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

2d6: (6+5) -5 = 6
Success!

Also, since this update involved a few more rolls...

Jinx Perception: 2d6: (3+3) = 6
vs
??? ???????: 2d6: (4+3) +2 = 9
Jinx Loses

Jinx Perception: 2d6: (3+4) = 7
vs
??? ???????: 2d6: 2d6: (2+2) +2 = 6
Jinx Wins

Jinx Shooting: 2d6: (6+4) = 10
vs
??? ?????: 2d6: (2+1) = 3
Jinx Wins

"Hey, Lux, is it okay if I have a quick private chat with Seraphine before the show?" I nodded over at my best friend. Well, one of them. Ekko and her could have a death match over which of them was my number one BFF if they really wanted to.

"Of course," Lux answered with her usual bright smile. "She's your friend after all. I appreciate you showing me the sights in Piltover, but you're not required to spend every waking moment entertaining me."

"Thanks." At least she was being cool about it. Not that I'd expected her to throw a big fit, she'd been putting out so much nice girl energy I was starting to wonder if she should have a halo over her head. Well, aside from the whole 'asking us if we'd weaponize hextech to help her hunt mages' thing.

With Lux settled for the moment, I shifted my attention over to Seraphine. "Well, you heard the lady. Is there someone I can drag you off to for a bit, Ser-bear?"

Seraphine groaned. "Don't, Jinx. I can live with my dad using an embarrassing nickname for me, but that's because he doesn't know any better. You do."

"Aww, but you're so cute when I tease you." I snickered and playfully nudged her. "If I can make you blush hard enough your face ends up matching your hair, and you start doing this pouting thing where—look, there it is!" I grinned and pointed at her puffed-out cheeks and the way she seemed to be struggling to hold in an annoyed frown.

Before Seraphine could come up with anything to say about my teasing, Caitlyn hit me from the side with a floppy drunken one-armed hug. "Jinx. Jinx Jiiinnnx." She started poking me in the side until I turned my head to look at her. "Sherafine's cute and all, but if you really wanna get with her you gotta up your game. Teasin's a good shtartin' place, but you gotta show her that you're intereshted. Ash your unofficial kinda-shorta big shishter, I gotta show you how to get with the laydies! Jusht follow my advishe and shoon you'll be shneakin' 'em into your bedroom just like me!"

I groaned and tried to shrug Caitlyn off, but she was being an annoyingly clingy drunk who couldn't take a hint. "Seraphine and I are just friends, there's nothing like that going on." I looked to Seraphine for help, but she seemed to be far too busy snickering at me to do anything about my floppy drunk s—Caitlyn.

"That'sh only caushe you haven't made a move!" Caitlyn started poking me again. "You better hurry, she'sh cute and shomeone elshe'sh gonna do it schooner or later if you don't. In fact..." She detached herself from me, only to go over to Seraphine and flop a hand onto her shoulder. "Hey. What'sh a cute plashe like this doin' in a borin' girl like you?" She paused and blinked a couple of times. "No, wait, it wash... um ... Have you sheen my Heroine of Piltover medal lyin' around anywhere, I losht it..."

Was it possible to die of secondhand embarrassment? Because Caitlyn was definitely doing her best to make that happen to me. Maybe those cringe lines worked a lot better when she wasn't plastered on spiked party punch, or she just remembered to use better material. Something she did must work, or her trying to sneak girls into her bedroom wouldn't be a thing at all.

Seraphine groaned and slipped out from Caitlyn's grip, definitely blushing now. Hopefully just from the embarrassment of Caitlyn's antics, because if she was actually into Caitlyn we were gonna have to have a conversation about that. Caitlyn was too old for her, and off-limits anyway when she was my ... never mind. Once she'd slipped away from Caitlyn, Seraphine smiled politely. "That's very nice of you to say, but I'm afraid I already promised Jinx I'd talk to her before the performance. If you'll excuse me." She quickly attached herself to me, grabbing my arm and directing me towards the backstage area.

"Oh!" Caitlyn eyes lit up in drunken comprehension, and as soon as she started grinning I braced for an incoming horror. "Goooot it! You two have fun with your 'private talk' then!"

I groaned and thought about telling her how she was jumping to crazy conclusions, but trying to use logic on a drunk was a losing proposition. The only solution was to try to get out of there before Caitlyn could make things worse than she already had. Too bad I wasn't fast enough to evade her loudly calling out after us, "Use protection!"

"I'm gonna kill her," I grumbled as I fled the scene with Seraphine.

"I'll help you hide the body," Seraphine murmured back. She was smiling, so I was almost completely certain she was kidding. Then again, it was always the nice ones you wouldn't suspect who wound up having a secret brutal streak.

I sighed and shook my head. "Sorry about her. I'll give her a hard time for this once she sobers up." I was almost tempted to go to Mrs. Kiramman about it, but that was probably crossing the line. Even if she was being annoying, talking to her mom was a bit too close to snitching. Besides, it wasn't exactly Caitlyn's fault she was drunk when someone had spiked the punch. Though you'd think she would've noticed at some point if she was drinking enough of it to get that sloshed. Then again, one of the things booze was supposed to do was mess with your ability to tell how much booze you'd had.

Thankfully we made it to the backstage area without any more trouble from Caitlyn or anyone else. Which probably meant Lux had stepped up to deal with her for a bit. I was gonna have to thank her once all this was settled. Though knowing her, I'd probably just got another smile and a nice comment about how it was no trouble at all.


As we stepped into the backstage dressing room I could swear I felt something pass next to me, but when I looked over there was nothing. Probably just some weird airflow or something. I shrugged and sat down on the couch while Seraphine sat down in front of the mirror and quickly checked herself before turning to me. "So what did you want to talk to me about, Jinx?" A second later a wickedly playful smirk appeared on her lips. "Assuming this wasn't just your sneaky way of dragging me away for a sloppy makeout session. Don't mess up my hair or makeup, I'm gonna be on stage soon."

I scoffed and grabbed one of the cushions off the sofa and threw it at her head. "Don't you start too!"

Seraphine snickered as the pillow bounced off her head. "Blame Caitlyn."

"Oh, I intend to." That wasn't why I'd dragged Seraphine off on her own, though. I cleared my throat and tried to get back to what I'd been planning to talk to her about in the first place. "Anyway, speaking of being up on stage, that's coming up pretty soon. You feeling good?"

"Yeah." Seraphine sent a shaky smile my way, but after trying to hold it for a few seconds she sighed and shook her head. "Well, mostly good. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little terrified too. It's going up on stage in front of the entire school, after all. It's normal to be nervous before you perform, especially in front of your peers. If something goes wrong or I forget the lyrics halfway through everyone at the school is gonna notice and talk about it. And even if they don't say anything to my face, I'll know they're thinking it. 'Oh look, there's the girl who totally bombed at the school talent show.'"

"Want me to blow up the stage if that happens?" I offered. "I bet nobody would be talking about you metaphorically bombing the talent show if I actually bomb it."

Seraphine snickered. "Let's hold off on using terrorism to distract from any issues with my performance, but thanks for offering."

"Anytime." I grinned and clapped her shoulder. "You know what they say, a good friend will help you move a couch, and a great friend will help you move a body. Throwing bombs around in the middle of a talent show feels like it's a step past that. Which means I qualify as the best friend of all time, right?"

She grinned at me. "Something like that, yeah." She moved over to the couch and sat down next to me, bumping my shoulder with hers. "Thanks for being here. You don't need to set off a bunch of bombs to distract everyone from me messing up my performance to be my best friend, you've already got that locked up. It's just a shame you can't be on stage with me."

I shrugged. "Sorry, but you need someone who actually knows what they're doing up there. Though I suppose if you did start struggling I could just jump up there, grab a guitar, and start making things up as I went. I'd probably be so terrible that nobody would even notice if you were singing off-key or whatever." I'd wanted to help out with her music, but there just hadn't been time for it while taking care of everything else.

"Or I could always go a bit harder rock and put you in charge of the pyrotechnics," Seraphine smiled and leaned against me, letting her head rest on my shoulder. "Or maybe not. You'd probably make the explosions so big and awesome that they'd completely overshadow my performance. I'm not a diva, but I am the band's frontwoman..."

"Me overshadow you at music? Impossible." I grinned and threw an arm around her shoulders. "Music is your whole thing."

For a while we just sat there together, not really saying anything. Maybe that's part of what being good friends was, not always needing to fill the space with words and conversation. Though it probably also helped that she could do her whole empathy emotions-sensing thing. I tried to keep all the nice friendship thoughts front and center so she could pick up on them. I might not have any magical powers to read her mood, but it definitely felt like she was a little less tense now.

Still, it wouldn't hurt to make sure. "Hey, I saw you doing the ear thing earlier. You're not having trouble with ... you know ... your thing, are you?"

"A bit." Seraphine sighed and sent an apologetic smile my way. "It usually doesn't bother me too much, but there are a lot of people here, emotions are running high, and I'm a bit stressed out over going on stage in half an hour." She covered one of her ears and sighed, shaking her head. "So ... yeah, it's bothering me a bit more than normal."

I'd suspected that was probably the case. "Well, if you've got fifteen minutes before you need to start getting ready with your band, it sounds like you've got a bit of time left to blow off some steam. We've got this nice room all to ourselves, after all..."

"True..." I thought I heard something that sounded kind of like a gasp, but a second later it stopped mattering because Seraphine was singing.

Always on the outside,
Through a window looking in,
Never the right time,
So the chance goes by again,
The lines begin to show,
When we feel broken
To move on we have,
To drop the pieces we're holding

It didn't take long for the magic to start, as little glistening motes of light appeared from nowhere and began settling all over the room. The gentle pinks and blues of Seraphine's magic always reminded me of better times, when there'd been a different pink-haired girl in my life. Sometimes I felt bad about how much I'd moved on with my life. It's not like I'd forgotten about revenge against Silco, but after four years it just didn't hurt as bad as it used to. I had a life now, a pretty damn good one by most standards. It's not like I was abandoning Zaun or anything, it was just…

Wouldn't Vi want me to be happy?

Seraphine must have picked up some of what I was thinking because she leaned a bit closer and locked eyes with me as she kept singing.

And no one is Perfect,
You don't need to be strong,
Every single day,
No one really knows along the way,
That the best things in life won't be,
Perfect anyway

Oh. I'd forgotten how much harder Seraphine's music hit when she let her magic out. She was a good singer just purely on her own skills, but when she broke out her empathy and fused it with her singing it was on a whole other level. I'd never quite bought her talk about how everyone has a song written on their soul, but it sure felt like she was singing to something deep inside. Like yeah, maybe I was kinda messed up and didn't get things right, but that was okay.

Vi never wanted me to be some perfect person who never messed up and perfectly balanced everything with Piltover and Zaun. She'd just want me to be happy and do the best I could.


I was gonna say something when I noticed something odd. There was a space in the middle of the room where none of Seraphine's magical lights were landing. A strange sort of blank area where there was nothing, even though something should definitely be there.

I whipped out Zapper. Paranoid? Probably, but sometimes paranoia is just the world's way of warning you that an invisible demon is about to eat your face.

I quickly rolled two dials on Zapper's side to set it to stun intensity and wider dispersal, then flicked off the safety that turned it from a tool to a weapon and fired. Seraphine let out a startled scream at the sudden and unexplained violence, but I was far more interested in the fact that someone else was screaming.

An instant later, Luxanna Crownguard popped into existence, seemingly out of thin air, twitching from the aftereffects of taking a direct hit from Zapper. At that power setting it wouldn't do any serious damage, but she wouldn't be doing much for the next minute or so.

"Gotcha." I grinned triumphantly down at her.

"Is that Lux?!" Seraphine gasped. "When did she—how—I thought I felt—" Her eyes were already wide with shock, but an instant later they nearly popped out of her head as she latched onto my arm. "Jinx, she saw me!"

The reality of the situation came crashing down on me. I'd just attacked the daughter of a foreign diplomat who was here to do vital business with Piltover. And said daughter was from a nation that super-hated mages, and Seraphine had just outed herself as a magic-user. This was… well 'bad' felt like the understatement of the century.

"Aw monkey-shitting fuckballs." I groaned. It wouldn't be long before Lux's guards noticed she was missing, and Seraphine was supposed to be with her band to start their performance soon. What was I supposed to do now?!

---

Current Stability: 0
Willpower: 1

How Does Jinx Handle Lux Before She Recovers?

[ ][Treatment] Make Her Comfortable, This Was All A Misunderstanding.

[ ][Treatment] Take Her Sword, But Don't Tie Her Up

[ ][Treatment] Tie Her Up and Search Her For Any Hidden Weapons

What Approach Does Jinx Use To Talk To Lux?

[ ][Talking] Be Nice, We're All Friends Here, Right?

[ ][Talking] Interrogation, We Need Answers!

[ ][Talking] Threats, Seraphine is in Danger If Her Secret Gets Out

---

I resolved the problem of finding a song that matched Seraphine's voice by just ... using an actual in-character song for her.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O11UcwRctAE

I'll definitely bookmark a couple of those songs, though. Odds are Seraphine's gonna be singing again at some point in the quest. Plus a good library of songs might be handy when I'm vaguely toying with the idea of a "By Day They're A Rock Band, By Night They Fight Fascism" quest.

Also, you have to wonder exactly what Lux was expecting to see when she decided to do a little spying on Jinx and Seraphine, especially after Caitlyn was teasing them so much.