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“Well,” Jinx chirped, signalling her upcoming absence by flinging a large rectangular bag over her shoulder. “I’m going now! Bye!”
”Oh?” Viktor perked up instantly, snagging the end of one of her ludicrously long braids and pulling her back with a playful tug. “And where are you off to?”
”Ugh, you’re such a dad sometimes, you know that?” she whined, perching reticently on the table next to him where the Hexcore snarled perpetually.
“Contrary to what may be your line of thinking, I actually care about your whereabouts, malysh,” he explained, screeching the chair to face her and pulling the goggles off his eyes. God, he missed swivelling chairs. “Where are you going?” he questioned, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.
”Its a surprise!” she chortled. “A little… passion project I’ve been working on.”
“Well, I can hardly blame you for that. I know you find studying this a pain sometimes.” He gestured to the Hexcore, and though he seemed to relax, he eyed her belt of bombs suspiciously. “No chaos?”
”No chaos,” she refuted (lied). “I pinky promise!”
Despite his concern, he hooked his pinky around hers. It lingered, first for one moment, than two.
”Vik?” She waved a hand in front of his glazed over face. “Hellooooo…”
”Sorry,” he conciliated, furrowing his brows in befuddlement at the anxiety that had woven itself into his stomach. “You… you won’t be long, will you?”
”Awww, Vik,” she cooed, drawing him in for a reassuring hug and ruffling his hair. “You think I’m gonna leave you? I’m no Jayce Talis.”
”No,” he scoffed grimly. “You certainly are not.” As he finished his sentence, he felt something elastic and squeaky get pushed into his hand.
”There,” she said, drawing back to reveal in his palm the monkey stress toy she’d gifted him. “If you miss me too much, give it a squeeze to remind yourself I’m riiight here.” She poked his chest.
”Thank you, schastlivy,” he said sincerely, face softening as his heart melted a little at her nonchalant kindness. “Now, idti! I have work to do while you’re gone.” He waved her away and turned back to his work, but not before she jolted the chair back to face her.
”One more thing, silly!” She waved a syringe half-full with Shimmer in front of his face.
”Ah, I’d hoped you’d forget,” he complained, putting his worse leg up on the table in preparation.
”At least it’s hurting less now,” she offered optimistically, crouching down and injecting it without warning as he requested her to do - he would truculently refuse the treatment otherwise.
As per usual, he lurched forward, and as per usual, she caught him, running her hands through his hair and appraising his strength in a hushed voice. At least since the presence of the Hexcore, the agonising scream had been reduced to heartfelt cries and whimpers. By some miracle, it seemed to connect to him and improve his health by a mile. The relationship enraptured her, and she would take notes quietly to herself in their shared notebook (a new but aged thing they’d picked up one day for a low price), which he would find later and examine and admire and discuss with her, singing praises of her intelligence until late in the evening.
Of course, it couldn’t mitigate everything.
”Jayce…” he whimpered, and Jinx felt the usual twinge of empathy. It was nothing irregular, for Viktor to call his name like that, but god damnit her heart broke a little for him every time.
Thankfully, Viktor recovered quickly, smiling over the outcry as though it never occurred. He leaned back languidly in his seat, waving her away in a permissive, playful motion, and returning to his diligent studies.
“Off you go then, before I change my mind!”
”Love you too, best friend!” she called after him, throwing in that sarcastic humour she knew he loved.
“Fuck!”
Jinx kicked the window to the lab one, two, three more times, but no budge.
”Fuck!” she repeated, belligerence building like bricks. “I don’t get it! It opened really easy last time!”
Try a balcony?, Silco offered politely. And mind your language!
“Quiet, old man,” she retorted half-heartedly, begrudgingly taking his advice anyway and shuffling over to a balcony just to the right and below her.
She set her feet down easily, marvelling momentarily at her improvement in parkour since she was a child. Briefly, she glanced around, before trying the handle with a sharp tug: no give.
Who locks their balcony?!, Mylo groaned inconsiderately.
”Rich Pilties worried about getting robbed, I guess,” she replied to the air, pulling a hair pin from her head and slipping it in the lock, twisting it with deft hands until it cracked open with a click and thumped onto the floor.
She pushed it open nonchalantly, stepping inside and looking back and forth before heading down the gaping corridor on her left. For someone who was currently improvising a little on a robbery, she felt remarkably calm, movements jaunty and unfazed. She came upon what she assumed to be the lab doors quickly, sneered at the superfluous size of them, and shoved them open with a great deal of force.
Admittedly, the strident sound it made was more noise than she would have liked, but whatever. Just as thoroughly, she closed the doors behind her, leaving a minuscule gap should an escape route be necessary. Her eyes landed on what she was looking for before she could even properly look around.
”Bingoooo!” she cried in a sing-song voice, lolloping over to the impressively complex Hexcore. Judging by the fact it was right out in the open, there had obviously been some big presentation, and the thing had been abandoned in the rush of the indulgent afterparty - because Pilties had time to celebrate everything, apparently.
For a moment, she ran her hands over it, enamoured with the ingenuity, before flopping the hefty rectangular bag onto the counter that was about to get much heavier.
Don’t forget the gloves!, Claggor reminded her suppliantly.
”Oh, right,” she uttered, laughing as an afterthought as she unclipped them from their hangers. “I thought they were just for show. Say…” she hesitated, scrutinising one more closely. “There’s a hole in the back here, like something’s supposed to go in.”
Work it out, Jinx, Silco encouraged softly.
”Ohhh, it’s powered by gemstones!!” she exclaimed, slapping her forehead melodramatically and flinching as her voice resounded of the walls. I really need to be more quiet, she self-critiqued.
Or you’ll jinx it again!, Mylo screeched unhelpfully.
”Shut up,” she snapped, freezing in place.
Something had passed over her peripheral, followed by a whisper, softer than any she’d heard but absolutely threatening. She inclined her ears in the direction of the sound. Another flash, a few syllables. Instinctually, she reached for her holster, traced the noise with the barrel of her gun and aimed at the offending…
…mug?
Yes, mug. There was a mug, alone and ceramic, half-filled with coffee that had been sitting there for God knows how long. On its face, it was plastered with rays of faded yellow sunshine. Above the false sun, we’re the words ‘Man of Progress’ in black ink, and adorned in the centre of it all, the iconic, unmistakeable face of one smug Jayce Talis.
Jinx tilted her head and narrowed her eyes. Across that arrogant, stupid, grinning face she pictured devilish horns poking out from the top of the traitor’s head, and she received a little pleasure in knowing she saw the man for who he really was: a supercilious, insensitive traitor, abandoner of friends and enemy to the Undercity. She smirked back at him, cocked her gun.
Bang!
Coffee splattered everything, creating brown smudges on the desk and floor. Jayce’s face fractured and split into a dozen pieces that bounced off and shattered against the walls and floors they pummelled into. Miraculously, the handle remained intact, rolling lazily onto the floor and landing with a fragile thud.
So much for not making noise, Mylo commentated unhelpfully.
This time, she ignored him, returning dutifully and more than a little hurriedly to packing up the Hexclaw.
Maybe if she had known herself better, she would have remembered she had a habit for letting curiosity overcome her reason. As she placed one of the gloves into the bag, a blue glint caught her eye. Of course, her reason objected - they had plenty of stolen gemstones back at the lab - but her mind wandered to her earlier revelation regarding the Hexclaw's power source. She took an orb and slipped it into a socket, encapsulating herself with how even the slightest of hand movements caused it to clench and unclench realistically.
"Cool," she commented, slipping the gem out and placing it precisely where she found it. Curiosity satiated, she zipped up the bag, pausing to safely repositioned the device. So engrossed was she, that she didn't hear the mechanical sounds powering up behind her.
Her final warning was a blue light illuminating her shadow.
"Put. That. Back."
Oh shit.
Oh fuck!
Oh fucking shit!
The overbearing feeling of panic flooded her and subsided just as quickly, smoothly displaced by distaste.
"Oh, look who it is!" she snarled, twirling on her heel to face Jayce Talis. Smirking bitterly, she gestured to him as if to signal an entrance. "The Man of Progress!"
Jayce scowled, the Mercury Hammer growling under his whitening knuckles.
"Awww, you're mad! You gonna shoot me?" she teased, wrapping her braids defensively around herself and slapping on her helpless little girl face. "Help, help! I'm a helpless little girl, and this nasty man's gonna hurt me with his fancy new toy!"
He ignored her goading, cutting to the chase. "What have you done with Viktor?"
"I've saved him," she replied incredulously.
"Liar."
"Ha!" she barked. "You're a funny guy, Mr. Talis. A real fucking funny guy!"
"You're lying!" he insisted haplessly, jerking the weapon toward her. To his horror, she didn't flinch, but began to meander closer, arms swinging casually.
"One thing you should know: I hate liars," she spat the words out like a sour lemon, so that there was no doubt they were true. Her devilish smirk had transformed into something of icy fury, eyes slicing into his being. "I'd kill anyone who lied to me, and I'd never lie to anyone, even..." she eyed him with distaste, "...you."
"Even so," he said, lowering the weapon ever-so-slightly. "I don't why he'd stay with you, unless you’re-"
"Why do you care?!" she broke out passionately, voice raspy with rage. "You're the one who left him!"
"I never meant to injure him!" he retorted, hammer rising with his anger. "The exile was unanimous."
"Oh, so you admit you agreed to it?" she derided. Suddenly, her face contorted into something strange: a mix of resentment and empathy. When she spoke again, her eyes glistened: "Do you even know what happened to him after you left?! Do you even care?! You left him. I found him, he's mine, you're not going to take him from me!"
"You took him from me!" he retorted, nerves strung high as the hammer growled with vigour.
Jinx cackled, an impassioned, psychotic thing that would have had him shuddering if he weren't totally infuriated.
"You're a class act, mister!" she heckled, pointing an accusing finger at him and moving sporadically. "Mister pretend-you-miss-him! Bet you think I wouldn't miss him!"
Jayce arms fell limp, the hammer falling from his fingers as they gave out to the rising burn of the weight in his hands. Jinx seemed to forgot him, flinging the prodigal bag over her shoulder. With this weight lifted of his shoulders, he felt a new kind of strength festering in him. In a few broad paces, he strode up to her.
"I'm going to erase whatever fucked up delusions you've manipulated him with in his vulnerability, but first, I'm going to take you back to your tough-ass sister and see what Caitlyn wants to do with you now you killed her mother, you fucking psycho."
"Just. Try," she hissed, eyes ablaze with raw, unfiltered hatred as she gazed unwaveringly into his looming form. "She won't want me. No one does, and anyway, she won't get the chance." Her final words she laced with special, reserved malice just for him: "Besides, I work with Viktor."
"You wha-?"
As if on cue, his attention was drawn to an obnoxious ticking noise at his feet. Too late did he realise it was a bomb. A last mocking breath tickled his ear.
"We’re like best friends."
Bang!
Plumes of smoke engulfed them both, and Jinx vanished into the fog with only a maniacal laugh to follow on. Jayce fumbled around, lunged for the direction of her giggles and landed on nothing. Outside, he heard muffled bangs and the splatters of ink and paint. In the artificial fog, he tripped and stumbled several times, groping blindly in the dark for a girl that was long gone.
When he finally escaped his imprisonment of smoke, any traces of the Hexclaw, and of Jinx, were gone.
Viktor was furious.
It was a rare occurrence for him to even get angry, so the fact that Jinx of all people had managed to make him furious was really something profound.
It was ironic that he had always scoffed at those cartoons where steam blew out a person’s ears (deeming it frustratingly scientifically inaccurate), because right now he swore he could almost feel it happening to him. As he stormed into the lab, he could feel his fingernails prick into his left hand, and in his right his cane quivered under the force of his grasp. His teeth were set like a wild animal, grating together against his will.
”Jinx!”
No response. Only the sound of blaring music from where she worked conscientiously around the Hexcore, twisting away at the dials with her hands and cautiously pressing gemstones against it to gage their reaction. He winced as the abrasive music graced his ears.
“…My teeth are yellow, hello world. Would you like me a little better if they were white like yours?…”
”Jinx!”
Still no response. He stood about a metre behind her now, comfortably dropping his cane to rest his hands on his hips in the fashion of a disappointed parent.
”Jinx!” He tried again, this time adding more force.
She barely faltered. He would dare say she was even singing.
Viktor threw his arms up, utterly exasperated. With new focus, he picked up his cane, carrying it easily near the Hexcore and not requiring it for support. He flounced over to the record player, slamming the cane down on the disk with enough force that the music sputtered and crackled.
”Jinx!”
”That’s me!” she stated cheerfully, apparently not at all fazed by this abnormally brutal display.
As she predicted, he wasted no time in reproving her.
”A dozen enforcers, after us! Enforcers! After us!”
”…yeah?”
“The academy, vandalised!”
”Ohhhh… yeah…”
”Approaching. Jayce.”
”Y-up!”
She tried to take it seriously, she really did, but since Viktor relied so much on his voice to give him power, he hardly moved - it really took away from the whole ‘intimidating’ aspect he was going for. Instead, she toyed with the spinning top he’d gifted her, absorbing herself with it and reacting minimally until the lecture was over.
As for him, he was infuriated with her lack of attention and clear miscomprehension of the urgency of the situation. He needed her attention. He snatched the toy from her, disregarding the pang of guilt he felt at her fleetingly hurt expression.
”Do you have any idea the extent of what you’ve just done?!”
”Actually…” she began slowly, prolonging the pronunciation as she lifted herself from her seat in preparation for the surprise. “I do.” She moved to a table adorned with decorations, spiralling aesthetically around the suspicious tall white cloak in the centre. In one swift movement, she unveiled her passion project. “Ta-da!!”
Whatever anger had been on his face until now was completely wiped out in place of awe. He gawked at the machinery she had collected, floating between the emotions of joy, anger, and surprise like a lost little balloon. So astounded was he that he didn’t notice her walking up to him diffidently, hands behind her as her eyes peered up from under her black brows, until she was right in front of him. Taking his stunned expression for joy, her face brightened significantly, and she practically leapt into him with a desperate, approval-seeking hug.
I did all this for you, it said. Do you appreciate it?
By now, he was completely overwhelmed with the growing plethora of emotions in his chest, managing only to pat her shoulders as pride and sympathy joined the party. Eventually - as was customary of his mind - his logic reignited again and quelled his emotions in favour of better judgement.
Had Jinx stolen the Hexclaw just to make him happy? Yes. Was she desperate for his love and approval? Most definitely. Did that change the fact that she had risked her life and performed several dangerous crimes in the process? No.
”Do you like it?” she queried modestly, drawing back and looking at him with those wide, innocuous eyes that had no idea she’d done anything remotely wrong.
Viktor swallowed, measured up his words carefully in his mouth before administering them. “The… thought behind it was very nice and I am very grateful, but…” As he uttered the word sharply, her face faltered a little. As a comfort, he pressed his hands on her shoulders. “It doesn’t change that what you did today was dangerous and morally wrong.”
“Are you mad?” she whispered faintly, lip trembling.
“At you? No,” he denied, rubbing her arms reassuringly. “But you need to understand that there are consequences for your actions that are going to make life trickier for us now, not to mention how it will effect others. Those bombs you set may have been harmless, but they could have hurt innocent people, and I know full well you don’t want anymore blood on your hands, do you?”
”No…” she appended murmuringly, eyes brimming with tears of shame.
”There, there,” he recovered, pulling her into the proper hug he couldn’t give earlier. “I’m not angry, schastlivy. It was an excellent surprise, a wonderful surprise, and I appreciate the effort you put into it.”
”I just wanted you to know what I’d do for you,” she whimpered.
”I know, klever, but I already know that,” he explained. “And there are better ways of showing it than disturbing Piltover, okay? You show it enough as is. No need to put lives on the line as well. Do you understand, malysh? I’m not upset.”
”I understand,” she mumbled sincerely.
“Khoroshaya devochka,” he praised wholeheartedly, rubbing circles into her back. “Now, why don’t you help me with my medicine, and then we’ll take a look at the Hexclaw and see what we can discover, hm? How’s that sound?”
”Good.” She snivelled into his shoulder.
He squeezed her reassuringly, and then guided her by the hand to prepare for the same emotionally vulnerable, bonding procedure they’d performed that morning.