blame for his death.” 

 

“You admit to partaking in the events that lead to it, then?”

 

“No,” Swain ran his strange augmented arm across the table, “only that we were friends and when he came to me for advice, I gave a lackluster response that I now regret.”

 

It had only been a year since they’d had their last atomic explosion. Poor work. Poor existence. Poor eternity. Mel Medarda had missed the new normal, ignoring her until it was too late. 

 

She’d been distracted by Jayce, distracted by the idea that this was all still comparable to table meetings and votes. 

 

“How do we prevent the explosion? Tell me that and I will work with you to have the Undercity in your command.”

 

Poor negotiations. Desperation. But we have to save them. With no one to save her, Mel Medarda straightened her back and readied for his answer. 

 

“We cannot,” he said and looked to the window. “It's our actions after the explosion that will prevent a disaster.” 

Notes:

A thousand and one apologies cannot make up for the wait time on this. Instead, I hope a little over fourteen-thousand words will suffice.

This story is not dead! I promise! I was simply super distracted with the world around me in combination with the fact that I also became engrossed in another fandom.

But I have been doing some Ekko and Jinx work on the side and in secret...I am going to be in a zine, specifically, "Dancing With You: Ekko/Jinx Zine". Pre-orders should be up around July 13th-August 10th. I have written a very fun, small fanfic in the main universe. The art is phenomenal. All proceeds go to charity.

Otherwise, I hope the next update will not take as long.

Notes:

Hey, it has been awhile. I am armed with nothing but an outline, a playlist, and an over-eagerness to have season two arrive as soon as it can.

Let's have some fun!

(Also, in case this was a worry of anyone's, none of what I write is informed by the unfortunate series of leaks that occurred. If any of what I write happens in season two, it will be fortuitous and insane and wholly serendipitous)

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 2 of Orphic Technologies