#(even up in piltover it's given lots of side eye of a different sort)

[fishymedic]

thinking about how he probably didn't have an patch/anything outspoken that screamed 'street medic' to his attire *slight safety precaution where try to balance being an sign of aid and not becoming a target etc (aside you know the supplies in his bag/preventative precautions depending on the circumstances) but that act 2-into post act 3 it becomes more an recognizable thing.

[dearlymrme]

In The Deep - Part One (Silco/F!Reader)

merman!Silco/F!Reader

873 Words

SFW

Part 2, Part 3

What starts as a fascination quickly turns into an obsession for both parties. As it turns out they had more in common then they first thought.

“It’s a perfect spot given the space but also considering what it is you're studying.” Singed had said as he introduced you to the new lab under the cannery. 

You wondered how he found the place. It was spacious, a thick door of metal with a latch that kept out intruders and snooping Enforcers. It was an open room with plenty of space to work, much better than the hole the two of you took residence in before; a cave which had you both adapting with such synergy that even in tight quarters you had learned to move around each other in such a way it was almost like a dance. You didn’t need to do that anymore. You could finally turn around without the threat of slapping him in the face with a clipboard. You could actually run between the walls, they were so far apart.

“Nobody will bother us down here. Though, that’s not to say that we won’t have guests.”

He gestured to the viewport of life beneath the polluted waters of the River Pilt.

It had been months and the sight outside the porthole still fascinated you.

You had spent a lot of downtime just staring out in the thick blue waters at the large beasts of fish that swam past the window. The shadows of a deep one in the distance that’s large tentacles curl and furled out and dragged slug and sand up in clouds. You had taken to calling it Kraken. You know it’s likely not THE Kraken but still it was a terrifying being that nobody even knew lived under the waters, that you didn’t even know lived under the waters, until recently.

It was impressive though. Despite all the horrible poison and chemicals Piltover had poured into the water, that life still managed to adapt and overcome. Tall stalks of weed grow up from the bulge of slug and sand, surviving on what had to have been the bare minimum of light. You wanted samples. Your scientific mind itches to get its fronds underneath a lens to see just what it looked like. What sort of genetic make-up did it have? Seaweed was used in all manner of health foods, kelp included. You wondered just what kind of benefits the river’s toxins could have given this species of underwater flora.

You had seen all manner of different kinds of fish. Some with the heads of a viper and horns sticking from their gills. You had seen one that was a royal purple and fins close to that of a beta, long and elegantly flowing, hiding barbs underneath that were likely full of poison. What manner of toxicity must it have to poison something so adapted to poison already?

But you loved it even more when night fell. When the tests were done and you got to drag your chair to the window and wind down with a cup of tea and simply watch the night come to life. The underwater world would light up again in a different way. Bright luminescence of fish you would have never seen during the day by how clear their bodies were, their skeleton glowing in neon. Bioluminescent plankton that floated and blinked like fireflies. The Kraken itself had a pattern of glow to it, running down its tentacles and pulsing like a heartbeat.

You can safely say that you had spent such a long amount of time that one would say you had seen it all. Perhaps eventually the luster would wear off but it never did. Everyday was something new.

Tonight for example.

It burns red like hot coal. Speckles climbing up the sides of its body in hellfire splotches that flicker between a setting of dull and bright. You can just barely make out the shifting of fins coiling along the front and back of a snake like form, it was long, likely a sort of eel. But there was a single bright ombre of red and orange that you assumed was an eye.

And it was watching you.

You could turn on the rest of the lights, the only thing that kept the room brightened this time of night, while Singed had gone to bed and you had decompressed by watching the fish, was the luminescent flowers that Singed had been studying.

And whatever type of fish this thing was, it was smart. It was avoiding the small dull halo of light that beamed through the window and lit up anything that passed through it. The creature stayed just out of reach but remained moving. Its fins fanned with its body, coiling like a snake and its burning eye locked onto you.

So you watched it and it watched you. You stood from your chair and walked closer to the port to try and get a better look.

It was hard to see, even when you squinted but there was something more to this fish. You couldn’t put your finger onto it until you realized that it was looking straight at you. It had forward facing eyes.

This thing…whatever it was…was a predator.

And despite the thick glass separating the two of you, you can’t help but feel like you were already in its jaws.

[citywatcher]

DEN OF THIEVES.

Today was heist day.

Ekko was going to meet the crew by the sandbars near one of Clan Arvino’s warehouses. The air was cleaner out here, closer to the sea. Ekko thought that if there wasn’t so much that needed attention in the suburbs of Zaun, he might have liked to move to the coast someday. The sound of the waves gliding against the shore was soothing, a slow rhythm that the ruckus of the narrow streets and slums of Zaun couldn’t hope to replicate.

Over on the north side of Piltover, Ekko had heard that the beaches were filled with white sand and turquoise water, and the sea floor sparkled with shells. Ekko frowned. The sea on this side of Zaun didn’t share the same luck. A murky blue pervaded the surface of the water, the waves ragged and choppy as they lapped up onto the shore.

“Ekko,” one of his friends had said. “Wouldn’t it be cool to go see it one day?”

He had given them a pained smile. “I’d like to bring it here one day.”

Ekko walked up the sandbar, pebbles crunching underneath his boots. The clan guardsmen had become smarter, flagging down groups of more than three teenagers whenever they wandered too close to property lines. So he had taken a roundabout route along the shore, while the other members of his crew coming along for the heist would come from a different direction.

For now, though, it seemed like had arrived early. With the power to rewind time literally in his back pocket, keeping a schedule wasn’t nearly as difficult as it used to be, but he’d been making more use of the time he didn’t rewind recently. More room to reflect and look back. Ekko found a row of wooden stumps along the side of the warehouse and took a seat, leaning back against the stone wall.

Ekko had placed a hand on a part of the stone jutting out of the wall, using it like an armrest. But the stone began to wobble, and he quickly turned to look. Had he been lounging over the den of one of those sand crabs?

Then the entire stone wall began to shake. Ekko pushed himself away, fearing an earthquake. Zaun didn’t experience many tremors, but its citizens were always on the lookout. With the city of Piltover looming over them, every Zaunite had to know the quickest way to escape the underpasses, to reach a point where they weren’t in danger of having the bricks and mortar of Piltover collapse on top of them.

Ekko began heading for the seashore, turning around to gauge the magnitude of the earthquake. But nothing else was rumbling - only the stone which he had leaned on. He raised an eyebrow. Tracing his gaze up the stone wall, he noticed something very perplexing about the stone. It was receding.

“Whoa!” he heard a voice cry out. “Pardon me! Oh, watch out!”

Coming over the crest of the stone wall was a girl who seemed to be running down the jagged surface. But as Ekko looked closer, he realized she wasn’t running - she was riding the stone, as if it was some kind of skateboard.

And she was speeding right towards him. Her eyes were wide with panic and Ekko noticed her short brown hair - standing up in waves like a dandelion.

He almost didn’t come clear in time, but Ekko swerved out of the way, holding out a hand to steady his footing. The girl hit the ground with a dull thump, and sand flew into the air from the impact. Ekko raised an arm to shield his eyes, turning his attention to her when the coast was clear.

The girl lay on her side, curled with her knees tucked in. Ekko walked over, taking note of her clothing. Giant sleeves? Were those shoulder pads made of stone? He figured she wasn’t from around Zaun.

“Hey, you alright?” he asked, offering a hand.

The girl pushed herself up with a groan. “Hm?” She looked up towards him, her face blank for a moment. Then she lifted her eyebrows and gasped. “Oh, Great Weaver, I’m so sorry!” She grasped his hand, allowing him to pull her up to her feet. “You aren’t hurt, are you?”

Looks fine to me, Ekko thought.

“Me? Nah, all good. But...  you…” Ekko looked towards the stone wall and back to the girl, his eyes narrowed. “Were you riding on that rock?”

“Oh!” The girl raised a hand to the back of her neck. “Well, I suppose I was. Is it impolite to weave the rock here without asking?”

Ekko was sure he had misheard her, so he reached for his Z-Drive and rewound back seven seconds.

Another embarrassed gesture. He turned an ear towards her, to make sure he heard correctly.

“Is it impolite to weave the rock here without asking?”

Ekko turned back to face her straight-on. Alright, so he wasn’t hearing things.

“You… weave rocks. So what, you make stone quilts or something?”

She pressed her hands together, her fingers tapping each other. “Oh no, I suppose I’m speaking too quickly. I’ll explain, then. I’m a stoneweaver. The earth calls to me, and I answer it. And when I speak to it, it can move me, as you just saw, so…”

Ekko crossed his arms. “Magic, then.” It wasn’t like he’d never seen it used before. The artificers in Piltover used magic when they went to work on hextech. But hextech had always felt like a product, something conducted in a lab. Ekko couldn’t say he encountered a lot of magic like this. If he considered time travel to be a similar sort of reality bending, that was the only thing like it.

“And what brings a stoneweaver down to the shoreline in Zaun? Need some sand for an experiment?”

The girl paused for a second. “Not exactly. I was just - well, you see, I followed this path and thought…” She turned her gaze to the tide coming in behind Ekko, then looked back to him and sighed. “I’m lost.”

Ekko let out a low chuckle. “Yeah, I can see how Zaun wouldn’t exactly be the most tourist-friendly city.” He uncrossed his arms, letting his thumbs sit in his pockets. “Let me try to fix that reputation. Name’s Ekko.”

“My name is Taliyah,” she answered, nodding. “Then, Ekko, if it’s not too much to ask…?”

“You want me to lead you back to the main streets. Yeah, I can take you there. But, you see…” He pondered how to phrase it. “You caught me in the middle of something really important.”

“Oh, that’s not an issue! I can wait,” Taliyah said, looking down at the shore. “People are busy. Perhaps I should study the sand here after all.”

“Well, about that.”. Even if Ekko and his friends pulled off their heist without a catch, the theft would still sound the alert and bring in the clan security to the warehouse. The last thing he wanted was for someone else to get detained by association because of their shenanigans. Especially Taliyah - she was the textbook definition of an innocent bystander.

That didn’t leave him many options, and the ones Ekko did think of were still unsavory. Still, he figured it was better to not leave her in the dark.

“I was actually wondering if you’d like to help me out. I’ve never seen a stoneweaver before, but from the short time I saw you in action, your powers seem pretty neat.”

Taliyah looked elated. “Help out? In what way?”

Here came the tricky part. “So, my friends and I are conducting some kind of… business. And I’ll be straight, we’re not exactly being the most honest of people. But we’ve got a job to do, and it’s really important.”

Taliyah blinked. “I… see?” She  turned her head up towards the roof of the warehouse in the distance. She frowned “Is that where you’re going?”

“Uh-huh.”

She looked back at Ekko, and he could feel her glare piercing through his skin. “Are you thieves?”

He shifted his weight from side to side. “If you get technical with it… you could say so. Look, I can explain, there’s-”

The thwomp of a rock striking him in the forehead cut Ekko off. He raised a hand, rubbing the point of impact. The other hand went to his Z-Drive. Maybe he should try starting off on the right foot.

Rewind!

Again, he shifted and leaned on one foot. “Okay, I’ll admit it.” He swerved to the side, dodging the rock launched at him. “But what we do is what we know is best for the people of Zaun.”

Taliyah had another pebble raised in the air, but let it fall to the ground.

“If someone takes the possessions of another person in my tribe, that person deserves no respect,” Taliyah explained. “Thieves have no place in our society. How can you say that being a thief is good for your people?”

“Because we don’t just let the rich and the powerful use what they have to tread all over others.” Ekko stood his ground. The lost boys of Zaun were often condemned as thieves, vandals, agents of disorder. But this flavor of chaos was how they would solve Zaun’s problems.

“If the law won’t be on our side, and looks the other way, then we have no choice but to take matters in our own hands.”

One of his friends appeared at the top of the wall. “Yo, Ekko!” she called out. “Get over here!”

He raised a hand in acknowledgment. “Yeah, yeah, I know!” He turned to Taliyah.

“Listen, I don’t have enough time to explain everything, but I can tell you that we don’t have time to debate the finer points of this right now.” He tilted his head towards the warehouse. “The clan guardsmen will come to check out the facility soon. And I don’t think you want to be around if they start looking for us.”

Taliyah held his gaze, her face impassive as stone, but dropped her shoulders and sighed. “Alright then, Ekko. I am with you for now out of circumstance, but I don’t take those who commit thievery  lightly. I want to hear more about you, and what you want for Zaun.”

“Deal,” Ekko said. He thought about extending a hand, but figured she wouldn’t want the handshake of someone who just admitted to thievery.

“Then, for now, welcome to the team.”