ACT V
A SIGN OF WEAKNESS IS ALL ONE NEEDS
THE CHASE
For days before, the people of the Lanes were simply annoyed by the almost constant howling that came up about some time following the Council's explosion.
At least, now it became a *bit* better, as there was a bit more gunfire, now that the enforcers have mobilized as a small regiment, occupying the surface of most of the southern side of Piltover's Bridge of Progress and starting to send forces to the fissures to occupy them all the same. But of course, the advantage of firearms and better numbers didn't fare much better when the opposition had the advantage of both the tight spaces the enforcers couldn't flank around or advance without support, the issues of verticality and the knowledge of the extensive tunnel systems for the mining colonies, the price of Progress from much before Hextech made it's advent. Some losses were already reported amongst the enforcers from reacting gangers and thugs.
That was the situation Corporal Ortmer and three others of his unit were a bit nervous, doing a beat, just on their own, as ordered. A simple recon and secure the perimeter from any potential attempts to find a breach and strike the staging points the enforcers had barely acquired, that provided the vital link between the topside of the southern side of the bridge and below. While the surface could be well secured with a few skycruiser airships providing fire support for the ground enforcers above, the fissures were another *different* matter entirely - the enforcers below were dependent on a safer access for numbers, for entry and exit, as well as to provide a supply chain for them to be able to operate for extended hours. If any gangers or soldiers of the Chem-Barons were able to catch up on any gap and take over a staging ground, it'd potentially disrupt most, if not all the progress made so far since both Councillor Talis and the newly-appointed Warden-Marshall Ferros had approved a full advance of most precinct elements towards the Undercity, which barely started almost forty minutes ago.
"This place is a maze...", one of the enforcers groaned. "Pretty easy to just hide and ambush anywhere..."
"Well, making sure they don't is the job, now, ain't it?", another enforcer scowled.
"You both, shut your mouths and focu-", Ortmer started.
But then, a roar was heard, a bestial one, which prompted the enforcer foursome to raise their rifles in instinct, stopping their beat. Another growl was heard, and this made them raise their rifles above.
It was when they saw something smaller, almost like a dwarf with a large bomb on his back, running an upper catwalk bridge connecting the fissure's sides.
"You, freeze it right there!", Ortmer shouted, but it was clear the small creature wasn't stopping.
And then something larger jumped the fissure, ignoring the crossing bridge and hanging by a section of the catwalk, where it rapidly started scaling it back to continue the pursuit.
This larger something startled the enforcers and froze them. It looked like a giant wolf with something on it's back, but it happened so fast it was gone.
"What the hell was that!?", a third enforcer shouted.
"Like if I know!", the first enforcer replied before Ortmer shook his head, returning to his senses.
"That was nothing!", Ortmer ordered, turining around to face the others. "You all saw nothing!", he said, crystal clear and slowly so all would hear it. "And that's an *order*."
The enforcers, after a second, all nodded.
It wasn't like they all were in the mood to be deemed nutjobs, at any rate.
Ahead and above, the Yordle Ziggs ran for his life as he climbed and entered a pipe on which the large bomb on his back almost hampered his entry, which nearly gave the needed for the chasing beast's claws to reach him. However, the hampering was an advantage, as the beast couldn't enter the pipe and by the time it tried reaching the Yordle with it's paws, Ziggs was already out of it's reach and couldn't - and certainly wouldn't - look behind. Ziggs took a left a bit ahead, leaving the beast's sight.
"Try... run.", the beast growled.
Ziggs didn't take much to find an eventual exit, towards a larger, broader pipe, where Ziggs wasted no time heading to a ramped section above connecting to another pipe, this one with a ladder, though a long one, which he readily started to climb, despite his muscles aching and the weariness reaching up to him. At least the larger bomb wasn't as much being a burden of weight, despite it's dimensions, so he could climb the ladder as fine and reach the manhole in time, which he could push and climb out into the streets above, the barely gilded buildings at that place and rootops making it clear Ziggs had just reached the surface to the southern side of Piltover, right as a large airship, a dirigible, flew over sweeping the street and surrounding buildings with spotlights all around. Ziggs could also hear boots marching close by, indicating that possibly company he didn't need at that moment was also close by. He immediately headed towards the first open way he could find that wasn't on that street and ran towards it.
"To all citizens of the south-side.", a voice boomed overhead, from the speakers installed at the airship. "Curfew is in effect, remain in your homes. Anyone unauthorized caught outside will be detained. If you resist, you will be fired upon. Again, remain in your homes, this is for your protection."
Ziggs entered what looked like the ruins of an abandoned building, or more likely a destroyed one, by some sort of accident. It was a large, wide structure, fit to accommodate either large stockpiles or machinery, and judging by some of the long forgotten machinery, it could've been a factory or workshop of sorts. So much the walls, some of the roof and floor were damaged, some holes exposing the exterior, indicating something really catastrophic happened at that place. Debris were also strewn all about, but this didn't look like something recent, not of a few days, at least.
But at least it looked safe, for a while, until that beast would find him, so he could catch his breath and lay down his muscles.
"Shit, this wacked up table, most of these childish things, you think it's her hideout?"
The voice got Ziggs on alert again, something he didn't need, and tried to find a place to hide.
"What, are you dense? If it were, I'm amazed no one's ever found it..."
He found a room, with a door busted open and damaged, but it'd do, to help him hide. He noticed it was a mess, old shelves precariously holding themselves, some products long collapsed, some boards cracked.
"Hey, you forgot *whom* was covering it up, for her and her boss?"
Ziggs entered the room and could finally take the large bomb off his back, resting it on the floor.
"Yeah, but still doesn't *look* like it, I mean, where does she make her bombs, and how, anyway?"
That muffled conversation caught a bit of Ziggs' curiosity.
Someone else making bombs, explosives? And 'her', meaning a 'she', a woman? Whom it could be?
Ziggs ever thought he was the *only* one whom had such an interest on such a field...
"Can't deny she knows to pick quite a view, though, gets even the whole city's other side and... oh, crap, I think this might be it."
"Might be what?"
"Where she bombed the Council, buckethead!"
Bombed the Council? All those snobby Lords and Ladies which Heimerdinger was sucking up to? Did that explain why he fell to the point he went in hiding with those people Ziggs almost helped destroy, before he saw those might not have been criminals at all?
And this person, to have done what Ziggs dreamed for so long since he was taken to that horrible place... Maybe, the moment he could, Ziggs could pay this 'she' a visit and thank her whole-heartedly...
As he tried musing all this, Ziggs took a false step and accidentally his back bumped at an already unstable shelf, which started an almost irreversible effect.
"Look at it, the perfect line of sight, the place hidden in plain sight..."
Multiple shelves started falling, one taking another along with it, which forced Ziggs, in fast heartbeats and breath, to get his larger bomb and carry it away and out of the stockade as everything collapsed.
And like life and it's expiry, the sounds were inevitable.
"The hell was that!?"
Ziggs barely had the time to strap the big bomb to his back before he heard sounds behind him.
"Hold it right there!"
"Turn around, slowly, hands where we can see them!"
Ziggs turned around, slowly as instructed, to face the couple of enforcers pointing their rifles at him.
"That bomb, put it slowly on the floor and don't you light-"
Suddenly, that the roar was heard, as the enforcer's attention was shifted away from Ziggs and rather a large creature that just jumped into the rundown building, and Ziggs didn't need to turn around to know whom it was.
He barely had the time to catch the breath before the beast did catch up to him.
"What the-", the first enforcer started.
"Hold it right there, you too!", the second enforcer said, as well, but the beast already started advancing towards Ziggs, growling, forcing the Yordle to run.
One of the enforcers instinctively, as with any other with a gun at the sight of a predator, opened fire, one of the rounds hitting the beast, whom in turn shifted it's focus to the enforcers and jumped right at them.
Ziggs didn't want to see, but couldn't avoid hearing the screams and sounds of iron claws tearing through flesh as he sprinted to the next room, but a quite bizarre one.
One which lied a table as it if were set for dinner, on that rundown place of all places. Candlesticks strewn about, as well as a tray with what seemed a pastry-food long left in it, ants now swarming and crawling on it. Chairs were present and distributed along the table as well, but not all were the same, two were radically different, one almost fit for a child and another a curved one, strewn about with black feathers. One of the chairs had shown signs of being shot at.
The Yordle couldn't afford the time to stay and look, however, as he *had* to remain ahead of the beast. He passed the uncanny scene, into a ramp led up to a catwalk, exposed to the night sky, on which he then headed left, seeing an abandoned office which he could hide. He felt some of the local river stench, which sickened him a bit, but it was good, it would confound the chasing monster if he was really lucky. He entered the office and then spotted to a particular vent left open, small, but it'd fit him for this. He put off the giant bomb and entered the vent, hiding in enough distance for the beast to be unable to grab him.
Seconds passed. Then a minute. Then two.
And there was nothing. Nothing happened.
Ziggs found it weird. The beast would and should've arrived at the office about twenty to thirty seconds since he was busy with those Piltovan enforcers. He dared creep out slowly from the vent and at the office.
It still remained empty. No sign of the beast, either on the floor, walls or ceiling.
Past the door, just a part of the night sky. Some lights flailing about from the airships. But no beast.
Ziggs took care to climb one of the desks close to one of the windows, attempting a peek below, towards the strange dinner table.
There, he finally saw the beast, simply standing there, staring at something it was holding... it looked like... a bunny plushie doll?
And then at other things, though at times the beast was twitching, like if seeing those things *awoke* some memories on it's mind that haunted it. Ziggs could relate to that, as that happened to him not so long ago, down in the fissures. The beast saw other things as well at the table, like an almost human mannequin and a smaller doll, with googles, and those disturbed the creature.
All that left Ziggs intrigued. It was as if that beast wasn't always a beast... not since birth, at least.
The creature picked also something from the table, such as a smoking pipe and sniffed it, and while it disturbed the creature too, it seemed the creature was also soothed by it, as well.
The wolf-like beast then approached the closest chair, the apparent childish one.
"Pow-der...", the beast slowly read, perhaps meaning the name in the written chair.
The large killer wolf then circled the table, stopping as the beast felt some scent from the seat at a head. "She...", the beast said, shaking it's head slightly. "She was there... she was here...", the beast continued, stopping by the feathered riddle chair, with some indescribable words in live pink, which Ziggs couldn't read from his distance. "She... she too...", the beast muttered and carrying on.
As the beast reached the chair at the other end, however, one riddled with bullet holes, however, the beast had a negative, feral reaction, however. It started backing away as it felt it's animal instincts kicking back.
The beast then roared as it drove it's iron claw, bashing the chair away, scaring Ziggs a bit, whom dropped down from the desk.
Ziggs heard muffled voices at a distance, from shoutings.
That could only mean one thing: more enforcers coming, and no doubt would find the recently felled pair, the work of the beast.
Ziggs wasn't for sure going to find out what would soon happen, and so picked up the big bomb, strapped it to his back once again and started leaving, jumping down from the catwalk to the outside at the docks, a risky fall, and then finding a proper place where he could hide and catch his breath before he descended back to the Undercity. The topside was just too hazardous at that point, he only went there to dodge the beast and nothing more, and he was apparently successful at that.
Unknown to Ziggs however, the beast had not engaged, but instead ran off, with at least the bunny and the smoking pipe between it's claws.
The smoking pipe would soothe the beast's constant pain, at least, and the bunny and it's scent would hopefully find those ones haunting it's memories.
To find answers. To know. To remember.
Ziggs, on the other hand, found a better hiding spot between the walls of a storage yard, where he could rest. Except that, while he rested his back and could slouch his limbs, he could do anything but rest.
Images flooded Ziggs' mind. Of all that occurred. The battle. His meeting with Heimerdinger. The breach in that hideout. That beast. How he was lied to by that Ternnus person. Of that tree. That reminded of *her*. The one he hurt, if only by accident. And what she would've thought if she saw what he was doing, right now...
A tightness gripped his heart, something he thought he wouldn't feel again ever since that day. Something in the way of his throat.
And yet, no tears could come from him. All the images and noise, and still he couldn't cry, only feel the tightness, the grip of guilt grabbing him, such an invisible, weightless hand.
And there was nothing the asylum *had* to tug it away from him, now.
He had to go through this alone, for the first time in half a century...