"So early in the morning..."
Caleb looked through documents while wiping his face with a steaming hot towel.
The door opened. Kai'Sa stood there with Yuumi floating beside her.
And at the moment, Jinx was dangling at Kai'Sa's side in one hand.
"What happened with you two this time?"
Caleb narrowed his eyes at the two women and the cat.
Shurima really had been more peaceful.
No gunfire to torment the ears, no paperwork to wear down the soul.
"She ambushed me."
The Void skin spread over Kai'Sa's body again, and Caleb could already guess what had happened.
"Young people these days, no honor in a fight," Caleb replied automatically.
"Mind your own business."
Jinx, who had been playing dead, lifted her head and huffed.
"She came here from far away, so cut it out."
Kai'Sa sat down in the chair in front of Caleb and picked up one of the documents.
Sure enough, she still could not make sense of it.
Jinx crept up onto the ceiling.
"Sorry for the trouble." Caleb gave Kai'Sa an apologetic smile.
"It's fine. Her killing intent was just too obvious."
Kai'Sa picked up a change of clothes from the couch and went into the next room to change.
"So the Void is really that strong..."
Jinx muttered from above.
She had only just raised her gun when Kai'Sa vanished from beside her in an instant.
Before Jinx could even react, the organic structures on Kai'Sa's hands and back were already glowing with purple light.
And then, when she woke up, all she could see was the floor.
So Jinx had decisively chosen to play dead.
"Where's Vi been lately?"
Caleb scanned one document after another, then tossed them aside.
Zaun's self-governance was holding up pretty well. Even though Caleb had been gone and ignoring everything for days, nothing major had gone wrong.
"She's probably been patrolling different parts of Zaun lately." Jinx's voice from above sounded a little gloomy.
"Vi is...?" Kai'Sa asked, confused.
"She's an Enforcer here, and that one's sister."
The pen in Caleb's hand pointed upward, then he casually scribbled his own name across the paper.
Kai'Sa looked a little worried.
If the younger sister was already taking potshots at night, how much better could the older sister possibly be?
"Relax." Caleb waved a hand and smiled. "Her sister's actually pretty straightforward."
"Really?" Yuumi sounded skeptical.
"There's supposed to be a concert tonight."
"Want to go together?"
When he said that, Caleb looked up toward the ceiling.
"I'm not going as part of the audience." Jinx sounded thoroughly dejected.
She could not beat Kai'Sa, and she was not as likable either.
She honestly did not know what to do.
Even when Kai'Sa looked like that, covered in that ugly purple armor-like skin, the way Caleb looked at her had not changed in the slightest.
Jinx's long braids swayed a little, as if stirred by the wind.
"So this is what your work is like every day?"
Yuumi licked her fur and rolled around in the pile of files.
"Not really. I'm waiting for someone." Caleb smiled.
"That girl from yesterday? The really tall one?"
Yuumi's single sentence made both women in the room perk up at once.
"Yeah, she's part of the reason, but there are other people too."
Caleb smiled and lowered his head to keep flipping through the documents.
Noxus's intelligence network should be pretty fast.
Still, it should be a lot slower than the communication device he planned to build later.
Well, he had said he would give Piltover's councilors a surprise.
If Noxus showed up late, Caleb was not in any hurry.
It was exactly because the timing was uncertain that it counted as a surprise.
"Governor."
Another knock sounded from outside.
"Come in." Caleb set the documents down and looked toward the door.
"What is this?"
The two who entered barely looked human at all.
One was covered in fur and strapped with chemtech apparatus.
The other was made of slime, green from head to toe.
"The Chem-Barons' forces have basically been wiped out."
Both of them bowed slightly.
Deep in Zaun's mines, the news had taken longer to reach them.
By the time they made it back to the Firelights, it had already been the middle of the night.
"Well done." Caleb had no intention of hiding anything from Kai'Sa or Yuumi. He leaned all the way back in his chair. "What reward do you want?"
He picked up his pen, already preparing to write up a few documents.
Before Caleb had arrived, one of the main reasons Zaun had fallen into such miserable shape was thanks to the Chem-Barons.
The barons never cared whether the people at the bottom lived or died. All they cared about was business.
Only when enough wealth had been piled up could they start mingling with the elites of the Upper City in the promenade levels.
What ordinary people had to face was endless labor, along with the constant danger of street violence.
As long as Zaun kept bleeding itself dry from within, even Janna's protection would never let it stand on equal footing with Piltover.
Did these two wiping out the Chem-Barons mean chemtech would now fall behind to some extent?
Not at all.
With two geniuses like Ekko and Viktor around, how could the front line of chemtech ever be led by a pack of Chem-Barons?
That was not even mentioning Singed.
If he had not invented Shimmer, would those rat-like Chem-Barons ever have had their chance to rise in the first place?
They would still be hiding in the depths of the mines, living like rats in silence.
At the end of the day, Chem-Barons were just people who used chemtech to monopolize the market and profit from it.
Now that chemtech had been distributed among the general public, some gifted people were rising again.
And with Zac, Warwick, Vi, and Blitzcrank helping maintain public order, anyone who tried pulling the old trick of squeezing profit from other people's flesh and blood would have an entire factory smashed to pieces.
The funding sent down from the Upper City could be used perfectly well to open factories that would replace those run by the Chem-Barons.
Now plenty of Zaunites were already factory workers, and owners of those factories too.
So long as the Chem-Barons disappeared completely, Zaun's internal strife would lessen, and relations with the Upper City would remain peaceful.
At that point, the twin cities as a single power would naturally become impossible to ignore.
After all, this was both a wealthy region and a major transportation hub.
And now Caleb had also managed to build a fairly good relationship with Shurima, so the future of the twin cities, especially Zaun's future, was preparing to surge forward at full speed.
The only condition was that they had to survive those few major events first.
At least, from Caleb's point of view...
"We don't need anything."
Their reply pulled Caleb out of his thoughts.
"It's just that... the Firelights have been wanting to develop a batch of seeds recently..."
Warwick gave an awkward grin.
"Got it. I'll write you a letter of recommendation, and you can go pitch a few of the major houses for investment."
Almost anyone could walk through the gates of those great houses, but staying there was another matter entirely.
A recommendation letter from the Governor of Zaun was without question an important guarantee.
After all, no matter how incredible Ekko's Z-Drive was, it had nothing to do with seeds.
But Zaun truly was still in desperate need of rebuilding, so planting more greenery was definitely necessary.
"That'll do. Go ahead."
Caleb waved a hand and lowered his head to keep reading through the documents.
Ah... the speed of development in the Undercity these past few days had actually exceeded even Caleb's expectations.
Viktor had already opened an entire production line of his own, all of it operated by robots he built himself.
"So what are we having for lunch?"
Looking at the somewhat stunned Kai'Sa and Yuumi nearby, Caleb smiled.
Truth be told, he had never imagined that one day he would be working himself to the bone over every major and minor affair in a city.
And enjoying it, no less.
//Check out my P@tre0n for 30 extra chapters on all my fanfics //[email protected]/Razeil0810