#madeofthreads

SEND △ YOURS △ FOR RECEIVER TO SIT IN SENDER'S LAP

If the smell of booze wasn't already indicative of his inebriated state, it was the stupid fucking smile plastered across Leon's face as he lowered himself onto his wife's lap that gave him away. "Hey, you," he greeted, head lolling to rest against hers as he slung an arm around her shoulders. "Am I too heavy? We can switch if you want."

Wow.

He had expected the Lucian soldiers to be better than this. The rumours and stories the others told about them were scary. How could one man posess such powers? And his band of merry men wasn’t any less terrifying. They were there and then not, disappearing and reappearing from thin air in a flurry of stars and blue. It must look beautiful. But it was certain death. Or so Enok had heard.

But as he had watched this man, his beginning dread had came to a sputtering stop – and he had saved this man from the unfortunate fate of running straight into Emmanual’s loyalist camp.

The hell was wrong with him? Had he escaped from the fabled Mystic and was just running like a headless chicken?

Enok mustered the man, cowering down himself. His body tense and ready to jump up and run away, too. Just because he had saved this man, it did not mean that the man would repay him with any kindness. He could just as well pull out a weapon and kill him. Such was life.

Though the man did not attack him. No. His attention shifted again – to the voices of the higher soldiers. Enok listened, too. But his eyes stayed firmly on the other one. Curiously mustering his armour. Taking in the things attacked to his belt. How he smelt. Of leather. Oil. And fresh baked bread. It clung to his dark hair. To the cloth beneath leather plates.

Gods.

What he would do for a loaf…

For a moment Enok's thoughts drifted, he was so hungry. But those instincts didn’t have a place here now. Enok’s eyes cleared again and he nodded towards the forests behind the man. Away from the camp. They hadn’t seen him yet. Why was he not using this chance and running away again? If he lingered, they could still find him.

Viktor stayed quiet and still when the homeowner arrived. Running away made no sense, he was a cripple and thus slow. And... he did not want to run away.

This certainly was not the first time Viktor had broken into the apartment of an Academy student. Far from it. It had become his new hobby - after the Academy had banished him from their grounds for sneaking himself into the body of students.

Stuck-up bastards had not even cared for the fact that he had outdone all the others.

But his face was known there now. So the students' aoartments were the next best thing. Stealing a book and a stack of notes here and there, no one noticed. All of the aoartments had been the same chaotic luxury brat den... all but this.

This here... was a miracle.

Viktor had spent the good part of his afternoon here. And now finally the student that fascinated him so had arrived.

A trained, handsome man - looked almost too good to be this smart. About his own age.

Viktor eyed him up and down, as if he was the one allowed to judge the other here.

The little glowing crystal in his hand - he held it up as if he wanted to ask 'this?' - and then let it play through his fingers like a coin.

Time in this place had done nothing to dull the man that had been making a name for himself as the Eye of Zaun; even after so long, some five years and counting, Silco was still sharp, still quick to anger, still a vicious dog they could not quite bring to heel. He snapped at even the slightest wrong look, fists quick to fly, and if his work as a revolutionary of Zaun hadn't made his reputation, the ease with which he took on men two or three times his size certainly did. A feral sump rat, some called him, and he let them.

What did he have to lose? Silco was not seeing the outside world anytime soon. He'd killed an Enforcer, after all, set him on fire with a poorly-thrown molotov, so of course Piltover would have exaggerated the charges to ensure one of the leaders of Zaun's uprising would spend the rest of his days in Stillwater. It took care of two problems: it took a murderer off of Zaun's streets and effectively ended Zaun's fledgling push for independence. He didn't know that it had truly ended, though the Enforcers who pushed him around always saw fit to remind him that he was nothing more than a dirty trencher who'd stepped out of line and gotten not only Enforcers killed but his own people.

When the visitor didn't leave, Silco's eyes lifted, head turning toward the door of his cell, and the dim light caught the sharp green of his gaze. His head tilted to the side a little, his brows drawn together in annoyance; didn't anyone know by now to leave him alone?

Then with a scoff, he turned his head away, the stone wall cold against his back. He could see the man before him for what he was: a Piltie. A Piltie in a pit of rats where he didn't belong because all he'd done was kill a child of Zaun.

Young Leander @madeofthreads and Somnus, being cute best friends

There is little protest left over in Luis, but still, he tries. A wry lopsided grin and he makes to gesture for her to not worry - but simply lifting his arms makes him flinch and quickly drop both. His left arm hadn‘t much risen anyway. And if something wasn‘t numb, it hurt. 

„Ah, such kindness, princesa Dulcinea…“, he comments, while limping to the bed and letting her help him lie down. 

Wow. So far it had gotten with him. He needed fucking help to fucking lie down.

But after the bumpy boat ride to the island, Luis had almost jumped from the boat to escape the pain shooting through his back into his skull. 

To hear from her that he had helped made that all worth it, though. 

Maybe he could repay just enough in the end…?

Lying on his belly, Luis doesn‘t forget to keep a halfway chipper grin, though. The lines on her body had vanished. The parasite was kept in check.

„You look great, you know? No doubt at all, we will make it to my lab and then you‘re good. Get rid of that damn parasite.“, he tries to reassure her. She had sounded terrified a lot throughout this whole ordeal. No miracle, with how obsessed these bastards seemed to be with her. Making her the wicked key to their supposed take-over.

„….I‘m sorry you got caught up in all this shit. I promise, usually Spain is a great country… lovely people… amazing food… eh? Wish you could‘ve experienced that on a real vacation, not this… freakshow.“

There is a low chuckle coming from him, broken off when that shakes his spine too much and Luis starts seeing white blotches in his vision.

„Oh dios mio…“

Luis closes his eyes for a moment, then he opens one to squint at Ashley again. His right hand briefly wandering beneath himself to pull out the key to his laboratory.

„Can you keep that safe for me, señorita? It‘s the key to my laboratory. We need it to get in. And I think currently it‘s better off with someone, who can use their legs fully, eh? Tried giving it to Leon, but he got all dramatic and sentimental - can you imagine that?“

Mylo. Claggor. There was a sharp jab of pain at the reminder that the two boys were dead, and with it came an even sharper pain at the memory of their deaths. Vander glanced away for a long moment. They had almost, almost escaped, all four of them. Freedom had been right there in front of them...

And then it had all come crashing down in the blink of an eye. An explosion, just like that day so long ago on the bridge.

There was something that confused him, however. Powder hadn't been there that night. It had been Vi, Claggor, and Mylo that had emerged to rescue him. What could she have possibly done while back at the bar? Then realization abruptly hit him: the explosion.

Who among them dabbled in the creation of bombs? No one except her. To think, he had always assumed the explosion was something within the factory that had exploded. The thought never crossed his mind that it might have been from an explosive.

"Wait, did you -- ?" The bartender couldn't finish that sentence, and he didn't want to. It didn't matter anymore. (Would it have even mattered back then? After all, he had been the one taking care of the kids; their safety -- and blood -- was on his hands, especially given the circumstances that had brought them to that place.)

Rather than initially giving a verbal reply, Vander approached the young girl, his bulky frame all-too easily dwarfing her. It was with great tenderness that his large hands rested on her shoulders.

"Listen to me, Powder," he softly requested. It wasn't a command; it was a plea, more than anything else. "What happened that night wasn't your fault. None of you should have been there, to start with; it was between Silco and I, and it started a long time ago." Fingers gently squeezed her shoulders in an attempt to comfort her. "Powder, Jinx... No matter what name you go by, no matter what you did or didn't do, I'll always be proud of you -- but I need you to know that what happened was bigger than any of you. It was never your fault."