Tales From Runeterra - Reunion

**This post has a parent: **http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/fancreations/2Et5Alvo-tales-from-runeterra-the-plague-of-theft

Click the link to the parent for the preface to this event. As a note: this is an experiment with longer story-telling through dialogue. Future segments will likely not follow the same style, and will normally be much shorter.

The Glass district got its affectionate name from a popular saying about it - that anyone would sooner walk across a floor covered in broken glass than ever live there. But it wouldn't be a district without inhabitants, and it certainly had no lack of the impoverished and deviant populace. Much to the inhabitants' dismay, the district was often the butt of many a joke, one of them being the existence of an apartment complex owned by a rather wealthy entrepreneur from the upper districts. The place was known as the Shady Springs condos - a place that even lacked clean water let alone a spring, and a more ironic use of the word "shady". Most people just ignore the fact that the "condos" are little more than boxes held together with chewing gum and cheap glue.

Officially, the place didn't actually have a name - nor did anybody care enough to file the paperwork to make it an actual district. While it was technically within the borders of Piltover, the people within the "district" wore the stigma of being the worst the city had to offer - as a result, any kind of government funding to the area was minimal, and the only employment options there were either sweatshop work or - well, crime.

It's the world that Vi grew up in, and as she walked down the narrow streets so cracked and filled with holes from the absolute lack of maintenance, an eerie sense of familiarity flowed back to her, along with a distinct sense of unease. And while the Glass district saw almost no law enforcement (other than in extreme cases), her exploits made her almost infamous among the populace, which brought no small amount of curious and disdainful stares. Vi hated every step she took in the place - the only thing that kept her walking further in was the rekindling of a rage that had burnt out long ago.

When she finally made it to her destination, her head was throbbing furiously as massive doses of adrenaline flooded her veins. Room 278 of the Shady Springs condos - Vi felt as if the door were taunting her, torturing even. She took a deep breath and, setting all of her willpower into suppressing her fury, knocked as gently as she could on the door. With her gauntlets, this wasn't saying much more than that she didn't break down the door.

She waited a couple of moments - no answer. She counted up in her head, one, two...

As she hit "five", she swung furiously at the door. The cheap wood shattered on impact, the frame going with it; and there in the middle of the explosion of splinters lay a man, his face shielded desperately by his arms. As the splinters passed and the man sat up to see, Vi's gauntlet caught him directly in the middle of his abdomen and sent him careening into the far wall. He lay crumpled on the floor a moment before slowly trying to lift himself up; his efforts only resulted in a coughing fit that was abruptly interrupted by Vi grabbing him by the stomach and throwing him into the right wall. As Vi stepped in and threw another punch, the man quickly held up his right hand as if to try and stop her - which, to Vi's surprise, he did, even before her fist touched him. Attached to his right hand was some blackened contraption indiscernible in nature that seemed to repel her gauntlets.

As she stood in relative shock, the man took the opportunity to finally sputter out something through his pained coughing. "Could you... goddamn... stop for just a m-... moment?"

Vi tried again in fury to throw another punch, but once again the contraption on his hand pushed her gauntlet away. "Why won't you just take the hit?" she screamed.

"Would you just... let me speak?" he wheezed. Then in her rage, Vi did something the man couldn't have guessed, and the man found himself laying facedown for minutes on end after her boot connected with the side of his head with an audible crack.

At first, Vi grinned at her success. "What you got in that thing on your hand? Magnets or somethin'?" When no reply came, her grin slowly faded away, and she tentatively stepped forward and nudged him with her foot. The stimulus prompted another feeble coughing fit and a groan, which she responded to with a swift kick to his side.

The man groaned once more in agony before pathetically chuckling and muttering through his gasps of pain, "I'm pretty sure... I've run out of ribs... for you to break."

"You still have a spine, don't you?" Vi snarled back as she pushed her foot down on his back.

"Why are you doing this...?"

"Because," she hissed, twisting her foot left and right. "I told you all. Never. To contact. Me. Again."

He laughed through the pain. "Told us...? You left Terri a goddamn voice message."

"And did that message not have my voice telling you all to keep the hell away?"

"So that's it then, huh? Just... gone? Did family really mean so little to you...?"

Vi stepped away as she started laughing hysterically. "Family?" she sputtered. "You all left me to die in a mine."

"I wasn't even there, Vi," the man retorted, dragging himself to sit up against the wall. "I told you the job was bad from the start... she was far too unstable for that environment."

"So you left us to it, and you're upset at me for doing the same?"

"I at least had the decency to tell it to everybody's goddamn face from the start, Vi. I didn't just leave like a cad after a one-night-stand, without a goddamn word. You might as well have just left a bloody note scrawled on the wall that said, 'See ya, losers'."

"Why do you care so much?" The man fell silent after that; he hung his head, face hidden from her, and despite the pain couldn't help but wring his hands. "Well?" Vi followed up after a few minutes in the uncomfortable silence.

Another minute later and he finally said in a broken voice, "Vi, when Kris brought you into the gang, you were the only one my age that wasn't... well..." He trailed off and stared toward the side a moment. "Terri was a sociopath, Jinx was a psychopath, Paxton and Brock were both just assholes... you were the only kid like me that wasn't just there to wreak havoc and the only one that didn't mind me clinging to your boots like a lost pup. Vi, you were... my sister... and my family there... and then you just left." Another silence between them before he finally said, "You never turned back... it's like you never actually cared."

"Shit happens, you know. You should have just moved on by now."

More silence followed. "My family left me alone when I was just four, Vi..." he said finally. "When you left... I felt abandoned again." He paused and turned his head up toward her. "Just that this time I had the ability to do something about it."

"Why didn't you try this shit sooner then?"

"After you left us, Zaun began picking off people who... well, wouldn't be missed, for whatever experiments they wanted to do over there. Kris came up with another bad raid and we basically leaped directly into the goddamn trap."

"You don't know the experiments they were doing?"

"No... I picked the cuffs to our chains off and the others, well... did the rest. Paxton and Brock were both killed, but Terri, Jinx and I made it out without much of a scratch. Or, so I assume... we lost each other in that damn city. Hell, didn't even realize that Jinx was still alive until recently." He lifted his right arm up weakly, just barely raising it above his head. "It's where I got this thing... some kind of... glove fitted with a super-magnet. Reverses polarity, too."

"How'd you get it?" she asked straight-faced.

He looked up at her with a furrowed brow. "As soon as I was able," he continued, ignoring the question, "I got a ticket out of that bloody city... you'd be surprised how tight the border patrol is in Zaun. I performed so many damn odd jobs..." He trailed off in thought before finally coming back, speaking sadly, "When I got back here, Vi... you were an officer. All eyes were on you. Trying to meet with you alone... I did what I had to."

Vi gave a deep sigh. "West... what did you do with everything you stole?"

West motioned with his head towards his left. "There's a crawlspace in the bedroom... the evidence from the locker is in there."

"And what about everything else?"

"Hocked it in the Blue-Blood district and distributed the money here. Even after being away for so long, the high-class still remain corrupt to their cores."

"In the end, West," Vi responded slowly, "You broke the law, I represent the law. I have to bring you in."

"You're not going to."

"Are you actually challenging me right now?"

"I'm saying I won't go in alive."

Vi narrowed her eyes at him and motioned her hands as if to crack her knuckles.

West stared up at her, face and chest starting to swell from the beating; his eyes didn't waver, though. "It's your call what to do, Vi. What's your choice?"