7 The Other Ekko
by moissanitej@gmail.comUniverse of Season 2 Episode 7
Ekko opened his eyes one day, and realized he’d missed time. After talking to Powder about the creation in the invention area? He was beginning to think differently. He asked her about what kind of things they talked about. He saw a mural of Vi, looking exactly as how he once remembered her too. That proud, huge red jacket. Yeah, there was no doubt. Another him had taken over.
Powder addressed how he was angry and distant at first, even accusing her of killing Vi herself. And then?
“We kissed,” she said. “He was warming up to the world, I guess. I? I knew something was wrong, could feel it, so I am sorry, Ekko. But he acted like you when you got distant. Weird. I thought he might even leave for days like you did. . .”
Ekko didn’t even care about that, he saw the bigger picture. How is an Ekko suffering still? Ekko looked back to the large machine that was built. It was a quick job, for quick traveling, and definitely broken. But now? “Don’t worry, Powder. Can you be my assistant again for a little while?”
“I mean. Sure? I guess?” She seemed off. “Good to know I can go around kissing guys and it doesn’t bug you.”
Ekko pulled her closer and gave her a lingering, sweet kiss. “I’m sorry. Nah. Supremely jealous of myself.”
She hit his shoulder playfully. “Better be, Mister.” She looked at the machine. “So, this thing again? You sure?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Powder? I?” He never did it before. “This wasn’t how everything originally looked. I went back in time as a child, changed something, and this is the result. You’re a lot better than you were before.”
“I can definitely feel that. I felt it from him. He even accused me of being responsible for Vi.” Powder glanced at him. “Was Vi still here?”
Ouch. “I’m sorry.” Damn. “I didn’t mean-”
“Things change with change,” Powder said slowly. “I understand, Ekko. If you could have brought her back. You- . . . so you want to find this other Ekko and what exactly?”
“Figure this out. I fixed everything,” he stated. “Everyone was turned into a resource, nobody should have been hurt.” So why was there a hurting Ekko? The way he treated Powder at first, it was a real sign he had a Jinx.
Jinx was gone though. None of the Powders went crazy because of the Zero Drive. He made them all immune to it, so why? Ekko started to mess around with the burned out controls. This would take awhile, but once he got this fixed safely with Powder, he needed to look.
“How’d you do it? Whatever that gave you this world?” she asked.
“I had to pull a parallel you to this world, and my work read her like a resource. Like a rest on all Jinx into Power because . . .” Oh man, he was so in the doghouse. “It was all over.”
“Time travel. You never told me you had time travel.”
“I.” Oh. “Some things I can fix.”
“Vi had a big no on her?”
“I wasn’t here when she . . . I mean-”
“You can’t, just say you can’t,” she demanded.
Time chose this path. Nothing was perfect, and he knew that. To try and undo something that didn’t just happen in his timestream? That kind of thing, it was so risky. Hell, he did nothing but take a parallel and make her immune to his Zero Drive, and he came back to a vastly different world. If he saved Vi. Who knew what would happen. “I can’t.”
“I know.” She was crying, but trying to keep it together. “Because I know you would have, if you could have. So.” She wiped her eyes and then her nose. “She would be so calling me a baby right now.”
“No, I don’t think so,” he said gently. “I think she’d say ‘it’s okay, Powder’.” He gave her a hug and embraced her for a few minutes. The world’s really were so different.
“What changed besides Vi?”
Oh. “I used to have parents. They were called Wyeth and Inna. I don’t know where they went. They never contacted me.” They were gone. He didn’t catch it right away since they were hardly ever not working. But now? They never came home. There wasn’t a home for them. With them.
“I’m so sorry,” Powder whispered. “I didn’t know.”
“It’s okay.” It was just time taking it’s bite. He knew nothing was perfect, there was always a balance. “A balance.” Wait. “She should have been fine too.”
Powder moved from the hug. “Who should have been fine?”
“The parallel. She would have been changed too.” But?
“But if something was wrong, then some parellel self might be the one in trouble somehow?”
“I don’t know, but, I’ll find out.” He would find out.
Without a yordle’s help like the other him had last time, he and Powder had to recreate the machine with just them. Until?
Powder being Powder, she couldn’t leave her brothers out. He had to explain it all to Mylo and Claggor. After he explained the situation, he also had to explain his Zero Drive, and why it needed this bigger machine too. How his original one he got from a future self had all this extra technology included in it.
Yeah, Mylo definitely had to point out how stupid it was to get rid of that thing. Whatever. In the end, it helped though telling them. Those guys were great at their own inventions.
It took two and a half weeks with all three of them, but it was built. Stable.
“You be careful, and don’t stay long,” Claggor warned him. “Who knows what staying too long in a parallel world could do?”
“The other him was okay here,” Powder pointed it.
“Yeah, but he took him over,” Mylo agreed with Claggor. “This isn’t a mind over body thing, it’s two bodies of the same person in one universe. That could get nasty.”
“I won’t stay long. I’m gonna figure out what happened, and make sure it gets fixed,” he promised. “It’ll be okay. Besides, I’ll be scouting for a little while. I need to find the right parallel out of infinity.”
“Don’t make yourself sound remarkable,” Powder teased. “If whatever happened just shoved him here, it means it’s got to be close to ours. Probably right next to it.”
Right. Ekko turned the machine on. Time to figure this out.
Arcane Universe
Ekko checked his machine. Okay, this was really weird? Jinx was always in Zaun and this was not Zaun. “What is she doing . . . near Demacia?” That was not a safe place for anyone at nearly any point in history. Caught with any magic and they would imprison and give ‘treatments’ until people died. All that shimmer in her, they would call that magic in a split second. His time travel machine, yeah, he wasn’t much safer. Tuck that deep on the side. He wore a heavy coat to cover it up extra well in that parallel universe.
He was in some kind of festival? Someone singing on a stage. Inside a huge tent. It traced her here somewhere.
“Try again!”
Ekko heard a yell and then a heavy slap. He noticed some woman with wings crying on the ground. This is not Zaun at all. He took a second, hard glance.
Chains.
Collars.
Casted down looks.
And his own look became hard. Not since his world had restarted with Powder, had he looked at anything like that. He became extra aware of his surroundings, the old Ekko clawing itself back as he surveyed.
This place wasn’t a safe place for education. For families. For anything. This was a cold ass dumping ground of illegally selling magical creatures. A place near Demacia might seem stupid, but those would be the people paying the most, wanting to get their hands on magic aid.
A terrible place, but it still didn’t make any sense. Jinx wasn’t magic. Yeah, she used some shimmer, but it only lasted as long as the shimmer did. She was no more special than anyone else in Zaun magically. Not a damn sign. “Jinx.” He felt something tug at his pantleg, but his quick alert was on and he kicked it.
Which he found out was a yordle. I kicked a yordle? “I’m sorry,” he apologized to him.
“You said Jinx?” the yordle said, not even fussing about it. “Are you a friend?”
“You know Jinx?”
“Teemo!”
Ekko watched as this poor yordle was just yanked backwards several feet, choking on the collar he had around him. Bullshit! He glared at the woman holding him hostage.
“Fluffykins.” A kid went and grabbed the yordle, picking him up. “Naughty. You went too far. Momma says you can’t go the full extent of your leash.”
Ekko moved closer. “Oh, okay. I’ll move closer then. To you.” Yeah. He was real close. Right next to the woman staring her down.
“May I help you?” She didn’t care about the look at all.
“I want to talk to the yordle,” Ekko demanded.
The woman rolled her eyes. “Elise, Honey, put Teemo down so this boy can talk to him.”
Boy? I will boy you. If he had his baton right now, he would be in so much trouble with it.
The yordle Teemo came over. He stood beside Ekko.
“What’s your name?” Ekko couldn’t tell what this yordle’s name was with the two names moving around.
He seemed to pause. “My name?”
“Yeah. Your real name. What your friends call you,” Ekko said, making it clearer.
He nodded. “Captain Teemo. I’m Captain Teemo.”
“He’s Fluffykins! He’s extra soft with his bushy tail,” the kid said to Ekko.
Which Ekko ignored. He bent down to the ground to try and be more eye level. “Captain Teemo, have you seen Jinx around here?”
“I don’t know the exact time,” Captain Teemo said, “but if it’s almost 2:00 she should be coming in with Two-Tone Jack soon.”
Two-Tone Jack? “Who’s Two-Tone Jack? Is he nice? Is he mean?”
“He doesn’t mean to be mean,” Captain Teemo said. “If he’s mean.”
Whoah, that didn’t sound good. “Then he’s nice?”
“Dynamically, with Jinx, he’s her nicest owner.”
Owner? Fuck! “She’s not magical, what is she doing here?”
“She doesn’t get affected by time magic, as well as a lot of other magic now too.” Captain Teemo said. “It’s made her plenty valuable.”
What? “By how much? I mean, like, what do they- what can they do with that?”
“Time fugitives, they mess up the past, and the beliefs of people,” Captain Teemo said slowly. “They fool everyone, but not people nullified to time. She can even sense time travel with a very small delay.”
“No. No, no, nooo!” Ekko grabbed his head. “It was so perfect.” Every Jinx balanced to Powder perfectly. Except. The original one. While each Powder became null with just his Zero Drive, there must have been some creeping imbalance that stayed in. Eventually leaving her null to everything. With an imbalance getting worse as she grew older. “She remembers time travel?” So he still created a Jinx. “Has she experienced a lot of it? Is she . . . stable?”
Captain Teemo thought about what he said. “When she was younger, she got caught. I was there. We got out, but while there she saw her future self. She was doing her best to keep everyone away from her, so Meddler wouldn’t hurt them.”
“Meddler?”
“Our master, the one who owns us and rents us out.”
Those words. They really hurt this guy. It was clear Captain Teemo didn’t want to use any of those words, but right next to his ‘owners’ he wasn’t getting a choice. He probably even knew more information, but he had to be careful how he spoke.
Captain Teemo took the chance and whispered in his ear. “She is a nice person named Powder, wrapped in the act of a maniacal Jinx. She used it to escape this place, but it caught up to her. Now, she’s Powder and Jinx, depending on her master.”
“And her owner right now is called Two-Tone Jack?”
“Yeah, one of five,” Captain Teemo said.
Five?! “She’s got five fucking owners?”
“And one master.”
“I have to get her out of here.”
“You can’t, they’ll hurt her friends. They have bigtime magic here, they manipulated her friend into thinking he never even had time travel.”
Oh. Jinx had talked to this yordle a lot. That was good, and so was the fact this Ekko didn’t have time travel with her that way. “So he didn’t use time travel very much at all then?”
“Forgot he had it since he was a kid.”
“So she is clear of sound mind.” She ended up getting the same kind of curse with time, but she was okay. This universe’s Ekko had forgotten. The fuck, is this the universe’s way of balancing things out?
“Yeah, but her friends aren’t safe. I don’t know how to protect them, but she can’t bail until everyone she cares for is safe. As for me? If I go, there’s a newborn yordle that will take my place.”
Man. “What’s gonna happen to her friends?”
“Vi is going to get taken for illegal fighting with one of her owners. Her friend Ekko is going to get mind-wiped, very high doses of shimmer to become a junkie, and get released on the streets of Zaun.”
Hell no! That was not happening. “Damn it. I can’t save her today.” He had to figure out how to save the others.
“Umm?” Captain Teemo gestured toward the ground. “Yeah, I thought so. You definitely can’t save her.”
Ekko saw it too on the ground. Holy hell. “Wild runes.” Yeah, he had to study parallel travel and figure out all these mysteries too before he could save her. “Don’t tell her you saw me. I’m going to try and figure this out, but it’s-”
“Cruel to tell her she might get out, I get that,” Captain Teemo agreed.
“Make way, Make way!”
Jinx. That was definitely her voice. When she came in though?
Ekko was already ready to throw hands! She was on some giant’s shoulder with chains on each of her arms.
She wasn’t acting downcast at all though. “Oooh, Two-Tone, look at that spread.”
“I agree, Jinx,” the giant said as he came over to a large table. “What do you want to eat, my little chaos maker?” He held his hand underneath his shoulder.
Jinx stepped down on his hands to be lowered to check out the food. She hadn’t noticed him yet. “I need something yummy quick, I know the machine people are coming.”
Maybe I should hold off. He moved away from her point of view, but could still hear her. It didn’t feel right to let her know he was there, only to leave her in that cursed place. I can’t. I have to figure out how to save her family first.
“You!”
Ekko looked from behind his hiding spot.
Jinx was finished up getting her food, but a woman was moving swifly toward her.
“Am I married?!” the woman demanded. “Do I have kids, and a husband?”
“I don’t even know you,” Jinx answered. “How am I supposed to know that?”
“You are the null girl, and I paid your steep price already, so you better help!” The hysterical woman insisted. “Look, I remember being alone, but I found these while cleaning my attic.” She was trembling in grief, showing her children’s drawings and deeds not under her name. “Things signed by others. Children’s drawings. None of this should have been here. And look?” She held up one paper extremely close to Jinx’s face while she was trying to just eat. “See? That’s my name. With three other names I don’t know, standing as stick figures in a child’s drawing.”
Jinx yawned and bit into some food. The woman grabbed her and started to shake her.
“Don’t ignore me, I need to know the truth!” the woman declared.
“Hey!” The giant picked up Jinx. “First of all, some respect. My little chaos maker is eating, it’s the first time she’s eaten all day. I know that you’ve probably traveled a great distance and did many things to find her, but there is a time and place for this. I still have her for five minutes. Considering your problem, you are probably working in cooperation with the Runeterra League.”
Runeterra League?
“Jinx is still under my time, but I am giving her time to eat before her next owner comes. So relax.” The giant put her back down.
No shout of indignation, no moving toward blasting her off to space, Jinx just went straight back to the food without a word, biting into meat. The fury of Jinx wasn’t there. The yordle was right, this was something different in Powder. It was still Jinx, but not the Jinx’s he got rid of. And he could see it.
Her hair wasn’t pigtailed, it was short. That heavy maniacal texture was surface, but not deep enough. He could still see Powder in her, especially when the woman came toward her. Like, she moved back between them. Jinx’s eyes had been there one minute, and then they had softened to Powder, before going back to Jinx.
He’d never seen that before. She became soft for the woman, but then hardened again against her because she was hungry? Compassion, balanced with basic needs, switching between so fast. Did this environment make her have to change fast between both?
As much as he wanted to help, he needed to hurry up and do the research to save his other self and that universe’s Vi first. She wouldn’t budge until they were safe. At least, her sister. She absolutely loved her sister. Vi.
He looked around himself again. Yeah, wild runes were blossoming around him again. When I travel I already bring imbalance. Would that imbalance be enough to stop the time manipulation against Vi and his other self?