Chapter Text

The bronze-on-white banners of Sandvik Hexvehicular Industries stirred only faintly in the breeze from the open balcony. Councillor Yurel Salo sucked in the draughts of fresh air with discreet gusto.

Sandwiched as he was between Warden-Prefect Nicodemus and Count Sandvik himself among the guests of honor, surrounded by a veritable who’s who of Piltovan dignitaries, all sweating in their finery and exuding a cocktail of fine perfumes to cover it, Salo contemplated sainthood. Specifically, for the pretty blonde maid he’d watched open the balcony doors…

…at least until he promptly forgot about her existence. Little space within one’s attention span, after all, to ogle the help when the gracious host had jugglers and mimes capering about the cavernous ballroom of Sandvik Manor amidst holographic dancers, poised and graceful, projected from spinning Hexlumens ringing the floor.

Salo mused that it was either excellent forethought to keep the dance floor looking active whilst not requiring anyone to actually dance, or a sign that Piltover in its almighty Progress had finally figured out how to sell a mansion its own proprietary ghosts.

The distraction was fleeting, unfortunately, because Salo simply couldn’t ignore the chuffing and huffling sounds Nicodemus was making beside him. The fellow squirmed in his dress uniform like an overstuffed poro barely restraining itself from pouncing upon the sprawling buffet. His eyes bulged each time they fell on the towering masterpiece of a wedding cake; a replica of the Tower of Techmaturgy in bronze and silver frosting and fondant casting its majestic shadow down the table.

Judging from the sounds Nicodemus was making just at the thought of eating, Salo’s stomach twisted at imagining the gruesome auditory components of his actual feeding frenzy.

Alas, enduring such company was the price of power; Salo’s late cousin, may the insufferable fop rest in pieces - in many small pieces scattered all over Progress Square, as it were - had been far better suited to finding actual pleasure in these displays. A master of the dance of alliances and dalliances, for certain, not that it had helped whatsoever when that grinning Hextech rocket had screamed through the window.

Yurel couldn’t too sourly begrudge his cousin, however; his untimely demise in the Council attack had cleared the way for his own rise to power. And the benefits of the Seat almost certainly outweighed the odd annoyance.

But that did leave him to deal with such yawn-fests as the merger of Sandvik Hexvehicular and Runford & Sons Cogworks, a transaction representing the opening of eight new factories, several million cogs of calculated profits and hundreds of potential jobs worth of investment…

…otherwise known as the wedding gala of Alysoun Sandvik and Terenz Runford.

Yurel glanced at the allegedly happy couple, eclipsed in the shadow of the beaming, boisterous father of the bride and his circle of laughing sycophants. He took idle note of the precious daughter’s resolute chin-quivering stare into her soup and the bold new son-in-law’s valiant attempts not to slide off the table. Salo wondered whether they had been told about the union before or after being handed their script.

Pity, thought Salo, Typical of these industrialists, it all feels more like an exhibition floor than a gala. Nothing beautiful, no real artistry, not a single courtesan of any gender or species…

I’ve attended livelier funerals.

It might have been just a tinkling of spoon on glass at any other wedding, but Count Sandvik had hired an entire Hexcoustic orchestra to add a literal fanfare to the announcement that he was ready to give his big speech.

They could almost, just almost, drown out the chanting of Stop Sandvik Slavery! and No More Death Factories! from beyond that open balcony, just outside the Manor gates.

“Well,” Yurel Salo muttered, “at least there’s some entertainment.”

He watched with dry amusement as Alysoun, sitting so close to him, perked up at the sound, peering with curiosity and something else, something more complicated, out the window.

“Funny, isn’t it?” Salo leaned over to the young bride to murmur, “We were at war with them a year ago. Now our bleeding hearts want to give them a pay rise.”

Salo’s jesting tone hid the test; he wondered if the girl had wit enough to know it.

Alysoun just stiffened up and stared at the dregs of her soup. Then at the enormous, straining buffet tables beyond theirs, around which extravagant guests were still milling, one woman in a feathered bonnet and elaborate bustle ignoring the imminent speech to snatch at the feast like a darting piranha.

More food would be thrown out tonight than the families of Sandvik Industries’ factory workers, mostly poor Zaunites, would eat over a course of months.

“…we do pay them,” Alysoun mumbled, “Like the Accords say. It’s just…it’s not-”

Count Sandvik cleared his throat, gave a beaming smile, and opened his mouth. In the expectant silence the protest chants only rang out clearer –

“No more Death Factories!”

“Fair Pay for Zaunite Workers!”

“Stop Sandvik Slavery!”

“…enough,” Alysoun muttered, and clenched her fingers around her fork.

Terenz blinked out of his sleepy trance and looked sidelong at his new bride, as if it were the first time he’d heard her speak aloud. For all Salo knew, it might have been.

Count Sandvik, however, wasn’t about to compete. He scowled with his impressively bushy eyebrows and glared at Warden-Prefect Nicodemus in a silent ‘why have your officers not removed that rabble?’ before starting his speech.

“Friends, associates, and esteemed fellows of the City of Progress-”

“STOP SANDVIK SLAVERY!”

Sandvik’s face turned an ugly red color. Someone in attendance snickered loudly. Salo planted his chin on his palm and looked for the culprit, out of curiosity, but the only movement in the gathering aside from awkward seat-shuffling was the girl in the bonnet, her expansive bustle worn too slovenly for Salo’s liking but with a pretty enough face, fumbling with her ample bodice in a somewhat unnatural way, but one that made Salo giggle.

Was she stuffing something into the food? How uncouth.

His attention shifted as, in response to an imperious gesture from Sandvik and his mighty eyebrows, the fanfare blared again, followed by a Hexcoustic squeal that put Salo’s teeth on edge as Sandvik dialed up his volume in attempt to drown out the interlopers.

The lights had also dimmed, unfortunately stymying Salo’s stickybeaking and forcing his focus to the loudmouth Count in the literal spotlight.

“Friends! Associates! Esteemed fellows of the City of Progress! Welcome, this fine and balmy evening, to the wedding of my beautiful daughter, Alysoun, heir to the fortunes of Sandvik Hexvehicular Industries, to the talented Terenz Runford, brilliant and vigorous young scion of Runford and Sons Cogworks, representing generations of fine Piltovan innovation in the fields of…”

Salo felt his eyes glaze and snatched another seafood canape from the blonde maid as she passed him.

“…when my daughter came of age, well I said to my long-time associate, Marquis Runford, what good is it having a wedding if it doesn’t pay a good profit?”

Polite titters at the joke rippled up in waves from the crowd. Bonnet girl’s snicker cut oddly through them, as if she were laughing at an entirely different joke. Runford himself preened like a resplendently bearded hawk, bowing his head in faux modesty, and the Count continued.

“But on a less frivolous note, let me speak for a moment about legacy. For it is legacy that we are here to celebrate, tonight, the enduring legacy of two great companies. A legacy of inventiveness, of hard work, of rising from humble roots to the success that we have today, that classic Piltovan story, of determination and willingness to-” the Hexophone squealed, distorting its projected voice, “-put-” ::ethics!:: “…aside in the pursuit of-” ::being a greedy poopface!::

A murmur went through the crowd. Sandvik furrowed his spectacular eyebrows and peered at the device.

“Pardon that, I meant to say that I’m-” ::hocking off my daughter like an antique watch!:: “-and…my word! And – um-um-” ::also laundering funds for the Chembarons!::

The shrill voice scratched out of the Hexcoustics systems, and Sandvik turned a vivid shade of aubergine. Salo slowly sat up, and so did his eyebrows.

“Pardon me, fine guests,” stammered Count Sandvik, whilst his daughter stared at him open-mouthed, and even his son-in-law finally seemed awake.

The gasps of shock among the gathered Piltovan dignitaries – the heads of several Clans, multiple Council members, famous artificers, wealthy entrepreneurs – became a low, rising hubbub of outrage. They had been willing to stoically ignore the chants from outside, but there was a limit.

“There appear to be some technical difficulties with our Hexcoustics,” he cleared his throat, “-generously supplied by Runford and Sons for this special occasion-”

::…Ooh, that burns, how quick they turn, eh Runny?:: screeched the hexphonic speakers feeding Sandvik’s audio to the rest of the hall, ::You gonna take that diss lying down?::

Runford made a small but sharply audible choking sound.

Salo chomped down his canape and lifted his eyes to a hint of movement above Sandvik’s head.

“Cut the feed!” Sandvik hissed to his aides, fumbling in a little crowd around him on the stage, “Cut it!”

He raised his voice above the faint scratching and squealing of the hexphonic stand and shoved it away from him, booming in his loudest concert hall tone, “Friends, I do hope you will forgive my sense of humor. A little comedic levity – a p-prank, all part of the show- now to reward your patience, let me unveil-”

There was something lowering from between the curtains above Sandvik’s position.

Salo squinted.

It looked for all the world like a very large water balloon, slowly descending as it filled from pipeworks somewhere above, pulled down by its own growing weight.

And something was buzzing around it like a large, persistent fly.

With the auditory mishaps seemingly under control, Sandvik straightened and beamed, returning to his script, his eyebrows bristling with self-satisfaction that was at least half genuine.

“…our new plan to put a Sandvik Industries Ring Rider in every Piltovan home…”

Salo squinted more. “Pardon me, Alysoun,” he muttered as he reached over her to snatch a mostly decorative multi-lens monocle from a yordle inventor on her side of the table.

Over the fellow’s protestations, Salo focused the lenses on what looked like a cartoonish mechanical mosquito with a grotesque painted grin, its nose a shiny pin.

“…making access to our workplaces…”

It poked the swelling balloon. Salo winced, but the snap of rubber only heralded the balloon changing color from garish green to blue as one layer tore away, revealing another balloon beneath.

But one that was swelling faster for the relieved pressure.

“…our factories, our places of leisure ever the more convenient…”

The pin pricked again. Another layer popped away. Green to blue to purple.

Others adjacent the stage had noticed now, but either did not quite deduce what was about to happen or feared to interrupt Sandvik’s speech.

They were, however, quietly backing away.

“…for every upstanding Piltovan citizen.”

Another layer vanished. The balloon was now bright, noxious pink, and had a grinning neon green monkey painted on its wobbling flanks.

Salo’s eyes snapped open. He lowered the lens.

“If you’ll excuse me, I need some air.”

The newlyweds followed him with their eyes and glanced at each other as the chants outside grew louder to compete with Sandvik’s speech.

Salo slid from his chair with a squeak that drew the attention of several dignitaries near him and backed up toward the buffet table. From the corner of his eye, he saw a few individuals converging, scuffling through the crowds, looking for someone. They were dressed as partygoers, but something about their strong builds and stiff scowls said Wardens.

Salo, distracted, jostled the punch bowl, and heard a clink.

He turned to see something floating in the punch that wasn’t a piece of Ionian silk-apple. It was chunky, metal, and had a purple underbelly topped by crude, grinning iron jaws.

Salo’s heart started pounding. Images of his cousin being reduced to a fine mist in a ball of blue fire slammed with thunderous clarity into his thoughts.

The Wardens were shouting at someone. There was a kerfuffle. It all seemed so far away.

Salo noted two more of the contraptions, nestled alongside the pears in the salad bowl, and a third clamped in the jaws of a suckling pig.

He slipped away from the table and fumbled for the balcony. Stairs out there, down to the garden, away, get out of here-

Salo backed into a skinny figure in a bonnet, one whose décolletage was no longer quite so ample. 

“Aw, c’mon, Sally-Two. You’ll miss the show!” Bonnet Girl purred into his ear.

Something cold pressed into the small of Salo’s back. Her hand was on his arm, strong as steel.

“N-no,” Salo froze like a rabbit, “-you-”

Count Sandvik had stepped forward to gesticulate toward the giant rolled-up banner upon the wall at his back, ignorant that he’d only stepped directly under the swelling thing above his head.

“In three, two…” she giggled.

Yurel Salo shuddered as the girl behind him bit her lip. Her eyes shone a demonic pink in the dark.

“…forty-six…twenty-eight…seven…” she rasped, “…one!”

“We are proud to announce our new plan of action, adhering to the Sandvik words, our motto, words that Piltover can live by now and forevermore…”

The banners unfurled, the bronze wheel gripped by a fist of Sandvik industries against a white field was drowned in comical faces of pink and blue paint – one with an undercut, one with a top-hat – poking their tongues and grimacing. The Sandvik slogan We Reinvent The Wheel had been utterly blotted out by two giant neon words:

EVERYBODY PANIC!

The pin pricked, the balloon burst, and bright multicolored neon paint plummeted to drench Count Sandvik, splashed on the guests of honor, rendering them in vivid, toxic hues that glowed brightly in the dimmed lights.

“Showtime!” sang Bonnet Girl. Salo was shoved into the arms of a Warden pouncing after her, breath knocked from his body.

She flung aside her bonnet and sloughed out of her bustle with a flourish, revealing a stick-figure dressed mostly in striped stockings and bullet belts. The girl pirouetted on one booted toe, and with a flick of a hand that held a pistol, fired a single crackling bullet down the length of the buffet table, into the mouth of the suckling pig.

Chaos exploded.

One by one, the dishes detonated. The pig, first, a plume of hot fat and meat falling in ribbons to string itself all over the nearby guests; the tureen, pinging toward the ceiling like a land mine in a shower of beef soup; the salads flinging leaves and fruit at the horrified guests, the stuffed poultry bursting in puffs of feathers, all whilst the speakers blared a Piltovan operatic aria over the shredding shrieks of Zaunite metal.

Salo hit the floor as the screams joined the symphony. Wardens shouting, tables flipping, people covered in soup, pastry, fruit, and feathers scrambling in a torrent away from the exploding feast. Amidst it all something glinting gold spun end-over-end over the table, iridescent bubbles flashing around the guests closest to the radius of each eruption.

He was only vaguely aware of the girl stepping over him, matter-of-factly.

Salo looked up to see her bounding onto the ruined buffet table, wheeling amid the raining mess, gesticulating grandly as if she were conducting an orchestra of flame and food wreckage with her entire body, her pistol in one hand and a crag-turkey leg in the other as the baton.

Her long blue braids snaked after her as she twisted and twirled just out of the grip of food-splattered Wardens, Sandvik private security footmen, and panicked party guests tripping over each other to either pursue her or flee in abject terror of the scene.

Whilst she danced a wild ballet amid the carnage, she was humming along to the music.

Worst of all was her face. She wore a transcendent smile of bliss, her eyes shining in childlike joy, reflecting in the flashes of bright pink and green flame as more of her explosives went off in a chain reaction, leading to...

The cake. 

It went up like a rocket - perhaps because she'd somehow put a rocket inside it - in a soaring trail of fondant and cream. The flanks of the cake split apart, sloughing off like a collapsing mountain to bury the screaming Count Sandvik and apoplexy-stricken Nicodemus. 

Guests shrieked and slipped in the goo on the floor as they scrambled for safety. Count Sandvik resembled some kind of paint-and-cream monster, flailing his arms and roaring at the heavens from a swamp of sludgy dessert. Nicodemus, shouting orders to his troops, had lunged forward, slipped on the cake, and now slid helplessly across the floor, bowling down his own men like pins at an alley.

Two merchant family matriarchs shrieked for the blood of the culprit whilst a third stomped out her flaming wig on the floor. The chief engineer of Sungate operations had a giant chunk of green jelly wobbling on his bald head. The Marquis Runford was busy extracting half of a cooked goose from his screaming wife’s bustier. 

Somehow, Alysoun Sandvik, her eyes shining and her mouth wide open in awe, then furious determination, had acquired a protest sign - or had she had it with her all along? - and sprang to the front like a hero of the revolution, her pristine white wedding dress an avant-garde artwork in every color in the cookbook. Terenz stared after her like he was having a religious epiphany, and then started to laugh, and kept laughing and pointing, wild-eyed.

And at the heart of it all, Jinx, the Loose Cannon, the Terror of Piltover, the Ghost of Zaun, stopped atop the table, lit by the rocket fire, and turned to strike a pose of solemn, stiff-lipped salute as she followed her rocket’s majestic ascent.

The cake finally broke apart on launch, and the rocket, still covered in jam and chunks of sponge and fondant, crashed through the ballroom's massive skylight and out into the Piltovan night.

Security people swarmed the room, and all Salo could do was watch as Jinx grinned ear to ear, greeted them with a theatrical bow -

And from somewhere behind her, like the sun glinting as it came up over the horizon, spilled a flash of rainbow colors blending into white, blazing, blinding light.

When it was gone, so was she.

Leaving only the rocket, soaring into the heavens, where it burst high over Piltover with the whine, pop, and BOOM of spectacular fireworks.

An explosion in neon, painting the Piltovan sky with the sign of a grinning monkey.

“…so, it begins…” Salo muttered, and fainted face-first into a glob of cake.

ILL-OMEN'S GAME

~ Ill-Fortune & Illumination, Part II ~

Chapter Text

“It was Jinx,” Yurel Salo muttered into his cup of tea, “Absolutely, one hundred percent, unmistakable, in the flesh. It was her.”

Caitlyn Kiramman stood by the gilded rope that kept the crowd of venerated, if miserable, witnesses from the site of the incident; and she kept her thoughts carefully guarded, though she knew, of course, that Vi would have detected the faint tremor she felt stirring at her brow.

The tension was not dispelled by Vi herself. Caitlyn saw all the tiny emotions that her stoic, scowling expression buried from the eyes of others; the way her eyes searched each detail of the room, seeing signs of Jinx in everything she had touched, like fingerprints daubed in paint on a childhood bedroom wall.

The pain and longing in the crease of her brow and the softening of her lips.

Jinx. Powder. Her little sister.

Vi, a caged hound catching the scent of her pack from afar, seemed unable to contain herself from prowling in the background of the crime scene.

And what a crime scene it was. Food and paint clung to every surface, up to and including the twenty-foot-high domed ceiling. Shredded furniture lay scattered in all directions. It looked like two giant toddlers had engaged in a food fight, with the wedding gathering caught in the middle.

“Well, well, we cannot be certain-” huffed Nicodemus, his still-sticky moustaches bouncing.

“We bloody well can!” Salo screamed at him, “I saw her with my own eyes, and so did you!”

“Gentlemen,” Caitlyn said, with a firm smile, “If you would give your statements one at a time, please.”

Huddled within expensive blankets and surrounded by attending medics at the edges of the crime scene, Caitlyn’s list of witnesses had proven a mixed bag.

Oh, they’d had plenty to say; ample description given of the extent of the property damage, the ruination of gowns and suits and the exact monetary value lost in the disastrous breakdown of relations between the two families, and more than one high-ranking Piltovan had described in intimate detail each of the dishes of the exploding feast that had rained upon them...

…whilst being unable to pinpoint anything concrete about the perpetrator. A few dismissive comments about ‘some strumpet in a poorly fitting bustle and bonnet’ making a mess of the buffet, someone else said a servant girl had decided to do a striptease on the table amid a deluge of glowing rainbow bubbles, others had sworn black and blue that a horde of screaming Zaunite brigands waving signs had somehow triggered the bombs – from outside the building.

After that, reports became …incoherent, even from Count Sandvik’s footmen, and the off-duty Wardens Nicodemus had somehow poached from her department to act as his personal guard for the event. She would have words with those, later.

The only thing they could all agree upon was that the fireworks had ended with the perpetrators disappearing in a blinding flash of light.

Councilor Salo, alone, was rather loudly adamant about what and who he had seen.

“Thank you for your testimony, Councilor. Warden-Prefect,” Caitlyn addressed Nicodemus, “I’d like to invite you to describe what you witnessed, if you please.”

She smiled her best polite smile at the man whom the Council had selected to act, technically, as her supervisor and intermediary between the political world and the offices of the Wardens. Nicodemus was an aristocrat, of course, with some adventuresome military service in his younger years, but one who hadn’t set foot in the field in more than three decades…

…and with not a whit of policing expertise beyond an interest in two-cog crime dramas, naturally.

With his appointment just after the Progress Day attack, when she’d dug her heels in and refused to offer the Council a scapegoat, Caitlyn found it hard not to think of him as her punishment.

“Hm, hem, well!” said Nicodemus, smoothing his moustaches, “The Count was giving his speech, and I was just thinking to myself about the cake, you see – whether or not there were real gold flakes in the frosting, you see, or rather perhaps brass flakes, if there are such things, for it had such a nice color, you see-”

The nib of Caitlyn’s prized self-inking pen hovered just above her notebook, studiously awaiting a note worth taking.

“-Well! There’s quite a confounded sound coming out of the speakers there, for a bit, and then all of a sudden there’s a big pop of a noise and we’re all bedecked with this nonsense-” Nicodemus gestured to his paint-spattered dress uniform, “and then, all of the blasted food starts-well, blasting off! I ordered my boys-”

My Wardens, none of whom were assigned with my knowledge or approval, Caitlyn noted.

“-To snatch the culprit! There was a blasted lot of that rotten sign-waving rabble just outside, and it seems one must have gotten inside and started cavorting most distractingly on the table. Must have gotten a bit excited by all the explosions-”

Vi choked back a snort.

“Jinx,” Salo groaned, “It was Jinx, you blithering idiot, setting off the explosions-”

“-and there was some other wench waving a sign-”

“The bride,” Councilor Salo observed, before Caitlyn’s sharp eyebrow hushed him.

“And well blow me down, I must have been knocked over by another one of the buggers from behind, for next I know I had been cruelly cast down to the floor…”

“He tripped on cake,” Salo added helpfully.

“-As to who these rapscallions might have been, Little Caity,” Caitlyn’s teeth set on edge at the nickname Nicodemus insisted on using, thinking it affectionate, since had first met her at her family’s gala when she was twelve, “I’ve not the foggiest-”

“Jinx,” Salo muttered, fidgeting with his thin fingers. “Jinx, Jinx, Jinx, it only has one syllable, need I repeat it further?”

He had a similar delicate physique to his deceased cousin, Caitlyn noted, and played into their outward resemblance deliberately; but Yurel Salo clearly had a sharper edge than the languid dilettante his predecessor had been.

At each repetition of Jinx, Vi’s shoulders tensed a little further. She was facing away, pretending to study the room, leaving her partner to the interviews.

But Cait felt every coil of her tension tightening.

“…w-well, well we can’t be certain…” Nicodemus stammered, and trailed off.

“It was Zaunite sympathizers!” snarled Count Sandvik, storming up out of nowhere just as Caitlyn’s pen finished scratching, “They’ve been trying to sabotage this merger for months now over some nonsense about ‘factory conditions’ and ‘fair pay’. Bah! Never set foot in the filthy Gray and they think they’re ‘friends of the Undercity’! Think they know a man’s business better than he knows himself-”

He was still livid with rage, adding purple to the kaleidoscope of hues that he and his assistants had so far failed to scrub out of his hair or off his skin.

Only Caitlyn heard the quiet pop of Vi’s knuckles behind his rant.

“-And now they’ve stolen my display model and kidnapped my daughter! Your useless Wardens didn’t keep them from making noise at my very gate, didn’t stop them from unleashing this hell upon my home, and didn’t stop them from taking my Alysoun – on her very wedding night! Janna’s winds only know what vileness they’ve tempted her to undertake on their behalf-”

“Count, I understand your duress,” said Caitlyn, “But please remain calm. Your daughter was seen leaving of her own volition with the groom. We are doing everything we can to locate her, of course, to verify her safety-”

“Kidnapped, both of them!” Count Sandvik wailed, “-by degenerate miscreants!”

Caitlyn winced, feeling Vi’s mood rolling off her back in stormy waves. She didn’t need to look. If she didn’t calm Count Sandvik down…

“Sheriff,” said Councilor Salo with a thin smirk, “Allow me.”

He stood up and rounded on Count Sandvik, and then snatched up a fallen Pilt cod from a ruined seafood platter and slapped the man across the face with it.

The resounding smack silenced the room. Vi’s fury evaporated, the other nobles stared open-mouthed, and Sandvik gaped at Salo in perfect imitation of the fish he’d just been slapped with, even as Salo tossed it aside with a sour look of disdain that morphed into a pleasant smile.

“-Your daughter wasn’t kidnapped, you elephantine buffoon,” Salo said sweetly, “In fact, judging from her eagerness to rebel, and the look of admiration on her new husband’s face, I daresay she’s off thoroughly enjoying her wedding night, probably a lot more than she expected to, no thanks to you. So, if you’d kindly let the Sheriff and her people do their jobs, we can all leave this grotesquerie of a ballroom and your miserable company behind us and spend an extravagant amount of time, soap and fine alcohol blotting this nightmare of an evening from our collective thoughts.”

“I…I…” Sandvik gawped.

Caitlyn snapped her notebook shut and exchanged a glance with Vi, who was fighting a toothy grin and looking at Salo with a new admiration.

“Gentlemen, thank you for your time, when you’re ready, my officers will escort you home,” Caitlyn said, and then added as she was turning away, “Councilor Salo, a word, if you please.”

As the Councilor joined Caitlyn and Vi, other Wardens and their medics closed ranks about the witnesses.

Caitlyn exhaled through her teeth.

“That was by far the last thing I had expected you to do, Councilor.”

“Well,” said Salo, buffing his nails on his ruined, flared collar, “Of the things they let you get away with when you sit the Council, that seemed the most appropriate. And fun.”

“…I’ve gotta get a seat on the Council,” said Vi.

“I wonder if Piltover would survive your tenure,” said Caitlyn, with a smile, “Thank you, regardless.”

“None required,” said Salo, frowning, “I can scarcely believe my ears. Am I the only one who saw her? Or are my esteemed contemporaries losing their tiny minds?”

“They’re scared,” Vi muttered, “None of them want to admit that it’s her.”

“Because that would remind them that she can still get to any member of Piltovan society,” Caitlyn said, “Anywhere, any time. No one is safe. They’d rather not contemplate that possibility. Better to have seen nothing than to have seen one’s own vulnerabilities reflected.”

“Yes, well,” Salo gave a thin smile, “She stuck a gun to my back and told me not to miss the show, so I don’t have the luxury of that level of ignorance, I’m afraid.”

He glanced up at the unfurled banner; EVERYBODY, PANIC!

…and the gurning caricatures painted above the slogan, over the Sandvik emblem. The pink and blue monster faces certainly bore an uncanny resemblance to his current company.

Salo didn’t take his eyes off the garish artwork. Despite his exterior bravado, Caitlyn saw that his hands were shaking, as he wrung them, unconsciously, trying to still the tremors.

“I remember when I built my first ornithopter,” he said, “The entire frame was polished Noxian hardwood. Of course, my cousin took one look at it and demanded to be bought one made of Ionian silkwood, twice as expensive, and twice as big. We were eight; that’s my fondest memory of him, frankly.”

Salo turned back to Caitlyn.

“I won’t go out the way he did,” he said, with a faint quaver, “Catch her. Whatever you must do, whatever resources you need, so long as your goal is to bring that creature in, or down, you have a friend on the Council. Am I clear, Sheriff?”

“Absolutely, Councilor,” said Caitlyn.

Vi quietly ground her teeth.

Salo smirked, “Then I’ll take the opportunity to warn you; you won’t have many others. Progress Day, the Menagerie, and now this…it’s not a good look, Sheriff, as I’m sure you’re aware.”

Caitlyn glanced back across the room to Warden-Prefect Nicodemus, now in deep conversation with a scowling Marquis Runford as they were ushered from the room to waiting Hexcarriages.

“Painfully,” she admitted.

“Find more allies, wherever you can,” Salo said, with an eyebrow to the silent Vi, “and shore up your weak points. Or Jinx will be the least of your worries.”

With that, he tucked his hands behind his back and withdrew to follow the others.

With the departure, Caitlyn and Vi shared a silent look. 

Caitlyn turned to the rest of the chamber; the radius of each blast, the pattern of the sprays of food and the proximity of the guests to the tables when it blew; the smear trails that their hasty scrambles away had formed as fancy shoes slipped and the trains of gowns slid.

Her eyes caught something. Kneeling, she plucked an unusual bullet casing from the floor, narrowed her eyes at it, and rolled it between her fingers.

Standing, Caitlyn’s gaze followed its past trajectory across the space the central tables had occupied.

She saw it, in her mind’s eye; the single shot soaring across the table, aimed toward a Chomper in the mouth of the suckling pig, just as Salo had described.

“Theatrical,” she murmured, “Typical of her, and yet atypical.”

“I don’t see other bullet casings,” said Vi, “She didn’t bring the minigun.”

“Or the rocket launcher,” said Caitlyn, “She only fired one shot.”

Vi nodded, scrutinizing a chunk of ruined punch bowl, “Smaller charge in the grenades, too. Practically a firecracker compared to what she usually uses.”

“If she’d wanted to kill these people, this room would have been a charnel house,” said Caitlyn.

“Like the bridge, a year ago,” said Vi.

Or the Council building, thought Caitlyn, but she did not say it, knowing Vi’s thoughts had gone there too, and that she had held her tongue for Caitlyn’s sake.

The two fell silent, studying the chamber.

Vi breathed hard, as though her sister’s scent still lingered amid the sharp smell of paint, burnt metal and gunpowder that floated between the smells of spoiled and charred food all around them.

Caitlyn breathed softly, each breath catching on a thought as pieces of the sequence of events clicked into their places in her mind; Jinx’s entry, disguised, placing each of the explosives, the positioning of the guests, the eruption of the chaos, and her swift and unseen escape.

“She had to be in the room. She had to see where people were standing, calculate each blast radius carefully to where they would be before she placed and triggered the charges. The timing had to be perfect, when everyone had gone back to their seats for the speech. Even then, it’s a miracle nobody was killed.”

“I don’t think so, Cait,” Vi chuckled, “Didn’t someone say something about rainbow bubbles? And her disappearing in a blinding flash of light?”

Caitlyn glanced about the room; it had cleared, by now, only a few of her investigators remained to examine the scene. Harknor and Darlington were scraping samples of the paint at the far end of the room. No one was within earshot.

“It does sound a little like Janna’s own intervention, doesn’t it?” said Caitlyn, “Much as mysterious bubbles of light protected Kepple, Mir and Linus…”

Vi held her silence, and Caitlyn knew they were thinking of the same person.

Luxanna Crownguard, darling of Demacia, Lady of Luminosity.

On the run for months following the assassination of King Jarvan the Third and the outbreak of a violent mage revolution, led by Sylas of Dregbourne…

Smuggled into Piltover by Jarro Lightfeather, nom-de-guerre of Ezreal Lymere, treasure hunter and lovesick idiot extraordinaire…

…and promptly lost in the depths of Zaun.

Lost and found. By Jinx, the Loose Cannon.

“So, they’re still moving together,” said Vi, “And whatever it is Lux has, she’s still using it to shield bystanders from the worst of Jinx’s uh, habits…”

Caitlyn tapped her pen to her lip, a long-held hunch congealing in her guts.

“Vi, I don’t think it’s what she has,” Caitlyn mused, “I think it’s what she is.”

Vi frowned. Then her eyes widened as she followed Caitlyn’s thought to its conclusion.

Lux Crownguard, daughter of House Crownguard, protectors of the King of Demacia…

“Waaaait,” Vi said, “You’re kidding me. You mean she’s a…”

“Mm,” Caitlyn confirmed what she dared not voice aloud.

A mage.

Vi whistled softly under her breath, “…well, that’d explain the robot-trashing laser cannon.”

“Vi, this is serious,” said Caitlyn, “It explains everything. And it makes our situation with the Demacians far more dire than we expected.”

Lord Eldred Crownguard, Lux’s uncle, an incredibly powerful figure in the Demacian hierarchy, married to the even more formidable High Marshal Tianna Crownguard, had currently set himself up in an entire wing of the Hall of Law, with more of his Demacian entourage seeming to arrive by the day.

A diplomatic mission, officially, to lend aid in locating their missing family member, but Caitlyn seemed to have her fears that it was something else entirely.

Vi, though unaware of the details beyond ‘unwanted Demacian envoys’, took Caitlyn at her word with a nod and chewed it over.

“Explains why my sister keeps her around,” Vi muttered, “Girl cut our Plaza Guardian up like a cheesecake. And if what you’re thinking is right, she doesn’t even need a weapon, she is one. Jinx must be in awe of her.”

A long pause held between them. Vi blew out her breath and ran her hands through her hair, looking back at the banners one more time.

“But she still isn’t killing people.”

“Yet,” said Caitlyn, “The Menagerie, letting the animals loose, that was a whim. And we know, from the flare she was carrying, that she intended to call you out.”

“Yeah, and we know from the recruiting poster-” Vi gestured at the banner at the back of the room, “And now from this, Cupcake, that she wants to call both of us out. She wants our attention. Now she’s definitely got it.”

“I highly doubt her newfound pacifism is due to a sudden change in moral code,” said Caitlyn.

As much as I wish it could be, she wanted to say, hoped that her eyes would say where her lips couldn’t, as much as I want her to be your sweet little sister again…for you, for her, for some kind of hope…

Vi shook her head, chewing on her lower lip thoughtfully.

“No. The Council rocket was a declaration of war.”

“Yes.”

“This time, it’s a game. That’s what you said. That’s why she’s not killing. She wants us to come out and play with her. She knows what it’ll push us to if the bodies pile up.”

“Yes. I think it’s the closest we can expect to a peace offering, perhaps even a truce,” Caitlyn murmured, “But there’s a catch; I’m certain Jinx only intends to keep to it as long as we continue to play. On her board, and by her rules.”

Vi turned back to survey the chamber. She nudged the half-dried mess of paint on the floor near where Sandvik had been standing with the tip of her boot and blinked in puzzlement as she found a scrap of brightly colored rubber.

“So, this is it, then,” she muttered, “Her first move?”

Caitlyn stepped up beside her, close enough to feel the heat of her lover’s strong arm, shoulder to shoulder.

“I should think so.”

“I don’t get it, though. This wedding. Dumping a paint bucket on a rich Piltie and blowing up the buffet. What’s the message? Random chaos? Something to do with those protests?” Vi shook her head and sighed, “It doesn’t make sense. She never really cared about Zaun, not even when she was with him, her beef with Piltover is pure personal spite…”

A shudder ran through her; she scratched at her hair again and kicked another wad of ripped, paint-splattered balloon rubber – this one marked with a familiar monkey sign on it – out of her path.

“Shit, Cait. I wonder where she is now. If she’s okay…”

Caitlyn let her hand slip down, where none would see, to twine her fingers with Vi’s. To squeeze her hand, to ground her, to let her know she would not be forced to hunt her sister alone.

“I think,” Caitlyn said softly, “Wherever she is, whatever she’s planning, we’re only seeing her opening play.”

“What does that mean, Cupcake?”

“It means it’s our move,” said Caitlyn, “And we’d best hurry. We may not be the only players on the board.”

“I got a tip,” Zeri had said, and that’s how it started.

He’d been in his workshop when she showed up, poring over plans, tinkering with the mostly finished ‘Timewinder’ to incorporate some review notes he’d gotten in his correspondence from Heimerdinger, and thinking, as he did almost constantly now, of his parents.

Nearly a month of chasing their tails, rumors and hints they’d thought might lead to something concrete, some way of identifying which of the steaming, sprawling wellsprings of Chemtech industrial production and human misery that were the factories on Brasscopper Alley might be owned by Glasc Industries – and which might employ a married couple named Wyeth and Inna – had been stonewalled again and again.

So it was that those four little words didn’t spark much more of a response from him than a small sigh.

“Look, Zeri, if it’s going to turn out to be another whump chase–”

“Something’s going down,” Zeri announced, hands thrust in the pockets of her coat, head tilted up defiantly, “Hey, I know it’s been rough man. I know I told you I knew where they were, I didn’t know that they’d…”

“Move them, yeah,” Ekko planted his hands on the workbench and leaned there, fighting another sigh, “We’ve been over this. It’s not your fault, you couldn’t have known how they rotate the workers.”

“No, I shoulda known, Ekko,” she muttered, “It’s what they do. Bring the fresh ones to the frontline work, the ones that can work longer and harder, shuffle out anyone with lung rot or sump sores until they can work again or t-they…”

Ekko winced, and Zeri trailed off, shaking her head.

“…sorry, man.”

“Not just that,” he said, “It’s so they won’t get time to form close friendships. Anything that could turn into protest, strike, revolution…”

“Shit,” said Zeri, “I didn’t think of that.”

“They learned that from the Pilties,” said Ekko. He drummed his fingers on the benchtop and tried to force the tension from his neck, “But if we can’t even figure out which of the factories on Brasscopper Alley are owned by Glasc Industries, how can we find them?”

“It’d help if boss bitch didn’t hide her money so damn well,” Zeri groaned, “She’s nothing like the rest of them.”

Ekko nodded. Renata Glasc operated on a very different level to the Chembarons that Ekko and Zeri had each been used to messing with. She didn’t simply sit at the top of a feudal pyramid of lieutenants, fixers, thugs and couriers like most of them did. She moved freely between the two cities, and any hints of where her money flowed, how much of it there was, and how it was transferred was concealed beyond a hall-of-mirrors of private contracts, front companies, charity foundations and secure accounts with Piltovan banks.

“…hell,” she continued, slipping her hands out of her jacket just to flex her fingers. Occasionally, Ekko would see a little flash out of the corner of his eye – little arcs of electricity tended to crackle around Zeri’s fingertips when she was angry or nervous, “Most of the people we spied on, stole from, or interrogated didn’t even know they were working for Renata Glasc.”

“And if we can’t see where her cogs flow, we can’t even know which factories on Brasscopper she has her fingers in,” Ekko mumbled.

Without that, they were no closer to finding Wyeth and Inna, and Ekko’s initial fervor for their quest had begun to be gnawed at by despair and doubt.

“I’m sorry, man. I’m trying my hardest here. We’ll find them, we’ve just gotta find that one weak link in the chain.”

Ekko gave a tired smile.

“You’re right, Z,” he said, turning back to her, “Thanks. Y’know sometimes I think your optimism’s the only thing keeping me going-oof-”

She’d stepped closer, and without warning slammed into him in a body hug.

“We’ll find them, Ekko,” she said, determined, squishing him in her chunky jacket, “This tip’s different. You’ll see.”

Ekko swallowed slightly and leaned into the hug, the bright spice of her scent and the strength of her arms. His breathing started to even out; he nodded.

“…th-thanks, Z.”

“Don’t mention it. We’re a team. I told you we’re getting your parents back, and that’s what I’m gonna do,” she said, squeezing him one more time before she slipped away. If there was a faint heat on her cheeks, if she’d held his eyes for just a little longer than usual, Ekko didn’t quite know how to react to it - not right now, not with everything going on.

Just my imagination, he thought, gotta be, but…

“...besides,” Zeri added, after a tiny cough, “Glasc burned me too. The shit Wencher Spindlaw pulled in my neighbourhood? Led back to her.”

Ekko blinked, “Damn.”

“Yeah,” she said, “So...um…you wanna hear what I got?”

He took a deep breath, leaned back against the bench, and nodded.

“Sure, hit me.”

Zeri’s eager smirk sparked at her lips.

“So, you remember our old friend Garront Trezk?”

“Old Spider-baron?” Ekko shuddered, “Creepy guy, lots of limb augments, big in the hallucinogenic chems and weapons trades?”

“That’s the dick,” said Zeri, “Lot of whispering going around that he and Wencher had a falling out with Glasc and Sevika. That there’s gonna be some kind of throwdown.”

Ekko arched his brows and whistled. Barons undermining each other was no big news in Zaun, they’d screw each other over and come back to the meeting table like nothing had happened on a weekly basis, but direct conflict was rare.

An escalation was never a good thing for Zaun.

“He’s trying to pull allies together for a special mission. Get this –”

Zeri paced, chuckled, and then spread her hands.

“He’s gonna try to prove he’s the top dog by taking down Jinx.”

“What?”

“She ripped off some shipment of theirs. And it’s got them all barking about how to respond; Glasc and Sevika on the side of ‘messing with Jinx is asking to get your face blown off’-”

“Can’t believe I’m agreeing with them,” Ekko laughed.

“…Trezk, Wencher and a bunch of other Gago asshats all scheming about how to deal with her on the other.”

“And screw each other in the process,” said Ekko.

“And screw each other in the process,” Zeri agreed, “This could be our in, man. If Trezk makes a move against Glasc, he’ll probably try to hit her cash flow first, and he’s way sloppier about his trail than she is.”

“And that could give us a window into her finances,” said Ekko, “And lead us to my parents.”

“We just have to tail Trezk long enough,” said Zeri, “And hope Jinx doesn’t blow him to chunks before he leads us to Glasc’s moolah.”

“What the hell does he want with Jinx?”

Zeri shrugged, “I dunno. He seems to want her captured alive, for whatever stupid reason. Word is he’s meeting with some mystery merc. Someone who says they’ve got a way to hunt her down…”

“Good luck,” Ekko snorted, “This some chemmed up sniffer?”

“No, man, that’s the thing,” Zeri shuffled from foot to foot, chewing her lip, “This is why I wanted to bring it to you. This dude, whoever they are – my contact wouldn’t stop babbling about it – says they didn’t even want a cog in return.”

“Huh?”

“They said they’d bring in Jinx, alive or dead, and all they wanted was, get this – the person she’s with.”

Ekko’s blood ran cold.

“Lux?”

“Crazy, ay?” said Zeri, “And the crazier thing – apparently? This merc’s foreign. And…they’ve got some kind of weird powers, to boot.”

Ekko pushed off the bench and paced his workshop, thoughts roiling in his head.

“Z, this could be bad,” he muttered, “This could be no big deal, but if it’s bad, it’s gonna be real bad. We have to warn them.”

Zeri blinked, “Warn Jinx?”

“…you don’t know her,” said Ekko, shaking his head in a swish of white locs, “Someone she cares about gets targeted, there’s no telling how she’d respond. If she gets caught flat footed…it could be bad for the whole of Zaun.”

“Okay, okay, so we need to get eyes on this asshole first…” she put her hand on his shoulder, “It’s tomorrow night.”

“What is?”

“The meeting. Trezk and his goons are going to meet with this mystery merc. I was gonna suggest we tail them anyway, see if he tries to hire the guy to move against Glasc as well. It’s going down by the old Wysker Refinery.”

Ekko blew out a breath, “Okay. I’ll pack up here and tell everyone. We need a plan and a team.”

Zeri nodded, clapped him on the shoulder, and made for the door, “I’ll go get them together.”

Alone with his thoughts for a moment, Ekko glanced up to his workspace.

His eyes couldn’t help lingering on a little rickety metal toy he’d tucked away behind his other inventions. No-one left here to recognize it for what it was.

His seventh nameday gift from Powder.

“Jinx,” he murmured, “Just where the hell are you?”

The Ring Rider whined and jolted as it spun between crumbled towers and leaned to dodge its way narrowly through gaps in the latticework of scaffolding that covered this part of Piltover.

Periodic whoops of laughter and shouts of glee still swelled from one of its occupants, as well as the occasional shriek of alarm from the other at each close brush with oblivion.

It juddered as it bounced along the stone railing of the plaza steps, whirred up the side of the old clocktower and spun inside, between the zip and rattle of the autoguns and the clang of floor-panels swinging away over the drops into recently installed pit traps…

Drowned amid the stillness of the abandoned district, and amid the silenced clockwork guts of the enormous tower around them, the Ring Rider finally slid to a halt, and a lanky figure slung its leg out of the vehicle, goose-stepping onto the platform and swinging about in a pirouette, still humming an atrocious mangling of a certain Piltovan aria.

As the gush of steam slid from the cooling disc of the Rider, Jinx twisted off her goggles and thrust out a hand, grinning, to the wind-whipped girl – still dressed in a Piltovan serving maid’s uniform – who shimmered into visibility as she swayed and staggered out after her.

Luxanna Crownguard of House Crownguard, youngest scion of the most powerful family in the kingdom of Demacia, diplomat, aristocrat, charity worker, trained spy – runaway, refugee, mage – slid her hand into that of Piltover and Zaun’s most notorious terrorist and gave a somewhat shaky smile as her eyes focused.

“W-well that was – it was.”

“Great party, right?” Jinx beamed and wiggled her brows, “The buffet was to die for!”

Lux blew a strand of blonde hair out of her face and laughed, a little nervously, “Hopefully not.”

“…aw, yeah, you did the bubble thingies again, or whatever,” Jinx rolled her eyes, “Well, fine, Fat Hands and Big Hat might play nice if we do. But worryin’ about, like, collateral deaths and stuff – ugh, boring…”

Lux took a deep breath, waiting for her heart to stop pounding.

“That was our accord, Jinx,” she swallowed, “If you really want to play with them, we’ve got to do it right. Besides, blowing people up is easy. You can do that in your sleep. Isn’t it more challenging this way?”

“I…I guess,” muttered Jinx, unable to quite look Lux in the eye without her scowl slipping away, “Bahhhh…”

“Don’t worry. The boom is your job, the boring part is mine,” Lux winked at her, “So just focus on what you do best.”

As she got her bearings, she swept gaze about the cavernous interior of the clocktower – the gantries and scaffolding repurposed to turn the broken-down cogs and gears into a spider’s web of platforms, the stained-glass windows retouched with garish splashes of neon paint, the interior cluttered with salvaged junk and multiple tinkering workstations, surfaces already beginning to be scrawled with familiar designs...

“Y-you propelled that contraption like you’re trying to murder the sky, I don’t exactly have my bearings. Is this still Piltover...?” Lux breathed out, “…where are we?”

“Oh, yeah! Milady Flashlight! May I present…” Jinx crooned, leaning to kiss the hand in her own, sweeping her other arm out in grandiose display, “Our new digs! Ta-daa!”

Lux turned and craned her neck as she stepped onto the central cog; “Jinx…it’s only been a moon since Progress Day…were you sneaking up here and setting this up the whole time?”

Jinx chortled, “You betcha, Blondie. I mean, I had this place kiinda set up for a while – told you, I got a bunch of lairs – but since we’re gonna take on Pooptover’s Foulest on their own turf…”

Jinx gesticulated again to indicate the dusty space with a sinuous snake-wave of her arms.

“New base of operations! What do you think?”

“It’s beautifully you,” said Lux. She turned her smile back to the blue-haired wildcat beaming at her back.

“Us, you mean,” said Jinx, her grin twitching away a little, self-conscious, “I-I mean, um, you really like it?”

Only then did Lux let her eyes wander past and notice a few little touches. The ramshackle but cozy-looking bed up on the most private platform. The antique Piltovan wardrobe beside it. The racks for her sword, her staff, her armor. Empty bookshelves, waiting for Lux to fill them.

“…beautifully us,” Lux agreed, with a bubbling laugh, “I love it. Thank you, Jinx.”

Her breathing had finally come under control; her heart no longer thundered with their wild ride behind them.

And the echoes of the panicked screams at the wedding lingering in her ears.

…Protector, what did we just do?

“I suppose that we have their attention now, don’t we?” Lux said with a weak grin.

Jinx bounced her head in a whirl of blue braids and gave a nasty cackle. She swung her arms about, swept up Pow-Pow – her hot-pink minigun – and Fishbones – her shark-like rocket launcher – from where they lay on the battered couch that she’d somehow dragged up here – and hugged them to her thin chest.

“Thanks for sitting this one out, guys,” Jinx sighed, “Next time, I promise, I’ll make it up to you!”

She lay them reverently aside and hummed as she flicked a spot of gravy from her shoulder, found a chunk of gratin in her braid and chomped it down happily as she flopped onto the couch.

Lux, her legs still a little weak from the breakneck Ring Rider escape, and numerous moments where a hair-trigger miscalculation on Jinx’s part would have sent them slamming at dizzying speed into any number of pieces of grand Piltovan architecture, wobbled only slightly on her way to the couch, and slid down it next to Jinx.

Shoulder to shoulder, she lay her cheek to Jinx’s own.

“What now, Jinx?” Lux murmured, “Are we safe here? Are you sure we weren’t followed?”

“Haha, pork chops didn’t even see us coming, let alone going,” Jinx quirked a little grin, her bright eyes closing, leaning into Lux’s touch, “I know how to shake a tail, Blondie. Relax. Traps would let us know if anyone got close, anyway.”

Calloused, slim fingertips with their cracked mismatched nails brushed Lux’s hair from her cheek.

“Kick your feet up. This is our lair now. You’re home!”

Lux’s eyes grew distant.

White colonnades and green fields seemed so far away. A storybook fable with a tragic ending, that had happened to someone else.

Home…

Lux turned her head, eye to eye with Jinx, blue to vibrant amethyst.

“I’m home,” she said, “With you.”

Just as Jinx’s eyes softened and she had begun to reply, it all hit Lux at once. Adrenaline, relief, the heady rush of Jinx’s smoke-and-bubblegum scent, the touch of Jinx’s fingertips to Lux’s blazing cheek, the curve of her clever smirk and the flicker of her eyes down to Lux’s mouth.

Lux kissed her, a swift, wet crush of lips.

Jinx’s little squeak of surprise quickly stilled, and she twisted like a snake, entangling Lux in her arms and twining their legs as the kiss deepened.

Home. With you. Your lips and mine. So far beyond anywhere I’d ever imagined my life going. You, impossible you…

Lux broke the kiss only when she ran out of air, eyes drifting open, lips lingering to steal more soft presses to the warm mouth so close to her own.

“…mm, what now, my Jinx?” Lux repeated in a dizzy whisper, in between kisses, “We…do have a new bed.”

…Light, is that all I think about now?

“Oh, we’ve got aaaalllll kinds of surfaces, Flashlight,” Jinx gave a husky chuckle against her mouth, “Wanna break ‘em in?”

“Mm… ah, um…we should probably eat something first,” Lux shuddered as her stomach rumbled, “All that food…”

“I can think of something I want to eat.”

“Jinx!”

Her lover – I have a lover, now – cackled and buried her face in Lux’s shoulder, limbs wrapping her up like an overly affectionate spider.

Lux shut her eyes and let her thoughts go. She tilted her head back and swooned as Jinx’s hungry, prickly kisses descended her throat, leaving ruddy rings of possessiveness marked on her skin.

Her eyes drifted to the distant reflection of airship searchlights glowing past even the opacity of the stained glass.

And flickering openly through the access archway Jinx had flown their new toy in through.

“...at…at least let me close the front door first.”

“They won’t find us,” Jinx whispered, her fingers squeezing Lux’s own, “But ughhh now I’m imagining my stupid sister peeping on us all naked and stuff, ugh. Fine! Go, shoo...”

She reluctantly slithered away and pushed sulkily at Lux’s arm.

Lux snickered as she stole one final impish kiss to Jinx’s brow before rising and, still a little flustered, moving to the controls for the blast door Jinx had installed to seal their new lair.

As unfamiliar as she was with the mechanized contraptions of Piltover and Zaun, Luxanna was hardly primitive enough to mistake the operation of buttons labelled “Open”, “Shut”, “Lock” and “Boom!” for her convenience.

She stopped.

Staring out over the darkening cityscape beyond – this can’t be right, we’re... 

The bright lights and soaring brass and stone towers of Piltover were close – so close – but there were no lights around their tower. Theirs was a district of tall dark buildings wrapped in scaffolding, of conspicuous holes in a grand skyline. But only a few blocks away, the heart of Piltover shone and pulsed with Hextech-fueled light and life.

“We’re still in Piltover,” Lux licked her lips, “We’re right in the middle of it…what is this place?”

Wiry arms slid around her from behind. Jinx’s chin propped on Lux’s shoulder; she felt the searing heat of her lover’s body wrap against her back.

“Last place they’d look for me, Blondie,” she chuckled, “They used to call it ‘Progress Square’, because Pilties are sooo imaginative…”

Their clocktower was tucked in an inconspicuous corner of a grandiose plaza ringed by even taller buildings. All of them stood derelict; their walls chipped and cracked, their windows broken, the avenues around them fenced off.

“Guess it’ll need a new name whenever they finally get around to cleaning up. But that won’t be any time soon. They’re about to have bigger problems.”

Lux frowned, staring down the avenue, across the square, where the shadows of a gigantic edifice lingered in the half-cleared rubble and abandoned construction machines waited for their operators to return.

“Jinx,” she murmured, knowing the answer already, “What happened here?”

Jinx bared a hollow grin with a thousand meanings - and none at all.

“Me,” she said.

Chapter Text

THE PILTOVER EXPRESS, 4^th day of Arv, 997 AN.

MARITAL MAYHEM MARS PILTOVER’S PEACE!

GALA EVENT TERRORIZED BY TROUBLEMAKERS ~ The wedding of Alysoun Sandvik and Terenz Runford, much anticipated among investors and inventors of Piltover, was tragically disrupted last night, first by a rabble of anti-Progress protesters and then by an unprecedented act of terror.

At this exclusive event, attended by recently elected Councilors Salo, Hoskel and Shoola and the heads of Clans Cadwalder, Arvino and Holloran, a cowardly attack by unknown actors destroyed the peace and sanctity of the gathering, reportedly beginning during Count Meville Sandvik’s keynote speech. This craven assault left several partygoers injured and caused over a hundred thousand cogs in property damage, as well as despoiling the nuptials of the happy couple.

“This is catastrophic. This deal was worth millions,” stated the Count in an interview after the fact, “The wretches even made off with the prototype Ring Rider. Why did I pay security? They couldn’t even stop my little girl from abandoning her father in his hour of need.”

Regarding the incident, Warden-Prefect Nicodemus was unavailable for comment, but we have the following statement from Sheriff Caitlyn Kiramman:

“The property damage is obviously extensive, and there are injuries and psychological trauma to the guests to be considered. We were very fortunate that there were no fatalities, given the volume of explosives used.”

When asked about the murderous intent of the assailants, Sheriff Kiramman presented an unusual theory.

“We have an ongoing investigation to bring the perpetrators to justice. It is our belief at this time that this attack was meant to disrupt the proceedings rather than to cause casualties.”

When our correspondent pressed further, another senior officer was overheard to comment, “If she wanted bodies, there’d be bodies,” before being ushered from the scene.

In a strange twist to the tale, the newlyweds were unavailable for comment, having disappeared shortly after the incident, allegedly last seen departing in the company of a mob of protesters gathered to dispute the merger of Sandvik Hexvehicular Industries and Runford and Sons Cogworks.

Asked if there was an investigation into the bride’s disappearance, the Sheriff declined to comment.

Speculation is rife that the attack, mimicking the tactics and iconography of the notorious mass-murdering criminal known as ‘Jinx’, indicates another act of terror against our city by this menace, following her apparent return last Progress Day with the now-notorious release of wild animals from Count Mei’s Menagerie and chaos that followed.

Is it truly Jinx, or have pro-Zaunite agitators simply formulated a copycat strategy to disrupt the fragile peace of the Accords?

As we head into yet another day with our fair city shattered by violence and unrest, many citizens are asking; will Piltover ever be safe again?

The newspaper spun end over end into the air and jerked as the electrified bullet from Zapper blasted a hole straight through the front page, pinged off the ceiling of the clocktower and lodged somewhere in the stonework.

“Copycats?!” Jinx snarled, “Agitators?!”

“Jinx,” Lux sighed affectionately, her hands twining together as she caught a gleam of morning sunlight through cracks in the stained-glass and wove it about the falling paper…

Reflections, passing through tiny water-droplets in the air, light generating heat, with a little push from me, bouncing them back over and over, the air grows denser…

Visible as just a patch of shimmering iridescence, it caught the falling pages and floated them toward her, where she lay on their couch eating a piece of purloined Piltovan toast.

“Oh, they’ll be agitated all right – when they’re picking little goopy chunks of their posh patooties outa the freakin’ stratosph-oohh…”

Jinx’s eyes flicked to the display of magic despite herself, and she only gave a grumpy huff as the paper finally landed in Lux’s grip.

“…Didn’t know you could do that,” Jinx mumbled in awe.

“Neither did I,” Lux giggled under her breath, her eyes shining almost as much as her hands with the warm bliss of using her Light, “But I’ve been…experimenting. Now that I can. Now that I’m free to.”

Free. For the first time in my life, I’m really, truly free.

There were still things she couldn’t do, places she couldn’t reach. Demacia had taught her to starve and snuff her Light. The Illuminators had taught her to focus it through her staff into formulaic spells, easily controlled – or easily concealed.

Touching her Light directly felt like closing her fingers around a candle flame. Warm, inviting, blissful, until it was suddenly, painfully too much.

But she was learning. Each time, she could reach a little deeper without recoiling from a part of herself she had been taught was dirty and dangerous and wrong…

It had taken Jinx to let her see what it really was.

Lux sighed into her smile, and turned her eyes to the ruined newspaper, picking at the scraps Jinx had left of the page with the story on it.

“Oh. You know why they’re printing this, don’t you?”

“Because they’re Piltie whackerjackers with their heads stuck up their coochies!”

Lux eyed her through lowered lashes.

“Jinx, you need to think about it from their point of view. That wedding was an important business alliance-”

“Blah, blah, ugh…” Jinx made a gagging gesture with two fingers in her mouth.

“Yes, but!” Lux quickly scanned the paper. How strange. It’s like a disposable book…

The thought was deeply unsettling to someone raised in a kingdom where books were hand-crafted treasures stored in libraries and treated with reverence, but she pushed it aside.

Because a different sinking sensation was crawling down her spine.

“…if they openly admitted that you, Jinx, had hit them, and gotten away with it, how would that look?”

“Like I’m awesome.”

Lux couldn’t help a shrill giggle. She rolled up the newspaper and tossed it at Jinx’s head, where it beaned her on the crown and bounced off, earning Lux a playful amethyst-eyed scowl.

“You are, but stay focused,” Lux sat up and drummed her fingers on her knee, “What would it say about them?”

Jinx pursed her lips and scrunched her nose.

Light, why is she so cute?

It floored Lux how someone so incredible, a genius with deadly technology, savvy survivor of the underworld of Zaun, protégé of a deadly crime-lord from her youth, clearly skilled with intimidation and mind games, could be so utterly clueless about how the Topside society she despised functioned.

I suppose, Lux thought, this is why she needs me. Hopefully not the only reason.

One glance up to see the way Jinx looked at her dispelled those doubts.

“Well, it makes them look pretty stupid,” said Jinx, folding herself up like a blue-haired spider on the couch opposite Lux, “Since they can’t catch me.”

“Jinx, you blew up their seat of power, killed half of the government, started a war – that Piltover arguably lost – ending in the undercity’s secession…”

Jinx spurted into snickers like a naughty schoolchild, “Oh yeah, haha, I totally did all of that-”

“…And then Progress Day…and now the Sandvik wedding? And you’re still at large?”

“Mm-hm! See. Awesome.”

“To Piltover, you’ve got to be the Darkin incarnate,” Lux shook her head, “People in authority aren’t used to being burned like this and then having someone get away from them. Listen…”

Lux leaned over and cupped Jinx’s hands between her own.

“With everything you’ve done to this city already, if they admit it’s Jinx, Striking Again With Impunity, they’ll look powerless to stop you.”

Jinx’s grin flickered with wicked glee at this.

“-No, I mean,” Lux sighed, squeezing her lover’s fingers, “I mean if they can’t catch you, they’re going to pin it on copycats and sympathizers. People they can get to. And then they’re going to start making examples.”

Jinx growled and rolled her eyes.

“If that’s Cupcake’s next move? Pathetic! I’ll just be louder next time so nobody will be able to deny it’s me!”

“Not Caitlyn,” Lux shook her head, “It doesn’t make sense for her.”

At the mention, Jinx's jaw tightened and her lip twitched. She sneered into an empty space, her eyes fixed.

“Blondie, you don’t know this town. She’s Boss Enforcer. It all goes back to her.”

“From everything I know, she’s fought hard to keep peace between the cities,” Lux said, “She’s got nothing to gain from stoking tensions. Someone, though, must stand to benefit from doing so…”

“Ughhhhh! So…what? You’re saying I should stop? Just because blah blah Piltie politics blah?”

“I’m saying be careful,” Lux said softly, “That’s all.”

Jinx tipped her head and studied Lux for a long time, her long blue bang hanging down over one bright eye.

Lux shivered. Even now, even with everything that had passed between them, there were moments when Jinx reminded her of how much of her - her mind, her thoughts, her worldview - were alien to everything Lux had ever known.

And could change at the wildest of whims.

Finally, Jinx snort-laughed and sprang up from the couch.

“C’mere,” she said, tugging at Lux’s arm, “Bring your toast!”

“Wh-wha-hey!”

Lux blinked and stuffed her remaining toast between her teeth as she flailed to follow Jinx to the center of one of the cog platforms, where Jinx had scattered a workbench, a few boxes of gadgets and cans of paint.

“Mmph-wha’we doing?”

Jinx didn’t reply right away. She flung herself down in a whip of blue braids, snatched up a box of chalk and started quickly sketching out a tangle of geometric lines on the cold metal surface of the cog. Lux watched in fascination as the network grew in complexity, and Jinx started linking the lines into rectangles and squares and marking them with scrawled names.

Then, she spilled a small box of multicolored metal plates, mostly cut-offs of other junk splashed with paint to identify them, onto the makeshift field.

“Is this…our next plan?” Lux queried; her brow cocked.

Jinx, tongue poking between her teeth, grinned and nodded. 

“Yup! And I’m gonna show you exactly why you don’t have to worry at all…”

Lux slid down to sit crosslegged next to Jinx, her head tipped in curiosity with a spill of golden hair over one shoulder.

“Oh,” she smiled, “Are you, now?”

Jinx’s blazing pink eyes flicked up to her, and she caught a flash of her wildcat grin.

“Once upon a time, I was really good at this game, Blondie,” she tapped the chalk on the floor, her eyes flickering about what she’d drawn, “Best in the Lanes, really. Or maybe it wasn’t me,” she frowned, “No, it was that little dead girl…”

Lux frowned, too.

“…no, shut up! I’m talking to Lux,” Jinx shook her head as if to clear it, her eyes momentarily distant. “Doesn’t matter! I’ll show you how to play. And then…We do it on a bigger board! Y’know what that means?”

“What?”

Jinx wiggled her brows and dragged another box of equipment over with a clunk of metal.

“…Field trip!” she crowed.

“Already?” Lux blinked, “B-but the Wardens will be on high alert looking for you!”

“Trust me, Luxie,” Jinx bit her lip, “I’ve got Fat Hands and Big Hat right where I want them.”

She pushed the yellow pieces toward Lux and winked.

“I’ll start,” she said.

Vi groaned and tugged at the hem of her dress uniform.

“Stupid thing doesn’t fit.”

“You spent four hours with the tailor, darling,” Caitlyn murmured, smiling past her arm at another cluster of mercantile dignitaries, “It bloody well ought to.”

Vi scowled and scanned the gathering.

Just one day after Jinx’s attack on the Sandvik-Runford wedding, and here they were again: another posh Piltie gala, another big clump of the wealthy and powerful of Piltover all in one conveniently explode-able place, and this one in the broad daylight of the City Innovation Gardens on a sunny Piltover morning.

“Cupcake, some of these people were at the wedding yesterday…”

“Yes,” Caitlyn said, keeping her smile up, as she nodded to another Kiramman family friend, keeping her mien carefully balanced between amenable member of the present class and dress-uniformed Sheriff here in official capacity.

Vi lowered her voice, once she was sure they were out of immediate earshot; “…so is this ‘stubborn defiance’ or ‘suicidal ignorance’ we’re seeing here?”

Caitlyn sighed under her breath and met her partner’s eyes.

For a moment, Vi thought she’d overstepped, that she’d sensed a hint of that flinch Cait sometimes got when Vi took shots at the Pilties, of which her lover and partner was decidedly one, and which she herself, by reputation, was becoming.

A thought that left her stomach twisting right down to the bottom.

But there was also a weary understanding. Cait had grown up in this, she knew how to wear their masks, but those masks had never really been a comfortable fit.

Not for you, Cupcake. You’re different.

Vi studied the woman beside her. She was surrounded by the peers of her birth and class, her people, like Vander and Benzo and the kids in the Lanes had been for Vi, and yet Caitlyn wore her pristine Sheriff’s dress uniform with its tall, crested hat like it was armor.

Protecting her from a world she’d never really belonged to. Vi was beginning to finally understand that.

“A little of both,” Cait murmured, “Look at Arvino and Hoskel,” she nodded across the chamber, “Tell me what you see.”

Vi chewed her lip. The Clan head and the newly elected niece of the previous Councilor both cast frequent eyes to the burly Wardens guarding the entrances and exits of Viscount Petrigan’s annual Showcase, held in Piltover’s Innovation Gardens.

And the increased presence of privately hired ‘security’ personnel, courtesy of Clan Ferros, despite Caitlyn’s best assurances that their team was up to the task.

“They’re scared, Cait,” Vi narrowed her eyes, “But they came anyway?”

“These galas are crucial to the equilibrium of the city. You might see a frivolous party and a display of languor and excess; but there’s half a dozen deals going on behind every cocktail glass,” Caitlyn gave a thin smile, “If these people don’t want to fall behind in the race, they have to be here. This isn’t entertainment for them, it’s survival.”

“The wheels of Progress, eh?” Vi muttered, “Gotta keep turning, no matter what.”

“You’re learning,” Caitlyn said.

Vi’s smile faltered.

She was learning. Figuring out the way the Pilties thought, what drove them, their desires, needs and anxieties, all the ways Piltover worked. It made them…comprehendible. Ordinary. Human.

And that made her want to crawl out of her skin and hide somewhere deep and dark, somewhere survival meant staving off a slow choking death in a slimy gutter, somewhere that smelled like iron and sweat and smoke and home.

Vi drummed her fingers on her arm and gave a polite, awkward smile as another Clan Cadwalder daughter flashed her a flirtatious glance in passing.

Her smile vanished as soon as the woman had moved on, “…what are we doing here, Cait? You really think this is her next target?”

Caitlyn observed the interaction with wry amusement and then breathed out, sharp eyes surveying the gardens.

“She hit Count Mei’s Menagerie on Progress Day. She hit the Sandvik-Runford wedding. If there’s any pattern so far, it’s that she has consistently targeted high-profile displays of Piltovan wealth and prosperity. The Showcase is a massive fundraising event attended by many of the same people called out by those protests,” Caitlyn pursed her lips. “If Jinx is intending to follow up the wedding with a one-two-punch, here is where she’ll strike.”

“If that’s the pattern,” Vi said under her breath, “If there is a pattern.”

Caitlyn glanced sidelong at Vi and frowned.

Vi rolled her jaw as if she were loosening up for a fight. She couldn’t quite keep her eyes off the blue-and-black clad Ferros footmen patrolling the upper tiers of the greenhouse walk. With their blank-eyed goggles, masks, and berets, they cut a more uniform appearance than Caitlyn’s rather more discreet Wardens.

And, with the gleaming black metal of their proprietary F-302 Punisher carbines slung within easy reach, a far more intimidating presence. One that sent a familiar tingle up Vi’s spine. An old one.

An ugly feeling, crawling up her veins and between the tendons in her arms, shoulders, and neck, even worse than the constant low-key tension she always had at these parties, feeling like she was a junkyard dog trussed up for a show.

“I don’t like it, Cupcake,” she whispered, “I know you’ve squared our plan with the team, I know it’s solid…”

Caitlyn nodded, “We can’t afford to slip, with Jinx involved.”

“Damn straight, but what the hell are we going to do about them?”

She jerked her eyes to the gantries as subtly as she could as another Ferros patrol shadowed overhead.

“We can’t control their presence,” Caitlyn muttered, “We can only work with what we have. But I have seniority here. They’ve been informed of the possibility of a Jinx appearance and agreed to defer to our plan of action.”

“I don’t like it.”

“I know, Vi, but I …” Caitlyn faltered, “I wasn’t informed they’d be here. And I can’t stop private security deals between Clans. I’m sorry.”

“Cait, I know, I just-”

“I see the peace is well kept this eve, Sheriff,” called a crisp voice across the gardens; Caitlyn stiffened slightly and Vi turned with some surprise to look up – quite far up – to a very tall man in foreign garb striding closer, “And this must be your famous partner.”

A white cloak swept about his heels as the man stopped before them.

His towering height and statuesque build would have given him away as a Demacian immediately, if the pauldrons hadn’t already, but the white-and-gold formal garb would have cemented it from across a castle hall.

“Vi,” she said, clearing her throat, and offered the man a curt nod, “Nice to meet you.”

“Vi,” Caitlyn gave a smile, “This is Lord Eldred, of House Crownguard of Demacia.”

Vi did her very best not to visibly suck in a breath.

…Crownguard!?

“An honor,” said Eldred, “I regret to hear of the incident yester eve. This ‘Jinx’ seems to be quite a pox upon your fair city, is she not?”

Vi bit her tongue and put on her best fake smile. She gave the man a tense nod. She didn’t trust opening her mouth.

Damnit, I’m so not good at this.

“She has been certainly at the center of many tragedies,” said Caitlyn, coming to her rescue, “We were fortunate that the wedding attack did not cause any fatalities.”

“Due no doubt to the tireless vigilance of your Wardens,” Eldred replied, “You have my admiration, Caitlyn, in undertaking this difficult task.”

As cordial as his manner was, there was something flinty and calculating about his expression, a very measured sense of control, that crawled in Vi’s neck.

“Much appreciated, Lord Crownguard,” Caitlyn bowed her head, “You may rest assured we have everything in place to protect this gathering, should the need arise.”

“I have utmost faith,” said he, “I must mourn the timing, of course, of this returning pest. Diverting your department’s attention, as it were, from your investigation into the whereabouts of my niece, Luxanna.”

And there’s the trap, Vi thought. Cait’s suddenly cold eyes showed that she knew it too.

“Should you need any assistance in that endeavor,” Lord Crownguard continued, “Allow me to offer our resources.”

‘Resources’? Vi wondered, Demacia’s half a continent away…

“Your offer is appreciated, Lord Crownguard,” Caitlyn said tersely, “But our investigation is proceeding as planned, there’s no need to concern-”

Vi cleared her throat, “Yeah, that Jinx sure is a pain,” she said, playing her disarming grin against the man, “But we’ve got it in hand. I’m sure you guys know what it’s like, dealing with troublemakers that won’t go away. Wasn’t there that rebellion…that mage who broke his chains, what was his name, again?”

Caitlyn’s mouth fell open for a moment, but Vi held her ground, and her friendly smile, just covering the feral glints of teeth.

Eldred’s smirk slipped away like a sheathed blade, “Sylas of Dregbourne.”

“That’s the one. How’s that going, by the way?” she turned an innocent look up to the man, as though they were talking about the weather, “Did you get him yet?”

Eldred narrowed his eyes to dangerous slivers. His smile returned, but now it was devoid of all warmth.

“Alas,” he said, “The degenerate kingslayer has fled to the Freljord, where he now consorts with barbarians at our borders. Unfortunate. But it is only a matter of time before the Dauntless Vanguard brings the dog to heel.”

He leaned in as if sharing a conspiratorial word and smiled grimly.

“Justice is never thwarted, only postponed. Would you not agree?”

“Couldn’t have said it better myself,” said Vi, smiling back, letting her friendliness slip not an inch, “We’ll bring in your-” she glanced at Caitlyn “-niece, safe and sound, no matter how long it takes. You’ve got my word.”

Caitlyn cleared her throat, and swept in front of Vi, slipping her arm into the taller man’s, “In the meantime, Lord Crownguard, I trust you’re finding the party stimulating? Let me introduce you to my friend, Lady Veraza; she’s been sponsoring work on the most promising hex-free agricultural techniques, you may find a like mind on the risks of overreliance on the arcane-”

“Intriguing, I am sure,” said Eldred, “Well, I am sure our paths shall cross again ere our tasks are seen through. Good eve,” his eyes lingered on Vi’s only a moment before breaking away.

With a warning glance over her shoulder, Caitlyn led Eldred away, with the Demacian only giving a gracious smile and bow of his head as he withdrew, leaving Vi with that rising feeling of tension in her neck.

Like rolling thunder before a sump-storm.

‘Degenerate’? ‘Dog to heel’? Demacians don’t even do ‘creep’ by halves, do they?

Poor Lux.

She blew out a slow breath and returned to her burly-security-guard act, her gaze sweeping the crowd, clocking for the hundredth time the exits and entrances, both obvious and less.

None of them she expected Jinx to use.

“Powder,” Vi muttered, “Is this really what you’re here for…?”

Despite the sinking feeling of apprehension in her gut, she couldn’t shake a sense that her sister was closer than she could see.

Jinx lowered the spyglass and scowled.

“She didn’t get it,” she muttered, “She didn’t figure it out?”

Mylo crackled like static, floating away in the dark, scolding her for her pathetic hope. Claggor was deathly silent, sad, disappointed.

Far away though they were since she had sunk them in the deep, something about Vi brought them drifting back into her periphery, through all the other voices…

She forgot…

Violet, closer, right by her shoulder, gnashed her sharp teeth through a cupcake that bled as she bit into it and laughed at her.

Of course, I forgot, Violet sneered, I’m all grown up. Why, aren’t you?

She thrust the bloody cupcake at Jinx’s face. Jinx swatted it away from her bangs with a growl…

Jinx focused her eyes as her hair swished aside, and Violet was gone.

Of course, she was gone. She hadn’t been next to Jinx on the roof. She was down there, in the fancy Piltie party with her fancy Piltie girlfriend.

Jinx growled and pressed her knuckles into her temples.

Her breathing only settled when she caught a bright, sunlit scent of sweat and leather and girl upon the breeze.

“How many on the southeast entrance, Blondie?” she said, without looking up.

The light tread upon the edge of the roof beside her settled, and she heard the faint rustle of cloth a moment before her Lux shimmered into her peripheral vision.

“Ten,” Lux replied, a little breathlessly, “And that’s the last of their deployments.”

“Not quite,” Jinx squinted through the spyglass, “There’s ol’ Zayney-poos and his special ops squad.”

Lux leaned over Jinx’s shoulder, fragrant golden hair falling rather distractingly to brush Jinx’s cheek.

“Where?”

Jinx nudged her head to the side, and slid her gaze left of them a few rooftops over.

Lux chanced a peek around the edge of the chimney they sheltered behind. Just out of their eyeline, silhouetted in the shadow of a Hextech receiver tower, the outlines of a cluster of uniformed figures knelt or crouched, their faces turned to watch the massive, temperature-controlled glasshouses of Innovation Gardens.

Special Officer Zayne Asako and his elite unit were only a few buildings away from them, close enough to make out their mannerisms as they waited, but from where she was, Lux wouldn’t have been able to see them at all if it weren’t for the angle of the climbing sun spilling their shadows on the rooftop beside them.

“Gah,” mumbled Lux, “They’re so close!”

“Not looking where we are, though,” Jinx chortled, wheeling the spyglass around again, “Tee-hee-hee, that’s like…the best and brightest of Piltover’s Finest parked all around this shindig, just for lil’ old us…”

“I can’t believe I didn’t see them. How’d you spot them?”

Jinx tapped her nose and sniffed, “Zayney’s a Trencher turncoat.”

Lux blinked, “…and?”

“Now he’s Topside he overdoes it on the Piltie soap, trying to ‘blend in’,” Jinx rolled her eyes and grinned.

“Oh,” Lux let out a small, nervous laugh, “Jinx, there are other units inside. Different uniforms. There are flying machines that seem to be scanning the interiors as well…”

“Oh yeah, those’ll be Ferros goobers and their drones. Whee, Clan mooks! Even better.”

“How is that better?” Lux furrowed her brow, “This place is guarded like a fortress. Getting in and out without one or both of us being spotted, even with my abilities, would be incredibly dangerous.”

“Yup.”

“What exactly are we going to do?”

Jinx tugged her back into the shadows of the chimney. Her eyes gleamed in the gloom as she gestured to a ladder leading down to the alleyway behind them.

“Remember what I showed you back at the lair?” Jinx whispered, slapping the spyglass into her grip, “Field trip time!”

Without further explanation, she scurried swift and fluid as a squirrel bouncing along a branch and slid down the ladder out of sight, blue braids slithering over the edge of the roof.

“Jinx, wai-” Lux blew out her breath and turned her eye to the glass, scanning the far-off interior of the Gardens one final time.

There was Vi, her vivid sweep of red-pink hair quite unmistakable even amid the gauntlet of Piltovan fashionistas she was steadfastly avoiding. Gauntlets at her back, ready for the fight, whenever it came…

A glint of white drew her eye. A tall man, a long white cloak, grey-white hair, stood with his back to Lux, talking to Caitlyn and another woman near one of the display tables.

Lux’s breath stopped.

No. No that’s not possible.

The man was partially obscured by one of the big ironwork beams that crisscrossed her view of the garden. As crawlingly familiar as the shape of his neck and shoulders were, she couldn’t get a look at his face.

Growling under her breath, Lux reached for her Light, bending, shifting the facets of dewdrops in the air to alter their refractive properties, to bounce what they reflected toward-

Movement in her peripheral vision disrupted her. As the sun’s angle moved, Zayne and his men, with their focus still on the Gardens, were repositioning between rooftops toward a better vantage point.

Theirs.

“Curse it,” Lux muttered, and pulled her focus back inward, to the light acting upon herself, bouncing from her own skin, clothes, and hair…

She tapped her staff to her ankle.

A sightless ripple slipped down the ladder, into the darkened alley.

Caitlyn slid back to Vi’s side with a released sigh.

“That was dangerous, Vi.”

“You’re welcome, Cupcake,” Vi split a scarred grin at her, “Sorry, you were floundering around in circles there. I might not know Piltie politics, but I know a big dog throwing his weight around where it ain’t his territory.”

“I had it handled.”

“Uhuh,” Vi crossed her arms and blew a pink strand from her lips with a small puff of breath, “Why didn’t you tell me the Demacian envoy was her freakin’ uncle?”

“Keep your voice down,” Caitlyn muttered, her gaze brushing across Lord Eldred’s back from across the room. Fortunately, he seemed to be engrossed in discussions with a Clan Ferros firearms manufacturer…

Not that that wasn’t a terrifying enough prospect.

“He’s not just her uncle,” she said glumly, “Eldred Crownguard is the husband of Tianna Crownguard, High Marshal of Demacia, commander of the entire Demacian military.”

“Oh shit,” said Vi.

“…He’s also head of the Mageseekers.”

“…oh shit,” Vi repeated, “Did I just-”

“Yes,” Caitlyn smiled thinly, “But thank you, anyway.”

“Shit,” Vi winced, “Cait, this is a terrible idea. If she shows up, this could be a disaster…if they both show up-”

“I know,” Caitlyn chewed her lip, “But something’s not right here, Vi. I’ve got a gut feeling there’s something-”

“We’re missing,” Vi nodded, “I know. I haven’t been able to shake it, either.”

Caitlyn narrowed her eyes in thought. Her gaze swept the room; six squads of Wardens guarding all entrances. Zayne’s unit running exterior surveillance.

Hextech tremor sensors scanning every inch of glass. Ferros guards with heat goggles on every gantry. Scout drones providing aerial recon.

Of course, none of that matters if she chooses to just fire a bloody rocket through the glass, but…

What else could we be…

A prickle ran up the back of Caitlyn’s neck as she heard a soft clink, clink, clink of metal on metal above them.

From the corner of her eye, she saw the tall figure stroll with perfect precision across the footbridge behind her. The feet that made that sound upon the ironwork gantry weren’t feet at all, of course. They were blades, sharp as razors, pitched to balance the body they held with an eerie grace that had always reminded Caitlyn of a two-legged spider.

Pale as a ghost, her face displaying both the sharp angles of a woman of maturity and the porcelain, unnatural smoothness of false youth, the woman tipped her head down to look straight at Caitlyn.

“Camille Ferros?” Vi muttered, “They let her out in daylight? That’s new.”

“Our day keeps getting more bloody complicated,” said Caitlyn under her breath.

She offered Camille a faint smile and a nod of acknowledgment, but the face of Clan Ferros’ chief Intelligencer was unreadable in response.

Camille did, however, return Caitlyn’s nod.

Her gaze then slithered across the Garden interior, seeming to scan every individual present with equal parts razor penetration and utter detachment.

Including Lord Crownguard, who glanced back at her with a measured interest of his own.

“Always wondered how she doesn’t get stuck in the floor,” Vi whispered as Camille turned with a silent swivel of her hips and stalked away from them.

“Vi, be polite.”

“Sorry, that woman freaks me the fuck out, Cait. It’s not the augments – plenty of those in Zaun. It’s just-”

“I know. But she’s not to be crossed, Vi,” Caitlyn’s expression darkened, “Under any circumstances.”

Vi fell silent for a moment, rubbing her knuckles.

“I don’t like this,” she repeated under her breath.

Wondering, like I am, if her sister is coming. And when. And how…

And what she might be walking into.

Vi bore her burdens silently, but Caitlyn could feel them. Not only the silent waves of dark tension that would roll off her all night at any ‘Piltie party’ she’d been forced to attend. This intensity was a different beast.

Everything hit differently when it was Jinx.

Caitlyn leaned close as she dared to her partner, her lover, her other half, wishing she could sweep her up in her arms and take her away from all of it.

“I cannot believe I’m saying this,” she murmured to no-one, “But any time now, Jinx…”

“Jinx, we’re moving away from the Gardens…”

“Dur.”

Lux had started to breathe hard. She was fit, quick on her feet, and the air up here was nowhere near as difficult for her Demacian lungs as the air of Zaun…

…but keeping up with a Shimmer-enhanced cryptid like Jinx was no mean feat. The streets and alleys of Piltover scrolled past them as they ran, keeping just out of sight of the midday crowds.

“…uff…why, exactly?”

“Cuz they’re full of goobers. C’mon, we’ve gotta randy views.”

“Ran-…” Lux puffed, “Rendezvous?!”

Jinx glanced over her shoulder and skidded to a halt in the shadow of a – for Piltover – dingy alleyway, Lux smacking into her back with a squeak.

“Why have we-mm!”

Jinx had turned on her with a flash of mauve eyes and pinned her to the cold alley wall, snatching her mouth with a hot, hungry kiss that tasted of gunsmoke and bubblegum.

In the dark, with Jinx’s hands pressing her wrists above her head, Jinx’s eyes glowing slivers burning in the gloom, Jinx’s wiry, muscular body writhing against her own, Lux melted.

“…Flashlight,” Jinx husked against her mouth, “Say it to me like that again any time you like.”

Lux, dizzy, her eyes half-lidded, chased Jinx’s lips as she pulled away with a wicked cackle and darted ahead again.

“Mmuh…um…” Lux shook her head to clear it, flushed, heart pounding, Light, how can she be so… “Wuh-wait, rendezvous with w-who exactly?”

Jinx only giggled, fanned herself, and twisted around the alleyway ahead, sliding down an abandoned industrial pipe to a lower tier of the city and dropping into the back of a sculptor’s yard, closed for renovation.

Lux flailed after her, landing with a cloud of dust and a slightly-less than graceful crouch and blowing a blonde strand of hair out of her eyes.

Jinx thrust an arm out and whistled.

“The rest of the team!”

“…T-team!?”

For a moment, there was only Jinx, standing posed like a melodramatic statue in the empty yard; then, movement entered Lux’s periphery, and she caught a whiff of rather ripe animal scent.

Familiar animal.

Two baboons leapt down the walls, freshly smeared with self-applied lipstick and face-paint. One was wearing a bullet belt, the other had a backpack visibly full of Chompers and a pair of flight goggles.

“Oh, hey guys,” Lux gave a breathless grin, “Guess you’re still around, huh?”

Belts the Boom-baboon bounded over to her, and Lux scrunched her eyes briefly before relaxing into – and submitting to – the creature poking around in her hair, tipping her head over and nibbling at strands of gold as he groomed her.

She looked up through her hopelessly mussed hair to see Jinx smiling at her. Not grinning like a demon, just smiling, even a little softly…

…whilst, of course, Goggles chewed at the tip of one of Jinx’s braids and flicked through her lopsided bangs with scrutinous interest.

When Belts was satisfied – perhaps a little disappointed – that Lux had no lice to extract, he bumped her and sprang back to his partner’s side, and Jinx huffed and rolled her eyes as Goggles chuffed and let her go.

“Gro-oss,” she said, flicking her soggy-ended braid, “Ugh! All right, fun’s over, troops, snap to attention! Huhttt!”

The two baboons screeched and hopped away from the girls, and Jinx saluted, strutting back and forth in front of them, “Company, present arms! And legs! Other extremities optional!”

Goggles scurried into the shadows of the yard and dragged out an overloaded wheelbarrow full of rickety boxes of tools and plates of multicolored metal, dripping with the fire-tailed, squeaking forms of a small troop of Powder Monkeys.

“Cadets,” Jinx said, her face solemn, her voice twisting into an imitation of Caitlyn’s posh accent, “Today, we embark on a mission of critical importance to the City of Piltover. Today, the City of Progress becomes the City Goin’ Nowhere! And it all starts with you!”

Lux just stared at her in awed fascination as the monkeys howled and bobbed their heads. She doubted the animals had any clue what Jinx was saying, but she was clearly entertaining them…

And likely, trying to entertain her.

“Oh, I see. You’re not taking me to the theatre, you’re bringing the theatre to me-” finally, Lux shook her head and laughed softly, “Jinx, is this… a date?”

Jinx snapped out of her act and stammered a moment – “Of course it – I mean - I…no…I mean yes! I mean-I’m being totally serious here, c’mon, Blondie!”

Lux fought back wheezing hysterics. Impossible. Impossible!

All along, she had been treating this with deadly seriousness. After all, the Wardens of Piltover and the agents of the Clans were nothing to be taken lightly. They were highly trained and well-armed. She knew that Caitlyn’s reputation as a shrewd leader, a brilliant tactician and detective was well deserved, and Vi’s prowess as a frontline powerhouse was no lesser.

Lux had approached this as she would have any mission for the Radiant deep into enemy territory.

But, for all that she and Jinx fell naturally into lockstep in so many ways, how was she to reconcile her training and methodology with…this?

“Serious,” said Lux, fighting it down with a gulp, “I see. Then, commander…”

She straightened, tilted her chin, and looked Jinx in the eye, “I stand ready. Give me my orders.”

Jinx’s lips twitched into a beaming smile. Her eyes shone.

“We-ell,” she said, with a curt nod, and grabbed the wheelbarrow one-handed, “There will be four teams.”

Jinx thrust one of the messily color-coded boxes at Lux’s feet, “Team Yellow!” and then dragged another beside herself, “Team Blue!” She pushed a third to the baboons, “Team Ka-ka-ka,” and the Powder Monkeys, a tiny box marked ‘Extremely Flammable’ to finish, “And Team Ook-ook-oo!”

The primates bounced excitedly, shrieking.

“Piltie Party ends at dusk. We’ve got until then!” Jinx narrowed her eyes, “Four teams. Four colors. One board. And very arbitrary rules!”

“Jinx,” Lux stammered, “U-um I’m sorry but are you actually expecting the baboons to follow your orders-”

“Shh,” Jinx winked at her, and lowered her voice to a whisper, “…not at all, but they’ve got the basics figured out and whatever they do will be a perfect diversion, right?”

“Oh,” said Lux, “I…guess?”

“See? Madness in my method,” Jinx winked, shrugged Fishbones off her shoulder, turned him over, and scratched an approximation of the game board she and Lux had practiced with that morning into the dirt at her feet with his chunky metal tailfin.

“Ka-ka-ka, you’re East-” chuffs and growls, “Ook-ook-oo, you’re South,” cinder-like tails swished as they ignored her, pouncing and pulling on each other’s ears – “Which leaves Team Blue North and Team Yellow…West. We work outward to these four points, then circle here until we meet back here at this spot – then we split up and head back to our respective lairs to lie low…and wait for the music!”

Lux blinked, looked at the collection of scribbled lines, and then down from the hill they stood on, the view from the yard sweeping down from the high arts district of Piltover through its main concourse into the city center, the industrial and residential districts…

“Same game,” Jinx grinned, at Lux’s moment of realization, “Bigger board.”

“Oh, boy,” whispered Lux.

“Hope you’re ready for some exercise, Blondie,” Jinx winked at her, and grabbed her toolbox under one arm, “Cuz we got a lot of ground to cover.”

A small smile tugged at the corner of Lux’s lips.

“Orders received,” she said, “Game on, commander.”

The clockwork city ticked and tocked, its Hextech veins pulsing into the deepening shadows of the afternoon.

Blue and gold lights rose into the approaching evening, as dusk fell over Piltover.

One by one, the esteemed guests filtered out of Innovation Gardens under the watchful eye of Wardens and Clan security both. Goodbyes were said, messages exchanged, handshakes made, and dalliances whispered as the well-to-do of Piltover congratulated themselves on a return to form.

Extravagant hexcarriages in brass and silver, experimental automotors with their grumbling engines and even a few personal dirigibles floating into the Gardens’ ample courtyard formed the cavalcade of exiting patriciate.

“She didn’t show,” Vi muttered, “All those Ferros assholes. Just a touch heavy-handed there, Cupcake. She’s too smart to walk into that, it must have scared her off.”

She slung her leg over the seat of the bike; the so-called “Justice Rider”, as Officer Tisca had joyfully coined the Wardens’ newly issued two-wheel autocycle when it’d been first assigned, was a gleaming beast of Piltovan technology with thus far unmatched horsepower…

…and just a few lingering issues with cornering and braking that meant that only two officers so far had taken up ownership of one. The irrepressible Tisca, of course…

And Vi.

“I’m surprised she didn’t see it as a challenge,” Caitlyn furrowed her brows as she climbed a little more gingerly onto the seat behind Vi, slipping her arms around Vi’s waist when she was certain there were no lollygagging rag reporters lurking nearby to write them up as tomorrow’s spice for the paper in lieu of a fresh Jinx attack.

“Unless it was never the target,” said Vi, kicking her foot down and revving the machine’s Hextech engines with a spark of thrumming blue.

“Unless it was never the target,” Caitlyn repeated, leaning her chin into Vi’s back.

What are we missing?

The cycle rolled out into the wide cobbled streets. Vi kept her focus on the road, the wind tousling her hair; Caitlyn thought fondly of evenings without work, evenings without Jinx weighing heavily on their thoughts, where she might lie that precious head in her lap and run fingers through those pink strands in lieu of the jealous wind…

If only.

“Huh,” Vi mumbled, blinking suddenly. She slowed the bike as they came to an intersection, and a frown pursed the scar on her lip.

“Hmm?” Caitlyn murmured, lifting her chin from Vi’s back.

“I must have zoned out there,” Vi shook her head, “Could’ve sworn we were on Beaker. Never mind, I’ll circle around.”

“It’s all right, Vi,” Caitlyn smiled, “You’ve got a lot weighing on you. Cut down Flagcrest and head east, it’ll shortcut us home.”

Even after a year in Piltover, Vi was far more comfortable with walking the streets than making use of the City of Progress’s elaborate transport systems. At least the autocycle gave her agency over her movements, even if she hadn’t quite figured out the road layout yet, it seemed…

Caitlyn let her eyes settle on the scrolling glow of the streetlamps as Vi turned them left down a covered arcade, open to vehicles after sunset when the crowds had cleared…

Perhaps Vi was right, and Jinx had identified Caitlyn’s baited trap as just that. The Ferros presence at the Showcase had, indeed, been heavy-handed. Was this Viscount Petrigan’s overreaction to the Sandvik-Runford wedding, or Albus Ferros showing his hand in some political stunt meant to impress the glitterati?

A shudder went through her as she recalled Camille’s appearance. Hardly comforting. Camille Ferros was not a figure brought out of the shadows for display.

Her presence meant something; Caitlyn couldn’t put her finger on wh-

Vi swore sharply as lights flared blindingly in their face; a three-carriage Hexcargo freight car full of capacitors screamed out of a side-street and narrowly avoided them both as it screeched past. The driver shouted out the window and waved his fist.

Vi flipped him the bird with a muttered, “Asshole,” and turned down the next street. Caitlyn thought, for a moment, she’d caught a flash of unusual color from the corner of her eye on a wall right on the edge of the turn, but she thought no more of it.

“Traffic’s bad tonight,” Caitlyn mumbled, “Hard to focus.”

“Sorry, Cupcake. Some nuts out on the road. Yesterday must have everyone on edge…”

She trailed off as her words were drowned out by a symphony of honking, shouting and clunking metal.

Vi braked, the autocycle juddering under them as they emerged from Flagcrest into a tangled jumble of Hexcarriages, velocipedes, rickshaws and monocycles.

“What the…flaming fuck…”

Most of the cavalcade from the Gardens were stalled here, clogged up around the Viscount’s stretched silver-plated carriage with its nose crushed like a badly made paper plane by an enormous mining transport that should have been down in the industrial district.

Viscount Petrigan himself was shouting his head off at the transport operator, whilst Officer Tisca wrote up the incident. She gave a wincing glance back at Vi and Caitlyn and waved to them.

Vi waved numbly back as she stared at the cacophonous carnage. They were only a handful of streets away from Innovation Gardens, but they’d somehow ended up smack bang in the middle of town…

And so, somehow, had seemingly every Piltovan with a vehicle.

Caitlyn caught another flash of color. She sat up straight, widening eyes darting to familiar corners, plaques eye-height on the brick and stonework of the buildings, signs angling from poles at each intersection.

Stately and neat, each name printed in large block letters for the convenience of the citizens of Piltover to find their way…

…so long as they pointed the right way.

And so long as those letters spelled the right names.

Flagcrest Arcade had been switched with Rattlecart Lane and Cygnet Court was Cognet Crescent, which was a different street, supposed to be on the other side of Piltover – the sign for Gleambridge was facing toward the factory district instead of the river – and Caitlyn was pretty sure there wasn’t a Ticklepickle Street in Piltover anywhere.

There were blue arrows painted on some of the walls, yellow arrows on others, pointing in different directions.

And neon paint on the back of every sign, doodled animals and scrawled words, too small to read from here.

Caitlyn groaned and planted her fingertips into her temples.

“She didn’t…” Vi said, slack jawed, “She couldn’t…”

“Oh yes, darling,” sighed Caitlyn, “She did.”

Chapter Text

“She switched the street signs,” Jayce repeated.

Caitlyn couldn’t help but wince, “Yes, it certainly appears that she did.”

Jayce bowed his head and leaned his hands on his desk.

The three of them – Jayce, Caitlyn and Vi – sat in his overly large office overlooking the industrial quarter. Officially, and on Cailtyn’s own insistence, members of the Piltover Council no longer met in a single location. The workings of the government were concealed by shuffling them between various suitable locations throughout Piltover. Even their private offices were rarely in the same building anymore.

So far, it’d worked. No further assassinations or attacks on the surviving Councilors or the replacements of those lost had occurred – at least until the near-miss of the wedding. Caitlyn couldn’t stop them congregating at an informal soirée, after all, or the wheels might fall off Piltover itself.

Jayce Talis’ choices, Caitlyn thought, were a tell.

Twice now, he’d tried to step down, only for disaster to force him back to his seat. Piltover’s rock in every storm, her Defender of Tomorrow. A tomorrow that never seemed to come for him. He’d settled here into a lofty space, as befit his station, but one overlooking the furnaces and foundries of Piltover’s ingenuity.

Politics keeping you just out of their reach, Jayce, she wondered, or they out of yours?

The way he looked out his window gave her answer.

“Cait, the entire street network around the south docks ground to a halt.”

“I know.”

“…transport ships were waiting for hours for the loading crawlers, because someone stole half the signs and threw them in the bay, twisted more to face the wrong way and smeared the rest with feces-”

Vi snorted, and when Jayce glared at her, shrugged, “Hey, don’t look at me.”

“Shouldn’t I?” Jayce smirked humorlessly, “What, Vi, you forget to potty-train her?”

“You wanna repeat that, pretty-boy?” Vi growled, and Caitlyn held her back with a hand on her chest.

“Well, how about the eastern warehouses? Spot fires all over the place – cables melted in the cranes – and let’s not go to that traffic nightmare across the whole city center!”

He ran his hands through his hair, “You’re telling me Jinx did this? That one girl somehow got all around Piltover in a couple of hours, turned the city upside down single-handedly, and made a fool of us all - again? And she did all this, and no one saw her?”

Caitlyn narrowed her eyes.

“Jayce,” she said, “Calm down and consider yourself – consider all of us – lucky that Jinx seems to have settled on pranks instead of mass murder.”

Jayce opened his mouth to say something, but the steely look in Caitlyn’s eyes and the warning one in Vi’s quelled him. He blew out his breath instead.

“These ‘pranks’ are still causing massive property damage, terrorizing and injuring our citizens and risking lives. Even if Jinx isn’t pulling the trigger, it’s a matter of time before someone gets seriously hurt, or-”

“She’s capable of a lot worse,” said Vi.

Jayce visibly bit back harsher words and turned back to Caitlyn.

“Okay,” he said, “Fine. Let’s get it on the table, then.”

He looked up at them both and straightened his back.

“This is Jinx. She fired the rocket. She-” he cleared his throat, “Cait, if it weren’t – weren’t for Mel, I wouldn’t be standing here. Viktor wouldn’t…”

He trailed off, eyes glazed and distant.

“…your mother wouldn’t be with us,” he murmured, “We know what she’s capable of. What makes you think she’ll stop at ‘pranks’? Look at me and tell me why I- why all of Piltover shouldn’t be terrified of what happens next?”

Caitlyn took a deep breath, but it was Vi who cut in, stepping in front of her.

“Hey,” she said quietly, but her gravel hid her fire, “You went and offered Silco your deal. You told him to give up his – his daughter - for his dream. How do you think she took that?”

Jayce’s jaw tightened but his brows twisted – anger, one moment, and something else the next.

“You’re unbelievable,” he shook his head, “You’re blaming me for what she did?”

Vi scoffed. She wasn’t done.

“You think any of our hands are clean?” she said, “All of us – you, me, even you, Cupcake – whether we meant to do it or not, we pushed her.”

“Vi-” Caitlyn began but trailed off at the sight of Vi’s glare at Jayce.

“…Silco, cutting his deal-with-the-devil with you behind her back. Cait, an Enforcer, taking her sister away from her. Me, making her choose between me and…” she rolled her jaw, the word still tasting like bile and venom on its way out, “-him.”

“I had to make peace,” Jayce started, “One mass murderer for the future of Zaun-”

“She killed him,” Vi said quietly, “To save me. Because I made her choose. Then she fired the rocket.”

Jayce fell deathly silent. Vi stepped up to him and looked right into his eyes.

“We pushed her, pretty boy. Right to the fucking edge – and over it.”

She glanced sidelong – out the window – out over the industrial district – beyond it, to the climb up to the city center.

“This? It’s just a game. Poke us, provoke us, see how we respond.”

The very visible gap in its glorious towers.

“…are we gonna learn from our fuckups, hot stuff?” said Vi, “Or do you wanna see what happens if we push her again?”

Jayce, brows softening, nodded.

“Fine. How do you intend to respond?”

Caitlyn cleared her throat.

“Before I tell you that, Jayce, I need your confidentiality.”

“You have it, Cait,” he said, “You know that.”

I wish that I did, she became bitterly aware of the burning tension in her shoulders. The headache that hadn’t gone away – not for days, really – maybe never for long, since Progress Day – I wish that I had anyone I could really trust here…

I have Vi, and only Vi, and some days I don’t know if she should trust me.

Caitlyn swallowed.

“She isn’t alone,” she said quietly, “However this person is influencing her, her patterns have changed. And we believe that we can leverage that to our advantage. To end this peacefully, without any more lives lost.”

“You want to bring her in alive,” he sighed, “Okay, Cait, listen…”

He looked at Vi again and bit his tongue.

“This accomplice?” Jayce shook his head, “You think she’s working with – who, these ‘Zaunite sympathizers?’”

“No,” A sharp scowl knit Caitlyn’s brows, “That’s proper bullshit, Jayce,” she said, “You and I both know the papers are just using this to stir up hatred against Zaun. I don’t know if it’s just to sell more print, or if someone’s in their ear, but-”

“Let them,” he said.

Caitlyn blinked. Vi breathed out through her nostrils, muscles tensing in her forearms, but Jayce held up a hand.

“If you tell them it’s Jinx – it’ll be mass panic, Cait.”

“You can’t know that.”

“She started a war,” Jayce, “I very much can know that, thanks.”

“Fucking bullshit!” Vi snarled, and Cait thrust herself between Jayce and Vi, just in case her partner’s furor finally snapped. Her boots rang out on the marble floors in the tense silence between them.

“I won’t, Jayce,” Caitlyn said, tilting her chin, “I won’t be part of scapegoating Zaun. Stirring up the bad blood, that’s everything we’ve worked against-”

“Yes, and it’s still there, no matter what we do,” he said, “Piltover doesn’t control Zaun anymore. There’s no Enforcers to go down and bully them with impunity. Let both sides glare at each other across the river until you’ve caught Jinx, then clear the air, publically. It’s not ideal, but it’s better than the alternative.”

“You know how many Zaunites live in Piltover?” Vi growled, “Once you light that fire, you can’t control it. People will get hurt, pretty boy. Probably killed. You ready to wear that again?”

He fell silent again and took another breath.

Jayce Talis may have gone from pioneering inventor to revered political leader, but he’d never been good at schooling his emotions. His big, strong, open face wore them all over it, especially for Caitlyn. He wasn’t a natural liar, for all his honest face had grown a false tongue.

“Jayce,” Caitlyn said, firmly, but a little more gently, “You may be correct about the panic. And I certainly cannot force the papers to print the truth. But I will tell it, to whoever will listen.”

Jayce turned away from them, paused for a second, and then laughed out loud, shaking his head.

“Of course, you will,” he said, “You’re Caitlyn goddamn Kiramman.”

She caught a flicker of change on his face, the beginnings of a smile, familiar from a decade or more of friendship, too often a stranger in recent years.

“Stupid of me to think I’d change your mind,” Jayce chuckled, “Thanks, Cait, for being the best of us.”

“I’d be no other way,” she said.

“Damn straight,” said Vi.

Jayce laughed again under his breath. His shoulders slumped.

“Fine. Bring her in your way,” he said, “Do whatever you have to do. Just don’t get anyone else killed. And Cait-”

Caitlyn breathed out, her lips softening only a little when she saw the way Vi’s heart had leapt to her eyes.

“-it’s going to be a tightrope,” there was a warning note in his voice, “With the Council, the clans, the people of Piltover. You know what she is to everyone here, better than anyone else. She’s Piltover’s monster, and they will never feel safe until you tell them Jinx is dead.”

“Jayce-”

He looked back at them both, seriously now, but softer.

“I know you, Cait. If you get her, you’ll want to make an example for Piltover, won’t you?”

Now it was Vi’s turn to furrow her brows and look at Caitlyn.

Damn it, Jayce, don’t…not like this-

“Hope and healing for the cities, I know,” he said, lifting his hands, “Redemption and reconciliation. It’s beautiful, Cait, it’s you. But what if it’s not her?”

“You don’t know that,” Caitlyn’s lip quivered, “There’s a clinic, new methodology, results. People like her can really be helped. Don’t tell me that you can know that outcome-”

“Cait…” Vi whispered.

“I can’t,” Jayce said, “But I can tell you it’s not going to be the answer Piltover is ready to hear.”

“So – what?”

“Make her disappear, Cait,” Jayce said quietly, “Listen to me just this once. If you get Jinx, make her gone. Wherever Piltover will never hear from her again. Where, how, that’s up to you.”

He looked at them both, almost pleadingly.

“For everyone’s sake,” he said, “Including hers. Promise me.”

Caitlyn breathed out, breaking her eyes from his.

“Goodbye, Jayce.”

Caitlyn closed her eyes and walked away, Vi blinking after her, confused, still processing everything – the implications of what they’d just discussed.

“Cait,” Jayce called to her, “One more thing.”

She stopped in the doorway, breathing hard, and glanced over her shoulder.

“She wants to see you both,” he tossed something from his desk, which Vi caught in a quick snatch of bandaged fingers, “About your Demacian problem.”

Vi, brows still furrowed, passed Caitlyn the small, metal object.

A seal of Clan Medarda.

“Thank you, Jayce,” Caitlyn said quietly, “For this, if nothing else.”

“Don’t mention it,” Jayce gave her a tired smile, “To anyone. Please.”

Caitlyn only nodded.

As they left, Jayce turned away, to his window, and the distant ringing of the forges. 

Sunlight filtered through the small windows of the safehouse; outside, the shrilling of distant gulls and the clangor of industry, that constant and ever-present song of Piltover, formed the backdrop to his solitude.

In the darkness and silence of his cell, Garen Crownguard meditated on his position.

As prisons went, this was far from the worst he had endured. The interrogations had consisted only of questioning and the scratch of Caitlyn’s pen to her notes. There had been no threats, no torture, no starvation. Vi had unlocked his manacles early in the piece, when she had gauged there was no malicious intent against their persons.

He had full domain of the safehouse, including the small kitchen, food cellar and drinks shelf. The latrine was no old bucket and dirty straw, but one of those Piltovan contraptions tastefully separated from the space in its own ventilated room. Garen had to admit its disposal was both efficient and hygienic once one figured out the Void-spawned mechanisms of its use.

The only reason he was even sitting in his cell was that the small bunk in there, whilst appropriately spartan and a little cramped for a man of his size, was comfortable, and caught a hint of the afternoon sun.

But he was a prisoner, nonetheless. Caitlyn had bound him here with the one chain he could not break.

His word.

Garen sighed and stretched his neck for the hundredth time, settling his weight on the bunk and resting his hands on his knees. His fingers twitched, yearning for the hilt of his sword; but that old friend was under lock-and-key in the evidence room at the Hall of Law, as were the rest of his armaments.

Without them, he felt naked. Fighting down the spiking chill in his spine, Garen took a deep breath.

Lux is out there alone. I’ve come all this way, and I still can’t go to her.

A bitter echo rang out in his thoughts, scratched from squeaking iron jaws amid the blood-choked wreckage of the village of Goldweald, where Garen’s unit had found not a single survivor, only crows…

…GaRe̡n͡,̀ b͝Ro͜T̡he̴rŔr,̛ ͝d̸O͟n’T ̢H͞aTE ́mE͘.͟.̧.͞… 

It had only been the wind, shrieking through broken hinges. His imagination, the wind, and his guilt…

But that mission, before Demacia’s eruption of chaos, now felt somehow like a prophecy.

Two months now – or three? – since they had last stood on the same side. Amidst the driving snow, the flashes of steel and cries of the raging and the dying – the stink of blood and sweat amid the chill of ancient stone.

One last time, she had stood with him, for Demacia. One last time, brother and sister, they had fought back-to-back against the waves of Winter’s Claw barbarians crashing through the shattered gate…

Against Sylas of Dregbourne, leading them.

Yet before, when the Mageseekers came for you, it was Sylas who stood at your side and defended your city, whilst I ran back to my King for… what? A mad hope that I might summon Jarvan to reason?

Garen could not lie to himself. He had abandoned her, his flesh and blood, to his duty. He had run back to Jarvan for orders.

I needed his permission. To stand and fight for my sister’s life.

Sylas, scourge of Demacia, accursed rebel mage, had needed no such permission. Lux had asked for his help, and there he was, despite all the bad blood between them. Oh, Garen had his miracle – Jarvan’s heart had turned, and Garen had returned to Terbisia’s defense at the last moment…

Where he should have been before the first sword was drawn.

Garen closed his eyes.

My loyalty to Demacia is unquestioned… my duty … but what brother am I? What son, to our father and mother? What man could leave his sister to fight alone?

When it was his turn to be besieged, when the tides had turned again and set the Crownguard siblings once more on the opposite side of the field from Sylas of Dregbourne, Lux had not hesitated to summon her long-forbidden magic against her former friend.

To save her brother’s life. To defend his Vanguard, even unto calling down Galio himself to their aid. She had fought Sylas, mage to mage, and driven him into retreat, thwarting his revolutionary ambitions for the moment.

Garen could see her there in his mind’s eye, a tiny, radiant figure amid the twisted and bloodied bodies slowly being buried in the snow. Like a vessel of Kayle’s own grace, the very radiance of Demacia’s Light, shining, a primal power in a very mortal form.

Only when the battle was done did she show him the missive she had received from the King, pushing it into his hands.

“I cannot stay, Garen,” Lux had said, her breath still steaming in the cold, her eyes still containing hints of gold in the blue, “Do you understand, brother? Everyone in Terbisia would be in danger. This was the last time.”

Words, only words, he had pleaded. She could return with him to the capital. Jarvan had seen reason before, and Lux’s favor with the King was strong, and would be stronger with this victory against the rebellion.

“Stop it,” she shook her head, “Garen, I didn’t fight Sylas because he’s my enemy. His cause is not unjust.”

Those words still wounded him now, sticking like icy hooks in the back of his heart. Hidden wounds, cold as the Freljord winds.

As cold as truth.

“I fight him only because he’s coming to kill my family.”

Her hands, tiny against his own, had folded his fingers over the royal decree, demanding her return to Terbisia, her city for refugee mages, her place of hope.

Demanding she submit the names and abilities of each and every one to be registered and known to the agents of the Demacian crown.

“But I have another family, too,” she said, “And I won’t see this happen to them. Again!”

“Sylas’ forces keep recruiting, even from afar,” Garen protested, “The King merely wants to be certain of your subjects’ loyalties-”

“He may have denounced and disbanded the Mageseekers, but how many of his advisors have ties to the order? How many crawled back to him, penitent, claiming they had no part in its misdeeds? Who is whispering in his ear, Garen?”

He could not answer her.

In his cell in Piltover, Garen sank forward as he breathed out, his head in his hands. Somewhere outside, the Hexgate boomed, punctuating his solitude.

“Nobody in my city is joining any rebellion. You know this, Garen! How many are elderly, sick, families and children? They’re no threat to the nobles – they’re with me because Sylas scares them almost as much as the Mageseekers did!”

Lux stalked away in disgust, staring out over the battlements, into the light splitting the clouds. Behind them, his great shadow cast across the bloody courtyard, Galio rested in silent attendance to their words.

“I can’t do this to them. This registry is only where it will begin. All over again. My mages know that. They haven’t had the luxury of the Crownguard name to shield them. Light, the things they’ve shown me, their stories, their scars…”

She bit her lip, but for all the haunted horror in her eyes, that steel glinting there had not faltered.

“If I do this to them, they will never trust me again. I vowed to protect them, and I’ve used the Crownguard name to do it. But if I enact this order, then I’m just another hand of tyranny slowly closing on their throats. Do you understand?”

Garen walked to her side, leaning his weathered gloves upon the stones.

“I cannot,” he admitted, “I am no mage.”

She closed her eyes and let her hair fall to hide her face for a time.

“Brother, you once told me that…that I was your sister…and a mage…and a Demacian.”

Lux turned back to look at him. Everything bared in her eyes, the pain he’d seen there over all these years, always concealed, always masked in smiles.

“Where is ‘Luxanna’ in that listing of my faces? Who am I, Garen?”

“You are all of those things.”

“I can’t be,” Lux said softly, “When one of those things must kill another.”

Garen stared at her in slow building dread. “If you disobey a direct command from the King, you risk his punishment.”

“I accept it gladly,” she said.

“They will replace you as governor-”

“I’ll nominate a successor.”

“And they’ll force through the registration anyway!”

Lux winced and breathed out, fog in the cold.

“Then, with consideration to the event of an existential threat to the citizens of a city of the realm, I will invoke Rathvan the Second’s Law of Self-Governance, declaring Terbisia an independent city-state within the Kingdom of Demacia,” she smiled, “And its neutrality in the ongoing civil conflict.”

Garen’s heart had ground to a halt in his chest. His ears tuned into the wind, unable to process what he’d heard.

Until he did.

“Y-you cannot do that, Lux!”

“I am aware of the powers Jarvan recently vested in me, and of the ancient laws of Demacia. Actually, I know them better than Jarvan does,” she smiled still, uncannily bright, like looking at the sun, “All those books, remember? I practically lived in the library. You used to call me Little Page-Duster.”

“The King’s decree-”

“Is subject to certain legal loopholes,” Lux turned her eyes on him, “Imposed by the Great Houses about four hundred years ago as a check on the monarch’s power. Safeguarding themselves, of course, should their strongholds become threatened by a tyrant. Which I fully intend to exploit. If I can do one good thing with my blood and my title, let it be this.”

Garen let his jaw hang open.

“Jarvan would be - betrayed, Lux,” he whispered, “He loves you like – like a sister-”

She rolled her eyes and laughed, “Garen, don’t make your attempt to betroth us any more uncomfortable, please.”

“You’ll force his hand. He will declare you an outlaw. And even if he doesn’t, Aunt Tianna will march our forces upon your city.”

“Not if I call for the Vanguard first,” Lux said, “So long as we have raised no arms and made no threat against the Kingdom, by those selfsame laws, we may not be quelled by force, and may summon the Kingdom’s forces to our defence in time of need.”

“This is insanity,” Garen froze, his jaw clenched with anguish. “You’d defy the King openly and risk a second civil war on top of the first?!”

“That’s Jarvan’s choice,” she said, “The last time we spoke, he told me he wanted to be a king that I’d be proud to serve. If he chooses to march upon unresisting Demacian citizens – then all of Demacia shall see otherwise. And I’ll be first in line to remind him.”

“Sister,” Garen growled, “What if I am ordered against you?”

Lux studied his face. Her eyes searched his own, bright, radiant – and so very weary.

“I don’t know, Garen,” she said, with a smile that broke his heart, “What if you are?”

“Lux, I…”

He faltered, fighting a tightness in his chest that stole his words, unable to look at her, when he was clasped by a sudden ring of warmth.

Her arms had slid around him, warm as the sun, soaking even through his breastplate, warm with the Light, her Light, that he had denied her. That his whole world had denied her.

“As long as my people stand behind me, I will stand for them.”

His sister’s bright blue eyes, earnest, turning up to him as she slid away.

“Maybe that’s who Luxanna can be.”

“I can’t let you do this.”

“Then come with me, Garen! Let all Demacia know that the heirs of House Crownguard are ready to make amends for our family’s support of the Mageseekers. That their age of fear has passed and will not come again.”

“My duty…” he began, “Lux, I cannot-you cannot ask me to choose!”

And the wall went up behind her eyes.

“Of course,” she said softly, patting him on the chest. Her hand lingered there, hesitant to let go of the physicality of him, and that’s when he knew.

“Your duty must come first,” Lux said, and there were tears already turning crystal on her cheeks as she turned away, “And s-so must mine. Goodbye, brother.”

“Lux-”

She turned away, and he saw her in his mind’s eye, crumpled amid the flames of the burning Capital on the day of Sylas’ escape. That terrible, raw look in her eyes, just as she had been on the first day that she had discovered her magic. How many times had he turned from her and walked away?

Only now, steel-eyed and radiant with her desire to do what was right, beyond the false walls of honor and duty, Garen saw her for what she truly was.

Saw her too late. Now it was her turn to walk away.

Lux strode across the courtyard, into the shadow of the petricite colossus, and reached up to touch the white marble skin at the giant’s ankle.

“It’s time, Galio. Let’s go home.”

“If only it had been that simple,” Garen mourned, looking at his big, calloused, useless hands.

If only home had been ready for her.

With a sigh, Garen stood. Well, if he was stuck here in this cozy little prison with his memories, at least he could make use of the conveniences.

Crossing the room, aware of how loud his footsteps sounded in the stillness, he could not help but glance at the growing spiderweb of Caitlyn’s investigation map of Piltover, and the wanted posters she had assembled of the players in the game. That, of course, drew his thoughts to Lux’s current predicament. 

Mageseekers, in Piltover?

There was much he had not told Caitlyn; a soldier could not reveal Demacia’s internal affairs too openly, of course.

The Order had been declared renegade in Demacia, yet, with Sylas’ rebellion having turned its sights on the noble Houses who had created and enabled their oppressors, perhaps the Mageseekers’ fortunes had turned once more since he’d left?

And Lux is with this…Jinx?

A frown creased his face as his eyes swept across her sketch. Only a young woman, no older than Lux, a thin waif wearing barely any clothes, but the sketch artist had captured something dangerous in her eyes. Something wild and dark that made even Garen shudder.

“Who are you?” he wondered aloud, “Why in Kayle’s name is she by your side?”

He should have prayed to the Protector for guidance, but instead, Garen found his thoughts seeking answers elsewhere.

“Oh, Kat,” he muttered, “What would you do?”

Shaking his head, he turned away and plodded to use the lavatory. He sat brooding with his thoughts for long moments there in the dim, but as he completed the task and prepared to rise, he thought for a moment there had been a yellow flash - a change of lighting - perhaps the sunlight glinting off something in the other room.

Garen’s hackles rose as he heard a soft thud, quiet footfalls, and the rustle of papers.

Caitlyn and Vi would have used the door.

Garen very quietly extricated himself from his current occupation. Carefully, he rose, buckling his belt with painstaking stealth. He would have given anything for his blade, but even with his bare hands, Garen knew he would be a formidable foe for any intruder-

What he did not count on, however, was the soft click as his weight left the seat, the bleep of Hexlights and the gush and clunk of the flushing mechanism.

He heard a scuff of startled movement in response.

Damned Progress! Garen scowled, Nothing for it, then!

“DEMACIA!” he roared as he flung the lavatory door wide and lunged at the intruder-

“Holyfreakingshit!” a young blonde man in some kind of leather jacket and goggles yelped as Garen seized him, reaching for an ornate gauntlet on his wrist –

One that glowed blue!

Garen snapped his hand over the device, yanking it off the boy’s arm and tossing it aside. With a twirl of motion, he flung the interloper into his cell, grabbed the barred door and swung it shut in his face.

“A burglar and a mage,” Garen growled, slamming home the bolt on the cell’s massive lock, “You shall explain yourself, knave-”

“-BIG! Uh-Brother! Big. Oh brother. It’s you,” the youth babbled, before his blue eyes focused on Garen’s face and he cringed. “…Ohhhhhh no.”

Garen blinked at him. His garb was different, but it did not take him long to recognize the young blonde man in the cell.

“…Jarro Lightfeather,” he grimaced, but it became a cold smile, “I had hoped our paths would cross again.”

The cringing only deepened. It looked for all the world like the boy was trying to shrink into his skin. He had both his hands up in surrender.

Rather a moot point from behind bars.

“You shame the proud name of the Sentinels of Light with your mischief, cur,” Garen narrowed his eyes, “And now I catch you rifling through the belongings of Piltover’s Wardens? Explain yourself!”

“Okay, about that, listen…” said Jarro, “I’m here to – help Cait and Vi – I’m here to help Lux – my name’s not Jarro, um, Jarro Lightfeather – that was m-my alias in Demacia, but I’m really from Piltover and um…”

“A thief and a liar,” Garen scowled, crossing his arms over his chest, “You are not making a strong case for your innocence.”

“Ezreal!” the prisoner blurted out, “My name’s Ezreal. You’re Garen. I’m Ezreal. Y-you’re her…her brother. Right?”

Garen frowned.

“And you are the rogue who absconded from Demacia with my sister. What are your intentions with Luxanna?”

The boy swallowed, took a deep breath, and stood up to face Garen.

Young, Garen thought, despite himself. No older than Lux.

“I’m going to help her,” the young man said, with a defiant tilt of his chin, “Whether you, or Vi or Cait, or anyone else tries to stop me.”

Garen furrowed his brows, “Why?”

“Look, man,” Ezreal said, “Because I screwed up, all right? And I can’t stop thinking about it. Because Lux is in danger, and even if she says she’s got it handled, there’s worse coming for her – like those – those assholes who t-tortured me – and there’s no way in the Void I’m gonna let those bastards near Lux, not ever! Because that’s not what a good guy would do. And because I…”

He faltered a moment, then looked up into Garen’s face, steel-eyed and earnest, just like the look she got when she had planted her feet.

“Because I love her.”

Garen sank his forehead into his hand and bit back a rumbling groan.

He pulled a chair over from the war table, dropped it in front of the cell, and sank into it.

“Very well,” he sighed, “Let us talk.”

There were only candles lit in the clocktower as night came in.

Hands twined under the sheets. Mismatched nails threaded golden locks. Skin to skin, heart to heart, breath to breath they tangled. Lux shivered under her, teeth prickling her shoulder as she came down from the top, still panting.

Jinx couldn’t help but smile wickedly where her mouth was buried against Lux’s throat. She traced her tongue from Lux’s collarbone, collecting her angel’s sweat as she did, until she had climbed Lux’s chin in wet sucking kisses and claimed the soft pink rosebud of her mouth.

Never thought I’d wanna do this so much…

Lux shuddered again and went limp under her, still breathing heavily, tilting her head to groom Jinx’s lips and stifling those very vocal moans of hers with Jinx’s tongue. She broke only to gasp out exhilarated giggles that pulled more of the same from Jinx’s chest as she tangled in a sweaty heap with her Lux.

Never thought it’d be so much fun.

Jinx purred at Lux and nipped a few possessive little bites to her neck and ear. She crawled up onto the kitchen table with her, hoping she wasn’t going to get splinters in her bare butt from the battered old wood that Lux had at least the sense to throw some bedsheets over first.

Never saw you comin’, Blondie…

Lux leaned back to slump her head back against the table and gave a throaty, dizzy laugh.

…well, until I did.

Like. A lot.

Like just now.

“Light,” Lux whimpered, her voice a wreck, “…I…I think you’re right…it’s even better after a mission…”

“Thought it would be!” snickered Jinx, “All that adrenaline. Guess we found your kink, Blondie…”

“Oh, shut up!” Lux gulped air and turned her bright pink face away.

“We gotta go on more wreck-municipal-transportation-systems dates.”

Lux groaned and buried her face in Jinx’s hair in that adorable way of hers that was both still shy somehow and incredibly freakin’ hungry – for Jinx, her skin, her scent, her touch, Lux seemed to want to burrow in and never come up for air.

Jinx had come to learn that about her Very Good Friend; she could be a total paradox, one minute stumbling over Jinx’s filthy vocabulary, pink in the cheeks, the next that same girl would throw Jinx down on the bed with those blue eyes burning and…

And now Jinx’s cheeks were hot.

Nobody should want me like this. Nobody…I’m…I’m broken and crazy and …me, but…

But Lux did.

And for the first time – for the first time since the bomb, since Vi, since Silco – no, maybe for the first time ever – those awful words rang hollow more often than they struck true.

There were still moments when Jinx thought about how much blood was on the hands she let touch Lux’s perfect skin, but…

…I’m still crazy, she thought, but maybe Lux is crazier…

“Only for you,” Lux groaned out, “Light, you’re dizzying, you make me do things I’d never do, want things I’d never thought of wanting…”

“L-like what, Flashlight?”

Lux’s hands were on her cheeks, pulling up to her until they were eye to eye, damp gold hair crushed into blue.

“You. This. Everything…” Lux stared at her, her kiss-ruddy mouth smiling like the sunrise, “…you…you…you…” she trailed off in a little sob. She kissed Jinx still more, and the sound rang in Jinx’s heart like a gunshot.

Maybe it couldn’t last. Maybe she was tricking herself. Maybe this was all just a game to Lux and when she got homesick or bored or scared, she’d be gone, but…

But every time she said you Jinx felt like there were words missing in the breath before it.

Two little words she didn’t dare say. Three little words Jinx hadn’t dared think, even to herself. Had she ever said them? She felt as if she had once, in a dream, but that had gone somewhere into the dark where all her good thoughts went.

She couldn’t have.

Jinx woke Lux, much later, sometime when the sun hadn’t come up yet. Jinx had blacked out the windows with makeshift blast resistant sheeting because glass and her experiments weren’t good bedfellows, and because Lux still sometimes lit the place up when she – well, when Jinx lit her up – and when she did those experiments of her own, and Jinx didn’t want their clocktower to become a lighthouse with the Pilties looking for them.

But Jinx still knew when it was light out. Oh, you could always tell it was daytime in Piltover, because of that whole sun thing, changing the whole atmosphere of the city. Dawn in the Undercity was a grey furtive thing that made all the night-people creep squinting to their shelters for a brief respite in the machinations of a city that slept with one eye open, but up here it was a slow stately pinkening of the heavens, the calling of gulls and the rising clamor of a bustling day-city wakening to another prosperous morn. It was the weirdest thing about the place for Jinx. She remembered Powder finding it mesmerizing, everything so bright, the colors so vivid and clean, burning her eyes…

Where was she?

The sun hadn’t come up yet, but Jinx’s clinking a few bits of metal and mumbling to herself as she tightened screws, despite herself, had woken Lux from her slumber.

They had made it to the bed, eventually, because the kitchen table wasn’t super comfortable for the sleeping part of sleeping together even if Jinx would be forever snickering at calling it the ‘eating table’ ‘where we eat stuff’ whilst wiggling her brows and chomping into steaming Piltie meat pies she had totally paid for sure and getting swatted by a brightly blushing Lux –

Oh, that’s right. Tinkering.

She’d made a noise. Lux was awake now, a little murmur and a shuffling of the sheets and then a mussed blonde head with her hair like a golden bird’s nest, swaddled in only their blanket, appearing and floating across the lair like the world’s least prepared celestial descending from on high or the world’s most adorable ghost.

Cold. She must be cold.

I don’t really get cold anymore…

“Jinx,” she croaked, “Wh-what are you working on-oh wow.”

Jinx shrugged, “Chompers.”

“That’s a-” Lux yawned into the back of her hand and blinked, “-That’s a lot of Chompers.”

“Need some spares for the next job.”

“I see.”

Lux pulled a chair over – oh, we haven’t done anything on that one yet, cool, I thought I might have to make new ones to break in – and sank over it in a cloud of blankets.

Jinx could only just make out her sleepy eyes squinting through the entanglement half-concealing her face.

She had that look. Jinx squinted back at her.

“…see…what, exactly?”

“That something’s bothering you.”

Jinx scoffed.

Yeah, okay, it was true, so what. There were a lot of Chompers; she’d filled the third box already and her workbench was lined with another two rows half-ready to go.

So, what. She’d need a lot…there was a lot of area to cover. That’s what was bothering her. Logistics.

“Nah, I’m good,” Jinx waved her off with a coy smirk, “Go back to bed, Blondie. Get your ugly sleep.”

“Ugly sleep?”

“Yah. You’re too beautiful awake, so you gotta get ugly sleep,” Jinx turned back to tinkering, hunkered up like a weird naked spider by her workbench, “Now shoo, before the sun gets jealous!”

“Smooth,” said Lux, grinning at her, “But I’m not going to let you get away with it.”

“Hmm?” Jinx poked her tongue between her teeth. She tapped just a little more ‘burny’ powder in to balance the ratio of the ‘boomy’ and the ‘flashy’ and screwed on the head of the next.

“If you don’t want to talk about it,” Lux shifted slightly, stifling another yawn, “I can go back to bed. But I thought I’d offer an ear if you needed it.”

Jinx’s fingers twitched on the Chomper’s jaws as she set the wires.

Jinx growled. Her shoulders slumped. She tinkered in silence while Lux waited patiently.

“She didn’t get it,” Jinx said suddenly.

Lux held a pause almost as long as Jinx had; Jinx could almost hear the cogs clicking in her head even over the faint metallic squeaks of wire bending into proper place.

“Vi.”

“Didn’t think Hat Lady would figure it out,” Jinx muttered, “It’s not meant for her. But Vi…she – she should have picked it right away-”

Her fingers spasmed again, and the pin slid out of the Chomper. Its jaws chattered as it rolled down the bench and off – Lux’s eyes flew wide and she slid back in her seat –

Jinx caught it without looking and grunted, “-She forgot! I can’t believe she’d forget!” She tisked behind her tongue as she turned the grenade upright, slid her pick wire in behind the teeth and disarmed the mechanism. “I mean it’s not like it’s really been that long. Right? I can’t be the only one who remembers stuff like that. It was important!”

She’d have to start again on this one, and some of the Powder had tipped out on the floor. Brush that up later…

“R-right,” said Lux, lowering her faintly-glowing fingers, “I can understand – how you feel – my brother and I used to have that kind of relationship.”

Brother. That’s right. She has a brother.

“Yeah,” Jinx said softly, “But your brother didn’t get stolen from you by some – some Piltie! – and become a stinking Enforcer – and forget everything!”

Lux fell silent, and for an awful moment Jinx thought she had gone too far. But when she fearfully glanced back, Lux had pulled her blankets up around her knees, leaning her arms on them and staring somewhat wistfully at the Demacian armor hanging on her little stand by their bed.

“I love my brother,” Lux said softly, “I love my family still, I can’t deny that, but…”

Jinx waited, lips pursed and brows knit.

Lux breathed in and out slowly, not quite a sigh, not quite a shiver.

“Garen is…he loves Demacia. He’s spent his whole life giving everything he has to our country, being everything Demacia asked him to be. He lives and breathes the virtues Demacia is supposed to stand for. Honor, courage, duty, sacrifice, tradition, community…”

Jinx snorted, despite herself. Something twisted in her gut, something spiky and sour that crawled up the back of her throat.

“…sorry, Blondie, but I think I wanna puke.”

To her surprise, Lux laughed softly.

“Me too, a little,” she admitted, and Jinx peered at her.

“Huh. Really?” 

“I can’t forget the smell,” Lux said, “in the Mageseeker prison. Every time I think of it – all of it – honor, duty, sacrifice – I can smell it again. Blood and vomit and excrement with that sickly potion smell under it all. Puddles reeking in the corner of every cell, everything the petricite tore out of them, every miserable dose, every miserable day. I could never forget it, not for a moment.”

She swallowed, wrestling visibly with nausea.

“So yes, it makes me want to retch, thinking about the lie my brother lives for the sake of Demacia.”

Jinx twisted on her chair in a tangle of limbs, kicking it closer to Lux with a squeak and squatting on it, knees up, arms resting on the battered back of it, between the black iron crow wings.

“You hate him?” she whispered.

“No, Jinx,” Lux shook her head, “I don’t.”

“You wanna fight him, like me and Vi?”

“Fight him?” at that, Lux laughed again, “…everyone thinks Garen is so tough! He’s a teddy bear. We’d never fight – never seriously – we always had each other’s backs. Oh, he’d always growl and puff at anyone who dared bother me, but the moment they were gone he was a big hand pulling me up, dusting me off with that goofy smile. He’d coddle me, but it was mostly jest. Half the time I’d be the one defending him. He always trusted me to be me, to do what was right…”

Jinx studied her, trying to imagine her life, trying to imagine her laughing brother, her happy childhood with him…

But all she got was a scarred smile, mashed lips, rough hands with bruised knuckles that always smelled a bit of blood, but always touched her cheek so gently, and adoration in grey, guileless eyes. All hard edges for everyone else, all soft, smothering protective strength keeping me weak for her…

“My brother’s still in there, suffocating under all that courage and honor,” said Lux, softly, her eyes distant, “I see him staring out at me, every time duty has him do something he knows is wrong.”

She rubbed her cheek along her arm and closed her eyes again.

“Hating it,” she said, “And scared. So scared. But every time he must choose…”

“…He chooses Demacia,” Jinx hissed through gritted teeth, seeing Violet snarling looming in the flames, scribbles over her face, You’reAJinx, walking away… “Doesn’t he?”

“He doesn’t choose at all,” Lux shook her head, “He can’t. It’s not even his fault.”

faultFAULTALLYOURFAULT…

“I don’t think Demacia has left any room in Garen for Garen…”

Everything went blank, just roaring flames and darkness and scribbles and – light warm soft rainbow bleeding into white…not empty like the white void, white and warm and full of every color there could ever be…

Lux had shuffled out of the chair. Jinx felt her glowing fingers on her shoulder, her back, tracing the blue clouds, her smile soft and sad in Jinx’s periphery.

Then her arms slid around Jinx. A tickle of messy hair on her shoulder. Lux’s smell, sweet and musky and a little stale with dried sweat from their evening’s activities, enveloped her like the blanket she’d wrapped around them both.

She still smells like the sun…

Jinx’s paralysis slowly unwound its clenched grip on her muscles and her brain. Her eyes slowly focused.

“I…” she swallowed, “I’d never choose that. Over you. Never. If anyone…anyone tells you that you’re less for having a perfect shiny light inside you…I’ll kill them all.”

“I know,” said Lux, burying her nose in Jinx’s hair.

Jinx closed her eyes and fought until her breathing stabilized. Until she was ready to let go of her carrion grip on Lux’s forearms.

“Give her time, Jinx,” Lux said.

“W-what?”

“We should give them some chance to react before we get onto the next thing. We’ve been going pretty fast, here.”

“…so?” Jinx licked her lips, her voice a scrape like a knife on concrete, “I’ve got so many ideas, gotta do ‘em all…”

“But it’s their turn, right?” Lux tipped her head, “That’s how the game works, isn’t it?”

Jinx let out a slow breath and tipped her cheek to squash into Lux’s own.

“I…I guess.”

She felt Lux’s cheek crease with her sweet smile.

“I have a feeling,” Lux murmured, tipping her face to kiss the corner of Jinx’s mouth, “That we’ve started the clock ticking one way or another. So, what happens if Vi does figure it out?”

“Oh, then the game gets really fun,” Jinx chortled, with a wicked glint in her eye, “Then we go bigger.”

“And what if that escalates?” Lux said softly, “Even with what we’ve planned?”

“What if it does?” Jinx turned to face her, pressing their brows together, stroking her cheek with her thin, calloused fingertips, “It’s not as if I care, Luxie. It’s you and me against the world, ain’t it? It’s just us, showin’ them all.”

“I hope you’re right. I am having a lot of fun breaking all the rules with you,” Lux smiled, gathering Jinx close, squeezing her as if she never wanted to let go, “But I wonder if…”

“If what?”

“If there may be ripples we can’t see. Things we can’t control, moving out of our view against us. And the people we still care about.”

“Dunno about you, Blondie,” Jinx scoffed, “But that list is real short for me. It’s us. It’s only us…”

Lux cupped her cheeks with warm fingers and leveled sky-bright eyes to hers.

“Is it?” she said, “Really?”

Jinx opened her mouth to reply, a flippant dismissal on her lips.

She found she couldn’t answer.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Twin steel blades clicked in perfect time across a brass cog.

Ekko leaned against the face of the long-dead clocktower, Old Hungry, looming high above the Lanes in the shadows of the Grey, whose missing hand formed the spine of his sword-bat.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Five glowing threads converged on his position, twined gracefully between the tottering heaps of dwellings stacked on top of each other.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Shomi, always the fastest and best dropboarder in their ranks, stepped off their board first, prosthetic hand lifted to bump knuckles to Ekko’s as they closed in.

The others were not far behind.

“Z’s in position,” said Meela, coming up behind them, crow mask in place, “Spider Baron and his goons are incoming.”

“She’ll keep eyes on and meet us there,” Shomi added.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Powder, thought Ekko, hope you won’t need to keep that promise.

He looked up and clicked the pocket watch closed.

“Go time,” he said.

Chapter Text

Wysker Refinery sat steaming in the gloom of the lower Entresol. Amid the tanks, pipes and towers, a small group of figures slid through the air with only the low hum of their dropboards to mark their passage.

Scowling through his chemlit breathing mask, a heavily armed bruiser on sentry duty raised his weapon –

A soft ‘hey’ snatched his attention a moment before an arc of electricity zipped invisibly through the metal gantry at his feet, straight up his augmented legs and through him.

As the sentry’s body twitched and locked, tipping forward, Ekko flitted past on his dropboard, catching the unconscious man and carrying him soundlessly into the shadows.

Zeri lifted her fingertips from the metal flooring and winked at him as he returned.

Ekko shook his head at her from behind his white owl-like mask, tapped two fingers to its jaw, and pointed deeper in.

Five Firelights and one sparkplug of a girl pulled up as they approached the tangle of pipeworks nearest the main atmospheric distillation center of the complex.

So far, so good. Only lightly guarded, and the handful of sentries they’d encountered were easily avoided or silenced as they’d moved in.

So far, too good, in Ekko’s judgment. That meant if it wasn’t a trap, then Trezk had the bulk of his security concentrated around his location.

But it was too late to back out now.

They stowed their dropboards and continued on foot, not risking the glow and the sound of the boards giving them away.

Meela, Kew, and Shomi fanned out and took concealed positions to watch for patrols. Scar stayed close to Ekko and Zeri as they took point, passing down the length of a damp ventilation tunnel…

…slowing at the sounds of harsh voices echoing from the glowing artificial canyon of a chamber just below them.

Any time now, Ekko thought, and pressed against the wall to listen.

“…you jerkin’ me, mate?”

Ekko would have recognized the mechanical rattle of Garront Trezk, Old Spider-Baron Himself, across the Last Drop at happy hour.

Ekko shrank back slightly from his vantage point at the opening of the tunnel. He sighted Trezk’s arachnid-limbed shadow spreading threateningly across the wall before he laid eyes upon the man himself; strolling into the center of the meeting space, his primary arms tucked behind his back, whilst his bladed, mechanical augments squealed, sparked and tapped as he ran them along the railings of the walkway approach to his conversation partner.

“…I offer you eighty thousand cogs for Jinx’s tight little arse in a cage and you turn me down flat? What are you, a charity?”

Ekko made a quick summary of the figures marching after Trezk; there were at least ten heavily armed goons visible, most of them augmented in various ways.

It would just take one with enhanced chem-senses or optics to make them, and Trezk himself had both. Ekko had just locked eyes with Zeri to give her a warning look when the laugh rang out in echoes about the space.

Trezk stopped in his tracks; opposite him, half-bathed in shadow, an elaborate throne made of junk and detritus had been set up, and upon it, fingers steepled, sat a figure in a long black and purple cloak, a dramatically pointed cowl drawn low over their face, eyes crackling with a strange light above a beak-like chem-breather, the same crackle that pulsed now and then down chem-tubes running into the shoulders and arms and the metallic thimbles on their gloves.

It looked like Zaunite streetwear cut custom into something more grandiose, and Ekko wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, or the person who wore it.

“Think not that I have need of your currency,” said the seated figure, its voice a nasal whisper distorted by the breather, and with a strange, clipped accent, “What I desire is worth much more to me than coin, although it is, of course, without value to you.”

Foreign, Zeri had said, and across the chute from him, she nodded as if she’d read his mind.

Ekko narrowed his eyes. And not alone. A second stranger stood leaning against the wall to the left of the enthroned character. This one, light and lithe, wore a dull grey coat and hood, their clothing form-fitting and nondescript save for a few light pieces of some sort of ceramic armor plating.

They had their arms crossed and their face was hidden entirely in their tipped-forward hood.

“I’ll be the judge of that,” said Trezk, his pedipalps clicking with the greedy thought, “The other girl, yes? Foreign, too, that’s what Wencher’s boys said…”

“The few your Jinx left alive in her escape?” said the stranger, with an audible smile, “That is correct.”

“There’s good money for pretty foreign meat in at least four or five of my business operations,” Trezk chirred, “But not enough for any sane fool to take on Jinx. So, before I accept any such deal…”

The spider-like baron clicked another few steps forward, toward the other’s presumptuous seat.

“…what is she to you?”

“Nothing of your concern,” said the other, “And nothing from which you could profit.”

“You’d be surprised what husks I can bleed a profit from.”

“International affairs are best not meddled with by the wise,” the seated figure slowly rose, “A spider may find too heavy a prey has landed in his little web.”

 Trezk gave a hissed, nasty laugh. The Chembaron’s men laughed with him.

“Of course,” the stranger added, lazily, “Jinx herself represents an entire industry of profits to you, does she not? Is that not why you need her alive…? To extract and synthesize for yourselves the unnatural power from her very blood?”

Shit, Ekko gritted his teeth, seeing Zeri’s eyes widen as she put two and two together, They know! Damnit!

“What did you call it,” the mystery man chuckled, “Shimmer?”

Trezk vented steam from the valves on his back and cocked his head, while his men sneered and fingered their weapons.

…with any luck, thought Ekko, they’ll kill each other before this goes any further.

“Well, you’re an audacious piece of shit, I’ll give you that,” Trezk’s mechanical pedipalps collected a froth of saliva from his lips as he spat on the grill floor at his feet, “And you’ve done your homework. Say I believe you. What do you need from me?”

“A window,” said the hooded mercenary, fingers brought to a glowing triangle at his waist, “And a lure. Enough to bait a trap for this wretched gangrel child you wish brought down at your heel.”

Trezk’s eight augmented eyes swivelled and scoped in suspicion.

“You won’t catch her in a trap, foreigner,” the Chembaron chuckled, “You won’t have a hope. She knows every sewage pipe, every dark alley, every ventilation shaft from the Promenade to the Sump, better than the rats and whumps do. She’ll run rings around you if you try to take her in Zaun.”

The mercenary drifted closer, tilting his cowled head.

“Whoever said I intend to take her in Zaun?”

That gave Trezk pause.

“What’s your plan, then?”

“To be revealed,” said the other, “Upon acceptance of the agreement.”

The Chembaron clicked his pedipalps again and spread his spider limbs briefly in displeasure.

Then he gave another harsh, rattling laugh.

“Sure, why not? Although, if I’m to deal with a man who hides his face – I need at least a name.”

The other, bowing his head, turned away from Trezk and spread his arms.

The fog of Zaun coalesced in a swirling cloud above Wysker refinery, blurring out the lights in the high towers, and there was a soft rumble of something rarely heard as more than an echo down here in the depths…

Thunder. The hairs on Ekko’s neck stood up, and he felt a metallic buzz in the backs of his teeth. Chemtech can’t do this…is that some kind of Hextech setup or…

“Know me, then, as the caller of thunder and weaver of the sky’s wrath,” he declared with feverish relish, lifting his arms to the skies, “You may call me…”

Crackles of purple-blue electricity coursed from the mercenary’s fingertips as he did so, lighting his burn-scarred face and glowing eyes above his mask.

“…STORMSHOCK!”

Ekko shared a glance with Zeri. She looked back at him, scrunched her nose, mouthed …’stormshock’? and made a gagging gesture.

Ekko rolled his eyes at her and pressed his finger to his lips.

“Well, then… ‘Stormshock’,” said Trezk, clearing his throat behind his enhanced mouthwear like he was choking on a tiny chainsaw, “Let’s say you show me what you can do, before we send you to take on our little Jinx.”

The crackle subsided to dim flickers lighting the merc’s manic eyes.

“Very well,” Stormshock whispered, “Your proposal?”

Trezk continued, “I’ve got a test run for you. Two days. Factorywood district – a little light relocation of a business associate’s assets. You’ll, of course, be properly reimbursed for your time.”

“And the target?”

“Glasc Industries.”

Ekko’s breath caught in his throat.

“Accepted,” said Stormshock.

“…and your friend?” Trezk chuckled, “Will they be expecting a cut?”

Stormshock turned his cowled head to the left, to the shadows by his makeshift throne where the silent partner had leaned.

Ekko followed his gaze and felt a sudden jolt.

The empty shadows.

“What friend?” said Stormshock, innocently.

Ekko glanced quickly over to Zeri and Scar’s side of the pipe in warning-

Zeri was looking down into the meeting. No, her head was tipped forward, her eyes glazed. Something dark and damp was pulsing at her throat, spreading on her shirt-

Scar lay sprawled in the dark behind her.

NO!

Zeri’s body fell forward, out of the open mouth of the vent, and a slender figure behind her lunged with a flick of its arm.

Ekko had only a split second to see the blank pearl-grey mask under the hood, completely featureless save for a pair of circular, staring black eyes – before he saw the point of the dagger flying at his heart.

Just as it pierced cloth and prickled flesh, his fingers found the ripcord and pulled-

⧖

…the point of the dagger rewound as it flew away from his heart. Ekko had only a split second to see the blank pearl-grey mask under the hood, completely featureless save for a pair of circular, staring black eyes…

Zeri’s body fell backward from the open mouth of the pipe, and a slender figure behind her sank into the dark with a flick of its arm….

NO!

Scar lay sprawled in the dark behind her.

Zeri was looking down into the meeting. No, her head was tipped forward, her eyes glazed. Something dark and damp was pulsing at her throat, spreading on her shirt-

A blade slipped in reverse across her throat; a ghost-like figure peeled away from her unsuspecting back and twisted soundlessly from releasing Scar’s body…

… falling upward into the hand that crushed Scar’s mask into his mouth to silence him amid the sewing-machine thrust of a knife into his kidneys…

The empty shadows…

⧗

Ekko lunged across the vent, pulling Zeri into the wall behind him with a yell of shock – his sword-bat glowed into life as it clashed with a thin, jagged-edged dagger inches from Scar’s back.

Ekko met the attacker eye to eye, mask to mask. One blank face to another in the glow, they strove, for only a split second –

Scar, roaring, brought his spear and claws to bear on the assassin behind them. Zeri swore and drew her gun. The stranger kicked Ekko in the gut, twisted, and pulled backward…

…Zeri wall-ran the inner curve of the shaft around them, her boots sparking on the metal, screaming as she fired shot after electrified shot at their ambusher…

The killer twisted Ekko’s arm behind his back, hooked Scar’s barbed spear tip on a bracer-sheathed forearm and pulled him off-balance, right into the path of Zeri’s bullets –

Damnit!

⧖

The killer twisted Ekko’s arm behind his back, took Scar’s barbed spear tip on a braced forearm and pulled him off-balance, right into the path of Zeri’s bullets –

…as Zeri wall-ran the inner curve of the shaft around them, her boots sparking on the metal, screaming as she fired shot after electrified shot at their ambusher…

⧗

Ekko shoved his bat hard against the assassin, leveraging his half-crouch and lower center of gravity to push them backwards, freeing up room for himself and Scar to swing, to maneuver – and for Zeri to shoot.

Electrified bullets pinged and sizzled along the tunnel at the assassin but ricocheted off a half-moon shield the attacker had flung up to guard their face.

And when her bullets hit the walls or floor, they simply thudded, lifeless lead.

“Boots up!” Zeri snarled. Ekko’s eyes widened behind his mask. He sprang after Scar – who was already in the air, on his dropboard, arm out to catch him –

As soon as their bodies were clear of contact with the metal tunnel, Zeri planted her feet in a wide stance and her bright-green pigtails stood up with static.

A spark sizzled and green-gold lightning swelled at the barrel of her gun and flashed in a heartbeat right through the assassin’s shield and into their chest…

…where it soaked into their breastplate like water into dry sand.

“…Huh!?” Zeri’s jaw dropped.

Ekko swung his bat up to guard her as Scar dove, but their enemy was faster, dashing forward shield-first, a ripple of kinetic force slamming into Zeri and knocking her off her feet.

She flailed, arms akimbo.

Their enemy had a new weapon, suddenly, ugly, jagged chunks of metal connected by glowing crimson Chemtech cords into a segmented whip; Scar had to swerve to avoid a scourging lash, and Ekko’s swipe at the assassin’s hooded head narrowly missed –

Zeri twisted as best she could out of the way of two more lashes, one slashing the front of her jacket. She missed her footing, stepping into open air at the entrance of their vantage vent…

…and fell.

Ekko cursed, but as his hand went behind him, his fingers on instinct didn’t grab the cord of the Z-drive.

They grabbed the Timewinder.

You’d better freakin’ work!

Ekko hurled his new gadget after Zeri, narrowly missing her position as it spun and arced through the air…

…dragging Time to a crawl with it.

Zeri’s flailing arms and wide eyes grew sluggish in her tumble. The Timewinder swept past her, and Time caught up with her as it did…

But it’d given Ekko seconds.

He dove from Scar’s board, pulled his own off his back as he fell, crunched until his feet planted on the familiar metal, and swooped. Ekko’s arms caught around Zeri’s waist, and he tumbled off his board with her as they rolled onto the hard metal gantry…

…right in front of Chembaron Garront Trezk.

An awkward heartbeat passed while the Baron and his killers looked down at the two youths landed in their midst.

“Oh Spider,” laughed Stormshock, “It seems your web has caught some flies…”

“…seriously?” Zeri groaned.

“Firelight brats!” Trezk roared in a clatter of pedipalps, “Squash ‘em!”

His blade-like limbs stabbed down to impale them both; Zeri yelped and shoved Ekko away from her just in time. The blades sparked down between them.

Ekko kicked a boot against the flat of the spider-blade and kipped to his feet. Zeri snatched up her fallen gun and scrambled for cover from the hail of chem-thug gunfire…

Ekko grinned. Bullet after bullet aimed in her wake slowed like they were firing through molasses. The Timewinder cut through their arc, clobbered two of the Baron’s soldiers on its way through, pinged from the last one and flew back to Ekko’s hand.

He heard a familiar thrum at his back and sprang onto the dropboard as it completed its own arc back to its master.

“Hey Bug-eyes,” he laughed in Trezk’s face, “Sorry to crash!”

Trezk bared his iron teeth and flung up two of his arachnoid limbs like fencing blades, thrusting them after Ekko’s chest. He parried both away with his swordbat and surfed over the Chembaron’s head in a twist of his dropboard –

He only had a moment to wince as he heard the whine and click of shot bolts behind him – and twisted to see Trezk’s torso had sprouted two cannon barrels and was drawing down fire right on Ekko’s bac–

-Shit!

⧖

He only had a moment to wince as he heard the whine and click of shot bolts behind him – and twisted to see Trezk’s torso had sprouted two cannon barrels and was drawing down fire right on Ekko’s –

⧗

Ekko let go of the cord and hurled the Timewinder into Garront Trezk’s chest right as he was priming his cannons. The Baron snarled and slid backwards. The spinning disc ground into his steel chassis in a shower of sparks, throwing his shots wide.

Chemtech hummed. A garish orange personal defense field swelled into a bubble around Trezk’s position.

Nice augments, asshole, Ekko lamented. He zipped between clubbing down Trezk’s still-firing goons. The Timewinder cycled and flew back to him, Trezk’s shield barely dinted.

“Cheeky little monkey,” Trezk hissed, “I’ll cut your fucking tongue out-gah!”

Burst-fire from Zeri’s pistol chewed at Trezk’s chembarrier and siphoned from it into a brightening yellow electrified forcefield of her own.

“Hoy jerkface! Thanks for the charge!” Zeri shouted as she zipped by, “Ekko! We takin’ this asshole down?”

Ekko opened his mouth to reply but was cut off by a rumble of thunder.

“May I, Baron?”

Oh, shit.

Stormshock, until now standing by his shadowy ‘throne’ and watching in dry amusement, strolled calmly toward the fight, arms spreading.

“Here we go,” Zeri mumbled, grabbing Ekko and pulling him inside her shield, his locs standing up as the barrier crackled over him-

Zeri squeezed eyes shut and braced herself a split-second before both of their worlds exploded into white-hot, sizzling, mind-blanking metallic oblivion.

…

Ekko flickered back into consciousness. He was on his back. His teeth tasted like burnt copper and ears were a screaming void of tinnitus. His muscles spasmed under his skin.

Everything hurt.

“…f-fuuuuck…” Zeri coughed near him, “…so t-that’s what it feels like …”

Ekko groaned and rolled onto his stomach. Zeri’s shield and insulated boots must have taken the worst of it, but she and Ekko had still been electrocuted – and through the keening in his ears he heard Trezk laughing, Stormshock’s boots on the gantry, strolling closer, lightning coursing around him…

He’s a goddamn Mage!

“Oh, have I clipped your wings, little flies?” their new enemy crooned, “You are the first witnesses to my new power – your wretched city’s ‘chemtech’ has proven a most valuable amplifier for my talents…behold my ascent, in your last mome-”

“FIRELIGHTS!” came a full-throated cry.

But this time it came from above, and the voice, to Ekko’s relief, was Scar’s.

Scar, Meela, Shomi and Kew zipped into the arena, soaring effortlessly between the clumsy shot bolt fire of Trezk’s henchmen.

Scar jammed a spear through the mechanical wrist of one, pinning his gun hand to a wall. Shomi clipped another with their dropboard as they passed over, snatched his weapon and cracked him in the face with it on the return arc. A third goon snarled and fired after Kew, only for Meela to knock both legs out from under her as she passed…

Two more were pinned screaming to the gantries by crystal-bombs, struggling in vain to free their weapons and limbs.

Ekko pawed behind him, panic shooting through his chest – The Z-Drive!  The hum didn’t feel right. It didn’t feel damaged, but he’d have no idea until he tried it. And without it –

Shit, shit shit shit!

Ekko shoved himself awkwardly to his feet as Trezk came barrelling toward them both and pulled Zeri with him behind cover. She pushed him back with a wink, leaning out to lay down suppressing fire into Trezk’s flailing limbs.

“Z, we’ve gotta go!”

“What? We’re kicking their asses, man!” Zeri beamed. She planted her palms and fired another shock laser through the wall they hid behind, fritzing Trezk’s spider legs like a bug hitting a zapper and toppling him in a crash that shook the refinery, “Hah, and down came the spider!”

Ekko gritted his teeth, “I can’t rewind! If anyone goes down-”

Stormshock started laughing, and crackling bolts of lightning coursed through the skies, snaking after the Firelights –

Ekko heard a sharp cry. Shomi’s dropboard exploded in sparks. They fell, but Meela swooped in to catch them just in time.

Zeri growled. “That gago piece of shit thinks he can just fry us and get away with it? Nobody out-sparks Zeri!”

“No, no no, Z, we gotta go!”

Too many bad guys, too many elements, too many people I care about…too many variables!

“Hoy you! Yeah, jumped-up windbag with a face like a deep-fried grandpapa scrote!”

Zeri wrenched out of his grip and, like the flash she was, vaulted over their cover, surfing on the metal, plinking electrified shots off Stormshock’s static field as she did…

…and feeding her own with every hit she landed.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Ekko mumbled, “Z’s got this, just gotta get everyone else out…”

A quick scan showed him most of Trezk’s men down or struggling, the Firelights still circling in evasive maneuvers, keeping them busy, the Chembaron slowly picking himself up…

Ekko heard a soft clunk.

Behind him, the gray-masked killer stood in the smoke. Their barbed whip glowed fiendish crimson, like a demon’s tail following in their slow, stalking stride.

Toward Ekko; the only obstacle between them and Zeri’s exposed back.

“Yeah, screw this,” he whispered.

“You dare challenge me, pathetic child? Feel the wrath of my storm sizzle through your very fleshhh!”

“Oh. My. God. You practice that bullshit in the mirror, dude? …Here’s mine!”

Ekko had never been religious, but he reached for the Z-drive and prayed to Janna.

Behind him, Zeri and her new nemesis erupted in what was, frankly, a terrifying display of electricity, duelling purple and green bolts coursing through every pipe and panel of the Refinery around them –

Zeri’s eyes widened as she realized how bad an idea this was, only when the billowing flames of ignited chem-fuel rolled over the screaming Baron and his men, their Firelight friends, and the laughing Stormshock-

“Oh shi-” Zeri turned away too late, fire reflected in her eyes as it swept for her…

Nope, was Ekko’s only thought as he sprang in a wild dance amidst the reaching flames, over the assassin’s head, twisted the Z-drive’s dial to its maximum output and pulled-

⧖̷̨͖̩̬̿̆̈̈

The temporal bubble unburst, time unraveling, flames unwinding, shriveling away, electricity slithering back into its origin point, bullets fleeing into the barrels of guns, footsteps unwriting themselves upon the dirty refinery floor, bodies lifting back to life and activity…

⧑̋̄͒̑̅͒

Amidst it all, a transparent image of a boy ducked and darted and wheeled.

⧗̨̄ͧ͂̐͑̚͝

Zeri’s eyes narrowed as she stared down her enemy, preparing to unleash her own ‘wrath of the storm’…the wind puffed from her lungs as Ekko wrapped his arms about her and dragged her bodily away.

⧒̛̝͕͓̫͌̀̌̽͌

“Gerk! H-hey-”

“Nope!” said Ekko.

“But-”

“Nope!”

⧗̛̙̝̰̖̤͚̳͙͉̫̻̪̺ͭ̿̏͆͑͟͝ ̧̛̣̜͈̲̩̟̤̘̩̞̤͖́̆̉̃̓̀͢ͅ

Zeri flailed at him as the dropboard under him took off into the air, leaving her nemesis glaring silently in her wake.

“Woohoo!” she screamed at him, flipping two birds, “Suck it! Tangina no Mukhang Puta Lolo mo-”

Time

⦕͍͎͒͒̈ͬ́⦓ͬͣ̎͠͏͎̪͓͓͚͚̳⦻⦔̱̹̯͕̙̜̘̼̥ͥ̓͊ͨͯ̉ͮ͒̐⦖̨̰̦̮͖̬ͮ̌͌ͣ̈͠ ̞̳͚̤̻̜̪̞͆̃̀͝

 shattered.

Time caught up with the shimmering silhouette of the boy in their midst, and the Chembaron’s men had only a split second to stare idiotically at the greenish, translucent outline before a massive pulse of distorted temporal potential-energy swelled into a dome that flung them in all directions, unwinding and reconstituting their matter in every possible iteration of their exact selves within that exact instant, condensing lifespans into the space of a heartbeat and back...

They hit the floor in a chorus of temporally warped screams.

Ekko, breathing hard, snapped back into the position the spectral copy had occupied, arms still wrapped around Zeri.

“…woah,” Zeri gulped, staring at the carnage around them, “D-did you do that?”

Ekko didn't reply right away. His eyes, wide to the whites, flicked to their downed opponents. Some were still moving. He kicked the dropboard up, held tight to his companion, and pushed the throttle to its limit.

They sputtered as they shot into the sky and away from their foes.

“I think-” Ekko mumbled breathlessly, weaving his board between the tall towers of the refinery, “I-I think that was my Z-drive.”

“Dude, that was freakin’ awesome! You’ve got to call that something cool!”

“Um,” Ekko reached into the frazzled stew of his brain, lost amid explosions and lightning and fire and time and possibility and death and rewound life…

They flew on, the Z-drive fritzing at his back in little spurts of geometric sparks fading into the air like smoke-rings, the dropboard at his feet spitting green, Zeri’s arms wrapped around his waist, the Firelights flying with him in his peripheral vision, and the Wysker Refinery, blessedly un-exploded, dwindling in their wake…

“Um,” he breathed out, “…Chronobreak?”

The Chembaron and his men lay strewn about the floor of the meeting place, groaning, steam rising from their flesh and metal.

“…did we get ‘em, boss?” someone croaked. Most didn’t move at all.

Trezk coughed smoke and snarled as he wobbled back to his feet, braced on spider-limbs twisted and bent by the colossal concussive force of whatever the hell had just hit them.

“What was that – what the fuck was that?!” Trezk shrieked in a distorted white noise roar, “Those little shits. Those little shits! Mercenary, are you dead?!”                                                                            

Stormshock peered past the arm with which he had guarded his face. His companion’s chem-augmented petricite shield lowered from before him, and a blank mask glanced back at him with a grim nod.

“Apparently not,” the storm mage whispered.

He glared after the green trails, now receding into the darkness of the Zaunite night, made both luminous and impenetrable by the Gray, whilst the gray-masked killer retracted the segments of their Chemtech whip with a snicker-click, and sheathed the blade they became.

The two ‘mercenaries’ exchanged silent glances.

Trezk, the servos in his damaged spider limbs whining as they struggled to keep him vertical, spat black blood on the ground and clenched his fists.

“New deal,” he said, “Firelights. Jinx. Glasc and Sevika. We take ‘em all.”

“And the girl with Jinx?” Stormshock asked.

“All yours, whatever she is, I don’t freakin’ care!” Trezk snapped his pedipalps in a spray of greenish-black spittle, “Weapons, chems, whatever you need – nobody burns Garront Trezk and lives!”

The Baron turned, his many eyes flickering as he scuttled back into the dark, his voice following after him in a metallic echo.

“Two days. Gear up, make yer plans. Then they bleed.”

“It seems, Demacian,” Stormshock, nee Kravius Mallarde, turned his eyes to his companion when the Chembaron had gone, “That we are hired.”

Mageseeker Kestrel smiled under their mask.

Ekko stepped off his board and collapsed against the graffiti-spattered wall of a little storage yard just outside of Factorywood, between the sprawling worker district and the Lanes.

Way out of range of any pursuers. The edge of Firelight territory. Safe…for now.

He clawed off his mask and puffed out wild breaths as Zeri slumped next to him, panting just as hard.

She glanced sidelong at Ekko and burst into breathless laughter.

“All…freakin’…right!” she whooped, “Did you see that shit, Scar!?”

The others had dropped in around them. Scar growled as he pushed his mask back from his fierce Chirean visage, “Reckless!”

“…That was too damn close a call,” Shomi agreed, hopping down from Meela’s dropboard. They pushed their flight goggles to the edge of their cropped pink afro and sighed, “Even for me!”

“Recon…mission…Z,” Ekko panted, “Recon!”

“C’mon guys,” Zeri wheezed, “Wasn’t my fault some creeper got behind us. We got intel, we know who they’re movin’ against and when. And we all made it out in one piece!”

Her eyes swept around the gathered Firelights and then locked on Ekko’s own. Her face slowly fell.

“…Didn’t we?”

Ekko swallowed, controlled his breathing, and looked back at Zeri’s face.

Without realizing what he was doing, he lunged and swept his arms around her in a tight, fierce hug.

“Woah-hey!” she blinked over his shoulder, and then he felt her arms slide around him. “It’s okay, man, it’s okay…”

Ekko said nothing, but only scrunched his eyes and tucked his face into the collar of her jacket, fighting back the flashes of –

Zeri suddenly stiffened. Her hand, patting him on the back, paused.

“…oh shit,” Zeri whispered, “No way…me?”

The other Firelights exchanged knowing glances. Ekko couldn’t respond, his breath rebelling against him again, only a half-hearted nod.

“Shit,” hissed Zeri, “Fuck. Seriously!?” she pushed him up and studied his face, her own cycling through a gamut of emotions from shock and dread to anger to disbelief and back.

Then she rolled her eyes and groaned.

“…what?” Ekko managed.

“Please tell me I didn’t get ganked by ‘Stormshock’.”

Ekko grunted and shook his head.

“Okay. Okay, least I can keep my dignity,” Zeri gave a slightly wobbly smile and pulled him in for another hug, “C’mere.”

“…got you, Z, got you,” Ekko said, letting her jacket soak a couple of damp spots around his eyes as he hung on. Damnit. “…but don’t go doing that again, okay?”

“Okay,” she said, swallowing, “Shit, this feels weird…”

“Sorry, we should’ve warned you,” said Shomi, patting Zeri on the shoulder, “First time’s always a bad trip.”

Knowing you died, even though you’re still here, Ekko furrowed his brows, they all know, but none of them really know. None of them need to carry that…

“You too?” Zeri stared up at Shomi, Scar and Meela.

“Yeah, couple of times,” said Meela, hiding a hint of a self-conscious fidget.

“Shit.”

“Now you know why we love our Ekko,” Shomi said, giving Ekko himself a gentle rap of their prosthetic knuckles to his arm and a grin, “The man with the reset button.”

Ekko chuckled as best he could. He knew the smiles of his Firelights, unsettled, as they always were when they thought about the number of times the Z-drive had rewritten their endings, but not really comprehending.

Because how could you really feel the weight of something that had happened to another you?

He dared a glance at Scar. The big guy’s ears dropped slightly as he met Ekko’s gaze and returned it, knowing. He gave a nod of thanks.

Scar’s the closest. He knows me better than anyone. But none of them really know…

Nobody but me. That’s how it’s got to be.

“Yeah, no shit,” Zeri mumbled, squeezing Ekko, finally letting him go, “You okay, dude?”

“I’ll live,” he said, clearing his throat, “We better keep moving. If Trezk survived that, he and his whole gang are gonna be a hornet’s nest…”

“And they’re definitely going after Jinx?” Shomi asked.

“Jinx, Glasc,” Scar nodded, eyes narrow, “And now probably us. Said they’d start in two days’ time.”

“We’ve gotta warn Jinx,” said Ekko, pushing to his feet and throwing a hand to pull Zeri up with him, “If there’s a crazy mage and some kind of magic-sucking assassin after Lux, things could get really, really bad…”

“You’re all chummy with Jinx all of a sudden?” Shomi said, with a quirked brow, “I say we guard our own and let ‘em sort each other out. Win-win for us.”

Ekko opened his mouth to reply, but Zeri cut in, “Ayo, it ain’t about her, right? If anything happens to Lux, whatever that gaga bluenette gonna do? That’s gonna have a big body count. And Lux is cool, she doesn’t deserve whatever those scumbags got planned. Screw all of that.”

“If they get Jinx,” Ekko said darkly, “They’ll extract the Shimmer from her blood. They’ll restart production, it’ll be Silco all over again – only with more barons all in competition with each other.”

“Oh, shit,” said Meela, and Scar growled under his breath.

“...and if they hurt Lux, it’ll be the Council rocket all over again,” he added, “Or worse.”

The Firelights fell silent.

“But how the hell do we warn her?” said Kew, “We don’t even know where she holes up. She could be anywhere in Zaun…”

“They’re not gonna take her in Zaun,” Zeri said, “That’s what shock-cock said.”

Shomi frowned.

“Oh, crap, uh, guys…” they said, with an uncharacteristically nervous laugh, “Didn’t get the chance to show you this before it was go time…”

They tugged off their pack and rummaged for a freshly-printed – if slightly rumpled – Piltie newspaper.

“Lanes kids have been hawking these from Topside, check out this morning’s edition…”

Shomi tossed it to Ekko. He read the headline, eyes slowly widening.

“Aw, hell no,” he groaned, “She’s not even in Zaun! She’s hit Piltover again.”

“What?!” said Zeri.

Ekko took a deep breath.

“Firelights,” he said, “Back to the tree. We’ve got to patch up and fortify our turf. And we’ve got to head this off before it turns into a war.”

“How are we gonna do that, E?”

Glasc or Jinx. 

My parents...

...or Zaun.

Ekko narrowed his eyes and looked up, into the Zaun Gray that concealed layer after layer of their home.

“We’ve got a bridge to cross.”

Chapter Text

Piltover lay spilled before Lux, shining in the midmorning light in all its industrious dynamism. Dirigibles floated like low-hanging clouds above the towers of bold modernist design, each geometric masterpiece soaring in boastful competition with the next. The morning cast all its glorious angles of glow and shadow into orderly streets already buzzing with activity.

Piltover – its architecture, its aesthetic, its energy – was a stark contrast to the stately but conformist grandeur of Demacia. Lux still found it as dizzying as it was intriguing.

Jinx had needed more time to tinker with her setup for the next step of the game. As much as Lux feared to leave her alone within her mind, she had to remind herself that Jinx was long accustomed to her own company, and being constantly with Lux was exhausting for her no matter how desperately she craved it.

Sensing that, Lux had offered to scout and do some reconnaissance on their behalf. The first time she’d really been out on her own in quite a while, now that she thought about it, away from her lover for more than the time it took to fetch supplies. She hoped to her deepest heart that Jinx’s hair-trigger fears of being betrayed or left alone would not haunt her decision.

Lux sucked in a deep breath of Piltover. Alone with the air, somehow, she could still only think of Jinx.

It didn’t help, of course, that Jinx had left her marks on the city all around her. Piltover’s bustle sounded off-kilter, the rhythm of those oh-so-orderly streets syncopated this morning by the traffic chaos they were still trying to unsnarl. Lux had spied Wardens meticulously noting down their many scribbles on the walls, their replacement signs, even the angles they pointed at, unwilling yet to scrub them clean just in case Jinx’s mad art turned out to be clues.

Good. It was exactly what Jinx wanted. It was coming together just as she’d hoped, but…

Her presence lay deeper, far deeper, than any of that for Lux.

Jinx was in the smoky hints of industry on the breeze. Jinx was in every distant clang of metal and every flash of arcane blue when the Hexgates zipped and popped.

Lux closed her eyes and took a deep breath from her perch high up in the scaffolding of an under-construction Piltovan statue.

…Jinx was a taste on her tongue, surely imaginary by now, and yet, the gunpowder musk of her skin was there every time Lux breathed in, as though Jinx was a part of her now.

No matter how far Lux was from her, she lingered.

She had no doubt, none at all, that the Luxanna Crownguard of few months ago would have looked upon all she had done and been since and believe she had gone mad.

Maybe I have.

But with her thoughts consumed with Jinx, she couldn’t help but smile. She imagined the brittle timbre of her voice, sometimes childish, sometimes warm, sometimes sharp and cold and broken. All the fresh memories of that voice tickling in Lux’s ear, followed more often still by the nip of her dusky lips and sharp little teeth…

And Jinx liked using her teeth. Lux’s high-collared outfit concealed numerous red half-circles that still stung deliciously when the cloth rubbed at them wrong. She was covered in them from throat to belly to ass to calf. She certainly had no regrets.

Lux shivered at the very thought of what her lover had done to her, and what she had done to Jinx, all the places she had cupped in her mouth and scraped with her tongue, every part she had teased and tasted, all the ways that Jinx had sunk her clever fingers into her flesh and broken her to quivering pieces and then rebuilt her, over and over…

“Jinx,” Lux sighed into the winds, as though their cold caress were her lover’s hands on her face.

Everything was new. Tender. Painful and sweet.

Lover. I have a lover…

Oh, and how. Her wild Zaunite girl had crawled all over Demacia’s pretty, pristine, exemplary little doll and cracked her apart in sweat-soaked sheets and against dingy walls, over and over again, felt around inside her to find the parts of her that were ugly and raw and wanting and tinkered with them until she burst wide open, unlocked and unleashed and free…

Lux opened her eyes to her reflection in the statue’s polished marble, blurry and indistinct.

If it were a mirror, would I recognize myself? The new me that we’re building together?

A deep, shivering breath fogged out on the brisk Piltovan air. Only now did Lux notice the strength of her grip upon the scaffold railing, the wet heat between her legs that she’d pressed them together to conceal - from absolutely nobody’s observation.

Lover. My lover. Mine.

Even now, she couldn’t quite understand how this girl was so intoxicating to her. She was nothing like anybody Lux could have ever dreamed of wanting, but everything about her, the way her choppy blue bang swept before one vibrant eye, the sweetness of her favorite bubblegum undercutting the gunsmoke-and-concrete-dust smells that seemed burned into her skin, the taste of her spit on Lux’s tongue, the slither and clench of her wiry muscles when she crushed Lux’s body into hers, the scratch of her nails, the husk of her voice and the glow of her eyes in the dark…

“Jinx,” Lux licked her lips and closed her eyes, “Jinx, my Jinx…”

Lux wanted, wanted, wanted her…

And had her. At every available opportunity.

“Light,” she murmured, “is this just…lust? Is that what this is?”

No, that was stupid. Everything she and Jinx had shared, their laughter and their agonies and their tenderness, she couldn’t pretend it was somehow all in the service of that touch-starved need.

Lux knew better, even if she didn’t have words for what it was. Not yet.

Her own carnal wantonness shocked her. There was – something like an animal in her, once drowsy and timid, now awake and starving, and all it wanted was to take and be taken, by Jinx, and no-one else…perhaps – perhaps it was only that it had all become so suddenly physical, and at her own urging, and that the adrenaline of their crime spree had only intensified Jinx’s playfulness and Lux’s own thirsts? 

Then why do I feel like there’s so much more to this than- than the flesh?

Jinx was beyond any mere sinful dream. She was capricious, fragile in many ways, brutal and caustic in others. The violence of her was overwhelming, and yet Lux bared her most vulnerable self to Jinx, without fear, the way she would for no other.

Why does she make me feel so much more like me than I ever have in my whole life…?

Lux fought back a frustrated sob; it became a shivering little moan into her palms instead.

Why would I do anything, break any rule, my own or anyone else’s, all for her?

She trusted Jinx. She…

My first. My only. My everything…

And what did she even have to compare Jinx to? Her adolescent fantasies of being swept up in the arms of a graceful knight? Her awkward, confused feelings about the bodies of the women and men around her? And then there had been Sylas…

Lux’s unsteady breaths grew solemn, her expression grim as she pulled it away from her reflection.

Perhaps there was another reason she was so unsettled.

Last night, for the first time since meeting Jinx, she’d had the dream again.

The door loomed. Heavy stone. Guarded, day and night.

“Lady Crownguard, that is absolutely impossible…”

“I want to see him.”

“Please understand, my Lady. Sylas of Dregbourne is Demacia’s most dangerous criminal. A mass murderer and a mage of the vilest breed. His crimes are the very darkest. To expose you to such a twisted mind would be the greatest of irresponsibility…”

“And should we children of Demacia fear to face such darkness?” she turned upon the Keywarden, blue eyes fixing him from below. Her height did not impose, but her posture, her words, and her blood held power.

“Should we hide it away and cower in our beds? Is that the Demacian way?”

Power she had been groomed since birth to wield in service of her family.

It was finally time to wield it for herself.

“Do you mistake me for some sheltered waif who needs coddling, Keywarden?” Lux pursed her lips, “Does the Crownguard name suggest such weakness to you?”

“No, my Lady-but.”

“Let me rephrase. I will see him now.”

“Lady Crownguard, at least allow us to send a retinue down with-”

“How long has Sylas been imprisoned for?”

“Fifteen years, my Lady.”

“Fifteen years. The wretch must be just skin and bones by now. He is behind bars, I presume, and shackled?”

“He is… you shall see. Yes. Bound. In chains of the finest petricite, my Lady.”

She deployed smile thirty-six, Thinly-Amused Noblewoman.

“If your prison has held him for all that time, then there is no chance I will be harmed. Have some faith in the fortitude of Demacia, Keywarden. I shall go alone, to demonstrate mine.”

“… as… you wish, My Lady.”

Locks rumbled and slid away. The great doors cracked into an abyss.

Someone handed her a torch, and Lux gathered all the poise and power she did not feel, and stepped into the dark…

Step after step. The torch flickering hot in her hand.

Cold stone greeted her. The white teeth of Petricite bars.

Only the faintest trickle of natural light from a skylight far above the door, outside the cell, a stone chute far too small to permit any daredevil escape.

That light, alone, and the one she brought with her.

It felt more a tomb than a cell.

Grunting movement in the dark. The clinking of metal on metal. A scent, wafting through the smells of cold damp stone, of stale sweat and iron and despair, old and new, layered in endless repetition.

The huff and rasp of breath. Lux stopped and caught her own at the sight of the silhouette in the gloom…not curled up in the dark –

- but perched partway up the wall.

The sounds, the scent, conjured images of this Sylas of Dregbourne shuffling hunkered in the reeking dark like a beast, waiting to pounce.

And she the prey.

“…earlier than usual, Mageseeker,” came the voice, panting with exertion, “One moment more, I pray thee,” A voice cut with gravel by untold pain, but softer than she’d thought, though it turned bitter at the next, “…and then I’m all yours.”

Her eyes adjusted to the dim light. She saw the loops of the chain anchors lodged into the floor first. The angular, dark-gold links leading into the darkness, twisting and straining against wiry strength.

The outline of a tall man, gaunt and ragged, but no wasted bag of bones. Partway up the cell wall he’d climbed, hoisted up by his own chains, pulling against them to prop himself there. Using the very implements of his imprisonment to keep his body fit as best he could.

Bare feet dropped to the floor with a puff of dust, and chains clinked again as Sylas of Dregbourne crept out of the dark toward her.

Lux stood silent, holding the torch, heart in her throat.

She thought she’d steeled herself for anything. A brawny fiend sneering at her from the shadows. A pathetic ghoul begging her for mercy.

The face that stared out at her was a man perhaps approaching thirty, it was difficult to tell; his cheeks and jaw would have been strong but for the ravages of malnourishment and maltreatment. There was strength there still, and in the body, despite all that had been done to him. Through his own efforts, clearly. Lank black hair hung about a brow sheened with sweat. Stubble, unevenly shaven with whatever pathetic tool they’d allowed him, peppered his jaw.

But the hooded eyes that peered out at her, searching, were grey and weary and terribly, terribly human.

“You’re not one of them,” he whispered, trepidation becoming surprise and curiosity, “…are you?”

“I…” the words she had planned on her way down those dark steps slipped immediately out of her mind.

His brow furrowed, and his expression filled with a slow-building awe.

“You’re no Mageseeker…who are you?”

Blank. Lux fought for a smile to deploy; she managed only a flat rictus, as blank as her mind.

“I’m no-one…”

Sylas’ eyes still searched hers. He moved toward the petricite bars – but stopped with a sigh of familiarity when the lengths of his chains pulled at him, just outside of arm’s reach from the bars.

“No…no that’s not true,” he said, and chuckled, “I think you’re very far from ‘no-one’. I think you have something very special.”

“No, I’m not special at all.”

Lux backed away. Why had she come? What was her plan? What did she mean to…?

The prisoner was still staring at her, his brows knit, and eyes widened in what she could only see as wonder.

Then his gaze flicked down. Grey eyes fixed on the Crownguard insignia upon her collar.

They hardened.

“Funny,” the chuckle now once more had that sad, bitter note under it, “Isn’t it? You’re out there, and I’m in here, when we’re so much alike.”

Her gloves grew warm, the torch in her hand thrumming as its corona swelled luminescent with all her hues, and a thrill of fear shot through her.

Her light had kindled.

“This was a mistake.”

“No - Wait-”

She turned to leave, fumbling for the stairs, and her boots slipped on the dank floor, the torch fumbled from her fingers, rolled through the bars, its handle brushed his foot…

…and Lux could only watch wide-eyed as the torch floated from the floor to the outstretched hand of Sylas of Dregbourne.

“Thank you, for this at least,” he said quietly, grey eyes lit forlorn by the firelight, and offered her a worn smile. “For bringing me a little light.”

She fled.

Lux listened to the gulls and waited.

Why, Sylas? Why now?

Did it mean anything at all? After all, his story of tragedy and injustice, his haunted eyes watching her from his cell, his soft gravel voice had stayed with Luxanna in the days following that first meeting and each after. Their friendship, hidden and secretive and fraught with the fearful thrill of danger and discovery, had naturally stirred things in her. Her outrage, her sense of justice, her empathy, her guilt…

And the joy of discovery as he had taught her to control her magic.

Some nights, returning from the reeking cells full of tension, anger, warmth, and anguish, she had imagined freeing him from his shackles; imagined riding away with him into the hills, perhaps imagined some safe place where he might take her in his arms and draw her close and express his gratitude in the dark by the campfire or the hearth…

But those fantasies had been only superficial. She had not dreamt much further than that, never allowed herself to decide whether what she felt was friendship or desire. She'd certainly not dared to conjure what those nights together might look like, might feel like, the physical reality of such a coupling. Lux had never really had the chance to probe deeper into why.

And then Sylas had betrayed her, and it had all gone up in flames.

She understood why, now. She understood the choices he’d faced in that moment, and the weight of regret he had carried ever since.

But the sight of her Light searing through the crowd, the screams, the stink of scorched flesh as bodies fell, sliced apart by her radiance…

She couldn’t shake the tremors that thinking about it sent through her fingers, nor the sting of rage it spurred in her whenever she thought of Sylas, even now. Her grudging acceptance of his apology, her respect for their mutual cause, if not his methods, and their on-again-off-again alliance against common foes could not wash it away.

What would she think if she saw him again? Was Jinx right that part of her wanted, would always want, to see him dead for what he’d done with her trust?

And is it him that I want dead…or that part of me that…

…that wanted the hands wielding that Light to be mine?

And why was she even thinking of him now?

If I had the choice, I’d have done it all again, he’d told her, honestly, except that I would have trusted you with my plan…As apologies went, it was at least brutally sincere.

But Sylas had not trusted her. That was it, in the end.

And he was right not to; because he was a revolutionary, and she a Crownguard, and whether rightly or wrongly, he was coming to kill her family.

Lux breathed in.

Jinx trusts me.

Lux breathed out, and pushed her feet to the edge of the scaffolding, kicking a small pebble cast off from the statue so it tumbled down, down, toward the bright cobble streets far too far below…

“I’m tottering again,” she mumbled to herself, “Aren’t I? For him, back then, and now, for you…”

For her failed plea for mercy, Demacia had burned. And maybe it had needed to, just like Piltover needed to be shaken to its core…

But if what Jinx had planned went wrong, or even if it went right, there really would be no going back.

…when was the last time ‘going back’ was an option for either of us?

Lux opened her eyes.

An autocycle had pulled up in the plaza below. Two figures amid the flow; a splash of rich ruby hair next to midnight blue flickered between the bodies of others as they crossed the square toward the tower.

It was time to go.

I’d do anything, be anything, for you.

“I’m sorry, Jinx,” Lux murmured, “But I have to. For both of us.”

She tapped her staff to her ankle, glimmering out of sight, and began her own ascent.

Elevators, to Vi, were just coffins on chains.

It didn’t matter how spacious or sturdy they were, they all seemed confined. Nowhere for all her caged energy to go, no way out, just ‘up’ or ‘down’, and nothing to do but wait until they were done with you…

“Up” or “down”, no other way, perfect metaphor for the freaking twin cities, wasn’t it?

And worse when they were full of unspoken words.

As Vi wrestled with her urge to pace, Caitlyn stood pensive, her arms crossed over her uniformed middle, sharp blue brows collected in stormy thought.

The elevator began to whirr as it finally rose. This one was at least quiet, even covering its little sound with tastefully classical hexcoustic music, and that somehow made it worse.

It was a long way up this gleaming red-and-gold tower to Mel’s penthouse suite and the rooftop garden where she allegedly spent much of her time since leaving the Council. Her forced early retirement had at first demanded ‘convalescence’ in Clan Medarda’s elaborate countryside estates…

…but even her own family had found that Mel Medarda was of no mind to fade so quietly. Which brought her visitors to the Clan’s massive tower by the Piltover seaside, and its gilded elevator, its mechanisms cleverly hidden beneath panels in the shape of gliding swans.

Art and aesthetic beauty obfuscating pragmatism.

Still a damn long way up. Vi ground her teeth and found herself wishing for the damnable screech and rattle of the Rising Howl. At least then there’d be an excuse for silence.

“I didn’t,” Caitlyn suddenly said, breaking into Vi’s thoughts like a whipcrack.

Vi opened her mouth to speak, found it dry, and cleared her throat, “Didn’t what?”

“Tell Jayce anything,” she chewed over her next words, “Let alone anything I would not tell you first.”

Vi searched her face, but as hard as her expression was, Caitlyn was deliberately making eye contact, blue to grey, her lips drawn in a firm, dignified line.

“It sounded like you had a plan. When were you going to tell me?”

“I don’t,” Caitlyn breathed out, a tiny shake to her head, and something almost pleading in her eyes – something that said I promised. I won’t break it, “I had a thought, and I made a few enquiries when I learned about the clinic. Jayce picked up on it and drew his own conclusions.”

Vi snorted, “Jayce deduced your innermost thoughts, huh Cupcake? Should we hire him?”

“You laugh,” said Caitlyn, “But he’s a very intelligent man. Co-inventor of Hextech-”

“-Face of Progress and Man of Tomorrow, yeah yeah, I get it-”

“-and my oldest friend,” Caitlyn pointed out, “He knows how I think, like you do.”

Vi grunted, and the elevator rolled on.

She chewed on her words in silence for a time. Caitlyn still watched her, blue eyes begging to be believed.

To be given a chance.

“…you think it will work?”

Caitlyn breathed out.

“I don’t know, Vi. I can’t…this – the study of the mind – it is all so new. Piltover’s earlier efforts were barely better than Stillwater.”

She paused.

“Or worse.”

Vi knew there were tendons standing out on her neck, right where Caitlyn could see. She could hide nothing from Cait, she never could, and she hated it, because Caitlyn didn’t need to carry all the weight of her bullshit. She had enough weight of her own to bear.

“You think this place can…fix her?”

Caitlyn held her silence for a long, grim moment.

“No,” said Caitlyn, shaking her head, “I don’t think that’s what I’m saying, Vi. And you know it.”

Vi growled under her breath.

“You won’t rehabilitate her into some model Piltie citizen, Cupcake,” she said, “If in some mad world she wanted that, pretty boy is right. They’d never accept her. She’s always going to be a monster to them now.”

Powder’s face, unbidden, stabbed into her thoughts, laughing in their bunk, her little fingers patched and nicked from making her would-be-bombs to fight the Enforcers.

Her voice grew softer, her eyes falling from Caitlyn’s.

“…maybe she always would have been.”

“I don’t believe that,” said Caitlyn, “Vi, your sister is so much more than her violence. Her mind is…” Caitlyn trailed off, “…once in a generation. Even Jayce and Viktor acknowledged that. She did in weeks what took them years, and she was working alone…”

She shook her head again, her blue eyes distant and pensive, flashing in Vi’s periphery.

It hurt not to be staring into those eyes. It hurt that these wounds still existed between them, despite everything.

But, watching Caitlyn’s face, Vi frowned. She’d never realized it before but, the way Caitlyn’s eyes wandered, lost in the stream of her own thought, like she always did when she was speaking on her interests and intellectual passions…

Despite everything, all of it, she… the realization came up on Vi like a wave, she admires Jinx?

Vi did not know it was possible for her to love this woman more.

“Imagine if she was given the opportunities that she was robbed of as a child,” Caitlyn went on, a faint tremor in her voice, “People like her – like Ekko – the minds of Zaun, I’ve seen what they can do. Imagine what good she could do for both cities if we could find a way just to give her a bloody chance!”

Despite the fervent belief in Caitlyn’s eyes, Vi’s heart weighed heavy.

It was sweet, it really was. Vi wished she could believe it.

“Yeah, well,” Vi said, “Viktor was from the Undercity too. He tried to do just that and look where it got him.”

“Vi…”

“He wasn’t a crazy killer terrorist either,” Vi hid bitterness in her smirk, “Still blew up in his face, didn’t it?”

Caitlyn held her tongue. Vi let hers push against the back of her teeth, fighting with her words.

I hate this.

“Cupcake, I appreciate what you’re trying to do. I mean it. Especially after…after everything she did to you…”

She couldn’t look at Caitlyn, knowing how quickly her thoughts would turn to the bleeping of hospital machines, the spear of blue light trailing across a red sky. The thunder of falling rubble.

Maybe even garish neon paint, washed from fresh bruises, circling the drain…

I’m a coward, and I don’t deserve you, Cait. Neither of us do…

“…but Powder – Jinx, I mean,” she winced, “–after everything – even if she had the chance to build something to help Piltover, why would she want to?”

Caitlyn fell silent. Outside the little whirring golden box, the city scrolled by in the bright daylight. Growing ever brighter.

“I promised you,” Caitlyn said softly, as they rose to the penthouse level, “No gallows, no Stillwater. We need to know what our ‘something else’ is going to look like before we are faced with the sudden choice. I’m trying to keep that promise.”

Vi closed her eyes and nodded.

“I know.”

She looked up at Caitlyn, finally.

“That’s if we ever catch her.”

A silent beat hung between them. They certainly were no closer.

The mechanisms stopped, Hextech hummed, and the door clunked as an attendant waiting at the top floor stepped in to open it.

“This way, please,” said the red-haired attendant, guiding Caitlyn and Vi through the antechamber and into Mel’s sanctuary.

Caitlyn couldn’t help but smirk at the way Vi respectfully kept her eyes away from the woman’s lithe, athletic physique and rather attractive scars. All of Mel’s people were like her, really, distractingly pleasing to the eye, courteous and well-mannered, their crisp Noxian accents and immaculate attire lending them an air of untouchable old-world poise that rendered even the most genteel of the Piltovan upper crust a little crass by comparison.

But, like Mel herself, Caitlyn knew that none of the young women and men attending the daughter of House Medarda would be mere ‘local cuisine’. Her beauty and refinement were razor-edged tools for a razor-edged mind, and those she surrounded herself with were the brightest and best of the next generation of philosophers, artists, diplomats, and kingmakers, all vetted and known personally to her.

The Garden, encompassed on all sides by tall glass panels cut in triangles to resemble the sails of ships, was a place of both privacy and awe-inspiring view across Piltover’s harbor. Caitlyn and Vi walked beneath tall native trees interspersed with Shuriman date palms and Noxian summer blossoms, both adaptable and well-suited to the Piltovan climate. Their steps bore them over white paths and curving bridges between which numerous beds of wildflowers were contained in sinuous shapes and patterns.

Mel Medarda was not difficult to spot, seated upon a small outdoor divan, before an enormous canvas upon which she now painted in graceful strokes the hues and textures of a Piltovan midmorning over the harbor, white gulls and white ships splashed in light of liquid gold.

“Caitlyn, delightfully punctual as ever,” said their gracious host with a smile when they finally reached her, “Vi, thank you both for coming. It’s good to see you.”

Vi opened her mouth to give a warm, probably awkwardly informal greeting, but her lips froze open in surprise; Caitlyn’s steps slowed.

Mel wasn’t alone.

Seated at a little tea-table not far away, observing Mel’s work without obscuring her light, was Cassandra Kiramman.

“Caitlyn,” she said with a smile, setting down her teacup, “You received the invitation. Good.”

“I’m – surprised to see you out and about,” Caitlyn reached out to greet her mother with a hug – far more superficial than she would like, but Cassandra had only begun to grow accustomed to hugging again after…

…and Caitlyn always suppressed tension in her neck at the feeling of cold prosthetics on one side of her body.

“This was your mother’s idea, actually,” said Mel, “She thought I might be able to provide a little help on certain matters.” The woman’s dark-gold eyes twinkled with mirth masking a hint of bitter pain. “As I’m now a private citizen with entirely too much free time, I agreed.”

“We also thought it would be best to see the two of you outside of your usual…” Cassandra’s smile flickered only an instant, “…haunts.”

“Of course, mother,” said Caitlyn, smiling, “We’d be delighted.”

The gorgeous redhead and a tall youth with his hair in shining black curls stepped forward and drew out two chairs from either side of Cassandra, creating expectant space flanking her around the little table, but angled so that each seated person was facing Mel Medarda.

Caitlyn found her hard to look at now.

It was no prejudice she might have against disfigurement; Caitlyn’s native compassion turned her toward those who suffered, not away. It would not have mattered to her, but it was also eerily true that one would be hard pressed to call what the rocket had done to Mel Medarda ‘ugly’…

But Mel Medarda had become a living embodiment of the night Piltover had shattered.

Caitlyn had read the reports between shaking hands in those terrible days after.

The rocket pierced the window of the Council chamber directly behind Mel’s seat. Its Hextech-fuelled Chemtech explosion reacted almost instantaneously with the innate magical defenses of the ancient artifact – here Mel herself had corrected that it was not ‘Shuriman’ but of Solari Targonian origin – that she wore on her person even when she slept.

The golden adornments, bonded directly to her skin, were a relic and heirloom of Clan Medarda that was fabled to protect its wearer in the direst hour.

It had done its best.

As the Councilors around her had their flesh seared from their bones and their bodies blasted to chemical dust by roiling clouds of rune-amplified blue flame and concussive force with barely time to scream, Mel’s armor had taken the brunt of the rocket striking its reflective magical field at the center of her back. In her split-second reaction to the window shattering behind her, she had turned on instinct toward Jayce and Viktor; her choice had shielded Jayce, the closest to her position, and saved his life.

Viktor had been only close enough to Mel and Jayce to be spared the worst.

Caitlyn smiled as politely as she could and let her eyes wander rather than averting them suddenly.

The enchanted armor had melted down and into Mel’s flesh. It really was part of her, now, complex lightning-strikes threading through her dark skin like a river-system of living gold seen from far above.

Caitlyn took the moment she was facing away from Mel to take her seat by her mother’s side to close her eyes and fight back the flashes of her memory of seeing the Council tower split apart mingling with her imagination of what had taken place within.

Cassandra had seen the rocket coming in the window’s reflection and cried out a warning as she dove from her seat. She’d been partially shielded by the chair and the table cracking apart and collapsing on her body when it hit.

Caitlyn had few illusions; if it had not been for Mel Medarda, there would have been no force present dampening the blast at all, and her mother and best friend would be ash and dust.

“Take some tea and settle yourselves in,” said Mel, “I’d like to hear your news, before we attend to business.”

Mel smiled at her, but there was a sadness in it. Despite Caitlyn’s best efforts, her quick eyes missed nothing.

“Uh, thanks, cheers,” said Vi, settling herself down with a warm smile to Cassandra. She looked out of place as ever in a place like this.

Mel’s hand trembled slightly as she lay down the paintbrush and turned to her guests.

The rocket had changed her in other ways. Where she’d once been famous for her grace, she now had both ferocious energy and frail languor infused into every movement; even now, faint gleams of Hextech blue pulsed along her arms and back every so often, sending small convulsions into her limbs that she contained only, Caitlyn suspected, by indomitable will.

Even her beautiful grey-gold eyes had tiny motes and flecks of the rocket’s arcane azure reflecting in them when the light hit them in certain ways.

“We’re working to restore order to the traffic network,” said Caitlyn quietly over her tea, “Jayce thinks we should have everything cleared up by this evening, if not by early tomorrow.”

“Marvelous,” Mel joined them at the table, settling in with her customary poise, thanking the brown-haired young woman who served her tea, “I trust Count Sandvik is satisfied with his daughter’s whereabouts?”

Vi contained a snort but couldn’t contain her wry smirk.

“Alysoun and Terenz are safe,” Caitlyn said, lifting a warning eye to Vi, “It’s my understanding that their decision to renounce their inheritance and elope without their parents’ knowledge or consent in lieu of another pre-arranged ceremony was, nonetheless, a mutual and happy one.”

“My my,” said Mel, with a dazzling grin “Such a scandal.”

“Apparently they’re honeymooning,” Vi added, ignoring Cait with a wink, “In the Promenade. At an, uh, protest forum.”

“I see the young haven’t changed,” Cassandra muttered into her teacup.

Vi’s furrowed brows suggested to Caitlyn that she had words to reply that she was having second thoughts about.

Mel voiced them for her.

“Of course, they haven’t,” she said quietly, “Because the world hasn’t. Has it, Vi?”

Caitlyn caught her breath.

Mel entirely had Vi’s attention now. She met the other woman’s eyes without fear and nodded.

“No, it hasn’t,” she said, “Zaun’s still poor. Maybe even poorer. Some of the Chembarons make sure people prosper – as long as they’re paid protection. Others just take.”

Mel listened as Vi went on. It was one thing that Caitlyn would give her; most Piltovan politicians knew how to talk, Jayce was certainly very good at it, but none knew how to listen like Mel Medarda.

When she listened to you, it didn’t matter who you were, you felt like you had the whole world’s attention.

Vi let her gaze drop to her knuckles. Bruised and scarred, still wrapped in gauze, out of habit. Only Cait had really seen those hands bared, the tale of damage they concealed, breaking her heart each time she held them in her own and felt the rough scars.

“…when the turf wars break out, that’s when it’s the worst for the people down there. And with Shimmer running low, they’re more frequent than ever.”

“It is dreadful to see Zaun oppress its own,” said Cassandra, “If there was more that could be done-”

“They learned from the best,” Vi said quietly, “It’s like Mel said. The world hasn’t changed. The Barons are just a new layer between the people getting screwed and the people doing the screwing. Follow the money and power, it’s still flowing the same way…”

A bitter little chuckle broke out of her.

“Money flows uphill and shit trickles down. That’s how the engine works, and it hasn’t changed a bit.”

Cassandra arched a brow, and Vi cleared her throat and blushed, seeming to suddenly remember that it was Caitlyn’s mother she was talking to.

“Um…sorry, Mrs K, I just…”

“No, Vi, by all means,” Cassandra said, with a flicker of her gaze to her daughter, “Put us in our place.”

“It’s appreciated, Vi,” Mel agreed, with that impossibly charming smile of hers. The scars she wore now had not lessened its power, “Honesty is a rare commodity in Piltover. And it has been harder than ever for us to understand what’s happening across the river.”

Cassandra tisked, but though her pristine mask was up, Caitlyn saw a hint of affection in her glance back to Vi, as she conceded, “That is certainly true. Your insights are valuable.”

Vi went pink to her ears and stared into her teacup. Caitlyn slid her foot slightly beneath the table to make contact with her partner’s, to silently let her know she had her back.

“My partner speaks her mind,” Caitlyn said, thinking of the crate, the warehouse, Renata’s list, “And the truth. There’s still corruption in Piltover, and I’m still doing everything I can to keep the peace in spite of it. If the Wardens had more resources…”

“You’d not be on the back foot,” Cassandra sobered, “I know, darling."

Caitlyn took a deeper sip of her tea. Surrounded as she was by all the trappings of high art and politics, she could not exactly relax.

But this wasn’t a Council meeting or a high-society gala. Mel Medarda, of all people, had joined her on the political outskirts of Piltover’s power. And her mother was…her mother.

Caitlyn sighed and let the tension sink from her shoulders.

“The Enforcers had hundreds more officers,” she admitted, “And five times the funding.”

“Ten,” Cassandra amended.

“Ten!” Caitlyn gestured, “I’m holding together two cities entwined in increasingly complex ways, fresh out of a civil war and perpetually tottering on the edge of another one. As we no longer have jurisdiction on their side of the river – and I shall reiterate, we should not have it – Piltovan criminals simply hide their assets in Zaun, and Zaunite criminals operating on our turf always have somewhere to retreat. The Chembarons have their fingers in most of it, and the only thing even close to a force for justice in the Undercity are community vigilantes like the Firelights or that young Spark girl, none of whom trust us either. And now – with recent events–”

With Jinx, the bitter, unspoken word hovering between them and all of their scars.

“–I’m being hounded for results from all quarters. But if the Council and the Clans expect results, surely they can spare us more than token support! If we had that, we might actually be able to do more than toddle along after and clean up the mess!”

“Except, of course,” said Mel, after contemplatively finishing a date, “That there are several barriers to your doing so, and at least one of them is entirely your own doing.”

Caitlyn frowned, her steam running out, and tipped her head.

“The first is that those resources would have to come from some of the very people you might end up investigating,” Mel’s smile grew wry, “The second is that you stubbornly insist on being incorruptible, so there’s no incentive for anyone to give you funding and personnel in order to use you against their rivals.”

Caitlyn’s brows stormed together above her nose. “Mel, that’s…”

“…true, actually,” Vi chimed in, chuckling, “Yeah, hundred percent.”

Traitor, mouthed Caitlyn.

Love you, Vi mouthed back with a wink. She was picking at the dates now, giving them an experimental bite, having given up on the teacup out of fear of breaking the admittedly tiny handle.

“The third,” Mel went on, tapping a gold-wreathed finger against her lip in thought, “Is that your Department is hand-picked and hand-vetted by you. A wise strategy, and one I employ myself.”

She gestured to the few attendants still drifting about the gardens.

“And your training regime is far more nuanced and thorough than any in Piltover’s history, but it’s also expensive and time-consuming. That means you’ll never have the numbers the Enforcers had. You can’t afford to let just anyone in. And your enemies know it.”

Caitlyn bit her tongue and breathed out.

“Not even you can know how many I’ve had to turn away,” she said, “How many of the old Enforcers tried to wriggle back in or get cronies hired in their stead. Or how many people have tried to buy my officers out from under me.”

“…Like Count Sandvik?” said Vi.

“Like Count Sandvik,” said Caitlyn, with a pointed glance at the two other women, “With Nicodemus’ help.”

“Tread carefully dear,” Cassandra said softly, “Caitlyn, I know how much this means to you. And…through everything, I’ve come to respect what you are trying to do, and what it is costing you. But you do have enemies.”

“On the Council,” said Mel, “And outside of it.”

“Including certain Demacians,” said Caitlyn, “Isn’t that why you asked me here?”

“Not only those Demacians,” said Cassandra, “Though they are a factor. I thought it prudent, given the difficulties of your present case – the Crownguard matter - to call upon certain favors.”

Caitlyn’s eyes widened.

“M-mother,” Caitlyn stammered, “I thought we had agreed that my investigations, my work, are inviolate and confidential…”

“Caitlyn,” Cassandra drew a sharp glance upon her daughter, “I know we have not always seen eye to eye as mother and daughter but please trust, in this instance, that I…we, are trying very hard to steer you to your friends.”

“I already knew,” said Mel, “Don’t worry, Cait. It’s taken care of.”

Caitlyn’s heart skipped a bit. Vi’s chewing slowed and stilled beside her. Caitlyn stared at Mel Medarda silently, as if she could see the invisible strings attached to whatever the woman had done just by staring intently enough.

“What precisely is ‘taken care of’?” she repeated.

Mel smiled. It wasn’t a smug smile, and that’s what made it worse; harder, impossible to read.

“Let’s speak frankly,” she said, “As of a few weeks ago, you have four Noxian corpses in cold storage, one recuperating Noxian Reckoner in your med ward, a nameless–” here, she gave Caitlyn and Vi a pointed look “–Demacian swordsman in your custody, and a growing number of Demacian diplomatic envoys in your city.”

She levelled her eyes on Caitlyn’s own, and for a split-second, there were those drifting motes of Hextech blue in them again.

“Being obligated by law to hold a public murder trial for a Demacian war hero would complicate matters, wouldn’t it?” Mel smirked, “Especially with all those unexpected ‘diplomats’ sniffing around after a certain missing person. Especially considering their ties to the allegedly defunct Mageseeker order.”

“Defunct?” Caitlyn asked, frowning, “How do you mean?”

Mel’s smile thinned. “Ah. Demacian news doesn’t move swiftly, especially outside its borders, does it?”

Caitlyn slowly sat up straight.

“Mel, would you kindly explain?”

She nodded, steepling her fingers before her, “Caitlyn, Sylas of Dregbourne struck again. A few months ago – and with support, this time, from a solid rebel faction. There were raids on numerous Mageseeker compounds, multiple jailbreaks, retaliation, staged mass executions, even a siege of the capital…”

“Holy shit,” said Vi, half a date falling out of her mouth.

“In the end, Jarvan the Fourth seems to have had a change of heart. Mages in Demacia are now afforded at least some modicum of protection under the law.”

“Young Luxanna seems to have had some hand in that,” said Cassandra, with a wry smile of her own.

“And the Mageseeker order was forcibly disbanded,” Mel finished, “At least for the time being.”

Caitlyn, stunned, let her eyes search and scan for some subterfuge.

“This makes no sense,” she said aloud, “Eldred Crownguard is here in Piltover, with an entire entourage of his own.”

Caitlyn thought, for a moment, she’d heard the clank of a broken plate in the background, but she barely noticed it over the keening silence in her head.

“Caitlyn,” said Mel, “Eldred Crownguard is dead.”

“What?”

Luxanna’s heart pounded.

Eldred Crownguard is here in Piltover.

She hastened to scrape up the broken plate, fiercely aware of the judging eyes cast her way.

‘Elba’, the persona of a promising young Piltover academy graduate she had practiced for just such an occasion as this, would take such a minor mishap in stride, but even with her Illuminator training, Lux struggled to keep her tension from showing.

And Mel knew all of her attendants personally. Which meant that most of them also knew each other. Simple enough to steal from a wardrobe downstairs and tint her hair brown, but she couldn’t afford to draw too close scrutiny…

The rest of Mel Medarda’s words hummed in the background. She heard Kingslayer, Mageseekers’ command structure and rebellion…

All of that she knew. Uncle Eldred was dead. Sylas had killed him personally, during his final bold raid on the Capital, and Lux, knowing what horrors her uncle was culpable for, had not found room in her heart to mourn.

Only guilt, and uncertainty at the reason she felt it. Because he was still family, or because she had done nothing to stop his atrocities herself?

The man at the Garden party. The man whose back I saw…

How could he be here? How could he still be alive?

…and does that mean there are Mageseekers in Piltover?

Hastening out of the eyeline of the other attendants, ostensibly to dispose of the broken crockery, ‘Elba’ slid a narrow rod of gold from the fashionable array of accessories at her belt and tapped her ankle.

When she stepped back out of the kitchen, it was out of sight entirely.

A risk. She couldn’t hold that spell forever, and a faint glimmer of an outline might give her away if she moved or was jostled.

But it was a risk worth taking.

Lux slid around the corner, hugging the garden wall, keeping out of the direct sunlight that might compete with her magic. She slipped into the shadows of a little arched chamber full of art supplies, closer to the conversation. She had only to circle around to get within earshot. The other attendants were far away, on the other side of the garden…

Except one.

Lux saw and felt nothing before cold steel pricked at her neck. Her body instantly tensed like a rabbit in a trap, the spell wobbling about her before it shivered out of her grasp.

“… ‘how nice to see you’ would be only half a lie,” whispered a voice of razor silk in her ear, “Hello, Lux.”

A faint familiarity tugged at her, even amidst her fight-or-flight panic, about that sultry Noxian burr; the markings on the knife, the smirk of ruby lips at the corner of her eye, the scarred cheek pressed to hers.

Lux swallowed, very carefully, against the knife at her throat.

“Hello, Kat,” she said.

Chapter Text

Outside, the sun cut planes of brilliant light and shadow across the fantastical geometry of Piltover, painting the world in blue, white and gold…

Inside the clocktower, those shadows clung like cobwebs to the corners of disused machinery. Jinx sat alone, listening to the drip of water from somewhere in the bowels of the tower and the odd chirp and yelp of a couple of Powder monkeys skittering around below.

“Gotta be careful with those burny lil’ tails,” she muttered, snapping the jaws onto another Flame Chomper and dropping it into the reinforced, flame-retardant box. Normally she’d just think it was funny if the little beasties set off one or two, but she’d put effort into this lair, Luxie had nice stuff here and, “…random explosions get a lot more attention up here than back home.”

Home.

A funny little slip of the tongue. Home. Where was ‘home’? Zaun had always been home, except that Zaun didn’t want her anymore. She’d pissed off the Barons – or they wanted her blood or something – Sevika hated her, and at least Boy Savior wasn’t trying to beat her to death anymore, but she wouldn’t bet on party invites to the Buzzy Bug Tree. All that was left of Vander was a murderous cyborg wolfman…

And Vi wasn’t down there anymore.

No, nobody wanted her around except Lux. And Lux was up here, with her.

She’d left little marks of herself all over their shared space, in this lair just like the one down in the Entresol. Her blonde hair was stuck to the wall of the little shower recess. Her clothes were stacked neatly in the dresser and her books in her bookcase. Little strings of crystals hung near the bed that she charged with her Light until they glowed with subtle iridescence, much kinder to the eyes to read by at night than chemlights. The sheets of their bed still held traces of her bright scent…

…oh, and there was that burning smell in the kitchen area.

Lux was many wonderful things, but a girl raised in a castle full of freakin’ servants wasn’t much of a cook. She still tried, for Jinx and for her own sanity, because Jinx’s cooking was apparently ‘surprisingly delicious, but terrifying both to witness and to ingest’. Unfortunately, Lux’s culinary creativity started and ended at somehow stewing meat and vegetables into watery flavorless slop and transmogrifying baked goods into charred sacrifices stinking up the oven.

Jinx thought it terribly cute that she tried, though, because everything about Lux was cute and perfect, especially the parts of her that other people would think were somehow imperfect.

Lux had barely left and already Jinx felt her absence by the weight of her lingering presence. She was alone, back in her own headspace and her own company, as she’d grown so bitterly used to in that whole year in the dark that she’d blinked and missed save for the nightmares…but Lux didn’t feel gone.

She’s gone, she’s not coming back. She’s only gone for a walk. She’ll betray you, lead them right to you…  she’s gone to gather intel, it’s what she’s good at.

Jinx growled and swatted the annoying whispers away. Always there, especially in the moments she was alone, but so was the memory of warm tones of iridescent Light, drowning out all the lies her stupid brain was telling her…

Because this was home. They’d probably need to leave it, eventually, they’ll find you, there’s nowhere to hide but…wherever they landed together, that would be home too.

Jinx put the Chomper down and furrowed her brows in some consternation at the unstoppable dopey smile twitching its way across her lips.

Home is where you are, Sunbeam.

Jinx tweaked and tinkered more amid the clinking of tools, vaguely aware that she was humming something bright and tuneless to herself, without even having any music shrieking in her ear to dampen the voices of the scratches and the scribbles and the white hollow void…

They crept about in the shadows at the edges of her awareness, skulking little scavengers that dared come no closer. Because no matter if the windows were blacked out and the walls scribbled with Jinx’s graffiti monsters…

This was a place of Light.

…sometimes noise, Jinx pondered, with a snicker as she spotted that they’d left a few of her extra fun toys strewn about the bed from last night. Woops.

That was a new thing for Jinx, too.

“Huh. So sex is actually really fun, who knew,” Jinx mused, then sighed happily, “Not gross at all when it’s you, Blondie. Ooh, I’ve got some real neat ideas…tee-hee…but bombs first!”

Poking out her tongue, Jinx snatched a wrench and tightened the screws on the latest Chomper before she added it to the pile. Bullet-belts for Pow-Pow, multiple types of rockets for Fishbones, and so many Chompers she was starting to get an ache in her wrist from the repetition of assembling them.

And she hadn’t just been making ammo. Oh no, there were so many wonderful new surprises she’d made. Good games needed props, sets, accessories, after all…and it was good to have something to focus on. Her guns were getting really sick of her babbling about Lux.

Jinx reached into the drawer of her desk for another tool and – her fingers bumped into something secluded there. Jostled, it slid partially into her view.

Jinx stopped.

“Oh,” she swallowed, “I guess. I could finish that.”

Something she’d started working on. For Lux. Something that the Game had…distracted her from.

But something she’d need help with.

“We’re just waiting for stupid Big Hat and Fat Hands to figure it out, anyway…but I’d need to go down to see…”

Jinx’s fingers twitched.

“Yeah…yeah there’s time.”

Jinx sprang from her seat like an uncoiling snake and snatched up her things, one by one…

The nearest Powder monkey tipped its head, bright, fiery eyes blinking at her.

“Don’t do anythin’ I’d do,” she called to the monkeys, “I’m goin’ out!”

Pow-Pow was, as always, revved to go, but Fishbones glowered at her as she slung him over her shoulder.

“Oh, don’t make that face,” said Jinx, “I just…need to get some extra specialist supplies. And a bit of advice. From my conscience. My other one! That’s all.”

Jinx turned on her heel and jabbed a finger at the scribble-eyed shadows peering at her from their perches around the room.

“And you – all of you! Stay outta trouble.”

Didn’t much matter what she said, though. She could leave the monkeys behind, but the shadows would come with her.

They always did.

As Jinx slipped behind the sun-kissed streets and started on her long path down, she whistled anyway.

“I got a good feeling,” she hummed to herself, hanging onto the threads of sunlight that made the world smell like her, “It’s not gonna go wrong this time. It’s not…”

The craziest thing was that part of her even believed it.

“Eldred Crownguard is dead.”

Caitlyn’s train of thought came to a crashing halt.

“What?”

“By the Kingslayer’s own hand,” said Mel, “Along with most of the Mageseekers’ command structure. The rebellion left their organization in tatters, though there’s rumors of resurgence.”

“Th-this is impossible,” Caitlyn stuttered, “If Eldred’s dead, who the hell is occupying the Grand Stanwick suite? Who did Vi and I speak with at the Innovation Gardens? Who landed on my roof, Mel, and demanded to be housed in my city?”

Mel held up a hand, “That’s a question I intend to find the answer to, Caitlyn. Leave it with me, please.”

Caitlyn fell silent and exchanged a glance with Vi, who looked as dumfounded as she did.

“A grand mystery indeed,” said Cassandra, “But it is one we are content to take out of your hands. First lesson of shooting, Caitlyn; shall I give a reminder?”

“One shot, one target,” said Caitlyn, reflexively. Her eyes met her mother’s, and she pursed her lips, “I’m stretched too thin.”

“Far too thin, dear,” Cassandra said, returning her smile, “But that is where the first rule of shooting can meet the fourth rule of business.”

“Delegate,” said Caitlyn, with a twitch of a smirk.

“Precisely,” said Cassandra.

“To that end,” said Mel, “Let’s discuss what else can be taken off your plate. I assume you’ve had ample time to interrogate your captured Noxian? I believe his name is Ephus, a sword for hire and former Reckoner of the arena?”

Caitlyn frowned, “Y-yes, he was in a coma for several days, and required jaw surgery to speak again-”

“Yeah, woops,” said Vi, lifting a finger over chewing a handful of dates, “…my bad.”

Caitlyn sighed.

“I trust you were able to glean information from him?” Mel probed, a glitter of curiosity in her clever eyes, “And are likely to get no more?”

Caitlyn narrowed her eyes. Alone, badly wounded and abandoned by his remaining allies, the man had not been reticent. Mercenaries were canny survivors and knew when to bargain and when to comply. The hospital-bed interrogation had gathered little more than she had guessed; that the Noxians were independent operatives, pursuing Luxanna as a prize to gain favor with those higher in the food chain.

He’d named all the other Noxian suspects but knew very little of their unlikely ally, the Demacian Mageseeker. That mystery remained elusive.

“Enough,” Caitlyn admitted, “…as much as we’re likely to.”

“Good,” said Mel, “Then he’s no longer your problem.”

Caitlyn blinked.

“He’ll be returned to Noxus. Out of your hair. In exchange,” Mel said, spreading her fingers and placing her palms together, “Noxus is willing to drop any demand for restitution for the deaths of its citizens in the cases of both the Piltovan boy who killed in self-defense and the Demacian you have detained.”

“Mel, that’s not-he cut a man in half in broad daylight-the law-”

“The City of Piltover concurs with this ruling,” she continued, “Formal arrangements have already been made, thanks to your friend on the Council…”

Salo, Caitlyn thought, narrowing her eyes, Damnit…

“Your swordsman is cleared of all legal scrutiny and remanded to the protective custody of the Wardens of Piltover. Do with him as you see fit.”

Caitlyn shot to her feet, her brows furrowed in fierce protest, “Mel, that’s not how justice works. There are laws, which Garen Crownguard has broken, there must be a trial, a jury…”

Silence fell as Caitlyn trailed off, her words lost in Mel’s immovable smile and her mother’s raised eyebrow.

“Leave it, Caitlyn,” Cassandra said warningly, drumming her white gloved fingertips upon the table, “You need all the allies you can muster. This is a gift. Recognize it and accept it.”

Caitlyn opened her mouth to argue, only to feel Vi’s hand on her arm.

“She’s right, Cupcake,” Vi said, “Let it go this time.”

“Vi, how could you? We’ve talked about this. We need to be better than the Enforcers – this is a bribe –”

“Cait,” Vi said, her eyes flashing up to her lover, her partner, “This is a good deal. We should take it.”

“I cannot believe you’re siding with my mother on this!”

“Yeah, well,” Vi gave a hint of a dark smirk, “Between the Lanes and Stillwater, I might have a fair sense of the difference between a bear trap and an olive branch.”

Cassandra cleared her throat, and Caitlyn growled in the back of hers.

“Vi has good sense,” said her mother, “Enough to know that not every exchange is compromise.”

Vi tipped her head, unable to hide her surprise, “…thanks.”

“Besides. It’s already done,” said Mel, “Your mother suggested you’d have reservations, so I took the liberty. Your hands are completely clean, Caitlyn. Relax yourself.”

Caitlyn breathed out instead of screaming, and resumed her seat, slowly.

“How?” she asked Mel, her throat dry, “How did you arrange this? I thought that you – that your mother – that you weren’t on good terms? And that – that bad blood between Clan Medarda and the Noxian high command–”

“Caitlyn, darling,” Cassandra chuckled, “Noxian political intrigues are like basilisks fighting in a cave. An outsider only hears the growling, and only when she sees the bones fly out from within is it obvious who won.”

“Oh?” Mel gave a tinkling laugh, turning to Cassandra, “I’ve never heard that one before. But it’s rather apt, thank you.”

“Funny, we say something similar about Piltover,” muttered Vi, and gave Cassandra a sidelong grin in response to her chiding glare, “Heh, sorry – can take the girl out of the Lanes, but not the Lanes out of the girl, right?”

A beat of silence, and Caitlyn’s lingering outrage, stilled them all.

“Fine,” said Caitlyn, “I’ll concede you’ve outplayed me this time. Let the record state that I still don’t approve.”

“You hardly have to, dear,” Cassandra drew an implacable smile, “That is sometimes the way of things, in business as in life.”

“Let the record state,” Mel’s eyes softened a little as she leaned closer to Caitlyn, resting a gold-laced hand on her arm, “That you still have my sympathies.”

Mothers, she mouthed to Caitlyn, with a tiny roll of her eyes.

“Hmph,” Cassandra murmured over her tea.

“Hello, Kat.”

Steel prickled at Lux’s throat, cold as death and smelling of it. A sharp contrast with Katarina’s body heat through her fine Piltovan fashions - no leather today - and the spill of soft blood-red hair on Lux’s shoulder.

In plain sight. Lux must have glanced at her in passing half a dozen times across the garden as she infiltrated Medarda’s sanctum. It wasn’t as if Lux hadn’t used the exact same tricks to blend in, only she’d fallen for them too…

It would be a tragedy, Lux mourned, to die feeling this much like a roaring idiot.

What is she doing here?! Is she here for me? But if she was, I’d already be…

“Brunette,” her captor observed, sharp green eyes gliding sidelong to Lux’s dull brown hair, “That isn’t dye, is it?”

Lux’s tiny laugh was shrill, her voice trembling a little through it, “N-no, a trick I learned…um…”

She closed her eyes and breathed as best she could against the knife and the beating of her heart. Bending light. She couldn’t change her face – oh she’d tried, but the best she could do was make it shimmery and indistinct from a distance, difficult to discern or remember – but she found it simpler to alter the way light reflected from her hair and her eyes…

Katarina’s brows arched slightly, impressed, as Lux’s hair subtly blended through autumnal hues until it had become fiery red to match her own.

“…color’s really just…how we see light, after all,” said Lux.

“And your eyes, too. You really are quite the mage,” Katarina murmured, a little more warmly than Lux had expected, “I do hope you aren’t intending on causing my lady host any trouble, though. I’d hate to regret sparing you in the gardens of the Crownguard estate.”

She’s…working for Medarda? Lux wondered.

“I, um,” Lux licked her lips, “I would also hate for you to regret that…’Dereen’. I was pretty grateful for that, actually.”

She saw, from the corner of her eyes, Katarina’s ruby mouth twist in a smirk.

“How sweet, you remembered,” she tugged Lux back against her chest, leveraging the knife to impress non-resistance upon her, “Let’s catch up, shall we?”

Lux barely squeaked as she was pulled from her vantage point, and earshot of her targets…

Damnit!

…and out onto a secluded balcony, looking back over the shining city of Piltover.

“Little Luxanna,” Katarina clicked her tongue in Lux’s ear, “All the way down here in the shining City of Progress. What are the odds we’d chance to cross paths again? Or would you call it fate?”

Lux blinked.

“Mm, hold that thought-” Katarina twisted Lux’s body and pushed her back into a wall just out of view of the archway; the dagger left her throat, and her captor’s quick eyes darted back to check the coast was clear before she stepped back toward Lux, backing her into the balcony’s corner…

…and settled against the wall beside her. She blew carmine strands from her face and shot Lux a sly smile.

“Alone at last,” she said.

Only the quiet murmurs of conversation from Mel’s attendants and the swishing of someone brushing dry leaves from the garden paths disturbed the beat of silence.

“Well, international intrigues are the last thing the two of you need to be concerning yourselves with right now,” said Mel at last, her smile fading a little, “They can be our problem. You have plenty of your own.”

Her head had tilted to her shoulder, her eyes on the threads of gold weaving through her skin from the designs once embedded there, now melted permanently into her flesh.

Jinx hung in the air. The real reason they were here. The note of dissonance binding all the disparate jigsaw pieces together.

“What do you really want, Mel?” Caitlyn dared ask.

Mel gave a softer smile.

“The same thing you do, Caitlyn. Peace and justice for our cities. Stability,” she leveled a look at Vi’s suspicious expression, “But our vision of what that should look like is not the only one.”

Cassandra poured the last of the tea herself, topping up their cups.

“Factional politics between the Clans are worse than ever, Caitlyn,” she said as she settled back into her seat, “You – all of us – need to be exceedingly careful where we tread.”

“I’ll be blunt,” Mel sighed, “There are forces in Piltover right now looking to use her return, and her current…antics… to press their advantage. I don’t know who all of them are, or who their mastermind is…”

Vi, to her left, had that look of a crouching predator she sometimes got. Caitlyn felt a crawl up her spine.

“But I don’t like where they are taking Piltover,” Mel concluded, “And there’s only so much I can do from outside of the Council. So, what I want is very simple; I want you, Caitlyn Kiramman, to stay as the highest peacekeeping authority in the City of Piltover, at any cost.”

She leaned forward in her seat.

“And I want you to capture Jinx. Can you do that?”

Caitlyn took a deep breath.

“We will,” said Vi, her energy brimming under her skin, “And only us, do you get me? If anyone else corners her, she will retaliate. Again. Maybe worse.”

Her eyes unashamedly fixed on Mel’s scarring, and for a moment, just a moment, Caitlyn saw the unflappable ex-Councilor’s mask crack.

As Caitlyn wrestled her own heart back to where it belonged, she wondered if Mel had the nightmares too.

“…no matter what happens,” she added, more gently, “If you truly intend to trust us, then you must trust us. It will take time, and our methods may not win us much praise, but we’re the only ones who can.”

“I wish I could give you more time,” said Mel, “But the balance of power in Piltover is shifting. I think all of us have less time than we think.”

Another beat of silence hung between them, a chill tension in the warm Piltovan sun.

Thoughts whirling, Caitlyn pushed to her feet.

“Thank you, Mel,” she said, “This has been most insightful.”

The former Councilor dipped her head in a graceful nod of acknowledgement.

“Mother,” Caitlyn said, with a smile to Cassandra, “A private word?”

“Of course,” said her mother, and Kiramman junior and senior rose and departed the table; leaving Vi with Mel Medarda.

“Mm,” said Mel, “Abandoned by the Kiramman women,” she turned and winked at Vi, “I suppose we shall have to make small talk?”

“I, ugh, damnit,” Vi said, hand on her rumbling stomach, “Need to scoot to the ladies, actually. Mind if I uh…”

“I should have warned you about the dates, my apologies,” said Mel, eyes twinkling with mirth, “Second to your left.”

She sipped to herself to hide her laughter as Vi scurried away.

Turning back to her painting, Mel Medarda surrendered to her musings of red and of gold.

“Chance?” Lux coughed, “that does mean you’re not here for me, right?”

Well, the fact she hasn’t killed me yet means she’s probably not here to kill me.

So, small wins, I guess.

Katarina tisked and wiggled her fingertip, “That isn’t how this game goes. You know that.”

Lux stopped, searching the other woman’s face.

Why now? Why would she – that mysterious, dangerous, and uncomfortably attractive Noxian woman who kept showing up in her life and her brother’s – show up again here?

After Sylas’ escape and their first rooftop encounter in the aftermath, Garen had become a little obsessed, in Lux’s opinion, with solving the mystery of the red-haired stranger who had saved Lux’s life and made such a dramatic exit from the capital…with seeing her again.

He hadn’t liked his answer when he’d found it in another heated crossing of their blades.

Katarina du Couteau, the Sinister Blade of Noxus.

“Yeah, I know,” Lux scrunched her nose and groaned, “So, what? You’re here for reasons you won’t tell me, and I’m here for reasons I won’t tell you, so we just…stare at each other awkwardly, and both of us miss our eavesdropping window? What does that achieve?”

Katarina laughed under her breath, and Lux shifted uncomfortably, suddenly reminded that Garen wasn’t the only Crownguard who’d nursed a little crush.

Oh, no, come on, Lux’s thoughts stormed, She saved my life! It’s entirely fair. I mean also, look at her, but… it doesn’t matter because I’m in…with…I mean…I’m …I’m with Jinx…

She thought of rose eyes burning in the dark, a husky voice in her ear, and clever hands with mismatched nails…

A little heat came to her cheeks that she hoped Kat wouldn’t notice.

…I have Jinx.

“You aren’t missing much in there,” the Noxian woman said, “Let me offer an exchange instead. I tell you something you need to hear. And we get to know each other a little better.”

“Say I agree,” Lux furrowed her brows, “Why would you make an offer like that?”

“You called me Kat. So, you know who I am. That seems a little dangerously unfair…” Katarina smiled, “I’d like to learn more about the Luxanna I’m dealing with now.”

“Oh, me?” Lux grinned cheerfully, one of her finest numbers, “I’m an open book.”

“Practically translucent,” Katarina deadpanned, “It actually surprised me how hard I had to dig just to find out the few things I do know about you, Luxanna.”

“I’m sure,” said Lux, wondering, with a quickening heartbeat, where she had dug and how.

“For example, I know what the Illuminators really are,” Katarina tilted her head, “And I’m sure they found a lot of use for a girl who can bend light, didn’t they? As long as they could make you swallow your shame…”

She shook her head, and a grimace of disgust and anger twisted her lips. It wasn’t aimed at Lux, but it hit her like a punch anyway.

“…they made you feel worse than if they’d made you use your body to find those secrets, didn’t they? No, they’d not have a Crownguard sully her patrician flesh so, but in the back of their minds I’m certain they’d see little difference between whoring yourself for your country and using magic in its name-”

“If you are trying to befriend me,” Lux squeezed between gritted teeth, her eyes stinging, “You’d best stop talking now.”

Katarina fell silent. Grey-green eyes, stormy and difficult to read, searched Lux’s own as she stood defiant, chin tilted.

Soft Piltovan robes rustled. The red-haired killer took a hesitant step forward and raised her hand to brush Lux’s tousled hair behind her ear.

Scars on her fingers. On her face.

Like Jinx.

“Demacia doesn’t deserve you,” she said, with a kindness Lux could barely have imagined in such a knife of a woman, “In Noxus, no such stigma would keep you from embracing your gifts.”

Lux’s eyes narrowed; she pushed the other woman’s hand away.

“I’m not here for Demacia,” she hissed, “And I’m done with my gifts being used for someone else’s agenda.”

She’d half-expected Katarina to stab her for the repudiation, but instead, the redhead broke a genuine smile.

“There. There she is,” Katarina said, “I knew I made the right call.”

“The gardens, back then…” Lux’s heart gave a little skip, “…you were there to kill me.”

The assassin nodded matter-of-factly.

“Why didn’t you…?”

Katarina shrugged.

“Like you,” she said, “I’m not always good at doing what I’m told.”

The wry smile she let Lux have almost held a tinge of sadness.

“But…you were there, the day it all burned,” Lux whispered, “Sylas didn’t kill the King. Someone else did.”

Katarina didn’t reply. She turned back to the city, tucking her own hair back behind her ear as the Piltovan breeze tugged at its long crimson waves.

“Prince Jarvan blamed mages,” Lux’s heart sank. She wished she could be furious, that she could hate Katarina for having tipped the first domino on all the horrors that had happened later, “So many mages suffered because of what you did.”

But it wasn’t the first, was it? It was never the first…

“We both did things that day that had unintended consequences, Lux,” Katarina said after a time, contemplative, “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry for what came of it for your mages. You can hate me if it’s what you need.”

A long pause, grey-green eyes and disguised blue on the skyline of Piltover. They stood in shadow, looking out at a city bathed in light.

“Demacia was a tinderbox waiting for a spark,” Katarina finally said, “Don’t blame your kindness for the cruelty of fools, Lux. Don’t dare.”

“I don’t,” said Lux, softly, “And that’s why I can’t hate you.”

Katarina nodded again. After a long pause, her head tipped slightly forward.

“…I’m glad.”

“Why?”

One lean, muscular shoulder shrugged beneath fine Piltovan silk.

“I don’t know many kind people.”

“I’m not always kind,” said Lux.

“But you can be.”

Silence hung between them.

“You’re in Piltover to kill someone,” Lux said, a lump in her throat, “aren’t you?”

“Don’t worry. No-one you’ll miss.”

Katarina turned her gaze back to Lux.

“And you aren’t here to spy on Clan Medarda for Demacia, are you?”

“No,” Lux’s lip trembled faintly, “I’m here to keep a promise.”

“Oh,” Kat smirked, “to a lover?”

Lux couldn’t help but take satisfaction in the surprise in Katarina’s face when she replied-

“Yes.”

The twitch of Katarina’s scarred brow and the slight parting of her lips was a small victory. Lux took the win with a dazzling smile of her own, a little concoction of twenty-six, ‘asserting unassailable confidence’ with forty-two, ‘challenging an assumption.’

“Well, well,” Katarina purred, “You’re still full of surprises. Not your scruffy prisoner with the chains, I take it?”

“Hardly!” Lux trilled in response, “And to that end I’d really like to get back to what I was doing if you don’t mind!”

“Which was?”

“Same as you. Getting to know someone,” Lux said, “Nothing more than that.”

“Intriguing,” Katarina slid her daggers away, “Then I’ve cost you enough time. But I think I’ll keep an eye on you – so don’t go getting yourself into too much trouble, mm?”

“Is that part of your mission?” Lux narrowed her eyes.

Katarina gave her a flash of a glance over her shoulder as she sauntered away.

“No.”

She moved back toward the archway.

“Wait,” Lux called softly, “You said you’d tell me something I needed to hear?”

Katarina paused.

“Seventh and Tinneker Street,” she said, “There’s a two-storey bakery café with shuttered windows and no opening times on the door. It’s a Warden safehouse. That’s where they’re keeping him.”

“Who…?” Lux asked, but her pounding heart already knew.

Only one man would be in Piltover for both Luxanna Crownguard and Katarina du Couteau.

“He needs you,” Katarina finished, the glint of her hawkish profile with the gorgeous scar outlined in the shadows of the balcony, “Or you need him. I’ll let you decide.”

Lux lifted a hand to reach after her, but there was someone coming – heavy footsteps down the hall encircling this side of the rooftop garden.

“Kat,” Lux said, “He misses you too.”

Katarina paused only a moment in the shadows to shift a nearly imperceptible sigh before she was gone.

He’s here…He came for me. She could be lying, but…but I know she isn’t.

Lux breathed in, controlling her heartbeat, controlling her Light until she had let the hue of blood leave her hair, returning it to mousy brown, and tinting her eyes to a dull green.

A little less vivid. A little more ‘Elba’.

The footsteps made a turn toward her. Lux breathed out and stood at the railing, occupying her mind-space as a cocky young Piltovan graduate. She prepared to haughtily brush past whoever was coming…

…she turned to the archway and froze as she looked up, into slate gray eyes, as startled as her own.

“Oh, hey,” said Vi, “Sorry, didn’t see you there.”

She stepped toward Lux, that easy half-smile on her scarred lips, and spread her hands to lean on the railing beside her.

“Don’t mind me, miss,” she said, with a slight wince, “Just needed some air. Dates, y’know? Not used to ‘em. Well, I mean–”

She gave a fond glance back over her shoulder, vaguely in the direction she’d left Caitlyn.

“–the dried fruit kind, anyway.”

In that moment, Lux blessed her fortunes that her dual indoctrination as a Crownguard heir and an Illuminator agent rendered her face blandly unreadable.

Inside she was screaming.

Now or never.

“Don’t mind at all…” Lux said with a smile. Number thirty, twinkle-eyed, friendly and innocent, “…want some company in your convalescence?”

Vi turned to her and blinked.

“Sure,” her Jinx’s sister said, arching a brow and playing her charming smirk in a breezy, noncommittal way, “What’s on your mind?”

Lux’s smile deepened.

Another thunderous explosion rumbled through the earth and rattled the precarious tangle of gantries and scaffolds looming overhead.

“…Sevika wants how many?” scratched the voice from the pile of junk.

Huck’s luminous augment-eyes swiveled nervously as he flinched from another nearby crack-boom-rumble-thoom. The patter of sod and debris raining after was no less comforting.

“-f-forty-five units if you don’t mind,” he stammered, pulling the checklist up before his face and peering over it, one last time, “And s-some more of these more general-purpose charges…”

He dodged a spanner tossed thoughtlessly out of the pile.

“…and, yes, a h-hundred mines…”

“Giselle! Ya seen my readin’ glasses?”

Huck shrank back as a pile of parts tumbled past him; a pair of pointed furry ears and the top of a large round head flicked out of the junkpile, followed by a diminutive figure hopping down from the latest mess of bomb components.

“Left ‘em on your desk again. Comin’ up, boss!” a smaller yordle shouted from one of the upper platforms of the workshop, before she slid past on one of the ziplines crisscrossing the space and dropped a pair of goggles into his hands.

Ziggs slapped them on over the identical pair he was already wearing.

If anything, they were only bigger, greener and more cracked. But that wasn’t the unsettling part for Huck, of course –

It was the notorious explosives expert’s ear-to-ear, manic grin, which only flickered a little as the yordle scanned over the inventory list.

“Hm, yeah, yeah we got this, it’s kid’s stuff, but-” Ziggs scowled, “C’mon? Landmines? I told the last guy, you want demolitions? I got ‘em! You want very enthusiastic mining charges, you wanna do some bombastic urban renewal or have a Nameday fireworks party for yer kiddies they’ll never forget, I got your booms!”

He trotted over to Huck and shoved the paperwork back into his chest.

“…but I ain’t armin’ anyone’s stupid gang war!”

Huck swiveled his eyes to follow and slunk after Ziggs as the yordle marched away through his workshop, dodging Ziggs’ scurrying crew, most of them also yordles – with a few Chireans and even the odd human – carting canisters and crates, pouring chemicals into tubes and beakers, and testing the odd charge with cries of “Fire in the hole!” and “Here comes the boom!”

“M-mister Ziggs-” he managed, “-We’re not asking you to pick a side, only to supply munitions for which you will be very well compensated.”

“I got two rules, buddy,” said Ziggs, flicking a smoldering cinder from one ear as he scurried up one of the gantries to his small, cluttered ‘office’, “I don’t kill people, and I don’t get people killed.”

He kicked his battered roller chair behind his even more battered desk and hopped up onto it, turning to face Huck for the first time.

“But, Sevika-”

“…I’ll never get it!” Ziggs laughed, displaying entirely too many teeth, “Seriously! You guys are here for such a short time, why always in such a hurry to move each other on?”

He pushed a lever on a grotesque contraption on his desk – and as it hissed and steamed Huck shielded himself from the inevitable explosion – but instead, it gushed and gurgled as it poured viscous rocket fuel that at least smelled a bit like coffee into a dinged metal mug.

Ziggs pushed it across the desk to Huck and motioned for him to sit.

“I’ll tell ya what I told her. Life’s a gift. Just take a step back and appreciate a good explosion for the work of art it is. Stop and smell the glycerin now and then! Like so-”

He sucked in an enormous breath, his almost-canine nostrils flaring and glistening; Huck gave an experimental sniff himself, but all he smelled was bitter burning and noxious chemicals that sent him into a fit of coughing.

Her…? Huck wondered. Could he be talking about…

“Ahhh,” Ziggs sighed, “Pity she was too deep in the dark to listen. I tell ya, that kid was the only one who really got it…”

A chill ran down Huck’s spine and every hair on his forearms stood up at once.

“W-well…” he mumbled, “I-I don’t expect the Baron to – to take the news well but she did – did say she expected you’d refuse, s-so I’ll just take our business elsewhere…”

The air had suddenly gotten colder. Maybe it was just Huck’s imagination…

…but he was sure he wasn’t imagining the sweet smell of bubblegum.

Huck fumbled to push up from his chair.

“Aw,” rasped a new voice, ice-water all the way up Huck’s spine, “Still with the ‘blah blah killing people’s bad blah’ after all this time? Y’know, I knew she reminded me of someone…”

Huck froze. In the dirty glass of the windows behind Ziggs’ desk, he saw a smudge of his own reflection – and right behind him, two amethyst lamps shining in a shadow, just behind his shoulder…

“Ohh no–” Ziggs boggled, squinting around his massive goggles, “–speak of the darkin…”

Huck twisted with a gasp, finding himself face-to-face with a grinning, pallid ghoul of a girl hanging upside-down from the rafters.

She chewed noisily and blew a bright-pink bubble from her lips.

“J-jinx!”

The bubble popped, and Huck gave a small scream and sprang back at the sound.

“Hiiiiya!” Jinx beamed, “Chad, right?”

“H-Huck,” he said, miserably.

“…yeah, definitely not a Chad,” Ziggs mumbled, pouring himself a coffee and seeming to shrink behind it as if hiding behind the mug might make Jinx forget he was there.

No such luck. Jinx swayed, winked at him, and swung back to leer at Huck from unsettlingly close.

“Whatever, Chadd-with-two-d’s. Been a hot minute! Dig the new squinters!”

She stretched a fingertip to prod at his Chemtech augmented lenses, then booped him in the ugly surgical scars on his forehead – that he’d unsuccessfully tried to grow hair to cover –

“…kinda miss the hideous Shimmer growths, though, they were so funny! All wobbly and squishy looking!”

Huck swallowed.

A hot minute. Sometimes even he forgot, lost in the years he’d spent tangling his mind and memories in the vibrant, toxic bliss of Shimmer – the only thing that had ever made him feel powerful – that he’d been there at the start, at Vander’s Last Drop…

…that he’d known the Loose Cannon since she was a timid little girl stuck to her scrappy sister like glue, the apples of Vander’s eye.

If there was anything left of little Powder in the grinning Shimmer-eyed demon before him, Huck couldn’t see it.

“U-uh, um, oh gods, I um,” Huck licked his lips, wishing he could be anywhere but here, panic crawling up his spine, “I-um I got clean-wh-when, um, when the street S-shimmer ran out…”

“Yeah, yeah good for you!” said Jinx, swinging side to side, her long braids swaying like dangling jungle vines, “Not sure I believe you though…”

She blew a pink bubble that popped in his face.

“…cuz my tits are up here,” Jinx snapped her fingers in front of her modest chest, then looked at herself and rolled her eyes, “I mean kinda, but you know, anyway…not where you’re looking.”

Huck scrambled back from his chair and lifted his hands up, “I-I’m r-really sorry…but I don’t k-know what you-”

What the heck is she insinuating? W-why would she think I’d even care about –

Unable to keep his eyes off her - like one would look at a deadly snake inches from one’s face - Huck realized she was right. He couldn’t keep his gaze from locking to her eyes. Her depthless, blazing, pink, liquid eyes – the color of power…

He could almost feel it twisting in his veins.

“…Yep,” said Jinx, slurping the bubblegum back in and chewing it between sharp white teeth, “You still got the look, buddy. Can’t keep your peepers off the pink in my peepers.”

Jinx dropped down before him, an effortless slither of movement. If he’d still had eyelids, she’d have moved before he could blink.

“Tell Sevika I said ‘hi’, will you?” she whispered, “Oh, and tell her – if any of her Baron buddies want to come after me for this?”

She waved her fingers in front of her Shimmer-hued eyes, then leaned into his space as he cringed away.

“Tell ‘em I don’t have time to play with them right now. They’re gonna have to wait their turn.”

Huck’s blood ran cold.

“…I will, I will-”

Jinx split a grin, ear to ear, far more terrifying than any look that had ever crossed Ziggs’ face.

“Cool.”

Run. Flee. Get out of here. Get away from her…

“I-I’d better go-”

…thank all the stars, Jinx narrowed her eyes and wiggled fingers in a wave.

“Seeya, Chadworthy-oh, wait, drink yer coffee first! Here ya go.”

“Huck…”

“-Hucklechaddy, gotcha!” Jinx passed him the dinged up mug with an encouraging smile.

Huck choked it down with shaking hands and a burning stomach.

“Good boy!” Jinx winked him, “Now I gotta chat to my kaboombuddy, so run along, will ya? Toodles!”

Paralyzed with terror though he nearly was, Huck had spent enough time around dangerous people to know a generous window of opportunity when he saw one.

Bowing and scraping, he snatched up the paperwork – not before Jinx’s clever eyes had sighted and scanned it – and gave Ziggs an apologetic glance as he fled toward the exit…

“Oh! Wait, Chaddington! One last thing…”

Huck shook as he stumbled in the doorway.

Jinx was grinning that demon’s grin at his back. She twirled a braid around her finger, spinning it like a skipping rope.

Her eyes, though, those beautiful, terrifying eyes, the color of the Shimmer that taunted his dreams and haunted his nightmares, were deadly serious.

“…Tell them they’d better be sure.”

Huck swallowed, nodded, and fled the workshop like a mouse scurrying from the claws of a cat.

As the door swung shut behind him, he caught one final glimpse of Jinx turning her gleaming, wicked eyes upon the furball cowering behind his little desk.

“Heya, Ziggs,” she rasped like sandpaper on iron, “Remember me?”

Chapter Text

“Heya Ziggs. Remember me?”

The yordle chugged a gulp of his sludgy coffee and forced a toothy smile.

“How could I forget?”

Jinx beamed at her old friend. Behind her, Chaddlehuck flapped out the door and left it swinging in his wake.

“Wow, that guy. So uptight, right? Scared of his own shadow!” she twisted Hucklychadd’s chair around to face backwards and climbed onto it like a blue-haired spider, “Now it’s just you and me…”

“J-Jinx…if you’re done intimidatin’ my customers,” the yordle arched his fluffy brows, “To what do I owe the uh, honor?”

“Hmph, you weren’t sellin’ what he wanted to buy anyway, Ziggy-puff,” Jinx snickered and tipped her head to look at him, “Do I need an excuse to visit my buddiest of pals? How ya been?”

“I was fine until about five minutes ago, Jinx,” Ziggs shrank back a little, almost like Huck, almost like he was scared of her too or something, “Heard you were back but didn’t expect you’d show up here. What in gunpowder’s almighty name really made you swing into my place after all this time?”

Jinx was fairly sure Ziggs hadn’t missed the way her eyes lit up at every background crack and boom going on in his workshop. She chewed her lip and shrugged.

“I need some advice.”

“Advice.”

“Yeah! From my conscience.”

Ziggs groaned, “How many times do I have to tell you? I’m not a figment of your imagination - I’m a yordle - look I run a freakin’ business! That you helped me start! Would a figment be able to run a successful demolitions and pyrotechnics emporium? In this economy?”

“If I imagined it, yeah, dur!” Jinx protested, thrusting a finger up to make the point, “And I always wanted the best for you, so of course it’d all work out. Why are you so grumpy at me, anyway? Didn’t we part on good terms?”

Jinx paused. Now that she thought about it, she actually couldn’t remember.

Ziggs reminded her with a glare and a throwing up of his hands.

“You kidnapped me!”

“Aw, c’mon, it was one time!”

“…for a whole month, Jinx!”

Oohhh, that’s right.

Jinx squinted at Ziggs’ grumpy mug. She still kinda wanted to squish his furry cheeks.

“…so I did,” Jinx grinned, “But c’mon, Ziggs! I wouldn’t call it kidnapping… I mean firstly, you’re my conscience, so I can’t exactly kidnap something that’s in my head, can I…”

“Oh, for the love of-” Ziggs plopped what of his face he could fit into his coffee mug and gave a muffled scream into the dregs.

“And secondly - you had a whole ton of fun, right?”

Ziggs sighed. He looked kinda down, so Jinx sprang up and slipped behind him, flinging her arms around his neck, ignoring the tension that instantly seized up his fuzzy little body.

“C’mon! We had the bestest roomies thing goin’! Can’t ya just remember all the fun times we had back in the ol’ Turmoil days? The fun stuff we built? And blew up!”

He can’t actually be scared of me. That’s just too silly!

Her adorable little conscience paused; his furry brows crinkled in consternation.

“Agh-urgh-I mean…” Ziggs’ wet nose twitched, “I-I ain’t gonna deny, I got some fond memories, but…”

“…the zinger rockets? The clapper-cracker? That time we blew up a whole Enforcer munitions factory and nobody even knew it was us?”

“Y-yeah those were some, hah, some top tier booms-yer a real artist, Jinx,” Ziggs clutched his coffee mug for dear life, but kept up his big grin and what remained of his dignity, “I-I mean that stopped ‘em using all that ammo on Zaun, and t-they did manage to evacuate…”

“Yeah,” Jinx rolled her eyes, “Cuz you tripped the alarm like the fuzzy little goodie-two-shoes ya are. No wonder they didn’t figure it out! Kibblyfied Enforcers are like, my calling card…”

“Can’t you just stick to the graffiti?” Ziggs whined, “I like the graffiti…”

“And fourthly, like, you told me you were done with Piltover after yer old pal Heemerdoogle got the boot-”

“Heimerdinger.”

“-yeah, Himmeldiggler, that’s what I said!” Jinx squeezed Ziggs like a plushie, nearly pulling him off his chair, “And haven’t you had a whole lotta fun down here in Zaun? Isn’t it just as cool a place as I told you it’d be?”

Jinx leaned into his peripheral vision and batted her eyes at him.

Ziggs sighed. His ears drooped.

“…Got me,” he grunted, “It’s good to see ya, Jinx.”

Jinx cackle-squealed and squished him until he pushed her away amid a bunch of adorable grumble-growling.

Jinx bounded back to Chaddles-Huckabee’s chair and slid around on it for a while kicking her legs before she settled, beaming at Ziggs and thrusting out a hand.

“So…we cool? Eh? Boom-roomies? Blast-besties? Bomb-buddies for life!?”

“Sure, sure, whatever…” Ziggs grunted, grumbled, leaned down to scratch his butt, “…if you catch!”

Jinx only had a split second to hear the hiss of the lighting wick before he lobbed a spherical bomb with a trademark skull on it over the table.

Shimmer-enhanced senses and practice-honed reflexes kicked in. She snatched the bomb out of the air, rolled it twice around her wrist – juggled it to the other palm -

- and blew the wick out with a stormy glare and a small stream of smoke.

The tense silence hung between them for a split second before Jinx blew a sloppy raspberry.

Ziggs snorted. Jinx cracked a grin and spurted giggles. Ziggs snuffled like a pig, finally bursting into an unhinged snicker and then a cackle of his own. They laughed together like a pair of bomb-crazed lunatics until the laughter ran dry.

Jinx noticed the rest of the workshop had gone quiet, probably his assistants being impressed at his famous visitor.

Though she was fairly sure she saw one of the yordles hiding under a pile of crates. Whatever.

Jinx tossed the bomb back at him. Ziggs caught it and bowed with a flourish. Then he looked back at her, winked, and swiped a match.

“Fire’n the hole!” Ziggs hollered over his shoulder, re-lit the bomb and chucked it behind him, out the open window of his office, to explode with a satisfying crump and clatter of debris somewhere in the yard.

One of the apprentices swore their head off in the distance.

“…thanks,” Ziggs guffawed, “I really needed that. It’s been just work work work around here!”

“Shucks,” Jinx pawed a hand at the air, “…anytime, Zigglepoos.”

Turning back to Jinx, the yordle explosioneer’s grin softened, “…huh.”

“Huh?”

He squinted at her. “You look well, kiddo.”

Jinx stared back. Her nose twitched, “Who, me?”

Ziggs chuckled and shook his big football of a head, “Look, don’t blame me for worryin’, okay? You weren’t in a good place when I met you, and you were in a whole lot worse one when you disappeared. I ain’t seen you in nearly a whole year…”

Jinx closed her eyes.

Because there were shadows looming behind Ziggs; because thinking about the dark days after the rocket had her brain scribbling f͝angś on his big teeth and scratches c̷ra̵ck̷i̷n͝g̕ his goggles and bl̕ee͞d͘i̕n͜g̛ out his eyes…

Because he was right. She’d met him just after the rocket – when she was a manic, frantic, subhuman mess even by Jinx standards – and then she’d only sunk from there, until the screaming in her head was too much and even the voice of her unwitting conscience in all those unclaimed explosions in the middle of the civil war hadn’t been able to stave off the others…

Because they’d started whispering to cut th̀e ͠ti̶es, and Ziggs had deserved a better friend, just like Lux deserved a better girlfriend and V͡ì ̵ deserved a bet̶tér ́siśter͜…

She could be better. For all both of them. She really could this time.

Jinx breathed in and out, and let the Light warm through her, until the twitches on her face melted into a soft smile.

When she opened her eyes, Ziggs was leaning over and peering at her expression in curiosity.

He adjusted his goggles.

“…hmm, yep, I ain’t just bein’ polite. Still white as a ghost but ya got a bit more…”

Ziggs waved his hands around.

“…zap in yer zip,” he concluded, “Are you like, actually looking after yourself? Are you like…actually eating? Hydrating? Maybe even…sleeping?”

“Hmm,” Jinx tapped her chin, and it slipped out of her before she could think about it, “When she lets me.”

Ziggs might have even blinked behind his goggles. His brows shot up above ‘em, anyway.

“…She?”

Jinx’s heart had started pounding all of a sudden and that was a funny awkward feeling she hadn’t felt since some shy, weak little girl had fallen down a well long ago and Jinx wasn’t entirely sure she liked it…

Ziggs slid his chair closer to his desk, plopped his little stubby elbows on it, and planted his scruffy chin into his palms.

“What did you really wanna see me for, Jinx?”

Jinx winced. I mean it wasn’t like she was embarrassed about Luxie or anything! And wasn’t this why she’d really come? Because her heart felt like it wanted to burst, and she had nobody – nobody outside the voices in her head, and he was the only one that – that wasn’t like t͞he ͘ơthérs ̨ – nobody else she could tell any of this to?

She took a deep breath and blew it out in a flustered sputter.

“So, um, there’s this girl…” Jinx whined, flopping her arms about, “…and I don’t wanna kill her…”

“Oho,” said Ziggs, with a slowly spreading grin, “Do tell.”

“Are you certain?” Cassandra lifted a brow in restrained astonishment, “Luxanna is in the company of…Jinx?”

Caitlyn hid her flinch.

Jinx was not a topic she enjoyed raising around her mother; even if Cassandra Kiramman did not balk at discussion of the terrorist who had nearly taken her life, she was so adept at hiding her feelings that – that if it truly affected her – how would Caitlyn ever know?

“I’m certain,” Caitlyn sighed, “There’s too much evidence to ignore.”

Her mother fell silent.

Tucked into a discreet corner of the gardens, facing another one of Mel’s beautiful paintings, far from the quiet hubbub of her attendants working in the background, they had, for the moment, privacy to speak.

Caitlyn had, of course, picked the spot for its positioning – clear line of sight in all directions, and nowhere for an eavesdropping political climber to hide.

“It’s difficult to imagine. I recall from our visits to Demacia that Luxanna was always quite the charming little creature,” Cassandra gave a faint smile, “She charmed you, certainly-”

Caitlyn found a smile of her own, “Well, bonds forged by necessity –”

“Bored children are wont to find joy in simple company,” Cassandra chuckled and shook her head, “Do you remember? You strode up to me, eyes all agleam, and begged for us to adopt her.”

Caitlyn fought the twitch of her smile, “Mother, I was twelve, and she was eight, and the most precious - and precocious - little gold-haired angel imaginable…”

“Yes, a pity House Crownguard would not have stood for it,” said Cassandra, “I have few regrets, Caitlyn, but among them is that I was never able to give you a brother, or a sister…”

At that word, she drifted off again; a distance entered her eyes that Caitlyn had grown accustomed to recently, a pensive absence.

It had never been there before the rocket.

She did not miss her mother’s warm hand unconsciously closing its fingers over the cold.

“The poor girl,” she murmured, and Caitlyn genuinely did not know to whom she referred. After a moment, her gaze cleared, and she was Cassandra Kiramman again, “And there is no word on the circumstance?”

“We don’t know if she is there under duress,” Caitlyn admitted, “But we do know that Jinx’s patterns have changed.”

Cassandra drew her lips in a thin line.

“She’s stopped killing.”

She’d noticed. Of course, she had.

“It’s a breakthrough,” Caitlyn said, “I believe it’s our chance to resolve this, peacefully, once and for all.”

Caitlyn braced for the reply; that they had to end the threat, that they had to do anything it took to bring Jinx down, to retrieve the missing dignitary, to keep Piltover safe…

“How old is she, now, Caitlyn?”

Caitlyn breathed out, “Lux?”

Her mother had that pensive look again, ruminating on unreadable thoughts.

“Jinx.”

Caitlyn’s brows furrowed, but she composed herself enough to reply, “…eighteen or nineteen, I think. Though to be honest, I’m not sure Vi even knows how old she herself is after Stillwater, let alone her sister.”

“Scarcely out of adolescence,” Cassandra muttered, “I remember you at that age. Always getting yourself into trouble. Running off on adventures, and those first few giggling girls sneaking into your room…”

An awkward flush heated Caitlyn’s cheeks, but she blinked it away.

…what on earth is she getting at…?

“I heard from Jayce that you’ve had Zevi’s workshop positively churning out automatons since Progress Day,” Cassandra said, finally glancing back at her.

“Um,” Caitlyn blinked again at the change of subject, “Yes. There are operational matters I shouldn’t speak of outside of work, but I – suffice to say that it’s part of preparations.”

“An expensive part,” Cassandra noted.

“A necessary part,” Caitlyn tilted her chin, like she’d done since she was a child, “To save lives.”

“Of that,” her mother responded, with that little nod she gave only when making a final decision, “I have no doubt, Caitlyn.”

Caitlyn swallowed, quite unable to follow, but nodded in return.

Cassandra turned her look back across the garden, “And what does Vi think?”

“…that I’m playing with fire, I think,” Caitlyn replied, heart still in her throat, “But she trusts me.”

“And you trust her.”

Caitlyn pursed her lips.

“Of course.”

Cassandra took a deep breath; in the stillness, Caitlyn heard the faint whirr and whine of her Hextech-supported lung inflating, hidden in her pristine clothes.

“Then do what you must, darling,” she said, “To bring them both home.”

Caitlyn felt her mother’s gloved hand upon her own, and then Cassandra withdrew, and turned back toward where Mel Medarda sat.

“Do not neglect to call at the house,” she called, “Your father and I will expect you for tea.”

Reeling, Caitlyn only stammered out a – “Y-yes mother…” before Cassandra departed to bid her farewell to Mel.

Only then did Caitlyn notice that Mel currently sat alone.

Where was Vi, anyway?

Crisp Piltovan air, cooler and thinner than the Undercity, prickled in her nostrils as Vi sucked in a breath.

“Kinda glad to get away from the politics,” Vi breathed out, “Just gives me a headache. Really not my scene. Probably yours, though, right? Cait said everyone here’s a real up and comer…”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” said the brown-haired girl, with a nervous laugh, “Kinda the family business for me but I’ve honestly always found it a bit awful.”

Vi leaned on the railing and waited for her stomach to stop twisting itself in knots. If she’d not known better, she’d have sworn Medarda was trying to poison her.

Ugh.

The young woman’s voice was bright and chirpy, maybe even a bit grating; right now, it was a nice enough distraction, so Vi forced herself to focus on it.

“Yeah?”

“Always feels like at some point, no matter how well intentioned you start, you end up making decisions over people’s heads.”

“Seems so,” Vi chuckled, despite herself, “Sort of the whole point, I guess.”

“Maybe. But once you’ve sat there and watched a table full of people talking about plans that will affect hundreds, maybe thousands of people’s lives like they’re just deciding what to have for dinner…”

The girl shook her head, and Vi cocked a brow and laughed at her.

“Yeah, well,” Vi said, “For people at that table, deciding what to ‘have for dinner’ might as well be the same thing.”

The brunette blinked bright, clever blue-green eyes, “I…what do you mean?”

“Food on their plate comes from somewhere, doesn’t it?” Vi smirked, “Don’t grow it themselves, do they?”

“No, I suppose not…”

“Someone else cooked the food, and crafted the silverware, and sewed the tablecloths,” Vi shook her head, “And most of the time if that stuff didn’t come from out there somewhere with all the trade and the gates, it came from down, if you get my drift. Pilties think their hands are clean now that Zaun’s independent, but don’t ask where the factories that make their stuff are, and who makes the money out of the people being exploited there…”

The brown-haired girl had gone very still, and Vi cursed herself, “…ah, sorry, I um, figured you weren’t from Piltover – you’ve got kind of an accent…”

“It’s okay!” said the other girl, “I’m not. I understand.”

Ah, fuck, thought Vi, what am I even saying? She’s not even from here and I’m dumping all this…

These posh places, posh people, it dredges it up for me every damn time…

Shit.

The brown-haired girl had paused, pensively staring off into the distance, “I mean to say things aren’t so different in other places.”

She didn’t seem offended, and Vi took the window, “In Noxus?”

“…it can get pretty dog-eat-dog,” she shrugged, “A little like Zaun, maybe.”

“Yeah, a lot like it, maybe,” said Vi, darkly, “A lot like it is now, anyway. It wasn’t always, though, no matter what anyone tells you, miss…”

Before Silco. Before the Barons. When Vander… she drifted off into brooding thoughts.

“Elba,” the girl said, peeking back at her, “Call me Elba.”

Vi fought her thoughts back to the present and smiled at her, “Vi.”

The girl laughed, “I figured! You’re kinda famous, you know! The ‘Piltover Enforcer’?”

“Ugh!” Vi groaned, “Seriously? Who started that shit? I’m a Warden from the Lanes…”

“Hmmm…” said Elba, blue eyes twinkling brightly, “I guess I could try to spread that about…Vi, Warden from the Lanes? The Lanes Warden…? The Lanekeeper?”

Vi winced and scratched the back of her head, “Oh, yeah, um…”

“We’ll workshop it,” said Elba, giggling and leaning back against the railing.

Vi scrutinized her with a sidelong look. Pretty – very pretty, in a very typical kind of way. She’d blend right in at any posh Piltie gala, but there was a lot more going on behind her eyes than most of those types Vi had met since she moved Topside. Vi genuinely couldn’t tell if she was flirting or not; even if it weren’t for Cait, her whole ‘perky and chipper’ thing wouldn’t quite have been Vi’s type, but the attention was flattering, and helped take her mind off her stomach…

Off everything.

“Ah, my pardon, Miss Vi,” Elba shook her head, “There I go again. You just came out for some air, and I’ve been prattling your ear off.”

“No problem, seriously,” Vi lifted both hands, “It’s been nice. I don’t make a lot of friends at places like this.”

“Still! I didn’t mean to intrude, I just…”

“Needed some air?”

Elba pursed her lips. The brightness of her eyes seemed to dim a little, “…just a little rattled,” she shifted her gaze away, “I got some news I didn’t expect. About my brother.”

Vi pursed her lips, “I see.”

“I mean, he’s fine, I think, I just…” the girl looked out over the city again, “I’m not sure what to think. I just…we haven’t seen each other in a long time. It’s a bit of a shock.”

Vi paused. Doesn’t matter. It’s not any of my business.

“…didn’t part on such good terms the last time?”

Elba didn’t reply. She’d looked down and now fidgeted with her fingers.

Vi watched her silently for a moment before sighing and running her hands through her hair.

“…I might know what that’s like.”

The girl looked up at her.

“Your brother, too?”

Vi held her silence. Her relationship with Jinx wasn’t publicly known outside of small circles. It was probably a risk if this kid had her ear open for whatever political faction…

But would it matter? They’d find out anyway.

“Sister.”

Vi fully intended to leave it there. It was no one else’s business…

But suddenly, there was Powder’s face, smiling in her thoughts, the warmth of her little cheek under Vi’s touch. Her voice, chattering away about her latest inventions.

All so long ago. A lifetime of fire and pain away.

Caitlyn and her family carried grievous wounds from her sister’s actions. So did Ekko. Her comrades in the Wardens muttered about her in hushed whispers…

Who could Vi talk to about her? Anywhere? Ever?

Sometimes, still, Vander…

… but he doesn’t have the answers I want.

Elba gave a faltering smile, “Older or younger?”

It pulled Vi back to the present.

“Younger.”

“Oh, that’s me, in my family,” Elba laughed softly, “Guess we’re always trouble, huh?”

Vi couldn’t help but give a little laugh of her own, even if it prickled over the ache of bottomless wounds.

“Lady, you have no idea.”

“Hmm, I guess I don’t…” Elba hesitated, then tiptoed a little closer and pressed her back to the railing, tipping her head to study Vi’s expression, “So, tell me about her?”

Vi caught her breath, and held it, frozen up.

What could she tell a stranger - if she even should…?

Vi breathed out.

“And this girl of yours is…full of…boom?”

Ziggs stirred a spoon through the black soup of his coffee. It was so thick that his spoon had apparently bent over time.

The yordle’s expression see-sawed between a kind of grinning wonderment and a slow-blooming, surreal horror. At least that’s what Jinx thought. Ziggs, like her, grinned a lot of different grins with a lot of different meanings.

“Yes!” Jinx growled, pacing back and forth, kicking the guest chair with a squeak and rattle of wheels each time she passed it, “It’s all like…locked up in her, and she’s so scared of it. I tell ya, Ziggs, this stupid Dumbassia place really messed her up good!”

“Yeah, Dumba-” Ziggs cleared his throat, “Demacia’s a messed up kind of place. Not a lot of yordles there for a very good reason,” he pondered, “Only a couple that are crazier than me.”

“Yeah well, good, cuz if I ever get there, I’m gonna blow it to chunks for what they’ve done to my Flashlight…” Jinx’s eyes narrowed to slits, “There won’t be a Demacia when I’m done.”

Ziggs breathed in and slowly, noisily swallowed gulps of coffee.

“…it’s like there’s this big wall in between who she wants to be and who she thinks she has to be, y’know?” Jinx went on, still pacing, fingers clenching and unclenching. She’d left her guns in the rafters, and her fingers were twitching to shoot something, but this was Ziggs’ place and she wanted to be able to still talk to him, which would be hard if everything was on fire, “And the light’s on the side of it she can’t quite reach and it’s hurting her!”

Ziggs scratched his nose.

“Right. Shiny girl with a big boom locked up where she can’t let it out. Why come to me about it? Got a feeling you aren’t just here for an ear…” Ziggs snickered, “…or to gush about yer new girrrrlfriiieeend…”

Jinx, who had been fiddling with something in her pouches, rolled her eyes and swatted at him.

“Ughh! C’mon, rubbing my sincerity in my face, much? Help a girl out!”

“All right all right, whatcha need from me?”

Jinx sighed and pulled her hand out of her belt pouch, planting her chin in her fidgeting palms.

“…it’s magic!” Jinx groaned, “…and like, Hextech, I get. That’s wobbly wibbly heebyjeebies stuff but you can use a bunch of runes and formulas and stuff to make it do what you want. It’s just another code to crack – and I cracked it good. When the magic is a person, though? What do I do with that?”

Ziggs paused and crinkled his scruffy brows a moment before he burst out laughing,

“Aahhh and you figured I might be able to help ya with that cuz I’m a yor-”

“Figment of my imagination!” Jinx exclaimed, “Exactly! Because I can actually hug ya and pass you bombs to throw and you kinda smell like black powder and burnt toast …”

Ziggs sniffed at himself and conceded with a grunt.

“…so that’s pretty solid for a hallucination?” Jinx furrowed her brows, “the others all appear and disappear and…whisper in my skull and it’s…”

She shuddered and lifted her hand to smack her head – but growled and released the clench of her fingers before Ziggs could leap up and stop her.

“…anyway that seemed pretty magic to me and I thought you might know what to do.”

Ziggs drummed his fingers on his desk and clicked his big doggy tongue for a moment before sighing.

“All right well – well look, us yord-figments are kinda made of magic, right? But we don’t really think about how it works any more than you think about how your breathin’ works, yanno? And some of us, like me, don’t use it in real obvious ways.”

Jinx narrowed her eyes.

“So?”

“So your girl’s a mage for sure,” said Ziggs, “And that means she’s always gonna be struggling to connect what’s inside her with the distance you human types have spent like…whole-assed civilizations puttin’ between yer selves and the magic all around ya.”

Jinx felt a growl welling up in her chest, “So you’re saying I can’t do anything? Is that it?”

Ziggs, hesitating for a moment, hopped up onto his desk and toddled close enough to reach out and pat her shoulder.

“I’m saying it’s gotta be her. You can’t do it for her. It’s gotta come from her own choice, cuz the magic isn’t just inside her – it’s not really a gift or a curse, it’s who she is.”

“I know that,” said Jinx, miserably, “I told her right away. She’s the shiny!”

“So, what’s the problem?”

“Problem is she doesn’t seem to know that, sometimes…” Jinx’s lips quivered. She was close to growling, sniffing, something, twitching up in her like a sneeze waiting to happen, “She’s always holding back.”

“Then the best thing ya can do for her, Jinxie, is just to support her. Help her find whatever it is she needs to crack through – whether that block is fear, or grief, or even somethin’ that should be nice, like kindness…” Ziggs’ grin faded a bit, then he shrugged, “Whatever’s making her hold it in, it’s like – y’can’t just keep tryin’ to blow up a wall with the same type of explosive if the first one fails, right? You wanna blow through somethin’ right, you gotta find the weak point and the right charge and then …”

“…fire in the hooole!” someone shouted outside, and Ziggs’ workshop rattled with a deeply satisfying explosion whose flash through the windows lit up both her eyes and his.

A dreamy, romantic sigh spilled from both the yordle and the girl.

“…but this isn’t something I can blow away,” Jinx groaned, “There’s nothing to shoot or stab or blow to chunks for her – it’s all feelings and stuff…”

Her eyes narrowed, and then slowly widened, as did her grin.

“…well, I mean, I do make her blow up pretty good whenever we’re doing the sex and I stick my–”

“NOPE!” Ziggs jammed his fingers in his ears.

“But I-”

“Not having this conversation, Jinx!”

“Why not?”

“’Cause despite our equivalent emotional maturity, you’re young enough to be my great-great-grandbrat and-” the yordle hopped back off his table and spun around on his chair, shuddering, “And no offense, but human mating rituals are just weird and unsettling!”

“Huh,” said Jinx, scratching her cheek, “Well yeah, but how do imaginary yodels do it?”

“-Not having that conversation either, Jinx!”

“Ugh, fiiiiine,” Jinx rolled her eyes and threw up her hands, “Whatever, I just mean…” she waved her fingers at the air, “That works! How come it does?”

“Probably cause you’re, ugh…” Ziggs cringed and shivered his fuzzy head, “Breaking through emotional barriers-”

“…among other things…” Jinx snickered, “…we’re on our third bed frame…”

Ziggs made a sound like a whump hocking a furball and chugged more of his grotesque excuse for coffee, “…I was looking forward to meeting this girl but now I don’t think I’m gonna be able to look her in the eye, thanks-”

“Well whatever, we can’t exactly just whip off our clothes in the middle of a battle-”

Ziggs snorted and shoved his head into his paws.

“…so I gotta be able to do something else. I’m…I’m a Jinx, wish I could just fix this by building a better bomb…but I…”

Her hands twitched for her belt pouch again, unconsciously, and she was sure Ziggs had noticed, which only made everything worse.

“…I can’t…”

Her conscience buddy went quiet for a moment.

Then his big grin split ear to ear.

“Don’t be so sure about that,” Ziggs said, “C’mon, I gotta show ya somethin’.”

Vi breathed out.

In the beat of silence, Lux studied her face. She didn’t really look a lot like Jinx; not at first, with her strong features and stocky build and short hair…

…but Lux had spent quite a lot of time staring at Jinx’s features. If you looked – really looked – she was there in every part of Vi. In the lines of her jaw and the crease of her brows and shape of her lips when she was hurting, or pleased, or pensive. The little tides of motion and stillness that animated her, pouring emotion out into the world in ways that Lux with her array of lying smiles could never do until she met Jinx…

Vi was a mirror. Lux knew that slight softening in her brows and the part of her scarred lips, the feelings they painted on her features. Because Jinx was just the same.

Lux knew she had her. For…what? she wondered, Why am I doing this? Risking this?

When Vi spoke, all her reasons and excuses washed away.

“She’s…brilliant,” Vi said, a broken-glass chuckle under her breath. She still stared out at the city. “She’s so, so smart. I never knew what to do with how smart she was – how do you even explain something you can’t understand to someone who can’t see it in themselves?”

Lux gave her a soft smile, and she continued, lifting her head to look up at the sky.

“Me and Van– m-my dad, I mean – we’re the straightforward type, you know?” Vi raised her hands and flexed her fingers into fists, “Even when the world wasn’t, we just… we got each other. But Powder…”

She shook her head.

“I always knew she was going to be…more,” Vi looked out again, “More than what we were, where we lived. I looked out for the other kids, but everything…everything I wanted for us, it was for her. To lift her up, so she’d have that chance to be more… More than I could understand. Everything she deserved to be.”

Lux frowned, and nodded, “…were you able to do that?”

She was honestly astonished at herself for being able to ask that question without her masquerade breaking.

Vi held a long pause during which she only breathed, in and out, pushing her knuckles against the railing, her body edging back and forth like she was stretching for a workout…

Or a fight.

Lux was certain it was only unconscious, but the prowess of this woman’s strength – and the weapons she carried, as Lux had seen – was at the forefront of her mind.

Not a fight I’d want to be on the other side of, she thought, and wondered if she ever would be.

“No,” Vi said quietly, “It…went bad.”

She fell silent again, and Lux’s heartbeat picked up. Jinx’s voice echoed in her mind, the monkey bomb worked! – Powder’s words – it worked so well she killed them all – Violet didn’t love her then…

Violet cried and screamed and hit her and called her a Name.

Lux let her eyes focus on the woman before her and wondered what she expected to see.

“…maybe I was wrong,” Vi said softly, “Thought about it a lot, all this time. Maybe that’s not what I was doing at all. Maybe I was holding her back. Maybe I was just so scared of losing her that I…that I ended up making it happen…”

She left, she left… Jinx’s voice, small and high like a frightened child, And Powder died.

“You’re like my brother,” Lux said softly, before she could stop herself.

Vi paused again and turned her head.

“I am?”

Lux’s breath shivered slightly, but she’d spoken it, now. The words welled up to her lips.

“A little, maybe,” she said, “He just…he always wanted to protect me. Even from myself.”

From himself, too. Her fingers fidgeted. From what they might order him to do…

“…so, he put up all these…walls, I guess, between us,” she said aloud, “to keep me safe. And even though – even though I knew that was what he was doing, I didn’t want to be safe. Not as much as I wanted my brother to be my brother.”

Vi looked at her thoughtfully for a moment, scarred brow raised, and then hummed and nodded.

“Yeah,” she said, “We do that, don’t we? Older siblings. We don’t see what you…what you really need from us until it’s too late.”

“Not just about us,” Lux replied, softening, “It’s about what you need too.”

Vi turned away with a small flinch of pain and hung her head over her hands, clasped together on the railing.

Lux bit her lip. What had she really wanted from her? To see the monster Jinx feared and hated…? To see the sister Jinx loved…?

What had she expected to find…?

“I need to see her,” Vi whispered, and Lux thought there was a gleam of wet on her cheeks, in the thickness of her voice, “I need to know if… if it’s all too late. If there’s any chance. I-I know we can’t go back…but I have to know if there’s a forward…or if this is just…it.”

Lux’s heart thundered in her chest. She thought of all the ways it might end – the ways it might have ended if she hadn’t taken Jinx’s hand – the ways it might still end, if it all went wrong…

Jinx, lying bloody and cold in Vi’s shaking arms. Jinx crumpled, sobbing, over Vi’s still form…

Or both of them, broken like dolls, twined together lifeless in the rubble of their pain.

“Do you…” Lux’s throat was dry, her voice like sandpaper, “…still love her?”

Vi didn’t answer. Not right away.

When it came it was quiet, but Lux felt the steel under the heartbreak. Her absolute conviction, blazing, brighter than a Hextech rocket.

“Yes.”

Lux felt it in her own heart, swelling at the thought of brilliant Shimmer eyes full of genius and warmth and misery and a mouth that laughed or wept or kissed her in the gloom and a mind and soul that burned so fiercely they put her Light to shame…

Yes.

That tiny word slammed into her like a thunderstroke. The answer to a question she had not dared ask herself.

Because she didn’t need to.

“Miss Jinx, welcome…to the blasterium!”

Shimmer eyes went wide as saucers.

“You’ve got a whole freakin’ junkyard out here?!”

Jinx turned in a circle, her eyes lit, her braids curling around her as she surveyed the towers of detritus, the reinforced concrete walls – and the multitudinous scorches and blast marks cratering the yard behind Ziggs’ workshop. It was big enough that it just kept going, fading into the Gray…

“Oh yeah!” Ziggs chuckled, “I’m a successful bombtrepreneur, didn’t ya know? Gotta have a space to test the goods!”

He knocked his knuckles on the chassis of a trashed robot.

“We pile up all the cast-off stuff the Lanes kids don’t want. Y’know, if they’ve already picked through it, keeps ‘em from sneakin’ in here and getting’ hurt.”

“No fun, but –”

“But!” Ziggs bounded down to stand beside her, thrusting an arm out with a bow, “A perfect spot for a certain bright young lady to cut loose with her shiny hands and not have to worry about fryin’ any sump-scrappers lookin’ for parts, got me?”

Jinx’s eyes glistened. There was a knot in her chest – her throat – people didn’t do nice things for a Jinx – what was this…

“Now ya just gotta promise me you’ll also steal some nice Piltie flowers to give her,” Ziggs grinned even broader than usual, “You gotta treat a lady right when you take her on a detonation date. So, we got a deal-gack!”

Jinx wrapped her arms around the top of his head and buried her face in Ziggs’ fuzzy cheek.

She said nothing at all.

But the gentle pat at her back told her that he got it.

“Deal,” Ziggs said, confirming what she couldn’t put in words, “We’re good kiddo. You look after yourself and that girl of yours and we stay good, kay?”

Jinx gave a silent nod, shimmer tears leaking into his scruffy fur.

“C’mon, Jinx,” Ziggs cleared his throat, “Yer leakin’ pink stuff on my face.”

Jinx gave a hideous little giggle, then finally let go and stood up, twisting her back to him. Nobody sees me cry, nobody sees me weak…

Nobody but her.

Ziggs, to his credit, said absolutely nothing. A pang stung Jinx’s heart – somewhere between anger and annoyance, at the voices that wouldn’t let her just have this – that had to tell her she was weak for trusting him…

But fumbling fingers drew the thing from her pouch without thinking.

“Ziggs,” she mumbled, “I … made a thingy.”

Piqued, the yordle toddled closer, squinting through his massive green goggles; sweeping a look over what lay in her hand…

Ziggs snapped his fingers to a hidden latch in the edge of his goggles, and they scoped into multiple magnifying lenses, making him look vaguely like a hairy chameleon.

The facets. The panels and lenses. The etched runes. The connecting mechanisms.

“Is this what I think it is?”

Jinx nodded, chewing at her lip.

“Huh,” Ziggs grunted, then whistled, “I’d say ‘you’re freakin’ insane’ but it’s you, so of course you’d actually figure it out…except that you’d need…oh.”

He peered up at her.

“…she must be real special to you.”

“She is,” said Jinx, without hesitation, “But I haven’t figured it out yet. Stole a hex-doohicky to power it, but it’s not working with my runes like should…”

Ziggs plucked the blue-glowing orb forth and frowned.

“…Now ya don’t see a whole lot of Hextech crystals down here even on the black market but – oh yeah, this is one of the mass-produced ones,” said Ziggs, “If you got a magnifier you can see the Clan Ferros mark on ‘em.”

“So?”

“So, these synthetic ones do just fine for most of what Piltover’s doin’ with Hextech now, but for what you’re tryin’ to do…” he shakes his head, “You’d need one of the original crystals. There’s somethin’ about ‘em that’s just… it’s different.”

Jinx growled in the back of her throat.

“Thing is, since they made that deal with Clan Talis, Ferros has been goin’ out of their way to take most of the old crystals out of circulation,” Ziggs went on, passing it back to her with a hint of reverence, “Even those old unstable prototypes, ya know, the pre-bicentennials? Yeah, they snaveled most of those off somewhere, to keep ‘em out of ‘the wrong hands’…”

Jinx snorted, “Our hands.”

“Zaun’s,” said Ziggs, “Yeah.”

Jinx growled again, a black wall of whispers rising in the back of her thoughts, flashes of a cracked, uneven gemstone bouncing on the floor, tracing arcs of blue – a gemstone clanging between two nail-studded cymbals…

A blue serpent trail cutting in a perfect, beautiful line across a crimson sky.

“…only things that still use the original crystals are big stuff, like the Hexgates, that they didn’t wanna screw with. Cuz they still can’t figure out how to make those work with the synthetics…”

Jinx’s eyes snapped back to him and focused.

At her back, Fishbones was looking at her. And Jinx knew exactly what he was saying with that accusatory eye-socket. But she wasn’t going to bite. Not right now.

She had to think.

“Right, Ziggs,” Jinx mumbled, “I-er, think I got it.”

“Aha! Don’t mention it, knew you’d crack it sooner or-”

“Zigmund?” boomed a somewhat shrill, and incredibly pompous voice from somewhere nearby, “You’re out of your office – this is most irregular! – you did remember our appointment, I hope? Hello?”

Ziggs froze, his ears shooting up. Jinx ignored the annoying little voice, staring instead at the device in her hand.

Her thoughts roiled within her. Possibilities. Decisions she might make. Scraps of back then things that had happened things that needed to happen colliding with everything warm and good and bright that Lux made her feel…

Jinx’s eyes narrowed.

“Aw crap,” Ziggs grunted, “Forgot he was comin’, dangit-ahhh…”

He peered to the path to his office, down which a small, hooded figure was trotting on tiny steps, peering inquisitively about.

Ziggs gave a nervous laugh and scrambled backward.

“Well-Jinx-it’s-been-great-catchin’-up-you-bring-your-girl-down-whenever-but-uh-might-wanna-make-yerself-scarce-for-now-”

“Heh,” Jinx’s voice echoed behind him, “Fine. Been real, buddy…”

When he turned, she was gone, like a figment of his imagination.

Lux swallowed her heart.

“I’m so selfish,” Vi gave a broken laugh, and finally turned to look at Lux, with a smile like a wound on her lips, “Everything that’s happened…she’s done things that she can’t go back from. Things I should hate her for…”

“But you don’t.”

“I can’t,” Vi swallowed, too, “She’s my sister. My sister. I’d follow her anywhere. I’d forgive her anything. Even if I…”

She sucked in and breathed out a trembling sigh. She was looking straight at Lux, but her eyes were blank, far away, seeing other places.

Seeing her.

“Even if I – even if I can’t - if I have to–” she winced, “-fuck, even if she hates me, I have to try. Even if I can’t ever have her back. Even if I can’t save her from herself, at least I can…I can save her from everyone else…maybe I can stop her from leaping off that cliff…if it’s me who-”

Vi’s breath shivered. Lux met her eyes, saying nothing, but her own breathing was just as intense.

“Shit,” said Vi, “Sorry, sorry I’m not making any sense, I’m just dumping all this on you-”

Lux shook her head and reached out to take Vi’s hands in her own.

Scarred, strong, wrapped in those bandages. It was everything Lux could do to hold back the Light from shining through her fingers, warming and soothing, something to this person who loved Jinx so much that it was a screaming hole in her heart…like she was for Jinx.

“It’s okay,” Lux said, squeezing Vi’s fingers as best she could, “It’s all right. I …” she swallowed again, “I can’t know what you’re going through, but I know what some of those feelings are like. And I know…I know how hard it can be, when there are things you can’t just fix.”

Vi nodded, fighting to hold back the tears that were reddening her cheeks, hiding themselves stubbornly in her face. She said nothing, though, not risking more words, so Lux tilted her head and smiled at her.

The numbers fell out of her smile. Vi deserved that much.

“Where are you at with her now? Do you feel like there’s a chance for you two…to just talk?”

Vi blew out another hard breath, trying to control her thoughts. She flexed her fingers away from Lux’s touch, unconsciously, and rolled a shrug, as casual as she could under the circumstances.

“…I…I don’t know. I feel like she’s…” she narrowed her eyes, “…um…”

The air had cooled a little. Lux held her ground. She’s wondering how much she can tell me. Remembering that I’m a stranger…

Vi shrugged one more time, helplessly, “…she seems different, now. Like, she’s still – still keeping her distance. Playing mind games. But I can’t stop feeling there’s – there’s something else going on. She’s trying to tell me something, and I can’t see it.”

“Huh,” Lux feigned puzzlement, then shook her head, “It sounds a little like…maybe she’s reaching out to you?”

Vi frowned, “What do you mean?”

“Whenever I thought my brother was just being obstinate, whenever he was frustrating me and just…” Lux shook her head, “Grr, just not listening to me…I’d try all kinds of things to try to get his attention. Especially teasing him! And let me tell you, I may have a sweet face, Miss Vi, but I can be mean, especially when I can make it personal.”

She chanced a little smirk, and thought she saw Vi twitch a smile in return, despite it all.

“…I’d sing songs or play pranks to try to remind him that – you know – ‘you’re still my stupid big brother and I’m still your spoiled kid sister, so cut that nonsense out.’ If she’s trying to tell you something,” Lux went on, “Maybe it’s something like that? You know? Like a message that would only make sense to you.”

Vi’s eyes locked into place, and for a moment Lux thought she’d overstepped.

I’ve said too much. I’ve slipped, she knows…

Her Light sparked down within her, awakening like the unfolding petals of a flower, ready to make quick her escape.

But Vi was staring past her again.

“Huh,” she said, blinking, “That’s – um, th-thanks, Elba, I-”

Crisp footsteps rang down the corridor, and Vi’s attention snapped away at the soft sound of “Vi? Are you through here…?”

It came closer, calling Vi’s name, and a chill went through Lux as she recognized Caitlyn’s voice.

Vi gave her an apologetic smile, wiped her eyes with a soft cuss under her breath, and stepped away from the railing to peer through the archway – “Yeah, through here, Cait…!”

Panic clenched Lux’s chest. Vi had never seen Lux before in her life but Caitlyn…

She can’t see me…!

…and before Lux had time to think about it, her hand slipped around her concealed staff and tapped it to her ankle.

And then no-one could.

Caitlyn’s face, curious and concerned, manifested from the shadows of the archway, brows arched.

“Sorry, Cupcake, dates didn’t agree with me, came out to cool off and ended up chatting with…” Vi turned, blinking at the empty balcony.

Her brows furrowed.

Caitlyn stopped, “Vi?”

“…she was right here.”

“Who?”

“Elba.”

Caitlyn’s eyes narrowed, “…who?”

“Shit,” Vi muttered, “She just disappeared!”

From where Lux pressed to the inner wall, away from the railing and behind the two now peering about, she fought to control her breathing.

Shit. Shit. Shit. What did I do…

“Violet,” Caitlyn murmured, “I think you are very lucky that whoever your new friend was didn’t disappear knives into your kidneys whilst your back was turned.”

Vi scowled.

“Fuck,” she muttered, “Fuck I can’t believe I fell for – Vander taught me better than this-”

“I know, it doesn’t feel like the Undercity,” Caitlyn said softly, “But you need to start approaching these high society things like…”

“…like you’re cutting deals in the ugliest back-alley bar in the Lanes,” Vi scowled, “I know, we talked about it-”

“No matter how sweet or friendly or vacant the person seems,” Caitlyn continued, but by the end of it, her voice softened, and she placed a gentle hand on Vi’s back, “Are you okay?”

Vi growled under her breath. Her lips pursed, and Lux watched her face veer between betrayal, anger, guilt, shame, and then a slow-dawning realization.

“Cupcake,” she said, licking her lips, “We need to get out of here. We need to go now…there’s something I need to…”

“Agreed,” Caitlyn said, “Whatever it is that’s on your mind, let’s discuss it on the way out.”

A silent glance exchanged between the two seemed to speak volumes more than they were presently willing to say aloud.

And Lux knew that on their way home, they’d take precautions against being followed.

Vi nodded, “Okay,” and squeezed Caitlyn’s hand; the two strode off together, their steps swift with purpose.

Lux, still breathing hard, stepped away from the balcony, but Caitlyn and Vi were lost from her sight already.

Lux closed her eyes, fought her sinking stomach, and turned on her heel, flowing unseen from Mel Medarda’s sanctuary.

To find her own way home.

Beyond her storming thoughts and lingering emotions, Lux couldn’t shake that last look in Vi’s eyes.

The nagging thought that she’d lit a spark she’d not intended. The question that wouldn’t leave her mind.

What have I done…?

Chapter Text

The alleys of Piltover crowded Lux as she slipped through them, suddenly seeming less spacious, less vacant. Her footsteps quickened, matching the speed of her heart, but not running – never running – no, she had no reason to hurry…

What have I done?

They felt so close, those alleys, because the buildings here were so tall; too tall, all of loud, bombastic geometry so unlike her old home. Demacia slept in stony grandeur; Piltover steamed and rattled and whirred, ever wakeful. 

A clockwork city, that never closed its watching eyes.

What have I done?

Lux bit her lip, her thoughts racing faster than the dust of Vi’s autocycle retreating from the Medarda residence. Too fast for her to follow on foot; and it didn’t matter anyway.

She knew where they were going.

To the place they’re keeping my brother.

The sting of longing nearly overwhelmed her. Garen was here. Right here. The thought of the warm thunder of his voice spread through her heart and nearly drove Lux to tears.

The memory of fire, of his broad back turning to walk away…

She could not go. Not now. Caitlyn and Vi would be on high alert, it was too great a risk.

Like all of this was, Lux scowled bitterly at herself, I should never have taken the chance. 

It had seemed simple, her impulse - to see her, to meet her - and certainly there were ways it could have gone objectively worse.

She had learned much. She had a new ally she had not expected, perhaps two. She had achieved her objectives, and yet…

What have I done?

The question, repeated like the cawing of crows in her skull, gnawed at her, because she had no answer, no way to calculate the fall of the dominos.

Only a sense that dominos would fall.

Lux took a deep breath and blew it out as she slid her hood lower and stepped out into the busy streets of Piltover.

Still branded, inescapably, with her outlandish graffiti.

How do I tell Jinx…?

“You’re unusually quiet, Vi,” Caitlyn murmured against her partner’s back as they rode the circuitous route back to their safehouse, “Are we going to talk about it?”

Vi flicked her gaze to the side-streets and grunted, “Gotta be sure no-one’s following us.”

“I understand. When we can, then.”

Vi fixed her eyes ahead, taking another sharp left and cutting through one of the side-alleys that only an autocycle could fit through.

Wouldn’t matter if someone was following on foot, though…or on a rooftop.

If they could keep up.

“I just…” Vi sighed, glancing back at Caitlyn, the soft blue eyes so full of kindness she could never keep much from for long, “That girl said something. It made me think.”

“About?”

“Jinx. Our whole thing. This game she’s playing…”

She trailed off.

“It’s been frustrating me, I’ll admit,” Caitlyn said after a time, “I feel like I’m missing pieces to the puzzle. I’m certain that it all only seems like random chaos – that there’s rules to her game that she isn’t telling us…that I can’t see.”

Vi accelerated as they came up under a bridge, out of sight from the rooftops above and the alleyways around and slid through the back gate of the small underground garage behind the safehouse where she parked the cycle.

“I don’t think you were meant to, Cupcake,” Vi said as she dismounted and ran her hands through her hair.

Caitlyn paused, watching her, and Vi collected her thoughts as she locked the gate behind them.

She saw the clockwork of her lover’s mind strike the answer before she could speak it.

“Of course not,” said Caitlyn, “The message is meant for you.”

Vi nodded, pensive, and turned to the steps.

The series of locks they’d left on the door slid one by one, and Caitlyn and Vi strode in.

“That’s just it, Cupcake, I think –”

Quiet voices rolled from the room ahead. Vi stopped, quick enough that Caitlyn ran into her back.

“…what the hell…”

Garen Crownguard, sitting on a small stool outside his former cell, turned to them both and raised his hands.

“…now,” he said, “I know this looks – questionable, but please let me explain –”

Caitlyn’s eyes snapped to the figure behind the bars, who leaned into them and gave a cheerful, if wary grin.

“Uh, Cait, Vi…” said Ezreal, “So, um, hear me out here…”

“I have captured an intruder-” rumbled Garen, at the same moment Ezreal announced – “I’m the new member of your investigative team.”

Caitlyn and Vi exchanged glances, and in unison shouted “No!”

Jinx lay on her back on the gantry above Ziggs’ office, braids dangling, swinging her legs, whilst the conversation bubbled up in echoes from below, muffled only now and then by explosions and shouting from back in the workshop.

There wasn’t a lot that she was frankly interested in. Lot of ‘blah blah impending violent conflicts blah blah’, ‘blah blah fragile peace of the undercity blah’ with the newcomer imploring Ziggs not to sell to either side and Ziggs assuring him he had no plans to get involved.

The only thing that piqued Jinx even a little was that apparently Auntie Ogre was in cahoots with Granny Glasc, and as the rumor mill had it, a bunch of barons Jinx had barely heard of – nobody who’d sat at Silco’s table, that’s for sure – were lining up to try to take them down. And somehow, supposedly, it was all about Jinx herself…

Huh.

It was at least entertaining to observe Ziggs’ visitor, amid many declarations and pronunciations, waving his hands around with such animation that his hood popped right off from a great floof of golden hair like a big yellow puffball like she’d seen on a lot of those funny Piltie statues of…

Waaait a minute.

That’s him?! That’s Himbodonger!

What’s he doing talking to my conscience?

The talk below had turned to various technical and scientific experiments the two were undertaking, and that kept Jinx entertained for a while – the legendary Professor could sure talk the talk, though the more Jinx listened, the more she got annoyed at…that …that way he was clearly thinking at a million miles a second, just like Jinx did, but it was always in these linear branches of logic, like it was all on cleverly-designed rails, without ever once just leaping off into anything actually spontaneous or creative or fun…

Hindendingo, she decided, was brilliant – but, the same way Lux made ‘boring’ beautiful, this little fuzzball somehow made ‘brilliant’ boring.

And the way he was talking down to Ziggs really got under her skin.

How dare he! Ziggs was funny and crazy and loved a good boom! How many hundred years since this bossy little fusspot had an original thought in his head anyway?! That was her conscience he was arguing with! It was to Ziggs’ credit that he was cracking wise, giving as good as he got, even knocking this stuck-up little Piltie blowhard off his perch now and then…

But Jinx had it in her mind to do that a bit more literally.

Nobody messes with my conscience but me, she decided.

When the debate over the merits of a Hextech-powered saurian robot the size of a four storey building – which Jinx thought was a brilliant idea and wasn’t sure quite why Hooberdickles kept dismissing Ziggs’ suggestion that he was secretly building one for fun as poppycock – was finally over, the little golden yordle pulled his hood back over his head, thrust a hand out to Ziggs with a declaration to ‘agree to disagree’ that sounded rather final, and the two parted ways amidst much gesturing and grumbling and goodbyes…

And Jinx slunk after him as he toddled back through the smoky streets of Zaun.

What’s some famous imaginary Piltie even doing in the Undercity? Jinx narrowed her eyes as she slunk after him, the familiar alleys and rooftops effortless to her, leaving her plenty of time to think, what’d I miss in the year I was away…?

As she watched him trot down a narrow side-street, the memory slammed into her that this goofy creature was supposed to have been one of the founders of Piltover.

Topsiders take themselves sooooo freakin’ seriously when it was all this guy’s idea? THIS guy?!

Whatever. Wasn’t gonna matter much once Jinx turned him into steaming bits of yordle-meat painted on an alley wall anyway. She’d already blown up the Piltie council, popping the famous founder, unwitting architect of every Trencher’s misery, in a stinky Zaunite gutter just cuz he’d been rude to her boom-buddy would be hilarious and ironic. Jinx liked both of these things.

Could they even die anyway? Everyone said they lived forever, and Babette and old Smeech had been around as long as Jinx could remember, but that just made her curious…

Even if that murmur whose warm, bubbling timbres sounded a bit like Lux, undercutting her nasty, raspy, scratching Voices, didn’t sound like she’d be happy with Jinx doing it.

Jinx scowled and waved it away as she slid down another downpipe and crept after her prey.

He suddenly stopped, peeked left to right, and shifted his gait. Furtive, he scurried out of the main concourse. Sneaking. Not very well, mind you, but he was certainly seeking to deflect attention.

Had he somehow sensed she was following him? No, he wasn’t taking any path that would avoid her, it was more like…this was the way he was always planning to go. He just didn’t want to be followed…

Jinx’s curiosity overrode her malicious intent. Frowning, she crept after him, a twin-tailed shadow on the walls of Zaun.

It was only when he scurried up the battle-scarred concourse to the old Pilt bridge that Jinx found her burning curiosity grew to faint uncertainty.

Because there was no sign of the Chembarons’ usual goons guarding their end. Instead, there was the familiar chemical smell of fresh paint, and that faint, greasy salt texture and residue of crushed crystalline matter that indicated…

A familiar hum confirmed it; dropboard engines, running low and quiet under the echoes of the industry of Zaun whispering up from the Gray. Likely inaudible to any ears but hers.

Humberdribbler crept past the guard station – and the fresh paint stains and signs of struggle – with only a muttered ‘dear me’ under his breath before he stopped.

Five figures on dropboards slipped like ghosts out of the smoke.

Jinx bared her teeth and slipped under the guard station desk, where she found a Chembaron goon having an enforced power nap, still gunked up in one of the Firelights’ crystal traps.

Well, it was roomy enough for two. Jinx peered past the chempunk’s slumped cheek and narrowed her eyes.

Ekko. And four of his friends – no, five, there was zappy girl. Jinx felt the static crackle of her before she saw the yellow green sparks as she vaulted over a concrete barrier. Zeri-stands-for-Lairy, there was no mistaking that bright green hair of hers or her fidgety, energized movements.

“Thanks for coming,” said Ekko, his voice distorted through his owl-like mask; the filter made it sound way too tough-guy for his words, “It means a lot, Professor.”

“Never mind all that, my boy! I understand your mission must be of grave importance to call in such a favor,” said Hamburdungler, his big white moustaches quivering with each word, “I do trust you weren’t too rough with the guards on this end…the Accords…”

He really was kinda cute, in a way that didn’t at all clash with Jinx’s intent to murder the little jerk for sassing her buddy…

Unless this proved more interesting.

“I drew them off,” said Zeri, “They’ll be on a wild cragduck chase for a while. Buy us time for your part, Prof.”

“W-well then,” huffed the yordle, “I truly must ask before I engage in this somewhat dubious coercion of Piltovan security forces using what remains of my status – do you intend to do harm to any citizens of my city?”

“No,” said Ekko, without hesitation, “We’re on the clock to protect both cities, Professor Heimerdinger, from something bad.”

“And when we say bad,” said a tall one with a prosthetic arm, “We mean Jinx bad.”

Oh, Jinx felt a strange pang in her chest, Me bad, huh?

And there were the Voices, whispering, they turned on you Pow-Pow’s trigger twitching excitedly close to her finger, Fishbones’ scarred eye watching knowingly over her shoulder, the ghosts of all their dead friends staring accusingly at her back.

She couldn’t see them. But she knew they were there, every dead Firelight, the pink-haired girl who looked like Vi right in front, with white scribbles over her dead scared eyes, grimacing right behind Jinx’s other shoulder, just the face she’d pulled as she fell…

“M-my word!” said the yordle, “Is that menace planning something? We must alert the Wardens! We must put protocols in place to protect the citizenry immedia-”

“Professor!” Ekko shook his head, “Look, there’s no time to explain, but it’s not her doing this time. Someone else is coming for her – and someone she cares about-”

Jinx’s heart started thudding in her chest, burning hot like a coal, hot like the tip of a cigar, hot like the tip of a bullet spinning out of a barrel…

“…and if anything bad happens to Lux…”

“We’ve gotta get to her before they do,” said Zeri, “And those guards will be back soon to find their, uh, sleepy buddy, so with due respect - we gotta move, man!”

Jinx ignored the unconscious guard beside her and shrank down into herself, her eyes blank.

If anything bad happens to Lux…

Lux. Lux. Someone’s coming for Lux…?

“I see. Very well!” said the little Professor, “Then we must get you across the bridge. Worry not, Professor Heimerdinger shall resolve this impasse!”

He dramatically threw off his hooded robe and strutted up to the Piltovan side, wincing only slightly in the floodlights that snapped to drown his diminutive form.

“HALT, WHO GOES - What?! Councilor-”

“Councilor no longer! Professor, if you please, and I do say, turn off that dreadful light – I insist! – we shall be discussing, dear Wardens, documentation for these emissaries from the Nation of Zaun to ensure safe passage into Piltover under my protection…”

The drizzle of words faded into the back of Jinx’s consciousness.

Who. Would. Dare…?

Driven by the question, as the Firelights crossed into Piltovan territory…

…a slinking, sinuous shadow, unseen and unwelcome, she followed.

From shadow, they rose, dark eyes adjusting to light.

A sea breeze tousled their trailing coat and tugged at tendrils of black hair. Kestrel leaned from their easy grip on the gantry, listened to the gulls, and stretched their fingers into the Piltovan wind, as though their gloves were pinions that might catch the currents and bear their body aloft into the beautiful sky…

Soon.

The bright skies and idle clouds of Piltover were a relief after Zaun’s claustrophobic darkness, the closest Kestrel could come to fresh air and sunlight of Home – and the farthest escape possible from the choking shadows of their new dwelling-place.

Shadows that watched, and waited, and mocked.

The Noxian, of course, was insufferable even in small doses; Kestrel had left Kravius to gloat over their compact with the Chembaron, to tinker with his toys and assemble his little empire at the abandoned refinery. A ‘supply run’ Topside, scouting the territory, searching for signs of their elusive quarry…it was a suitable excuse.

But the itch still lingered in Kestrel’s skin.

“This place thrums with magic,” Kestrel murmured, to the patch on the wall just over their shoulder, inescapable, “…contained, harnessed, controlled, made to serve, not the whims of mages, but the needs of the common man. An ideal of the future that could be for all…”

A deep shudder ran through Kestrel’s spine. Crawling, wicked amusement licked every vertebra.

The bright sun could ease the chill, the clean breeze could wash away the cloying dark, but it was all just covering up what was always there…

“It’s all a lie, isn’t it?”

Kestrel didn’t have to look far to see proof of that. The conspicuous holes in the Piltover skyline, the cordoned-off heart of the political and business district spoke volumes of the city’s fatal hypocrisy.

Piltover stank far worse than Zaun, in that regard.

Kestrel closed their eyes, breathed in, and fought to reassert control, silence, discipline. The faceless dark had no answer, but it smiled in scorn at Kestrel’s torment nonetheless.

“She’s here, somewhere,” Kestrel whispered, “I know she is.”

She was in every glint of the sun from Piltovan brass and steel. She was in the calling of the gulls, like those that flew over the white sails of Silvermere where she had been born. She was everywhere here…

How many years, how many miles, Luxanna?

The ache of wounds, still healing, the bitter sting of repudiation by the Order they had served all their adult life. None of it would matter when they found her.

That bright, false smile, the smile that brought untold death, that cold and heartless Light – therein lay the outcome of all of their years of suffering. The end of a long road.

They would give her an answer to a question she dared not ask.

“Patience,” Kestrel forced out a shuddering breath, and crushed their focus to the immediate task at hand.

Supplies did need to be procured. The trap must be perfect. There would be little margin for error, and their erstwhile partners were a necessary but unpredictable variable, almost as much as was Luxanna’s deadly companion.

That one would need to be reckoned with – and Kestrel was under no illusions. Jinx would require quite the reckoning indeed. It was a shame, really. From what Kestrel knew of Jinx, they were certain - she, of anyone in these wretched cities, would have understood.

In the meantime, however, there was another errand to be run.

Grey eyes widened to black, large and soulless in fine-boned cheeks. Kestrel stared down, with the far-sight of their namesake, upon the entrance of the Feathersett Hotel, and the trickle of figures furtively slipping in and out of it, masked in the flow of Piltovan leisure-makers.

“My my, Lord Eldred,” Kestrel chuckled, “Assembling quite the party, without me? I’m crushed.”

Silent, they dipped from the gantry and slunk across the broad windowsill below, crossing to a better vantage point. They perched on a stylized carving of Janna, Goddess of the Wind, outthrust from the building’s western corner in the fashion of a ship’s figurehead.

“Let’s see where the pups go to play…”

“No. Impossible. Absolutely not.”

“But Caitlyn-”

“Out of the question!”

Vi rolled her shoulder. Tension crawled along her neck and up into the base of her skull.

Her spiking stress at the realization that her new confidante was very likely spying for an unknown party – and that she’d walked into some kind of trap – was not helping her mood.

And the ‘conversation’ in front of her was very quickly building it into a roaring headache.

“Come on!” Ezreal whined, slinging his hands against the bars, “I can help! I’m quick on my feet-”

“You have an injured leg!” Caitlyn shouted, “And your hand as well! You’d be a liability in the field, and you should still be focusing on your recovery-”

“I’m fine, I’m a really quick healer–” Ez wiggled his fingers as if to demonstrate, masking a small wince and shrinking his fingertips into his palm only a little – “Um, anyway I’m also keenly observant! A good researcher, I have a vast knowledge of-of history! And – uh ciphers and codes, and uh, chases – and – and criminal underbellies – uhm – I mean, of a lot of things! And I’ve already worked with Vi on this case! She’ll vouch for me. You need me, Cait!”

Caitlyn stared at him with eyes that could have cut a hole in an iceberg. She turned their searing beams onto Vi, who shrugged helplessly.

“He’s not wrong, he was a pretty good partn-”

“Vi!” Caitlyn made one of those cute choking posh noises in the back of her throat and stared at her partner in outrage, “No! Absolutely not!”

“I too hesitate to trust the boy after his previous duplicity, in Demacia and elsewhere,” Garen spoke up, “But I do believe he is in earnest in his desire to help my sister, and I am grateful that, when she was in danger, he at least attempted to bring her to safety, when I could not…”

Garen fell silent a moment, thoughtfulness crossing his brow, “…whatever the outcome.”

Ezreal blinked, twitched a little smile and then thrust his hand out to indicate Garen, “See? If the big guy’s gonna give me a chance – why won’t you, Cait?”

Vi turned away from them and rubbed her temples as Caitlyn’s voice rose behind her.

“Because, Ezreal, no matter my sympathy to your feelings for Lux, this is still a Warden investigation-”

“Oh, really?” said Ezreal, glancing around the empty safehouse, “‘Cuz I don’t see the rest of your Warden team here-”

Caitlyn gritted her teeth, ignoring him, “-and you’re a known criminal – and the reason she’s in this bloody position in the first place-”

“Exactly!” he snapped, scowling at her for the first time, “That’s why I have to do this!”

 Vi walked away from them, rolling her head to one shoulder, stretching her neck again until it popped, releasing a little of the tension.

Her fingers flexed by her sides, loosening up for a fight she knew wasn’t coming. Not tonight. But it was there, like a storm on the horizon, like pink eyes – once blue – blazing in the dark.

Jinx wasn’t running and hiding anymore. She was back, and everything was calling to Vi to come out and meet her. Only a matter of time now before she and her sister were face to face.

Even the thought had Vi’s heart both growing colder and beating faster at the same time.

A message meant for you…

Vi took a deep breath and tuned out, as best she could, the bickering behind her as she lifted her eyes to the map.

The map of Piltover and Zaun – at least an approximation of the latter - lay spread out, crisscrossed already with Caitlyn’s signature red string and the organized chaos of her pinned notes and sketches. The eyes of persons of interest stared back at her from the paper.

She’d looked at it a hundred times already. Caitlyn might have spent more time poring over it than Vi, who often paced like a hound in a cage when her partner was lost in the more esoteric depths of police work, but that didn’t mean Vi hadn’t…

…wait.

Vi frowned.

Something meant only for you.

Vi’s eyes scanned the evidence scattered about the room, framed in those careful little glass-lidded boxes Caitlyn stored them in to protect from contamination and damage.

She’s playing a game.

The fragments of Firelight bombs from the menagerie. Samples of the neon paint she’d defaced the Sandvik banners and the Warden recruitment poster with. Sketches of the full images and her graffiti slogans…

The shredded flap of rubber, splattered in paint, with her monkey sigil painted on it.

A game.

Her eyes fell on the map again. The small notes Caitlyn had plastered in a dizzying network over every marked street that Jinx had ‘relocated’ in her mass disruption of traffic.

Only for you.

Vi was tired. It’d been a hell of a day, even if she hadn’t had to punch anything – or because she’d not been allowed to punch anything. Her eyes, too, were tired.

And in their weariness, they unfocused on the map, and she started to see geometric patterns forming out of that chaotic jumble of renamed street signs, and Darlington’s sketches of the blue and yellow arrows.

A long-buried memory of dirty knees crossed in the dust of a Zaunite street, of children giggling, of Powder’s lip bitten in concentration, stirred in the back of her thoughts.

‘I can’t help feeling like we’re missing something,’ Caitlyn’s voice played out in her head, above the hubbub of her present moment, arguing with Ezreal and Garen behind her.

Blue and yellow arrows. Blue and yellow sticks, arranged in the dirt of a street crossing, drawing lines, geometric patte-

Vi cupped her hands over her mouth.

“…Garen, due to your change in circumstances, I cannot tell you where to go or what to do. But I would implore you to remain in our custody for your own protection. And please, for the love of Janna – please keep an eye on this idiot-”

“I will consider it my duty, Caitlyn.”

“…Hey, I’m right here!”

Vi blinked. There was so much noise, thrumming in the back of her head. She had to think. Think.

“Everyone shut up a sec…” Vi muttered between her fingers, but they weren’t listening, “I need to-”

She twisted away from the map and dropped to her haunches in the middle of the floor, staring at the rug.

“Holy shit,” Vi whispered, “Holy fucking shit, Powder…”

“Yes, you are right here, where you should absolutely not…Vi?” Caitlyn had turned to her, a frown suddenly arresting her lips, even the swish of her dark hair falling from agitated motion to stillness.

Vi snapped her fingers, throat dry, “Chalk.”

Caitlyn blinked. She crossed the room and pulled open her desk drawer, peering back at her partner, saying nothing aloud.

“Um,” croaked Vi, “Yellow and blue.”

Caitlyn nodded, rummaging for the two pieces, and passing them to Vi without question.

She rolled it between her fingers, then, in a coiled spring of stillness into motion, flicked the rug off the floor, bent to the tiles, and began drawing lines.

Ezreal, curiosity piqued, peered from within his cell. Garen’s brows furrowed in question as he fell silent. He crossed his brawny arms.

Vi worked quickly, her arms and the back of her neck stiff with tension. She sketched out a quick geometric tangle of shapes; squares, lines, blue coming from one corner, yellow from another, marking out quick sequences of numbers in bastardized Pilt lettering mixed with gutlau symbols.

She sat back on her haunches, off the puzzlement of her companions.

“A game,” Vi rasped, laughing under her breath, “You called it, Cait. It’s a game.”

“Y-yes,” Caitlyn frowned, “We had assumed, that, but-”

“No! You don’t get it. It’s Stickbones, Cupcake.”

“Forgive me,” said Garen, “I’m quite lost.”

Ezreal frowned, “Stickbones? That’s a street game they used to play back in ancient Oshra Va’Zau-”

“…In the Lanes,” said Vi, pursing her lips, glaring up at him, “They still play it in the Lanes.”

Ezreal fell silent, and Vi dropped her gaze to the floor.

“We played it when we were kids. Powder…” she gritted her teeth, “Jinx, she was the best at it. She could beat anyone, kid or grownup. A lot of the materials for her inventions, what we didn’t scavenge, she won playing Stickbones.”

“Four teams, right?” said Ezreal, “Four colors, traditionally, representing the Four Houses of the Earth mirroring the Four Houses of the Sun from Shuriman mythology, and the thirteen stations of…”

“…Red, blue, yellow, green,” Vi shrugged, “I have no idea what you’re on about, Ez, but yeah, four colors. Thirteen squares, one for each of the major districts of the Undercity – yeah, I guess there are more now, but back when Vander…”

She pursed her lips and shook her head, pointing to the numbers.

“Each team has a color and a bundle of – yeah, sticks, we usually used bones. Rat bones, or fish bones, whatever you had, you’d paint ‘em or dye ‘em, heh, one thing we never ran out of was chemicals to stain things with…”

She pointed.

“Start here in the four corners and move in toward the center…you put your sticks down across these lines here and interconnect ‘em, trying to score higher by taking more districts and blocking them from getting there first. The opponent can put their sticks down parallel, but they can’t cross-”

Caitlyn was the first to look between what Vi had drawn on the floor and the map, her sharp blue eyes quickly assessing the similarities between the childish chalk game-board Vi had drawn on the floor and the mess Jinx had made of the City of Piltover.

“Bloody hell…” Caitlyn whispered.

 ”Yeah,” Vi smirked, “And that…”

She pointed at the torn piece of rubber from the wedding fiasco.

“…That’s Sump Shower. You put a bunch of thin rubber balloons inside each other, and fill the middle one with some goop, uh, usually harmless but gross goop, and then…heh, you play or sing and make each person line up and sit under ‘em one by one and –”

“You burst each layer, one by one,” Caitlyn groaned, “Salo described one of her little flying toys doing just that…”

“Until either they all burst at once, or it gets to the last one,” Vi concluded, “Either way, someone’s luck runs out and …”

“Splat,” said Ez, chuckling, and Garen raised an unamused brow, “Sump Shower.”

Vi took a deep breath.

“It’s not just one game, Cait,” she said, “Everything she’s done after the Menagerie, the wedding and everything since. It’s all games, our games, the ones we played as kids.”

“She wants you to remember,” Caitlyn said immediately, “She’s reminding you that you’re her sister.”

Vi fell silent for a brooding moment.

“…does she think I forgot?”

Caitlyn held her tongue; Ezreal, of course, had no such compunction.

“Well, you joined the Wardens,” he shrugged helplessly, “So maybe, yeah.”

Tendons stood out in Vi’s neck. “Ez, I was starting to like you. Don’t make me forget why.”

“Calling it like I see it,” he said, shaking his head, “You had your reasons, I guess. Does Jinx know what they are, though?”

Silence gripped Vi again. She hated that he was making so much fucking sense. Ezreal, of all goddamn people, didn’t get to make sense.

She blew out a heavy breath and nodded, then lifted her gaze back to the map.

“So, she has turned your whole city into the board…” Garen furrowed his brows, “For a children’s game?”

Vi stood staring at the map. Piecing together the patterns, aligning them to the board she’d drawn on the floor, fighting with the memories of Powder’s quick fingers, her smirk of victory when she’d place down the sticks just-so and absolutely wreck her opponent’s strategy…

Yeah, the street signs, they point out the Menagerie, the square where Cait tried to trap her, Sandvik’s manor…

“Yellow and blue. That sky blue marks her starting point, and the yellow…”

She and Caitlyn both looked back at Garen.

His face hardened. “Lux.”

“That’s two players,” said Caitlyn, pursing her lips, “Did you say there were four colors?”

“Usually,” Vi chuckled, “Rules, uh, vary a bit. I always picked Red…”

“Of course, you did, darling,” Caitlyn mused, thumb to her lips, “Green could be Ekko and the Firelights,” Caitlyn murmured, “Except that…”

“She’s used pink for red,” said Vi, holding the chalk out to Caitlyn, and pointing back to the board, “And instead of blue and green she’s got two blues. One light, one dark.”

“So, we’re both on her board,” said Caitlyn, taking the chalk and rolling it between her fingers as she studied the map.

Her eyes narrowed.

“She hasn’t followed up. She’s been waiting for our move.”

Vi nodded, “You think you’re ready to make it?”

“Not quite yet,” said Caitlyn, “We need to understand the rules, as she’s laid them out for us here. The disruptions here – and here –” she pointed to the map. ”Smeared feces? Really? Clearly the work of those unaccounted-for primates escaped from the Menagerie.”

Caitlyn smirked at the audacity, “Those were distractions, meant to divide our attention so she could act.”

“Actually,” Ezreal coughed, “Given the colors she picked for their teams I’m pretty sure they’re meant to represent the two of you. I mean, I’m sure she’s not actually saying you’re poop-flinging monkeys, or anything-”

Caitlyn pinched the bridge of her nose, “…of course she is. However, these, the two corners, yellow and blue, and the arrows and swapped signs she used to indicate the boundaries of her game board – they map to her moves. Hers-” she glanced sidelong at Garen, almost apologetically, “And Luxanna’s.”

He said nothing, but storms hid behind his brow.

Caitlyn tapped her lip with her fingertip, “She’s left spaces blank for us. To try to predict and block her next move, or to try to make a power play and claim space for our own,” Caitlyn narrowed her eyes, “She’s testing us.”

Vi let a sigh spill from her lips. “So that’s a bit more of what she’s doing, but why…and what she wants, her real endgame…”

She shook her head.

“I don’t know, Cait. It’s just a game! If this is a message for me, how am I supposed to interpret it? It’s like it’s a… code or something…wait.”

She blinked, and rounded on Ezreal, “Ez, didn’t you say something before about codes? Ciphers? You know about them…?”

“Uh,” said Ezreal, “Yeah, sure do. C’mon, Vi. You wouldn’t believe how many ancient tombs are locked with some kind of crazy puzzle where you’ve got to decipher the sigil sequence on the third scroll of Antaruk or align the symbols in the three celestial wheels or you’ll get your head smooshed in by an animated statue. Stuff like that’s my bread and butter.”

“Cool,” said Vi, and plucked a key from her pocket, striding to the cell. “You’re in.”

“Huh! I am?! All right!” Ezreal blinked and beamed, “I knew you’d come through for me, Vi! You won’t regret it!”

Caitlyn pulled away from the map to stare at her, “What? Vi! No!”

…but the key was already in the lock, and Vi pulled the cell door open.

“We need him, Cupcake.”

“Absolutely, utterly out of the question! I am the Sheriff of Piltover, I can’t just enlist a rag-tag group of-I’m already taking an enormous risk bringing Garen into this-”

“Cait,” Vi said, her pleading heart in her eyes, staring at the map.

Caitlyn quivered, opened and closed her mouth, and pinched her fingertips over the bridge of her nose.

“Ezreal, please explain to me, one more time, why, after everything, you still want to be involved in this case?”

“Because I already am involved,” the young man said, tilting his chin, “Since I brought her here on that airship. Look, I even tried to do what Vi – what Lux told me to – and go home and stay out of it…”

He lifted his right hand, his fingers, still blood-blistered under the nails, shaking slightly.

“…and I got fucking kidnapped. Out of my own room! So, don’t tell me I can ‘just go home’, Cait, I – I can’t – I can’t be there, okay? I can’t. I have to be here, doing something, trying, okay?”

Caitlyn’s eyes softened. Vi knew that haunted look; knew her lover and partner well enough to know she was seeing a monkey scraped in the fog on a bathroom mirror, Vi’s arms slipping around her as she shook and cried on the shower floor…

I can’t be there, Vi, I can’t…

Caitlyn held her breath before she finally gave a relenting sigh.

“Fine. Ezreal, if you make me regret this, I’ll make you regret ever having so much as lifted a bag of lollies from the candymaker. Are we crystalline?”

“As the sparkling blue of Lux’s eyes,” he replied, then cringed back from her brother’s frosty glare, “I mean, uh, yep, sure, peachy, Sheriff.”

“All right, wonder boy,” Vi clapped his shoulder, tugged him out of the cell and herded him toward the map, “You’re up.”

Ezreal caught himself, fluffed his jacket collar, and looked over the chaotic sprawl of paper, chalk, threads, and pins.

“Okay, Jinx,” he said, popping his stiff knuckles, “Let’s pick that crazy brain and see what you got…”

“This is still a terrible idea,” said Zeri.

Six Zaunites and a yordle stood in the looming shadow of the Hall of Law.

Even with Heimerdinger’s encyclopedic knowledge of his beloved city, it’d taken them some time to cross Piltover. With time being of the essence and moving stealthily risking a hostile reaction with the city on such high alert, they’d had to move openly – and their patched, painted street clothes and homemade tech had very quickly marked them as Undercity folk, heavily armed Undercity folk at that, as much at odds with the prim and tidy citizens around them as they were with the dizzying brass towers soaring above.

They hadn’t been threatened with anything more than stares of affront, surprise, curiosity…

And fear.

It was the most unsettling sensation Ekko had felt since he’d been dragged bodily from the Sump by Jinx, wracked with Shimmer and hallucinating horribly the whole way. If it hadn’t been for the legendary Heimerdinger strutting ahead of them, drawing gawping stares and hushed murmurs from the Piltovan populace…then…?

Ekko didn’t expect they’d have been attacked or accosted, not here, not by these people, who’d never have to face violence in their lives if it weren’t for people like Jinx bringing the consequences of oppression home to their doorsteps. At worst, someone would’ve called the Wardens, which would probably have expedited this whole process, a thought that Ekko couldn’t help but give a bitter smirk at.

It didn’t help. None of it did.

Ekko wasn’t much attracted to Piltover. Okay, so he’d admit fascination with some of its technological achievements, whatever, he’d nerd out over an issue of The Hextech Gazette or Scientific Quarterly that washed down into the scrap heaps in a decent condition as much as the next teenage inventor from the Lanes, but…

There’s nothing here we couldn’t do, us, the children of Zaun, if Piltover would take its boot off our necks.

Something about everything here rubbed him wrong, and the building they stood in front of now most of all. The massive edifice with its frowning statues of Sheriffs past did not inspire welcome. He had to remind himself, hard, that this is where Caitlyn and Vi would be, that was what mattered.

“Yo, Ekko,” Shomi muttered, “You know that vibe when you didn’t read the signs right and you’ve stumbled into another gang’s turf without knowing it?”

“Yeah,” Ekko craned his neck, looking up, “Feelin’ it too.”

Zeri shivered, “Ugh, I feel like we’re gonna get arrested just for existing!”

“Poppycock,” announced Heimerdinger, pushing past them and popping on a pair of spectacles as he did, “I shall permit no such thing to be done to you. You said that you needed to speak to the Sheriff, did you not?”

“Yeah, because Cait and Vi are the most likely people to know where Jinx is-”

“And this is her workplace. Naturally, the Wardens should be informed of any looming threats to the city! I shall hail the doormen at once…”

Ekko shifted the weight of his dropboard on his shoulder. From the corner of his eye, despite his best attempts to ignore them, the crowd of rubbernecking Pilties who’d trailed after them for a few streets now once more intruded on his thoughts.

He could’ve sworn there’d been a flash of color at the back of the crowd, maybe slipping into an alley, like the tail of a snaky blue braid-

Ekko caught his breath, but there was nothing.

Damnit.

No. Even she wouldn’t be that damn brazen…

That there were clear signs of her presence scattered across Piltover – recently reset street signs, graffiti being scrubbed by workmen, ubiquitous Wanted posters – hadn’t helped his imagination any. She might have been just one scrap of a girl, but the whole of Piltover felt dotted by Jinx’s fingerprints.

Ekko’s attention jerked to the sudden rumble and whine of Hextech engines and the flash of lights as a narrow two-wheeled contraption slid out of a nearby side street, twisted and screeched to a halt by the sidewalk next to them.

“Right on time for suspicious activity!” said a chipper female voice, and the skinny, uniformed Warden on the back slung her leg over as she stood regarding them, “Word is there’s ‘a disturbance’, but you fine folks don’t look like you’d be interested in any disturbing, now, would you?”

Despite the spike of tension in his neck and the dangerous narrowing of Zeri’s eyes at his side, Ekko put on his best smile and lifted both hands. “No disturbance here, Officer, got our word on it.”

“Waaaaiiiit-hit-the-brakes. Are you Firelights?” said the woman, doffing her helmet with a flick of short, shiny black bob and a gamine grin, “What the heck are you doing up here?”

Ekko opened his mouth to reply, but was cut off by a “Yes, yes!” from Heimerdinger, bursting from amid their ranks like a cotton ball on legs, to the abject shock of the officer, “Greetings, officer-”

“Heimerdinger!” she exclaimed, “Um-Tisca! I mean. I’m Tisca. You’re Heimerdinger. Um. Obviously,” she snapped up a salute, “I mean, Officer Tisca, Justice Rider, reporting for duty, Councilor!”

“Professor, if you may!” said the yordle, for about the sixth time today, “How d’you do, madam?”

Justice rider? Zeri mouthed to Ekko with a roll of her eyes, and beside her, Shomi audibly snorted, drawing a somewhat affronted glare from the uniformed woman.

Fortunately, she was soon drowning in Heimer-babble, during which he extolled the virtues of his Zaunite companions, emphasized the immediacy of their mission to see the Sheriff, and then got into a tangential lecture about the importance of cooperation between the cities and their shared spirit of Invention…

Ekko shared a glance with Shomi, Scar grunted, and Officer Tisca’s enthusiastic smile quivered away into a look of panic.

“S-sure Prof we’ll discuss it inside-um-this-way-rev’em up, people, let’s gooo-”

They were suddenly on the move, past the Wardens’ brooding footmen at the door – and into a busy reception office where more than a few curious glances came their way.

“All right,” said Tisca, “Sorry, gonna have to check weapons and technological devices here. Protocol for all visitors, y’know?”

Scar growled and Kew clutched her club protectively, but Ekko put his hands up and shook his head at them, “Gotcha. Just, uh, don’t go pulling any cords or pushing any buttons, okay?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” said Tisca, “It goes in secure storage, I’ll have the keys. Nobody touches your stuff until you come to claim it, all right?”

Peeling off the swordbat, the Timewinder and – worse – the Z-drive – still felt like cutting his own arm off. Sweat rose on Ekko’s brow and a chill went down the back of his neck.

What if some Warden decides to tamper with it…or Jinx attacks the station, or those crazy assassins do, and I don’t have the Z-drive…

“-Now just a moment!” Heimerdinger interjected, waving a finger, “I shall personally vouch for this device – a proprietary invention! A very delicate piece of equipment! It should absolutely be handled by no other but this young man, its inventor. In fact, it is quite capable of protecting the lives of everyone in this building. I understand your protocols regarding weaponry in the building – very sensible! – but I must insist on an exception being made in this instance…”

Ekko relaxed and gave Tisca an easygoing smirk as he carefully passed over his swordbat in exchange for the return of the Z-drive.

“Yeah,” he said, “Think I’ll hold onto this, thanks.”

Its weight at his back felt good. Solid. Felt like hope.

“Rather a close one,” muttered the Professor, at his side, as the officers handled the other Firelights’ gear, “Don’t worry, my dear boy, I have your back.”

“Thanks, Heimer,” Ekko murmured, aware of Zeri watching him with her lips twitching on some outspoken outburst as she handed over her gun and shrugged off her jacket.

“Hey, I get it, but I’ll look after your stuff personally, okay?” said Tisca, as she turned to Shomi, “So just take it eas – oh woah is this a hoverboard?”

“Dropboard,” said Shomi, with a faint smirk, “But yeah, sure is. My own design.”

“How do they work?” the young Warden’s eyes lit up, “How fast? Huh? Hey, do you think it’d outrun my bike?”

Shomi shrugged, “Wanna find out?”

“Get done with your business here,” Tisca grinned ear to ear, “And you’re on!”

Heimerdinger hem-hemmed and quirked a prodigious fluff-brow in the direction of Caitlyn’s office. With a huff, he toddled up the stairs.

“…are the speed demons flirting?” Zeri crowded in close to Ekko as they followed, with her eye on the nattering Shomi and Tisca behind her, “Is Shomi seriously flirting with a freakin’ Warden?”

“Hard to tell,” Ekko replied with a chuckle, though his mind was on Jinx, and a half-imagined glimpse of a blue tail slipping into a dark alley, “Kay’ll kick her ass if she puts the moves on them, though.”

“‘Too roight!’” Zeri mimicked Kay’s accent and bumped his shoulder, “You okay, E?”

Ekko took a deep breath as the door to Caitlyn’s office opened before them.

While we’re up here, Zaun ticks closer to a gang war, and my parents…

“Let’s just get this over with,” he said.

Her stomach had only stopped twisting when she looked up to see the clocktower.

Only a few blocks away, now, a few more crowded Piltovan streets to navigate, and Lux would be home. She could bury herself in Jinx’s arms and kiss her mouth and let her explanation of what had happened with Vi be a later problem…

She could tell herself that. That was a start.

The city center of Piltover with its gilded towers was the only obstacle to her homecoming, now, and she –

Lux’s spine prickled; quick to tug her hood up and turn away from the glimpse she’d caught, she slipped into the flow of a stream of Academy students on their afternoon break.

Between their bright chatter, she chanced a look across the boulevard, hoping to the Veiled Lady’s mercy that she’d been wrong.

But no, there, just across the street; a man and a woman sipping at a mobile coffee-dispenser. Ill-considered attempts at Piltovan fashion, of which to be fair Lux herself had only a novice’s understanding, had betrayed them to her eyes first. But really it was the stiff-backed way they stood, the exact spacing apart to best scan the panorama of a street for their prey, a habit or a protocol trained so hard into them as to become muscle-memory.

A familiar sight on any Demacian street corner for most of her life.

They weren’t wearing half-masks, but to Lux, they didn’t have to. Sure, she could chalk it up to her paranoia after what she’d overheard at the Medarda building…

…if a closer glance hadn’t shown her that, masks or no masks, they were still wearing their gods-damned petricite, brazenly and openly, the wheelbug curls of their Graymarks pinned at each collar.

“You can take the Mageseeker out of Demacia…” she muttered under her breath. Lux pulled a book from her bag and positioned herself by a tree near the gaggle of students. She let the pages conceal half of her face as she idly flicked through them, but her eyes locked onto the two across the street.

So Mel was right. There are Mageseekers in Piltover. And Uncle Eldred – or at least someone pretending to be Eldred…

No, Eldred was dead. Sylas had wrapped a petricite chain around his neck and smashed his skull into his white marble desk. Wisteria had taken over and led the Mageseekers on a genocidal rampage, leading to the king’s intervention and the disbanding of the Order…

He had a contingency. Of course, he did. He wouldn’t have let himself be taken like that, arrogantly caught alone in his study by the Kingslayer.

Illusions, dopplegangers, false memories. How many mages had he weaponized through brainwashing or experimentation? What powers might he have been able to call on to pull his trick?

An old fear, buried since she had caught her first whiff of metallic Piltovan air that smelled like freedom and distance and a new life, suddenly surged back into her spine with a vengeance.

Lux swallowed.

I have to get closer. I have to know what they’re up to, I have to…

It took all of her focus to grasp what light touched her hair in the shadows of her hood and bend it just-so until it had become an unassuming, mousy brown.

It was a risk. But even if they recognized her, they’d surely be able to do little in the crowds of Piltover.

Surely.

Luxanna slipped her book away and moved closer, blending into the crowds, passing near the steaming contraption selling its hot beverages. She just had to get within earshot, or clear visibility on their moving lips…

‘…cannot stand…much longer…’

Luxanna watched the woman’s cold, angular face, which glanced at every passerby with suspicion; the man, dark-skinned and shaven headed, seemed calmer and more thoughtful.

But the bearing of both would have stunk to her of Mageseekers even without the Graymarks at their throats.

‘…patience,’ and ‘more coming’ she lipread from the woman; ‘enough of us’ and ‘long before we find…’ the man replied, and something that sounded like ‘without the mad bloodhound’, which made very little sense to Lux.  

The woman scoffed and turned, muttering something unintelligible, and in her new posture Lux could no longer see her mouth.

Lux stepped sidelong out of the line for the coffee stand, excusing herself to the elderly man behind her with a flash of a smile, and made her way across the fence line by the park to reposition…

A small Poro scurried yipping over her foot, and Lux looked down for a moment.

She lifted her eyes, and a cold thrill stabbed her spine.

Across the street, observing the two Mageseekers from the shadow of a newspaper stall, stood a slim figure, tall for Piltover but small, like Lux was, for a Demacian.

They were looking straight at her, caught as frozen as she was.

She had only the time for impressions; a charcoal-sketch of an unkempt chin-length black bob that might have once been straight and sleek, a white, sharp, heart-shaped face and huge grey eyes staring saucer-wide, right at her, right into her.

The stranger’s paralytic stare widened further, as if they’d seen a ghost, and a crawl of familiarity twisted in Lux’s gut in turn.

The other’s chest began lifting and sinking as if they’d started breathing fiercely, and a slight smile spread across their bloodless lips as their pupils swelled and dilated to fill nearly the entire eye.

Every instinct she had screamed at once to get out go hide don’t be seen, and it was only compounded a thousandfold when a noisy Piltovan automobile rattled past, obscuring their mutual line of sight for a split second –

The stranger was gone.

And then, so was Lux, vaulting over the fence amid a small babble of shock from the people in the line, dashing into the park beyond and tapping her staff to her ankle as soon as people weren’t looking at her.

Go run hide vanish disappear…

Lux rippled out of the spectrum of human visibility and twisted to peer deeper into the park – but the shadows of the trees felt suddenly threatening and hostile.

They could be anywhere. Setting up an ambush, calling in allies, circling to entrap her. Lux peeled away from the park, took a zig-zag trajectory to a small side-gate and ducked out into the streets again, concealing her disembodied shadow amid crowds of people.

Rationally, there was no reason to panic, but Lux’s gut had saved her before.

She didn’t know who the hell that was. Everything about them screamed Mageseeker even more than the other two, but there was that nagging sense of something personal, a half-buried recollection.

The wild look of recognition on their face stayed with her as she, invisibly, fled like a spooked rabbit down the sunlit streets of Piltover.

Kestrel’s heart became a block of black ice.

Her.

Everything sharpened. They saw the folds of her flowing hair tucked within the hood, the parting of small lips and widening of green eyes, fading to become blue eyes as shock disrupted her concentration.

Luxanna. Luxanna. Luxanna.

Against all odds, all the surging tides of emotion, training and instinct took over. A moment’s distraction, and they were on the hunt, flitting out of sight to pursue the prey –

Over the fence, quickly putting a barrier between them. Clever.

Into the park, where there were far fewer observers and far more shadows. Much less clever.

A thousand voices shrieked in Kestrel’s head. They dug gloved fingers into the palms of their hands as they gave chase, wishing for a split instant that the concealing gloves weren’t there, that nails could bite and prickle and ground them from those intruding whispers that leaked and oozed from every black angle cast by Piltover’s afternoon sun…

A quick scan with black eyes that saw all found nothing; she was not in the park, not concealed behind the trunks or crossing the twisting runners’ paths nor the open spaces nor squatting in the canopy.

Maybe clever after all.

She’s here she’s here she’s right in your grasp…

Kestrel’s breath quickened, teeth champing until they felt like they’d crack. They slunk away from the park – hopping the fence, slipping down behind another crowd –

Something wrong caught their eye. A small throng of people crossing the street – at first nothing amiss, no sign of her among them, but something …

Light betrays you, Luxanna, as it was always destined to.

“…one shadow too many,” Kestrel smirked, and slipped after them, a silver knife gliding into their palm, easily concealed.

Their footsteps quickened as they watched the shadow peel from the throng and down an alleyway, toward a tall fence – one whose signs read ‘danger! do not cross’…

Kestrel narrowed their eyes as the fence rattled slightly, and a small puff of dust flicked up on the other side.

Got you.

Eyes followed the fenceline to a weak point – the sound of Luxanna’s soft tread moved left – Kestrel cut across a side alley to circle her position, sprang to kick from the narrow alley walls and climb to a higher vantage poin–

Kestrel froze, legs akimbo, pressed against the brickwork.

Shafts of sunlight caught the razor-thin metal wires crisscrossing the end of the alleyway, just above that fence.

Their knee pinched one of them ever-so-slightly.

Kestrel’s gaze followed the wire back to the disused socket of a clothesline right above a cracked window planter full of long-dead flowers…

…and ugly, grinning metal contraptions, a cluster of them, tangled up in the wires. They clinked faintly as the movement jostled them.

A crow, sitting on the roofline, clacked its beak almost in mockery as it stared at Kestrel.

Black laughter echoed in the howling depths.

Kestrel breathed out and closed their eyes, listening to Luxanna’s footfalls fading, her Light slipping through their grasp…

Their leg slowly, ever-so-slowly, relaxed.

Lux pressed her back to the stones and bit back a small yelp as the CrAcK-BoOM-cRaCK of a string of Chomper blasts rumbled through the abandoned alleyways behind her, followed by the crumbling of masonry.

So they’d followed her, despite all her precautions - and tripped the first layer of Jinx’s perimeter.

I hope you weren’t just trying to recruit me for Janna’s church or something…

She waited with bated breath, but there were no more sounds, save the cawing of crows overhead.

Furtively, keeping her focus stoically on her invisibility spell – the longest she’d been forced to hold it in quite some time – Lux moved through the silent streets to conceal herself within sight of the alley.

Rubble was strewn across it, the upper part of one apartment block’s flank caved in entirely. Fortunately, for both the citizens of Piltover and for hers and Jinx’s secrecy, there were no occupants – there had not been for a year – and periodic demolitions had been scheduled, though long-abandoned, for this damaged and derelict part of the city.

Lux pursed her lips, blue eyes scanning the wreckage.

The alleyway lay dark, draped in smoke and shadow, but she could see no body nor pieces of body in the scattered rubble…

Only a few black crow-feathers.

Lux glanced up.

Through the smoke, at the far end of the street, a thin figure stood silhouetted on one of the rooftops, the winds of the blast rippling their loose clothing, staring intensely at the alleyway into their cordoned-off district like a general calculating the odds of a siege.

They turned and melted away into the deepening shadows of the afternoon.

Lux breathed out, swore furiously under her breath, and turned for home.

“Caitlyn’s not here?” Ekko mumbled, resisting the urge to rub his forehead – lest he wipe his war-paint off in the middle of a room full of Wardens.

The bustling, jostling, cluttered office of the Wardens of Piltover crowded around the Firelights. Despite the knowledge that they were ‘safe’ enough – considered tentative allies of the Sheriff, ones who had worked with certain elements of the Wardens before to keep the frail peace between the Twin Cities – the six Zaunites twitched and darted their eyes at the sight of every blue and grey uniform moving in their periphery.

Ekko couldn’t blame any of them. The faces and names might have changed but the hated uniform barely had. Scar, Meela, Kew, Shomi – even Zeri – who among them hadn’t grown up with the Enforcers beating them down?

How many faces had their predecessors put on the Wall?

Zayne Asako, seated across from him, sighed, “Sorry, Ekko. Sheriff’s working on a delicate case and it requires her to be in the field-”

Least they sent one of our own to talk to us, Ekko thought, though he’d gritted his teeth. He knew Asako – he’d been their primary contact and, as a Zaunite, one of the few Wardens who still operated in the Undercity.

And the Firelights were among the few who knew it because he was mostly there undercover.

“Yeah, a ‘delicate’ case,” said Ekko, “The Jinx case, which is what we’re here about, man! Look, wherever she is, we need to talk to her, and to Vi, because there’s real trouble and she needs to know.”

“Yeah, figured you wouldn’t be here if that weren’t the case,” said Zayne, “We’ll get your statement, do everything we can to get it to her,” said Zayne, “But I’m afraid even I don’t know where she is right now. For security reasons, she’s gone deep on this one…”

“Um! Excuse me,” interjected a bespectacled young woman in red and green office garb, her arms full of papers and a rather haughty looking white cat, “Ekko, was it? I can – ah – I can send the Sheriff a pneuma-tube. I have a direct line for emergencies. Since it’s urgent. What would you like me to say?”

Relief flooded Ekko’s chest; he shared a glance with Scar before clearing his throat, “Tell her that there’s an imminent gang war in Zaun, and one side’s hired some freaky assassins – Noxians, I think, though they’re beefed up with Zaunite tech – to hunt down Jinx, and…”

He paused, thinking on how much to say before biting the bullet.

“…and Luxanna Crownguard.”

Zayne’s thumb paused its rub on the edge of his coffee mug and the young Archivist’s pencil scratched to a halt on her notes.

“That sounds bad,” she said quietly.

“Understatement of the millennium,” said Zeri, “Those gagos almost killed us. They’ve got a crazy-assed lightning mage and some nut job with a whip and a lot of knives who sucks up magic…”

“Hm,” Zayne frowned, “Sheila, didn’t Vi put in a report about-”

“Yeeeepp,” said the Archivist, Sheila, thumbing through a file, “Maniacal lightning mage, magic-sucking whip nut, both at large, connected to the Crownguard case.”

“Shit,” said Zayne, “And you said this is connected to a gang war?”

“Yeah, they’re working with Trezk and Spindlaw against-”

“Zayne,” a blonde Warden shoved through the maze of desks, thrusting a pneuma-tube into Asako’s face, “Word from the Undercity. There’s an active firefight in the Entresol. At Markoli’s.”

Ekko perked up, the Firelights exchanging glances, “Margot Vyx’s restaurant? In Bridgewaltz?”

Zayne sat up immediately, spilling his coffee on his augmented arm and swearing under his breath, “Who’s hitting them?”

“Probably Spindlaw,” growled Scar, “It’s started.”

“Sorry, Ekko,” said Zayne, looking over the Firelights with some regret, “I’ve gotta handle this.”

Sheila shooed the cat from her arms, met with a disgruntled mewl and flop, and slapped her notes down on the table, spilling paperwork, “Um, okay, I’ll just take this over for you – if you don’t mind continuing your statement, I’m so sorry, the workload’s been absolutely frenetic since Jinx…”

“Yeah, we get it,” said Ekko, swallowing, watching Asako’s broad back recede to rejoin his unit in private, and with it, their chances of holding the Wardens’ focus, “But this has got to reach Caitlyn and Vi…”

Despair tugged at his chest.

“Well, um! I’ll be sure to send your pneuma tube as soon as…” Sheila glanced at the mound of paperwork on her desk and gave a small whimper, “Well – It’ll be priority –”

“Sorry to intrude, Sheila,” said a new voice, softly accented, and an elegant woman in vivid purple strolled into their periphery, laying a gentle hand on the young Archivist’s shoulder, “They need you on the Vyx case. I can take it from here.”

Beneath her fancy hat, dark eyes that missed nothing slid playfully over Ekko and his compatriots. Her deep brown skin didn’t quite mask the snake of something - darkened veins, maybe a tattoo - down one side of her face and neck.

Ekko sucked in a breath.

“L-lady Veraza, are you sure-” Sheila stammered.

“Shoo, darling,” the woman said, plucking the empty pneuma scroll from Sheila’s grip, “I’ll look after our guests and make sure Caitlyn gets the intel. Leave it with me.”

Smiling in relief, the Archivist bowed her head to Ekko and his friends. She laid down the half-written notes only a little hesitantly before she fled to her paperwork.

“After all,” said Lady Corina Veraza, regarding Ekko with a smile, “We folk of the Undercity understand each other. Don’t we?”

“Yeah, Corina,” said Ekko, narrowing his eyes, “We sure do.”

As he stood, she smiled and slipped past him. Her eyes slid over Zeri, Shomi, Scar as she did. In passing, she leaned to Ekko’s ear in a tickle of warmth and the scent of heady flowers…

“…not here,” she said, her smile slipping away in his periphery, “Too many cats in the aviary. Come with me.”

Tapping his shoulder with the pneuma tube, Corina Veraza strolled out of the office of the Wardens, waving pleasantly to a distracted Heimerdinger as she did.

Ekko blew out a sigh, “Perfect.”

“Is that…” Shomi muttered.

“Yeah,” said Ekko.

“You trust her?”

“Nope,” Ekko said, “Not a bit.”

Tension coiled in his gut, but he grinned through it anyway.

“Let’s go.”

This time, he was sure of it. Looking past Corina as she’d spoken, he’d seen a blue braid dangling at the window.

Chapter Text

The next day…

::: HA HEE HA-HA, HA HEE HA-HA-:::

“Hold the door!” Caitlyn cried, jamming another cartridge into the Hextech rifle, and fumbling to draw the bolt as the battered metal surface at her back jolted with a deafening BANG, ”Hold the bloody door, Vi!”

“On it!” Vi gritted her teeth. The Atlas gauntlets vented steam. She dug their massive fingertips into the display bench and flipped it on its head. Steel screeched and pitted white chunks out of the concrete floor.

::: HA HEE-HA-HA, HA HEE-HA-HA-:::

Caitlyn cursed as the door shoved open, a clawing arm slipping through. Blank neon grins crowded the darkened gap. She smashed away pawing fingers with the rifle butt and thrust the barrel up under a glowing, mocking eye.

::: Ha HeE-HA-hA, h-:::

BLAM! The face beyond collapsed in a stew of sparks and smoke. Caitlyn pulled away from the door just as Vi, with a roar of fury and force, slammed the massive bench into the frame, smashing the door shut and crushing the invading limb.

It fell to the floor with a clang, still blindly feeling around until Vi brought the Atlas down upon it. Brass splintered and cracks cobwebbed through the concrete floor.

::: ha hee ha-ha, ha hee… :::

Panting, rolling her badly bruised shoulder, Vi looked up at Caitlyn through sweat-soaked bangs; her Sheriff’s wild blue eyes blazed between strings of blue-black hair. Her chest rose and fell with furious exertion.

Bang. BANG. BANG…

Muffled through the reinforced barrier, they were still laughing that laugh.

 ::: ha hee ha-ha, ha hee… :::

“…not…how I pictured this going, Cupcake,” Vi gasped, “How’d we end up here again?”

Caitlyn flinched as the building shook from another distant explosion. Her expression turned murderous.

“I think you’ll find, darling,” she muttered between clenched teeth, “…that this is Ezreal’s fault…”

The previous day…

Ezreal ran his hands through his hair and dug the fingers of his unhurt left into his aching head.

“Well that makes…absolutely no sense.”

Piles of note paper, scribbled, scratched and scrawled upon lay spread about the desk, stacked on the chairs and strewn on the floor. Caitlyn’s mind map, affectionately dubbed the ‘Conspiracy Wall’ by Vi, now resembled an overgrown castle wall choked with papery vine growths.

All their attempts to untangle Jinx’s ball of string, up until this point, had ended in utter failure.

Caitlyn looked up from where she slouched in one of the chairs, fatigue driving her to be uncharacteristically slovenly, even chewing on her pen, “What happened to ‘I’m on the very edge of cracking this cipher, Caitlyn, give me space to think’?”

Ezreal considered his own exhaustion to blame, but he couldn’t quite dismiss the smugness from his smile as he twisted around to regard the Sheriff.

“Not on the edge, Cait. I cracked that baby twenty minutes ago.”

“What?!” Caitlyn sat up, her weariness instantly dispelled, “Which one was it? The fractionating cipher? Garen’s Demacian war code? That ancient Shuriman cryptograph with the columnar transposition?”

Garen grunted awake at the mention of his name – or maybe it was at the word ‘Demacian’ – but said nothing save with his eyebrow.

“Are you all sure those are words, because those don’t sound like real words,” Vi mumbled, a book sliding off her face, “Wait did you say you got it?”

“Of course, I did, I mean what do you take me for? You did hire an adventurer extraordinaire,” Ez beamed and flipped his hair, but his cocky grin flickered a little around the edges, “Sorry, Cait, but none of the above.”

“None?” Caitlyn chuckled, “Do you mean to say I was correct in telling you that digging around in the classics wasn’t going to apply to Jinx’s thinking and you’d be better off trying to put yourself in her perspective?”

Ezreal grimaced, “Ugh, it’s not like Jinx’s head is a place I’ve ever particularly wanted to be, but yeah, fine, you were both right.”

“I like it when you say that,” said Vi, sitting up and squinting as she rubbed her bleary eyes, “Cool. Spill, golden boy.”

“Truly,” said Garen. He lumbered from his seat, stiffly as a waking gargoyle, to give the Piltovans and the Zaunite space for their mad scheming whilst he quested to the slaying of a different beast - Caitlyn’s coffee machine.

“Ahem! Ladies and gentle-Garen, allow me to unravel the mystery for you,” Ezreal cleared his throat and stepped back from the conspiracy board, swinging his arms out to display it like a hawker at a carnival. His stomach sank as Caitlyn fixed him with a raised eyebrow for his theatrics.

She smiled thinly.

“The summary, please.”

“You mean the boring version? Fine, gosh,” Ez jabbed a thumb at the map, “So I was looking at your map of all of her graffiti and the renamed street signs and then, I had a thought…”

“Wonders never cease,” Caitlyn murmured, and Ez’s retort was cut off by the sound of the coffee machine clunking and steaming and Demacian oaths sworn violently in the background.

“I had a thought…” Ezreal repeated, through tense lips, “…that maybe I’d seen something like this layout before,” he took a deep breath, “In Hextech runes.”

Caitlyn’s brows furrowed ever so slightly, “Go on.”

“Okay!” Ez beamed, as he’d been waiting for a signal to do just that, “So then I thought – you know, she’s a genius inventor, she’s probably good at math, maybe she’s basing this on Hextech equations. So, while Caitlyn was working on the historical ciphers, and I had Vi working on any Zaunite street lingo connections-”

“Gutlau,” Vi sighed, “It’s called gutlau, Ez.”

“-right, so I chased the Hextech rabbit down the warren and…” he pouted, “Nothing. Around and around in circles, it just didn’t connect. Until I realized, Cait was right; we’d been overcomplicating it.”

Caitlyn tilted her head, “How so?”

Ez took a deep breath.

“Because,” he said, “I was forgetting the purpose of a cipher.”

“To keep a secret!” Garen interjected.

“Wrong!” Ez pointed at him and grinned, “Well half wrong. What’s the only real unreadable secret?”

Garen’s frowning reply was cut off with a yell of victory as the coffee machine spurted into life, aimed into the mug this time.

“One you never wrote down,” said Vi.

“Exactly!” Ezreal bounced, waving his hands, “All ciphers are still communication – they’re meant to be cracked – but only by the right person. Just designed so nobody else can get it. Got me?”

“Yes, she wants us to decode it,” said Caitlyn, “Vi and I. We know that…”

“Ding!” cried Ezreal, finger thrust in the air, “So that immediately cut out anything that Jinx wouldn’t reasonably expect Caitlyn, Vi, or both to know. You and me, Garen…” he shook his head, “We’re not in the equation. So Demacian codes – even ones Lux would know – or my historical cipher stuff won’t apply.”

Garen scowled but was forced to grunt and nod an agreement. He flopped back into his seat and sniffed curiously at the steaming beverage of his victory.

“Nor would anything based on information only Jinx would know,” Caitlyn added, tapping her pen to her lip, and glancing to Vi.

“Right, so I realized that all the messages and taunts she’s left on her crimes are all in Pilt alphabet,” Ezreal pointed back at the sketches, “She hasn’t written anything up here in gutlau.”

“You don’t really write gutlau,” said Vi, “It’s got no formal system, so we mostly kinda use Pilt letters in shorthand, except…”

“Except for the language of Zaunite gang signs and cryptographic wall art,” said Caitlyn, “Conspicuously absent from all of Jinx’s doodles at her crime scenes in Piltover,” she frowned, “Maddeningly so.”

“Yep,” said Ez, grinning like a cat with a canary, “See it yet?’

“Of course,” Caitlyn replied with a faint crease of her lips, “She knows that investigation and police work are my forte. She’s ensuring that I can read the messages she leaves for us.”

Vi leaned back in her seat and laughed, “Guess that part of the cipher is for you, Cupcake.”

“And that’s where we circle right back around to ‘absolutely no sense’,” Ez sighed. His temples still throbbed, ”Because I can’t see how a kid’s street game drawn out like a Hextech equation only with painted arrows and flipped street signs could be a message for anyone sane, Cait, let alone for you.”

“If the patterning suggests something to do with Hextech,” Caitlyn narrowed her eyes, “but I’m not an inventor like her, or Ekko, or Jayce…what’s our common language…something she knows I would understand…Jayce!”

She abruptly stood up, darted to the desk, and rummaged through the papers and sketches, whilst Ez and Vi peered at her curiously.

Caitlyn stopped and let out a groan.

“Bloody hell.”

“Well, ain’t this peachy,” Jinx murmured, over the scratching laughter of her Voices, “Just where I thought I’d end up today…”

Ahead of her, the stately façade of the Kiramman Estate perched and preened itself, glowing bright in the waning sun of a Piltovan afternoon.

“Not far from the middle of town,” she muttered into the perfectly pruned hedges, “Not far from Blondie. I can go home any time I want. Stop laughing…”

The breadcrumbs of her little trail of curiosity had led her to this – skulking in the too-clean alleyways all the way to the Hall of Blah where she spied on the Enforcers – Wardens – whatever – making chum with Little Man, the little freakin’ traitor, only Sheriff Big Hat wasn’t there and neither was Vi, and that got her curious enough to hitch a rattly ride on the roof of Plant Lady’s personal Hexcarriage all the way up to …

Here.

Again.

One quick trip down…

“…quick visit to Ziggs, get some stuff off my chest, shoot the breeze, grab the stuff, shoot a Hubblebooger, go home…” Jinx gritted her teeth. She watched the gates snap shut behind the unlikely figures of five Firelights and a Zappity Zeri, all of them looking out of place as a mob of sewer whumps at a Piltie dog show. The pretty lady sashayed ahead of them, leading them deeper in, all of them sketched over with laughing chalk grins on their blank masks that clashed with their nervous, cautious body language.

“…how was I to know it’d get this interesting?” she shot back at Claggor, peeking out of the gloom by her shoulder with black leaking below his cracked goggles and his wide sad face, “Look, it’s not a ‘terrible’ idea-” she glared at Mylo, hunkered up behind the hydrangeas, “How was I to know she’d bring them all here?”

The boys were rarer visitors since she’d laid them to their watery rest. Rare, but not gone. They’d never be gone, not really, because they’re in my head, like the rest… like all the dead Firelights, those were all new, shadowy figures that mostly stayed in the corners of her eyes, staring accusingly.

She hadn’t cared before. She hadn’t cared one whit. She still didn’t – not enough to remember their faces, not enough to remember them as more than vague outlines except for her, the pink one that looked like Vi, but then she’d gone and had her little heart-to-heart with Ekko and he’d given them all names and stories, and now here they were, fresh ghosts at the edges of her gallery, making sure she remembered that she’d killed them all and taken them from their friends, their dreams, their futures…

“…well, maybe, if they’re really little snitches for the Enforcers now, I’ll stop caring again,” Jinx gritted her teeth and narrowed her eyes, “But Miss Green Thumb being involved…that, I gotta figure out…”

And then home to Luxie. I promised.

It wasn’t difficult to find her way in. It hadn’t been the first time, either – the Kiramman place had pretty high walls, but hardly any guards apart from a couple of patrolling security footmen, a garden with lots of stuff to hide in and lots of stuff to climb, and huge freaking windows. The windowsills alone practically screamed to be clambered over and still, even after all the drama she’d caused on her last visit, the easiest one to get into was Cupcake’s bedroom.

Jinx couldn’t shake a crawl in her spine at the thought of how many times her sister must have climbed up along this same spot, and a twist in her stomach at the thought of – what if I come in this way and she’s there, or they’re both there, and they’re …

Fishbones’ weight shifted on her twitching shoulder, and she nearly slipped.

Jinx pressed her belly to the cold smooth stone. She squeezed her eyes shut and caught her breath, controlled it, before she levered open the window to Caitlyn’s bedroom and slid in like a snake into a gilded birdcage.

They weren’t there. Either of them.                                                   

The room was still disgustingly huge. You could probably house a Zaunite family of seven here without anybody feeling squished. There was a little dust on the mantlepiece. The bed didn’t look slept in, but then in a place with a butler, it wouldn’t, would it? Even if it’d been half on the floor five minutes ago, Jinx reckoned, some poor idiot who was fed and clothed and kept warm so well that they could almost forget they had a master would come fussing about tidying it up.

It set Jinx’s teeth on edge.

Was this where they lived? She’d thought so many times about it – coming back up, spying on Vi, her new life, whatever it had been after Jinx had declared The New Us and killed Powder one last time. She’d never quite been able to bring herself, in that whole long year, to drag her wretched body out of the dark places she’d hidden in Zaun, up to Piltover…maybe too stubbornly set to the pact she’d made with herself, that she’d cut the ties and set them on opposing paths - maybe just too scared of what she’d find.

Was this their home? Did they live here, or did they leave this big empty place and settle somewhere else? What would that place even be like – gross and posh and huge like this? Would there even be anything of Vi in it that Jinx would recognize? There sure wasn’t here…

Jinx was forced to dismiss the thoughts at the sound of footsteps in the hall, but it was only one of the servants puttering past. Servants. Jinx wondered what Ekko thought of that. Maybe she’d ask him, after, if they weren’t back to killing each other…

“No,” she muttered, “He’s not. He’s not ratting me out to them. He’s tryin’ to find me, because someone’s trying to hurt Flashlight, and I gotta know who, so I can kill ‘em…”

And then I gotta get home. To her.

Narrowing her eyes, Jinx slunk deeper in, following the sound of voices.

Caitlyn threw down a series of images of renamed street signs.

Fascination Court. Ambition Boulevard. Synchronization Street. Acceleration Avenue. Translocation Terrace.

“I wondered why these five weren’t renamed into gibberish or jest like the rest,” Caitlyn muttered, “Each is rather central to a particular district of Piltover. I had a hunch they were pointing to where she might strike next.”

Vi looked at them, looked up at Caitlyn, and blinked as Caitlyn gave a small scream of frustration and planted her fist to her mouth.

“They’re the five master runes of Jayce’s original Hextech equation!” she announced, between clenched teeth, “And the chapter titles of his notes, which if you recall – I was, eight years ago, helping him collate…”

“…when we were breaking into his apartment,” Vi groaned.

“The same working notes Jinx later stole, and reverse engineered to create her Hextech weapon,” Caitlyn finished.

Ezreal boggled at them both. “What, seriously?”

“Long story,” said Vi.

“I cannot believe I missed it!” Caitlyn paced, tugging on her hair, “It was right there, spelled out in literal neon paint!”

“She’s telling you where she’s hitting next,” said Vi, “Maybe she’s telling me what she’s targeting….”

She rummaged in her own pile – her own notes on gang signs and the Wardens’ sketches of Jinx’s graffiti.

“She’s included the Menagerie in her game board,” Caitlyn said, “so it seems she’s counting that as the start of the game. I suppose because I made the first move there…and that’s on the court she renamed to ‘Fascination’.”

“Right,” said Vi, “And Bellwether, which she renamed to ‘Ambition’, Sandvik’s wedding venue is at the end of that street.”

Ez scratched his temple. “Wow, that’s really obvious, in retrospect,” he observed.

Caitlyn gave a small whimper, sat down, and buried her face in her arms.

“So that’s two locations down,” said Vi, frowning at the pile in front of her.

“…actually,” said Ez, “You’re three locations down,” he tapped the map, “Look, ‘Synchronization’ street is right down the middle of inner city Piltover, right where she concentrated all the traffic. And it links back to the Gardens – wasn’t the target, but it’s where you two were gonna be while she ran around making the mess.”

“…aptly named,” said Garen, broodingly, “…as she seems to have co-opted my sister into that caper.”

Vi looked up at the map, at the location of the Gardens.

“She was right there,” Vi whispered, “She had to have been. She knew right where we were…”

“Then we know her next target is likely to be on Holifaunder Avenue, which she named ‘Acceleration’, the fourth rune,” Caitlyn narrowed her eyes, “That street is named for its Museum, presently housing a major exhibition on the history of Hextech. She could be targeting any number of artifacts displayed there, or all of them at once.”

She turned to Vi, but her partner was brooding over the pile of images Darlington and Harknor’s teams had drawn and gave no reply.

Ezreal pursed his lips and shrugged, rolling tension out of his neck, “It’s all I can give you, Cait. From here on, your guess is as good as mine.”

“Perhaps that is all the information she intends to give you,” Garen suggested, “It’s plenty enough to go on.”

“Don’t think so, big guy,” Vi said quietly, “Look at this.”

She pushed forward a copy of Jinx’s art; a distinctive, childish scribble of a sluglike monster painted on a building corner with Fascination Court visible on the sign in the foreground.

“Remember I told you once,” Vi said, looking up to Caitlyn’s eyes with that old pain lingering in her own, “We used to make up stories, to chase the monsters away?”

Caitlyn’s expression softened.

“Oh, Vi,” she whispered.

Vi ran her calloused thumb over the sketch, scarred lips set in a helpless frown. She cupped her hands over her face and took a deep breath, then slid her fingers back through her hair, drawing it back from haunted eyes.

“There’s three,” she said, “One near each place she hit so far…I didn’t see them before, she’s hidden them in plain sight.”

Caitlyn pursed her lips. When she spoke, it was gently; aware of Vi’s wounded heart bared in big grey eyes.

“They are likely to be the key,” she said, “She won’t give us all the pieces until she’s done having her fun. But whatever it means, it’ll be something valuable. So we need to know, Vi. Is that all right?”

Vi nodded, breath shivering, “…the first one is, I think she’d say it like… ‘a Fire-Spitting Boom Bug’, that’s what she’d name it. Guess that’s not far off what she did at the Menagerie.”

Caitlyn flashed Ez and Garen a warning look as she sat down opposite Vi, clasping her lover’s hands.

“…Second would be a Fire-Eating Slime Snail, heh, third’s a Snail-Smashing Claw Crab,” Vi went on, “I’m, um, guessing the fourth one’ll be…”

She furrowed her brows.

“…if I said a crab, she’d usually say something like…like a Crab-Cracking Lightning Lizard, or…” Vi’s face fell, “I don’t know, Cait. I don’t know how any of this is helping.”

Caitlyn squeezed her hands.

“She wants you to remember the past,” Garen rumbled quietly from the background, “That much is clear.”

“I don’t know why,” said Vi, “The last time I saw her – the last two times – she told me, straight up, that…that Powder is gone. She made that pretty fucking clear.”

She couldn’t help a glance at the spot on the map where the Council building used to be and pulled guilty eyes away from Caitlyn’s.

“…Now she wants to remind me of when we were kids? Why?”

“I don’t know,” said Caitlyn, lowering her own eyes, “I wish I knew, Vi.”

Garen chuckled, “Speaking as an older brother…whenever I was being obstinate, or digging my heels in, Lux would always bring up the most childish things. I suppose it was her way of drawing my attention to our connection. Knocking me down a peg, so we could see each other, eye to eye.”

“Heh,” Vi said, “Sounds about right. Kinda like what that Elba girl…”

Her eyes, staring at the floor, slowly widened, and she raised her head to look at Garen.

“…Wait what did you just say?”

Ekko watched the slosh of tea into the delicate porcelain cup and wondered how the hell it had come to this.

The inner courtyard garden was a finely manicured thing, bright with seasonal flowers from the Kirammans’ many connected ports, things that could never grow in the Undercity, all of them carefully pruned and presented. Across from him, the other Firelights – Meela, Kew, Scar, Shomi – and Zeri crowded around the outdoor table, fidgeting, some clearly fighting the urge to pace or perch around the garden, others clearly fighting the urge to flee the scene entirely.

But it was Ekko who’d been seated opposite the lady of the hour, a picture of relaxed beauty and grace, smiling at him over steepled, gloved fingers.

“If the tea’s not to anyone’s tastes, don’t hesitate to let me know,” said Tobias Kiramman, settling beside Corina and giving the unexpected gathering a welcoming, if somewhat flustered smile, “I’m afraid we weren’t expecting so many visitors – my wife’s out on business, though I expect she’ll be back shortly. But of course, Lady Veraza is a dear friend of our Caitlyn, and any other friends of hers are always welcome.”

“Uh, thanks - Mister Kiramman,” Ekko fumbled, not entirely sure of the form of address in this situation. He nudged Meela, who was sniffing at the tea with that cocked-bird-head thing she did when she was nervous and glared over at Zeri running little sparks through the silverware to test the conductivity, “…for inviting us into your home.”

Hospitality was at least enough of a universal rule to know where they stood. Ekko hoped.

Corina swept to his rescue, dipping her chin into the curve of her fingers, “Tobias, the Firelights here have worked with Caitlyn on several occasions. She speaks highly of all of you – according to her, you’re the closest thing the Undercity has to a force for peace and justice.”

Corina tilted her head slightly, her eyes roaming with warm amusement over Ekko’s.

“I believe ‘tireless defenders of the community’ was how she put it?”

“Sounds like you’re in the same line of work as Cait,” Tobias said with a cheerful smile.

Ekko fought not to choke on his tea and swallowed a hint of bile at the thought of being compared to Enforcers, no matter how well-meaning.  

“Don’t know if I’d go that far,” he said, clearing his throat slightly, “It’s a very different situation.”

“Of course,” Tobias nodded, seeming thoughtful, and Ekko saw a shadow of some of Caitlyn’s softer facial expressions in his that made him warm to the man, despite himself.

“So, Corina,” Zeri piped up, fixing the woman with one of her daring smirks, “You’re from the Undercity like us and friend of Caitlyn’s? That’s sooo neat. Tell us how you guys met! Must be quite a story…”

Corina’s smile flickered ever so slightly at Zeri’s look of challenge. Ekko could have kissed her. His cheeks warmed at that thought, and he blinked it away as Corina returned to her unflappable expression.

“Oh, I made her acquaintance early after the Turmoils. She learned of my Cultivair project, and reached out to me,” Corina smiled graciously and cast her eyes to Tobias, “Your daughter has a deep desire to see the suffering of the Undercity lifted and peace restored. It is a goal we share.”

“Lady Veraza’s supported all of Caitlyn’s efforts to rebuild the Wardens and been, like yourselves, a key connection to the Undercity,” Tobias offered, “Clan Kiramman has been only happy to return the favor. No matter what’s happened between the two cities, my daughter truly believes we can build a better future – making amends for our past missteps. She’s helped Cass and I see that…”

He gave the Firelights a kind look, “I think clean air for the people of Zaun is a first step we can all agree on, isn’t it?”

Corina gave a dazzling smile, and Ekko felt his stomach sink. Shomi and the others exchanged glances and looked to him for guidance on how to react, what to say.

Don’t rewind, Ekko set his lips in a firm line and wrested control of his twitching fingers, don’t rewind…

“Definitely,” he managed to say, with a small smile, “That why we’re here, Corina? Talk about your Cultivairs?”

Tobias cleared his throat, “Right. She did say you’d needed space to speak privately,” he rose from his seat and gave a little bow, “If there’s anything else you need, please let me know.”

“Thanks, Mr. K. The tea’s amazing,” Ekko smiled at him as he made his way out, ignoring Scar and Meela’s eyes boring into his back.

Only once he heard the doors back to the gigantic, sprawling mansion’s internal rooms close did Ekko turn back to Corina Veraza. She only smiled at him, “Sweet man, isn’t he? And humble, despite all the privileges of his station. His wife, however – formidable woman. Stick around and perhaps you’ll meet her.”

Ekko could see Zeri fulminating to speak her mind now their host was gone; Ekko lifted his hand from the table slightly in warning.

“Okay. I’ll bite,” he said, “You wanted to show off, I get it. What’s your play?”

“Straight to the point,” Corina said, leaning closer, “Like a sunflower turning to its namesake. A good trait in a leader, though not always in a politician.”

“I’m not a politician,” said Ekko.

“Everyone is, Ekko, most closed buds are simply poor at it,” Corina replied, smiling sweetly, “But you’ve been patient with me, so I’ll repay you in kind.”

She withdrew a pneuma-tube from her bag and placed it prominently on the small table. Ekko’s eyes magnetized to the confidentiality seal on the tube, right next to the Glasc Industries logo.

“An employee manifest,” Corina said softly, “Timetables, stationing, and duty roster. Current.”

His mouth ran dry, but he kept his face steely, “And why do you think I’d be interested in something like that?”

Corina tilted her head at him, and then laughed – a warm, floral, tinkling laugh, one that rocked her in the delicate garden table seat.

“Ekko, please. You and your vivid friend here,” her eyes snipped across Zeri, and her smirk flickered with amusement, “…didn’t think your digging was subtle, did you?”

Now it was Shomi’s turn to hold Zeri back; she fairly crackled with outrage, wriggling in the taller Firelight’s prosthetic grip, “You wanna talk to me like I’m here, Petal?”

“No,” said Corina, turning back to Ekko, “Take it. It’ll mean your jaunt here wasn’t wasted.”

Ekko didn’t move, though his fingers curled into a fist to keep from snatching up the tube and its promises. “What’s your price?”

“Price?” Corina twinkled with mirth, “I’m a philanthropist.”

Ekko snorted, “Sure you don’t mean ‘comedian’? C’mon, you’re gonna burn Glasc to give me this, and you expect me to think it doesn’t come with strings?”

“Renata and I understand each other; a few deadheads pruned between friends comes with the big girl seat,” Corina fairly purred, “Perhaps I’m only interested in sowing a little goodwill. It’s getting to be a rare bloom in Zaun, lately.”

“…Oh, my freaking stars,” Zeri stifled a scream into her tea, “I just can’t…”

Ekko turned to his companions, reading their steely expressions and suspicious glares at Lady Veraza. He gave them a nod of affirmation and turned back to her.

“I think you can probably tell,” he said, “If this is about your gang war, we’re not interested in picking a side.”

“Too late,” Corina sighed, “A side has picked you, darling. Didn’t you know?”

Her nails, capped with false tips like elegant brass spirals, traced the teacup with a nearly inaudible scraping screech.

“…Garront Trezk has put a bounty out on your Firelights. Seems he’s intent on decorating his gallery with your pretty masks, preferably with your heads still inside them. Wencher and Saito have already been sniffing around the edges of your territory looking for stragglers. It’s only a matter of time.”

She leaned closer, her eyes flint hard.

“I know the look of survivors. You’ve all grown from tough soil. You know how this works; together we flourish, isolated, we wither.”

Corina tapped her nails atop the pneuma-tube and rose to her feet.

“Consider this a gift. When you’re ready, you know where to find me.”

“I told you where we stand,” said Ekko, rising to his feet in turn, “Whose side are you on?”

Corina Veraza smirked and picked up her pretty hat with its huge white flower, “Me? The same as you, dear Firelights. On the side of Zaun, to the bitter end.”

“Corina, wait…” Ekko stared at the pneuma tube on the table, aware that another sat heavy in Corina’s bag, “Caitlyn. Give me your word you’ll send her that message.”

Corina opened her mouth to speak, but her eyes fixed somewhere behind Ekko. He thought he saw her mask crack – briefly – with the unfamiliar state of surprise. Then she smiled again.

“Oh, don’t worry. That won’t be necessary,” she said, backing toward the door Tobias had left through and tipping her hat, “Don’t play too long now. Clock’s ticking, below…”

Ekko frowned and watched her go, a crawl climbing his spine as he heard the plop and splash of a flower-head tossed into water.

The voice followed it up his back like a knife point before he could even turn.

“…think Cupcake knows she’s a Chembaron?” said Jinx, lounging amid the carvings on the decorative fountain behind them.

Ekko damn near rewound on the spot.

Vi could only watch as Caitlyn paced, her tall boots clipping the carpeted floor of the safehouse.

“You’re certain? You’re absolutely sure it was Luxanna?”

Vi threw up her hands, “Look how would I know? She’s your old friend, Cait, I’ve never laid eyes on her in my life. Closest I’ve seen of her is those sketches, but -”

“But she used that wording. That exact wording?”

Vi glanced at Garen. Ever since she’d said it, the big man’s energy had completely changed. Ezreal had perked up like an excited puppy, and Caitlyn was now pacing, all her mental wheels spinning, but Garen sat silent, his elbows on his knees, his chin on his fist.

Vi knew the feeling of the air changing weight, and Garen Crownguard practically had his own gravity.

She shook her head and looked back to her partner, “Near enough, yeah. My gut says yeah, Cait. It’s her.”

“So ‘Elba’ was Lux,” Caitlyn shook her head, “And she made contact with you to – what? Warn you? Pass a message from your sister?”

“She gave me the clue,” said Vi, “She – she got me talking about siblings, opened up about her brother…just led me right to it.”

Garen’s narrowed eyes lifted to hers. She could feel the questions he had – about what she’d said, about how she’d said it – like the warning cracks of a moving mountain.

I get it, Vi wanted to say, that weight pent up in you. I feel it every time I have to say her name.

But Ezreal was talking, his bouncing knee swinging the arm he’d propped on it, “She wants to be found, she wants us to save her, that’s what it means! We’re supposed to stop Jinx and get her back, we’ve gotta figure out the rest of these clues…I’m on it, guys, you can count on Ezreal-”

Garen locked his eyes to Vi’s and forced out a sharp, bullish snort of breath, but Ez was already buried in the remaining code, radiating action, decision, progress energy in all directions. Caitlyn ignored him and turned on her heel before the two seated figures.

“Lux slipped away from us again. Evidently, her diplomatic skills aren’t her only training. Would you say that’s fair assessment, Garen?”

Garen’s huge shoulders knotted up in hesitation and the storm built in his mighty brows.

Caitlyn thinned her lips, “And might I make the assumption that the Illuminators aren’t merely the humble religious charity they project?”

“Mm,” he replied, suddenly seeming aware of the foreignness of his companions and surroundings. A Demacian wall had flung up between them, and Vi watched a contest of indomitable wills as it weathered the crashing waves of Caitlyn’s withering Sheriff stare.

“Look, man,” Vi finally interjected, when she couldn’t stand it anymore, “You don’t want us to keep underestimating your sister, we have to know what we’re up against. Or we’re always gonna be on the back foot, and we’re never going to catch up to her. You want that?”

Garen blinked and stared at her. She’d hit home; Vi watched his iron Demacian resolve crack, as though his sister was a structural fault in an imposing dam.

Vi knew the feeling.

“You might,” he cleared his throat, “Assume that.”

Caitlyn arched a brow.

“…there are, ah, rumors,” Garen went on, “That agents of the Radiant act in secrecy to protect the Kingdom from its external enemies…”

“…wait, Lux is a freaking spy?!” Ezreal blinked, and his jaw hung open, “Holy crap, can she be any more perfect…”

“I imagine that must require rare talents,” said Caitlyn, “In my experience, the shadow work of any nation often finds acceptable that which other parts of the society shuns. Or persecutes.”

Garen’s eyes flared, and he pushed himself halfway to his feet- only to find a solid Vi-shaped roadblock between himself and Caitlyn.

“I’ll defend my sister’s honor, Caitlyn, even from you-” he began.

“Yeah, okay, settle down big guy, we know she’s a mage,” Vi rolled her eyes, “Everyone in this room knows she’s a mage. So can we not?”

Garen locked up like a stunned ox, and Vi took the opportunity to plant her hand on his chest and push him gently – but firmly – back into his seat. In apoplexy, he turned from Caitlyn and Vi to Ezreal –

“You too, knave?” growled Garen.

The young adventurer peeked up over his shoulder like a rabbit suddenly surrounded by a pack of hounds.

“Oh um, me?” said Ez, “Yeah, totally knew. About the mage thing, not the spy thing. I’m one too, by the way. Mage, not spy.” He wiggled his fingertips, a little blue glow humming between them, and lighting the marks on his cheeks. “…Hi.”

Garen groaned and slumped like a dying titan, “I should have known. I should have known!”

“…So, to summarize, your sister’s a super powerful light mage and a trained spy and the most beautiful girl in the world,” Ez sighed, and Garen glared at him with enough heat to melt iron.

“And we’re not only trying to track down the city’s most dangerous terrorist, but also the Demacian equivalent of a Clan Intelligencer,” Caitlyn concluded, throwing up her hands, “We suspect we know where they’re going to strike next – but not what, or why.”

“Um,” said Ez.

“I’m sorry, Cupcake,” Vi shook her head, “I’ll try again, I just…”

“No, Vi, it’s not your fault. But even if we confirm that she’s going to hit the museum on Holifaunder, I cannot ask them to move the entire collection just in case…”

“…Um,” said Ez, one finger in the air, “‘Scuse me, guys.”

Caitlyn turned on him with a blazing blue-eyed scowl, “…Yes, Ezreal?”

“Uh, just speaking as someone who’s, ah, contributed a few donations to that museum…”

”And several withdrawals,” said Caitlyn, deadpan.

“…it’s a give and take kind of business,” Ez shot back, but asserted his finger-in-the-air proclamation with a determined look, “I know that collection. Including the current exhibitions. May have memorized the whole rotation, actually.”

He pulled a book from his bag, slapped it on the table, and pulled a loose flyer from the middle of it.

“…look, Ez, I know it’s your thing,” Vi started, “But that doesn’t get us any closer to what Jinx wants, and she hasn’t told us-”

Ez tapped the flyer, and Vi’s eyes widened as she fell silent.

“Hasn’t she?” said Ezreal, “Hextech equations, Jayce’s notes, scribbles from when she was a kid? Like, when she stole the first Hexcrystals, that kind of age?”

“Oh,” Vi murmured.

“…Did she draw any of her Lightning Lizards in blue?” Ezreal finished with a cocky grin.

The Holifaunder Museum presents:

REVOLUTION: THE DAWN OF HEXTECH

A THRILLING exhibition of milestones from Piltover’s EPOCH-CHANGING technology…

Featuring for a limited time, the FIRST stable HexGem ever crafted…

…straight from the workshops of JAYCE TALIS, MAN OF TOMORROW!

Proudly sponsored by Clans Talis and Ferros.

“…and by the way,” Ezreal added, “The flyer’s a total lie; that gem’s the second stable one. The replacement prototype.”

“What happened to the first?” Garen frowned.

Vi could barely hear him over the thunder in her heart and the blood rushing in her ears; her fingers clenched involuntarily, her whole body ready for a fight that wasn’t coming. Not here. Not yet. But soon. She fought her dry tongue to find the words.

“Jinx put it in her rocket launcher.”

She heard Caitlyn’s hitched breath behind her, and turned to see a cold determination gripping her partner’s features, transforming her entirely. Cait, her Cupcake, warm, compassionate and loving, had been packed away. The hour of Sheriff Kiramman had come.

“Ezreal, I want a list of all relevant contacts at the Museum. Any strings that you can pull, pull them now. I will have permission to move any part of the collection, and I will have it immediately, that is to be understood.”

He gaped at her momentarily before his mouth snapped shut. “On it, Sheriff!” he said, with a sharp salute, and scrambled to his feet.

“Garen, I want you with us. Your armaments will be returned, but I will have your word that you will not turn your blade upon Jinx. We act only in the protection of innocent lives. Am I understood?”

“You have my word, Sheriff,” said Garen, with words that replaced Sheriff with Commander in their tone and meaning, ”On the honor of Demacia.”

Caitlyn rounded on Vi, eyes freezing blue, the face she loved statuesque.

“Deputy,” she said, “There are three pneuma-tubes in my desk. One is earmarked for Zevi; one is for Sheila, at the Hall of Law. The last is to the secure location marked. Send them all.”

Vi swallowed and nodded. Her heart was pounding; her sister’s blazing eyes seemed to wait in every shadow of the sinking sun.

“Got it, Sheriff,” she said.

“From this moment,” Caitlyn said, surveying them all, “My orders are absolute, and my authority is final. You wanted to be on my team, you will obey my rules to the letter.”

Caitlyn took a deep breath and turned her steely gaze to the map.

“Operation Foxtrap is a go.”

Jinx fidgeted in her belt bag, thumb running over the empty socket in her present for Lux.

“…think Cupcake knows she’s a Chembaron?”

She watched the Firelights jump like scared mice. Bat Guy pulled a knife, Dog Girl and Crow Girl nearly fell off their chairs, the Tall One actually screamed a little, and Ekko went straight for his ripcord and almost pulled it…

It really never got old.

“You guys all knew, right? Chembaron?” Jinx grinned ear to ear, “…puh-lease tell me you all knew?”

“Yeah, we knew, duh,” Ekko growled, keeping his voice low even as his eyes flared at her, “What the heck are you doing here?”

Oh, Little Man, you haven’t changed a bit.

“Me?” said Jinx. She let her grin spread even further, “Spying! What are you guys doing here?”

“Well there you go, Ekko,” said Zeri, lowering her crackling fingertip, “Found your crazy ex.”

Now it was Jinx’s turn to growl, a stab of – something – twisting in her chest.

”I’m not his-” “She’s not my-” she and Ekko looked at each other and scowled.

Zeri rolled her eyes at them both.

“…Z,” Ekko said, without taking his eyes off Jinx, “Give us some space, everyone. And stay out of trouble, okay?”

Bat Guy growled under his breath and Tall and Pink gave him an incredulous look. Zeri simply snorted and shook her head.

“Ugh! Whatever,” she announced, “I need a walk after talking to ‘Lady Cor-ii-naa’ anyway. Just one more plant pun and I swear, I start a forest fire…”

She snagged Dog Girl by the collar and tugged her off her seat with a squeak; Bat Guy and the Tall One exchanged glances, sighed and corralled Crow Girl toward the door. “You better know what you’re doing,” the Tall One said over their shoulder, with one warning glance to Jinx.

“…never seen a forest mind you,” muttered Zeri, on her way through the door, “But I’d improvise!”

The Firelights exited the garden, leaving Jinx and Ekko alone with the drifting petals cast in the light of coming evening, and the space between them.

“Jinx-” Ekko broke the silence first, tension sinking out of his shoulders.

“Sparky’s got moxie,” Jinx cut him off, “I like her. You banged yet?”  

Ekko choked on whatever he’d been about to say next and his eyes bugged, “What?!-No! That’s none-”

“-Little Man, you really gotta get laid,” Jinx rolled her eyes and laughed, “It changes, like, yer whole perspective.”

Ekko’s outrage faltered, “…y-you and Lux…?”

“Ohhhh yeah,” Jinx beamed, “Like right after leavin’ your tree. And a whoooole bunch of times since-”

“Okay!” Ekko scrunched his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, “Geez, stop, I get it!”

Just like Ziggs – hilarious – Jinx was really starting to have fun with this angle. Ekko didn’t share her mood, though. Little Man had his Big Boy face on, pacing back and forth, body wired with tension and caution.

“You tailed us since the Warden office,” he said, “Or earlier, probably. You know why we came up here?”

Jinx’s grin flickered and fell off her face. Every muscle in her body slowly coiled up like a snake; she knew Ekko’d seen it.

“Someone’s comin’ for Luxie,” she said, “Yeah. I heard.”

“Everyone’s coming for both of you,” Ekko said, “Whole Undercity’s getting caught up in this Chembaron gang war and the two of you are apparently the grand prize. You’ve gotta watch your back, Jinx. For her – for yourself – and for Zaun, too.”

“Watch out, Boy Savior,” Jinx licked her lips, “Almost sounds like you care.”

“So what if I do?” Ekko scoffed at her, “That gonna be a problem?”

“Things aren’t the same,” she growled, “You forget what I owe ya for?”

Ekko pursed his lips, tense with unspoken words, and finally breathed out a sigh.

“Look, I get it. Powder’s gone,” he said, “I know she’s not coming back. But Silco’s gone too.”

What do you mean by that? Jinx gritted her teeth, No he’s not. He’s right here. He’s with me… a quiet tone undercutting her Voices like a knife blade, grounding her when she needed it most. A red eye burning, just over her shoulder, housed in Fishbones’ hollow iron cheek, always there for her, always, like he always was…

“…and the assholes who took his place want to carve you up for your Shimmer blood and sell your girlfriend to some psycho mercs,” Ekko threw up his hands in exasperation, “So what, maybe we’re not gonna be friends. Maybe I’ll never be square with what you did and what you do.”

Jinx held her silence, brows furrowing. Ekko took a tentative step closer to her, hands now held up in a gesture of peace.

“But we don’t have to be enemies right now, because right now, helping you and helping Zaun happens to be the same thing.”

Jinx studied his face, her brows caught in a furrow and her words caught up somewhere in her throat where they weren’t quite making it out. They tasted off on her tongue. He’s lying, her Voices hissed at her, he’s gonna sell you out. He’s gonna le͘v͠er͡age you to win points with his bestie-bestie C̡a͠it̨l̢y͞n …he’s jealous of L̷ux,҉ ͞he ́wa҉n̷t͜s̷ ͝he͡r oút ̸o҉f t̕h̡e way̸ …

Jinx twisted her face away from him, staring out into the leaves of the Kirammans’ stupid garden that smelled like clean green things and sunlight in ways that reminded her of Lux. Feigning indifference in the bored flicker of her eyes about the space whilst inside, she wrestled her feelings into submission like forcing an angry snake back into a basket.

His face was too open, honest, the big-hearted kid poking through the stern leader man again. Jinx had to do something about that – it was like a freaking itch.

“Cool,” she said, “So, what’s this?”

She held up her off hand and watched the olive branch in Ekko’s eyes snap as they locked to the pneuma-tube she held.

And filled up with panic.

“Give me that, Jinx,” he said, trying to keep his voice strong, “It’s mine.”

“Reeaally?” she narrowed her eyes, chortled, and hopped off the fountain, splashing the iron cap of her boot through the clean water as she swung her leg, “Coulda fooled me. You left it lying around on that table like you didn’t give a whump’s…”

She waved it in his face and snatched it away as he gave a grab for it, chuckling nastily.

“Soooo, what’s in it? Money? Drugs? Naughty pictures? Schematics for your first hot date with Sparky… ooh! Limited edition Jayce action figure!”

“Please, Jinx. Don’t do this,” Ekko sighed, feigning annoyed exasperation, but the fear in his eyes was real – it ran somewhere deep – it was a burning mystery to Jinx, “Just give it over!”

Jinx gasped and hopped away, twirling like a Piltie ballerina, “You said – please? I guess I gotta – here you go – oh no, whoops!”

She faked a slip and tossed it over her shoulder, toward the fountain –

Jinx’s teeth set on edge… she tasted something between metal and ozone and her skin buzzed … Time popped, and Ekko was suddenly holding the tube, breathing hard and clutching it to his chest, his eyes fixed on her in a mix of warning and suspicion.

“Wow,” Jinx breathed out, “Wow you must really want whatever was in that.”

Ekko’s eyes widened. He frantically unscrewed the tube.

The empty tube.

“Woops,” she smirked, “Say, was that Granny Glasc’s seal I broke? What’s up with that? You like ‘em older now or somethin’?”

Ekko looked like he was about to jump up and punch her in the face again – that’d be a fun replay of the bridge, wouldn’t it? - but Jinx really didn’t get it – from the brief scan she’d gotten while she tucked the papers in her bag, it all just looked like boring stuff, names and numbers and schedules, why was he even wearing that face, like he was fighting his own tongue –

“My parents.”

Burning in her nostrils.

Jinx’s brain screeched to a halt.

Smoke.

“What?”

Smoke, and other smells – burning smells, iron smells, sweat and fear smells. Violent noise, violent movement, somehow both close and far away in the haze. ‘Dear friend across the river…’

“They’re alive,” he said softly, “Glasc has them.”

Violet’s slippery hand in hers, iron strong. “Just keep walking, Powder…”

Ekko unhooked the sword-bat from his back and swung it into his grip. He held his other hand out, and from beneath white locs, his eyes were deadly serious, just like on that same bridge.

“And I need those papers back.”

Violet’s footsteps slowed. Stopped. Her hand stopped squeezing and went stiff and cold.

Ekko’s shoulders were lifting and falling with his quick breathing. Fighting breaths, his body, compact and quick, ready to rumble. Ready to fight her, right here and now, in the middle of the Kirammans’ fancy garden…

“But…Benzo…you’re – you’re like us – an orphan-”

“Yeah,” said Ekko, “I thought so too.”

Two bodies lay in the smoke, draped over each other. Vague. Just shapes in her memory.

Jinx stared at him, open-mouthed. Even the Voices were silent.

Just Violet’s shuddering, broken breaths. And their eyes.

Fumbling at her hip, she pulled the slightly crumpled papers from her belt bag and thrust them into his waiting hand. She pulled her eyes down to the ground before they could really register the look of surprise and relief in his.

She let him have it for a moment before she snapped her hand up and grabbed his wrist.

“…Ekko,” Jinx whispered, eyes still hidden in her bangs, aware of the spring of tension in his arm, ready to defend – to attack – anything he had to, “…you’re going after them, aren’t you?”

Ekko stayed his hand and held his breath. He nodded.

“…but you’re up here instead,” Jinx’s words shook on her tongue, “…for me?”

“For Zaun,” he said, “And for you.”

Jinx lifted her shoulders in a slow breath and looked up into his face. Searched his dark, kind, determined eyes.

“Seven,” she murmured, cracked glass and old wounds, “Still owe you seven.”

“Jinx-”

She let her hand slip over his own, folding his fingers around the papers.

“I’m in,” she said, pulling away from him, “You do it, I’m in.”

Ekko caught his breath, searching her face before her eyes left his, looking for something – a trick, a ploy – maybe just some feeling she couldn’t keep off her face. Jinx shrank back, self-conscious, but though Ekko looked like he wanted to say something, instead he just pursed his lips and nodded.

There were a lot of feelings in his eyes, in his voice, and one of them was gratitude.

“Go to Lux. Look after her,” Ekko slipped the precious papers back into their tube and closed his eyes, “I’m going back to Zaun-”

But when he looked up, only the empty garden was there to hear him.

Lux sank into the darkness as the blast shields slid down and thudded into place. The hollow boom of their locking echoed throughout the cavernous spaces of the Clocktower; swallowing, she lowered the hand controller, her thumb still brushing the “LOCK” button, and released her held, shuddering breath.

Only one other person had the code to enter the lair; and she wasn’t home. Lux wouldn’t be surprised or bothered by that, Jinx was Jinx, but in the circumstances, a thrill of panic clutched at her guts.

Alone. She was alone.

Movement caught her eye; Lux tensed, staff lifted, but it was only one of the Powder monkeys, outside their usual haunts on the lower level, playing with the jaws of an unfinished Chomper. The little creature peered at her with its smudgy eyes and flicked its little flaming tail.

Lux breathed out again, gave the monkey a weak smile, and let the Light flow with her breath; her strings of little crystals about the lair lit up, their warm iridescence offering no bright light that might penetrate the blast shields and clue any outside observer to the tower’s occupation.

“You’re cute,” she said to the monkey, “But you’re probably not a big help in a fight.”

Lux steeled herself and strode to her cabinet, her display racks, shedding all traces of Elba as she did. Soon she was tugging the straps on her armor, checking the sword belt at her waist, the fire of old training lit in her belly.

Whoever the bastard was, they would not find Luxanna Crownguard unready.

Planting her back to a solid wall, staff across her knees, Lux settled where she could see all the entrances and exits, and played out in her thoughts, over and over, the encounter on her way home.

Wide black eyes, tousled black bob, a faint, fervent smile. A face she didn’t know, but it tugged at her with familiarity, a sense of nostalgia and dread knotted together, of Demacia.

Who are you?

Lux was certain that she hadn’t been followed past the edge of the cordoned-off disaster zone. They hadn’t followed her to the Clocktower. They didn’t know she was here.

It was small comfort.

“Where are you, Jinx?” she whispered to the dark.

It had no answer.

Jinx slunk like an alley cat in the wrong neighborhood through the towers of central Piltover. It was both harder to hide here, where there weren’t so many dark tangled nooks and her Wanted posters grinned on any given wall; and easier, where the towering buildings cast long shadows in the coming evening and the Pilties came and went, distracted by their attention-seeking surroundings and their cluttered, crowded, busy little lives.

Someone’s coming for Lux…

“Barons think they can take her?” Jinx muttered, “Think they can take us?”

Jinx hissed in annoyance. Even as a kid, she hadn’t any fear of the upjumped thugs sitting at Silco’s table, eating out of his hand. They had bigger piles of cogs and bigger cadres of goons to their names now, but she could tell their core mentality hadn’t changed. Still thought themselves a class above their fellow Trenchers in every way. Jinx always thought it made them just wannabe Pilties, kidding themselves that Topside would ever respect them…

…and now they were interrupting her Game.

Well, whatever. Jinx could run rings around them then, and she could do it again now. If they brought a mage, so what? She had a better mage. If they brought an assassin – Jinx could be one of those too.

And the killer who won was the one who struck first.

She jogged across a brass-ringed rooftop, slid down one of the gantries and kicked off onto an elaborate fire-escape to the next roofline; blue braids bobbed and wove after her as she turned to take a shortcut back toward the old Council district – toward the Clocktower – toward Lux…

And stopped.

No time.

There really wasn’t. Someone’s coming for Lux tugged at her guts like she’d swallowed a fishhook, line and all.

But…

The Holifaunder Museum was right there, a slab of noble granite and flapping banners at the end of the street, and the itch at the back of her skull said it won’t take long to case it again. Just to check. Vi hasn’t figured it out yet, so it won’t take any time at all…

…and there was that empty socket in her invention, burning a hole in her belt pouch that felt like something incomplete.

“Just a look,” Jinx muttered, at her dead brothers’ twisted faces, crowding suddenly over her shoulders, “Get off me…I’m not goin’ in, it’s just a freaking look…”

She swatted them away with a flinch and turned to walk to the edge of the rooftop, above another mass of brassy scaffolding that clung to the buildings of Piltover like cobwebs – never restful, always upgrading, always in Progress – and unclipped her spyglass from its slot, concealed in Pow-Pow’s flank.

Through the scratched-up lens, she stared down at the frowning façade of the Holifaunder and –

Movement in the loading yard behind the building. Lots of movement.

“…Ooh,” Jinx whispered, “Whole herd of pork chops down there…”

Excitement started pulsing in the back of her skull as she swept the spyglass left and right.

Badges glinting in the dying light. Blue and grey uniforms, guarding workmen loading up armored shipping crawlers.

A whole lot more than they’d need to hide what she wanted. So, there was something else they were moving, too. She could see them already split into two forking convoys, further out of the center of Piltover, taking different routes to confuse pursuit. But she knew their destination.

Could’ve been any secret safehouse, but Jinx would put cogs down that with that many vehicles, they weren’t heading for of the Wardens’ understaffed facilities. The Enforcers, though – back before – back when Silco had tabs on all their operations and tendrils sunk in half of them – had a massive old training facility out that way, defunct since the war. Jinx had skulked around its rafters whilst Silco played politics with Marcus; she'd even broken in afterhours once, for a little playtime of her own…

It had everything a girl could want. Shooting range, obstacle course, vehicle and combat training…a veritable funhouse.

Jinx knew the fanfare was for the Pilties’ benefit – Big Hat was smart enough to know that Jinx would sniff it out right away. She might as well have painted it on a neon sign.

This was an invitation.

Jinx slid the spyglass shut, her smile quivering into manic life.

“…Finally.”

Chapter Text

Row after row of crates slid from the rear freight cars of the cargo crawlers, unloaded by mechanical arms; Vi thought they looked like giant Sump beetles carrying their young on their backs, but didn’t say so to Cait.

The Enforcer training facility at Locksteppe smelled like dust, and metal, and the Enforcers. Vi didn’t know how to put words to what that meant; but she knew it when she smelled it. She’d known it all her life, ever since the bridge. Every time Grayson would come around the Last Drop with her attack dogs strutting at her heels. Every time they’d chase her little gang of kids for some petty crime or shake down the Lanes for whatever it was that day - intel, retaliation, or just to keep the Trenchers in line.

Vi didn’t know what the scent actually was. Something in the metal or the cloth of the uniform, the leather of their boots, some trace of gunpowder left on them from the firing range. It didn’t matter how faint or subtle it was; something about it was anathema to the Lanes, it didn’t belong there, and even a hint of it clung to her back teeth and prickled the hairs on her arms…

It’d taken months for Vi to adjust to the way it hung about the Warden offices. The uniforms, even Caitlyn’s. Vi would sometimes get a whiff of it under her soft lilac perfumes and her spine would chill. Its traces in the one Vi shrugged on every morning reminded her that you’re one of them now…

Over time, she adjusted. Somehow.

Vi had finally concluded that it was as spiritual as it was physical, as if the ugliness and threat of the Enforcers of her childhood had infected a very ordinary smell and made it as oppressive as they were. A year of associating it with the jostling comradery and daily drudgery of the office had stripped it of its teeth.

She was all the more certain of this, because walking in here had brought it flooding back. It was the same damn smell. But here, it went right up her backbone and crawled into every muscle in her neck with that primal, childhood dread…

Here. Here’s where I see her again…?

“Vi?” Caitlyn’s voice intruded into her brooding thoughts, “Are you all right?”

Vi flinched, suddenly aware that her fingers were digging into her palms, “What?”

“You seem a little on-edge,” Caitlyn leaned in to look at her, “I know that this is hard, but is there anything you want to talk about?”

How about the way this place smells like fucking Stillwater?

The words didn’t make it to Vi’s tongue, though; instead, her jaw-muscles tensed and twitched and she pushed a smile to her scarred lips and rolled a shrug she didn’t feel.

“I’m fine, Cupcake.”

Caitlyn gave her a knowing look, but followed it up with a nod, accepting her word even when smelled the lie.

Shit, I don’t deserve this woman, Vi thought, even if that woman was one of them and so am I and here we are setting a trap for her and all she could see behind her eyelids when she let them close were those beetle-like masks and brass-and-blue uniforms looming and snatching for Powder as she fled the arcade – towering giants thirsting to beat down a frightened little girl – monsters wearing her own face –

Vi forced the breath through her nostrils and focused on the clunking containers being unloaded by Chief Machinist Zevi and her team.

“I know I keep saying this, but…more bots?” Vi clicked her tongue, “Cait, I told you the same plan won’t work twice. She’ll be expecting it this time.”

Caitlyn offered her a small side-smile.

“That is entirely what I’m counting on.”

Vi frowned and quirked a brow at her partner. Sometimes the Piltie clockwork going around in Caitlyn’s head was awe-inspiring; sometimes it was just a little aggravating, even if her smug little detective smirk was aggravatingly cute.

“I don’t get it.”

“Mm,” Caitlyn lifted her head, considering, “The first time is a challenge, Vi. The second is an invitation.”

“You think she’ll bite?” Vi shook her head, “She’s too smart to walk into a trap.”

“She is. But she’ll do it anyway,” said Caitlyn, “Because she wants to play.”

“And you’re setting the board?”

“Precisely.”

Vi fell silent, watching countless tons of brass and steel whirr and click into place whilst Zevi marched about shouting orders to her little army of workers, setting up the funhouse.

It was more than bots. Caitlyn had scouted this place early after it was abandoned by the Enforcers, in anticipation of Jinx’s return. She had mothballed the facility, officially; her shrunken and retargeted department no longer had the need for a training facility of this size –or militarized nature – and no longer had the staff or resources to justify keeping it running anyway.

But it was still technically leased to the Sheriff’s department through the Council. And there’d been the occasional sound of clanging and sparking behind closed doors, during that long year of silence.

“Zevi’s having a blast setting this up,” Vi muttered, “But the Council’s gonna hate you.”

“That’s a problem for future Caitlyn,” said Caitlyn, with a faint wince, “If this works, and we capture your sister, it won’t matter how far over budget we’ve gone.”

Vi took a deep breath at that capture your sister. Would they? Could they?

And what then?

“She’s beaten you at this game before. Even with Zevi’s improvements, Cupcake…isn’t this just a massive risk?”

“There are four factors at play that were not present, the last time,” Caitlyn said softly, “Firstly, we now know Lux is involved, where we previously did not. Secondly, and thirdly – we have the new members of our team to counter that advantage.”

“Ez and Garen,” Vi laughed, “Yeah, guess we’ll see what comes of that…what’s the fourth thing?”

“We’ve learned from our mistakes. This time, we’re going to make her think we have something she wants. Because we do.”

“Oh?”

Caitlyn turned to her with a wistful smile.

“You.”

Lux stared at the wall and waited, alone with the sound of her own breath.

Time. It could have been minutes or hours.

This tension sat in a familiar space; the brewing thunder before a battle. Young as she was, Lux was by no means inexperienced in the field. She’d crouched in the rafters of a meeting hall for hours waiting for the signing of a treaty. She’d staked out a rambunctious border town brothel from an abandoned hovel across the street for three days and watched Noxian dignitaries furtively slip beyond its gaudy door. She’d sat by a campfire into the early morning whilst her comrades slept and watched the frost on her breath whilst she waited out her watch.

She’d heard the whisper of wolves’ paws in the snow…and the thunder of Winter’s Claw warriors crashing against the fortress gate.

Somehow, this was different. Lux was further from Demacia than she had ever been before; and yet…she wasn’t in the field.

This battle was being brought to her home.

Lux let her eyes slip shut, but her senses remained keenly, screamingly alert.

Meditation. Discipline. Awareness. Control the breath, clench and relax the muscles, let the weight of the armor settle naturally. Don’t tense up, don’t fight it. Loose and limber, ready to spring to action…

White face. Tousled black hair. Grey eyes, widening to black as the pupils swallowed them. A weird twitch of the head, like a bird tracking the movement of its prey. That smile. Small and serene, but mad in a way Jinx wasn’t.

The smile of a fanatic.

Lux’s breathing grew syncopated. Irrationally, she felt weight in her limbs, pulling her down, toward the darkness of sleep…

Black eyes, white face, white eyes, black…

She jerked awake, the taste of grave earth choking in her mouth and white-knuckled fingers clenched on her staff – to the sound of metal clinking somewhere above her.

Movement, a deft, sinuous slither of –

Light! She summoned it with a brilliant thrum into her chest, her lungs, her arms and fingers, the staff in her grip a conduit for the glow between her hands. Lux sprang to her feet, and-

“Flaaaaaashliiiight!” the scratch of a familiar husky voice blasted into her senses; she beheld the soles of a pair of boots first, then familiar skinny legs and striped, mismatched leggings, emerging from a chute concealed amidst the tangle of clockwork.

The whole wild girl slid out of the chute, bubbling manic laughter.

“-Jinx?!” Lux blurted. A flood of incredulity and relief ran through her.

Jinx had no sooner landed than she twisted in a spiral of blue braids, and caught Fishbones screeching his way down the chute behind her. She hugged the rocket launcher like it was a plush pillow. Then she flung him onto the couch and bounded like a gothic gazelle –

“Oh, thank the Light,” Lux sighed, “Jin-oof!”

– squealing into Lux’s arms.

“Blondie Blondie Blondie!” Jinx sang, swinging around Lux and peppering her face with wet kisses, “Guess what guess what-”

Lux swallowed, dizzy, nervous laughter bursting from her lips. Her heart fluttered with joy and relief. She swam in the warm damp press of Jinx’s lips on her face and her familiar heady scent and wild, chaotic energy. Her Jinx was home safe and together they could take on anything –

But she still tasted charnel soil on her tongue.

“They got it! They got it! They got it! Fat Hands and Top Hat! They made their move! FINALLY! Ooh, it’s Go Time, Sunbeam, they won’t know what hit’em!”

Lux licked her lips and swallowed again.

“Th-that’s amazing, Jinx. I’m so glad – I really am-”

Jinx barely stifled her wild cackles as she bounced away, hands scrunched to fists in front of her beaming, wide-eyed face.

“Wait till we tell the monkeys, Blondie! You should see the stupid trap Top Hat’s got set…up…for…”

Her hyena giggling died away, and her brows furrowed. Quick pink eyes darted about the room, taking in details.

“…us…”

The blast shields were down, and the room was dark apart from Lux’s glow-crystals… Lux had been sitting crosslegged on the floor in a vantage spot…

Lux was wearing her armor.

“…Already?” growled Jinx, and Lux’s pounding heart skipped into a different timing.

“Yes,” she stared at Jinx, her own brows creased, “You knew?”

Jinx withdrew eye contact and shook her head, less a gesture in the negative and more akin to an animal clearing away an annoying itch.

“Ekko told me.”

“Oh.”

Jinx gave a small, snarling sound in the back of her throat. She stalked away from Lux and swore violently under her breath in gutlau, a string of chaotic syllables that Lux had no hope of following.

“You kill ‘em?” Jinx asked hopefully, bright eyes shining with malice.

“…No,” Lux sighed.

“They follow you here?”

Lux shook her head and bit her lip. The crawl in her spine from those few split-seconds asleep was still there, and it made everything worse – detached and hazy, like she hadn’t really woken up – she had to think…

Ekko told her? Why did Ekko know? Did she go to see him…?

A weird thrill of something unpleasant stabbed up the back of her neck. Jealousy? Protector, have I lost my mind? It was so stupid and irrational, right now, in these circumstances, that Lux nearly laughed at herself out loud. Really, Luxanna?

No, she trusted Jinx, she trusted Ekko – she wasn’t thinking straight. And now Jinx was pacing around the lair like a caged cat, periodically glancing up at her hidden traps in the clockwork or in the far above rafters or leaning over to fiddle with one of her contraptions, testing them. None of it was dispelling the anxiety.

“Which one was it?” said Jinx, “The zappy-zap mage or the kinky one with the mask and the whip?”

What? Lux blinked at her and shook her head, “Um, I…have no idea what you’re talking about, it was just…”

A Mageseeker.

“…someone who recognized me on my way back,” she was pacing too, now, her anxiousness matching Jinx’s agitation, “They tracked me even though I was invisible, but they stopped when they tripped your perimeter Chompers-”

Jinx laughed a raspy, nasty laugh.

“It didn’t get them, even if it should have,” Lux narrowed her eyes, “Jinx, we have so many enemies, it could have been anyone. But I think it was a Mageseeker.”

“Huh,” said Jinx, puzzled, “Dumbassians? Here?”

Lux nodded. Her temples throbbed, “Listen, Jinx, there’s things I…”

She faltered.

The taste of cold dead soil in her mouth was gone. Imagined, in the first place. But the memory made her shudder. She didn’t want to talk about it or think about it anymore.

Jinx, my Jinx… suddenly, the sight of her lover prowling about their home, matter-of-factly shoring up their defenses, sealing the secret chute she’d used and setting a saw-toothed jaw trap at the end of it…was a lot more comforting than it should have been.

Jinx…

Lux’s fingers curled and she pushed the creeping shadows to the back of her skull, in favor of fixing her eyes on Jinx’s cheekbones, the line of her neck and the way her tattoos hugged her shoulder…

What do I tell her…? About the Mageseekers? About Garen?

About Vi…?

Jinx, fidgeting with something in her belt pouch and biting her lip, looked up at her.

“What things?”

Lux didn’t smell right.

Oh, she still smelled like her; like sun-warmed yellow things that grew under bright clean skies in places far away Jinx would never see; but there was a sour note under her warm yellow bright.

One Jinx was intimately familiar with.

Fear.

Jinx bit her lip as their eyes met. Lux was looking at her with this strange soulful look, and she kept parting her lips and taking in a little air without speaking and then letting them slip closed again.

And she didn’t smell right.

Why is she scared of some mage-hunting freak?

Hot anger licked up Jinx’s back. How dare someone make Lux sca͢r͜e͢d̕. How ͏d̶ar͢e͜ ͘tḩey!̧

The world around Jinx vanished; the dark between the cogs and pistons seethed with shapes, shapes with scribbled eyes and scrawled jagged mouths, urging her to find whoever it was and break them very slowly, one piece at a time – the feet last, so they could still run, so they could feel s̶car͠e̡d͟, so they’d run until their lungs burst and then have nothing left to run with when she found them and f̡inis҉h̨e̷d ̕t̢he j̨o҉b…͢

It flickered, and keened like the tinnitus after a bomb, and then there was a sensation – warm, soft around her hands, strong small fingers clasping her.

Sound came slowly back-

“-inx…Jinx, please, please don’t…I need you here now. I’m here, right here.”

Lux was closer, looking up at her with concern. Fear. It still clung to her.

Jinx didn’t like it; didn’t like the cawing crows in her head. She had a horrible, niggling feeling that if she opened the blast shields, they’d all be out there, perched in a big black carpet all over the Piltovan rooftops…

“Jinx.”

Jinx didn’t blink. She never blinked, but her eyes did focus, sharply, on Lux’s beautiful face.

“Are you okay?”

Jinx licked her lips. She pulled her thoughts back to all the things she wanted to talk to Lux about – the stuff she’d done, about Ziggs’ offer of the blasterium to train in, about Hymendinghy and the Firelights, about Corina freakin’ Veraza having tea with Top Hat’s parents…

About Ekko having parents.

She swallowed and squeezed Lux’s hands.

“I gotta go, Sunbeam,” she whispered, like sandpaper, “I gotta go kill ‘em for you.”

Lux resisted, tugging hard on her hands, and shook her head in a furious wave of blonde hair.

“No!” she said, “Don’t go out there, Jinx.”

“But I-”

“You’re here. You’re here with me. I don’t want to go out there and I don’t want you to go out. Stay with me, tonight…”

Lux stood closer, searching her face, gripping her hands in tight, strong fingers that hummed with the subtle shimmering iridescence of her Light.

“Tell me there’s no way they can get in,” Lux said, “They can’t get in, can they?”

“Blondie,” Jinx smirked, “They’d need an army. Ooh, or maybe a dragon…”

“Then stay.”

Jinx’s shadows flinched and retreated, hunkering in their corners. Big blue eyes pleaded with her. How could she say no? But…

“But…the Game…Fat Hands and Big Hat, they’ve-”

A soft mouth crushed suddenly to hers.

Jinx’s brain fritzed in mid-thought. She froze only a moment; then she melted, brows furrowed, whimpering into Lux and her sweet seashell lips and the shy thrusting tangle of her tongue.

“…Jinx…” Lux mewled as she burrowed her face in. She pressed her small nose into Jinx’s cheek and angled to suckle her lips more fiercely. Her teeth scraped Jinx’s own in her desperation.

Jinx shivered as she felt Lux’s fingertips slide around the back of her neck, toying in the tiny hairs at the base of her skull and tucking under her swaying braids. She growled and devoured the plump flesh of Lux’s lips greedily back.

Luxie, I want to show you - I want to tell you - but you…

Lux gave another hot, wanting sob into her mouth, and Jinx’s thoughts dissolved.

“Tomorrow,” Lux whispered between kisses, “They made us wait. They can give us tonight…”

She wrapped her arms around Jinx and pulled her close, right into her armored chest, crushing Jinx’s breasts, her buckles, and her bullet-belts carelessly against the steel shell.

“Flashlight-”

Lux’s fingers fumbled with the buckles on her breastplate. She slid it away from between them and tugged at Jinx’s belts as it crashed to the floor. The softer flop of her blue arming doublet followed, leaving only a loose undershirt beneath.

“…Please, Jinx.”

She pulled Jinx toward the bed, sinking down on weak legs, peeking up at her with damp eyes and pink on her cheeks.

Jinx furrowed her brows. Her throat was dry; her lips swollen from the ferocity of Lux’s kisses, her taste on Jinx’s tongue…

Her hands, on Jinx’s own, still shook.

Jinx tipped her head, bit her lip and swayed closer. Her heart pounded with awake desire and a red-hot heat in her belly – a feeling she’d only recently come to be familiar with. She fumbled with her clothing. Lotsa belts – too many, for stuff like this, really – her hand slid into the belt pouch she wore and bumped what she’d hidden there.

For a moment, she wanted to pull it out. Proudly show it to Lux, see the curiosity in her eyes, the patience as Jinx babbled about what it was, what it did, and how it would work…

The look on her face when she figures it out…

But it wasn’t right. It wasn’t finished. Jinx’s thumb brushed the hole where the Hexgem should be.

Tomorrow. I’ll tell her about it tomorrow. When it’s done. When it’s mine…

Biting her lip again, Jinx closed her eyes and shed the belt – and its contents – to the floor.

On the bed, Lux tipped her head at Jinx’s hesitation, spilled her golden hair over a warm shoulder bared by her half-open shirt, and smiled at her like a sunrise.

What could Jinx do but match that grin with a giggle and pounce her, pin her down as she squealed, and plant sucking, impish kisses on her neck?

They soon became more. Giggles becoming gasps, wriggling becoming undulating, scrunched eyes becoming heavy-lidded…

But her smell still isn’t…

Jinx stopped.

…right.

“Luxie…”

“…unh-mm-uh?” Lux fluttered her eyes and looked up at her, “What’s wrong?”

Jinx cupped her cheek, plump as an apple and hot as Pow-Pow’s flanks after a good round of shooting.

“You want to do this?” Jinx leaned in, searching those big blues, “You sure?”

It was just a flicker; no more than that. It could even have been Jinx’s imagination; not like she hadn’t conjured up stuff a whole lot less subtle.

“Yes,” Lux breathed, “I want to feel good.”

She snatched up both of Jinx’s hands and brought them under her shirt, pushing it up to bare her breasts. Her mouth snaked to Jinx’s throat, kissing her, licking the traces of the day from her skin.

“Make me feel good,” her breath washed heat under Jinx’s ear.

Jinx lolled her head and rolled her eyes back beneath their lids. With a growl, she pinned Lux down and dipped her hand - then her mouth - to do just that. But as she brushed her fingertips across silky skin and soft, downy hair and heard Lux’s tender cry in her ear, a tiny, toothy thought wriggled in the back of Jinx’s skull, bit down, and started gnawing.

The sour note was still there, under her sweat, under the rising heady musk of her desire.

She’s still scared …but not of them.

Lux moaned her name and shuddered under Jinx as she slipped her fingers in.

There’s something else she’s not telling me.

Scratches and scrabbles invaded her senses, just at the corners of her consciousness. It was all Jinx could do to keep control, to keep touching gently, assuredly, as she fought her own thoughts.

Jinx bit her tongue and hid her face in Lux’s shoulder, certain, now.

Lux is hiding something.

Perched on the rooftop in the waning sun, Kestrel surveyed the ruined domain that had thwarted their hunt.

The wide avenue of neat terraces flanking Progress Square lay before them, cordoned roughly off by barricades and warning signs. There were no lights in any window; this once bustling landmark in the political and economic heart of Piltover, consisting of multitudinous offices, cafes, workshops and dormitories auxiliary to the Council tower, lay cold and unbeating.  

Too many variables.

Even Kestrel had to feel a certain sense of awe at the scale of Jinx’s rocket attack. Some of the structural damage on the periphery of the Square was nearly invisible, but elsewhere the devastation was an avante-garde masterpiece painted in cracked stone, melted metal and strewn rubble.

The violence, the audacity, the sheer catastrophic spite displayed in the firing of a single weapon – a single moment of malice, thrust like a blazing spear into the heart of a corrupt empire.

It was terrible. Glorious. The scream of an indomitable will.

But Kestrel could not supress a shudder at the memory of another fire, another shining capital in flames, another day of reckoning and ruin.

They’d been enroute to the Mageseeker compound in the Great City of Demacia, returning from a mission, when Sylas of Dregbourne made his bold escape and turned the power of her infernal magecraft against the Kingdom, bringing chaos to order, ugliness to beauty, doubt to certainty…and death to a great King.

Kestrel’s empathy for Jinx quickly faded.

Their admiration could not be thawed to complacency, though. The explosive that had come within a hair’s breadth of ending Kestrel’s quest was clearly a firecracker compared to the Loose Cannon of Zaun’s full capabilities.

“A reprieve, Luxanna,” they whispered, between gritted teeth, “But only that.”

She was close, so close that Kestrel could almost feel the warmth of her accursed Light upon their skin. But they had to take pragmatism into account, as maddening as it was; she had slipped away, invisible, into the maze of condemned buildings. Kestrel had no way of knowing which of them was her destination, which path she might have taken, only the certainty that she was in there somewhere – and so was Jinx.

And Jinx had certainly turned the entire place into a labyrinth of murderous deathtraps.

“The rabbit hides in thick woods indeed,” Kestrel muttered.

A flicker of thought came to them; give the Wardens their location, let the noble sentinels of Piltover’s justice pay the blood-price to navigate that suicidal gauntlet. But it was just as soon dismissed – involving any other forces, even, or especially, the Sheriff’s uniformed lackeys or Lord Eldred’s half-masked pups, might lose Kestrel their window to do what must be done.

“So, I cannot go to you,” Kestrel shook their head, “I’m patient, Luxanna. I’ve always been patient. I’ve given you years already, living in my nightmares.”

Dragging gloved fingertips across the dust of the rooftop, Kestrel rose.

“I can wait. You’ll come to me, beneath the open sky.”

The trap would be laid in Piltover. Her blood would flow in these bright streets. But for the pieces to be arrayed and the jaws to be set…

Much work still had to be done, in Zaun.

“Now I know where you lay your head,” Kestrel smiled, “Sweet dreams, Luxanna.”

The garden had fallen to silence. It swallowed everything. In its midst, Ekko’s world narrowed to two lines on a crumpled page, separated from each other by walls of letters and numbers.

S102 Inna – Block 03b – 04:00-16:30 HC approved.

D033 Wyeth – Block 68c – 03:40-17:00 Labor Class A: req.

Ekko drew in a slow breath, full of the cold winds of memory.

⧖

“So, what’s cooking, boy genius?”

A warm gravel above him. A big hand scruffing his buzzed head.

“Check it out, Dad! I finished the interconnector, it runs on a conductive reaction…”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah! These two plates here – you put them together with this wire and-”

“Honey, there’s nothing flammable in there, is there?”

“-not this time, Mom!”

“Good,’cause if you burn yourself again, sweetie, your dad’s going to have to patch you up while I finish this work…”

“Your mother’s just fussing,” Dad laughed, “C’mon, show me how it works.”

Ekko’s eyes lit up. So did his creation.

⧖

Time. He didn’t know how much of it he’d lost just staring at them.

Just numbers, codes, jargon. Ekko didn’t know what all of it meant; but he knew enough about how chemplants operated, and he and Zeri had learned enough about Glasc’s operations for some of those sterilized little collections of letters to set something crawling in his guts.

Because they meant things like hazardous chemicals and hard labor and treatment waiver...

⧖

Dad’s whistle, then his laugh. Arms pulling him up – not …not as strong as they’d once been – but just as warm all the same…

“Ekko, you did it!”

“Told you I could, Dad! Told you!”

“Inna, honey, you gotta come see this. Couple of years, our boy’s gonna blow’em all away Topside.”

“Couple of years, huh?” his mother’s voice, amused, “I think he’d blow them away now.”

Topside. All they talked about. One day, he’d be big enough, and they’d have enough…

That he could go up.

⧖

Ekko closed his eyes.

He breathed in, fighting the ache in his chest. There’d been a time when it’d been numb, even bittersweet. When he’d resigned himself that they weren’t coming home. Now it had a fresh sting to it, a fresh sense of –

Time. Ticking away.

⧖

“You talking about Piltover, Dad? Um, when…when do I go?”

“When your Mom and I get done with work. And, uh, you’re still a bit young for the Academy, so I guess that gives us a bit of time with you yet…”

“Will I get to meet Heimerdinger? Can I – can I shake his hand?”

“Ekko, when old Heimer sees what you can do, he’ll want to shake yours.”

Smiling till his cheeks hurt. Then fidgeting.

“Dad…um. What about here?”

⧖

Ekko let his breath out and slipped the papers carefully back into the tube; he stowed it in his pack and shook the tension of the confrontation with Jinx out of his muscles.

Jinx. Part of him couldn’t believe he’d heard it. Couldn’t believe she’d say it, and couldn’t believe, most of all, that he’d believe it. Believe her.

But he did.

“…I’ll hold you to it, Powder,” Ekko sighed and flipped his pocket watch into his hand, “When it’s time.”

He pushed through the doors into the Kirammans’ mansion, and quickly spotted flashes of his crew, pacing like stray cats around the enormous foyer; Zeri was the most obvious, sliding down the bannister with a noisy slip-and-flop before zipping back up and doing it again - much to the annoyance of Scar. He’d propped himself up by the bottom of the stairs and was muttering to a restless-looking Shomi, whilst Meela peered at the paintings with an artist’s barely-concealed fascination.

“Yo, E,” Zeri bounced up to him, her agitation masking relief, “Gaga bluenette didn’t kidnap you, stab you or blow you up. Cool! We good to book it?”

“Yeah,” Ekko said, “We’ve been here too long. Let’s get back to - where’s Kew?”

“Dunno, man, she said something about finding out if Pilties had gold-plated toilet seats, but she’s been gone a while…”

Ekko groaned, “Scar, get everyone together - no wandering off! I’ll go get Kew.”

That tension was there again as he set off alone. Creeping right up his back. The cavernous rooms – the smell of flowers and marble and dust – the staring eyes of all those busts and statues and paintings –

They all said you don’t belong here.

⧖

“…what do you mean, Ekko?”

“What if I … what if I stayed here! What if I – um – if I helped out Mr Benzo at his shop? His sign says ‘help wanted’! You and Mom go in all the time for rare parts – there’s really cool stuff in there and I got a bunch of ideas I could make-”

“Ekko…”

“-and then I could get some cogs too and then you and Mom wouldn’t have to work so hard …and…and I could invent something really cool and – and I could help everyone and–”

“Oh, Ekko, listen…”

“-and I could stay with you!”

Looking up. Way up. Dad’s big, bristly face. Smile falling away. He looked so tired.

“Son,” Dad sighed, “I know you love it down here. But you haven’t had a chance to try anything else. That’s why we gotta work so hard, but when you go Topside, it’ll different, you’ll see. It’ll be everything you dreamed of.”

⧖

Ekko’s footsteps rang hollow on the floors. He felt like an intruder, even knowing it was Caitlyn’s childhood home, even seeing her face staring down, in various phases of her life, from some of the portraits. The Caitlyn he knew had a warmth beyond the posh accent and the privilege. This place felt too grand for her, too hollowly gilded.

A cage of a different kind. Even her painted faces looked to Ekko like they wanted to escape.

Ekko’s steps halted as he heard ruffling movement. His brows knit as he spotted Kew, darting her head around, just past a cracked door at the top of another staircase, stuffing something into her bag –

Ekko scowled and pulled the ripcord.

⧗

…into her bag, just past a cracked door at the top of another staircase, darting her head around, his brows knit as he spotted Kew…

⧖

Kew gasped as Ekko slid his forearm between her reaching hand and the gold-framed porcelain vase.

“E-ekko! Holycrap-I-uhhh-”

“What the hell are you doing?” Ekko hissed between his teeth, “You’re stealing from Caitlyn’s parents?”

Kew furrowed her brow, confused, and scratched her dirty blonde tresses out of her eyes –”-um, so? They’re freakin’ Pilties, Ekko! Look at this place! They’re not even gonna miss it!”

“I gotta remind you she’s the Sheriff, Kew? Her family invite us in and you’re gonna rob them? We’re better than this,” he shook his head, “You’re better than this.”

“Look, man, she’s your friend,” Kew snapped, keeping her voice low, “She’s Vi’s girl, whatever, that–” she pointed at the vase, “-that could net us enough downstairs to feed half the families at the Tree for a month! If this Baron war goes to shit, we need anything we can get our hands on, you know that!”

Ekko’s hand slackened on her wrist. He opened his mouth – to tell her he got it, but that they couldn’t burn their bridges with the few friends they had Topside–

A throat cleared behind them.

“Don’t take the Raviani,” said Tobias Kiramman, leaning at the top of the stairs, with a thoughtful expression.

Kew jumped and squeaked, and the vase tipped off the stand…

⧗

…the stand, Kew jumped and squeaked…”Don’t take the Raviani,” said Tobias...

⧖

…and something in his tone of voice made Ekko take his hand off the dial.

Kew jumped and squeaked, and Ekko snapped his hand out, deftly catching the Raviani as it tipped off its stand.

Tobias arched a brow at Ekko’s dextrous feat, then chuckled and stepped forward.

“May I?”

Ekko passed it mutely back to him and breathed out as he placed it back on the stand.

“…as I was saying, don’t take the Raviani.”

Tobias walked across the room and, with a furtive glance about, pulled down a smaller, older-looking piece and held it out for Kew.

“Take the Orbelo,” he said, “It’s ugly as a crag-duck but it’ll be worth five times the Raviani to any dealer worth their salt.”

Ekko blinked in shock. “What? Um, we can’t-”

“No, please, I insist,” Tobias sighed, “It’s been in my family for eight generations, and they all somehow failed to get rid of it. You’d be doing me, and the décor, a huge favor.”

Kew stared at him open-mouthed, and then, with a cautious glance for Ekko’s approval, crept forward and hesitantly took the vase.

She slipped it into her bag, her eyes on Tobias all the while as if he might grow two heads and eat her; the man just smiled with his kind, bearded face and gave a whistle of relief as the Orbelo vanished into the bag.

“I’ll tell Cass I knocked it over with the tea tray,” Tobais winked, “None the wiser.”

“T-thanks…” Ekko said, “Thank you.”

His hand slipped away from the Z-drive.

“Don’t mention it, please,” Tobias said, “But we’d better get you all out of here before she gets home. She has a nose for these things – she’ll know it’s gone.” He winced. ”…Instantly.”

“Oh, shit,” muttered Kew, her eyes on Lady Kiramman’s disapproving glare in one of the paintings across the hall.

“Come on. I’ll guide you back,” Tobias offered, already walking, “I get lost in here some days, too, don’t worry.”

“S-sure…” Ekko said, falling into step as they walked back out into the hall leading to the foyer. Kew, humbled, followed them, saying nothing, hugging her bag to her chest.

“Things go well with Corina, I take it?” Tobias asked, after a long moment of awkward silence and echoing footsteps in the hall.

“Y-yeah,” Ekko said, thinking of the new weight in his bag, the terrible hope it carried, “Better than I thought.”

Tobias nodded as he walked them down the stairs. “If you see Caitlyn, please tell her to take care of herself. And tell Vi – not to let either of those girls push themselves so hard.”

“I will,” Ekko chuckled, “Don’t worry about that.”

They passed back out into the hall, where the other Firelights sprang up with some relief as they noticed the cavalcade heading for the door. Ekko’s fingers fidgeted. For some reason, he didn’t move them to the ripcord, as was habit; he found himself toying with the pneuma-tube instead.

“Mr K…?”

He was opening the big doors for them, shaking a trepidatious Scar’s hand as he saw them out, “Hm?”

Ekko shifted his feet, “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it, Ekko,” Tobias smiled, “But you can do one thing for me in return.”

Ekko looked up at him.

“Whatever’s going on down there,” Tobias said, looking at Ekko and his friends, their young faces, their scars and bruises, “Be safe.”

“Can’t make promises,” Ekko said, “If you know anything about Zaun, you know that.”

Tobias frowned slightly, but nodded, “Fair enough. Take care of each other, then?”

Ekko flickered a grin, “Always do.”

He flashed the man a Zaunite hand-sign – one that meant, in the kindest way, die old and fat  – and made his way out the door.

⧖

“We can’t just leave him there…”

“Benzo is a good friend of Vander’s. There’ll be other kids around him, Vander’s even got a little daughter about his age - I hear she’s just as precocious as our Ekko. He’ll be safe until we get back.”

“Safe! He’s nine years old, Wyeth…he’s our baby boy…”

“I know. I hate it too. But this job, honey, this could be our only shot.”

“I know.”

“We’re doing this for him. I promise you. A couple of months, we’ll have enough that he can go where someone like him - where he’ll have the life he deserves.”

“I know, I just -”

“Mom …Dad? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, Ekko. Just talking about work. Go back to bed.”

“Okay. Love you.”

“Love you too, Little Man.”

⧖

Ekko strode out amid the towering stately homes of Bluewind Court with his family at his side and let out a held breath.  Maybe the place wasn’t all bad; or rather, maybe there were a couple of people in it who weren’t, necessarily, the worst.

But it still stunk like Piltover. It didn’t smell like metal, and oil, and pain, and hope. It didn’t smell like home.

“If Trezk has hit the Vyx,” said Scar, a quiet, level rumble above him, “Won’t be long before it spreads.”

“And if Wencher’s trying to pick off our guys,” said Zeri, “You gotta call in the patrols and warn everyone.”

“Guess the fight’s picked us,” Ekko said with a cold smile, “Firelights...”

He spun his pocket watch and slipped it back to its place at his side.

“Let’s make them regret it.”

Next day. Pre-Dawn.

Lux lowered the spyglass from her eye and pursed her lips.

“This place is a fortress, Jinx.”

It was that liminal hour when the world held its breath and waited. A smoky dawn still hung just below the horizon; the rooftops of Piltover, sprawling in the distance, were indistinct geometric lumps in a shroud of grey mist.

The surreal thought came to Lux that in this crepuscular void, at a glance, Piltover looked a lot like Zaun.

Their objective loomed much closer. It was possibly the ugliest building Lux had ever seen, a brutalist concrete rectangle set atop a flattened-out hill in the midst of a fringe district mostly full of utilitarian warehouses and workshops; an unglamorous corner of the city’s iron guts.

It afforded plenty of vantage points where the two could scry with impunity upon their target, but that wasn’t much of a relief, because…

“Oh yeah,” said Jinx, chuckling, her pink eyes glowing eerily in the gloaming, “Outer wall’s reinforced concrete and razor wire. They blocked all the windows, no visibility in or out.”

Lux narrowed her eyes. “And no visible guards.”

“Well, Flashlight,” Jinx poked her tongue between her teeth and stole the spyglass, squinting through it, “Not like they’re tryin’ to keep us out of their super-duper trap funhouse…”

“Are they trying to make us think it’s abandoned?”

Jinx’s smirk faded.

“…not quite, Blondie,” she whispered.

Lux gently took the spyglass from her; it took her a moment to see, but through a portion of the skylight they hadn’t blacked out, she caught a flash of carmine hair and a strong back, pacing up and down along a gantry below the dusty glass…

“She’s here,” rasped Jinx, distant with old pain, “She’s really here this time. It’s not a trick.”

“No,” said Lux, “But it is a trap, and if we’re walking straight into it, we’re going to need a plan.”

Lux lowered her view and slid it left.

“No other visible ingress – except there,” she pursed her lips, “A small door, rear of the building, third floor, with a balcony and scaffolding down…”

“Fire escape,” said Jinx, her eyes blank.

“With everything else blocked up except that and the skylight, they are definitely aware of it. It’s practically a welcoming fanfare.”

“Oh yeah.”

Lux lowered the spyglass and took a deep breath, considering their options.

“If I’m able to find a weak point in the wall, perhaps a gatehouse, I could cut the wire with my Light and infiltrate, perhaps even get to the skylight and reconnaissance your sister’s activities unseen. We’ll need to know what we’re up against before-”

“Nah.”

She heard a clunk by her shoulder and Fishbones’ jagged metal jaws entered her peripheral vision. They were splayed apart, and a brassy point like a giant star-shaped arrowhead protruded between them.

Lux’s eyes widened, “Jinx…d-did you put a grappling hook in your rocket launcher….”

“Hehe,” Jinx chortled with nasty laughter, “Yeah.”

“Jinx, I really don’t-” 

Fishbones clunked again and then roared to life; smoke and light, yellow light, flared in the gloaming.

Lux cringed back as the metal shark spat its long, spiky tongue across the space between their vantage point and the fire escape. Wire screamed and twisted like a cut snake as it unspooled by Lux’s head.

The projectile speared straight through the door and splayed its prongs; Jinx gave a catlike smirk of satisfaction, clamped the wire and a pulley system to its anchor point, and hooked a series of loops roughly bolted onto Fishbones’ fin onto the wire above their heads. Then she loaded something else into Fishbones’ jaws, gripped him tight with one hand, and held an arm out for Lux.

“Hey pretty lady. Need a ride?” Jinx batted her eyes.

Lux swallowed and gave her a glare, but stepped into her lover’s embrace and held on tight.

“They definitely will have heard that,” said Lux, “Thought you’d aim for the skylight, honestly.”

“Nah, too obvious,” said Jinx, “All this set up for us? Gotta play along. Say, can you still do your light bubble shield thing?”

“Y-yes, I can call a prismatic barrier, if you need-”

“Yeah, we’re gonna at the other end. Hang on, monkey-babe!”

Lux opened her mouth to retort, but Jinx squeezed with her wiry corded arm and kicked off the roof, whooping as she swung her legs …

And pulled Fishbones’ trigger.

Lux’s gulp of surprise became a scream of terror as the rocket launcher ignited, but did not fire, whatever Jinx had loaded into it. Instead, the rear ports of the launcher vented flame, light and force, propelling both weapon and girls along the wire - the bunker-like building on the hill rushed toward them at a terrifying velocity - wind tore Lux’s hair in a flapping banner behind her, Jinx’s braids whirled and snapped –

“Bubble time Luxie!” Jinx cackled, “Bubble time!”

Lux barely had time – and room - to swing her staff up, the barrier springing into wobbling luminescence around their bodies. Fishbones sputtered and spat bluegrey smoke, force petering out; split-seconds later, they hit the door with a thud.

The jarring impact went through every bone in Lux’s body; she tumbled to the gantry balcony with a groan, sure she’d have broken all of them if it hadn’t been for her Barrier and Jinx’s outthrust legs absorbing most of the force.

Sprawled on her back beside Lux, Jinx guffawed, “Hahahaha I’ve wanted to do that for aaages…”

She crunched to her feet, smoke rising from her hair, and unhooked Fishbones from his moorings on the wire. Jinx retracted and holstered the smoldering beast on her back. She turned and hauled the coughing Lux to her feet.

“Bubbles still up?” Jinx asked her, brushing her down.

“Ugh…please warn a girl next time, Jinx? But yes, they should be…”

“Cool,” said Jinx, as she slid something small and flat into the narrow gap around the doorframe at both the hinges and the lock. “Ten second timer.”

“Oh no,” said Lux, wincing as she braced.

Jinx reached to the back of the embedded grapple-rocket and pressed some kind of switch or toggle. Then she giggled, tackled Lux, and pulled her halfway down the fire escape stairs.

The already taut cable squealed and strained and the door started groaning at the seams a split second before Jinx’s charges blew the hinges. The entire door, grapnel still embedded, whooshed past them like a freight train as the retracting cable ripped it away into the sky.

“We’re in,” said Jinx.

The explosion was a dull roar through the reinforced walls, but the gantry beneath Vi’s boots still trembled faintly.

Or maybe it was only the tremor of adrenaline in Vi’s chest, her arms, her everything…

“She’s here,” Vi whispered.

Caitlyn pushed the hat back from her eyes and sat up from where she leaned on the wall, her face locked and cold.

“Fire escape. She took the bait,” Caitlyn unhooked the radio from the wall beside her – hooked into the network that was wired throughout the building – and spoke clearly into it – “All units, Fox is in the Trap. Repeat, Fox is in the Trap. Zayne - they’re at 3A. Activate units one through five.”

 ::: On it Sheriff. Go time. :::

“Simeon, Mir, I want you on standby, in case she breaks through.”

::: Aye, Sheriff. :::

“Zevi-”

::: Control room’s live, Sheriff. Got you loud and clear. :::

“Thought she’d come through the skylight,” Vi muttered, staring down the gantry as more thuds and screeches of metal sounded distantly through the layers of their trap, “I should go to-”

“No, Vi,” Caitlyn sighed, “We talked about this. I know it’s hard, but…”

“I’m the last line of defense,” Vi said softly, “Right.”

Her fingers twitched at her sides. They brushed the metal tube at her hip; gun-shaped, but not a gun. Its clunky tip, shaped like her gauntlets, lovingly, spitefully smeared in neon paint.

She’s here. She’s so close. 

Everything she’d thought about doing - saying - welled up behind her teeth, behind her heart, like a dam about to burst.

“Be patient, hold the line, and stick to the plan,” said Caitlyn.

She shrugged her rifle off her shoulder and checked it all over. She had her Sheriff face on, but Vi saw the faint tremor in her lips.

“She’ll come to us, Vi,” said Caitlyn, “It’s only a matter of time.”

Vi nodded, breathed out and slid her fists into her gauntlets.

Pow-Pow shrilled her whining song and her pretty bullets danced. Flashes lit up the dark walls of the facility hallway; metal bodies juddered and jumped in time with the ditty…

Their round flat eyes blazed Hextech blue in the dim.

They’d stumbled into a maze of appeared to be very ordinary walls, doors and rooms – too ordinary, too orderly, and too empty – which Jinx recognized instantly as the Enforcers’ idea of a ‘training gauntlet for indoor tactical scenarios’…

…and there were dragons in this dungeon! Well, if dragons were robots, and also clunky, brassy, and vaguely Warden-shaped.

“These things again?” Lux said by her ear, twisting behind a corner into cover. Stun-bolas flew past their position; Lux leaned out and blasted the mechanical man onto its back with a flash of Light – “Didn’t we blow them all up last time?!”

“Oooh Blondie, no-ho-ho,” Jinx laughed, her voice thick and raspy with excitement, “These are new models!”

She held up a severed head, its jaws still clacking and sparking, and twisted to peer into one shattered eye, “They’ve got like, runes in their heads – old ones were just basic automatons but there’s some Hex-feckery going on here and I am down for it…”

“Wonderful,” said Lux, but she couldn’t help but twitch her lips at Jinx’s childlike glee, “Here comes the next wave!”

“It’s like all my birthdays at once!” Jinx sang, her voice soaring up a few octaves as she did, “C’mon, let’s play with ‘em!”

She and Lux darted together from their cover, Lux throwing out arcs of dazzling light to scorch and cut and sizzle, Jinx spitting tracer fire to cut down the first advancing rank – followed by a bouncing Chomper to blast apart the second –

- the foremost mecha-man knelt with a whine of servos and brought up a glowing, thrumming Hex-shield. The Chomper’s fiery blast washed over him and his fellows and billowed back down the corridor.

A moment later, though, their silhouettes advanced through the pink haze of smoke, scorched but unharmed.

“Oh dear,” Lux murmured.

The grating, thudding footsteps of the Warden-bots trickled past Zayne Asako’s vantage point. Metal bodies scrolled past him, flowing toward the sound of gunfire and thrum of magic.

“They’ve advanced to 3E,” Zayne pressed his back to the wall and leaned out, “Lockdown initiated.”

:: Good work, Zayne. Keep me informed. ::

Heart pounding, the chief Sting Officer signaled his unit to move - out of Jinx’s path.

Only when they were all past him did he unlock the nearby wall console and enter the code.

Hextech thrummed and pulsed its blue electricity through the walls of the facility.

Steel screeched, fell, and slammed.

Pow-Pow’s bullets pinged from the shield unit’s guarding barrier. The golem, blocky and broad-shouldered with a stylized simulacrum of a Warden helmet over its tin can of a face, shuffled forward, the shimmering hex-field fanning out from either side of its shield protecting the lither bots with their upraised hands and sizzling shock-darts that followed in its wake.

“Oh, they got some new tricks, huh?” Jinx pouted, but even that look didn’t linger long in the face of her excitement, “Sunbeam, do you – d’you think Top Hat actually likes me?”

Something boomed loudly behind them, but Lux lost its location amid the oncoming cacophony of marching mecha.

“There’s too many,” Lux seized Jinx by the arm and tugged her back toward a corridor they’d already cleared, “We need to reposition so they can’t flank us. Chokepoint, two corridors back – good cover, we can hold them there -”

“Anyone ever tell you you’re hot when you get all ‘superior tactics!’, Blondie?” Jinx slid purple eyes back to her.

Another volley of shock-darts sizzled past them; Lux, twirling like a dancer, slung her staff down the hallway, boomeranging into another shield to deflect their kinetic force aside. She blew strands of blonde from her face.

“Really? Right now?” she snorted, “Come on!”

“Aw, don’t tell me I tuckered you out last niii-eeeurk!”

Lux dragged Jinx bodily down the corridor – no mean feat with the extra weight of her weaponry – as shock-darts sizzled and pincushioned the junction wall behind them. Lux rounded the corner -

Her eyes widened as they both nearly skidded into a blank metal wall.

“What?”

The corridor should have opened back out to where they’d blown the door off – but instead, nothing faced them but a slab of pitted steel.

“Ooh, they dropped a bulkhead,” Jinx rapped her knuckles on it and frowned, “Gotta be a good six or seven inches thick. Can you cut through that?”

“Not quickly,” Lux muttered. Or not without expending a lot of energy in a confined space…

“Chomper won’t blast through either,” mused Jinx, “...bet Fishbones could...”

“Not in a five-foot corridor, Jinx!” Lux scowled and seized her hand, “Keep moving!”

They ran, twisting down another hallway. They’d doubled back, by now – bits of shattered, smoldering Warden-bots strewing the floor like macabre cookie crumbs on the forest path in a Demacian fairytale.

And another steel wall, where their way ahead should have been.

Lux caught her breath. From the corner of her eye, more bots were moving in a solid wall down the left junction corridor.

A second unit, with another shield-golem in the lead.

“They’re corralling us,” said Lux, “Damnit.”

“Oh no,” Jinx giggled at her side, “Guess we’re going to have to kick their asses? Whatever will we do!”

Lux gritted her teeth, weaving Light Binding with two quick strokes of her staff and flinging it to slow the oncoming shield-bot and its adjacent follower in rings of rainbow radiance…

It wouldn’t hold them forever, and past their cover, she could hear them reloading and scanning for targets.

“Nothing, if we can’t get past that shield!”

“Hey,” Jinx blew her rough blue bang from her impish grin and swept those gorgeous eyes back at Lux, “Wanna see a skill shot?”

She slipped around the corner and sprinted straight at the wall of bots.

“JINX!” Lux screamed after her, but she had no hope of keeping up with her mad girl’s bounding speed. She could barely see Jinx moving. She whirled between spinning bolas, spreading nets and zipping darts, her purple eyes a Shimmer trail, sprang up, kicked off the wall –

In midair, Jinx drop-kicked a chattering Chomper in a sharp arc over the shield golem’s head – and its field of protection – and into the ceiling.

It bounced, smacked into the chest of the bot behind the leader, and chomped on with a tinny laugh. A moment later, the Chomper blew, hurling pieces of the lesser bots in all directions and sending the shield golem stumbling forward…

Jinx landed, skidded, and twirled Zapper from her hip. An electrified bullet burst the cable connecting the shield to the power nexus under the golem’s chest…

The energy field fritzed out. A second bullet popped through the golem’s head, and it tipped facedown into the floor.

Jinx slid back to her feet, fell back into stride, and stepped over the smoking hulk of the shield golem, whistling.

“You comin’?”

Klaxons flared in the distance. The radio chatter screeched and chirped. The facility’s Hextech-fuelled warning lights throbbed and flashed through the dim gloom of the massive gymnasium space.

Ezreal rolled his shoulder, shook out his fingers, and glanced up – way up – to Garen.

“Hey man, um…”

Garen shifted, growled out a sigh, and lifted a brow.

“Just in case we end up in a situation where you’re spinning that big sword around and I’m, maybe, also in proximity to you when you’re doing it…” Ezreal braved a smile, “…we’re cool, right?”

Garen chuckled, though the mirth didn’t reach his eyes.

“We’re both here for Lux,” he said, “And no matter her questionable choices, I must respect them. It would be poor form to cut down my sister’s lover, even by accident…”

“L-lov-” Ezreal blinked. “-oh hey uh – I’m not – I mean we haven’t – we aren’t – actually…”

“…Oh,” said Garen, thoughtfully, “I suppose you’re fair game, then.”

Ezreal swallowed. “Hey, c’mon, man, be serious-”

Garen’s face settled into a cold, stony expression.

Ez paled; “…Oh shit, you’re serious.”

He didn’t see the faint smile cracking Garen’s façade until the big man snorted with laughter.

Ez’s face crumpled to deadpan.

“That wasn’t funny.”

“If you intend to woo my sister,” said Garen, bringing a big hand down to pat the younger man’s shoulder, “You’ll have to learn the Demacian sense of humor.”

He looked down the darkened gantry, toward the sound of distant explosions.

“…or Lux will eat you alive.”

Ezreal furrowed his brows and opened his mouth to question, but the radio mounted on the gantry beside them hissed and chopped with a garbled but familiar voice; Ezreal fumbled and snatched it up, as Garen looked at him like he was wrestling a dangerous snake.

“Uh, hi, Cait, Ez, over?”

::Ez, they’re on the move. Presently in 3E but situation changing rapidly. Standby for orders. ::

“Uh, roger?”

Ezreal took a deep breath and looked up at Garen.

“Here we go,” he said, “Hope she’s happy to see us.”

Garen’s stormy blue eyes set beneath a troubled brow.

He gave no answer.

“We’re going around in circles!” Lux panted, kicking another robot’s severed arm out of her way with a metallic clank, “They keep cutting us off with these damned metal walls and their numbers aren’t thinning!”

She was smudged with ash, her armor dented by shock-darts; her fingers still twitched involuntarily from the last lucky shot that lodged in her cuirass and conducted its nasty little stun-pulse straight through the metal. If Jinx hadn’t been there to pull her out of harm’s way…

Lux had fought deadlier battles, but few more surreal than this endless dance of liminal corridors and silent, shuffling, faceless foes.

They’d lured the last mob into a cul-de-sac and Lux had dropped part of the ceiling on them with a well-placed light blast; only to reveal the wooden framework was a thin veneer over even more solid metal.

They were rats in a maze, and there was no obvious way out.

“How many of these tin cans you think we’ve blown up, Blondie?” Jinx muttered, “They gotta be expensive, right? And I swear I see a bunch of familiar bulletholes…this is a fun game, but I smell somethin’ off-”

Jinx’s eye twitched, and she snapped her gaze up at the ceiling.

“There it is again…”

“There’s what?” Lux leaned back into the small fake office they’d camped out in, a moment’s respite amidst the running fray.

“Kind of a hum and pulse,” said Jinx, narrowing her eyes and following it with an animalistic tilt of her head, “It’s in the walls, too. Every couple of minutes. Buzzes in yer back teeth. Tastes like Hextech.”

“Some kind of…” Lux searched for words. Piltover’s arcane technology was baffling to her; conceptually, she could understand most of it, but the labyrinthine web of cause-and-effect that made each thing function was something that still felt like it floated on another plane she couldn’t reach…

“…message?” she ventured, “For the machines?”

“Hm,” Jinx grinned, “Yeah, something like that.”

Without warning, she snatched up Pow-Pow and ducked out into the corridor; a shuffling squadron of the machines came marching left, and Jinx leapt behind them, laughing as she spun Pow-Pow’s barrels and chewed off the limbs and heads of a few in a hail of withering fire before they could turn…

Then she bounced back to Lux’s side and started counting under her breath.

“…what are you doing?” Lux whispered, “You just told them where we were hiding!”

Jinx kept counting and silently pointed up. This time, Lux heard it too, a quiet hum and whoosh, and Jinx pressed her finger to her lips as she peeked her head back out into the corridor, to a clanking, creaking sound –

Lux peered around the corner, pressed to Jinx’s ear, and stared.

The dismembered bots were slowly, amid crackling blue arcs of magic bouncing between their ruptured limbs, pulling themselves back together.

Jinx whistled, “Oooh, wow, that explains a lot.”

“Protector,” Lux groaned, “I-I thought those last squads looked battered - it’s like those dead men in Noxus brought back by the hemomancers – a tale to frighten children –”

“Can’t keep a good Noxhole down, I guess,” Jinx chortled, “Or a good Tin-forcer!”

Jinx pulled Lux back away from the reconstituting bots and further down the hall. She was counting again; this time, when the pulse sounded, Jinx followed a faint blue flash in the walls with her eyes…

…and tore a chunk of wallpaper away with her bare hands, revealing lines of copper wiring running down the inside seam of the wall section, broken up by small pads or nodes etched with Hextech runes.

“Sooo,” Jinx muttered under her breath, aware of the ever-closing shuffle of the bots patrolling again, “Someone on Top Hat’s team is good with Hextech. We could do this all day, till you burn out your magic and I run out of ammo. But that ain’t her game…this is just a warmup puzzle…”

She glanced up again, following the wires.

“That means there’s  a control room, somewhere, Blondie,” Jinx said, locking her wild eyes to Lux’s own, her grin sparking, “C’mon, I think I got a shortcut…follow the wires –”

She grabbed Lux’s hand and pulled her with a squeak in a zig-zag down the few corridors left to them – ducking through another small office they’d previously hid in –

The ceiling pulsed again.

This time, no bots; but the doorframe in front of them filled with a screech of metal, and as Lux turned to the one behind her – that, too, slammed shut.

“Oops,” said Jinx, as a soft hiss sounded from somewhere.

Curls of white vapor, barely visible, oozed from the seams of the cubicle walls.

“Breathers!” Lux cried, fumbling for hers and holding her breath as she pulled it from her belt-pouch; Jinx snorted, but already had hers halfway clipped on when Lux donned her own.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” said Jinx, her voice tinny through the mask, “Sleepy time gas? They had to juice me with enough to take down Bertie last time, they’ve sure got short memories…”

“Not me, though,” Lux growled, aware that she’d breathed some of the gas before her mask went on, running through potential symptoms in her head and hoping the Zaunite breathers – designed for the much denser particulates of Undercity air – would work on this finer, lighter vapor, “We’ve got to get out.”

Focusing, Lux closed her eyes and let everything else – the room – the marching bots – the rasp of her own breathing – the pinch of the breather about her jaw and cheeks – fade away.

There was only the Light, floating in subtle chromatic waves inside her, waiting for her to reach in and warm her hands…

Curiously, Lux still felt the Hextech pulse through the walls; much stronger, resonating with her own magic, but entirely separate from it, running in parallel where she couldn’t touch.

Lux breathed, drew the Light into herself, and condensed it down to the head of a pin; opening her eyes, she stepped to the wall nearest.

Light welled at the tip of her index finger, at first glowing through her flesh and illuminating all the blood vessels in translucent orange, then focusing to a razor-thin white line.

“Hey Jinx, keep an eye on that gas, would you?” she warned, knowing that telling Jinx don’t look at the light was a doomed endeavor.

Gritting her teeth behind the mask, Lux forced her concentration deeper – the wallpaper caught, burned and shriveled away – her Light sparked and bubbled white-hot where it cut into the heavy metal wall underneath-

“Curses, it’s thick…Jinx, can you find a weak point, somewhere it might be thinner, or…”

Lux’s eyes drifted from her laser-light to the hissing source of the gas. She locked eyes with Jinx, and both girls followed its filmy white fingers, creeping…down.

Heavier than air, it should have filled the room by now…

“Jinx, the carpet-”

“Thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’!” Jinx crowed, drew a jagged-looking knife from her boot and squatted as she ripped the carpet up with glee, peeling ragged wedges of it away from –

A dense grate-flooring.

“That looks thinner than the walls,” Lux smirked, “Bad luck, Caitlyn. Oh, and Jinx?”

“Mrr?” Jinx looked up at her with those beautiful pink eyes.

Lux winked, “Hang onto something.”

She pulsed her light into a stronger, hotter beam, and sheared a blinding circle into the floor. Weakened metal squealed as it gave way with a kick –

A ring of smoky light opened beneath them, both girls tumbling after the circular slice of flooring, glowing at the edges.

Caitlyn took a deep breath, hunkered over the radio, whilst she watched Vi pace like a caged hound up and down the long walkway.

Knowing she was so close, feeling the ripples of her actions through the very building in which they stood, every second felt like an eternity.

The radio crackled, and Mir’s voice wobbled scratchily through.

:: Sheriff, they broke – I think they broke through the floor. Simeon has eyes on them. They’re in 2F. ::

“Understood, Mir. Move to second floor vantage and hold position. Standby.”

:: Aye, Sheriff. ::

“Time to play our hand,” Caitlyn murmured as she hung up the radio, “He’d better be as good as he says…”

“For his own damn sake,” Vi growled.

Caitlyn nodded, stared at her radio for a moment, and then made the call.

Shrouded in jealous wisps of vapor, Jinx and Lux landed with twin thumps on a dense but springy surface.

They’d fallen onto a mat-floored platform near one end of a cavernous gymnasium, lit only by small hex-lamps along the ceiling, shining down on the elaborate system of gantries, stairs, ramps and platforms that filled it end to end.

Lux waited to be sure the gas was clear and peeled away her breather, “Another gauntlet.”

“Yeah, ‘urban combat training course’,” Jinx grinned, “Makin’ all the mutton shunters run up and down all this stuff to work off the donuts, heh! She’s dolled the ol’ place up a bit though...”

Lux blinked at her, “You’ve been here before? When were you going to mention that?”

Jinx shrugged, “Silco had the old Sheriff on his payroll. I mighta snooped around a bit, so what.”

As the fact that her crime lord father had Caitlyn’s predecessor ‘on his payroll’ sank into her brain the background, Lux let her tense shoulders slump, “Tactical considerations, Jinx! I could’ve used what you know about the layout before we, you know, got stuck in a maze full of killer robots?”

“Aw, where’s the fun in that though?” Jinx pointed, “Lookie! There’s paydirt!”

At the very far end of the gymnasium, past the entire insane tangle of walkways and obstacles – and the mysterious silhouettes kept just out of their view by the stark lighting – lay a lone platform atop which a small plinth had been highlighted by a single very strong, very obvious downlight.

Something glinted blue there.

“Subtle, Cait,” Lux arched her brows.

“She knows I’m not,” Jinx giggled, “About time she stopped tippy-toein’ around. Ready?”

Lux blinked at her again – “Jinx, that’s the most obvious bait I’ve ever seen.”

“Yup! But it’s what we’re here for.”

Lux tugged at her hair, eyes tracing possible paths through the obstacle course, “It’s certainly a decoy. Caitlyn would have nothing to gain by risking you stealing the actual Hexgem, especially considering what you did with the last one…”

Jinx slowly grinned, ear to ear.

“Oh no, it’s real,” she whispered, her eyes glittering with amusement, “Ridgy-didge, bona-fide, real as it gets.”

Lux tipped her head, but Jinx only grinned.

“How can you-” Lux jumped as hidden speakers somewhere on the ceiling squealed and sprang to noisy life.

:: Luxanna. Jinx. :: said a familiar voice, the posh accent clipped even further by the distortion of the hexcoustics, :: Welcome to the board. I hope you are enjoying yourselves. ::

Jinx narrowed her eyes and gave a small, catlike hiss and flinch, glancing sidelong as if at someone whispering in her ear. Lux glanced at her in alarm, but Caitlyn’s voice continued;

:: I’ll not waste your time with small talk. You know the rules. If you win, you escape with the prize. If we win, we take you in. Simple, and fair. :::

“Yeah, Top Hat,” Jinx muttered, glaring at nothing, “So you think…”

::In the interest of fair play…:: Caitlyn gave a faint pause. :: I have someone here who wishes to speak with you. ::

Lux watched it all happen, the slow shifting of Jinx’s facial expression, the playful mockery bleeding out of her eyes, the softening of her dark moue of a mouth.

:: … Hey, sis. :::

The deadly firecracker the twin cities feared became, instantly, a timid little girl, round eyes searching the darkness as if the one she feared and longed for might stride out of it.

“…Vi…?”

“Hey, sis.”

Vi kept her voice low and level, but even through the static of the radio, she heard the thick gravel underneath it.

Her voice trembled under the weight of everything, like her arms would tremble holding up the weight of the world…

“Last time I saw you we didn’t get to talk,” she closed her eyes, leaning near the mouthpiece, fighting with all the words she’d wanted to say – planned to say – not screwing them up now…

Powder hung near her lips.

Vi gripped the name, holding it back, playing over and over again in her head the black rage that had burned behind her sister’s eyes the last time she’d called her that name…

Still, to this hour, this moment, not really understanding why.

And still, no matter how often she’d accustomed herself to saying it, unable to call her that other name to her face…

“I’m sorry for that. I am.” she said, mouth still feeling dry and heavy, voice coarse, “But I’m here now. And – wherever you’re at, whatever’s going on with you, I’m here, and we’re going to settle this.”

Vi drew a shaky breath, held it, and let it out before she lifted the handpiece for the next.

“It’s about us…”

:: It’s about us. :::

Lux was gone. The room was gone. The world was gone. There was only Jinx’s breath, fighting to drown out the shrieks and sneers of her white scribbling void, and th̶at ́vóic͡e̷, thick and tired and filled with pain, scratching through the hexcoustics.

:: We both know I’m what you want. It’s always been about us. ::

Jinx growled, her eyes dilated. There were the gantries ahead of her again; only they were full of shadowed silhouettes, and Powder ran down the walkway ahead, giggling, while Violet chased her, making stupid monster sounds, a big grin on her face s̕cr͘atched ̀out,͠ j̛us̀t͏ ͞l̴ìke̸ ̸h̸ér͡ ͘e̕ye͞s̛ - h͏er ͡o͘ųt́st̛re̛tc͘h͟ed ͢h̕ands͢ t́wįs͡te͠d i̴n͡t͡o͢ c͠h͏a̛l͏k cl̨aws -

:: So if you want to play, let’s play. Come and get me – if you can. ::

...V̧̭̰͔̤̩̬̳I̪̱̼V͚I͔̭͙̜̘̝̝V̘̩̱͜Ị̵͍̗̯͙V̯̠̪̕ͅį̗̳V̜͇͍̤͜iṿI̸̮̱̺̞V̲̭̝͚̞̗͔i̸V̕i̪̳̞̣̣͘ͅV̹̟I̗̤̬̪̤͘V̲i̧-̢̲͙͙̲ͅV͓͝i̱̗̙͖̕ͅ’͘s̱͉̹͘ voice e̸c̢hoi̕ng̸ over the speakers….

Jinx felt something grip her hand, strong fingers twining with her own. She took a moment to realize someone was holding her hand – someone’s concerned face, stricken with an echo of her own pain, lingered just in her peripheral vision – lu̡x̸L̸U͟Xlu҉X̸lUx– stands for Lux stands for Blondie stands for Flashlight stands for You…

:: And sis…? ::

The rest of the lights went up with a resonant clunk, illuminating the rest of the obstacle course - and what it had been turned into.

The voice above paused, and changed, a warm, playful note entering it, one that hit her right in the heart and dug in deep, to places buried since a bloody, tear-streaked Violet turned her back and left her in the flames…

::…Tag-rat. Got your tail. ::

Chapter Text

“Tag-rat! Got your tail!”

Powder burst into a flailing run. Her thin legs tripped, and she stumbled. She caught herself, ducking around half a broken door jutting out of an ancient bathtub. Her chest already ached, and they’d only just begun the game.

Of all the junkyard chasing games, Powder loved Rat-in-the-Hole best – because you were allowed to hide. She was good at that, at least.

Claggor pounded past her position. As a Catcher he was slow, but as he had the build of a Noxian war rhinoceros and the stamina to match, he didn’t have to be fast…he just had to outlast you.  And he could outlast anyone except Vi.

Powder’s wide eyes peered out of the gap between the bathtub and the door. Her heart pounded louder in her ears as she saw the prize; the Ratbag, a little dirty, patched cloth bag painted – by her own hand – with a rat’s face above stinky cheese, its eyes X’d out in green. It hung from the bent and rusted old signpost at the top of their junkyard obstacle course.

Powder held her breath. ‘Tag-rat’ meant Claggor had caught someone. There was now a Snitch in play. She hadn’t seen who. Going out there now was risky - so risky - she could be quick up close, but she wasn’t fast, anyone could outrun her, even Ekko…

Powder’s eyes flicked sideways. She shrank back and hunkered down.

Hide. Just hide. Just wait until someone else wins. Just…let the others have the fun. She wasn’t good enough; she wasn’t fast enough or strong enough or brave enough…

Suddenly, across from her, Powder spied Vi, creeping up behind the rusted wheel of an ancient mine cart.

Vi spotted her and froze. For a moment she furrowed her brows, but then gave Powder a ‘shh’ gesture and a wink. She followed where Powder was looking and pursed her lips. 

Vi looked back at her, smiled beautifully, and gave her a firm, single nod.

A nod that said ‘you can do it. You’ve got this.’

Powder stared at her, and then at the epic quest yawning between her position and that dangling treasure atop the mountain.

She could hear Claggor’s huffing breath as he chased someone to her left.

But…the bag. It was still there. No-one else had claimed it.

Powder’s eyes narrowed.

Vi winked at her again, her muscular body tensed, and then she sprang past Powder’s hiding place and deliberately kicked over an empty can as she bolted for the next cover, long legs pumping.

Powder heard Claggor grunt and puff and pound turf chasing her. Moving away.

She sucked in as much air as she could. Her tiny body tensed. Her lungs screamed in protest as she coiled up, mimicking Vi’s ‘running’ pose…

Eyes on the p̕r̶i̷ze̸,͢ sh͡e ra͟n̴..͢.̶ 

.̨.̵.Ji͡n͡x ̕p͟e̷l̸te͞d ̧do͞wn t̡he̸ ̀ga̧ntry͘, eyes wide and wild, lips parted, the familiar weight of Pow-Pow and Fishbones bouncing with her fluid, bestial sprint. 

She’d long since learned to move with the weight of her weapons - not only to compensate for them, but to use their balance, mass, momentum, to pull her in erratic patterns her enemies would never expect. Thinking her guns slowed her down was their first mistake.

Her guns weren’t encumbrance; they were extra limbs.

Ahead of her, the walkways shimmered between p͠a̧st ̧and ̡pr͡e̡se̷ņt - muddy ramps of battered metal and wood in the yards behind the Lanes - steel walkways with dangling monkey-bars and high safety rails in a Piltie facility…

Brass and rubber and foam hissed and whooshed – automatons with punching arms and swinging, padded weapons striking at her from all directions – Powder ducked her head under a wooden arm holding an old Enforcer baton, still spinning from being tripped by Mylo as he passed –

Jinx rolled under one, sprang over another, caught the third in her upraised hands and swung from it, legs swinging forward to hurl her through the gap between two more –

Somewhere behind her, Lux was shouting her name, thready p̡a͞ni͘c̢ in her voice –

Ahead of her, the blue glow of the Hexgem waited at the top of the mountain.

Eyes on the prize, Jinx ran.

Lux shouted Jinx’s name.

“Jinx – what in the Light’s – Jinx!”

She cursed as she ran, of all the pox-blighted horse-pogging goblin-brained – what was Vi thinking? – she had to know the effect it would have on Jinx, she had to…unless that was their plan, all along.

Lux wondered if either of them were truly that cold.

Just the sound of her sister’s voice. That’s all it’d taken. Lux had watched it happen behind Jinx’s eyes – the transformation – Jinx wasn’t here anymore, she wasn’t now, she was somewhere and somewhen else, and Lux was sure that wherever that was, it was some other place and time where she was that timid little girl again…

And then she’d just taken off, like a clawcat across the Noxian plains.

Lux ran in her wake, but wherever Jinx was, operating on whatever buried instinct, she was too fast – too fluid – bouncing off, under, over, every one of the swinging buzzing spinning snapping contraptions in her path, as if she’d predicted the whole course and burned it into her muscle memory…

Lux was neither so prescient, nor so lucky.

She was quick enough to duck under the first few swings, rolled past a swipe that brushed her cheek with a foam-sheathed mechanical fist, drew the sword from her side to parry three bouncing rubber balls shot from a cannon propped at the end of a blind turn –

But the net gun at the end of the next, she hadn’t anticipated that, and put her foot right on the trigger plate.

“Jin-gack!” - weights snapped against her shins and her legs tangled with each other.

Lux yelped as she tumbled to her flank on the gantry.

Jinx’s eyes fixed with manic fire on the glow of the Hexgem. Oblivious, she ran onward.

…somewhere behind her, Ekko shouted her name, hoarse with panic. Powder chanced a glance back – Ekko was running, his thin legs and arms all akimbo, eyes white with adrenaline, maybe even fear…

Claggor loomed right behind him, cheeks red and brow beading with sweat. Ekko kept ahead of him, darting and weaving, but his stamina would soon give out…

Ekko’s eyes pleaded with her.

Powder turned away and kept running.

He was chasing Ekko, that meant Ekko wasn’t a Snitch. That meant only two people could be…

Mylo or Vi.

Powder scowled and kept running. She cringed away from a trip-trap - a wooden spoon propping up a plate in the middle of her lane - stumbling over it - Jinx cackled with glee as she rolled past a spring-loaded stun trap on the floor and heard its jaws snap and sizzle behind her - Powder gasped for air as she tumbled to her feet and ran up a wooden plank toward the Ratbag – so close, so close – almost in her reach… 

:: Eyes on both, boss. :: Simeon’s voice crackled through the radio, :: …Goldie’s down. Repeat. Goldie’s down. Jinx is going for the prize.::

Caitlyn’s pale face shone like a ghost in the pale Hexlights. She locked eyes with Vi.

“Acknowledged,” she said, “Boys, it’s your turn. Keep your wits about you – and good luck.”

Vi’s knuckles strained within the gloves. Hextech fingers clenched in their turn.

“Deploy,” Caitlyn said into the radio.

Powder’s legs burned like her tendons were on fire. The shouts of the other kids as the chase went on behind her were muffled and distant; only the thunder in her ears had any clarity.

And the miserable little cloth sack hanging right in front of her, forbidden fruit just within her reach…

Powder leapt onto the final platform and stretched her hand, her fingers closing on the tatty cloth –

An arm swept out and snatched the bag from her grip.

“-nuh uh,” Mylo smirked, keeping his voice low, “I got this, watch n’ learn!”  

It was right there. Almost in her reach. Right up the final ramp, blast the left club-swinging dummy with Zapper, leap-kick off the right and over the arc of the one with the stun-prod…

Jinx’s boots clanked on the illuminated platform.

The Hexgem sat on a museum plinth under a bright spotlight. Top Hat had even sat it on a little red velvet pillow, red like the lining of Síl̡c͠o’s ͢jacke͜t, just for Jinx…

Jinx’s feverish eyes narrowed, taking in all the places she would have trapped the plinth herself. No hinges for a dropaway floor, no cabling for an electrified panel, no visible explosives, or tripwires. Jinx wiped a bit of concrete dust from her hair and blew it into the air above the Hexgem…

Phoey, not even a single laser.

It was right there, and Jinx could just take it.

“Seems stupid,” she muttered, “’kay, let’s be stupid…”

She reached out, biting her lip –

A small flash of gold pulsed opposite her, and deft fingers swiped the gemstone right from under her nose.

Jinx looked up into bright cornflower-blue eyes and a cocky smirk.

“Gotta be fast,” said the young man. He winked.

Jinx snapped Zapper into his face and pulled the trigger on instinct – only Zapper’s wasn’t the only flash – and their charged bullet pinged and sizzled in a distant wall, because the guy wasn’t there.

“Hi, by the way!” he called from behind her, and she growled and twisted to see him leaning on one of the railings, gem casually glowing between two fingers, his other hand raised to wave, “Jinx, right? I’m Ezreal!”

“Grr!” Jinx champed her teeth and fired again – he zipped away again – he was over on another platform, his voice more distant –

“-So, you always shoot people for saying hello to you?” Ezreal called back cheerfully, “You want this? Catch me!”

Rage frothed up inside Jinx like an overboiled cauldron.

Powder froze, staring up at him with her brows twisted in shock and rage.

“C’mon, get out of here,” Mylo scoffed and held the bag out of her reach. He peered behind him to keep eyes on Claggor, turned to step around her –

Powder stepped in his way. He nearly tripped over her.

“What the hell, Powder?” he snapped, eyes bugging, “Get out of the way!”

“No.”

“You can’t outrun Claggor, if you take it, we’ll freakin’ lose!”

“It’s mine!” she snarled, “I got it first. It was in my hand! You stole it!”

“Damnit! He’ll hear us!” Mylo glared at her, “Out of my-oof!”

Powder headbutted him in the gut and snatched the bag. It tore between their grips, some of the junky odds and ends they used to keep it weighted escaping, and slipped free of Mylo’s fingers…

Tears of frustration stinging her cheeks, she bolted back down the way she came, clutching the bag tight to her chest.

She heard Mylo yelling and chasing her. She heard Ekko calling for her.

Through her tears, she saw Little Man cornered by Claggor, calling out for help – Vi, Powder, anybody…

But Powder had the Ratbag. She had to make it back to the Nest. She had to.

“Tag-rat! Got your tail!”

It was the only way to win.

Lux swore under her breath and wriggled against the net, only succeeding in entangling herself further.

“Damned golk-clutching snavel-crotched-” Lux gritted her teeth. The instinct to struggle wasn’t easy to shake off, but she had to. She had to be calm and…

…reach inside herself. Feel the warm tide of colors, all the hues of a rainbow on a warm afternoon, all the warmth of a spring dawn, grasp the threads, weave them together, push them into an edge of light as sharp as a razor and as hot as the heart of the sun…

Light spilled between her fingers, shone through her flesh, gleamed upon her armor.

The net sizzled, scorched, and fell away from her in pieces, and she slung off the remains and shoved to her feet…

In time to see Jinx at the plinth. In time to see a flash of gold – a familiar, confident poise in the figure up there with her – snatching away her prize.

Lux’s eyes widened and her mouth fell open.

“…Ezreal, you futtering piece of-Ez!”

She was going to kill him. She was going to fry him, fricassee him, and serve him on a platter of-

Lux had barely taken a step forward when she heard the thud of heavy footfalls on the gantry behind her.

“Lux,” said a voice, and her heart stopped.

She knew before she turned. She’d known before she’d heard that familiar rumbling bass. She couldn’t put words to why she knew –

But she knew.

Lux closed her eyes and steeled herself.

“Garen?”

Mylo was almost on her, his long bandy legs and erratic weaving gait carrying him closer with each step…

“Powder – give it here!” he moaned, “C’mon!”

She tripped through the lower arm on one of their homemade bucket-broom-and-straw Enforcer dummies; Mylo cursed as he stumbled into the counterswing from its higher arm, forcing him to duck and scraping his spiky hair…

Glancing behind her, Powder only saw, cut out against the sky, Mylo’s gangly figure, the shape of the makeshift Enforcer helmet on the dummy, and the s̕c͜ratc̸he͡s͟ an͏d͝ ̴sc̴r͏ibb͡l͝es͘ ͟ conjoining the two-

Thud thud thud thud. Her heart. Claggor’s footsteps; he was coming for them, drawn by Mylo’s noisy whining, his heavy running footfalls sounding almost like ja͏ckb҉oots ́ơn a̧ ̛b̷r͞idge lit by red, red smoke…

The adrenaline in her chest twisted into something darker and uglier.

Her run became a blind sprint.

Ezreal laughed as he popped from one point to the next along the gauntlet. He twisted and fired a streaking blue shot, slicing another rope, sending another Enforcer punching-bag whooshing down from the ceiling into Jinx’s path…

But he was only laughing on the outside.

She’s too fast…fast, fast, fast, seeming to get faster with every obstacle she slipped past or obliterated with a flash of gunfire; every time he thought he had her in the corner of his eye, she’d shift that creepy boneless run of hers and be suddenly somewhere else, just in his periphery – or just out of it – like being chased by the world’s most persistent mosquito…

One that was more inclined to squash him than the reverse.

Her feral grin and blank, inhuman eyes were, frankly, terrifying, and some of those ‘playful warning shots’ were a tad too close to really be either…

Ez wasn’t stupid. The longer he drew this out, the more time he gave Jinx to figure out his timings and his patterns. And game or no game, she sure as hell wasn’t shooting blanks.

High. High. Lead her higher. Lead her away from Lux…

His heart wrenched at the flash of golden-white light. Lux was there, right there, a tiny bright figure across the gymnasium…

But Ez couldn’t go to her. Jinx was right on his tail. He had to stick with the plan…

He had to trust Garen.

High. High. Higher…

Level after level, up to the stairwell – up to her own date with destiny.

High. Higher. Highest.

All he had to do was stay one hair’s breadth ahead.

The boys’ voices called to her, but they didn’t sound like them anymore.

Twisted. Dark. Distorted. The silhouettes of the playground were leering red-eyed monsters, their grimacing masks like the faces of giant steel beetles, reaching out with their big, gloved hands, their long black batons going ‘crack crack crack’ on Trencher bones…

Muzzles flashed and flared. Pretty fireworks. Bright, beautiful, colourful clouds of smoke, the prettiest lights Powder had ever seen…

Falling, falling, shapes in the fire. Crack crack crack, and Trenchers stumbled and fell still.

Eyes staring, full of nothing, silent faces in the flames.

“Garen?”

The downlights cast craggy shadows on the many angles of his face. He looked different; longer hair, more unkempt, a few new scars, his armor battered by a long road walked on difficult paths.

Months, since Terbisia. Months, since his broad back turning away from her in the flames a second time…

Lux’s hands trembled on her staff. Their grip slackened as he approached.

“I told you once I’d never leave your side again,” he said, “I’ve failed to keep that promise too many times, Lux.”

Blue eyes met hers, weary, sad, and hopeful.

“I’m here now.”

“Here. Now?” she growled, “Now, after everything? Here? Why? How? Y-your duty – Demacia, the Vanguard-”

Garen’s shoulders sank. She almost felt the weight on them – mountains of it – the mighty fortress of his faith and devotion, split in two, right down the middle.

“I’ve…” he shook his head, “It doesn’t matter. The Vanguard are loyal. They hold the line.”

Lux’s heart went cold, knowing what that meant. What it had cost him.

“You’ve deserted.”

Garen flinched as if he’d been struck, but kept walking toward her, nonetheless, his weaponless hands raised.

“I’ve chosen, Lux. The choice I should have made a long time ago.”

His big heart was in his eyes, and hers swiftly filled with tears.

“Oh, Garen,” she whispered, “They’ll kill you if you go back…”

“If that’s my fate, I’ll die without shame,” he said, with the air of a man resigned, “It took me too long to see it. Demacia – the Demacia I love – the Demacia I should have been fighting for all along…”

He shook his head and stopped his solemn advance, sinking instead to one knee before her.

“It’s yours,” Garen said, “Your Demacia, Luxanna. You were right. By the Light, you always were.”

Everything fell onto her. Weeks on the run, aching limbs and gnawing empty belly and gnawing empty fear of marching feet and whinnying horses and clanking chains. Months before that of the unease, a pristine life tottering on a roiling bed of strife. Years, before that, of hiding her Light, of suffocating something as elemental as her breath, of putting on mask after mask, layer after layer, until even the mirrored waters of High Silvermere couldn’t tell her whose face she saw in them anymore…

And all the suffering far worse than hers. The terrified cries of mage children in her city as the gates shuddered and cracked. The hollow skeleton faces of those in the Mageseeker cells. Sylas’ eyes, haunted, bitter, knowing...

The fire, the screams of the dying, the stench of the Mageseeker prisons, the crowd at Sylas’ execution, scourged by her Light…

Now. Here. His sacrifice, steep, and noble, and terrible…all for…what?

Lux shook her head, tears splashing on her cheeks, scorching, bitter.

“-you t-tell me that now? Here? After everything? After Terbisia? You throw it all away now – now when it’s – when it’s all too late?”

She wanted to hit him. His stupid, stubborn, idiot face, staring at her dumbly like that.

“-and what-” Lux snapped, aware that her voice was shaking, that she was losing it – Jinx, she’s getting further and further away, and I – “You’re here to take me back? Y-you idiot! I – I can never go back, they’d kill me – and now they’ll kill you too – Oh, Garen – what did you do-”

She stumbled forward – to smack him right across his stony jaw for being such a big stubborn idiot – for waiting to pick a side until all it would achieve was his own sealed doom – how she could hate him for that –

Instead, her arms went around his neck. She buried her face against his big shoulder, the scent of steel and sweat and leather, held on for dear life, and sobbed into the shadow between his neck and his big stupid pauldron.

“I’m sorry, Lux,” Garen mumbled, “I’m sorry for everything.”

“Shut up,” she whispered, with a broken laugh, full of biting anger, “I’m forgiving you, you great stupid oaf, don’t ruin the moment…”

She held on tighter, as if she could hold him in this world, with her.

“It’s the last time, Garen,” her voice came smaller, colder, and filled with truth, “The last fucking time.”

Her brother started at the curse, staring at her.

Then his face softened. Shoulders slumping, eyes closing, he held Lux close in his big arms.

“I know.”

Jinx snarled as she chased the infuriating jerk from platform to platform, leaping and climbing and pouncing where he only had to flex that stupid gauntlet and blip from place to place –

Sometimes, with that stupid cocky grin, he’d scribble out for a second and Jinx would see Mylo in his place, his gaunt dead features grinning like an idiot, full of fake swagger, mocking her…

Jinx shook her head to clear it. No, no, he wasn’t Mylo, Mylo is dead and sunk deep…

This guy had a name of his own.

Ezreal. Ohh, I remember you, don’t think I don’t…

Boy in the streetlights. Pauper prince with your pretty, pretty smile.

Mister ‘First Kiss’…

Imagining his pretty lips pressed to Lux, Jinx felt her cheeks twitch with a manic grin full of pearly knives. A special grin, just for him.

Up, up, up…

He was leading her away from Lux.

Jinx glanced back over her shoulder; her heart jolted as she saw Claggor – no, Claggor, but tall, huge, a giant looming over Lux with his cold dead face and his sad bloated pout – no no no no – it was another giant, with huge stupid armor with huge stupid shoulders, he was walking toward Lux…

Then she had her arms around him, and Jinx’s heart twisted and flopped in her chest.

“Luxie…?”

Impossible. It couldn’t be. It had to be, but it couldn’t be.

Brother.

Her brǫthe͜r.

T̷hey brought her brother…

They͡…ar͟e ͝ta̵ki̴ng͜ ̴h̸e̴r fro̵m yo͞u.͡

Jinx smacked her fist into the side of her head.

It isn’t real. It wasn’t happening. It must be just in her head, another hallucination, another stupid lie in her skull…

Jinx growled and twisted to follow movement - Ezreal darted off the platform ahead in a flash of bright gold, ducked suddenly toward a stairwell – not part of the obstacle course – built into the structure of the building, climbing higher –

“She’s waiting for you,” he called down from a landing above her head, leaning over the rail, and waving the Hexgem, “And so’s this.”

Jinx watched him disappear with slivered eyes on the squeeze of his fingers against the palm of the arcane gauntlet.

With one final, anguished glance at Lux, she hissed and turned to those stairs.

“Got a kiss for you too, pretty boy…” Jinx mumbled under her breath.

She unhooked a lone Chomper from her belt.

Powder was alone.

She had ducked and hidden and slipped through tight gaps in the junk and finally, finally lost them. She was almost there now. Away from the sharp bright sky and the moving shapes and the bright loud voices. Back, back, to the black, black hole in the dingy metal wall that meant safe quiet cool calm safe…she just had to drop the Ratbag in and the Rats would win - win - because of her - 

A shape loomed ahead of her.

Ezreal wasn’t alone.

He’d lost sight of her. She was nearby, though. Her breathless, echoing giggle crawled its fingers into his spine and lodged there, somewhere deep.

Ezreal had run from worse things. Seething voidlings in the wastelands of old Icathia. Lumbering temple guardians, deathless tomb horrors, angry Vastayan hunters, vengeful Noxian killers.

None of them, he knew now, would haunt his nightmares like Jinx.

Shit shit shit shit why am I doing this I’m going to die this is the worst idea this was your idea Caitlyn it’s your crazy sister Vi it’s all your fault if I die I’ll haunt you both until the stars burn out…

The dark stairwell with its flickering light and its tight, close space closed in on him. His leg burned. His lungs burned. His head felt light and dizzy, his sense of direction all screwed up – too many Arcane Shifts, this is why he’d used them sparingly on the damn rooftops, but there was no way he’d get away from her without them…

Except now he had no idea where she was and –

“Firrrrrsssst Kissss…”

The voidlings and stone golems didn’t say shit like that, echoing off the dark hollow gymnasium walls.

“-oooh you’re pretty out of the streetlamps – nice hair, just like hers – nice blue eyes – sure you aren’t sisters, mister?”

“What the ever-loving-fuck-are-you-talking-about-” Ez growled between gritted teeth as he barreled up the stairs to the final stretch.

It lay before him, a long gallery walkway, grill floor, lit by hexlights on the railings and a dusty stretch of skylight, cutting across the ceiling from that shadowed stairwell to a darkened archway – one more floor up, to the attic office where Caitlyn and Vi had sequestered themselves…

Just ahead, the reinforced door behind that archway, he could blip out, shut her in – for a private chat with her sister –

“Just wanna get to know you! Since we’re gonna be real close friends – for a little while –”

“Ugh, I did not sign up for Jinx level crazy,” he muttered, “Just…a bit…further…”

Ezreal sprang across the last gap, landed a little wrong on his leg and winced; he rolled to ease the impact, and as he came up – there she was – right behind him and to his left…

Pink eyes gleaming in the dark of the stairwell. Squatting like a gargoyle and grinning like a devil, with her hand behind her back.

The door was open. He could make it. Draw her in, spring the trap, in and out, easy.

Smart-ass act, one last time…

Ezreal kipped up and twisted to flash her a wink and a salute.

“What took you so long?”

“Had to get some flowers,” Jinx crowed, but her smile didn’t reach her eyes. Those were blank as the shark’s on her back, “For our date!”

Ezreal blinked and licked his lips, “F-flowers?... Date?”

“Oh, yeah, a whooole bouquet-” Jinx beamed and twisted, tossing something into the air between them, “Caaatch!”

Is that a grena-IT’S A GRENADE!

Ezreal gulped air as he twisted away, blinked from one end of the gantry to the other – and lanced a sky-blue arcane shot through the chattering chunk of metal – knocking it spinning away from him and into a cluster of Enforcer dummies on a platform below.

He gasped as the explosion rocked the interior and threw him against the guardrail, tottering far, far above the crazy gauntlet maze.

“Whew! Close one,” shaking himself off, Ezreal smirked, “Don’t blink! Or you’ll miss me.”

“That’s okay!” Jinx sang, behind him.

Ezreal’s heart lurched into his throat. She wrapped her arms around him like a demented frog – enveloping him in the searing heat and griping strength of her, her glowing eyes in his peripheral, her smoky-sweet gunpowder scent in his nostrils…

…her iron fingers slotting through his, tugging him into a mad waltz on the damaged, smoking gantry – and preventing him from closing his hand to trigger the gauntlet.

Ezreal swallowed. She leaned into his face, frighteningly close.

“I never blink,” Jinx whispered, and kissed him.

An explosion rang out.

Somewhere, beyond the tangled maze of gantries and steps and ladders and nets and ramps and spinning dummies and swinging bags, a bright flash of colored light and a boom of concussive sound tore through the background noise.

Lux opened her eyes against her brother’s shoulder.

“Jinx…” she whispered, and reluctantly pushed away.

Garen shifted, looking at her with furrowed brows.

“I’m sorry, Garen, I have to-” Lux moved to turn away from him – only to feel resistance on her arm. His big hand closed around hers, gripping her, not hard, but firm enough to lock her in place against his towering weight.

“Lux,” he said, shaking his head, eyes earnest, “Don’t go.”

She tugged her arm in vain.

“Let me go, Garen,” she growled, “You don’t understand. I have to go to her.”

“You’re right,” he rumbled, “I don’t understand. To fly to Piltover for sanctuary – I can grasp this – but Jinx?”

She stopped fighting him, staring at his hand around hers, the fear and worry and concern in his eyes.

Garen couldn’t hide anything from her. Not really. He was far better at lying to himself than he was at lying to Lux.

Except once.

“She’s a killer, Lux. A criminal and an outlaw,” he said quietly, “She started a war and tore this city apart. I’m not of Piltover, it’s not my place to pass judgment upon her – but I must ask – why?”

Lux closed her eyes. She could do better. She could give him truth.

“Because I did all of those things too, brother,” she said, and let the Light flow into her hand, into his, let him feel its heat growing, warning. Let it linger in her eyes when she opened them, “I am all of those things.”

A little flinch went through his brows. Resistance. Denial. She forged ahead before he could speak:

“…and when I was at the bottom of the pit, when my back was against the wall, and I was going to die – alone – there was Jinx.”

Garen caught his breath as she pushed at his hand, the light spilling between the gaps in his fingers, forcing him to tighten his grip or lose her.

“Lux-”

“Not Demacia or House Crownguard,” she said, coldly, “Not Caitlyn nor Vi, not Sylas, nor Ezreal, not our family, not even you,” Lux nearly spat, her voice trembling, “Jinx. Time and time again. Jinx. Every time I fall, there she is, pulling me up. My Jinx.”

She watched it dawning in his eyes, slowly, his capacity to absorb what she was implying fighting Demacian bullheadedness all the way.

“What…do you mean by ‘my’…”

Lux snorted, “I don’t have time to educate you. She needs me now, brother. She’s hurting, and I need to go to her. Let me go.”

Garen frowned, but she saw the tendons in his jaw work, “I’m sorry, but I cannot. Vi means her no harm, but this rampage must stop,” he said, shaking his head, fighting her, fighting the Light, “Some things are between family, alone, sister. For them, as for us. Let her go.”

“You don’t understand!” Lux snapped, “Vi can mean no harm, and still do harm, and she will-if I don’t go to them!”

“I can’t let you do that.”

“You chose me, over Demacia,” Lux narrowed her eyes, “If you’re really here for me, then let me go. I need to be there for Jinx. She is…she is my choice.”

The realization finally clicked into place behind his eyes. Garen’s eyes squared, and his mouth slowly sank open.

Lux didn’t have tears or snark or spite for him. Only soft sincerity, sharper than Demacian steel.

“Let me go, Garen. Please. Jinx is going to hurt someone, or get hurt, and I cannot allow either.”

“Lux-”

 She closed her eyes, forcing all of her control inward, hating what she was about to do.

“Garen…” she said, smiling, “Kat sends her regards. She misses you.”

Her brother froze, and his grip on hers faltered, “…Kat?”

Lux flared and pulsed her Light – just enough – to blind him, to push him away, only briefly – just for the moment she needed. His flinch of pain and surprise still stung her.

As he grunted and shielded his eyes, her fingers slipped from his.

She ran.

Jinx dug her fingers into her prey’s fur collar and pulled him in tight. 

Streetlamps flickered – his arms went around her – Lux’s flushed cheeks – a perfect picture – the hero and the princess – where she should have been, except …

Her mouth locked hungrily to his.

Just long enough to get a taste of him, and he of her, something he’d remember. Long enough to feel him tense up, to see his shocked eyes through the wicked slivers of hers.

Oh, his lips were soft and had a nice shape. He tasted nice and had a nice smell, books candles leather boy – the fresh clean sweat of their chase – he smelled a bit Piltie but there were traces of the spice of faraway places on his clothes, his skin, just a bit interesting to Jinx…

But she felt…nothing. There wasn’t even a hint of sparky shiny flashy perfect boom.

Kissing him wasn’t kissing Lux.

And there was that little sour note in his scent – f͘ea͢r F͝E͡AR͜ ͡fe̶ar - that made something dark and cruel in Jinx g̕ri̧n ͘r͝az͡ors͏ because she knew it was in there just for her…

Ezreal sank into her, just a little, before he snapped out of it with a choked cry.

His eyes flew wide, and he tore his mouth from hers, flailing his arms as he fell onto his back on the gantry, hard.

“Wh-what the hell-”

She giggled as his panicked eyes darted to the weight he hadn’t noticed in his grip – a second Chomper, chattering away between the fingers of his gauntlet hand.

Jinx twirled her braid around a finger. She was wearing the pin on the same hand, like a wedding ring.

Ezreal’s eyes flew even wider, “S-shit!”

As he tried to sit up, Jinx gave a heady, drunken laugh and sprang on him, straddling his chest between her thighs and pinning his arms under her knees before he could toss the grenade away.

“Mr Snappy here is the friend you just don’t wanna let go!” she chortled, “Here, lemme help you keep a good grip…”

Jinx plucked a roll of duct tape from one of her many belts and snatched the end in her teeth. It skree-e-e-eked as she wrapped it around his gauntlet, the grenade, and the balcony railing.

“Don’t budge, Ez-buddy,” she said, “Wouldn’t wanna get any miscellaneous viscera on that fancy glove. Say, how’s it work, anyway?”

“I’m not-I don’t-Y-you kissed me!”

“Hehe, yeahhh…” Jinx licked her lips, one finger pressed to them, and considered, “…Oops, I didn’t ask, did I? That’s right, should have asked first…”

Jinx let her smile drop cold. She snapped her hands down onto his wrists, slid back, and leaned over him until her brows were pressed to his and her huge, unblinking pink eyes burned into his own.

“-Shouldn’t you, Ez?”

Ezreal froze under her. She heard his breathing go sharp and high and the r͜a̴z̛or g̸r͜įn͘ in̵s͞idè he̷r ͢go̵t bigg͘e͡r and the c̨rows ̢clack͠ed their bea̢ks and guffawed a raucous song of approval.

“I…L-Lux told you?” he stammered, “L-look it was a mistake – I made a mistake – I apologized – we talked about it – what the hell do you want from me?”

Jinx leaned close enough that he’d be feeling her breath on his face. She gave the cruellest smirk of her life of many.

“Can think of two things I already got,” she purred, and slid her eyes sidelong to her left hand – where the Hexgem glowed between her fingers, flashed around them in a deft sleight-of-hand, and disappeared into her glove.

“Gotta be fast,” she whispered to him with a wink.

Ezreal let out a pained sigh.

“Ohhh crap.”

Caitlyn paced, her boots ringing on the gantry.

“Ez should have been here by now,” she muttered.

“Cupcake,” Vi lifted haunted eyes to her, “This – the junkyard – Rat-in-the-Hole – it was my idea…if anything goes wrong – I’m sorry, I just – I thought-”

“You said it was a memory,” said Caitlyn, “A positive one. The first game you played together.”

“Not the first we played,” Vi murmured, her voice hoarse, “The first she ever won.”

Caitlyn pursed her lips.

“I just…” Vi stared back at the door, “…I hope she hears what I’m trying to say. I hope it's all…enough.”

“So do I.”

Caitlyn’s heart leapt into her throat as the thunder of an explosion rippled through the building, rocking the floor and walls around them.

Inside. Very close.

“Ez…” she whispered.

Vi set her jaw and flexed the fingers of her gauntlets. She turned to face the darkened way out; down to the trap room, the appointed hour…

Down to destiny.

“I’m going.” 

Jinx bit her lip and watched Ezreal pale as he followed the Hexgem vanishing into her glove.

Ezreal’s eyes flicked back to the chattering grenade in his hand. He narrowed them and looked back up at her.

“O-okay, shit, fine, you got the prize,” he muttered, “And the other thing was…?”

He might have just been playing to stall for time, trying to figure a way out of her trap, but at the hopeful puppy-dog flicker of – was that interest – curiosity? – Jinx nearly burst out laughing. Instead, she gave a – well, a Jinx approximation of a sultry, seductive giggle - that cracked into an unhinged snicker halfway.

“Oh wow, big boy, look at you – don’t tell me crazy little Jinx lit the rocket in yer pocket just now?”

“N-no,” he chanced, “Why would you think that?”

Jinx faked contemplation of the concept, leaning over him again –

“…so that’s a maybe, hmmm?”

Ezreal furrowed his brows as she draped her narrow body onto his. When he didn’t resist, Jinx let her lips hover over his mouth. His breath caught again. Jinx stopped, wickedly, just for the show…

Then she rolled her eyes and snorted.

“…nah, just messin’ with you, buddy. Y’know, though, Luxie was right.”

Ez groaned, scowled and tried, weakly, to fight her off, “Oh, c’mon-wait, Lux? Right about - um - what?”

“You,” Jinx shrugged, “You kiss okay…” She snaked her face over his and tucked it in beside his ear, sucking in a slow, reptile breath of his confused muddle of fear, revulsion and arousal, “…but I’m better.”

She let it sink in. When it did, Ezreal stiffened up and stared up at her.

“…no, you…what? Lux wouldn’t… you?”

A flicker passed through Jinx’s eyes – almost a flinch – you? You what? You freak, you crazy bitch, you sid́eshǫw̢ ͜m͏o̵nster …? and for a moment her smirk became a grimace with too many teeth – but she twisted it into a grin with too many teeth instead and ran her nails down his wrists.

“Oh, trust me, Lux would – and did – and boy did she like the taste,” Jinx let the gloating note in her voice grow until it was feverish, just like her widening eyes, “Sunbeam can’t get enough of this, shoulda seen us last night, polishin’ all the surfaces in our home–”

Ez clenched his teeth. Jinx heard them squeak.

“That’s not – Lux wouldn’t – I don’t believe you!”

Jinx threw her head back and laughed like an electrocuted sewer whump, “Oh, pretty boy, you’d better! Oh, and while you’re at it, better tattoo ‘Lux’s first kiss’ on yer butt cheek, cuz if you think you’re gonna be her ‘first anything else’ –” Her voice thrummed with victory; “TOO LATE!”

Ezreal sucked in a quivering groan and slumped back against the gantry. His breathing went all wonky and his facial expression just kinda dissolved.

Oh, did I actually make him cry? Wow, ouch, I’m not feeling sorry for him, though – Lux wouldn’t…

Lux would. Jinx growled and smacked at the side of her head. Crapola, she totally would…

He’d given up struggling entirely, but he was still giving her that anguished, confused look, like the kind people give you when you suddenly stab them.

Ugh… he’s like a kicked poro and – and not even in a funny way…

Jinx shook her head furiously, like there was a bee in her ear. She wasn’t supposed to feel anything…anything except what she already did – glee, malice, spite, that’s what a Jinx was made of, wasn’t it? That’s all she was good for – wasn’t it? Jinx scowled savagely at herself.

Ezreal sensed her distraction and took the opportunity to wriggle again – kinda pathetically – so Jinx prodded his chest with a bony finger, pushed him to his back, and leaned back in.

One more point to make.

“She’s mine,” Jinx growled in his face, “And I’m hers. Sooo…if you even get a fizzle in yer tizzle about touching her again…”

She dropped her voice into a straight-razor whisper.

“…I’ll see you where you sleep.”

Footsteps. Heartbeats.

Vi’s breath rasped in her ears.

Caitlyn was behind her. Light flickered ahead of her.

All I wanted…

That blast meant it could have already gone horribly wrong. Ez could be dead; Garen, Caitlyn’s concealed Warden team, any of them could be dead, even Lux…

Even Jinx.

Risking everything, playing this stupid game, a crazy plan, a crazy, stupid hope…

Powder’s face filled every corner of her thoughts. She was there in every flash and flicker of the dim hexlights. Under the faint ambience of klaxons and squealing radio chatter, there she was, giggling as she scrawled chalk and crayon monsters on the walls.

There she was, glints of purple, smirking in the dark.

Just to see her. Just to talk to her…

Sound, ahead of her, just below. Soft, muffled voices, then a scratchy laugh, icing sweat down Vi’s spine.

It wasn’t in her head. One of the voices was hers.

Vi fought down her thundering heartbeat and the tension in her arms. The Atlas gauntlets weighed on them; the Warden uniform itched on suddenly self-conscious skin.

It felt like hell, felt like shame.

Too late to take it off, now. Too late to put the gloves away.

That would feel like a lie.

Her sister hated liars.

Footsteps. Heartbeats.

“Pow…?” 

Powder’s eyes focused. The face in front of her resolved. The strong cheeks, the scars, the cropped pink hair, the concerned grey eyes.

Vi. Vi ͟vi V̷i̢…

“Hey, you got it!” Vi said, grinning, “Right on!”

Powder gulped, nodded. The boys were catching up. She could see the Rat’s Nest, her goal, right behind Vi-

Vi had fallen into a half-squat.

“Sorry about this, sis…” she sighed, then chuckled, “But you’re gonna have to get past me.”

Powder’s eyes darted up to her sister’s face.

“Vi…you’re the…the snitch? Claggor…got you?”

She shrugged, oblivious to the s̴cri̕b́b̵l̷e͠s on her face, “Happens to everyone, Pow. Just how the game is.”

“Back – back there? You were supposed to chase me,” Powder sniffed, eyes wide, “You let me go!”

“Maybe,” Vi shrugged again, “Maybe I didn’t think I could catch you.”

“B-but you’re a Snitch! You have to!”

“Then this time I will.”

Vi glanced behind her, to the sound of the boys’ voices approaching from the other side of the junkyard.

“C’mon. You’re almost there, just gotta get past me,” Vi hunkered deeper, loose-limbed, watching her, “Keep it low, use your center of gravity. Keep an eye on my reach and get into my blind spots.”

“I-I can’t…”

“You can.”

“Powder - damnit!” shouted a boy’s voice. Mylo and Claggor were close, getting in each other’s way, Mylo still trying to elude the Catcher, Ekko was nowhere to be seen – if Claggor caught him, he’d be a Snitch too, and Vi –

Powder was alone.

…I’ll see you where you sleep…

Ezreal swallowed beneath her, but Jinx saw his eyes resolve into something colder, more certain of where they stood.

Good. She’d made her intentions clear.

Time to move on.

“‘kay?” Jinx grinned, patting his chest, “Cool! Good talk! Gotta make tracks, Ez-buddy, so you just stay here all cozy with Mr Snappy while I skedaddle with my shiny new-”

Clang.

Weight rang out on steel. Boots, solid. Someone landing on the gantry.

Jinx’s heart lurched and sank sideways.

Thump. Thump. Hollow footfalls, singing on the metal. Thump, thump. Her heart, roaring in her chest.

Ezreal’s look of anguish and grim death shifted into a small, relieved smirk.

He didn’t say a damn word.

“Powder!”

It hit Jinx like a slap.

Her heartbeat picked up. Her eyes froze. Slowly, ever-so-slowly, they lifted.

The darkened arch at the end of the walkway filled with presence.

Ezreal, the gauntlet below, the distant flash of Lux’s light, all of it disappeared. Her world narrowed to that shadowed space. Jinx could almost smell her – that warm, familiar sweat and solace, strength and sister – almost feel the solidity of her there, before she even saw the outline of broad shoulders, the reddish-pink sweep of her hair…

Her face, just the same. A tiny little bit older. A few more miscellaneous scars; a little filled-out, maybe.

Eating better. A nice soft Piltie life.

Jinx’s eyes flicked down to the silhouette of the stupid, giant gauntlets. Her Fat Hands. The epaulettes on her shoulders, the hints of Enforcer in her clothing, her stance.

She wore an echo of the pleading puppy look Jinx had left her tied to a chair with a year ago, and an edge of hesitant guilt.

Knowing she had just said the wrong thing. The wrong name. Again.

The scribbles came crawling right away. Jinx scrunched her brows and forced them back, forced herself to see, even if it made her whole body shake like a leaf.

Vi’s eyes softened on her face, her big fat bleeding heart bared in them, but when they fell on Ezreal – still pinned under her, the chittering grenade locked in his fingers –

They hardened to something both steely and resigned.

“Let him go,” Vi called out to her, “I put him up to it. It’s not his fault.”

Al̛l y̴our ̵Fa̢u̧l̢T A̶L̨L͜ ͝Yo̷UR͜ FA͘UL҉T͝…

“I just … wanted to talk to you,” Vi kept walking, her gait slow, steady, her eyes never leaving Powder’s Jinx’s own… “Just the two of us. He walks away safe, and we can do that. Just like we both want.”

Like I want…what do I want…

Jinx licked her lips, darting her eyes around like an animal, “Vi…”

Why did I do this?

“Ez, you okay there, buddy?” Vi called out, keeping her eyes on Jinx.

“…sure,” he replied, shooting her an imploring glare, “Fine. Peachy. Never better. Thanks Vi, how are you?”

Jinx tried to keep her eyes on her sister’s face – tried to keep it Vi’s face – even with the scribbles and scratches crawling all over it, painting it with horns and teeth. Jinx pulled her gaze down and saw what clinked with each of Vi’s steps.

Vi slowed her steps, breathed out, and followed Jinx’s eyes to her hip, where it hung. Battered old metal. Brassy, the flared end bolted on with handmade additions – metal cut and painted to match her stupid Fat Hands –

Jinx sucked in a breath.

…the square…Top Hat’s dumb trap…I dropped it…and she…

“Yeah,” Vi said softly, “Got your message. Here I am, sis. Playing the game with you, just like you wanted.”

She let her eyes slide briefly down to the space below, the gauntlet, and smiled, like a dopey dog hoping for pats.

“…you’re having fun, right?”

Jinx laughed. She didn’t know where it came from, but then she never did; it just bubbled up, twitched and spasmed out of her. A short sharp laugh, this time, spurting like blood from a fresh wound.

“Ooh, yeah, you guys went all out for us, I feel so special! Where is Cupcake, anyway…?” Jinx narrowed her eyes, “Hiding back there with a big ol’ forty-cal aimed right between my pinkie peepers, am I right? I already smelled all your piggies in their hidey-holes, watchin’ the show…”

“She’s giving us space,” Vi said, “We’re gonna do this my way. No more tricks. Just you and me.”

Jinx’s laughter soured.

“Sure, no more airships, no more floodlights, no more tranq darts?” Jinx sneered, “What happened? She run out?”

Vi’s scarred lip and brow scrunched. “I wasn’t in on that plan,” she said, “Believe me, I let Caitlyn know she screwed up. That’s why she agreed to this.”

Jinx tipped her head. Sh̨e’s lyi̛ng̛ to͏ ́y͡o҉u, hissed her Voices.

“Ooh, lover’s spat, big sis?” she smirked, “Thought you Enforcers were all on the same piggy page.”

Vi flinched and looked down at herself, “This isn’t - I’m  not-”

“What? An Enforcer?” Jinx scoffed, shook her head and snarled, “Don’t lie to me. Sevika was right, again! Wasn’t she? You…you got one taste of – that – that Piltie poontang and you hopped the river and never looked back-”

“That’s not how it is-” Vi protested, lifting her huge gloves, dwarfing her real hands, the scarred bound hands that touched her cheek so gently, “Look-”

“-So what? You get off on beating down us dirty poors now? With your big Fat Hands? That how you roll now, sis?”

“You know it’s not,” Vi ground her teeth, “How the hell could you think that?”

Jinx snapped her teeth and growled, forgetting Ezreal still pinned under her. He gave an alarmed grunt as she jostled the chattering grenade –  Jinx had built her Chompers good, though, she knew it wouldn’t blow until he let go. Probably.

Jinx didn’t much care right now if it did because her sister – Sevika was right – was one of…one of them…

You did this. You pus͞h͢ed her away. ‘T͡he҉ ͡N͠ew ҉Us’. You picked your seat…you m̴ad͝ that she picked hers?

“How could I?” Jinx hated the catch in her voice, it felt weak, “How could you –”

“To find you!” Vi snarled back, clenching her giant fingers in frustration, “The city was on fire! Everyone was hunting you! I put on this badge – so it would be me and Cait – not some trigger-happy Enforcer – only us, that was the deal –”

“As if they’d get me,” Jinx snorted, “So what, you hunt me down so your Cupcake could kill me herself?”

“No!” her sister growled, “We were the only ones trying to take you alive! We still are! Cait – despite everything you’ve done to her – she still believes you deserve a chance! And so do I!”

It hit Jinx right in the chest and stole the bitter retort from her lungs.

Vi took a step toward her, eyes imploring.

You’re still…still trying to save me…Still, after everything.

After I showed you who what I r͟ea͜l̛ly am.

“Shut up,” she told her Scribbles and Scratches, “Shut up all of you I need to think I just need…”

Vi took another step.

“I made you an offer once,” she said, “It still stands. If this town hates us, then fuck this town. We’ll get you away from here, somewhere safe – wherever you want. Then we can talk. I can listen. Whatever we need to do, whoever we need to be. It’s whatever you want, sis.”

Jinx tore her eyes away from Vi and squeezed them shut, tried to blot all the sneering voices from her head and find something- anything- to answer.

She found Ezreal staring cautiously up at her.

Then she found a bitter, raucous laugh.

“Sisssss…” she hissed, “Sister-sister – sure hmmm what do I want –” Her teeth champed, and she planted a knee on Ezreal’s chest – he groaned, but to his credit, didn’t give a peep other than a pleading look back at Vi –

“…I wanna play a new game,” Jinx said, “Let’s play ‘I let your puppy go… if you say my name’.”

She locked mauve eyes to her sister’s gray.

“My real one.”

“…Pow, I-” Vi flinched, looked at her stupid gloves and clenched her eyes, turning her gaze away.

“I told you,” Jinx growled in warning, pressing down on Ez a little harder. One hand hovered near Zapper, fingers twitching, “That’s not my name. The only Pow-Pow you’ll ever see again is right here…”

She ran her other hand lovingly down the flank of her minigun.

“…and she’s soooo bored right now,” Jinx clicked her tongue, “So, gosh golly, Officer Vi, seems in all this excitement I forgot who I am – say, what’s my name again?”

Vi looked up at her, her heart bleeding in her eyes. Her lips opened as if to say something, but a sick expression crossed her features, and she snapped her mouth shut again.

“…don’t make me do this,” she whispered, her giant metal fingers clicking as the hands inside them shook, “Please. I can’t.”

I can’t…this isn’t what I wanted…please, don’t…don’t make her, said Powder’s voice, far-off.

“You picked my seat,” Jinx growled, “And you can’t even say it? Fine.”

She flicked Zapper from their holster and pressed them into Ezreal’s forehead.

“Don’t,” Vi warned, her eyes going steely again, “He’s not involved. You want to point that at someone, point it at me.”

“Oh, he’s involved, don’t you worry,” Jinx smirked. “Now, let’s see…is pretty-boy here worth more than Cupcake?” Jinx twisted her lips into a bitter sneer, “...he kissed my girlfriend without asking so I’m leaning no…”

“Wait – don’t –” Vi took a step forward and opened her mouth to say something, plead, negotiate, threaten – instead, she blinked. “Your…huh…?”

Vi furrowed her brows; somewhere below, light flashed, getting closer – Garen’s booming voice shouted ‘Lux!’ and Vi’s eyebrows, despite themselves, shot up.

“…you’re kidding me,” Vi gaped, “No way!”

Jinx caught a choking snarl in the back of her throat, “Why is everyone so freaking surprised?!”

“I’m…wow,” Vi laughed, actually laughed at that, “Gotta say, hella impressed. I mean, Lux? Isn’t she basically a princess?”

Ezreal whimpered. Jinx’s snarl choked off and, against all odds, she felt heat on her cheeks.

Vi laughed again, pacing on the gantry, absorbing it. 

“…Well, well, look at you, sis, hot damn-” Vi glanced at Ez, “-oof, sorry, um…I mean, tough luck, buddy, but also – did you really kiss Lux without asking? Big nope, just saying.”

Ezreal looked up to Jinx with the biggest, bluest just fucking shoot me eyes she’d ever seen, and for some freaking reason, instead of itching her trigger finger, it made her not want to.

Maybe just to spite him. Or maybe that little burbling voice under the Scratches, warm as sunlight, saying ‘because I don’t want you to’.

“…Vi’s right,” Ezreal finally opened his mouth to croak, “…you got what you wanted. I’m out, man,” he gave Vi a pained, almost betrayed look, “I’m out.”

“Argh!” Jinx scowled and dug Zapper into his forehead, hard enough to leave a ring, “Shut up! I’m trying to have a hostage situation here!”

Vi wasn’t smiling now. Tension crept back into her shoulders as she slumped.

“Do we have to?” she sighed, “Just let him go. Please.”

“Why? What is he to you?”

“A pain in my ass,” Vi said, “But he doesn’t deserve this. Let’s talk.”

“Not until you say it.”

Say it. I want it in your voice. I want you to look me in the eyes and –

“I won’t,” Vi said softly, “Don’t punish this idiot for it, okay? I’m not asking you to be her again. I know I – I know I can’t have her back.”

Jinx looked up at her, fingers slackening on her gun.

“What?” she snarled, “Then why won’t you say it?!”

“I tried, I tried for a whole damn year, but - now you’re here – right here…I can’t,” Vi whispered, “I’ll call you anything else you want, anything but that. Please – how can we be a ‘new us’ – if we’re just reliving that night – punishing me – punishing yourself – over and over for something that wasn’t–” Vi’s eyes were wet now, “We’ve both lived that horrible fucking night enough…I’m not dragging you back there with me. I won’t.”

She lifted her big, stupid hands, palms up, the servos whining as Hextech powered down to the bare minimum she needed to hold them up.

“I can’t,” she said, “You’re not – that word. It wasn’t your fault, it never was. It was mine.”

Fire. Her stinging cheek. Her sister’s monstrous eyes, twisted with ha͘t̶e. Iro̵ņ-s͠tr̴ong̸ ̸f̧in̸gers͜,̕ ͘cr̛ushi͢n͞g̢ ̕h̛er c̛h͝in…͢a̢ll̶y͟óu̴r̛F͢aul͞t̵AL͢LYo̡u͘R̶F̕au͘l҉T̀YÒu’r҉eA͝J̀IN͏X͏…

Jinx’s eyes blanked.

“No,” she whispered, “No no no you can’t…you don’t get it at all - you can’t take it from me…you can’t – I’m Jinx I’m a Jinx – stands for Jinx – that’s me – that’s mine – you can’t take it back – it’s not yours – it’s mine mine mine me me –”

She clicked Zapper’s hammer back.

“Wait-” Vi called from far away... “NO!”

Mr Snappy’s chattering teeth whispered do it.

“JINX!”

Another voice. Bright. Warm. Yellow. You…

…L̕u͠x̶…l̷ux…lUX̡l͞UxL̷u͜x…̸

Jinx snapped out of it. Ezreal was white as a sheet under her, sweat beading on his brow – but she hadn’t pulled the trigger…

“Lux?” Ezreal croaked out, but Jinx felt her Sunbeam’s eyes only on her. Only for her.

Vi stood closer than she remembered, body tensed for action, Hextech glowing in her clenched fists. But she’d stopped, an anguished look on her face, and behind Jinx, at her back – Light.

“Jinx, he’s not part of this,” her Lux said, “You promised me. Let him go. Talk to your sister. And then we can all go home.”

Jinx twisted to look at her.

“…Not like this,” she whispered.

“No…not like this…” Powder whispered.

“C’mon, sis,” Vi’s voice said, gently. “You’re so close. You can do this. You just gotta get past me.”

Powder had to close her eyes and swallow.

“You didn’t try to catch me…you’ll let me…you’ll let me…win…I don’t want…”

“Hey no, Pow. Not this time, okay? I’ll play fair, I – Powder? What’s wrong?”

Her shoulders had started to heave with her quickening breaths. Claggor and Mylo tumbled around the corner, their faces cut into the gurning màs͏ks òf ͝E̛n̛forcȩrs. Powder turned back to Vi-

The s̶crib̨blęs spread up Vi’s cheeks, turning her face into a leeri͞n͘g,̸ s͏a̛w-t͏oot̨h̵ed ̀rict̕u͜s.

Face frozen, eyes wide, Powder gave a fierce shake of her head, and screamed.

She lunged between Vi’s legs, ducked low and dodged forward – as Vi grabbed for her, she flung the Ratbag past her, right at the Nest –

“Powder!”

She didn’t wait to see what happened. Ignoring them all, she ran, ran, ran, until she found a dark dark place to crawl into and hide, vanish, disappear…

“Not like…this. This wasn’t-”

“Yes, Jinx. This was the deal,” Lux said softly. Her eyes arrested Jinx – huge, blue, knowing, and caring – but full of that Demacian steel, “You know it was. Let him go.”

“Why?” Jinx gritted her teeth, “I’m a Jinx, I’m crazy and I’m a killer, why should I?”

“Because you gave your word,” said Lux, “And you’re not a liar.”

But you are, whispered a voice that sounded too much like Silco, a pretty little de͘ćei͟ve͜r͝ with a lying goldeǹ ̵ton͟ģu̢e. I told you, daughter, everyone else betrays us…

Jinx swallowed.

“No, no, this is all wrong, this-” she whispered, and her grip on Ezreal slackened just a little –

Too late, she saw the marks on his cheeks were glowing bright, and the glint of the little shiny multi-tool between his fingers as it slit the last strip of duct tape.

“So yeah,” he said, with a hard look that bled to heartbreak as his eyes found Lux, “Screw all of this.”

Ezreal twisted under Jinx, throwing her off-balance, lobbed Mr Snappy away from everyone on the gantry…

Jinx snarled and wrapped her arms around him as he pressed his fingers into his palm and her world sucked into her belly in a flash of golden motes –

…a sticky end of tape clung to Mr Snappy. It knocked his aim off. The grenade clipped a beam and bounced.

Her last impression was of Vi and Lux, together, screaming her name – her real one – and of Ezreal’s oh shit, I fucked up face pressed up close to hers as the two of them blipped together.

Lux screamed her name – and so did Vi - too late.

Jinx was gone.

Gone in a blink of gold, motes flashing where she and Ez had been. Lux gaped, but she didn’t have time to process it –

Because the mis-flung Chomper clipped an overhanging beam, bounced back toward the gantry – its jaws clamped on the rail.

Vi looked Lux in the eye and dove straight at her.

Lux flung her staff and flared her Light.

The staff passed and the iridescent bubble went up around them just as Vi tackled her in those giant gauntlets – knocking the wind out of her – and body-shielded her from the explosion thundering at their backs.

Blue Hextech and luminous magic thrummed together. Everything blanked into smoke, noise, and light.

The gantry squealed beneath them; Lux, stunned, was aware only of the solid strength of Vi’s arms around her, flesh and metal – alive or dead, she couldn’t tell – and then her stomach lurched out her throat as the walkway gave way…

They fell together.

Garen’s footsteps thundered on the steel walkways, his blade flashing – cleaving the lifeless barriers that leapt before him – crashing through the traps and dummies, slowing him down only momentarily in pursuit of his fleet-footed sister…

His eyes still wore motes of her light behind them, still stung – she’d slipped away from him, light as a fleeing deer, in those moments of blindness and surprise, and now –

And now, all he could do was watch her up there on the walkway high above, amid the bloom of a bright explosion.

All he could do was watch her fall…

“Lux!”

Caitlyn sprinted from her vantage point, springing down the stairs half a landing at a time, her ankles jarred by the hard landing even through her boots…

Her thoughts were full of Vi and the roar of the explosion and the smoke and noise and the heart-pounding possibility that–

“VI!”

She hurled herself through the darkened doorway - and caught herself at the edge. The walkway had torn away completely, vanishing into twisted tangles of metal and beyond, only a drifting cloud of bitter smoke.

No Jinx. No Ezreal. No Lux, and no Vi…

Caitlyn’s heart leapt to her throat. Her blood ran cold as she stared down, down…

“Vi…”

Her hands fumbled as she drew up the rifle, the scope to her eye, searching…

And finding, amid a shattered platform below, two bodies lying tangled amid a hint of drifting glow.

Darkness. Stillness. Scribbles and scratches, fading from her thoughts, as her heartbeat slowed, as her breathing stopped hurting and squeezing at her chest.

A faint blue glow creeping in at the edges of the dark.

Voices. Distant. Muffled. Shouts.

Her name. Over and over. Closer and further away.

“-always doing weird stuff like this, Vi! C’mon, we played this game a hundred times, why’s she got to freak out now? There’s something wrong with her, I swea-”

“Mylo if you don’t shut up and look for her, I swear, you’ll be the one they never find.”

“Hey Vi,” Claggor’s voice, “Those prints look like her shoes?”

“- yes, she’s got to be close, Powder! Powder!?”

Her mouth, dry and bitter, struggled to scratch out the words.

“Vi…” Powder swallowed, and tried again, “Vi!”

Blue shone closer. Powder squinted as she saw the silhouette lean into her hiding space, resolving itself into Vi’s face.

Softer. No scribbles now. Smiling gently. Her real smile, her real face.

“Hey,” she said, “There’s our girl.”

She had a sputtering, smoking blue flare in the other hand. The flare Vander made her carry, every time they went out playing games in the junkyards. The flare she was only to pull to stop the game, if someone was hurt, or something dangerous had happened, or one of the kids had disappeared…

To call everyone back together.

Powder’s eyes filled with tears.

“Vi…I…I’m sorry, I…I messed up, I…I didn’t mean to…”

A warm, calloused hand reached in and touched her cheek.

“Shhh, hey, no, you didn’t,” Vi reached down and took her hand, “You didn’t mess up. Actually, kinda the opposite. Guess what?”

She pressed the half-deflated rat-bag into Powder’s palm.

“Congrats, Pow. You won.”

“Ugh, c’mon, Vi,” Mylo groaned, “She threw it in the Nest, that’s not how you win, you gotta carry-”

Vi gave him a look that could cut glass and crack concrete. The whinging grimace fell off his face instantly.

“Dunno, man,” said Claggor, hovering just on her other side, “Never heard that rule before. Rats get the Ratbag back to the Nest, they win. No rule about how.”

Powder swallowed, “R…really? You’re not just…saying…”

Claggor shrugged. To his credit, he didn’t even look at Vi.

“Nah,” he said, “Vander’s rules. He said that’s how he played it when he was a kid.”

“If Vander said it,” said Ekko, peeking in from behind Vi, “That’s how it is, right?”

Mylo looked queasy but sighed his acquiescence and slumped into a sulk.

“Yeah, okay,” he said, “You won, Powder. C’mon out.”

Vi doused the flare and handed it to Claggor. She stretched her hand out to Powder.

Hesitating, with small coltish steps, Power stumbled out into the light.

Blinking away golden motes that snaked and seared within the darkness, Jinx’s senses swam slowly into the Light.

Somewhere, she could hear Ezreal coughing. Jinx wrenched open one eye with great difficulty to see a small industrial ceiling; they were in some sort of enclosed room. Ez lay next to her, on his back, his skin a sickly pale, small flickers of blue-green at his cheeks.

“…it’s…not supposed to…be able to…do that…” he gasped, “…lucky we aren’t…ugh…fused together in a… mutant pile of goop…”

“…better n’ sex?” Jinx scratched out, but her stomach was twisting like a pile of mating snakes. She groaned and rolled with a clunk onto her side, hazy eyes swimming over the details of the room –

“…Oh no no…Lux…” Ezreal groaned and whispered suddenly, “Lux…”

…he promptly turned over onto his stomach, pushed himself onto his knees and vomited into the grating floor. Then he rolled away from it, sobbed Lux’s name once more, and reached out his gauntlet hand before he passed out.

Jinx’s eyes flew open.

Lux…the railing, the Chomper - Vi! VI!͝ L̕U̷X̵!

She sucked in a breath and scrambled to her feet –

She beheld a huge glass wall – no, a viewport – banks of Hextech batteries piped into the walls, the ceilings – a wide console desk with a big, mechanized chair, two Tinforcers standing guard and –

A muscular black woman with buzzed pink hair, in an engineer’s overalls, sat at the big chair, a coffee mug dangling in her grip and her jaw hanging open.

“Ez, what the hell are you-” she stared at the sick on the floor and grimaced – “Oh, really mate?” and then up at the click of Zapper’s barrel pointed right at her, “…oh, bugger.”

Jinx, gasping, her shoulders shaking, tried to force her wandering aim to fix on the woman’s head, “S-so you’re the robot lady? Knew she had someone good with Hextech…heh, big fan of yer work…”

The seated woman gave a cautious smirk and lifted her hands – a mechanical arm snaked out of her chair and took her coffee.

Five more sprouted from the chair, brandishing various guns and a spark welder, all pointed at Jinx.

“You’ve been keepin’ me at my tools,” she said, “I’m Zevi. You can call me Chief.”

Jinx stared at Zevi’s guns, calculating how many she could take out before she went down -

“Jinx,” Jinx grinned, unhinged, but it didn’t reach her eyes because L̡ux ̸V̧i Lux̀ Vi V̕i̷ Vi͜ L̀ux̷- “Stands for-”

She shook her head fiercely, lifted her hand as if she was going to drop Zapper – and in a flick switched him for Fishbones, swung down from her shoulder, jaws snapping open, rocket primed within.

The bots’ guns all loaded with a mechanical chorus of clicks.

“-stands for I don’t have time for this shit because Lux and Vi might be dead!”

“Vi - okay, woah now –” Zevi’s brows arched, “Slow down. You fire that in here, you’ll kill us both, let’s take a different tac-”

“Uhuh. Yeah?” Jinx flew her eyes wide and grinned until her lips cracked, “Vi. Lux. Eyes on ‘em. Now!”

Zevi sucked in a breath, nodded, and kept her guns trained on Jinx as she turned to her control panel. Twisting dials, flicking switches, until a hum of blue-white Hex-symbols spread across the glassy mirror in front of her, sketched wobblingly between the shifting needles and lenses of its elaborate mechanical frame.

“Shit,” she murmured, “There they are.”

Jinx, ignoring the bots entirely, shouldered Fishbones and stalked up to the woman’s side.

And there they were, a shimmery blue sketch of tiny, tumbled figures, like broken dolls amid the smoke.

Her whole world, lying there together.

Strong arms swept around Powder and held her close. Into Vi’s tight strength, crushing her but never hurting her, shielding her from anything, everything, that might ever try to.

“Hey,” said Vi, smiling above her head, “You did good, Pow. Great, actually. You never won before, right? You know what that means…”

Powder’s spirits lifted.

“…Jericho’s?”

Vi split a grin and scruffed her hair. “Loser’s shout.”

“All right!” Ekko whooped, eyes wide.

Claggor sighed dramatically and fumbled for a few sticky cogs in his pocket, “Guess I’m up.”

“…just a stupid game,” Mylo muttered under his breath.

The boys started moving off; Vi watched them go, but hung back, waiting for Powder.

“Vi…”

Her sister paused, looking back at her.

“I’m sorry I hid. Y-you should be mad at me…I just got scared…”

“It’s all right. I mean, you know why it’s not safe to run off on your own, so don’t do it again, okay? But it’s okay to be scared. Sometimes it’s what keeps us alive.”

Powder nodded, swallowing another surge of guilt for Vi needing to light the flare, because of her…

“Did I…really win?”

Vi smiled and nodded. She put an arm out and Powder slunk to her side, tucking under her strong embrace and pressing her face to Vi’s tummy.

“You got it past me. Fair and square,” Vi said, with a faint roll of her eyes, “Mylo just loves to whine when anyone does anything cool who isn’t him.”

Powder giggled and nodded. But her smile faded as she thought of the feeling – when the treasure was hers – when she’d won – when it’d all been taken away –

No. Not again. Not like that. She wouldn’t let the monsters win.

“Vi…” Powder fidgeted in her pockets, “I want to come. On the next job. I’m ready.”

Vi paused. Powder saw a flicker of hesitation in her eyes, and it stabbed her somewhere deep and dark.

But then Vi took a deep breath, smiled at her, and nodded.

“I’ll talk to Vander,” she said, “If you say you’re ready, Pow…then you’re ready.”

Powder smiled back at her. A timid smile, growing in strength.

She wouldn’t be weak. She wouldn’t be scared.

She’d win again.

Chapter Text

It was never just going to be a game…

Caitlyn clenched her teeth. She climbed with fumbling hands – shaking hands – down the emergency access ladder, through the cloud of lingering smoke that coated her nostrils and clung to her lungs like the Progress day bombing – like that night on the bridge – like the wreckage of the Council building – smoke that smelled like death and fire and Jinx…

What if the worst has happened?

She held her breath against the bitter fume and pushed her intrusive thoughts down, as best she could…

What if Vi is dead?

…they came on anyway.

What will you do…? Without her?

The weight of the rifle slung over her shoulder, shifting to rub at her back and jostle her hair with each rung descended.

What will you do about Jinx?

Her boots hit the floor.

If Vi is gone, what’s really to stop you pulling that trigger…?

Caitlyn closed her eyes and controlled her panicked breath. Cool, measured, rational…

“Me,” she whispered to herself.

Caitlyn unslung the rifle from her back, and moved in the quick, cautious advance of a skilled hunter through the darkened maze she had built.

Faces screamed in the flames, condemning her, pleading for her help.

She could do nothing but run.

The wheat burned brightest. Her eyes stung and watered; drifting cinders danced hither and thither. Giant stone wings swept above in the darkening skies; the cinders followed in waves.

The staff in her hand twisted and writhed, alive, digging long thorns into her flesh. She stumbled, knees splashing in the water. The culvert tunnel ahead of her a black mouth, fire glinting on the teeth of the raised grate that promised her freedom, escape…

…into the dark.

“Come on!” said the blonde boy ahead of her, his hand stretched out, face half in shadow, eyes burning white pinpoints, “I know a safe place. We’ll go there together, my princess, just like in the storybooks, just take my hand…”

“…and you’ll be the devil on my back,” whispered Jinx in her ear, slippery fingers between her thighs, bubblegum and gunsmoke upon their joined lips, “I’ll be the angel in your head, my…”

“… Little Light…”

She turned, and behind her in the burning square, beneath the shadow of the circling colossus, Sylas knelt with his head on a wooden block, staring at her imploringly with blood trickling down his cheeks from hollow eyes.

“You abandoned our cause, our people. You left us behind to die alone…”

“No!” she cried out, but her brother stood above him, looming like a vengeful giant with her Light glowing reflected in the bright blade of his raised sword.

The sword flashed. Blood fountained onto the stones.

The head rolled to Lux’s feet, but the staring face wasn’t Sylas’ face, but another man who had died years ago, on his knees in the cold rainy street, begging that it hadn’t been his fault…

Her words. They’d been powerless now as then.

She looked up to her brother, but Garen only smiled at her, and lifted his fínge̡rtip̴ ͞t͏o ͝his-

Giant metal hands snapped out of the dark, crushing them both in a welter of blood.

Lux shuddered and twitched against the walls of metal clasping her. Everything hurt. Giant metal hands…she lay in them, breathing dust and motes of blue Hextech glow and warm iridescent threads of her own Light…

But her mouth tasted like the cold black dirt of a rain-soaked grave, and then, as consciousness returned – like soured milk and a hint of metal on her back teeth.

It didn’t come back right away, what had happened, how she’d gotten here. But, driven from unsettling dream to stark reality by sluggish flashes of panic, Lux turned as best she could and pawed at the warm body tucked against her back, to seek for blood, for wounds, for movement in the chest.

…please Light let there be breath let there be a heart beating there…

The body groaned, and Lux’s heart restarted.

“…oh, hi, Elba,” croaked Vi, “…fancy meeting you here.”

Lux caught a laugh in her throat that became a relieved sob. She tucked her face against Vi’s shoulder and clung her hands tightly to her collar.

She let the Light flow through metal and cloth and flesh and bone, bouncing on an unseen spectrum through Vi, back to Lux, painting brief echoes behind her closed eyes of what it had passed through…

Bruised muscle, old scars, the woman was a mess of healed wounds, tough as the streets that had borne her, and battered to hell by the blast and the drop…but nothing screamed broken or crushed or bleeding inside.

Her Prismatic Barrier couldn’t have protected them both against the full blast of a Chomper and a fall from that height, but, combined with whatever force shield Vi had in her gauntlets, it’d been enough to spare them the worst.

Lux still felt like she’d been stuffed inside a giant cooking pot and smacked against a stone wall.

“…not… my best disguise,” Lux admitted, breathless, muscles screaming when she pushed out air to speak, “…but… hello. Nice …to meet you. I’m Lux.”

“Vi,” the other woman said, “Guess it stands for ‘vindicated’, heh…”

Vi sucked in a pained breath, her eyes cracking open, fixed on the ceiling.

Her eyes fell on Lux. A slow smirk spread its way across her lips.

“So. You and my sister, huh?”

Garen’s eyes had followed their fall, but he had not seen them land.

The trajectory from the smoking wreckage of the walkway above ended somewhere behind the tangle of stairs, poles and platforms to his left. Garen grunted and pushed himself up one of the ramps to seek a vantage point, only to be accosted by more strange, mechanical dummies swinging clumsy batons at him-

Cursing, he hefted his sword and sprang from the ramp into a pirouette, his blade cleaving two foes in twain in passing. As they slid aside, Garen landed with both booted feet upon the platform and thrust his head out over the edge, peering through the haze in search of his sister.

No sign of Caitlyn, of Ezreal – or of Jinx –

But there was no mistaking the glow of Luxanna’s light.

The light I feared, the light I made her shun and hide…

Once more, saving her when she needed it most, when he could not.

Garen’s fingers squeezed the thin steel railing. But there – there – two silhouettes slowly rising from the rubble, one leaning on the other.

Garen took a deep breath and moved ahead to them – to her.

Lux let her mussed hair hide the pink on her cheeks and glared back at Vi.

“Sh-she told you?”

“Well, no, sort of,” Vi grinned through slightly bloody teeth, “I deduced. Kinda. I’m a detective, didn’t you know? Good to move?”

Lux groaned and nodded, her hot face cupped in her hands, “I…should be…just bruises.”

“Three, two…” without waiting for her own count, Vi let the shuddering Hextech gloves power up and lift Lux away from her – with remarkable gentleness for their evident mechanical force. Set down, she moved quickly to help Vi up to a seated posture…

Lux’s light had not misspoken. Vi was injured, more than she’d let on, her back and shoulder scorched and studded with a few small pieces of shrapnel that had made it through both of their shields and her reinforced Warden jacket.

Hopefully not too far. I didn’t detect any serious injuries, but…she’s bleeding.

The sound of running footsteps alerted them; Lux would recognize her brother’s heavy tread anywhere. Caitlyn could not be far behind.

I need to get away from them. I can’t be taken. I need to find her…

“…hey, look,” said Vi, squinting up at her from where she leaned on one giant fist. “I won’t pretend I know you, or what you’re doing with her, but…”

Lux watched soulful grey eyes search for the right words.

“She’s changed,” Vi said softly, “And I think it’s because of you.”

“Vi, I’m not –” Lux shook her head, “She is who she wants to be. It’s her choice, all of this. You need to know that.”

Vi furrowed her brow but nodded.

“But you still helped. And if-if that means I can trust you then-”

“Luxanna!” Garen’s booming voice. She saw him on one of the platforms through the smoke and lifted her hand to show she was safe.

Vi glanced at the approaching voice, then back to Lux.

 ”-please,” she said, “Why all of this? What does she really want?”

Lux paused.

I wish I could tell you. I wish I could tell you everything. I wish I could make this simple or straightforward like you want it to be.

But I don’t know how to do that, even for myself.

She finally shook her head, slid an arm around Vi’s body, and helped her to her feet. As she did, Lux couldn’t help but privately marvel how the humming light of Hextech stripped the weight from her giant gauntlets; Lux couldn’t have budged her without it.

“She wants what you want, Vi,” she said, her eyes on Garen’s broad shoulders moving through the shadows. Caitlyn was closer still, moving cautiously, her top hat silhouetted by the dull Hex-lights.

She bit her lip, watching the other woman’s gray eyes, full of spikes of half-buried pain. Considering her next words.

Very carefully.

“But she’s at war with herself, do you understand? She’s fighting her own mind, every moment of every day. And she doesn’t always win.”

Vi flinched as if Lux had struck her; she pulled her eyes away and down, haunted and heavy, her shoulders bunching inward.

“I screwed it up,” she whispered, “I thought we could just…talk…but when she was there I – I couldn’t even say her name…”

Lux, hesitantly, reached out to lay her hand on Vi’s arm. Light spilled between her fingers, warm and gentle, subsurface glow painting orange through her flesh. Vi glanced down at her hands and her face softened in awe; the kind of look Lux would never have hoped for in Demacia.

“Vi…”

Lux held her question for a long moment before it finally spilled out.

“Can you love who she is now, all of her, however hard that may be?”

Vi’s brows furrowed. She looked up at Lux and, seeing something in her eyes that Lux didn’t know was there, stared at her, utterly stunned, before her mouth dawned into a wondering smile.

“If you can,” Vi said, “Yeah. I can.”

Lux choked on her breath, and gave Vi her best, most implacable smile. Number thirteen, cool, aloof, unreadable.

She felt the twitch that betrayed it as it crumbled and fell from her lips.

As it did, her brother’s voice overtook her thoughts. Garen’s broad face appeared in her periphery, furrowed in concern. He swept her up and checked her for injuries, despite all her protestations.

Over Garen’s shoulder, Lux heard a cry of “Vi- VI!” as another figure sighted them and broke into a run.

Caitlyn’s look of fear, relief and gratitude nearly broke her heart.

“Hello, Lux,” Caitlyn said, when she was at last done embracing Vi and fussing over her wounds, “You’ve run us a merry chase.”

Lux sighed.

“Hello, Cait,” she said, “It seems I have.”

The control room lay almost silent, save for the tinny melody of old showtunes playing from Zevi’s Hexcoustic gramophone.

Smoke rose in small plumes from bullet holes in the two Tinforcer guards and the sparking gash in the power cable leading to Zevi’s chair.

The mechanized arms lay limp, the coffee dribbled onto the workstation mat, and the only sound was the occasional muffled grunt from Zevi herself, tied and taped as she was back-to-back with the unconscious Ezreal and stuffed into the cleaning closet…

And the faint bleeps and taps as Jinx worked the console, zooming in close on the growing cluster of blue figures on the Hextech viewscreen.

They’re alive. They’re safe.

Her brows twitched above blazing pink eyes, her lips over clenched teeth.

Vi said it wasn’t ỳour͡ ̴fa̛ult. Not your f͘áu͝lt…like she can just say that and Powder will…and Lux…

She flinched as she watched them together, Vi holding Lux in those giant hands, Lux with her arm around Vi, helping her up, leaning to look at her, to speak…

…easy, comfortable. Not the first time they’ve talked.

Be͞hinḑ ̵you͘r̴ ͏bac̕k.

“It’s not true,” Jinx whispered, “She wouldn’t lie to me. She’s …she’s good and bright and-and true…”

How did they really figure it out? Do you think Top Hat is really that good?

They’re old friends, aren’t they, Lux and C͟ait͞lyn̷…

“N-no,” Jinx ground her teeth, fingers hunching on the control-board, “She’s different, Blondie isn’t like her…”

They’re bluebloods, Jinx, said the voice that sounded like Silco, they’re not our kind. Thinking themselves above us, from the moment of their birth. You were never going to be on her level.

She hated that voice, because Fishbones sounded like him too, sometimes, only Fishbones liked Lux, Fishbones preened on and on about how good she was for Jinx, Fishbones would never say something like-

She was usinǵ ͠y͞ou.

“…why would she do that?” Jinx shook her head, staring with flickering eyes at a space just over her shoulder where his red eye burned amid the shadows and scribbles, “She – she stayed with me – we did stuff – we laughed and…ate ice cream and blew stuff up and she…and she was my first…and I was hers…”

That’s not entirely true now, is it? Not the first ‘everything’. The evidence is right in this room, and you’ve gone şo s̴o̵ft you haven’t even remov̶ed him from the board…

“She doesn’t want me to,” Jinx felt hot tears on her cheeks, stinging. The twist of her bitter mouth made her cheeks hurt, her eyes scrunch painfully, irritating the old dark lines of her shimmer veins at their corners.

Jinx pressed her palm into her forehead and leaned into it.

“I promised, and I’m – I’m not a liar…and she told me, anyway! She told me everything…”

Eventually.

How do you know there isn’t more she isn’t telling you at all?

A faraway girl from a faraway place, full of şec̷re͢ts…not her f̧au̕l͞t̡, is it? It’s natural that she guard herself above all else. You offered her protection, and she took it and did what she must to keep it.

“No…no,” Jinx whispered, “She meant it. It’s real…”

She’s a survivor, like you. She’s simply learned the rules of a different game.

“It’s not a game,” Jinx gritted her teeth, but her words felt weaker, more like Powder’s simpering excuses, as the brother’s giant frame appeared and swept Lux up into his arms again; as Caitlyn embraced Vi and she and Lux stood together, checking each other’s wounds…as if they all cared.

Isn’t it? Isn’t all of this just your G͏am͜e̶?

“…Vi’s hurt,” Jinx mumbled, “She’s hurt…I didn’t want that – that wasn’t the game…”

It was always going to be.

The red eye flared in the dark.

Going ơùt together, tḩe wa̛y͞ ̢yo̧u ́came ͝ín͜.

The scrabbles and scratches were screaming and laughing at her, but the laughter sounded like distant cawing.

Far away but getting closer.

Jinx gritted her teeth, watching them all together, their body language, nobody fighting, all of them just talking, like civilized people did, sorting out their problems – and she was their problem, wasn’t she?

Jinx wiped her nose on her wrist and clenched her teeth again. She stared unblinking at the screen.

But she never did blink, did she? Monsters don’t blink…

“Fine,” Jinx growled, “If they wanna play that way…let’s change the rules.”

Dials, toggles, switches. Jinx spared a malevolent glance back at the captive Zevi. She peeled open her control panel and whistled under her breath.

A complex network of Hextech runes carved into node plates connected by orderly Hex-conductive circuitry. Jinx had seen this hand at work before, though – the same as on the internals of the giant mech she and Lux had smashed in that Piltie plaza.

Runes for control, targeting, reactive behaviour, the repair pulse, passing messages from tin can to tin can…oooh…

“Nice setup you got here…so much cool stuff to break,” Jinx giggled, and flicked her eyes left to something that caught her attention.

A paper file on the desk, half-sopping with spilled coffee, and marked with a red CONFIDENTIAL – SHERIFF’S OFFICE. The title below in black.

“Operation: FOXTRAP.”

“…’Foxtrap’, huh?” Jinx smiled slyly to herself.

Wicked faces leering gleefully over her shoulder, Jinx reached for her tool belt.

The pounding of Caitlyn’s heart and the fear in her spine had barely subsided; sliding her arms away from Vi, hating that her hands were once more daubed in her lover’s blood, Caitlyn sighed, staring at the object of their long search, in the flesh, for the first time.

Blonde hair spilling about her shoulders, the bright blue eyes – just the same – still had that porcelain princess visage with the wide, expressive smile that charmed or concealed so effortlessly. But she was older – hints of athletic form under her battered Demacian armor, a woman’s definition to the cherubic face Caitlyn remembered, the pale seams and nicks of scars here and there.

A soul-weariness behind the bright blue sparkle of her eyes. They’d seen too much to be ever called ‘innocent’, to any observer with an ounce of sense.

Luxanna Crownguard, here in Piltover, running with Jinx…

“Well,” Caitlyn forced a thin smile, “The last time I spoke more than two words to you at a gala, you were about knee high to my father and had on a little frilly blue dress. You tried to bribe me to let you read all the books in the Kiramman library in exchange, if I recall, for a kiss from your brother.”

Garen, over her shoulder, tending Vi’s injuries, cleared his throat loudly and stared down at his sister in bemused surprise. His patient, meanwhile, snorted contained laughter.

And Lux’s air of cautious stillness – like a doe paused in the instant before it bounded into the woods – melted away to a mild chuckle.

“Oof, it was a good plan! How was I supposed to know you didn’t like boys?” Lux puffed her cheeks and blew out a breath, then gave Cait that same butter-wouldn’t-melt smile she’d worn when she’d made that very offer. “It’s nice to see you, Caitlyn.”

“Lux,” Cait couldn’t help a smile of her own. Lux’s smile had matured with the rest of her but stayed just as infectious. “I’d say it’s nice to see you too, but that wouldn’t exactly be true, would it?”

Lux gave a small huff of a sigh and kept her sunny smile up.

Caitlyn’s neck prickled. The Demacian girl had made herself quite a name in diplomatic circles, despite her youth. One did not do that without extensive training in being exactly what people expected you to be until you weren’t.

But Caitlyn Kiramman wasn’t one of her parents’ rich associates, easily flattered by a warm and well-bred smile. She was the Kiramman heir and the Sherriff of Piltover.

“I have questions, to put it mildly. We’re going to have a long discussion about…” Caitlyn shook her head, “Everything. But we need to find her first. And our time may be very limited.”

Anyone else might have been forgiven for missing the nigh-imperceptible flicker of Lux’s smile.

“I’m sorry, Cait. I don’t know where she is.”

“And you’d not give her up if you did,” Caitlyn narrowed her eyes, “Would you?”

“Ez blipped,” Vi cut in, grunting a little in pain as Garen picked a piece of metal from her back and cleaned the wounds, “Just before the bomb went off, and I think…I think he blipped them both somewhere.”

Caitlyn’s eyes narrowed further.

“Where?”

The walls screeched; or rather, the Hexcoustic speakers set into the ceiling and about the chamber at various intervals sprang to sudden life. Garen hoisted his blade, Vi tensed up, Lux squeaked and jumped.

:: Hiiii little rats… :: sang Jinx’s voice, from everywhere, :: Whatcha dooin’ down there? ::

Their eyes lifted to the ceiling.

“Oh, bloody hell,” whispered Caitlyn, “She’s in the control room.”

Jinx giggled to herself, twirling her braid about one finger. She plucked out another Hextech node, amid a familiar tingly crackle of magical energies, and plopped it into a different empty slot.

Smart of Miss Chief back there to make her system so customizable. Quick to adapt to any situation! Really, very neat. Perfect, actually…

Jinx tore her eyes from the four figures on the screen and scowled.  Let them sweat a minute, this is gonna be fun…

Jinx bit her lip as she slid the locking mechanism into place, twisted the control dial and watched the Reassembly Pulse do its thing.

Before her eyes, the mangling she’d made of Zevi’s two guard-bots unwrapped itself, metal popping and cracking beneath Hextech flashes as if invisible hands were punching the bent brass panels of their chassis back into order.

“Default pattern…” Jinx muttered, twisting another dial and pressing the Big Button underneath it, “…Reset.”

Across the room, Zevi scowled at her and wriggled against her bonds, muffled cursing through the tape over her mouth.

Jinx grinned and pulled the radio receiver back over.

:: Sooo…Foxtrap, huh? I get it, cuz I’m so foxy, right? That was fun. I had fun. Did you have fun? ::

“Zevi’s up there,” Vi muttered, “Fuck, do you think Jinx hurt her?”

“She wouldn’t,” Lux murmured under her breath, “We talked about this…”

Caitlyn glanced at the blonde girl’s tilted profile, studying her tense, anguished features. One theory confirmed…

“What about Ezreal?” Garen growled, “If she considers him a rival for your-” Garen hesitated, tangling in his tongue, “-affections, sister-”

“Gloves come off,” said Vi, her face cold, eyes meeting Caitlyn’s. For her sister’s jealousy, after all, Piltover had already burned once.

:: Two problems, though, one – I’m getting bored. Two – I feel a bit left out of your little party down there. It’s almost like – stop me if I’m wrong here – like you’re trying to take Flashlight away from me. ::

“…no, Jinx,” Lux whispered, then shouted, “No! Jinx, it’s not true, that’s not what’s happening at all! Listen-”

“She can’t hear you,” said Vi, wincing as she pushed back to her feet, “We’ve got to get to a radio. Lux, you need to talk to her – Cait, where-”

“Top lane,” Caitlyn pointed at one of the branches of the obstacle course, “Doesn’t look as damaged by the explosion, it might be functional – we’ll need to evacuate the others, too – Zayne, Mir, Simeon…”

“Move it!” Vi hustled them, “C’mon!”

:: So I was thinking, :: Jinx went on, :: Luxie told me this story about some dead Noxious guys who just wouldn’t stay down… that sounded neat! And scary. For you. ::

Lux, already halfway up the ramp, turned to furrow her brow at the ceiling, eyes tracking across to the hole they’d dropped down from.

“Oh no,” she said.

Jinx lowered the receiver and turned to the Tinforcer she was tinkering with. She closed its control panel and set the lock, engaging its new programming – and giggling at its new look.

The golem’s eyes flared blue.

“Hmm…” Jinx thumbed through Zevi’s notes and raised her brow, “Record new voice challenge to perpetrators? Ooh, that sounds fun…”

She pushed the button. The two golems’ chest-mounted receivers crackled. Jinx scratched her nose, then shrugged and leaned in to the nearest.

“Ha hee ha-ha!” she cackled into the receiver.

…Jinx pressed ‘save’, then switched the hex-runes to ‘broadcast commands to all units’. She snickered more, then unhooked her multicolored spray-can from her belt and poked her tongue out as she sprayed the metal man’s face.

“Lessee…all units equipping hazard and crime-scene marker paint, copy last observed motion, apply to all other units…” The first golem slotted a canister and nozzle into its open palm. Long neon slashes of paint sprayed across the face of the second bot.

“Nice work, Captain Kettlenoggin!” Jinx boomed in her best sar-major, “We’re decoratin’ the whoooole squad…”

Jinx tapped another program into the console and narrowed her eyes as she sent it; both bots’ eyes lit up in crimson.

“…and I got a special mission for you two… Now, off with you lads, hup-to!”

She saluted her metal-man and his freshly vandalized buddy as they plodded out of the chamber to fulfil their orders. As their footsteps faded, Jinx turned back to the control panel, back to the nervous, shifting blue shapes on her screen that represented Vi̛vi͢VI͠ ̕and luxL҉U̶x and T͡OP̡ ̵H̛aT and͞ S̕h́O̸u͏lDER̡s…

“Think you can take her from me,” Jinx muttered, her smile dying away, and her lips peeled from grinding teeth, “Think you can lie to me and screw with my head – this is my game…”

She opened the panels again, disabled the security override and reassembled the runes for targeting to all viable targets and the acceptable force to all available…

“…they wanna play ‘fair’?” Jinx sneered, “Fairest rules are no rules…”

Jinx’s thin shoulders shook with wild giggles. She hit the switch marked: SECURITY LOCKDOWN: SEAL ALL EXITS.

As the screeching of the steel plating slid down over the skylight and sealed the few remaining exits, the faint clunking of many metal feet drew closer and the pawing mechanical bodies started tumbling through the hole she and Lux had cut in the ceiling, Jinx snatched up the radio again.

:: Let’s find out who’s really trapped with who.::

Jinx killed all the lights outside the room.

Vi was halfway across the platform, just behind Caitlyn, fighting to keep her partner from hearing the pain in her breathing, when everything went dark.

“Shit!” she stumbled, heard Caitlyn curse as something smacked into her – one of the obstacle dummies, probably – and halted to try to gain her bearings.

The eerie, ambient glow of the Hextech components of her gloves was, for a moment, the only light, but it shed very little.

“Caitlyn…?” she called out, eyes searching the abyss, suddenly hyper-aware of the jungle of nonlethal traps currently surrounding them.

“Here,” Cait’s voice, and then the white eye of the hexlight attachment of her rifle lit up, a pale cone slicing through the dark, “Where’s Garen, Lux…?”

A surprised squeak and a thump and grunt presaged the appearance of a warm candle-like glow – hovering, miraculously, in a bright ball above the palm of the Demacian girl, two platforms ahead. Vi and Caitlyn both stared, briefly paralyzed by fascination with the spectral iridescence, the way it caught different hues at different angles when the girl moved.

Knowing Lux was a mage and seeing it were two quite different things.

Garen had, fortunately, mightily hewn enough of their gauntlet traps asunder that Caitlyn and Vi were able to make their way across the gantry to join the Demacians.

As they did, Vi thought she heard a tinny echo of her sister’s voice: ha hee ha-ha…

“…she could be anywhere,” Caitlyn muttered, “Stay together, we need to strategize-”

“Did you hear that?”

:: ha hee ha-ha! ::

“Jinx…” Lux whispered, eyes bright by the glow of her magic, “Jinx…?”

Vi turned, but there were no pink eyes gleaming in the dark.

:: ha hee ha-ha ha hee ha-ha…::

“What the hell…it’s coming from more than one place.”

Vi’s blood ran cold as a chorus of metallic clicks and clunks crowded in on them, like a swarm of giant beetles moving in the dark, mingled with that chilling echo of her sister’s laughter…

And then there were eyes; disc-like and crimson, unblinking in the black.

:: Ha hee ha-ha ha hee ha-ha…:: Louder and more cacophonous a chorus by the second…

Lux made eye contact with Vi, swallowed, and the ball of Light in her palm swelled until its illumination washed out over the blank faces of the dozens of Warden golems closing in on them from all sides, reaching for them with sizzling Hextech weapons and pawing metal hands.

:: HA HEE HA-HA HA HEE-HA HA…::

All of their eyes blazing red, and all of their faces and chassis scribbled with Jinx’s trademark crude graffiti.

“Okay then,” Vi muttered, and brought her fists up in a pulse of Hextech, “Here we go…”

Above, Jinx’s pink eyes gleamed in the dark. She switched the screen’s vision to body heat detection.

Her new army were closing in on the four down below; shouts and gunshots sounded as the Wardens up in their hidey-holes above and in the walls frantically tried to hold the golems at bay. Giggling, Jinx returned to the control panel and finished her surgical scrambling of the hexnodes.

Jinx caught herself whistling along with Zevi’s tinny showtunes. She scrunched her nose and stared sidelong at the gramophone.

“…just one final touch.”

Jinx pinched her lower lip under her teeth as she unclipped a battered disc from its scratched-up metal case in her belt pouch and switched out the one in the phonograph.

“Welp, Chief,” she beamed at the exasperated glare of the woman in the closet, “Been a gas, but I’m gonna go join the party. If you need to pee, wake up Ezzypoos, I’m sure he can getcha out, if he’s done puking and crying, heh…”

Ezreal gave a faint moan in his sleep. Zevi huffed a sigh through the tape, and Jinx winked at her and turned to the door…

…’all acceptable targets’. The bots’ll go for me too.

Jinx shrugged to herself.

Fair rules are no rules.

She put the radio down next to the gramophone, set the needle, and cranked up the volume.

Jinx slung Fishbones back over her shoulder and hummed along to the first jagged guitar riffs pulsing from the flared hexphonic speakers.

:WANNA JOIN ME? COME AND PLAY…:

“Showtime,” Jinx smiled and skipped from the control room.

: BUT I MIGHT SHOOT YOU IN YOUR FACE! :

Vi’s massive knuckles crashed through the blank face of a cackling golem, two more clawing at her from her periphery –

BOOM-BOOM-their metal faces popped and blew wide open. Caitlyn’s rifle flashed in the dark as she twisted in clean, precise motion, her face a mask of icy focus. She blasted clean holes through any shambling machine-man who slipped into her allies’ blind spots.

: BOMBS AND BULLETS WILL DO THE TRICK … :

Lux wheeled and danced beneath the sweeping arcs of her brother’s great sword, back-to-back with him, spinning iridescent streaks of light to sear and slice even as Garen’s blade smote steel limb and brassy crown.

The flashes and bursts of illumination against the seething lifeless movement in the dark made a strobe-lit flickering nightmare of a battle.

And then there was the gods damned song…

: WHAT WE NEED HERE – IS A LITTLE BIT OF PANIC! :

“Garen, Vi, clear the way –” Caitlyn shouted over the crack of her rifle and the thudding beat and screeching vocals of the song pounding them from every speaker out there in the gloom  – “second-left stairs to the upper platform – “

“ – chokepoint them on the stairs,” Lux finished, a whirl of her staff sending columns of rainbow iridescence up to trap the golems crowding behind them and block their compatriots from pushing past them, “Got it! You’re clear!”

: DO YOU EVER WANNA CATCH ME? RIGHT NOW I’M FEELING IGNORED – SO CAN YOU TRY A LITTLE HARDER? I’M REALLY GETTING BORED! :

The song roared in their ears, masking the giggling and clunking of the mecha, disorienting the four even further; but not enough to stop Garen and Vi exchanging a glance and a nod before they moved together, Vi ploughing her way through the first ranks, metal-men and pieces of them flying like dolls, Garen slicing weapons and limbs from those climbing the platforms or closing in from the sides –

: COME ON! SHOOT FASTER! JUST A LITTLE BIT OF ENERGY, YEAH - :

They were taking hits. Stun-darts and shock-nets zipped through their defenses from the dark;  the still-active obstacles caught them as they ran on, Garen limping from a trap catching his booted ankle, Caitlyn’s lip split from a boxing glove to the face; Lux stymied their pursuers in rings and swells of shimmering Light, giving Caitlyn ample time to clear their six in sharp flashes of her gun and swiftly-deployed traps; they beat a strategic retreat up the stairwell behind their companions, drawing the horde after them…

: I WANNA TRY SOMETHING FUN RIGHT NOW! GUESS SOME PEOPLE CALL IT A-N-A-R-C-H-Y! :

A pulse buzzed in the metal walls of the facility, down through the floor, through the bots -

: LET’S BLOW THIS CITY TO ASHES - AND SEE WHAT POW-POW THINKS - :

Vi flinched at the mention of ‘Pow-Pow’ flickered at the corners of her attention – and groaned as she watched the dismembered golems pulling themselves back together in pulses of Hextech, their blue eyes flickering back to hostile red as they reassembled…

“Whose idea were the regenerating doom bots again– “ 

: IT’S SUCH PATHETIC NEATNESS – :

“Yours!” Caitlyn snapped, “You told Zevi ‘wouldn’t it save a bunch if they just got back up again’, remember?”

: BUT NOT FOR LONG… :

“Oh yeah,” Vi winced.

: CUZ IT’LL GET JINXED! :

Lux huffed for breath. She fell in beside Garen and the Wardens, blasting another smoldering hole through the metal skull of a bot climbing after her and throwing a Prismatic Barrier up over her brother as sizzling shock-darts spat his way through the dark…

“She has a song,” she gasped, “Of course she has a song – why does she have a song?” Lux’s brows knit in a scowl. She flashed the head off another bot cracking a baton on her pauldron with a :: ha hee ha-ha :: “…is that her singing - who wrote this song!?”

Another golem dropped from the ceiling above her, :: ha hee ha-ha :: and Lux yelped as it pinned her to the floor and swung a crackling stun-baton at her head –

: SO MUCH BETTER, SO MUCH FUN… :

A hole ripped through its chassis. The power core sizzled and spat Hex-sparks. The bot slid sideways, its massive weight dropping away from Lux. She flailed and rolled to safety.

: LET’S START FROM SCRATCH AND – BLOW UP THE SUN! :

“A mystery for later,” said Caitlyn, over her smoking rifle, “Vi – cover! Garen, get Lux to the radio!”

“With me, sister,” Garen hauled Lux to her feet, gripped his blade one-handed and spun it in a web-of-death through the advancing ranks, sparks flashing from the ancient Demacian steel cleaving through their armored chestplates and cable-sinewed collars.

There. She saw it in the flashes of her own Light, the receiver dangling against the railing. Lux twisted under a clawing mechanical lunge and flitted in a blur of faintly glowing blonde and white to snatch up the receiver…

Her staff spun back to her hand. She fumbled with the unfamiliar device in the other, finally squealing to life, making her jump …

“Jinx!” she called into it, “Enough. Stop. Please. Whatever you think is happening – I promise it is not. No one is taking me. I’m not leaving you, because I –” she faltered.

Because I…

Garen was still cleaving golems that crawled up the platforms giggling in her lover’s voice. Vi and Caitlyn fought more to hold them back. The lights were still out, and Ezreal – who knows what she’d done to him, and yet…

Gleaming eyes opening in the dark. Wicked and playful. Soft and wounded. Mismatched nails on pale fingers clasping hers tight. A bird-boned body, searing warm or deathly cold in her arms. A brittle voice, holding all its thousand shards together through so much pain, breaking as it whispered her name…

Lux breathed out.

“…I never would. I can’t. Because I love you.”

Lux held her next breath. Even through the cacophony of the song starting its repeat chorus and the machines closing in around them, she could hear her own heart beating, in anticipation, in dread, of what Jinx might say…

Only crackling silence answered her.

:: …I never would. I can’t. Because I love you. ::

The receiver lay quiet by the shrieking phonograph.

Only Lux’s breathing and the muffled din of the battle came through.

A hand, fingers unclenching from a fist, hesitated only a moment before reaching for it.

Lux’s heart restarted when the receiver in her hand crackled.

It sank when she heard the voice on the other side.

:: Hey, Lux. :: Ezreal said.

Lux winced and fought the poorly timed urge to cover her face in her hands; only the brawny breadth of her brother body-blocking the golems from reaching her kept her from an immediate need for self-defense.

“Oh, Aspects, Ez,” she said into the receiver, brows furrowed, “Listen, I’m sorry, I never meant to – I’m really-”

:: -sorry. She’s not here. :: He sounded small and tired. Maybe it was just the radio distortion.

No, she was kidding herself. She knew why.

:: Tied us up and left. I was out cold. Don’t know where. ::

Lux’s reply faltered at the heartbreak hiding just under his voice.

She wondered what to feel about that.

“Is that Ez?” Vi shouted over the cacophony of combat and punk rock, “Thank Janna’s holy tits,” she’d grabbed another bot by the face, tore its torso from its twitching legs, and held it at arm’s length while it robotically spun its arms at her – :: ha hee ha-ha ha hee ha-ha :: – clanging off the metal shell of her gauntlet, “Is Zevi there? Is she okay? We need to – ugh! Turn them off! Turn it all off!”

“Ez, um, can you and – Zevi? – turn off the golems?” Lux repeated into the receiver, unsure if she was holding it right.

The receiver crackled again. A woman’s voice came over it.

:: Zevi here. Can’t, luv, she’s jimmied it up good, the whole system’s scrambled. Can’t even turn off the bloody music. ::

Caitlyn, sweat on her cheek, rifle tucked under one arm, swept to Lux’s side and grabbed the receiver, “Zevi, what are you looking at?”

:: Zevi, what are you looking at? ::

Standing by the numb and deflated Ezreal’s side, Chief Machinist Zevi winced, looking down at her control panel, rune network hopelessly shuffled and scattered, hours of work to untangle, and then her viewscreen.

Its Hextech-powered display glitched and distorted, the lines of blue glow no longer sketching anything useful…

…only the vague, jittering outline of a grimacing monkey.

“Problems,” Zevi sighed into the receiver.

Caitlyn clenched her teeth, her eyes flicking to Vi hurling a severed golem torso into another pile of its companions; Garen, hemmed in by a shield bot, had given up on cutting at it and was bashing it over the head with the hilt of his sword whilst two others clung to his cloak like starving beggars.

“Get out of there, both of you,” Caitlyn said, “Find Zayne, Mir and Simeon, stick together, and meet us on ground floor.”

:: She hit the full lockdown, Sheriff, there’s no exit down there either … ::

Caitlyn faltered; Vi, swinging one of the bots around by its legs to club another two down, caught her eyes, panting hard, and gave a fierce, bloody-toothed grin.

Tension caught in Caitlyn’s shoulders. She groaned out a sigh.

“We’ll be making one,” Caitlyn said.

Ezreal watched Zevi fuss and swear over the ruined console and wondered why it mattered. Why any of it mattered.

Jinx wasn’t lying. She and Lux are…Lux said she loved…

Ez put his hand to his mouth, feeling like his lips still burned with Jinx’s kiss, like she’d poisoned him. Conflicting thoughts, conflicting feelings, tumbled around in his chest and in the back of his head until all he felt was numb.

Maybe it was the botched teleport – maybe it really had scrambled them a bit – he shuddered at a sudden, irrational thought of waking up with Shimmer eyes in the mirror – but her taste still lingered stronger in his memories than the bile presently in his mouth…

He still felt sick.

Lux doesn’t love you. She never did. She never could.

You were never going to be enough.

“…hell does it matter,” he muttered, and Zevi glanced sidelong at him questioningly, but returned to swearing at the console without interrogation.

: COME ON…COME ON…AND GET JINXED! :

The phonograph clicked, spun the disc internally, reset, and repeated.

Zevi scowled and snatched up the receiver again as the song droned on.

“She hit the full lockdown, Sheriff, there’s no exit down there either …”

Caitlyn’s end paused.

:: We’ll be making one ::

Ezreal surfaced from his misery to exchange a brow-arched glance with Zevi.

“Can you blip us down there, Ez?”

Lux doesn’t…

“Huh?” Ezreal pushed the intrusive thoughts away, blinked and looked at his gauntlet. Motes of arcane energy rose at his attention to it, but so too did a wave of nausea at the thought of teleporting after- “Uh, no dice, I – um – it only does me.”

“How’d Jinx get in here then?”

“…I mean it only does me normally, whatever the hell happened back there nearly turned us into inside-out-octopi and fritzed my gauntlet and I really don’t wanna do that again.”

Zevi grunted, slid a wrench from her tool belt, and knelt by her console.

“Fair enough,” she said, prying open a panel and pulling forth a glowing Hex-battery unit. She sat back in the inanimate chair, clipped its belt-arms across her body, and clicked the unit into the central buckle, “Fun way, then.”

The seat’s lights came on, and its arms whirred and clicked back to life. Zevi stood, and the seat - and its mechanical arms – detached and stood with her like an octopoid backpack, the lower pair dropping to plant against the floor for support.

Ezreal widened his eyes, momentarily distracted from the dull ache in his chest.

“Okay, that’s really freaking cool.”

Zevi grinned at him and gave him a robotic thumbs-up.

“Hope your leg’s better, mate,” she said, “And your heart. Cuz we’ve got a crew to rescue, and they might just need a hero.”

Ez swallowed, and forced himself to find a faint, tentative smile.

“Better keep up,” he said.

:: HA HEE HA-HA HA HEE HA-HA ::

“They’re breaking through!” Officer Mir discharged her sidearm through the chest of another scratched-up, jittering bot, “Damned ugly blighters!”

Simeon’s carbine cracked another high-caliber round through the metal skull of one lurching beside her with its arms outstretched almost imploringly. The blonde sniper chuckled. He lined up another shot with a squint, “Never did like the damn things. No replacement for a real officer…”

Zayne Asako caught a stun baton with a crackle on his augmented arm and smashed through its mechanical wielder with a whirl of electrified bolas. ”Speaking for myself,” he puffed, augmented eyes focusing through the crowded darkness to spot a bot sneaking up behind Simeon – and pinging his bolas across the room in a whirling crackle to snag its legs and topple it to the ground – “I’d rather these be Jinx’s target practice than our guys.”

Simeon turned and punched a shot through the bot’s eye, giving a nod of thanks to the Zaunite.

“I’d rather Jinx be my target practice,” Simeon grunted, “Personally.”

“Hah,” Mir shook her head, “You wanna say that to Vi’s face, tough guy? – Blast, more coming!”

Zayne took the brief break in the tide to dash to the radio receiver, tugging it to his mouth, “Sheriff, don’t mean to be a hassle, take your time but…backup?”

:: Incoming, Zayne. Hold your posit- ::

A shock-dart sizzled out of the darkness and snapped the radio out of Zayne’s hand, rendering it smoking ruin; a whole squad of golems, led by a shield golem, shuffled down the narrow corridor toward their position.

“Damnit,” he scowled, unholstering his sidearm, “Backup incoming!”

Simeon cursed as his shots pinged harmlessly from the Hextech-powered force field protecting the current wave swarming their position – “We’re screwed if they don’t get here soon, can’t get around that shield bot!”

“Who’s coming?” Mir asked, her long forelock flicking as she glanced back to Zayne, “Vi’s down there with the Sheriff-”

A loud whistle cut through the mind-numbing giggling of the golems.

Gold flashed; a figure darted in from the side-corridor the bots were blocking and spun something bright yellow like a discus right into the shield bot’s flank. Arcane energy seized the machine, gold overwhelming the blue –

The bots swiveled their torsos in unison, firing a spray of darts, nets and bolas in the direction of the new figure. The newcomer slid under them, the wings of a blue, crackling bow springing from his wrist.

Two arcane bolts flashed forth, arced like homing arrows, and slashed through the core of the shield bot from behind; it detonated in a bright yellow flash and the bot toppled, its Hex-shield fritzing out…

Gunfire peppered its unshielded minions in a hail and lit up a strobe silhouette of some nightmare contraption like a giant mechanical spider against the wall –

“What the flaming fuc-” Mir blurted out and she fell back beside Zayne as the source of the shadow came scuttling into view, “-oh hey, it’s Zevi!”

“And Ezreal!” said Zayne, grinning.

“-yeah, him too,” Mir muttered.

The last set of bots crumpled to the ground beneath the wash of Zevi’s flamethrower attachment and three more precise blue shots from the Gauntlet of Ne’zuk…

Ez stopped his slide-dash with a deft twist of a foot and flipped his hair.

“Officers,” he said with a smirk, “How may I be of assistance?”

“Thanks for the save, kid,” Simeon checked his ammo, breathing hard, “How the hell did you know how to take that thing out?”

Ezreal shrugged, smiled, and casually flicked another arcane arrow behind him, without looking –

– through the face of a not-quite-down golem aiming a shock dart at Simeon’s head.

Ez winked at the flustered sniper.

“All in the reflexes.”

Mir rolled her eyes and Zevi belly-laughed and shook her head.

Her weapon-arms began reloading. She glanced up at the walls and ceiling with a long sigh.

“And here I was proud of the whole Reassembly Pulse thing…We’d better split, gang, forty seconds before it fires.”

“This way, Officers,” Ez waved a hand and darted off, taking point, “Keep up!”

The Wardens exchanged a glance, grabbed their gear, and hustled after him down the corridor, cautious eyes on the dismantled bots in their wake.

“Where the hell are we going?” Mir grunted as she ran, “Whole place is sealed tighter than my ex’s wallet. What’s the Sheriff’s plan?”

A tremendous vibration shuddered through the walls of the facility.

“She’s got a way out,” said Zevi.

Mir and Zayne exchanged another glance.

“It’s Vi, isn’t it,” said Zayne.

Zevi chuckled.

“Yep.”

Cogs whirred. Pistons thrust and steamed. Hextech glowed between gaps in gleaming azure plates.

Another reinforced internal wall buckled beneath the thunderous force of the Atlas gauntlets. The left fist crumpled it like old paper; the right fist blasted through and ripped it from its moorings.

As it crashed into the far wall in a screech of steel, Vi turned back to the dumbstruck Demacians with a cocky wink.

“What, you never seen someone do that back in Demacia?”

“We use doors back in Demacia,” Lux smiled at her as they hustled to the edge of the gymnasium and shone her Light to clear the next layer of office corridors beyond.

“…mostly,” Garen added with a chuckle.

“…my brother has been known to crash through the odd wall,” Lux admitted, “Maybe it’s an older sibling thing?”

Garen rolled his eyes at her, rolled his shoulder, and turned to guard their flank from the shuffling red-eyed mecha funneling toward the gaps Vi had made in the walls.

Caitlyn cocked her rifle to her shoulder, and shot down another pursuing golem, “Darling, whilst you are showing off, please keep an eye out for your sister.”

Lux frowned, “Curse it…where is she…?”

“Probably closer than we think,” said Vi, bringing her fists up as they reached another steel barricade, “Since we’re making her a way out, too.”

: … WHAT WE NEED HERE, IS A LITTLE BIT OF PANIC … : echoed from a speaker tucked into the corner of the corridor. The song had looped again.

“Likely her escape plan, yes…” Caitlyn muttered, “No other choice. It simply means she’ll come to us. We must be ready for her when she-”

A bright neon flash lit up the silhouettes of the pursuing golems. An unmistakable raucous cackle and the staccato zip and thunk of minigun rounds plugging through metal bodies sprang up from behind them.

Lux swallowed her heart.

“She’s coming.”

Jinx cackled as she mowed down another row of bots, kicked off the back of a falling shield bot and planted boots on one of the ramps.

She ran through the wreckage of the obstacle course, trashed dummies lying sliced left and right – good job, Shoulders McChonkjaw! – her eyes on the flashes of blue and scream of shattering metal.

Helloo Vi҉V̷iVI̷VIIV̴i…

“Thanks for the exit, sis,” Jinx drew a grim smirk, but the joy wasn’t there.

Because there was an iridescence shining near the blue. Lux was there, with Caitlyn and Vi…

I could be there too…

Jinx squeezed her eyes shut. She nailed another stupid giggling golem in her way with a hail of fire from Pow-Pow…

… it wasn’t yơur f͟aul҉t̨…it̛ w͏às mi̶n̴e… lingered in her thoughts, fuck this town…somewhere safe…wherever you want.

Punishing me… punishing yourself.

“Shut up, shut up shutup-” Jinx clenched her teeth, the distraction sending a golem’s shock-dart into her shoulder; she gave a short, snarling scream as the pulse went through her – but it had no chance of overwhelming her Shimmer alone – she tore it out and flung it through the bot’s eye with a growl.

They’d seen her. As intended. Across the chamber, she caught Lux’s pale face in the gloom, blue eyes searching for hers, but not finding them…

Then her big, stupid brother eclipsed Jinx’s view, stepping into the gap with his sword raised, and Lux ducked into the corridors beyond with the others…

This was a mistake. This was all a mistake, you sc̷reẁed̷ it all up,  j̴ust l̸i̷k̴e a Ji͘n̵x͡…

“…we’ll see about that,” Jinx whispered.

“She’s coming.”

Vi peeled another sealed iron bulkhead from its moorings, the wounds in her shoulders and back burning, but the power of the Atlas gauntlets undimmed by the ache in her arms or the rasp of her breath.

She turned to face Lux, the Demacian girl framed in her own Light against the wall of darkness behind them, lit only by flashes of Jinx’s weaponry and the glowing eyes of the golems her brother was body-blocking from chasing them.

Sighing, Vi dropped the bulkhead and let her shoulders hang.

“Guess you’re gonna have to pick a side, shiny girl.”

Lux’s frosty eyes turned back.

“If you think it’s about sides,” she said, “Then you’re making my choice for me.”

“Are we, Lux?” Caitlyn cut in, loading another magazine into her rifle, “Vi and I may share your sentiment, but we all know Jinx does not.”

Lux fell silent.

“We aren’t your enemies,” Caitlyn said softly, “But it’s time to stop pretending that this can go on and no-one will get hurt.”

The flashes of gunfire and grenade-blasts grew closer and closer.

“Help us,” said Vi, exasperation leaking into her voice, “Help us bring her home.”

“Oh? Which home, Vi?” Lux hissed back at them, “A cell or the gallows?”

The image of her sister’s tiny body, limp and swinging hit Vi hard; her chest tightened.

“Lux-”

“She’s home with me,” Lux set her stubborn Demacian jaw, “That’s the help I have to give.”

The hum of Hextech and the crash of Garen’s blade snapped them to attention.

“Kayle’s wrath blast them!” Garen huffed as he fell back to their side, “Another shield sentinel, I can’t get through from the front!”

Vi growled, “Cait, cover me,” as she pushed past Lux and Garen.

With a roar and crunch of metal through metal, Vi sunk her fingers into the plated floor beneath the shield golem and tore up the entire panel, flipping the unit backwards into its fellows –

– and into a withering hail of her sister’s gunfire.

The bots fell still. Pink eyes flashed through the gloom and smoke.

“…Wait,” Vi whispered, “Ji-”

The eyes glared sharply into hers, then disappeared. A moment later, one of the golems lurched out of the haze to Vi’s left – Garen cut down another two, guarding her right flank, Jinx was nowhere in sight –

Vi snarled and snapped her hand over the face of the golem lunging at her –

…her sister’s wild, hating, hurting eyes stared between Hextech fingers as she clenched and crushed her skull …

Vi gritted her teeth and banished the awful image from her mind, shoving the golem away…

:: ha hee ha-ha ::

“VI!” Caitlyn screamed behind her. Vi saw, too late, the Chomper chattering, stuck to its back.

:: Tag-Rat, Got your Tail! :: it sang in Jinx’s voice. 

“Fu-” Vi pulled her hands back to shield her face just as the Chomper exploded-

-in a cloud of luminous smoke, drowning Vi’s view in a wall of choking pink and green.

“Shit!” she shouted, flailing back until her back collided with Garen’s; she heard his deep voice grunt, but she could only barely see him; Caitlyn and Lux had disappeared entirely, only a faint glow through the fog of Lux’s iridescent light…

…and then there was a whisper of movement past her, a faint glimpse of blue braids snaking past -

Lux’s glow went with her.

“Lux!”

She heard the cry torn from her brother’s throat, saw his huge silhouette pull away from Vi and chase after her, heard Vi swearing and Caitlyn calling…

But Lux’s world narrowed to the pink eyes flashing out of the blinding smoke and the squeeze of pale fingers around her own.

“Hey Blondie,” Jinx flashed a wicked grin, “You done?”

“Jinx-” Lux gasped out, but she was already moving, stumbling to keep up with Jinx’s terrifying speed, dodging between the lumbering golems without even fighting them – “Where-”

“Out,” Jinx sneered, “Away from them.”

She jabbed her thumb in the direction of blue flashes and shouting – not Vi – there were differently-shaped figures moving in a pack toward the din of battle.

Ezreal, others - the Wardens…?

Ezreal was in front, his eyes searching the chaos. They met hers, only for a moment. Lux tried to put everything she had to say to him into that look, a tiny, sad smile without a number.

As she turned away, back to her lover, she hoped it would be enough.

“My brother – Jinx – Garen’s here, and Vi, she-”

Jinx glared back at her with a look that cut the words from her tongue.

“We’re going,” Jinx snapped, then smiled, and somehow that was worse.

Lux held her tongue and gave one longing glance over her shoulder. She ran on.

“Fuck!” Vi shouted, panic flooding her chest, “She took Lux - Garen’s run off!”

“-fuck!” Caitlyn’s face twisted in shock and fury behind her. She squeezed her trigger, again and again, but her ammo was running thin, and the damned pulse in the walls flashed through around them…the increasingly grotesque golems started crawling back from ruination yet another time, “We can’t go back for them, Vi, not without having a –”

Vi fought back a scream of frustration, “I know. Way out. On it.”

They breached the edge of Jinx’s smoke cloud, back into the darkness. Without Lux, only Caitlyn’s flashlight cut the black ahead of them, narrowing their field of vision to a pale cylinder and a white oval.

Vi smashed through the next door with a single punch, but behind them a crowd of golems swarmed down the corridor.

“Damnit!”

The next door ahead was already open. She let Caitlyn slip past her into the room, smashed the closest pursuing golems, and backed into the room beyond. Caitlyn slammed the door in the faces of the oncoming horde.

:: HA HEE HA-HA, HA HEE HA-HA-::: 

“Hold the door!” Caitlyn cried, jamming another cartridge into the Hextech rifle, and fumbling to draw the bolt as the battered metal surface at her back jolted with a deafening BANG, ”Hold the bloody door, Vi!”

Garen Crownguard thundered through the smoke and haze, sword laying about him left and right into the ranks of the mechanical men – by now so hundred-hewn that their movements twitched and juddered, their metallic faces and bodies twisted by scars and dents, disfiguring them into shapes of nightmare –

“Lux!” he shouted into the smoke and haze, but her light was fading from him, the mad girl had her, and Garen couldn’t catch up – they were in his way, pulling him down, metal hands grappling his legs, dragging on his arms -

“DEMACIA!” Garen roared, hurling his foes away in a whirl of force as he spun – but there were yet more, clinging to his back – a blue flash caught his attention behind him, and he twisted with his momentum, blade raised –

“Woah, woah!” Ezreal shouted, hands raised, “Cool it, big guy, we talked about this!”

Three smoking golems, shot through by his arcane arrows, lay at his feet.

“Got your back,” said Ezreal, “Where’s Lux-” he followed Garen’s eyes to the disappearing light, and the growing crowds of golems between them, “-Shit.”

“Jinx has her!” Garen growled, and moved to chase, but Ezreal seized his arm with all his rather small might.

“We’ve gotta get out of here, man.”

Garen clenched his teeth, ready to argue, but out of the smoke in flash and fire came a small group of others – the Wardens, battered and bloodied and evidently running low on ammunition.

Ezreal looked up to him with eyes both heartsick and weary.

“It’s not worth it,” he said, “She’s where she wants to be.”

“I think you’ll find, darling,” Caitlyn muttered between clenched teeth, “…that this is Ezreal’s fault…”

Vi sighed. The bots clawed and giggled at the massive iron bench she’d crunched into the doorway.

She slipped on a breather and nodded to Cait to do the same.

“You should go easier on him,” she said. She turned to the reinforced concrete wall opposite – the outer wall of the damned building, finally – and cranked the Atlas gauntlets to their maximum safe power, “He’s a better guy than anyone lets him be.”

Blue light swelled and washed the room in its pale glow; Vi’s brows furrowed. She screamed strength into a double-handed punch into the wall. Caitlyn’s retort was swallowed as she ducked behind cover from the thunderous crash of exploding concrete dust and tumbling brickwork.

Vi, dusted ghost white by the powder, shook it from her hair and glanced back to Caitlyn, flashing her a wink.

“Look, a way out.”

Smoke and concrete dust billowed into the skies of Piltover. Eight figures stumbled out into the stark daylight; flashes of gunfire, arcane blasts, Hextech fists, and Demacian steel cut down the mechanical revenants lurching after them.

Outside the pulse animating the building’s walls, they didn’t get back up.