6 Meddler’s True Form
by moissanitej@gmail.com“She was burnt to a crisp. Madame Jeb, is dead, in my home.” Meddler groaned. “I’ll have to throw her out in the cold. Don’t tell anyone where she was last at.” He tossed open the front door which let the killing freezing temperatures slide in as he tried to toss her out.
“Hey!” Jinx complained. “There is a baby in here and those are killer freezing temperatures!” Hmph. She saw Captain Teemo already on it, getting some of the blankets off the ground around the baby and Delulu.
“I don’t think she is going to say much for a little while,” Captain Teemo told Jinx. “Now I feel kind of bad I told her she was too young to be thinking about following Lenny and Madame Jeb. Especially when Lenny was . . . Smeech maybe not . . . the best . . .”
“I just killed him not too long ago,” Jinx admitted. “Shouldn’t he just be a spirit? Is he already back? What’s he doing being stuck here too, who’s his master?”
“Oooh!” Captain Teemo hit his head. “It was right in front of me, Bandle Scout! That’s how they even nailed a yordle! We don’t die very often, and there is a gap between spirit and physical. This place must have found a magical location, and with their time and magic knowledge, are able to pull balanced yordles that were spirit becoming physical. That’s when it would be weakest.”
“Which would be the recently dead spirits coming back to physical form?” Jinx asked.
“Yep. Oh, I really need to get that information back out there.” He looked at Delulu. “She and that baby need to get to Bandle City. Freljord, Freljord, Freljord. Where’s the closest location back to home? It’s probably near here, magic people like magic spots.”
“Don’t even think about it.” Meddler came back in after getting rid of Madame Bej’s body. “Why are you all in one cage?”
“That yordle baby is hers,” Jinx told him. “Madame Bej was hiding that. Know why?”
“Not really, that doesn’t make any sense,” Meddler said. “It would have been hers, she would have contracted it.”
“Who owned Smeech?” Captain Teemo demanded.
“I don’t know who that is,” Meddler said, “and I don’t like the tone.”
“A recently dead yordle I helped kill out there by making an awesome gun,” Jinx sneered. “So who’s playing near the recently dead yordles?”
“And covering it up. Delulu had a baby, but it wasn’t claimed. You said it’s parents were dead,” Captain Teemo accused him.
“What I have for information,” Meddler insisted. “Stupid. Either way, Delulu and it are mine anyway.”
Alright. This is it, Captain. He had what was his mission right there, as well as an extra civillian. I am going to put these critters down, grab the top of the cage, kick that door open, and grab Meddler while he makes a get away to Bandle City.
She placed them down, grabbed the top, popped the cage open, knocking Meddler backwards. With it open? She heard the sounds of magic that probably meant they were gone.
Good. Now it was just her.
“I’m back. Good job, Jinx.”
She looked back and saw him again. What? “Why’d you do that?”
“I have another Scout I need to get home, but she can’t get back yet. So, I’m not going yet,” he insisted. “I gave Delulu and her baby safely to Bandle City.”
Man! Almost had Meddler dead. Of all people Captain Teemo could have started to like.
“Idiot.” So close. Jinx just glared at him from her cage.
“I am not leaving you until I figure out how to get you out too,” he stated. “There might also be more yordles here, especially if Smeech is here. I have to find out everything.”
Ugh. She rolled her eyes. His freedom. He was a soldier first. Couldn’t change that in him. Still? So close. If she had just-
“I have been fairly nice,” Meddler told them. “Dinners. Desserts. Pillows. Blankets. You get to stay in the same room, talk, share that empathy between each other. All of that. And you?” He gestured toward Captain Teemo. “You killed two yordles and took my prized yordle Delulu away somewhere. Even the brand new one! Fucking yordle location to Bandlewood around here somewhere.”
“Home is never that far,” Captain Teemo confirmed.
Meddler stood in front of Jinx’s cage. “And you? You meant to murder Madame Jeb. One of my best customers.”
Jinx rubbed her fingers together in front of him. She might be cuffed but she could show him, that she still had some mobility.
“A challenge or a proposal with Meat Claws. A new contract with Madame Durham. Killing Madame Jeb. Helping yordles break free. I? Am well passed pissed. Fluffykins, you are now on the open market to buy. I’ll even let you go at a lower price, just to get rid of you!”
He moved closer to Jinx. “Get back in your cage. Do not forget the leverage I hold over you. I made her forget everything once, and you don’t have any toy rabbit to help-”
Jinx had flipped on him, grabbed him from behind, and choked him with the unbreakable chains between her cuffs she almost always wore. He might be magical, but he was a weak man. Die, die! She swung her legs in unison to his back, pushing it in, to make the choke even stronger. Suffocate long and hard you son of a bitch!
She felt the struggle beneath her arms. The struggle to live, that fought against her to breathe. Wheezing. Gasping. Choking. Until finally, the struggle quit. Her legs came down first.
She didn’t let go for some time with her arms, wanting to make sure he wasn’t trying to trick her.
She let go and watch his body hit the ground. Eyes wide open and dead.
Done. It was done. The nightmare was dead.
The nightmare was dead for good.
She collapsed onto her knees, and there was nothing of Jinx left as Powder sank to the floor.
It was over.
Captain Teemo came over to check on her. Unburdened relief was flowing through Powder. He looked out the windows. Icy Tundra. He couldn’t grab her with magic anymore, nothing worked on her. She would have to get into the cage.
He moved toward the dead Meddler. Deserved. Your lucky your kind doesn’t live for eternity, or I’d nail each one of you over and over when I’m freed. Having said that to himself, he tried to inspect his time machine. It was time to move on. Oh, I don’t understand these controls! This was way advanced for him and not his specialty. He looked back at her. “Powder, I’ll be right back, I promise.”
Captain Teemo arrived back to her with a yordle that would definitley be able to figure it out. One of the smartest yordles that was in between phases, but physical enough to come back for a little while. “We need to get her out of here. Do you know how to control it, Cecil?”
Cecil didn’t answer, he was just studying it. Then he looked back toward her.
There was some recognition. “Do you know her, Cecil?”
“Not her, and not here,” Cecil said. “In a parallel world I was stuck in, but I knew the boy who knew her. She is Jinx, but?”
“You don’t need details, just fix this thing, so we can get out.”
“Details help things,” Cecil said.
“You do not want details of her.”
“You said she won’t be sensed in here because she is immune to magic, but I know that she used shimmer.”
“It’s dwindled. It doesn’t do anything anymore.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s immune, I told you that.” Man, Cecil was not an easy yordle to get along with. He denied his very essence of magic for science, but right now, he needed that.
“Teemo, I am still healing, my physical form is brand new and not very strong. You have a good five more minutes,” Cecil said. “So give me any information you know.”
“I already told you, she’s immune, and he someone caught her by targeting the cage with her. We need to do that, except for a safer place that what it’s set to. She needs to go back home to Zaun.”
“How is she immune?” he continued. “What is going on? There is a dead boy on the ground, and she is just curled up on the floor.”
“Damn it Cecil B. Heimerdinger, she killed our master, we’ve been stuck imprisoned in a magical creature encampment for weeks! Is that enough for you?! And my name is Captain Teemo, now fix this thing already!”
Cecil didn’t seem to know how to handle it, but he demanded it, and Captain Teemo didn’t have much time. He was set now into looking deeply into it. “It’s on a set program. It looks like it is one of several. Number 12 of 267? Hmmm.” He grasped his chin. “It’s commanded by others, it is pre-set.”
“Well, fix the presets,” Captain Teemo demanded. “Please, this is important.”
“Look fellow yordle, this is . . . it’s more like a circuit piece. A cage is already pre-programmed to be picked up with it. If she’s in it, she would be sent to . . . near Demacia, 692 years ago.”
“692 years ago. That’s why they don’t care about alerts the next day.” Captain Teemo should have expected it, but still? “They just pick years randomly and set up shop?”
“Yes, and it looks there is a commanding piece that connects the other ones. That’s how everything stays in line. Are you fine, Captain Teemo?”
“I’ve had better days,” he said so tired. “We can’t send her to the next location, someone’s bound to be there.”
Cecil looked out the window. “Without proper heat, she’ll die here. This is Frejlord. This magician must have had heated magic to keep this place so nice and comfy with warmth.”
Oh, he was right. It was starting to really freeze, she wouldn’t have long. “But then how do we get out?”
“We can,” Cecil said. “I don’t know how to take her.”
“No ideas?”
“Not in just a few minutes.” Cecil moved over toward him. “She looks so . . . different. Not like the rumors.”
Captain Teemo tried to grab some blankets to put them over her. What was he supposed to do?
“Where is her friend, Ekko?”
“I haven’t seen him, just a parallel of him. He wanted to help her escape, but it’s too tough. This Time Meddler, he has manipulative magic and he’s threatened her friends. Mindwipe. Shimmer junkies. Everything.”
“Ekko my prodigy on shimmer?!”
It was easy to see Cecil knew her friend.
“Get Ekko here, on the double! If you get him here, he should be able to figure out something. He’d last long enough to help in some way.”
Someone came through the door.
Something came through the door.
Heimerdinger watched as Captain Teemo was flung back into the cage so hard he smacked his head and lost conscience. Jinx started to scream and covered her head on the ground, as if she was an average person in danger, not like herself at all.
The creature, akin to a molting black bird, looked at Heimerdinger. “You leave in a couple of minutes, you don’t have long, be grateful for that.”
“Who are you?” he demanded.
“Do you think I would really put myself near Jinx and an ancient yordle without anything in between?” he asked. “I am not giving you a name, but I am the one referred to as Meddler by them. You are Cecil B. Heimerdinger. Shame you have no time to see your friend Ekko. Which is good because if he got involved, he would die.”
Twisting the knife. Heimerdinger could do nothing but glare as he grabbed the screaming Jinx on the floor, bringing her up by her neck. This thing holds so much magic within it, even if I could stick around, I could do nothing right now!
“Oh, you would not believe the things he has been up to. He gave me everything with her.” Corden had the gall to start choking her. “I bet you wish I would just keep this up and kill you, don’t you?” Nothing but involuntary choking sounds back. “Here’s the deal. You are my property. If you think you are ever going to escap me, think again. I am always out there. I can get to anyone you love at anytime. No one can stop me, and I don’t waste my sweet time traveling in that circus of magical creatures! I don’t waste time trying to please those who shame me! Those watching you are just more slaves, doing my bidding.”
He eased up on her neck again. “You can fight all you want, you won’t ever escape me. Jinx is nothing. Jinx is basically Powder. You’re nothing. No one can help you. No one can save you.”
She groaned. “Why?”
“Why?”
“Why?” she asked again.
“Why do I want you? Time fugitives have been messing around with Runeterra’s history. When someone finds out, they pay handsomely to know all of the truths hiding from them.” He brushed her hair back. “The ones watching you are little more than owned themselves. Whether the next one is as gentle remains to be seen. So keep this in mind? Kill them? And I don’t care! Now, the yordle has been a problem, I am selling it off, but I am keeping you.”
Jinx started to try and struggle more again. “Let me go!” she shrieked. “Let me go or you’ll regret it.”
“Oh, hello Jinx. Would you like to know something very, very interesting? One of the Time fugitives that have been responsible? Is another version of Ekko. Isn’t that interesting? That boy just can’t keep himself out of things when it comes to time. Oh, but you can’t blame him, he has no idea about this little arrangment between you and I. Hell, he doesn’t even have a Jinx. He’s just having fun. Yet, destiny still has to pair itself to a Jinx. Funny little thing it is.”
“Don’t.” She struggled. “Care!”
Oof, yes, that is what I wanted! Look at her. Came from basic girl who saw through glamour to Daughter of Silco, lady and master of all mechanized guns, not to mention becoming an icon of Zaun. Now? She’s had a master for weeks belittling her, selling her to anyone who had enough money to make her their plaything in any way they wished. “You know your friends will hurt if you don’t cooperate, but cooperating makes Jinx die, more and more.” And yet?
He loosened his grip on her neck almost completely.
“And yet you still make trouble?” He continued. You fully meant to kill a madame, and even fought to kill me, choking me out with your chains. Fully cuffed, still lethal. In a cage, still lethal. It was honestly a little breathtaking. Meddler had seen several things over his millenias, but she was definitely one of a kind.
Even now while he held her, able to end her, her eyes were hard, she was breathing hard, her whole self was a mess, but she was still screaming defy.
Not just her immunity, just the way she handled herself. When he picked her up, she was clearly her weak, more emotional self but she was still able to find the nerve to yell at him.
He pulled out some standard love potion the Madame’s used around their garden. Too much smell should be too much magic and kill. He put it next to Jinx’s nose. “Take a big whiff.” He watched her breath it in. Nothing. He reached for a potion that should instantly kill her once it touched bare skin.
He rubbed it on her face. Nothing. Could even the god warriors not kill her? Physical things could hit. He could clearly choke her to death. Physical only, no more magic. Not even the lightest casting of pink or purple in her eyes from the Zaun shimmer. Pure blue eyes. “I’ve decided.”
“ . . . yes.”
“Good. Powder. I am going to sit you down. You are going to march back over to that cage and get back in. You are going to wait patiently while the next caretaker shows up to watch over you.” He glanced over toward Heimerdinger. “It won’t matter, even if you tell your pupil. Time makes him my clay to scultp to my will if he tries anything against me. Goodbye.”
Heimerdinger continued to glare until he was gone.
Bandle City
Back in his spiritual form, Heimerdinger yelled. He moved around, trying to think! Ekko’s friend was shuffled in a heck of a terrible situation with Captain Teemo. He went toward the area with the new yordles that were brought back too. No way would they be leaving out of Bandle City for some time. I am going to figure this out. I am going to figure this out!
Nothing was impossible. There had to be a way to stop that time imbecile!