The Fractured Reunion Chapter 12: Be Those Who Are Better, an arcane fanfic

So, in case anyone was curious, the song Vi got going at the end of the last chapter was "We All Lift Together" from Warframe. Part of me thought about transcribing and altering the lyrics directly, but 1. I'm pretty sure Flashbangs and Frag Grenades already did that somewhere in its mass of clever rebel and work song rewrites for Zaun forces to sing; 2. You almost don't need to change the lyrics to make that particular song basically fit perfectly, and any changes I could think of making to better reflect Zaun instead of Venus really messed with the cadence of the song; 3. I'm planning on doing something like that in my next Arcane project, and didn't want to wear it out.

Now, as to why this took so long, well, I've been dealing with emotions about… the world, I've begun a massive Metal Gear Series replay that I'm trying to keep form derailing my creative process on The Fractured Reunion (there's an old MGS5 two/three-shot I started and abandoned before I finished), AND I had to actually come up with a good speech for Caitlyn. THEN I had to decide how I wanted to use the Speech as a framing device in terms of the order of the actual story events.

I do not own Arcane or League of Legends. This is purely fan work. Please, feel free to comment, criticize, and above all, enjoy!

The Fractured Reunion Chapter 12 - Be Those Who Are Better

"Greetings, Piltover. You likely know who I am, but I feel it pertinent to remind you anyway. I am Caitlyn Kiramman, Head of House Kiramman, Grand Commander of Piltover. And I have a message for you. A difficult, but necessary truth. That I, that we, have been so very wrong, for far too long."

Vi ripped her hands out of the guts and ruins of the system controls. It had been Caitlyn's idea; set her recorded speech to loop, then break the control systems so no one could turn it off. Not easily, anyways. Vi smiled as Caitlyn's voice and words started to echo through the city as the rest of the audio alert system came online. Caitlyn had had to get through so many attempts at the full speech, overcome as she had been with emotion so many times at so many parts. She'd been there for her, held her, kissed her, comforted her. She'd offered thoughts on the content besides, but Caitlyn proved she had a way with words Vi somehow hadn't expected.

"You sure they won't be able to just… shoot this up? Or blow it up?" She asked, shaking and smacking ruined gears and wire from her forearms.

"I had the systems designed to whitstand attack from Jinx." Caitlyn replied, smiling.

Vi barked out a sharp laugh at the irony.

"We have been so very wrong, about the Undercity. About Zaun. About it's relationship to us. About it's people. Our people, I'd say, if we had not spent generations proving how they are very much not, because we would not treat ourselves the way we have treated them. Because we were, and are, wrong."

Vi had told her about him. Him. The Big Man at the front of the facility, his cane tapping and banging, either sound always a promise of agony to follow.

She'd already shattered that same cane over his skull, and groaned in exasperation to cries that they had to move, that the Firelights who tagged along understood, but they didn't have the time.

So Jinx contented herself with stabbing the broken edge through the warden's one good leg, so hard the stone tiles beneath it cracked. She patted his cheek with an acidic, dooming warmness, and hissed into his ear.

"My sister seems honestly just, saintly in how much she's willing to live and let live, you fat, sadistic fuck. Too bad for you I'm not her, and you owe us seven years of suffering and separation. Don't go anywhere; you'll be suffering and tired, then…"

As she sauntered off, Jinx realized she certainly wouldn't have time to make good on that threat. But the sound of his sobbing, the smell of his… Oh, he wouldn't realize that for a LONG time…

"'Crime-infested. Lawless. Dangerous. A hotbed of scum and wickedness. Lazy. Undisciplined. Unwilling to do anything honest for a day's pay. Criminals. Monsters. Animals…"

Being able to reverse time, even if by just a few seconds, sounded GREAT. And it was, Ekko mused. But it was also SO stressful. Because it was all on him to use that control of events to the proper advantage. Four people had died in the course of the last 20 seconds, until he'd rolled the clock back over and over.

Never thought he'd be putting his and his people's lives on the lines for Pilties. Certainly never for a Councilor of all Pilties. But Caitlyn had vouched for Shoola, vouched for her ability to help shift minds, if not hearts, and all the money she'd bring to any sort of reformation movement following their hopeful victory, so…-

Ekko's head snapped back as a rifle stock nailed him in the face and broke his train of though, and he clicked the switch on his watch. He ducked just in time, once time started flowing forwards again, and swung his own weapon, sending the… they really DID need to come up with a proper name for the Enforcers who had rebelled against Caitlyn. Sure, 'assholes' was an apt descriptor, but no one would take them seriously.

He swung his pipe at the asshole and sent him crashing to the ground. His people, taking advantage of his foreknowledge of all the rest of the enemy attacks, were making short work of the house-arrest detail that had been placed on Shoola. Another swing made sure the asshole wouldn't be getting up for a while. He turned to the Councilor who looked both grateful and suspicious.

"Kiramman sent us. We're getting you out."

"If we dare still to call it, call them, such, we do so in isolation. Isolation from the whys. Why is the Undercity as it is? Why are its people as they are? Because of US. Because of what we have done to them, for generations. We have poisoned and beaten and stolen and ruined and ignored, especially ignored. Because in our ignorance of the truth, of the why, we could deny our own culpability in it."

They had her father at gunpoint.

They. Had. Her. Father. At. Gunpoint.

Truly, they must be bigoted and stupid. To think Caitlyn's fear of their threat would win out over her need to destroy them for daring to make the threat in the first place.

"You will cease this deplorable fraternization, and you will stand down-" The… insurrectionist? Rebel? They really needed to decided on a proper term. But 'asshole' would do more than well enough as he kept a pistol pointed at her father's temple, and she drowned him out to turn her eyes to Vi. Their gazes flicked back and forth, a whole debate of ability and strategy passing wordlessly, before Vi nodded and shook one arm to disguise the unfolding of the metal and crystal.

A burning magical sphere of power shone into being over the middle of the barrel of the pistol… and the wrist of the woman unfortunate enough to hold it. The magical forcefield burned and cut through both with the same ease, and-

BEW!

Five quick shots from her HexTech rifle; the five assholes fell dead, great holes burned through their skulls or eye sockets. Vi cocked her head to the right, and leapt up and over the railing leading to the next floor, a good ten feet at least in the air. Whatever Jayce, Ekko, and Heimerdinger had done to save her, the enhancements clearly hadn't stopped at her arms, even if they'd been meant to.

Caitlyn ran to her father and embraced him, then dragged him down the steps towards the rest of her squad, as the sounds of gunfire and shattering wood and Vi roaring in exertion began to waft from upstairs. Then an explosion, and Caitlyn watched as Vi and another asshole fell through a hole blown in the bottom of the 2nd floor sitting room. The asshole was, strangely, atop her in the fight. But that positional advantage proved not what it seemed. Vi's hands crushed the rifle stock as he tried to beat her with it, and her legs tangled and swung, throwing him utterly off balance, onto his side on the floor. Vi swept up over him, snatching at the barrel of his rifle, and seemed to surprise even herself when she ripped it out of its mooring barehanded!

Everyone simply paused for a second to take in what she'd just done. Vi thankfully recovered the quickest, and laid the asshole out and unconscious with a hard, swift punch, tossing the rifle barrel aside.

"We call Piltover the City of Progress. A city of Equality. But Progress for whom? Equality for whom? Certainly no one and nothing beneath us. Because if it were, we might have to pay the costs of our Progress ourselves, instead of pushing our runoff and toxins and refuse and scraps onto those literally beneath us, and beating and imprisoning and killing them when they dare protest against their unfair treatment."

Jinx gnashed her teeth as another volley of bullets and crossbow bolts chipped away at the edge of the wall she had barely been able to hide before it started getting shot to pieces. Fucking PACK of Assholes and Noxians (Assholes Squared, then?) in a choke point blockade at a key crossroads in the network of cells and rooms that made up every floor of Stillwater below the ground floor. Bunch of damned bootheels, RIPE for the EXPLODING! And YET… she'd probably catch a bunch of people IN those cells if she did that, so…

"UGHHHHHHHHHH!" She let herself groan aloud in frustration. "NEVER let me be a fucking big fat hero again, it's so BORING. And HARD! And DUMB!"

And yet, despite her proclamation, she was beginning to suspect that perhaps being a Janna-forsaken bleeding heart actually ran in the family, and hers had just taken a-fucking-WHILE to start dripping. Because one dumbass across the hall tried to lean out around from his cover and get a shot off, and she screamed to stop him.

It didn't help. He was a bloody pincushion in seconds. And that. Was. IT.

She snatched a grenade from behind her back and tore the pin away between her teeth, hurling it around the wall with expert precision. She breathed deep as absolutely everyone that wasn't her SCREAMED. The Assholes screamed in warning, the prisoners screamed in terror, the Jinxes and Firelights backing her up screamed in outrage. She sucked those screams in, let them FUEL her.

Then the bomb went off scattering a mist of technicolor paint everywhere, and the screams turned to confusion, and Jinx let the Shimmer endlessly flowing and burning in her LIGHT and BOIL!

She sped out at superhuman speed into the cloud of paint, firing as she went, Asshole heads popping off in gory, glorious bursts of red and bone and stupid bigot fascist brain. With her free hand she snatched and tossed another paint grenade. Not that the assholes knew that's what it WAS. She could dodge some bullets and such with her enhanced physiology, speed, mental processing.

She couldn't dodge twenty all ready to fire, trained on her.

So she literally blasted spray paint into their eyes and field of fire, and the rest of the crew behind her FINALLY realized they weren't going to get shot cause she was hogging all the attention, and the prisoners in the cells realized they could try and contribute and started HURLING whatever could fit through the bars at the blockade crew, and a few things that couldn't.

Shimmer-enhanced strength and speed on demand also made kicking and pistol-whipping a few choice blockaders to death easy and satisfying, besides.

Her triumph was short-lived as a series of grenades tumbled to her feet from deeper in.

That wasn't fair. Bombs and grenades was HER THING, the greedy fuc-

BANG! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-

Jinx snarled as her eardrums began to heal past the effects of the flash bangs, as she watched a troop of Enforcers and Noxians lead Ambessa Medarda away back through the bloody halls and empty cells Jinx and her crew had left behind them.

FUCK, what she wouldn't give for Pow-Pow or Fishbones. But a minigun and a rocket launcher were, even for her, poor choices for a prison break and prison corridors, so she'd left them. If she hadn't, she could've MULCHED that bunch of Assholes, that damn warlord bitch especially. Could've ended what was surely gonna be the worst of this weird little war before it could even start.

But all she was her pistol Popper, and paint grenades, so she settled for decorating the group with the brains of the rearguard.

"Yeah, you BETTER RUN, WAR PIG!" Jinx roared after the group. FUCK. It'd be smooth damn sailing for them; Jinx and the crew had cleared the whole way behind them. There weren't even prisoners left to slow them down. Sure, she could pursue, but all the other prisoners still in the cells… But… FUCK, being GOOD SUCKED!

"What are you all standing around for? Fucking get these cells open. You dips, move."

She barely gave the four in a cell far too small to fit them time to get out of the way before she shot the lock apart. She forced her way past them to the tiny window at the back of the cell, drawing a flare from her bag. She tore the cap against the top and held it out as burned and smoked, black and blue rising into the air. A sign to the crew holding the gondola controls back at the mainland; trouble was coming.

"The last two generations have trapped us in a cycle we dare not admit is there, because if we admitted it, we would have to admit what started it. My year-long policy of reprisal and crackdown began after the attack on the Council, that killed so many of us. My mother included. The attack came at the hands of the individual known as Jinx. A HexTech rocket of her own design, fired in response to the death of her third father, in response to a lifetime of unjust inequity and suffering. She attacked us in response to grief, in response to what we had done to her and her people and her city. What we have been doing for centuries. And I responded just the same. We're truly not so different. Only circumstances keep us so infinitesimally separated."

Sevika rose and strapped her fighting arm into place as she saw the detonations at the bottom of Progress Bridge, as she saw the black-colored flares light up both from Stillwater and on Piltover's side of the river. She rolled the steel-toothed, slot-powered prosthetic in its socket, felt the weight of it.

"You all know the drill. Let's go!"

The roar that went up as they crested the curve of the street that descended into Zaun from Progress Bridge, as they charged across it, shook the world.

"And had she had access to even a tenth the resources I did, had she lived in an environment that fostered her mind and treated her with kindness, where might we all be today instead? In scant days of study, she could engineer HexTech devices that took the Partners YEARS to develop. We deny and dismiss and dare not see the truth; that the people of the Undercity are just that. People. Just like us. As brilliant and able and everything we like to think we are. We simply dare not acknowledge that truth, because then we would have to acknowledge the fundamental inequity of Piltover and Zaun, an inequity that is entirely our work. Our doing."

It had become an absolute, chaotic, bloody mad dash back across the Bridge. They'd all assumed it would be. That the boats would be either too slow or too destroyed to get them back across easily. But that assumption belied the reality of what it really meant to fight their way back home.

Vi snapped another rifle beneath her crystalline forearm and hurled its owner against one of the columns. Ducked a truncheon and sent its owner tumbling ass over kettle with a two-fisted counterblow. She snatched a friendly Enforcer off the ground and pushed him towards one of the Jinxers who'd come up from the Zaun side with Sevika, letting her get dragged off as quick as could be managed.

It was bloody, violent chaos. But they were managing. Going to make it happen.

Vi felt her gaze slide through, finding Caitlyn in the fighting. She kicked and smacked and swung and whirled and shot; her time under Ambessa had clearly improved her fighting ability. And damn if that didn't do something for Vi, even in spite of where those skills had come from. She let out an appreciative, teasing whistle as Caitlyn ducked a truncheon, then smacked her attacker with the stock and rifle and flipped it around expertly, blasting a shot through his shoulder that sent him tumbling to the ground.

Then she saw it. Her whole Wild HexTech surgery trapped in the depths of the Arcane had really changed her in ways she didn't think even its architects had intended or known could happen. Sure, she was stronger, could move faster, fight longer. But she could see more; process faster. And THAT was how she saw it, knew it.

A shot from the far end, streaking for Caitlyn's head.

Vi threw up a forcefield but- TOO LATE. She saw the bullet melt slightly, saw it fragment into a cloud of shrapnel around a still-pointed brass core, still screaming through the air for the woman she loved.

Another field, still too late, what was WRONG with her?! A molten glob in a sea of red-hot shrapnel, barreling for her. Maybe she could still duck, maybe she could warn-

"CAIT-"

The world stopped as Caitlyn looked up and her head snapped back, blood and bile bursting into the air.

"CAITLYN!" Vi wasn't sure she'd ever heard herself so terrified.

Everything, herself most among that everything, became a blood-hazed blur as she fought her way through the mass of bodies fleeing and chasing. Just before she collapsed down next to Caitlyn's prone bleeding form, it stuck in her mind for some reason, she caved an asshole's throat in beneath her knuckles. V

Vi's hands and fingers felt, desperately, at Caitlyn's limp body, around her blood-stained hair and puss-strewn face as her ruined eye socket poured blood and all sorts of awful and more blood leaked from the crack in the back of her skull. Vi's fingers finally found the right spot on Caitlyn's neck. Thu-thump. Thu-thump.

She was alive.

Suddenly Scar and Sevika were there, but Vi couldn't hear what they were saying. Vi's forcefield had cut most of the assholes off from their main force - They REALLY needed a better word for the enemy forces - and Sevilla's reinforcements were helping take down those who remained on the Zaun side of the Bridge, helping their wounded and tired get up and moving.

Vi turned her gaze away from Caitlyn's face, to the assholes beating and firing on the forcefield.

"Get her out of here," Vi commanded, passing Caitlyn into Seika's arms. "I'll be behind you, but I've got something these pricks need to hear." Vi reached into the pack at her side, drew out a large pink flare. She lit it up and dropped it; a sign the job was done, everyone should retreat.

She let her other arm open, let the Arcane power BURN and FLOW, and another forcefield burst into being behind the front line of assholes, cutting off the main force. And then it SCRAPED FORWARD, pressing that front line up against the first forcefield, tighter and tighter…

"The current civil unrest is the result of my decision to admit that truth, to accept that truth and begin to work towards a restitution that I dare not call well-earned. Humanity, acceptance, basic needs; these things need not be earned here in Piltover. Furthermore, Zaun should not have to earn nor prove worthy of such fundamentals of life as clean air, clean water, enough food for a day. The gas attack, that tipped the scales of public opinion and led to my appointment as Grand Commander? That we saw and decried as so inhumane and damaging to our people and children? The people of Zaun breathe that, and breathe worse, every day. The briefest taste of what we put them through, and our first reaction is crush them underfoot. How dare we?"

Vi approached the compression of assholes stone-faced, and she could see the fear in them. The absolute certainty that this would be their last day, that they were going to die here, like this, by her hand.

"Do you fucking get it now?" She snarled as she got right up against the glowing blue magical energy, glared at the compressed CRUSH of humanity caught between the barriers. A lot of broken noses and busted teeth and a few crushed eyes from the sudden and rapid compression she'd inflicted with the barriers, and everyone present knew she could make that even WORSE. Could crush them to a bloody pulp between the forcefields.

"That feeling… That absolute fear for your life. Knowing it's not in your hands anymore. That it doesn't belong to you. It belongs to someone else. Somehow who hates you. Who doesn't even see you as a human being. Who's just looking for an excuse to take it all from you, for no good reason, maybe just because you existing pissed them off…"

She could see tears and blood and snot flow from their collective faces as they took in her words.

"Now you know how I've lived, how all of us have lived, under YOU, EVERY. DAY."

Vi tried her best to take a calming breath, but shots were ringing out from far behind the second barrier, and she could hear the muffled pleading from between her forcefields.

"Do you get it now? What you've done to us?!" She snarled, practically pressing her nose against the burning Arcane energy. "Only, this isn't just a nice learning opportunity for you. This is a chance for me to make a point. And this is just gonna stick in your dumb, asshole craws forever."

She let her left arm close, let the power bleed away. Let the back forcefield drop, and the crushing mass of assholes fall back over themselves into life and relative safety.

"You're not better than us. We're so much fucking better than you are, in all the ways that really matter." Vi declared as she saw medics rush forward. Medics…

"Who now still dares? Those who refuse to accept the truth. Who could see where my actions on Progress Bridge would lead, and refused to entertain even the barest inflection of decency and humanity. Who could not accept the truth; that we are not better, simply because we live in Piltover. As it stands, we are worse, for all that we are and have, we are and have at Zaun's expense; we are and have to their direct detriment. I refuse to deny the truth any longer. I refuse to accept the way the world is, simply because that is how it has always been. I stand with Zaun, that we might at last truly live up to our own ideals. That we might achieve true progress. True equality. I intend to be better than I have been before, than we have always been. And I hope that I will not be alone in doing so."

Vi felt her gaze drift. That poor bastard whose throat she'd caved in was still slumped against the second forcefield, slowly choking and drowning on his own throat and blood. Sure, all the assholes caught between the forcefields were getting medical attention, and every one of her people on her side of the barrier were getting treated and evacuated with all haste as soon as she'd dropped the flare. 'We're so much fucking better than you are, in all the ways that really matter.'

Vi remembered the protest, the Day of Ash, when she and Powder had lost their biological parents. The Enforcers had gone group of bodies to group of bodies, jabbing and kicking and then firing at anything that made noise. Not a trencher who'd dared protest, dared fight, could leave Progress Bridge alive.

'We're so much fucking better than you are, in all the ways that really matter.'

Vi knelt down next to him, reaching into her pocket to withdraw a small switchblade, before she thought better of the order of operations. She snatched his pistol out of his holster and yanked at the barrel, ripping it out of place. She passed a small forcefield through it, and blew hard for good measure, tried to get any and all metal shavings she'd made out of it. Then she reached with her knife, and cut into the man's throat. Shallow, carefully, just around where she'd broken and crushed it before. Then she slowly slid the barrel of the gun into the cut, and breathed a sigh of relief as the barrel got around the damage, as he started actually breathing again.

She looked down the Bridge. Her people fleeing, but still clearly waiting for her before they truly left. The assholes who hadn't been killed outright all left wounded where they'd fallen.

'We're so much fucking better than you are, in all the ways that really matter.'

She moved down slowly, hoping none of them would be dumb enough to try to attack her. After first handling the last guy Caitlyn had fought, bandaging his gunshot wound and asking him to keep an eye on the guy with the gun barrel in his throat, she moved down. Got stitches started, helped set broken or pulled bones and limbs. Her people moved forward again, and she could see the disbelief among them. But she could also see that they understood what she doing.

They crawled towards each other across a Bridge of pain, helping and healing those they'd been battling and killing just minutes before. Till Vi found it; the end case asshole. She waved her people off.

The woman had scrunched up against the last column, and was desperately trying to hold her gut and intestines in place through the great gash in her stomach, blood and bile pooling and soaking beneath her.

"No-nononono, please!" She begged, too delirious and terrified and DYING to have seen what had been happening around her.

"It's alright. It's ok. I ain't gonna hurt you, just, your hands-" Vi said softly but firmly as she reached and shifted, her other arm opening, a forcefield curving and contorting to the woman's body. The Arcane barrier compressing tight enough even the bleeding stopped, and there was no way anything of her insides would be able to fall out again. "Can you stand? Can you-" Vi tried to help lift her to her feet, but stopped swiftly after an agonized, teary cry erupted from the woman's throat. So she gathered her up by the back and legs, carried her towards the barrier across the Bridge, which she finally let drop.

The disbelieving assholes on the other side numbly directed her to their emergency first aid area, where she set the woman down, and timed it with three medics to let her drop her forcefield over the woman so they could reach in with greatest speed, to ensure she lost as little as possible in the transition from magical medical care to the mundane.

Vi couldn't quite make out the babbling from the woman as they dragged her off, already working on pushing and sewing and stitching. But she was fairly certain she heard a few desperate 'Thank you's in there somewhere. She turned to look at the mass force of assholes she'd walked right into the middle of, carrying one of their wounded so she could hopefully be saved. She walked right back out again.

It was over half a mile of Bridge to get back onto the streets of Zaun. Half a mile any of the assholes could've used to take a shot at the other great leader and figurehead of the opposition. Of the revolution.

Vi walked over the crest of the street without a backward look. Not even a hint of violence directed at her the whole way down.

So. Between just… general emotions about everything, and everything going on in this chapter, I hope you can all see why this took so long. I hadn't planned it this way, either. I was going to just write out the story bits. Then I had the detail of 'Caitlyn sets an recorded speech up on an city-wide emergency broadcast system she had built to better distract and divide opposition forces and attention so everyone can do their thing.' Come to me as I was writing Chapter 11, and I realized I had a chance to do something very interesting, something I'd never tried before. Then I realized that interesting thing also meant I had to actually WRITE THE SPEECH in its entirety, and make sure it was actually GOOD.

I definitely did the first. I'm still not totally convinced I accomplished the second, but I can't get it any better, so here it is.

That Very Interesting Thing is what you read; the actual action and advancement of the story intercut with the speech, both thematically working as meaning for the story scenes, and providing a meta/actual background noise to everything happening as it keeps playing, over and over. The STRUCTURAL use of the speech nonetheless worked out just like I'd hoped it would, so I'm happy with that, at least.

As for the content, that was also partly why this took so long, because some parts felt too long, and who's perspective to use for Ekko's scene of time-reverse-fighting, and how to portray that effect, was an ENORMOUS creative question for basically an entire month.

I'd had the "Vi helps preform first aid to the Assholes" idea since almost Chapter 9, maybe even earlier. And that was an idea I kept refining and building on that whole time; Ambessa almost interrupted it in one mental draft, but that was too quick for her to reappear out of prison, and broke the emotional intent of the scene. Ambessa is, both literally and narratively, an outsider force, bringing and pushing her own extra fucked up ideals on top of Piltovers'. And THIS was about Vi doing something that would again help Piltover see how fucking WRONG it's always been, and Ambessa interrupting at the last minute, trying to have Vi seized… it'd be another good action scene, but this didn't NEED to be a good action scene at the end. It being action-y defeats the purpose of it.

Vi carrying in someone with a major gut wound and walking back most of the Bridge without harm was a late development of the idea, but I think it really works to help drive home the point of the whole story beat.