Jhin was still playing the piano at center stage.
In the empty theater, he looked strangely alone.
A few seconds later, the doors were kicked open.
The Enforcers advanced with their guns raised.
The masked man over there seemed to be smiling with his eyes.
"I bloom in murder, like a flower at dawn."
Jhin's murmur spread through the hall, and not a single person present dared let their guard down.
The men at the front held up shields, bracing for the bullet attack that might come at any moment.
Jhin remained completely calm, as if being surrounded meant nothing at all.
He slowly lowered the piano lid, and at that exact moment, the Enforcers in Piltover-made armor were all caught by lotus-shaped traps clamping onto their legs.
Beneath the closed lotus petals, something spun slowly, yet the Enforcers couldn't break free no matter how hard they tried.
Camille's eyes flickered twice, their yellow glow shifting to purple.
Then she rushed forward.
Caleb didn't stay idle either, he swept a laser straight across the floor.
He could tell there was a rune underneath building up power, so he had no choice but to give up trying to kill Jhin immediately.
Otherwise, after that one hit, Jhin would be left praying there were still spare chemtech parts down in the Dredge.
The laser carved lines across the ground, and everywhere it passed, explosions erupted one after another.
Don't get it wrong, Jhin's traps relied on spinning runes to unleash rune-fire upward.
What Caleb did instead was cut off the spinning process itself and turn it into explosions blasting outward in every direction.
Rather than smoke swallowing up the Enforcers' silhouettes, it looked more like the shockwaves from the blasts were hurling them away.
Camille wove nimbly through the crowd, and bodies flying everywhere did nothing to slow her advance.
Luckily Caleb was here, which meant the worst these Enforcers would suffer was a few broken bones.
Otherwise, they would've just become more victims dragged into this madman's work.
Jhin's gaze stayed steady. He drew the pistol he was so proud of.
After missing two shots into the chaos, he calmly reloaded and aimed at Camille as she climbed higher into the air.
Just as Camille's upward momentum weakened and she was about to stall, she fired the cable at her waist into the ceiling and pulled herself upward again to avoid the incoming bullet.
Jhin's next two shots missed as well.
At last, with Camille flying at him through the fireworks overhead, he bent at the waist with elegant grace.
It was like an actor bowing to the audience after the curtain fell.
Camille spun toward him with both leg blades flashing, but Jhin slipped his gun behind his back.
Had he given up resisting?
No, the hidden fourth bullet fired from his right hand, and the Camille suspended in midair had nowhere to dodge!
Even a body forged with Hextech would be blown apart by this shot!
What perfect art.
"The heart is the strongest muscle!"
That beautiful harmony was shattered by a sudden roar.
A blue wall of shields burst out of the smoke and blocked the fourth bullet completely.
Caleb pulled away his Hextech shield and shot forward, while a perfect hexagon sprang up around Jhin.
"The Hextech Ultimatum!"
Jhin's right hand was cut off in a single strike, and both his gun and the device on his back were pierced through.
Camille planted one foot on Jhin's gun, while the other rested against his neck.
Jhin helplessly raised both hands to surrender.
"Can you still move?" Camille called out.
She wasn't talking to the other Enforcers, of course, but to Caleb, who had charged in through the explosion.
"How did he get here so fast?"
Jhin's mind was full of questions.
Who was this guy who had shown up out of nowhere, someone from Piltover?
His plan had been flawless, and even when Camille found him, he hadn't panicked in the slightest.
A shield bursting out of the smoke?
And it could block his fourth bullet too?
Who exactly was this man?
"Ow, ow, ow..." Caleb rolled down the hard steps several times before barely managing to climb back to his feet.
"Next time you pull a surprise attack, can you give me the details ahead of time?"
Grimacing, Caleb made his way over to Camille's side.
"If it's a surprise attack, then of course time is tight."
"And yet you still had time to tell me that whole touching father-daughter story..."
Caleb took a bracelet from Camille's waist and fastened it around Jhin's wrist.
"You were a huge help."
Camille looked at Caleb with satisfaction.
"What reward do you want? You earned it."
"Easy. Cash out your life and the lives of the Enforcers here, then dump it all into Zaun."
Caleb's answer came quick and clean, leaving even Jhin momentarily stunned.
"Um..."
Jhin finally couldn't hold back any longer. If he didn't get an answer to this, he'd never rest easy.
"How exactly did you close the distance that fast?"
He looked at Caleb, their builds were about the same, and there were no visible runes on him either.
There were all kinds of people in Ionia, but Jhin knew very clearly Caleb wasn't the type who possessed overwhelming physical power.
"Oh, that?"
Caleb answered readily enough, pulling out an item.
"With this."
The thing in front of him was crude and rough, like something an Undercity resident had cobbled together from a pile of junk.
And yet it was exactly this grappling gun that had let Caleb close the distance so quickly, burst out through the smoke, and block that crucial fourth bullet.
"A rigid mind always has its weaknesses." Jhin couldn't help sighing a little.
"I lost this round."
"Just remember to wait for the wealth House Ferros will be bringing you."
Camille dragged Jhin away from the scene, since the place still needed to be cleaned up.
Before leaving, she even blew Caleb a kiss.
"This old woman can't actually be into me, can she..."
Caleb clutched his chest, suddenly nervous. Even knowing Camille was in her seventies, her beauty was still hard to resist.
"Well, look at that, one trip out and I made more money again. Isn't that just so exhausting?"
Now that things had gone his way, Caleb started humblebragging to thin air, even walking with a swagger.
Then suddenly, he started coughing.
After all, he wasn't a real Zaunite. Living in Zaun was harming Caleb's body too.
Still, he felt like outside of Zaun, the air quality everywhere else was pretty good, so he had been forcing himself through it all this time.
He had finally gotten to breathe fresh air in Piltover, only to suck in a theater full of dust just now.
That was enough to make Caleb's lungs stage a full-scale protest.
It felt like he was about to cough his throat right out, but there was still no sign of relief.
Maybe he really did need a set of Hextech lungs too.
Caleb kept coughing, until he suddenly felt the murky air around him being blown away.
Then a fresh, sweet scent drifted in, and he quickly gulped it down in huge breaths.
Caleb could breathe again.
Not those brief gasps between coughing fits, but a true, deep breath.
It was as if every alveolus in his lungs had opened, like the soft brush of a beautiful woman's hair across his cheeks.
With some difficulty, he pushed himself up and looked at the figure who had descended beside him.
She was a vision in white, the tip of her staff pointed straight at him.
Her hair streamed high above her, as though the wind itself were lifting it.
[Janna, the Storm's Fury, combat strength T2, demigod class, guardian goddess of Zaun.]
Caleb wiped away the tears he had coughed out of the corners of his eyes and looked at her.
Then in the very next second, he covered his nose.
There was way too little fabric on that outfit.
This was way too intense, way too intense.
And seriously, if she was wearing that little, why was she still wearing gloves?
Just as Caleb's heart rate shot up to two hundred, she finally spoke.
"Thank you for bringing winds of change to Zaun."