Luxurious Anarchy (Lux/Jinx)

Chapter 4: Iron

"This is a fucking nightmare, little man."

Ekko grunted as he leaned into the wrench, metal squeaking against metal as the bolt finally snugged tight. "No, this is basic maintenance. You said you wanted to help, getting some grease on ya was always in the cards."

Vi flicked her head to the side, trying to shake a stubborn lock of dark pink hair out of her eyes. "Not the hoverboards dude, the undercity. Do you know how many Shimmer addicts I had to clock before I got here? Three, and one of them even recognized me as, and I quote, 'Vander's lil girl'."

Ekko raised an eyebrow, "And you still hit him?"

Vi snorted, "Well I wasn't gonna give him my wallet, and he did pull a knife on me."

The lanky young man shrugged and set the board aside, "Alright, fair's fair in that exchange. I assume you've got some sort of point you're trying to make."

Vi frowned and closed her mouth, looking down at the rough cut of scrap iron she'd been trying to buff the rust out of.

With a clang, Ekko threw his wrench aside, "Oh don't clam up on me now. You might act the knuckle-dragging brute, but you got some serious gray matter, same as Pow-"

The silence that washed over the two of them carried the chill of the grave, a dead girl's name dying on Ekko's lips. Vi closed her eyes, setting aside the rough bundle of steel wool to run a palm over her face.

Wiping sweat from her brow, that's all. No tears for who her sister had been. No tears for the last of her blood, for the lost bond. Not now, not yet. She wasn't gone, but Vi just couldn't find it in her to go back, to go see who Powder had become. The woman with a curse for a name.

Not yet.

Squaring her shoulders, Vi stood up. Ekko was resting his forehead against one of the walls in the maintenance shed, the thin corrugated metal dotted with half-finished blueprints, maps, and timetables. Vi elected to use some of her hereditary gray matter to ignore the sweat drops rolling down his cheeks. Vi had lost a sister, one she'd only seen for an hour at most, spread across a couple of frantic and horrific days.

Ekko had lost his best friend, and had been watching her corpse ply a bloody and ruinous trade from the bottom of the sumps all the way to the top of Piltover's spires for years.

Vi coughed, and looked away from Ekko as he rubbed a mostly clean scrap of cloth over his face. "It's the fact that there were so many addicts, and that they'd be so bold to try and jump me."

Ekko sighed, and turned around to face Vi. "What makes you exempt from the 'walking in my alleyway' tax? Come on Vi, it's Zaun, the fastest way to get some copper washers is to run a fool's pockets, you know that."

"Okay, first off, as the boy savior to all these people down here, don't get all depressing on me. You do the hopeful and uplifting, appoint someone else to be grim and dark for you or something. As for why I get to walk around tax-free," Vi flexed one arm, and couldn't keep a cocky smirk off her face as she looked at Ekko. "Bruh."

Ekko snorted out a laugh, but waved his hands in surrender, "Alright, alright, you've got cannons while the rest of us have pop-guns, point made. What are you getting at tho? It's bad, yeah, but what did you expect? The top dog is gone, the Pilties are acting cagey as all fuck, and somebody blew up one of the main production and distribution sites of Shimmer."

Vi winced at that last point. She'd wanted to hurt Silco, but the unintended knock-on effect of a bunch of junkies suddenly starved of their fix had really torn through the undercity like a wildfire. A few hours of boiling rage and lashing out, and bodies were still being added to the count weeks later.