"Shock and awe. That's the plan. Shock... and awe. Or was it awe and then shock? Wait, right, you can't have the awe without the shock, durr. Shock, and awe."

Vi repeated these words over and over again in her head to try to keep herself calm, as she casually strode towards a fully manned police barricade, complete with riot shields, officers with rifles, even machine guns mounted on the barriers they had erected. She had to give them credit, they had gotten the barricade up fast.

"Too damn fast," she thought. "And where the fuck did they get machine guns? Since when do cops have fucking machine guns?"

She decided to pretend instead that she was just on a simple stroll through the city square, on her way to a lunch date with Caitlyn. It was two years ago, and everything was the way it had been before. She could vaguely see that the officers were pointing at her and shouting things, but she blocked them out.

"Just a nice walk... man, it sure is pretty today."

The sun was high in the sky, providing just the right amount of warmth. A few large clouds drifted lazily overhead, and birds flew through the air, heading to do whatever it is birds do on a nice day. Vi wasn't exactly schooled in avian behavior. The square was bathed in sunlight, and if it wasn't for the rubble strewn everywhere from Jinx's destruction of the statue in its center, the scene would have been perfect.

"YOU THERE! STOP WHERE YOU ARE IMMEDIATELY, OR WE WILL STOP YOU BY FORCE!"

"Oh, so they have loudspeakers now. Perfect. You know, this is just like a standoff from one of those old western movies Cupcake likes so much. Except I don't have a gun. And they have like, a hundred."

Vi kept walking forward, never changing direction, never wavering, never faltering in the slightest. For some strange reason she almost felt like a train, albeit one without brakes. It couldn't stop, slow down, or change course no matter how much the conductor wanted it to. Even if she didn't put stock in the concept, she felt as if this were her destiny, something she had been driven to, and she had already crossed the point of no return. There was no stopping what was about to happen. The comparison of herself to a train brought a song to her head, and she couldn't resist humming the tune.

"Here comes the soul-collecting train of murder coming..."

On an normal day, Vi felt like a badass an average for three or four times. Whether it was striking a badass pose, or punching someone in a badass way, or even just putting her sunglasses on and driving off on her badass motorcycle, Vi was no stranger to badassery. But right now, she felt especially awesome. Who else could just casually walk towards a dozen medium machine guns pointed right at them? She was literally staring death in the face, and telling it to fuck off.

"Ticket is your life, ended by a knife, called the murdertrain eternity of pain! There is no escape but death, your life is just a murder train a' coming."

Vi loved deathmetal. It suited her profession, and her unique style of combat. Punching things was metal, right? She felt it just... fit her.

The shouting and increased activity from within the police cordon was starting to make her anxious, even though she was still well over the length of a football field away. The problem was that there was nothing but open ground between the police and her, so they could clearly see her coming. It didn't help that all the other citizens had already fled, and she was one of the only people left in the entire square. She calmed herself by reminding herself of the plan. She had never been very good at coming up with plans, that was more Caitlyn's forte. Whenever something would go wrong on a call, Vi knew she could always fall back on her partners plan. That woman prepared for everything, unexpected or not. This time, the plan wasn't Caitlyn's, but it gave her some comfort that there still was one.

"Go crazy, cause a huge spectacle, something that will get Caitlyn to notice and show up. So, massive explosion you can hear from the other side of the city."

She glanced at the smoking rubble in the center of square.

"Check. Two, find a way to survive long enough for Caitlyn to get here."

She felt Ter'Kul's dark presence somewhere in the deepest corners of her mind, and it made her shudder.

"Check. Three, talk to Caitlyn..." For some reason that seemed like the hardest part. "Well, I'll figure that out when I get there. That is, if Caitlyn shows up in the first place... No. She'll be here."

Vi steeled herself further as she noticed the automatic weapons on the barricades being trained on her.

"She has to be."

Corporal Bynes looked out over the empty expanse of concrete that was Progressus Square, with confusion in his eyes. The other officers around him were pointing at something in the distance. He squinted as he made out the figure of a woman, apparently unarmed, calmly walking towards them.

"Yo Matthews, is this bitch for real?" Bynes asked his friend, who was standing next to him.

"This is some kind of like, protest or something right?" Corporal Matthews started to chuckle as he saw what everyone was up in arms about. "There's no way she's serious. She doesn't even have a weapon? And is her hair fucking pink?"

Bynes shrugged, and turned to his M360B medium machinegun, which was currently mounted on the steel barricade the riot squads had hastily erected around the rubble of the statue, cordoning off the area after the explosion that had destroyed it. He opened the feed tray and racked the bolt back, placed the weapon on safe, loaded a belt of linked rounds into it, racked the bolt forward again, and closed the feed tray. Moving behind the weapon, he adjusted it until the iron sights rested squarely on the approaching figure.

Behind him, he heard Lt. Anders address the approaching figure with the loudspeakers they had set up. "YOU THERE! STOP WHERE YOU ARE IMMEDIATELY, OR WE WILL STOP YOU BY FORCE!"

"Ooh, kill em Lt," Matthews whispered mockingly.

"I hope this bitch tries something," Bynes said with one eye closed as he sighted in. "It's been a long while since I've gotten to shoot someone."

"Right?" said Matthews, as he performed a brass check on his assault rifle, making sure the first round in the magazine was properly seated in the chamber. "I mean, this'll just be target practice, but at least it's not wood. I hope she bleeds. A lot."

Bynes chuckled mirthlessly. Sometimes he wondered if he was an asshole, or if police work had just desensitized him.

Behind him, the Lt. spoke up. "She's gotten close enough. Granado, Mullinix, get out there and take her down. Non-lethal. I don't want extra paperwork."

Granado and Mullinix both smirked and responded with a "Roger sir."

They exited the hastily set-up perimeter and began jogging over towards Vi, who was still a good ways off

Corporal Bynes watched as the two men drew closer to her. He turned to Matthews. "You know it's pretty sad that this is the most exciting thing that's happened in over a month. Unless you count that crazy bloodbath over on Von Stueben street, but that doesn't count. No one saw it happen."

"Welcome to the Piltover PD," Matthews said with a sigh. "Living the life."

Yeah, but at least- wait what the fuck!?" Bynes exclaimed as he looked back towards Granado and Mullinix, only to see their prone figures lying on the cobblestone, and the woman with the pink hair still approaching at the same pace.

"The fuck just happened!? Anyone see what happened?"

An officer near him answered the question. "She just broke their fucking necks with her bare hands! Lt, can we shoot this fucker?"

"Fuck this," Lt Anders agreed. "Open fire! Gun this bitch down!"

The expression on Byne's face was that of a child who had just been informed that they could pick out whatever candy they wanted from a candy store.

He sighted in as quickly as he was able and thumbed the safety off.

"Gotta be the first one to fire..." he thought.

Satisfied his shots wouldn't fly completely off the mark, he pulled the trigger and held it down. The medium machine-gun kicked hard, but he was used to its recoil, and held the sights on the target. He noticed with glee that his gun was indeed, the first to fire. With a gap of only half a second, the other guns around him opened up, nearly deafening him with their combined noise. Officers not manning crew-served weapons fired their assault rifles and shotguns too. The ones with the shotguns knew they probably wouldn't even hit their target, but they would be damned if they were the only ones not sending rounds down-range. Shell casings clinked off of the stone and bounced around on the ground, pouring from the crew-served weapons in a rain of brass.

As Bynes let his finger off the trigger, he saw the pink-haired woman jerking and thrashing as hundreds of rounds entered and exited her body. Bloody mist seemed to sprayed out from her in slow-motion, as her body finally fell backwards and collapsed onto the white cobblestone of the square, lying in a spreading pool of hot crimson.

Vi's blue eyes gazed blankly up at the sky, dead and empty, her face and body ruined by a hundred impact wounds.

Back at the barricade, Bynes smirked and thumbed the safety into the on position.

"Now that's one dead motherfucker," he said.

"Hey, you know what sucks?" Matthews replied. "Now we have to fucking clean these weapons."

Bynes sighed and slumped over onto the barricade in defeat.

"I fucking hate public service..."

He lifted his head slightly and looked back at his friend, confused at the lack of a response. Perplexingly, he saw that Matthews was frozen in shock, as he gazed out towards where the pink-haired woman had fallen.

"What now?" Bynes asked, as he turned to see for himself, noticing other officers looking just as dumbstruck as Matthews.

Before him, was a sight that would haunt him to his grave. And it was fast approaching.

Somehow, the light near Vi seemed to darken, as if her body was radiating some sort of unlight. The sunlight seemed to flow around her, as if not wanting to touch her corpse. The blood pouring from her wounds stopped spreading. Slowly, but with ever-gathering momentum, it reversed its outward flow and began to rush back into Vi's body. Bones cracked and crunched, reforming and snapping back into place. Skin regrew, turning a deathly pale white as entrance and exit wounds sealed themselves with a strange sucking noise. Dead, yet still brilliant azure eyes were swallowed by spreading dark pits of emptiness, soulless black orbs taking their place. Hands ruptured as infinitely sharp talons jutted out of her fingers, flexing as if they had a life of their own. Two curved horns grew out of her forehead, menacing in their appearance.

As the officers looked on in stunned horror, Vi's body started to rise off of the ground, chest first, arms and legs hanging limply in the air. Her feet then touched the ground, and she stood slumped over, arms hanging in front of her, head nearly touching the ground. And still, the transformation was not complete. Ter'Kul had something special in store. The skin on Vi's upper back began to bulge outward, as if something inside was trying to escape its prison of flesh. With a horrible tearing sound, two massive black wings of skeletal bone burst out of Vi's back and flared open, twitching and dripping blood. The creature Vi had become slowly raised its head, and stared straight at its prey. A malevolent smile grew on its face, lips slowly parting to reveal wickedly fanged teeth.

The officers broke out of their stunned state and began scrambling to reload their weapons, pointing and yelling at the monstrosity currently grinning at them.

Ter'Kul was smiling. It had not expected to kill again so soon, but death was always welcome. Things were slightly different this time around, he realized. Being forced to pull this body back from the brink of death so soon after the last time had used a large amount of his strength, and he knew he would not be able to retain his form for long. Soon, he would be forced back into the dark corners of his hosts mind, to rest and gather his power again. He had to eliminate the prey-scum before that happened.

Failure was not an option. This realm would be his. And so, he had to put an end to these humans in the quickest, most efficient way possible. He wouldn't be able to toy with them this time around, but his chosen method of execution didn't bother him much. In some ways, the suffering of the soul was sweeter than the suffering of the body. After all, wounds to the soul never truly healed.

Decision made, he crouched low to the ground, flaring out his wings in preparation for flight. Just as the machineguns opened up again, he leaped into the air, flapping his skeletal wings to achieve maximum thrust. The black wings of bone didn't appear to be capable of flight, but they trapped the air between the bone with a dark, invisible force that was just as effective as skin or leather. The officers struggled to adjust their aim, but he was rising too quickly for them to track him effectively. A few stray rounds struck his skin and bounced off, but he paid them no mind. Gazing down, he judged himself to be directly over the large group of humans.

"Pitiful fools," he spoke with the voice of thousands of tortured souls, more of which would soon be added to his gestalt conciousness. "Death is upon you." His words had an air of finality to them. "Now, witness my power!"

Gathering his hands above his head, he moved them in a circular motion, and a dark sphere of deathly unlight began to grow between them. The shrieks of eternally tortured souls echoed from the sphere, filling the officers below him with an unreasonable sense of hopelessness and despair. Most dropped their weapons and clutched their ears, blood leaking from between their fingers. A few managed to hold onto their rifles, but they were unable to raise them against their tormentor, the urge to look at anything but the evil angel above them overtaking their shattering minds. As he poured more and more souls into the dark sphere, Ter'Kul whispered to the essences of the dead that he had trapped inside, telling them of what horrible agony they would endure if they tried to escape his grasp once the ritual was complete. Satisfied that the sphere was large and powerful enough, he grasped it in one hand, flaring his wings above him, and began to plummet towards the ground, where the officers writhed on the cobblestone in unspeakable pain, as they felt their souls being drawn out of their bodies to feed Ter'Kul's endless hunger.

With a wordless shriek of ancient malice, Ter'Kul slammed the sphere of unlight into the centre of the group, and a massive shockwave of dark energy erupted out from it, scattering the rubble that remained of the statue and ripping the men's souls from their mortal frames, disintegrating their bodies into streaming clouds of ash. The particle storm whipped around Ter'Kul, dust and screaming souls swirling around him, as they were inevitably drawn inwards. His screaming mouth was stretched open impossibly wide as he swallowed soul after soul, a bright light in his throat drawing them in, offering the promise of one final dawn. He had torn a hole in the fabric of life. But this was not the dimension-meld. No, he had yet to regain the power he needed to begin that forbidden process. But soon. Soon, he assured himself. Soon, he assured the souls that were absorbed into his being. Soon all would be null. All would become none. This reality would cease to exist, and the Void would become the true reality, the darkness and absence of life. That day would soon come, the end of all things in this pathetic universe.

But today was not that day. The particle storm abated and the howling winds of entropy slowed, as Ter'Kul drew the final soul into himself, closing his gaping mouth with a snap. His strength was waning. He needed to rest. And he had new souls to entertain...

He allowed the transformation to reverse itself, as he drew back, down into the deepest, darkest corners of Vi's resilient mind. This host was different, he realized. All before her had broken and succumbed to his will at this point, but not this one. This one continued to resist. This was going to be interesting, he concluded.

But for now, the darkness beckoned. It was time to sleep.

The wind whipped Caitlyn's grey cloak around her as she flew through the air, propelling herself from skyscraper to skyscraper with her hex-tech grappling device. The hood she wore was heavy, purposefully made that way so it would not come off while she moved at high speeds.

There had been a large explosion from somewhere in the inner city, and she had been resting in one of her rooftop observation nests when it had woken her from her troubled sleep. Sleep was never an easy thing for Caitlyn, she worked herself too hard and worried about too many things. She had finally found a solution to her mild insomnia in the form of Vi, her girlfriends strong arms wrapped around her making her feel protected and safe, wanted and cared for. The sleep she got while in Vi's arms were the best she could ever recall. But ever since Vi had run from her, ever since she had seen the look of fear in her eyes, sleep was even harder to come by than usual. Those eyes haunted her dreams, her subconscious, even her waking mind.

Even now, soaring through the air at nearly a hundred miles an hour, death only one slow reaction and a split-second away, she couldn't help but think about Vi. Couldn't help but think about her brash, unrefined, yet caring and sweet girlfriend. Her girlfriend who had rejected her and ran from her.

"That's enough! Focus on your goal. The explosion, that's right. I have to investigate that. It might be a lead to Vi's whereabouts. Either way, it's got to be something. Focus."

It had come from Progressus Square, she was sure of that. The acoustics of the blast indicated it had come from a wide-open space, and there was only one of those in the inner city. She knew Piltover like she knew the rifle currently strapped to her back. And she knew that rifle better than she knew the back of her own hand.

Nearing the square, she slowed her momentum and landed on the rooftop of a thirty story building bordering the open space, tucking and rolling to avoid injury. Striding swiftly to the edge of the roof that was closest to the square, she noted with shock that the centerpiece statue had evidently been blown to pieces, judging by the crater where it once stood, and the rubble scattered around it. She could see what appeared to be scrambling figures around the statue, and one lone figure approaching them. She couldn't be sure at this distance however, so she unlimbered her rifle and laid down, assuming a prone position.

Making sure the safety was on, she brought the scope to her eye and focussed on the scene in front of her. And what she saw made her gasp in surprise.

The lone figure was Vi. The figure advancing towards what she now realized was a police barricade, was none other than her partner and the love of her life. Her pink mohawk and choice of attire was unmistakable, even at this distance.

"What do I do?"

She bit her lower lip, asking herself what she should do, what was Vi going to do, what were the officers going to do? The situation looked tense, and for once, Caitlyn wasn't sure of the right course of action.

Should she fire a shot at Vi, get her attention? Should she fire at the officers, to draw their attention away from Vi? Should she just do nothing? Sit there and wait for something to happen? But what if Vi was killed? Those officers had dozens of rifles aimed at her, and it looked like they were preparing to use them. Caitlyn didn't think she could lose Vi again. The mental image of Vi being gunned down in front of her flashed through her mind, and she shuddered. That would be too much for her to bear. Before she could make up her mind however, the officers made up theirs.

As she watched, two officers jogged out of the cordoned off zone and approached Vi.

"Just what are you up to Vi..." she wondered. She had never felt so powerless, helpless to do anything but just sit and watch. The men reached Vi and attempted to subdue her, but they had made a fatal mistake. Apparently one was a much faster runner than the other, and they came at her one at a time. The first man reached for Vi, only to be surprised by the swiftness of her actions, as she twisted his arm around, put him in a headlock, and pulled upward, breaking his neck.

The other officer shouted and sped up, sprinting towards her. He attempted to tackle her, only to be met with a boot to the chest. His inertia took both of them to the ground, but he had the breath knocked out of his lungs, and Vi did not. As Caitlyn looked on with a mix of admiration and concern, Vi rolled over on top of the man as he struggled to rise, placing her hands on his forehead and the back of his head, and broke his neck with a forceful twist. With a single smooth motion, she rolled to her feet and resumed her casual walk towards the police barricade. Caitlyn could see the shock of the officers manning it, as they slowly came to their senses and began racking the slides of rifles and aiming them at her. It all seemed to happen in slow motion.

She screamed a warning to Vi, even though she realized it would be stolen away on the wind before it could reach the ears of her beloved. It couldn't happen like this. It couldn't. She had to do something, anything. She rose swiftly and slung her rifle over her back, preparing to leap off the edge of the roof towards the ground, planning to slow her fall with her grappling device. She took a few steps back, then started running towards the edge of the roof.

And then the first shot rang out. Her steps slowed, and then stopped. Her arms fell to her sides as other shots followed, the air ringing with the unmistakable sound of massed gunfire. She could see Vi jerking as the rounds found their mark.

She was frozen in shock. She couldn't move. Her brain simply refused to process what was in front of her. She dropped to her knees, unable to remain standing. This couldn't be happening. Not again. She couldn't live through this again, losing her. Not again. As she gazed out upon Progressus Square, unwilling to believe her eyes, the gunfire ceased, and the love of her life collapsed in a pool of her own blood, dead.

"I... I can't... I can't do this anymore. Is this world so cruel, to give me back the one I love, only to take her away again, right in front of me? Good things... happen to good people. Right? So why this? Why must I feel this pain again? What have I done to deserve this? Mother? Father? What did I do wrong? What unspeakable evil have I committed, to be forced to watch her die? To be forced to feel my heart shatter and break?"

As she knelt there on the rooftop, blank eyes staring into nothing, questioning her sanity and hurling curses at the heavens, the change began. Caitlyn's dead expression changed to one of hope, then quickly to one horror and disbelief, as she watched a demon take over Vi's body. Everything seemed to happen too fast for her, her mind was having trouble processing everything. It flew into the air, gathering a sphere of tortured souls above its head. She could hear their terrible wails even from across the square, and she was forced to clutch her ears to try and cover them, as the spirits whispered to her of infinite blackness and dimensions of pure terror.

Just when she thought her mind had reached its breaking point, the screaming stopped. And then the creature plunged from the sky, slamming the sphere of emptiness into the ground in the center of the mass of police. A gigantic swirling cloud of ash and raw energy erupted from the center of the blast, and even with the aid of her rifle scope, she could not see into it. She held her breath as she waited to see what would happen next. The particle storm did not last long however, and as it dissipated into thin air, the clouds overhead began to pour down water, as if sensing the pain that reality was in, and attempting to soothe it with the caress of the rain.

She raised her rifle again and sighted in. For some reason, there was only one body on the ground. Where had the rest gone? As Caitlyn zoomed in and focussed on the prone figure, she was shocked into silence for the third time that day. The figure lying face down on the ground was Vi. From this distance, she appeared to be breathing. Caitlyn could barely see the rise and fall of her back. A part of her didn't want to believe it, the rational part that couldn't explain what had just happened. But the other part of her, the part that was filled with love for Vi, forced the rest of her into action.

Vi might try to run from her if she was conscious, but Caitlyn couldn't leave her like that, lying on the ground in the pouring rain. She descended to the ground, deactivating her hex-tech grappling device, and began to run towards Vi as fast as she could. Her legs felt weak, but she wouldn't, couldn't stop. The square hadn't felt this impossibly vast the last time she was here, she was sure of it. Each step seemed to last a lifetime, as she drew ever closer to her unconscious girlfriend.

She was roughly a hundred feet away when she realized that she was crying, tears running down her face and mixing with the rain doing the same.

"Curse you Vi, this is the second time you've left me crying in the rain. Just please, please, please be alive."

The cobblestone expanse seemed to stretch out forever, but all of a sudden she was there, kneeling next to her, close enough to touch her.

Unable to stop the tears from flowing freely down her face, she hesitantly reached out her hand, noting the dozens of bullet holes in the fabric of Vi's clothes. Amazingly though, the skin below the fabric was flawless and unmarked. She moved her hand forward to touch Vi, and part of her was afraid it would pass right through, that Vi was just some kind of phantom. She gasped as her hand met Vi's, she couldn't believe it, Vi was actually real, right here with her. The place where their skin met tingled, and she shuddered as she felt electricity course through her body. But there was one last thing. One thing she had to do, to be sure that Vi was real. She turned Vi over, so that she was laying on her back. Her rising and falling chest wasn't enough. She leaned down, slowly at first, and turned her head, placing her ear over Vi's heart.

Bump-bump.

Caitlyn recoiled in shock and placed her hands over her mouth. Vi was alive.

Sobbing, she clutched Vi and pulled her tight to her, squeezing her as if she was never going to let go again. And that was exactly what she intended

"Vi... Vi..." she whispered in between sobs, her face pressed into Vi's hair. The rain had soaked them both thoroughly at that point, but it didn't matter. Nothing mattered, nothing else but Vi.

"Please don't try to leave again..." she managed to choke out. "Because I'm never going to let go."

Vi's face was peaceful and serene as she rested, as if she knew who held her in their arms.

Caitlyn smiled through the tears as her brain began to catch up to her heart.

"Stay with me."

Ruh-roh, it's been over a week since I uploaded the last chapter. I'm sorry it's taking me so long to write these, because honestly it's just me being lazy. BUT! The next chapter is gonna be pretty much pure fluff. Which I am really excited to write. Thanks for all of you that have stuck around with this story, and hello to those reading it for the first time. I'd say I'm just over the halfway mark with it, still a while to go. And now it can have fluff in it! Please review, whether it be praise or flame, and enjoy the rest of your day!