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Jinx is a genius.
Self-proclaimed, really. It's not as if Zaun has schools or actual institutes to test shit like that. But by Piltover's standards, she'd be considered a genius.
Probably (maybe?).
The point is, everything Jinx does has a reason. It's plans stacked on plans stacked on plans. Contrary to popular (Piltie) belief, everything Jinx does isn't just pure madness.
There's logic and reasoning, calculated risks and controlled damages (everything she wants destroyed, will be destroyed. She's a Zaunite through and through, she knows how to stay in her buisness and hers alone).
It's hard to tell, she knows. She has no qualms admitting that, to anyone else, it may just look like chaotic targetting. Bombs placed at random, collateral damage, shit like that. But Jinx isn't a liar, either. She'll leave the collateral damage and accidental casualties to the Pilties. If anyone were to ask why she does the things she does, she'd never lie. She'd always tell the truth (sometimes it's a job. Comissioned by angry fissure folk or people who don't want to get their hands dirty. Sometimes it's of her own volition. Information spreading like wildfire and Jinx—Jinx may be crazy, but she has standards).
So, yes. There's logic and reasoning and everything is calculated. She reads books on aerodynamics, she calculates angles, she researches the blast radius of certain explosives. She could explain every little gadget she's ever created, and the ones that don't—didn't—work? Jinx could tell you exactly why that is and how she fixed it.
The one thing (except not literally, because there's many things she's not entirely aware of, but this is the only one she can focus on right now)—the one thing—that she couldn't tell you at this moment (because she's absolutely hell-bent on researching it and she will find out) is why blonde hair and blue eyes make her heart jackrabbit inside her chest.
She can't explain the way heat rushes up her neck and settles across her face. Or the way her breathing stutters whenever the other gets too close.
She can't explain it and it frustrates her.
So she does what any good scientist (nevermind the fact that she'd be closer labelled an engineer than a scientist) would do.
She researches.
Step One: Pose a Question
Jinx puts some thought into this. It can't be too vague. It needs to be focused, specific. It needs to tell her enough that she'll be able to successfully research it.
It takes her a while. An embarrassingly long time, in her opinion. A lot longer than she would have hoped and she's pretty sure that spending nearly a week cooped up in her lab isn't doing anyone any wonders.
In her case, when she finally emerges she almost topples off the edge of a building. Even the dim light of the undercity burning her retinas and forcing her to squint her eyes to try and prevent her pain.
In Zaun's (and Piltover's) case, she's pretty sure they're expecting her to send a gods damned nuke into the center of their city (which she fucking won't. Thank you very much. She's pretty goddamned busy at the moment). She hears the whispers as she navigates the shadows about her week long disappearance. "She's planning something big," they whisper. The words traveling like the sump water coursing through their extensive sewer systems. Quickly and with no end. Word of mouth twists it into larger, harsher (and by her standards, their imagination is pretty fucking bad).
Jinx clutches her journal tightly to her chest, her name printed in jagged, neon colors along the front. She perches on a railing near the border beteeen the two cities, watching the sun set past the horizon line as she flips through lined pages.
"Question:" it says, printed neatly (not her usual chicken scratch for when she's in a rush to get her ideas out on paper. No, she put extra time and thought into this) along the first line. "Does my (Jinx) proximity to Lux (Subject) affect my heartrate?" (And it's important that she makes it clear that this is between her and Lux because Jinx is at least 99.9% sure that it only happens around her). Scratched in smaller letters next to it is "Why?"
Okay. That's the question. Now she has to do the research.
Step Two: Background Research
Jinx ends up breaking into one of those Piltie hospitals. Not one of her brightest ideas—not in any capacity, really. But it was the best idea she had in the moment.
She's not in that much of a rush, but she knows (is highly self-aware, she doesn't need anyone telling her this—shut up, Mylo) she has a tendency to draw out certain steps. Particularly the research portion where she spends too much time jumping through topics that interest her rather than the original topic.
Regardless of all that, that's how Jinx finds herself sprinting through Piltover alley ways and across towering rooftops. Enforcers chase her tail and she can hear Fat Hands and Top Hat Lady yelling her (and not her) name as she zig zags crowds in an effort to lose them.
She can feel the duffel bag holding all of her (stolen) medical books hitting against her leg, the weight of it a tell-tale sign of just how many of them she had swiped from their copious amounts of bookshelves.
Jinx isn't armed (having left Zapper and Pow-Pow behind because she's sneaky, she knows she is even with her weapons, but Pow-Pow is big and Zapper is conspicuous) which, in hindsight, might have been a mistake.
Bullets whizz past her, she can feel (or hear?) the wind as they buzz past her ear. Jinx isn't really sure if they're just not shooting to kill or if they have really poor aim.
She brushes away the thought, sliding into the safety of the Undercity and easily navigating through the crossing pipes until she's in the safety of her lab.
Dumping the books out onto her desk, she flops into her chair reaching out for one of them and flipping through the pages. Eyes skimming the words quickly.
Step Two: Research. Complete.
Step Three: Construct A Hypothesis
Research takes longer than she's entirely comfortable with, but at the very least she has finished that particular step and is ready to construct her hypothesis before the experiment truly begins.
The books prove a fruitless endeavor to chase after, the information providing very little of what she needs. Most (if not all) is nearly useless to her. Nearly none of it applies to her and Lux's (she hesitates to use relationship. Which is stupid considering the fact that relationship is a vague term. It can mean familial—for example, Jinx amd Vi or Jinx and Silco—it can mean friends. What Fat Hands and Top Hat are trying to preten they are. Or it can mean....romantic. What Vi and Caitlyn definitely are) relationship.
Jinx sighs loudly through her nose, pen tapping against the blank page of her (now-dubbed) research journal. She knows the structure of a hypothesis "if, then, because" but the lack of useful information makes it difficult to form one.
The medical conditions regarding the cardiovascular system usn't relevan because she knows for a fact that she's completely healthy. And she refuses to think that those relationship advice books that were mixed with the medical ones apply to her.
No, she thinks. This is an experiment, feelings don't apply here. This is to be completely unbiased.
She clicked the pen, pressing it against paper.
"If," it reads. "I am in close proximity to Lux, then my heartrate will increase because I am attracted to her."
The words make her heart stutter (which is not proof because she has yet to conduct the actual experiment) and she forcefully flips the page, hesitantly drawing a table.
Step Three: Construct A Hypothesis. Complete.
Step Four: Conduct An Experiment
She resolves for three different tests. The band wrapped around her wrist and pressing against her pulsepoint tracks her heartrate.
The table she had drawn upon finishing her hypothesis serves this exact purpose.
First, she tracks her resting heartrate. This will work as her controlled variable.
In order to do that, she takes a stroll through Zaun, careful to keep her pace a steady walk. No bombs, no guns, no weapons. Just a calm walk through the Undercity, her mind focused solely on past and ongoing projects rather than the basis of this experiment.
She does this for a week. Five days. Three as the standard, and two extra just in case. When the week finishes, she successfully has five days of her resting heartrate.
Second, she tracks her active heartrate. Another controlled variable.
Jinx is aware that her and Lux often go running together (just running. Lux has a reputation so Jinx tries very hard to contain her explosive tendencies to purely running rooftops) so she tracks her heartrate as she follows the exact route she often takes when their together.
Her pace is limited to the speed she knows she takes when she's with Lux (who, while she'll never say it straight to her face, is much slower than herself. Not as used to the twists and turns, the labryinth that is Zaun).
Five days pass and she has the necessary information to introduce the independent variable: Lux.
Spending time with Lux is—is freeing. She's never felt...caged before. Or ever, really. Has always felt like nothing about her actions were limited by anything but her own boundaries. But being with Lux—
With Lux, it opens an entirely new set of doors she was never even aware of.
For five days they just walk. Walking through the markets and through hidden routes where she shows Lux the impossibility that is the flowers sprouting through cracks and crevices.
Five days of her showing Lux the best places to watch the sun set or rise under the dim light of Zaun's flickering fluorescents. Just waling, no running or wreaking havoc. No bombs or the colorful array of an explosion of glitter.
For a moment, she almost forgets that she'd been doing this as an experiment.
Step Four: Conduct An Experiment. Complete.
Step Five: Analyze Data
Jinx calculates the data. Writes it all down on a neatly drawn table, labeling the variables, the measurements. Creating a graph to show the differences between each experiment.
It's...it's not entirely unexpected yet it still manages to surprise her.
Her resting heartrate is the lowest, obviously. A standard beats per minute according to medical journals. Hardly flucuates between the five days.
Her active heartrate is higher. The running pace was slower than her "I'm being chased and need to book it" heartrate, about the same as a light jog if she had to guess.
The third chart—
Skyrockets, is the best phrase she can think of.
She only records it immediately after the end of the meeting, but that doesn't mean Jinx doesn't have three recordings of the way it increased throughout.
It's still high. At the end. Higher than resting, higher than active. Much, much higher.
The data stares her straight in the face and Jinx (not in denial. Shellshocked, surprised, baffled) can't help but think that it's mocking her.
Step Five: Analyze Data...Complete.
Step Six: Conclusion
She has everything she needs.
The question, the research. A hypothesis and the data required to confirm or refute it.
All she has to do, really, is put it into words.
Pen tip presses against a blank page and—
Ink bleeds through the paper. A splotch of blink slowly growing from the centerpoint.
It shouldn't be this difficult.
It's logical, reasonable. There's evidence to back the point and all the proof is there.
Slowly (and not a relative slowness. Not like a moment of adrenaline where everything feels—looks—as though it's moving in slow motion. It's objectively slow in the way that certain letters are thicker than others, indicating prolonged time pressed against paper) scrawling words are formed.
"My hypothesis was correct," it says like a death sentence. The guillotine hanging above her head ready to strike truth.
"You're attracted—in love (infatuated)—with her," it implies. Like it's not something she intrinsically knew and just refused to acknowledge.
Maybe for fear of how this would affect her relationship, or what it said about her.
Regardless, Jinx has a conclusion. She has an ending.
She has the proof and the research and the experimental data to prove it all.
Step Six: Conclusion. Complete.
Step Seven: Share Results (Optional)
It's optional.
That means she doesn't have to do it. She could just stow away the feelings somewhere deep down in the heart she apparently has and shove the journal unto a box with all of her other forgotten items.
Over time, she'll probably forget about it. This—this infatuation will subside and she can forget any of this ever happened. Her and Lux will remain friends and everything will work out fine.
Jinx sighs.
She won't do it. She's not a liar, has always hated liars even if just by omittance. If Lux were to ask her, she would tell. And Jinx knows Lux will notice if she were acting off, has always been able to read her better than even she could herself.
It's annoying yet endearing at the same time. And it would be best to get it out on her own terms instead of waiting for the shoe to drop.
They meet under the dim light of a setting sun. Red hues mingle with orangr and the risinng moon casts a lingering shadow that highlights each and every one of Lux's cheekbones.
Jinx stands, head tilted up and staring into blue—like the ocean's crashing waves. Like the morning skiea—blue eyes.
She reaches out a hand, cupoing defined cheekbones and ignoring that familiar flutter of her chest as she watches confusion flit across the blonde's face.
"After extensive research and experimentation," she rasps, words rolling off her tongue comfortably, rehearsed. Like the speeches she gives—gave—to Silco when introducing one of her new weapons. "I have come to the conclusion that I am attracted to you and would like to begin a relationship beyond," she pauses. She had trouble with this part, but she is nothing if not diligent. "Friendship with you. I would like to court you." Jinx clarifies when the confusion does not fade.
She'a reticent when red flushes across Lux's face, when she pulls out of Jinx's hold on what is hopefully just surprise.
It's silent for a long moment before—
Lux grasps her cheeks, her taller stature forcing Jinx onto her toes. Lips meet lips and, whispered sofrly into the air, carried through the wind, she whispers.
"I would like that."
Step Seven: Share Results (Optional). Complete.