Mark was used to the wind in his hair when flying, but the air in Piltover felt different from when he flew on Earth. It wasn't just the temperature or density—it had a unique sharpness, as though the wind carried a touch of electricity, constantly buzzing with energy. In the distance, Mark saw what could've been called a dock, but instead of boats coming and going, it was those airships he'd seen over the city. Boxes and barrels lined the platforms next to the large blimps, but strangely, no people were moving them in and out. That could be because, through the openings in the infrastructure onboard, he saw a series of small explosions and rapid movements inside.
Mark hesitated for a second. He was almost sure something was happening inside, but it could all be part of sending the ships out. However, not a second later, he watched a man on a hoverboard wearing an owl mask flip over a series of shots fired by a man with what Mark figured was an advanced type of nail gun. The attacker struck the man with the pistol in the head with his board, confirming it: these guys were pirates.
Mark quickly flew down, stopping right outside one of the gaps in the wooden structure. Gathering as much information as possible is a priority over stealth right now. Wooden boxes and barrels were stacked around the floor, prepared for the now-canceled voyage. About seven people were on hoverboards, all with similar white and gold masks depicting different designs. Orange crystals had several people stuck to the walls and boxes—the crew, Mark assumed.
The person in the owl mask landed, flanked by two others, one with a spear and the other unarmed. "We have five minutes till they're out of there." Mark presumed the person at the front of the trio was the leader, and they quickly flipped out a device that reminded Mark of a yo-yo. Mark floated closer, keeping to the shadows of the stacked crates. One of the crew members was a woman with brown skin and dark hair who spotted Mark leaning out. He gave her a shushing motion with his finger over his lips, to which she responded with a perplexed expression, but she stayed silent regardless.
The group quickly popped open one of the barrels at the far end of the ship, though Mark couldn't see what was inside. "You ever seen this much Shimmer before?" one of the pirates promptly said with a hand on her hip.
"The fuck is a shimmer?" Mark wondered.
"They're expanding," the leader told his group. Check for more below. Burn it all." Mark watched as two grunts at the back of the ship opened a trapdoor on the other side of the boxes. He waited, holding his breath until they descended into the airship's lower layer. Not a second after they disappeared below, the trapdoor swung shut, and he heard frantic cries coming from beneath, the pirates banging on the now sealed-closed latch.
"Alright," Mark thought, "Beat these guys, then get those other ones out of the basement, simple." He needed to act fast, but a head-on assault might get someone hurt. Utilizing his flight, Mark sped towards the large grunt with the wolf mask and spear, touching him on the shoulder. The entire group surrounding the barrels of 'Shimmer,' which Mark could now see, was a neon purple viscous liquid looking at him. Despite the white masks covering their faces, he could tell their expressions conveyed confusion.
"Hey," Mark said casually.
"...hey." Said back the tall minion.
In a split second, before any pirates could make a move, Mark threw him against the column on the ship's side, sending the man crumpling into a lanky heap on the ground. Mark winced; he hadn't meant to throw him that hard. Quickly, the group mobilized, the leader of the group slamming some kind of club into Mark's head. It stung for about half a second, not even making Mark's head tilt to the side. "Ow." Mark quipped with sarcasm. He quickly grabbed the weapon and bent it in half, but as Mark was about to let it drop to the floor, one of the pink-haired grunts threw a small rock at his hands.
The result was the same orange crystals that held the crew in place, expanding over Mark's hands, shackling his arms to the bent bar. As Mark prepared to break out of the rocks, two invaders on either side of him started throwing punches and slamming him in the shoulder with their bars. Mark ducked under one punch, but the pirate behind him smacked him in the back of the head with a bar; however, he just turned around and glared, shouting, "Seriously?!" He simply grabbed the man's weapon, crumbled it into a tennis ball-sized sphere, and tossed it into the ocean below them.
The same grunt who just threw the bomb punched him in the jaw; it didn't hurt Mark in the slightest, but he had to move with the attack to prevent the person from breaking their wrist. He not only had to pull his punches to avoid knocking off one of their heads, but he also learned through his days that when fighting regular crooks, you had to move with their punches. He didn't once, and that guy was in the ER for a month. However, Mark didn't anticipate the girl sweeping under his legs, knocking him off balance. However, instead of falling to the ground, Mark merely hovered a few inches above the floor, catching himself in mid-air. "Nice try," he said with a smirk, straightening up and landing lightly back on his feet.
The tall man who had been thrown against the wall at the start of this fight had recuperated and approached their leader. "Who the hell is this guy?!" he shouted.
"I dunno, but we're running out of time!" The owl-masked man responded. One of the crew, positioned behind the barrels, whipped out a gun-like device Mark remembered as the nail gun fired at the owl-faced leader. It fired with a whistling sound that would've been soothing if it wasn't firing small knives. They sadly clanked against Mark's chest before clattering to the floor, and Mark looked at him incredulously, "What the hell is your problem, dude?! You just watched me get smacked in the head and not go down, so you shoot knives at me?"
"Who the fuck are you, man?!"
Mark smirked; he loved it when they set him up like this. Putting an arm over his chest, he began, "Me?" Smirking, he looked the pirate in the eyes. "I'm In-" Before he could finish his introduction, he was interrupted by an explosion from the basement trapdoor, rocking the airship back and forth. Mark quickly scanned the area to ensure none of the pirates fell off—he'd prefer this not to become a rescue mission. Nonetheless, Mark soon noticed that a purple gas was swirling around his legs, and suddenly, the trapdoor flew open, sending even more of the gas throughout the surroundings. It clung to everything like a living mist, twisting and writhing as if it had a mind of its own.
Mark instinctively held his breath, his enhanced physiology rendering him less susceptible to whatever this gas might be, but he wasn't immune to the sense of foreboding it carried. Before the invaders, Mark's ears picked up a jingling, like bells or chains, resonating faintly through the gas. Then, the image of a small girl came into Mark's view, emerging through the purple mist. She had cartoonishly long, bright blue braids that reached her ankles, almost scraping against the ground. Her skin was pale—not to the point of looking sickly, simply as though she didn't get much sun. Her clothing seemed mismatched; on one hand, she wore a purple glove with leather straps on her bicep, while on the other, she had a simple brown work glove. She also had a belt-like feature that held up pants that reminded Mark of something a clown would wear, colored in dark and light purple shades. A purple string laced between the holes in her boots, and leather flaps hung off the sides.
The initial thought that ran through Mark's head was that she was a stowaway who had been hiding below deck, though her calm demeanor didn't suggest it. She blew a large strand of blue hair out of her face, looked at Mark and the group, and then nonchalantly said, "Hi?"
Mark blinked as the room went silent for only a few seconds, but it felt like hours. Suddenly, the girl reached behind her back and pulled out what looked like small alligator faces, but as she brought them up to her mouth and used her teeth on the two pins, they turned out to be grenades. "Wait, no-!" Mark tried to yell, but she was already throwing the bombs at the pirates. The jaws latched onto the faces of the two guards on each side of their leader, sending them tumbling over the side of the ship.
Before they were even completely over the railing, Mark was after them, soaring down into the water below. In the second before the bombs exploded, Mark grabbed them and ripped them off, their masks coming off with it, before attempting to discard them, only for them to explode less than a foot away from Mark. Shrouded by the purple smoke that followed, Mark zoomed down after the falling raiders only for them to pull the large hoverboards off their backs and zoom away, back up towards the fight. Mark tried to focus, yet purple smoke from the grenades still clung to the air, dispersing slowly but leaving a faint metallic tang in his mouth. Despite his distracted state, he took off, grabbing one of the flying men in masks and dangling the flailing man by the back of his collar.
"Get the hell off of me!"
"In a minute!" Holding him tight, Mark flew up and eventually spotted the other one, who fell, circling the blimp and preparing to attack. Mark didn't know if he should stop her, considering that the blue-haired girl had thrown bombs at them, but he decided to trust his gut and stop them. He spun around three times, generating all the momentum he could, before throwing the raider he'd been holding into the other one just as she was about to make her move, knocking her down. Mark zoomed over as the fight progressed inside the airship and grabbed both of them by their collars, the hoverboard falling uselessly to the ocean below.
"Oh god, I think I'm gonna be sick…"
Mark quickly ripped the remaining two rocks from their jacket pockets and tossed the pirates onto the harbor. "Alright, I'm giving you guys one chance to answer: who the hell are you guys?"
"Who the hell a' you!?" The male one retorted.
"I asked first!"
The girl tilted her head. "How do you not know the Firelights?"
Mark pinched the bridge of his nose. He got the information he wanted, but he knew he'd dread answering questions like this in the future: "I'm… new in town, alright?"
"Oh yeah," the guy said, "Like we couldn't tell that by your freakin' suit—where the hell did you get that thing, anyhow?"
"My mom made it for me." It was the first thing that came out of Mark's mouth; not even a bit of that was true, but what else would he say?
"...seriously?" the girl asked.
"Wait a minute—you never told us who you are!"
Mark smiled. Maybe this time, he could get his introduction out. "Me? I'm Invin-" A gunshot cut off his words. Mark quickly whipped around and saw the blue-haired girl holding a gun over her head, pointing the barrel up, smoke still billowing out, as one of the pink-haired Firelights fell to the ground. Mark turned to the other two lying on the floor, saying, "Stay here!" Mark bolted inside the ship, and disarray met his eyes, neon pink flames crawling across the floor and up the walls. Mark figured the Firelights setting the shimmer alight as planned to be the source of the colorful fire spreading throughout the blimp.
Mark and the Firelight leader both knelt beside the girl who'd been shot, blood pooling around her, but Mark could tell by the look in her eyes that she was dead. It was the same look he saw in Angstrom's eyes when… No- The image of Angstrom flashed over the dead girl beneath him, his face bashed in like an exploded pumpkin. Mark shook his head before he and the owl-masked leader glared at the girl. "You killed her!" Mark screamed. The girl's glare suddenly hardened, and the Firelight leader let out a guttural roar before he charged at the blue-haired girl. Suddenly, the girl slung out a massive minigun from her back, showering the surrounding area in a hail of gunfire. "Shit, someone's gonna get shot!" Mark watched as the tall Firelight in the wolf mask picked up the leader on his hoverboard, flying in front of them and taking most of the gunfire. The two of them flew around the inside of the airship, unable to block all the gunshots from hitting the walls or the crew—though Mark doubted they were wholly innocent if they were transporting 'Shimmer.' Whatever that was, it seemed to be worth enough for the Firelights (whose opinion of Mark was rapidly improving) to try and destroy it.
Mark then remembered- this many bullets were bound to hit those two Firelights on the harbor. Thinking quickly, he ducked through an opening in the wall and rushed over to where he left them, the two Firelights ducking for cover behind some crates. "We need to go now!" Still under the hail of gunfire, Mark picked the two of them up, cautiously shielding them with his body.
"Oh goddamnit, not again!"
Mark looked toward the Firelight leader, who motioned for him to follow. With a small sonic boom at his feet, he sped off, quickly regrouping with the two Firelights as they entered a large cement tube.
"Where're we going?"
"Hold on," said the leader in a deep voice. "We can stop for a minute; it's safe." Mark carefully set the two Firelights down, both quickly joining at their comrades' sides as Mark scanned the dark, damp tunnel they had just entered. The air was heavy with the smell of seawater and mildew, and the faint echo of dripping water reverberated around them.
The wolf-masked grunt approached Mark, and he could tell under the mask that he was seething, "What the fuck was that, man?!"
"Hey, for the record, I thought you guys were pirates."
The wolf-masked grunt released an exasperated sigh, throwing his hands in the air. "Pirates?! Do we look like pirates to you?!"
Mark raised his hands in a nonviolent gesture. "Look, I'm new around here. I saw a gang of masked people storming an airship with clubs and bombs—what was I supposed to think?"
"Hold up," the Firelight leader cut in, his voice deep and gravelly. He turned to Mark sharply, "You just come outta nowhere and start fighting like you're some kind of superhero without even knowing who we are? What the hell's your deal?"
Mark sighed and figured this was his best chance at getting his name out there, "Listen, I think we got off on the wrong foot," He held out his hand to the leader, "Call me Invincible."
"What the hell kinda name is that?" the man he carried in said.
Out of nowhere, the girl who he had saved spoke. "He saved us," She said to no one in particular. Everyone turned to her.
"What?" asked the man in the wolf mask.
"Jinx threw those bombs, and they latched onto our masks. If he didn't pull them off…" She allowed the end of the sentence to hang in the air.
After a moment of silence, the leader turned to Mark and said, "I'm guessing I should thank you."
Mark raised a dismissive hand. "Nah, it's okay. Just doing what I do best."
"God, you're corny."
"Maybe," Mark shrugged, "But this cornball just saved your people." Mark hovered off the ground, preparing to leave. "I'll see you around." With that final word, Mark sped out of the tunnel, causing dust to follow him like a jet trail.
The four surviving Firelights looked at each other. "Do you believe him?" the wolf-masked grunt asked, his voice still tinged with skepticism. "Invincible? Who says that with a straight face?"
"He did kinda kick your ass, though-"
"Shut up!"
