The lead thug didn't wait for a polite conversation. He lunged forward and buried a fist squarely into Chen's face. Chen's head snapped to the side, and a slow, warm trickle of blood began to seep from his nose.
A holographic -40 flickered briefly in his upper peripheral vision, a HUD element only he could see. His health bar dipped to 410.
The thug didn't stop at the physical assault; he leaned in, his breath stinking of cheap grog. "A brat who hasn't even grown hair on his chin thinks he's a Chem-Baron? It's a miracle you've lasted this long in Zaun, kid. I'm taking that girl, and by the time I'm done, she'll be wishing she stayed in whatever gutter you found her in."
Chen slowly turned his head back, gritting his teeth. He didn't look scared; he looked like a man calculating a build path. He stared into the ruffian's eyes with a cold, focused intensity.
"Oh, we've got spirit, do we?" the thug scoffed.
Suddenly, Chen's fist shot out, burying itself in the thug's kidney. A pulse of emerald-green light erupted from the ruffian's torso and flowed back into Chen's chest.
I'm waiting for a Grasp proc, Chen thought grimly. Are you?
The green light signaled that Grasp of the Undying had successfully procced. The strike dealt an additional 4% of Chen's maximum health as magic damage—shredding through the thug's non-existent resistances—while healing Chen for 2% of his total HP. The kidney punch landed with the weight of a seasoned brawler, sending the leader stumbling back with a wheeze of pure agony.
"You little sh*t! You actually fought back?" the leader roared, clutching his side. "Kill him! Scrappy-doo thinks he's a hero!"
Chen might have been a Silver-tier scrub in his past life, but he had one thing these thugs didn't: a strategist's brain. He knew the math. With a base attack speed of 0.4, he couldn't just stand there and trade blows; he'd be out-DPS'd in seconds. He had to play the long game. He had to kite.
Grasp of the Undying was his win condition: every 4 seconds in combat, his next hit would deal 4% max health damage, heal him, and—most importantly—permanently increase his total health by 5.
Chen couldn't see the thugs' stat sheets, but based on that first punch, they weren't exactly elite units. They were low-level mobs. He had a chance.
He began to dance. As soon as the internal four-second cooldown reset, Chen stopped on a dime, pivoted his hips, and unleashed a spinning kick that connected right with the leader's ribs.
Green light. +9 HP restored. +5 Max Health stacked.
"Call that one Dragon's Rage!" Chen shouted, mimicking Lee Sin's ultimate. There were no flashy golden particle effects, but the sheer impact sent the thug sprawling into the dirt, clutching his midsection and gasping for air. It looked cool, and in Zaun, style points were half the battle.
After the kick, Chen immediately pulled back, keeping his distance. Pure kiting. Pure "auto-spacing."
The remaining two thugs panicked as they saw their leader go down. One of them lunged, tackling Chen with a desperate pounce. Chen's base movement speed was too low to dodge the collision. He was slammed into the gravel, the wind knocked out of him as numbers flickered in his vision. He was pinned.
Debuff: Rooted (2.0s)
He was physically grounded. As the second thug rushed over to deliver a heavy boot to his ribs, Chen timed it perfectly. The moment his cooldown refreshed, he drove an elbow into the neck of the man pinning him. Another Grasp proc.
-80 flashed over his head—a critical hit from the standing thug's kick. Chen's head rang like a church bell. The pain was visceral, blurring his vision, but the two-second "root" expired. He felt the thug's grip loosen, and with a surge of adrenaline, he rolled to the side, narrowly avoiding a follow-up stomp that would have cracked his skull.
Chen scrambled to his feet and delivered a stinging kick to the backside of the man who had pinned him. Grasp proc number four.
The stalemate dragged on for nearly ten rounds of combat. Chen had procced Grasp six times now. His health bar was sitting dangerously at 50%, but the constant healing kept him in the fight. He was getting faster, his movements more fluid as he adapted to the rhythm of the brawl.
The thugs, on the other hand, were terrified. This wasn't a normal kid. He was hitting them with some kind of weird, green energy that was slowly sapping their life force while making him look tougher by the second.
Desperate to end it, the leader—now recovered but limping—rushed Chen again. Chen raised a fist, ready for the seventh proc. But he missed one crucial detail: the glint of rusted steel in the thug's hand. It was a shank.
Powder, watching from behind a pile of scrap, began to hyperventilate. The sight of the knife triggered a cascade of trauma. Vi, Vander, the explosion, the screams—everything flooded back in a sickening rush. She saw the image of Vi calling her a "Jinx" superimposed over the junkyard.
And then, she saw the most recent memory: Silco's blade plunging into Chen's back.
In Powder's fracturing mind, the thug didn't exist. It was Silco. Silco was trying to take the last person she had left.
"NO!"
Powder's roar was primal. She stood up, her eyes wide and bloodshot, and snatched a heavy handgun from her satchel—a piece of "scientific waste" she had clearly finished.
BANG.
The gunshot was deafening. The lead thug's head snapped back as a high-caliber round tore through his skull. Blood and grey matter sprayed across the scrap metal, coating Chen's neck and face in a warm, copper-scented mist.
Chen froze, his face mask of crimson. He turned his head slowly, his eyes wide with horror as he looked at Powder. Or rather, he looked at the manic, wide-eyed shadow of the girl that was rapidly becoming Jinx.
"No... don't..."
Before the words could leave his mouth, she pulled the trigger again.
BANG. BANG.
Two more shots. Two more perfect headshots. The remaining ruffians dropped like sacks of grain, their lives extinguished before they could even scream.
"...want to do that," Chen finished lamely. The fight was over. It had taken less than a second.
"Silco! I'm going to kill you! I'll kill you all!"
The girl looked up at the grey Zaunite sky, laughing hysterically. It wasn't a happy sound; it was the sound of a mind snapping. "Kill, kill, kill! Hahahahaha! See? I'm helping! I'm helping!"
She looked like she was carrying the weight of Mylo and Claggor on her shoulders, their ghosts whispering in her ears.
The laughter died out as suddenly as it began. Powder dropped to her knees with a heavy thud. The adrenaline vanished, replaced by a soul-crushing realization. She looked at the gun in her hand, her fingers beginning to tremble violently. She looked at the three corpses, then at Chen, who was standing there, covered in the blood of her victims.
The handgun slipped from her fingers, clattering onto the stones.
She gasped for air, wiping tears and blood from her eyes, sobbing as she looked up at him.
"Chen... Chen..." she whimpered, her voice small and broken again. "I just wanted to help you. I... I had to... they were going to..."
"Chen..."