A/N: So, until now, I was just moving chapters from my snipped thread; unfortunately, that's over.
From now on, the next chapters will come slowly, probably once a week or so, with my Patreon staying one chapter ahead as always.
Anyway, what did you guys think? any feedback would be appreciated.
-----------------------
-----------------------
Ethan approached the strip-club —if it could be called that— with long steps, both Maelle and Taylor easily keeping pace with him despite the latter's wound having barely healed.
The place looked incredibly run down, exposed metal pipes could be seen among broken bricks and plastic sheets covered most windows where the glass had broken, different color lights shining from between the cracks.
He frowned at the deafening music escaping from the place, he had always hated nightclubs.
From between one of the biggest cracks, he caught sight of a topless girl retreating as a costumer fondled her small breasts, alcohol spilling over her exposed chest, her body too thin from malnutrition.
Squeezing the metal pipe tighter at his side, he immediately started missing his glaive, but turns out walking around with a polearm bigger than he was is incredibly inconvenient… there was a reason swords were popular and it wasn't because they were better weapons.
There were two man at the door, one was larger, he stood at least 2,10m tall and was built like a wardrobe, shirtless, he had a face full of heavy makeup, wearing a spiked collar and bracelets.
The other was slightly smaller and much thinner, wearing a leather coat and having piercing all over his body, including at least 12 on his chest.
The larger of the two gave them one look and snorted, hand reaching for the handle of a machete hanging from his waist. "Fuck off."
Without saying anything, Ethan lifted his pipe and smashed his head before he could do more than grab the handle, the man crumbling to the floor like a sack of potatoes
The second guard took one look at his companion and raised both hands, stepping away from the door before running towards a back alley.
Maelle looked at the crumpled man and raised an eyebrow. "I thought we weren't trying to kill anyone?"
Ethan grimaced, he hadn't hit as hard as he could but head wounds were dangerous, then he shrugged, he didn't really care about it right now. "He'll survive… probably."
Taylor gave the guy a look, noting the drool falling from his open mouth, but she didn't say anything, her bugs inside the club probably letting her see even more than he had.
Getting inside, they ignored the naked girls dancing on tables, the gaunt figures smoking shimmer at corners, several of them probably teenagers, and the mind numbing music blasting through the room to start walking toward the second floor, some bodyguards noticing their entrance but dismissing it from their mind.
Close to the stairs there were small rooms blocked by black curtains, Ethan could both hear and smell the sex coming from inside them.
As soon as they got to the second floor, Taylor raised her chem-tech gun, a purple pistol borrowed from Jinx, and shot in a single fluid motion, the chemical discharge hitting the barrel of a stolen riffle aimed her way and causing it to explode, leaving the guy holding it screaming on the floor missing a few fingers.
The club's music continued to fill the room, it's deafening beat enough to completely mask the discharge and the screams from the other patrons.
The small, pale skinned woman had been sitting on a red armchair reminiscent of a throne, a cigarette on her lips, a completely naked girl laying in a sofa at her side and two small, leather masked guy sitting at her feat.
Margot, the madam in charge of most prostitution in Zaun and one of the two remaining Chem-Barons in the lower city.
Around her, 8 bodyguards started to move, a mixture of men and women wearing enough piercings, chains and leather to outfit an entire store... and Ethan was sure one woman was large enough to actually be the store.
He just grabbed the back of an empty chair and started dragging it behind him while continuing to walk towards her.
Maelle stepped ahead of him, her sword, the only one they could find in such short time, coming out of it's sheath with a well practiced motion, the edge dented in several places from lack of care.
At the edge of his vision, his improved eyes caught the moment tiny flies landed atop the remaining fire-weapons in the club, two pistols each in the hand of a different bodyguard at the corners of the room.
Taylor adjusted her aim, the barrel of her gun pointing straight towards the flies before she pressed the trigger in quick succession, two green blasts hitting the weapons and sending the men to the floor before they could even draw.
Guess she was pissed.
Turning the chair around and setting it heavily in front of the pale woman, Ethan sat down and stared at her, all 8 of her bodyguards falling to the floor with varying degrees of injury as Maelle finished with them.
The leather masked guys at her feet finally seemed to snap out of their drug induced haze, eyes going from Margot to him a few times before they scurried away, but the girl in the sofa was just too out of it to care.
"So… it seems like you were under some kind of misunderstanding," he said, watching the way cold sweat had started running down her forehead. "You see, when Sevika called a meeting, she wasn't asking you to show up."
They had discussed how to deal with the living barons, but when the two simply refused to show up for Sevika's round table, those discussions had changed.
Before, they had been prepared to give a few concessions to the barons in order to unify Zaun, none of them liked it, but both Margot and Chross led large organizations, were competent and knew more about Zaun than even Sevika and Jinx did, at least their corners of Zaun.
Unfortunately, it had become clear that without a third Baron, both of them saw no reason to unite or even discuss things, they'd simply stay in their little dens until Piltover calmed down, then proceed to fight each other until there was only one left.
Worst case scenario, if Zaun tried to unify without them, they may even form a temporary alliance to fight them before they 'established' themselves.
The barons had to go, it was just a matter of deciding how to do it.
"I-I se-see," the woman said, taking a second to wet her lips and try to regain some composure. "My apologies, perhaps you'll accept a gift as compensation? F-free use of all my clubs for you and your lieutenants? I'm sure we can still come to an agreement…"
Resting the metal pipe beside his chair, Ethan took off a letter opener and made a small hole on the palm of his hand, a tickle of blood starting to fall on the table between them.
Immediately, his senses seemed to improve, his vision expanding and his hearing catching the beat of every nearby heart, the scent of shimmer and other chemical agents filling his nose.
Staring at Margot, he saw her heart starting to beat faster, goosebumps raising on her skin, he also noticed that, while she looked only 20, she was much older, the small valves all over her body being used to stretch her skin.
"Perhaps," he said, dispelling the intrusive thought of how her blood would taste to concentrate. "But before you could have been a partner, now that's no longer an option."
Closing his hand, he squeezed one last tickle of blood and forced his wound close, the liquid forming a small pool on the table, then it seemed to come alive, a thin line slowly moving towards the Chem-Baron.
"What are you doing," Margot asked, her voice growing stronger even as her fear became more obvious to him.
"Insurance," Ethan said and leaned back on his chair. "No more independence Margot, you work for us now, you'll follow our rules and take orders like a good little minion, or else…"
With an effort of will, the red liquid exploded into motion, launching itself off the table and hardening midair into a thin needle to pierce through the woman's chest before she could react, the substance entering her body and mixing with her blood.
"Don't!" she screamed, jumping out of the chair only for Taylor to push her back down, hard. Taping at her chest, she released a breath of relief at still being alive before quickly speaking. "You can't control my business without me! Do you have any idea how many girls I control? How many would die without my protection!"
"Don't worry, as I said, that's just insurance," Ethan said. "I'm sure you won't even notice it's effects, as long as you follow orders, don't try to betray us and prove yourself useful that is, otherwise, it's a very painful death."
In truth, Ethan still didn't have the control to really do much with blood if it had been outside his body for more than 1 or 2 minutes, but if he focused, he could feel it's location for as long as it existed, she would not be running away anytime soon.
Margot also didn't have to know that.
"No one will be forced," Taylor said, still holding the Chem-Baron's shoulders down. "And no one under 18, those are the new rules."
"To begin with, at least, I'm sure we'll come up with more," Ethan nodded. "We'll not be pursuing anything that happened before today, but it won't be tolerated from now on, anyone who breaks those two rules won't be doing it a second time."
"It will cut down on the earnings," Margot said but, when she saw the look in his eyes, quickly amended. "Of course it will be done, I'm just making sure there's no misunderstandings about the books later."
Interesting, although his improved senses could still catch it, there were no obvious signs of fear anymore and she was no longer stuttering, it seems like she worked well under stress.
"I want a list," Taylor said, finally releasing the woman but continuing to stand behind her. "Every prostitute you hire, how much you let them keep, who's in charge of them, how do you run the business, I want everything."
"… That will take time. I don't control everything, but much of the prostitution in the lower city ends up here, we don't even register their names, just numbers on a book."
"Then you're in luck," Maelle joked. "Finding that out is the perfect chance to prove yourself useful to us."
"You're closing the club today," Ethan said. "We'll want to look at everything before reopening," then he nodded towards the naked girl on the sofa. "And get this one into a room with some clothes."
"What are you waiting," Taylor said. "Move."
Margot moved, quickly ordering her remaining workers to stop the music and pushing her customers out the door, then she started walking down the stairs to go talk with her girls.
"Wait," Ethan stopped her. "Have you had any contact with Singed?"
"Silco's inventor?" Margot asked and he nodded. "No, with the recipe for shimmer, we didn't need him anymore."
Ethan waved the woman off, keeping a watch on her for a few minutes and, while he saw the thought of resisting forming, of calling for her remaining forces and trying to fight them, the woman was smart enough not to do it.
Turning to Taylor, he sighed. "You're sure about not pursuing things from before we took over?"
"No, but this isn't my world."
Maelle took a seat at the now empty sofa. "No matter the world, I don't think anyone would consider such abuse to be right."
"… I know," Taylor sat at Margot's chair. "But we also don't have anywhere to put them and I don't want to just… kill everyone."
It would probably be too many people anyway.
Ethan was already starting to get a headache, when he first thought of taking over Zaun, he hadn't really considered the implications of it, even solving the drug problem wasn't as easy as stopping Shimmer production, particularly because most of the recipe had leaked, every two bit criminal could cook some, if at a much lower quality.
The fact was, crime had become the backbone of the lower city's economy, without it the entire place would crumble in less than a month.
For a moment, they grew quiet with their own thoughts, Taylor using her bugs to keep watch on the club and nearby streets, making sure everything was going as they wanted.
"About Singed..." Maelle finally broke the silence when she was sure there were no more goons listening. "Do you know if his daughter is dead or just kept forcefully asleep?"
Ethan considered the question. "I… have no idea, in the show he says he wants to cure death, but his daughter is always shown inside a sealed container, she wasn't frozen, but I guess he could be keeping her in a forced coma. Why?"
"If her brain is still working, I could take her inside a canvas, give them a chance to live together… We may not need to fight him."
Ethan tapped a finger against the pipe at his side. "… That would be a hard sell for Jinx."
"We could use a chemical tinker," Taylor wondered out loud, "Directly cutting people off shimmer would create too many problems but, if he could make the formula weaker, safer and less addicting, we could slowly work them off the drug."
Ethan, hummed in thought, he had been focused on Singed as an enemy but, if they could recruit him? Would aura help with his daughter's recovery? The problem was he had no idea how Jinx would react, did she even care about what happened to him as long as she got Vander back?
"I'll talk about it with Jinx," Maelle shrugged, then turned to Taylor. "What are we going to do with the girls?" then she glanced towards the door to the back room where some of the dancers were still gathered. "And the boys, I guess."
"We'll take over," Taylor said with an unhappy voice. "We'll provide protection and make sure they aren't explored."
He could see she hated her answer, but there would always be prostitution, even more so with the state the lower city was in, stopping it entirely would just leave a lot of people without jobs.
"I was thinking of starting our own factories, those who don't want to continue can start working there" Ethan said. "With their mind I'm sure Jinx and Ekko, when he shows up, can reverse engineer ion batteries or improve something like plastic, knowing it's possible isn't everything, but it does help a lot. Plus I don't think they have assembly lines yet."
Taylor gave him a look. "You want to introduce plastic to the pollution they already have?"
"Make a factory to recycle it?" Ethan shrugged. "I doubt anyone in the lower city would throw a bottle away if they could get even a cent for it."
He didn't have all the answers and, while increasing the lower city's pollution wasn't a great idea, they needed to have some source of money if they wanted to break away from Piltover.
"She's finished gathering everyone," Taylor suddenly said, getting up from the sofa. "I'll go talk with them."
Ethan nodded, watching as both girls started walking down the stairs, he briefly considered going with them to provide security, but they didn't really need it, specially with Taylor's new aura, and he didn't want to make the workers even more uncomfortable.
Taylor was intimidating enough as it was.
Leaning his head back on the chair, he wondered if the others were done with Chross, the Chem-Baron left in charge of most drug production in Zaun.
________
TAYLOR
Taylor finally allowed herself to feel, the emotions she had shunted into her swarm returning with a vengeance to leave her a strange mixture of tired, embarrassed and angry.
Thankfully, there were only 7 girls and 1 guy that wanted to stop being prostitutes and, of those, 4 were completely fine working as strippers, so it was easy enough to just let the rest continue as waitresses, after allowing them to wear shirts, otherwise, she didn't know what kind of work she'd be able to get them.
Unfortunately, she had a feeling things wouldn't be as simple tomorrow, when the rest of the information about Margot's workers arrived.
Reaching Jinx's home, she took a second to compose herself and entered, the place looked like someone had trapped an explosion halfway through in a Gray-Boy bubble and decided to live in it.
Every surface and corner was messy, not just messy but purposefully messy, as if someone had made sure no spot was left untouched, bit's of metal and wire tangled like nets laid about everywhere, half finished gadgets from the mind of a mad Tinker.
The scent of oil was thick in the air while light came from nowhere and everywhere, sneaking it's way through cracks and pieces of mosaic glass acting as windows, a dozen cracked signs were pinned to the walls and there were several piles of equipment picked for scraps.
She could recognize several items, a broken pistol missing it's barrel, chemical canisters, bottles of spray paint, an old music box stripped for parts, all scattered about in a way that made no sense to anyone that didn't think like Jinx
Something she had no intention of ever doing, judging from the spray paintings on the walls, the bullet holes, the laughing faces scrawled all over the place and the multitude of colors.
Jinx was insane, she just didn't know yet how insane she was or if it was dangerous to her.
When she had first arrived, Taylor had set her power loose on the place, acquiring a surprisingly small amount of creatures for such place, so at least it was kept clean, cleaner than the rest of the lower city.
Using her bugs to scout the place, she managed to find yet another trap, one of the non-deadly kind this time, a simple paint bomb hidden under a pressure plate, so she made a not to not step on that particular plank and found her own corner, her power immediately putting her gathered spiders back to work.
Thinking about Jinx, Taylor remember the way she had smiled, all teeth, a strange purple glint in her wild eyes as she toyed with her food on that Piltover house, that look reminded her of Jack.
Compared to the other women, Jinx was the one she felt closest to, a thin girl with small breasts, she wasn't traditionally beautiful but had a dangerous intelligence about her, the way her eyes tracked every object, every possibility.
Taylor had recognized her as a tinker but, when she tried to analyze her like one, she couldn't find a pattern, there wasn't one, it was all instincts, impulse and obsession, it made her consider Jinx the most dangerous despite clearly being the weakest of the group.
And now she was working to unite a city with her as a symbol… Taylor was sure she had made worst decisions.
Regardless, something needed to change, the lower city reminded her of the Bay after Leviathan, a ruined, hopeless place where normal and even good people were forced to do terrible things to survive.
Only, in the lower city this wasn't the exception, it wasn't new, no, for those living here making terrible decisions was just everyday life. For them it was either die in a mining accident, sick from working on the factories or sell their bodies, be it for sex or muscle, to one of the gangs, no wonder many turned to shimmer, the Merchants would have loved the place.
The place was the underside of everything, where Piltover shone, the under city dug down, not just into the ground but into people, pulling to the surface the worst they had on them.
But it wasn't just desperation and cruelty, there was ingenuity in the lower city, people building their lives from scraps, from the trash of the upper city, from failure itself. It was dangerous, lethal, but also a promise of greatness if only they give it time, if they could force Piltover to take it's boot away from Zaun's neck.
The fact that she was once again joining what amounted to a criminal gang in order to try and be a hero didn't escape her, Taylor wondered if she was making yet another mistake, but she knew herself, she couldn't leave it alone, not after what she had seen.
At least her new companions were completely different, she didn't think she could take it if they started reminding her of Lisa, Brain, Rachel, even Alec.
Laying down on her bed, she massaged her leg, the scab of her wound having already fallen off leaving a white patch on her too thin thigh, a small amount of skin where hair still wasn't growing.
Closing her eyes, she refocused on her swarm, noting that Ethan was watching Maelle continue working on her painting before putting most of her attention on her spiders, a mixture of jumping spiders and web hunters that somehow could create silk stronger than anything in her previous world.
Or maybe that was something she was doing to them.
After coming to this place, she had found her own abilities much easier to control, not only could she control both insects and people, she could also lower her range or even turn it completely off if she wanted, she didn't need to constantly struggle to separate herself from someone if they were too close.
Focusing on her newest power, her aura, she willed it out, letting it envelop her spiders, infusing into their silk and making it stronger. Taylor wasn't sure it was actually her soul made manifest, but it certainly felt like it, a piece of her not just her shard filling her swarm.
Adjusting her head, she slowly relaxed, her control over the arachnids almost like muscle memory, leaving her mind free to wonder…
… She barely remembered the night she arrived, her memories of Ethan and the other girls starting with her laying naked in a large bed, a strange, athletic redhead stopping her from doing something drastic.
But she remembered something else… she remembered a certain scene inside a building, first through the eyes of a moth and, later, a few jumping spiders.
Interesting enough, while a jumping spider had a very narrow field of vision, it was very detailed and, looking through the eyes of a dozen or so, she could stare at a couple of people and see more details than with her own eyes.
She remembered the way Jinx tore his shirt apart, how her nails dug into his skin to leave brief cuts, how his muscles tensed at the touch, the way he took control, lifting her hands above her head and taking her.
She remembered the size of his member and wondered if she had really taken it inside her, Brian hadn't been that large, would it even fit in her hand?
Then she thought about the way he had taken Jinx.
Slowly, one of her hands squeezed her breast over her shirt, her breathing coming faster as the thought of letting him take her wouldn't leave her mind, a second hand slowly making its way towards her pants.
Biting her lips, she hummed, squeezing harder and finally letting her fingers sneak under her clothes to trace slow circles over her clit, sending a shiver of pleasure into her core and causing her face to heat up.
She continued working herself slowly, her shirt rising up almost by itself until she was touching her bare nipples, softly pinching them between her fingers, her panties starting to get wet.
Lifting one knee slightly up on the bed, she lowered her clothes to the middle of her thighs and couldn't help imagining Ethan walking up the stairs to catch her in the act, her pussy completely uncovered.
It only made her feel hotter.
Biting her shirt, she traced a hand up and down her lips, getting it completely wet as she imagined Ethan's own fingers playing with her,
Taylor did her best but couldn't help moaning, the sound escaping her lips as she inserted her middle and ring fingers inside, her pussy stretching and her toes digging into the mattress.
She gave herself a moment to get used to the feeling, it had been a very long time since she last masturbated, then she started moving, picturing the way Ethan would play with her, his well defined muscles touching her skin and the way his cock would stretch her much further.
The thought sent another spike of pleasure running through her core, a wave of heat hitting her and seeming to fill her entire body, sweat accumulating on her chest and neck.
She increased the speed, her pussy wet enough to make indecent noises as she fucked herself, her muscles tensing and her toes curling up in pleasure.
Suddenly, as she pinched one nipple, it was no longer just Ethan but also Pyrrha in her fantasies, the incredibly fit redhead holding her down on the bed and nibbling on her nipple.
With a small cry of pleasure, she came, her fingers furiously moving inside her core even while her back arched and her legs shook, her mind going blank for almost a full minute as she actually squirted, she didn't know she could do that.
Collapsing on the bed, she just laid there breathing hard for a full minute, one arm over her eyes as she tried to recover, then her senses started to come back and she scrambled to cover herself.
"Wow," Maelle said as she took in the sight, her face going red. "Sorry to intrude, I-I'll tell the others you're busy."
"Wait, don't!" Taylor quietly screamed, almost wishing she had stayed dead after Contessa's bullet, her pale skin nearly completely red with shame.
Unfortunately, despite the embarrassment, she… she couldn't help noticing that someone seeing her had only made things better.