Late at night, after a busy day, the group was gathered at the inn, enjoying a late-night meal.
"So your big mission topside was to play doorman? Son of a bitch, that job really suits you. Hahaha," Graves mocked Twisted Fate.
Twisted Fate didn't bite back, which took all the fun out of it for Graves. He didn't notice the hidden smile playing on TF's lips.
From Twisted Fate's perspective, he could see Jinx drawing something on Graves's back with a marker while Fizz sneakily poured a mysterious liquid into his drink. Little Isha provided another distraction, running up to hug Graves's leg, babbling and drawing his full attention.
Ren watched the trio wreaking havoc on Graves and felt a sense of peace. Jinx's demeanor was clearly much brighter than when he'd first found her. Her mischievous grin couldn't hide how adorable she was.
Isha was like a miniature Jinx, which made sense given her history. Through their earlier chats, they had learned Isha's story. She was being hunted by a Chem-Baron's thugs when Jinx had swooped in and saved her.
A helpless orphan, persecuted by villains, is suddenly rescued by a cool older girl who not only saves her but also effortlessly defeats the enemies she stood no chance against. It's only natural to admire the strong, especially when that person is your savior. As a result, Isha tried her best to be just like Jinx. Whenever she faced a problem, she would instinctively wonder, What would Jinx do? And on top of that, the kid was smart.
As for Fizz, the blue-skinned fish-man was a clever, mischievous spirit who loved pranks. While his way of thinking wasn't quite like a normal person's, as a yordle, he was kind-hearted. Even if his actions led to less-than-ideal results, he always started with a good intention. Fuck, that damn sense of déjà vu.
After their fun, everyone went back to their rooms to wash up and rest. Ren had booked the entire floor, so even Isha had her own room, though she clearly preferred to stay with Jinx.
When a freshly washed Ren was about to get into bed, he found it already occupied by Jinx and Isha.
The two of them were wearing pajamas they'd bought at the inn. Jinx patted the space on the bed and wiggled a finger at Ren.
"C'mon, handsome~"
Muttering about how it "wasn't appropriate, really," Ren, already in his own pajamas, climbed into bed.
He lay on the edge, with Jinx in the middle, her back to him. Isha lay facing Jinx, her little head snuggled against Jinx's chest. The three of them fell into a deep sleep.
A ray of morning sun streamed in, and Jinx slowly opened her eyes. It seemed she had slept soundly; a tiny trail of drool had escaped the corner of her mouth.
As Jinx stretched languidly, she woke Isha up. Seeing the little girl's sleepy, confused eyes, she leaned close to her ear.
"Little kids who sleep in don't get breakfast~"
Isha's bright eyes just looked at her as if to say, Who do you think you're kidding? But a second later, she played along, leaping up with her hands in the air and letting out a great shout—"Yaaah!~~~"—like a king returning to his throne.
Just then, they noticed Ren was gone. They went searching for him and found him in the room where they'd had their late-night snack, sitting in meditative silence.
This was the luxury of having money—using an entire room just for meetings and meals.
Jinx grabbed one of her long braids and started tickling his ear with it. Isha looked down at her own short hair, frustrated, until another long blue braid appeared right in front of her. Jinx had offered her the other one. And so, the two little troublemakers began to pester Ren.
With a sigh, Ren exited his meditative state, made a monster face, and pretended he was going to catch them, sending the two of them scattering on their bare feet.
After breakfast, Jinx was not happy to hear that Ren wanted her to stay in and study the research notes.
"I wanna go too! When it comes to taking down gangs, I'm a professional."
"It's just a small-time gang; we don't need our Jinxie for this one. Besides, Hextech is the key to making Zaun strong in the future."
"Fine, I won't go. It's not like I can help with that stuff anyway. It's the same whether I'm there or not."
Ren looked at Jinx, who was now perched on a chair with her head down. Though she acted like she didn't care, he could see the disappointment in her eyes. He thought for a moment and then said, "However, this is our first move against a Zaunite gang. It's a very significant event."
Jinx's head shot up, her eyes sparkling. Isha and Fizz also crowded closer.
A corner of Ren's mouth twitched. He swallowed the words he was about to say and changed his tune. "Alright then, everyone's going. We'll use this opportunity to form our own gang."
"Yay!" The three little ones hugged and jumped up and down. "Jinx, Fizz," Ren said quickly, "you two stick with Isha. You have to protect her."
Jinx declared that no one would hurt Isha while she was around. Fizz also solemnly swore that he wouldn't stand for anyone bullying his friends.
Twisted Fate picked up a playing card, his voice dropping to a dramatic low. "So, it begins? A person of destiny, with like-minded friends, forms a new power. What changes will this tide bring to the world? Salvation… or destruction?"
"The hell are you on about? That's a goddamn playing card, not a tarot card. Who the fuck do you think you're fooling?" Graves shot back at him. "But if we're starting a gang, what're we gonna call it? How about 'The Real Men'?"¹
The three little ones beside him couldn't stand it, letting out a collective "Ewwww~" of disgust.
Ren, wearing the hooded jacket that Jinx had enchanted (with graffiti), walked into the Black Hand's headquarters, the others following close behind.
The base was crowded. It looked like they were in the middle of a meeting, which was good news for Ren.
"Arthur, I gave you a chance. You should have cherished it!" In the center of the courtyard sat a large, muscular man. His right arm was a black mechanical prosthesis.
Across from him, a middle-aged man with a thick beard was tied to a post. "No matter how far I fall, I'll never run with you. You piece of shit, I was already making a name for myself when you were still licking someone else's boots!"²
The courtyard fell silent. Even the thugs in the corner who had been beating up a group of teenagers stopped. The leader of the Black Hand's face turned ashen, a vein throbbing on his forehead. Then, a cruel smile spread across his face, and he waved his hand.
A goon standing next to Arthur got the signal and swung a baseball bat at him, yelling as he did. He taunted him about how being a veteran meant nothing, how he only got by because of Vander, and how Vander had been dead for years.
And then there was no 'after that.' The thug, his head suddenly sporting a new hole, collapsed at Arthur's feet. The shot had come from Jinx. An almost visible aura of murderous intent radiated from her. "I'm going to kill them."
Ren's gaze shifted from Jinx back to the crowd. "Then kill them all. Leave no one alive."
"Protect Isha," Ren said to Fizz, then began to walk slowly toward the Black Hand leader.
Boom! Graves charged into the crowd like a berserker, his shotgun blasting. Twisted Fate, cards in hand, sent them flying into the thugs as he slowly made his way over to Isha and Fizz.
Jinx, after firing two more pistol shots, switched to her minigun and unleashed a 'death storm' upon their enemies.
Ren, who had been keeping a close eye on Jinx, relaxed a little. Not bad. Her mental state really has improved. This time, despite her rage, she hadn't broken down. And her machine-gun spray had deliberately avoided Graves, Arthur, and the captive teenagers in the corner.
He sidestepped a slashing blade and delivered a sharp elbow strike to the attacker's ribs, shattering them. The man coughed up blood as bone fragments pierced his organs; he wasn't going to make it.
Facing another group of charging thugs, Ren raised his foot to attack but quickly stopped himself, remembering one of his goals for this fight.
He raised a hand, and a gust of wind formed a Wind Blade that sliced a thug in two at the waist. Ignoring the horrified screams of the other enemies, Ren continued to experiment. Wind Blade barrage! Dozens of blades flew out, and in an instant, the air was filled with severed limbs in an incredibly bloody scene.
Twisted Fate had shielded Isha so she wouldn't see the carnage.
The Black Hand leader was a ruthless man himself. Knowing he couldn't escape, he pulled out a vial of Shimmer and injected it into his neck.
His body swelled slightly, but the veins on his skin bulged, glowing with an intense purple light that matched his eyes. He let out a roar and a cloud of gas, then charged at Ren.
Ren's eyes also began to glow. He stopped casting spells and charged forward to meet him, bare-handed.
BOOM! It was like two small trucks colliding. The impact drew everyone's attention—or at least, the attention of Ren's crew, as all the other gang members were already dead.
Jinx started to raise her gun to help, but Graves stopped her.
"This is a fight you can't interfere in," Graves said in a deep, serious tone. "A war between kings!"
Then his expression shifted, and his voice returned to normal. "Eh, this chump looks tough, but he's no match for Ren. Ren's not even using his full strength; he's clearly just using him for practice." An image of the punch Ren had thrown back in Bilgewater flashed in his mind. "If this guy was a real threat, I'd have jumped in already. We'd fight him shoulder-to-shoulder and fuck him up."
Twisted Fate, meanwhile, had already taken Fizz and Isha outside to play games.
Ren weaved left and right, throwing occasional punches, not letting the Black Hand leader land a single hit. The man got faster and faster, then suddenly smashed his mechanical arm toward Ren's chest. Ren didn't dodge. He took the punch head-on.
As the mechanical arm struck his chest, a faint golden light flared, absorbing the damage. Ren took the hit without so much as grunting. Unscathed.
A similar golden glow appeared around his clenched fist. With a single punch, Ren sent the Black Hand leader flying, embedding him in the nearby wall.
It was the power of Grit. His Haymaker ability originally stored Grit by taking damage, then unleashed it in a powerful strike while simultaneously generating a shield. Through his deepening understanding of the skill, Ren had learned he no longer needed to get hit to build Grit. He could now accumulate it at any time, though it was much slower than taking a beating. He could also use the stored Grit without activating Haymaker, channeling it to his fists to increase his attack power or to his body for defense.
It proved that skills were just a starting point. They weren't limited to their system descriptions. How far he could take them and how much power he could unleash depended entirely on his own ability.
He pulled the Black Hand leader out of the wall. "You're a monster… a real monster… Ugh—Argh! Come on, do it!" The punch seemed to have knocked some sense back into him, and he roared defiantly.
But Ren didn't finish him off. "We're not done yet. I need your cooperation with one more thing." Before the man could speak, Ren used Flash, and the two of them vanished, reappearing three meters away.
"How do you feel? Uncomfortable? Are you hurt?"
"N-no… I feel fine." The man suddenly realized what he'd been asked. 'Am I hurt?' Are you fucking blind? You have to ask me if I'm hurt?
Ren continued, the golden light flashing again and again, about once every three seconds. Finally, he confirmed it: taking someone with him when he used Flash didn't cause them any harm, though after too many successive jumps, the passenger would get dizzy and nauseous.
Ren thanked the Black Hand leader for his selfless assistance, and then ended his life with a single punch.
Graves was bandaging Arthur's wounds. Jinx had been the one to cut him down from the post. After freeing him, she had walked over to the group of teenagers and was now just standing there, quietly watching them, lost in thought.
"Arthur? Is that you?"³
"It's me, Ren. You're still alive. I can't believe the little kid from back then is a grown man now." Arthur spoke as if he wasn't injured at all. He then nodded his head slightly toward Jinx and whispered, "Is that Powder?"
Ren knelt down and whispered back, "Yeah. But she likes to be called Jinx now."
Arthur closed his eyes and nodded slowly. "Understood."
Ren asked, and Arthur explained what had happened to him over the years. He had refused to work with Silco and the Chem-Barons and looked down on most of the current gangs. He had helped countless orphans and teenagers.
Heal.
A fully recovered Arthur accepted Ren's invitation to join them. The group left the bloody scene and found a clean spot nearby to discuss a name for their new gang.
After rejecting 'The Real Men,' 'The Iron Bros,' 'The Dynamite Gang,' 'The Feed-the-Fish Gang,' 'The Blue-Blue Gang,' and 'The God of Gamblers Gang,' an idea struck Ren.
"'May Janna protect you, and may the Gray not enter your home.' Let's call ourselves The Bluebird Gang."
"Just like in the catastrophe hundreds of years ago, when Janna's protection, a wall of wind, saved countless people in Zaun."
"I hope The Bluebird Gang can be like Janna, a great wind that sweeps away the Zaun Gray and brings fresh air and sunlight to our people."
Seeing the emotion and bright light in Jinx's and Isha's eyes, Ren asked, "Is that name okay?"
Jinx rushed forward and threw her arms around Ren. "It's brilliant! You're a genius, handsome! Of course, your genius is still a little bit less than mine. Just a little," she said, making a tiny space between her thumb and forefinger.
Isha rushed in too, hugging them both tightly.
Arthur said nothing, but his trembling hands and the intense light in his eyes betrayed the storm of emotion inside him.
Twisted Fate held up a card and began to speak in cryptic phrases.
Graves managed to choke back his urge to roast TF, not wanting to ruin the moment. But he couldn't hold it in forever and finally muttered under his breath, "Call it whatever you want. You're the boss, you can call it anything." Well, to be fair, he thought, none of the rejected names were Ren's idea.
Only Fizz was ignored. "The Feed-the-Fish Gang is a great name! Or the Jump-in-the-Sea Gang, the Shark Gang…"
"Can we join?"
The teenagers who had been beaten by the Black Hand gang were asking.
Translator's Notes:
Graves's suggestion of "纯爷们" (Chún Yémen) for the gang name is perfectly in character. It literally means "Pure/100% Manly Men." I've translated it as "The Real Men" to capture the slightly silly, hyper-masculine vibe. The insult Arthur uses, "在哪添蛋呢" (zài nǎ tiǎn dàn ne), is crude slang that literally means "licking eggs somewhere." It implies being a sycophant or a nobody. I've translated it as "licking someone else's boots" to convey a similar level of contempt. The author's numbered footnotes from the original text have been integrated or explained here. The reunion with Arthur is a significant plot point, connecting Ren's new crew to Zaun's more idealistic past under Vander.