Author's Note:

Well, this has been... yeah, no excuses. I've just been lazy about working on this. Glad to see people do still want to read my work. That's a big moral boost, and I just wanted to thank everyone who does view my work.

"Hey, Bookworm."

Goau looked up from his book to see Jinx's head, still pillowed on her arms, turned toward him with a partially bored expression on her face.

"Is the Pirate Lady still in town?" She asked him, her tone with that slight bit of hope in it, and possibly the 'fun' she was playing.

He turned his head toward the door and noticed the time of day had turned to evening, meaning they had been in this old bar for two to four hours, before he looked back to Jinx. "I think she'd be getting ready for that invasion I let slide earlier." He informed her, a slight worry she would be mad about that act.

Her eyes turned up, looking toward the wall not the ceiling, and she huffed at a strand of hair in her vision, blowing it away only for it to bounce back to where it was before. "Oh right, I did say that earlier, didn't I?" She replied, more of a question to herself than to him.

Her eyes turned back to him, a smile creeping onto her face. "You think she'd stay in town, or go out to sea and fight them?" She asked, this time to him and not to herself.

Goau shrugged his shoulders. giving her his utmost attention. "I wouldn't know. Tactics have never been my strong suit." He admitted; although he was somewhat decent at games such as chest. "The best I could do would be searching for her with my Clairvoyance spell." He added.

Jinx hummed to herself in thought for a bit, the tone one he often heard her using without knowing the lyrics, before sitting up and stretching her arms. "Yeah, sure." She said, the creeping smile gave way to her usual smiling and excited expression, and she put her hands behind her head and leaned back in her chair, only just catching the table with her foot before she would have fallen backwards. "Let me know where she is, will ya." She requested.

Goau knew she had some kind of plan in mind, though he doubted it would be something serious, like blowing up part of the town, sinking a ship, or setting fire to something. If anything, it was likely she only intended to make herself a new weapon... a bit downgraded compared to her current ones, but she was random like that and other ways.

He closed his eyes, curious himself what Miss Fortune was doing, and put his book down on the table. He carefully folded a corner of his current page for later, not wanting to lose his place, as he activated the Clairvoyance spell.

Contrary to how it worked on the Fields, the spell caused him to enter an astral world, giving him a vision of people through magical outlines that varied depending on their abilities. In those like him, Summoners, those he saw were like faceless people of pure energy, people such as Cassiopeia or Luxana had thick, bold outlines, and average people, such as Talon or Shen, had smaller outlines.

People like Jinx who had little to no innate magical abilities, however, were almost invisible to him when using this spell; though it was not like he was completely blind.

His body remained behind as his astral form, not a second body but a magical vision and sight that he was able to project outside his physical body, granted him a bird's eye view of Bilgewater, allowing him to move it and zoom in and out as he scanned the piers of the port town in search of the bounty hunter captain.

He was tempted to look further out, curious to see for himself if what Jinx claimed about an invasion or some kind of attack was true, but he did not know if that would be within his range or time limit. Looking beyond his own body was one thing, going over the limit was something that could leave him drained, exhausted, and groggy at best. At worst, it would leave him blinded and deaf for several hours.

Finally, he managed to find Sarah Fortune, her ship and crew, and those she asked to come with her; or wanted to tag along.

She was on her ship, giving orders to her crew by the look of it, and there were others he knew and not a part of her standard crew. Graves, who was smoking a cigar as he checked his gun, and Illoai, a newcomer to the League and apparently frequent visitor to Bilgewater.

He watched them for about a minute until his spell's limit came to an end, forcing him back to his body before it began to tax his well being, where he saw only the darkness of his closed eyes.

Rather than open his eyes up immediately, he reached out with his left hand, trying to feel and determine whether or not she- His hand came into contact with something warm, soft and, after a squeeze, squishy.

"Oh!" He heard her moan, and then giggle playfully. "Not so rough." She said in a, what he could only describe as, an embarrassed tone. "It's my first time."

Goau let out a sight before opening his eyes. Based on her reaction, one might have thought she was trying something else. To him, he knew somewhat what to expect from Jinx. He saw in his hand a rag, warm and wet from the combination of being soaked in booze and set on fire before being smothered out.

"You, um, do you know you pulled this one on me last week, right?" He asked with a smile. This was not the first, nor second, time she pulled this one him, but it was the fourth time; although the last time was a raw and tender chunk of steak.

Jinx pouted at him, her eyes narrowing and her smile turning into a line on her face. "You could pretend." She replied with clear annoyance.

He laughed a little and put the rag on the table before picking up his book again and opening it again. He then spoke as he checked the page in his book to finish reading the page he had been reading before. "It looks like she's about to leave with Graves and Illoai. Your plan to distract the sheriff looks to be a complete success." He informed with a small smile and a causal tone.

What happened next was as much a surprise to him as she must have been.

Jinx snatched the book from his hands, turned it around in her hand, and hit him with the spine of the book as she leaned toward him on the table with her other hand. "No mind reading!" She said before hitting him again. "None!" She added.

"Ow!" Goau exclaimed after the first hit, instinctively moving his hands to his head to rub the spot she hit. The blow was not as hard as she had hit him in the past, but he was able to feel a bump forming.

When he looked back toward her, she hit him a third time, restating her dislike of mind reading; at least this time his hands were in the way to protect his head, but it still hurt. "You mean that was your plan all along?" He asked. Few times did he take a shot in the dark as a guess to her plans, but this was one of those times when his time with her had gave him a perfect guess.

She glared at him skeptically. "Oh, so you didn't read that part of my plan, uh?" She asked before slamming the book down and standing up from her seat. She stared him down, the standard way she went from calm and happy to angry and unpredictable at the tip of a hand, or rather the pull of a trigger. "I spent weeks planning this, and I don't want it messed up now! Got that, Bookworm." She threatened; though her appearance was not as effective against him.

Goau looked up at her, a surprised expression on his face. "You were trying to get Miss Fortune to leave Bilgewater? There's no invasion or enemy ships coming?" He asked.

"Of course not- wait what?" She asked, only now realizing that he had no idea what she was angry at him for. "You weren't reading my mind a minute ago?" She asked.

"That's... why we're a bad team during matches; you hate it when people read your minds, and I've stopped linking our minds when I do summon you there." He reminded her.

While there were times when it was okay to cut loose and give simple advice or commands, Jinx was one of a very few number of Champions who did not like the mental messages of another in her head. It was mostly because she liked to keep all of her heists and activities to herself until she revealed them, usually in a bright explosive of panic and colors and an orchestra of hot lead and rockets, and a second mind in your head made that impossible.

The Champion had access to the Summoner's mind and vice versa, at least to a small extent.

In Goau's case, he had decided to stay out of her head and give directions by means of wards and team-only pings. Aside from that, he let her do her own thing... even when that meant the risk of getting caught out by the enemy team.

And his teammates thought he had terrible map awareness... well, he did actually, but matches weren't his strong suit anyway.

Jinx sat back down in her chair and leaned back in it, once again catching the bottom of the table with her foot and teetering on the edge of falling backwards. She smiled as she spoke then, happy that her plan was known only to her for now. "Just pretend that you still don't know anything, and I won't have to tie you to a rocket and send you to Hat Lady's birthday party." She said.

Goau reached over and took his book back. "Pretending is easy, acting is hard." He replied.

"Oh right. You're a terrible one of those." She began. She stopped her teetering and hummed for a few seconds, thinking, and then went back to rocking back and forth. "Then just keep quiet, in your own head, and don't give away the fun." She finished before letting got of the table and falling back in her chair.

He glanced up when he felt the table jolt, and watched her roll out of the chair only to come to rest on her bottom, straighten her legs out in the shape of an upside down 'V', and her arms resting at and supporting herself at her sides. "Got it?" She asked with a tilt of her head before pushing herself up and onto her feet.

Goau's response was to look back at her, and then use sign language to give his answer. "So, you want me to do this, or no?" Was the message he motioned out with a series of hand and finger motions.

Jinx was dumbfounded for a moment, but only for a moment. "Sure, you can make shadow puppets if you want." She said with a wave of her hand, and then smiled at him, her usual maniac expression back on her face. "Just stay out of my way or you may get blown into itty-bitty teeny-tiny pieces." She said with a cute and smiling face.

Goau's expression turned to one of worry with a forced smile, and he signed another message. "Good thing I'll have Revive in an hour." Was his message. "Something tells me I'll need it for one of us... probably me."