Chapter 5

"You've gone the whole day without icing it?" Caitlyn asked with an expression that was fifty percent worry and fifty percent annoyance. Okay, maybe closer to 40-60. Or 30-70. Yeah, that seems more accurate.

"It didn't hurt," I complained as she pushed at my shoulder, forcing me to sit down on the comfortable couch in her study. "I'm a big girl, Cait, I can take a little swelling."

Caitlyn clicked her tongue disapprovingly and pressed a bag of ice to the side of my face. "You're a human being. When you get hurt, you need to recover. Don't try to just shrug it off like a golem. Hold the bag," she said, not quite an order but far from a suggestion. I held onto it with one reluctant hand as she went into another room. Gnar hopped up on the seat next to me and began sniffing at the bag of ice, and it brought a bit of a smile to my face.

Caitlyn returned and immediately shot a glare at the yordle, like he was a bad dog getting hair on the furniture. "Hey!" she said firmly. "Get down from there!" The yordle didn't seem to get the memo, so I picked him up and placed him down on the ground, where he gave me a confused look, chattered some prehistoric yordle version of 'hey what gives', and set himself to work sniffing about the room. Caitlyn sat down again and placed a red first aid kit on the table next to her. As she got a small towel wet with antiseptic she looked from the bruises to the cut on my head and sighed. "That's probably infected," she commented softly, and began to touch the towel to the cut. Stinging pain shot through the side of my head and I grimaced, sucking in a breath from the sudden fire spreading from the cut. Caitlyn smiled and laughed softly. "Big baby," she chided.

Once the cut was disinfected she applied a small bandage, and with a sigh of relief, turned to cleaning the smaller, less-dangerous cuts on my hands. "Now then," she said as she wiped at my knuckles, "Tell me what happened. And I mean the truth, Vi," she added as I started to open my mouth, "Not some story."

I shot her a scowl, something I'd been prepping, and told her everything. The whole time Caitlyn remained quiet, save for the occasional 'mm-hmm' or 'I see', and to my surprise, she didn't show a hint of anger. It was actually… kind of nice. After the initial sting of the antiseptic, my battered knuckles fell into a sort of numb haze, and it felt nicer than I would have guessed. I leaned back in the chair, my eyes on the ceiling as I explained the problem at the merchant's market, the fight and what had happened to get me so roughed up. "…And that's it," I finished after what must have been a good five minutes.

"I see," Caitlyn said, her tone one of absolute calm. "Then I'm afraid I have no choice."

"Huh?" I said as I let my eyes fall down from the ceiling onto Caitlyn, who had just finished cuffing my hands together.

The mood in the room went from zero to fight in a split second.

"What the hell, Cait?!" I shouted, raising my hands like the cuffs were an illusion I was trying to break through scrutiny. I looked past the cuffs at Caitlyn just in time to watch her calmness melt in a sea of bubbling rage. Oh… crap.

"You're telling me…" she said slowly, her calm voice a façade that was quickly crumbling into barely-contained anger, "You beat a couple of men halfway to death's door and left them there, all on the word of one man?" She clenched her fists, and I could see her knuckles turn white. "Do you have any idea how many lines you've crossed? Any idea what they could legally do to you?"

"They were shaking down-" I started, but I found myself quickly interrupted when Caitlyn slapped me across the face, right across my bruises. Pain flared up, harder than I had anticipated, and I grunted as my neck twisted sideways in recoil.

"Words, Vi," she said sternly. "They were just words. Threats are one thing, it's another thing entirely to leave them bleeding on the street. If a merchant is threatened, they talk to the police. If you happen to be a police officer, which is unfortunately the case, you follow the rules when reprimanding them. You don't arrest them, you don't book them and you certainly don't beat the teeth out of them. Do you even know the meaning of the word 'restraint', or are you just a thug like the rest of them?!"

The words stung worse than my injuries. "I'm not a thug," I spat, venom in my voice as apprehension and surprise turned to anger in my gut. "I'm nothing like them."

"Is that so?" Caitlyn asked aggressively, standing up to take a few steps away. "And what makes you so different from criminals like them? Why shouldn't I drag you down to the precinct, book you in front of everyone who takes orders from you and throw you in a cell?"

My eyes narrowed, my voice edged with ice. "I let them live."

Caitlyn responded in kind. "That isn't enough, Vi. That isn't nearly enough."

Gnar, who had been sniffing around the room throughout the conversation, seemed to feed off of the energy in the room. He ran between us, chittering away in high-pitched babble.

"Let me go, Cait!" I protested, my voice rising over Gnar's. "This isn't right!"

"Oh, so you can tell right from wrong," she countered, her voice almost a shout at this point, "Then tell me, exactly what was right about beating a man within an inch of his life!"

"I was sending a message!"

"You were breaking the law!"

Again the yordle waddled between us, waving his boomerang in the air and chanting wildly. Her anger boiling over, Caitlyn swore loudly at the yordle, then snatched the boomerang and chucked it at the window. Glass shattered with an ear-splitting crash, and Gnar squealed with surprise and dove for the window. Even before his blue-tipped tail passed out of sight, Caitlyn had turned her focus back to me.

"I cannot believe," Caitlyn continued, oblivious to the sounds of the yordle scuffling outside, "I cannot BELIEVE that after this much time you still undermine everything you've worked so hard for."

"I'm not underminding a freaking thing," I responded, my words full of vitriol, "I'm protecting the public. If you weren't so spun up in your freaking rules, maybe you'd notice that!"

"Don't you dare pass off what you did as lawful," Caitlyn spat, "I'd sooner have your badge than approve of your methods."

"Take it," I said as I rose to my feet, my cuffed hands balled into fists. "I don't need your goddamn law. I'll do this myself."

Caitlyn reached back to the desk behind her and drew a pistol from the drawer, a weapon I'd seen her use more than once in close quarters. She wouldn't miss at this distance. I didn't care. "Sit down, Vi," she said, her words filled with a tone of absolute, utter authority.

My lips split in a devil's wild grin. "Make me, Cupcake."

Our standoff was halted by the sound of a roar splitting the night air, like a massive beast had erupted from the ground out of the middle of nowhere. Its steps shook the ground, making the books in Caitlyn's study rattle on their shelves. Caitlyn moved past me to the broken window, just in time to hear the beast howl again. The sound of its voice sounded strangely familiar, but it took me a moment to figure it out. Then I remembered- Heimerdinger's mention of the mutated gene, the strange blood signature.

"It's Gnar," I said softly, and Caitlyn looked from the window to me. "Cait, that thing is Gnar. …Get these cuffs off me. Right now."

Caitlyn opened her mouth to protest, but the sound of a blaring horn cut her off, which seemed to grow louder the longer it sounded. The weirdest part was that it sounded like the horn of my… bike…

"CAIT, GET DOWN!"

The bike slammed into the window with the force of a wrecking ball, splintering the bookshelf next to it and sending books and bits of drywall flying. I had taken a step forward towards Caitlyn, but the force of the impact threw me to the floor. I recovered quickly, spitting dust from my mouth as I pushed myself to my feet, but I froze for a second as I saw the hole left by the bike.

My bike had landed halfway through the room, embedded in the couch an inch from where I had been sitting. Its frame was warped, the chassis crushed and bent inward as if it had been made of paper in a toddler's hands. The horn warbled drunkenly as one wheel spun off-center, getting progressively quieter and quieter as it died out. But what made me freeze in ice-cold fear wasn't the condition of my bike, it was the condition of the limp body lying in the corner, her leg pinned under the overturned bookcase. I crossed the room as quickly as my legs could manage, fear making my heart pound like it was trying to burst out of my chest.

"Cait, wake up," I pleaded as I checked her for any injuries. Her left leg was trapped and I saw a large cut on one arm, but she seemed otherwise intact. More importantly, she was still breathing. I pulled at the bookcase, desperation making my arms scream with the strain, but it was too heavy to be moved. A curse left my lips as I slapped Caitlyn lightly across the face, but she showed no signs of waking up. I had no choice- I raced to the desk and found the key to the cuffs, and before they were off my wrists I was running down to my workshop. I passed Bradford on the way down, and he looked to me with confusion and abject terror on his face.

"What in the world is going on?!" Jeeves cried, his voice a bit too high-pitched thanks to his panic. Outside I heard another enraged roar, and Jeeves squeaked with fear as the ground shook again.

"Cait's in her study," I said as I ran past, "Get to her and try to wake her up. I'll be back." He looked like he wanted to ask questions, but I shot him a glare that said I didn't have time to answer them. "Now, Bradford! She's hurt!"

I saw him scurry away as I bounded down the stairs into the workshop, where my gauntlets lay on the wall. I suited up as fast as possible, throwing the pack onto my back and flicking it on even as the cuffs fell to the floor. The gauntlets felt like ten-ton weights for a second and then whirred to life, becoming increasingly lighter until it was like I wasn't wearing anything at all. Thoughts raced through my head faster than I could process them as the systems in the gauntlets powered on; anger left over from the argument and Caitlyn's actions, surprise at Gnar's transformation, and overpowering everything else was fear, a terror that shook me to the core that Caitlyn might not make it out of this, and that it was my fault she was hurt. That was something I couldn't let happen. Not now, not ever.

Without a moment's hesitation I sprinted back to the study, taking the stairs up to the second floor three at a time until I had reached Caitlyn, who was awake thanks to Jeeves but was still pinned to the floor. "She's not bleeding," Jeeves reported as I stormed into the room, "But her leg looks bad. R-Really bad. Oh stars…"

"Cait," I said as I got to her, one armored finger propping up her head, "You with me, Cupcake?" My voice wavered with barely-contained fear. Caitlyn stirred, her eyes fluttering weakly, and she tried to speak only to offer a pained whimper. "It's okay, I've got this," I said to her, trying to comfort myself as much as I was trying to comfort her. "I'm gonna get your leg unstuck, and then I've gotta go."

I changed my focus from Caitlyn to the bookcase, and forced my fear and panic to turn to iron in my gut. No time for freaking out, Vi. Caitlyn's hurt and help is nowhere near. It's on you. I wedged my metal fingertips underneath the bookcase and pulled, and the servos is my pack whirred to life, adjusting the power output to my gloves to allow me to lift the heavy bookcase and heave it over, where it landed with a heavy thud on its back, safely away from the others. Caitlyn screamed with pain as the weight left her leg, and as the scream died in her throat she quieted down, ragged breaths leaving her mouth in a pained rhythm. With the weight off of Caitlyn's leg I could get a good look at it, and I almost wished I hadn't. The leg was bent in a strange direction, part of the shin jutting out at an unnatural angle. It was clearly broken, although I couldn't judge the extent right now.

"Bradford," I snapped at Jeeves, my mind racing to find a solution to handle the situation, "Where's June?"

Jeeves frowned in panicked concentration, trying to remember where the other servant of the house had been. "Last I checked, she was in the kitchens, Miss Vi."

"Get her and bring her to Cait, she'll know what to do. Get a line to the precinct; we need a Jinx-threat-level response team down here. I'll stall it so it doesn't get out into the city."

Gnar snarled again outside, and I felt the heavy collision of its body into the house. The foundations shook, and while I was able to keep my balance, Jeeves toppled over. A few books fell off the shelves, and I heard the sound of glass shattering in another room down the hall added punctuation to the impact. "Y-You're gonna fight that thing?!" Jeeves stammered.

"If he gets out into the city, people could get hurt," I said with a stern face as I headed down the stairs into the foyer. "I can't let that happen."

I got to the foyer in seconds flat, and saw the beast that was once a little adorable yordle for the first time. There's wasn't much similarity between then and now. The Gnar I knew, an orange little ball of fuzz and energy, was gone, transformed into a red-furred beast that looked like equal parts gorilla, yordle and Freljordian giant boar. Its hands were the size of both of my gauntlets put together, and its normally-huge black eyes were small and yellow, contorted in an expression of absolute rage. Its mouth was large enough to swallow me whole, with teeth the size of knives paling in comparison to the two gigantic tusks that grew from the canines of its lower lip. A small bird skull, the same skull that was big enough for little Gnar to wear as a hat, was barely visible on the top of its head, and his arched back scraped at the ceiling, peeling away bits of paint and crushing the light feature in the center of the room with his sheer girth.

Gnar hadn't noticed me just yet, and was preoccupied with bashing the hell out of everything around him. Every time he hit a wall he made the house shudder, and I knew I couldn't fight him here for fear of one of us taking out a load bearing wall, sending the building toppling down with everyone inside. "HEY!" I shouted, cocking one fist behind me as the gears in the gauntlet began a slow whir, increasing in tempo as it charged. It began to emanate a soft blue light that grew in intensity until it drew Gnar's attention to me, and in that second I almost wished it hadn't. When those yellow eyes focused on me, exclusively on me, some part of my brain that hadn't been active since my ancestors' ancestors were creating fire suddenly shot to the forefront, overloading any rational thought I had with a primal, instinctive fear. I had faced down bladed horrors designed to be living nightmares and seen visions of my own death due to Void-borne magic, I had fought apex predators and unstoppable animations of the very force of nature itself, and none of those compared to the feeling of bone-shaking dread I felt when Gnar laid his primitive, furious eyes on me.

I steeled myself against the fear, let it turn to fire in my belly, and did the one thing I could do to keep myself from falling apart- I got mad.

"You jerk, I liked that bike!"

Gnar roared, a sound that slammed into my ears like a sledgehammer, and I howled with rage in return. My charging fist shook with the built-up energy, and as I met his cry I took a step forward, then another, one after the other until I was in a dead sprint, hurtling towards the most terrifyingly massive thing I had ever faced down. And I punched him straight in his god damned face. The discharge from my gauntlet let off an explosion of force, sending a shockwave rippling through the air. The design of the gauntlet instantly mitigated the force that would have ripped through my body and turned my bones to powder, and instead converted that kinetic energy into outward force. The desired effect was to send the beast flying, preferably out into the courtyard of the house. It had the desired effect.

The beast landed with an earth-shaking tremor, and left a hole in the front of the house the size of a small house itself. As I stepped through the hole I got a good look at the courtyard where Gnar had been raging, and quickly realized that it didn't really qualify as a courtyard anymore. The place looked like a warzone, with Gnar-fist-sized craters littering the normally well-kept grass and trees uprooted and left to lie on the ground like discarded twigs, massive swaths of missing dirt where they had been rooted sturdily into the ground for decades. Anything man-made had been destroyed, and pieces of plaster, marble and porcelain lay strewn across the ground, mere rubble compared to the depth of the destruction. Gnar made it back to his feet frighteningly fast, his eyes laser-focused on me as he snarled with anger and charged.

The ground rumbled as he strode forward, each step displacing a mound of dirt the size of my torso and making my legs tremble with aftershock. I clenched my fists within the gauntlets, triggering a built-in defense mechanism that sent a signal back to the pack on my back. I didn't have much of a knack for hextech variety, but I had specialized to the point of mastery. The pack on my back began to hum and emit a blue light, and I felt the air around me electrify, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end and my forearms within the gloves erupt into goosebumps. The air around me hardened, forming a shield of pure kinetic force, designed with the exclusive purpose of preventing just about anything coming my way from landing. I knew it was a good shield- a damned good shield- but it was a brief defense, and I had no idea how well it would stand up to a hit from this guy. No better time to field test, right?

Gnar's fist slammed into the shield with the force of a warhead, and even when I braced I still felt the impact make my bones rattle. The hardened air erupted into blue-white light with a deafening thundercrack, converting the kinetic energy into light and sound almost instantaneously. Despite the insane strength of the monster, the shield held, but I knew it wouldn't last long enough for round two. Seemingly confused by the sudden flashbang effect its attack had had, Gnar paused just long enough for me to drop the shield and get my legs functioning again. I took steps to the side, trying to get between him and the house, when he dug his fingers into the ground and threw- literally threw the land out from under me.

I lost track of everything, dipping into blackness, and came to my senses what must have been only a few moments later. My mind swam in a haze of pain and terror, and I was only dimly aware that I had been chucked into the side of the house by the searing agony in my back. I felt blood and saw a large piece of rebar jutting out from my side, the color red slicking the ribbed surface of the metal. My unfocused eyes struggled to follow the jagged tip of the metal down to its base, and it took me a second to realize that while the rebar had cut into my side, it hadn't penetrated, just grazed the skin. An inch to the left…

I heard a roar and felt the world darken around me, and only slowly became aware of the fact that I was laying in a shadow. Gnar towered over me, one arm raised to strike, and I felt my eyes close in pain and exhaustion, fear giving way to an ocean of fatigue. I heard the wind whistle as his massive arm swung down, but I didn't have the strength to get up and avoid the blow, and my shield was out of commission. I was up the creek, and I knew it.

The loud crack of a rifle tore my eyes open in time to see the fist twist in midair, slamming down inches from me into the earth. I felt the impact shake me to the core, but it had missed all the same. I looked to the side, where I had heard the gunshot, and saw Caitlyn leaning out of the bike-sized hole in the side of the house, her rifle visibly shaking in her hands even from here. The girl was a hell of a shot. Gnar's focus abruptly left me and it spun, stomping towards the other side of the courtyard where the uprooted trees lay dying. I realized what was happening even as Caitlyn fired off another round, which landed in the massive yordle's flank but did little to slow him down.

With every muscle in my body screaming in protest I heaved myself to my feet, crying out in pain as the rebar cut into my side. It was bleeding badly, but I had bigger, furrier problems. I activated another mechanism in my gauntlets, causing them to vibrate and parts to shift to allow faster movement. A small lens jutted from one knuckle, and steam erupted from the exhaust vents at the base of each gauntlet as they let off pressure. I should have used this sooner, but I didn't have much choice at this point- it was this or Caitlyn got hurt, possibly killed. Not an option.

By the time I was ready I saw Gnar grab a tree, pieces splintering off of it around his iron grip, and hurl it through the air like a boulder towards Caitlyn. I raised my gauntlet as quickly as I could and a red laser shot from the exposed lens, tagging the airborne projectile with pinch-perfect aim. My arms and legs moved almost on their own, faster and harder than should have been possible, and I raced across the grass as if magnetically drawn to the old tree, the laser tether growing shorter and shorter as I closed the distance. I bent my legs and leapt, higher than a human being is capable of, the pack on my back whirring with a high-pitched whine as it overclocked just about everything to break every law of physics hextech could. I slammed into the tree from a side angle with the force of a freight train, smashing it cleanly in two and sending it spinning in midair, far off-course so that it crashed into the ground next to the house.

I landed harder than I should have, and my overburdened muscles couldn't hold me up through the landing. I collapsed in a heap, crying out in pain as my gauntlets hit the earth like Gnar's fists and sent the shockwave rippling through my body. I should have been out of gas, but there was still more fight to do. I couldn't stop here, despite every ounce of energy being spent. I planted one hextech fist in the earth, using it as leverage to heave myself up, and turned my wavering gaze to Gnar, who had lost track of myself and Caitlyn in return for focus on the sirens slowly growing louder in the night air. The response team was coming. It had been a gut reaction to call them, and a bad one- he'd tear them apart.

I checked the gauges on my gauntlets. No juice. They'd still work, but that meant no charged punches, no shield to save my sorry ass, nothing but metal and momentum. It took a second for the wheels to get back to spinning in my head, but when they did, they brought to mind a plan. It was a plan so crazy that it'd get me killed if it backfired (even super-killed, if that was a thing), but if it worked, we might have had a chance of making it out in one piece. "Cait!" I shouted up to her, "Stay down but stay ready! I'm gonna try something really stupid!"

I didn't hear a response, until Jeeves' terrified voice rang out, "M-MISS CAITLYN SAYS YOU'RE A STUBBORN IDIOT, A-AND YOU'LL NEVER LEARN, AND ALSO G-GOOD LUCK!"

Well, hell, that was just what I needed to hear. A manic smile split my face, a happiness borne of being beaten to the brink and seeing a spark of hope. Lights grew bright around the courtyard as droves of police swarmed the street in front of the house, many more than was normally needed for just about anyone that hadn't given their minigun bunny ears and pink paint. Gnar howled in primal rage at the newcomers, but was too confused by their lights and sounds to attack right away. I had my window.

I ran up behind the great beast, opting not to use a loud battlecry of any sorts in the name of 'stealth', and used what strength was left in my legs to throw myself at Gnar's massive back, grabbing hold of as much fur as I could within the hands of my giant gauntlets as the beast took notice and bucked, shaking me as hard as it could in an attempt to shake me off of his back. I grimaced as the violent shaking ripped the gash in my side open further and did the stupidest, most brilliant thing I could possibly do in this very dire situation: I turned my gauntlets off.

The hextech machinery powered down, and I almost immediately felt the gauntlets quintuple in weight, pressing in on my hands like a vice. It felt like agony, especially with the great beast thrashing about to jar me loose, but it had the intended effect- now deactivated, the gauntlets were immovably locked into position, which led me to phase 2 of my master plan.

"Yippie-ki-YAY!" I screamed in insane joy as Gnar bounded across the courtyard, leaping and rolling and doing everything he could to get me off, all futile (but still very painful). I felt like my arms were going to rip right out of their sockets, or like the pack on my back was going to peel off and take my spine out with it, but fortunately whoever put my bones together didn't cut corners, and I held myself together as I slowly felt the beast losing steam, his movements growing sluggish and strained. He roared again, and while it was still a low bellow of rage, it held with that rage a noticeable note of desperation, of exhaustion. I felt the body underneath me ripple, tremble with sudden anatomical shifts, and the dark red hair began to lighten and turn a bright orange as the gigantic creature beneath me shrunk, becoming smaller and smaller until I felt my legs and the rest of my body touch cool earth.

My arms lay outstretched before me, a few ripped-out tufts of fur still dark red but the rest had vanished. I strained to see through the fingers of the impossibly-heavy gauntlets and caught a glimpse of a small orange ball of fluff within my hands, its tiny body shaking with tired breaths. An exhausted smile split my face in a way that made my black eye throb, and I heard the sounds of policemen's footsteps race across the grass towards me. "Ma'am!" one shouted once he was within earshot, "Are you alright?"

"Peachy-freakin'-keen," I responded sarcastically, although the humor was ruined a bit with how my voice trembled with pain and exhaustion. "Could one of you gents take my hands off?"

I was dimly aware of Jeeves' voice saying something about injuries, medics, and cleaning, but when I tried to open my mouth to respond, the muscles of my face collectively unionized and refused to cooperate. The cool ground cushioned the injured side of my face like a pillow given what it had been through lately, and it was enough to convince my brain that passing out was the proper course of action here. Honestly, I was on board with the plan this time around. Fading to black was a fantastic idea.