Recap / League of Legends: The Boys and Bombolini

The Boys and Bombolini

By Jared Rosen

There existed, among the multitude of disgusting Bilgewater shipping warehouses filled with rusted knives and arms-length carnivorous rats, one Bilgewater shipping warehouse devoid of such things.

Graves and Twisted Fate find themselves in yet another heist gone awry. The two end up delving into some deep and complicated emotions between each other.

The story can be read here.

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Tropes

• Acting Unnatural: At one point, TF provokes an 'lovers' quarrel' with Graves to distract Bombolini. Graves initially fails to catch on and assumes he's being insulted for real, and even once they've been able to make their escape, it's clear that their argument got a bit too personal.
• After Action Patch Up: Downplayed — in the wake of the disaster, TF attempts to check Graves' head for signs of a concussion, but he gives up after admitting to himself that he doesn't know what to look for. Graves still gets a bit of a charge from his partner touching his hair.
• Alliterative Title: The Boys and Bombolini
• Arms Dealer: The story takes place in a warehouse owned by a shady Piltovan explosives dealer who has decided to get out of the business (and conduct a bit of insurance fraud in the process).
  Owned by a Piltovan arms dealer...it was primarily used to ship large quantities of high explosives—both powder and hex—to various enemies of peace across the continent. Most notably, the Noxians in Ionia, the Noxians in Shurima, the Noxians in Demacia, and, very occasionally, the Noxians in Noxus—the latter having recently sent a letter threatening to murder “the cheap bastard who was gouging them with their bomb prices.”
  Said Piltovan owner-slash-bastard, deciding it was no longer safe to be the consigliere of colonial evil, therefore employed a group of heavily armed Azure Way mercenaries to guard his warehouse while simultaneously hiring a different group of heavily armed mercenaries to steal the entire hoard from under the first group’s noses. A great sum of coin was spent insuring this hoard so that in the event of a colossal chain explosion during a violent, hypothetical gunfight, the owner would walk away an ever-so-slightly wealthier arms dealer.
• Call-Back: The main duo make a lot of references to the "Ruined King Saga", due to the fact that Graves joined the Sentinels of Light during that time.
  • Graves has a spare blue card from TF in case he needs to teleport out of danger, referencing the death animation of his Sentinel skin where he draws out the same card.
    Fate leaned over to Graves, pointing at his interior coat pocket. “You still got that blue card I gave you?” he whispered.
    “What, the one from the Sentinels? Yeah, I still got it,” Graves answered at a normal volume.
  • Twisted Fate calls out Graves' belief that he stopped Viego single-handedly, noting that Vayne informed him that it was Gwen and Akshan who defeated him while Graves was left behind. This is a callback to the Absolution cinematic.
• Casual Danger Dialog: Graves and TF draw out a gunfight just to banter like bickering spouses.
• Complexity Addiction: TF evidently has a touch of this, since he saves his teleportation Blue Cards for making an appropriately dramatic exit. Graves suggests they could just use them to teleport in, but TF insists on showmanship.
• Distinction Without a Difference: Graves on his taste in men.
  Graves: "I do not have terrible taste in men. I have good taste in terrible men, and there is absolutely a difference."
• Double Entendre: The original advertising flyer for Graves and TF (and Bombolini) was... misleading. As the narrative duly notes, a lot of their potential clients expected a different sort of service. (And Bombolini was miffed that he wasn't even mentioned).
  "Two men who will do anything (and we mean anything) to anybody (and we mean anybody) for the right price (any price)"
• Due to the Dead: When the heist is over, TF suggests going back and burying whatever's left of Bombolini. Graves disagrees on the conviction that he's probably not dead.
• First-Name Basis: Both Graves and TF call each other by given name at least once. Evidently Vayne is on similar terms with Graves, since TF calls her Shauna from her letters. (Graves warns him to never call her that in person).
• Functional Genre Savvy: Graves declares himself the protagonist and "male lead" of the story fairly early on (dubbing TF the deuteragonist). This irritates his partner no end.
• Green-Eyed Epiphany: TF evidently realizes his feelings for Graves go a bit beyond friendship when he considers all the other people his partner has been with over the years.
• Love Epiphany: Downplayed — both TF and Graves realize in the course of this misadventure that they find the other attractive, but they deliberately cut the thought off as soon as they think it.
• Manchild: Graves, Graves, Graves. It's a sign that TF's feelings are starting to turn when he thinks of his partner's hair as "boyishly unkempt."
• My Friends... and Zoidberg: Bombolini always got third billing back when they were all partners — if they mentioned him at all. Even the title of this story makes him sound like an afterthought.
• No One Could Survive That!: Neither of them thought Bombolini had survived his previous misadventure with them, and Graves wouldn't be surprised if he makes it out of this one too.
• Pride: The besetting sin of the three main characters. Graves is riding high on a sense of importance after taking down the Ruined King. Twisted Fate is irritated that his partner is acting like some kind of genius mastermind instead of the Dumb Muscle that (TF thinks) he is. Bombolini is resentful that his former partners never gave him credit for his part in their early success and forgot all about him when they had the chance.
• Remember the New Guy?: The story is pretty nonchalant introducing Bombolini, who was apparently always behind the scenes of Graves and TF's adventures in their youth.
• Remember When You Blew Up a Sun?: Graves talks up his supposed exploits during the "Ruined King Saga", only for TF to quickly see through his bullshit on how it went down.
  Graves: He was a ghost king, and you’re lucky I fought him or we’d all be ghosts! You’d be a ghost, I’d be a ghost. Everyone would be a ghost!
  Twisted Fate: You weren’t even there! You think I don’t read Shauna’s letters? Graves, I’m a con man, you can’t trick me. They left you outside while scissors doll and the shirtless wonder saved the day.
  Graves: That ain’t how it went down, Fate. That’s just the story. We don’t talk about what really happened.
• The Resenter: Bombolini. Not that being ignored while alive and forgotten once 'dead' wouldn't leave a chip on a man's shoulder...
• Revenge: Bombolini turns out to be nursing a fantasy about his former partners getting into a massive fight in front of him in a room full of explosives. About the first half of it plays out, but not the "We're sorry, Bombolini" spelled out in the lingering smoke after they both blow up, nor the crown, sash, and scepter he would be awarded after.
  It was a very intricate fantasy.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: Graves cuts off Bombolini's monologue just as it gets rolling by firing into a crate of explosives.
  Bombolini: Do you know what I thought when I saw you two after all these years? After all that time, all that—
  Graves: Not interested.
  (boom!)
• We Used to Be Friends: Bombolini was apparently a partner-in-crime with Graves and TF who went completely unappreciated for years before retiring from crime altogether. Then the latter two would pull a heist on Bombolini's diving company, resulting in his ship exploding. And Graves and TF didn't even get a worthwhile reward from the job.