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"No wonder this mission has the 'Difficult' tag..."
Chen looked at the meat grinder in front of him. Sevika was a high-level bruiser who could probably one-shot a novice like him if he wasn't careful. He was painfully self-aware: without Counter Strike off cooldown, he was just a target.
He glanced behind him. Four more hits from a Shimmer Warrior and his health bar would hit zero.
"Logically, we're dead. This is a total wipe," Chen muttered. "But luckily, I'm a cheater with a Teleport button. Dead end? I'll just blink across the map."
But as he reached for the system interface, the air around them seemed to grow heavy. Powder had spotted Silco in the distance. This was the first time she had seen him since the night everything went blue and screaming.
Inside her mind, the walls of reality began to shake.
A tiny, younger version of Powder, clutching a ragged doll, stood in a void of total darkness. Suddenly, neon graffiti of Mylo appeared, glowing with a sickly light. The drawing shifted, becoming a twisted, mocking version of her dead friend.
"It was you, you Jinx," Mylo's ghost whispered, his smile wide and eerie. "You killed us."
"No!" Powder clutched her head, her braids whipping as she thrashed. "It wasn't me! I just wanted to help!"
"Help?" Mylo's voice echoed from every direction. "How many books could we fill with all the things you've 'helped' ruin?"
"NO!" Powder fell to her knees, sobbing. Then, a spark of electricity flickered, and Claggor materialized. He didn't speak; he just watched her with that same gentle, quiet gaze. Powder reached out, trying to touch him, but the further she ran, the further away he drifted until he was just a speck of light.
That light wasn't Claggor. It was the Hex-crystal.
A mechanical monkey hopped out of the shadows, slamming its gongs together. BOOM. Blue light filled her consciousness. Claggor's shattered goggles flew past her eyes.
"NO!!!"
Powder snapped back to the foundry, her eyes bloodshot and her body trembling. She looked at her hands, then up at Silco. The grief was gone, replaced by a white-hot, jagged rage.
"It wasn't me," she hissed. "It was him. It's all his fault!"
Before Chen could grab her, she kicked her hoverboard into high gear. She wasn't fleeing; she was initiating.
"Silco! I'm going to kill you!"
Jinx gritted her teeth, drawing both pistols and unleashing a wild barrage toward the command deck. Her aim was erratic from the swaying board, the bullets sparking off the metal railings.
Chen felt a strange, hollow ache in his chest. In the original timeline, Silco was the only man who truly loved Jinx for who she was. Seeing them now, locked in a blood feud, felt like watching a tragedy rewrite itself into something even darker.
I changed the plot, Chen reminded himself, trying to stay focused. He didn't adopt her. He doesn't love her. He's just a warlord who poisons children. He deserves this.
On the deck, Silco didn't even flinch as bullets whizzed past. He'd survived a hundred assassinations. He didn't recognize the masked girl; to him, she was just another pawn of a rival Chem-Baron.
"I don't care who sent them," Silco said coldly, snapping his fingers. "Kill them all. Let everyone know that Silco owns the air in Zaun now."
Sevika didn't need to be told twice. She slammed two fresh vials of purple Shimmer into her Chem-tech arm. A jagged, glowing blade hissed out from the metal limb as she charged toward Jinx.
"That's Silco!" Ekko shouted, his own rage boiling over, though he kept his head. "Chen! Hold the monsters behind us! We have to force the gate!"
Ekko shot forward on his board, intercepting Sevika.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Jinx fired a point-blank burst, but Sevika, fueled by the Shimmer's reflex boost, blurred past the bullets. Ekko arrived just in time, swinging his heavy metal rod with the full momentum of his hoverboard.
DUANG!
The rod slammed into Sevika's mechanical arm. The impact forced her back several steps, grinding her boots into the floor.
"Go! Break through!" Ekko yelled.
But Jinx didn't care about the exit. She reloaded with a mechanical click and dove deeper into the crowd, her eyes fixed on Silco.
Behind them, the Shimmer Warriors had reached Chen.
"Damn it!" Chen raised his streetlamp, activating Counter Strike. The heavy, armored fists of the mutants rained down, but the HUD flared with a cascade of "MISS" notifications.
He slammed the counter-attack, stunning the giants for one second, then turned his board and rocketed toward Jinx. He didn't care about the mission anymore; he had to get her out before Sevika recovered.
Jinx was already in the middle of the blockade. A bald guard swung a machete at her head; she sidestepped so closely the blade whistled past her ear. She kicked his knee, shattering the joint, and fired a blind shot behind her that caught another thug in the throat.
In one fluid motion, she elbowed the bald guard, caught his falling machete, and buried it into the chest of the next man. She was a whirlwind of violet hair and hot lead—a literal Loose Cannon reaping through the crowd.
"Jinx! We're leaving!" Chen roared, reaching out to grab her.
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