Chapter 2.
Vi had to wake up earlier than usual the next morning. She only had a couple of outfits, and she thought her police uniform would look nicest, so that's what she wore. She downed a cup of coffee and reheated the big breakfast she had made for herself the night before so she'd have plenty of strength for her test today. Her gauntlets, which she hadn't really done anything with, were sitting in their stand beside the door and despite her frustration at their poor gripping ability yesterday, she slid them on like normal, happy to have the soft synthetic suede against her arms and the familiar cold control balls pressed against her palms. She flexed and posed in the mirror, fantasizing about her splash portrait being displayed in one of the ten screens around the Summoners' Rift arena. Her communicator device blinked that someone had left her a message. Vi clicked to read it – glowing script across the screen read: "Good luck! 3 – Caitlyn." Vi's stomached twisted uncomfortably. She rolled her eyes at herself and zipped the device into the pocket of her shield pack.
She climbed down the narrow staircase of her old brick apartment building to the parking garage in the basement where her motorcycle, fitted with extra-large handles that synced with her gauntlets. She had fixed the bike herself. The downside to riding a police-issue vehicle was that everyone slowed down around you, but the upside was that you could go as fast as you wanted. Her paperwork stowed safely in a side compartment, Vi put on her helmet (she had learned to do that the hard way last week), brought the vehicle to a rumbling first gear, and rode up the ramp to the open road above.
The drive from Piltover to the Capital, where the Institute of War hosted the League of Legends Games, was long, but faster than you would think. A broad highway through the mountains allowed high-speed travel, and the trip that used to take several days back in the time before the Techmaturgical Revolution was now about two hours. There was talk of underground trains being built between the Capital and the major counties of Valoran, but that was all theory at the moment.
Vi raced up the hill, as fast as she wanted to go, weaving in and of cars in the city until she reached the area of the road where there was never a roadblock. She zipped through the mountains, enjoying the air ripping on her skin and the curvature of the road. The image entered her mind of driving up here with Caitlyn on the back of her bike, clinging to her waist as they whipped through the mountains. The thought made her ears redden a bit. Vi sighed as she thought to herself that in all reality Caitlyn would probably tell her off for reckless driving if she were here.
Vi had completed the paperwork dealing with the disastrous flop of an operation with Jinx the previous day. She didn't know exactly why Caitlyn never let her do it normally. She suspected that Caitlyn was worried she would spell things wrong and use the wrong terms and embarrass the sheriff's office with how uneducated she was, but Vi was meticulous, and she even had Ezreal proofread it for her. Caitlyn was… she was sweet and pretty and she made Vi's heart hurt, but she wasn't always nice. Vi could almost hear her stiff upper-class accent saying, "I didn't become the youngest sheriff of Piltover by being the nicest one in the running!" Of course she had never said that, but Vi could imagine it.
The glimmering white stone walls of the Capital rose into sight across the plain. Vi leaned into her handlebars and gunned it, as fast as she could go. The road was straight and well-maintained here. It was an old city. It had all the modern conveniences that money could buy from Piltover, but in its essence it still looked like the capital of an ancient civilization, all white stone buildings with semicircular arches. The stone was engraved in an old language that Vi, with her exactly zero years of schooling, didn't even know the name of, let alone how to read it.
Signs in the common language pointed her toward the arena. She knew the way, having come here with Caitlyn twice before now. The winding streets were very slow, too narrow for the traffic that congested them, but Vi, checking her watch, saw that she had saved almost twenty minutes with her extra-fast driving. What a day to be a cop, she thought to herself with a smirk. She had no authority here in the Capitol, but she did still have immunity from traffic violations. Actually, she wasn't sure they had any traffic rules here. Most people were still using horse-drawn wagons. The rich people certainly had cars, but the lines painted on the road were fully ignored.
Vi pulled up to the gate below the arena that led to the VIP parking. The wheezy old man who manned the gatehouse looked at her suspiciously.
"This parking garage is strictly for Champions of the League," he said sternly.
She produced her paperwork. He still didn't seem to believe her, but grudgingly opened the gate. The parking garage was swanky. Lights embedded in the unnecessarily high ceiling showed off huge sculpted columns around the place. The garage was mostly empty, but Vi felt important here, parking here by herself. Anxiety fluttered in the pit of her stomach, but she strode confidently to the Champion entrance, a large tunnel that could accommodate even champions like Cho'Gath comfortably but that dwarfed Vi. The attendant's office was set into the wall on the right side.
"Hello again Miss Vi," said the pretty young attendant with glasses and a squeaky voice. Again? Vi hadn't met her before. Her name tag said, 'Libby.' She couldn't have been much older than Vi was. Definitely chosen for her looks. "You are here for—," Libby paused, her cheeks pinkening. Apparently she didn't want to admit she didn't know what was going on today.
"My final combat test and orientation," said Vi, her voice deeper than usual, giving into temptation and leaning subtly toward Libby with her most seductive energies. She couldn't help it. It was just too easy with a shy little newbie like this girl. Libby was so delicate, she made Vi feel like she wasn't a shy little newbie herself, which she kinda was, actually.
"Right," said Libby. "Right through this door on my left, and you'll find Locker Room R at your disposal," she said with a flutter of eyelashes and a lip-biting smile.
"Thanks, sweetie," said Vi, winking at the attendant as she made a move toward the door, yanked on the doorknob, and pulled it clean off.
"Oh…" said Libby fretfully. "You have to push…." She opened the door from the inside for Vi, who trudged sheepishly inside. "I'll have Donald come fix this," Libby said to herself.
Vi rubbed her temples, in all kinds of agony. This was why Caitlyn thought she was a bumbling idiot. Case in point. Locker Room R was built for a human females, big enough that all the women in the league prepped in here, probably. If she could have made it herself there would have been less purple velvet and instead there would be a workbench where she could tune up her gauntlets. Caitlyn would love this room, though. It would be weird changing in here with Caitlyn and all the other league women, wouldn't it? Vi couldn't resist a little smirk to herself.
Vi approached the mirror where there was a paper pinned up for her to see. "Please enter the arena for final combat test no later than 10 AM. It was 9:41. Vi took a sip of water from the sink, made a few faces in the mirror, double checked to make sure she was wearing everything she was supposed to wear, and then followed the labyrinth of a shower space out into the loading dock, a wedge-like space that wrapped around the arena like the underside of huge metal bleachers. You could see light through the gaps in the ceiling. There were a few people here, men in suits.
"Ah, Vi!" said a pompous fat man with an accent like Caitlyn's but more nasal. "Excellent, quite excellent. Meet your panel of Summoners." He gestured to four other men, all suited, all greasy-looking, filthy rich no doubt. Vi forced a smile, ejected her right hand from its gauntlet, and shook their hands. They looked irritable.
"Let's get on with it," said a tall, gray-haired man with a moustache. They ushered Vi into the arena, onto the spawn pad. She heard his voice just off the edge, saying, "All she does is punch things. Who's going to want to play her?" Vi inhaled loudly through her nose to drown him out. The kit crew rushed out onto the field. They swarmed around her, attaching little do-hickies to her person and checking her self-made machinery. A boy in glasses and kit-crew gear placed an earpiece behind both ears, not in them. They were taped down very tightly and felt strange, but Vi was glad she didn't have to have them in her ears. That was the way they used to do it, but they had problems with champions getting disoriented and dizzy.
"Alright, champion," said the boy. "You know the rules. Follow your orders immediately and correctly. Your cooldown time will take effect on the Summoner's end. Feel free to taunt for a polite audience. If you have any technical malfunctions, press the disconnect button," he gestured to a covered button on Vi's knee. "And return immediately to the spawn pad."
"Am I playing a real game?" asked Vi.
"You are playing a 1 v. 1 game," said the boy, sighing heavily as if this were too obvious. "They want to check to make sure they've powered you correctly."
"In 30 seconds, minions spawn," said a mysterious woman's voice over the loudspeakers. Vi shook out her arms and legs one last time, still feeling jittery, and waited for a command. A string of purple minions emerged from the fog, and there was Sejuani, riding her massive boar, towering above Vi. Looking at those sharp tusks, Vi felt a thrill of terror that she might actually have a technical malfunction, and her point shield might stop working, and she might get gored for real.
But her point shield did work, pinging away points whenever she suffered damage, but never letting her feel more than a gentle shove or a temperature change. Just as it had been last week, it was a terrifying yet exhilarating experience to not have to think about what she was doing, just to follow orders like a robot, but at the same time, she had to execute it perfectly. It was like playing an instrument in an orchestra. She couldn't get behind. It was a steady stream of commands: "Forward, forward, forward, forward, turn right, target, E-force, E-force, target, target, back, ward, to the grass, back." The Summoner sounded like a teenage boy, probably the rich kid of one of the sponsors. That's what this game was for, basically: entertaining the rich people of Valoran. Anybody could watch, but it took a lot of money to be able to sponsor a champion and call the shots for him or her or …it.
The Summoners they were using for this match obviously knew what they were doing. Vi had pounded Sejuani into the ground and had the satisfaction of seeing her point shield show zero health bars – "You have slain an enemy," said the loudspeaker woman's voice in her ear – about the same number of times as she herself had seen her own point shield go to zero, had collapsed on the ground, and felt the pleasant warmth of the knock-out guard preventing her from taking any more hits while she walked back to the spawn pad. Vi and Sejuani had each disabled one of each other's turrets by the time the board of Summoners ended the game.
Back behind the launch pad, the Summoners were replaying parts of the match on the big screens and taking notes. "Ah, Vi, wonderful, wonderful," said the pompous man, welcoming her back. "Ah, you are quite a mess, hmm-hmm," he said, eyeing her sweat-drenched figure. "Well. You can shower in a moment. We've made a few adjustments to your points, nothing to worry about. The point is," he gestured with both hands, "you've officially been accepted as the next League champion!" Vi grinned excitedly. "Just sign this form," he said, handing her a clipboard with a rather simple document, unlike all the qualification forms she'd had to fill out before. Vi knew what it said already. She signed her name at the bottom, dotting her 'I' with a little heart because she was feeling cheery.
When Vi ambled back into Locker Room R, she was surprised to find she was not alone. Sejuani was already in the shower – completely naked, and there were no curtains. "Uh, sorry," said Vi, averting her eyes awkwardly and claiming the shower as far away from the other champion as possible.
"You'll get used to it," said Sejuani in her low, formal voice. "When I first joined the league I tried to be the last person to shower so no one would see me, but it's just not worth it."
"I see," said Vi to the wall, trying to focus on washing herself properly when she was feeling this self-conscious.
"Plus I mean, you start to get… better acquainted with the other champions pretty quickly," said Sejuani in a suggestive tone.
"What do you mean by that?" she asked, venturing a glance at Sejuani. Her figure was icy-pale and muscular. She was quite tall.
Sejuani chuckled, looking at Vi carefully. Her mouth pursed in a little half-smile. "You're cute," she said "You like girls, don't you?"
Vi felt her face flush. "That's… nobody's business," she stammered.
"Mmm, whatever," said Sejuani. Vi heard her turn off her shower. "But, you'll probably have more fun here if you just ask for what you want." She left the showers and was gone from the locker room before Vi came out.
