11

Chapter Thirty

Striding across the Academy campus, we were attracting a number of curious stares. It was expected, but the alternate would raise even more questions, so I just strode forward, at a sedate pace, while my partner walked a bit quicker to match me.

"This is where you learned to do science?" Piper asked, bright eyed, looking around the campus.

"Eh, not really," I replied. "This is where I learned a lot about a lot of stuff, but most of the teachers here are more of the 'memorize and repeat' type, then the 'investigate and understand' way of doing things. You need the first, to start with, but that doesn't teach you how to discover things, just how to understand other people's discoveries. It's a thing."

She narrowed her eyes, remarking, "But you teach me stuff to 'memorize and repeat'."

"Because I'm teaching you 'Science', the noun, the knowledge discovered by others, and also 'Science', the verb, which is finding new knowledge," I clarified. "And then, when I tried to Science, verb, and figure out Hextech pretty much everyone I reached out to here didn't even try to help."

Jayce hadn't really tried that hard to get help in the last couple years, wanting the discovery to be 'his', but that was a mindset born of close to a decade of trying to reach out to the professors, and being dismissed out of hand.

The blue haired girl thought about that, nodded, then shot the people staring at us a cross look. "Then why am I here? You're already teaching me!"

Smiling down at her, ruffling her hair, I told her, "Remember how I said, if you studied hard, I'd show you my lab in Piltover?"

The girl paused, mid-step, and turned wide, excited eyes my way. "Really?"

"Really," I nodded.

"Let's go!" Piper announced, grabbing my hand and dragging me forward, through the main door of the building we were walking towards, then, looking around, glanced back. "Uh... which way?"

Taking her hand, I led her to the correct elevator, the girl practically vibrating with excitement as we headed to my lab, the signs I'd had to put up warning people to stay out, and, if the door was closed, knock instead of entering (something Heimerdinger regularly ignored, despite me putting it at his eye level), making it clear which one it was. Putting a finger to my lips, I waved for Piper to wait, and she pouted, until I winked, and understanding dawned, the girl grinning mischievously.

Stepping into the doorway, and doing my best to seem innocuous, over-doing it really, I called out to my lab-partner, who was leaning against a table, studying the blackboard with our gate rune diagram sketched out on it, "Heeeeeeeey Viktor!"

"Good Morning, Jayce," the man replied absently, before pausing, and looking my way, an eyebrow raised.

"Soooooo, you know that thing we talked about a few weeks ago?" I told him, giving him the fakest smile I could.

The Zaunite gave me a dry look. "We talked about a great many things. Unless. . ." Realization passed across his features. "You didn't."

"I did!" I grinned.

"But you promised me that you wouldn't!" he replied, sounding hurt.

"So I'd like- wait, what?" I questioned, his statement not tracking.

"I know you stifle under Professor Heimerdinger's oversight, but..." he started to say, but trailed off upon seeing my confusion. "You haven't been experimenting on your own?"

I blinked, "No. I was referring to getting an assistant. Viktor, I told you I wouldn't do that. If I was to run an experiment anywhere on Runeterra, I'd do my best to make sure you'd be right there with me."

A bit chagrined, the man grimaced. "I am sorry, Jayce. I jumped to conclusions. Now, is she here?"

"She is!" I smiled, waving the girl, who was trying not to giggle, over.

She jumped into the doorway next to me, with a showboating, "Hiya!" wave.

Viktor stared at her, then at me, then at her, then at me. "Jayce. You are aware that is a child, correct?"

I looked Piper's way, skeptical, then back to my lab-partner, "Are you sure she isn't just a tall Yordle?"

"Her ears are far too small," the other man noted dryly.

"I'm told Yordles come in a variety of shapes, colors, and sizes, and I don't discriminate," I sniffed, Piper losing her battle with her giggles, and I walked inside, dropping my bag off on a table out of the test-zone, the girl following, as Viktor continued to look skeptical. "Regardless, may I present Piper Vandottir, registered Freljordian."

The girl glanced at the blackboard filled with runes, then to me, and I nodded, Piper dashing over to examine it more closely. My lab-partner stepped away from it, meeting me halfway across the room. "I have heard they have a closer understanding of Magic than we do," he admitted, "And some have oddly colored hair."

"Her sister's hair is white," I shrugged.

Viktor nodded at that. "And how do you know her? I must admit, I do not keep up with such things, but I had not heard of your family having any sort of alliance with our northern neighbors. Our very northern neighbors," he corrected.

"Not the Talis', their father was a man I respected personally. They needed help, and I was in a position to offer it," I stated simply.

The look the other man gave me was complex, a mix of questioning curiosity, sorrowful understanding, and amused interest. "I suppose they would fit your requirement of someone you can trust. However, is this Piper not a little, shall we say, young?"

I opened my mouth to respond, but the girl in question called, "Hey, Jayce? What's this?"

"It's the design for the Gate I told you about," I called back, turning to respond to my lab-partner, but she had another question.

d

"But you said that was supposed to move stuff, not shred it."

Both of us paused, Viktor giving me a searching look, while, on my end, I'd mentioned what I was working on, but not our current difficulties. Looking over to her, I asked, "How can you tell it does that?"

The blue haired girl gave me a confused look, waving to the diagram. "...Cause it's what you wrote?" The way she said it, it was obvious to her, and, from my lab-partner's suspicious stare, he seemed to think this was something I'd set up, but I really hadn't.

Walking over to her, and looking over the seven rune sequence, with their activation patterns and mana-flow diagrams sketched out, I couldn't see whatever it was the young girl was referring to. "Okay, so, we want to open the teleport gate, and send things through. I don't see anything here that should shred what passes through the gate in the process. Now, it does, but why?"

The girl gave me a narrow-eyed skeptical stare, clearly not believing that I truly didn't know.

With Viktor watching me, saying the words would instantly out her, so I merely mouthed 'Chemtech', and she blinked, as we'd had several talks about how her instinctive grasp of that stuff surpassed my own, while my ability to crunch the numbers and diagnose the problems in her own attempts, like putting together functional grenades, was something the girl still thought was akin to magic, though she'd started to understand my explanations, now that she'd been picking up the requisite base academic skills.

The look she gave me was surprised, glancing at the diagrams, likely not thinking the same dichotomy applied to Hextech as well, though, having seen what the girl was capable of when she was older, I knew it did.

"I, uh, you have things go in," Piper said, waving to the Open-Door Rune, though it also stood for a half-dozen other things, "and so they go in," she said, waving to the In-Enter rune, "but when they come out they come out," she said, pointing to the Out-Exit rune.

"...Yes?" I replied, confused.

"So it shreds it," she finished, like it was obvious.

Which, to her, it was, but, while invention was one of her natural skills, communication was not.

"Okay, so, again, but with more words," I prompted her, not chidingly, but like I did regularly when we had our lessons, and she jumped to the answer.

Piper looked back at the diagram, biting her lip. "Okay, uh, you have things go in the magic-door-thingie, outside the bubble, and then you have stuff go in, like, in," she stated pushing her hands together. "But when they come flyin' out, they don't just come out," she said making her pressed together hands do a little hop to the side, "but they come out," the girl added, flipping her hands outwards so her palms were facing away from each other, "so they come out when they come out, which, uh, not good."

That explained things, a little, but, frowning, I said, "Okay, the motions helped, but maybe-

"No, I think I get it," Viktor interrupted, walking over. "Maybe it is because we doubled up on rune-meanings. We thought we were being careful, but perhaps that brought out the others. What would happen if we took them out?" He leaned forward, erasing both the In-Enter and Out-Exit Runes, looking to me, but I just shrugged, not sure myself.

Piper, however, winced. "Uh, I wouldn't do that if I were you."

"Okay, why?" I questioned, feeling like she was right, but I couldn't put it into words.

"Well, if you're not in when you go in, then what are you?" she questioned simply.

Why does this feel like I'm dealing with my Exalted instructor back in Basic? I thought, the man never clear on what Charms and other similar magic systems did, in order to 'not hamper our Dao'. The man would speak in simple sentences, absolutely drenched in meaning, which were so obvious to him that he felt no need to explain. I finally registered a complaint, only to be told that he was a terrible teacher on purpose, as figuring out his bullshit was half the point of the class, so we could figure out the specifics of any such system we ended up in, and the other half was practical training in dealing with 'Beneath the Beneath' types.

BtB's, either through laziness, incompetence, maliciousness, or some combination of all three, taught truncated lessons that served as good reminders when you knew what they were talking about, but didn't help you learn it at all. This problem was exacerbated as the instructor themselves might not know what the real lesson was, merely parroting what their teacher told them, either verbatim or through a demented game of telephone that further obscured the meaning of something that was kind of important to know.

Needless to say, the only way I was going to a Xianxia world was if you forced me, because fuck that.

However, ironically, those lessons came in handy now. Leaning forward, I re-drew the In-Enter rune, and underlined where the Out-Exit rune had gone. "Okay, I feel like we need something here, because if we don't this mana-stream just kind of goes wherever, and that's how we defined the distance component of the Gate's exit. But, we want them to come out, without coming inside-out. That's what you meant, right?" I questioned, getting a nod from Piper. "So, how can we have it come out without coming out?"

The blue-haired girl reached up for the chalk in my hands, so I gave it to her, and she moved to the empty spot, going up on tippy-toes to write in the In-Enter rune, but flipped.

Both Viktor and I stared at that.

It seemed so simple.

So obvious.

So... genius.

"It surely cannot be that easy," Viktor stated, but it was clear he doubted his words.

"I mean... it'd only cost us, what, twenty minutes to check?" I offered. I'd always seen the Runes arrayed one way, but the issue with Mages was that they could riff on the runes, or, to be more specific, their riffing on the concepts of their magic formed the runes, but they twisted and spun as they appeared, so... maybe it worked that way?

If this were standard Weave magic, no, no it wouldn't, but Weave magic was incredibly set in metaphysical stone, to the point that its static nature made it the go-to for standardized use since it was really hard for Agents to fuck up. However, there was a reason DEATH didn't want me using Weave magic, and this kind of uniqueness, it's, for lack of a better term, artistry, was why I was allowed free rein to do as I wished here.

Thankfully, it was easy to switch out the Out-Exit rune-tab in our current Hextech matrix for an extra In-Enter rune-tab, just put in backwards. I wondered what would happen if we put it in upside-down, however, given the spinning nature of the rune-tabs, it'd probably either do absolutely nothing or disrupt the mana-flow, forcing it to swirl counter-clockwise instead of clockwise, which might cause it to explode, so that'd be something I'd need to test on the range, just in case.

Setting the matrix in place, we all strapped ourselves in, and I fashioned a quick harness for Piper, having her stand next to me when Viktor prepared to open the Gate. The new crystal-glass shields were in place, letting us see what was happening, but they were strong enough to take gunfire without shattering, though it'd still crack.

As the Hex-core flared into being, Piper stiffened next to me, staring at the glowing, sparking crystal sphere, starting to hyperventilate, small hands gripping onto the table so hard her knuckles had turned white, an almost imperceptible whine coming from lips held tight.

Reaching down, I placed a hand on her shoulder, murmuring, "You're safe, Piper. I'm here. You've learned what it is. It's no more dangerous than Chemtech. To know something is to gain mastery over it, and there is no need to fear what you have mastered, only respect it for what it is."

The girl's head snapped up to me, her pupils like pinpricks, her breathing ragged now. I kept her gaze with my own, doing my best to project confident support, and she, haltingly, looked down and let go of the table, one hand going to where mine laid on her shoulder, gripping it tightly, while the other she balled up, then released, trying to breathe in set patterns, clenching and releasing her fingers in time.

Squaring her shoulders, she nodded, turning to look at the Matrix, whispering, "Jayce is here," her words almost lost over the crackling of the hex-core.

I looked up myself, seeing that Viktor was watching the pair of us, expression thoughtful, though he hid his reaction under a veil of sanguine expectation when he saw me seeing him. Nodding to the other man, he nodded back, starting the activation sequence.

The runes flared, the formation swirling into place, and, glancing down to Piper, I saw her eyes were wide once more, not with fear this time, but with wonder. While they weren't exactly my memories, so Jayce's childhood recollections didn't have the emotional kick they would've had before, I still understood exactly what she felt like, though my introduction to magic hadn't been nearly as benign.

Interestingly, as I watched the rune-matrix resolving, there was a difference right at the end, though the pattern wasn't mirrored, as the In-Enter rune was, but created something entirely new, though, for the life of me, I couldn't see why.

As the matrix locked into place with a blue-white flash, Piper flinched, even though I'd warned her, and, though we started to float, I held her in place next to me, the girl giving me a thankful look, grabbing onto my shirt with her free hand, though after a few seconds with nothing else happening, she started to relax, slowly letting go of me to extend a hand out in front of herself.

Studying her expression, Piper started to smile, marveling at the odd sensation of holding an arm out without any of the sensations of having to keep it up, her hair floating upwards, the clips she used to hold it out of her eyes causing it to seem like two slowly rising cat ears.

"Jayce, whenever you are ready," Viktor prompted, smiling himself as he watched Piper experiment with the Zero-G environment she found herself to be in.

Nodding to my lab-partner, I, still keeping my hand on Piper's shoulder, leaned over and grabbed the water-balloon, labelled Voyager 46, and, with a practiced hand, tossed it into the gate.

The fluid-filled sphere sparked as it approached, mana-lightning playing over it, before it seemed to stretch, vanishing in a burst of blue light.

Then, from the exit point, it appeared, flying out, and completely intact.

Mind you, it hit the wall, and then promptly burst, but still.

It'd worked!

Viktor turned his astonished gaze my way, and started to grin, an expression I matched, as I quickly grabbed the pillow and lightly tossed it in as well.

There was a noticeable lag from between when it entered and exited, but it did exit this time, completely intact, lightly bouncing off the now wet wall, not a tear to be seen in its fabric.

Trying the rest of our test set, Piper got in on the fun as well as Viktor, the girl giggling up a storm while it looked like my lab-partner wanted to laugh himself, but kept his expression schooled to an indulgent smirk as we ran through the entire regimen, the only tests we hadn't run was passing a living subject through it, as, with our difficulties, running any lab mice through the 'mulching' portal would just be horrific, and we had been struggling with this for weeks.

Viktor ran through the shut-off sequence, and I made sure that Piper had her feet on the ground, even as I wondered, given that we could reverse runes, if perhaps using a reversed Charge-Begin-Gather-Initiate rune would be better than the End-Death-Stop-Remove rune-centric sequence we'd finagled.

More things to test, I thought, with some annoyance, but also at least an equal amount of anticipation. Gravity reasserted itself, and we removed our harnesses, Piper and I moving to gather up the mostly unharmed test subjects.

Grabbing the apple, only slightly bruised, I shook my head, commenting, "Every other time we've done this, we got apple-sauce."

"Oh, could we do that?" Piper asked, and, when I shot her a confused look, clarified, "Make applesauce with this?"

"You want to use the experimental Hextech dimensional gateway to make applesauce?" I checked, and she nodded guilelessly. I shrugged, "Sure, but after we've checked to make sure we didn't make, I don't know, dimensional apples or something by accident."

The girl's eyes went wide, "What would dimensional apples taste like?"

Viktor, coming to join us, commented, "It would likely be a very multi-layered flavor."

Piper started to nod, before she realized he was joking, and laughed, tossing the damp pillow at him, the lame man catching it easily and tossing it into the collection crate. A companionable silence spread between us, as we collected the scattered samples, until the other man asked a question that made me freeze.

"Topside is quite different from the Lanes, aren't they? Still getting used to the open sky?"

"Yeah," Piper agreed absently, adding, "It's just so... big. But Jayce's place is even better!"

Shit. Okay, this is salvageable, I thought. I could say she meant that the Lanes are big, and I've just taken her down once to show her-

But she wasn't done, having realized what she'd said, and stiffened, turning to look at me, panicked, quickly saying, "Jayce! I'm sorry!"

Which confirmed to Viktor that Piper had said something she wasn't supposed to, and the look the other man sent me told me that it'd be nearly impossible to convince him without outright lying to the man, something that... I didn't want to do, for a number of reasons.

"It's okay, Piper. If you were going to slip up, Viktor's one of the best ones to do so in front of," I reassured the girl, who seemed on the edge of tears, waving for her to calm down. "Viktor, a word?" I questioned, motioning for the other side of the room, the man nodding and hobbling after me.

"'Registered Freljordian'?" he asked, as Piper nervously watched us, and I shot her a reassuring smile.

"Got the paperwork and everything," I replied easily, waiting to see what his approach to this was going to be, so I could tailor my response.

He turned to look at her as well, studying the tween. "When you were robbed, it was by four children," he remarked. "Two boys, a big one and a skinny one, and two girls, an older one with pink hair, and a younger one with blue hair. Her sister's hair is white, you said?"

"It is now," I remarked, giving him enough information to show my trust, but not divulging everything.

"And the boys?" Viktor questioned.

"Sadly they, and the children's father, were all killed two months ago," I stated. "The Lanes are dangerous, as you know, and a gang leader, along with a dozen or so of his thugs, decided that Piper and her family needed to die. Of them all present, five survived, including the leader, and the two girls."

The other man looked doubtful, but then frowned, nodding. "The stolen hex-cores. Your destabilization wasn't nearly as explosive as the incident at the docks was supposed to be."

"She set up a resonance cascade, from a handful of observations, and with no knowledge of runes whatsoever," I noted sadly. "And she blames herself for not being able to do more. Is it any wonder why I taught her?"

The scientist shot me a skeptical look, then shook his head, "You know most would tell her that she was too young to work with such things?"

Now it was my turn to give him a disbelieving look, waving to the blackboard, then the crate full of intact samples. "The girl's a savant, Viktor. And, while I'd take her in even if she wasn't, she wants to help. Wants to contribute to more than, in her mind, the death of over half her family because she believes herself to never be good enough, to be a living jinx, when the blame instead lies on the head of the man who tried to kill them all, and she's anything but. What kind of man would I be if I denied her that?"

"You would be normal," the other man commented, eyes distant, as he gazed into memory. "But neither of us are." He went silent, clearly working through something, almost whispering, "She must've been lonely."

"She had her siblings," I disagreed, but nodded after a moment. "Siblings that didn't really understand her. Her sister cares about her, but it was only when I started teaching them both did Violetta start to realize Piper's talents, and saw her as more than a child to be looked down upon, though one to be looked after because of it."

"Will this 'Violetta' be joining us?" Viktor questioned, and I snorted. "No?"

Shaking my head, I told him, "God no. The only way Vi would be here is if we were having something delivered and needed an extra pair of hands. That girl's talents are martial, not scientific. Though..."

"Yes?" my lab-partner asked, cautious, but with a hint of amusement in his tone.

"Piper knows someone, before I had to fake her death to prevent that gang leader from trying to finish the job, an orphan," I stated, seeing an opportunity to move forward with one of my plans. I'd thought of him as he would be, but now he wouldn't be a leader unto himself, and, with a bit of work, could be brought into the fold. "More engineering focused than scientific, but still inventive. A tinkerer type. The kind the Ferros' would snap up in a second, if he was so inclined, and if they knew about him. He'd need some oversight, but could be a great help, if you feel up to it."

Viktor had started to nod, but looked at me sharply. "Me? But I'm..."

"A learned scientist?" I questioned, smirking slightly as I teased him, the man having similar hang-ups to Piper when it came to self-worth. "An accomplished academic who himself studied under the most experienced of Councilors in our city's history? One of the two men in charge of the project that will change the face of Piltover itself?"

"... Well, when you put it like that," my lab partner admitted. "But, to be a mentor myself?"

Shaking my head at the parallels, I told him, "You won't be his father, nor will he want you to be. But, while I've only known you for a short while, I think you'll try your best, and that's all I could ask for. And, besides, if you need help, I'll be there for you. Oh, and you could talk to Heimerdinger, I guess. The floof would probably be fluffed that you're continuing his tradition, or something like that," I finished dismissively, getting a laugh from the other man.

"You really do not like him," Viktor commented.

"I don't like his blindness to the very progress he claims to champion," I replied dryly. "Though I do respect his accomplishments in other, non-magically adjacent fields. So, are you fine with Piper helping us in the lab?"

My lab-partner looked at her consideringly, and she gave him a nervous wave in return. "You said the man that went after family is still around?"

"A contact of mine was the one that got her and her sister to safety, they both look different compared to what they used to, and I won't be taking Piper into the Undercity until she's grown to the point she's unrecognizable," I informed the other man. "Honestly, the haircut, different clothes, clean air, and good food have taken her halfway there."

"They would," he noted absently, nodding to himself. Coming to a conclusion, he hobbled forward, striding up to the now-nervous girl. "It has come to my attention that I did not formally introduce myself, and for that I apologize," he stated with formality. "Good morning, Ms. Piper Vandottir, I am Viktor, and I look forward to working with you in the future," he smiled, offering a hand for her to shake.

Looking to me in confusion, her unsure expression relaxed a little, brightening when I nodded, as she looked back to the other man and grabbed his hand, pumping it once as she said, "Uh, it's nice to meet you, Viktor!"

The older Zaunite smirked, "I, too, am not from the Topside, but while I do not come from Freljord, like you do, I grew up in the Undercity."

Piper's eyes went wide. "You, you did? But then, why are you here?" she asked, and I winced at her phrasing.

"Talent, luck, and hard work," Viktor smiled, not taking offense. "However, I had to learn how to avoid bringing attention to it, as some 'Pilties' are... less than understanding about that fact. Would you like me to share some strategies?"

The tiny tinker started to respond, then looked to me, and I gave her a small nod, so she looked back to my lab-partner. "Yeah! Uh, if you don't mind? I know you're doing science-stuff."

"Science-stuff, in this case, is looking over the samples to see if there's anything weird, and then figuring out the next experiments to do," I told her. "Viktor, more gate-work or you want to see if flipping the Begin rune will let us close the gate easier?"

The other man blinked, "It, it would, wouldn't it?"

I shrugged, "Probably? So? It's your turn to be the loose cannon."

Considering that, Viktor declared, "Flipping the rune. It will make things easier, but also might explode."

"Really?" Powder asked, excited, before she realized what we said, sending a worried look my way.

"It probably won't, and we've got safeties in place to protect ourselves," I reassured her. "You guys want anything to drink?"

"Coffee, please," Viktor smiled, as Piper called out, "Juice!"

Making refreshments, I smiled as my lab-partner directed the young girl to sit at a nearby table, and started talking about his experiences when he'd first started attending the Academy, Piper following along with laser focus, glad they were getting along.