Her Gun to His Head

Warm, orange sparks tickled Jinx's skin as she welded two unsightly pieces of steel together, her music blaring through the cavern as it typically did while she tinkered. She examined her handiwork, putting her torch down for a moment and pulling welding goggles away from her tired eyes. She supposed she'd normally have tried to catch some winks by now, but she'd been buzzing all night, unable to exhaust her own energy.

It probably wasn't a bad thing, she thought as she glanced over at her replenished stack of Chompers, the stockpile at least twice as big as before. It wasn't as though she'd ever be likely to run out of repetitive tasks with which to occupy herself — perhaps Silco could use a fancy-looking new ashtray, or something. She always got a kick out of giving gifts to people, especially prank gifts — she did wonder whether Chuck ever kept that nice box full of spiders she'd left at the bar for him a few nights ago. She couldn't believe she'd forgotten to ask him about that...

Her mind flashed back briefly to the rooftops above The Lanes, from some hours prior. For some reason she was struggling to remember the name he'd given her — the mysterious dude skulking about in the shadows. She supposed some mischief might not be wasted on him, if they were ever to cross paths again.

What was his deal, anyway? She could tell from watching his little scuffle with those two goons before that he did some things just for the fun of it… yet, he'd totally blown her off without a thought — she was the most fun person in this boring waste-town…

Seemed way too focused on being all serious and brooding — talk about having your priorities upside down.

She supposed that the tenor of their conversation was at least different from the way she was normally treated by people around here — having everybody either feel afraid 'cause they think you're crazy, or just see you as a nuisance who's gonna mess everything up was getting old.

Garou, that's right…

She began to think about how he'd asked her where she liked to spend her time — perhaps he did see himself crossing paths with her again…

She glanced down at her chest, feeling her heart thudding a little faster than normal, in response to her thoughts.

Not that she'd never felt excited about something before, but it felt different, somehow. It felt weird.

She dismissed it, returning to her unfinished contraption. She soon realized she'd been so deep in her daydream that she hadn't even noticed the repeated low squeal of the record needle skipping. She dropped her tools once more and hopped up to go and fix it, stifling a yawn for the first time.

She'd only just made it over to the player when Silco burst through the door, a stressed look on his face. He immediately began toward her.

"You've only been here in The Lanes tonight, yes?" he said quietly, but with a kind of frantic undertone, "tell me it wasn't you…?"

"Wh— yeah…?" she replied, confused by his demeanor. "I mean, I was waiting for you at the bar, I guess you went and left though, so I took a walk… why?"

He seemed to straighten up and breathe a sort of sigh of relief at her answer.

"There's been an attack Topside," he revealed, running a tense hand through his hair and beginning to pace slowly, "not nearly as significant as the one you carried out, from all I've been able to gather… though, reliable information has been all but impossible to come by thus far—"

"Marcus?— you didn't talk to him yet, you mean?" she wondered, moving toward him, in hopes of comforting him.

"No— he may have been on the scene," he replied. "From all I've heard, it's seemingly being attributed a single individual… which is the part that strikes me, and why I thought that perhaps you'd—"

He paused, staring ahead for a moment, before turning to her.

"I'm not certain how this might hinder us, if at all," he said, slowly backing up to lean against the railing, and allowing her to slink over to his side. "For all I know, it may have simply been some street rat who got their hands on more Shimmer than they could handle…"

Jinx let out a small giggle. "Yeah, probably, I mean, didn't you tell me that half the snotty well-to-do's up there take the stuff themselves anyway?"

He glanced at her. "…I certainly suspect that Finn and a few of the others deal to them, yes," he replied dispassionately, letting his head roll back to gaze at the cavern above.

She looked up at him, observing how haggard he looked.

"…You're not used'ta havin' to be up this late are ya?" she pestered.

He took a moment to stretch his eyes and then turned to her again. "I suppose not recently, no." He exhaled. "I've dispatched Sevika to find out all she can from our other contacts, so, if anything, she's the one who ought feel the most disgruntled tomorrow morning."

"Serves her right," Jinx smirked, snuggling up by his side. "You coulda totally taken me with you, by the way, instead of leavin' me behind again…"

"I hadn't had much of a notion that it was going to be an eventful night until I was informed that the bridges had been shut," he replied.

"Mm, okay…" she conceded.

"I'm supposing nothing of interest occurred down here while I was gone…?"

She considered recounting her night to him, as she often did, but unexpectedly decided against it.

"Nothing ever does…!" she sang.

He smiled slightly, petting her hair for a moment, before pulling her in front of him and giving her the fatherly look-over.

"You haven't slept at all, have you?" he surmised of her own tired eyes.

She gave a delirious giggle. "Fishbones is almost ready…"

"Hm," he looked concerned, but vaguely appreciative. "You mustn't push yourself so hard…"

She smiled back at him, her eyes beginning to flutter shut.

"Careful— you'll fall…" he said, holding her by the shoulders.

She steadied herself, rubbing both her eyes and yawning at the same time. "I'm okay…"

"You know, there is still a bed for you up there," he added. "I do wish you wouldn't choose to sleep down here…"

"I'll be fine…" she grinned wearily, "you can let go…"

He reluctantly did so, and watched with trepidation as she waltzed over the enormous turbine blade upon which sat her sleeping area, collapsing onto her patched-together mattress.

"Good night…!" she murmured through the material.

He shook his head, and turned to take his leave. "Good night, Jinx," he returned quietly, leaving her to rest in her vast neon cave.

~~~~~

Jinx peeled her eyes open to an irritating, fluttering sound right by her ear. She made a half-hearted swipe at it when she discovered it to be a firelight insect, whirring by her head.

'Those things don't normally find their way down here…' she thought drearily to herself.

She begrudgingly sat herself up. She supposed it would have to have been morning, though she'd have to wait to find out — daylight didn't exactly reach her underground crevice.

She opted against bothering to change her clothes, so she fetched her small carry pouch and followed the rickety wooden path up the stone face of the cavern until she reached street level. One of her newly assembled Chompers was subjected to some colorful doodles as she climbed, so that he didn't stand out from the rest.

She popped the cap back on her paint marker and surveyed the street, hoping that something might catch her eye. She supposed that the caged, adolescent Krug kept by the street vendor near The Last Drop deserved a visit — those things did make the most adorable little sounds.

The vendor gave her a somewhat unenthusiastic nod of the head as she skipped over to his stall, allowing her to peel the cover back and take a quick look at the captured creature. She bobbed back and forth excitedly while he absently returned to eating his lunch.

The Krug gargled at her lazily, showing off an azure glow between its stone body plates. She grinned, wondering if there might be any out there that displayed a pink coloration. Not that she'd ever really be able to keep one — the thing would easily grow to become twice her size before long.

She dropped the cover back over the cage and moved on, finding her secret back alley route to the upstairs floor of The Last Drop, and making her way up. Peering through the window that would be her entrance, she scrunched up her face inadvertently at the sight of Sevika brusquely exiting Silco's office, waiting until she'd gone downstairs before lifting the glass frame and crawling inside.

She pressed an ear against the door first, carefully opening it and stepping inside once she was confident her father was the only person on the other side of it.

He'd already begun to light up a cigar, as he noticed her enter.

"Jinx," he greeted her with a subdued tone, "I have something I'll need you to do for me today."

"Oh— okay," she answered, somewhat pleasantly surprised.

He concluded a puff from his cigar, and leaned forward over his desk, inviting her over. She hopped toward him, taking interest in the large Piltovan city map sprawled out across the surface of the desk.

"I have some of our people stationed by the harbor side of the Bridge of Progress, as well as these two smaller footbridges," he gestured, dropping some ash from his cigar hand onto the parchment without meaning to.

She resisted the urge to use her finger to decorate the page with it.

"From what we've gathered, the bridge closures were downgraded to only a partial blockade early this morning," he continued. "I'd still like to know the size of their guard shifts, and how strictly our couriers are being screened for merchandise — with Marcus remaining unreachable, it's unclear how long it will be in effect…"

"Oh— still, huh?" she replied. "Y'think he got taken out?"

Silco sighed. "We'll certainly have to entertain the possibility. That, or he's decided to turn on us. I intend to find out before nightfall…"

Jinx had taken her paint markers back out of her pouch, and had begun to add some color to the line work on the map.

"What about the Shimmer-head?" she wondered absently, while she scribbled. "If he made it out, shouldn't we try to find him?"

Silco slowly exhaled a wisp of smoke. "Strangely, Sevika is convinced that she had a run-in with this person, the night before last… some kid from out of town she says, causing trouble at the gaming lounge…" He ran a tired hand through his hair, subtly shaking his head. "It's tenuous to me — virtually all of the visual descriptions that have trickled down thus far have been inconsistent and over-sensationalized, so I fail to see how she might have reached that conclusion…"

Jinx smirked and rolled her eyes in amusement. "Sounds like her... so— what, everybody up there are tellin' tales of some big, scary, monster?"

"That's… likely how it would have appeared to Topside — few of them up there would ever have seen anything remotely like it before…" he mused.

"They wouldn'ta seen anything like anything before," she babbled.

"Mm," Silco replied absently.

He turned to her, after a moment.

"I seem to remember you having built yourself a spyglass, some time ago," he said. "It had a magnification lens—"

She perked up a little.

"Yeah, for looking at airships from the rooftops," she confirmed, "I think I kept it in the stash down there, somewhere."

"Good," he replied. "I thought perhaps you'd fetch it. You have a talent for climbing — I'd like you to find yourself a lookout point over the bridge, and relay back to me all you can see."

"Oh," she replied, pursing her lips slightly. "Sure, I guess I can do that…"

He nodded, laying back in his chair with his cigar.

"Bring your notebook, if it helps," he suggested.

She got the sense that she was being given busywork, but she didn't feel like pressing the issue.

"Okay, well, I'll see ya later then…" she inwardly sulked, trudging toward the door.

"Be safe, please," he quietly called after her.

'As if that was ever an issue…'

~~~~~

She found herself perched rather precariously between two narrow walls, high above the Fissures, but still nowhere near as high up as she needed to be for the task at hand. She located an open window that she could use to find some footing temporarily, and swung herself up to reach it.

She glanced inside at the dim interior — half of the dwellings on this side of the river were abandoned, likely for as long as she'd been alive, or thereabouts. She struggled to remember clearly the fighting that she'd been told about, long ago. She only knew that she'd lived through it, as a small child. Many didn't…

None of that stuff really mattered though, not to her, at least. She supposed it did to Silco, but he had his reasons. The past was hard to make go away, as much as one might want to.

'It had mattered to her, too…' she remembered.

Jinx felt a pang in her head as she tried her best not to dredge up old memories.

She spotted a staircase inside the apartment leading up to the next floor, which looked more appealing than scaling a stone wall, so she stepped inside.

The floorboards creaked as she crept along them. The place was kinda weird — various terrariums littered every available surface, the plants inside having spilled out long ago, growing along the walls and up the ceiling, searching for moisture.

Jinx wandered into the kitchen, with half a notion to see whether the plumbing still worked. All she found were the open ends of the pipes jutting out from the wall, the sinks and taps having been removed to be sold for coin, presumably. An end table by the staircase sat with its drawer open, a set of unused bandages inside.

'Yoink,' she thought to herself, claiming them and stashing them inside of her pouch. Not that proper wound care was really ever her forte…

She kept her footsteps light as she made her way upstairs, and peered through a doorframe which showed her a relatively unobstructed view of Piltover. As she crept closer, she confirmed that the wall had seemingly been knocked out on that side of the building, providing her a useful vista. She observed dull, grey clouds over the entire city. She hoped that whatever lookout spot she did manage to find would have some form of shelter — she hardly fancied a recon mission spent drenched and shivering…

As she crossed the threshold into the room with the battered down wall, she unexpectedly heard something stir beside her.

She thrust her pistol out in front of her out of instinct, but didn't feel the need to cock it when she saw him. Her eyes were saucers for a moment.

His face instead turned quickly to a scowl.

"What'd I tell ya 'bout following me…?" Garou grumbled, sat hunched against the paint-stripped wall.

"Foll— what…?!" she stammered, "I'm here because— what are you doing here…?"

He side-eyed her.

"I try not to sleep in the same spot twice…" he replied. "Found this place on my way back from—" He paused. "Never mind. Didn't bring anybody with, did you…?"

"No…?" she answered, her brows furrowed.

He studied her face for a moment.

"…Cool," he eventually replied, slouching down and aimlessly moving pieces of rubble about.

"Make it sound like you're on the run, or something," she remarked, unclenching her facial muscles. "Enforcers don't really go looking for anybody in the Fissures anymore, you know…"

He shot her an expression that she supposed was meant to look mean.

"Don't really need anybody keeping tabs on me, aight?" he declared.

She scoffed in derision, but quietly enough that he wouldn't hear her.

After a moment, he seemed to chuckle to himself.

"Say, I heard people talkin' about some sorta monster attack over the bridge…" he smirked.

"Uh, yeah, I heard about something like that," she said, coy about saying too much.

"Didn't think people believed in that sort of thing over there…" he remarked, the impish smile not leaving his face.

She was finding his demeanor to be curious.

"Well… I guess that's just what you call something scary you never seen before," she said. "Topsiders ain't seen much of anything, over there in their golden palaces…"

He cocked an eyebrow.

"And on this side…?" he asked.

"…On this side, what?" she puzzled. "This is where Shimmer comes from…"

"Hm," he seemed to tilt his head back in thought. "The pink stuff makes you strong, huh…?"

She narrowed her eyes a little.

"You're really not from around here, huh?" she said.

He side-eyed her again.

"Whatever…" he shook his head, her comment seeming to annoy him. "I still ain't convinced you're not stalkin' me, y'know…"

She rolled her eyes at him, stepping over the rubble and toward the edge.

She attempted to scout out the next leg of her path to the top of the skyline, while he watched her.

"Ain't much of a way down that way — already tried it…" he chimed in.

She glanced at him. "I'm not trying to go down…"

He raised an eyebrow. "What for…?"

She gave a sarcastic chuckle. "Why— you wanna come with, all of a sudden?"

He quietly scowled, clearly not appreciating a taste of his own medicine.

"Nah," he said bluntly, standing up and rubbing his knuckles, wrapped up in bloody bandages. "Anyway, don't expect me to still be here when you get back…"

The bandages had caught her eye. "Oh, um… I think these could be yours, actually," she said, pulling out the roll she'd found in the drawer downstairs.

He raised a brow again. "Yeah…" he replied, gingerly accepting them back from her. "Didn't want the fresh ones to get dirty…"

They looked at each other for a moment, as he began to unwrap the old ones from around his hand.

"Thanks…" he muttered.

"Sure… I doubt ya even remember my name, though," she remarked.

"Nope," he replied, "remember your hair, though, never seen nothin' like that..."

She wasn't sure why, but hearing that made her face start to feel hot.

"Whatever," she shot back. "Just— go and beat some more people up, why don'tcha…"

This seemed to elicit a genuine chuckle from him. He stepped through the doorway and into another room, presumably to go find some tape for his fresh wrap.

She finally spotted her way up, though it involved a bit of a shimmy across a narrow ledge, which she didn't exactly look forward to. She glanced back, spotting Garou down the hall tearing off the new bandage with his teeth and using some sap from a nearby plant to glue it down. It seemed he could take care of himself, at least.

They met eyes as he turned to descend the staircase.

"You, uh," he began from a distance, "gonna be at that bar tonight? The one you were on about?"

She bashfully darted her eyes away from him at the question.

"I… y'know, I can be…" she replied gawkily, "you gonna…?"

"I'll see 'bout makin' it… got somethin' else to do first," he answered. "Other side of town…"

'Jeez, always so mysterious…' she mused.

"Okay," she said, "well… I'll be there, probably…"

"…Cool," he gave a little nod, and hopped on down, out of sight.

She found the quickening thud of her heartbeat unwelcome, in that moment — she still had a mission to do.

At least, this time, there was something kinda fun to look forward to afterward, maybe…