"How are things over at the Dredge?"
Caleb had his eyes closed, trying to rest. He had barely slept these past few days.
Now that the Chem-Barons operating openly in Zaun had been wiped out, the next step was simply to wait for Ekko and the others to finish building Hextech equipment that could actually improve life in Zaun.
That was something Caleb wanted to do as Zaun's Governor, not something the system was demanding of him.
So for once, he was enjoying the chance to slack off, and had simply come to the Firelights' camp to catch up on sleep.
As for all the miscellaneous work, he had dumped every last bit of it on Ekko and Heimerdinger.
By now, all the Chem-Barons in Zaun had retreated into the mines, and even the pollution problem finally looked like something that could actually be solved in the near future.
The environment in the Lanes was gradually getting better.
Anyone who tried to strong-arm people into buying or selling things got beaten badly at minimum, and the lucky ones only lost a mouthful of teeth.
If Jinx happened to be around, Caleb also had to worry about waking up with his face painted all over, or opening his eyes to find a rattling grenade swinging in front of him.
…
"When do you think he's going to wake up?" Ekko asked as he continued making tiny adjustments to his device, trying to get the timing just right.
The truth was, even Heimerdinger had to admit it, Ekko was a genius when it came to the Z-Drive.
Probably no one else alive could take time itself and truly hold it in their hands the way he could.
Messing with time was an extremely dangerous thing.
A single mistake, even the slightest error, could turn the expected result into something completely different.
An effect meant for another object could end up being applied to the user instead.
Or worse, someone could be reduced to an embryo, or a pile of sand.
And yet Ekko could use a Hextech Gemstone to drive time with unbelievable precision. That achievement alone was enough to secure his place in the history of both Zaun and Piltover.
Heimerdinger watched the young man in front of him and lost himself in thought.
Jayce. Viktor. And now Ekko, the new talent emerging from Zaun.
Every generation produced its own brilliance, and that made Heimerdinger deeply glad.
"Hey!"
A loud shout shattered the peace of the Firelights' camp.
"Put me down already!" the suspended yordle yelled angrily in a shrill voice.
"You can stay right there," Heimerdinger said, rolling his eyes at the sight of Ziggs hanging in the air.
Jinx and Caleb had not been gentle with him. Between the two of them, they had stripped him clean in no time.
And the explosives they had found on him had genuinely left Caleb stunned.
Basically, anything he carried on him could be turned into a bomb if the need arose.
That was why he was called the Hexplosives Expert.
"You wrecked my city, and you interrupted my research several times too."
Heimerdinger glared at the old rival who had been making his life difficult for over a century.
"You have to be sent to prison in Bandle City."
Heimerdinger stared at the menace hanging above him, this walking disaster who always seemed determined to blow everything up just because he could.
Bandle City was where yordles gathered, but that did not mean every yordle amounted to something special.
Some lived ordinary, uneventful lives, spending their days running a little shop and repeating the same routine forever.
Others just climbed onto a lizard and charged straight into the front lines of a war.
And then there was this one, the kind who would use absolutely anything around him to make an explosion.
Heimerdinger had never been able to understand the way Ziggs thought, but even by yordle law, this was excessive.
If Kled were not off serving in the Noxian military, he would have ended up the exact same way as Ziggs.
And that was not even counting the chaos those two had caused back in Bandle City before.
The more Heimerdinger looked at him, the more an inconvenient question came to mind.
How exactly were they supposed to send this lunatic back to Bandle City?
Magic there obscured the city from ordinary human perception.
Unless you were a master runesmith, or another yordle, you would never find that city hidden out in the sands.
But yordles were rare to begin with, and the number who could actually keep Ziggs under control was even smaller.
They would probably have to send some people along with him.
At that thought, Heimerdinger could not help sighing.
That was the real difficulty. If they just threw him into an ordinary prison, there was no telling what he would turn into a bomb next.
Yordle or not, Heimerdinger did not want to kill one of his own.
Old friends were disappearing one after another. Maybe, in the end, Heimerdinger was selfish too.
"Caleb came here?"
Mel walked gracefully through Zaun. Compared to the first time she had set foot here, her expression was much softer now.
Recently, Zaun had begun to prosper again thanks to Piltover's support.
After all, with four council votes effectively in hand, whenever Caleb was absent, only her opinion and Jayce's could really be called meaningful opinions in the council chamber.
"About what happened last time…" Mel looked at the busy Heimerdinger, guilt rising inside her.
"It's fine."
…
"You really scared me this time. How can you just run into danger like that?"
It was the same lavish room as before. Caitlyn pursed her lips and endured the sting of the disinfectant.
Unlike Caleb, who had come through the fight without a scratch, Caitlyn had not been nearly so lucky.
Shrapnel thrown up by the machine gun had embedded itself in her thigh. She did not have a Hextech shield to protect her, after all.
During the battle, the surge of adrenaline had kept the pain suppressed.
But the truth was that as soon as Urgot was dealt with, Caitlyn had gone lame on the spot. She had been carried back while clutching Vi's gauntlets.
Cassandra looked at her daughter, her eyes full of reproach.
One sentence from someone else, and Caitlyn had run straight into Zaun and come back injured.
"That Caleb, does he have a girlfriend or anything?"
Cassandra had already looked into him. He barely had any family background to speak of.
Which meant that, with Caitlyn being an only child, the match would be remarkably suitable.
It was not as though Cassandra had never imagined it. A couple more children later, she could happily spoil her grandchildren herself.
She could even hand the family business over to Caleb to manage. One stationed in Piltover, one in Zaun.
They could look after each other perfectly.
The more she thought about it, the better it sounded.
The moment Caitlyn saw her mother's expression, she knew exactly where her thoughts had gone and hurried to cut her off.
"He doesn't, but I don't like him like that either."
"Oh, listen to you. You're still so young and already talking about liking this person or that one."
Cassandra's fantasy collapsed, and she stirred the silver spoon in her cup in annoyance.
"Fine. What matters is what you want. If our family doesn't get that kind of luck, then your father and I will just have to try again."
"By then Caleb will be middle-aged," Caitlyn said without thinking.
She had seen plenty of marriages between socialites and heirs from major families. Fortunately, the Kiramman family had always been fairly relaxed about that sort of thing.
"What are you even thinking?" Cassandra shot her daughter a look. "You're dead set on working law enforcement for Piltover. Someone has to take over the family business."
"Or are you planning to be the big sister who attends council meetings for your future sibling too?"
"Hiss…"
The last of the fragments was removed from Caitlyn's leg, and she sucked in a sharp breath.
The good news was that she could keep her position as Sheriff and go running off to all the crime scenes she liked.
The bad news... for the moment, there was none.
She really did not feel that way about Caleb.
If anything, the one who had left a stronger impression on her was that pink-haired woman who always charged forward without hesitation.
…
"Can you fix them?"
Vi watched Jayce at work and impatiently tapped the floor with her foot.
"Of course," Jayce said. As their designer, repairs like this were second nature to him.
"They were originally meant for mining, but if you use them in combat, they're honestly terrifying."
Jayce looked at the gauntlets and could not help marveling at them.
Caleb had been right. If this kind of technology ever spread on a large scale, then the moment some conflict broke out, both sides would grab whatever Hextech gear they had on hand and start fighting immediately.
And Piltover could never afford the cost of that.