sailormel666

[sailormel666]

SERPENTINE

an arcane story

5.

“I don’t know what I ever did to deserve this,” Nova muttered, voice thick with mock betrayal and actual sulking, muffled further by the chunk of charred meat she was chewing.

One hand held the skewer—still warm, still dripping grease—while the other hovered midair, fingers splayed like she was examining battle damage. Specifically: the cartoonishly bright bandage now wrapped around her finger, all pastel hearts and smiling faces. It looked like it belonged in a child's first-aid kit, not on the hand of a thieving smuggler with blood under her nails. Nova didn’t even want to know where Jinx had found the damn thing.

“You flinched. Again,” Jinx said, mouth half-full of steamed bun, tone swinging between defensive and smug. “I told you to hold still. And,” she added, quieter now, almost—almost—apologetic, “I did say sorry.”

Nova exhaled slowly, a huff of breath that was more exasperation than anger, letting her eyes drift back to the hulking machine gun on the workbench across the room. The thing looked like it could take down a small aircraft. Maybe a building. It glinted under the low light like it knew it was beautiful.

They were sitting cross-legged on the floor around a makeshift table, Jericho’s finest laid out like a street vendor’s version of a royal banquet. Oil-slicked paper wraps. Steam rising in curls. Everything over-seasoned, overcooked, and perfect.

“You better wipe out every single bastard I’ve ever side-eyed with that thing,” she said dryly. “I bled for it. Literally.”

Jinx snorted a laugh, already reaching for her next bun. “As if I need an excuse for that,” she grinned.

Then her eyes sparkled with that too-playful malice she wore like second skin. “Might start with those pretty boys you keep dragging around.”

Nova rolled her eyes, sharp and practiced. “They’re not—” she started, then gave up with a snort. What was the point?

Still, something in her stalled. Nova gave her a look—part exasperation, part affection. Jinx just kept eating, happily digging into the next steam bun, face smudged with sauce, looking for all the world like a quirky teenager who didn’t wire grenades into children’s toys for fun. For a second, Nova wondered if she meant it—about the men. She wouldn’t, right?

Then again, most of the guys Nova gravitated toward were either criminals, assholes, or both. Self-awareness was not a problem. Standards were.

She shoved the thought aside and sank her teeth into another skewer.

The food was good. That was enough. For now.

Once Jericho’s best was reduced to grease-stained wrappers and picked-clean skewers, silence settled over them—rare, but not unwelcome. The kind of quiet that came only after a full stomach and a long day burned clean through. Nova sat with her boots swinging off the edge of the old rotor blade, a slow yawn cracking through her jaw. The path back to her place wasn’t long, but right now it felt like crossing the Sump on foot with bricks for legs.

She lit a cigarette with tired fingers, took a drag deep enough to sting, like it might jolt her spine into motion. It didn’t. A breeze rolled through instead, soft and grimy, rattling old tin and coaxing a few bats into flight overhead.

“You’re lucky, you know,” she said, voice low and even, no bite behind it. Just truth. Her eyes swept across the hideout—this mess of rusted metal and spray paint and half-sanity that Jinx called home. “You get to hole up in here all the time. No tight leash, no clock to punch. Just a few wild errands and the rest of the day to yourself. Away from all the power-hungry pricks and politics.”

Jinx didn’t answer right away—just kept winding one of those long braids around her fingers, watching Nova with a look quieter than usual. Something softer, unreadable in that flickering neon light.

“Silco still got you running around like a wind-up toy, huh?” she said eventually, voice light but eyes sharp.

Nova gave a dry huff, one of those laughs that didn’t reach the throat. “Sure does.”

She took another drag from her cigarette, eyes drifting somewhere far beyond the hideout walls. “Don’t get me wrong. I like the work. Smuggling’s an art if you’re doing it right—the thrill, the sleight-of-hand, dancing through cracks they don’t even know they left open. That part’s still good.”

A pause. Smoke curled out of her nose in a slow exhale.

“But damn, sometimes I just wish there wasn’t always so much.”

She didn’t say it bitterly. Just tired. The kind of tired that seeps in, slow and constant, like water through cracked concrete.

She knew why Silco kept her on the grind. This city needed iron hands in the fire, always. Every move they made, Piltover loomed closer, more suspicious. The pressure didn’t let up—it only deepened. And Silco? He wanted her to learn how to carry that weight, how to breathe in the smoke and keep moving anyway. Because things were only gonna get worse before they got better.

Nova never doubted the cause. Not once.

With a mother who’d suffocated on fissure gas before she even hit her teens, and a stomach that had known more hunger than comfort, Nova had been born angry. Born knowing what it meant to be disposable. The hate she carried for the Topsiders wasn’t learned—it was inherited. Etched into her bones.

“Topside’s breathing down our neck again,” she muttered, almost to herself. “And now everyone’s either skittish or looking for a payday. Can’t trust half of ‘em to keep their hands steady.”

Jinx’s voice broke through the storm of thoughts. “I wish he’d let me do more.”

Nova blinked, turning her head. Jinx wasn’t looking at her—just staring off into some middle distance, brow furrowed, jaw tight. That glint of chaos dulled for a moment, replaced by something weightier. Quiet frustration. A girl with too many ideas and not enough outlets.

“I can handle it. You know I can.”

Jinx’s voice was quick, edged with something sharp—not anger, but a kind of ache. She leaned forward, snatching up a warped piece of scrap metal from the cluttered floor, turning it over in her hands like it might make sense of things. Then, softer:

“I don’t get why he’s always got me benched. Like I’m still a damn child.”

Nova let out a long breath through her nose, the kind that came with too much knowing. She looked over at her sister—not by blood, but by fire and fracture—and felt something tug behind her ribs.

“I don’t think it’s about strength, sis,” she said gently, voice low. “Silco knows what you’re capable of. We all do.”

Jinx didn’t answer. Just kept fiddling with the metal, eyes narrowed, expression unreadable under the humming neon glow that filtered through the vents.

Nova glanced off, her gaze catching on the hulking machine gun still resting on the workbench. Half-finished but already dangerous, like the girl who built it.

Truth was, Nova didn’t mind Jinx being tucked away down here most days. She didn’t say that part aloud—didn’t say how every time she left the hideout, she felt a little less anxious knowing Jinx wasn’t out in the crossfire. Down here, she was in her own chaos. Messy, loud, but still safer than the streets.

But then there was the other truth too—the one that twisted deeper. Jinx needed movement, needed the noise and madness of the city to keep from being swallowed whole by her own head. Sitting still was never good. Too many ghosts in the walls. Too much silence.

Nova reached over, flicked the edge of the scrap metal in Jinx’s hand. “You want in?” she asked, a small smirk tugging at her lips. “Next time I’ve got a big haul headed to the Hexgates, you tag along. Could use another set of eyes if the Firelights decide to show off again.”

Jinx looked up at that. Not grinning, not cracking a joke—just searching Nova’s face, quiet for a beat too long. Then her lips twitched into something almost-smile, something that didn’t quite reach her eyes.

“You serious?”

“Yeah.” Nova nodded, slow and steady. Her voice carried that kind of calm certainty that made people listen. She wasn’t blind to the truth—Jinx was chaos bottled in a girl’s frame, volatile and wired like a bomb half a second from detonation. But Nova had always been quick to read the field, to move with instinct rather than force, calculation rather than noise. Her quiet sharpness cut clean through Jinx’s storm—maybe that’s why they worked.

“You watch my back,” she said, smoke curling off her words. “I’ll let you get in on the action.”

Jinx’s grin broke across her face in an instant—feral, thrilled, sharp as a broken bottle.

Then, without warning, Jinx lunged forward, wrapping Nova in a crushing, impulsive hug that came like a sucker punch to the lungs.

Nova let out a surprised breath, caught off-guard. She was twitchy with touch, always had been—years of dodging sharp elbows and grabby hands in tight alleys had taught her not to trust anything she didn’t see coming.

But this was Jinx.

Jinx, who never understood the concept of space, who treated boundaries like suggestions. The only person Nova let close without armor.

“You’re the best!” Jinx practically sang, burying her face into Nova’s shoulder, wild braid half-smacking her in the cheek.

Nova sighed through the edge of a grin, fingers reaching up to tap Jinx lightly on the head. A gesture somewhere between affection and exasperation. The bandaid on her finger—still all pastel pink and stupidly cheerful—stood out like a joke between them.

“Yeah, yeah,” she muttered, dry as Zaun smoke but with that quiet warmth tucked beneath it. “You better remember that.”

Then, something lit behind her eyes. “Speaking of remembering…” Nova peeled herself out of the hug, reaching for the bag she’d tossed aside earlier. “Brought something sweet. Found Witch Gum at the market.”

That caught Jinx’s attention like a firecracker. Nova unwrapped the lump of crinkled newspaper, revealing a few dusty sticks of the infamous candy. Eyes wide, Jinx leaned in with the reverence of a kid spotting treasure.

Witch Gum was the stuff of Undercity legend—half myth, half sugar bomb. Each stick was a gamble: sweet as sin or sour enough to pucker your soul. There was no guessing which you’d get until the flavor hit like a punch to the face.

The two of them each took one, side-eying each other like a ritual was about to go down.

“You ready?” Jinx asked, all faux-serious, like she was gearing up for battle.

“Hell yeah,” Nova answered, just as solemn.

They popped the gum into their mouths in sync, waiting, chewing. One beat. Two.

Then Jinx’s face contorted like she’d licked a live wire.

“Augh! Sour—again!” she groaned, sticking her tongue out in defeat.

Nova nearly doubled over with laughter, the sound echoing off rusted pipes and graffiti-stained walls.

“You got the sweet one, didn’t you?” Jinx accused, eyes narrowed, already scheming.

Nova shrugged like it couldn’t be helped. “Maybe.”

“Swap with me.”

“What? No. Gross.”

But Jinx was already spitting the gum into her palm and holding it out like some cursed offering, bottom lip sticking out in the most manipulative pout known to man.

Nova stared at her, deadpan. “Seriously?”

“You love me.”

“Unfortunately.” Nova rolled her eyes, muttering something about poor life choices as she spit hers out too, trading like it was a blood pact. She didn’t really mind the sour ones—they were her favorite, actually—but Jinx didn’t need to know that.

And anyway, that was the thing about Jinx.

Nova could never quite say no to her. For better or worse.

Because before the smuggling runs, before the chaos and cause and turf wars—there was this. Two sisters, in anything but blood, sitting cross-legged on rusted steel, trading gum like secrets.

Being a sister came first. Everything else followed.

[sailormel666]

SERPENTINE

an arcane story

4.

“Absolutely not.”

Silco’s voice landed like stone—flat, final, unflinching.

Nova didn’t flinch either. Her brows pulled tight, arms folded across the back of the chair she leaned on like she was ready to throw it. “Why the hell not?”

She’d half-expected the answer, but it still scraped something raw. Rejection always did. Across the desk, Silco didn’t look angry—just tired in that way that weighed behind the eyes. He shifted his gaze from the document she’d handed out to her face. That look again. Not scolding. Not soft. Just measured. Cold steel in warm light.

“If this is about risk again,” Nova said, voice tight, threading the line between protest and plea. “You know I can handle myself.”

And she could. Hell, she’d grown up crawling through the bones of the Undercity—places most people didn’t dare name, let alone enter. She knew how to move where the gas still lingered and the walls had secrets. She was fast, clever, damn near impossible to catch.

“I’m not questioning your abilities, child,” Silco said, calm as water before the boil. Somehow, that stung more than yelling.

“But I need you at that meeting tomorrow,” he continued, folding his hands together, voice flat with intent. “The Topsider’s too useful to lose.”

Nova exhaled through her nose, started pacing. Slow, controlled. But the frustration curled under her skin like smoke under glass. Of course it was him again. Some middling Piltover tech rat who’d been smuggling scraps—armor, mask parts, stripped-down enforcer junk—just enough to be useful, just clean enough to keep his hands looking innocent. He’d been slippery lately. Paranoid. Greedy. And now, difficult.

“Can’t somebody else deal with Hadrien?” she asked, stopping in her tracks, arms crossing again like armor. “I did the digging. I’ve got all the leverage. I can pass it on.”

“But I want you to do it, Nova.”

There it was. Quiet steel in his voice. Not just command. Not just trust. Something heavier—expectation dressed up like praise.

“You know him. You’ve kept the chain running this long. I trust you not to botch it now. Not when we’ve got the Firelights lighting up every route we’ve got left.”

He leaned back again, slow, steady. That rare flicker of softness pulled at the edge of his mouth. Barely there. But it meant something.

“This matters, Nova. For us. For you.”

She didn’t answer right away. Just stood there, jaw set, chewing the inside of her cheek like it might quiet the noise in her head. That old tug-of-war pulling tight—rebellion versus duty, instinct versus strategy. The part of her that burned to throw herself into the ruin and the wreckage... and the part that knew better. That knew real power was quiet. Controlled.

Nova’s arms stayed folded, stare locked somewhere on the floor, though her mind was miles off. Thoughts churned behind her eyes, cold and restless.

“You know I hate dealing with people like him,” she muttered at last. “Twitchy little bastard, all nerves and self-importance. Like a few scraps and stolen tech make him irreplaceable.”

Silco let out a breath. Not quite a sigh. More like patience thinning.

“He thinks that,” he said, voice low, even. “Because you let him. You gave him comfort.”

She looked back at him then, mouth twitching into something that wasn’t quite a smile. More teeth than warmth.

“Comfort’s a tactic,” she said. “Fear makes men reckless. Comfort makes them loyal.”

Silco’s reply came quick, no softness left in it now.

“No. Comfort made him bold.”

A pause.

“Reel him in. Break his damn fingers if it gets the point across.”

Nova’s gaze lifted at that. Chin tilted up—not defiant, exactly, but close. She didn’t flinch. Just stood there a second longer, weighing the weight of what came next.

Her voice, when it came, was quieter. Not weak—just... worn.

“And after?”

Silco’s eye pinned her.

“After,” he said, “you get your ruins. Your rust and rot and half-dead places.”

Another beat passed between them.

“But the job comes first.”

Nova gave a single nod. Barely there. Enough.

“Fine,” she said, voice like the click of a blade folding shut.

Nova slung her shoulder bag over one arm, movements deliberate, unhurried. Not sulking—she didn’t sulk—but the tight pull around her mouth gave her away. She’d have to handle that twitchy Topsider fast if she wanted any shot at hitting the Alcove ruins between warehouse checks. Not impossible. Just another layer of pressure pressing against her ribs like a slow vice.

As she made her way out of Silco’s office, she lifted a hand in a half-hearted wave—casual, offhand, like the conversation hadn’t just grated her spine a little.

“I’ll check in tomorrow—once it’s all sorted,” she called over her shoulder.

Silco’s voice followed, flat and unimpressed. “You’re not funny, Nova.”

She huffed, the sound halfway between a laugh and a challenge, unapologetic to the bone. Without slowing, she reached into her coat pocket and flicked something back toward him—a flash of metal arcing through the low light. The stolen Zippo. He caught it cleanly, already shaking his head before his fingers closed around it.

She did that sometimes—petty thefts that danced just shy of provoking. Enough to earn a scowl, never quite enough for punishment. A quiet rebellion, the kind that smoldered.

“Depends on who you’re asking,” she shot back, voice light and wicked.

And with that, Nova disappeared into the hallway, all swagger and leather and unresolved tension.

--

The rest of the day slipped by in a blur of movement—steady, chaotic, familiar. Nova made her rounds through the warehouses, boots echoing on concrete as she counted crates, checked manifests, gave curt nods and sharper warnings. She granted herself a few stolen minutes outside, leaning against rusted rails with a cigarette between her fingers and something sugary pressed to her lips—too cold, too sweet, exactly what she needed.

She cut through one of Zaun’s endless market veins on the way back, half scouting, half stocking up. Bartered with old vendors for gear and smokes, let her fingers drift over odd trinkets like she was hunting for secrets.

The daylight, what little of it bled through the smoke and steel, had thinned to dusk.

Zaun after dark was a different beast altogether. Beautiful in the kind of way most people missed if they didn’t belong to it. Neon signs blinked like heartbeats—loud, bright, dying. The skyline was jagged with rust and ambition, painted in electric greens and bruised purples. The air thrummed, alive with a symphony of grit—vendors barking prices, machines hissing low, radios cracking static melodies. Strange tongues spilled from shadowed doorways, twined with the smell of oil-slick noodles and day-old booze. Decay dressed itself up like life and strutted through the streets.

Nova walked through it like she was part of the architecture—born from the same smoke and defiance. Leather jacket scuffed at the edges, blades tucked out of sight. She wore her edge loud, her stride looser now that the work was done, her presence a challenge carved in smirks and scars.

Jericho’s food stall glowed like a beacon through the murk. She didn’t have to speak—just showed up with that crooked grin of hers, and he already had her favorite ready. Something hot, greasy, wrapped in paper that soaked through before she’d even taken a bite. Heartburn and happiness, rolled into one.

Bag in hand, she made her way down to Jinx’s hideout—a twisted sanctuary buried in the belly of forgotten vents. Half-wrecked, half-art, suspended on rusted rotors and cluttered with color and mayhem. Spray paint bloomed across every surface. Broken toys, forgotten bombs, and bits of brilliance jostled for space. Bats screeched in the rafters, music thudded from nowhere and everywhere, and the whole place thrummed like the inside of a fever dream.

Nova stepped inside, already bracing for whatever chaos might greet her—because when Jinx was involved, chaos wasn’t a possibility, it was a guarantee. She called out her usual: “Heya, sis,” voice pitched just loud enough to cut through the distorted, punk-drenched hum warbling out of the old gramophone in the corner.

Jinx was hunched over her workbench, fingers smeared with grease and determination, mid-way through bending a hunk of metal into submission. At the sound of Nova’s voice, she perked up, twisting around with a manic sort of grin.

“There you are!” she chirped, waving her over with the enthusiasm of someone about to ask for a favor you couldn’t possibly want to give.

Nova’s brow lifted, suspicion coiled behind her eyes, but she still dropped the food bag on a nearby crate and stepped closer. Her gaze swept across the controlled chaos of the workspace—blueprints tacked up with knives, bolts and screws rolling between oil crayons, wrenches, half-eaten candy bars. And dead center, like a crown jewel: a machine gun. Massive. Mean. Beautiful in the way natural disasters were.

“That’s a hell of a fireforce,” Nova said, voice flat but edged with reluctant admiration.

“Right?” Jinx beamed, practically vibrating with pride. Her eyes lit up, then just as fast dropped back to her work, all focus again. “Still needs welding, though. Few seams, nothing major. I just need someone to hold the pieces in place.”

She looked up at Nova with that look—wide-eyed, too-innocent, soaked in false sweetness.

Nova groaned before the question even landed.

“Oh, no. No no no. You’re not roping me into that again.”

Her face twisted, half horror, half inevitability—because she already knew she’d give in, but that didn’t mean she’d do it quietly.

“After you nearly torched my finger off? Twice?”

Jinx was already grabbing her tools, all swagger and unbothered confidence. “That was your fault. You flinched.”

“I flinched because it was on fire!”

“Exactly. Don’t flinch, and we’re golden,” Jinx replied, flipping her welding visor down like a knight readying for war. “Hold steady, and I promise this time, no crispy fingers. Probably.”

Nova sighed, muttered something profane under her breath, and stepped into the blast zone. Sisters, after all. Even when it hurt.

[sailormel666]

SERPENTINE

an arcane story

3.

The streets welcomed Nova like an old lover—familiar, indifferent, and never quite safe. Noon meant little down here. Sunlight didn’t touch the Undercity, not really. It filtered down in diluted streaks, poisoned by smoke and machinery, a rumor of warmth rather than the real thing. Time didn’t move—it lingered, sluggish and hungover, like a body curled around last night’s regret.

The night-walkers were still crumpled in doorways and alleys, faces pressed into dirty blankets or the crook of someone else's arm. Sleep, or something like it. What moved now were the early traders—those poor bastards who still believed in routine. Grills hissed. Metal clanged. Carts scraped over stone. Kids with eyes too sharp for their age picked through the rubble like carrion birds. Everything had a hunger to it.

Nova arrived at the south harbor just in time—boots damp, pulse steady. The others were already there, leaned against crates and lamp-posts, smoking and spitting, tired and familiar. She gave them a nod, that lopsided grin that didn’t quite reach her eyes. But when the merchants arrived, she straightened. The mask came down like a guillotine—sharp lines, smooth voice, eyes unreadable.

The trade was simple: shimmer for supplies. They didn’t bother dressing it up with euphemisms anymore. The Bilgewater crew looked exactly like you'd expect—sun-bleached silks clinging to lean, scarred bodies, gold that shone too brightly against salt-worn skin. Flashy in a way that almost dared you to try something. They looked like walking sins. Nova didn’t blink. She was fluent in sin.

Getting shimmer through the Hexgates had become a bureaucratic chokehold, each bribe heavier than the last. And every slip left a scent trail that led too close to Silco’s door. But ships—ships were old blood. Once they vanished over the horizon, they belonged to the sea, and the sea didn’t answer questions.

A few words, a few barbed pleasantries behind them, and the deal slid into place. The pirate signed the document with a slow hand, rough fingers making delicate, looping strokes. Ink curled like smoke. She watched—perhaps too long. There was something about those hands. Calloused, heavy. The kind that held knives and necks and hips with the same certainty. It made her wonder, suddenly, shamelessly, how they'd feel wrapped around her thighs. If they’d tremble. If she would. How deep he’d press into her before it hurt just right. How quickly she’d ask him to push further, reach for her throat instead.

The thought came uninvited, like most of them. She cleared her throat. Shut the door on it.

“Pleasure doing business,” Nova said. A little too stiff. Her voice didn’t flinch, but something behind her eyes flickered.

She turned before he could answer, folding the paper with surgical neatness and sliding it into her jacket. Lit a cigarette with fingers that didn’t tremble, though her lungs held the smoke a second too long. Not for calm. For control. Nova had plenty of talents—grit, wit, a silver tongue—but her best trick was always this: how good she was at passing for whole. No one saw the rot she carried, the little hungers she kept tucked away. She wore herself like armor. And her weaknesses—those stayed buried.

She wasn’t proud of how good she’d gotten at hiding her own mess. One might’ve thought Vern, in all his liquor-soaked rage, would’ve been enough to keep her away from certain appetites. But shame teaches its own rituals. Nova had learned them early. Learned how to chase down oblivion in needles and skin, in chemical quiet and one-night warmth that didn’t survive the sunrise.

Still, there were rules. Lines she didn’t cross. Anyone too close to Silco’s business was off-limits. No exceptions. Hiding things from him was like hiding something from a bloodhound. Still, Nova kept the line clean. For his sake. For hers.

Jinx knew of Nova's occasional escapades, though. Not the whole of it—Nova wouldn’t let her carry that weight. But enough. Enough to hate it. Still, Jinx never turned her back.

The Last Drop was quiet when she walked in—too early for chaos, too late for quiet. Staff wiped down tables with tired hands, the low hum of music hanging in the air like dust. Henchmen scattered around, pretending not to watch. But they watched. Always.

Sevika was there, of course—at her usual spot, smoke curling from her lips, counting coin from her morning collection like it owed her an apology. Nova slid into the chair across from her with the ease of old habit, swiping one of Sevika’s cigarillos without asking. It was ritual by now.

“You look rough, kid,” Sevika muttered, eyes still fixed on the stack of grimy coins in front of her.

Nova shrugged like it didn’t matter. “Slept like shit.”

“That so,” Sevika said, voice flat, but the edge was there. She glanced up, finally meeting Nova's gaze. “How’d the deal go?”

“Smooth,” Nova said, all lazy charm. “Knocked the price down clean.”

She said it like she hadn’t just sent poison dressed in glass out across the ocean. Like it didn’t weigh something in her chest.

Sevika let out a short breath, not quite a laugh, not quite approval. “Your old man’s gonna like that.”

“Hope so.”

Nova leaned in slightly, elbows on the table, eyes gleaming like she was about to confess something holy or unholy—hard to say which.

“There’s a place,” she said, low. “Down in the Alcove District. Old factory, half-collapsed. Supposed to be stripped clean years ago—but word is there’s still something buried under it. Machinery. Maybe older tech. Maybe something better.”

Sevika raised a brow but said nothing, just lit another cigarillo, the tip flaring orange in the dim. Nova's appetite for trouble wasn’t news.

“I was thinking,” Nova added, straightening up, voice casual, “if I could get the day cleared, I’d go sniff around. Tomorrow maybe. See if it’s more than rust and ghost stories.”

Sevika snorted, low and dry. She watched as Nova stood, stubbing out the last of the stolen smoke, already halfway up the stairs before the moment could stretch too long.

“Good luck with that,” Sevika called after her, voice rough with amusement.

She didn’t mean the trip. She meant the asking.

[sailormel666]

SERPENTINE

an arcane story

Chapter 2

They used to say her mother, Valentina, had been like an angel. An angel, of all things. That kind of word didn’t come cheap down here, which made it worse. That meant they meant it. Beautiful, they said. Too kind for her own good. Always laughing, even when she shouldn’t have been. Nova remembered only fragments—a flash of a smile, the smell of something sweet, hands that trembled when they thought no one was watching.

Valentina hadn’t worked in the mines, like Silco had in those old, myth-heavy days. She stood at the gates instead, with a cart of warm bread and sugared rolls. The kind of woman who handed out soft things in a hard place. A beacon, people said. She had that glow, just enough to catch Silco’s eye once—back when he was still a man who could feel things like longing. But that dream unraveled fast, like most things do down here.

Nova didn’t know the details. Only the scraps. They parted. Her mother moved to the far side of the Undercity. Found herself pregnant. And Nova arrived.

Why Valentina never went back to Silco with the truth, Nova could never quite grasp. Pride, maybe. Or shame. Or a kind of sorrow so heavy it turned you mute. Nova only knew her mother as tired. Haunted. Carrying a sadness so heavy it bent her, made her brittle. And brittle things break.

Then came Vern.

Gruff. Mean. A man who lied easily and hit a little too hard. He drank away what little they had and gambled the rest. When the fissure gas finally got to Valentina, it didn’t come like a storm—it came like rot. Quiet, slow, inevitable. Death by degrees. Nova was ten. All she could do was watch. Sit and watch the only person who’d ever looked at her like she mattered dissolve into coughing fits and silence.

It was in those last hours—thin, rasping hours—that Valentina told her. Who her father was. Just a name. And a pocket watch, heavy in her hand, etched with a single letter. Like a curse or a riddle.

The time between then and now? That’s not a story Nova tells. But it lives in her—shows up in how she jerks away from loud voices, how her back never fully rests against any chair. Like she’s waiting for a hand that might strike. Fear made a home in her spine. It also taught her to survive.

She ran. Slept in boiler rooms and crawlspaces. Learned which pipes hummed with heat and which walls hid food caches. Slipped through cracks and crevices. Half-starved, half-wild. She stole like it was a sacrament. Moved like smoke. Her smallness became her weapon. Her fear, her shield.

And then, one day, around fourteen, the name came back.

Silco.

Just a whisper at first, drifting through the alleys like a rumor with teeth. He was back, they said. Rebuilding. Reclaiming. Resurfacing.

Nova listened. Waited. Lingered at the edges of things.

She had nothing. No direction, no home, no softness left in her. The chem barons were circling like dogs. Their enforcers wanted bodies for the furnaces they called factories. She was running out of corners to disappear into.

So she thought: Why not. One name. One watch. One last gamble.

Might as well try. Whatever the outcome.

By then, she already understood the rules. Not the ones written down—those were for people who believed the world was fair—but the real ones, the ones taught in bruises and empty bellies. That everything came at a cost. That nothing was ever given, only taken or bartered for. Nova had learned it the hard way, which meant she had learned it well.

So she didn’t knock. Didn’t show up with wet eyes and shaking hands, didn’t plead. That kind of approach got you used, or worse, pitied. Instead, she broke in. Slipped past the men paid to see everything, past the locks meant to keep the desperate out. She waited in the dark of his office like a spider waits in silk. Patient. Still.

When he returned—boots heavy on the stair, entourage murmuring behind him, already half in the next conversation—he paused. Just a beat. Then sighed, crossed the room, and sat at his desk. Only then did she rise, quiet as breath, peeling herself from shadow.

"Your security needs work," she’d said, flat. No ceremony. Just a girl, too skinny, sharp around the edges, with eyes that had seen too much too soon.

He flinched—barely—but she caught it. Then the calm washed back over him, practiced, like slipping into a well-worn coat. “So I see,” was all he said. Not unkind. But measured.

She stepped forward like an animal raised on fear—carefully, but with something deliberate in the spine. Gave her name, her mother’s name. And if the words weren’t enough, the face would be—Valentina’s features, Silco’s eyes. A mirrored inheritance. Still, it was the pocketwatch that made the truth undeniable. She placed it on the desk like an offering, like a weapon. Metal worn smooth with time, bearing that single letter like a scar that had never faded.

“I’m not here for charity,” she said. No tremor in the voice. “I’m asking for work. A place to stay. I can earn it.”

Then, like a street magician, she reached into her thredbare coat. Produced three small, silent trophies. Sevikas’s zippo. Rem’s comb. Deckard’s knife. Names with weight. Faces with grudges. And somehow, she’d taken pieces from each without so much as a whisper. She lined them up neatly, like a dossier. Proof of concept.

He didn’t ask how. That would’ve made it too real.

She hadn’t expected kindness. Had braced for worse—yelling, a boot, a thrown bottle. The doors slamming shut behind her for good. But instead, he said nothing. Just looked at her, long and sideways, like he was trying to solve a puzzle and couldn’t find all the corners.

Jinx was already there back then. Unraveling in bright colors and bad dreams. Maybe he thought they’d balance each other. Maybe he thought one broken girl had been a fluke, but two meant fate. Or maybe he was just tired, and Nova was another problem with sharp teeth he could train to bite for him.

Whatever it was, he let her stay.

And suddenly, she had something she'd never had: a place. A bed that wasn’t dirty. Food that wasn’t stolen. Doors that locked from the inside.

Loving Jinx was easy. Jinx had a hole in her shaped like a sister. And Nova had spent her whole short life defending the ones she called her family until she bled. They cracked differently, yes—but there was symmetry in it. Grief translated between them. They understood each other without needing to say much. Pain does that. It builds fluency.

Under Silco’s eye, and with Jinx' madness beside her, Nova became something more than just a survivor. She grew teeth. Learned to play the game instead of just dodging it. The Undercity bent around her. She knew its alleys the way most people know the lines on their palms—deep and winding, hiding fortunes or curses. She mapped smuggling routes like a second nervous system. Oversaw warehouse deals, rerouted contraband when Topside sniffed too close, organized the unorganizable.

But that was the clean version. The version her father preferred—the one with bodyguards and ink-stamped manifests.

The part Nova loved came after. The wild part. Slipping through dead zones and forgotten tunnels, chasing secrets, tracking whispers. Boots in the dirt, breath shallow, knife ready. It was dangerous. But it was hers.

Silco didn't like it, of course. Said it wasn’t fitting. Said it was reckless. But Nova was never her mother’s softness—no gentle patience, no warm bread in hand. She was all sharp edges and cold fire. If Valentina had been a song, Nova was a blade in a back alley. A problem with its own solution.

She wasn’t born for safety. She was born for the smoke and the shadows.

[sailormel666]

SERPENTINE

an arcane story

(I wrote this when the silence got too loud. Just a little world to escape to.)

Chapter 1

Nova had always suspected there was something off about her. Not wrong, exactly — wrongness was for broken machines and twisted limbs — but misaligned, like a door hung crooked that never quite shuts. Nights she didn't sleep, which was most of them, she filled the hours and the ashtrays trying to trace it back. Wondering whether it was something coiled in her blood—Undercity blood, unruly, unrepentant—that had done it. Or if it was the city itself. Piltover's shadow, thick with smoke and rot, raising her the only way it knew how: with fists, silence, and the occasional illusion dressed as love.

She preferred those answers. They made things cleaner. A product of place, not choice. Like rust on metal — inevitable, impersonal. It meant she could keep the blood on her hands without feeling the need to wash it off. After all, wasn't it a kind of love, too, the way she protected what was hers? Even if it meant doing terrible things. Especially if it meant that.

She told herself those stories—quiet, hushed lies to make the weight easier to carry. You kill to protect, she whispered. You do what has to be done. The blood isn't yours. It's borrowed. That was the trick, wasn’t it? Paint a prison with meaning, and it starts to look like a shrine.

But there was the other voice, too. Not a whisper—never that kind. More like rot in the walls, humming just beneath the plaster of her thoughts. A voice that knew her. Knew what she flinched from in the mirror.

You’re not a protector, it said. You’re a coward with a knife. All your clever words are just silence in disguise. You don’t want to hear the screaming. That’s all.

And then the worst part, the truth that never needed saying but said itself anyway:

You’re filth. Born of filth, steeped in it. Pretend all you want—you're still rot at the root. And no amount of borrowed light will ever clean you.

---

“They should just put me down. Like a sick dog.”

Nova's voice came out sand-dry, cracked with use and disuse both, like something left too long in the sun—if there were sun in the Lanes. She groaned as she peeled herself off the couch, slow and reluctant, her joints protesting with brittle cracks, vertebrae slotting into place like reluctant soldiers answering roll call.

The mirror—tilted, smudged, and vaguely accusatory—waited for her on the floor. She dropped down in front of it, cross-legged like a girl at a sleepover, if the sleepover involved blood and poison and waking up drowning in your own regrets.

Nova was compact. Slender, like a blade. Short, like a warning. A face that pretended softness, delicate in the way spider silk is. But the softness was a trap, a decoy. Ink curled up her skin in black waves: flames, sigils, jagged ornaments that whispered violence. Piercings glittered like tiny threats. Her hair, black as oil and nearly as volatile, curled long to her hips, dyed at the ends in fading colors that looked like they'd been stolen from better times. Bangs cut straight, almost ritualistic. Skin pale, undercity-pale, the kind that never met sun, only smog and shadow. Her eyes—too large, too blue—carried the insomnia of a life lived in alleys and backrooms. They always seemed to be holding back a story, or choking on one.

Today, though, those shadows weren’t helping her mystique. Last night’s choices clung to her like smoke. Or shame. Or both.

With the grace of repetition, she reached for her scattered makeup, the tools of concealment. Not to pretend. Just to recalibrate. Survival requires illusion, not denial.

“Sounds a bit dramatic. And that’s coming from me,” Jinx said from behind her, slouched on the couch with that curated disinterest she wore like armor.

Nova didn’t look at her, not at first. Just kept dabbing at the wreckage of her own reflection. Then she flicked her gaze sideways, raised her brows.

“You’re not helping.”

Deadpan. But not biting. Not to her.

Jinx grinned—wild, pleased—and unfolded herself from the cushions, drifting over with that off-kilter grace she had. She didn’t ask; she just started gathering Nova's hair, fingers deft and strangely gentle, working it into those two buns Nova always wore when things were about to get serious. Half utility, half armor.

“I told you you’d regret staying out drinking all night,” Jinx said, sing-song.

Nova stayed quiet. Drinking. If only. It hadn’t just been booze. It was pills, and vials, and bitter liquids with no names, traded in corners by people who had no gods and even less conscience. She’d looked at that sordid table, full of ruin, and thought—why not. One more time. One more night to pretend she had control. I can handle it, she’d told herself.

Fool.

“When’s that shipment coming again?”

Jinx’s voice cut clean through the spiral. Her hands were still in Nova's hair, finishing the job, pinning the last curl into submission.

Nova blinked, then reached for the old pocketwatch and squinted.

“Shit. Twenty minutes.”

Her tone was flat, but the pulse in her throat ticked faster.

“I can’t be late. If I screw this up, Father’s going to end me.”

“Heh. Tell me about it.” Jinx didn’t sound scared. But then, Jinx rarely did.

Nova stood, automatic, movements honed to precision—strapping her twin blades onto her back, the pistol to her belt. The leather jacket came last: cropped, patched, and worn like a warning. Her outfit was black from neck to boot, the only color stitched into the fabric in threadbare rebellion.

She looked the part. The stories were true: a spitfire, a shadow in leather and ink. Feminine in the way venom can be sweet. Smuggler. Killer, if need be. Survivor, always.

She grabbed her shoulder bag on the way out, hesitating at the threshold.

“I won’t be back till evening,” she said. “Jericho’s for dinner, sis?”

“Oh yes!”

Jinx lit up like a struck match. She clasped her hands, that grin breaking wide—something between sugar and teeth.

“But bring something sweet too!”

Nova huffed, halfway a laugh.

“Spoiled rotten,” she muttered.

And then she was gone, swallowed whole by the city’s throat—its alleys winding like veins, buildings stacked like forgotten prayers. Somewhere out there, the undercity was waiting. And it did not forgive.

[sailormel666]

[sailormel666]

[sailormel666]

✞ 666 ✞

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✩⋆.ೃ𐦍*:☾･⋆𐦍.ೃ࿔*:･

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Art of the Toxic Jungle: Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind - Dir Hayao Miyazaki (1984)

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the little mermaid, 世界童话名作选 (1976)

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