The Forgetter:

The young one. Her smell, her laugh, her very essence sits somewhere deep in the darkness. Even from where he is he can smell it though he's not sure how far away, but near. Near enough to know, but not close enough to find. Not yet. He has searched, and he has killed and none have screamed her name or yelled what they believe is the answer to the question.

He did not ask the question, but he had hoped they could tell him the answer.

"Powder."

He has whispered this word time and time again to rats that scurry through the city but each time they scream words that fall on deaf ears. Countless words that he hears but does not listen to. The endless cries of 'please' and 'beast' fall on ears not yet aware of what those words mean but he does not think they are meant for him.

They are not words one yells to a protector. He protects; he knows that much. Who he protects, and why they seem so far away never becomes any clearer in his mind and that is what aches at his consciousness. He knows that he must find the young one, the one named Powder but he barely remembers why.

He hears the screams, and he smells the blood of those who do not know the answer and they do not bring him closer.

At least until now.

When he hears the laughter. The laughter of a child that he has lost, or maybe not he has lost but someone did. Someone lost so long ago and has yet to find, but maybe he found.

The laughter lies at the top of a tower that he remembers but ever so faintly. He remembers two children, the young and old one watching the lights of the city. He remembers like he remembers a dream; imperfect and ever fleeting.

His claws drag him higher and higher through the streets and buildings that lead to the child. She is there, and the laughter turns to tears and something in his blood curdles at the sound of the child's sobs. He reaches higher and higher with an instinct that borders between feral and paternal; a new feeling that turns his veins to ice.

With a final roar the creature arrives on it's perch to find a shock of blue staring back at him.

"P-p-powder."

Vi/Caitlyn:

The explosion rocks through the city with enough force to create a shock wave that blasts Caitlyn's hair back even from down on the streets of Zaun. Immediately she reaches behind her back to draw the rifle and scan the streets for additional signs of violence. The people of the Undercity barely need a reason for violence and whatever this is could be what finally sicks them on the interloper Enforcers, peace be damned.

Thankfully for Caitlyn everyone else around her buzz with the same anxious fear that bubbles up inside her gut now. Dozens of men, women and children push through the now forming crowds to get a look at the almost mushroom cloud of neon purple/blue that rises in the not-so-distant streets of Zaun. Of course, this couldn't be easy, why would it ever be.

The ground next to her explodes in a rain of shattered rock and debris and instinctually the gun is raised and pointed at the source of the sound. No hesitation, not here. Grey eyes and red hair stare back at her down the barrel of the gun.

"Heya Cupcake."

Caitlyn's breath hitches in her chest and she doesn't lower the gun. The warmth of finally finding Vi fills with the almost betrayed feeling of how long it took to actually find this girl. Caitlyn should be back up in Piltover making sure that the city isn't falling apart but she's down here chasing after Vi who they sent to avoid this situation. She was literally sent down here to do this job and now Caitlyn is trudging through the Piltover/Zaun version of the DMZ and all she can sum up is a 'hey'.

None of this actually escapes her mouth as she freezes still staring at Vi. The moment passes and Vi makes no move to stand up from her three-point landing, but instead awkwardly sucks on her teeth.

"Uh, you're not going to shoot me right? We're still on the same side, yeah?"

That breaks Caitlyn out of her stupor as she lowers her weapon and slings it over her shoulder. She lets out a shaky breath and straightens her back. Vi instinctually winces almost recoiling from the inevitable scathing soon to be thrown her way.

"You are the single most inconsiderate, and brick-headed person I have ever met. Jayce trusted you to come down here and do a job and what do I find? Broken bodies and the fact that my partner has gone completely AWOL."

Vi opens her mouth to speak but Caitlyn is on a roll and she's not going to be interrupted, not now. She makes a mental note to circle back around to the 'partner' line, but maybe after the stern talking to.

With every other word Caitlyn takes a step towards Vi and pokes her in the chest.

"Do you understand how worried I was about you when you just disappeared? Do you get that there are people who care about you while you're on your little crusade? Of course, you don't because you're the most single minded I have ever met. This isn't Stillwaterr Vi, there are people who rely on you and people you need to think about before doing something so stupid."

Vi lets out a sigh and removes her hands from her gauntlets. She reaches up and puts her hands on Caitlyn's shoulders to hold her steady.

"You're right."

"What?"

"You're right. I'm a fuckup and I definitely fucked this one up too, huh? But, I'm done with that. No more screw ups; that's a promise and I'm not going anywhere."

Yeah, that did definitely take the steam out of what else she had to say. She was pissed and hurt and Vi chooses now to have an ounce of emotional maturity?

Taking her silence for an answer Vi gestures with her head towards the now dissipating explosion smoke "Did you have more you wanted to say or can this wait till we get home. Because there was an explosion that we should look into."

She has to swallow down the warmth that spreads through her belly when Vi says the word home. "I had a whole tirade lined up but yes, let's talk about this another time when the Undercity isn't exploding."

Vi's hands reach up to cup both sides of Caitlyn's face and despite the height difference she pulls the two of them close enough together for their foreheads to touch. She can feel the heat of Caitlyn's face through her fingers as her eyes dart in a mix of fear and anxiety. Her shallow breath tickles against her lips and it makes Vi smile more than she has in days.

"Welcome to Zaun, cupcake."

Jinx:

Jinx had wanted to get high, well partially. Not in the typical Zaun way of getting high which usually required some form of Shimmer injected or dranken. Whatever floats their boat really but no, not like that. She wanted to get high in the sense of height. She needed to get high up. The higher you go the less you can see of the disgusting streets below and the farther the problems seem.

The higher you go the better you can breath and clear your head. It's no Piltie air that's for sure but it's leaps and bounds better than mixing air with the shitheads that plow through the streets below. So Jinx got high up.

She used to do this with Vi when they were younger and the problems of the world seemed so far away. The one time that Vi brought her up on the roof to show her all the mistakes that everyone made. Mylo and Claggor had screwed something up and Vi wanted to show her that everyone can make mistakes.

"Great lesson, sis."

Some lessons are just itsy-bitsy little slip ups that you can laugh about later. Jinx doesn't get to have those kinds of mistakes, oh no hers are the kind that stick with you and laugh and berate you wherever you go. Hers are the kind that drag corpses back to dance around her about how much of a fuckup she is.

"Aww, poor little Jinx. Nowhere to go without dear old dad?"

Of course Mylo would refuse to screw off. Claggor at least had the decency to give her space when things got bad or when she had to go to the bathroom, but Mylo is always rude. Always rude, and always mean. Claggor just judges and Vi was just a feeling in her gut before she rose from the dead. Now she doesn't know what Vi is.

No, she knows what she is.

"She's a traitor, obviously." Jinx stands up and waves her arms at the air around her gesturing at the ghosts. "She gets one good taste of the sweet air up there and she forgets all about me! Nope, she's wrapped good around that other bitches finger like I'm just dead meat."

Claggor seems hurt by the choice of words but he doesn't express it, meanwhile Mylo doesn't seem phased by them. He never is.

"Sorry, Claggor." She makes it a point to not apologize to Mylo because screw him. And for once Claggor speaks up before Mylo even gets the chance to open his stupid rotting mouth. Serves him right to be cut off so he can finally see what it's like.

"That's not true."

"Uh, yeah it is. I am sorry. God, you don't have to-"

Claggor shakes his head causing his goggles to jostle in his hair like a gust of wind that Jinx doesn't get to feel.

"About Vi."

"Oh no, no no no. We are not doing this, not with you two. Uh, news flash! She chose someone else and that someone is the exact type of people who we hated when we were kids. The same kinda assholes that we used to screw with for fun. But no, now she's in bed with the Enforcers like it's funny."

"They did hug for a long time. That wasn't no friend hug." Mylo chooses this point to chime in and she couldn't have hated his timing anymore. Honestly if the bullets landed he'd have been gone ages ago, but whatever fresh hell she lives in won't be that kind.

"Oh my god, I know right! See Claggor, even Mylo knows what he's talking about for once. Maybe she's fucking the Enforcer and I'm just the ugly stepsister to their little romance."

"Ugly stepchild. You are sisters."

"Nobody asked you, Claggor! Gods, you're awfully talkative for someone with some bad opinions today."

Jinx slumps down on the ground with a huff and lies flat against the solid ground of the room. The cold metal stings her skin but for once she's glad for how cold it gets down in the Undercity. Just a nice disgusting rooftop to sleep on and forget all about Vi and that stupid proper sounding Enforcer with the nice house. Maybe that's what it was, Vi liked girls with nice houses. Jinx snorts at the idea of Vi sitting around a nice table with a three course meal set out in front of her, all the while some uppity Enforcer slaves away in the kitchen.

She laughs at the audacity her sister would have to sit down at a table with an Enforcer to share a meal, but it turns to an angry growl as she flails her arms and legs against the rooftop.

At first it's all anger at her sister but also at the sheer audacity of herself to think about Vi with the Enforcer, but the heat of the anger doesn't last long in her chest and it's replaced with a cold yearning. Vi at the table eating, wishing that Jinx was there. Vi would ask again and again for Jinx to come live with her but she'd say no everytime because she can't trust Vi. Vi would beg and beg and she wanted her to feel as left out as Jinx felt but deep down she'd want to say yes.

Even in her daydreams she can't get away from her pleading grey eyes calling her a dead name but even in her daydream she knows Vi would take her back. Or her little girlfriend would have her shot dead like a dog; that's possible too.

Jinx's eyes shoot open as the ground beneath her back shakes with a violent weight. "The hell?" The ground shakes once again, almost rhythmically as it seems to approach her. Oh, it's getting closer.

Jinx rolls into a crouched position and readies Pow-Pow as she looks around her. The thudding comes from beneath her but toward the far side of the building and is getting closer way faster than she'd like. Vi? Unless Vi learned how to scale a vertical building when she was locked away the odds were looking pretty slim. Boy Savior? Well, he'd probably just fly up here and skip all the dramatics with doing it the difficult way. Also, Jinx was 50/50 on if she had actually managed to off him.

Long claws are what appear first on the edge of the buildings lip. Claws that dig into the metallic frame of the rooftop, and drag a body onto the solid ground. The framework shifts under the weight of the new form that quite literally crawled it's way onto the rooftop. Claws that connect to grey skinned hands that look dead but somehow still drag whatever this creature is towards Jinx. It's body is larger than any man she's seen, well any normal man save for those in the throws of Shimmer, but covered in a layer of matted and almost oily looking fur. The scent of death and raw iron fills the rooftop.

Blood, not oil on the fur.

But it's the face that stops Jinx dead in her tracks. A face that hasn't haunted her for years, almost as long as Vi. A figure that until recently was just as dead as she thought Vi was but here it stood. Everything inside of her told her that this wasn't real; none of it could be real. It was a trick just her head fucking with her like it always does. Just like Mylo and Claggor but they're dead silent now.

"Vander?"

The creature opens its mouth with a sickening snarl and spews red stained foam from it's lips onto the ground with a wet slap. It runs it's tongue across it's redden teeth with a predatory sniff and inches towards Jinx.

Instinctually she draws up Pow-Pow and revs up the barrels towards…Vander? The ghosts could never hurt her but she's already had one ghost come back to life so might as well be prepared. The thoughts are confident but she can feel her hand shaking on the trigger as the barrels spin up. Her face feels wet and she instinctively looks up to the sky for signs of rain but there are none, only a cloudy overcast in the darkened skylight of Zaun.

"V-Vander? Don't…don't make me."

The creature sniffs at the air towards Jinx, never stopping it's stride towards her. Jinx takes her steps back pushing her closer and closer to the edge of the rooftop before her feet hit the lip separating her from the fall below.

"P-p-powder."

The gun stops revving and she takes her finger off the trigger. "What?"

"P-powder. Take…care…of…P-powder." The creature gestures towards her with a gnarled clawed finger. "You…Powder."

The tears are hot on Jinx's face but she feels a white hot rage bubble up inside her at the dead name this ghost is calling her. No, she killed Vander. This isn't like Vi who just up and disappeared; this is just one more ghost she sent to the chopping block here to screw with her. Just like Mylo and Claggor. Just like Silco when she stays too close to home. At least her other ghosts have the common decency to call her by her real name.

She chose her chair. She's perfect and no fucked up nightmare of Papa Vander is going to change that so long as she's in charge. "Powder. Powder is dead, okay?"

The creature, Vander, immediately snaps its head up towards Jinx in surprise. The eyes empty but searching for some sign of a lie in her words. The hollow purple eyes carving into her soul and she can feel her resolve slipping away with each moment it stares but she holds true.

"No…your fear. The…fear in your eyes…I've seen it…Powder." The voice is yearning now, almost begging her to be Powder. Just like Vi did, but Vi was here and now. Vi haunts her and guilts her just like the ghosts do but at least she can touch Vi because she's real. Not like this nightmare version of her dead father.

One of her dead fathers.

"Nuh uh, Powder is dead." Jinx makes it a point to emphasize the end of the word dead. "You get it? D-E-A-D, alright? She's gone and she's not coming back."

The creature claws at it's head tearing long gashes across its face and skull and drawing semi-iridescent blood onto the rooftop all the while muttering: "No, no no no no no no no."

"Yep, she's dead and buried. You can thank Vi for that, she helped me kill her."

The creature stops in it's tracks and glares towards Jinx; it's clawed hands still dripping with its own blood "Y-you…"

"Killed her. Powder fell down a well and she ain't ever coming back. If you don't mind I got some more self-indulgent moping to do before the night is over so if you could-"

Before she can finish her words the creature is upon her moving faster than she anticipated even with the Shimmer flowing through her veins. She dodges just as the creature cuts through one of her braids and tears a diagonal slash across the floor. Her now bloodied braid lies limply at the creature's feet as it lets in and out a ragged and vengeful breath. It's mouth is once again filled with the red-stained animalistic froth it had when it arrived.

Jinx pulls out the chomper dangling from her waist and pulls the pin as the creature turns around to continue it's assault. The last thought she has before the explosion goes off is of Vi.