Luxurious Anarchy (Lux/Jinx)

Chapter 10: Do Bad Well

Vi cupped her hands around her mouth, taking a deep breath of undercity air, "Powder! Come on, are you in? We just wanna talk!"

On some level, Vi knew calling her sister by a name she had cast off was not the right thing to do. At the same time, she just couldn't bear to address her like she was a curse. Vi saw that her little sister now drew a perverse sort of strength from embracing a nickname she had all but been branded with as a child. For Vi though, it was like speaking with a mouth full of rancid bile, anytime she even tried to call her sister Jinx.

"Are you sure she's staying here?"

Vi spared a glance to where Jayce was, leaning on his Hextech hammer. The directive to dress down for the foray into the lanes had done little to hide that Jayce was a topsider, though the metal half-mask respirator he was wearing hid his iconic cheekbones and jawline at least. Caitlyn looked a little better, which is to say worse, and could maybe pass as one of the souls that lived on the boundary between topside and undercity.

Shaking her head, Vi waffled one hand, "It's a coin toss, but if she's not, I'm gonna take a detour on our way back to the lifts to get my silver gear back from that sump skimmer who swore this was her turf."

Caitlyn and Jayce both cocked their heads, brows furrowed in confusion, "You'd go chase someone down for a single gear?"

Looking back across the graveyard to the warehouse, Vi snorted, "If you let someone sell you bad information once, you'll look like an easy mark forever. Plus, I'm not exactly swimming in gears and hexes like you two."

There were some sounds coming from the warehouse, which Vi thought was encouraging. Raising her hands to cup her mouth again, she shouted, "Powder, I can hear you in there! Come on, five minutes, that's all Pow-"

When the door literally exploded off its hinges, Vi grabbed Caitlyn by the shoulder and roughly threw both of them to the ground. Jayce watched dumbly as the door bounced across the fetid graveyard that bordered the warehouse. When he heard the distinctive whine of a minigun winding up however, he wasted no time in following Vi's lead and jumped to the side, dropping flat to the ground.

A fraction of a second later, a blistering hail of gunfire cut through the air just above them. Vi, who was on top of Caitlyn, gritted her teeth as she felt a handful of rounds rip and tear through her jacket, passing close enough to flesh to leave whisper-thin trails of heat along her shoulders.

The roar of gunfire faded, and at a volume that sounded like it should echo for miles, her baby sister screamed, "WHAT'S MY FUCKING NAME?! SAY MY GODS DAMNED NAME, VI!!"

Vi planted her hands, and with her shoulders burning, pushed herself up off the ground. Caitlyn looked confused when Vi gestured for her to stay prone, and she turned and walked into the graveyard, just a dozen paces or so. Far enough that neither her Cupcake or Jayce would be in the line of fire, though all bets were off if her sister resorted to her Chompers to vent her anger.

She was standing there, eyes like rose quartz soaked in chems and set alight. Her smile was not welcoming, but nearly feral, a rictus grin of rage. The gun she'd named Pow-Pow, another of her names she'd cast off, was in her hands, barrels still spinning. The lightest touch of the trigger would shred Vi into a bloody mulch.

Behind her sister stood another woman, one Vi didn't recognize. She was a blonde, even taller than Vi, and with a fighter's muscular build that her simple white tunic and blue leggings didn't conceal at all. One hand rested on her sister's shoulder, but it was not a hand placed in restraint, but rather one placed as a gesture of support. Even with the pink and teal-painted respirator obscuring half of the blonde's face, Vi could see the affection in how she looked at the blue-haired young woman.