Part Three: Cautious Steps
As soon as she's conscious, Jinx's fractured elbow causes her eyes to tear open. With a gasp, she sucks in all of the oxygen her lungs will allow and forces herself upright. Blood surges through her vessels causing her head to palpitate, sending her in a dizzying spell. Once the spinning stops, she regains her breath and looks around.
Her head rings as she tries to see through the near black of the darkly lit bedroom. Of what she can gather, the room is nearly as messy as she keeps her own. Clothes and other junk litter the wooden floor, posters hang on the walls and the dingy scent of body odour strangles her nostrils, though not quite as horrid as the rat. Wherever she is, it certainly isn't a jail cell of the Piltover PD.
A green ray of light escapes out of Fishbone's mouth over her back, making the white ceiling dance with its emerald glow. She uses her good hand to empty the rocket launcher's jaws revealing the hextech cylinder that falls into her lap. For some reason, the surface is radiating with heat that scorches her skin causing her to knock it away immediately. It sounds a deep knock as is drops on the ground and rolls across the room to Zapper, it also glowing with its blue electric light.
Then she remembers. She remembers how she got there. She remembers Caitlyn's extended hand, and the empathy that was pouring out of her eyes, and the hateful fire raging inside of Vi's. She remembers being surrounded at the bluff, and how each and every one of the police officers looked at her, waiting on the order to eradicate her from the city like the filth she is. She also remembers her final thoughts of awaiting death as she fell. The wind racing past her face, the sound of the helicopters whirring above them, the ocean spraying it's salt water onto her bare back below. The bliss of the roaring waters as she dove to meet her fate. But she's not dead. She's not floating lifeless atop the water's surface drifting down Runeterra like the pirates and scoundrels of Bilgewater.
Jinx doesn't know how to feel about it. It's not particularly funny, not this time. That must make her the biggest hypocrite ever, then. Whatever. Whatever, who cares. Her head hurts just thinking about thinking. She still doesn't even know where she is, nor how she got there. She takes a few deep breaths before trying to stand. Her legs feel like jelly, like she's been thrown in front of a moving train. Her weapons feel so heavy strapped across her shoulder, even in their shrunken forms.
She eyes the slightly opened door before her, though it may as well be a mile away. Not a sound can be heard in the building. The sun is out, barely penetrating the dark curtains of the room, so it must be daytime. Needing to find out where she is, Jinx decides to leave Fishbones and Pow-Pow in there and only take Zapper as she scouts out the area.
The two weapons sink into the bed behind, but she still feels so weak even without them. She grips the wooden frame of the bed to steady herself up and takes a few steps before she's able to walk on her own. It isn't until she's up and moving that she realises how damn horribly her broken limb hurts. Her whole left side has almost gone numb from it, but she doesn't allow herself to worry about that now.
Leaning on the wall, she opens the door a crack to have a look, the orange light of the hallway painting a stripe down her face. Nothing. She opens it enough for her thin figure to fit through and takes slow, cautious steps into the small hallway. Stairs down to a lower floor are straight ahead, with some other doors in the small junction. Before going down, Jinx decides it best to check the rooms. She readies Zapper in her hand as she makes for the door on her right. She uses the gun to open the door with a creak. No one is inside, though the walls are covered painted canvases in some kind of abstract style. An easel stands in the centre of the room with a half finished canvas. Jinx has never known any artists in Piltover, aside from the creators of the odd priceless artefact she would take from the local museum. She never got their type of art. She continues her scouting.
The other room holds a larger bed and two dressers. Two messy rooms, and one big room. She must be in a family's house. No one seems to be home at the moment though, which makes sense according to the wall clock. That also means that she must have been out from last night until now, midday. If no one has bothered her yet then the house must be abandoned, but that begs the question as to why it appears so lived in.
The wooden stairs creak under the weight of her boots as she goes down, aiming Zapper as she does so. Again, nobody there. The low hum of her electric weapon is the only thing heard in the quiet house. However, the room itself catches her eye. It doesn't look like anything she's ever seen in Piltover. The architecture is completely different, as well as the design of the place. It looks like the home of a wealthy person, with the size of the room and how neat everything is. If anything, Jinx would assume that she'd somehow ended up somewhere in upper Demacia, though she'd never been to the pompous kingdom herself. She imagines those silver-spoon-fed kingdom folk would live something like this. Expensive furniture, polished tabletops and freshly cleaned floors. It's nothing like how life is in the slums of Zaun though. There, you would be lucky to sleep with something hard over your head at all, let alone a soft bed in a warm room.
If someone does live here, they won't be around for a while longer. Without much else to go, Jinx goes back up the stairs and lays herself on the queen-sized bed in the largest room of the three. If she plans to use that arm again then she'll need to let it rest. The bed she lays on is making that quite easy. It feels as if the ocean is swaying underneath her body, and the cotton is swallowing her being. Her head hasn't felt this cradled since, well never. Those rich Demacians clearly know how to relax. Before she knows it, she's fast asleep once more.
A noise from downstairs awakens her. Someone must be home. She gets up a little too fast, causing her arm to hurt again. Jinx quickly readies Zapper and leans against the frame of the door and listens intently.
She hears a door shut, and someone talking. "… don't know if that's a good idea. I think I should give the kids some more time before— well you know. I love him, but it's only been a year since Gardner. What d'you think?"
Sounds like she's talking to someone. The voice stays stationary below, giving Jinx a chance to hurry across back into the dark room with her things still inside. Fishbones and Pow-Pow go over her back and she opens a window to get outside. Time to disappear. She hops onto the sill and prepares to jump when she sees the hextech isotope glowing on the floor over her shoulder. She can't afford to leave that behind. She spins around and quickly goes to grab it, it's cooler now so she can pick it up. Suddenly the door to the bedroom opens.
"What's this?" a boy says as he enters the room. By the looks of him he must be attending some Demacian Academy. He wears a half pressed uniform and has his short black hair mostly well kept. His eyebrows crease as he drops his schoolbag on the bed and inspects the canister. "It's warm?" The green glow makes his face light up in the dark room.
Damn it, Jinx thinks to herself, hiding inside the nearby closet she had managed to get into before he saw her. Just put it down. Put it down, and go away. He instead shuts the door behind him and gawks on at the canister like he's never seen a piece of hextech before. Granted, that's a stolen specially engineered isotope more advanced than anything Demacia can even dream of achieving. The high-brows and wig-wearers can out fancy Zaun with their royal balls and polished grammar but they can't touch Zaun when it comes to hextech, no one can.
It doesn't seem like he is going to be moving anytime soon, so it's time to take matters into her own hands. She didn't want to do it, but now things are going to have to get messy. With her arm the way it is, there's no way she can take anyone on in close-quarters-combat, let alone the entire Demacian Crownguard. Once word of her presence in his kingdom gets out, that king of theirs is sure to set all of his hounds loose after her scent, because of how popular she's become to the more fun Piltovans. To say the least however, that would not end up in her favour, no matter how many rockets she has. She has to deal with this one discretely.
She unsheathes her knife and slowly opens the closet door. The darkness of the room plays in her favour. She cautiously sneaks up behind him, close enough to smell him now, and presses the blunt edge on his neck. The fool immediately perks up but stays still. He's smart not to try anything. They would have to pick his head up from off the floor if he did.
"You're going to keep quiet, and you're going to do as I say, got it?"