Bzzt! Bzzt! Bzzt! Bzzt!
Despite the efforts of the sleek silver electronic alarm clock on the bedside table, nothing stirred within the darkened room...
Bzzt! Bzzt! Bzzt! Bzzt!
Still nothing.
Bzzt! Bzzt! SLAM.
A long white naked arm now stretched from bed to bedside table, ending with a lazy fist that rested loosely upon the silenced alarm clock. From within the depths of lumpy silken sheets, a loud sleepy groan issued forth. The fist lost its integrity, sinking onto the alarm clock as five splayed fingers.
Arm resting on alarm clock and foggy head dearly hoping that maybe today was daylight savings day, Sarah Fortune remained motionless for another couple minutes or so. Pillows so soft, blankets so warm. Their seductive touch implored her to cast aside her worries and obligations and to sleep in bliss...
No, no, had to get up. Things to do. Appointments to keep. Damn it all to heck.
Normally she would have come up with language harsher than "heck", but now that she was raising a child, she was trying to clean up her language. So, with arms stretched out wide, she sat up with a big lackadaisical yawn, her satin pink sleep mask still plastered over her face. Still plagued with the languor of the drowsy, she dropped her arms and lolled her head to the side, smacking her lips a few times as she savored the last few moments of darkness and rest...
With a galvanizing grunt, she finally tossed aside the blankets, swung her legs out of the bed, and lurched facefirst into an awaiting bath robe...
The bathroom door swung open and a poofy-haired Sarah slowly and unsteadily walked in, her gait more reminiscent of a loitering zombie than her usual peppy self. With a flick of the wrist, the soft lighting came on and she called out in a raspy voice, "Fizz. Time to wake up."
Her call was answered by a loud bubbly snore. Sarah sighed as she peered over the edge of her half-filled bathtub to see her blue little bugger half-submerged and still totally asleep. The sight of a child floating face down in water was normally an alarming one, but not in this case due to the amphibian boy's gills. As more bubbly snores continued to float up to the water's surface, she flickered the lights on and off repeatedly, hoping that the lightshow would suffice to awaken him. But alas, he continued to snore. Maybe she walked like a zombie in the mornings, but Fizz slept like the dead.
She grumbled as she squatted down to roll him over onto his back. "Wake up, Fizz, we need to get ready for our WHAT ARE YOU WEARING ON YOUR FACE?"
Fizz had decided to tie his very own "sleep mask" over his eyes last night. Unfortunately for her, his "sleep mask" was not an actual sleep mask; it was one of her favorite brassieres. Each heavy cloth cup was fitted quite nicely over each of his eyes, and he had managed to secure the back's clasp somewhere behind his large ellipsoid head. Apparently Fizz had observed her habit of wearing a sleep mask to bed and decided to do the same thing with whatever he could get his grubby little hands on.
Some said that imitation was the sincerest form of flattery. This was of small consolation to Miss Fortune, however, because she was becoming genuinely concerned about Fizz's propensity for wearing women's underwear. She had caught him the other day running around the house with a bra strapped over his chest (he claimed that he was simply emulating what Taric the Fabulous Gem Knight liked to wear in his spare time). Once she also found him hiding in a closet with a sheer stocking pulled over his head (he claimed that he was playing ninja and that he needed a mask like what Shen wore). He also used some of her garters last week to create a giant slingshot so he could fire himself over the backyard fence and into the neighbors' swimming pool.
It didn't help that today was the day that Social Services would be visiting to officially determine if she was a suitable and capable guardian for a foster child. She was on edge about the visit, well aware that she already had a strike or two against her due to her infamous reputation as a sultry bounty hunter. But now, a horrific vision crossed her mind as her imagination conjured up worst-case scenarios; she could just see Fizz flying out of another garter slingshot and propelling himself through the living room onto the Social Services worker's lap with a bra over his face and panties in each hand. Sarah had been infected by Malzahar's Malefic Visions before, and although the Void and its monstrous progeny were a terrifying prospect indeed, they still paled in comparison to the potential heartbreak of her losing her beloved little blue booger. Granted, he was a pain in the tush, but he was HER pain in the tush and not anybody else's! She'd be darned if someone was going to take him away from her!
First things first. She reached down and undid the bra from around his still-snorting head. Then she bent down to lift up one of his floppy ears and yell into the fleshy flap: "WAKE UP!"
Fizz finally began to stir, and one of his eyes cracked open. "... huh... Mama?..."
Sarah couldn't help but dawwww for a moment at him calling her Mama, and she took a moment to rest her chin and forearms on the bathtub's edge, her green eyes unusually gentle as she watched his little pudgy hands rub his big black eyes open. But then she quickly composed herself. The little bugger was in trouble, and she wasn't going to let him cutsie his way out of this one. She promptly picked the sleepy fish boy up and out of the tub, carried his dripping rotund body to her adjoining bedroom, and set him down on the floor in front of her rich mahogany dresser.
"Good morning, Fizz!" She grabbed him by the cheeks and tugged his elastic face this way and that. "Wake up, sleepy head!"
The fish boy grimaced as he turned his head this way and that, his groggy hands ineffectually batting away at her in slow motion. "I'm awake, I'm awake!"
"Excellent!" She let go of his cheeks and pointed to her dresser. "Now, remember last week when I told you about the drawer you should never open?"
Fizz's grumpy face instantly turned guilty. "Uh oh."
"Hmmm? What do you mean by, uh oh?"
"I, uh..." A sly look passed over his face, and he turned his head to watch her reaction as he slowly and intentionally extended a finger towards the wrong drawer. "You mean... this drawer?"
One look at her taut lips told him that she wasn't in the mood for any games, and he hung his head in penitence as he slowly moved his finger towards the correct drawer. Her undergarments drawer, to be exact. "Or maybe it was this one..."
"Yes, that one, Fizz. Remember what I told you? Big boys don't play with girls clothing. Only girls play with girls clothing." She put her hands on her hips. "You're not a girl, are you?"
Her little barb prompted Fizz to hop up and down in vehement protest, his floppy ears spraying water all over her carpet. "No way, I'm not a girl! I'm a boy!"
She tilted her head skeptically. "Are you sure? I found you wearing girls clothing just now..."
"Yeah, but... that's different! Last night, I thought it would be neat if I wore a mask like you do when you sleep, so I just kinda... uh... took a mask from your drawer..."
"If you want a sleep mask of your own, just ask me for one, and I'll get you one!"
"Yeah but I didn't think about it until last night, and I didn't want to wake you up..."
"Oh Jesus... fine." She sighed as she plopped her rear end down next to him. "I'll let it go this time. But no more going through my special drawer!" Her forefinger sternly poked him on the nose. "If you do it again, young man, no Nutella for a week!"
Fizz's blue face blanched white in absolute petrified horror as he stared cross eyed at her forefinger. "No Nutella?"
"You heard me. No Nutella."
He clapped his hands onto the top of his head in disbelief. Then, scrunching his eyes shut and frantically shaking his head, he began to stammer profusely. "I promise, I promise, I'll never open your special drawer ever again, I promise, I promise, I promise - "
"Ok, you promised! Remember that, Fizz!" Sufficiently satisfied by his groveling, Sarah now grabbed a pink towel and, before he knew it, she was wiping his wet body down furiously. "Now stay still while I dry you off."
He didn't stay still, of course, and he began to cackle and wriggle away from the invasive towel. "Stop it, it tickles, hahahaha, it tickles!"
"HERE COMES THE TICKLE MONSTER!" Sarah cackled right back at him as she spun him round and round inside the towel, rigid fingers needling his armpits and ribs. "This is what you get for opening my drawer, you little booger!"
"Ahhahahahah!" The spastic fish boy fell to the floor in a heap, protecting himself the best he could from the unbearable tickle torture...
A few minutes later, a decidedly less enthusiastic Fizz stood glumly in front of Mama Fortune's body length mirror, tugging on the buttoned collar of a freshly ironed white silk shirt. "Do I hafta wear this, Mama? It feels itchy..."
Sarah ignored his complaining for the most part, used to his moaning and groaning whenever she made him wear clothes. Focusing mostly on the coconut butter skin lotion that she was applying to his ears and face, her eyes scoured his skin for any potential dry spots as she addressed Fizz's caterwauling with the practiced and no-nonsense tone of an elderly Ionian beautician.
"Yes, you have to wear these clothes, Fizz, just like when you go to school. You have to look nice for today's visitor, otherwise they are going to take you away from Mama Fortune. You don't want that now, do you?"
"No." A mournful Fizz sagged in defeat as he stuffed his hands inside the pockets of his khaki slacks. "Fine..."
His ears pricked up at the faraway mechanical sound of the toaster's iron springs being released, and his nose wriggled as the scent of freshly toasted wheat bread wafted in from the kitchen. Formerly still body now wriggling this way and that once again, he shouted,"Toast's done! Oh boy oh boy oh boy can I go eat now?"
"Fine, you can - "
He was off to the races as soon as her lips formed the letter F. The sound of bare feet skidding and sliding on the hardwood floors as he weaved his way through the hallways of her expansive and lavish home, it reminded her that she had yet to get him to wear socks. He simply could not stand the feel of cotton against his webbed toes. Whenever she forced a pair of socks and shoes onto him, she always found him minutes later hiding in an obscure corner of the house and shucking them off with an almost unconscious compulsiveness. Even threats to take away his beloved Nutella could not keep his socks on. It was then that she realized that the footwear thing just wasn't going to happen. An odd feeling for a woman who was so used to getting everything to go her way.
A few minutes later, he was sitting at the kitchen table and industriously spreading copious amounts of Nutella onto his toast with a butter knife. "Nutella is the best! This must be the food of the gods, huh! It's like chocolate butter or something!"
"Mmmm, something like that." Sarah smiled from the kitchen island as she finished tossing together a giant crystal bowl of Caesar's salad. Most people didn't consider salad to fall under the category of breakfast foods, but she didn't give a flying fiddle about their opinions. One didn't get a fabulous body like hers by inhaling bacon and sausage links, and if she wanted to eat salad as part of her complete breakfast, she was going to eat some mother****ing salad.
Juggling two plates and two bowls within her arms, Sarah walked over to join Fizz at the table, setting down his plate of steak and eggs and his bowl of salad in front of him. Fizz's voracious appetite was a godsend when it came to making him eat his vegetables. Not exactly possessing the most discerning of palates in the first place, the fish boy had no problems wolfing down any greens she offered him. This made Sarah the envy of the neighborhood mom clique, actually, since pretty much all the other mothers had to practically beg their kids to eat their veggies. Whenever the moms got together at Sarah's to chat about their kids over tea and biscuits, they were always patting Fizz on the head and gushing about what a nice young gentleman he was... oh, if they only knew. If they only knew...
While the two ate breakfast together, Sarah's highest priority was to make sure that he was prepared and ready for the social services visit. "Now, Fizz, the social services worker will be here soon. Do you remember the three things I wanted you to focus on during the visit?"
Fizz swallowed down a forkful of scrambled eggs, then recited from memory: "Don't eat anything off the ground. Don't pick my nose. Don't mention that I wear girls clothing."
"Good!" Sarah beamed as she stuck a slice of steak into her mouth and started to talk with her mouth full: "And once you sit down on a chair, don't move until the visit is over, okay? No jumping up and down, no hand stands, no somersaults off the chair, nothing of the sort."
"Okay." Fizz was not a stupid kid by any means, having scored very high on the aptitude tests prior to entering school, and he had a reasonable grasp on the gravity of the situation. "What if they want to take me away from you, though? Can we just run away and go live somewhere else?"
"They won't take you away from me," Sarah said with firm lips and voice. "If push comes to shove, I'll break his fingers one by one until he agrees to let you stay with me."
"Oh..." Fizz brightened up. "That sounds like fun! I've never broken someone's fingers before!"
She grinned. "It's not so bad once you get past all the screaming and cursing... you know what, how about I take you on one of my bounty hunts tomorrow? I'm sure you'll want to see what Mama does for her job!"
"Really? Awesome!" Fizz started thrusting his little fists into the air in some sort of awkward shadow boxing routine. "I like to beat up bad guys too! Hyah hyah! This one time, this kraken tried to invade my home city and destroy everything, and I beat it up by going straight for the eyes with my trident!"
"Hahaha, a kraken?" Sarah outright laughed at her little boy's tall tale; there was no way her little booger had defeated one of those mythical monsters of the sea! That was something that only a champion of the League could do... but he sounded so earnest and serious that she decided to humor him anyway. "Tell me more about this kraken! It must have been a very big and scary monster, hmm?"
"Yeah, it was like twice the size of the biggest ship in Bilgewater, and it was ruining all of our seaweed fields! It was really cranky, too, it liked to knock over things for the heck of it! But krakens don't see stuff that well directly behind their heads, so I swum up really high, then dove down from behind him! He never saw it coming until it was too late! I stabbed him in the eye so many times, and he kept trying to grab me, but I'm way too fast to be caught by a silly kraken! He ended up shooting a bunch of ink and running away before I could permanently blind him!"
Big smile still plastered on her face, Sarah had to raise an eyebrow at that last little detail. Wait, how did he know about the vulnerabilities of a kraken? Could it be possible that there was an element of truth to his story? Come to think of it, for all of his troublemaking ways, blatant fibbing was something he never ever did. He was certainly prone to exaggeration and embellishment, but still...
Both of them froze at the sound of a loud knock at the front door. Then Sarah looked at her cell phone's clock in confusion. What the heck! Social Services wasn't supposed to be here for another fifteen minutes! Did the worker come early, perhaps?
"Finish your breakfast," she told Fizz. "I'll get the door."
She jumped up and quickly checked herself in the kitchen's body length mirror (being the vain woman that she was, she had a body length mirror in every room of the house). Today, she was not dressed like Sexy Vamp Miss Fortune. For this visit, she was House Mom Miss Fortune. Clear lip gloss instead of lip stick. Nail polish stripped off her fingers and toes. Loose and comfortable pink sweat pants and hoodie shirt instead of her usual skin tight garb. Went easy on the mascara today. Simple diamond studs in her ears instead of her usual giant golden loops...
She still thought she looked really freaking hot, of course. Just a different kind of hot for today. As she hustled to the front door, she hoped the social services worker would be a man. It was so much easier to manipulate men into doing whatever she wanted...
More knocking at the door. Actually, it was more like pounding than knocking, and she could hear the heavy oaken door reverberate as she neared it, the pounding was so violent. Ruuuude! What kind of Social Services worker knocked on a door like that? Oh boy, she thought to herself. Incoming a-hole...
She shouted as cheerily as she could, "Hold on! Be right there!" Her indoor shoes screeched to a halt as she peered through the door's peep hole to get her first glimpse of the social services worker -
Her eyes bulged in horror and she pulled herself down and away from the peep hole as fast as she could. It was no social services worker! It was her ex-boyfriend Ezreal! What the **** was he doing here! Jesus christ, she didn't have time for this ****, he was going to ruin everything!
Forehead pressed against her door with her eyes closed, she muttered a series of foul-mouthed oaths under her breath that would have made even the most hardened sailor blush. Fervently hoping that he would just give up and go away...
"I know you're there, Sarah! Please, just open the door, I have to talk to you! It is of the utmost importance! Please, Sarah, open the door and hear me out!"
The sound of his nagging voice prompted a fresh round of venomous oaths from her muttering lips as she stood up and undid the locks to her front door with noisy anger. Having dated him for nearly a year, she knew that stubborn tone of voice. He wasn't going to go away. Not until she yelled at him to get off her doorstep, at least.
She threw open the door and thrust her head out like a striking snake as she hissed, "Ezreal, what are you doing here! How many times do I have to tell you, it's over between us - "
She stopped talking for a moment. Even as the name Ezreal left her lips, it rapidly dawned upon her that the man in front of her was not Ezreal. Or at least, he was not the Ezreal she had dated. The Ezreal she had dated was a young and pretty studmuffin with a dazzling carefree smile that never failed to make her heart flutter. This man, however, was far different in both looks and demeanor. For starters, he looked older. Much older. Maybe twenty years older? His body still looked to be a lean mean *** machine, but his once-smooth face now bore several lines of age and a shadow of unkempt blonde and grey stubble. He looked like he was thirty, but she guessed that this man was probably closer to forty. Ezreal was one of those guys who she always thought would age really well, and this guy, whoever he was, certainly fit the bill in that sense.
His youthful bedroom eyes were much harder now, no longer the quixotic eyes of a wayward adventurer with his head in the clouds. The once-fiery blue eyes were now deadened to a disturbing degree; they were the eyes of a man who had suffered more loss and grief than any man should ever have to bear...
Wow, Sarah thought to herself. What the hell happened to him! He was taking their recent break up a lot harder than she had expected... he wasn't here to go psycho on her, was he?
"Sarah, thank god I got to you in time!" Ezreal's face broke out into a huge smile that was undeniably happy and relieved. "I'm so glad to see you're safe!"
"Huh? Safe? Of course I'm safe! Nobody ****s with mother****ing Miss Fortune! Ezreal, what are you talking about?" She was utterly confused now by his words. The joy in his voice and eyes was unmistakably genuine and even worse was the way he gazed at her pretty pouting face. He obviously still cared for her. And that goddamn smile and those amazing eyes were making her weak in the knees again as a year full of memories suddenly came rushing back through her head...
No. NO. She found herself involuntarily drifting towards Runeterra's version of Justin Timberlake, and she stopped herself before she got sucked into the undertow. She had her reasons for breaking up with him and that was that. She wanted financial stability and, now that she had a mouth to feed, she also had to worry about Fizz's welfare and his college tuition. Every night, she promised to herself that, for Fizz's sake, she was not going to settle for anything less than a billionaire. And although Ezreal was well off, he was not a billionaire. End of story.
Sarah forced herself to take a small step back and away from those dangerously addictive eyes of his. So consumed was she by his newly-styled brand of grizzled hotness, she now realized that the rest of him was different too. He was wearing some weird metal suit and an eyepiece that reminded her more of Hextech augmentation than anything else, but the technology seemed far more sleek and advanced than anything she had ever seen...
He placed a concerned hand on her shoulder, which surprised her. She was even more surprised when she found herself not minding the sensation of his hand against her body...
His eyes turned into those of urgency. "Sarah, I am not the Ezreal you know! The Ezreal you know is the default skin Ezreal of present day! I, on the other hand, am Pulsefire Ezreal. I am from the future, and I've come back in time to warn you and your son of the grave danger you're in!"
"You're Pulsefire what? From the future? And Fizz? What about Fizz? Why is he in danger? Is the social services worker going to take him away from me?"
"No, no, the social services visit goes just fine! Don't worry about that stuff!" Pulsefire Ezreal's face darkened. "In the future, Sarah, the world has been overrun by the machines. Viktor has created an unstoppable army of hextech steel whose sole purpose is to rid the world of its organic impurities! Bilgewater, Piltover, Noxus, Ionia, Demacia, you name it! Every nation has fallen, and mankind has been forced to scatter and hide for survival..."
"****ing Viktor," Sarah grumbled. "He's always the reason behind everything, isn't he?"
"Yes, he is... and he even managed to do the unthinkable. He did something which even Riot Games couldn't do." Ezreal's face was dead serious now. "He deleted Teemo."
Sarah's eyes flew open and a surge of unwelcome panic threw up from her stomach. She didn't know why, but she started calling out, "Fizz! Fiiiizzzz! Come here, honey boo boo! Come here where I can see you!"
"Huh?" Fizz skipped out into sight from the kitchen with more Nutella toast in his hands. "What's going on? Is he the Social Services guy?"
Sarah quickly walked over to pick him up in her arms. "Come here, Fizz, I think we might have a little problem..." While Fizz shrugged and continued to stuff his face with toast, she looked back to Ezreal. "I don't get it, what does all this have to do with Fizz?"
Pulsfire Ezreal's face was now doubly relieved to see the fish boy safe in her arms. "Hey, Fizz! Thank god you're safe! I had feared the worst!"
Fizz stared hard at the stranger he had never met before. "Mama Fortune said I'm not supposed to talk to strangers."
Ezreal broke out into a grim chuckle. "It's good advice, Fizz. Listen to your mother." He turned to address both Fizz and Sarah now. "You may find this hard to believe, Sarah, but your boy will grow up to become the leader of the Resistance against Viktor and his terrible army. Twenty years from now, Fizz Fortune will become the last and only hope for mankind as we know it."
Sarah simply stood there, stupefied by the words coming out of Pulsefire Ezreal's mouth. Fizz, on his part, nonchalantly burped, licked his fingers clean of Nutella, then said, "Cool!"
END OF CHAPTER
Notes: Oh my god! Viktor taking over the world? Fizz is the last hope of mankind? What am I even writing here! Stay tuned!