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It was a temperate night, though no one would think to open a window down here. Outside, what little could be seen of the sky glowed a muted, sickly green. The sounds of the night market crammed between towering tenements stretched upwards to his ears in anarchic bursts. Looking down, it was hard to see much through the grime and shadows, but faceless forms chased their highs under pungent gas lamps and neon signs. Occasionally, drifting away from his studies, he wondered what sort of lives those people led, what ails them, what drives them to be out so late. Sometimes, he pressed his forehead against the dirty window pane and just wondered over what could be different if they could only see a little more of the sky.
Positioned above it all, Viktor existed in his own still oasis, omnipotent over the Lanes in his three cramped rooms. Here on his windowsill, he could study, he could ponder, he could simply sit on the worn, mismatched cushions he had scavenged and thrifted; it did not matter. Books of all sorts surrounded him, strewn about and shoved into the one rickety bookshelf his father had built in a distant past. Their ghosts walked up and down these rooms. His mother's bare feet still roamed the cramped kitchen, his father's muddy boots still sat at the door. These walls had always protected him, insulated him, and his family against the threats lurking around every corner. Though the paint peeled, though the floorboards creaked, this apartment was his.
The world was constantly demanding things of him, begging questions, assuming answers...But this window seat was the space in which he could look at the world himself and pose some of his own questions.
The scratch of his pen and the occasional turning of pages were his quiet rejection of any assumption.
The hours were late, the disturbances outside becoming less frequent yet more violent-sounding. Immersed, he let the minutes pass him by, filling his mind with fresh concepts, noting down anything of interest, dog-earing the pages he would return to later.
Somewhere between dusk and dawn, something rustled outside, close by to his window.
A bird, no doubt, or some other night creature, so he continued scribbling without looking up. A minute and nothing more passed.
tap tap tap
He jumped, head swiveling in the direction of the sound.
Electric blue braids and ghostly pale skin sat hunched just beyond the window pane, a big, toothy grin accompanied the ghost-like figure. Jinx waved at him, balancing herself on the ledge, totally undaunted by the steep drop down.
Seeing vividly Silco's wrath if his daughter became a splatter outside his apartment, Viktor wasted no time in opening the window, upbraiding her as he did:
"Miss Jinx, it is incredibly rude to tap on a man's window this late at night, I know Silco taught you some manners." Somehow more liquid than meat, she slipped in through the newfound crack in his window, smoothly transitioning down to the floor. She sat cross-legged, as though it were the most natural thing in the world for her to be here. "What is the meaning of-"
"I have a question," she butt in, peering up at him with determined blue eyes. Those were not the eyes of a teenage girl simply making silly social calls, but the eyes of a scientist. He leaned against the sill, meeting that stare with his own, folding his arms.
"One that could not wait until a more decent hour?"
"Bingo genius," was her ever courteous reply; "now help me with this," and she pulled out a messily folded piece of paper from her pocket. Unfolding it roughly, a surprisingly neat blueprint became apparent. "I've been trying to crunch the numbers on how much force I'd need to detonate and accelerate this stuff up and out at least ten yards-" she pointed at 'the stuff', which was drawn in neon crayon for further emphasis. "but the numbers just don't work. The force needed to eject this stuff would destroy the insides of the gun." She pouted grievously over this fact. "I just can't get it to work..." and there was genuine sorrow somewhere behind all her fronting, shame, even.
A shame that she only ever let Viktor see. The shame of an inventor unable to bring what they imagine to life. Viktor was, of course, familiar with this feeling and could not possibly turn her away after such a confession. But of course, she knew that.
He tilted his head, leaning down to better see the drawing.
"A rocket launcher?" he questioned.
"A big ol Mr. Mouse launcher," she corrected.
Mr. Mouse's were one of her nastier grenade prototypes. They were named as such for their small, unassuming size. She even decorated them with whiskers and tails. He had been a victim of a less lethal variant, and he was still picking glitter and blue powder out of his socks.
"Ah, I see," he went over to the bookshelf, which sat to the right of his window seat, and began to peruse. "Well, Mr. Mouse launchers have never been put into production. However, there are grenade launchers with points of similarity, which you may be able to use as a necessary north star in your calculations." His fingers ran over the spines of books. "Or, at the very least, a more thorough foundation to start out from."
"Isn't that cheating, though?" She said.
"Not at all, Miss Jinx. True genius builds off the back of its predecessors; nothing of worth is ever wholly original." His fingers stalled on the correct weapons manual, picked up while scrounging dumpsters years ago near the Academy. He pulled it out and began thumbing through its worn pages.
"Whose work do you steal to do what you do in Dad's lab?" she asked suddenly.
That gave him a pause, "It's not stealing, it's borrowing with dubious intentions of returning," he smiled at her giggles, "but as for who I take inspiration from...A variety of sources, anything I can get my hands on."
"Boooo," she called, wanting specifics. He sighed.
"Very well, I steal, as you would have it, primarily from the Academy archives. Their golden boy Mr. Talis does good work..." all those nights rummaging around where he shouldn't have been, discovering things in a laboratory he could barely fathom, conversations that flew under the radar of the labs night guards, all came back to mind, "but it is work that is better in our hands."
"Does Dad know you take field trips to Pilty-land?"
"I think he suspects that my genius may be supplemented at times...He's never questioned me on the matter. Now look here, back to the point at hand." He brought the manual to her, sitting down on the floor across from her despite the protest of his leg and back. "This is a grenade launcher. Now, I want to draw your attention to the fundamental thing in our case, which is here," he pointed at the chamber. "Inside here is a clockwork spring mechanism. That is illustrated here. It's not so much a matter of force upon the contents of the chamber, but pressure that drives the contents, in this case a grenade, out towards all of your mortal enemies. So the question we ask ourselves is, how do we build the most pressure without compromising the integrity of the system?"
She pored over the manual page, fascinated by its various graphics. Her young mind was working away at solutions to her issues, viewing this new information from every angle. He smiled at the saccharine sight, remembering the fond days past when such simple mechanics baffled him.
No matter how destructive Jinx was, she was undeniably bright. Under his tutelage, that genius could be harnessed for the good of the Lanes, for the good of all people.
Yes, she was making weapons of destruction now, but Viktor was comfortable in his own calculations that all of that was probably just a phase; she had the potential to broaden her horizons towards infinity. Every true engineering mind goes through their arsonist phase. It was merely a rite of passage into more productive fields of expertise. Besides, there may be a time and a place for arsonists in the silent war they were waging.
It was a wonderful thing, watching the girl grow into her intellect, gaining confidence in the work of her hands, and he felt honored to have a sacred place in that process.
Despite how much he valued his time alone, a simple cost-benefit equation told him that there was no better use of his time than this.