This chapter will be a clusterfuck because that's what I want to make so there's going to be a lot of clustered-fuckery!
Change log:
-Spookier
-Meme-ier
-ier-ier
I'm so funny. Right? Guys? Totally am.
Joke of the SUDDEN CAPITALISATION CHAPTER: What happens to Ryze when something exciting happens? His pulse Ryzes.
See? Funny guy. Good dude. Swell fella.
Yep.
Chapter 50: Utter Nonsense
A week later (13:20 13th January):
I scratched my chin, deep in consideration, as I stared at the array of things in front of me. The cheery tune played over the speakers embedded in the ceiling and a chill blew past my shins. There was some sort of smell in there. I wasn't entirely sure what it was, but it was something. It was like cold had a smell.
"Hmmmm…" I mumbled while reaching around and scratching my back.
I heard Rex coming towards me before I saw him. The distinctive clacking of his bones on the tiled floor gave him away from a mile. He got within a foot of me then turned and stared at the same stuff as me.
"Oh, that is a tricky one…"
I adjusted my cuffs: "Yeah, you would expect that they would make it easier."
"Well I suppose that one- no, no that's not enough… hmm…"
"Did you get everything else?"
He stared at his basket and nodded.
"Okay, good. You have done well."
"Thanks."
"Oh! Look! This one has two percent less fat!" I exclaimed while grabbing one of the tubs of butter and throwing it in the basket. As that was the final thing on the list, I began making my way down the aisle towards the checkout desk. Rex stayed by my side as I picked out a checkout that I thought would clear first and went there. He set the basket down and we both began unloading it onto the checkout. The woman behind it scanned them one-by-one until we had everything in recyclable bags. Rex carried the bags out as I paid for our items, following him soon after. We went outside and into the terrible cold. I got into my armour and stared back at the store for a few moments while remarking: "It was lucky that, of all things, this place survived."
"Yeah. Oh hey, would you look at that."
I turned around to see what Rex was talking about and couldn't for the life of me make sense of what I saw. It was kinda like a humanoid sheep wearing a wolf mask and a ghostly wolf wearing a sheep mask. For some reason the sheep had a bow.
No idea why.
They were only a few metres away from us, standing on top of a small pile of snow. Considering that we were in the middle of nowhere with the only notable things being the supermarket behind us, the mountain range in the distance and the various cracks in the world. It was slightly bumpy, but other than that we were in a dull area of uniquely Freljordian nothingness. Which made the sheep and wolf even more confusing. Neither of them should have been there.
I was about to say 'hello' when the wolf blurted out: "That's him! The one who killed me!"
The utter disdain in his voice convinced me that I had definitely killed that wolf at some point. Thinking back, I knew exactly which one it was.
"You were the big fucker who destroyed the town, right?"
"There was no fun in that hunt! If you just let me kill the child when it was her time it would have never happened!"
"Why would I let some random wolf kill my sister?"
"I'm not A wolf! I am THE Wolf!"
"Is… is that supposed to be a name I recognise? Because I don't."
It snarled at me and looked like it was prepared to dive towards me at a moment's notice. The sheep-thing put its hand in the way and began speaking in a feminine voice: "We are Kindred. At the end of all life we wait. Accept your fate, and I shall end you quickly. Run, and Wolf will hunt you down."
"So, what you're saying is I'm going to die?"
"By rights, you should be dead already. You have cheated the nature of mortality until now. No longer."
"You know, oddly enough, I've been in a similar situation to this before. When I was eleven I was approached by this big cloud of darkness that took on my shape and told me I had to die there. So, I am making the executive decision to ignore your suggestion of dying. So, want to fight then?"
"No-one has ever stood their ground and fought us."
"This shall be interesting for both of us, then. Now if you'll just stay right there for a second…" I trailed off while pressing a hidden button on one of the armour plates around my wrist. A moment went by with them getting visibly more anxious to begin.
"Here it is!" I declared as a targeting laser landed right on the sheep from above. To my dismay, it jumped out of the way before the asteroid could smash into the ground. Even so, the blast knocked us all back a few metres and sent parts of Rex, and the shopping, flying in all directions. Some of his smaller parts were flung well into the distance, so it would take a while for him to get himself together.
I didn't particularly want to get mauled by the ghost wolf, so I flung myself to my feet as quickly as I could. Immediately I recognised the arrow that was flying through the air towards me, but I managed to dive out of the way. Somehow, and it probably looked really cool, I managed to roll and jump up to my feet in one motion. There was a large black thing blocking the left side of my vision, so I turned and grabbed it. I spun around and flung the wolf by its face towards the sheep. It blocked an incoming arrow on the way and bought me time to draw my axe. The sheep managed to dodge the wolf, so more arrows were headed in my direction at unfortunately high speeds. I ducked and dodged all but one of them, which hit into my shoulder-guard, piercing it and getting lodged half-way through. It dissipated into nothing after a moment but I didn't have nearly enough time to figure out why or how.
After jumping behind the meteorite to dodge another volley, I pulled out an explosive of some sort and hurled it over the rock. I didn't hear it land anywhere, but I did hear a growl followed by the meteor being smashed into many pieces. I was then face-to-face with an angry ghost wolf. Luckily for me, I noticed the flashing red light in its mouth.
"Oh." I smiled while activating the detonator. The blast knocked me to the floor and left an annoying ringing in my ears, while sending the wolf flying backwards. That was helpful, but it had already destroyed my cover, so I was again having to dodge arrows. Seeing as staying on the defensive wasn't doing me any favours, I started running forward towards the sheep. Clearly, it wasn't expecting me to move very quickly, as I managed to grab its neck and choke-slam it. I had a few new holes in my armour, but they weren't anywhere important. Sadly, it was able to roll away before I could bring my axe to bear.
I was quite exposed to the rapidly approaching wolf and the arrows of the sheep, so I grabbed a canister from my belt and crushed it. A shockwave went out, followed by a wave of smoke that left the surrounding few metres chocking in concealing, cloud-like smoke. I knelt down and activated the invisibility component of my armour. In mere seconds the smoke was gone and I could see how close I had been to getting munched-on. The wolf was only a few centimetres above my head, barely avoiding the tall crest. The sheep thing was a few metres away, scanning the area cautiously.
My plan didn't hold up too well when I noticed that the wolf was sniffing around.
"Well, shit." I sighed while putting my axe up defensively. There wasn't even time to hold it up fully before it was taken into the wolf's mouth and flung away, taking me with it.
At least it bit the axe, not my face.
As I hit the ground, I couldn't help but feel like my attempt at stealth was ill-conceived. It shorted-out not long after I stopped moving. "Plan E it is, then." I announced while pulling out a stick of mega-dynamite, putting it under my back and setting fire to the cord. "CYA NERDS!" I shouted as I was propelled at incredible speeds into the sky. The clouds passed by me in an instant and I was in space the next. I kept going at the same mind-boggling speed as Runeterra began shrinking behind me. I could actually see the small red dot of the explosion that I left behind.
While I did enjoy being in space, I didn't feel too great about going any further into the never-ending darkness of space. So, I pulled out another stick and lit the detonator cord.
"Wait, how am I making fire in space?"
A moment later I slammed into the ground. In spite of all logic I was completely unharmed, even though I had made a hole so big you could fit an apartment block in there. I laughed while standing up and staring at the crater: "How the fuck did any of that work?"
As I looked around, I noticed that I had uncovered a cave and that Rex was staring down at me from the top of the crater, high above.
"Hey boss! Why are you down there?"
"I don't know how any of this worked but there's a cave entrance right next to me and it looks like a plot-point so I'm gonna go inside."
"How do you know it's a plot-point?"
"Because there's a sign that says 'Plot Point' here."
"That's pretty swiggety."
"I know right? Anyway, while I'm searching around in here you can go find the stuff for the plot when I get out later in the chapter."
"What if you don't get out?"
"I do not know. That would kind of suck though."
We waved at each other then went our separate ways. It was pretty damn dark down there, so I picked up a conveniently-placed lantern and stared at it intently.
"If this thing were on fire right now I'd appreciate it."
Nothing happened so I rustled it a bit then started staring again.
"I'm honestly amazed that this is not actually working. Of all the things in this fucking chapter that could make sense and it has to be the damn lantern."
I sighed while pulling out a lighter then lit the candle inside the metal and glass casing. The immediate area was slightly illuminated by a dim light that was only just strong enough to show me where there was ground and where there was not. Any and all detail was obscured by the oppressive darkness, leaving me hoping that I had not just wandered into den of an animal. It would be unfortunate, to say the least, if I found myself wandering through the toilet area in my shiny, new armour.
It was really quite an unremarkable cave for a while. I walked through it quite happily and nothing happened until I strolled out the other end into the afternoon sun.
I let out a 'hmph' noise as I turned around and flung the lantern aside. There was a sign at the end of the cave with 'The other sign lied' written on it.
"Is this going to be a Halloween episode or not?"
It is.
"Then why the hell did you miss out on that opportunity for some scary stuff to happen."
Dunno.
"Alright, fuck you then. We're going this way."
And so, I strode in a random direction. I was on the side of a mountain, so there was actually a difference which way I chose for once. Up seemed fun, so I went that way. There was a considerable amount of distance I had to cover if I wanted to reach the top, so I began right away. For a while, it was all pretty simple. All I had to do was test the ground before I took my steps and keep at least one foot or hand on something sturdy at all times. Not the easiest of tasks, considering almost everything was covered in snow, but I managed.
A while into my ascent, the ground shifted to be far more vertical than before. It was too steep for snow to settle in most places, so I could at least see the weak-looking rocks that I was going to be putting my weight on. They didn't inspire confidence.
Despite that, I went ahead and began climbing anyway. I didn't dare to look up or down, as either one would likely induce some level of panic for one reason or another.
As I scaled the side of the mountain, I began to realise that the surface I was climbing was growing more vertical by the second until, eventually, it started getting more horizontal towards me. After a while I was practically climbing along a perfectly horizontal surface, hundreds of metres from the ground below.
I knew, because I looked down for a moment.
"Damn, it looks boring down there."
I noticed as I kept climbing that there was an incredible amount of webs littering the place. They varied in size from barely bigger than my thumb to easily bigger than me. There was also one about the size of a house, which I could only assume was a team effort on the part of multiple small spiders. No way it could be a very big one. Nope. None at all. Nuh-uh. Don't even think about it.
Then a huge spider crawled out of a hole in the rocks next to the big web. It was all black and had hairs in random places on its body. Its eyes were as white as the snow far below us and its exoskeleton jutted out around the joints to form dodgy-looking spikes. The beast's mouth could only be described as a clusterfuck of mandibles and all sorts of other disgusting things. I couldn't see it, but I was sure that the thing's stinger was as unpleasant as everything else.
Now, that wouldn't have been too much of a problem on its own. I had fought huge spiders before and it was very likely I would fight them multiple times again in my life.
The problem was a pair of large, insectoid wings that appeared out of its carapace. They fluttered into action and it dropped off the rocks. Immediately, the beast flew towards me with all of its disgusting limbs poised to do terrible things to me. There wasn't all that much distance between us, so I hurried to pull out my axe and hurl it towards the incoming spider. I couldn't deny my disappointment when it hit into the thing's head and pinged away harmlessly.
All I could say before I got slammed was: "Shit."
The next thing I knew I was wrestling with a spider as we flew through the air. It was doing its very best to either bite me with whatever the hell that thing was that it called a mouth or stab me with the dripping stinger the size of my face. I was spending most of my time dodging as best as I could despite being in the grip of multiple huge legs. I did get a few punches in but they definitely hurt me more than they hurt the beast.
Being no particular fan of dying, I decided that I should no longer be so close to the not-so-itty-bitty spider. I took the risk of grabbing one of the pincer things around its mouth and twisting it as far as it would go. Eventually, it loosened its grip enough that I was capable of putting my feet flat on its belly and pushing myself away and out of its reach.
As I fell through the air I sighed: "At least I'll get to land in snow."
Nope. Pebbles.
"Bloody hell."
I pulled my helmet off just to make sure my face was all intact. As far as I could tell, I wasn't horribly disfigured from the battering I had taken so far that day. Unfortunately, I wasn't in the best place to keep up the good record. As my vision became less blurry and the throbbing pain subsided slightly, I stared around my surroundings. I noticed the ocean with most of my senses at the same time. As I stood up from the thankfully small hole I had made, I realised the un-living hell I had been dropped into. Somehow the beast had managed to fly us all the way to the Shadow Isles and drop me on the shore. Behind me was the vast, eternally decaying forest. Shrouded by the ghostly green fog that flowed through the trees like water. A few mountains poked through the forest in the far distance and I swore I momentarily saw the visage of a broken castle standing above the treeline. No matter where I looked, there was always something moving along the treeline at the side of my vision.
"This place sucks." I concluded before shrugging and deciding I might as well check it out.
Of course, I wasn't about to go in unarmed. I turned around and held my right hand out, as if reaching for something across the ocean. A few seconds went by before I noticed a ship sailing across the horizon in the distance. It was quite pretty for a few seconds before something smashed through it from the opposite side to me. My axe slammed into my open hand as I realised what had destroyed the boat.
"Sorry…" I mumbled before spinning on my feet and walking towards the forest, putting my helmet on while I trudged through the stony beach. I did my best to be as cheerful as I could be despite the chill that blew through my armour even though it was air-sealed. Add to that the unmistakable smell of death and the distant wailing of what was likely dead people…
Let's just say I was not very comfortable.
As I pushed through the fog, cobwebs, and bushes I realised how much I was being watched. Everyone can feel when someone or something is watching them, but this was definitely more. It was like being up on stage in front of an audience of people. I hadn't felt that way since karaoke-night back at base.
On the bright side, I wasn't being attacked yet. I didn't really have any clue how I would deal with the situation if I was assaulted by an unfriendly apparition, but it was definitely going to involve some running. One thing that caught my attention over everything else a tree that I strolled past. After stopping and turning back, my assumptions were proven correct. A decaying corpse was pinned to the tree by a large arrow, right through the chest. It was slightly disgusting to see the flies and maggots very slowly devouring the dead person; however I was so morbidly curious that I took a closer look. It was a woman in tattered clothing who looked to be in her late fifties at the time of being killed. She was shockingly ugly.
Now, what I was not expecting was for her to burst to life and shriek at me while reaching out with her arms. I'm a pretty quick guy, so I didn't get caught in any of that nonsense. Even though she missed like a fucking scrub, the crazy bitch kept screeching at me with her arms out. The arrow prevented her from actually achieving anything, so I smiled smugly and was about to giggle before her incessant screaming morphed into something more like a cry of despair. One of her hands dropped and the other pointed to something behind me. I couldn't even turn around properly before I was smashed to the floor by what felt like a horse. When I pushed myself back up I was greeted by the rather unpleasant sight.
"Fear me, mortal, for you have come to the domain of Hecarim and his Iron Order!"
"Oh, hey Hecarim. Do you happen to know where I can go around here to find something interesting to do?"
"You speak as if you hold no fear of losing your soul!"
"I've lost it, like, twenty times now. It's no biggie."
"I recognise that boast from somewhere… Zoh!"
"Well done, you're the first person to figure that out."
"If that is the case then you must truly want people to still believe you gone from the realm of the living."
"Are you suggesting I am not subtle?"
"Yes. Everywhere you go, calamity occurs. It is a trait we share."
"That… is a fair criticism. So will you be giving me a tour of this… lovely, island or not?"
"As much as I would appreciate the chance to find somewhere around here to get wasted with you like old times, I cannot waste time. We are preparing for the Harrowing later this year."
"That's quite some time away mate."
"It is going to be rather large Harrowing this year, and we have to prepare an entire island nation worth of lazy souls for war."
"Fair enough. Have fun buddy."
"You too but, before I go, a warning: do not believe your lying eyes."
"Consider it headed."
He gave a polite bow then turned to the terrified corpse: "Get out of there, you." He mumbled while wrenching the soul from its body.
I strolled away as he rode off into the fog. In spite of my predicament, I was in high spirits after that chat. Hecarim had been so pleasant when he realised who I was, so maybe I could get some pull with the rest of the isle's inhabitants. Mordekaiser was not likely to be too friendly after our previous encounter, but Karthus and Thresh had always seemed like cool guys. A bit mean, but cool.
Eventually, I came upon a mostly-destroyed village. The stone buildings were crumbled to the point that the most intact structure there was a bell-tower with two walls standing and the others in a pile on the floor. The entire village was built along a single, circular road. The road didn't branch off to anywhere else, leaving the place with an isolated feeling. Just to get in I had to step through the husk of some kind of building. Too much of it had been taken and added to the piles of rubble for me to make out anything about the building.
The centre of the village was a grassy area with a tree in the very middle of it. In most senses, it was a normal destroyed town on a low-technology planet. Nothing was out of the ordinary, except for the person kneeling next to the tree, looking towards it. I could have recognised her from anywhere, even without the tails.
Having lost all sense, I shouted out: "Oi! Ahri!"
As I approached her, she got up but didn't turn. I slowed my pace considerably as my cautious side gained some sway over my actions. Before she had even fully turned I knew that something was terribly wrong there. Her movements were not anything like my vague memories informed me they should have been. Her eyes stared into infinity, seemingly incapable of focusing on something. The massive gash across her chest mimicked the one I had given Sam, taunting my greatest mistake.
In the time it took me to blink, I was completely surrounded. My mother, Megan, Dis. Even people who were long since dead helped trap me, their faces only familiar due to the scars they had left on my memory. All of them had the same distant stare. The same crooked movements. The same terrible wound.
Behind them, the entire town was filled to beyond brimming by thousands more people. Barely any did I recognise, but I knew why they were there.
I offered no resistance when Dis grabbed my right arm and Yasuo took my left. Their grip made my skin burn cold and my arms grow numb. The corners of my vision disappeared into darkness and my knees gave in, dropping me to the ground. My neck grew heavy and fell, taking the head with it.
These weren't real and I knew it. Be they ghosts, hallucinations, zombies. It didn't matter. Each and every one represented one of my failures. Seeing the thousands of them just showed how much I deserved whatever fate was lined up for me.
When I managed to pull my head up, the sheep was staring down at me with the wolf by its side.
"I suppose this means I lose…"
"Don't see it as a loss. See it as the right for all these wrongs."
It stepped back and stroked Ahri's cheek.
"It's a shame really. She never will move on."
Alive.
In an instant, every sense I had became clear. I felt an imperfection in the weave of the under-suit of my armour. The odour of the dead plants crushed under my knees and the unnatural scent of a creature that spent as much time not existing as it did the opposite. I could see every individual fleck of darkness swirling in the mouth of the wolf. I could even hear the chaos unfurling in the distance as Hecarim ran down someone unlucky enough to wash up on the shore.
"Apologies, but there's going to be a delay. I can't stand unfinished business."
One hand grabbed the sheep and slammed it to the ground while the other took the wolf by its face. The hallucinations faded as I threw the beast into a tree. They were both knocked out quite badly, so I had time.
And I had a chance. That was all I could really hope for.
All I really needed.
A few hours later (17:20):
He was mostly back together and, to be honest, I had to give myself props really. Stood in front of me was most of Rex. He didn't really do much considering the lack of a skull, but other than that it was fine. A few missing ribs and the lack of both arms didn't really lessen the fact that my magnets really did the trick. A perfect example of some of the cool as hell technology that I didn't care to learn how to understand but was definitely going to use to find my friends. Then I was going to use it to murder someone in the most terrible way I could.
"See now, this is exciting!" I declared while returning to my current project. After jumping up the step-ladder, I opened the side panel and messed around with the electronics inside. A vial of liquid nitro-glycerine fell out and hit me on the forehead but I didn't really know why it was in there in the first place, so I ignored it and closed the hatch. It didn't quite close right so I slammed it a few times until it bent awkwardly into place. I hopped off the step-ladder and stepped away from the very large rocket. I probably should have removed the ladder, but I didn't.
"Health and safety be damned! Ahahhahaha!"
I took a seat on the snowy ground at the same time as the lamb (as I had learned I should call it) woke up. It took a few moments for it to realise it was strapped to a rocket and, when it did, it didn't look very happy with me.
"You just lost your last chance at a clean death!"
"Oh yay, I'd hate to die of chocking on a crisp when I'm eighty."
"There's nothing you can do to stop us from escaping this and killing you!"
"Actually I very much can and have. I deduced from you getting from the Freljord to the Shadow Isles as fast, if not faster, than I did on a flying spider so you must be using teleportation like every single fucking character on this planet. Anyway, with that all in mind, I invented a magic-inhibitor and shoved it in a rocket. So now you're both going to go on a sightseeing trip around Runeterra at about twelve thousand miles per hour. And don't worry, you'll be in the atmosphere so you won't run out of oxygen and at some point I might even bring you down. Although I lost the button that does that so it won't be for a while…" I pondered off while briefly trying to think where I put it. I didn't immediately remember so I shrugged it off: "I'll sort it later. Bye!"
I got to press a big red button and they got to take a rocket trip into the upper atmosphere so, really, everyone gained something. I gave a half-hearted salute to the rocket as it flew away then went into the door on the side of a mountain. As I stepped down into, what was previously the room of the Summoner in charge of watching over me, I smirked. It was almost exactly the same as my room, save for the bed, so it made sense why he seemed so grumpy.
My smile persisted as I went down a spiral staircase, because I had to add a spiral staircase, into the main hallway of my base. I strolled along the brand new red carpet, going past the hundreds of skeletons at work fixing the base. The walls were now solid, smooth stone and the lava had been replaced by lasers. As I reached the junction I stared right to see how the progress of removing the torture rooms was going. From the looks of it, we had cleaned out ten but I could still see at least twenty more behind those.
"I wonder what it's like to be so interesting in something that you make thirty rooms dedicated to it…"
Suddenly someone crashed into the side of me and, for once, it wasn't Rex. Just another skeleton.
"Boss! We've found a thing linked to that thing you wanted us to find!"
"Uhhhhh… oh! You mean my friends! Did you find them?"
"Uh, no, but we found the place that they store files for the entire area so if they're in the Freljord we'll know."
"That's great! And this will be a golden opportunity for me to test my new armour-getter-inner-process!"
It stared at me blankly.
"It's a cool thing and I'm gonna go do that while you… do a thing. You know. A thing."
I rushed over to one of the nearby doors and barged through it shoulder-first, slamming it into the wall and splintering the wood. It was a pantry-sized room and the only thing in there was a fireman pole into a hole in the floor. After jumping onto it I slid down into a hallway below the main base. Immediately I began making my way along the hallway. Along the way, I walked into the various parts of my armour, them attaching as soon as they contacted me. First the under-suit, then the arms, hands, legs, feet, chest and shoulder-guards consecutively. At the end of the hallway were my helmet and axe, waiting on a small table for me to collect. The moment I picked them up, the chunk of hallway I was in began going up, separating from the rest. It only took a moment for me to reach the top and I took a moment to stare out on the frozen, fragmented landscape before putting my helmet on and tapping on the table, causing it to project a scaled-down hologram of one of the skeletons in the control centre onto the table surface.
"What are the coordinates of the recently discovered base?"
"It is at 'X' two-two-nine and 'Z' minus seven-three. Do you want me to signal everyone to form up or nah?"
"Don't. After yesterday's magnetic fuck-up I'm not going to risk putting too much strain on the new technology until I can find a solution."
"You do realise they'll still be on high-as-shit-alert after we raided that other compound?"
"Of course I know. That's the fun."
I got rid of the hologram as my helmet locked in on the target compound. It was behind a mountain range to the South. Perfect cover.
The rockets in my boots fired up and I slowly rose into the air. I didn't immediately lose balance and crash into the ground, so I set them to full power and boosted towards the target marker on my HUD at a few hundred miles per hour. The world below me shot past and within seconds I was in the air above a vast military complex. I turned down the power to hover mode and stared at the target way below me. There was an area full of shipping containers right next to a set of huge warehouses. An entire town was also contained within the walls of the compound next to a building that made the town look like a child's toy. Beams of blue light pierced the sky around me from various points in the base, suggesting multiple nexuses were operational within.
All things considered, shock-and-awe seemed like the best strategy. To help, I called base.
"Hey is Rex together yet?"
"He's missing a few fingers and two ribs but it looks like he'll be fine."
"Alright, put him on."
"… Hey boss! What happened with those ugly things?"
"It's a long story. Right now, I need you to tell me if the Artillery-Firework is finished assembling ammo yet."
A brief time passed before I heard from him again: "It's at ninety-eight percent. Is that good 'nuff?"
"Easily. Now I need you to enter my current coordinates into the targeting computer then reduce the 'Y' by about forty. Can you do that?"
"Happily. We're gonna delay the sunset with this."
"I can't wait."
A few moments later I saw a brief blast coming from the location of my base before spotting multiple smoke-trails flying through the sky towards the compound below me. It only took seconds for the trails to make their way into the compound itself then stop for a while. That stop ended in three.
Two.
One.
With a brilliant flash of multi-coloured light and annoying noises, the entire main building of the base was covered in firework explosions. At the time when it felt most right, I deactivated my boots and began falling to the building. I reached terminal velocity in a matter of seconds and soon found that the base was become very large, very quickly. Luckily for me, there was a building there to slow my fall. The ceiling didn't do a great job, nor did the third floor but the second floor stopped me completely, though I still nailed the landing despite crashing through so much. When I got up, I realised I'd crashed directly into the champion file section. Three rows of bookcases full of records. 'Friendly', 'Neutral', and 'Hostile'. Didn't take much to work out which one they would have put my friends in.
Thank alphabetical organisation for me having all the files for Ahri, Shen, Akali and Zed in hand after only a minute. And I was only slightly on fire from an angry Summoner. We were in a pretty small room, so I just had to reach out and smack him to solve that problem for a few hours.
Seeing as taking the records would hint at who I am to the wrong kind of people, I went through as much as I could while there with my back against the door, preventing people from coming in that way. Hopefully they would all be too distracted by the fireworks that were still going off outside.
"So, Ahri, what have you been up too…?" I questioned the records while sifting through them. Nothing, apparently. She was not found among the dead in the aftermath of the battle but had yet to show her face since. Some records detailed the possible sightings where people had thought they saw the white tails but most were discounted as citizens attempting to cash-in on the information-bounty.
That wouldn't have been as surprising if the records were not labelled with 'All Regions'. Not only was our intel on what was held in that place wrong, but my expectations for how Ahri would handle the situation were wrong. Instead of becoming the recognisable face of the resistance for people to rally to, she had just disappeared.
After skimming through the records on everyone else I discovered they had all done the same thing except for Zed. He had made himself very visible by ramping up his usual killing spree to multiple people every day. I expected as much. With the military forces of Demacia and Noxus disarmed, no-one was even around to do so much as slow him down.
The door I was leaning on suddenly flung open, shoving me forward and to the ground. When I looked back at who it was, Arckani was standing in the doorway.
"You could have knocked first."
"Oh great, it's you again. I suppose the fireworks were your doing?"
"It was a team effort between me and Rex." I explained while getting up. "So, why are you here?"
"Looking for information on possible allies. What about you?" He questioned, a clear amount of distrust in his weird voice.
"Oh, you know, just checking to see if I'm important enough to warrant a file yet."
"You're not pulling that bullshit on me. I gave you a straight answer so I expect one back."
"Fine. I was searching for someone who I used to know. We were kind of friends but then some stuff happened and now I've no idea where he is."
"Well your first mistake is that you took the files of two female champions but you just insinuated that they were a man."
"Hey, people can have sex-changes. I don't judge."
He stared at me and I could tell that somewhere, under all that fabric, was either a person who was getting tired of my comments or a sentient jelly creature.
"Yeah, I'm just gonna stand aside while you do your allies thing."
I took a seat on a nearby window-sill and kept watch while he checked through the records.
"If you don't mind me asking, are you a sentient jelly under all of that fabric? Cause you're clearly not quite the shape of a normal person."
As he skimmed through the file for Yasuo I was glad to get a glimpse of the lack of a 'Deceased' stamp.
"I'm going to ignore the rudeness and just answer it as if you asked it in a much more civil way. I'm not human. But, imagine the ugliest person you've ever met. Make them tall and turn all of their organs upside down while also duplicating some of those organs and you have my people. We wear a lot of clothing because even we can recognise how ugly we are."
"Sounds gross so I'll take your word for it. Please don't ever feel the need to take off your head-wraps.
"So what about you?" He asked while throwing aside the file for Tahm Kench. He landed on a nearby bench.
"I'll tell you if you go and unbench the Kench."
"What?"
"Go on. Unload the toad. Uninhibit the ribit. Unclog the frog. Unroll the tadpole. Unmute the newt. Defog the polliwog."
"Alright, alright, we get it, Twitch memes. You still haven't even answered my question."
"I don't know what your question is to be honest. You just said 'so what about you' and I must have missed the context."
"The context is, what the hell are you under that armour? Are you just another skeleton or do you follow in the tradition of weird shit hiding behind big armour like Mordekaiser and Zoh Kihn?"
"Uh, who's the second one? Sounds like a dick."
"He is. Before it all happened he was quite famous actually. Although it was always hard to look at him because of all the rumours of what was under that armour."
"What were the rumours?"
"One suggested that he was a stereotypical alien with the big eyes and grey skin, but my favourite was always the one that said he was actually just another suit of armour under the main one then under the second one was another."
"I see why you like that one. What I would give to be just a suit of armour holding a smaller suit, holding a suit even smaller still and so on."
"Actually, now that you mention it, we could see if they've got anything on him."
He skipped over to the end of the bookcases and picked out a huge file with my name on it.
"Oh, apparently he escaped recently from a not-so-permanent detention centre."
He put the records away and took a step back before sighing.
"You distracted me well there. So I'm going to ask again, what the hell are you?"
"I'm the clusterfuck that happens when you mix too many failed self-experimentations."
"That sentence could also be used to describe absolutely anyone from Zaun."
What he just said was particularly clear for a reason I didn't understand for a moment until I realised that the fireworks had stopped. I hopped off the window-sill and approached Arckani: "Hey man, we've just run out of time. We need to leave a minute ago."
"Well we could just run."
"Nope. There's a wall that goes around the entire compound that is at least ten metres tall. Guards are fucking everywhere. If we try to run we'll be murderified and if we try to fight we'll be murderified."
"So we sneak."
"Before I agree, and I am going to agree, I'd like to say that I could easily escape from this place on my own but there's no way in hell I'm going to leave you behind."
"Why? We've been nothing but annoying to each other since we met a week ago. This has been the only thing that's even been close to a civil conversation."
"As far as I'm concerned, as long as we're both gunning for the same people, we're on the same team. So come on, we've got some sneaking to do."
AGH I'M SO TIRED I JUST WANT THIS TO BE FINISHED
BYE FRIENDOS
