It was a quiet night in the undercity, Ekko thought as he moved from rooftop to rooftop, and that was never a good sign. The City of Iron and Glass was one that never slept, the highly toxic air that surrounded the city was always filled with the noise of countless factories and bars working twenty-four hours a day.

No, the sunken city was never, never quiet unless big troubles were brewing.

It was a shared instinct that every citizen of Zaun had, one developed after years of survival in the Sunken City.

It was like a miasma that permeated the air, very different to the perpetual smog that covered the city; It was something invisible to the normal senses, but every zaunite worth their salt could feel it. The visible tension on a thug's shoulder, the empty stalls closed way too early, the absence of the usual dealer in his corner… but most of all was the silence, the damn silence.

It all pointed down towards the same conclusion: The Chem-barons were nervous.

And when all of the Chem-barons were nervous at the same time, that's when the regular zaunites needed to be afraid, because there were only two things in Zaun that could spook so bad the sunken elite. Either the Pillies were planning another massive raid on the Undercity… or Powder was planning something big.

Out of the two the latter was the most likely, as much as it hurted Ekko to admit it as he made another sharp turn into an alley. Ever since Vander, Mylo and Clagger died while Vi disappeared,

Because she wasn't dead, they never found her body;

Nobody could call Powder exactly… stable or any other similar word as a matter of fact. Don't get him wrong, she still was the same genius girl he grew up with, the one who would always help him fix the machinery at Benzo's and could turn any pile of scrap into an array of traps and bombs at a very young age, true the bombs would not always worked but she got better as she grew up, unfortunately.

Still, there was no denying that Powder had become a little unhinged, to put it kindly. More than once he had caught her murmuring to herself and even sometimes to her weapons; it also didn't help the fact that her mood had become as volatile as one of her explosives. Sure, Vander and Benzo had told him when he was young that it was normal for girls to have mood swings but Ekko wasn't sure they were referring to this; especially when Powder's mood swings had gotten way worse after she was picked up by Silco's gang.

Silco

Just the thought of the Orange-eye man was enough to make Ekko's blood boil.

He really hated Benzo's killer. The man had flooded the undercity with Shimmer, turning hundreds into addicts and dozens into literal monsters. He took over after Vander as the underground ruler, even using The Last Drop as his headquarters as if it was a final insult to the previous owner. No… the final insult was taking Powder in.

He really felt guilty about not sticking with her when she needed it the most, he tried looking for her but after Benzo's death he too was left alone without no one to care. His parents? They worked 24/7 at the factories, they often slept there too. In fact, it was only because of the small amount of coins that barely covered his weekly expenses that he knew they were still alive.

It took him a couple of months of doing odd jobs across to Zaun to fix his living situation, but thankfully Zaunites didn't care as much as Pillies about child labor so he managed to scrap by day after day.

The first time he met Powder again after that night wasn't a pretty one, neither was the second or third time. It was in the fourth attempt that they managed to actually have a semblance of conversations and even then it was ruined when Silco was mentioned. Especially after Powder let it slip that one of Silco's friends had given her in her words a "tasty and colorful" drink every time he visited.

At that time Ekko was around 7 years old, the same as Powder, but he wasn't stupid. Silco held the monopoly on Shimmer, only he knew who made it and only he could sell it, so one didn't need to go to Piltover's University to connect the dots about what exactly that bastard was giving Powder. The fact that as time passed Powder would get paler and paler with every visit didn't help nor the times that he swore her eyes had momentarily changed colored to a more visceral red either.

Still, he would visit every so often to check on her; just as he was doing right now. As he approached the abandoned wind drill that Powder insisted to use as base the loud sound of music indicated with each step that the bluenette was home.

Come on, shoot faster

Just a little bit of energy!

"Powder!" Ekko called as he could see the twin braided girl sitting in front of a workbench.

I wanna try something fun right now

I guess some people call it anarchy!

"Powder!" He called again; the walls and floor surrounding him momentarily lighted up as whatever jinx was doing drained the lights out, allowing the glow in the dark drawings that filled almost every corner to come to life.

Let's blow this city to ashes

And see what Pow-Pow thinks

It's such pathetic neatness

But not for long 'cause it'll get…

"JINX!" Ekko finally yelled as he managed to turn off the record player that was blasting the music.

"That's my name!" Powder said with a jovial tone as she spun around her chair throwing off her safety goggles to greet her visitor.

It only took a second for her to recognize him, and less than another to spring out her chair like a poro after a poro-snack

"Little Man!" In a blink of an eye Powder had launched herself from her chair into Ekko, her long arms wrapping around him as he was pulled into a hug. Wow, his younger self would be so jealous of his current position, with his resting on her neck as she played with his white hair.

Then he felt her arms tense around him.

"Um Powder-" That was the last thing he managed to say before Powder started spinning, dragging him around like he was a practice mannequin in a pillie's dancing lesson. Seriously! He was sure she was only a month or two older than him, so why was she so much taller in comparison?!

"Ekko! Ekko! Ekko!" Powder chanted as she continued to drag him towards the workbench she was previously working on. "You have to see what I've been working on!"

"That was precisely why I ca-" Ekko's sentence was cut off as he was forcefully seated in the workbench's chair as a strange contraption laid before him. It appeared to be a small metal chest, one that was very similar to the old music boxes Benzo used to have in his store. But where the music boxes in Benzo's were old and rusty made out of copper and brass, this one was shiny, made of gold and silver with intricate patterns carved around the whole chest . Shiny gems of blue and white color adjourned each side of the box.

"Holy Shit Powder!" Ekko exclaimed as he recognized the stylized M in metallic green painted on top of the chest. "Is that an authentic Marivaldi!"

"Mmhm" Powder nodded with one of her trademark smiles "Oh la la Monsieur Equó" Powder barely able to contain her giggles as she continued speaking with her snobbish Piltover accent she could muster. "I did not know you were so well versed in the high world of the neuf Varisiati!"

"Are you kidding me?" Ekko retorted without taking his eyes away from the box, his fingers carefully exploring every crook and cranny the chest had to offer. "Benzo would never shut up about it! He forced me to memorize how each one of them sounded on the off chance I ever found a real one. Hell, he even told him he would trade his entire store including me for one of these."

His finger finally found a small hidden button under between the third and fourth blue gems in the left side, then he pressed the fifth white gem on the right side before finally pressing the small green gem in the center of the green M. The fake ones never managed to get the sweet spots right, the really bad ones would usually have wind-up handles that told everyone their fakeness while the better imitations would still struggle to get the startup sequence right.

Benzo had shown him dozens of imitations and pointed out what was wrong with them and right now, he couldn't find anything wrong with the piece in front of him. So either this was an authentic Marivaldi or a really really good knock off, both would fetch a ridiculous amount of money even if they didn't work.

A jovial sound filled his ears followed by almost angelic voices, for a moment his mind was taken back to better times, when he and Powder would sit at the roof of Benzos shop listening to his recording of Marivaldi, the old man's most precious possession.

"It works?" Ekko muttered with a dumbstruck expression as he slowly stared at bluenette. "IT WORKS?!"

Powder just nodded.

"Powder! A working Marivaldi is worth a fortune and you manage to make it work?!" Ekko grabbed her by the shoulders and started shaking. "There are like only 4 or 5 people in the Shuriman continent that are known to do that and maybe another 3 in the Valoran continent!"

"Li-ttl-ee Ma-nn!" Powder tried to speak over, her face slowly turning a little green, but Ekko ignored her as he continued to ramble.

"You can't sell it in Zaun, you most likely get ripped off then stabbed. If you try to sell it in any topside store you would get ripped off then arrested. Maybe if you sell it directly to a noble you may only get ripped off a little bit? Hell even if you sell it at half the market price you would never need to work eve-"

*Blaargh*

Powder's stomach had decided that enough shaking was enough and voiced its displeasure by making her vomit all over Ekko's shirt.

"Ew! Powder! I just got this shirt"

"Sorry Little Man,I shouldn't have bought that poro meat from Cookfish's stall." She apologized as she wiped out the remaining barf from her mouth with her hand before allowing a smirk to appear over it. "Also I didn't just make the music box, I upgraded it!"

With a quick sleight of hand Powder grabbed two tools from the table and before Ekko could stop her she jammed the one in her left hand into a small gap in the front of the box.

His heart skipped a beat.

It wasn't like he didn't trust Powder... most of the time but when she usually mentions the word upgrade it was more likely a code for making it explode. So he was pleasantly surprised when instead of an explosion a soft click was heard.

Powder then positioned the second tool at the back of the box and started pulling it in until a second click sounded. Finally after a couple seconds she twisted both tools in opposite directions at the same time.

*Clank*

A whirring sound silenced his doubts as the box slowly started to open itself revealing all the mechanisms inside. Powder grabbed a small pair of tweezers that she used to skillfully remove a small golden cylinder from the innards of the music box. She then picked another similar cylinder, this one Ekko noted was most likely made of iron and brass judging it by its colors, and carefully placed it where the golden cylinder used to be.

Leaving the tweezers at the table, Powder picked a small rod and inserted it into the box. After a couple seconds, the cog and gears began to turn as another melody invaded his senses.

"...Is that Mierichi?" Powder nodded at the question.

"You modify a Marivaldi to play a Mierichi?" Powder nodded again, this time with a big grin in her face.

Ekko couldn't help it, he bursted laughing. Powder soon joined.

"Seriously Powder, those guys hated each other!" He said as he whipped out a tear from his eye. "If they aren't rolling in their graves right now then their ghosts are coming here to haunt you!"

Ekko finally managed to compose himself, once again looking at the golden box in front of him.

"How did you manage to start it up? You only have a limited amount of tries before the box locks itself up."

"Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeell" Powder dragged her words the same way she used to as kids whenever Vander caught her doing something she shouldn't. "It did kinda lock itself after a few tries and I was soooooooooooo tempted to blow the stupid thing off but then it started humming again with that annoying tune"

Her ramble continued as Ekko tried to wipe his shirt but only succeeded at spreading the vomit to his sleeves.

"you know, like the one it sounds in the arcade when you lose and that made me so so mad because there is no what I was going to let a stupid box beat me so I stole a few tools from I guy I know and…. "

"And the answers were written all over the surface; anyone with half a brain could have seen the unlocking pattern..."

"It was beautiful Ekko, once I managed to find the secret secret combination to actually open the box, a secret song started playing and everyone just shutted up and listened. Do you know how long it has been since my voice was the only one in my brain!"

"Wait what?" Ekko tried to questioned but was ignored

"Then I had the idea to make it so it could play other songs so I made a new cylinder and borrowed a couples of records; trust me transcribing does records into the handmade cylinders was a pain in the ass"

"Seriously Powder, what was that about the voices..."

"And to think I would have missed it If I hadn't stop to help that bleeding lady "

That seemed to snapp Ekko out of his stupor.

"What Bleeding Lady?"

"The Bleeding Lady! You know the one that I found in the streets two days ago, duh" Powder answered him as if he was automatically supposed to know if she had found someone in the streets. "Though I guess she isn't a Bleeding Lady any more, unless she has that time of the month, but then again she looks old enough for her to bleed no more and..."

"Powder!" Ekko snapped her out of her rambles, grabbing her by the shoulders as he began to shake her again. "Where is she?"

The Powdered face began to turn green again but she managed to point her hand towards her previously unseen couch. Ekko let her go just in time as Powder released another burst of puke.

*Blargh*

Ignoring the smell, Ekko approached the couch where there was indeed the body of a woman laying around; The periodic movement of her chest indicated that she was still alive for now. Her shirt was ripped open allowing him to see her abdomen had been covered with crude bandages that were still tainted with blood.

Definitely a Pillie judging by all the fancy clothes and jewels but her face was familiar to him somehow.

Then he saw it.

Resting on her chest was a very particular necklace.

One that every street rat in Zaun was trained to avoid, less they wanted an express ticket towards Stillwater.

"You have no idea how hard it was to drag her all the way here without anyone seeing us, plus she bled all over my favorite outfit! Do you know how hard it is to clean blood stains out? Its a pa-"

"Powder"

Her ramblin stopped suddenly as she heard Ekko's tone.

"Ummm….yes?"

"Why is there a Councilwoman bleeding on your couch?"

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Well, Arcane did what no other show had done in years. Revive my need of writting. If Finals dont kick my ass to hard I should be able to contiue it. Wrote this as of Act 2 so maybe will not follow to closely the canon laid by the series. Still hope you enjoy the new story.