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It started back in their university days- mostly because that's when they had first met- and in typical art versus science fashion, he and one Cecil B. Heimerdinger had hit things off gloriously. Explosively, even. Not actually , not yet, but metaphorically things grew heated to the point of blowing up almost immediately. Ziggs could remember it like it happened yesterday, not hundreds of Yordle years ago.
It was a group project, and they had been randomly partnered up to make a simple potion. The specifics didn't really matter, not that Ziggs remembered them specifically, but they had disagreed on the methodology and ended up hitting a wall. Heimerdinger, slow and thorough, had broken out no less than seven textbooks and thirteen different highlighters to scrawl an intricate series of diagrams for optimum efficiency, efficacy, and magic-acy. Meanwhile Ziggs had thought it was boring and could use some excitement. So he'd turned the bunsen burner up to max bunsen, tossed in a few things he knew would add some serious pop, and waited for the magic to happen- all while Heimerdinger's back was turned.
That group project potion would become the catalyst solidifying their rival-ship for the rest of time.
Heimerdinger had turned at the last moment and instantly started to give him a serious tongue lashing, waving papers around and everything. Meanwhile Ziggs simply counted down until- boom ! Fireworks shot out from the potion bottle flask and whizzed around the lecture square, zooming all around Bandle University with pops and bangs as they burst in technicolor flashes. It had stunned not just the faculty and other students, but Heimerdinger as well. It had also singed his then fledgling mustache- but mostly it had left him awestruck and reluctantly impressed.
"The potion is still missing a key ingredient," he said after composing himself, extinguishing his flaming facial hair between thumb and finger, and immediately referencing one of his textbooks. Meanwhile the professor attempted desperately to put out a fire on a nearby parchment bush, the other students still in a tizzy as they attempted to piece their classroom back together.
"It was pretty great though, right?" Ziggs grinned, knowing the answer. The whistling and whirring, the sharp scent of explosive powder and magic, the colors ! It was quite the impressive show. He probably should have written the recipe for it down somewhere- although most of the nearby paper had burned up in the blast.
"It was," Heimerdinger agreed, "if we adjust the amount of star powder and halved the volume of dewdrops we could increase the capacity of whizzing spottybug chitin thus improving the amount of 'rockets' emerging from the flask by at least thirty percent- here let me show you on this diagram-"
The rest was, as they say, Yordle yore- or as humans call it, history .
Bandle University barely survived their decades of study, and by the time the dean, who retired immediately after, finished shoving their degrees at them, they had left a trail of destruction and science in their wake. Together they had caused no less than seventy-four fires, broken several monuments and laws of nature, and had gotten snailcats banned from the campus indefinitely not once, but twice. There was a collective sigh of relief when they finally left to go do their residency studies in Hextechnology over in Piltover. Relief for the Bandle Woods, at least.
For Piltover? They wouldn't know what hit them.
For all the primness and propriety, Piltover was less resistant to the addition of two Yordle engineers than expected. Something, something, "advancing hextechnology quickly and efficiently", something something, "internal conflicts with Zaun'', something "Noxus”' something. Geopolitics weren't Ziggs' strong suit, no, his strong suit was an actual jumpsuit he invented to mitigate Hexsplosive forces and protect against residual magical energies. But Heimerdinger easily soared to the very top of the Piltovan engineering department while Ziggs nose-dived straight into the experimental recesses of Zaunite catalyst workshops. While his fellow Yordle gave lectures on automatons, Ziggs designed hextech reactors, all while showing impressive restraint by keeping the explosive energies locked up in reactors- for the most part. Heimerdinger made invention after invention, while Ziggs perfected what he already made. The dichotomy quickly became a source of contention and competition.
Trade shows and technologic conventions devolved into contests- each of them showing off their latest and greatest inventions and iterations. For every laser canon and rocket launcher, Ziggs had a satchel charge and bouncing explosive. It didn't take long before they were field testing in the convention centers. Nobody could find flaws in Heimerdinger's inventions like Ziggs, and nobody could improve Ziggs' formulations like Heimerdinger. Despite this, they still gradually grew more and more distant, both in regards to scientific collaborations and within the city. Heimerdinger was eventually put on some fancy council, rightfully so, but Ziggs remained working in the Hexreactor business deep in the heart of Zaun. It was fine, honestly, since he didn't have any desire to be in such an uptight, boring, and bomb-phobic workplace. Not when there were so many prospective places in the underbelly where he could not only show off his work, but have it be appreciated too. But the distance began to stretch, and Yordles already had a tenuous grasp of time.
Perhaps it was a normal part of the scientific journey- when two lab partners ended up on different paths, researching other things, no longer working on the same weapons of mass destruction. Ziggs had heard of that sort of thing before, after all, it's why the arts and science departments at the University developed such a strong rivalry. Differing opinions and goals and ambitions. Of the two, Heimerdinger had always been the one reaching higher, even if he didn't really notice since it was all in the name of furthering engineering science, while Ziggs had always been more focused on his true passions; blowing things up in bigger and better ways.
The thought of their collaborative efforts in hexsplosive hextechnology going the same way as the rest of Yordle arts and sciences rattled around until eventually, Ziggs decided he needed to nip it in the bud.
It was time to pay Piltover a little visit.
The surface of this great city-state was just as picturesque as ever, the air fresh and free of the chemical-laced magical smog that filled Zaun's streets. There were also a surprising number of posters up with his face all over them- he hadn't noticed he'd gotten famous, but the Wardens all throughout town certainly had an eye out for him. Not that they did much to stop him. Before long he was exploding his way into Heimerdinger's old lab- and then apologizing to the students standing shocked and asking where their professor's new lab was and exploding his way into that lab instead- with a suggestion that he just knew Heimerdinger couldn't resist.
Everybody loved making bombs- it was a fact of nature.
And when it came to the testing of Ziggs' latest, greatest, most powerful bomb to date?
It would be just like old times- furthering the study of explosions and the art of the boom, competing to see if the newest technology could withstand hexsplosive forces that were off the charts, reveling in the thrill of mayhem and science- that was all secondary though. This visit was about meeting back up with an old rival/friend and rekindling that competitive spirit they developed so many hundreds of years ago. Ziggs would bet his fanciest satchel charges on that stuffy inventor having forgotten the meaning of fun.
It really was lucky that Ziggs knew just the solution, genius that he was.
This was gonna be a blast .