Caitlyn had made her way back to her motel, in the much safer, albeit not by much, parts of Zaun, the city state formed within the caverns, cliffs, and crevices below the city state of Piltover. The door was wide open, probably from the assailant carrying her unconscious body out of the room after she was struck. How long had she been captured? She went to go check her bag, but by no surprise discovered most of her room had been ransacked. Not by the assailant either, by the denizens of Zaun around. Motels, hotels, any business worth a damn to tourists makes sure to keep themselves locked up, with the best security that Zaun had to offer. At the same time though, an open door makes all that security null and void.
Nothing was left in that room except the bed and desks because they were too hard to fit out the door without breaking them down. The TV, lamps, chairs, and her bag. Along with her bag, and her hexphone. She checked the mini fridge located in the bathroom, for some odd reason, and noticed her take out food was still there, and hardly stale. She couldn't have been gone for more than a day tops. The walk over to her motel took her ten minutes, so that'd make sense they got her in that house so quickly. The motel had a large standing sign, bright enough to glow through the smog of Zaun's air. Made it an easy target to follow back from where she was taken. She still had her hextech rifle at least, so wandering the streets was not a problem. She could not even call for pick up if she wanted too, and she had no clear idea where the nearest tram or lift was to leave the city. She was wary of asking anyone after her already rough encounter with one of Zaun's gangs. There could be more to that cult, there could be more cults in general.
The only thing I can do now is find the Pinkette. She has to know a way out of the city. , thought the Sheriff. With that thought, she left that room, and made her way back to the house she was kept. Nothing was left, just a pile of rubble and dust gathered in a hole in the ground that was once a basement. A few suggestively colored planks spotted by the Sheriff's keen eyes told her how the final confrontation resulted between the cult member and the Pinkette. Caitlyn was an astounding tracker. A hunter by nature. In the land of Zaun, below the earth, however, you cannot simply track by scents or sight because of the smog. You cannot track by sounds because of the numerous amount of factories and machinery running all throughout the city. She'd have to go in blind. Or so she thought.
She she studied the only other location down the alley the Pinkette could've gone, because the other direction is where she walked and she would've noticed her walking behind for however so long, she noticed a substance on the ground she saw earlier when she was in the basement. It was a high grade of lubricant used in most of Zaun's machinery, and only a few of Piltover's. And by high grade, she means the highest grade Zaun is able to produce in such a location. Piltover's resources up top are much better and in higher quantity because of easier access to..well everything.
She noticed the second time the Pinkette charged her gauntlet, it started leaking out from one of the fingers. Those gauntlets are prototype at best, and Caitlyn could tell they were just hastily made with scrap from the city. Although for a Zaun dweller, she was impressed by the woman's ingenuity with what little she has to work with. Those weapons weren't perfect though, she could tell how they were working as they were used. She's putting danger to her arms and hands by using them with such output. She will bring that up when she finds her again, and she will. She just has to follow this trail. Luckily this lubricant has some odd properties to it that make it distinguishable from the other...fluids...of the city. It had a strong scent of almost..rotten vanilla. She couldn't quite figure out how that makes total sense herself. It also changed color when it came into contact with shimmer, going from a murky brown, to a light green. Zaun was weird, with weird chemicals, and weird practices. This wasn't even the slums was the worrying part, but that was where the trail was leading her. Deeper and deeper into the slums of Zaun. The path she took although, was empty, and void of life it seemed. There were a few people who walked by, but they seemed like they were just trying to survive, and move on. Nobody malicious seemed to come within range of her, either by sight, hearing, or godforbid, smell. The trail eventually stopped, at the entrance to a tunnel, lined with pipes only big enough to fit one person wide.
She raised her rifle and shone the light down. A long straight tunnel, too long for the light to fully reach, and this was Piltover tech, a light that shone for over 100 yards. She clicked it off, and moved on with little to no thought. There was nothing else she could do, she had no idea where her contact was, or the Pinkette. She had no way to leave the city safely, or at least a safe way to wherever the exit was. Her disguise was taken, or thrown out, by her captors. It would be bad public relations if the Sheriff of Piltover was seen walking around the city with her rifle mounted on her back because she had no wya to carry the disassembled parts safely without her bag. Any bag here in Zaun would just let the pieces jumble around and knick into each other, and she had too much pride for this rifle and it's origins to let that happen.
She walked down the straightaway tunnel for almost ten minutes because a turn was encountered. A simple left or right choice. On the ground of the tunnel, she noticed another splotch of the lubricant. She smelt the vanilla scent all through the tunnel but never saw another spot until now, why was that? The splotch was aimed more towards the right, so she turned, and kept walking until she encountered a hastily made doorway into the wall that should've been a dead end. It led into a building, run down, old, falling apart, but build into one of the cliffs that Zaun was situated underneath, into, and against. The store was empty, looked like some kind of grocery shop at one point. Probably a front for a smuggling ring considered the hidden door tunnel system she just walked out of. There was also broken and rusted hextech pieces lying about which also supported this theory.
After walking out of the store, she was much deeper into Zaun, but at the same time, much closer to an exit. She could see more of the sunlight, but much more smog. She could see directly up at the sky now almost. Would also make sense for a smuggling store to be situated near some kind of transit to help easy and quick transportation and concealment of illegal goods. Her thoughts were broken by a sound of a pipe clattering in the distance. She looked, and saw alley way upon alley way. Lined with pipes, glowing a sickly green and very faint blue. A lot of experiments much be done here, in secret, by a number of people. She was in a dangerous place, one designed to look innocent, or empty on the outside, but built to hide rooms, basements, tunnels, and the like for whatever purposes the owners seem fit. Hell, the entrance she found for the tunnel was behind a dumpster in the middle of the street! Anything here could be an entrance.
She tried tracing any smell of the vanilla lubricant, and couldn't. She only had the scent of chemicals, iron, and rust around her. Damp air, moist with the waste of either experiments or people. Why is the Pinkette here? Is she a part of all this? Could she still take her back if she found out she was involved in such illegal experimentation or smuggling? Her thoughts were ripped asunder by the sound of a shout from a far, echoing down the alleyways to her ears. No, not a shout..a shriek?..a howl?..Yes. That is what it was, a howl, and a shriek. The Sheriff hesitated for a moment before reacting, in this part of Zaun, with the vibe it gave her, she realized that hesitation could have killed her if anyone, or anything, had taken that opening. The last scream she followed got her into this mess. She was an authority figure though, someone who dedicated herself to keeping her city safe. This was not her city though. On the other hand, she rationalized it as, if she takes out whoever this person or creature is, maybe she can prevent it from coming up to Piltover?..Such a loose train of thought isn't enough to convince someone. And yet as she refocused herself, she found herself already running down the alleys toward the noise.
She sprinted, almost slipping several times, rifle in hand, cocked and ready to fire. In a pinch, she could quickly flip, remove, or rip the front barrel off the rifle, and use it as a makeshift shotgun. It wouldn't fire the round, simply explode it whatever direction she was aiming for. Normally she called it the Piltover Peacemaker because she never used it without the front barrel, and it would expand upon firing. It was a crowd control round that could be deadly at close range. Without a front barrel, it would just explode out of the barrel with no precision, just force. Doing so destroyed the round, no hope for salvaging, and was only used in a pinch since it did cause damage to the chamber to do so. That and she's never used the feature before, she's not sure how effective it really is. With how long the alley was, she doubted she needed to use it. She could get a nice line of shot. As she ran past a spotlight used as a "street lamp" or sorts for the alley, her vision was blurred for a moment. When her eyes cleared up, she regretted putting any doubt of her rifle's second firing method in her mind..
In front of her was...nothing. Thick smog filled the alley, and the air. So thick she could hardly see ahead of her, and hardly breathe. Through all of it though, she could smell just a faint scent of vanilla. She heard it louder this time, a howl as piercing as her bullets. Followed by, not a shriek of terror or pain like she thought, but one of strain. One of effort. One she had heard before, in a basement of a house she had already long forgotten by now. Forgotten, because her nerves had steeled, and knew this was the end of her journey. She removed the front barrle once or twice to make sure she could do it in a pinch. It stuck a little, but she also noticed she could just bash it against the ground and snap it off. It was specifically designed like this, by her own parents, for her, to fit almost any and all situations she would find herself in. She put the rifle back on,and ran foward with a held breath against the smog. She could not see where she was going, and narrowly dodged every stuck out pipe and debris she ran across. All but one, a pile of scrap blocked her path, but she was already in a full sprint. She leveraged her rifle at the right moment, straight down, and used it as a vaulting pole. Not enough force to break the barrle, but enough to launch her small frame in a flip over the heap. She landed and slipped on the puddle of sewage on the ground, scraping her elbow against dirty, moist alley ground. A simple scratch, nothing more, she got up and continued.
She heard the howl again, closer, louder, more fierce, and a voice yell out "GET BACK HERE, YOU FUCKING MUTT!" The smog came to a quick end, as she bursted into an open area. The area was circle, pipes lining the walls, leading into more and more alley ways, a sewage system of sorts. Used by the Zaunites for travel, secrecy, and whatever else Caitlyn didn't care for at that moment. She was still in motion as she studied the area, and didn't see how close the figure was, colliding into it. She was too focused and ready to stop, and as she fell to the ground, she raised her rifle and fired on instinct. A shriek rang out, and the figure fell to the ground. Her focus was lost now, and she looked around more clearly, and in front of her at what she had done. Though, a voice helped her understand. "YOU CRAZY BITCH, I SAVE YOUR FUCKING LIFE AND YOU SHOOT ME?" The Pinkette screamed sitting on her butt, gripping her shoulder. Caitlyn stammered her words, and started to panic a little.
"OH, god I'm so sorry, I was running through so much smog, dodging pipes, and then I heard shrieks and howls and-" Her sentence was cut off as the Pinkette gasped and her eyes widened. "Oh fuck, FUCK, YOU MIGHT'VE JUST KILLED BOTH OF US." she yelled in an angry tone. She shot up to her feet, seemingly not even flinching as the use of her arm, and grabbed the Sheriff by hers, and pulled her into another sprint. "Follow me, or we're both going to die in this shit stain of a city."
Caitlyn was surprised to see a resident of the city talk so badly about it. That must have been a first for her, in her entire life. She was raised to believe if you were born in that city, your pride for it was never faltered. Maybe that was just her upbringing, not actual reality though. This was a poor time for the Sheriff to be suddenly questioning her upbringing. A howl again pierced the air. This one made both the women's blood freeze for a moment. This one was more frenzied, more..lustful. "Fuck, fuck FUCK. Why isn't the smog hiding the scent?" the Pinkette questioned, almost to herself in a panic. She took this time to look at her wound, and noticed how bad it really was. She thought it had grazed her since she felt little pain from it, but it had piercing directly through her upper arm, next to her shoulder. She was still bleeding, and the running only make it worse. "Oh..oh no."
The Pinkette continued to run with the Sheriff down another alley. A growing noise approaching them as they ran towards it, sounded like bells and a faint flashing yellow light could be seen in the distance. "What is that?!" questioned the Sheriff, panting for air as the smog started to burn her lungs. "Our way out of this hell, now shut up and keep running or we're gonna feel like swiss cheese soon!" Responded the Pinkette.
The area they came up too was a tram of sorts. A skyline, going at an angle upwards into more smoke and fog in the air. Caitlyn knew it didn't lead to Piltover because there was no line directly connecting the two cities like that. It had to go back to the upper reaches of Zaun where the actual exit out of the city was. "It we can make it there, we might have a chance. Well I already had a chance until you showed up and fucking SHOT ME! Now you just made this harder.." A howl pierced the air once more, this time directly above them, and a figure could be seen jumping from pipe to pipe, building to building, roof to roof. "SHIT, HEY, that's a rifle right?" The Pinkette quickly inquired at the Sheriff. Caitlyn confusingly nodded.
"GREAT! You see what I see right? SHOOT IT!" Caitlyn's eyes narrowed at the woman. "Nobody tells me how to use my rifle, or what to do." She jerked her arm out of the Pinkette's grasp, but still kept on running alongside her. The Pinkette stopped, and jerked the rifle fromt he Sheriff's hands. "HEY! HOW DARE YOU-" Caitlyn's words being halted by a sound of gunfire as the Pinkette pointed towards the sounds of howling, and fired. The recoil almost making her stumble. The recoil was nothing for the Sheriff, so it was apparently obvious that this woman had never used a firearm before. She was blind firing into the smog whenever she heard a howl. But she hesitated doing so, trying to think of where it was coming from. She needs to fire on instinct, not overthink, or she'll always shoot late, damn amateur using my rifle! thought the Sheriff. She walked over ripped the rifle back into her hands, and shoved the Pinkette out of the way with a twist of her hips. The woman stumbled back with a look in her eyes of both anger, determination, and..fear. Caitlyn ignored everything, her gazed had narrowed again, and her nerves steeled once more.
Whatever was stalking them, had not attacked the number of times it could have after a missed shot. She knew it was fast, it was large, and it was deadly enough to only be found in the deepest parts of Zaun and cause this fearless woman to actually cower for even a moment. She did not raise her rifle, she stood silent, and listened. "Hey, hey, what are you doing, come on, if you're not gonna fire, we need to get to the tr-" The Pinkette's words were halted by a howl directly in front of them, very close, but hidden in the smog. Caitlyn did not hesitate, she raised and fired immediately. A yelp was heard, along with clawing and stumbling somewhere to their left now, like it was running. Away? To them? Up? Down? Caitlyn's thoughts clouded her focus now. It just took a shot and is still moving so quick?, As if this creature knew, it suddenly leapt from the shadows, the smog of Zaun, and dove for the Sheriff. It was as if it knew the real threat, and that it's attention was halted just for a moment. Caitlyn could see it for only a second...it was a monster. It looked like large wolf, with metal on it, hextech? It was glowing a sinister red, and it's eyes were too. Caitlyn couldn't think, she couldn't move, fear gripped her. This was nothing like what she used to hunt as a child, the largest she hunted was a simple hogger, a large furry boar native to the outskirts of Piltover. Naturally aggressive, and can grow as large as a man. She had put one down as it rampaged through a farm, waiting for her moment that it would slip up so she could aim for it's soft neck fat. This was different, this thing was a hunter like her, and thought just like her. It didn't wait for a back to be turned, or a loud noise to distract. It waited for a slip up, a pause in action that it knew it could move fast enough and finish off it's prey. For once in her life, Caitlyn was the prey, and not the hunter. That fear gripped her,the realization that such a creature existed. She felt herself get shoved down, and a bright light blazed into the air where she was standing.
"GOD DAMN PILTIE". The Pinkette had shoved her, and aimed one of her gauntlets at the creature. All in the matter of only a couple seconds this happened, the creature got a blast of blinding light in it's eyes, and it stopped it's leap early, quickly dropped to the ground, snarling, seeming to try and rub it's eyes, swinging viciously around itself to ward off a surprise attack. The gauntlet hissed with steam, and the Pinkette winced in pain. She detached it from her arm, and it fell with a thud. She leaned over and yanked the Sheriff to her feet, and then into her arms like a child, and just ran. Ran, ignoring the pain in her arms, or her shoulder, or her lungs as they burned with chemicals from all around the city based in the caverns and cliffs before the gleaming trophy that is Piltover. A forgotten shell of a city that once was, now living in exile. She ran to escape one of the darkest parts of its soul. The creature still rubbing it's eyes, now looking in the direction of its prey, blinking rapidly to try and gain sight back. It could not see them, so it looked around in a hurry, still blinking, not sure if it was just blinded still or they weren't there.
The two women made it to the tram, and the Pinkette slammed her fist on the lever, and the door hissed open. She put down the Sheriff with her other arm, and went ot turn the valve to open the door, only to notice there was only half a door left. A large hole had been busted into it, the entire bottom half of the door gone. They just had to duck under it. The base of the tram platform was covered in dried blood, and so was the inside. Some poor bastards must have run into this creature before, thought the Pinkette. The Sheriff looked around in a daze, and blinked to realize her surroundings, to realize what was happening around her. She got to her feet, and readied her rifle again. When she aimed though, she aimed at an empty lot. "Oh fuck..where'd it go.." inquired the Pinkette. "Who cares, let's g-" The Sheriff's words cut off, by a howl from directly ahead. The creature lunged straight at them from the smog, and Caitlyn raised her rifle to fire. IT'S TOO FAST!, she thought in a panic. She closed her eyes, and readied for anything, when the Pinkette, already in the tram, grabbed the Sheriff, and pulled her as quickly as she could into the tram. Life moved like slow motion for Caitlyn as she opened her eyes to the sensation of being pulled. The creature was no more than 3 feet away from her, bringing it's large clawed gauntlet of an arm down towards her head. In the second that it felt like time had slowed down as she was being pulled into the tram, and as the creature continued to slash down, she had already knew she would live and she knew why.
The creature narrowly missed the indigo haired woman, but caught the front barrel of her raised rifle, cleanly ripping it straight off and instantly shredding it with one strike. Caitlyn's eyes widened as she landed on the floor of the tram, never breaking eye contact with the creature. Hunter vs hunter, prey versus prey. The creature stumbled for a moment upon landing, realized it had missed, and trying to not throw itself from the platform with the sheer force its leap it seems. Caitlyn kept her rifle aimed, no front barrel now, and she knew what that meant. "PEACEMAKER!" She pulled the trigger and and explosive shot erupted from the chamber of the gun. The bullet which normally would instantly expand upon exiting the barrel, did not so, just shot forward without expanded. This wolf, this creature, still proved itself to be an example of the pinnacle of hunting, for it knew it had opened itself up, and that it had lost it's prey. Instead of trying to lunge for the two women after recovering, it simply threw both arms up and braced the shot.
Caitlyn thought the round would simply explode and shoot forward, but she realizes now that was naive thinking. The blast that occurred when the round impacted would've shattered her gun, and probably tore her hands off. On impact, the round simply exploded, shrapnel that should've been the Peacemaker itself that was designed to expand and construct itself when fired instead just stayed inside the round. The two women tried to cover themselves from the shrapnel, and many bits and pieces imbedded into their arms and legs. It wasn't the shrapnel so much as the initial explosion that caused the most damage. The creature had been blown back, hardly damaged on it's body, but landing directly on one of it's chemtech chambers on it's back. The chamber shattering, and a glowing fluid splattering all over the ground. The monstrosity got up, surveying its surroundings, and let out an angry howl at the women. Then it turned around, leapt up what seemed like a mile into the smog covered piping past their line of sight. Seemingly unharmed, but lost the bloodlust it had before.
The two women, sat there a moment, and held their breath. After a few seconds, the Pinkette immediately got up, and activated the tram. It jerked to life, and started ascending up the line towards the upper reaches of Zaun. Caitlyn getting herself up and leaning against the side wall, wincing at the pain she felt in her arms and legs. The damage was minor, the peacemaker was just simply a plastic round basically, meant to expand and collide with as large of a surface area as it could to knock down someone. It was meant to be used no closer than 200 feet, much less at point blank range, directly out of the chamber, and without it releasing. The bits and pieces in their limbs were just plastic, and only caused minor gashes, the equivalent of being stabbed with a sharp pencil. She picked what she could out of her limbs, as did the Pinkette who was sitting down in the only seat in the device, big enough for 2 men at most. There was enough of the door left that Caitlyn could put a hand on it and just make sure she wasn't jerked forward and thrown out. They gave each other a look, one of confusion, one of anger at each other, but one nonetheless of relief. They rode the rest of the way up in silence.