Luxurious Anarchy (Lux/Jinx)

Chapter 8: Gladiator

Jinx cried out in shock, tumbling down the ramp from her favorite perch. The blast wave wasn't like any explosion Jinx had ever seen, felt, or caused, a nearly silent whump of displaced air accompanied by a not so nearly blinding flash of light.

Zapper was in Jinx's hands in a single Shimmer-fueled heartbeat, but the revolver felt even more cumbersome and stiff in her grip than before.

"Girl, stoppit, I'll tune you up later, but behave!" Jinx hissed, clambering to her feet to slowly crouch walk up the ramp, to where the explosion had gone off.

As she stalked onward and upward, her heart started to hammer the inside of her ribs, and her stomach suddenly had an entire swarm of firelights in it.

By the time she'd reached the midpoint of her ascent, Jinx was no longer crouching, and Zapper hung loosely at her side.

As she crested the top of the ramp, in a patch of sunlight that had somehow punched through the omnipresent cloud cover of Zaun, it was all Jinx could do to not burst into tears and tackle the woman only just now sitting up, flickers of light sparking and dancing off her armor.

"Wait, woman? No, yeah, that tracks, don't you say a fucking thing, Mylo!"

Lux shook her head, and looked at the ragamuffin of a young woman with braided blue pigtails down to her ankles. A young woman, who seemed to be having a hushed argument with the air next to her. The pink-haired outline blinked into existence in the corner of Lux's eye, and made a somehow mocking bow as she gestured to the toned and tattooed soul who seemed rather blasé about the loaded firearm she was wildly gesticulating with.

"Don't be taking his side, Claggor! Look, I need to make a good first impression and I don't need a couple of hecklers in the stands making it worse!"

"Um, hi there?"

Jinx's head whipped around, so sharply Lux was worried she'd hear something crack. The blue-haired woman's jaw dropped as she watched Lux stand allll the way up, towering above Jinx, at least six feet tall if she was an inch.

"Pick me up and pin me against a wall you fucking valkyrie."

nailed it, grade-A first impression jinx

Jinx slapped the hand not full of Hextech weaponry against her face and stifled a scream of equal parts frustration and humiliation. But stifled as it was, Jinx heard the statuesque blonde trying to choke down a laugh.

Lux failed to contain her laugh for more than a moment or two, and her joy rang out across the boggy morass that surrounded the platform she found herself on. A laugh that quickly turned into a cough, as the very air seemed to deem her unwelcome and turned traitorous in her lungs.

Jinx's eyes looked like pink fire as she suddenly darted away, snapping back to where she had been standing seconds ago, distance traveled be damned.

"Here, here, hold this over your breathy bits, I'll get the straps settled."

Lux moved by instinct and soulborne trust, pulling the mask to her face and gasping as slightly warm but ultimately breathable air filled the respirator. The blue-haired woman stood up on tippy-toe, trying to coax just another inch or two out of her five-foot height, gently pulling on Lux's pauldron to get her to crouch down and give her easier access when that inevitably failed.

"Oh gods, I'm sorry, my mouth got away from me, I'm sure that wasn't the first thing you wanted to hear from your soulmate. You are my soulmate, right? Not just, like, some whack-a-doodle mage who teleports into toxic clouds for a lark?"

you're babbling, calm down jinx

Jinx bit off a choice couple of suggestions for where Claggor could shove his calm, but in the interest of not picking another fight with her brother, she settled for piping down with a mild humph.