A Brooklyn Yankee in the Undercity of Zaun

Antarctica, 1945:  Horton H Flying Wing Valkyrie

“Schmidt’s dead!”  Captain Steve Roger shouted into the radio as he attempted to gain full control of the auto piloted bomber heading to New York. The frigid air blasting through the broken wind screen made it impossible to hear the radio clearly, but his heart skipped a beat when he heard the voice.

<<<What about the plane?>>> Peggy Carters tinny voice came over the speaker and was the sweetest thing he had ever heard.

Steve glanced behind him where the Tesseract had been before it sucked Johan Schmidt into a space portal and then melted through the tail, which was probably why he only had two axes of control, up or down.

“That’s going to be a little harder to explain.”  He said, not sure how to explain without sounding completely out of his mind.

<<<We read you, we’ll find a safe landing site, give us your coordinates.>>> 

“There isn’t going to be a safe landing site.”  He said, “I’m going to try to force it down.”

<<<I’ll will get Stark on the line, he’ll be able to come up with options.>>>  even over the tinny speaker, he could hear the stress in her voice.

“There isn't enough time, this thing is moving too fast, and its heading to New York.”   thinking hard before he made his next statement. it would be better if someone knew what he was doing, and not just disappear.

“I’m going to have to put it in the water.”

<<<Wait, we can figure this out, there is still time. Please do not do this…>>

“Right now, I’m in the middle of nowhere, If I wait any longer a lot of people are going to die!” Breathing out anxiously he glanced down at the controls and nodded. This would be as good a place as any, far from civilization, the water would control any residual tesseract energy from the bomb’s explosions.

“This is my choice.”

Steve pulled out his compass looking at the picture of Peggy he kept in it and placed it on the console.  This would be the last thing he’s see before he crashes. 

“I’m going to need a raincheck on that dance.”  He says, pulling his helmet back on and strapping it down. He pushed the yoke strait forward, and the plane began to turn towards the ice. The Valkyrie’s violently shaking structure groaned as it began descending.  Behind him the aero bombs became active as they started vibrating with the jet.

<<Alright, A week.  Next Saturday night, at the Stork Club.>>

He grins, still watching as the ice and water rush towards him. I wonder if it will hurt. “You got it.”

<<Eight O’clock, on the dot…  don’t you dare be late, understood?>> Peggy’s tinny voice was beginning to crack.

The ground was now rushing towards him quickly now. He grabbed his shield and rested it against his knees, ready to pull it in front of him.  

“You know I still don’t know how to dance.”  it was maybe a few more seconds before oblivion.

<<I’ll show you how.  Just don’t be late.>> Her voice cracked.

“We’ll ask the band to play something slow.”  and grabbed his shield and pulled it up in front of him. “I’d hate to step on your...”

The sound of the crash was deafening as the windscreen of the Valkyrie exploded inward, smashing him back and covering Steve with glass, ice and snow as it slid for what felt like minutes to finally drag to a stop. The shield had kept his face from most of the glass and metal that had blown into the cockpit, but now the cold water began pouring in as the plane began tipping into the broken ice, sliding beneath the water.  Oddly what he found interesting was his serum altered body was managing the ice and cold far better than he thought possible. The shivers were there, certainly, and he was beginning to cramp from the cold as water filled the cockpit, but he was still conscious. So, this wasn’t going to be a quick death from freezing, he was going to drown first, then freeze as the water was now up to his chest. 

Or explode, as the sound of electrical squeals emitting from the Hydra Bombs which came loose from their moorings and began rolling towards him. 

He was starting to see things, thanks to his hypoxia suffering brain. Weird lights and streaks were whirling around him faster and faster, mixed with what he thought looked like runes, or glyphs. He tried to move the shield, but the already freezing ice and snow had pinned him in the pilot’s seat and the water was at his neck. he was able to unbuckle the latch on the seat harness before he was fully emersed in freezing water, getting a good last intake of air before his head was under.  Holding his shield in front of him, maybe he could pop the ice that was solidifying around him and swim up and out of the Aircraft before it sunk to the bottom of the ocean then trek across the entire Antarctic to New York by next Saturday night. 

Peggy would be there…

It was getting harder to focus with these lights flying around him, especially as they were getting brighter until all he saw was white.

This was it then. The serum did have its limits.

There was the sensation of falling and an abrupt stop as he crashed into something. Ice shattered as he hit the ground in a bone crushing impact, freeing him from his frozen restraints and realizing that whatever broke his fall was groaning.  As He tried to get his arms under him, his hand found the telltale feel of a rifle barrel.  It felt like all the air was knocked out of him, so he tried to relax his throat to get a breath.  With effort, his diaphragm responded, and he sucked in air.

He felt like he was breathing in tear gas.

Steve instantly began to regurgitate sea water, coughing and spitting up everything that was inside his lungs and taking in ragged breath of oxygen. The air was thick and oily, and he felt like he was freezing and couldn’t stop his body from shivering.  His armored tunic was covered in ice and frost, and his padded undershirt was soaked to the skin and had been well on its way to becoming solid.    

Steve’s vision was blurry, but he could see his surroundings now, a long tight alley with doors on each side and multiple trash cans lined the ground floor.  Pipes jutted out from the walls and branched up to the upper levels of the surrounding buildings and led back on to another floor while others branched across to the other side of the alley.  There was a greenish hue to pretty much everything around him which continued to the sky, broken by a spiderweb of the pipes and power lines.  Groaning, he rolled off whatever he landed on onto his back and rubbed his eyes to try to clear his vision and realized he had landed on two people.  Armored head to toe in blue and gold metal with face covering helmets that had goggles and a respirator, but these were not hydra troopers. He did not see a swastika or a hydra symbol anywhere on the uniform, and one thing they were good at was ensuring you knew what side they were on.  

The soldiers were still holding their rifles and he could see parts of the ruined pilot's seat and the console laying alongside them, so some of the wreckage had come with him.   What had they been aiming at as he remembered their weapons were trained on something? He turned his head to the other side and saw a dead-end alley and against the wall two children were crouching there, huddled together and staring at the scene in front of them with wide eyes as if he had just dropped out of the sky.

Which he had, so their reaction seemed appropriate

Everything was still blurry and his head was splitting, but he could make out a blue haired girl and a white-haired boy staring at him. They could not be more than ten or eleven years old and looked terribly small.  The kids both moved forward slowly, keeping an eye on him and the two armored men and after some heated garbled speech while kicking ice away, the children each grabbed one of his hands and began pulling him up, his body stood up on its own by muscle memory as it wasn’t his head telling him to do so. 

He looked closer at the two children as they babbled and pulled him towards the mouth of the alley, onto the narrow street and into the green miasma.  He couldn’t make out all of what they were saying, some of it was muffled as if he were still underwater but he could make out accented English.  His vision blurred, blacking out for a moment and they were down a different street or alleyway.  

 He was having a tough time keeping his mind focused, feeling he was in a fugue state all the while his body was shivering from intense cold.  Moments flashed in and out of reality as he was being pulled along back alleys by a little blue haired girl, and other moments scenes from The Wizard of Oz played in his head, especially the munchkins scenes with Dorothy being led around by the tiny citizens of Munchkin land.

They kept off the main streets, careful to avoid the armored soldiers who seemed to be everywhere. The blue haired girl was pulling him along and tugging him if he faltered while the boy was carrying his shield and part of the Valkyries control panel.   The kid was struggling with the scrap metal as pieces fell off it and bounced around the cobblestones.  The boy rushed and picked up each part as if they were gold.

After another blank spot, he could tell by the cobblestone and broken ground being used for paved roads was in a different area of the town. The surrounding buildings he could see were bundled close together and stacked, intermixed with machinery and pipes reaching all the way up to the sky. He was in an urban canyon, and though he couldn’t see them, he could hear the din of the populous mixed with the shouts and moans of someone having a very bad night.  

Hell, this sounds like the Brooklyn of his youth as he blacks out again...

Steve realized that he is holding someone up against a wall, grinding its bat like head into the brick while the kids frantically pulling on him to go. Dropping the man with bat ears, He nearly trips over another body on the ground as the girl drags him down the next alley, away from the scene. He saw the little boy rush ahead, still carrying his shield and disappears around the bend in the alley. At least its feeling warmer now, in fact he feels like he is drenched with sweat inside his suit.  It could be from hypothermia or could be fever from nearly freezing to death. The girl brought him around the corner and the boy had a door open, motioning for them to hurry which he figures they must have as his vision blurred out to black.

He gained consciousness again as the children covered him with blankets that smelled of mildew and dust, and he realized he was in his padded undershirt, his eyes darted around and found his armored tunic was laying across a series of pipes on the other side of the room along with his helmet, suspenders and belt.  His holster was still attached to his belt, tucked under his shield. That was good he thought, at least they were responsible children as he passed out again…

Steve’s eyes pop open in a small dimly lit room, yellow light permeates around him from several glass pipes filled with a glowing yellow fluid.  There were more of them around, but it appeared they had been left off to save the energy, maybe to allow him to get rest.  Sitting up, the pain in his head caused him to pause and close his eyes. He has a concussion, or rather had a concussion as Erskine’s serum had accelerated his recovery and he had had enough head bashings before Project Rebirth that he knew the feeling of being on the mend.  

Untangling himself from the blankets and other clothes they had covered him with to keep him warm, looked for his gear, specifically his suspenders and belt.  There were some pain killers in his first aid kit which should clear the headache up, as well as any cuts from the Valkyrie’s crash.  Memories flooded back as he remembered some of the scenes of the last night.  The image of armored men holding rifles on the two little kids was the first, the bat eared people that tried to mug them, the rush through the streets of this very strange place. 

The tunic was laying across the small room, atop a bundle of pipes that he had seen the kids place it during a moment of lucidity.  Looking around, he saw his helmet, and reached out and grabbed it, placing it near his tunic on the pipes.  There was a thick glassed bottle of orange fluid, sitting near where he had been sleeping, and knew that it was for him to drink. One of the kids left is here, he figured. How exactly, he couldn’t say but it was probably while he was half conscious.  He pulled the cork and took a long drink from the bottle, and it wasn’t orange juice.  The thick liquid was cool and sweet and a little bit fermented, and it gave his stomach something to work on as he wasn’t sure if he was going to find any food around here, wherever this was.   Steve couldn’t see his suspenders or his shield which would have been difficult to miss.  That was going to be a problem if they’d decided to keep them from him.  He didn’t even know their names and wasn’t certain if they could be trusted but were careful getting him here in relative safety. 

Noise drew his attention to the door, and realized it was the muffled sound of children’s voices on the other side.  He drew himself upright, the muscles and joints in his legs screamed at him before the pain subsided as the blood flowed back into his limbs.   He cracked his neck, and then his back which made a chorus of pops and snaps.  Steve could hear the kids better now, and it sounded like they were laughing.  It was a nice sound, he thought to himself as he grabbed the lever and exited the small room. 

He stepped out into a storage room, one that was much colder than the tiny room he was in but smelled as much of dust and as the other room had.  Along the walls were stuffed animals and toys, some of the creatures they represented he could recognize, some that he couldn’t at first glance.  Wood swords and shields and small bows and arrows were on the other wall along with several other trinkets that were probably prizes of some kind.  Picking up one of the stuffed animals, it resembled a spider with eight google eyes and a wide toothy smile.  Looking at the others, there was an adorable dragon looking with a single giant eye and a small stuffed puffball with antlers.  Lined up along the wall was several brightly painted cabinets games in various states of repair. 

What the hell was going on…

He was in some form of arcade, or fun house.  He moved forward and could hear the kids better now, their conversation along with the hum of his shield when it’s activated in the next room.  They were giggling and laughing as he moved to the prize counter,  poking his head around and got an eyeful. 

His .45 was laying on one of the chairs, broken down for cleaning and surrounded by papers with schematics of his pistol drawn in bright colored crayons, which were still laying around the chair.  His suspenders were laid behind it, probably forgotten along with one of his gloves. 

The one that made him make a double take was the little blue hair girl sitting in his shield cross-legged and wearing one of his gloves and a pot on her head, riding it as the otherworldly metal artifact spun in place, turned into a fun ride.  The boy squatted nearby, and both were cackling like, well, children.

“This… Shield…. Thing… doesn’t… obey…. The… rules… of…. Oh... I’m... gonna... Barf...”  she said as she dragged her hands along the ground slowing her spin to a stop.  The sound of the shields hum subsided as she laid down across it, laughing hysterically.  The boy moved towards her, nodding his head.  “See!  I told you it didn’t have any friction.” He grabbed the side of the shield and she lifted her butt as he pulled it out from under her and placed it near the chair where the pistol and his harness were.  “Its super light as well!” he said excitedly.

Steve looked around the place and he confirmed it was a game arcade, abandoned for some time from the layers of dust and disrepair.  An enormous stained-glass window encompassed one wall, and he could see the shadows of foot and vehicular traffic going along the street outside.  One of the other features was a machine in one of the corners with multiple boxing gloves and punch pads built into it, behind it was a mural of a boxer in a ready stance.  A shooting gallery was to the boxing machines right, one that would have been an attraction on its own along the boardwalk.  Some of the creatures represented on the targets were far from human and saw that the bat eared type was there as well but was holding a cutlass.  A score board showed the status of people who used either attraction, or so he thought.  There were a few pinball machines and some other cabinets he assumed were games.  The arcade was lit by the same glass tubes that were in the small room he woke up in, though some of them were different colors.  There was a second level balcony, though he couldn’t see what was behind there. 

“That was fun...”  She said, giggling.  The boy moved over to her and tugged the glove off her hand and tossed it near the other one.  The girl tried to sit up but laid back down again.  “Still dizzy!”

 “Close your eyes and stay prone for a couple minutes.   that should clear it up quick.”  Steve said, stepping out of the back prize room and leaned on the counter.  The two kids leapt up and stared at him wide eyed, apparently her dizziness forgotten.  Several heartbeats passed and got his first real good look at the pair, thinking they couldn’t be older than eleven or twelve.  He wouldn’t call what they were wearing rags, but they were well worn and had been patched multiple times.  What really surprised him was their language.  It was English but it had a unique lilt that he couldn’t place. 

“Your awake!” The boy said finally and looked at the girl, who motioned towards the bowl near the boxing machine urgently.  Mouthing ‘oh right,’ he rushed over and grabbed it, taking it over to the counter where Steve was leaning, who stepped away as the child placed it on the wood surface and moved back away from him.  “We snitched those from Otho’s Breads, so they should still be fresh.  I can get you another bottle of juice if you want it.”

The girl nodded.  “We have a few more bottles in the ice box.” 

Steve shook his head.  “I’m fine, thanks.  I didn’t get your names.”  He looked at the bowl of flatbreads, which looked surprisingly like round hard tack.  “I’m Captain Rogers...” and shook his head, instantly regretting dropping rank.  “Steve.”

“Skeeve?”

“Steve...”

The boy grinned wide, “I’m Ekko, and this is Powder.”  He pointed at the girl who waved at him.  “You probably shouldn’t be moving around too much; you were pretty out of it when we brought you in here.” He said and pointed to his gear on the chair.  “This isn’t the usual Piltovan tech, and it definitely didn’t come from the Lanes, so...”

Powder chimed in. “The bullets look normal enough, but not a common size that the Enforcers revolvers use, of course that’s not a revolver.” She tapped her cheek, thinking aloud. “Brass will be hard to find, we’ll probably have to make them.” 

“I see, I’ll try not to shoot it a lot.” Steve leaned back on the counter; his lip quirked in a grin.  This was the strangest conversation he’d had with a pair of children.  “Which of you drew schematics of my pistol.”

Powder looked at Ekko for a moment, and they shrugged and turned back to him.  “We both did, but we didn’t get to tear it down further since we don’t have any spring pins to put it back together.”   

“I appreciate that.  Where I’m from kids your age generally don’t draw schematics, or break down 45s.” Steve said, relieved that they hadn’t tried and impressed that they had considered it.  He motioned around him “You guys build all this?”

“Nah, my sister and I found it a couple years ago abandoned and took it over as our hideout.” Powder spoke up.  “But Ekko and I got it up and running and do the upkeep.”  Ekko rolled his eyes, “mostly her.”

“You helped when you could.”  She shoved him.  “Benzo keeps you busy.”

Steve nodded.  “This Benzo is your... dad?”  fishing for information.

“Nah, I’m his Apprenta.  My folks have been gone for some time now.”  Ekko said, with a twinge of sadness that lasted only a moment. “I live above his shop, and he gives me a spot on his workbench for my own projects, and I get to keep some of the cogs if I sell anything.” He grins. “I got his shop piped; nothing goes on in there that I don’t know.” 

Steve smiled, nodding.  “Good to know.”  and looked over to Powder.  “What about you?”

“I have a sister and two brothers all older than me.”  She shrugged.  “Vander looks after us...” and cocks her head.  “So, you’re a soldier?  From Demacia?”

She caught the captain slip.  “Yeah, I am, but not from there.”  He stated.  “Though, I guess I’m on the DOA or MIA list in Washington, so I suppose I was a soldier.  Captain Steve Rogers with the United States Army and the SSR.” And mused aloud. “You probably won’t understand what I just said.”

The children looked at each other and back to him, blankly. 

Right.  “Missing in Action...  or Dead-on Arrival.” He smirked, and they looked like they understood.  “Whatever happened, I’m here now.  This is either a very long hallucination or a fever dream before I freeze to death.”  He spoke. “This isn’t Oz, right?”

“No, it’s the Undercity.”  Powder stated.  “Where’s Oz?”

“Over the rainbow.”  He said dryly and sat on the counter and swung his legs around to sit facing them.  “Do you know how I got here?” and added “How long was I out for?”

The pair looked nervously at each other and whispered between them for several moments.  Enough time for Steve to grab one of the hard tacks from the bowl and break off a corner.  It was softer than he expected but tasted similar to a hard dog biscuit.  It went down pretty rough, but it wasn’t bad enough to not take another bite.  Ekko nodded.  “You were out about a day and a half, we took turns making sure you were going to be ok.”  He nudged Powder. “Your turn.”   

“We made a wish, and you dropped out of the sky.”  Powder stated, her hand pantomiming a fall from a great height.  “Then you crashed down on the Enforcers that were going to shoot us, so thanks for that.”  Ekko nodded in agreement.  “We grabbed as much of your stuff that looked like it was useful.  We didn’t think you’d want the random pieces of metal…”

“Let’s back up...” Steve said, holding his hands up.  “Wished?”  He’d come back around to the Enforcer questions later on...

Powder began to pace, gesticulating as she explained.  “We did something nice for an old man over on Gristo lane.” she said, rubbing under her chin.  “That was, what...”

Ekko interjected.  “Last week or so”

She nodded. “Yeah, right.  Anyway, we brought him some medicine that he asked for...”

“It was a good snitch!”  he said proudly, nudging her with his elbow. 

Powder held her hands up defensively. “He really needed it, and we didn’t have any cogs, so we grabbed it while Zeba was busy with another customer.”  She continued, and went back to pacing. “The old man was in really bad shape and was really appreciative for the poultice.  He gave me a piece of canvas with a Rune on it, saying don’t use it unless you are in the direst situation of your life.” She laced her fingers over her head, still moving as she talked.  “So yesterday, we were taking a ride in Ekko’s Disk runner, and Ekko gave a bunch of Enforcers the Trencher Salute.” And showed him what that was.  So did Ekko. 

“You flipped them off...”  Steve was starting to get a picture in his mind and wasn’t pleased with what he was seeing.

Or hearing.

“Yeah!”  she nodded enthusiastically, “Then they threw a trap ball and stopped the Disk Runner, and we went flying head over heels, and when we saw they were rushing us, so we booked it down the alley and found out too late that the alley was blocked off.”

“We don’t go into that area of town, Vi and Claggor said that Deckard and his crew mug around there.”  Ekko explained.  “So were not that familiar with the alleys in this part of the lanes.”

“So, the Enforcers unfold their rifles and hold them on us and saying how they were going to clear out two Sump Rats.”  She started breathing little, short bursts and rubbed the heal of her palm into her temple.  Ekko touched her back, which appeared to calm her down.  “We didn’t believe they’d do it until they chambered a round...” 

“You don’t have to go on...” Steve said, it was clearly getting painful for her to remember

“So, I pulled out the Rune, and whispered into it, with a lot of breath like the old man said, that...” and paused, blowing out a full breath of air.

“We need a Hero”

Ekko continued for her.  “At first nothing happened, then the Rune burst into blue flames as the Enforcers chambered a round and aimed down on us...  Suddenly, a gold sparkly ring appeared over their heads and a torrent of water and ice slammed down on them, which broke, and you were inside, as well as some bits of equipment.”

Powder nodded in agreement.  “So, we grabbed you up and the stuff that dropped with you and brought you here.  You were really out of it.”

Steve nodded in agreement.  “I guess freezing to death will really take it out of you.”  He said, leaning his head back.  “Before I appeared here, I saw Runes dancing around me then everything turned white.  Must have been your ‘wish.”  He said, surprised at himself how calm he was about all this.  He wasn’t sure who he should be angry with, if anyone.  Certainly not these two.

“Why were you freezing to death?”  Powder asked, sitting down in front of him on the dusty floor.  Ekko sat next to her, holding his head in his hands.   Steve agreed that he’d tell them, it was the least he could do.   It looked like it was Storytime.

“The Country we are at war against launched an airplane filled with bombs to...”  He paused.  “Do you have aircraft?” not wanting to go on if they had no idea about air travel without explaining.  He grabbed the bowl of biscuits and put them in front of the pair and joined them on the floor.

Ekko nodded “We have air ships.”  Powder grinned at the thought.

Steve nodded and continued.  “...to New York, so I got on the plane before it launched and took over the controls while it was enroute.  An explosion damaged the aircraft and there was no way to stop it.”  He spoke.  “So, I drove it into the ocean before it could explode, water and ice filled the plane and then I drown.  I think it did explode after I crashed, so your wish saved me from that.”  he added.  “I guess I owe you.”

The kids grinned wide at that.  “Don't worry, we have plans for working it off!”  Powder said, rubbing her hands together.

No, that’s not ominous Steve thought.

Powder leaned back on her elbows.  “How big of an explosion would it have been?”   Steve’s lips tightened before he spoke, trying to keep in mind these were kids.  Smart, tough kids who had seen more than most he’d figured, but children none the less.  “It would have leveled the city.”

They were quiet after that for a few moments, digesting what he said. Powder had a million questions but didn’t feel it was the right time to ask any of them.   Finally, the silence was broken by Ekko reaching over to the bowl, grabbing a biscuit and started munching it. 

“You kept asking about someone named Peggy, is she your girlfriend?”  Powder asked.

“She’s someone I’d hoped to get to know a lot better but won't be able to.”  Steve said.  “She’s an Agent with the SSR, same unit I was with.  Peggy was there when they did the procedure on me, and Professor Erskine was murdered.”  He smiled.  “She faced down the Nazi spy's car barreling down on her, nearly getting ran down in the process.”  The kids looked at each other, and shrugged, not really understanding the references but got the gist of his explanations.  She was important to him. 

 Snapping is fingers He got to his feet, and went over to his harness, the kids shifting to watch him.   He began rifling through his pouches, “I can show you what she looked like.”

His face dropped, realizing he’d put the compass on the console before the crash. 

“Did you guys find anything else from the alley?  A compass with a picture in it?”  Steve asked, a sudden edge of desperation in his voice.  He couldn’t lose that compass, not now.  Did they even know what a compass was?  “It’s metal, glass and shows you your direction.  I put it on the console before I crashed.”

“We know what a compass is, Steve.”  Powder rolled her eyes and stood up, looking around the chair.  “Maybe it fell out of your pouch.”  Ekko hopped over the prize booth and looked in the back room while Steve and Powder kept looking around on the main floor. 

“I don’t know how things work here, but shouldn’t you have gone home by now?”  Steve asked, tipping game machines to look behind them.   He turned to see a saucer eyed Powder staring at him. 

“Wow You’re really strong!  It took Vi and Claggor both to get the Teemo game from the back.” And added.  “This is one of our safe spaces, so I have more leniency when I’m working on a project here.  I’ll have to head back later on, so Vi doesn’t come looking for me.”  She shrugs, a little embarrassed.  “I get obsessed with things some times and forget to eat, or sleep…”

“Vi and Claggor are your siblings?”  Steve asked, leaning against the Teemo machine.  She had mentioned she had some before but hadn’t mention names.  The girl nodded.  “If you stay here long enough you’ll get to meet them!”

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”  He asked.  She just shrugged with a slight smile.

Ekko hopped over the prize counter and out the door they came in last night.  Powder and Steve look at each other for a moment and rushed behind him and into the alley.   He was looking around frantically in the piles of trash and broken machinery.  “Its not here!”  he shouted, pushing over a trash can, startling a cat that ran out of the alley like it was shot from a canon.  “Where is it!”

Steve rushed over to where Ekko was looking, Powder a few steps behind him.  “What are you looking for?” 

“It was a large piece of tech we’d planned to salvage, but I think we left it outside when we got mugged,” he said.  “I thought maybe the compass might be there, with the scrap, and it was console like...”  He started to flip over a mattress that had been thrown out of a higher window but stopped when roaches crawled out of it, and he dropped it and bounced back.  Ekko glanced over towards the larger dumpster and vaulted at it, ready for a dumpster dive!

Steve pulled him back from a dumpster he was about to dive in and carried him back to Powder. “Its ok, Ekko, Its probably still in Antarctica with the rest of the plane.”  He said, putting the boy down.   “The chance it stayed on the console when I crashed is astronomical.  Sorry about the salvage part though.” Ekko kicked the ground, frustrated. 

“That would have been some nice salvage.”  Powder said, putting an arm around his shoulder, and realized that Steve was walking towards the main street.  The kids looked at each other and followed him out to the street.  The last thing they needed was to get harassed by Enforcers, or worst, Vi to find them before she got a change to explain.

“This is incredible.”  He said, looking at the landscape of the Lanes taking in the green hued underground city, with the wide array of people, both human and not.  “H G Wells couldn’t have come up with this on his best day.”

Undercity:  Black Orchid Keep, The Dredge

The hooded man glared into the scrying orb, its light the only illumination in the darkened chamber as he manipulated the mana flowing through the crystal device.   He shifted his fingers across the surface which altered the focus of the orb to Piltover’s University district.  The man turned and flipped through the ledger he had on the side and made a few notes before returning his focus back to the Scrying Orb.  He caressed the orb again, the focus once again on Piltover with practiced ease, and slid his hands across another area of the University District and the focus was now on a penthouse apartment, one with the Kiramman family crest on the cornerstone foundation…

There it is, he chuckled to himself, and manipulated the orb to bring the focus closer, through the windows and the balcony doors.  It was a warm day, he mused, the Piltover scum probably enjoyed the cool breeze that was blowing through the doors.  This fool had no instinct for security of his research, believing that being on the top floor of an apartment building was security enough.

Inside the apartment was a young man in his early twenties, handsome by most standards and wore an Academy uniform, puttering around inside along with a girl much younger than he.  What dirty shenanigans are you getting into he thought as he brought the focus to the girl as the man passed by her into the back, though he was certain of her lineage by the dark blue hair.  The hooded man looked through another ledger on the other side and confirmed his belief.  She was a Kiramman, and the building belonged to her family.  Good information for use later, if needed and the Kirammans had much to answer for.  

And they would, soon enough.

The focus shifted back to the man in the academy uniform as he moved out from the back rooms, holding the object that the hooded man had been waiting for that confirmed his conclusions.  The bright blue crystal, forged into a round shape either by him or a Shuriman artificer.  It didn’t matter at this point.  If there was magic in Piltover, it would be theirs, he thought as he watched him place the crystal into a device on a workbench.

The Scrying orb began to fade, the power nearly spent, but he had what he needed.  The Kirammans had a Brackern crystal, and the foolish boy was playing with it in front of an un-shuttered window and an open balcony doorway. It was like the boy WANTED them to take it.

The hooded figure finally released the Scrying orb, and with his fingers lite candles on the table, the room shifting from the cold blue of the Orb to a warmer hue of candlelight. 

Two people were revealed by the golden illuminations, both wearing dark vestments and hoods with little other adornment.  The pair waited patiently for him to recognize them, hands behind their back.   After a few moments of writing in the journal across from his ledger, the hooded man finally shifts his gaze to them. 

“I have a task for you both in Piltover, to retrieve something that rightfully belongs in the Black Orchids hands.”  The Hooded man said, and as he is about to continue another dark clad figure moved into the glow of the candlelight and bows his head, awaiting an audience. 

“What is this interruption?”  The hooded man askes, his voice clipped but even.

“A Rune was used in the Undercity.”  He newcomer stated.  “One powerful enough to commit a reality shift and deplete the mana lines for several hours in the lanes.”

Mana lines run all across Runeterra naturally and mageborne can tap into them as part of the arcane skills of mage craft, but rarely does a mage deplete a mana line in an area when casting.  Even rarer when its runic magic.  “How do we know this.”

The newcomer continued.  “One of the detection traps set for Master Ryze tripped.” He said, referring to the mage that had been a thorn in the Black Orchids side for some time now.

“Do we know who cast it.”  The hooded man asked, motioning the newcomer to step forward.  The hooded man believed that Ryze would be an asset to them had their interests aligned, if it had indeed been him who cast it. 

“We know only that it was cast, and just as quickly gone with no trace.” 

The hooded man pondered this, and after a few moments consideration he said.  “Look into this and keep me abreast.” And turned to the other two and waved them away, they had their orders.   All three faded back into the darkness, followed by the sounds of a heavy door closing.  The hooded man returned to the scrying orb, and touched it the crystal back to life and began searching for more answers but this time his focus would be on the undercity, and where someone might express an exorbitant amount of magic, and why...

And how could he make it theirs…