Sevika's Place . . .
Ekko didn't think he'd end up back there again. This time, with an invite.
"Your village is now known, once the chem-barons know, everyone knows. Even changing the way there is only going to last for so long." She went and grabbed her keys.
"Yeah." He knew that. "I couldn't order Jinx to kill everyone. Even if I did, I don't know how long they've known, or who knew."
"Jinx couldn't anyhow, she had one gun, and you can't take out Smeech easily," Savika said. "You need a new plan, the half-assed staying at Last Drop isn't happening anymore, Ekko."
"I know," he admitted. "They are going to start showing up. I also need a lab." Maybe? "Could I bring some lab equipment to your place?"
"A better idea. Heimerdinger." Savika looked toward him. "I want you to take my place for Zaun's council."
"Uuh?" Heimerdinger looked stunned. "Why?"
"You should be up there. They blamed you for not knowing or understanding what was going on in Zaun. Now you know," she reminded him. "You were also right about the hextech. If they don't accept you, it won't be hard to get some press going about everything."
"I mean what about you?" Heimerdinger asked her.
"Ekko is going to have his hands filled learning to be a bad guy, and instead of being miles away from his home, he'd probably feel better protecting it. You're also going to have to rely on some of your people to overlook your shit, or you will be discovered. Each factory needs a Firelight overlooking it."
"Yes, but why does that depend on me being on the council again?" Heimerdinger asked.
"Because I'm quitting. I'll watch Jinx 24/7 for you, Sir. No one will touch her without your permission. Not Firelights. Not an enforcer. Nobody."
"Hey, I'm not that bad," Jinx interrupted.
"You have the Last Drop, but you don't have the Last Drop. You just gave it away, it will be chem-baron central. Jinx can be there and watch herself, at other times, she can't."
"What do you mean I can't?" Jinx asked. "You being on the council is a big enough surprise, but me not being able to protect myself? In what way?"
"The experiment used on you had a side effect. Ask the boss," Sevika said, rebounding it to him.
Right. The shimmer experiment that she was down and out for to her for two years. He could have a chance to get some of the truth out to her. "It split your mind," Ekko said to her. "I was able to wake you up, but I wasn't able to restore you for 24 hours each day."
"That . . . makes sense," she settled on. "I found a letter addressed to myself, in my own handwriting."
Oh, that's how Pajamas managed it. I could use that as a gateway conversation later. "What did it say?" She handed it to him. She didn't put in much details. That's right, she didn't know the plan. She had to write out a guess, so she kept it fairly vague. "You change between you and when you were a kid as Powder. Powder alone can't protect herself."
"You're kidding me?!" Yep, that got under her skin. "So I can't fight?"
"No. Your weak and defenseless. Right now, we don't know how long the changes are, so just stay beside us," Ekko insisted. "No running off to the tunnels or anything." She didn't say anything, but she didn't look like she was disagreeing. "When we do know what to expect, you can get more freedom." As for everything else? "I compromised my Firelights."
"No you didn't, your turncoats did. If we didn't get captured tonight, you never would have even known. We can head where you need to whenever you want."
"I'm sorry," Heimerdinger said. "I had no idea chem-barons would go after you, Ekko."
"Whoah. You are still new," Jinx said to him. "Don't worry, Ekko."
She smiled. She actually smiled at him?
"Everybody knew where Silco had everything, nothing was hidden. Nobody messed with it, because they didn't mess with him. It's all about control, and what you do with it. Also, who you are next to? The person running the lanes is always the one riding with Sevika. You'll be A-okay."
Ekko just stared at her a little longer. "Things ended on a bad foot two years ago. The last time you were awake."
"Losing two years is hard to swallow, but life in general is always harder to swallow." Still, she didn't drop her happy expression. Was that her medication, or was that just . . .?
They headed out toward Sevika's car. "Heimerdinger, you stay in the front with Sevika. Back of the car, Jinx. You first." She went straight in. He got in the backseat too as Sevika took off. "Head in the direction of Last Drop." He was getting to the Firelights.
But, one warning. He looked toward Sevika. "You better not be secretly scheming against me, you really pulled me down into the actual chem-barons this time."
"That was Jinx." Still, Sevika didn't yell about the accusation.
"Yeah but you went from helping a little bit with stuff, to a full timer for me," he accused her. "Call me a little skeptical."
She still didn't look like he got under her skin. "You chose to lose your own arm, instead of losing mine."
Oh. "That would just be a bitchass move, who could do it?"
"A lot of people," Sevika and Jinx answered.
"That right there is what the leader of Zaun would do," she said to him. She banged her good arm to her chest.
Loyalty. Crazy. She seemed . . . for real? Maybe. He didn't have much choice but to trust in it now. He looked toward Jinx. Her hair in braids looked a lot better. He knew her hair had little accessories like gears, but he was never near enough, safe enough, to see all of them. "You are forbidden from leaving mine or Sevika's presence, Jinx." She didn't object. "You are not allowed to go to Piltover." Once again, she didn't seem to have a problem with that.
Now for the biggie? "You are forbidden from seeing Vi. She's an enforcer. She's with an enforcer. We don't entangle ourselves that way. We don't throw hands with her, unless we have to, and only I tell you if you have to. If she comes near you, you get out. Don't talk to her. Don't speak to her. Got it?"
She looked a little more worried with that part, but she still shook her head yes. "She really is an enforcer now. She comes back, and she's an enforcer."
"She has been for two years. It's old news. She doesn't come down in Zaun much," he said. "We don't mess around with her. Understand?"
She looked at him for a little while, and then that weird smile appeared on her face. "Right, we won't mess with her. It's been two years after all. Bad guys just don't get with good guys. Never works out."
That . . . seemed good? Better than he expected.
"Yes, that's true," Heimerdinger said from the front. "It takes a bad guy, to reach a bad guy."
All facets. Ekko was somewhere he'd never been with Jinx before. In her fold. To her, he wasn't just a stand in, she was taking him as a bad guy. And?
That smile. Jinx couldn't smile like that back then at him.
She lost Vi, but she gained me? She gained me, her old best friend. It was keeping her from going off the rails about her sister.
Too bad it would be fading in a second. "So, when did you become a bad guy?"
She seemed confused. "When I went to Silco."
"You were a bad guy the day Silco lifted you?"
"Of course."
"What made you a bad guy?"
"Because I was with Silco, and he was the bad guy?" She looked toward Sevika.
"Yeah, I answered the same things," Sevika lied, backing him up.
"You weren't a bad guy the day you went to Silco," he told her. "The explosion was an accident. You didn't mean to kill Mylo and Claggor."
"And . . . Vander. How did you know about that?" She started to freeze up a little bit.
He reached out and tried to touch her shoulder, remembering what Shields said. Touch was important. "It was just an accident, so, you weren't a bad guy yet."
She was just watching him now. Studying his eyes, like he was studying hers. "I never . . ."
"Meant for it to happen," Ekko said. "I get it."
She nodded her head a little. "It makes sense you get it."
It did? When she told him the first time, she had a hard time believing him because of her experience with Vi. "Why?"
"Good guys don't understand bad guys," she said. "Our mistakes. Our lives. We just weren't good enough."
Sevika made an agreeing "Mmhm."
Ekko felt weird for a second. This was . . . different. "What was the first full day like when you went to Silco?"
Jinx was biting her lip, almost chewing on it. "I was learning to survive as a bad guy."
"How? What did he do on the first full day?"
"Mmmmm." She looked back toward Sevika.
"I'm the boss," he reminded her. "Your boss. So?"
She was pulling closer in on herself. "I was learning to survive as a bad guy. I just made a gun with my fingers and went 'poow'. Easy."
If it was easy, why was she curling up so much? "At who and why?"
"I didn't have a protector anymore, Vi abandoned me, and I needed to survive myself. I was scared, but I couldn't be scared. You can't go with a villain and remain soft."
"That didn't answer my question."
"Silco. Just, testing," she insisted.
"Testing what?"
Her fingers were twitching everywhere, she kept moving around, like she was fighting not to leave that seat. "He got me books on weapons, and huge amounts of junk to work with, and he was so proud of me when I made it because I was using my skills to make it, I wasn't messing things up, and he loved that." She looked back toward Sevika.
"Yeah, he asked all of this of me," she lied for him again.
"When did you willingly have to take a life?" He was going to take her deeper. She was a little stressed, but she was like a big goodie bag right now, sharing anything he asked.
"When I was younger."
"Answer the question."
"I don't know. Shortly after I made Pow, I needed to use her. I was a bad guy, I had to learn."
"You weren't a bad guy yet, he just said that to you, you hadn't done anything wrong up to that point!"
"Then I was a bad guy in training?" She looked so confused.
"Was it someone innocent or rotten to the core?" He already knew.
"Super, super, super bad. I hated the guy. He always teased me every time I was in the room with Silco. But hey, I got there eventually! A little bit of crying in the process, but that was totally expected for the first time, Silco already told me that, and he was proud of it. He was proud of me. I was becoming just what I needed to be."
His god damn weapon! He couldn't even bear to look at her right now. Every time she explained something, she was psychologically throwing Silco's pride and feelings about her. Did you ever figure it out, Powder-Jinx? It was something he really wanted to ask when she came back.
"Look, I was living with the cruelest man alive in the Underground to a lot of people. I learned my trade, and he only ever encouraged me to get better with it. Night and day, I became stronger, then I was like officially perfect to him, this beautiful ball of absolute chaos and destruction. I was able to go down tunnels and do my own thing. I wasn't even at the Last Drop all the time, I was more of a tunnel kind of gal," she said. "But I was always there for Silco when he needed me, because I was perfect to him."
He felt like he was going to throw up.
"He loved her like a daughter," Sevika added. "They had that kind of bond. He never would have really hurt her. Ever. In fact, I'm sure you are going to figure out some things real quick about what he did and didn't do with Jinx."
"He sculpted her into a weapon."
"When your family is a bunch of bad guys, things aren't going to run the same cheery way," Sevika said back. "Yeah, it wasn't perfect, but there was love."
Which was even sicker. Maybe Silco did think he did love her. Maybe that's why he turned her into that. But? That wasn't right. He knew it, and he knew how to prove it. "You were perfect to Silco."
"Yep, he could only rely on me for a lot of things," she said, uncurling herself again. Her whole body was fine again. He'd give her that. That little relaxation for a few minutes while they went through the bumpiness of Zaun.
Okay. "And what was Powder?" Yeah, there it had been. "Was Powder perfect to him, or just Jinx?"
"I was supposed to forget Powder. I was supposed to kill her off."
Knew it. A whole new name. A whole new life. She was just supposed to start over with a new name and forget every single thing from before. A person couldn't just rip a part of themselves away like that. While she had things wrong with her mind because of what happened? Silco only made it worse.
"It would make me stronger though," she added. "It made him stronger. He killed off the old Silco. He had to be reborn again after Vander tried to kill him."
Wait, what? "That's a lie."
"No, it's not," Sevika actually backed her up. "Vander and Silco used to be comrades. Vander was just one arm of Zaun. The other arm was Silco. One day, there was a huge blow up, and Vander tried to drown him. Vander won control from that day forward."
"That's why his eye's all messed up," Jinx added to her statement. "Zaun's water is so toxic, he needed his shimmer injected into it each day."
//// "Didn't you try to kill him?" Ekko asked as he saw Silco right next to Vander. Both of them looked uncomfortable only for a second before Silco spoke up.
"The greatest thing in life we can do, is forgive." His eye was messed up there too, but it was healing.///
I thought he meant Vander forgave him. He didn't. Silco forgave Vander.
"Are we done with the questions for now?" Jinx asked.
"For now." If he wasn't here, as a bad guy, she never would have opened up about all that. Even when he reached her during the war, she never actually shared anything about her and Silco. About how she became a bad guy. Thought she was a bad guy the day she was taken.
But, he did get one of his theories right. Silco made her think, since day one of finding her, she had to be a villain. He tried to make her kill off Powder. He lied about Vi being dead. He egged the 'chaos and destruction' that was 'perfect'. If it hadn't been for him. She might not have been perfect, but she wouldn't have been half as broken. Powder-Jinx. She still picked herself up, and came back around. With the help of her Shield and Sword, she did so much. From all of this.
Powder-Jinx was amazing. It would be nice to tell her that.