Jayce hadn't felt so tired in ages. Forty hours ago, the council had agreed to table any motions to ready the Home Guard, and had approved his expedition. In an effort to deescalate the threat of a war between the two halves of their own city, Jayce, along with Sheriff Kiramman and Special Enforcer Vi, would enter Piltover's undercity and try to coax the Hexgem off of Jinx in exchange for limited amnesty. Removing such a horrific weapon from a terrorist's hands would do wonders to reduce tensions on both sides.
On reflection, the council demanding her blueprints and the weapon itself was overkill, but as they say, hindsight is twenty-twenty. Jayce privately doubted that even a pared-down list of demands would have gone over well, given that Jinx had effortlessly noticed the unspoken issue with only securing limited amnesty.
Sixteen hours ago, the three of them had limped out of their encounter with the fearsome Loose Cannon and worse, her mage soulmate. Jinx, of all the people of Runeterra, should not be the soulmate of a mage. Especially since it cost him ten gold hexes to a rather smug Caitlyn.
When Jayce had finally managed to close his eyes that night, after a long shower and three drinks, Jayce dreamed of neon pink eyes, shifting patterns of light that danced over vital organs, and the glittering point of a metal rasp stalking him.
And now, here he was, sitting down to a fancy luncheon with Sheriff Kiramman, Councilwoman Kiramman, Special Enforcer Vi, and Councilwoman Medarda. Viktor had begged off, citing stomach troubles and 'a good feeling' about some equations he'd been grappling with regarding the Hexcore. Similarly, Tobias Kiramman had been extended an invitation and declined on the grounds of illness and injury. Not his own, of course, but with continued flare-ups of the tension bordering Piltover and its undercity, all the hospitals were on war footing, so to speak.
Dimly, he heard his voice being called, and realized he'd been frowning into his coffee for a long moment now, saucer in hand, cup half raised. Jayce set them down, blinking as if seeing sunlight for the first time in ages.
"I'm sorry, did someone say something?"
He regretted asking almost as soon as he had. Looks were shared, and Mel lay one hand over his. "I did Jayce, I asked if you're okay."
His eyes flickered around the table, before looking back to Mel, "To be honest, I'm afraid I'm not." He moved to pick up his coffee again, and saw his hand trembling. "I... Gods, I wish I could have brought her into the council for her to give that offer of hers. There was a certain something about how she stated her terms down there in that warehouse."
"Was it how she threatened to gouge out a chunk of your brain with a nail file?" said Mel, no hostility in her tone. "Regardless, Jinx's demands were certainly... ambitious."
With a scoff, Cassandra Kiramman set her tea down, the fine porcelain clinking ever so softly. To anyone who knew her, that soft clink was the equivalent of throwing the cup across the restaurant. "Ambitious? More like audacious, insane, beyond criminally stupid demands. No, we gave her an out, and she refused to take it. She doesn't have a seat at the bargaining table, she has a noose waiting for her."
There was a much more noticeable clink as Vi's fingers crushed the elegant handle to her own teacup. She grunted, and set the mangled cup down before picking at the shards in her thumb with her salad fork. "Sorry, don't mind me, just, ah, forgot my own strength."
Caitlyn shot her mother a look, and Jayce felt guilty that Vi's pain bought him time to think, even just a few seconds. The hours in the day hadn't changed, but for the life of him, the time to sit back and think was gone like the mists of a summer morning. And lately, in the last day or so, all he could think of was the glitter of a metal rasp and shining eyes of burning magenta.
"Well, if running up a series of unreasonable demands is what got us out of that warehouse alive, I'm sorry to say I'm happy to have wasted the council's time then," Jayce said, drinking down the rest of his coffee. "Some of what she asked for was very specific though, and wouldn't have done a lone, mad bomber any good."
Mel nodded, humming thoughtfully as she stirred her tea, "You're thinking of the demands for an infrastructure budget, aren't you?"
Vi, who had barely shed a drop of blood or a tear as she finished digging out the porcelain bits out of her thumb, cocked one eyebrow, "That's what's on your mind? Not her demand for control of half of the commercial docking?"
Caitlyn shook her head, "No, really that would just be acknowledging docks already adjacent or built into the undercity as belonging to the undercity. Her proposal to expand Founder's Bridge, but to knock down other points of access between the cities is curious. You'd think she'd want more bridges, more unguarded ways to go where she pleases."
Cassandra sniffed, cup and saucer in hand though she made no move to drink what remained of her tea. "Frankly," she said with a sigh, "As much as I bristle at her behavior and her inability to see a good deal when it's presented to her, it takes real moxie to push for the undercities' independence, the same as Silco had. She won't get it, the terrorist brat, nerve and cheek are rarely combined with any wit." The older Kiramman set her saucer aside and looked over her shoulder, toward the divide in the cliffs, where past a bronze guard railing was a steep drop into the dim streets of the undercity. "I've met with Viktor, your associate Jayce, and I marvel at his intellect. I do not care for the undercity, for its barely contained anarchy and filth. But I wonder how many other diamonds in the rough are down there."
"Huh," chirped Vi, "and here I thought you just hated all us fissure folk."
The elbow Caitlyn shoved into her soulmate's ribs was not a gentle one, and Cassandra gave her not-quite-daughter-in-law a withering look, which rather quickly fell apart into a somewhat sheepish expression. "No, it's only fair you have that impression. Our house has been cold to you, even though you warm my daughter's heart. I do not hate the people of the undercity, I hate the lawlessness and refuse that pollute its streets. It is why I voted on the treaty with Silco. An organized criminal is, at the very least, organized. From there, it would be a much shorter leap to something much like a functional government, a proper lawful one."
Jayce let out a low chuckle, "The comparison of government and criminal organization is one I've heard joked about a few times, though less so since I joined the council." Jayce picked up his cup before he remembered it was empty. Setting it aside with a frown, he grumbled, "Each of us has looked at or heard her demands, and all of us can think of at least one demand that makes us uncomfortable for no other reason than how canny it's worded or how narrow it is in scope. I can't help but feel like Jinx, somehow, is pulling a fast one on us all, and I don't much care for the feeling."
Silence blanketed the table as his friends, lover, and co-councilor respectively, all brooded. No one could refute that something about the situation was off, like the ticking of a clock that was just a fraction of a second too fast, or tines of a fork that were ever so slightly misaligned. Not so bad as to be immediately identifiable, but a lurking suspicion in the back of one's mind that something was not quite right.
Further contemplation was stopped when their lunches arrived. Delicately assembled finger sandwiches, elegant salads, and a giant porterhouse steak slathered in some sort of tangy-smelling gravy. Everyone shot an incredulous stare at Vi when the table wobbled as it was set down in front of her.
Vi tucked her napkin into her shirt collar like a bib, chuckling "What? If they didn't want people ordering it, they wouldn't have put it on the menu. Now, as they say in Demacia, bone apple tea!"
Both of the Kiramman women groaned at Vi's proclamation, while Mel and Jayce gave each other a small smile, a shared memory of foreign languages, and bungled pronunciation during one of their earlier dinner dates.
In spite of Vi's non-existent table manners, the lunch part of the luncheon went smoothly. Jokes, anecdotes, and bits of gossip not rooted in undercity violence or topside corruption circled the table.
Like all things, the good times had to end, and Jayce was privately surprised that it wasn't because of something anyone around the table said. Between himself and Vi, there were likely more social faux pas than moments of proper Piltover high society on display, either from a somewhat stunted social vocabulary or a life growing up either in the undercity or prison. It wasn't even the time that Vi had demonstrated the danger of the phrase 'inhaled her food', and had to take a few quick strikes to the back from her soulmate to dislodge the errant bit of steak.
It was when the esteemed Councilman Hoskel approached the table that made Jayce try in vain to signal for the check. Whatever the balding councilman was going to say, whether it was one of his poorly thought out ideas or some piece of bad news someone had convinced him was a good thing and he was excited to share, Jayce knew it was going to spoil any idea of sticking around for desserts.
"Councilman Hoskel, what a pleasant surprise to see you here," Mel said, the half-truth passing through her lips as naturally as air. They all were surprised, none of them pleasantly, since in an effort to avoid this sort of complication, the reservations had been made under Caitlyn's name. Jayce shot her a questioning look, and got a subtle shake of the head for his troubles. The Sheriff of Piltover was just as stumped as he was.
"Ah, Councilors, I'm glad to have caught you," Hoskel cheered, pulling a chair from an unoccupied table and wedging himself in between Cassandra and Mel like it was the most natural thing. The people who were actually supposed to sit at the table shifted to one side or the other, making space for the intruder.
"Would you believe this is the fourth restaurant I had to go to?" Hoskel clicked his tongue in mock annoyance, "But I am quite happy to have found you, to share the good news!"
"Please, Councilman Hoskel, enlighten us." Cassandra's tone was icy, but if the elderly clan head noticed he gave no sign.
"Ah yes, I came to let you know that my men will soon be apprehending that dastardly terrorist, Jinx."
There was a fraction of a pause, before Sheriff Caitlyn growled "I'm sorry, I think I may have misheard you. Are you saying you sent your clan's guards to apprehend a dangerous criminal?"
Hoskel turned from where he was trying to wave down a server to give Caitlyn a somewhat baffled look, "Well, yes? I'm sorry if I wasn't clear, of course I wouldn't be so brash as to commander the Enforcers for such a task."
Jayce silently applauded Caitlyn's and Vi's restraint to not leap across the table and throttle Hoskel, then adjusted his mental congratulations to add Cassandra to the list, judging by the look she was giving the other council member.
"Sir, be that as it may, it is not the place of private guards to take matters of law into their own hands," Caitlyn said neatly, the undercurrent of anger one that Jayce identified as the sort she usually reserved for when shouting was socially unacceptable.
Hoskel didn't bristle, he was not quite intimidating enough to bristle. But he did swell at being called out by an authority figure. "That may be your opinion," he started, neatly sidestepping the fact that the Sheriff of Piltover's opinion was very much rooted in the laws of their city-state, "But since a bounty was being offered, I simply assumed that we were past such formalities."
"Bounty?" blurted Vi, "What bounty?"
Hoskel, happy to provide proof that his actions were justified, quickly furnished the pink-haired Enforcer with a rolled-up sheet of paper. The scroll was almost greasy, the coloration an off-putting brown-gray, and everyone could instantly tell by the faint chemical stink it was from the depths of the undercity.
Caitlyn looked over the bounty listing with an air of horror, while Vi quaked with rage. Her free hand gripped the table with such frightful intensity that the beautifully polished iron lattice crumpled with a quiet screech. Jayce boggled at the sight, and wondered why the hell she even bothered with the Atlas Gauntlets.
The Sheriff tapped her soul mate on the arm, pulling away the bounty and passing the sheet to Jayce while they tried to disentangle Vi's hand from the hole she'd torn in the tabletop.
Mel leaned against him as he looked over the bounty. A bounty of five hundred gold hexes was being offered for Jinx, dead or alive. Tellingly, there was no loss in the payout for a corpse being dumped at Sevika's feet, who was the source of the bounty. The name Sevika brought to mind dossiers of Silco's empire, she had been his right hand and second in command. Jayce passed the bounty to Cassandra across the table, before turning to Hoskel.
"Councilman," Jayce ventured in a hesitant tone, "while a bounty may be a sign of the Enforcers soliciting outside help with apprehending a suspect or known criminal, this is not a legal bounty. That poster did not have the Sheriff's signature or seal of office anywhere on it."
Hoskel's face was the perfect pantomime of shock. "Oh, goodness, I didn't realize, I figured if such things were being posted then they must have gotten the Sheriff's permission."
He drew himself up with, "I will be happy to make amends to the Enforcers for this oversight, but I fear it's too late to countermand the orders I gave my guards. In a few hours, I'm sure they'll be back from their hunt, Jinx in hand."
Mel smiled, a sweet and kind look that hid very little of the steel and fire in her voice. "And I'm sure those orders included the necessity of taking Jinx alive, right Councilman?"
The old fool at least had the good grace to look a little sheepish, "Well, no. Since I was working under the assumption the bounty was a legitimate posting, I gave the captain of my guard free reign to operate as he saw fit when collecting Jinx."
A horrific thought popped into Jayce's head, and decided to hijack his voice. "You did warn your guard about Jinx's bomb-making? That one of her crimes was blowing up a building with half a dozen Enforcers inside, a masterfully executed trap? Right?"
Hoskel puffed himself up with every ounce of ego and self-righteousness he possessed. "Now see here, my guards are the cream of the crop, highly trained and professional soldier types. Their equipment is the finest money can buy, and I spared no expense in making sure they were properly outfitted for this bounty hunt. They would surely rank head and shoulders above those unfortunate Enforcers who lost their lives to Jinx's trickery, and I have no doubt that they will be victorious against that mad anarchist and some jumped up charlatan you reported, the one who can make pretty lights."
Mel laid one hand on top of Jayce's before he could reply, which given the words on the tip of his tongue was a very good thing indeed. "Councilman Hoskel, please forgive us if these questions seem condescending, that is not our intent," she said in an ever so slightly condescending tone. "We're all relieved honestly, to hear of how well your guards are trained and equipped. I'm sure part of this training, in light of Jinx's earlier attacks on our fair city, included how to disarm or avoid such explosive traps, yes?"
Hoskel's confused silence was only broken when a thunderous string of explosions from the belly of the undercity rocked the restaurant. The cacophony of the explosions cracked windowpanes, shook the chairs and tables, and set Jayce's ears ringing. A plume of smoke, tainted pink and blue, rose from where Jayce knew the undercity docks sat relative to the restaurant. Or, perhaps based on the width of the rising smoke cloud, where the docks HAD sat.
"Well," murmured Mel archly, "I suppose that answers my question. Ah, garçon? Please put the bill on my account." The waiter nodded, and Mel dabbed her lips with her napkin before rising. Jayce climbed to his feet not a moment later as Mel smoothly turned to their uninvited guest and said, "Lovely to see you Hoskel, and please extend my condolences to the families of your clan guard."
The party hastily departed, leaving an ashen-faced Hoskel grappling with the fact his 'cream of the crop' guards bodies were likely smeared across a much larger space than any given body is meant to occupy.
Outside in the now slightly overcast sunlight, Jayce turned to Caitlyn, "So, are you going to press any charges or levy a fine or something for Hoskel ordering a vigilante action?"
The Sheriff shook her head, "No, the cost of twenty funerals and reparations for their families will be punishment enough. I think my time will be better spent drafting an order to not engage or pursue Jinx, in spite of her criminal status. Better to contact Vi or myself, since we're far less likely to be shredded by minigun fire."
Vi chuckled, "Honestly, going into the undercity at all seems like a bad idea right now. I doubt Jinx was anywhere near that explosion. And with her on the move, things are only going to get more violent as the gangs try to eliminate such a rogue factor in the succession war for Silco's throne."
Cassandra frowned, "We can't just let that hellion go free, she's just killed twenty men and women. Not Enforcers, but honorable citizens of Piltover nonetheless."
Mel pursed her lips, eyeing the smoke cloud, "Her response certainly was... a bit excessive to be waved off as self-defense. But how would you advise going after her? Now we don't know where she could be, and if this display is anything to go by, she will not come quietly."
Silence was the only answer any of them could offer, so muted farewells were given, and the five split off, Caitlyn and Vi back to their jobs, Cassandra to her manor, and Mel and Jayce back towards the Academy.
"What are you thinking?" Mel suddenly asked, and Jayce looked up, unaware that it was so obvious. Mel smiled, and for the thousandth time, Jayce cursed the gods that she was not his soulmate. He'd never felt the instinctual reaction that so many people assured him he'd feel in the presence of his other self, and Mel confirmed that he wasn't just missing the signs. But still, she was an expert at body language, and Jayce felt he was growing in leaps and bounds at the talent simply by exposure.
"Jinx is, as far as we know, the only person in the undercity to have a mage in their company, and certainly the only one to have a Hexgem. I may be able to design and build something that will let us track that magical energy."
Mel's eyebrows rose, somewhere between alarmed and impressed, before she quickly schooled her features. "You may want to keep such a thing under wraps," she murmured, casting a suspicious glance around, her voice dropping to a barely discernible volume. "If the Mageseekers of Demacia learn there is a way to detect magic without a leashed mage of their own, their reluctance to embrace Hextech will be shoved aside in the blink of an eye."
Jayce felt a chill grip him. The Mageseekers were not an organization of kind souls, and if he refused to share, they may not ask twice to secure what they wanted. Shaking his head, he muttered in a similarly low tone, "Be that as it may, we have to find Jinx and put an end to her killings. Topside or undercity, she's shed too much blood to be left alone."
Mel nodded, and Jayce saw a glimmer of concern out of the corner of his eye. "Just, be careful. They have eyes and ears everywhere, no matter how backward Demacia seems on the whole."
Doing his best to give her a reassuring grin, Jayce stood up a little straighter, resuming a more conversational tone, "I will. Now, since our lunch was cut short, should we pick up some dessert? All this talk of Demacia has me thinking of croissants."