Nice Day for a White Wedding

[gunpowderblue]

A wedding for one of the Champions of Piltover was an event of such importance that it was practically a public holiday. Vi was the most recognizable of the wardens, wildly popular in both Piltover (despite her origins as a streetrat of Zaun) and Zaun (despite her abandoning her own kind to become an enforcer for the elite). Crowds spilled into the streets to celebrate, with vendors quick to take advantage of the occasion to offer celebratory food and commemorative items. The church where the wedding was to take place was filled by half the wardens of Piltover, anyone who wasn't required on active duty elsewhere, and those who weren't taking up seats inside were lined up outside to keep the enthusiastic populace at bay.

Jinx wasn't too worried about getting through that double line of city-sanctioned violence. First of all, her access routes were either over the roof or through the tunnels beneath the city, and second of all, she'd already gotten in last night to prepare proper festivities for her sister's wedding.

Her only regret was that her plan didn't allow for her to be up in the church's auditorium to properly spectate the fallout. But that was all right. Her imagination had already filled in the details for how this was going to go:

Vi, the Betrayer, the Heartless, the Bloodthirsty Brawler, Vi the Violent, stood at the altar across from some demure, big-titted beauty (not what Jinx would have expected for Vi's tastes, but hey it had kind of seemed like Vi was into Caitlyn for a hot second there, so maybe Vi's type was repressed and boobly, and she'd just found someone even more repressed and boobly). The officiant droned something about love and devotion and whatever, Jinx wasn't sure, she'd never actually attended a wedding. A wedding bell rang.

Everyone paused, shifting and looking around awkwardly, embarrassed by a single wedding bell having rung too early, a single loud bong from one bell-tower interrupting the officiant's speech and waking up anyone who had fallen asleep during that speech. And then that one solitary bell was followed by a bang as the entire tower exploded.

Gasps and cries, people leaping to their feet. Vi reaching protectively for her beloved, looking up toward the source of the explosion.

Another bell, from the second tower. Screams this time from some of the attendees within the auditorium, shouts of anger from others. Another explosion.

Now people were starting to run, fleeing toward the exits or cowering under their seats, but none of them could get more than a few steps before a series of pops around the second floor of the auditorium released sprays of glittering red powder and trails of white streamers. The blood-red sparkles fell heavily, coating everyone in the room in red glitter in an instant, while the streamers wafted more slowly. People screamed, even though probably no one was hurt yet (or no one inside, anyway, since probably some people had been hit by falling debris outside when the bell towers exploded), and the rush for the exits became a stampede.

There was a third bong, then, because there were four bell-towers. The screaming became total pandemonium at this point. Jinx could hear a certain amount of it from her position, though it was somewhat muted through the stone, but she imagined the rest. The wardens were trying to organize. Vi or Caitlyn would have taken charge, shouting orders and trying to form on-the-spot strategy. Vi would be scanning the upper levels of the auditorium, possibly still holding her bride close. She wouldn't be able to send her bride anywhere to safety, yet, because it wasn't clear where would be safe, and the stampede for the doors meant that they couldn't really get through the thick crowd of everyone else trying to get to safety, and the streets beyond that would also be full of screams and panic. No, the safest place for that little bride was right where she was, by the altar, surrounded by wardens and as far from any of the exploding bell towers as anyone could get, at that moment.

Right around this point, somewhere after the third bell's ring, as the red clouds in the auditorium started to clear, as Vi kept searching the upper levels and trying to put together a plan, Vi would spot a glimpse of blue in the rafters near the fourth bell-tower. The end of a long blue braid spilling over a rafter, giving away the position of its owner seated above.

"Stay here," Vi said, probably, pressing her bride's shoulders to reinforce the command to stay here, in this relatively safe position by the altar, surrounded by wardens, where no one was currently stampeding. Maybe they shared a kiss at this point, passionate and loving, to reassure the frightened bride. Probably not. Vi tended to think first with her fists and only later with her heart.

And then Vi would make her way up into the rafters, sneaking up on that wayward blue braid, while the fourth bell rang and the fourth tower blew. She would land, one way or another, in front of the figure on the rafter. There were three possible routes up there, each one set with a trigger that Vi the charging bull would no doubt stomp across. And whichever one she set off, the figure on the rafter would turn toward her, lifting a gun and saying Hiya, sis!

The gun would fire, though it was unlikely to hit. The Jinx-shaped puppet couldn't aim, after all, and there was a necessary delay in the time it took the puppet to turn and lift its arm to fire. But that was all right. The puppet had only ever been a distraction.

When Vi charged across whichever one of the trip wires she hit, it had already pulled the detonator under the altar.

The floor around the altar erupted in a ring of tiny explosions in a circle right around the spot where the bride should, hopefully, be standing. It dropped ten feet into the basement, where someone else with long blue braids, someone who wasn't a puppet, was waiting. This part Jinx had to do herself. She couldn't be sure of whether the bride would be standing or collapsed, whether there would be other people in her immediate vicinity, whether she'd be injured.

The instant Jinx saw that figure in the white dress, she pounced her and latched a belt of chains around her waist. The chains started pulling the instant that Jinx pounced, since she'd been standing on the release for the counterweight. They pulled the figure off the circle of destroyed floor and dragged her fifteen feet across the room into a waiting cage. That same system of weights pulled the cage door shut, and then the whole cage dropped like an elevator through the hole in the floor beneath it.

The next red herring (recorded cries for help and a red-spattered white dress being dragged in the opposite direction through the tunnels beyond the church basement) flicked into action, and Jinx pulled a concealing curtain in front of the descending chain and the hole in the floor before dropping atop her cage-elevator to ride it down and down into the chasm toward Zaun.

"Hiya, cutie!" Jinx said cheerfully, tilting her head to look down upon her captive prize.