"You can't escape!"
Vi's voice rang out across the metal catwalks and alleyways of Zaun, her pink hair streaming behind her as she vaulted over a rusted pipe with practiced ease. Her target—a lean figure in nondescript brown clothing—was maybe thirty meters ahead, moving with the kind of fluid grace that came from years of running from trouble.
This was day eight of Vi's career as a Zaun enforcer, and she was starting to understand why law enforcement was so damn frustrating.
The rapid transformation of Zaun had brought consequences nobody had fully anticipated. The massive Kalinda Crystal Tower—now visible from almost anywhere in the lower levels—had become something of a tourist attraction. Word was spreading throughout the surrounding regions about the miraculous changes taking place in what had once been Piltover's toxic underbelly. Merchants came to establish trade relationships. Engineers came to gawk at the technology. Diplomats came to assess whether Zaun would become a threat or an opportunity.
And, inevitably, thieves came to steal.
The new equipment flooding Zaun's streets represented wealth beyond imagination to people from less developed regions. Hoverboards especially had caught the attention of opportunistic criminals—they were portable, valuable, and represented cutting-edge technology that could be sold to the right buyer for a small fortune. Every day, Vi and her team received reports of theft, mostly targeting the young people who'd received hoverboards as part of Zaun's youth mobility initiative.
The man Vi was currently chasing had stolen one such board. But unlike most petty criminals, this guy had skills. Real, genuine, professional-grade infiltration and evasion skills. Even with her enhanced physical capabilities and combat training from Marcus, Vi was having trouble closing the distance.
Whoosh whoosh whoosh~
The thief used every piece of urban terrain to his advantage—swinging around support beams, sliding under low clearances, ricocheting off walls to change direction mid-flight. He moved like water, flowing through the environment with minimal wasted motion. It was actually kind of impressive, in an infuriating way.
Then a shield came spinning through the air like a discus, its edge glowing with contained energy.
The thief's eyes went wide. He threw himself into a backwards flip, arching his spine with impressive flexibility to let the shield pass inches below him. The weapon embedded itself in a nearby wall with a thunderous CLANG, the impact leaving a deep gouge in the metal.
The thief landed in a crouch, sweat beading on his forehead. What kind of monsters are these people? he thought frantically. If I'd been a split-second slower, that thing would have cut me in half!
But he couldn't afford to freeze. The shield's owner—a large enforcer built like a brick wall—would be right behind it. The thief spotted a cluster of exposed steel pipes running up the side of a building and immediately launched himself toward them, using his momentum to climb rapidly toward the rooftops.
If he could just reach higher ground, get some distance, he'd be able to disappear into Zaun's vertical maze. He'd succeeded in grabbing the hoverboard—that was the hard part done. Now he just needed to survive long enough to collect his payment.
The various factions circling Zaun like sharks were desperate for samples of the new technology. Piltover especially was in a frenzy—the city that had defined itself as the pinnacle of technological achievement was suddenly being outpaced by the slums they'd spent generations looking down on. The Council had tried sending official delegations to establish diplomatic relations and trade agreements, but Zaun had expelled them without ceremony. Vander and Silco weren't interested in playing nice with the people who'd oppressed them for decades.
So Piltover had resorted to other methods. Corporate espionage, paid informants, and of course, thieves like him who were willing to risk life and limb for the right price.
I just need to get out of the energy field, the thief thought, pulling himself up onto a rooftop. Once I'm back in neutral territory, I'm home free.
He'd tried to actually use the hoverboard to escape, but that plan had failed spectacularly. The damn things were biometrically locked—they'd only activate for their registered owner. Without the authorization codes, the board was just an expensive piece of useless technology. He'd have to deliver it to his employers and let their tech specialists figure out how to crack it.
"We need to leave here now," he muttered to himself, scanning for the next route. "Those three mad dogs are relentless."
The pink-haired girl—Vi, he'd heard someone call her—was the most aggressive, constantly pressing the attack with those terrifying gauntlets. The fat one with the shield—Claggor, maybe?—was surprisingly mobile for his size and had reflexes like a cat. And the skinny guy with the staff—Mylo—moved with an almost supernatural flexibility that made him incredibly hard to predict.
If the thief hadn't spent years perfecting his craft, mastering the art of evasion and escape, he would have been caught within the first five minutes. As it was, he'd been running for nearly twenty minutes and was starting to tire.
But he was close now. Just one more district to cross, and he'd be at the boundary between Zaun and the neutral zone. Once he crossed that line, the enforcers would have to stop pursuing—jurisdictional rules that even Zaun's new government was adhering to.
The thief gathered himself and leaped from the rooftop, aiming for a lower platform that would put him on the path toward freedom.
"Where do you think you're going?!"
The shout came from directly behind him. Vi had closed the distance faster than he'd anticipated, using some kind of enhanced jump—probably the gauntlets—to propel herself through the air. Her right fist was cocked back, energy crackling around it in an angry blue corona.
She threw the punch mid-flight, and even though she was still several meters away, the energy discharge shot forward like a projectile.
BOOM~
The energy fist slammed into the platform just ahead of the thief, punching a crater in the metal surface that had to be at least a meter across. Shrapnel and sparks exploded outward, and the entire structure groaned under the sudden impact.
The thief landed badly, stumbling, staring at the crater with wide eyes. His mouth had gone completely dry. If that had hit me... I'd be dead. No question. Just dead.
"Let's see you run now," Vi said, touching down on the platform behind him. She was rolling her wrist, her expression somewhere between satisfaction and mild pain. The gauntlets protected her from most of the recoil, but throwing punches at full power still took a toll.
"Look, miss enforcer," the thief said, raising his hands in what he hoped was a placating gesture. His mind was racing, looking for an angle, any angle to get out of this. "I just took a hoverboard. That's all. There's no need to make such a big deal out of it, right? We can work something out. I'm sure you're a reasonable person—"
"You can't even take a stone from Zaun!" Vi snapped, cutting him off.
Her gauntlets flared with light again, energy building for another devastating punch. The thief's attempt at negotiation had apparently fallen on deaf ears.
Damn it! He wasn't a fighter—never had been. His entire skillset was built around not fighting, around being too fast and too clever to catch. In a straight confrontation with someone like Vi, he'd last about three seconds before being turned into paste.
But he still had one card to play.
As Vi lunged forward to deliver what would probably be a knockout blow, the thief swung the stolen hoverboard around and thrust it directly into the path of her fist. It was a desperate gambit—using the valuable stolen goods as a shield, betting that she'd abort her attack rather than destroy the very thing she was trying to recover.
It worked.
Vi pulled her punch at the last possible second, stopping her fist inches from the hoverboard's surface. The energy discharge dissipated harmlessly, and for a fraction of a second, she was off-balance, committed to an attack she'd been forced to abandon.
The thief didn't waste the opportunity. He yanked the hoverboard back, pivoted on his heel, and ran.
Knew it! he thought triumphantly. She's not willing to destroy the evidence. I can use that!
He'd pulled the exact same trick earlier in the chase, when the big guy with the shield had gotten too close. These enforcers were trying to recover stolen property, which meant they couldn't just blow it up to stop him. It was a narrow advantage, but he'd take anything he could get.
But he'd only made it about ten meters when he heard the distinctive whoosh of something cutting through the air at high velocity.
The staff.
The thief threw himself into a forward roll, using his hands to push off the ground and convert the movement into a tumbling dodge. Mylo's energy-charged staff whistled past, close enough that he felt the heat of it against his back.
"Damn it!" he hissed, scrambling back to his feet. "How are they still keeping up?!"
Behind him, Mylo straightened up, staff resting casually across his shoulders. His expression was one of mild annoyance mixed with grudging respect. "This guy is ridiculous," he said to nobody in particular. "I finally get why those Piltover enforcers always looked so frustrated when they were chasing us around."
"You can sympathize later," Vi said, jogging up beside him. She clapped him on the shoulder, perhaps a bit harder than necessary. "Right now, we need to catch him before he gets away. Move!"
Both of them took off after the thief again, with Claggor emerging from a side passage to join the pursuit. The three enforcers moved in loose coordination, trying to herd their target toward... something. The thief couldn't quite figure out what their strategy was, but he didn't like it.
At the edge of the energy field—the boundary that marked where Zaun's crystal-powered technology stopped working—Powder and Ekko were crouched behind a pile of scrap metal, making last-minute adjustments to a complex array of devices they'd spent the last hour setting up.
"He's almost here, right?" Ekko asked, carefully calibrating a tripwire sensor.
"Should be," Powder confirmed, her face smudged with grease from handling the mechanical components. There was an eager light in her eyes—the kind of expression she always got when she was about to test something she'd built. "Marcus said this guy would try to escape along this route. It's the most direct path out of the energy field."
Marcus had sent them here specifically, saying he wanted to test what they'd learned over the past few weeks. It was a practical examination—could they take their theoretical knowledge and actually apply it in a real-world scenario?
Powder was extremely ready to prove herself.
"Traps are set," Ekko announced, double-checking each component one last time. "Now we just wait and see if they actually work."
They ducked down behind their cover, trying to remain inconspicuous. In the distance, they could hear the sounds of pursuit—running feet, the occasional clash of energy weapons against metal, Vi's voice shouting something unintelligible.
"Here he comes," Powder whispered, her hand moving to the remote trigger for her capture gun. "Get ready."
A figure in brown clothing burst into view, moving at a dead sprint. His breathing was ragged, his movements showing signs of exhaustion, but he was still maintaining an impressive pace. And right behind him, maybe fifteen seconds back, came Vi, Mylo, and Claggor.
The thief crossed into the trap zone without hesitation, probably too focused on escape to notice the subtle signs of disturbance in the environment.
BANG~
A compressed-air cannon concealed in a pile of rubble fired, launching a heavy stone sphere at high velocity directly toward the thief's center mass.
"What the—?!" The thief's danger sense screamed at him. His hair stood on end, every instinct telling him that if that projectile connected, he was done.
He twisted his torso, trying to dodge, moving with every ounce of agility he possessed. But the shot had been perfectly timed, perfectly aimed, catching him at a moment when his options were limited.
The stone sphere clipped his side—not a direct hit, but close enough. The impact was devastating even as a graze, smashing into his waist with enough force to crack ribs. Pain exploded through his body, white-hot and overwhelming. Blood immediately began soaking through his shirt.
"Gah—!" he gasped, nearly collapsing from the shock. His vision swam, dark spots dancing at the edges.
But he couldn't stop. Stopping meant capture, and capture meant facing whatever punishment Zaun had in store for thieves who'd been stealing cutting-edge technology. He'd heard rumors about what happened to people who crossed the new government—and none of those rumors ended well.
Keep moving, he told himself through the haze of pain. Just keep moving!
He stumbled forward, clutching his injured side, trying to force his legs to keep working. A few more meters. Just a few more meters to the boundary line, and—
Dozens of energy beams suddenly lit up the space ahead of him, crisscrossing in a dense grid that turned the air itself into a lethal web. The beams were razor-thin but incredibly bright, and the thief had absolutely no doubt that touching even one would be fatal.
He slid to a stop, cold sweat breaking out across his entire body despite the pain. These people aren't trying to arrest me, he realized with dawning horror. They're trying to KILL me!
The laser grid ahead was certain death. But behind him were the enforcers, and while they were dangerous, at least they'd been trying to capture him alive up until now. Between guaranteed death and possible death, the choice was obvious.
The thief spun on his heel and charged back toward Vi and her team, making a split-second decision. He ripped the hoverboard from his back—it had been strapped there to keep his hands free—and hurled it at the approaching enforcers as hard as he could.
Mylo reacted on instinct, using his staff to intercept the board mid-flight. He caught it, pulled it down, and—
Wait.
Something felt wrong. Mylo's fingers, trained from years of lockpicking and sleight-of-hand theft, immediately registered the discrepancy. He'd handled hoverboards before during training. This one was lighter than it should be.
He flipped it over, examining the underside, and his eyes widened. The core component—the crystal matrix that actually made the board hover—had been removed. What he was holding was just the shell, the housing. The actual valuable technology was still with the thief.
"The CORE is still on him!" Mylo shouted. "He's still got it! CATCH HIM!"
The thief heard the shout and cursed internally. Of course they figured it out. He'd hoped to use the dummy board as a distraction for a few more precious seconds, but these enforcers were sharper than he'd given them credit for.
He juked left, avoided Vi's grabbing hand by centimeters, ducked under Claggor's attempted tackle, and sprinted toward a side passage that would take him away from both the laser grid and the enforcers.
"Don't move!"
A new voice. Young, female, trying to sound authoritative but not quite pulling it off.
The thief's head snapped toward the sound. A girl—maybe twelve or thirteen, blue hair, grease-stained clothes—was standing in his path, pointing what looked like a custom pistol directly at his chest.
A kid? Relief flooded through him. They sent a kid to stop me?
He didn't even slow down, just adjusted his trajectory slightly to run past her. Whatever threat she represented, it couldn't be serious. Kids didn't kill people—not even in the old Undercity, where violence had been common. This new Zaun was supposedly trying to be better than that, more civilized.
BANG BANG BANG~
Three shots rang out in quick succession. Three holes appeared in the ground directly in front of the thief, positioned in a perfect line that demonstrated both accuracy and intent.
"I said don't move!" Powder repeated, and this time her voice was harder, more confident. "The next shot goes in your body, not the ground. Your choice."
The thief had frozen, staring at the smoking bullet holes. The gun was real. The girl's aim was real. And she'd just demonstrated that she could hit him any time she wanted.
But... she was still just a kid. And in the thief's experience, kids didn't have the psychological makeup to actually kill someone, especially not in cold blood. They might make threats, might even fire warning shots, but when it came down to pulling the trigger with a human being in the sights...
An idea formed. If I can grab her, use her as a hostage, the enforcers will have to let me go.
He started walking toward her slowly, hands partially raised in a gesture that could be interpreted as surrender but left him ready to move. "Easy there, little girl," he said, keeping his voice calm and friendly. "Nobody needs to get hurt. Just put the gun down and—"
BANG~
"NO!" Vi's scream cut through the air, raw with horror. She'd realized what Powder was about to do a split-second too late to stop it.
The thief braced for the impact, for the bullet to punch through his chest or stomach or head. He had just enough time to think I really should have just stayed in Noxus before—
—nothing happened.
There was no pain, no blood. Instead, something else entirely. Where the bullet should have hit him, there was now a large, translucent bubble made of some kind of hardened energy matrix. The bubble had formed around his upper body, pinning his arms to his sides and completely immobilizing him.
"Hehehehe!" Powder's face split into a wide grin, all traces of the serious enforcer act vanishing. She looked like a kid who'd just successfully pulled off a prank. "The first three shots were real bullets, but the rest are special capture rounds! Pretty cool, right?"
Vi let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding, her heart hammering in her chest. For just a moment, she'd thought— "Oh, thank god," she muttered, pressing a hand to her face. "I thought you'd actually..."
She'd almost forgotten about the specialized ammunition Powder and Ekko had designed. The capture rounds that created temporary restraining fields instead of causing lethal damage. They were still experimental, only issued to the two young inventors and to the main enforcement bureau. Vi's team was supposed to get some eventually, but the production was still being ramped up.
"You scared me half to death," Vi said, her voice shaking slightly. "Living in Zaun doesn't mean we can just—"
"Still want to run?" Ekko's voice interrupted her. The smaller boy had flanked around while everyone was focused on Powder, and now he lobbed a spherical device at the struggling thief.
The sphere attached to the man's leg and immediately activated, projecting a perfect spherical energy barrier around the target. The thief was now trapped in two overlapping containment fields, completely unable to move.
"Let's see you escape now," Ekko said with satisfaction, dusting off his hands.
"Finally," Mylo groaned, walking up to the immobilized thief with a pair of specialized shackles dangling from his hand. "This guy can really run. If you two hadn't set up those traps, we'd probably still be chasing him around for another hour."
He clipped the shackles onto the thief's wrists—specialized restraints that would suppress any attempt at using crystal-based tools or weapons—and then began searching through the man's clothing. It only took a moment to find the hoverboard's core component, carefully wrapped in protective cloth and tucked into an inner pocket.
"Okay, so," Mylo said, pulling out a small notebook that contained abbreviated versions of Zaun's new legal codes, "you violated... let's see... theft, definitely. Intentional property damage. Resisting arrest. Um..." He flipped through the pages, frowning. "There's more. I know there's more. What else?"
"Disturbing public order and promoting detrimental social behaviors," Claggor supplied, walking up behind him. The big man had retrieved his shield and was holding it casually at his side.
The charges were serious. This wasn't just some kid stealing food because they were hungry, or some desperate person taking what they needed to survive. This was professional theft, sponsored by outside interests, targeting technology that represented Zaun's future prosperity. The kind of crime that could, if left unpunished, encourage others to try the same thing.
Vander and Silco wouldn't be lenient.
The thief didn't respond to the charges being read out. He knew exactly how much trouble he was in. Maybe not execution—Zaun's new government was trying to be better than that—but the punishment would still be severe. Perhaps public labor, working on construction projects for years. Perhaps experimental subject duty, "volunteering" for Singed's medical research. Neither option was appealing.
"Alright, let's take him in," Vi said, pulling herself together. The adrenaline was fading now, leaving her feeling tired and a bit shaky. "This was our first major arrest—a real organized criminal instead of just random troublemakers. We did good work here, even if it took forever to actually catch him."
She looked at each of her team members in turn. "But this also showed us where we need to improve. We've got power, sure, but power alone isn't enough. We need to be faster, more coordinated. And we probably all need to learn how to shoot properly—Powder's capture rounds would have ended this chase in the first five minutes if any of us had been carrying them."
Mylo winced at the indirect criticism. His marksmanship was... not good. He'd been a hand-to-hand fighter and lockpicker his whole life. Guns had never been necessary. Now, apparently, they were.
"Come on," Claggor said, gesturing toward the enforcement bureau. "Let's drop him off and file the report. Maybe we can grab food after? I'm starving."
The group began making their way back into Zaun proper, with the captured thief floating along behind them in his spherical prison. Powder and Ekko walked alongside, chattering excitedly about how well their traps had performed and what improvements they could make for next time.
The Zaun Enforcement Bureau was a relatively new building, constructed specifically to house the city's nascent law enforcement organization. It wasn't fancy—none of Zaun's buildings were, really—but it was functional, well-organized, and projected an air of official authority that the old gang hideouts had never managed.
Sevika stood in the main processing area, arms crossed, watching as Vi's team brought in their prisoner. She was a tall, powerfully built woman with a permanent scowl that made her look like she was perpetually disappointed in everyone around her. Which, to be fair, she usually was.
She'd been chosen jointly by Vander and Silco to run the enforcement bureau, and the choice made perfect sense. Sevika was completely loyal to Zaun's future, totally committed to the vision of a better society. She worshipped strength and respected results, which meant she had no patience for incompetence or half-measures.
Under her leadership, Zaun's criminal element had learned very quickly that the new order wasn't to be trifled with.
Many would-be troublemakers had tested the boundaries in those early days, trying to figure out how far they could push before facing consequences. Sevika had provided clear, unmistakable answers. Several petty criminals who'd refused to stop their activities despite warnings had found themselves minus their dominant hand—literally. Sevika had ordered the amputations personally, declaring that if someone was going to make their living with their hands by stealing, they should be prepared to lose those hands.
It was brutal. It was harsh. But it was effective.
In her own words: "If you choose to steal, you accept the risk of losing what you steal with. Simple as that."
Vi and her team entered the bureau and handed over their prisoner to the processing officers. Reports were filed, evidence was cataloged, witness statements were recorded. The bureaucracy of justice, Marcus had called it. Necessary but tedious.
When everything was complete, Sevika approached them, her expression unreadable.
"First major arrest," she said. It wasn't quite praise, but it wasn't criticism either. Just acknowledgment. "You did adequate work. Could have been faster, but you got him in the end. The traps were a good idea—shows tactical thinking."
She glanced at the thief, now locked in a holding cell visible through a reinforced window. "This one was sponsored by Piltover, we think. He'll be interrogated to confirm. If he cooperates, his sentence will be lighter. If not..." She shrugged. "He'll still serve as an example either way."
Vi nodded, not quite sure how to respond. Sevika was intimidating even when she wasn't trying to be.
"Get some rest," Sevika continued. "Tomorrow you're back on patrol. The changes in Zaun are bringing more attention every day, which means more people who think they can take advantage. We need enforcers who are sharp, not exhausted."
With that dismissal, she turned and walked away, already moving on to the next crisis that required her attention.
Vi and her friends filed out of the bureau, emerging into Zaun's streets as the artificial lighting that served as their "sunset" began to dim. The Kalinda Crystal Tower glowed in the distance, a constant reminder of how much had changed and how much they were fighting to protect.
"First real arrest in the books," Mylo said, stretching his arms over his head. "We're official enforcers now. Can't pretend we're just playing around anymore."
"We never were just playing around," Vi said quietly. "This is real. This matters. And we need to get better at it, because the problems we face are only going to get more complicated."
She thought about what Vander had told her over dinner a few nights ago. Zaun was changing rapidly, transforming from a lawless slum into something resembling a real city. But not everyone could adapt to that change at the same pace. There would be people who resented the new order, people who wanted to go back to the chaos of before, people who saw Zaun's new prosperity as something to exploit rather than protect.
The chaos wouldn't end overnight. For months—maybe years—there would be tension, conflict, resistance to the changes taking place.
And it would be enforcers like her, like Mylo and Claggor and the others, who would have to hold the line. Who would have to prove that Zaun could police itself, could maintain order without descending into tyranny.
In Sevika's words, if you start, you have to be prepared to be chopped off.
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