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“Titan. We have a new target for you to track,” the tall, hot, human policewoman with the stupid big hat slapped down a manila folder in front of him.
Stuck at his desk past 5 p.m. for the third time this week, Nautilus sighed. He’s a high-performing support at Bot Lane , arguably the most important branch of Summoner’s Rift Investigations. Usually he’s proud of his position—he’s been here, what, 12 years now—but sometimes, even he struggled to find the motivation. He didn’t even try to protest, just used the tip of his still-too-large mechanical pinky to flip open the file. “Who is it this time?”
“A robot in the red-light district.”
…Huh? Red light district? Robots worked there, he knew, but…“Why me? From what I understand, those establishments mostly cater to, well-”
“-humans, I’m aware,”
she finished his sentence. “But take a look at the file first.”
Nautilus turned down the brightness of his spotlights and took a look. Mission type: Recon, information gathering… infiltrate the establishment… pose as a customer…
Then he read further. Target:.. . “By Janna… it can’t be…” Nautilus exhaled.
Target: Blitzcrank. Known professionally as “The Hooker.”
Danger levels: !!!!!! [You must wait before issuing more pings.]
The policewoman nodded solemnly. “Now you understand.”
Blitzcrank —Nautilus would know that codename anywhere. Blitzcrank . He was there at the lunch meeting when they came up with it, after all. Blitz —for the way the robot quickly eliminated all previous agents they had sent, and Crank —for the way they crank that hog. Reportedly. He wouldn’t know, of course. Regardless, Blitzcrank had been the suspect behind some pretty grisly murders in the past few years. According to eyewitness reports, dozens had perished under his cruel claws, but they had been forced to stop investigations for “political reasons.” Until now.
Nautilus rubbed the spot above his spotlights, where his eyebrow would be. “Who’s my partner?”
“You will be going alone.”
“Alone??” Nautilus looked up in protest. “But… I have no sustained forms of damage—what do you mean alone-”“It’s a recon mission, Titan,” she explained. “Assigning a partner to you would only arouse their suspicion-”
That’s true, Nautilus conceded.“-Not to mention the… situation that we encountered last time.”
Right . Most of their high damage-per-second operatives are … meat bags, after all. Squishy, bloody, easily popped meatbags.
Sighing one more time, Nautilus went for one last attempt. “I can’t… my wife…”
“We’ve all got wives at home,” she said in a clipped tone. “Speaking of which—Vi’s sister gets out today from her arson charges—and I left the fuzzy cuf -” she trailed off, before coming to her senses. “Ahem. Are you taking the job or not?”
Nautilus shut off his spotlights temporarily. To protect Bot Lane—to Engage and to Peel —that was his mission.“Fuck. I’ll do it. I’ll find the guilty . ” He turned on the spotlights again. “Just… tell Pyke he owes me.”“Sure thing,” the hot policewoman responded. “And one more thing—be careful.”
“ Hrmg- hah! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Huhrmg,” Nautilus cackled. “What do you take me for, an amateur?”
“No,” she looked at him squarely. “But Blitzcrank is dangerous. They are adept at what they do. They excel at hooking you in; they have an innate shield against many of our hextech weapons. And most importantly—” she paused for dramatic effect, “They give you just a teeny spark of electricity, before silencing you for at least 0.5 seconds—an eternity in our line of work.”Nautilus knew all of that, of course. He always read the patch notes.
“-be careful out there, Titan,” she finished.
Nautilus nodded. “I’ll get the info you need,” he said. “And when we’re ready…” He looked up. “ They will pay .”
.
“I’m home, Ori,” Nautilus closed the door behind him.He was almost hit in the face with Ball, who glided over immediately. It whirled excitedly, unscrewing in the middle until it exposed its central gear, like Corin’s signature weapon, Housekeeper, in critically-acclaimed Mihoyo game Zenless Zone Zero. (Not to be confused with Corin, Orianna’s deceased father. That’s crazy, by the way.) Nautilus wished he had a mouth, then, so he could smile, cus Ball is so dam (haha get it) cute, just like Corin’s signature weapon, Housekeeper, in critically-acclaimed Mihoyo game Zenless Zone Zero.
He petted Ball and looked for Orianna, who was somewhere else in their apartment. “ The ball is impatient ,” she called out.
“I know, I know, just. Had to get debriefed for a new mission at work.” Nautilus sighed, casting his dredge line in the vague direction of the couch. He missed and collided with the wall. Orianna sent Ball over on instinct, even though they both knew you can’t take damage from colliding with neutral terrain. It was purely for show—like most things with her these days. “Protect,” she said, absent-mindedly.
“Yeah, thanks babe…” Nautilus climbed back onto the couch and sat down. “Whatcha working on in there?”
“Winding.”
Oh. Right. They’ve got a lot of babies—clocks and gadgets and children’s toys and such—and Orianna was probably diligently keeping them up and running. Unlike himself. Who got off work late, and had to go out later again to a fucking whorehouse . “Want me to help?”
Ball’s top half swiveled back and forth, shaking its head no. “This is very exciting,” Orianna explained, though her tone didn’t sound like it.
“You never get tired of it, huh?”
“This is a fun game .”
“I’m sure, Ori,” Nautilus pretended not to pick up on the sarcasm in her voice.She didn’t reply, and merely summoned Ball back to her side.
Nautilus cleared his throat, awkwardly—partially because he didn’t know how to tell Ori he had to head out again later tonight, and mostly because he didn’t have a throat and was, thus, anatomically incapable of clearing it. In any case, he made a weird gurgling sound. “Um… Ori…”
Ball whizzed back out.“Uh, yeah… um… I have to head out again tonight. Mission.”
Orianna was quiet.
“..Is that okay?”
She didn’t say anything, but Ball quivered with some sort of effort. Nautilus felt horrible about it, but he steeled his nerves. Mission comes first; Orianna should know that.“I’m gonna shutdown for a bit to recharge,” He said. And soon, he was lulled to sleep by the mechanical tick-ticks and happy tock-tocks of their many children.
.
Boom!
Nautilus was startled awake and turned on his spotlights immediately. Ori , he thought, and flashed through the wall to the nursery.
He was met with a horrifying sight. One of their children—a little turret, gifted by a legendary inventor from aboveground—was laying on the floor in a pool of grease and oil. Tiny screws littered the floor. And towering above the corpse, her entire metallic body glowing red, was Orianna, sending in piece after piece of sharp metal gears into its helpless little body. “Ravage,” Orianna said, over and over. “Ravage. Ravage. Ravage.”
“ORI!!!” He screamed. “Ori—stop it-”Orianna swiveled her head 180 degrees, and her eyes locked onto him like an unmissable tower shot. Thinking fast, Nautilus hit her with a staggering blow from his anchor before snatching up what he could of the little turret on the ground and trying to gain some distance. Finding herself unable to move, Orianna settled for slowing Nautilus’s progress. He barely managed to get out of Ball’s radius before Orianna freed herself. "I know what makes them tick. I know how to make the ticking stop." Her eyes glowed red in warning, as she whipped her arm around like a baseball pitcher. She reminded him of one specific elite enemy in Lies of P.
“I know, Ori—but you need to snap out of it-”
“I AM A WEAPON-”
“Yes—but you’re also their mother, a protector—”
A shard of metal pelted him squarely on the shoulder. “ I HAVE SHARP THINGS-”
Nautilus shielded the turret with his arms. Across the room, Orianna mirrored his movement, cradling Ball, until she was at least no longer physically aggressive. “The ball is angry,” she spat.“Is it because I’m leaving again??” Nautilus asked, being as gentle as he could given the circumstances.
In her arms, Ball nodded.
“I… understand that,” he tried to explain, “but you can’t just… you can’t just attack our fucking KIDS, Orianna.”
She cocked her head to the side in a mocking facsimile of confusion. “Why do they keep breaking?”
Nautilus saw red. “BECAUSE YOU KEEP ASSAULTING THEM, ORIANNA!” He punched the wall. Orianna didn’t pretend to shield him this time. “Probably because you can’t deal with the fact that you’re no longer protecting humans, the way I am! The way I still do!”
Orianna just looked at him in that fake childlike, confused, innocent way. “ They come apart so easily. How do you put them back together again?”
“You know how to do that, Ori,” his inhumanly deep voice crackled, “but that doesn’t mean you can just—you can’t just lash out on them because-”
Orianna didn’t respond. She simply deployed Ball to the place with the most scrap metal and used shockwave to find them all. Then, as the red outline around her body transformed back to a familiar blue, she glanced up at him again.“You’ve changed, Orianna,” he croaked. “You’ve changed.”
She was back to normal, for now, but her eyes were somewhere far away. “Time ticks ticks away-”
“Yeah. It sure fucking does, and I’m late,” he started for the door, and sighed. “I’m… I’ll be better in the future, I guess. Fuck! ”
He used all his effort to not slam the door behind him as he left.
.
“ Oh, come right in!” the pimp called out as Nautilus approached the property. The Howling Abyss was a popular brothel, but tonight, it was cleared out, courtesy of the insanely expensive reservation he had put in.
“Looking for uh… I’m here for a 1v1,” Nautilus admitted, only half-faking a tone of embarrassment.
The pimp chuckled, a look of disdain across his face. Right away, Nautilus despised him. “Warm yourself,” the pimp pointed to the fireplace, before ducking behind the counter, presumably to bring out the ledger.
Nautilus obliged and took a look around. The reception area was… kitschy, to say the least. He didn’t know brothels typically kept so many knick-knacks around. Along the wall were all sorts of strange objects, seemingly gathered from all over the world. He could not detect any sort of pattern or place of origin. Must be a hobby of the proprietor, then.
Soon, the pimp— Hermit , it seemed by the nameplate at the counter—returned with a large catalog. “I have all manner of marvelous things,” he said in a sickening, sultry tone, before opening the book, revealing, indeed, all manner of people and bots. Nautilus swallowed the lump of metal that seemed to rise up in his not-throat, and pretended to browse.
“Are they all, uh… are they all good?”
“Nothing but the finest,” Hermit replied.
Nautilus found Blitzcrank almost immediately, but flipped through a few pages in fake deliberation just to be safe. “Uh… what about this woman?”
“Very nice.”
“And this one?”
“A fine choice, indubitably,” Hermit shrugged.
When he thought he had faked it for long enough, he returned to Blitzcrank. “Um… and how much for this one? The Hooker.”
Hermit grinned, exposing all thirty-two of his perfectly polished, predatory teeth, like Shaco base splash art or perhaps Arcanist Ziggs. “Priceless…” “-This one then.”
“...Now, hand over the gold.”
Nautilus passes him four heavy bags: 1350 blue essence, in total.
Hermit examined the payment carefully, then cackled in approval. "Such riches! Perhaps I'll finally be able to afford a better robot,” he smirked to no one in particular as he took it to a backroom. Then he motioned for Nautilus to follow him. They walked down a long hallway and only stopped at the door at the very end. This door was special; it was decorated in swirling blue electric designs, and in the middle was a nameplate that simply said “The Hooker.” Drawing in a large amount of air through his grates, Nautilus steadied himself. “Enjoy!” Hermit said, and ushered him inside.
.
The room was nothing like he expected. It was simple—utilitarian, even, a stark contrast from the gaudiness outside. He had expected to see silk covering every surface; maybe even a few pieces of new hextech equipment. But there was just a bed, couch, and lamp. The only window in the room was barred shut—not that either of them needed fresh air. The only sign that this room was anything different than a dingy college apartment were the lightbulbs, which were switched to an intoxicating blue that matched the energy perpetually swirling around Blitzcrank. And speaking of Blitz…The Hooker was sitting on the edge of the bed, facing away from him.
The first things Nautilus noticed were his hands—large, jointed, and flat. They looked friendly, yet Nautilus couldn’t help but suppress a shudder. He, truly, had the hands to either off you or get you off. The rest of Blitzcrank was just as impressive. Nautilus was used to Orianna’s small frame and silver detailing, but Blitzcrank was massive. His sheet-metal frame was plain, unlike Orianna’s intricate cogs and gears. It was… something entirely different.
Nautilus couldn’t look away. It’s not like either of them had their clothes off; they didn’t have clothes, because they are robots , you sick fuck. Yet something in that golden frame called out to him, in a way that he had never been called out to before. Then Blitzcrank—the Hooker— turned to him, and spoke.
"Fired up and ready to serve."
It was the most monotonous voice he had ever heard, but Nautilus was entranced. And then, without much warning, Blitzcrank opened his hand and fired it toward him. On reflex, Nautilus did the same with his anchor, shooting a silent prayer to Janna that he would live this. Their bodies collided with a clang , and Nautilus dug his anchor—gently—into the side of The Hooker’s body, trying to buy himself a few seconds to recover from the dizzying clash.When he came to, they were locked onto each other in the center of the room. Nautilus’s spotlights immediately went into the spot where his anchor struck, expecting to find a dent or pierced metal—as it had been the few times he had to use it on Orianna—but he was shocked. On Blitzcrank, it had barely made a dent.
Blitzcrank, meanwhile, seemed just as shocked as he was, and Nautilus gathered this wasn’t how it typically went for the robot. Extricating himself from the deadlock, he laughed awkwardly. “Huh. Ha. Uh. Even matchup, aren’t we, Bli—I mean, Sir Hooker?”
Blitzcrank retracted their hand, balling it into a fist a few times, as if in confusion.
“Good shot though—I mean, ha, you see, I have the anchor.” Fuck. That was so hot, by the way. They hit that hook at max range… “So. I can appreciate the. The accuracy.”
Blitzcrank lowered his head in a polite nod. “Magic and steam guide me.”
“Me too,” Nautilus concurred, eager to make conversation. He was here to gather intel, so anything the Hooker said was worth listening to. As if it wasn’t worth listening to already, with that smooth, cadenced, metallic voice. “So uh. You come here often?” He’s so fucking stupid. Of course Blitzcrank comes here often; they’re one of the Abyss’s top performers! “You must be uhh. Well-oiled with all the practice you get,” he flickered one of his spotlights to mimic a wink. “A rolling golem gathers no rust,” Blitzcrank stated simply, and Nautilus noted, again, just how polite and humble they were. So unlike Orianna, whose servile words were always laced with poison. It was almost unthinkable that this robot would go and kill so many—yet Bot Lane’s results spoke for themselves. Nautilus reminded himself to stay focused; he had to get as much information as he can out of them.Leaning attractively on his anchor, Nautilus said, in as smooth a voice his gravelly croak would allow, “That bit you just did. That must be why they call you ‘the Hooker,’ “ huh?”
“Precisely.”
“And then. They’re with you, they’re disoriented, and you uhh. You.. serve them?? You have sex? You bone?”
“Bone is a poor alternative,” Blitzcrank mused, flirtily, as they drew closer to Nautilus.“Sure, haha,” Nautilus conceded, panic rising in his abdomen. He was in waaay too deep… and he started out as a submarine, Runeterra be dammed! “What do you do then? Do you touch them? Or do you… knock them up -”Blitzcrank suddenly sped up and closed the distance, putting a gentle hand on Nautilus’s outer shell, and Nautilus lost his voice. Fuck . He cannot believe he lost his ball-bearings so quickly- “I put the go- in go-lem,” Blitzcrank whispered right into Nautilus’s face hole.Nautilus bursted into laughter—from embarrassment or from genuine excitement, he no longer knew. “My, my, Hooker… that’s the funniest joke I’ve ever heard.”
He felt Blitzcrank freeze for a second next to him as if caught off-guard, and felt a warm sensation, as of an engine being spurred to life, inside his abdomen. He had forgotten how it felt to be excited; he had forgotten how good it felt to be understood. “Distracted, Hooker? I thought you were a professional.”
“I remain focused,” came the reply, as Nautilus felt Blitzcrank’s metallic hands ghost over his shoulder, before it paused.
“Your steam is escaping.”
Oh, right. Orianna. The fight. Ashamed, Nautilus moved to cover the broken plate, brushing past Blitzcrank’s gentle fingers on his way there “Oh, ha… I’m sorry-it’s.. I nicked myself on my way in-”Without any warning, Blitzcrank moved lower down on his body, and Nautilus swore he could feel all of his wires physically getting crossed.
“Metal is harder than flesh,” Blitzcrank teased.
No. No no no-he was a professional, he’s done intel gathering missions in the past-he can’t just give in—yet…
“Look. You’re leaking,” Blitzcrank whispered, and Nautilus felt as if his body had turned to stone, before all of his resolve collapsed and crumbled into little pieces like Cassiopeia’s death animation.
“Fuck, Hooker…” Nautilus’s voice cracked, “How long are you gonna do this for?”
“As long as it takes.”
.
Afterward, they lay in the center of the room covered in grease. Both had been exhausted, so they moved around 40% slower than usual. Nautilus rummaged through his panels until he found a loose carriage bolt. Gripping it between two fingers, he offered it to Blitzcrank. They shook their head no , so Nautilus jammed it in the corner of his lip plate and released a puff of steam. “That was good, Hooker.”
Blitzcrank nodded and gathered a little closer. They both had extremely rotund, metallic, and stiff bodies, but it was the thought that counts, Nautilus supposed. He sighed, and looked up at the ceiling.“You ever get tired of all this, Hooker? All this… drudgery? Cus sometimes… Sometimes, I think this anchor just weighs me down.”
Blitzcrank didn’t respond. They were like Ori in that way. Neither saw the need to respond to his musing comments, yet with Blitzcrank, the silence felt welcoming instead of accusatory. Nautilus didn’t have the heart to keep prodding them with questions—not when he had just been prodded to within an inch of his battery and thoroughly enjoyed every moment. Besides, he had an inkling that Bot Lane was after the wrong guy. Twelve years on the task force had taught him to read situations quickly, and this bot was a lover, not a fighter. This bot was stuck working in a whorehouse when they should have been at the club. Or the PC-bang. (Haha, get it, bang .)Something about this wasn’t right. Nautilus was sure that this was the location: they’ve lost people here, they’ve gotten reports of people disappearing here… their intel was all about this robot—this strange, large, “cruel,” and unfeeling thing—yet he just knew that this robot was good. It can’t be them, then, Nautilus realized. It must be someone else…Suddenly, he heard some shuffling outside, and then a voice saying something that he could not make out. He must have been in here for an hour, if not more. He had never enjoyed a 1v1 for that long.
The voice said something again, and Nautilus snapped to full alert. "Do you hear them calling?"Blitzcrank shook their head no, but their body language told a different story, and Nautilus realized they were lying. Were they involved after all? Why else would they lie… It was a human voice, and something about the tone alarmed him. They did not seem to be in distress, but the voice was off-putting, almost psychotic. Nautilus swore he’d heard it recently. Even more strangely, it seemed to come from below them. Nautilus had scoped out this property, and based on official records, there shouldn’t be anything underneath them.
“Echoes from below…” Nautilus pondered. Blitzcrank shook their head again, desperation blinking in their spotlights. Assuming Blitzcrank wasn’t in cahoots with the real perp, then…
The post-nut clarity hit him with a clang , like an actual nut on actual metal.
Blitzcrank’s reluctance to say anything…the strange collection of artifacts in the storefront…Hermit’s weird obsessive pride over Blitzcrank. It all made sense now.
“It wasn’t you, was it?” Nautilus said. “It was Hermit. All along.”
Blitzcrank nodded.
“-but you knew about it, didn’t you?”Blitzcrank nodded again, drooping his head in shame.
“Then the reports…you must have been trying to help the victims,” Nautilus realized.“ Quake in fear… fleshling… ” Blitzcrank shuddered, and Nautilus put a comforting hand on their shoulder.
“And after you were seen… it was easy for Hermit to blackmail you, into staying at the Abyss.” Nautilus was angry. How could anyone blackmail such a good robot! He grabbed his anchor and tightened the bots that had come loose during their rendezvous.
“Then let’s go. I will not rest,” he turned the knob on the door.
“I will have vengeance.”
.
Blitzcrank took him to the back of the building, through a secret entrance, and then down. Waaay down. Way deeper down than Nautilus had originally thought.
“Beware the depths,” Nautilus cautioned, though he supposed Blitzcrank didn’t really need the warning given that they’d been down here before. The two walked for a bit longer before Nautilus saw him.
Hermit . Hermit was standing in the middle of the make-shift dugout, a shovel in his hand, and around them were rotting corpses. If Nautilus had a nickel for every time he went to a room today only to find someone had recently killed another being there, he would have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice.
“Welcome to the dig site!” Hermit said in a mocking voice.Nautilus took in the bones all around them, stacked in macabre piles, surrounding an even bigger collection of artifacts than the foyer above. He gripped his anchor tighter.
“I can tell you appreciate detail and craftsmanship,” Hermit spoke with glee, wholly inappropriate for the situation they found themselves in.“Why… why did you do this??” “For Piltover!” Hermit piled some of the artifacts together and sat on top of them. "The problem with Piltover is they are always looking forward. Sometimes, there is much to be learned from the past. I was once an honored professor at the Academy of Science and Progress in Piltover-”
“-The one with Professor Heimerdinger?”
Hermit nodded. “Oh, yes, that one! Do they still talk about me at the Academy?”
“I don’t know,” Nautilus said. “But what happened afterward?” “I gave it all up to pursue true knowledge,” Hermit said, as if that explained anything. Evidently, however, it was enough explanation for him, because he began fidgeting with some of the gadgets around him, chatting to himself. "Tea... hm, what should I have with my tea today? Biscuits? No, too many crumbs! Can't have crumbs, might contaminate the site…” Nautilus realized, then, that Hermit was truly insane. He was a maniac—an insane, decrepit sick fuck. He was a sick fuck who would collect the belongings of the victims he killed and put them on display—the same type of sick fuck that would imagine robots with clothes on.
Seeing his reaction, Hermit stood up, opened his arms wide, tilted his head to one side, and gave a lopsided curtsy as a deranged smile formed on his face. "I've been digging here for twenty years. Just getting down to the good stuff!" Nautilus staggered backwards. Twenty years? That’s… unthinkable. Summoner’s Rift and The Howling Abyss hadn’t even been around that long. Hermit must have been here, working on his sick research, before he and the others were even conceived.
“So,” Nautilus said, mostly to himself. “So you decided to dig a mass grave, and go on a murdering spree… just to experiment with humans while collecting whatever trinkets they owned??”Hermit nodded.“How many lives have you taken?” “So many people have died here, I should call this place Murder Bridge…” Hermit laughed, then shook his head. “ No, no, the Howling Abyss is definitely cooler…” Nautilus had seen enough. He had heard enough. It was time to end this. “I have just one more question, Hermit,” he said, as he readied his anchor. “How did you keep this a secret for so long? When we sent the teams in to investigate—they weren’t even able to figure out-”
Hermit just cackled. "They won't know what hit them, because they'll all be dead!" With that, he suddenly lunged for Nautilus, brandishing an impressive array of armor, wands, staves, bows, guns, and at least six hats. Nautilus threw his dredge line expertly, but it seemed to have no effect on Hermit, as a blue barrier fizzed into existence and nullified the strike. Instead, it was Nautilus who was hit with something, and even with his years of experience, Nautilus was caught off guard. He felt a variety of effects kick in at once: he was burning, from many different sources, one of which left a crescent-cone shaped area of fire all around him. He was suddenly slowed; bullets and stray arrows seemed to catch him from out of nowhere; and was that blood?? Was he bleeding? He didn’t even have blood, and he was bleeding?
Sneering, Hermit pulled out a purple magician’s hat from the rubble and placed it on his head. Then he lunged again, this time with a different weapon- Krr—shrrriinniggn ! Nautilus heard a familiar sound and whipped his head around to see Blitzcrank, sending his hand straight into Hermit’s body. This time, though, there was no shield to protect him, and Hermit was pulled all the way to Blitzcrank. Then, Hermit was suddenly propelled upward. A silver glow flashed across his body, as if Hermit was responding to the displacement, but it was too late— it had no effect. Meanwhile, Blitzcrank’s body seemed to take the same sort of damage that Nautilus did, as their pristine panels were suddenly dented with bullet marks and slashes.
It pained Nautilus to see the robot hurt, so he jumped back into action. “Hrahhh! ” He yelled, as he launched a depth charge toward Hermit. Then he strode over, making three large riptides on the ground as he did so, hoping it would stop Hermit from escaping before the depth charge kicked in. “Ghyaah!”
In Blitzcrank’s hand, Hermit was desperately trying to uncork a potion, but he could not drink fast enough. Sensing his imminent demise, he looked at the two automatons next to him, and went for one last insult. “Robot stands for 'Rusty Old Broken Obsolete Trash'! See what I did-?" “Shut him up, Blitzcrank,” Nautilus said, as Blitzcrank zapped a circular space around them, ending Hermit’s tirade. Then, Nautilus fueled the internal wrath that only a Titan could know: The wrath of a Titan. Titan’s Wrath. He began punching Hermit as fast as he could—which was actually pretty fast, all things considered, at 1.23 times per second—but it was still not as fast as Blitzcrank, who sped up and was now punching Hermit at the whopping speed of 1.26 times per second.
"My research will bring a golden age to Piltover!" Hermit screamed when the silence wore off, but it was futile, as his health dipped lower and lower with their combined efforts. Just as Nautilus thought it was all over, though, a mysterious green circle descended from the sky on top of them, and Hermit seemed to regain some health as both he and Blitzcrank flinched from taking max health true damage.
"If I die here, frozen and alone,” he gurgled pathetically, “Tell them I did it for science!"
Nautilus looked at Blitzcrank, and they drew their fist back.
“The time of man has come to an end ,” Blitzcrank said, triumphant. And with one last punch, they finished him off.
The two, along with Hermit’s body, emerged from the basement digsite of horrors soon after.“An enemy has been slain!” he heard a woman’s disembodied voice call out from somewhere above him, but he didn’t care anymore.
He’d done it. He’d finished the mission.
And, perhaps more importantly, he met Blitzcrank..
One Month later.
Nautilus was sitting at his desk. Again. Past 5 p.m. Again . But this time, it was okay, because he had divorced Orianna as soon as he got home from the Howling Abyss that fateful night. And somehow in the days since, without that old ball-and-ball around, his life had gotten better. Quieter. More peaceful. And he was usually home earlier, too—he’s only here waiting on a file before he gets to go home—because he was enjoying his time back there more and more now, with his turret children and-“Report for you, Titan,” the hot policewoman with the comically large hat approached him.
Nautilus hummed. “Details for a new mission again?”“No,” she smiled. “It’s the assignment results for our new operative.”
Nautilus tore open the file excitedly. There, in big bold letters, he read—
Name: Blitzcrank
Role: Support
Branch: Bot Lane
“YES!” He shouted excitedly. “Blitzcrank—they made it!! Oh—I have to—excuse me,” he nodded to the policewoman, the one with the big blue hat and really long arms, and she let him go with a smile.
Nautilus barely opened the front door of his apartment before he spotted Blitzcrank waiting for him on the couch, and he didn’t need to say a single word for Blitzcrank to understand. Instead, the two simply launched their respective hooks at each other, colliding in a loving and passionate embrace.
“Oh, Blitzcrank… I’m so proud of you,” Nautilus said.
Blitzcrank made a police siren sound in response, and winked their right eye. They were still a robot of few words, but they made their feelings known in other ways, and Nautilus had learned to read their body language. Right now, Blitzcrank was happy… and feeling a little frisky.Taking the hint, Nautilus shut the door and sat on the couch next to them.
“Remember the day we met? You were so good with that hook,” he started. “I wonder if you could do it to me again?”
Blitzcrank drew closer.“And this time.. I was hoping that you could… do something that you didn’t do last time,” Nautilus continued. “I had heard
rumors that you could do certain things to your clients…”
Blitzcrank caught the unspoken suggestion.
“So I was thinking… could we…” Nautilus couldn’t even finish the sentence before a swirling blue energy surrounded Blitzcrank’s right hand, and he smiled.
“Then it’s settled. Knock me up, aimbot.”
.