I Had to Ally With My Manic Ex-Best Friend, But One Desperate Kiss in the Ruins Changed Everything

The air was thick with the bite of burnt chemicals and ozone, a toxic perfume that clung to the back of his throat. Ekko knelt amidst the twisted metal and shattered ferrocrete of what was, only an hour ago, a key distribution hub for the Sump. Meds, clean water filters, food—all of it now buried under smoking debris. This was the third strike this week, each one more precise, more damaging than the last. He ran a gloved finger over a blackened crater wall, the material still warm. His portable scanner whirred softly, its green light playing over the scorched surface.

The device beeped, displaying a molecular structure he didn't recognize on its small screen. It was volatile, deeply unstable. More so than anything the usual chem-barons cooked up in their filth-choked labs. This was new. This was different. A cold knot formed in his stomach. Unpredictability was a currency in Zaun, but this felt like a deliberate escalation, a move designed to cripple, not just to cause chaos.

Then he saw it.

Splashed across the one piece of wall still standing, a crude approximation of her work in shocking neon pink. A grinning face, its eyes wild and asymmetrical, its teeth a jagged line of pure mania. It was meant to be Jinx. It was her color, her theme. But it felt wrong. The lines were too frantic, the glee in the painted expression somehow forced, lacking her signature, destructive artistry. Still, it was her calling card, a deliberate signpost in the middle of the devastation.

His jaw tightened, the muscles flexing along his cheekbone. Jinx.

The name was a familiar ache in his chest, a dull throb of fury and something else, something deeper and more painful that he refused to name. He remembered a time when her hands were for building things with him, not for breaking them. A time when her laughter wasn't a prelude to sirens and screams. Now she was targeting the very people she grew up with, strangling the lifelines of the Undercity for a laugh. What had started as attacks on Piltover assets had devolved into this—mindless destruction aimed at her own.

The old pain, sharp and sudden, cut through the layers of his anger. The ghost of the girl she was stood beside the monster she had become, and for a burning moment, he hated them both. He hated her for what she did, and he hated himself for the part of him that still remembered pig-tails and shared dreams in the dark.

He pushed himself to his feet, the scanner clutched tight in his fist. The graffiti might have been a crude imitation, but the message was clear. She, or someone pretending to be her, was declaring war on his community. On his home. The frustration was a physical thing, coiling in his gut. He had to stop her. It wasn't just his duty as the leader of the Firelights; it was personal. This time, it was too personal.

He didn't have to track her far. The rhythmic thunder of her minigun, Pow-Pow, echoed through the rusted guts of a derelict chem-refinery, a sound as distinctive as her manic laughter. He found her on a catwalk overlooking a series of massive, corroded vats. She was a whirlwind of motion and color, her long blue braids snapping through the air as she spun, peppering the metal tanks with bullets. Sparks flew like angry fireflies, and with every few bursts of gunfire, she let out a whooping shriek that was more ragged than joyful.

“Having fun, Jinx?” he yelled over the din, his voice flat.

She stopped, whirling to face him. The grin that split her face was wide and sharp, but it didn't reach her eyes. Her magenta eyes were blown wide, pupils like pinpricks in a sea of frantic energy. They darted around, never quite settling on him, as if seeing things in the shadows he couldn't.

“Ekko! You came to my party! I was hoping you’d show up. The old place needed a little… redecorating!” She gestured with her shark-faced rocket launcher, Fishbones, and fired.

He didn't wait. The world dissolved into a smear of green light as he activated the Z-Drive. The rocket crawled through the air, slow and ponderous. He saw the trajectory, saw the weakened support pillar it was aimed at. He pushed himself backward in time, the sensation a familiar lurch in his stomach, and reappeared a dozen feet to the left just as the explosion tore through the spot where he’d been standing. The catwalk buckled.

“Too slow!” she screamed, but her voice cracked on the last word.

He moved again, a series of short, disorienting jumps that brought him closer. He needed to get his hands on her, on her gear. He dodged a spray of bullets from Pow-Pow, the shots stitching a line of holes in the metal wall behind him. Her aim was wild. She was usually a prodigy of ballistic precision, able to shoot the wings off a fly from a hundred paces. This was just spraying and praying, a desperate barrage of noise and violence.

Another jump put him on the same level, only a few yards away. He saw it then, up close. A sheen of sweat covered her pale skin. A slight tremor ran through her hands as she struggled to aim the heavy minigun. Her movements were jagged, her usual fluid, acrobatic grace replaced by something frantic and uncoordinated. She wasn’t reveling in the destruction. She was flailing in it, drowning in her own storm. His anger cooled, replaced by a cold, sharp spike of alarm. This wasn’t Jinx. Not the one he knew. This was someone on the verge of breaking completely.

He lunged, not with his blade, but with his body. One final time-jump closed the last few feet between them, the world stuttering into place as he slammed into her. The impact sent Pow-Pow clattering from her grip, the heavy minigun spinning across the grated floor. He had her pinned against the railing, his forearm pressed firmly across her collarbones, his other hand gripping her wrist. She was shockingly light, all sharp angles and tense muscle beneath his hands.

For a breathless second, they were still. Her magenta eyes, inches from his, were wide with something other than mania. It was fear. Pure, undiluted fear. Her chest heaved against his arm, her breaths coming in ragged, shallow gasps. The chemical smell was stronger now, sharp and cloying, coming directly from her.

His gaze dropped. Strapped to the bandolier across her chest was a small, unfamiliar device. It was sleek and metallic, nothing like her usual scrap-built aesthetic of bright paint and jagged parts. A network of thin, glowing green tubes pulsed within its casing, and a fine, oily mist seeped from a crack in its side. It was the source. The unstable chemical signature he’d found at the bomb sites was leaking from this thing attached to her.

“Jinx,” he started, his voice low, the anger gone, replaced by a cold dread. “What is that thing?”

Her eyes darted down to the device, then back to his face. Her lips peeled back in a snarl, but it was a fragile, defensive gesture. “Get off me!” she hissed, struggling against his hold. Her strength was wiry but desperate.

“Who gave it to you?” he pressed, his grip tightening. This changed everything. She wasn't the architect of this new wave of terror; she was a delivery system. Someone was using her, turning her into a walking chemical bomb. The thought sent a chill through him that had nothing to do with the Zaun night.

He saw the sigil then, etched into the metal casing of the device. It was a stylized ‘K’ crossed with a chemical retort, a symbol he vaguely recognized from the old stories, a mark belonging to a chem-baron long thought dead and buried.

Before he could form another question, her free hand moved in a blur. She didn't reach for a gun or a knife. She slammed her palm against a large, red button on the railing next to them—an emergency purge valve for the massive vats below.

An alarm blared, deafening and immediate. A deep, seismic groan vibrated up through the catwalk. Jinx used his momentary distraction to wrench her wrist free, shoving him back with a surprising force.

“Party’s over!” she shrieked, her voice laced with genuine panic.

She scrambled away from him, back toward the crumbling infrastructure. Without looking back, she lobbed one of her chomper grenades toward the already damaged support pillar. The explosion was immense, far bigger than the grenade should have allowed, likely igniting residual chem-fumes in the air. The catwalk didn't just buckle this time; it tore apart. Metal screamed as it ripped from its moorings. Ekko threw himself backward, activating the Z-Drive just as the entire structure gave way, plunging into the churning, toxic sludge below.

He reappeared on a solid platform thirty feet away, his heart hammering against his ribs. He watched the wreckage sink into the bubbling vat. Of Jinx, there was no sign. She was gone, vanished into the industrial maze she called a playground. All that remained was the echo of her panicked shriek and the burning image of the sigil in his mind.