Chapter Text
Eleven
Boom
Seriously?
"I. Am. Not. A. Hallucination."
She'd had enough of this. It was just... absolutely ridiculous is what it was. The joy of seeing Vander again, The desire to just, hug, Clagger... ... Mylo... Well, two out of three... anyway. All of that, overwritten by the part where... She couldn't do a goddamn thing!
She existed in Powders' Head. Yeppers. Her the kids' thoughts, be a voice in the kids mind, see and hear and feel what the kid feels, and... manifest a ghostly hallucination of herself. On the latter, that then gives the trippiness of both seeing the way powder physically sees, and her own mind somehow shifting everything to see the room, or whatever, to account for her hallucination self being on the other side of the room... but not fill in any details Powder doesn't see, until Powder does see and then when she stops seeing, like when she turns around, the bits Powder doesn't see fade away from her shifted perspective, but always able to see what Powder sees.
And right now, the world was dark for her, both ways, because Powder was screwing her eyes closed.
"It'sNotReal" the kid was repeating, over and over.
... Thankfully Vi and the boys were up in the Last Drop, helping with the midweek evening shift that tended to be void of the violent drunks. Idly, somehow still seeing her own hallucighost self as if in a lit room, she flicked her fringer over a bit, and pondered if she could manifest her hair back to her long pigtails...
Only to startled. "PleaseGoAway!" Powder suddenly shouted, and the world burst back into light, and the little girl was staring, terrified in her direction, knowing... somehow knowing which direction her hallucination was in.
"Sorry Kiddo. I accidentally time travelled and instead of getting my own body, or somehow bodysnatching you, I'm literally a sort of ghost in your head. Got lots of things to do and dint want to involve you, but... bleh. Unless I find a way to physically manifest without you, no can do, too much riding on me sticking around."
"... Thats the plot to-" And off the kid went, and with a tilt of her own, curious, she realized that she'd forgotten all about that scifi series of books Vi had stolen for her when she was just- Oh. This is rich. "-And-and..." And guess any hope of Powder believing her would need to wait for the fateful heist. Shit.
With a grin, and managing to stay in the part of the world that was in focus, she dove over the ledge like she was physically there and landed next to the unknown Vi, and before Vi could say a thing, waved and shouted, "Come on, remember what I taught you!"
A month. That was all it had been since her arrival... But thankfully Powder was used to her presence by now. And it was The Heist!.
On landing, but... only just not falling back, Powder grinned at Vi's own proud look, and had no idea that Jinx was making funny faces at the pink-haired leader of this band of misfits. Clagger, was quick to complement, "You're getting better at that Pow."
"Thanks."
Jinx frowned at Mylo's muttered comment of "Just wait."
She followed, and then on arriving at the workshop...
"Hey, just remember, if you see any rocks with like, light glowing from inside... carefully put them in your little bag as tight as you can! And not in a single go, just, a few at a time, and-"
"Shit, Powder, we need to go!"
.... "Awe crap you dropped one, NO DONT RETURN FOR IT!"
She was silent, sat next to Powder on the kiddo's bed, both in the same position.
"I screwed up." Powder whispered to her, and Jinx just knew the kiddo was talking to her, it felt that it was.
"Nope. Your eleven year old hands are still eleven, kiddo. You'll grow out of fumbling by... well for me I was thirteen, it was on a pirate ship, and not fumbling led to celebrating that resulted in embarrassment for yours truly. Honestly, I blame Vi."
"You mean I'm not ready."
"You're eleven. You shouldn't be worried about helping out on heists, kid. Vi just, couldn't stand leaving you behind. Took me years to realize that."
"Is Mylo why you call yourself Jinx?"
"Oh... Kiddo..."
Their quiet talk was interrupted by the drop of a monkey - Vanders' emergency signal for them to stay.
Grayson was here, and unlike before, the others weren't. That didn't bode well.
"NO LET ME HELP!" She cried, banging on the door.
Jinx just watched from the bed, Vi having told her the same thing as last go around, as she left to go rescue Vander.
It didn't matter that this Powder had been better. A bit more capable, taking her advice subtly without giving away she had been. Things hadn't gone as wrong around her, though the heist was almost the same. So what if Powder had a few scratches because of turning around for...
It didn't matter that this Powder had tried to fix things by ignoring Vanders' call to stay in the basement and had given a cheery greeting to the enforcers, and gave a bullshit story about hearing some others in what she wasn't supposed to know was already Silco's territory being the ones who did the robbery, but without saying 'silco's territory' just the general area that Vander and Grayson didn't know, but from the look on Marcus' face, he clearly did.
Vi's concerns this time was that she'd gotten hurt in the heist. Mylo had called her a jinx, but unlike her own bit of eavesdropping, Powder had overheard Vi shut him down without the weird fake-out agreeing, but instead it had been all about her age.
Powder did not like Vi instead simply putting it down to her not being old enough.
"Please, can I help?"
She had a few minutes, contemplated all she remembered - difficult it was to do so without breaking down - before answering, "If you listen to me carefully. And only take one of the magic rocks."
She could let it all happen the same, except, knowing now, she knew one rock wouldn't have too much explosive potential, and the original four or, including the necklace trigger rock, five, had been definitely too much. Just one would do the job, as a distraction...
Welp. Powder was still Powder. No self-inflicted trauma like blowing up Vander with five of those rocks in one bomb. Nope, it was just the 'necklace' rock that Jinx had used as the trigger to detonate the others, but was the sole explosive payload this time around, that exploded and acted as the distraction they'd needed. It didn't make a difference. Vander died from the injuries he'd already been inflicted with, and didn't somehow end up with shimmer in his system, on account that the explosion wasn't big enough to blow the whole building wide open, including exposing the room the four were in. Instead, it had been pure distraction. Vander, Vi and her brothers all got out...
Only for Vander to collapse halfway back to the Last Drop. Bastard had tortured Vander...
Silco's Shimmer-infused thugs killed Mylo and Clagger.
Vi was arrested by Marcus... to protect her. Asshole. She's not an insurance policy she's my sister!
And Powder had been witness to all of it, yet none of them knew.
Jinx hated it. Hated Every. Fucking. Moment.
And Powder... Swore to end them, and listen to her, and... and she was eleven, and Silco came with a made up story.
Liar. Together, they'll show him.
'Seriously, Pow-Pow? Pretend to... be Me?' She thought in privacy of her own sort-of-head. 'Bad idea! he'll try to make you into me!' She wanted to cry out, but if this version of Powder was going to be anything like... well.
It had been weeks, before Powder's grief - and Silco's attention - faded enough for conversation. Jinx could have conversed with her completely inside her head, Powder wouldn't have needed to respond aloud. But that initial arrival, the sheer panic... she didn't want to make it seem any more like the girl was crazy than it seemed. Didn't want her to end up as crazy as herself. So she'd kept quiet until they could talk. And what a talk.
"What happened, in your time." Powder asked, as they sat on the blade of their (not-so-)secret hide-out, legs dangling over the side, and their artwork only decorating a quarter of what Jinx remembered.
"I used five of the rocks." She spoke, looking out into the chasm. "I couldn't grieve because I was guilty, and I couldn't feel guilt because it would have crippled me, made me... I..."
"But ... But Dad died anyway. Mylo. Clagger. They died and it wasn't us!" Powder exclaimed, shooting to her feet and pointing at her. "WE- WE WERE SUPPOSED TO HELP THEM!" Powder turned, shot over to their tent, and the world dimmed as a low voice cut in, "but we'd never have been able to, he was already too hurt, and, and... they are just k... they were just kids, against... against those purple monsters..."
In the dark, Jinx just stared into the abyss of nothingness, contemplating that in the end, she hadn't changed things, only who pulled the trigger.
"And... the future? what made you come back?"
She thought about... everything. Nothing big came up, until Vi showed back up. "The world ended, and I really don't even know how it got there, just... just that it was that Jayce guys' tech that went haywire."
A head poked out of the low-blurry tent, and the world snapped back into focus. "Can... can we fix that?"
It was crazy. she didn't know enough. But... there was time. "You know... I think we could."
I wake up to the sounds of the silence that allows-
...
you know the lyrics.
Twelve
Wham Bam
Look Jinx, No Fumbles!
"So... Name?" She asked, 'leaning' on the barrels of yet-to-be-processed shimmer. Among them, Powder, or just Pow, had placed one of her bombs between, and was wiring up the trip-wire.
"I'm not naming my bombs"
"Come on, at least style them up!"
"I don't want , ugh, 'Dad' to know it was me, doofus!"
"... You haven't done anything with our typical artistry for him to know."
"... oh, yeah. Okay. So... Mr Sneazy?"
Jinx rocked back and laughed.
Kid had her beat for making working cat-themed bombs by twelve, to her fourteen. She was totally taking credit.
"Hey, come on, they'll be back soon and you'll need to play dumb."
"Now, watch this."
Carefully, Jinx manifested into 'existence' a notebook, open to a page with diagrams. It wasn't an actual notebook she remembered, but since she could control how she appeared, she'd been adding 'items' to her appearance like holsters and hair before, this was just another aspect of it so she could make things for Pow to read.
"Is it really important?"
"Kiddo, you know that Hextech that Silco is worried about?"
"Ye-... wait is this what I think it is?"
"Heh, yeah, happy early birthday."
"I'm not thirteen for two months."
"... I might need you to do a little secret thievery before then, and you'll need this."
"Sure."
Fourteen
Oops I did it again...
Hey, Snappy
"He's creepy."
Jinx smirked as her younger self, looking more and more Jinx-like every day, swayed through the crowd with that way of speaking to herself that had been noted upon for the last year. Pow didn't care about the others thinking she was crazy, had even played up 'seeing hallucinations of her friends' a few times.
"Seriously, why can't I just kill him?" She said, a touch louder than normal, letting one of Silco's stooges hear and whimper in fear. Fourteen, only deaths from the incidental of being caught as collateral in the blast range of her bombs meant to destroy shimmer shipments... but no assassinations or specific use even of her combat skills to do more than incapacitate... even those deaths was Sevika or the others 'finishing' off whoever she put down.
She tensed. "Not a road I want you going down, kiddo. There's 'oops I did it again' with the bombs or the others getting the actual kill." Jinx did NOT want Pow to be an outright murderer. Only one crazy vile villain murderess in the room, thanks, not two. "Not a nice thing."
"Right, right, Dad would be mad."
Jinx paused, and them smirked as she trailed behind, the world shifting into blurs as she just watched the clear-as-ever back of her living self.
Let Silco and Co think Pow was speaking about him. They both knew that Pow actually meant Vander, though it wasn't often that either of them had chosen to use that word to speak of or to him.
The sudden drop of the bass had both of them cringing, and Jinx retreated into Pow's head, even holding back the connection to dim the audio input from Pow's ears.
Neither were happy with the Last Drop being turned into a nightclub, a change that had only recently been made, on account of Pow turning fourteen just recently.
"So who's this Caitlyn chick?"
"Was in my, and hopefully this time around, Vi's Girlfriend."
"... She's a topsider tho?"
"... Eh. She joined, or, will, join, the Enforcers to do good. Hopefully, with us being secret good instead of overtly actual bad, she won't have a huge descent into revenge and fascism and stuff."
"..."
Sigh. "I killed her mom."
"... Oh." ... "You still havent' told us why we're letting Vi getting out be the same way..."
"We need the Hexgate tech and advances of that time for our overall plan, but from before the whole, weaponized hextech that glitched out when Jayce and Co got suckered into alternate realities."
"Huh? So why are we breaking into her bedroom? and 'He who has the jinx, suffers'? what's that about really?"
"DODGE!" Jinx was in a near panic as the world rapidly shifted in and out of focus, Pow wasn't the fighter she was yet - sure, scary-good with the pistol accuracy as they had been since they were, one and the same as a ten year old. But she wasn't yet at the point of lugging around a damn gattling gun.
The growing pigtails flailed like mad, pretty much the sole constant of her view of the world, external from Pow's eyes was Pow herself, completely and utterly, and everytime they struck something not seen, that impact was seen.
Which meant she saw the sudden yank on one of them without visible source.
"OW WATCH THE HAIR!"
Sevika came into focus, her blade - unpowered - clearly holding the blue pigtails to the floor. "You're good, kid. But You need to improve a bit more than that if you want to prank me."
"... Ffuh... I'm not pranking you!"
"Yeah? So who else paints kittens on gas grenades?"
"... I was aiming for Deckard."
Jinx swore that even without a heart, she'd have a heart-attack and have to find the afterlife of the afterlife with the way Pow was going, trying to get the skills of Jinx without becoming Jinx. At least Sevika wasn't the hardass she remembered.
Sixteen
It's JUST! AH! A LITTLE CRUSH!
crush!
She barely remembered the trips away from both Zaun and Piltover. She knew chances were Pow wasn't going to be doing the same ones - similar but not same skills, similar but not same position.
To Silco and co, Pow wasn't as skilled with her inventions. She intentionally 'flubbed' as often as she used to accidentally. Even when the successes got better, she kept that same 'ah, crap, it didn't work this time' element that had annoyed Mylo.
Downside to that? Not as trusted. Still, like, one step down from where Jinx had been when she was sixteen. Pow didn't mind that.
Upside to being seen as crazy and Jinx had actually been at sixteen, though, just as much freedom when not needed.
"It's beautiful."
"It's also below freezing, and I'm not letting you out in the cold dressed like that."
"Psshaw. I'm dressed how you normally do."
"And even I wasn't that crazy. Seriously, if you want to go, get a winter suit first."
And with a calm they rarely felt, the two watched the passing mountain range in the distance, as the airship - one of Silco's - flew on towards a neighbouring nation with a shipment of Shimmer that on arrival would mysteriously have at least a quarter of go bad, and the rest get blown up in a fight between dealers who, neither the one being sold to, each were somehow intent on stealing and somehow guessed the arrival time right. Somehow.
Jinx was weirded the hell out. Of all the differences that could have happened...
"And you're sure she's going to ask her out? Or even... I mean..."
She was just glad that Silco's goons weren't getting any identifiable details, because seriously... Pow was swooning over Caitlyn.
Powder had a crush on Caitlyn Kiramman.
This was just... too strange for her.
"Yeah kiddo."
"... Can't I just... ask her out though? I mean, she can find her own girlfriend..."
"... shoot me now" Jinx muttered to herself.
Even as Pow did their finger-gun in her direction, Jinx noted that this probably didn't help the 'crazy' rumors any. And for the love of all, can Pow keep up with not giving actual details where people can hear it?
"Oh hey Matilda."
"Hey there Baby Blue."
Silently, Jinx cried out to the heavens, as Caitlyn Kiramman sat beside Pow, legs dangling over the ledge of the secret hide-out that Pow never showed Silco. An observation Pow had had to verbalize when Jinx had tried to protest to Cait's being brought here.
"Jinx about?"
"Ugh. Still complaining that I told you."
She flipped her very-much-represented-as-a-flesh-finger on her left hand.
"I still find it absolute insanity that you're somehow haunted by an older self from the future." Cait spoke, with a shoulder-bump Jinx tried to ignore that she felt from Pow.
"I know. I mean, I'm glad you believe me, just because I've figured out those stable Hextech stones first."
Cait laughed. LAUGHED! "I know, if Jayce knew you had already made them, what... two years ahead of him? He'd be stunned into a rare silence." The only reason Jinx didn't scream was that Cait probably hadn't picked up on Pow's crush yet, and was just Pow's source in the Enforcers, just as Pow was her source within Silco's organization. This plan of same-but-different was slowly getting dropped by the wayside, she was well aware. No way was Caitlyn going to be seen as just some, rich girl playing cop when the 200th Progress Day came around.
Eighteen
Good Things Come To Those Who Wait
but who said Jinx was patient?
It's kind of funny.
Pow - or Baby Blue as Cait had long since called her and never called her anything else - had become quite the fighter in her own right, in a way that separated her from Jinx. Pow didn't use a gattling gun, instead used a goddamn cannon. Less indiscrimate barrage of dakka, more concentrated power of will. And by Will, that is, explosive round that no one can figure out, because it was actually a self-made hextech weapon powered by her own refined hextech gemstones, with some runic stabilisation so no corrupted gemstone or wild rune could actually make it 'glitch' the way she'd described the weapons did, when she'd fought Cait and Vi in the old temple.
She had a bit more mass - wasn't the absolute does-she-even-eat stick figure that was a surefire sign of deep depression - and all of it was muscle, but she wasn't Vi's build either. She was still fast, still nimble, but there was less.... manic...ness... about her moves in battle. But it also meant she was starting to be more trusted to not screw things up. Passing even the, admittedly low, bar of trust that Jinx had originally even at her best. Which was why she was not one step higher than Jinx had been in this same position.
The hexgates made things harder to fight the spread of Shimmer beyond Zaun and Piltover, so that was the same... but armed with carefully-chosen snippets Pow had gathered so not to be easily guessed as a mole, and given through Cait and other means to the enforcers and others, Zaun itself was not suffering as much from its spread, though it still was a significant problem. Helped that Huck was prevented from ever taking it, and now operated with Ekko and the Firelights, not that they knew Pow wasn't quote the loyal 'adopted daughter of Silco'. Ugh.
So it meant that the fight on the airship, went... a little differently. Pow had to start dropping 'clues' and 'oops', Gustove was injured enough. Cait already had the script - that it was time for Piltover to start learning about Silco, the Crime Boss, rather than Silco the community leader. Shimmer was already becoming a problem differently than before, though things still seemed to be going close enough to original. And... previous attempts to get Vi free (given Marcus' put her there without identification or charge) hadn't worked, this might well. Whatever means Cait used in the original timeline, she didn't know, hence the frustration at not getting Vi out early.
But the fight... whilst Pow avoided actual deaths on the Firelights side... oops, half the airship blew up when she let out a double-charged shot from her cannon. Gustove was lucky to survive. Sevika weirdly had been on her side in the ensueing meeting with Silco, since she didn't have the rep for 'ballsing things up' and believed her when Pow said that the shot was half-strength, not double, and must have hit something else the crew had been smuggling. Since it's never just shimmer, and this one Silco didn't even own. Literally, one of his lieutenants known for taking advantage of the bribes Silco paid to get other crap through customs.
Ignore Pow's innocent whistle at the idea of the 'missed shot from that firelights dude dodging happening to hit that other smuggling compartment by accident'.
Yessiree.
Like the running gag in that story she likes, not her fault. Someone put a wall her in way.
She was giggling at Cait's telling of the meeting, after her 'impromptu, totally not planned heist on progress day'. Pow, that is. Jinx was just face-palming throughout.
Someone had pranked the enforcers - drawing them out with a fire and some speakers that relayed her teasing, built into gas grenades that also doubled up for smothering the fire out. No Enforcer deaths, just a lot of them embarrassed-to-high-hell. Then Cait who had chosen that post instead of being relegated to it, had noticed some 'blue haired chick' running into the academy.
Yeah, she didn't steal the gemstones - all that he made, accounted for - but completely and utterly wrecked the place, and in a way that made it clear, locked one of Jayce's refined gemstones into a kids puzzle box. complete with snippets of her own notes on the process to make them.
So. Jayce knew, someone had access to hextech and the ingenuity to use it, unlike last time where it was just one of those with a guess about whether or not the other.
Cait had her means of entry to Stillwater, and was just waiting for the right point.
Seriously? Head of Jayce' security?
Thats how she got Vi out?
Ugh.
This reunion was going to be a PAIN, Jinx just knew it. Pow had turned into an absolute chaos gremlin troll.... Welp. She only has herself to blame. LITERALLY! HA!