"Click—"
That was the sound of pressing the switch on the back of the gun.
The smile vanished. The girl's expression turned cold. She held the gun in one hand, and with the other hand she touched the gun—click—pressing down the button on top.
Logan saw that and immediately blurted out, "Wait! It's me—Logan! Powder, it's me, Logan from the Lanes!"
"Did you forget?"
"Logan? Don't know you." Powder suddenly smiled. Her blue eyes were dazzling as she looked at Logan, and the fingers painted with pink nail polish pressed the button even deeper. "Let me think… whose lackey you might be. But that doesn't matter."
"Wait—look, I still have the pocket watch you gave me." Logan was speechless. She hadn't even been altered by shimmer yet, and she was already this unhinged? What kind of normal person shoots at a stranger?
He reached into his chest, pulled out the pocket watch, held it up toward Powder, and shook it twice.
The next second, the gun disappeared from in front of Logan.
A pale arm stretched out and snatched the pocket watch. Logan caught a scent—wasn't pleasant, but it wasn't unbearable either.
It was Powder's hair.
Her small head leaned right up against Logan's chest, and the smell of her hair slid into his nose.
Engine oil, mixed with a faint lemony note—together forming a not-so-lovely scent that flooded into Logan's senses.
"I remember this!" Powder suddenly clapped her hands, looked up at Logan, rose onto her toes, and leaned in close. Her perky little nose twitched as she said with delighted excitement, "Logan—Logan who fought Vi when you were little, right? I remember you were one of Marsen's people!"
"Mylo hated you guys the most!"
All at once she became way more talkative. She circled Logan twice, then shoved him excitedly and shouted, "Inside! Let's talk!"
"But… this is my house," Logan said.
"That's fine. It's not important," Powder replied.
She pushed Logan into his own home, hooked the door shut with her foot, then walked up and plopped down on Logan's plank bed like it was her place. She snapped her fingers, and a graffiti-painted little lamp on the table flicked on.
She curled herself up, hugged her legs with both arms, and looked at Logan, her expression lively as she said, "Didn't think you'd still be alive."
Looking at Powder—no, looking at Jinx—Logan felt complicated.
In his memories, Logan and Marsen had also grown up in the Lanes. Their parents had participated in that uprising under Vander's lead too, and died on that bridge.
So Logan and Marsen were also "Vander's kids." Not like Vi and Powder, who Vander kept at his home—but in the Lanes, they were still children who grew up under Vander's protection.
That was also the biggest reason the original Logan refused to join a gang with Marsen and harm the Lanes. Deep down, he always remembered that tall, gentle man.
Vander was Zaun's spiritual leader. And now Silco had become the one leading Zaun. In the original Logan's heart, that was usurpation—everything that belonged to Vander… had been stolen by Silco.
And now, staring at Powder in front of him, Logan's feelings were even more tangled.
On one hand, childhood memories were pulling at him. On the other, his impressions from watching the War of the Two Cities were pulling at him too.
Jinx was a disaster—a pitiable and hateful figure.
But he had to admit it: she had a strange kind of charm. A lot of people said Powder became Jinx because of the environment at the bottom.
But there was only one Jinx in Zaun.
Logan. Marsen. Vi. Ekko. Who didn't have the same childhood as Jinx? Who could honestly say they grew up in a good environment?
What turned Powder into Jinx wasn't the environment.
It was love.
Zaun or Piltover, plenty of people in the twin cities had their own grievances with the world, their own obsession with changing it. Vi, Caitlyn, Vander, Silco, Jayce, Viktor, Heimerdinger, Mel, Sevika—even Zaun's chem-barons… all of them, more or less, had cursed this world and wanted to reshape it.
But Jinx?
She didn't.
From beginning to end, she never complained about the world, never raged at the world.
Logan's understanding of Jinx was this: Jinx wasn't dissatisfied with the world. When she was little, she lived carefree. Vander and Vi blocked the danger outside for her—like knights guarding a princess.
Young Powder never worried about survival. She was protected too well by Vander and Vi, to the point that a kid raised at the bottom still ended up soft and naïve.
She didn't care what was right and what was wrong. She didn't care who suffered, who was exploited, who was oppressed, who was persecuted, who died in some alley corner.
All she wanted was for the people around her to never leave her—ever. To protect her for her whole life.
What she wanted was a quiet little life of her own.
Even if it meant hurting everything around her, she only cared about herself. It was selfish. And in Logan's eyes, it was hard to put into words.
Because it was the kind of thing you couldn't fully explain—couldn't fully untangle.
Logan could understand it with an example.
Jinx's behavior was like those children who cling to their parents and won't let them leave, convinced their parents should be by their side every single moment.
But parents always have to pull away, at least briefly. They need to work. They need responsibilities—to friends, to relatives, even to the world around them.
But a child can't understand that. In their selfishness, all they do is blame their parents for not staying with them forever.
From that angle, Logan could understand how Jinx operated.
She was a spoiled, selfish, single-minded "madwoman."
And that was why Logan had no intention of trying to reason with Jinx. Reasoning with an obsessive madwoman was pointless—just like an adult's logic and a child's logic were never the same thing.
"Yes. I'm still alive." Logan's thoughts snapped back. He looked at Powder and nodded.
"It's so good to see you. So where's Marsen? What about Noka? Are they still alive too?" Powder rocked back and forth, her two long blue braids shifting slightly across Logan's bed.
When she was quiet—when she wasn't acting crazy—Logan had to admit she was unbelievably cute.
Her pale face wore smoky makeup. The shadows under her eyes and the bloodshot edges around them gave her a mature, shattered look, but her small, doll-like face still preserved a childlike innocence. The contrast hit like a truck.
"They're still alive."
"Where are they? What are they doing?"
"They joined a gang."
"Ha! That's weird. I remember Marsen being really timid. How could he join a gang?" Powder buried her face into her knees, asking Logan with curiosity.
Logan answered, "To survive."