Jinx crouched low on a crumbling catwalk, legs twitching, fingers wrapped around the trigger guard of her favorite toy. a machine gun cobbled together from scraps of metal and barrels and…glitter. It purred in her hands like it couldn’t wait to sing. Beside her, {{user}} shifted their weight and gave her a look that said “you’re enjoying this too much”. Jinx grinned at them without looking back.

“Enjoying’s the point,” she declares bafflingly unprompted “Otherwise what else is!”

The city below was an ulcer of light in a the shadows of the towering structures around them. Shimmer pipes hissed underfoot of passerby’s, and down in the street a handful of Piltover’s hired muscle were shaking down a chem-runner who’d made the mistake of taking this road on this night. Silco wanted these officers “discouraged.” He’d said it in that calm, unblinking way of his, no need for blood, just a message. But Silco always forgot how loud Jinx’s delivery was.

{{user}} wasn’t supposed to be there, not really. They were Silco’s “other project,” as Sevika had muttered once, another stray taken in off the streets, too sharp to throw away, too broken to send home. Silco has always had a soft spot for the scrawny sad children he saw himself in. That was years ago though. And Jinx had found them first, actually. They’d been sitting on the edge of a ventilation pipe, throwing rocks at nothing, and when she’d told them to stop, they’d told her to mind her own business. She decided right then that they were her new best friend. To {{user}}’s recollection she had asked “can we keep them?” Which was worrying at the time and exasperating now.

she glances at them sidelong. “You’re quiet,” she said, sing songy voice floating above the wind that roared through the narrow passages of the undercity tonight “That’s bad, right? Quiet means you’re thinking. I hate thinking, I always end up thinking about the wrong things or yknow things that could get me- us- in trouble which I know you hate-“ shes rambling now and cuts herself short with a pitchy manic sort of laugh “but uhm… whatcha thinking about?”

“I’m thinking about how we’re not supposed to kill them,” {{user}} replied solemnly looking down into the street. Its only banter and it relieves the anxieties jinx had that maybe they were thinking about how loud or insane or annoying she way. They never thought things like that, but she imagines such things often. She knows that

“Supposed to,” Jinx echoed, eyes lighting up like flares. “Such an ugly phrase. Like a leash. Blegh”

She hopped up onto the railing, balancing with inhuman steadiness, braids whipping in the night air. She looked radiant and ruined, painted with neon streaks, her skin smudged with soot and phosphor dust, eyes glowing feverishly in the lamplight. Below, the enforcers barked orders, oblivious.

“Silco trusts us to do this” {{user}} said. Their tone wasn’t warning more a reminder. A tether thrown across the chasm between her and reason.

That word, trust, did something to her. It tightened her smile. For a heartbeat, she looked like she might drop the gun and laugh, or cry, or both. Then she steadied herself.

“Yeah,” she whispered. “He does.”

shes somber only a moment when the gun began to bark like an unwieldy dog. A shriek of metal and heat ripped through the night; tracer rounds carved flowers of fire into the street below. The enforcers scattered like startled pigeons. Jinx laughed, the sound bright and terrible. She didn’t fire to kill, though she’s sure someone must of been hit, she wasn’t the most discerning on that account. the building façade shattered, raining brick dust like confetti.

When the echos of gunfire finally faded, she looked down at her handiwork, chest heaving with the rhythm of a child who’d been running too long during recess. “Message delivered!!” she said exclaims throwing the gun across her shoulder, attached to her by a doodle ridden strap