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Description

Glue of Legends.

By FOXCARROTS

Part Two

“The Boot Eaters.”

    Vi felt the bright warmth of the sun overhead and it warmed her body and settled her mind. There was a nice wind coming from the west that met with the warm sunlight and made the temperature just right. This was an unending field of green free of the grime and confined space of Piltover. Here Vi was free and she could feel true happiness. She ran, her bare feet moving through the soft grass, the blades ticking her feet as she ran. Over hills and down paths she went, moving freely.

    However, something tugged at her mind, something sinister, something she was trying very hard to forget. There was an idea, clinging to the corner of her mind and Vi knew that she could not allow it to come to the forefront. She ran faster, her feet propelling her forward as fast as she could. It was no longer a fun run, but more of an escape. As much as she tried to dodge the realization on the edge of her mind the more it climbed its way up out of where she had buried it.

    More and more she pushed herself, pushing her mind and body as far as it could be pushed. She didn’t remember what she was out running but the fact that she had to. Her feet stung as they hit the ground, and her breath grew ragged. She could almost feel a heaviness, pulling at her feet, making every lift harder than the one before. Little by little she was finding it harder to run and it was not that she was tired, not that the hill was too steep. Something wanted to claim her feet, something sinister and that was what she was so desperately trying to outrun.

    She could feel a presence tug at her mind and her feet simultaneously. She knew that something was trying to stop her, to hold her and if she stopped moving, if her feet stopped running she would be trapped by it. She would try all she could to outrun this, stopping at nothing until she could run no more. But the thought of her predicament could not be run from, nor could it be hidden from. She ran and soon saw a massive crevasse ahead of her. She gasped and came to a stop as fast as she could, her bare feet sliding almost to the edge. The large drop off was like a bottomless canyon, larger than she had ever seen before. The bottom was deeper than she could see, and the other side was an infinite distance away.

    Vi stopped, catching her breath and resetting her bearings. She could go no further in that direction, she had to go back. She had to keep moving and had already stopped for too long already. She lifted a foot but felt a kind of resistance. She looked down and saw the grass curl around her pudgy toes. She yanked up, trying to break them free but the grass held on. It flowed around her other foot, going not only around the toes but the arches as well. She strained, fighting to move but the grass kept snaking around the geography of her bare feet. It was strong and hungry and pulled her feet back to the ground. She yanked and struggled, clawing at the grass that had ensnared her feet, but they would not surrender what they had already captured. Before long she felt as if she had grown roots, her feet immobile against the soft earth she before had enjoyed.

    Vi’s eyes opened and she breathed out a shocking gasp. She felt terror from her confinement and stood up from the couch she had ben sleeping. Somewhere in the haze between her nightmare and its basis in reality she had a moment of thinking she could move. However, as she instinctively went to take a step she was reminded by a sensation that pulled at her soles as she tried to run away. All of the memories flooded back into her mind of the bizarre permanent glue that had spilled on the unbreakable stone floor and ensnared her feet.

    She knew very well she could not escape, that she could not get free. However, she struggled nonetheless, the glue that had held her for days barely allowing her any stretch whatsoever. It got thicker and less pliable by the day, in a few days she wouldn’t even be able to flex it. She grabbed the back of one of her knees and pulled. She used a lot of strength but barely got three inches of stretch. She cried and screamed, the implications of her permanent entrapment flooding back into her mind. She ripped at the glue, flexing her legs until she pulled muscles but she could not move. She was trapped in her own footprints and nothing could let her leave them.

    “Vi!” Jynx said as she ran down the stairs to the makeshift bedroom they had made up. She threw her arms around her sister, not just to comfort her but to keep her from hurting herself in struggling against glue she could never get out of. “It’s ok, you just had a bad dream.”

    “I was free!” Vi said with a defiant tone. “I was running, and I could move. But I stopped and now I’m stuck again.”

    “It must be really hard to come back to your feet like this.” Jinx said as she squeezed her sister tight. Sleeping stuck and waking up stuck. We will get through this.”

    “Through this?” Vi said as she pushed her sister back and looked at her with an amount of craze in her eyes. “There is no getting through this. There is only getting out of this! I want unstuck Jinx!”

    “I’m still working on it!” Jinx insisted. “I have plans for some more devices and talking to people about some more possible solvents. So far we don’t have anything concrete but there’s some promising things in there.”

    “Promising things?” Vi scoffed. “You have no idea what it’s like to be stuck in this shit! It’s agony and I can’t take it anymore. I want out of this shit!”

    “I will get you out of it.” Jinx promised. “I will stop at nothing to get you out of that crap.”

    Vi went as if to turn and storm off but her permanently anchored feet happily reminded her she couldn’t. “Until you have something more hopeful to report just leave me alone!”

    “Vi…I…” Jinx pleaded. “You don’t have to face this by yourself.”

    “Leave me alone!” Vi snapped. “Let me wallow in my glue by myself.”

    Jinx reluctantly nodded and padded off, set on her next ideas to free her sister from a substance that by all intents and purposes was completely irremovable.

    Vi was inconsolable for days. She went through a cycle of depression, struggling, and shouting. She could not reconcile being in the glue and the glue had no intention off releasing it’s hold on the soles of Vi’s feet.

    Jinx was beyond frustrated, she used all of her contacts and skill but the solution to the glue evaded her. She began to think the only chance to undo the crap was to find out who made it. She wanted to go out and search but was afraid to leave Vi for more than an hour or two. As little as she liked it she would have to ask for help. She called Caitlyn, Vi’s only real friend and told her what was going on.

    On one of Vi’s mornings trapped in the glue and her own despair Caitlyn came down into the workshop. Vi instinctively got up and tried to hide her predicament, but as the glue just stretched and snapped her feet back there was decidedly little she could do.

    “You don’t have to be ashamed.” Caitlyn assured. “I am here to help."

    "Well, you are wasting your time." Vi sighed.” I can’t be helped.”

    “So you really are stuck huh?” Caitlyn asked as she walked closer. “I’ve never heard about glue that strong before.”

    “Well here it is.” Vi replied lifting a foot a few inches just to have it snap back in place violently. “Unknown brand never comes off style glue.”

    “You poor thing.” Caitlyn said as she crouched down. “What does it feel like?”

    “Agony!” Vi snapped. “It is like a vice is clutching my soles and I want nothing more in the world than to take a step but guess what…I can’t.”

    “Theres got to be something we can do.” Caitlyn insisted. “I’ll help in any way I can.”

    “It’s not going to be easy.” Jinx said as she came don to where Vi was stuck. “This stuff is really…problematic.”

    “Problematic?” Vi sighed. “I’m not a little child that needs coddling. You can tell me like it is.”

    Jinx nodded. “Well, this stuff is pretty much unbreakable. The force needed to get through it would at best severalty injure Vi. The stuff is sunk in and stuck too tight for any surgical option, and it shows no effect to any solvent I have tried. There really is only one thing I can even think to try at this point.”

    “What is it?” Caityln asked, a determined look on her face. “I’ll do anything.”

    “We need to find the people who made the stuff.” Jinx explained. “Vi’s only chance to ever get free of the stuff is the hope that when they made this terrifying glue…they also made a solvent to it.”

    “I’ll go!” Caitlyn offered eagerly. “You stay here and work on whatever plan b you can, and I will go and see if I can find a solvent.”

    “I can give you all the information that I have.” Jinx offered. “It’s not much but it is a good place to start.”

    “No!” Vi insisted, attempting to stomp her foot but being reminded she can’t. “I won’t put my sister or best friend I any danger on my behalf.”

    “When someone you care about is in need you cant worry about the danger.” Caitlyn said as she smiled to Vi. “Also you literally cant stop me.”

    Jinx gave Caitlyn all the leads she had, and she was off. The seedy underbelly of the city hid a lot of strange things. There was a precedent for weapons manufacturing and even chemical weapons underground. However, strange bombs containing seemingly irreversible glue was something new and that meant that someone would remember hearing of it.

    Caityn tried to be as inconspicuous as she could, moving from place to place asking if anyone had seen or heard of anything like the glue bombs. Just as she thought she had hit a dead end a vagabond by the river told her that he saw some stuff looking similar near where they were. He directed her to a warehouse and off she went to investigate.

    There was a in descript industrial building right where she was told it was and it seemed to have lights on. Caitlyn snuck around the back looking for a place to sneak in. She imagined that she could not just walk through the front door and ask for the glue solvent as whoever made the stuff was likely not ready to tell someone how to undo it. What good was a glue that wouldn’t come off if people knew how to take it off?

    Catlyn found an open window and it was an easy task to climb up and jump inside. The room was lit by a pair of functional lights above her head, and she moved quietly through the room. There were all manor of machines and inventions littering the room. They looked not unlike the canister the glue came in that she had been shown. Caitlyn decided that she was very likely in the right place and cautiously looked around for something that might help.

    She admitted that this might be a bit harder than she anticipated as the stuff was unlikely to be labelled as miracle glue solvent. She searched around looking for chemical recipes or liquids but all she found was more scrap.

    She became aware of a sound behind her, a metal-on-metal scraping. Caitlyn turned and to see nothing but a pile of scrap. She went back to her search but again heard the sound and movement out of the corner of her eye. She scanned around but a flash of movement and something bumping into her booted foot made her yelp. She looked down and saw a cut in the leather of her boot and what looked like teeth marks.

    “What the hell?” Caitlyn said as she again looked around. She saw several piles of metal move, seeming to come to life in front of her. They seemed to be like a little metal remote control car but each with rounded heads and antenna on their heads. They chomped their metal teeth in anticipation and began to advance on Caitlyn. She drew her weapon and began to fire, hitting a couple but causing several more to flow around. They only seemed preoccupied with her feet as they attacked and retreated, each taking a bite at her boots.

    Little by little they took off chunks, exposing her skin underneath. One would take a bit of the toe, one but off a heel, but one by one they tore her boots apart. They were too close and fast to shoot so Caitlyn resorted to swinging her rifle at them, knocking a few back, breaking another but not before she cracked her rifle right in two. After a few more attacks Caityln was forced to fall back, now feeling the soles of her bare feet against the cold stone floor. The metallic boot eaters had eaten her boots up to the shin leaving nothing behind but her bare feet. She stood on defense as the robot creatures moved forward. She feared that now that her boots were gone, they would devour the tender skin of her feet next but one by one the robots decided their dunner was over and shut down. Soon Caitlyn stood barefoot, surrounded by a dozen inert robots.

    “Well, I guess there is nothing for me here.” Caitlyn said as she headed deeper into the factory. “Time to face whatever is deeper in.”

-

Description

Glue of Legends.

By FOXCARROTS

Part Two

“The Boot Eaters.”

    Vi felt the bright warmth of the sun overhead and it warmed her body and settled her mind. There was a nice wind coming from the west that met with the warm sunlight and made the temperature just right. This was an unending field of green free of the grime and confined space of Piltover. Here Vi was free and she could feel true happiness. She ran, her bare feet moving through the soft grass, the blades ticking her feet as she ran. Over hills and down paths she went, moving freely.

    However, something tugged at her mind, something sinister, something she was trying very hard to forget. There was an idea, clinging to the corner of her mind and Vi knew that she could not allow it to come to the forefront. She ran faster, her feet propelling her forward as fast as she could. It was no longer a fun run, but more of an escape. As much as she tried to dodge the realization on the edge of her mind the more it climbed its way up out of where she had buried it.

    More and more she pushed herself, pushing her mind and body as far as it could be pushed. She didn’t remember what she was out running but the fact that she had to. Her feet stung as they hit the ground, and her breath grew ragged. She could almost feel a heaviness, pulling at her feet, making every lift harder than the one before. Little by little she was finding it harder to run and it was not that she was tired, not that the hill was too steep. Something wanted to claim her feet, something sinister and that was what she was so desperately trying to outrun.

    She could feel a presence tug at her mind and her feet simultaneously. She knew that something was trying to stop her, to hold her and if she stopped moving, if her feet stopped running she would be trapped by it. She would try all she could to outrun this, stopping at nothing until she could run no more. But the thought of her predicament could not be run from, nor could it be hidden from. She ran and soon saw a massive crevasse ahead of her. She gasped and came to a stop as fast as she could, her bare feet sliding almost to the edge. The large drop off was like a bottomless canyon, larger than she had ever seen before. The bottom was deeper than she could see, and the other side was an infinite distance away.

    Vi stopped, catching her breath and resetting her bearings. She could go no further in that direction, she had to go back. She had to keep moving and had already stopped for too long already. She lifted a foot but felt a kind of resistance. She looked down and saw the grass curl around her pudgy toes. She yanked up, trying to break them free but the grass held on. It flowed around her other foot, going not only around the toes but the arches as well. She strained, fighting to move but the grass kept snaking around the geography of her bare feet. It was strong and hungry and pulled her feet back to the ground. She yanked and struggled, clawing at the grass that had ensnared her feet, but they would not surrender what they had already captured. Before long she felt as if she had grown roots, her feet immobile against the soft earth she before had enjoyed.

    Vi’s eyes opened and she breathed out a shocking gasp. She felt terror from her confinement and stood up from the couch she had ben sleeping. Somewhere in the haze between her nightmare and its basis in reality she had a moment of thinking she could move. However, as she instinctively went to take a step she was reminded by a sensation that pulled at her soles as she tried to run away. All of the memories flooded back into her mind of the bizarre permanent glue that had spilled on the unbreakable stone floor and ensnared her feet.

    She knew very well she could not escape, that she could not get free. However, she struggled nonetheless, the glue that had held her for days barely allowing her any stretch whatsoever. It got thicker and less pliable by the day, in a few days she wouldn’t even be able to flex it. She grabbed the back of one of her knees and pulled. She used a lot of strength but barely got three inches of stretch. She cried and screamed, the implications of her permanent entrapment flooding back into her mind. She ripped at the glue, flexing her legs until she pulled muscles but she could not move. She was trapped in her own footprints and nothing could let her leave them.

    “Vi!” Jynx said as she ran down the stairs to the makeshift bedroom they had made up. She threw her arms around her sister, not just to comfort her but to keep her from hurting herself in struggling against glue she could never get out of. “It’s ok, you just had a bad dream.”

    “I was free!” Vi said with a defiant tone. “I was running, and I could move. But I stopped and now I’m stuck again.”

    “It must be really hard to come back to your feet like this.” Jinx said as she squeezed her sister tight. Sleeping stuck and waking up stuck. We will get through this.”

    “Through this?” Vi said as she pushed her sister back and looked at her with an amount of craze in her eyes. “There is no getting through this. There is only getting out of this! I want unstuck Jinx!”

    “I’m still working on it!” Jinx insisted. “I have plans for some more devices and talking to people about some more possible solvents. So far we don’t have anything concrete but there’s some promising things in there.”

    “Promising things?” Vi scoffed. “You have no idea what it’s like to be stuck in this shit! It’s agony and I can’t take it anymore. I want out of this shit!”

    “I will get you out of it.” Jinx promised. “I will stop at nothing to get you out of that crap.”

    Vi went as if to turn and storm off but her permanently anchored feet happily reminded her she couldn’t. “Until you have something more hopeful to report just leave me alone!”

    “Vi…I…” Jinx pleaded. “You don’t have to face this by yourself.”

    “Leave me alone!” Vi snapped. “Let me wallow in my glue by myself.”

    Jinx reluctantly nodded and padded off, set on her next ideas to free her sister from a substance that by all intents and purposes was completely irremovable.

    Vi was inconsolable for days. She went through a cycle of depression, struggling, and shouting. She could not reconcile being in the glue and the glue had no intention off releasing it’s hold on the soles of Vi’s feet.

    Jinx was beyond frustrated, she used all of her contacts and skill but the solution to the glue evaded her. She began to think the only chance to undo the crap was to find out who made it. She wanted to go out and search but was afraid to leave Vi for more than an hour or two. As little as she liked it she would have to ask for help. She called Caitlyn, Vi’s only real friend and told her what was going on.

    On one of Vi’s mornings trapped in the glue and her own despair Caitlyn came down into the workshop. Vi instinctively got up and tried to hide her predicament, but as the glue just stretched and snapped her feet back there was decidedly little she could do.

    “You don’t have to be ashamed.” Caitlyn assured. “I am here to help."

    "Well, you are wasting your time." Vi sighed.” I can’t be helped.”

    “So you really are stuck huh?” Caitlyn asked as she walked closer. “I’ve never heard about glue that strong before.”

    “Well here it is.” Vi replied lifting a foot a few inches just to have it snap back in place violently. “Unknown brand never comes off style glue.”

    “You poor thing.” Caitlyn said as she crouched down. “What does it feel like?”

    “Agony!” Vi snapped. “It is like a vice is clutching my soles and I want nothing more in the world than to take a step but guess what…I can’t.”

    “Theres got to be something we can do.” Caitlyn insisted. “I’ll help in any way I can.”

    “It’s not going to be easy.” Jinx said as she came don to where Vi was stuck. “This stuff is really…problematic.”

    “Problematic?” Vi sighed. “I’m not a little child that needs coddling. You can tell me like it is.”

    Jinx nodded. “Well, this stuff is pretty much unbreakable. The force needed to get through it would at best severalty injure Vi. The stuff is sunk in and stuck too tight for any surgical option, and it shows no effect to any solvent I have tried. There really is only one thing I can even think to try at this point.”

    “What is it?” Caityln asked, a determined look on her face. “I’ll do anything.”

    “We need to find the people who made the stuff.” Jinx explained. “Vi’s only chance to ever get free of the stuff is the hope that when they made this terrifying glue…they also made a solvent to it.”

    “I’ll go!” Caitlyn offered eagerly. “You stay here and work on whatever plan b you can, and I will go and see if I can find a solvent.”

    “I can give you all the information that I have.” Jinx offered. “It’s not much but it is a good place to start.”

    “No!” Vi insisted, attempting to stomp her foot but being reminded she can’t. “I won’t put my sister or best friend I any danger on my behalf.”

    “When someone you care about is in need you cant worry about the danger.” Caitlyn said as she smiled to Vi. “Also you literally cant stop me.”

    Jinx gave Caitlyn all the leads she had, and she was off. The seedy underbelly of the city hid a lot of strange things. There was a precedent for weapons manufacturing and even chemical weapons underground. However, strange bombs containing seemingly irreversible glue was something new and that meant that someone would remember hearing of it.

    Caityn tried to be as inconspicuous as she could, moving from place to place asking if anyone had seen or heard of anything like the glue bombs. Just as she thought she had hit a dead end a vagabond by the river told her that he saw some stuff looking similar near where they were. He directed her to a warehouse and off she went to investigate.

    There was a in descript industrial building right where she was told it was and it seemed to have lights on. Caitlyn snuck around the back looking for a place to sneak in. She imagined that she could not just walk through the front door and ask for the glue solvent as whoever made the stuff was likely not ready to tell someone how to undo it. What good was a glue that wouldn’t come off if people knew how to take it off?

    Catlyn found an open window and it was an easy task to climb up and jump inside. The room was lit by a pair of functional lights above her head, and she moved quietly through the room. There were all manor of machines and inventions littering the room. They looked not unlike the canister the glue came in that she had been shown. Caitlyn decided that she was very likely in the right place and cautiously looked around for something that might help.

    She admitted that this might be a bit harder than she anticipated as the stuff was unlikely to be labelled as miracle glue solvent. She searched around looking for chemical recipes or liquids but all she found was more scrap.

    She became aware of a sound behind her, a metal-on-metal scraping. Caitlyn turned and to see nothing but a pile of scrap. She went back to her search but again heard the sound and movement out of the corner of her eye. She scanned around but a flash of movement and something bumping into her booted foot made her yelp. She looked down and saw a cut in the leather of her boot and what looked like teeth marks.

    “What the hell?” Caitlyn said as she again looked around. She saw several piles of metal move, seeming to come to life in front of her. They seemed to be like a little metal remote control car but each with rounded heads and antenna on their heads. They chomped their metal teeth in anticipation and began to advance on Caitlyn. She drew her weapon and began to fire, hitting a couple but causing several more to flow around. They only seemed preoccupied with her feet as they attacked and retreated, each taking a bite at her boots.

    Little by little they took off chunks, exposing her skin underneath. One would take a bit of the toe, one but off a heel, but one by one they tore her boots apart. They were too close and fast to shoot so Caitlyn resorted to swinging her rifle at them, knocking a few back, breaking another but not before she cracked her rifle right in two. After a few more attacks Caityln was forced to fall back, now feeling the soles of her bare feet against the cold stone floor. The metallic boot eaters had eaten her boots up to the shin leaving nothing behind but her bare feet. She stood on defense as the robot creatures moved forward. She feared that now that her boots were gone, they would devour the tender skin of her feet next but one by one the robots decided their dunner was over and shut down. Soon Caitlyn stood barefoot, surrounded by a dozen inert robots.

    “Well, I guess there is nothing for me here.” Caitlyn said as she headed deeper into the factory. “Time to face whatever is deeper in.”

-