2 First Night of Capture

Jinx was somewhere else now. No more shouts or yelling. Captain Teemo was on the other side of her again. Then, there was someone new on the other side of her too. Jinx couldn’t tell what she had been. Older than her though, and far too relaxed for something in a cage.

She was just hanging upside down, staring at Jinx and the yordle. “You brought home strays. You can’t afford strays.”

“Delulu, shutup, not now.”

“Note taken about your language,” Delulu said.

“It was said as a joke.”

“It didn’t feel like it, I felt threatened.”

“I will get you extra dinner. These are not strays, they are each rentals instead of instant buys, so make friends.” Then he left the room.

Whoever Delulu was, she was fascinating. When in a new situation, it called for less rocking the boat, survey and study to survive. Delulu was clearly in the same caged kind of environment, but she was being treated differently. There were pillows and blankets in a much bigger cage. She was fully relaxed now, reclining backward on several pillows. She was even reading some kind of book. Plus, extra dinner?

“Hey, Delulu.” Jinx crept up as close as she could in her cage. “You look like you got this whole thing figured out. Extra supper, huh? Pretty impressive that you can call the shots from inside the cage.”

“It’s not a cage, it’s protection,” Delulu answered her. “Clearly you just got seized. You must be something special for Meddler to put you on rental. Welcome to the better life. You will start your morning usually hearing bellyaching or woes from others, and then you’ll deal with the renters making them happy, and then you’ll come home usually to peace and quiet.” Delulu sat up in her cage. “You don’t have a necklace yet. If you make tonight easier with less yelling about how you want to be let go tonight when it’s bedtime? I will report for you.”

Report? “What is that necklace?”

“A breeder’s collar.”

“What?!” Jinx shirked in on herself.

“It is protection.” Delulu turned around and showed her neck. She turned back around to face Jinx again. “Don’t let the name fool you, this necklace is why I live like this instead of just a basic small cage like a prisoner. You will want one as quickly as possible. Your chance of being treatedy humanely rise.”

“Mmm.” Jinx doubted she’d ever want that.

“A breeder’s collar.” Captain Teemo was moving around again, apparently better after whatever they did to him. “Oh, I am definitely not in Bandle City anymore.”

“Oh no!” Delulu turned quick as she saw Captain Teemo. “No, no, no! You’re another yordle!”

“Um?” Captain Teemo seemed confused. “I know all the yordles. You are definitely a yordle, but I don’t know you.”

“I was born off your map,” she said, with a half hiss. She glared at Meddler when he came back into the room. “I’m not having his babies, you can forget it, that’ll be cruel and unusual punishment, paragraph five, plain as day and you have stressed your yordle out to the max, these results are going to lose you a weak of profits, maybe more!”

Whoah. Jinx watched Meddler immediately move toward her.

“Goodness, Delulu, calm down,” he insisted. “You know that I would not cross your breeder, ever. I have no intentions of using him for you.”

“Sell him!” she demanded with a hiss.

“I am not selling him.”

“My temperature and emotional well being feel very threatened, you will get calls soon, get rid of him!” she demanded.

“Delulu, cease this,” he asked more than commanded. “What do you want?”

“I want letters! I want letters of conduct. Nothing can be exchanged between us, and I demand it now.”

“I just got home-”

“I demand it now!”

“Fine, yes, Delulu.” He rolled his eyes and got paper.

Oh, she’s good. Whatever that breeder’s collar had been, she was using it to basically whip this guy into doing whatever she wanted. The name? Scary. The power? Scarier. But, she was Jinx, and she didn’t shy away from survival. That might be the key to some kind of survival. “You gotta get mixed up with a breeder for one of those?”

“I don’t believe this.” Captain Teemo was just staring at Delulu. “It’s true, I finally found one of you. A yordle that’s never been to Bandle City. That’s unknown. That’s so outrageous.” He looked toward Jinx. “New yordles are pretty rare. My kind live, uh, a little differently.” He looked back toward Delulu. “Who are your parents?”

“Off your map,” Delulu said to him. “I am several generations off the map.”

“So if you broke free, you wouldn’t even know any yordle locations?” he asked her. “Thought so. How to get back home then.”

“This is home. I’ve lived here my whole life,” she answered back. Her temper had calmed down toward Captain Teemo. “My family is known as the Spirits of Freljord.”

“Born and raised in captivity. I’m so sorry,” Captain Teemo said to her.

“There you go. It’s all drafted up.” He went over and let her read it from her cage. “See? All better?”

“No blood exchange, No DNA exchange, nothing unnatural, I want that cleared up harder,” she demanded. “We aren’t just going to say, oh that was natural, but that was not natural, you know better that that with me.”

Oh, I am going to learn a lot from you. And from what I learn? Jinx was going to build something new, and get back home. Every swerve. Every word. She was memorizing Delulu herself. Delulu was a born survivor in this environment, and to survive, Jinx would need to study her. What else made her different?

She had bracelets on both her wrists. “Hey, Delulu,” Jinx asked. “Nice bracelets.”

Delulu looked at her bracelets. “These aren’t anything. Good job tokens and mind inhibitors. They are for mainly making me look richer and pretty, and the more of a catch I am, the higher the price. The higher the price, the less rentals and maltreatment.” Delulu gestured to her blue bracelet. “This would stop the voices plaguing you.”

“What?” The voices.

“Meddler uses a guilt spell that plagues people with those they let down. It makes it easier for him to reget them.”

Wait. Wait. “You mean voices of people we . . .”? A spell?

“There. Fixed. Now, there’s nothing for if something does happen,” he warned Delulu. He waved his hand over Jinx. “And there, that takes care of the voice spell, if it even still works. Did the voices ever disappear for awhile?”

“After . . . after Silco. They just kind of . . .” Mylo. Claggor. “Faded away. I heard Silco, a little.” Mainly in the prison.

“Your null ability is strong, and that strength is only getting stronger next to petricite. I tried to recast it but that ability seems to already have gotten rid of it again. Oh well.”

That. Bastard. All those years, the plaguing voices of the dead?

“Nothing will happen. He has his cage. I have mine, and I have Lenny, my stable chosen yordle,” Delulu told him. “Call up Lenny’s owner, and let him know about this. I don’t want Lenny to worry when he finds out.”

“Can I at least make dinner first?”

“No.”

“Please?”

“Fine, but then right afterwards,” she insisted.

He left the room.

Oh, I am going to be her. Especially after the truth of the voices, he was gonna pay. “So. That breeding necklace, that’s the reason you can treat him like that. Have ya . . . had any kids?”

“It’s not what you think.” Delulu gently grabbed her necklace. “It’s surveying equipment. “It reads your emotional levels. Children and pregnancy are important things to track, and since people want the healthiest children they can get, we wear these. Too hot. Too cold. Too emotional. It’s all read and sent back to a master source necklace.”

“The necklaces are twinned with another. The breeder keeps the other one,” Meddler said to Jinx. “They can tell when their rental is not feeling well with their own necklace and-”

There was a heavy thump at the door.

“-and just great, Delulu, I know who that will be.” Meddler moved toward the door.

Jinx watched a woman almost stand over Meddler. “Why is Delulu so stressed?” She pulled at a necklace on her neck. “This was glowing bright red, Corden. I swear, if you are messing around with-”

“She was stressed, we have new rentals,” Meddler immediately covered. “I have just drafted a new sheet to protect her from the new yordle I own. That’s it. You may talk to her.”

Jinx watched as Delulu suddenly did one of her own best talents. Act.

“Oh, Madame Bej!” Delulu gripped her cage, clearly not magical. “I was so scared and frightened, he brought in a new yordle without even a single word to prepare me! I was so afraid that I’d be pregnant by this very night!”

“Oh no, no, it’s okay, shh.” Madame Bej bent down toward her as Delulu wiped away her fake tears. “You know that I would kill that man instantly if he hurt you.” She glared behind her, and held another necklace up. “I am warning you. Don’t hurt my investment, Corden.”

Corden. So, the time meddler had a name. And oh, was he freaking out very fast. So they aren’t just twinned. He was probably hiding his, but Jinx would bet- there it is, boy is owned himself when he makes those deals!

He yanked out a necklace from around his neck that was red and burning. “I swear, nothing against Delulu, I would never! I’ve raised her from birth, and I did well with her parents, let the record show that!”

Oh, his neck was burning. Goooood.

“Madame Bej, I have not and will not hurt your yordle, I swear it, I will make another contract with you!” Finally, his neck stopped burning, but it held scars against his neck.

Good. He deserved some suffering.

Madame Bej dropped her necklace back against her skin and glared at Meddler. “See that you treat her as the queen she is, or I won’t even bother coming back. I’ll just take her, Corden, after the heat takes your very head off.”

“I promise.” Now he was touching his forehead. “She will be happy. She has a little bit of a headache right now, but I will see to that too.”

Madame Bej looked back toward Delulu. “It’ll be okay. He’s just any old person, no more worries. You have your beau Lenny, and that won’t change.”

“I love Lenny oh so much, and I’m sure one day I’ll be blessed with a baby yordle,” Delulu insisted.

“Yes, of course.” She stood back up. “Romance is always the preferred way of breeding, much better than force like Pompous, vile woman.” She moved past Corden without a word and left the property.

Once she was gone, Jinx was on it. “So you want a kid with Lenny?”

“No. We haven’t ever done anything, but Madame Bej is not like Pompous, she is an organic breeder. You spend time with your ‘beloveds’. They can’t force anything with you either because your necklace will go off.”

Oh.

“You have to get just the right one though. Being openly hostile will only result to a transfer to Pompous or Durham. Pompous allows anything, while Durham couples with magic and natural physicality. Durham is also a Baccai, which I tend to stir away from for obvious reasons.”

“Magic?” Huh? “How would that even work?”

“You just need to get the juices together, it’s not hard to magic with the right access to each one,” Delulu said. “Still, even if you end up with them as a breeder? They would still come over here if your necklace got stressed.”

“Jinx?”

Jinx turned to notice Captain Teemo.

“Your concentrating way too hard on all that,” Captain Teemo warned him. “I know from the look of it, what you are thinking, young lady. Please don’t?”

“I’m a study kind of person, I’m learning about my environment,” she insisted. Like how to survive it and get out.

“Just, don’t get rash. I know my friends are out there looking for me. We were already zoning in on Demacia and Freljord as possible hotspot locations,” Captain Teemo stated.

Heh. Here she had been hiding out from that Meddler, and Captain Teemo had been tracking him. Well? She’d see how things go.”

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“No, no, no, no!” Jinx struggled to hang onto the bars in her cage. From the morning, into the afternoon, her rental fees and rental owners were established. The results?

Six, she had to spend two hours every other day with six people, three of those each day, doing what they wanted. And what was worse? Their location was dampening her shimmer. Her eyes didn’t even show her as a shimmer user.

She had that blue back and was struggling. She was struggling to hold onto . . . Jinx. Because she was falling down so hard right now, that her whole being had lifted the lid off that well and Powder. “Please, please, please.”

Scared. Single. Alone. “Please.” It had been the opposite so long, she had buried Powder so deep, but Jinx wasn’t even standing next to Powder. Powder was holding onto Jinx that was dangling over the well.

Her rental owners?

Meat Claws. Known for buying to make them illegally fight for money.

Madame Bej. Delulu’s saving grace, she’d at least get her own necklace now. It was optional since she didn’t know her personally yet, but Jinx would take it, no doubt.

Boat. Boat was no different than Jinx, her owner Madame Durham wanted her pampered during her pregnancy.

The Institute. The only name the researchers were giving themselves that would poke and prod at her. At least they weren’t messing with Captain Teemo.

The Runeterra League of Legends: A bunch of people that thought they were righteous who wanted to hook her to a machine to tell her what’s wrong with the world. She was too dangerous to go out on missions, so hooking her to a machine, so much more fun.

Little Bob: A massive, massive guy that was just interested in her spunkiness. He didn’t know whether he wanted company or love.

One time rental time: Whatever that was approved.

“Vi.” Damn it. “Ekko.” Damn it. 

“It’s okay.”

Powder looked toward Captain Teemo. “I’d rather die.” But it wasn’t a choice she could make. The thing about people with time? They could threaten those she loved. Ekko’s memory would be fully wiped, he’d be taken and junked out on shimmer, and then thrown down the streets of Zaun. Vi, her mind would be wiped, and she would be brought to Meat Claws, to fight for him.

It wasn’t hard to get them. It wasn’t hard to get anyone. No one had to threaten her life. Meddler knew where her real heart lied. He knew her life. He knew how she fought. He knew who she’d kill. He knew who she’d protect.

“They’ll come. I know they’ll come.” He believed in his yordle friends. It was keeping him going too. “The Institute. I’m sorry.”

“Better me than you,” Powder told him. “It’s all I can do for anyone now. I just can’t do anything anymore.” Her eyes watered.

“They’ll come, I promise. They’ll come. Until then, I am making you my temporary Bandle Scout. Together we need to figure out how to get out of here,” he declared. “That’s our mission, Bandle Scout.”

“Yeah, just what I want. Another person controlling me.” She rolled her eyes. No way.

“There it is, Momma.”

Madame Durham. At least she wasn’t there for Jinx, she was there for her daughter. Captain Teemo had four owners themselves, also with one-time rental options. He said Durham would be the easiest, he just had to behave for her daughter.

He didn’t tell her who the other three owners were. Which was fine, she didn’t want to tell him hers either.

“Come, Teemo.”

“It’s Captain Teemo.” He wasn’t letting up on the truth of who he’d been. Powder would keep telling him it too.

“It’s Teemo,” Meddler insisted.

“It’s Captain Teemo,” Teemo still pushed him. “My friends are coming.”

Unlike Powder, they didn’t have anything to hold over Captain Teemo’s head to fully cooperate at first. Now, they did. A new Spirit of Freljord family member was born over six months ago. It’s mom died during it’s birth. It’s father, labeled as unknown. It was purchased by someone else, but Meddler purchased it, and now had it on ‘rentals’.

If Captain Teemo refused a rental, the little yordle was now a backup.

Man. These people must have studied their lives, knowing exactly how to make everything hurt. Like they had nothing else to do.

“Teemo,” Meddler said with more force. “You are Captain of nothing. You are owned, and unlike a woman, you will never get a necklace. So, straighten up.”

Powder felt Jinx come back toward her again as she sneered at Meddler.

Captain Teemo had a collar attached to his neck along with a chain. It was given to Mistress Durham. She yanked his chain for good measure.

“That’s a good lad, Teemo.”

“I don’t like Teemo,” her daughter said. “He should be something else, Teemo doesn’t fit a pet.”

“Hm. Fido?”

“No. Fluffykins.”

“Hmm, Fluffykins. Come, Fluffykins, let’s go.” She yanked his chain harder. “Be a good pet for Elise, because I can change what you will do for me, yordle. Sweet yordles should be petted.”

“I’m not a sweet yordle,” he answered back.

“Well, if you don’t, I’ll find a different use for you. Baby yordle’s life verses killing people. Your choice.”

Fluffykins. Captain Teemo wasn’t even Teemo, he was Fluffykins. That guy kills, but not for others. He did it for honor. If he fought back, he’d be a mercenary for whatever they wanted, or they would probably make him watch that baby get hurt. Yep, she watched him back off. Well? Damn her, whatever. “Don’t worry, Captain Teemo.” She got it now. “The team will come for us, so says this Bandle Scout.” She’d join his side.

He looked back toward her and nodded, accepting her loyalty. “Be strong, Soldier. We’ll get through this.”

Right. Powder crept back down and Jinx came back up as she let go of the bars and stood up straight. No more cowering. I am Jinx. The weapon of Silco. The icon of Piltover. The best actor in all of god damn Zaun! I am the master of controlled chaos. I will win this. This wasn’t the time for Powder.

Or was it? Jinx couldn’t snivel and cry and look humane. Delulu. Delightful Delulu. No, no more well. Powder and Jinx had to be used together again, just like in the past. Jinx had to survive the fighting, survive the play, and realize Powder had a use. Powder had to handle the delicate, while conning the feelings of others. The friendships and traitorous friendships. Together.

She would be what she became before Silco died. After she blew up her family. That tread, where Powder and Jinx equaled a passionate tiger. Not stoic and perfect Jinx. Not a passionate and imperfect Powder. Stab me with a needle, fine. Use my head for information, whatever. You physically try anything with me? I will warn you, end you, and if need be, end myself. She sneered. It wouldn’t do any good to threaten Vi or Ekko if she was dead herself.

Hopefully a god spared mercy if anyone tried anything with her besides information, because she wouldn’t.