Part Six: Zap
At first, Nathan doesn't know what to make of the situation. This seems to happen every time a cosplaying criminal points a knife at his neck. One moment, she was threatening his life with a blade larger than any in the kitchen drawer downstairs, and the next her eyes roll up in her head and she's laying unconscious atop him on his bed sheet. Is she dead? Her back raises with a breath of air. He hesitates to move her at first, for fear she may wake up and stab him for real this time.
As he pushes her body off his, all of her accessories and whatever else she has strapped to her, rustles and jingles like a gunslinger walking into a silent saloon in a western film. Of the few times he's played Jinx ADC, he at least knows the basics of her character. Three guns and grenades, none of which however he remembers emitting a green glow, but which is exactly what's shining out of Fishbones' mouth. Inside sits the same green lava lamp-or-phone charger that he saw the other day tucked inside of the model gun's teeth. Its green aura washes over Nathan's face and paints the wall a vibrant green as he takes it out and sets it aside on his bedside-table.
For a costume accessory, Fishbones feels like it was made with some seriously expensive, high quality material. The metal is firm and dense, and cold up until the jaws and razor sharp teeth where it stays warm to the touch.
Trying his best to actually touch her skin too much, he rolls her over off him and onto her back. She doesn't even budge, must be out cold. He picks up the glowing canister and grabs her knife from her hand and goes to get his phone from his desk.
He switches on the room light and goes into the camera app in his phone. Seeing the unconscious girl in his bed on his screen causes numerous shameful thoughts to flutter around in his head. If someone were to walk in right now, they could easily accuse him of drugging some girl and then doing illegal things to her. It's not like that though, it's not anything like that, but he needs evidence for the police, so he should. Katie would for sure want to see the infamous cosplay-crook, but it's probably not the best idea to share the pictures around.
He photographs her a few times and also the knife and the canister. Deciding it's probably best to disarm her before he calls the police, he goes to remove Fishbones and the pink minigun, Pow-Pow from her person, both appearing slightly shrunken in size, though feeling far heavier than they look. He doesn't find any of the grenades but he does find something that really catches his eye. Her shock pistol sitting in its leather holster. It causes the hair on his head to stand when his finger touches it. The clear, glass chamber that radiates with blue electricity is warm as it hums a soft, low toned sound and vibrates gently in his hand. The blue electricity inside is identical to the green energy inside of the canister, except for its colour. If he hadn't known better, he would think that girl is the actual Jinx from the game. She must be as serious as they come when it comes to her cosplay, and it shows in her costume he'll give her that at least.
Just as Nathan is about to go to put Zapper with the others, the girl's eyes pop open and two bright, pink irises lock onto his face. Before he can utter a word from his mouth, he feels the shock pistol snatched from his hand and his face slams down onto the mattress. She presses the weapon onto the back of his head and wrenches his arm contorted into his spine. She's fast. And strong. His elbow joint cracks as she pushes it further.
"Hey, stop!" he exclaims.
She doesn't listen. Only breathes heavily, sucking air in like she just woke up from a nightmare. Nathan thinks he even sees her mouth curl into a devilishly evil smile, like she's enjoying watching him in pain. Is she crazy? The hair on his arms begins to stand up once more and he hears the humming of Zapper getting louder by his ear. For whatever reason, he starts to get scared, but why? Afriad that her toy gun will hurt him? No, it's not the toys that's frightening but the maniac who's holding them. She's not just some house robber, she's insane. The room goes quiet for a moment, with ony the sound of the air conditioning and the weapon whirring up slowly being heard by either of them.
The girl freezes and her mouth frowns all of a sudden. The shock pistol's charge winds back down, and so does his arm hair. She releases his elbow and backs away to the other side of the room, still holding her Zapper up with both hands. Nathan rubs his pained arm and watches her. She doesn't allow for her gaze to shift away for a moment. Having her there now just staring at him actually becomes rather unsettling, so much so that he almost prefers for her to go back to nearly breaking off his arm at the joint.
"Are you done?" Nathan asks. He tries to keep his voice down. His mother would have a heart attack if she found out who was up there with him.
"Quiet. I'll ask the questions."
"Where have I heard that before?" he feigns confidence and she appears annoyed as she takes a step towards him, causing him to back up, his heel knocking the wall behind him.
"Where—" Her head suddenly swings around to the door. Nathan doesn't know what she's looking at at first, but then soon hears footsteps stepping on the carpet up the stairs headed towards his room door. Her hearing must be just as keen as she is quick. He and the Jinx girl lock eyes.
She replaces Zapper with her knife and goes for the door. Nathan gets between the two just in time and grabs her hand. She quickly performs the same manueover as before and pins it behind his back again.
"Honey, are you okay?" his mother says. The door cracks open but Nathan only allows just enough for his head to pop out to speak to her. The continues, "Hey if you want to talk about the whole... boyfriend thing then—"
"Mom," he says trying to ignore the knife touching on his neck by the girl behind him, hidden behind the door, "I actually can't really talk about that right now."
"Why not? Tell me what's up." She goes to push the door open, but he stops her.
"It's actually kinda late. You know what, why don't we talk about this in the morning?"
Her face looks like she's just caught onto some teenage mood hint he's been trying to signal her. "Oh, yeah, definetely, okay. G'night, Natie." She kisses his forehead and goes into her room. He closes his door when she's gone.
"Okay, Natie," the girl says smirking through her teeth.
"What do you want?" he asks annoyed. "Why did you come back here?"
She moves to the other side of the room again, giving them some room. She pauses first, and thinks about her question. "How do I get back to Zaun?"
Nathan has to take a moment to process what she just said. Uh... what? She's joking right? She's got to be joking. "Back to where?"
"Come on, have you had your head stuck in a poro's ass all your life? There's no way some royal Demacian citizen like you have never heard of Zaun, so how do I get there from here?"
Demacian? What the hell is wrong with this girl? Maybe in the interest of his health, he should play along. She might do something rash otherwise. "Y—yeah, um, Zaun is actually uh, west of here." Did she buy it?
She looks at Nathan for a moment without saying a word. "You're a shit liar, you know that?" She approaches smelling distance of him again, Zapper's blue glow washing over his face. "Now I'll ask you one last time, or I'll paint your mommy's nice white carpet with your brain. How do I get to Zaun from here?"
Nathan peers at the end of her weapon, and back at her. "You can't be serious," he doubts.
Her eye twitches with annoyance and she lets out a frustrated growl. Her curled, gloved fist flies towards Nathan's face but he moves out of the way just in time, moving in front of the open window. The cold draft chills his back.
"Keep still!" she yells as she takes aim once more with Zapper.
This time, it whirrs up far quicker than any of the times before, and it glows brighter and brighter, and causes the hair on his head to stand up straight now even being so far away from her. In a fraction of a second, she charges it and the entire room flashes a bright blue light, followed by a deafening, electrifying, slithering sound of the discharge of energy, as if lightning had been thrown into his room by an angry Zeus. Nathan manages to move out of the path of the electric surge of energy before it touches him. Instead, the projectile zaps over his head, burns through the curtain and flies out of his room, colliding with, and toppling a light pole on the other side of the neighbourhood resulting in flying white sparks and a loud crash.
"Nathan, turn that game down, dammit!" his mother yells.
"People are tying to sleep!" shouts Jennifer.
He doesn't have time to react to what he just witnessed as the girl is already on top of him again with her knife.
"Wait!" Again, his attempt to talk to her proves futile. He tears the flaming drape off the wall and leaps out of his window onto the garage roof. He successfuly smothers the fire, but has to again evade another bolt from Zapper.
"Ducking won't help!" she taunts and jumps out of the window after him.
Nathan drops down onto the lawn and begins a sprint out of his yard. He has to at least get his mom and Jennifer out of harm's way. If that maniac kills anyone, it'd have to be him first, with whatever the hell it is she's shooting at him.
She stops at the edge of their lawn and fires once more, this one passing just by his face and electrifying a rusted old car parked on the side of the road. It immediately starts up with the headlights on hi-beam and horn blaring in the quiet night. If he can make her follow him down a few blocks, he may be able to—
A thud sounds from her direction. Nathan looks and there she lies on the asphalt, face down and motionless. He waits for a few seconds to see if she'll get up. Nothing. What?
He kneels down over her and presses his head on her chest. It's moving up and down, and there's still a heartbeat, which means that she isn't dead. He hesitates to touch her at first, then rolls her onto her back. He doesn't know CPR so that's not an option. Even if he did, her lack of concern for his safety, to say the least, would discourage him from performing it. For the second time that night, she is unconscious in front of him.
He picks up the glowing shock pistol. It's warm now on the handle, but far too hot to touch on the glass chamber. He holds it up to his eye to get a better look at it. The vibrant blue light pours over his face and inside of the glass looks like if a bolt of lightning had been caught prisoner, swimming around in its current and damned to be perpetually bouncing off of the glass walls. It's really beautiful actually, minus the parts where it almost killed him.
His curiosity gets the better of him as he aims it at a nearby speed limit sign, and begins to pull on the trigger. It vibrates violently as it charges up once more and launches before he could even grip it properly. He missed the road sign completely, and instead tore a hole through a tree in a neighbour's yard.
He doesn't know what to make of it, of any of it. The high-tech weapon, the costume, the words she used. Either this is the result of playing too much league at night, or... no. He should call the cops. His phone is back in his room.
He easily hoists her over his shoulder and heads towards the front door. Before he gets to the porch though, he starts to feel her wiggle a little, then wiggle a lot. Then she starts to all out drive her elbow and fist into his back.
"Put me down! I swear if you don't drop me right now I'll kill you!"
"Jesus, lady, don't you ever take a break?" he asks.
She manages to break free and drops onto her feet in front of him. Without warning, she drives a right hand into his nose and starts to run off again, but ending with the same result once she gets to the edge of the lawn again.
Rubbing his throbbing nose, Nathan struggles to comprehend what's even going on. Every second that goes by the situation at hand makes less and less sense. All the more reason for the police to take her off their hands for good.
With a sigh, he goes to pick her up once more, and again she starts to bang on his back when he gets near the house.
"Let go of me!" she kicks and struggles. "I don't know what you're doing, but you won't get me alive! You're gonna have to kill me first, ya hear me?"
She shakes loose again, and starts to run off, but Nathan manages to grab her left arm before she gets too far away. Quickly, she replies with a right hook to the jaw, but he catches her fist, surprising himself with his quick reflexes.
He holds her fist and arm in a struggle and tries to reason with the girl. "Just wait! Look, I'm not doing anything, okay? I'm just as lost as you are." He still has to struggle to keep her from overpowering him. "All I know is that if you go over there again, then you're going to end up face down in my front yard, so if you don't want that to happen again, then you should just calm the hell down and let us talk for a bit."
He waits to see what she does next, his nose still throbbing from when he got punched earlier, but tries to keep a straight face through the pain.
In the blink of an eye, she swipes Zapper back from him before he can react, and points it up inches away from his face. It charges up its hum and glowing once more. Nathan freezes. Is this it? He thinks to himself. Is this where I die? She just stares at him with it, he finger tugging on the trigger ever so slightly. The silence between the two makes the shock pistol seem louder, and the tenseness makes the quiet louder than all else. Her eyebrows crease as she glares at him, hesitating to pull the trigger.
There's a moment where it looks like she actually believes him; that she's not in any kind of danger; that she can trust him. It truly does seem like she wants to, but Nathan sees hidden under her eyes things that he himself could never do, or have done.
Suddenly, it clicks in his head. Her words, her apparence, her actions. Even her weapons. It can't be just a trick, a coincidence. With what he's seen, it would be foolish to consider anything else for all alternatives would be just as ludicrous as the truth.
"You're really here, aren't you?" The words sound just as insane coming from his own mouth. "You're really... her."