Luxurious Anarchy (Lux/Jinx)

Chapter 31: The Only Thing They Fear Is You

"You have, at most, fifteen minutes."

Viktor slapped one hand over his mask, and Jayce boggled at Lux from behind some hastily donned welder's goggles. "You do realize that fifteen hours would not be nearly enough time to do what you're asking, correct?"

With glowing hands, Lux finished buckling her cuirass back on, and gave Viktor a withering look, "Then pray for me, because I'm going anyway."

Viktor bristled, but Jayce lay one hand on his friend's shoulder. "You say you did it before?"
"Yes," Lux growled, itching to get a move on, "Hells, you may have seen the sunbeam that I rode coming into your fair city."

Jayce nodded, and turned to Viktor, "Get the others, we can do it."

Viktor threw his hands up, "And here I was, about to lead a prayer circle. Bah, fine then, let's go make another miracle on the whims of a madwoman happen today."

Lux ignored the parting jab. She ignored Vi calling for her, or Ekko trying to wave her down from his board. Instead, she reached down into her soul, and did everything in her power to send Jinx a moment of comfort, a sliver of solace.

It was so hard to do, when all she felt was rage.

Time felt sticky, Lux decided, as she began to run, newly grown or freshly augmented muscles bunching and pistoning beneath her skin. It came in fits and starts, leaving her displaced from where she expected to be, too far or too short of her estimations.

She breathed as she ran, tried to count cobblestones or doorways, adjusting, adapting to the new her. She had always had a bit of muscle on her, but not like this. She felt, for lack of a better term, buff. Aesthetically pleasingly buff, but with her veins glowing purple and her skin shining gold, Lux had to wonder how many onlookers would agree with her self-assessment.

It was a dozen blocks before she realized she'd left her mask behind at The Last Drop. She had Zapper, her wand, her sword. She was clothed, and had put her cuirass back on, but not her vambraces or greaves. The smog and grit of Zaun's air no longer seemed to bother her. Was that a subtle alteration by Singed? Was it the Shimmer, boiling away in her veins, helping her adapt? Or had she died, strapped to a bar room table, punched full of holes, leaking blood and poison in equal measure?

Her soul told Lux that she was still alive. Her soul, or more accurately, her bond.

"Hang on babygirl, I'm coming," she whispered, kicking off a brick and stone stoop to whip around a corner like a golden comet.

Lux blinked, and she was surprised at the speed she was moving at, the ground blurring beneath her feet. She leapt, and found herself sailing through the air, a dozen feet off the ground if she was an inch, glowing like the heart of a star.

The council, the Demacians, the Home Guard and the Mageseekers, they would know she was coming, she was shining like a beacon.

A beacon running toward the largest crossing point between Zaun and Piltover, the old Founder's Bridge.

Overhead, silverwings wheeled and flocked, gathering around her position like crows circling a choice bit of carrion. Lux wrapped one hand into a cup, letting sunfire and starlight pool in the palm of that hand.

She leapt again, twisting at the apex of her flight to throw a javelin of consensed light. The bar of solid light flew faster than the eye could follow, and neatly snipped the head off of a silverwing. The riders screamed in horror as their mount began to spiral downward, muscles twitching and jerking without a brain to guide them.

Before the silverwings could scatter, before Lux had touched ground again, she threw two more spears of light, goring one silverwing, and tearing a wing off of another. Lux hit the pavement with a thud, and ducking low, sprinted for cover.