Alistar Story: Something to Protect

They're desperate. They have to be to do something this stupid. Or maybe it's some hotshot warband captain looking to recruit me. It's been a while since I did anything, anyway. Well, anything out and public. They probably think I'm tamed.

"Your service is demanded by the great host of Noxus!"

Great host, huh. That's rich. I don't even turn to look at them. I'm pretending to be too busy scratching the dirt. The dumb beast act always makes them overconfident.

A few more seconds of silence. I'm getting on his nerves. I can tell because I can hear him huffing and puffing. He's probably got spittle on the edges of his lips. Dumb boy, full of piss and vinegar.

"You will join our warband, beast!"

There it is. He said the 'b' word. It's time for me to stop acting dumb.

"Beast, huh," I rumble. I'm eight times his size, and several more his weight. Even sitting down on my ass on the dirt of the old arena I claimed as home, he doesn't even reach up to my waist.

He points his spear at me. That's cute.

Pokes me with it. That's less cute. I turn around. My face and my eyes, well, they're a real mean sight. Horns dominate the whole affair but they just draw the eye down to stare me right in the peepers. Faster than he can react, my finger and thumb, each the size of his torso, grab hold of his weapon's shaft. I snap it. It wasn't that it was bad craftmanship. It was clear he put a lot of effort in picking this one out. I'm just that stupidly strong.

He's left flabbergasted. "You- you're worth a thousand men, Alistar! Th-think about it! You could win so much glory!"

"Uh huh," I rumble. Glory. Yeah. Like in the arena. Like when I would rampage. I peek out, just curious. "Thousand soldiers, huh? How many did you bring?"

"F-Five-hundred sixty-two."

"Well, that's not a thousand," I state, acting all offended. Time to make him really feel small.

"That's our whole warband!"

"That's really nice of you to bring your whole gang. I was starting to get hungry," I say as I stand up to full height. He cowers. Always fun to watch Noxian soldiers cower. Not so brave now, are you?

"The warfront in Ionia-"

"Not my problem,"I huff.

"The Freljor-"

"Too cold," I protest.

"YOU ARE A CITIZEN OF NOX-"

I bellow. The whole place shakes. I've probably woken someone up from their afternoon nap, too. Sorry. Anyway, it shuts him up real fast, and he's even quieter as I pick him up by the cape like a kitten. Huh, those are some strong clasps holding it to his armor. Normally it tears right off. Whatever, it works.

I put him right up close to my face. "Look here, punk. I'm done. Do you understand me? I've never fought for Noxus. I've never cared for Noxus. I tore a brand new street through your city when I got the chance and frankly if I thought it'd make a difference, I would do it a second time. You know what's out there for me? Nothing. Not a damn thing. Your Noxus killed my clan. I killed many of yours. If you keep bothering me any longer, I'm going to add you to the red smears decorating my walls." The red smears were actually paint. I'd put it there just so I could make that threat.

I smell piss. Wonderful. Job's done. I drop him a solid ten feet. I hear a crack. Ouch. Well, a broken leg's hardly the worst to take from this encounter and if I didn't rough him up some they'd probably just come back with more people. He'd probably talk up how he stared me down and kept fighting until he had to be pulled away or some crap like that.

It doesn't take them long to leave, carrying their injured captain away, swearing up and down that 'Noxus will prevail' and 'we will come back'. They never do.

I turn to look behind me. "You're good. They're gone."

A group of people emerge from the shadowed hallways of the arena. Noxus' disenfranchised. The weak, the sickly, the unlucky, all the people Noxus wishes it could forget, the ones who were born or made too broken to be useful.

The thing is, I'm not any of those things. I'm big and mighty, the kind of force Noxus salivated over even as it tried to be better than it. The thing is, an individual Noxian isn't a big deal. I once sat on one that was trying to kill me without even noticing. There's just way too many of them, which is why I quit. I quit trying to kill every Noxian I came across. I got tired of the anger. It's exhausting, you know. I'd go to sleep every night only to wake up tired because I didn't quit fighting and killing in my dreams.

I got really depressed. Felt I wouldn't avenge my clan. Couldn't, really. Worse, I started to feel guilty. Don't get me wrong, every Noxian I killed was a soldier, but I just killed so many of them. It wasn't fine anymore.

They came after me for a while after I gave up. Droves of them. All I had to do was make myself more of a bother than I was worth and eventually they left me alone. I think I've become something of a bogeyman to them. Every now and then I get one of the kids like the one that just visited me trying to scare me like I haven't been there, done that. It's dumb.

Sometimes, though, I get visits from people like these. The thing that scares the big mean bully, the bogeyman to your bogeyman, that might just be your friend. That's when it clicked.

That's how I get revenge on Noxus.

It loves strength and hates weakness. So, I protect the weak. I use my strength to flex them away from the lives of these people. At first I did it just out of spite, because that's how it worked. I wasn't even picking fights, I was just minding my own business and anyone who got crunched was actively asking for it. Now, of course, I don't just have to protect. I need to provide. So, begrudgingly, I started fighting in gladiatorial matches again, this time of my own free will. Oh, they wanted a piece of me something fierce, so I got no shortage of volunteers wanting to kill 'the Minotaur'. I actually even hosted a couple of events right here in my arena. Got more coin than I knew what to do with. I didn't talk to the people even though I provided for them, though. They were my poetic justice against the imperial bastards at the top and in the military, and that was that.

Later it changed, though. Later on though, this little girl - couldn't have been older than three - came and gave me this red flower. Just plucked it. Said something like 'tank yu mista alistar'. Chop me up and call me steak if that didn't melt my heart. I couldn't hug her. Too tiny, might break her. I let her put her hand on my nose instead. Should have seen the light shine up in her eyes.

This is a new clan. A new family. Something to protect.

And if you've got beef with that, you'll get the horns.