"Sona! I know you're hiding in there, you can't fool me with your stupid little silent act! Sonaaaa!"

The apartment's flimsy door rattled in its entirety, from blanched door knob to rust-mottled hinges, as an angry little purple fist peppered the weathered imitation wood. The hallway was a decrepit unfurnished plain, with one bare light bulb above dangling from the flat expanse of plaster ceiling. The well-worn long red carpet reeked of must and various creatures microbiological. Cracked concrete walls completed the passageway, done up with a single coat of purple paint so thin, it was practically water color. Thanks to the little fist's efforts, freshly stirred dust now swirled to and fro before the door, lazily coasting about in the pyramid of artificial light above the hot pink hair rollers of Landlady Lulu.

"Sonaaaa! Do you have the damn rent or not?!"

The door's rattling ceased as the landyordle's fist laid off for a moment, but still no one answered. Lulu started to mutter audibly rude things under her breath for the benefit of Sona, who was surely cowering somewhere on the other side of the door like a field mouse cornered by a rattlesnake. That damn good-for-nothing tenant who was always late with her rent. A tenant who, despite being mute, was somehow the subject of numerous noise complaints! One might ask, how the hell does a mute pull that off?! Well, this particular mute pulls it off by practicing her stupid, obsolete, and outdated classical music at the oddest hours of the night, that's how!

Goddamn worthless broke-as-**** support champion clinging to her useless dreams of becoming a world-reknown musician. Should have invested her money wisely like Lulu did way back in the day (the yordle had a whole closet full of pre-nerf Philosopher Stones whose GP5 passives still stacked). Shouldn't have been a "team player" who blew all her money on wards because, at the end of the day when the matches were done and the games were over, the only person looking out for you was you. Should have majored in something useful and practical during her college years in case her musical aspirations didn't pan out. Now the pigtailed liberal arts major is literally living the joke constantly bandied about by the math/science/engineering majors: she flips burgers at McYordle's by day and plays her etwhale, etwhirl, etwhatever-the-hell-her-instrument-is-called-Lulu- don't-give-a-**** on various street corners by night to supplement her ****ty support champ's income.

Lulu used to feel some pity for Sona and her dire financial straits long ago. After all, not all support champions ever had the chance to be viable mids like Release Lulu once was; many poor lasses simply never had the opportunity to accumulate any meaningful amount of capital. Even then, Lulu's well of sympathy had run dry long ago for this particularly frustrating tenant. The mute was not just a dreamer, but the worst kind of dreamer imaginable: the impractical kind. Paid no attention to the reality of bills and taxes and credit ratings going down the drain. Mailbox not checked for days upon weeks, to the point where its contents spilled over into the other tenants' boxes. Never bothered to pick up any tangible skillsets or work experience worth mentioning on a resume. Just spent all her free time strumming that damn horizontal harp of hers while dreaming of the olden days when she played concerts before theater crowds packed tighter than sardines in tin.

"All right, ya moronic has-been of a music maker, this is my final warning! You get me the rent by the end of the week, or I'm kicking you out to the street! Ya hear me?! Pay me by the end of the week or else!"

The yordle tyrant thought she heard something shift on the other side, and she paused for a moment to listen. And her instincts were rewarded by the sounds of timid bare feet pitter-pattering towards the door. The sound of graphite or charcoal scratching on paper. Binder paper, probably, judging from the short ripping sound just now. A note shoved under the door and against Landlady Lulu's faded purple bunny slipper.

Sona's reply was only two letters long, flowery characters drawn in a tentative scrawl by a meek hand. Lulu read the note out loud because being loud is the yordle's favorite pasttime.

"Oh. Kay. Ok." The landlady snorts. " Ok?! That's all yer gonna write?! Rammus got your tongue or something?!"

No answer from the other side of the door. No more movement. No more notes, because Sona was destitute and couldn't afford to waste any more paper communicating with her landlady.

"Fine! I'm holding ya to yer word!" Lulu snatched up the note and jammed it into the hip pocket of her purple frayed bathrobe. Stomping off bow-legged like a man who had just sharted, she yelled her last warning over her shoulder. "Rent by the end of the week, Sona! End of the week!"

Now that the rampaging yordle was finally gone, for the next ten minutes, the door to Sona's apartment stood undisturbed as the dust sunk and settled into the carpet. As humming electricity coursed through filament high above...

Then finally, the muted click of a door knob turning, and the door slowly drifted open a crack. Silently, thank the heavens, due to the well-oiled hinges. A fearful face of pale fair skin, framed by pale blue pigtails, poked out with a furtive glance, large liquid eyes swiveling maniacally in search of madly charging yordle with an eviction notice bunched inside her little hands.

Not a soul to be seen. The coast was clear, for now.

So out tiptoed Sona, dressed and ready to go to work at McYordle's. A silly paper hat sat on top of her head, striped yellow, white, and red with a giant scarlet letter of "M" printed on the front. Torso utterly lost inside a shapeless and oversized white buttoned long-sleeved shirt. A giant ragged duffel bag floated beside her. Her beloved etwhal, waiting patiently for her to get a move on. She never left home without it.

The awkwardness of her clothing turned into flat out ridiculousness from the waist down, for she wore a long white pleated skirt that had no business inside the "kitchen" of a fast food "restaurant". The skirt was a limp thing as ugly as sin, nowhere near the flowing silken dresses she once wore. But she wore it nonetheless whenever she worked, because it hid her feet. It hid her shame, her humiliation. It hid the agonizingly painful and burning truth that she, being a support champ, could only afford one boot. And only a tier one boot, at that. Not even a tier two.

This was the badge of shame borne by all support champions. Even Nami, who had no feet with which to wear her boot of speed, could not escape the single-boot stigma of a support champ. When she had first joined the League, she had been forced to duo with the most vicious and mean-spirited of the bottom lane bullies, the one and only Miss Sarah Fortune. And sure enough, Sarah immediately showed who was boss by forcing the poor fish girl to wear her one boot on top of her head. Sarah claimed that this was simply a routine hazing ritual for all new champions. That they were laughing with her, not at her. The endless snickering and finger-pointing from Nami's teammates indicated otherwise, however, and Nami wearing her boot on her head became an enforced tradition from that day onwards, regardless of whichever ADC she was paired with.

A common running joke/observation among ADCs was that all support champs walk with a limp due to their uneven footwear. And as graceful as Sona was, even she moved with the slightest of hitches as she inched out her doorway. At least her bare foot aided in her ultimate goal of stealth, skin padding silently on carpet as she quietly shut the door behind her and proceeded to make her way down the steps to the first floor. The etwhal faithfully followed close behind, moving as one with its mistress.

Sona's misty grey eyes peered out from beneath droopy blue bangs, glued to the shut door of the landlady's apartment. The only door of solid construction in the entire apartment building. An oaken monolith, looming menacingly by the foot of the stairwell which Sona had no choice but to traverse. Barely contained rage seethed from the seal between the door and the threshold, the righteous rage of an uncompensated rental property owner.

Four steps away from the first floor now. Her balled up fists trembled by her sides as Sona shivered in hopeful anticipation. Almost there. Just four more steps. Once on the ground, she could make a break for the front door and -

Lulu's apartment door shot open like a triggered booby trap, and the landlady thrust out her head to belch fiery hot air from behind her freshly-applied mud mask:

"And the next time your Pentakill buddies come over?! Tell them no playing Rock Band after midnight! Ya got it, ya worthless bum?!"

Sona let out a silent eep and hid behind her stalwart etwhal from the blindingly white glare of Lulu's bloodshot eyes, glowing china saucers caked within a frosting mask of mud. Sona's grey eyes were the only facial features visible from behind the hovering duffel bag, as huge as Lulu's burning white, anxiously peeking over the top of her instrument to check on Lulu's hands...

No eviction notice in sight, which meant Lulu hadn't changed her mind about the end of the week deadline. Phew! She still had time to amass whatever money she could by any means possible.

Sona took heart from Lulu's little gesture of faith, and she stood up just high enough so that her lips were visible also now. And she silently mouthed to Lulu, who had gotten quite good at reading lips over the past year or so:

"No Rock Band."

Sona's apologetic and earnest agreement was accompanied by vigorous nodding and bobbing pigtails. Nodding so vigorous and eager to please that even Lulu's heart, as shriveled and stony as it may be, broke down a little from the sad sight of it all. The fire went out from the landlady's eyes as she gruffly waved to the front door.

"Get yer sweet little arse out of here. Ya got work to go to, don't ya?"

Sona nodded enthusiastically as she dared to give her landlady a fleeting smile of gratitude. The smile was so genuinely happy, so gentle and innocent, so out of place here amid the smoggy and toxic environment of this rough and tumble city known as Summoner's Rift...

The pure smile was both calming and rending, and Lulu's stone heart started to bleed from the cracks as the annoyed yordle waved away her grateful tenant. "Get out of ya here! Ya gonna be late!"

The pigtailed girl froze at the reminder, eeped, then was out of the door in a summoner spell flash. Gliding as fast as she could through the front yard, where a little dog house sat with a little wooden sign plunged into the ground next to it that read: "BEWARE OF FAE".

On cue, Lulu's pet Pixy popped out of the dog house and saw Sona off with angry little yips...

Lulu watched Sona recede in the distance, hating how her stone heart felt so heavy from within her bathrobe-clad chest. She didn't know why she cut this damn mute so many damn breaks. Legally, she could have kicked her out long ago for a myriad of reasons, but every time she yanked out the paperwork to boot Sona out, she just couldn't bring herself to finish it. And it wasn't merely because Sona was a fellow support champion, since Lulu had zero remorse about booting out those two sad sacks of useless flesh, Taric and Soraka, earlier this year...

Goddamit, Lulu thought to herself, am I actually rooting for her to make it?! But there's no way that pure and innocent girl can make it here in this rough and tumble town known as Summoner's Rift! A town rife with gangs and mobsters and psychopathic murderers, where anyone could kill anyone at any given moment for a few measly pieces of gold. A town where no one dared to walk anywhere without vision wards lighting the path (those who do not buy wards have been weeded out long ago like the noobs they were). A town with the most toxic environment humanly possible, overrun long ago by industry and fatcat individuals who aim to scale the corporate ladders. A town where the concept of class warfare is very much real, where fighters and carries and concrete junglers all fight tooth and nail with each other for a piece of the pie. A town where wealth inequality is not only acknowledged but accepted as harsh truth despite Riot's best efforts to balance the game played in this here town.

This is no place for a girl with her head stuck in the clouds, a girl who only wants to bring beauty and peace to this world with her music. This is Summoner's Rift, where the two main and festering factions are separated by a long running river, a river which neither side dares to cross despite the three bridges. People die so often here, the obituaries no longer bother to put down the names of the deceased. Those grimy rap songs which wax lyrical about becoming a statistic on the streets, they speak truth easily confirmed by anyone who uses Lolking.

This is is no place for the uplifting music and spirituality which Sona lives for. This is a hard place steeped in a hard reality where only the cream matters. Cash rules everything about them, creeps, get the towers, global global gold y'all.

And yet, a small part of Lulu wanted to believe. She wanted to believe that somehow, someway, somewhere inside that meek mute girl who hobbled around in one boot all over town just so that she could place vision wards on the front lawns of her ADCs' homes, if for no other reason than sheer chronic habit...

She wanted to believe that Sona could carry.

But someone else would have to help Sona get dat carry gold. And it wasn't going to be Lulu. Lulu was also a support champion, after all, and she herself barely had enough to get by. And she was sick and tired of being an ADC's b1tch.

Wait, wait, wait, did she really think Sona could carry?! Damn. Maybe everyone else is right. Maybe she is getting a little crazy in the head. Whatevs.

Lulu spun around on her lone purple bunny slipper and went back into her apartment to watch Oprah.

END OF CHAPTER

Been a while since I write something Lol-related. Been a while since I wrote one of my derpy little doodles. So I killed two birds with one stone and wrote this last night, lol. I chose to write about Sona mostly because, while I was at PAX this year, I watched a Rioter draw Arcade Sona, and I tend to draw my writing inspiration from artwork or music... the smile was different, though, not the manic smile of gaiety which we normally associate with Arcade Sona. It was a lot more demure and reserved... so I spent a lot of my time staring at this different take on Arcade Sona and thinking, "Hmm, I wonder if I could write a story about that smile..." I didn't know it was Arcade Sona at first, though, I thought it was some new skin like Ballroom Sona or Evening Attire Sona (my infinite powers of observation failed to notice her giant starred earrings)...

Neway, can Sona carry?! How will she ever get dat carry gold?! Heck, will she even be able to pay rent?! Guess we'll just have to find out.

Bonus points go to anyone who caught my Wu Tang reference.