You have slain an enemy!
"Er, duhhhhh, Mrs. Old-Woman-Voice-In-My-Head, I was right here! You don't have to tell me how super-duper-awesome I was."
Jinx slid Fishbones back onto her back and gave her hands a much needed rest. It had taken a lot to bring her target down, what with all of his bouncing and darting around the jungle, but Fishbones hadn't let her down. He very rarely did, after all.
"See you in forty seconds, baldy." she said to Lee Sin's body, as she sprinted down the lane. The kill had pumped her up, and she made it to the corner of the rift in record time. Good job too, there were plenty of minions ripe for the killing.
"Let's go Pow-Pow, I gots to get paid!" she said, spinning up her minigun, but a tug at her foot made her pause. She looked down, seeing the vine around her ankle and gave the area another quick glance before seeing her.
Zyra was in the brush to her left, explaining why Jinx hadn't seen her in the first place - she was a plant, after all, and she blended in with the long grass like she wa a part of it herself. The vine around her ankle wasn't an attack, though. As they met eyes, Zyra put a single finger to her lips, and pointed to the river. Jinx understood. There was someone else begging to get destroyed, and Zyra didn't want Pow-Pow giving them any clue. Jinx nodded and leapt into the brush too, slowly sliding Fishbones from her back again - if Zyra was right, she'd probably need the extra range to take the guy down. Plus, explosions.
Three seconds passed with no enemy, and that was enough to make Jinx impatient. After three seconds more she was willing to blow the whole operation and go to town on the minions, but then a figure burst from the river.
It was Master Yi. Jinx knew the name since she had fought with him before - she took her hand off Zap, knowing it would be no use here. A combination of a Flame Chomper and Zyra's vines, however, would be more than enough to keep him in line. A flash of steel and four dead minions later, Jinx knew that Yi had used his one party piece, and Zyra knew it too.
The vines came from the brush so smoothly that it seemed the brush was overgrowing across the lane - not that Yi noticed, since he had no idea of the vines until they had hit his leg. He looked down, giving Jinx enough time to toss a Chomper at his other leg. She leapt out of the brush.
"Nowhere to run, nine-eyes!" Jinx yelled. She hit the big red button on Fishbones and prepared to wreck face. "That's a nice sword fancy man, shame if it were a bit more EXPLODED!"
The Super Mega Death Rocket didn't travel far, but that didn't matter, as it still separated Master Yi into his constituent parts. Zyra appeared through the smiley faced smoke, treading on the remains of Yi with a confused look on her face.
"That was...excessive, wasn't it?" Zyra asked.
"Excessively AWESOME, right? Although it didn't used to blow people up into paste like that. Ever since I started working here my whole kit seems to pack a lot more punch!"
"Yeah, it's something the Summoners do, they can control how powerful we are down here to make it a fair…"
"Blah, blah, blah, boring summoner rules, yeah, I know. Who cares, I'm more explody! Anyways, I'm off to kill more peeps! You wanna come with, tree-lady? You keep them tied down and I slap them in the face with a rocket! Ooh, new idea, ROCKET GLOVE!"
"Well, I can also summon my…"
"NOPE! Don't need 'em. Just vine 'em and throw a ward down every so often so I can see who to kill, kay Twigsy?"
"My name is Zyra."
"Meh, I'll never remember that. I'll just keep thinking of more hilarious tree-based nicknames. Come on then, hop to it, we've got more saps to kill. Ha, SAPS, get it? Cos you're a tree and stuff…"
Jinx was long gone before she'd finished her sentence. Zyra sighed and jogged after her. She was just gonna get herself killed with such a reckless…
An enemy has been slain!
"Hey Sherwood! Hurry up! You're missing out on me being awesome!"
An ally has been slain!
ENEMY DOUBLE KILL!
"Oi, Nottingham! What the hell! Clearly that was your bad, I'm too perfect to fail so hard."
"What? Vines, seeds, overgrowth, that was everything I had! Pretty sure it was your dodgy zapgun...thing."
"Oh you did NOT just blame my gun. You don't blame the guns. They're as much part of this team as anyone, you apologize to Fishbones right now!"
This was the fifth time they had been wiped under their tower, the result of dive from Vayne. Both Jinx and Zyra had done all they could to stop her, but Jinx's bullets seemed to bounce right off her, and Zyra's vines felt more like twine than plant.
"Seriously though Jinx, you seem to be lacking your punch." Zyra said. "Come on, let's shop. Buy fifty BF Swords or something."
"Swords? Dude, that's boring. We need more guns. And don't say "seriously", you know I hate that word."
"Maybe this was what that letter was about. Did you get it too? From the Institute, they said they were tweaking the strength of some of us to keep in line…"
"Oh, that went on WAY too long. I got as far as there was something new in the jungle. Then I tested out my new napalm recipe on it. Protip: barbeque sauce - not flammable."
Zyra sighed. If Jinx had read the letter, she'd know the truth of why they were losing - they had been weakened. She'd noticed that the summoners were picking them to go into the Rift on their behalf far more than anyone else. Both of them on the bottom lane, almost every battle, and almost every battle they had won. And while it had been fun (actually a lot more fun than Zyra had expected), a lot of the higher-up summoners had complained - and what the Challengers want, the Challengers get. No-one could even complain, since they'd pretty much signed over their skills when joining the League, putting their talents in the hands of the Summoners.
"Look, Jinx, if you were just a bit more careful…"
"Yeah, I'm gonna pretend you didn't say that, Sequoia. Don't worry, I have a master plan. If you hit a wall, you punch it till it comes down. Like Vi! Except, y'know, not like Vi, because she's a wuss. Honest, I've got pictures."
"Eh, this battle is a bust anyway. The announcers been hailing our failures for the last half hour. Let's surrender, think of a new plan between fights…"
"Lolno Treebeard, we'll get'em next time. Just, y'know, put some fertilizer on those vines or whatever it is you do."
"I don't think we need to add to the sh-"
"Hey! Chin up, Redwood. We can do it. Shooty shooty catchy monkey. Which reminds me, Darius has been complaining about that monkey for ages, we should probably do something about that. Allons-y!"
Zyra frowned as Jinx sprinted from the platform. She wasn't going to learn any time soon. But that was fine, Zyra was enjoying the ride. She grabbed her Deathcap and chased after her.
"ANNIE! NUNU! JAX! YOU ALL SUCK! HOW CAN THAT PANTHEON EVEN CARRY FOUR BLACK CLEAVERS? THAT WOULD BE AWESOME IF IT WEREN'T SO ANNOYING!"
"Yeah, they're dead Jinx, I think it's time to go."
Zyra and Jinx were at the wraith camp, having just witnessed Pantheon destroy the rest of the team. They had Pantheon cornered, but, from either lack of skill on their part or an abundance of skill on his, they'd all end up dead. Pantheon was wounded, though, and so Zyra knew that Jinx would want to finish him off.
"Hey, Daisychain, we should totes finish that pokey-stick guy!"
"What? He just cut our teammates in half!"
"Yeah, well, they suck. We don't. We can take him, look! He's barely even upright. Plus he's not all that. The only reason he's here is because he didn't make the top 300."
"The...what?"
"Never mind. The point is he sucks, we don't. Snare, floor plants, vines everywhere, shooty explody. Job done. I'll take point because point is AWESOME."
"Jinx, we can't…"
But Jinx had already gone. She dove out of the wraith camp through to the mid lane, winding up Pow-Pow as she went. Zyra knew that this wouldn't work, but the only way Jinx would learn would be to experience it for herself. She followed her into the lane just as she finished her one-liner.
"...a message from Xerxes! Bang bang bang!"
Zyra knew that the bullets wouldn't pierce Pantheon's thick shield, but to her surprise, Pow-Pow didn't fire any bullets. Instead, flags adorned with the word BANG! had appeared, flapping in the wind as the minigun span. Pantheon just watched as Jynx continued to "shoot" - she actually hadn't realised that her gun was a glorified child's toy. Once she realised that Pantheon hadn't been turned into a red mist, she realised the problem.
"Hey, where's my bullets? These flags suck! They don't even shoot fire or poison or anything!" Jinx had taken her eyes of Pantheon to try and fix the issue, and Pantheon had noticed. He rose his spear and moved in to charge. Zyra figured that was her cue.
"Sorry Pantheon," Zyra said, planting her seeds at his feet, "The grass is greener on the other side."
"Hey, that almost made sense!" Jinx said, looking up and grinning. "See, I told you, even a bad one liner makes a kill cooler!"
Zyra knew the one-liner was bad, and was definitely not warranted given the situation. She knew Pantheon was going to kill them both. They were too weak to deal with, well, anyone at the League at the moment. But the one-liner made Jinx smile, and Zyra knew it was the only victory they were going to get out of this exchange. In a weird way, it almost made it worth it. She summoned her plants and covered the floor in vines...at least, that's what she planned to do.
Summoning plants was not that hard, and Zyra had done it more times than she could count. But this was different. As the seeds burst into plants, Zyra could instantly see that they were not plants. They were, in fact, cardboard cutouts of potted cacti. Not exactly useful in a fight, but that wasn't the most worrying thing. At the peak of her power, Zyra would cover the floor in stranglethorns. Champions would have a hard enough time crossing it, but as many people forget, plants are alive, and they don't like to be tread on. This time, however, the stranglethorns were not alive. They weren't even stranglethorns, or even any plant at all.
It was, in fact, jelly.
Where her stranglethorns should've been, a large pool of jelly had appeared. Admittedly, it was green, and, admittedly, it did slow Pantheon down, if only for the fact that he was as confused as Zyra was.
"Er, Fern? Jelly's great and all but, y'know, there's an angry spartan heading our way and I don't have anything to block out the sun with. Maybe plants next time, yeah?"
An ally has been slain.
ENEMY DOUBLE KILL!
Thirty seconds later, they were both scratching their heads.
"Someone messed with my gun! WHO TOUCHED SASCHA?"
"Sascha?"
"Pow-Pow, whatever. Seriously, what the hell was that?"
"The Institute sent us another letter…"
"...telling us that bullets are flags and plants are jelly?"
"Apparently so."
"Well that sucks."
"Yes it does."
There was a silence.
Summoner Helios has called a surrender vote.
"Surrender?" Jinx laughed. "No freaking way! Don't you do it Summoners. We got this. We'll just cover this WHOLE place in jelly, you'll see! Flags and jelly across the whole rift, that'll show them…"
Jinx was interrupted by the sound of the Nexus exploding.
"Cool explosion, I suppose, not the one I was hoping for, but still…"
This time, Jinx and Zyra didn't even get picked.
Not just this time. The last fifty times. No-one had bothered now that word had got around that they were the weakest champions in the league. No Summoner would touch them. This, however, had not dampened Jinx's spirit.
"They're just building anticipation, y'know? Everyone watches the Rift battles, they'll all be clamouring for us by now. And we are totally awesome so it's totally justified."
Zyra was astounded that Jinx was still in a good mood. Not about the being shunned by the summoners - that, she didn't care about. Zyra figured that she'd be going insane...well, more insane, just with the lack of action. The waiting room in which all the Champions spent their time in case of being picked for battle was a drab place, nowhere near in keeping with the flashiness of the Rift itself. At the moment, Zyra and Jinx were alone in the dark, dank room - literally every other Champion was out fighting.
Still, Zyra appreciated the fact that Jinx was in a good mood. It took the edge off of her dismal one. She didn't work so hard to get out of Kumungu and come here just to spend her new chance at life wilting in a waiting room. Jinx's good mood was the only thing keeping Zyra's spirits even slightly higher than rock bottom.
Actually, it was Jinx herself. Sure, she was insane, but she was happy and funny all the time, and this made the whole situation a lot more bearable for her. Sure, she was not fighting, but at least she was not fighting with Jinx. Still, Zyra needed to burst her bubble this time.
"Jinx, we aren't going back out there."
"Oh. Well let's take off then."
"Er...what?" Zyra said, surprised that Jinx had just accepted it.
"Let's go! We're free to leave the League whenever, y'know. I actually read through that big pile of super boring letters while we were waiting to fight, hell, I actually finally read the contract I signed! We leave, we get all our powers back! Win-win!"
"But…"
"Oh, don't worry. I know you've not really known anything else other than jungle and League, but everywhere else is cool too! I gotcha back. We can go kill Noxians! Big money in that. Who knows, maybe we'll just get so much money that we can come back! Big donation to the Challengers goes a long way."
"Well…"
"It's settled then! Come on, we're supposed to tell someone that we're leaving but to hell with that, they've jerked us around enough. I'm sure they'll rue the day they let Jinx and Zyra leave the League of Legends!"
"...Zyra?"
"Yeah, that's your name isn't it?"
"Yeah, it's just...you've never used it before."
"Well, it'd be a bit silly of me to forget the name of my partner, wouldn't it? Come on Z, I'm itching for some booms. Hey, Z and X! Coolest letters ever, yeah?"
Partners. Zyra liked the idea of that. And the world could always use a few less Noxians. She smiled, and followed Jinx out of the waiting room.