Legends of Runeterra

"us?"

"Hello, Bomburini." Drizzt waved his hand and said, "I'm here to rob you too."

"What—" Bangbulini was unhappy. "Wait a minute! You two blew me up in the air! You blew me up in my ship! We were partners before, but you two betrayed me for a small profit. There's no one else in this city who would betray his accomplice for such a small amount of money!"

"Not that little," Graves retorted.

"Just snatched out a gem," Drizzt corrected him, "and found out it was glass."

"Tsk, no," Graves said. "It's definitely more than that."

That's the truth.

Years ago, Bonbrini was a marginal third member of the criminal duo of Graves and Drizzt, doing simple jobs for meager pay and using pamphlets that were somewhat... poorly worded.

"Two men willing to do anything (literally anything) for anyone (literally anyone), for the right price (literally any price)." That's what the flyer proclaimed. Combined with the complete omission of any mention of Bomburini, it led to avoidable misunderstandings and misled potential customers. Thanks to Bilgewater's strong tradition of escalating violence, these incidents often ended in bloodshed or minor explosions. As luck would have it, the more commotion they caused, the more widely known the group became, and they quickly became a sought-after mercenary squad.

Over the next few years, the flyers remained unchanged, which resented the young Bumburini. He eventually used his share of the winnings to buy a small sailboat, leaving his life of crime behind and taking up shipwreck salvaging near the Blue Flame Islands. This business was more lucrative than robbery, and it also saved him from having to advertise his event as some kind of pirate fight.

A large ship easily attracted envy. Envious individuals eventually hired Malcolm Graves and Drizzt Fate to rob their former companions at a salvage site near the Baru ruins. The two men, lacking any sense of morality, readily agreed. Their robbery resulted in a small oil fire, then a large one, followed by a bloody storm and the exploding galleon. All the treasure went down with the ship... except for a piece of sea glass, of course.

Bombrini's whereabouts are unknown, presumably due to his death, and his employer, furious, ultimately withheld payment. Overall, however, the robbery was considered one of the more successful of the duo's criminal careers.

"You're not dead?" Drizzt asked. "I thought you were dead."

Bomburini turned his head. The wide-set pupils of his predator's eyes prevented him from seeing his own body, but the act itself was quite heroic. "Do I look dead?"

"I don't know," Graves replied. "Maybe."

"Are you going to kill them, boss?" said a half-merman impatiently. He was a sniper observer with a goby head.

"I agree with Goby," said his partner, a prawn with arms and legs, holding a very long gun. "You said they betrayed you, didn't you? What did they do?"

Bomburini blinked, trying to recall what the two men had done. His walnut-sized brain was almost ready to burst out of its shell. After all, decades had passed, and it was easy to forget all the details of his former number one enemy.

Graves. Drizzt. Graves... and... Drizzt. What were they doing?

I got it.

He thought of something that was so interesting and useful that it could completely overturn the deadlock.

"They are together." He guessed confidently.

The room was quiet.

"We know." said the goby.

"I mean, they're together," Bumblini repeated, more confidently. "I knew they'd end up together. Graves has terrible judgment, and Drizzt is the worst person I've ever met. It all makes sense!"

Goby shrugged. Drum Shrimp sighed and looked back at the thieves upstairs. He adjusted his scope and wondered why he was getting involved in this.

On the second floor staircase, the atmosphere is completely different.

"He thought we were together," Drizzt whispered. "Like, together in that sense. A couple, romantic.

"I know what 'together' means, Tobias," Graves replied quietly, more cautiously than before. "So how can we make good use of it? What's the plan? And why does he speak so harshly?"

Drizzt scratched his chin with one hand, flipping the red card over to gold with the other, pondering the question. The probability of everyone going up in a giant fireball was still too great for him to accept. Thankfully, Bonbrini and his men had let their guard down. Now was the time to make a desperate move. He needed to pull off something incredibly big, incredibly stupid, enough to upset the current stalemate. He needed...

"I can't believe you've got us in this again!" Drizzt yelled, pointing a venomous finger at Graves while making sure most of himself wasn't exposed to the sniper. "You're always like this, always showing up without a second thought! You're a big, burly guy with no sense of technique, and you're here to rob the gunpowder store with hextech ammunition and grenades! My mom was right, we really shouldn't be together!"

Graves was stunned for many reasons. First, he had never met Drizzt's mother, and even to this day, he wasn't sure if she even existed. Second, Drizzt hadn't explained the plan to him, yet now he was commenting on Graves's muscular build and his heist plan. He was a master of both physical prowess and brains, a master of the thieves's craft.

"Hey, what are you talking about? You're the one who keeps raving about how smart you are, but now you've taken another crappy job. Now you're stuck, right? You can only wait for me to rescue you! If it were up to me, we'd just do simple jobs, like simple robbery and murder, or extortion!"

"That's right, it's all because you have no vision." Trist deliberately emphasized "vision" and winked at him.

Graves didn't get the message right away, but continued exchanging secrets with his partner.

"That's why we're always arguing." Drizzt blinked again, finally understanding.

Downstairs, Benbrini was watching with great delight, while his men were bored and clueless.

When a man is betrayed by an old friend, his emotional reactions are irreversibly altered. He becomes suspicious, jealous, and occasionally indulges in fantasies of hidden revenge.

Bomburini had it all. He often indulged in fantasies in which his two enemies would quarrel before his shark's eyes. The argument would take place in a room or cargo ship filled with explosives, and at the height of the argument, a bomb would explode, killing both of them, leaving a trail of smoke and dust in the sky that read, "Sorry, Bomburini." Then everyone would cheer and applaud, and someone would crown him with a crown and a sash. Oh, and maybe a scepter.

All in all, it's a fantasy with rich details.

But this fantasy doesn't include being hit in the chest by a golden card, being sent flying through the air, and falling into the sea through a loading gate.

"Go!" Drizzt said, rushing out from behind his cover and running into a small hut nearby. He then aimed at a spot where the explosives weren't fully stacked and threw several golden cards at the wall. Each card exploded with strands of golden light, stunning the Bomburini mercenaries, who then began firing indiscriminately with their eyes closed.

Graves followed Drizzt through the hut and into the warehouse. A stray bullet struck the crate where Goby and Drumlin were hiding. The two half-murlocs froze. The bullet whizzed by. Goby looked at Drumlin, and Drumlin looked at Goby. It felt like an eternity had passed between them.

"We shouldn't be in danger—" Shrimp Goby exploded before he could finish his sentence.

The first explosion rocked the warehouse, and Drizzt and Graves stumbled along a rickety metal drawbridge, surrounded by wooden crates of black powder, many times more than their employer had promised.

"Not good." Drizzt glanced down at his feet.

"That's not good," Graves said. "I know we were just acting, but I'm not very happy with you right now, both personally and professionally."

"You have never been satisfied with me! Stop talking and run!" Trist said loudly. At this time, several mercenaries with guns downstairs looked up and immediately found two bandits running over their heads who were obviously not merfolk.

Graves was hurt, but he didn't want to show it. He simply threw a smoke bomb down the ladder, shrouding the entire lower floor in a corrosive fog. "This should be fun, but I'm not in the mood right now," he explained, accompanied by the mercenaries' labored breathing.

"Can you stop being such a baby? You're a man!" Trist shouted. He wanted to get his plan going as gunshots began to echo in the powder room.

"Don't call me Big Darling! You always pick on opponents my size. I always come to your rescue, and you never show any gratitude, Drizzt!"

"I don't know how to thank you? I didn't say I suddenly disappeared for several months to fight some ghost prince of Kamavia, and then suddenly came back to act pretentiously."

"He's the Ghost King, and I beat him off, or we'd all be ghosts! You a ghost, I a ghost. Everyone a ghost."

"You weren't even there! Do you think I didn't read the letter from Shauna? Graves, I'm a master of deception, and you can't fool me. They left you out there, and it's up to Scissor Baby and a bare-armed Wonder Boy to save the world."

"That's not the case, Drizzt," Graves said darkly. "Those are just stories. We never talk about what really happened."

"Come on! You're obsessed with achieving great things. Even if you were given a few more decades, you wouldn't be the number one hero in Valoran."

"Are we still pretending to have a fight, or are we really having one? If we are, I'm going to punch that stupid hat of yours down your throat."

"I think it was a real quarrel! And you know what? You really stink, and you never use your brain seriously. Now is not the right situation to use a grenade!"

"Yeah, that's why we broke up in the first place! You think you're better than me, you think you're better than this."

"What if I'm really strong?" Trist shouted, realizing what he had said only after he had said it.

At the front of the warehouse, where flames and explosions billowed, Bomburini's surviving men streamed through the side door and onto the suspended ladder. Their combined weight had already caused the screws in the wall to begin to crumble. Many mercenaries had sustained severe burns, their raging fury needing an outlet.

"Our quarrel can wait, damn it! Get out of that door!" Graves ordered. He and Trist immediately put aside their quarrel and ran towards the exit. The suspended ladder under their feet was collapsing rapidly.

Six steps from the door, another explosion erupted from the gunpowder storage below, engulfing the mercenaries on Azure Avenue in flames. The crates beneath them began to explode one after another. The smoke from Graves's grenade, a flammable, pungent, and foul-smelling mixture with a variety of tactical applications, instantly ignited. Graves hadn't anticipated this effect, despite the shopkeeper who had told him dozens of times that the smoke was flammable. As expected, the ignited smoke set off more crates of black powder, sending the fair-skinned card player and the impetuous, slovenly man flying through a precarious wall and crashing down into a muddy hallway below. This hallway was also filled with explosives.

This operation was still considered relatively successful in their looting career.

"Ugh," Graves groaned, "this really sucks."

Drizzt felt his head for his hat, and after making sure it was there, he clutched his ribs. "Yeah, it's rotten."

"Tobias, if we can't go back...I have something to say."

"What is it, man?" Drizzt said with a smile.

"I hope you die first." Graves laughed and coughed.

"Tsk, then thank you."

The warehouse shook violently again, bricks and tiles slamming to the ground. Smoke drifted in through the large hole in the second-floor wall, and flames licked the densely stacked hexagon boxes—the boxes were painted with another symbol of a bitter-faced man being blown away.

"Doesn't anyone realize how dangerous this thing is?" Graves said, limping toward a door that looked like an exit.

“This is Bilgewater, Malcolm. No one will notice anything.”

"...I noticed it!" came a familiar voice, perhaps a little hoarse.

Bomburini stood before the two brothers with a flamboyant air, a bruise on his chest, his harpoon ready. The shark-like figure faced Bilgewater's most renowned mercenary duo, with the only exit behind him. Graves spotted the wet silhouette of a shark on the dock outside. It seemed likely Bomburini had been hiding there for several minutes before making his grand appearance.

"Oh my God, why is it this stupid fish again?" Trist muttered.

"It's me, what can you do!" Bomburini yelled, coughing. "Do you know what I was thinking when I saw you again after so many years? It's been so long, so--"

"Not interested." Graves said, raising his huge shotgun and pointing it at the explosive box next to the Shark Man. Graves pulled the trigger, the bullet was fired, and everything was covered in smoke.