~spoilers for Arcane Season 1~

(this is the setting for "Arcade")

The scrapyard was grimy and obscured by omnipresent smog. The filthy display, swarmed by vermin corpses and half-alive insects, was situated in the depths of the Undercity. Nevertheless, a greenish glow and erratic firelights permitted vision among the gruesome and imposing mounds of discarded objects.

Motion came from a pile in particular.

Crouching on a slope of debris, an adolescent girl was scouring through the waste in search of salvageable items. Any piece that could be repurposed into one of her inventions and gadgets, either as a mechanism or a decorative element, found a new home at the bottom of a large brown bag. It was slumped a few feet away from the teen's delicate frame, presently hunched over an array of neglected metallic bottles.

One of her dark boots, which had been scribbled on and splattered with highly colorful paint, accidentally knocked into her bag as she hurried to drop the containers inside of it. Clattering, clicking and the occasional screeching of metal were the only sounds anyone but her would have heard. For a handful of hours, these noises had been her sole companions, or rather, they would have been if it were not for the pestering chatter in her brain. As surely as her vivid blue braids swung around her body every time she knelt to observe a new discovery, voices from her past whispered incessantly inside her head.

Suddenly, a foreign noise disturbed her quest.

Tap.

Within the span of her inhale, she produced her pistol and whirled around silently, with fatal speed, aiming it towards her right. The barrel glinted softly in the semi-darkness, pointed attentively at the edge of the closest mountain of junk.

Jinx's entire body was taut with apprehension, and each of her senses were heightened. Her respiration had ceased, her blue eyes glared hauntingly at the shadows beyond the limits of her vision. As her finger caressed the trigger lovingly, she heard it again.

Tap.

And again.

Tap. Tap.

Steps.

   "Who's there?!" she yelled, menacingly.

Her nose scrunched in dislike and her grip on her firearm only tightened. Jinx could have heard the fluttering wings of a firelight, the crawling of a worm, the flesh of a dead rat detaching itself slowly from its bones...

Tap.

She fired.

The bullet met a stack of garbage in the distance, popping against something metallic before the muffled sound of objects collapsing and sliding reached her ears.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.

   "Just a snake."

The cloaked intruder revealed themselves, closely followed by these words spoken in amusement.

The hooded cape enshrouded the newcomer completely from head to ankles. The presumed stranger watched fragments roll down the pile of rubbish and realized the girl had leapt away and was running in their direction. Simultaneously, a chomping contraption struck them in the face, painlessly, underneath the hood of their long cape. Its metallic jaw clung to the nearest side of the garment and instantly released an opaque blast of toxic gas.

The thick substance formed a smokey cloud around their body, penetrating their cloak and covering their snakeskin boots in curvaceous wisps. The individual felt a whooshing presence behind their neck as their hood was being pulled off. They hard shoe soles landing in the dirt as they staggered slightly, coughing and waving their slender arms to dissipate the remaining poisonous gas. It was meant to enervate, disorient and temporarily blind whoever breathed it. It had none of these effects on the mysterious being, however.

As the last of the heavy gas cleared, Jinx was revealed, fiercely aiming her gun at their chin from a cautious distance. The young girl gasped in bewilderment, frowning promptly.

She recognized the woman she currently held at gunpoint.

Her blue eyes dropped rapidly to the creature's snakeskin footwear before flicking back up to stare at her inquisitive smirk. The teenager did not lower her pistol in the slightest and spoke hesitantly.

   "... Hiedra?"

Hiedra allowed herself to grin, letting out a sigh of relief. Her Marks never led her wrong; the blue-haired girl standing a few feet away from her truly was Powder.

   "Hey there, kiddo."

The child pouted.

   "Don't call me that. It's Jinx, now."

Her statement echoed icily in the junkyard, there was a dangerous edge woven in her almost raspy voice.

The sex worker chuckled, marveling at her old friend's emotional turmoil. The tremors of the youngster's unstable psyche were steadily stimulating her empath abilities.

Jinx abruptly shook her firearm up and down, as if in exasperation, revolving to her left.

She snapped at the emptiness, "I know, shut up! I'm going to ask!"

The girl looked back at the prostitute, aligning her weapon with her head again.

   "Hiedra..." she drawled, thoughtfully. "Where were you?"

   "What do you mean?" The courtesan feigned innocence.

   "Since the last time you were down here. That day at The Last Drop was the last time I saw you. You remember, right?"

Strangely, her tone could be bitter and playful at once. It thrilled Hiedra.

   "Of course..." The elf-like being glanced down the barrel of the gun and cleared her throat. "You know, our Deal still stands; it's an eternal seal, in fact. I can't hurt you unless you hurt me first."

The mouse skull Mark tingled against her skin, thankfully intact despite Jinx's earlier launching of a smoke bomb at the creature's face.

Visibly doubting her interlocutor, the Zaunite child brought her firearm down regardless. "So?"

Hiedra bent her head, smiling to lend her lie some honesty:

   "I was travelling."

   "Where?"

The teen's repulsed retort caused the adult to laugh.

   "Oh, anywhere and wherever the elements took me."

Her poetic response impressed Jinx enough to convince her to change the subject and consider her curiosity satiated.

Nodding at their surroundings, she asked, "Did the elements take you down here?"

   "No. I was actually hoping to find you."

The adolescent began walking towards her previously abandoned loot.

   "Why?"

   "I was looking forward to seeing you again. Besides, I need someone to tell me what happened while I was gone. Apparently, a lot happened."

Hiedra's voice was light-hearted and joking, even if she was overwhelmed by the raw agony that the girl unknowingly emitted.

The hooker's unpleasant encounter with Silco, a number of hours before she sought out his adoptive daughter, had strengthened her intent to discover exactly what had prevailed in the Undercity while she was occupied with matters in Piltover. Although she was still assessing how to navigate and - more importantly - how to take advantage of the "new" Underground, she believed that rekindling her short-lived complicity with Powder would be doing herself a favor. Hiedra's initial interest for the inventive young girl had been undeniably revived by her unexpected reunion with Vi at Stillwater Hold. Needless to say, Violet was not her priority despite this, and her own schemes had guided her decision to track the youngest of the sisters down.

   "You should ask someone else," the teenager argued, grief tainting her sentence.

   "Tough luck, I don't wanna ask anyone else."

Tap.

                Tap.

Tap.

                Tap.

Tap.

                Tap.

The sex worker casually strutted to join the kid, who was retrieving her bag. She heaved the sack over her right shoulder, groaning as its contents clicked and clanged inside of it, poking at her back through the fabric.

The two women gazed silently at each other, inevitably reminded of the time they met. The youngest's pursed lips indicated that she was waiting for Hiedra to speak.

The courtesan whisked a few strands of her curly hair behind her shoulder.

   "What were you doing before?" she queried, intrigued.

The blue-haired troublemaker seemed to think the answer was obvious.

   "I was looking for parts."

Hiedra smiled earnestly. "I'm happy to see you're still making stuff. That bomb you threw at me earlier was flawless!"

The creature's enthusiasm startled Jinx into grinning. She laughed shortly and dismissed the compliment, "That's nothing..! That one was a really simple design!"

The teen swiftly glided down the hill of rubbish to stand in front of her surprise guest.

   "I don't doubt you've got a hundred designs! You were always smart."

Her encouraging, cheerful demeanor did not keep the troubled girl from reacting with misplaced animosity.

   "Stop it! You don't know that! You don't know..!" Breathing raggedly, Jinx began flinching at invisible phenomena and her blue eyes twitched from one location to another.

The young girl suddenly bit at her lower lip, exhaling shakily and loudly. Her pupils slowly met Hiedra's once more.

   "Everything has changed. I changed."

The pain and despair that strained her biting voice were beyond perceptible: the hooker felt them clawing at her skeleton.

   "Please, talk to me," the traveller breathed out, stunned by the gorgeous vulnerability of Jinx's wild emotional range.

The child sniffled, shrugging in an absurdly carefree manner.

   "Sure! I know the perfect place."

~

Fragments of glass crunched and squeaked underneath their boots' soles.

Hiedra skimmed the dark inside of the establishment with her flame colored eyes.

   "Why are we here?"

The teenager who led her here replied laconically. "We used to come here."

She was more focused on reaching the shooting game along the back of the arcade than she was on giving a complete answer.

   "Vander used to bring me here," the prostitute distractedly commented.

Her companion relieved herself from her hefty bag of collectibles. Then, the girl aimed her pistol at the first target, pulling the trigger. As the oldest of the pair dropped to the ground to sit against the structure, a bullet tore into the first panel with a "Bang!".

   "How did you know Vander?"

   "We were friends."

Bang!

   "No, you weren't!" Anger was laced into her blatant display of confusion. "Benzo was Vander's friend. We saw him all the time. We never saw you."

The young girl shook her head while she made her statements, her strands of blue hair wavering with the abrupt jerks.

Bang!

                  Bang!

   "I was a... Different kinda friend than Benzo was to him. At least, from what I know."

Bang!

Jinx ignored her companion's mischievous grin. "What do you mean, 'different'?"

Bang!

   "You know what I do for work, don't you?"

   "Yeah..." The agreement was naive, suddenly followed by an irked remark, "Was he your friend only because of that?!"

Bang!

                   Bang!

                                             Bang!

Emotion slipped into the hooker's voice. "No... He was my friend despite it."

   "Is that why you're nice to me? Because it's what Vander would've wanted!?"

The sheer amount of rage, pain and derision that transpired from Jinx's harsh questions startled Hiedra.

Bang!

                                           Bang!

                                                                               Bang!

                                          Bang!

Bang!

                                          Bang!

   "No."

Bang!

   "Are you lying?!" the teenager exclaimed reproachfully, whipping to her left and pointing the barrel of her gun at the sex worker's nose.

Keeping her tone even and honest, the woman reaffirmed, "No."

   "Then, why did you come back here?" the girl half-whispered, warily.

Hiedra told her:

   "For you. You're the reason I came back, Jinx."

   "Really?"

   "A lot of what's left down here doesn't have much worth."

The teen's retort was defensive and quick. "I like it here."

Before getting shot in the face, the courtesan deftly added, "So do I. I think the Undercity is beautiful. It wouldn't have its beauty if it weren't worthless."

The youngest of the two removed her pistol from Hiedra's face and stepped closer to her, causing her long cerulean braids to swing delicately around her body. The child looked down at the prostitute, towering above her. She produced a quiet inquiry.

   "Am I beautiful?"