This bit gave me a great idea for another story. Unfortunately, I won't be finishing this one. Check Chapter 8 for more info.

I recommend listening to the Infamous Second Son soundtrack during this chapter, especially the songs "Speed of Light" and "Double-Crossed".

Chapter 9

The first sensation to return from the black abyss was the feeling of being pinned under a massive rock. My arms felt limp beside me, and I had lost feeling in my legs beyond pain. My cheek rested against the cold dirt, and through it I could feel tremors that shook me from the disorienting darkness and brought me and my senses crashing back to reality. My mental faculties returned to me swiftly and promptly reminded me of how it feels to have your legs crushed by rocks. Thankfully, it was a brief reminder, as a few moments of agony later the rock rolled off of my legs to the side and I felt a pair of strong hands lift me up.

"Hey, you alright Vi?" a gruff voice asked. He sounded annoyed, rushed, and concerned at the same time. "Can you walk?" Familiarity helped me recognize the owner of the voice, and with it came an unfamiliar pang of pain in my heart, not from physical injury, but something… deeper. I made it to my feet and checked myself- I was human again, but younger, thinner, and lacking the muscle I'd built up over the years. I touched a hand to my face and felt the irritated sting of raw skin, still tender from a tattoo I'd gotten the day before. I looked around, gathering myself and getting ahold of my surroundings, but the man that had helped me up grabbed either shoulder and wheeled me around to face him, apparently too hurried to let me get my bearings. "Get it together, Vi," the man said to me anxiously, "We've got to get the hell out of here while we can."

I stared at him for a few moments, studying his features as if digging up old memories, until I finally spoke with hesitation. "Y-Yeah, Dutch," I said with confusion, "What's going on?"

Dutch wasn't the leader of the group of people I ran with, but he was the one who brought me into it all, the one who helped me get off the streets, and I considered him a brother for all he'd done for me. He was a tall man, easily a head taller than me, with a chin chiseled out of marble that was only made better by his short-cropped hair and permanent grizzly stubble. His eyes blazed a bright shade of amber, and I could see the fear and worry for my safety resonating through them like waves on the surface of a pool. His hands were toughened by hard work over a hard life, and I could feel the weight of their grip as he let go of me, his powerful shoulders heaving with a frantic sigh.

"You kidding me? You take a hit to your head or something?" He gestured around him, and I realized we were standing in the middle of a mine, which meant the tremors were incredibly bad news. I saw flickering lights illuminate hallways in many directions, and in some cases they illuminated piles of rock where sections of the mine had caved in. "The job went south, Vi," he spat as he stepped past me, glancing down the hallways. "Cesar made the call. We're leaving, diamonds or no diamonds."

My legs shook, screaming with pain as weight came onto them, but they held themselves up despite the injury from the rocks. The tremors made it difficult to walk, but after a few moments I had my bearings and felt strength return to my legs. We ran as fast as we could, and I stayed a foot behind Dutch since he knew the way out better than I did. As we ran, my mind raced, memories flooding back. This was supposed to be our big break. A diamond vein had been discovered just out of Piltover, and we were here to take what was ours. If we could get ahold of it, maybe we could get out of the hole we lived in and become something more than gutter rats, than the human filth the general public thought we were. It was a chance at something greater, and it had collapsed all around us in an instant.

I remembered Cesar, the leader of our group, and how he'd gone on about this mining operation for days, how it could finally bring wealth and safety and security to the people who'd needed it. The people that suffered more than anyone else. People like us. I remembered that it wasn't just Dutch and I on this job, and a moment of fear almost made me stop running. "What happened to the others?" I asked suddenly, unable to hide the concern from my voice.

Dutch didn't look back at me. "I got out with Cesar, Colt and Trench just fine, but we hadn't seen you or Fix."

"Let's find her," I said immediately, and without hesitation I dug my heels into the dirt, slowing to a stop as I turned around to head back into the depths of the mines. I wasn't about to leave a friend down here.

I took a step and felt a heavy hand on my shoulder. "Vi," Dutch said slowly, and I could hear his voice shake. "I found Fix before you. She's gone."

It was like a hole had been carved out of my chest by some cruel cleaver. Fix had taught me everything she knew, and I didn't just respect her, I loved her like a sister. I stood where I was, my throat choking up as I fought back combined waves of nausea and sorrow. I felt the hand on my shoulder tighten. "Let's get out of here, Vi," Dutch's calm voice said, and I could hear the concern and fear bubbling under the surface of his cool head. He was hiding his emotions, but I knew him. He was scared he'd lose me, too.

I turned silently and ran, Dutch a few steps ahead of me. I couldn't let this get to me, couldn't lose another one of us today. I watched the tunnels as we raced through, and before long we came to a large, open antechamber, one we had snuck through shortly after breaching the mines. We were almost out. Yellow mining gear, some more of Piltover's techmaturgic innovation at work, sat vacated on the walls of the room, almost as if used as last-resort supports to keep more of the rocky ceilings from caving in. I felt a rumble down the path we had ran, and knew something that way had caved in. No going back down that road now.

We passed through into one of the main opening chambers, and down at the far end I could see the traces of natural light. I knew that through that door and down a short hallway was freedom, and something in me lifted me up and made my pain vanish in a sea of adrenaline as we raced through the chamber. And that was when I heard his voice.

"Somebody, please!" came the shrill cry of a man, his voice warped with abject terror. I turned my head sharply around the chamber, searching for the voice, and as it rang out again I saw its origin- a partially-caved in second hallway, halfway between the one we had come from and the one we were headed to. I could hear the fear in his voice, and the sound of the voices far away, down the same hallway, and knew that they could not save themselves. Someone had to do something.

I felt my footsteps slow, and the thought set into my brain that I had to help them out. Dutch hadn't read my mind this time, but he had glanced back in time to see me slow, see the thoughts crossing my mind. "Let's get out of here, Vi," he said hurriedly, his pace slowed but his feet still taking him steadily towards escape. "This whole place is going down."

"We gotta help them, Dutch," I said firmly, the decision beginning to set itself in my head. I wanted to leave, to get out of there, but I couldn't ignore them, couldn't tear my mind from their fear, their absolute soul-crushing fear of being crushed or starved or strangled among the darkness and dirt. I resonated with a fear of my own, with every fear I'd had all these years of dying alone on the streets because no one had cared enough to help me when I couldn't help myself.

"They can save themselves," Dutch said as his steps slowed, the idea dawning on him that I wasn't about to leave with him. "We've gotta do the same."

"They won't make it," I said as my eyes scanned the chamber. "The rocks are too heavy. If I could find a good wedge, something to pry in there, we could-"

"Leave them, Vi," Dutch said firmly, and I felt his hand touch my arm, right on time with another tremor that made me lose my balance slightly. I spun around and looked at him, at the worry and concern in his face, and it dawned on me- Dutch only cared about getting me out alive. He felt the same grief for Fix that I felt, but something in him made it possible for him to ignore those people. It was a sickening side of him, something I hadn't noticed before. He looked at me with eyes that plead for my cooperation, but there was something different in them too, a layer of ice that hid his heart from my gaze.

"You'd let them die?" I asked, and I couldn't hide the apprehension and disgust from my voice or my expression.

"We have to look after our own," he responded shortly, and I felt his hand tug gently at my arm.

I ripped it away from his grasp, taking a step back. "These people are just like us, Dutch," I said firmly, anger and shock adding an edge the words normally would have lacked. "They aren't some upper-class fat cats, they're just normal people no better off than we are, and more importantly, they need our help." As I finished my words I heard their cries again, and the sound of unfiltered terror added a note of desperation to the swirling cloud of frantic emotion coursing through the air around us. "Please, Dutch," I begged, unable to hide my emotions any longer.

I saw Dutch visibly harden, his concern hiding behind a will of immobile stone. He'd done this before, when the chips were down and lives were on the line, and it had made the others rally to him, made us do things we didn't think we could, accomplish things we didn't think were possible. My god, he was going to help. A surge of desperate energy swept through me, and I felt a smile creep up on my face. "Thank you, Dutch," I began, stepping towards a shovel I had seen on the ground, "I think we-"

"We're leaving, Vi," Dutch said in that voice of absolute stone, and it froze me dead in my tracks. I had misread him, and the realization that he was about to force me to leave these people to die felt like a knife twisted into my spine. I returned my gaze to him, fear and incomprehension written into my eyes, and saw his resolution in return as he stepped towards me, calmly but quickly. I took a step back, but was too late. I felt his hand wrap around my arm, and the feeling of comforting support had vanished. He felt like an entirely different person. I struggled, but his grasp felt like a clamp around me, dragging me away.

"THIS ISN'T RIGHT, DUTCH!" I screamed at the top of my lungs, trying to wrench myself from his grasp in futility. "THEY'LL DIE! WE CAN'T LEAVE THEM!" I struck at his arm with my free hand, but if the words or the blows had done anything to slow him, he didn't show it. His eyes were focused on the light of the outside, and step by step he pulled me closer. In desperation I latched my other hand onto his elbow, twisted my trapped hand to expose his forearm, and I bit down as hard as I could.

Dutch's scream was almost as loud as my own as he twisted his arm, relinquishing his grasp and letting me stumble backwards. He caressed the bite marks with his other hand, and after a moment I saw blood drip between the fingers. He stared at me as if I had suddenly stripped naked and painted myself with my excrement, like I had completely lost my mind. "I'm helping them," I said slowly, unable to hide the shaking fear from my voice, "With or without you."

Dutch took another step towards me and this time I took several back. I didn't make an effort to hide the betrayal I felt, the fear of someone who had once been so close. This time, it was Dutch's turn to beg. "Vi, please," he said softly, and I began to see the stone in his gaze melt away, letting fear and concern boil to the surface. "There isn't enough time for this, the cops will be here any min-"

"The cops can't save them," I interrupted him, and glanced down at the shovel I had noticed before. It was only a few feet away, off to the side and roughly the same distance from both of us. I edged towards it and could see that Dutch had the same idea. "And I can't leave them." I took another step towards the tool, the weapon, and so did he.

"I'm not going to lose you," he said with a hard edge to his words that didn't entirely hide the fear. "Not like I lost Fix. There's been enough bloodshed for tonight."

"And you'd ignore the workers, the people who get by just like us, just so your little crew doesn't get picked off?" Again, I couldn't hide the disgust. This wasn't the Dutch I knew, right? I almost didn't want to believe I'd missed this side of him before. I took another step closer to the shovel. So did Dutch.

I saw his eyes harden again, and I wanted to believe I didn't know what he was going to say, I wanted to believe he would take my side, help me save them, but as his mouth opened I felt the words come straight from my mind, exactly as I had predicted. "They don't matter, Vi," he said calmly, rationally, pleadingly. "You matter."

"Fuck you, Dutch," I swore furiously as I dove for the shovel. I got a hand on it, right by the head, but as I lifted it I felt Dutch pull it towards him. He was stronger older, but I had leverage. I growled as we struggled, but for all of my twisting and pulling I wasn't able to get the handle away from him. Desperate, I lashed out at his knee, and as I felt the bones crack under my foot his howl of rage and pain weakened his grip enough for me to wrestle the shovel away from him. I took a step back and Dutch did the same, one hand on his injured knee. He shot me a gaze that seemed betrayed more than hurt, concerned more than angry. Despite all of that, he still cared about me more than anything. It was disgusting. "You don't want to help, then get the hell out," I spat with acid lining the curse, "Take another step towards me and I'll bash your goddamn brains in."

Dutch didn't respond, and despite his gaze of utter stone bearing down on me he didn't step forward. He must have felt the stone in my heart, understood that this wasn't something I'd back down from. Not now, not ever. I may have been young, a criminal, with no one but Dutch and the gang to care for me, but that didn't change what was right and what was wrong. I didn't let my eyes leave his until he turned away, limping as fast as he could with a damaged knee until he reached the exit. The moment he did I ran, back towards the antechamber as an idea constructed itself in my head. I could still hear the screams, which meant I wasn't too late, but the sound of another collapsing chamber nearby told me I didn't have much time.

Back in the antechamber I saw what we had ran by on the way out, the yellow-painted mining rigs. They were meant for digging, which made them perfect for getting through the rubble, but there were two things in my way. One, they were holding up the ceiling in this area, and getting caved in on wouldn't help me save those people. Two, I had no damn clue how to pilot them. I swore, desperation making me want to cry out in anger, then I noticed their massive hands, used for crushing rock and transporting the pieces. There was something I could use there. I ran to the nearest one, searching the joints of its arms for weaknesses, something I could exploit to rip the things off. A joining weld on the third rig I checked showed signs of structural damage, and a seam at the elbow of the thing had split. Jackpot.

I stuck the tip of the shovel into the crack and pulled, my arms screaming with the exertion. The rig creaked wildly, but didn't give. I tried again on the other arm, but found no more success. I was about to look for other options when I spotted an arc-welding device left on the seats of one of the rigs, penned in by the glass and thought safe until the place had needed to be vacated. It took several hammering blows from the shovel to smash through the glass, but with the hextech-powered welder in my hands I had a means to get things done at last.

Dismantling the rig without sacrificing its ceiling-carrying spine took more time than expected, but I managed to keep the fear and hurry from making my hands shake long enough to make a series of clean cuts through the metal, right at the structural weaknesses. The fists thudded to the ground heavily, and yet the shake of their landing was unnoticeable among the tremors. I tried to pick them up but their weight was massively greater than I had expected, which meant I needed a support structure. The fire of the arc-welder lit the darkening antechamber as I carefully destroyed the rig, taking bits and pieces from what I could on them without sacrificing their integrity. After a tense few minutes I had done it- the gloves sat on the ground with a rig of yellow-gray metal around them, just enough to support my skeleton and make me able to lift the damn things. It wasn't pretty and it'd probably fall apart, but if I had done things right it would work. For a bit.

I felt a rock land on my shoulder and looked up in time to watch a crack split through the ceiling above me. I had taken too much from the rig, and it had become the weak link supporting the ceiling, only scarce minutes from snapping entirely. A curse left my lips as I moved to my rig, and I set my hands into the heavy metal fists as quickly but carefully as I could manage. Two thin metal pads for my feet helped ground the weight, and I pressed my arms and back against the rough metal beams that made up the rig's improvised exoskeleton and prepared to lift.

My design worked, barely. As I raised my upper body from the ground the joints in the skeleton squealed with the ear-splitting sound of metal scraping against metal, but they bent and supported me, allowing me to life the heavy fists from the ground and drag myself to my feet. I fought to gain my balance as I felt dirt and rocks falling around me. The antechamber would collapse any time now, I had to move. I threw one leg forward, straining against the metal skeleton, and with a scream of protest the leg moved, my fleshy limb straining against it as I pulled it forward.

I continued my slow progress, one step at a time, until I had left the antechamber, and immediately began my slow and heavy trod towards the caved-in tunnel. A surge of adrenaline combined with an equal surge of confidence, pushing me forward step by heavy step as my muscles screamed in exertion trying to pull the heavy steel frame along with me, despite it being lighter than the metal fists themselves. Progress, Vi, keep making progress.

After what felt like an eternity I moved the rig to within range of the rubble. I could hear the screams coming through the rock and as I reached it I met theirs with one of my own. "STEP BACK!" I howled as I pulled back a fist, poised and ready to fly like a battering ram. I gave them a moment then swung in, burying the fist in the rock like a hot knife through butter. Rocks from the rubble tumbled around me, gathering around my feet, and more still fell as I pulled the fist away from the cave-in. With a cry of effort I slammed the second fist in, bashing away part of the stone. I continued, swinging three more times before the rubble had cleared enough to let the miners leave.

One of them, a stocky man of dark complexion, stopped at the mouth of the tunnel as the others passed, looking up at me. "You're…" he said, and I realized that he must have seen us as we snuck in.

He opened his mouth again, and I imagined he wanted to ask why I was helping, but I interrupted him. "Are there others?" I asked, peering down the tunnel. It was dark, and I couldn't see well enough to tell for myself.

The man nodded. "Two of them," he said fearfully, "They're hurt."

I grimaced, slipping my hands out from the machine. Without my support it toppled over, and the metal thunk made the man cringe. "Help me save them," I said as I ran past him, into the darkness. I didn't look to see if he followed, but after a moment I heard footsteps behind me and a fading light from the man shined past me, illuminating the way ahead.

We must have gone quite a ways down into the tunnels before I saw the people he had mentioned. Two men sat against a wall, seemingly ignorant of the rocks falling around them. It wasn't until I got closer that I realized that one of them was unconscious, the other had an expression wracked with pain. The one man seemed to be mumbling to himself in his unconscious stupor, words that meant nothing but felt vaguely familiar. I noticed his shoes had been removed, his feet blackened with frostbite. Could it be… The second was awake, but in no better shape. I couldn't see blood, but the unnatural bends and breaks in his right leg explained his agony. He looked up at us and set his eyes on the man following me. "I told you to get out of here, Jarah," he said with strain in his voice. By now we were close enough that I could see lines of sweat on his face through the dirt.

"We're getting you out of here," I interrupted, kneeling down next to him. "Give me your arm."

The man obeyed, but when he turned his gaze to me I saw apprehension. "Aren't you- URGH!- one of those thieves?"

I frowned, both from the strain of helping the man up and the thought that crossed my head. I hadn't realized it, but Cesar would be absolutely furious with me for sticking behind, and for disobeying and injuring Dutch like I had. I couldn't go back there, not now. Maybe in time, once he'd had the chance to forgive me, but did I want to? It was a question I'd have to wrestle with in my head, and now was not the time to do that wrestling. "I'm here," I said gruffly as I shifted to support his weight, allowing him to touch the floor with his leg without putting weight on it, "And they're not. That's what matters." I looked to the man that had followed me down- Jarah was his name, I guessed- and waited until he had picked up the unconscious man, carrying him over his shoulders with the legs over one side and the arms and head over the other.

As we made our way back out I heard the sounds of sirens at the mouth of the mineshaft. An instinctive fear gripped me, and for a moment I paused. The man leaning on me didn't expect it, and I heard his grunt of pain as he stepped on his bad leg and I wasn't there to support him. I hesitated but picked up the slack, and with Jarah ahead of me we walked out into the night.

The fresh air hit me like a wave, making me cough in realization of how much dust and dirt I'd been inhaling. I wiped at my brow and my hands came back stained with dirt, and perhaps it was a stroke of luck that they had- the police who had likely come to arrest me and my kind didn't seem to notice me. If I had to guess, the dirt obscured my face, covering my tattoo and staining my pink hair a messy brown-black. It wasn't perfect, but maybe if I could just slip away…

A medical tech came over to help me, and without a word I allowed the tech to shift the man's weight onto his shoulders, moving the load off of mine. As the load left my shoulders I met the man's eyes, and saw through the pain to his fixed gaze, equal parts gratitude and measured caution as he looked at me. I didn't know what my face looked like, but I imagine I appeared as neither the hero nor the villain to the man. He didn't open his mouth to speak, but instead he offered me a short nod, wincing through the pain to offer his thanks without drawing attention to me. I appreciated the gesture more than he knew, but I still had to get away before someone snagged me for questioning. The moment I was freed of the burden I began moving away from the scene, dodging the eyes of the law as long as my dirty disguise held. I made it to the edge of the ring of cars about the scene and was about to move into the crowd when I felt a hand grip my shoulder. I spun back around, fear written all over my face, and prepared to cut and run from the law when I saw Jarah's concerned eyes on mine.

"Thank you for your help," he said softly, his voice almost inaudible over the sirens and bustle of the rescue effort underway. "We would have died. You have saved many lives this night." His accent was thick, reminding me of Qarif's Shuriman dialect. The look in his eyes was one of genuine thanks, and a kind of warmth I hadn't expected to see from someone I'd tried to rob.

I didn't know how to respond. I wasn't used to hearing that from complete strangers. "I… Don't mention it," I said shortly as I pulled my arm away, "Don't mention it to anyone."

I took a step away from him into the crowd, and my thoughts about him had begun to fade when I heard his voice echo louder than it should have through the busy night.

"Why do you want Gnar to join the League, Vi?"

Recognition rushed back to me as well as a sense of myself, removing my immersion from the memories of my teenage years. I looked back at Jarah, and his face seemed foreign, alien, like an entirely different person. He didn't just see me, he saw through me, and I was sure it was the influence of the summoners that had changed the memory's emotions so drastically. I sucked in a breath as I let my pounding heart steady itself, and I took a moment amongst the fragments of my memories to gather my words.

"Because he's a kid," I said to the memory of Jarah slowly, my gaze leveled and resolute, "Not a monster. He deserves a chance."

If there was any emotional response, it did not show on Jarah's face. Instead he observed me silently, his expression absolutely unreadable. "How does it feel," he asked calmly, "Exposing your mind?"

I thought about my experiences, how I'd felt reliving that night, how I'd felt seeing Dutch betray what I believed in all for some broken idea of camaraderie. I knew in the back of my mind that they were still out there, older and wiser than they had been back then. But they hadn't changed, not like I had. That was something, as the enforcer of Piltover and as someone who had once thought of them as family, that I could not allow to continue in my town. I tightened one hand into a fist, and for a moment I thought I could feel the familiar power of my gauntlet wrap around my hand.

"It's reminded me that I have work to do."