At First Lands Preparatory Academy

"Fancy running into you guys here." Ezreal said with his signature smile.

"Uh...we were in the neighborhood and we like to support our fellow schools." Lux said. No, she thought, you weren't supposed to say both of them. It was we were in the neighborhood OR we support the other schools in our town.

"No we don't." Jinx said.

"No we weren't." Lulu said at the same time. "You asked me to sense their Starlight so you could run into Ez today. Remember, Lux?"

Lux's face went completely red and Exreal grinned.

"Yes, you wanted to strengthen the bridge between our two teams, correct?" Janna said, the stoic expression on her face in complete contrast to Jinx's attempt at hiding her laughter.

"Yes, totally." Lux said quickly, silently thanking Janna for the save.

"Well it's nice to see you guys." Ezreal said. "I don't know if there's too much time for bridge-building today, though. Sa-"

"Aren't you supposed to be working?" Someone said behind Ezreal. Lux looked over his shoulder and saw Miss Fortune-Sarah now, actually-right behind him. "Who's handing out tickets?"

Ezreal paled noticeably for a moment before relaxing and turning around with an easy smirk. "Soraka's covering for me." He said.

Sarah's looked at him with murder in her eyes. She held a clipboard in her hand and she was holding it so tightly it seemed like it was going to break. "Then who's watching the concessions stand?"

"There weren't many people in line, so it's temporarily closed." Ezreal said, his mask of coolness melting away with every second that Sarah stared at him.

Finally, she said, "You expect me to believe that nobody's hungry at all."

"Well, there might've been a few...dozen people waiting. But I just thought a quick break-"

"Get. Back. To. Work. Stay at your designated position until the fair is over and sell as many tickets as possible. This fundraiser has to go well."

"Of course. I'll go over now." Ezreal said. He waved at the other guardians before he left, saying, "Bye, guys."

"Bye!" Lux said, before cursing herself for how overly enthusiastic she seemed about it.

"Bye, blondie." Jinx said.

Poppy, Janna and Lulu waved.

"I gotta go take care of some things." Sarah said. "Enjoy yourselves."

Before she turned away, Lux said, "Wait, is there anything I can do to help out?"

"There's no need."

"Are you sure?"

Sarah turned and scowled when she saw that Ezreal had already stopped on his way to the ticket booth to talk to someone. "If you want to help, you can try to keep him focused on his job."

"Help Ez? Yeah, I can totally do that." Lux said with a smile.

"Have fun with that." Jinx said. "Now, Sarah, what was this I heard about a concessions stand?"

"Miss Fortune." She replied. She pointed to her right. "And it's that way."

"See you later, Luxiepoo." Jinx said. "Wanna go see what kind of snacks they have, Lulu?"

"No thank you." Lulu said. "Me and Janna are going to play a game."

"Spending time with the elderly? Your loss." Jinx said before disappearing into the crowd.

"Poppy, do you wanna go play a game with us?" Lulu asked.

"I'm going to make sure there are no open rifts nearby." Poppy said flatly. "Have fun."

After that, Poppy, Lux, Lulu, Janna and Sarah split up.

At The Ticket Booth

Selling tickets, apparently, was not as easy as Ezreal made it look. He'd asked her if she could watch the ticket booth while he went to take care of something urgent and she'd agreed. But what she didn't realize was exactly how difficult it was to do quickly when you were alone. While it seemed simple, the process of taking each customer's money, gathering their tickets and recording the transaction on the book next to her took her way longer than it did with Ez. Factor in the stress of having a line of twenty people waiting for you that was growing every second and it was getting to be...challenging, to say the least. She was so busy concentrating on her work that she didn't even notice Sarah, who had joined her at the booth and took control of handing out tickets.

"Where is Ezreal?" Sarah asked, handing a customer their tickets and taking their money. "Four."

Lux wrote down the amount of tickets and the price of each one as she said, "He asked me to watch the booth while he-"

"Let me guess. Took care of something 'urgent'?" She handed another customer their tickets, saying, "Ten."

"Yeah, how did you know?"

"Because urgent things always seem to pop up when he has to do some sort of work. Six."

"Oh. Well, it probably is important."

"Sure. All I know is he better get back soon because I don't have time for this. I need you to put this in the safe."

Sarah handed Lux the container they'd been using to store the money they'd earned from the tickets they sold. When Lux reached down to find the safe, she almost jumped. Pulling her hand back quickly, she noticed that her fingers were covered in purple gel that looked just like...

"POPSICLESTICKS!" Lux exclaimed.

"What?" Sarah turned around to look at her and her eyes went straight to Lux's fingers. "Is that...?"

"Yes, this is most definitely Voidgoop." Lux said.

"Voidgoop?"

"Yeah, the stuff that gets left around by-"

"Voidgoop?"

"Yeah, Lulu came up with the name."

"Fine, we'll call it that." Lux couldn't tell if Sarah found it endearing or childish. "Where is it from?"

"Hey, I asked for sixteen tickets." A boy said from the line.

"Booth's closed." Sarah said, shooting a glare over the shoulder that shut the boy up. She turned back to Lux. "How did it get here?"

Lux leaned down to look at the shelf the safe was on. There was Voidgoop all over the bottom. Being close to it made Lux feel a little lightheaded. Even the smell was so...unnatural.

Sarah looked as well and said, "It usually turns from jelly to stone in a couple hours. This must be relatively fresh."

"Look." Lux said, pointing to the left. There was a trail of Voidgoop leading away from the booth.

"There's a Darkling here." Sarah said.

"We have to get everyone out of here before someone gets hurt."

"No, not yet. Look at the trail. Whatever came through the rift must be relatively young. There's no way to get everyone out of here without causing a panic, so let's just find out where it went and deal with it."

"Alright. I'll send a text to the girls and tell them there's a rift somewhere." Lux said, pulling out her phone.

"I'll tell my team too."

After sending the message, Sarah and Lux stood up to follow the trail and find whatever Darkling had escaped from the rift.