Spending yet another night on duty is definitely not how Vi had planned to spend her increasingly sparse time off. And yet, nights like these seem to have become something of a pattern in the pink haired officer's life, recently. Yeah, sure, being a cop has always meant having to cut her sleep sometimes – operative word being sometimes - not every second or third day. But gears, if Cupcake can manage without complaining, then so can she, even if it means swaying on her legs in the morning. Besides, it's not like they're the only ones.
The woman narrowly avoids crashing after having to suddenly pull to the side when a carriage pulls out from a side street. Rubbing the blurriness away from her eyes, Vi fruitlessly tries to get them focused on the road ahead, making sure to avoid driving too close to an odd carriage. What does she even have the beacon for, if people won't get out of her way? What? Do they expect her to drive her motorbike any better than them at two AM just because she's police? Talk about standards... Freaking Pilties – there isn't even police back in Zaun.
Ah, Zaun. What a place, to have birthed someone as fucked up as the one responsible for half the force's sleepless nights. The person whose head Vi intends to smash in at the first opportunity. Damn the Clans and their wish to make a spectacle of Jinx's execution. Any trouble they'd stir would still be worth it.
Ever since the insane terrorist arrived in Piltover, Vi's work has become exponentially more difficult. Crime that Caitlynn has worked years to wipe out has resurfaced in a matter of days in the mad girl's wake. She wrecked Jayce's lab in one of her bombing sprees, destroying who knows how many priceless prototypes (some of which Vi had the pleasure of testing), and the less said about the treasury fiasco, the better. The Academy has not yet been hit, at least. Although Cait believes it's only a matter of time. Too big a target, she says.
It's impressive really, how just one person can create such mayhem, and how scared one person can make the entire city. Not many people leave their homes at night nowadays. For all the good it does them. Jinx isn't picky about the buildings she levels.
Vi comes to a screeching halt in front of the police tape, and quickly puts her gauntlets on after getting of her bike. The sight before her makes the pinkette's mind go blank for a moment. Somehow, the address she was given didn't click in her mind the whole way here. Looking at the complex in front of her, she feels like an idiot for it now.
Piltover's Fireworks Factory.
Great.
At least she's not feeling sleepy anymore. Weary to the bone, but awake, adrenaline already pushing the last vestiges of sleep away. After a quick look-around, Vi briskly walks over to the officer in charge, giving nods to her colleagues as she goes. They all look like they need a week off. No wonder. They've all been working double shifts to contain the resurfaced crime. None more than Caitlyn, the woman relentlessly working on finding a pattern, making a plan, trap – something (anything), to catch Jinx. The treasury was a spectacular failure, but it was also an eye opener. It's made them all realize they're dealing with someone willing to die in an attempted escape, rather than get caught.
"Derricks, what's the situation?" Vi calls out once she reaches the well-built man of average height and dark hair. Competent, curt, and a total stick in the mud. A man ideal for his position.
"Enforcer Vi," he greets her back. "A blue haired female was spotted in the factory's office building some fifteen minutes ago-" Vi scowls, fifteen minutes is enough time to rig half the damn place with explosives. "-carrying various weapons. We evacuated civilians from the vicinity already. We've got thirty officers on site, including you."
"Entrances?"
"Three, two emergency and one main, right here. We closed them off, and are waiting for Sheriff Liddell. She's on her way with backup, firefighters and paramedics too."
"You know Jinx will just blow her way out, right? No point guarding the doors."
"It's for keeping people out, not in." Derricks answers with annoyance painting on his face, before motioning her to the factory's plans, laid out on his car's mask. "Workers told me the depot is full to the brink, was to be emptied this morning." Vi's eyes widen at the news. How? How does she keep hitting where it hurts? There is something to be said about casting a wide enough net, but for the fireworks to be stacked like this the very night the criminal strikes? "Here, we can get there quickly when the trucks arrive.
"And when is that?"
"Nine through thirteen minutes. Sheriff's orders are to stay put, unless the situation escalates."
So, Twerp will have already been here for at least half an hour when the backup arrives, given she can't have been spotted right away. Half an hour given to an insane pyromaniac in a fireworks factory, a shipment of pyrotechnics nice and ready to blow up just waiting to be found.
Stay put. Psht, right.
"You stay here, I'm going in."
The man's eyes grow stormy. "Sheriff's orders are-"
"To stay put unless the situation escalates. Yeah, yeah, you said it already." The woman shouts over her shoulder, setting the clock on her gauntlet as she jogs to the entrance. "Well, it's gonna escalate either way if we just sit on our asses. Every minute counts. Cupcake knows that, and no offense but- I'm tougher than you guys are."
More than that - she's got a score to settle.
"Special forces," Derricks spits, before moving over to the radio to inform his superiors of this development.
(-)
Vi does not immediately go in the direction of the depot, once she makes her way inside. Choosing instead to follow the trademark neon pink scribbles the terrorist adorned the walls with, leading her deeper into the complex.
Paint.
Of course she'd find time to vandalize the walls in the middle of a break-in. Vi wonders at times, just how serious, if at all, the bluenette takes everything she does. It's infuriating! Being played with like that. As much as it chaffs, at least the employees got the time to get out unharmed, seeing as Jinx seems not to care for killing in itself as much as for wreaking havoc. Casualties are only ever those unfortunate enough to get caught in the crossfire.
Wary, Vi follows the trail as it leads her through reception, then offices and dimly lit hallways, up two floors by the stairs, and again through hallways and offices. Nothing disturbed, nothing destroyed, the only sign of the scrawny terrorist's presence being the pink smears on the walls. She finally comes to a stop before the door marked with a giant X, the director's office. The Enforcer rolls her shoulders, and braces herself for a fight.
The door shatters as she smashes herself through it, immediately taking cover behind her gauntlets. Nothing. No Jinx. Vi drops her guard to inspect her surroundings, scowling as her eyes land upon a crude paining of herself on the glass wall. Of course.
Vi walks closer to the glass, to see the storage yard on the other side of it, with containers strewn about, at a guess, waiting to be loaded,. There's also a light, coming from – the production hall, if she remembers the layout correctly. A lone figure stands in front of the truck entrance. Scantily clad, blue haired, lithe, and appearing to be in an argument with the rocket launcher in her hands.
Jinx turns her head towards the offices, and suddenly jumps up, enthusiastically waving at the officer in a mock greeting while shouting something Vi can't hear, due to the distance and the wall between them. She can't make out the girl's expression from that far, but she's almost certain it's one of maniacal glee – it always is.
The scowl still on her face, she powers up her gauntlets, and charges through the glass just as a rocket passes no more than a meter to her left, blowing up the office behind her. The shock wave sends the woman crashing onto the concrete ground, two floors down. The fall rattles her insides, but breaks no bones. Good enough to move, good enough to go.
The Enforcer pushes herself up, ignoring her protesting muscles. She is instantly forced to bolt sideways as another rocket flies right past her - bringing the wall behind her down. Near miss, way too close, but this time, Vi isn't sent to the ground and manages to follow up by charging towards her opponent, who has in the meanwhile switched her weapon of choice to the pink minigun. Vi activates her blast shield just in the nick of time, the first bullets making impact with it not a second afterwards. While her left hand remains occupied with shielding her body, she drops her right one to charge her gauntlet to close the remaining distance, knowing that when her shield breaks, the bullets will riddle her body. Jinx's hailstorm of bullets are too much for the steel alone.
Finally in range, the pinkette drops her guard and releases the pent up energy of her gauntlet, the force violently throwing her in her nemesis' direction. Still too slow - Jinx already a wells away from the spot in which she just stood, already throwing one of her grenades at Vi, who's stopped at the wall, having punched a hole through it. She reflects the explosive off her gauntlet, and into the hole she's made, shielding herself from the shrapnel when it explodes. Jinx uses this momentary distraction to whip out her energy pistol. This, Vi can't ignore. Bullets are fair game for her babies, but were she to shield herself from the energy blast with her gauntlets, the circuitry would melt, and without the hydraulics, well, moving a hand burdened by twenty kilos of steel is a challenge.
Instead, Vi opts to dive into the building through the hole of her making, a whizzing sound passing just behind her back. She promptly regards her surroundings and curses. Yeah, it's the production hall alright. Full of shelves upon shelves with tons of boxes full of powder and dyes, half made fireworks right beside them. It's a damned miracle it didn't all blow up with that grenade!
"Hey what's up Fats, wanna play hide and seek? I'm a champ!" Vi's eyes tick at the nickname.
"Sure! I'll hide your face up your ass, how about that, twat?!" She shouts back, straining to hold herself back from dashing right out; that's just what the maniac wants. But they can't fight in here either, each of the Loose Cannon's weapons could make this place go up in flames.
"Oh c'mon on, that's just rude! Callin' me names!" Jinx shouts back as she's backing away towards the factory's storage depot, aiming Zap in the general direction of Vi's hideout. The girl has already checked the depot, and is giddy at the prospect of seeing it blow up. All those fireworks just waiting for someone to set them free! But! Priorities must be kept, and if Fathands wants to play, then she can't possibly refuse her. Besides, she loves playing hide and seek! Almost as much as blowing stuff up! It's right there with tag - guns and explosives version, of course. So much fun and all at once!
"Catch me if you can!" the bluenette calls out as she turns around, and dashes off towards the warehouse, right at the moment Vi crashes through the wall a good ten meters away from her entry, only to see the girl disappearing inside the darkness of the depot.
"Cupcake's gonna kill me." She murmurs, shaking off some of the dust coating her body, and following in Jinx's footsteps, hoping to get into the building before the criminal has a chance to take up a good shooting spot. Halfway there, a flash from one of the dark windows draws her attention. It's enough of a warning for her to dash behind one of the containers way before the rocket reaches her.
"Come on, find me!" shouts the maniac when Vi peeks her head out. She waits a few seconds for more rockets or bullets, and rushes straight for the entrance when none come.
The woman grins once she steps into the pitch blackness of the building. If Jinx is planning on the dark to help her, then she just made a serious mistake. Vi pulls her goggles down and hits the night vision switch on its side. A useful little thing she and Jayce built months ago. No revenue, sadly, the miniaturized optics being far too expensive for mass-production, but both she and her friend find the device handy for personal use.
She almost trips over her feet once the vision boots up.
Derricks wasn't kidding, the place is choke-full of fireworks, right up the fifteen meter high ceiling. What in cogs? Aren' there regulations against this sort of thing? If Jinx blows this up, the whole district will be on fire.
Vi looks up to the catwalks from where the maniac must have been shooting, obviously not there any longer, still – she's only had so much time to hide, and can't have ran off too far into the building. With that in mind, the officer stalks towards where the stairs connect the ground to the pathways above, right in the middle of the aisles created by the packs of volatile materials. She checks the time on her gauntlet, a grimace passing her features when she sees only six minutes have passed since she set it.
No backup then.
Cautiously, the woman ventures deeper into the warehouse, finding nothing no matter where she goes. Until she sees something out of the ordinary, a portion of a gun barrel, it seems, sticking out from behind the stacked boxes. A vicious smile graces Vi's lips, and with a twitch of her fingers, she starts charging another strike. Before the gun's owner has a chance to react, she throws herself forward, striking the towering wall of boxes, intent on having them fall on her opponent. She jumps away, watching from safe distance as the packs fall to the ground, knocking some of the neighboring stacks down, as well.
It's only when they all fall, and nary a sound can be heard in the warehouse, that Vi approaches the place where she saw Jinx. Alright, where is that damn- ah, it was her minigun, now sticking out from under the fallen crates. With one move, she lifts up the crate under which the weapon lies, but it's only the weapon that she finds.
She drops the pack, wildly looking around.
"Hey, idiot!" Up. "Zap!"
Every muscle in her body joins Vi in the screams of agony, when the pain of all her nerves simultaneously burning shoots through every inch of the woman's body. Her muscles keep working on their own accord, making the pinkette thrash uncontrollably after she falls to the floor. It goes on for what feels like forever, and when it finally stops, Vi realizes she can barely move a finger, all of her already lacking energy completely spent. It's the same for her goggles, as the green of her vision winked out while she was too busy to notice. With titanic effort, the Enforcer manages to roll from her side onto her back, the ordeal leaving her breath short and ragged – hurting with each breath.
After a moment, she finds herself being stripped of her headgear. Vi blinks a couple of times, not seeing a thing in the dark, only feeling someone sitting herself on her stomach. Until the girl there, raises up her energy pistol, illuminating them both in a dim, blue light.
"Really, Fats, were you even trying? I mean, I knew I'd win – dur, but I didn't expect you'd fail like- that! Work with me here! Takes two to dance, n' all. Hah! You shoulda seen your face when you got hit, though." The girl rambles on in an entirely too cheerful manner as she puts her minigun's strap over her shoulder, before reaching for Vi's legs, followed with a soft click. Is that- are those plastic cuffs? What did she, raid a toy store?
The pinkette's head falls onto the ground with a thump, her neck too exhausted to keep looking up.
"Piss off twerp."
"Manners!" laughs the criminal, before she starts dragging Vi's unresponsive body towards the exit. "What's Hat Lady teaching you, huh? Where is she anyway? Actually, no, don't tell me, don't care. Now, where did I... here it is!" Blood drains from Vi's face at the sight of the remote in the maniac's hands, her fingers twirling around the switch.
"Jinx you dumb- put that thing away before you blow us both up!" Time, she needs to buy Cupcake time. It's all she can do at this point.
"Tpft, yeah, no I don't think so. I wanna show you something, so just shut up and- dammit you really are fat- just shut up and enjoy the show." She finishes as she props the officer against the wall on the outside, making the woman face the production hall, before crouching beside her captive, eyes trained on the far building. For a moment, her ever present grin morphs into something more... gentle, or maybe just less insane, Vi can't be sure as it's only for a moment. It comes back in full force when the bluenette puts her thumb over the remote's switch.
"For fuc-"
They are both blown away in the instant the girl presses the button down.
(-)
Jinx lands on her back with a pained grunt, and just lies there for a moment, dazed - allowing herself to marvel at the fires in the sky until she feels one of them whizzing past her ear. Yup, time to bail! She sits up, her vision swimming and ears ringing. Oh she will be just one big bruise tomorrow, the girl is fairly sure Fishbones has left his imprint on her back in that landing, though she can't feel much pain right now. Wait.
Where's Pinktard?
Ah! Crashed against one of the containers and passed out, must've hit her head or something, going by the blood oozing down her stupid face. Jinx groans at the sight. All her hard work and Fathands won't even see it. Ugh!
She stands up, before assessing her own body. Let's see, cuts, bruises, burns... all's good, she can move. But Vi can't. Well, she can't just let her burn, that would spoil all her fun! She stumbles over to the limp Enforcer, and with some effort manages to throw the woman over her shoulders, nearly falling over right there and then.
Swaying on her legs, she somehow drags them both to the sewer entrance, through which she originally found her way in.
"Umpf, no really, she should cut on doughnuts- hey Fishbones, mind giving me a hand here?"
"You could lose her gauntlets." Idiot.
"Or I could lose you, how'd you like that?" No way she's leaving Vi's best friends here like that. "How would she chase us without them?"
"You know, I think you just don't want to hurt her feelings."
"I'll hurt your feelings if you don't stuff it!" she spits back as she drops the loser down the hole in the ground. She hopes she didn't break anything in that fall. That would be annoying, broken bones take sooo long to heal! The girl turns around, giving the flaming show all around her a wistful look. A pout forms on her face as she thinks of her mistake – wrong remote, she was supposed to blow the warehouse up after that other place. Eh, details. She grins as she pulls out the second device from her pocket, and presses the switch, her eyes lighting up with mirth as the night sky fills up with even more colors. Oh how she'd love to stay and watch. But again, priorities. Fats needs help.
A smile still on her lips, Jinx jumps down after her officer.