The city bled in through Cait's floor-to-ceiling windows in bands of neon and teeth-bright white, carving the apartment up into slices of light and shadow. Eighty-seven floors down, Piltover screamed and sparkled; up here it was quiet enough that you could pretend the world wasn't on fire.
The coffee table was one of those ridiculous neo-glass slabs that looked like it was hovering. Holographic edges, invisible supports, the whole "I spent way too much money on this" package. Three glasses caught the light over it, clinking together—little starbursts trapped in crystal.
Jinx nearly missed the toast entirely.
"To chaos and order and everything between," she declared anyway, throwing her arm up like she was about to punch God. Her drink sloshed out and spotted her already-ruined outfit—ripped mesh over a circuit-printed tank that kept pulsing faint blue in time with her heart. Her floor-length braids whipped around like she was underwater, electric blue ropes catching every stray glimmer from the skyline.
She grinned at the other two like she'd just said something profound, not drunk.
Vi huffed a laugh at her from the floor. She'd claimed the plush rug instead of the furniture, big frame folded up cross-legged, boots off, mechanical gauntlets dumped in a heap beside her like two very illegal paperweights. She smelled like leather, engine oil, and bad decisions in a back alley.
Instead of using the glass in front of her, she raised the iridescent bottle itself and tipped it back. The label shimmered through color shifts, like someone had bottled an aurora and slapped a barcode on it.
"You just described the entire universe," she said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. "Not much of a toast, trouble."
Trouble. She said it with that lazy, gravelly fondness that made it sound a lot like babe.
Cait sat on the edge of her violet armchair like she'd been positioned there by an interior designer. Back straight, knees together, jacket perfect. The chair's embroidery matched the delicate stitching on her tailored lapels; of course it did. Even slightly drunk, she looked like a portrait that had wandered off a gallery wall.
Her fingers—long, manicured, annoyingly elegant—curved around the stem of her glass. "I appreciate thoroughness," she replied, voice cool, clipped, absolutely at odds with the faint flush painting her cheekbones.
The apartment lights read the mood like an obedient pet and slid down to a soft blue. Piltover's skyline flooded in to replace the brightness, all hovering traffic and neon veins.
Jinx flopped from her sideways sprawl into a sudden stand on the temperature-adaptive couch, almost wiping out in the process. Her drink did another suicidal wave.
"Game time," she announced. "Truth or Consequence. I updated the rules. Consequence means you let me test a harmless prototype on you."
Her arms pinwheeled as she spoke, blue cloud tattoos twisting across her skin like they were alive, shifting with each big gesture.
Vi squinted up at her. "Define 'harmless.'" The pink undercut on one side of her head caught the glow, lining her jaw in rose-gold.
"Non-explosive," Jinx said promptly. "Probably. Maybe. Fifty-fifty."
Cait lifted two fingers, that tiny aristocratic little motion that somehow shut both of them up. "Standard rules. No prototypes." Her gaze flicked, just once, toward the corner shelf where a containment unit hummed, the glass faintly shimmering from whatever delightful quantum nonsense Jinx had stashed in there.
Jinx followed the look and pouted. "Cowards," she muttered, but collapsed back onto the couch in a dramatic heap, braids spilling everywhere like electric rivers. One slid over Vi's thigh; Vi didn't move it.
Didn't move it at all.
Cait leaned forward, reaching over the coffee table. Her hands skimmed just above the surface, fingers twitching in precise little gestures. The built-in holo-projector rippled like disturbed water, then lit up with a pale grid that connected all three of them in thin lines.
"The game matrix is set," she announced, because of course she announced it. "Traditional rules. The system will monitor for deception."
Vi rolled her shoulders, then cracked her knuckles, each pop sharp in the quiet. "Fine. Truth. Let's rip the bandage off."
Jinx perked up at once, practically crawling across the couch towards her. "Most illegal thing you've ever done," she blurted, eyes already bright, one braid drooping dangerously close to her glass.
Vi's mouth curled. "Which jurisdiction?" she asked, like this was a job interview.
Cait's eyebrow arched with surgical precision.
"Okay, okay," Vi relented, smirking. "Rewired a security mech to let me into the Upper East Gallery after hours. Didn't steal anything," she added, giving Cait a look. "Just wanted to see the art. Their daytime crowd smells like perfume and tax fraud."
The game grid flashed a calm, satisfied green.
Jinx clapped, delighted. "Look at you, Miss I Break The Law For Culture." She kicked at Vi's calf with her bare heel. "That's kinda hot, actually."
Vi caught her ankle one-handed and squeezed, fingers warm and calloused against Jinx's skin. "Only kinda?" she rumbled.
Jinx's ears went pink. The grid didn't need to monitor that.
"My turn," Vi said, releasing her. She tipped her chin toward Cait. "Truth or Consequence, princess?"
Cait's mouth tightened at the nickname, but she didn't reject it. "Truth," she said, and took another measured sip. The amber caught in her glass painted her lips in a warm glow, like she'd just bitten into sunlight.
"Have you ever used your fancy investigator credentials for personal reasons?" Vi asked, voice going lazy again. "And don't say 'no,' I'll be disappointed."
Cait hesitated. Barely. Just enough that both Jinx and Vi noticed.
"Yes," she said finally. "Once. I accessed restricted archives to look up my family history." Her fingers tightened around the glass, knuckles going pale. The rest of her stayed perfectly composed, because of course it did. "There were… discrepancies in the public records."
Green again. The grid pulsed, then settled.
Jinx tipped her head back with a theatrical groan. "You two and your noble misdemeanors. 'I broke into a gallery.' 'I hacked my own trauma.' Someone ask me something filthy, I'm begging."
Cait's gaze slid to her, slow and assessing, eyes that particular violet that always looked like trouble under low light. "Very well," she said. "Truth or Consequence?"
"Truth! No, Consequence! No—shit—uh—"
Cait didn't wait. "Truth," she decided for her, which immediately made Jinx's brain short out a little.
"How close," Cait asked, "have you actually come to creating stable quantum resonance?"
Jinx's whole expression rerouted at once, wild brain doing a hard pivot. Her eyes lit up like someone had flipped a switch inside her skull.
"Ooh, you're going straight for the classified questions," she said, sitting up, suddenly sharp. "Kinky."
She started drawing invisible diagrams in the air, hands moving fast, fingers tracking equations only she could see. "Okay, so, last month, I got partial stability for 3.7 seconds. The Harbor District incident? Not me, obviously, but I stole their data and circled the failure vectors in bright pink."
Vi made a face. "Jinx."
"What? It's called peer review." She waved her hand, still sketching. "Anyway, the cascade isn't uncontrollable, everyone just ignores the subatomic fluctuation window and the background interference pattern, which is rude, frankly. So I built a dampening field that—"
"In English," Vi cut in, pouring herself more aurora liquor. "Some of us in this room don't get horny for math."
Jinx pinched her fingers together so the tips almost touched, holding them up in front of her mouth. "I am this close," she said. "Either to stable resonance… or vaporizing half the city. It's basically the same process. Very romantic."
She grinned at them over her hand, all teeth and danger and desperate want for approval.
The table flashed green, then flickered to yellow. Partial truth.
Cait's eyes narrowed, amused. "Which part is embellished?" she asked.
Jinx flopped back slowly, one braid sliding across Cait's knee this time, deliberate as sin. "Guess you'll have to hit Consequence next round," she murmured. "Let me show you."
Vi snorted into her drink. The city hummed outside. The grid hung between them like a promise.
"Which part was the lie?" Cait asked.
The city behind her threw a halo around her—gold and silver bleeding through the glass and catching in her hair, turning her into some pissed-off angel of bureaucracy and good cheekbones.
Jinx's grin went a little feral. "Stability was 4.2 seconds, not 3.7." She tapped her temple with one blue-painted nail. "A girl's gotta keep some mystique."
The grid blinked from yellow back to green, like it approved of her being full of shit in the most technical way possible.
They kept going. More questions, more drinks, more petty crimes confessed with varying degrees of pride. The glasses emptied and refilled on an endless loop; the cleaning drone did slow patrols like a nervous Roomba, swooping in to grab discarded bottles and retreating whenever one of them gestured too big.
Outside, Piltover turned over into proper night. The sky-lanes thinned, neon smeared into softer strokes. Inside, the three of them were their own little constellation: Cait all precision and sharp edges, Vi heavy gravity in a tank top, Jinx the unstable star that refused to mind its own orbit.
The holo grid shimmered between them, dutifully logging truths and half-truths and blatant bullshit. It didn't catch the important stuff—the way Cait's gaze lingered that half-second too long, the way Vi unconsciously angled herself between the other two like a shield, the way Jinx kept talking louder when she got nervous so nobody would notice she was scared.
Eventually the questions blurred into stories. At some point Jinx had ended up on her feet again, orbiting the coffee table like a drunk satellite, using the entire living room as a whiteboard.
"And then the particles do this weird dance," she said, spinning on her heel. Her braids whipped around in a bright arc, nearly taking out a floor lamp. The circuitry on her tank top was pulsing a little too fast, perfectly keyed to her heart rate. "They're entangled, right? So they're basically gossiping across the universe. Einstein called it 'spooky action at a distance,' which is adorable. I call it quantum telephone."
Vi had slid down until she was half-reclined on the couch, head tipped back, eyes reflecting the city. "How does your cosmic gossip line stop things from exploding?"
"That's the best part." Jinx stopped spinning, immediately listing sideways before she caught herself on the back of the couch, hand landing on Vi's shoulder. She squeezed once without thinking. "If I control one particle, I control its partner. Boom. Remote trigger. Precision detonations without having to be in the blast zone. Safer for us, scarier for them."
"Comforting," Vi said dryly. "Truly."
Cait leaned in, elbows on her knees, that investigative focus knitting her brows. Three empty glasses sat in front of her like a failed experiment. "Assuming you can stabilize the resonance," she said. "Without catastrophic side effects."
Jinx threw both hands up. "Why does everyone get so hung up on 'catastrophic' like it's a bad word? I am stabilizing it. I am actively stabilizing." She hopped up onto the coffee table before anyone could stop her. Bottles rattled. "Okay, picture this. Quantum field forming—"
"Jinx," Cait warned.
She was already mid-demonstration. Arms wide, she wove them through the air like she was conducting invisible currents. "Field goes shwooo," she said, very scientifically. "Containment matrix wraps around like this—"
The neo-glass hummed under her bare feet as she shuffled through an exaggerated dance, tracing circles and nodes across the tabletop. The drone took one horrified look at this situation and retreated under a cabinet.
"Jinx, maybe not on the—" Vi started.
"Wait, wait, the best bit is the resonance." Jinx hopped down from the table in a surprisingly clean landing, momentum spinning her into the center of the room. "When the fields line up just right, the energy—"
Her arm swung wide.
Her elbow hit something solid.
There was that layered horror-movie sound: the dull knock, the scrape, the tiny breath of air as something left its safe little shelf, and then the sharp, crystalline shatter of way-too-old, way-too-expensive glass meeting the floor.
Everything went absolutely still.
Jinx froze with her arms still out like she'd been T-posed by God. Cait's face drained, violet eyes blown wide. Vi's whole body coiled, subtle muscle tension like she was about to dive for cover.
On the floor, a vase lay in pieces. It had clearly been some ridiculous antique; even shattered, it looked too pretty to exist. Iridescent shards caught the ambient light, twitching with ghost rainbows. The pattern etched into them still suggested the shape it used to be—spirals and symbols and careful geometry, now broken into a constellation of little sharp endings.
The music faded itself out, the apartment recognizing that everyone's heart rate had just spiked into the "oh fuck" category. Outside, the city hum pressed in like static, louder against their sudden silence.
Cait stood.
She did it very slowly, each movement clean, nothing wasted. She crossed the room to the edge of the wreckage and stopped, looking down. The light carved hard angles into her face.
"That was a Cho Dynasty harmonic resonator," she said. Her voice had gone flat, all the warmth ironed right out. "Ninth century. There are seventeen documented pieces left."
Jinx felt her stomach hit the floor, then keep going. Her hands snapped into nervous motion, fingers knotting in her own braids.
"I—shit—Cait, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean—" The words tumbled out of her mouth like she'd lost control of her own tongue. "I can fix it, maybe, I've got a bonding agent in the lab that might work with—no, that's stupid, that only works on polyglass, this is—was—" She dropped into a crouch automatically, reaching for one of the shards.
"Don't touch it."
Cait didn't raise her voice. She didn't need to. The command sliced straight through Jinx's babbling, left her frozen with her hand hovering over the floor.
Vi stood up in one smooth motion. She didn't put the gauntlets on, but she didn't really need them to be intimidating. She moved closer, anchoring herself between Cait and Jinx without making a big production of it.
"Hey," she said quietly. "Breathe."
Cait didn't look away from the broken vase. "It was a gift from my grandmother," she went on, still in that flat voice that was so much worse than yelling. "The engravings encoded twelve generations of family records."
Jinx's heartbeat was loud enough in her own ears that she almost didn't hear it. Her fingers raked through the same lock of hair over and over, tugging, skin going cold.
"I'll replace it," she blurted. "Better than replace it. I know someone in Low Harbor who works with responsive materials, we can make a smart vase, it can play your family tree on command—"
"It's not about what it does." Cait finally lifted her gaze from the floor, pinning Jinx to the wall from halfway across the room. "It's about the fact that you treat consequences like a theoretical exercise."
Jinx flinched at that harder than she had at the shatter.
Vi's jaw flexed. Her eyes moved between them, cataloguing, weighing. She didn't pick a side; she just planted herself there, solid and steady, making sure nothing went nuclear.
The air felt thick. The apartment responded in some automatic way: oxygen increased, temperature adjusted, but it just made everything feel more vivid, hyperreal. Jinx took two stumbling steps back until her shoulder blades hit the wall. The blue clouds wrapping her arms seemed darker against how pale she'd gone.
"I'll make it up to you," she said. Her voice had gone small, frayed at the edges. "Anything. Just… say it."
There was a whole conversation in the look that passed between Cait and Vi. One of those micro-gestures things: the tiny tilt of Vi's head, the way Cait's shoulders shifted like she'd been waiting for permission she didn't actually need.
Something in the room snapped over into a new state.
Cait's spine straightened. When she finally turned fully toward Jinx, there was a different kind of focus in her eyes—less wounded, more clinical. Dangerous in a whole other way.
"You chose Truth earlier," she said slowly. "I believe the game allows for Consequence."
Jinx's back pressed harder into the wall. "Uh," she said. "It also allows for forgiveness and emotional growth, just putting that out there as an option—"
"A makeover," Cait said, cutting through her. "That will be your consequence."
It landed like a verdict.
For a second, Jinx just blinked at her. "A… what now."
Cait lifted her hand and absently touched the perfect roll of her own hair, fingertips brushing her temple. She let her gaze travel over Jinx—messy braids, ripped mesh, belts, the whole gremlin aesthetic—like she was appraising damage at a crime scene.
"You treat yourself with the same disregard you treat my antiques," Cait said. "Tonight, you're mine to correct."
Jinx sputtered. "This is oppression," she declared. "This is class warfare. I knew someday my crimes against fashion would be used against me."
Vi had migrated to the doorway almost without them noticing and was now leaning against the frame, arms crossed, watching with entirely too much amusement. Her broad shoulders filled half the space, making any attempt at escape feel instantly doomed.
"To be fair," Vi said, "I did throw a toaster out your window that one time."
"You did," Cait agreed. "But you also don't routinely endanger artifacts that predate indoor plumbing."
Vi shrugged. "And I look good in a tank top. Diplomatic immunity."
Jinx pointed at her, outraged. "Corruption! Cronyism!"
Vi pushed off the frame, closing the distance in a few easy strides. She hooked two fingers under Jinx's chin and tilted her face up. "Relax, gremlin," she murmured, a crooked smile tugging at her mouth. "Worst case, you end up hot and humiliated. You live for attention; this is just attention with mascara."
Jinx's pulse did something irresponsible. "I don't live for—" she started, then faltered as Vi's thumb brushed her jaw, calloused and gentle. "Okay, I do, but it's the principle."
Cait clapped her hands once, and the spell of the shattered vase rearranged itself into something sharper, more playful, but no less intense. "Bedroom," she said. "Now."
"Scary," Jinx muttered under her breath, but she followed. Vi fell into step behind her, close enough that Jinx could feel the heat of her at her back.
Cait's bedroom looked exactly like you'd expect: too neat, too expensive, everything in its place. The closet doors slid open at a gesture, and an entire wall of color-coded, perfectly spaced outfits revealed itself. Uniforms, suits, blouses lined up at regulation distances—structured, controlled, severely gay.
Jinx whistled low. "You have more uniforms than some regimes," she said. "I feel like I should be saluting in here."
Cait ignored her, reaching for a yellow plaid skirt suit and holding the hanger up in front of Jinx. The jacket fell just right across her shoulders. The skirt… did not fall anywhere. It clung, hovering somewhere in the danger zone between "fashion" and "indecent exposure."
Vi sidled closer, pretending to study the fit with grave concern. "Jacket'll hang better if she loses the shirt," she said. "Science."
Jinx snorted. "Pervert."
"If I wanted an excuse to see you naked, I wouldn't be dragging fabric into it," Vi replied, easy as breathing.
Which did nothing helpful to Jinx's heart rate.
Jinx grabbed the hem of her oversized t-shirt and, riding the drunk momentum, yanked it off in one fluid motion. It landed somewhere near Cait's neatly folded throws, which promptly lowered the property value of that corner of the room.
She stood there in battered boyshorts and too many belts, tattoos wrapping her ribs and arms, long torso catching the soft bedroom light. For once, she didn't pose or joke; she just… existed, suddenly very aware of being looked at.
Because they were looking.
Vi took her in with unashamed appreciation, gaze trailing from shoulders to hips like she was cataloguing a new favorite weapon.
Cait's eyes flicked down and back up a fraction too slowly to pass as entirely professional.
Jinx swallowed, suddenly not sure where to put her hands.
"Arms up," Cait said, back in that brisk tone, like nothing about this was killing her. She stepped in close to slide the jacket onto Jinx's arms, smoothing it over her shoulders, tugging it just so. Then the skirt, which was absolutely not designed for someone who climbed scaffolding for fun; she had to guide it over Jinx's hips, thumbs pressing into the fabric at her waist while she twisted to do the side zipper. Each adjustment was an excuse for contact: fingers brushing bare skin, palm flattening against her stomach, the light press at the small of her back as Cait turned her toward the mirror.
Jinx's brain went mostly offline. "You know this counts as cruel and unusual, right?" she managed, voice a little rough. "I break one vase and suddenly I'm cosplay."
"You broke a Cho harmonic resonator," Cait said, smoothing the skirt one more time in a way that was deeply unnecessary. "You dyed my divan last month. Consequences accumulate."
Vi made a thoughtful noise. "Gotta admit," she said, stepping behind Jinx, hands finding her waist with easy familiarity. "Chaos looks good in plaid."
Jinx's knees nearly gave out. "Stop saying nice things, I'm trying to be in trouble."
They dragged her back out to the living room like that—Jinx in the too-short plaid skirt and matching jacket, bare legs, boots still on, all of it wrong in that way that looped back around to obscenely right.
They sat her in the armchair. This time she didn't fight it. Vi slid onto the back of it, one leg bracketing Jinx's shoulder, the other planted on the floor, basically caging her in. She reached down to start unbraiding Jinx's hair, working through the thick electric ropes with slow, careful fingers.
"Careful," Jinx warned. "If you undo all of them I gain full power."
Vi snorted. "If you conditioned this once in a while," she said, gently working out a tangle, "it wouldn't feel like wrestling rebar."
Jinx tried to toss out some retort, but it died halfway because Vi hit a sensitive spot at her scalp, and her whole body went loose for a second.
Vi noticed. Of course she did.
Her voice softened. "It's really pretty, you know," she said quietly, right near Jinx's ear. "You're really pretty."
Jinx's mouth opened, then closed. Her shoulders dropped a fraction, the usual manic tension bleeding out as she leaned back into the touch, letting Vi card through her hair in long, rhythmic strokes. The faint spritz of lavender misted the air; Jinx could feel the droplets cooling on her neck.
Across from them, Cait had laid out her arsenal on the coffee table like a carefully curated crime scene: brushes, palettes, liners, gloss. She pretended to fuss with their order, but her gaze kept sliding back to the chair, watching the way Jinx's whole vibe shifted with her hair out of braids—less chaotic gremlin, more feral fae thing someone had dressed up as a person.
When the last braid fell loose, Jinx's hair poured over the back of the chair in a bright cascade, waves catching the ambient blue light. Vi spread it between her fingers, satisfied with her work.
"Done," she announced. "I have tamed the storm. Your turn, princess."
Cait stepped in close. One hand braced on the back of the chair, the other catching Jinx's chin and tipping her face up. "Don't move," she murmured. "I'm attempting to rescue your bone structure from your life choices."
Jinx huffed a breath that was dangerously close to a laugh. "Rude. My bone structure is a weapon."
"Exactly," Cait said. "I'm upgrading it."