Get Jinxed: A Tale of Mental Instability and Poor Decisions (Arcane/League of Legends)

No Place For Little Girls 1​

"Come on! I promise this'll all be worth it!" I scampered ahead of the group, waiting for them all to catch up. Not that I could blame them for lagging behind a bit, nobody liked hanging out in The Sump. We were about as close to The Fissures as we could get without The Grey becoming a problem, and their air down here was definitely kinda scratchy. Not to mention everything smelled like rotten eggs and worse.

Usually nobody came down here, even the homeless beggars and druggies found better places to go. That was part of why I'd picked this place; nobody would complain about me setting off a few Mousers down here, there was nothing here but ruined buildings and abandoned mining equipment. The Sump had been a mine back when Vander and our parents had been younger than me. Then they'd gotten a bit too lax about safety and wound up dumping an entire underground reservoir into the mines. The Piltie owners of the mine crunched the numbers and decided that pumping out all the water, fixing the mine, and clearing out the bodies would cost more than they could make from reopening the mine so they'd just abandoned the whole place.

I'd almost considered suggesting we set up shop here for our Hextech research. It would definitely be isolated enough for us to avoid attention. It was probably a bit too far off the beaten path, though. If anything went wrong they'd never find our bodies, and getting all our equipment down here would be a whole issue. Not to mention Jayce would probably have to wear a rebreather the whole time he was down here. Maybe Viktor too, his lungs weren't so hot.

It's not like we were short on options anyway. Vander had been fine backing us up as long as we didn't get up to anything too crazy, so now the biggest issue was just settling on a new place and getting everything set up. Jayce had been talking to the Kirammans about good locations, and we were gonna do some scouting next week. Several places looked promising, but that was all based on what the property records in Piltover said. Considering those warehouses were in Zaun, it was definitely a good idea to physically go there and make sure the paperwork wasn't completely detached from on-the-ground reality.

Mylo's voice pulled me out of my musing. "Whatever you dragged us down here to show off better be something really good." He clambered over one of the massive coal engines they'd used back then. "I heard The Sump is supposed to be haunted. They say if you stay here too late at night, the dead bodies of all those drowned miners will come back up and drag you down into the water with them." He swallowed, his eyes nervously darting around. "N-not that I actually believe in that kinda thing, but still ... it's creepy here."

Vi snorted. "Relax, Mylo. If any creepy undead things show up, I'll just punch 'em out. I could use something to smack after two weeks of dealing with that stuck-up Piltie girl. So glad I'm finally done with all that."

I couldn't resist the opportunity to needle her bit. "You're not gonna miss your girlfriend? I heard you talking in your sleep last night. 'Oh, Catie, please kiss me more with your fancy-schmancy Piltie lips and say more posh things to me!'"

"You do talk about her a lot," Claggor agreed. "Like, a lot. I get you've been stuck dealing with her for a couple of weeks, but it sure seems like she got into your head."

Vi glowered at both of us. "Keep talking like that and ghosts aren't the only thing I'm gonna end up punching..."

Ekko cleared his throat. "Uh, Vi? Wouldn't your fist just go right through a ghost if you tried to punch it? That's kinda how ghosts work."

"The legend says it's zombies Ekko, not ghosts," Vi shot back. "I can punch zombies."

"I don't wanna deal with either of those!" Mylo snapped out. "Ghosts and zombies are both creepy, so can we just ... not?"

"Yeah, yeah..." I grinned as I finally found what I'd been looking for. A decent-sized mining pit that had some junk in it, probably old equipment they abandoned during the flood. What mattered was that it looked deep enough to be safe, and didn't seem like it was in danger of collapsing or anything. "Alright, everyone, here we are." I grinned and pulled out one of my new and improved mouser bombs. "Everyone sit back and enjoy the show."

Mylo frowned and let out a very exaggerated yawn. "Oh come on, is that all we came down here for? Another chance to see one of Powder's bombs fail to go off? We could've done that anywhere."

I wanted to explain why it was different this time. How I'd actually read through a chemistry book to understand how explosive compounds worked and now had access to real machine tools and higher-quality components. Jayce and Viktor were fine with me doing a little side tinkering as long as I got all my assigned tasks done first and didn't use up too much material. After all, they both liked to do a little work on side projects too. We were all gearheads. None of that would matter to Mylo, though.

Besides, the best way to prove him wrong wasn't by talking, it was with action. I armed the mouser bomb, made sure it was ticking over properly, and threw it down into the mining pit. Then we waited, while I mentally counted down how long it would be before the bomb went off. I'd tested all the components. I know the chemical mixture would give a big kaboom: now that I had access to proper compounds instead of just having to improvise. I knew the detonator would work properly, now that could actually machine the parts instead of hammering together scrap metal. I knew this bomb would work.

Now it just needed to hurry up and explode.

Mylo leaned over the crater, frowning down into it. "So, are we just gonna wait around forever to see if this thing goes off, or—"

The mouser exploded.

It was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. I watched every detail: the way the initial blast wave slammed into the old mining drill my mouser landed next to, the cloud of dust and debris it kicked up, and how a fireball came shooting up from the pit towards us. Mylo screamed and stumbled back, barely managing to avoid getting his eyebrows burned off. I hadn't expected that much of a fireball. Must've been something about the pit I tossed it into. I guess the walls didn't leave all that heat with any direction to go in but up.

Everyone stared down at the results of all my hard work. Vi was the first one to break the silence. "Powder. That was..."

"Awesome!" Mylo shouted, bolting back up to his feet with a huge grin on his face. "Did you see how big that explosion was?!" He grinned and slapped my back. "I take back everything I ever said about you, that was one of the coolest things I've ever seen! Do you have more of those? Can we set them off?!"

I grinned and promptly tossed another bomb into the pit. This time all three of the boys gathered around the pit to watch it blow up, getting close enough that I was a bit surprised none of them got knocked over. Not that I could blame them when I wanted to watch the cool explosions too. I'd been trying to get the Mouser Bombs working for a long time, it was amazing to finally see all my hard work paying off.

Once the bomb went off and everyone finished gawping at the explosion, I wanted to show off a bit more. "Those are just test bombs, of course. If I was using them for real I'd put in some nails or stuff to create more of a shrapnel effect. Just the kaboom isn't gonna cut it, you gotta throw lots of sharp debris out there really fast if you really wanna mess somebody up!"

"Mess someone up?" Vi repeated, staring at me with her jaw hanging open slightly. "Powder, what're you—"

"Mylo's right, this is the coolest thing you've ever done." Claggor agreed. "I never expected you to get your mousers working that good. Maybe a bit too much kaboom for the sorts of jobs we usually pull, it sounds like you've got something better lined up anyway. I'm just glad we got to see your bombs in action."

"Can I look at one of them?" Ekko asked. As soon as I passed it over he popped off the top and gave it a quick once-over. "Looks like you were right about it being a materials issue. No surprise you finally got them down once you had good tools and weren't trying to make everything out of scrap. Not using whatever dirty chemfuel you can scrape up for the base your explosives probably makes a huge difference."

"Making stuff is so much easier with a budget," I agreed. Not that Vander hadn't tried to provide for me, but he had a lot on his plate, and even if he didn't, getting good tools was a lot easier on the other side of the river."

"Man, I should've got caught too if it was gonna work out that good for you," Mylo whined. "Next time we've gotta rob the place where there's some rich dude who thinks I'm brilliant, or where I can get a rich girlfriend like Vi." A second after those words left his mouth Vi smacked him upside the head. "Hey! That hurt!"

"It was meant to," Vi shot back with a smirk."You knew what the consequences would be before you ran your mouth,"

"You didn't smack Powder when she teased you," Mylo complained.

"She's my sister, I like her more than you," Vi countered. "Plus she's carrying a bunch of bombs right now." She threw a pointed look my way. "Though if she pushes her luck…"

"Yeah, yeah." I rolled my eyes. Vi might noogie me a bit if I really pushed her buttons, but she'd never smack me.

Ekko cleared his throat. "Hey, Powder? Could I have one of your bombs? I wanna take a closer look at it once we get back home."

I grinned at him. "Do you actually wanna study how I made it, or do you just wanna use it to blow something up?"

Between his dark skin and how terrible the light was down in The Sump it was hard to say for sure, but it looked like he was blushing. "I mean, I might as well use it once I'm done studying it…"

"If Ekko gets a bomb, I want one too!" Mylo grinned and leaned down a bit to throw an arm across my shoulders. "If you start handing out bombs and Vi keeps smacking me, I might have a new favorite sister."

Vi scoffed "Oh please…"

Claggor raised his hand. "Me too."

Vi let out an exasperated sigh. "Really, Claggor?"

He shrugged. "What? Explosions are cool. I'm sure she'd give you one too, Vi. You're her sister."

"I don't want a—" Vi groaned and ran a hand down her face. "Powder, how dangerous are these things?"

I grinned back at her and pointed down into the pit, where the old mining equipment looked a lot more mangled now. "That looks pretty dangerous to me! I definitely wouldn't wanna be standing next to one of them when it goes boom!"

Vi scowled and gripped my shoulder. "I meant how dangerous are they for you and anyone else to use? They're not gonna go off if you trip or something, right?"

Oh, that made sense. I shook my head. "That's not how it works, Vi. It can't go boom without the detonator head on it. Maybe if you hit it really hard you could break the tempered glass holding the components or the mixing chamber, but that'd just make it not work at all, or fizzle when you try to use it like some of my old mousers did."

"And there's no shrapnel in them?" Vi asked.

"Not yet," I answered before popping the top off one. "But you can just toss any old scrap metal in here and it'll work. Plus the mouser's casing can still be shrapnel even if you don't add extra."

For some reason, that just made Vi frown more. "I'm really not sure about this, Pow-Pow. You know I've always supported your tinkering, but these things seem kind of dangerous. Even if you know what you're doing with them, you can't go handing them out everyone else."

"I know what I'm doing," Ekko protested. "One time I even helped Benzo check out an old Enforcer gas grenade before we found a buyer for it."

"And Powder says they're safe," Mylo agreed. "Just make sure you're not standing next to it when it goes off. Which … duh, it's a bomb."

Vi grimaced. "I still don't like it."

---

Current Stability; 1
Willpower: 2

Mousers
[ ][Mousers] Grenades For Everyone
Powder Gains 1 Willpower for Entering her Popular Phase
Issues Triggered: Violet (-2), Jinx (-3)
Failure Consequences: Have an argument with Vi about this decision.

[ ][Mousers] Only Give Ekko A Bomb
Issues Triggered: Violet (-2), Abandonment (-2), Jinx (-3)
Failure Consequences: Powder Argues with Vi, Mylo, and Claggor

[ ][Mousers] No Sharing Bombs
Issues Triggered: Violet (-2), Jinx (-3), Self-Worth (-2), Abandonment (-2)
Failure Consequences: Powder resents her sister bossing her around.

Willpower
[ ][Willpower] Spend Zero
[ ][Willpower] Spend One for +3
[ ][Willpower] Spend Two for +6

I'm sure children playing with explosives will be fine. Totally fine. Nothing bad could ever happen in Arcane involving kids and explosives.