ic contact.

[deushexmachina]

"Hi, probably just easier to find me in the lab. I'll get back to you."

Comments

[jinxs]

Not so scary, right?

(she presses her thumb against his, laughing as she remembers their first encounter.)

The person you imagine when you thought Jinx, her name's Sevika. She's like, much less cool than I am.

[deushexmachina]

[The name doesn't ring a bell; Marcus kept any real clues clean of his "investigations" into Silco's affairs, and Jayce isn't surprised he hadn't known. He furrows his brow, wondering if he could persuade his brain to remember this detail if—when—he arrived back to Piltover.]

She sounds it.

[Another shadow to chase.]

[jinxs]

Super incompetent and bitching all the damn time, Jayce. Just never-ending bitching. She's been around since Vander, when I was little, and God, she never stops.

(honestly, she just drags her hands across her face, dramatic in gesture as she rolls her eyes.)

[deushexmachina]

And she... holds sway in Silco's court? [Bearing in mind Jinx's likely biases, he isn't sure this Sevika was the monster he once envisioned either.] What does she so, exactly?

[jinxs]

Oh, absolutely not. She's like me. A bruiser and a solver. I hold sway.

(because what does jinx wants that jinx doesn't get?)

[deushexmachina]

I mean, do the contrasts outweigh the similarities for you? [They do keep circling back to how she and Jinx overlap, and Jayce is beginning to suspect a jealousy he would never verbally accuse Jinx of, for the sake of his own throat.]

[jinxs]

Yep. I don't bitch about everything, for example. She's insufferable. Do you even have insufferable people in the Council? Furball looks like it.

(heimerdinger. or perhaps even the kirammans, but she suspects jayce might not want to shittalk anyone, so her hands are thrown up in innocence.)

Ooooor, maybe not.

[deushexmachina]

[He winces when her sharp tongue cuts into those Councilors past and present, and he gives a little shrug in response — notably not a defense of any given furball.

She's right to suspect he keeps his mouth dry.]

It's fine, [fingers tap nervously,] you're free to express your opinions as a constituent. I'm just trying to measure your relationship with this Sevika, but you're right... who says coworkers have to be amicable?

[jinxs]

Oh, she absolutely hates me. Thinks I'm going to ruin our cause, blablabla, because I did mention she bitches, right? Mostly, about how I'm a liability. Silco doesn't pay her a lot of attention, though.

(from the list of things that drive silco insane is jinx inability to not answer in full honesty, to not simply conceal or dance around subjects.

it's the truth, and she'll speak it as long as it is.)

[deushexmachina]

I guess she's unwilling to have a frank discussion with you, [he's relying on his experience; Jinx is receptive when she's treated like an equal. It's not inconceivable this Sevika considers her a child, and only a child.

That diplomacy was doomed.]

Well, you don't have to deal with that here. [Small blessings.]

[jinxs]

Oh, thank God.

(her eyes roll nearly into her skull, annoyance bleeding through every curve of her expression.)

Aside from her, there are some other people, but I don't interact too much. I don't think I want anyone else here. Do you?

[deushexmachina]

It's a relief to avoid the Council at large, [and the responsibilities that came with it,] but I miss... at least one Councilor.

[Shaking his head, he blows air out a tightly-lipped mouth.]

I miss my lab.

[jinxs]

Man, your lab was cool. Who do you miss?

(a chuckle escapes her, a little memory of the work she's left him on progress day bubbling to the surface.)

I miss-- I used to live in a reactor, actually. That was my workstation? I miss that.

[deushexmachina]

[Eyes narrow just a fraction,] Yeah, okay. [He hadn't forgotten Progress Day.] But the runic recalibration systems we had in place for distilling crystals into gemstones, I miss that. And the the microscopes we had at hand. The centralized collider.

[Amazing what a few major grants can net you.]

I'm guessing you took precautions to defuse any live reactive material? In your reactor.

[jinxs]

How did you do it? I remember when they were, uh, super volatile. I already told Vik about it, but I was the one who snuck into your study and blew up the building when I was a child. I remember they were-- not nearly as functional? That's really impressive.

(so, technically, she's the reason viktor and jayce met, she's trying to say with not so many words.)

Uh, not really. It went boom a lot. I liked throwing explosives from the edge.

[deushexmachina]

[His throat holds his breath. His mind flashes with vicious sequence; the explosion, his arrest, the hours soaked in anxiety, the trial, his mother's betrayal, his banishment, his near-suicide. Jayce shakes his head. Viktor intervening, Viktor's peer review, their new calculations, their breaking and entering, the final experiment, the birth of Hextech.

Bad with the good.

He exhales.]

It took some time, [he says, focusing on her interest.] Refining them into gemstones. Oscillations were just the beginning.

— You actively ignited explosive? In a dormant reactor?

[jinxs]

Something I was wondering is if they could be made smaller. If they could be divided, they could probably fit in more portable things-- without the powering container being too big. Mhm-- thought for later. Can we saw one?

(shitty idea, jinx, shitty idea?

but it seems like her brain is working overtime on it, so much that she barely registered the last question, shoulders raising in a shrug before she takes her notebook to herself, fumbling for a quill.)

Oh, yeah, all the time, actually.

[deushexmachina]

Smaller — that's conceivable, sure. I'm not sure about cutting one in half, though. [Possibly on the level of splitting an atom, times hundreds.] Even refining them from a crystalline form compounded the size a little.

[jinxs]

Where did you even get the idea for these things? Arcane stuff is just-- I don't know. Never seen it.

(but her hand doesn't stop making notes in her notebook, scratching, rewriting, all out of order and incomprehensible to another's eyes.)

[deushexmachina]

It was something that happened to me, as a child. My mother and I were traversing a dangerous land—icy, frozen—and we were going to die. My mother fell, I screamed for help. [Exhale.] And he showed up. The mage. He used magic to instantaneously transport us.

He used magic to save us.

[jinxs]

... Oh. Woah. Yeah, I can see that having a big impact. Transport-- like the Hexgates? Just like, nyoom?

(her hand flies in front of her, as to punctuate her last words.)

Vik told me he had a really cool thingie for drawing, with Hextech. What else did you make?

[deushexmachina]

The Atlas gloves, [he isn't aware of Vi just taking those,] which are mechanized gloves intended to make impossibly heavy objects easier to lift. The Hexclaw, which shoots lasers from a hand. For artistry reasons.

[jinxs]

Oh, yeah. I had forgotten about that one. I've seen it. Long story, you don't wanna know.

(or maybe he DOES, since it's his damn creation??)

You know, considering this place is magic, we should see if we could create something like hextec with what we have here. What do you think of that?

[deushexmachina]

[His mouth presses into a little line—you don't wanna know—and the turmoil whirls within him. He both did and did not want to know, his curiosity softened by the trepidation of Jinx's ephemeral knowledge of the future.]

Hm, [a clear war wages on his face.] It's not... bad... is it?

[On the subject change, his shoulders relax:] I've been working on that, actually. Data gathering about the magic here, and the magic that other people bring in from their own worlds. If there is a universal theory to the arcane, then the same runic equations that Viktor and I discovered should work.

[jinxs]

It depends to whom? Not to you, I'm sure-- unless Vi stole it? She's not above it.

(a little shrug of her shoulders. it's not like she knows that jayce and vi went on a little trip to shimmer paradise, anyway.)

That's a big 'if', Jaycey.