Chapter 1

"Deputy. We got a problem."

Crap.

I looked up from a newspaper I wasn't really reading with a frown. "I thought I told you to call me Sheriff when Cupcake isn't around, Lieutenant." I was about to look back down at the paper and go back to pretending to be busy when I noticed the worry on his face.

The grizzled man in the doorway looked at least fifty, with a face covered in signs of his growing age coupled with a life spent in the school of hard knocks. The only thing that concealed the scars and pockmarks on his blockish face was a thick, shaggy white beard that somehow managed to look unruly even when trimmed. He wore a grey suit jacket with a golden 'Piltover P.D.' badge visibly pinned to the vest underneath, and I could see the edge of his black officer's belt from where he leaned into the office door, looking at me with eyes that didn't seem excited to tolerate me. "Just because the Sheriff is away on official police business doesn't mean you get a promotion, Vi," he said, making sure to say my name this time instead of any fancy titles. "Shouldn't be sitting in her office, either, but that's neither here nor there." The tone of his voice made it clear he didn't want to deal with any sort of games right now, which made it harder to resist screwing with him more.

"Well, Phineas," I said, sure to use his first name instead of his last name to make the old ogre irritated, "I still call the shots when she ain't here, so we'll have to work on that."

"Later," he growled with an unexpected edge to his voice. Lieutenant Phineas Calhoun didn't hate me, but he was the type of guy to not tolerate screwing around when things needed to be done. That having been said, he seemed unusually abrupt today. Most days he'd at least let me get a few jabs in before getting down to business. "Like I said, there's trouble."

"S'wrong," I asked as I took my feet off the desk and casually dropped the paper in the vacated spot. "Papers need filing? Someone's rifle jammed? Yordle stuck in a tree?" It had been a slow day, so the thought of doing something both excited and annoyed me. Ripe situation for a little bit of sarcasm. "I think the scrubs can handle that."

Calhoun sighed and stepped into the room, grabbing the paper from the desk. His narrow eyes somehow narrowed even more, which I didn't think was possible. "A couple patrolmen reported a disturbance down in the Academic district. They went to investigate, we heard sounds of conflict, and their line went dead. They haven't checked in since." He shuddered and looked straight at my eyes. "We sent another squad to investigate, and they reported that the first patrol's car looked like it'd been hit by one of those Void things. Like some huge monster had just landed on it."

That got my attention, but it wasn't what sent a chill down the back of my neck. What did that was the realization that Calhoun was afraid of whatever the hell was tearing things up out there. Calhoun was a sour old bastard and would probably keel over in the next year if he didn't watch out, but he wasn't a coward. In fact, he'd been around longer than anyone on the force, including myself and the Sheriff, and he'd seen nastier things working the beat than I could imagine, and he still managed to be the toughest old man I'd ever met. He wasn't exactly full of piss and vinegar, but the old man didn't back down, and he sure as the stars didn't get scared by the boogeyman. That meant whatever was going down out there was bad news. Real bad news.

I rose from my seat, worry overtaking my urge to crack wise. "What else do you have?"

He nodded towards the door to the office, and as he turned to leave I followed him into the main office room. The Piltover P.D. building looks pretty average for the best damn city crime unit in Valoran, and that's because we don't waste the budget on the shiny pens and the special ink so all of our paperwork looks extra pretty. Pay your taxes in Piltover and you can bet that bottom dollar will be going to fund a well-oiled machine. The detective's department (home to the sheriff's office, as well as my dinky little deputy's office that was more like a workshop away from the workshop) looked like an average office building around here, with the only noticeable difference being the wanted posters tacked to the walls and the fact that every pencil-pusher in the room was armed with something and knew how to use it. They all wore suits, some with fancy trims or gear insignia to show their rank, but most looked fairly plainclothes. I don't think I could have stuck out more if I'd tried. Well, tried harder.

My typical ensemble is equal parts kickass and awesome. I'm a couple inches short of six feet, and built like a girl who knows how to handle herself. Most people notice the hair first- it's long on the right side, shaved off on the left side, and falls into long dreads going down to about my shoulder blades- and they tend to notice the "VI" tattoo on my left cheek second. Then the various studs and piercings, and then they take a step back and take in the whole image. If I like it, I'm probably wearing it- I usually rock a long-sleeved leather jacket that cuts off at the midriff, showing off a gray bustier and my armored shoulder pads. The stockings under my shorts tend to be covered in holes where stuff has gotten past the thick armor on my thighs, knees, shins and boots, and there's even a little frill from a tutu sticking out from under the bustier on my right hip. Cause, y'know, I'm just such a friggin' girly girl. Granted, I wasn't wearing the armor at the moment, but it bears mentioning because I had a bad feeling I'd be putting it on in short order. There's the gauntlets, too, but… well, let's not get to that yet. Good things come in good time, you know?

Calhoun led me to a desk where radio equipment was set up, an extension of the dispatcher's equipment elsewhere in the building. It was a good way to get a direct line out to the guys working the beat in case the Sheriff needed info immediately. Given that "needing info immediately" was the situation right now, it was a smart investment. See? That money could have gone to a comfy chair, but it didn't. Have some faith, citizens. Calhoun nodded at the man sitting at the desk, who took off the headphones over his ears. "You got 'em on the line?" Calhoun asked. The officer nodded and handed the headset to Calhoun, who handed it to me.

I heard a soft buzz of static from the other line, but I almost didn't notice it. All that 'marriage of magic and technology' stuff that hextech was known for was awesome for rifles, vehicles and giant gauntlets (be patient guys, we'll get to that amazing detail later), but this comm tech was still brand new, with all kinds of fun kinks to work out. I grabbed the microphone wired to the side of the machine and brought the correct communication protocol to the forefront of my memory, then decided protocol could suck it. "Yo, it's Vi. Are you guys dead?"

"That's a negative, ma'am," a voice on the other end buzzed into my ears. They called me ma'am? Must be new. "I don't know about the others. Unit 23 still hasn't reported in, and we've seen no signs. And their car…"

He trailed off, clearly shaken. "I heard," I responded succinctly. "Do you have any idea what the hell is-"

I got cut off by a loud crashing sound, a mixture of creaking steel and shattering glass, along with the rumble of stone foundations crumbling. A building just went down. Had to be. "Oh… o-oh gods," the cop stammered, "It's coming this way. G-get your gun, man. Watch the entrance."

I gripped the microphone a little tighter. "Talk to me, kid. Did you see it?"

"U-uh, right, yes, ma'am, we did." He paused, mumbling something to his partner under his breath. "It's huge. Bigger than a man. I think I saw it chuck part of a building at somebody."

That… wasn't what I was expecting to hear. "Gimme details. Animal? Machine?"

"It's like… a big freaking bear," he said nervously, "With red and blue fur, and tusks. Freaking TUSKS, ma'am." He began to say more but the words were drowned out by a roar, the kind you didn't hear if you lived somewhere that didn't have 'jungle'in its name. His partner screamed, and the sharp mechanical crack of his hextech pistol cut through the static. Another shot followed after, and another. Loud rumbling thuds began growing louder and increasing in frequency, and I had a bad feeling I knew what was coming.

"Get out of there!" I shouted, noticeably startling the cop sitting at the desk in front of me, but another roar cut me off, this one loud enough to send whining feedback through the machine. With a grunt of pain I yanked the headset off of my ears, and by the time it had fallen to the desk I was already on my feet and moving towards the door on the far side of the room, a small door leading to another office where I made my home for most of the day. "Where were they?" I asked Calhoun. I didn't have to look back, I knew he was following me.

"They got on-scene at Fifth and Woodson," he replied, only a few steps behind. "You need backup?"

I paused, only for a moment, and a smirk crept across my face. "It's okay if you're too scared to fight, Phineas. You're in charge around here 'till I get back." I knew he wasn't looking for an out- if I asked him to help, he wouldn't even hesitate- but this looked to be dangerous business, the kind of stuff a surly old cop might not be able to handle. He was better suited to keeping the place moving and, if things got nasty, he'd be the one to lead the scrubs. We came up to the door to my office, and I wrenched on the door handle in a hurry. As the door clicked open, I looked back at him with a grin. "Unless you're scared of a paper cut, you old geezer."

Calhoun smirked at me, for once showing that he occasionally possessed a sense of humor. "Snarky little brat," he chided as he turned around and headed back down the hall. "Keep your comms on."

"If I need words of inspiration from someone I'll find a coach," I shot back as the door shut behind me. As I turned around, I flicked the lights on, illuminating the small, messy office room with an upturned, damaged desk and an absolute mess of papers everywhere, equal parts conduct reports from Cupcake and incident reports from work that never managed to get filed. Shelves on the walls held small contraptions of varying lethalities and stages of completion, and every drawer probably held mechanics tools, screws, nuts, bolts, scrap metal and other mechanic equipment. If there was a method to the madness, it was a subtle method. The only thing kept in any sort of decent condition was the massive locker at the far side of the room, easily large enough to hold several people. But that's not what was inside the locker. Inside… well, inside were my babies.

I reached back to power on the hextech backpack I wore to work my gauntlets as I walked into the small room, and when I opened the locker the backpack let out a short chirp of activation and shuddered briefly. In response, the two gigantic hexsteel gauntlets on the table at the center of the room whirred to life, the sapphire gems in the backhands of the beasts glowing with a magical fire. A wide grin split my lips as I stuck an arm into each in turn. For a split second after I put my arm inside each gauntlet they felt immovably heavy, but the (coughbrilliantcough) hextech at work quickly compensated for the weight, and before I had to try the gauntlets lifted from the shelf in the locker, feeling as weightless as a second skin. Sure, they may have felt light to me, but these bastards weren't called 'vault breakers' for nothing.

I checked a few gauges and readouts built into the gauntlets to manage their pressure, then grabbed my goggles and the pieces of armor from a nearby shelf and finished suiting up. Once everything was set, I hurried through the precinct down to the garages, where my bike was ready and waiting. As I revved the over-sized grips the bike roared to life, a primal sound that filled mechanics, car fans and badasses everywhere with a fire in their guts (and maybe a little something more). A parking patrol immediately pulled over to give me clear passage as I gunned the engine and sped out of the lot. They weren't new, and you could tell because they knew the rule: Stay out of Vi's way.

You may not have guessed it, but I'm not your average officer of the law. I know, big shocker. I don't wear a uniform, I don't carry a badge (most of the time), and I don't tend to arrest people. They call me the Piltover Enforcer, and I earn that title. You break the law, you deal with Piltover's Finest red-and-blues. You commit a murder and get away, you get hunted by the Sheriff. You try to terrorize my people and mess up my city, and you have the balls to go for some of my cops too? That's when you have to deal with me, and trust me, I didn't get the gauntlets and the armor to play goddamn pattycake.

I knew the city well enough that I didn't have to worry about where I was going. I wove the bike through traffic with the kind of expert touch that would terrify anyone who wasn't at least slightly crazy. A loud siren wailed from a speaker on the back of the bike, clearing the road enough to let me by, although from the way I was moving, I almost didn't need it.

The traffic slowly thinned as I got closer to the Academic district, and as I homed in on the intersection that the second squad had reported from, any pedestrian or vehicular traffic all but vanished entirely. I turned off the siren as the road opened out and slowed down just enough to avoid a pothole the size of a car in the middle of the road, cursing as I swerved around it and glancing back at it only a moment to make sure I hadn't been hallucinating. I almost freaking drove right into the next one as a result, and when I saw the road ahead of me had been reduced to slabs of asphalt haphazardly cracked and scattered along the street, I pulled the bike over and parked it on the side of the road.

By the time I made it to Fifth and Woodson, I had a feeling that I was dealing with something reminiscent of some monsters from Zaun that I'd rather forget. The Academic district was a mecca of scientific growth and techmaturgical progress, and the place was modernized to the point that I expected just about everything I saw there to be hovering placidly in midair within the year. It was clean, well-kempt and orderly, and probably the most crimeless part of the city. Normally, it would be a peaceful and downright chipper sort of place, but today it reminded me of those pictures I had seen of the ruins in the Shurima desert. If there was a large, flat side of a wall or building facing the street, it was likely either dented or torn down entirely. The streets were covered in a thin layer of rubble and dust from the destruction, but thankfully there weren't many signs of casualties- these people tended to be the scientists and the philosophers, who already weren't the type to stand up to danger with bravery and derring-do. They must have cleared out the moment something went 'thump' a bit too loud. Made things easier for me… somewhat.

What set me on edge as I moved through the ruined streets wasn't the destruction or the chaos of the scene, though. It was the silence. Since I had parked the car, I hadn't heard any ambient sounds of destruction, screams or terror or even animalistic roars, and it was unnerving as all hell. I followed the path of broken glass and even more broken pavement for a few minutes when I found the squad car of unit 23, the first responders on the scene. It looked like a giant had crumpled it up like a wad of paper and chucked it in the corner. Twisted metal and fractured shards of glass stuck out every which way, to the point where I couldn't even tell if there was anyone inside of the damn thing. The idea that a living, breathing thing had done this kind of damage was something I didn't want to dwell too much on, because odds were it would be turning its attentions on me before too long. Get it together, Vi, you've got giant freaking monsters to fight. Get your head in the game.

I reached down to the small radio on the belt on my hip and hit the button with an oversized metal finger to spark it to life. "It's Vi. I found the 23 car, it's wrecked. No idea where the boys in blue are, or if they're still kicking." Something heavy settled itself in my stomach as I spoke the words, but I waited for the reply from dispatch.

Calhoun's staticky voice came back after a few seconds. "Understood. Any idea where it's headed?"

"None," I replied slowly, scanning the area for any sign of it. "It's like the thing just up and vanished, I-"

I cut myself off as the sound of a high-pitched chitter cut through the silence like a knife. I let go of the button and set the comm device back on my belt before heading in the direction of the sound. While my pace was already hurried, by the time I had crossed the street I found myself breaking into a full run, the anxiety and tension turning to adrenaline as I picked up speed. As I whirled around the corner towards where I had heard the noise, my fists clenched so quickly and tightly that I heard the metal clank roughly against itself in the palms of my gauntlets' hands. My eyes darted around, quickly trying to find whatever made the noise, only to see… nothing.

Confusion set in quickly, and when further nothing reared its ugly head, followed by a heaping helping of nothing, I swore to myself and lowered my hands. And that's when I heard the whistle.

I barely had time to jerk my head to the side before a whirling boomerang flew past me, whacking into the wreckage of a nearby building and getting lost in the clutter. As I looked to its origin I saw what looked like a yordle, if the yordle had a fashion sense dating back a few hundred or thousand years. He was an orange creature, all mousey features and big, dark eyes, with ruffled, messy fur and huge bat-like ears tipped blue. Two small teeth jutted out from his lower jaw, and he wore a small bird's skull on his head like a hat, the only article of clothing he wore aside from a small and ragged brown loincloth around his waist. If there was any such thing as a wild yordle, this little guy would likely fit the description. He chattered at me in high-pitched gibberish, and when I realized this little guy wasn't the hulking titan that caused all of this, apprehension turned into concern.

"Hey there little buddy," I asked slowly and with as much of a gentle tone as a total badass like myself could muster, "Who're you?" Even while I spoke to the little yordle I did what I could to avoid losing sense of my surroundings. Whatever had caused all of this seemed capable of a seriously nasty vanishing act.

The yordle babbled some more, then hopped onto a nearby piece of rubble and stuck its hands out to either side. "Gnar gabba!" he shouted, then repeated the 'gnar' part of it a second time as he hopped off and pointed up at the rubble behind me. I slowly turned my head to look back at the rubble, and felt something light as a feather land on my shoulder and flash by. Reflexes kicked in and one hand clamped down on it, but caught only air- the yordle had already flashed by and landed on the rubble, scrabbling through it until he found a protruding stick of bone- an unburied part of the boomerang from before. I watched him struggle to unearth the thing for a moment with squealing strains of effort before he looked back at me, jabbering away in an unfamiliar tongue and pointing at the boomerang.

My comms crackled to life again, and I heard Calhoun's voice break in. "Vi! Are you there?!"

The sudden voice made me jump a bit, but I grabbed the radio and spoke into it quickly. "Yeah, I'm fine. Nothing here, I don't know where it went." I looked around again, waiting for a colossal monster to land on me out of nowhere, but when it didn't happen I walked over to the rubble and effortlessly yanked the boomerang out of the wreckage. The yordle chittered excitedly and hopped a little bit where it stood until I handed him the boomerang, and when I held out an open gauntlet he gladly hopped into my palm and settled himself down. "I'm coming back to the station, send out a rescue crew with a couple units to look for survivors."

"Affirmative," Calhoun barked, and the comms went silent again. I took a few steps toward my bike where I had left it a few blocks back and looked down at the yordle, still not sure where it came from.

"You've got some explaining to do, little guy," I said as I started walking again. The yordle looked up at me with its huge eyes and tilted its head slightly, then returned its attention to the bone boomerang, gnawing at it like a contented puppy. With a sigh, I turned my attention to returning home and tried not to think too hard about what could have made a gigantic terror-beast just… vanish.

My first guess was Jinx. Probably wrong, but I loved wanting to punch her. Second guess… no suspects. Crap.