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The Winning Hand

Chapter 3: Mark on the Map

Notes:

Here we go. The next chapter of the story. Everbody's grown up a bit, and new faces have joined our trio as the stakes begin to grow.

Please enjoy and let me know if you've also been hyperfixated on this show these last weeks. Good thing they've put the soundtrack in its entirety on Spotify. :')

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text


PILTOVER. WHARFSIDE DOCKS. THREE YEARS LATER.

It was was a beautiful day. Sea gulls were lazily circling the sky. Under them, the Pilt gurgled peacefully like a sleeping leviathan. In the distance, the enormous Sun Gates shone like polished gold.

Shay didn’t even bother to look at them.

Instead of enjoying the scenic landscape, she listened and waited. Patiently. Hidden in the hulking shadow of the old fish market hall, she was keeping her gaze intently fixed on the small group of chem-punks. Silently suffering, they were hauling crates onto a rickety looking ship under the watchful eye of a chem-thug who was barking orders at them. In total, there was four of them.

Nothing escaped her watchful eyes: Their agitated faces, their ragtag clothing, the number of weapons they were carrying on them. She also noticed that they looked nervous as hell. Thus, prone to making mistakes. Hastily, she wrote every observation down to the smallest detail on coal-smudged pages.

There! A movement behind the window of the sailboat's cockpit suddenly caught her attention. Oddly birdlike, she cocked her head to the side, excitedly licking her lips, as she counted the shadowy figures. One. Two. Three.

Can’t. Hide. From me.

Oh, they’d chosen a shitty day to smuggle their stuff.

Stowing away her little spyglass, she snapped shut the little notebook, put it in her shoulder bag with a piece of coal and began to climb up the building.

The ravages of time hadn’t been kind to the former market hub’s façade. The wood rotten, the cement crumbling. These parts of the docks had been forgotten by everyone. Too small and cramped for the massive merchants' barges and the riches they carried east into the open sea. Another person would’ve been intimidated by these conditions, but she’d seen worse.

Daughter of the fissures. Miner folk. That’s what she was.

Feeling up every crook and nanny carefully and testing the stability of every foothold she was putting her weight on, Shay hefted herself up the wall, concentrating with the tip of her tongue poking through the front teeth. Drops of sweat rolled down her heated face and although her muscles strained, she was enjoying the challenge.

Life had indeed changed her in these few years.

“Give me hand, will ya?”

She eventually grinned with a raised hand into the air as a shadow darkened the rest of her way up. Vander met her joyful expression by smirking himself and hauled her up with one burly arm.

Shay practically flew through the air and stumbled against his broad chest as she chuckled breathlessly.

“Did you get stronger over night or what?”

Unbelievable. Raising her thick eyebrows, she took to a wide step to the side and looked up into his face, arms akimbo.

“Nah, scrawny thing like you?” He shook his head good-humoredly. Bright eyes meeting hers as he flexed his muscles like the insufferably smug asshole that he was. “Doesn’t take much strength at all.”

Shay sniffed, just faking being offended, rolled her shoulders and took a good noseful of air into her lungs. Then she punched him square in the arm with a bony fist, exhaling with a sharp hiss. His yelp was music to her ears. Training her to fight had been his biggest mistake. Sucker.

Passing a grumbling Vander with a cocky grin, she sauntered into the middle of the roof where the others were already waiting for her. She sat down cross-legged and put her bag on the ground with a thud.

“There’s four of’em on the landing stage. Three scrappers, one chem-thug,” she then began sharing her observation and rummaged in her messenger bag for the notebook that she’d meticulously scribbled in. “Luckily for us, they don’t seem too well armed. Some iron pipes and crowbars, but— “

“Just four? So, what are we waiting for then?”

Shay narrowed her eyes at the interruption. Why did they have to bring her along again?

“—there’s reinforcements on board,” she continued and looked up from her notes to meet the steely gaze of Sevika.

The tall girl was sitting next to Benzo, lounging lazily against the roof wall with an unimpressed expression on her face. Like a big grumpy cat.

It took Shay a lot of her small pool of patience to not stick her tongue out. Instead, she opted for a deep breath. Counted to three before she concluded her observation.

“Might be some sailors who’re on the smuggle. Didn’t seem keen to come outside and help the chem-idiots,” she said, shrugging her shoulders.

Vander sat beside her and sighed. Caressing his stubbled chin between thumb and forefinger, he seemed worried. His bushy eyebrows were drawn together.

“If we attack from the landing side first, they could steer the boat away from the coast while we’re busy fighting the small fries. Leave us stranded.”

“Should we split up then? Attack from both sides?” Bernadette, a girl with copper red hair, followed his train of thought.

A bastard of a Piltovan noble lord and his favourite girl in one of the finer undercity’s brothels, she’d chosen a life on the streets instead of following her mother’s footsteps. It had been Shay who’d found her behind the brothel, angrily kicking a john in the nuts. And it had been her who’d decided to offer the other girl a way to take out her frustration on some Pilties.

“What d’you mean by that?!” Benzo’s voice sounded rather alarmed as he crossed his arms in front of his broad chest. “I-I’m not swimming through the damned river!”

Shay tried to suppress a snicker but failed miserably which earned her a raised middle finger from the butcher’s son. Ah well, she deserved that.

“Exactly that. Though I’d have to pass as well. I still haven’t gotten the hang of swimming. Shay’s been teaching me, but I wouldn’t want to slow us down. Or drown,” the red head explained with a sheepish smile in Shay’s direction.

“It’s a good plan.”

Everybody’s eyes turned to Silco who had been silently listening to their rather chaotic planning.

“We’d eliminate the unknown variable. Taking control of the sailboat would also put us in an advantageous position of having complete control over the wares,” he explained with steepled fingers, hands perched on his raised knees. Although he looked more relaxed than any of them right now, Shay noticed the fervour in his narrowed eyes.

This wasn’t like any heist they’d attempted in the past. This would put their little group of misfits on the map for everyone to see. Finally earn them the respect of the undercity.

“Fine by me. So, who’s game for a little swim then, eh?”

Silco fixed Vander a thankful look and nodded in his direction before he let his gaze slowly wander over their assembled heads. Shay was sure that everybody’s heart was as fast beating as hers. Pounding in her chest like a war drum.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

“I’ll go,” Shay threw her gauntlet into the nervous silence and was very relieved about the fact that her voice hadn’t cracked. Raising her hand, she waited.

With an inner groan, she then saw Sevika follow suit and smile wolfishly, teeth flashing in a menacing manner.

“Definitely not going to let you have all the fun by yourself, little birdie.”

“You’ve got a funny way of getting your rocks off, Sevika.”

“Brat.“

“I’ll go as well.”

Surprised, Shay snapped her head to Silco who was also now holding his hand in the air. But he didn’t look her way. She blinked confused, momentarily taken aback.

“That’s Shay, Sevika and Silco on one team,” Benzo counted on one hand’s meaty fingers. “And me, Vander and Bernie on the other one. What now?”, he asked, wiggling three fingers of his other hand.

Frowning, Shay averted her gaze from Silco whose eyes seemed unusually distant. She’d ask him later. Altough it probably was just the nerves.

Putting her notebook back into her bag and standing up, she dusted off her trousers as four pair of eyes curiously followed her movements. The finality of this moment raised goosebumps on her arms, made her blood rush through her veins like a torrent that made the Pilt look like a streamlet.

But still smiling, she cracked her knuckles and gazed over the roof wall down to the small figures on the docks who were moving hurriedly like ants. Nervously bobbing up and down on the heels of her feet, she straightened her shoulders.

The night couldn't come sooner.

“We show’em what we’re made off!”

Notes:

We all know that splittin up the party is never a good idea, don't we?

If that was indeed a bad idea or not, you'll get to know next chapter. >:D