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Yet another experiment had failed, leaving Powder in tears.
It was almost her father’s birthday, and she was trying to make a ring with a hidden self-defense mechanism in it. The ring was supposed to look harmless, but there was going to be a small switch on the side that, when flipped, had a small, sharp spike come out from the ring. That way, if anyone messed with Powder’s father, they would get an unpleasant surprise when he punched them.
Powder worked tirelessly for three long days. She had obtained a golden-ish ring with a beautiful design on it. This would be the main ring that would go on her father’s finger. She then carved out a hole on the side to put in the parts that made up the spike. The spike was made up of six smaller rings that decompressed when deactivated. The switch was supposed push up the rings into a spike-like shape when activated.
It was supposed to be this beautiful weapon, but things didn’t go exactly as planned.
Powder had assembled the ring as best as she saw fit, and, in theory, it was supposed to work. However, five of the rings that made up the spike fell out of the hole and onto the ground when Powder flipped the switch to activate the weapon. The sixth and second-largest ring got stuck inside the largest and main ring, and when Powder tried to pull it out to start over, she accidentally ended up breaking the main ring.
The two golden pieces of the main ring seemed to fall in slow motion onto the ground in front of Powder. They bounced once before going still.
Powder had just stared at the broken pieces of the main ring, which was surrounded by five smaller bands that she had tried to put into the largest ring. She still held the sixth ring, the one that she had wrenched from within the main ring, in her hand. Powder squeezed her hand hard around it before falling to her knees.
Hot, wet tears fell from Powder’s eyes as she wept silently. Her contraption didn’t work, and she didn’t have a backup present for her father. But it was more than not having a gift for her father’s upcoming birthday; Powder had been trying to invent original and useful technology, but every single time she began her experiments, they would end in disaster and failure. None of them would work. And the fact that she failed trying to make her father something special hurt so much.
Powder suddenly heard a knock on the door of her room (well, technically it was her and her sister, Vi’s, room that they shared). She wiped her eyes as quickly as she could before saying “Come in,” in a quivering voice. She hated that she could easily hear how upset she was.
The door slowly opened, revealing Powder’s mother. Powder turned away in an attempt to try to hide her growing tears.
“Hey, Pow,” her mother greeted, using Vi’s nickname for her youngest child. “Are you all right?”
Powder thought about lying and telling her mother that everything was fine, but she realized that there was no point in being deceitful. Not when there were literal tears falling from her eyes.
“Nothing I do ever works,” Powder whispered as she pulled her knees to her chest. She wrapped her arms around her legs and buried her face in her knees. The sixth and second-largest ring was still in her hand. There was probably an indention in Powder’s palm from the ring by now.
Powder’s mother sat down next to her daughter on the ground. She noticed the rings strewn around her daughter, as well as the two broken pieces of the large ring. “You were trying to create something,” her mother commented. It wasn’t exactly a question, but it wasn’t exactly a statement either.
“Yeah,” Powder confirmed, her voice slightly muffled from pressing her face into her knees.
“Was it a gift for Dad?”
“Yeah.”
Powder’s mother wrapped her arm around her daughter’s shoulders. The pair sat in silence (save for Powder’s occasional sniffles) for a while, before Powder’s mother spoke again. “Why don’t we try again?”
Powder peeked up at her mother. “Are you kidding?” she asked. “There’s no point in trying again. Everything I make doesn’t work. I can’t do anything!” Powder raised her voice on her last sentence. She buried her face back into her knees.
“Let’s try again together,” Powder’s mother rephrased her previous statement. “You can tell me what you were trying to make, and I’ll help you with it.”
Powder didn’t move for a moment, but then she slowly unfolded her hand. Her mother saw the second-largest ring in her daughter’s hand. She picked it up from Powder’s hand and examined it.
“I was trying to make a ring for Dad,” Powder explained. “It was supposed to have a spike pop out of it when activated. It didn’t work. At all.”
Her mother made a “Hmm” sound before picking up the two broken pieces of the main ring. She held the golden pieces in her other hand. “Was this the part of the ring that would go around his finger?”
“Yeah.”
Powder’s mother smiled. “We can fix it. Easily.”
Powder looked up suddenly at her mother. “We can?” she asked.
“Yep,” her mother answered. “We can melt the edges of the pieces back together and go from there.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course.”
§
Melting the edges of the gold proved to be quite a challenge, since Powder and her mother only had a blowtorch and no propane at that, but they made it work. The edges of the ring were melted just enough so that the two pieces were easily sealed when Powder held them together. The main ring looked almost as good as new, and one could barely see the slim line left on ring that indicated that it was once not whole.
With her mother’s help, Powder was able to assemble the six smaller bands within the main ring. They had to make the hole that the smaller rings went in bigger, but that wasn’t too hard. This time, when the little switch was flipped, the six rings sprung up into a perfect sharp spike. The rings did not fall out this time.
Powder grinned up at her mother. “It worked!” she exclaimed. Her mother smiled at her as she removed the steel mask that she had worn when using the blowtorch.
(Powder’s mother did not allow her daughter to use the blowtorch, even though Powder pleaded to do so.)
“Can you flip the switch back?” Powder’s mother asked. Her daughter, in response, flipped the switch again to deactivate the weapon, and the six bands decompressed back into the hole of the main and largest ring. Now, it looked like a regular, harmless golden ring.
Powder and her mother just beamed at each other.
§
Powder’s father absolutely loved the ring. When Powder gave him her gift on his birthday, he was ecstatic and immediately put it on his index finger. “Pow,” he said. “This is absolutely amazing!” He flipped the switch on the side of the ring, and the spike popped up. Just like during the test run, the six bands that made up the spike stayed in place and didn’t fall out.
Vi, Powder’s older sister, eyed the ring that her father wore. “Did you make this?” Vi asked in awe.
Powder was about to tell her that both she and her mom made it, but her mother put her hand on Powder’s shoulder before she spoke. “Powder did create it,” she said. “I helped a bit, but Powder did almost all of the work.”
Vi grinned at her little sister and patted her on her back. “Good job, Pow,” she said. “I could never make something like that.”
Powder beamed brightly at her older sister’s praise. She felt an immense pride in the fact that her invention worked, and that all of her family loved it.
Her father came over to her and ruffled his daughter’s hair before hugging her. He had to stoop down on his knees to get to his youngest daughter’s level. “Thank you, Powder,” he said. When he spoke again, he lowered his voice so that just Powder could hear him. “This was my favorite gift I got today.”
§
There was debris everywhere.
Once strong and tall buildings were now humbly crumbling to ashes on the ground below. The walls were slowly deteriorating, and the roofs of various buildings were practically nonexistent now. Melted and twisted steel littered the streets of Zaun, and there was a thick layer of fog that covered the city. Well, it wasn’t really fog. It was more of a thick layer of ash that covered the city.
Powder could barely breathe with the ash strewn about her. Every time she inhaled, she choked on the polluted air. After a particularly long coughing fit, Powder felt Vi, who has been standing by her side ever since all hell broke loose, press a cloth in her younger sister’s hand.
“Here,” Vi said. “This’ll help a bit.” Vi brought a smaller, different cloth up to cover her own mouth, and Powder followed suit and covered her mouth with the cloth that Vi gave her. Now, with the bottom half of her face covered, she could breathe a little better.
But even with the cloth, Powder still choked on the thick air every now and then. She reached for her sister’s hand. Vi grasped Powder’s hand tightly, as if she was afraid that her younger sister would run off and get lost. Vi didn’t have to worry though; Powder was not going to leave her side. She had nowhere to go.
“Where’s Mom and Dad?” Powder asked her sister in a raspy voice. Their parents had been with them just moments before, but then the Enforcers arrived, and the family had gotten separated.
Vi scanned the ruins of what used to be Zaun. “I’m not sure,” she admitted. “But they can’t be far. They were just here.”
A cold, dark feeling swept over Powder, but she kept her worries to herself. She didn’t want to burden Vi with her worst-case-scenario thoughts. She just silently followed her sister as they walked through the ruined city.
§
Zaun was crawling with Enforcers. Every few blocks or so, Vi would peek around a corner just to make sure that the sisters wouldn’t be spotted by Piltover’s law enforcement. She would beckon Powder over if the coast was clear.
Powder and Vi tried to not make noise. Any sound, whether quiet or loud, had the potential to alert the Enforcers of their location. The sisters tried not to talk- mainly, Vi would lead the way through the destroyed city, and Powder would do her best to keep up with her older sister.
At one point, Powder accidentally tripped over a large brick left from one of the burning buildings. She hit the ground face-first, making a loud oomph sound. After she fell, Powder immediately froze. She looked up at her sister, and saw that Vi had a worried expression on her face. They listened for a moment, and soon they heard once distant footsteps grow nearer and nearer.
“Run!” Vi whisper-yelled. She grabbed her sister’s hand and roughly pulled her up. Powder stumbled to her feet before regaining balance and running with her sister.
Vi pulled Powder through the alleyways in-between various destroyed buildings. No matter how fast they ran, the footsteps seemed to grow louder and louder. Vi tried to weave her way through the ruined city in an attempt to lose the Enforcers, but when Powder looked behind her, she could see the blue and gold colors of their uniforms following them.
Vi led her sister to the bridge that connected the two cities of Zaun and Piltover. The sisters didn’t go across the bridge, but instead they hid behind one of the large beams that lay right before the bridge.
There was still fighting going on. Zaunite rebels were defending their city against the ever-growing number of Enforcers that still plagued the city. A couple of Zaunites stood out to Powder- an older woman with a triple-bladed sword; a big, strong man with metal gauntlets; and a figure clothed in black from head to toe.
Powder watched as the elderly woman get her blade taken away. After she was stripped of her weapon, an Enforcer shot her without warning, straight through the throat. Powder watched as the woman fell to the ground, eyes still open, and slowly choked to death on her own blood. The woman died with her eyes open and facing in the direction of the younger sibling. Powder shuddered and pressed closer into her sister’s side.
“Th-they won’t find us here, right?” Powder stammered. She shut her eyes tightly, but all she could see was the old woman’s lifeless eyes, the blood dripping from her mouth and throat.
Vi held her younger sister closer to her. “No, they won’t,” she said determinedly. “And if they do, they’ll regret it.”
Powder brought her knees up to her chest as she huddled next to her sister. She hoped that their parents would find them soon, and that they’ll be able to get away from the fighting and the sea of lifeless bodies that lay in front of them.
And there were, well, many bodies strewn around them. Too many bodies. This area of Zaun might as well have been a mass gravesite now, with all the dead Zaunites and Enforcers littering the ground.
Even though Powder knew that she shouldn’t focus on the destruction around them, she couldn’t help but scan her surroundings. She knew that Vi was probably doing the same thing, but her sister didn’t say anything yet. They just stood and hid in mutual silence.
As Powder was looking around, her eyes caught a gleam of light. Well, it was more of a reflection of the fires around them on something shiny. Powder squinted her eyes and noticed a hand sticking out from underneath rubble. Then she saw an exquisitely molded ring on the index finger of the hand.
An exquisitely molded, golden ring with a spike in the center of it.
Powder cried out when she saw the mop of pink hair underneath the rubble upon further inspection. Vi followed her sister’s eyes and saw parts of her father lying underneath rubble from a building. His ashen face was visible, his eyes wide open.
“Dad!” Powder cried as she broke from Vi’s grasp. Despite her sister’s screams to come back, Powder darted straight to where her father lay. When she reached him, she knelt beside where he was and shook him violently.
“Dad, Dad, get up,” Powder pleaded. “We have to go.”
No response. Powder grabbed his hand and tried to pull him up, but he was heavy, and she was so small in comparison to him. She couldn’t even move him.
Vi finally arrived at where Powder and her father were, and she quickly pulled Powder into her arms. “C’mon, Pow,” she said, fighting to keep her voice steady. “We have to go.”
“No!” Powder screamed. “We can’t leave him!” She fought against her sister, but Vi’s grip on her was too strong, and she couldn’t escape her sister’s hold.
“Pow,” Vi whispered solemnly. “He’s dead.”
And she was right. When Powder looked into her father’s open eyes, she saw that they were blank. His eyes were beyond seeing. He was no longer there. His eyes looked the same as the old woman’s who had just died moments before. Powder turned from him and allowed Vi to lead her away.
However, as she turned, she saw a smaller figure in a heap on the ground a few yards away. This time, the figure wasn’t buried partially under rubble, so Powder easily recognized the figure as her mother. Her mother’s eyes were the same as her father’s- blank, lifeless, and beyond seeing. Blood trickled from a cut on her head and into her open mouth.
Her gentle mother, who had just days before helped her with her father’s birthday gift, was bleeding and dying. Dead and gone. Her father, whom she had just given a beautiful, deadly ring for his birthday, was gone too.
It’s strange how someone could die so quickly. Powder didn’t even get to say goodbye.
§
There weren’t as many Enforcers around, to Powder and Vi’s relief. The few that were still around (or perhaps still alive better describes them) were attempting to subdue the large man with the metal gauntlets.
The Enforcers were also failing horribly.
The man was able to knock one of the Enforcers to the ground, and he threw the other one across the bridge. The one he threw didn’t come back, and the one that he knocked down never stirred again. Powder saw that the back of the Enforcer’s head seemed to have caved in.
The man just stood there for a while, and Powder watched him. The man looked tired, beaten, and worn; but he also looked as if he could take on another couple troops of Enforcers if they arrived.
“C’mon,” Vi said as she began tugging Powder away. “We have to go.”
Powder followed, but she tripped again. Over her own feet, much to her embarrassment. “Fuck,” Powder mumbled, and her older sister shot her a disapproving look. Vi didn’t say anything though; there was no point in lecturing her sister for cursing when they were standing in the middle of a battlefield that held their parents’ dead bodies.
The man with the gauntlets apparently heard Powder and turned. He saw her on the ground with Vi right next to her, helping her up. Powder made eye contact with him, and she saw that his eyes were wild, full of fury. She scurried back, trying to put distance between herself and the man. She didn’t want to end up like the Enforcer, with his head caved in, or like her parents, with their eyes lifeless and cold. If this man wanted her and Vi dead, they would be dead.
The man began to approach the two sisters, much to Powder’s horror. She again stumbled to her feet and clung to her sister’s arm. The man now stood right in front of them, and he seemed larger than Powder at first thought he was. She cowered behind her sister, but Vi stood her ground and stared the man straight into his eyes. She wouldn’t show him her fear.
To Powder’s surprise, the man knelt down in front of her and Vi so that he was on their level. His eyes weren’t as angry as before. They seemed almost kind even.
“Where’s your parents?” the man asked the two sisters.
Powder couldn’t answer him. She didn’t know what to say, and even if she did, she wouldn’t have been able to speak. She stared at the man’s metal gauntlets, which were still on his hands. They were covered in blood, but they gleamed in the firelight. Just like the ring on her father’s hand.
“They’re dead,” Vi told him flatly. She said nothing else.
The man was silent for a bit, seemingly deep in thought. When he finally stood up, he beckoned for the girls to follow him. “Come with me,” he said in a gruff but not unkind voice. “I’ll get you somewhere safe. If you want,” he seemed to add the last part as an afterthought. He turned and began walking away.
Powder looked at Vi, who shrugged and began trudging along beside the man. There was nothing left to lose, and Vi knew it. Powder waited a moment before trailing behind her sister and the strange man. She gripped her sister’s hand, and Vi gave her a small squeeze. It was just them now. Them against the world.
She didn’t turn back to see the ruins behind her, nor did she turn back to see her parents one last time.
If she looked back, she would’ve seen the gleaming light of her father’s ring still calling after her.