"Ekko, Lad?"
"What?!" He yelled at Heimerdinger. "Sorry!" He grabbed his head. She was dragging her sister to jail. She was dragging the weak version of her sister to jail, and leaving them with a freaking kid who no one could comfort, yelling at the top of her lungs. "Selfishly steal her doctor, her meds, the magic but take her to prison, good going, Vi!"
He went toward Cake. "Hey, it's okay." It wasn't working. Everyone was trying. Things just got worse if someone tried to touch her. Anatoly made a deep psychological impact on her, even before hurting her mother.
So many people around her, but nobody there could hold her for comfort.
"Once they get so far, our chance to regain Miss Jinx are gone," Heimerdinger came over and told him. "Upsetting, yes, crying child that won't quit, yes! Are you going to just let this happen?"
"Obedient to you," Sevika said to him "You call the shots. You can get her amnesty. Most of all? Zaun gets it first!" Sevika said roughly to him. "Piltover will have systems to get it here and there, Zaun doesn't have systems here and there good enough to distribute to everyone, only through the shimmer industry running side! Run it how you want to run it, don't worry about the chem-baron stuff. We'll handle it."
"We'll?" Ekko looked toward Sevika.
"I don't care if people find out and I get thrown off the council. If you take a big risk, so will I! I'll play my part, and I'll do the same thing I did under Silco. This is for Zaun."
What was he supposed to do? "Vi will see her everyday. She'll see her more than an hour, I know it."
"Her or Powder?" Heimerdinger questioned. "She needs to be free, Ekko. It won't work without being free. This is not a regular case, the body and mind must understand each other! She will not make it."
"But . . ." What could he say or do? "They would get the vaccine out?"
Heimerdinger's eyes were giving it away. "Yes. If all you actually care for is the vaccine?"
Ekko looked toward him. "We need to vaccinate everyone. It's our goal."
"It wasn't mine, Lad."
Oh. Ow. "Professor Heimerdinger. Vi is super close with her sister."
Heimerdinger put on his hood. "I think you've got it from here, Ekko. It's only two people to cure."
What? "What do you mean?" He watched him head out. Just head out without a word. Just walked off. From him.
"I'm out too," Sevika said to him with a glare.
"Good, didn't invite you here, that was all her!"
Sevika bent closer toward him. "He's leaving because you became just like Jayce. You aren't going to see him again. Enjoy your Firelights."
What the- "Don't you talk to me like I'm a bad guy, you were the one running with Silco, and-!"
"-and I must be talking to a real shitty person then, huh?" She walked out too.
What the hell was all that?! I don't get it. "She is better off with Vi. I mean, they took her to prison. What do they expect me to do?" Then, he watched Marlene start to leave. "Where are you going? This is Piltover, it's a long way back to Zaun."
Marlene just glared at him.
Oh hell no. "You think you have any right to judge me? You were hiding as a junkie, Marlene!" She still walked off.
"Ekko, we have to go after Jinx!" One of them yelled. Several of them agreed.
But then what? Vi and the enforcers would be on them. There was no plan on what to do with her. Heimerdinger just walked out with absolute disappointment which really hurt. Sevika left, and for some reason, that hurt too. Even Marlene, the person who he was . . . hopping up on shimmer to watch the vaccine.
"She killed Vander!" A Firelight said from the back. "Sorry, but it's true, your friend killed Vander."
"That was an accident," Ekko said, "Jinx killed a lot, but he was-"
"I meant Vi."
Vi?
"She took him to see Viktor. She told you that on the ship. She isn't always smart, Ekko. I know she's like your big sister. But. If she took charge of him like she does in situations? Then, she might kill Jinx before we ever get to use her for the vaccine."
Oh. The way she said that? Just skirting right by the killing Jinx part, straight to the vaccine.
"What we could do?" Another Firelight offered. "Clearly from that roulette, it is in the blood. If we restrain Jinx, we could probably just keep taking some of that each day. You can study it and use your smarts to see when it's safe. Oh, wait. That's probably what they are doing with her now, huh?" he asked.
"Oh! Maybe you could talk to Vi, and get her to share her blood? At least, for the Firelights at first?" Another one asked. "She is like your sister, she'd probably do that for us. We could help each other."
"Yeah. You could meet with Vi to get her blood."
What. The. Fuck? "You think we should just steal her blood?"
"Either that or we need to go fetch her, Ekko," the first Firelight said again. "Our cure is walking into a prison right now."
///"Yes. If all you actually care for is the cure. Yes."///
"Who thinks we should bust Jinx out and steal her to use her blood for the vaccine?" He watched half the hands go up. Half. "How many think that's going too far for it?" The other half raised their hand.
Along with Scar.
///"Good job!" Heimerdinger showed up right there. "You can save her, and help Zaun, without bending to an Anatoly's will. I have made a contingency plan just for this occassion. You don't work against a memory mage without one."///
Am I really that stupid? "Professor!" He ran out of the ship and looked around. Where? Please Professor, be around somewhere. He looked to the left.
//////"Would you really have done this, Ekko?" She questioned him. "Without seeing another world. Another Powder."///
He looked to the right, his breathing getting heavier.
///For just a second, he thought the other world's Powder had found a way to cross over. Her hair was clean. Her makeup was all different. She even wore pretty eye shadow, except it was more lavender.
For just a second, he knew it couldn't be her. The smirk she gave him screamed Jinx, and so did the purple stripes right through the center bangs. He had given those in the last fight for Piltover, that Jinx hadn't survived. The most damning were the pink eyes. She still had shimmer eyes, something Powder would never have had.
A friend he thought, long since dead, was alive. It was a lot to process in three seconds.
"Hey," she answered back. Her Zaun accent, not that ridiculous accent. "Long time no see, Ekko."///
"Professor Heimerdinger!" He started running down the street straight as fast as he could. It was obvious now, how could he not see it? Even Vi and him did it.
///"All she wanted was for me to be here for her wedding, but can I do that? No, Vi, you have to be a hardass. Damn it, Ekko, this better fucking work," Vi muttered to him.///
///"He is crushing her!" Vi stopped trying to pass him though. "She's got the strength of a kid, how can we-"
"For Zaun!" he shouted. "For. Zaun." He glanced toward Shields and Cake. Still fine.///
Running out of time, I am running out of time! "Professor Heimerdinngerrr!"
///"Hey," Jinx corrected him sharply. "I broke my arm for this hug, so shut up, Ekko."
For the hug. "Did you have to break a whole arm? If you were doing it to put yourself in pain, wouldn't a finger have worked?" He looked toward Heimerdinger and saw a nod.
"Then what the hell, Powder?" Vi asked her. "You could have broken a finger to do whatever you just did."
"I wanted to hug her," PJ moaned. "Cake needed a hug."///
///Jinx was wearing a tight hugging sequin turquoise dress that didn't even have straps, and it had a slit on the side.
He tried not to stare at her clothes, but staring at her face wasn't helping either with everything she was doing.
Her mouth was holding bobby pins as she wrapped her long bangs with her hands into her hair, placing it up in a makeshift bun. She stuck the pins up, one by one inside, and then she took lipstick and pursed her lips together putting it on quickly, while she was also digging for a splash of makeup. She was quick but not too messy. When she was done, she grabbed some kind of card and a white piece of a napkin for her mouth, leaving an impression of the lipstick.
She took her mouth off it and it fell to the ground. "Just wait for my lead. They should have your ID, but if you've just been using a hoverboard and attacking, it's doubtful you can start this. Got it. Ekko? Ekko? Buster?"
"Uh. Yeah." Ekko watched her approach, but picked up the napkin with the lipstick on it. ///
He stopped and reached in his pocket. That napkin with the lipstick on it. He could not have screwed up more. "She was so fire in that dress." And it might be the last time he saw it.
The last time he saw her, as her.
Jinx. His Jinx.
He tried to run analysis while his mind was remembering all the recent memories he had of her. Everything was moving too quick, but what he was seeing is that he saw nothing. Heimerdinger had something. He only read a little of the letter, just enough to know what was being asked. He should have read more.
"Ekko Lad?"
"Professor!" He headed toward him, he did hear and he was coming back. "I need help. This vaccine has turned Jinx not into a person, but a thing to everyone."
Heimerdinger smiled and gave him a nod.
"She's so important . . . that she's not important. I've got half of my Firelights that want to drain her own blood to get at it. She's become an object, a thing everyone wants for what she has, and I don't know how to save her."
"Well," Heimerdinger told him, "We missed the important first boat, but there's another one to get her before she's sealed in prison."
Ekko felt his whole body physically relase in relief. He felt another strong arm on his shoulder.
"We'll get her," Sevika said to him.
"I can't fully trust my own Firelights," he told them. He hated to have to say that. "I can't just launch a surprise attack with them, I don't know what the need for her could do."
"Power. Magic. Greed. They are often together," the Professor said. "You see Miss Jinx now, instead of Miss Jinx through Miss Powder, don't you?"
Ekko didn't understand what he meant the first time he said that. He got it now. "Jinx can't lose the person she is."
"Right, no she shouldn't, and we won't let her. Let's start walking back and we can talk," Heimerdinger insisted. "First things first, her transformation timing is going to be off because of the extra magic during the transformation process and . . ."