Silent Waves, Chapter 3
Chapter 3: Crashing Waves Fandom: League of Legends Ship: Jhin x Sona
[AO3]
Word count: 4623
Jhin descends the wooden ramp to the stone docks of Piltover. The stones are cleanly cut and precise, just how these machine-tinkering folks love it. The skyscrapers of Piltover are always a sight, drowning in gold, hextech, and a faint air of superiority. He takes one last look at the city before glancing at the nearest clock tower, its bells tolling eleven.
There wasn’t much time. The cabal stated they would be sending a messenger with his gun by noon. If he wasn’t there in time, there would be troublesome consequences he wasn’t willing to risk.
Two hours left. He had to make his way down to Zaun and find the rendezvous point. He swallows a longing sigh when a haggard old man approaches him with a knowing smile. He recognizes the cabal’s mark on the elder’s eye prosthetic. He straightens his back and bows his head.
“Back again, I see,” the old man splutters as he taps his cane by Jhin’s feet. “Y’really have no limitation with the way y’treat our technology, do ye?” He urges Jhin to follow him through the dark alleyways of Piltover.
“On the contrary, elder,” Jhin replies calmly. “It is of the utmost importance that I make sure my gun is well taken care of.” He raises his head to the skies, a mysterious look in his eyes. “It’s just that I had picked up a… stray, and she didn’t seem to take too well to it.”
“Oh gob it,” the elder harrumphs. “What else did y’expect, picking up a stray like that in the sea?” He shakes his head disapprovingly. “I never once took ye fer the type, but whatever y’picked up did quite the damage to yer gun.” After a moment of silence, he asks, “What did y’even pick up, anywho?”
Jhin’s eyes squint, but the elder cannot tell if it’s out of joy or anger. “A feisty and frightening little thing, I assure you.”
“Is that so…” the elder mutters as he takes Jhin deeper into the city, where The Gray of Zaun awaits below. “By the way, y’didn’t run into any trouble coming here, did ye?”
On instinct, his hand hovers over his abdomen but brushes it off like he had touched something filthy. “Not that I’m aware of,” he answers. “Why do you ask?”
The elder cackles quietly. “The sea has quite the terrifying creatures around here, boy. Y’would do well to mind your path when you depart from Piltover.” Before Jhin can ask any further, the elder ushers Jhin into a hexdraulic conveyor. He slaps Jhin’s back as he makes his way inside. “Come now, y’don’t want to be late!”
“Please, elder. I have a sensitive back.” A shame Jhin can’t kill this old man. He’s the only connection between the cabal and the technology of Piltover and Zaun, the middleman, repairman, and analyst of broken weapons. Killing him would send the cabal after Jhin’s head.
“Someone as young as ye? Y’might as well be one of them Chem-punks ‘round here.” The descender dings, and the door opens up to an alleyway much darker than those of Piltover’s. The streetlamps dimly light the path of cobblestones and bridges ahead. The conveyor creaks as the elder sits on the edge of the doorframe. “I’ll be waiting right here. M’sure you won’t take long.”
Jhin hums a non-committal response as he moves on. The stench of Zaun is sickly as always. The chem-fumes wafting out of the dingy chimneys makes him scoff. How vile. The sooner he gets his gun, the sooner he can get out of this place.
“Where the spirit of this land goes, her followers are near,” a voice says from the dark.
“The followers the stem, the spirit the blossom,” Jhin answers back. He turns to the source of the voice. “Do you have what I requested?” he asks.
“Certainly.” A pair of mechanical hands holding a parcel manifests from the shadows. “To deliver a parcel to the infamous Golden Demon himself, it is quite an honor.”
There is a moment of silence as Jhin unwraps the parcel and holds his newly-repaired Whisper in his hand. The feeling of metal against the palm of his hand sends shivers down his spine. He gives the grip a little squeeze and sighs longingly. Oh, how he missed Whisper…
“Now, shall we talk business?” the figure speaks up. With a metallic clang, a man covered in mechanical prosthetics steps out of the shadows. “I have a job I would like you to accomplish.”
Jhin simply stares at the man in silence. There’s another beat, and the man begins to feel uncomfortable under the scrutiny of his eye. “I understand you’re a client, and I am not one to question them.” He pauses. “Usually. What could a Chem-Baron such as yourself need an actor such as me?”
“Isn’t it obvious? I need power.” He scoffs scornfully. “The only things keep Zaun from falling into chaos are the pillars holding it up: we, the Chem-Barons. Unfortunately, one of these pillars has exhausted their use and refuses to step down. What other choice do I have?”
“Interesting,” Jhin can only say. “Normally, I would take up such a request. It would have been a fantastic piece of work, something as organic as a blossom blooming from within its mechanical cage.”
The baron’s face sours at his words and becomes exasperated. “So, will you do it or not?”
“Unfortunately,” he starts as he points his gun towards the baron, earning a small yelp at the cold touch of his gun’s muzzle to his chest, “I cannot comply.”
“W-wait, what are you doing? I can pay you to do this! A-any amount of money you want!” the baron tries to bargain. He dares not move, or else that bullet will go straight through the core of his body and kill him.
Jhin clicks his tongue in disapproval. “You see, the cabal has its own discreet way of disposing of their messengers.” His eyes squint in pure bliss when he sees the look of terror and desperation in whatever untouched flesh the baron has. Such skin tarnished by dull metallic parts… What a shame, really. “You are my client’s aim, baron. And I will make sure that your death is not meaningless but beautifully ornate.”
“As if I would let you, demon,” the baron exclaims as his mechanical body begins to hiss with steam and overlap each other with increasing size and parts, the baron disappearing into the suit. Jhin hops backwards and shoots at the chest, but the metal deflects the bullet off-course without a dent. “You really think I would come out here to meet The Golden Demon without preparations of my own?”
“I can’t say I didn’t expect it. After all, even the side character must put some effort into their performance before the final curtain call.” Jhin hops away when the baron slams a giant mechanical fist onto the cobblestone. He slips away into the shadows before the baron can catch him.
“Bastard, you think you can hide from me?”
“I prefer the term ‘observing’,” he replies. He studies the structure of the baron’s body, making the calculations and notes necessary to bring the stage to the grand finale.
“You can find the weak point all you want, but it’s useless! This metal is of the highest grade and can deflect any bullet you shoot at me!”
“Weak point? Oh, no, no.” Jhin’s eyes lock onto the tank pumping chemicals into tubes that weave around the mechanical suit. “What I look for is completely different, baron.” He assembles his gun into a rifle and takes a deep breath. Four shots. He shall free this baron from his rusting cage with his art. He shoots.
A tube shatters at the leg. A sickening green chemical sprays everywhere like a spring shower.
Another shot, and another tube shatters at the fist. As he thought, the tubes acted like hydraulics as well as a power source.
The baron’s body creaks into a slow stop, but the baron remains unfazed. “You can stop me, but you’ll have to drag me out of this suit in order to kill me!”
“You seem to lack understanding in your own creation then, baron.” Jhin carefully aims, not at the body but at the gauge tank at the neck of the suit. When the bullet strikes the ring connecting the tank to the neck, a high-pitched hissing noise escapes from the broken tube. Within a few seconds, a pained cry comes from inside. “No matter what and how many walls you construct, there will always be a breaking point.”
The baron screams grow louder as the green chemical empties out from the tank. There’s a loud clang when the baron bursts out of the suit, his flesh and prosthetics practically melting from the acid. He tumbles down the suit and attempts to escape. He hears a dull sound of thunder, and he feels vines of flowers sap away his strength as they constrict around him and the alleyway. The baron’s outstretched arm falls like a tree branch pruned to ensure its healthy and beautiful growth.
Jhin sighs in joy at his work. Or, so he thought it would be the result.
Odd. He doesn’t feel the bliss he’s always felt with every finale. His brows furrow in confusion, unnerved by this feeling. He only feels… dissatisfaction… and a numb pain coming from the wound in his abdomen, like it’s pulsing against his skin to remind him of its existence. Of the siren’s existence.
“Even at these brinks of euphoria, that blasted siren continues to pull me back like a tide,” he mutters. He sighs helplessly. He can only wonder why the siren holds this kind of power over him.
“What took y’so long?” the elder asks.
“Just appreciating my work, elder,” Jhin lies. “It was one of my best work yet.”
The elder grunts in amusement. “Sure, whatever get y’going. How’s the gun? Did it do the job?”
“Absolute perfection, if I say so myself.” He tries to ignore the elder’s dissatisfied face at Jhin’s lack of enthusiasm. “Forgive me, I am still caught up in that moment of bliss.”
“Y’always were an oddball, eh? Come. Y’got the job done, so we need to head up top.” The elder pushes Jhin back into the conveyor and ascends beyond The Gray back to Piltover. They watch the murky atmosphere of Zaun turn golden like the setting sun as they approach the top. “Did y’know? This ol’ thing belonged to that Chem-Baron back there.”
For once, Jhin’s brows raise up in surprise as he slightly turns his head to the elder. “I don’t suppose you were my client this time around, elder?”
The elder taps his cane on the floor of the conveyor at the beat of his cackle. “The baron’s been going ‘round without a goddamn care about the other factions and his own tech!” His cackle slows into a hum. “Did he mention anything ‘bout another Chem-Baron, by any chance?”
“He did.”
“Mm, ain’t it interesting how putting a single idea about themselves into their heads can become so distorted that they become out of touch with their own reality?” the elder says. “The human mind is a fascinating thing.” He shoots Jhin a mysterious look. “Wouldn’t y’agree?”
He doesn’t answer. He feels like he can’t. Jhin feigns an amused chuckle as he turns back to the overview of Piltover. “You are quite the frightening one, elder. I don’t suppose all Piltovans are as mad as you.”
“Not mad,” the elder corrects with a crazed look in his eye. “Just passionate.”
--
Sona lies in the bottom of her tank, stretched out atop one of the several rocks they placed on the sand. She listlessly gazes up at the tarp covering the top of the glass. Faint streaks of sunlight filter through from above. Her lips purse into a straight line.
How can these creatures produce such… sounds?
It’s faint, but it’s constantly there like in the back of her head. She presses her palms to her ears and tries to shut out the cries and voices of the merfolk of this region. Even their songs sound so cacophonous.
A new siren. A girl.
She’s not from here. She’s come to our home.
This is her home.
She belongs here.
She belongs here. She belongs here. She belongs here.
What a dangerous place this is, and yet the landfolk of this region are oblivious to the creatures that they’ve created. And worse, these creatures have caught wind of her presence. They know she’s here. They will come to take her away. To make her one of them.
She hears two of Jhin’s crew, tasked to guard her tank from any intruders, talking to themselves outside of the tank. In an attempt to relieve her mind of the voices, she swims over to the guards and taps the glass gently. They’re cautious, but for good reason.
One of them glances at the other with a questioning look. The other returns the look with a helpless one as she approaches the tank. “Can we help you?” They watch her point up and slide her hand up to the lower half of her face, as if she’s putting on a mask. “The captain? He’s not back yet, or at least, we haven’t heard anything from the deck yet.”
Sona makes an impatient face and nods. She sits on the sand and leans back against the nearest rock with her arms crossed.
“Excuse me?” the other guard speaks up. “If you don’t mind, would you like to join our conversation?” Seeing Sona tilt her head in uncertainty and glance up at the deck cautiously, the guard shakes his head. “The captain’s not back yet. I don’t think it’d hurt to try.”
“We’re the more curious of the bunch here,” the first guard joins in. “We’ve never really seen a siren before, or any sea creatures like the merfolk, so we’re really interested in what you see down below.” She shoots an accusatory glance at the other guard. “Unfortunately, some people don’t really believe that there are certain creatures in the sea.”
“Listen, I gotta see it to believe it. There aren’t such things as krakens the size of a battleship. I’ll believe that there are krakens the size of smaller ships like ours, sure. Bilgewater ain’t full of crazy folks, so I have no reason not to believe them.”
“What!” she exclaims. “You’ll believe them but not me, when I’ve heard those stories from the people who’ve seen it themselves?!”
“They’re just stories!”
“So you’re saying the Bilgewater folks are fibbing?”
“I didn’t say tha —” A knocking on the glass catches their attention, seeing Sona smile sympathetically. They watch her point to the female guard before nodding. The male guard pales with wide eyes. “Y-you mean they’re real?”
Sona nods. She brushes her hand over the sand and makes an even bigger gesture with her hands, saying there are even bigger and more terrifying creatures in the abyss of the sea. She can’t help but laugh when the other guard pales as well.
But their conversation is cut short when there’s a commotion from above. The door leading to the cargo hold opens, another crewmember poking his head out the door. “Captain’s here! To your posts!” he whispers urgently.
The two guards scramble away to their posts and wait for Jhin’s arrival. Sona, on the other hand, rolls her eyes and swims to the farthest side of the tank and sits atop the bigger rocks. She waits for that iron door to open. But it never opens.
Strange. She had expected him to come by with that foolish squint in his eyes as he gazes at his prisoner in amusement. Her shoulders, which she notices had become stiff and tense, relax. No matter. The less he shows his face in front of her, the better.
Suddenly, the iron door to the cargo hold opens, and Sona tenses up again. But instead of Jhin, it’s the same crewmember who had told the guards to be at their posts. “We’ll be heading back out to sea. Captain won’t be coming down here until we’re out of Piltovan borders.
One of the guards furrows her brows in confusion. “Is there a reason why?”
The crewmember grimaces. “We’re being tracked. Someone found out about the siren.”
Immediately, a heavy atmosphere crashes upon those in the cargo hold. Dread pools in Sona’s stomach. She feels like something much worse will occur out at sea.
The voices of the merfolk that were only whispers in the back of her head just a few minutes suddenly grow in numbers and intensity. She winces at the overwhelming amount of voices and hunches over with her palms against her ears.
They’re going. They’re taking our sister!
How dare they take our new sister!
This is her home!
Come back!
She belongs here!
The voices die into silence as sudden as the next words are uttered altogether in one distorted voice:
We’re coming for you, sister.
Sona gasps in horror when the voices then spill over like a tsunami in her mind. It’s too loud. It’s too intense. She shoots up to the top of the tank, banging the glass lid and catching the attention of the crewmembers guarding the cargo hold.
This is about to become a battle. The crewmembers are preparing themselves to fight whoever is tracking them. But she’s not up there to warn them of the creatures in the sea that are coming for the ship. For her.
Jhin had been careful. He had never mentioned the siren directly in his conversation with the elder. But he supposed Zaunites have eyes and ears everywhere, even in Piltover. Zaunites were known for their experimental demeanors. Some are even passionate enough to steal test subjects for their work.
Mercenaries… are likely. The experimenter themselves wouldn’t go out of their way to face an entire ship of pirates.
He brings out a golden stopwatch from his pockets and opens it up to his eye level. In the reflection of the glass, he spots a ship in the distance that’s slowly sailing in the same direction as them. The ship flies a Piltovan flag, but he can see Zaun’s technology built into the ship. He hums in thought. He had guided the ship towards Freljord, a region that has no need for Piltovan or Zaunite technology.
Even if Piltover wanted to expand their tech to the north, their ship isn’t built to withstand the harsh conditions of Freljord.
A crewmember steps up to the helm and whispers in Jhin’s ear, “Captain, the siren is acting up. We’re not sure what happened. She suddenly swam up to one of the guards trying to say something to her.”
Jhin furrows his brows as he glances at the gate of the cargo hold. What is the siren up to this time? “Do you know what she’s trying to say?” he asks.
“She’s trying to warn us about something. Something in the water? She keeps pointing to herself and then out to the water.” The crewmember looks concerned. “What should we do, sir?”
Something in the water? Pointing to herself… but out there within the sea…
“Hey, do you hear that?” a crewmember standing by the rails murmurs to another. “It sounds like… singing?”
“I don’t hear anything.”
“No, no, I hear it! It sounds like a lullaby my mother used to sing for my brother back home.” The crewmember’s eyes suddenly light up, and he leans over the rails. The crewmember’s eyes glaze over, as if he’s in a trance. “That… sounded like mother.”
“What?”
“That… sounded… like…” the crewmember’s words trail off as he leans closer and closer to hear better. “Mother…!”
“Whoa, hey, what are you doing?!” the other shouts as he pulls him back onto deck.
“It’s her! It’s mother! She’s in there, don’t stop me!” the former shouts back in rage, swatting away the latter’s grip. When the other doesn’t lose his grip, he pulls out a dagger from his belt and slices the other’s arm.
“Agh!” The latter releases the former’s shirt in pain, but two other crewmembers pull them both back onto deck. One of them kicks away the dagger and pins down their frantically pleading mate.
Jhin directs his attention to the commotion happening on deck. Then he hears it. He hears singing coming from the waters. It sounds like an opera. The voices sound muffled, but he thinks he hears them sing of art, of Whisper, of his feats and trophies at sea. That there’s more he can do out there. With them.
His legs suddenly feel heavy, and he feels his foot swing out towards the side of the ship. His mind feels blank like an empty canvas, and the music of the sea is the paint giving it life.
“Captain!” another crewmember runs out from inside the ship and up to the helm in a panic. “It’s an ambush! We’ve been surrounded!”
He snaps back to reality with a hiss, having sunken his nails into the injury in his abdomen. “By who? The Zaunites haven’t even reached us yet.”
“They’re no Zaunites, sir! They’re merfolk!”
Jhin’s eyes grow wide. Sirens. He hadn’t considered this. Could the siren he captured have called these sirens here? No, she is mute. She hasn’t displayed a single ability to be able to communicate to anyone so far. He shakes his head. The merfolk have been around for centuries. Each region has their own kind of merfolk.
Piltover, the City of Progress. Zaun, the City of Iron and Glass. With the advancement of technology, there would be an equal amount of waste filtering into the waters. His eyes perk up in realization. The toxins. For the merfolk who lived in these waters for so long, they wouldn’t notice how far the toxins can be carried by the water. Therefore, they would eventually die to the toxins.
Or adapt to them.
“Prepare yourselves!” Jhin announces. “These creatures can affect any of you to kill you! If you see someone who’s affected, hold them back!” He normally wouldn’t bat an eye if two men or three die, but with enemies coming from both within and out of the waters, he cannot afford to lose that many men at once. “Lookout, keep an eye on that Piltovan ship!” He loads Whisper with four bullets and cocks the hammer. “This show isn’t over yet.”
---
The sounds of gunshots and shouting from the deck alerts Sona of the sirens’ arrival, her banging against the glass becoming stronger and louder. The lid refuses to budge. She swings her arms down in frustration and swims over to one of the guards who had spoken to her.
“Miss siren, isn’t there anything you can do?” she asks in a panic.
Sona nods as points at the lid of her tank. She makes the same gesture to refer to Jhin and then the instrument he had taken.
“Your, your instrument? Can you help if you have it?” When Sona nods firmly, the guard purses her lips in hesitation. She chews the tip of her thumbnail in thought until they hear a metallic clang of the cargo hold’s gate above Sona’s tank.
As they look up, they watch in horror as one of the crewmember’s body is torn apart by a siren that had managed to jump on board. His blood pours onto the top of the tarp covering Sona’s tank.
The guard swallows a gag, looking away. “Okay,” she says. She turns back to Sona. “I’ll get you your instrument from his quarters. I, I don’t know if I might make it, but I’ll try.” The guard runs out of the hold, ignoring the other guards’ protests, and makes her way up to the deck. She glances at the helm, the captain now replaced by another hand.
“What are you doing?” the navigator hisses when she runs past her to Jhin’s quarters. “You’re a dead sailor if he catches you going in there.”
“It’s for the sake of this ship. The siren can help us.” The guard sneaks into Jhin’s quarters and searches the room for the golden instrument. She spots it sitting atop a dresser in the corner of his room, where the siren’s old tank once remained. “There!” Grabbing the instrument and stashing it in her satchel, she runs out of the quarters and back to the deck.
The heavy stench of blood and sea water penetrates her senses as soon as she steps outside. She gags at the sight of dead human and siren bodies littered all over deck. She takes a deep breath, forces herself to look away from the scene, and rushes back down to the hold.
“What have you done?” a guard asks when she produces the instrument from her satchel. “Are you insane?”
“If the siren says she can do something about this situation, I’m willing to take that risk,” she protests. “Get the other guards. We need them to take her up to the deck.”
“Captain will kill all of us!”
“Then what else is there left to do?! I went up there, and we’ve already lost so many hands! The sirens are climbing up the deck! We need her!”
A guard extends out an arm to stop her from climbing up the stairs. “Some of us don’t want to die because of what you did, don’t you understand that?”
“Would you rather all of us die then?” she asks solemnly. The others fall silent. “And if the captain’s more than willing to kill us after all this, then so be it. He’s only losing more of his crew. I’m still going,” she insists urgently. She lunges up the steps to the top of the tank and unlatches the lid. Sona immediately bursts of the water towards the guard, who shields herself thinking she made a mistake of freeing the siren.
But nothing happens.
Instead, Sona is hunched over the edge with her instrument finally in her hands. She takes a deep breath and looks up at the cowering guard with a grateful smile. “Thank you ,” a voice says with a pluck of the strings.
The guard’s eyes widen for a moment, but she regains her composure. “Y-you’re welcome.” She leans forward and hovers her hands over Sona’s shoulders. “We can carry you up to the deck.” Her heart nearly leaps to her throat when Sona suddenly grabs her wrist while shaking her head and pointing her finger at the guard’s forehead.
Jhin will kill her. All of them.
“It’s a risk I’m willing to take.” The guard tucks her arms under Sona’s and lifts her out of the tank. “Come on, we need to get you up there.” One by one, the guards in the hold come up to help her carry Sona down the stairs onto a stretcher. “I thought you didn’t want to get killed by captain?”
“Better than all of us dying to these things… or worse, getting taken for torture and experimentation in Zaun,” a guard mutters, to which the others chime in agreement.
As they reach closer to deck, the female guard speaks up. “We have enough of us to hold her while joining in the fight. There’s a chance the Zaunites will try to take her too. Two of us need to hold the stretcher while the rest of you surround it and fight whoever tries to come after us, got it?”
“Got it. Ready?” The crewmembers crouch to prepare to run out to the deck. Sona sits up on the stretcher with her instrument at the ready.
“Charge!”
