Twin Cities: Who says scientists can't be conquerors?

Chapter 45 Now I'm not exactly a "good person" either.

"It's okay if it hurts, child."

"Your situation is rather unusual, so I dare not use anesthesia on you."

A deep voice emerged from between the shadowless lights, carrying an indescribable, complex quality.

Aaron followed the sound and found Singed's shady bald head.

Singed held a scalpel in one hand and a bullet fragment, soaked in blood and dark red, in the tweezers in the other.

He clicked his tongue in admiration, as if he were examining a work of art.

"Look at this bullet."

"It looks no different from a regular large-caliber bullet, and it can kill people directly. But in reality, apart from the primer and cartridge case, the bullet inside the cartridge has been replaced with some kind of special drug."

"This drug has a powerful blocking effect, which can almost instantly render the injured person unable to think or be conscious, and then make them completely helpless."

"I'm sure you can relate to this, right?"

"That feeling of being hit by a bullet, your consciousness starting to fade, your brain gradually becoming numb... tsk tsk, what a brilliant invention."

As he spoke, Singed held the tweezers up to Aaron's eyes, bringing them close for him to see:

"Did you notice? The bullet caps are specially made; these bullets aren't even designed to kill."

"I don't care about that, Singed!"

Aaron grimaced, enduring the excruciating pain in his shoulder, and had little interest in what the usually taciturn Singed had discovered to make him so talkative.

All he wants to know now is what happened after he lost consciousness.

Just now, while in that magical, glowing space, Aaron's negative status was completely locked down, so he could analyze and learn without being affected at all.

Now that he's back in the real world, the intense throbbing of his pain receptors has made him lose all his patience.

Aaron looked around and realized that this was the laboratory in the basement of the Fugen Tavern, which had always been Singed's private space for researching glimmers of light.

Surprisingly, there was no one else there besides him and Singed.

"Who brought me here?"

"Do you know what happened outside? Where's Hilko? Where are Jinx and Caitlyn? They saved me, didn't they?"

Aaron caught his breath and spoke again, asking a series of questions.

He was certain that before he fell into a coma, although he had summoned the Zaun version of the Shadowcraft tactical mech, it was too late to make any further arrangements.

He knew nothing about what happened afterward.

Logically speaking, if Jinx, who had pilot privileges, managed to overcome the difficulties while piloting the Shadow Mech, then she must have been the one who brought herself back to Fugen's Tavern.

But now I can't see Jinx around.

Aaron didn't believe Jinx wouldn't worry about him, and he didn't believe Jinx would obediently wait outside the "operating room".

"Don't be in such a hurry, young man."

Singid's voice remained slow and deliberate, unhurried and calm.

He chuckled, then explained his earlier behavior, before briefly mentioning Jinx and Caitlyn:

"I just want you to see for yourself that the person who shot you didn't mean to kill you."

"As for those two girls... hehe, they're not here, they're just too shy to see you."

"Afraid to see me?"

Aaron was stunned.

He was now gradually getting used to the pain in his left shoulder socket and was able to think and speak fluently, so when Singid's words reached his ears, he was immediately a little confused.

If it were just Caitlin, she might really not want to see him.

On one hand, he was wounded, and on the other hand, Singed's laboratory had revealed almost everything about Hilko's research on dim light over the years.

If Caitlin saw this, it wouldn't be surprising if she turned away in disappointment and anger.

But Jinx...

"What is she afraid to see me about?"

……

"This piece is installed here; you've got it wrong."

"No way, this piece of armor was pieced together here after being flipped over."

"No, no, uh, it seems right too?"

Jinx looked at the trapezoidal armor plate in her hand, then at the cone-shaped object in Caitlyn's hand, and finally threw it away in distress, falling backward into the haystack behind her.

Looking in the direction she fell, the once imposing Cheng Ying mecha was now a pile of countless parts, scattered haphazardly on the ground in the backyard.

Clearly, the mech had fallen apart.

The culprit is still unknown, because Aaron did not eliminate the final defect in the structural stability of the mecha, which caused the Cheng Ying mecha to fall apart upon landing after being overloaded.

She just sadly clutched her long blue braid, her face, already streaked with tears, filled with dejection and dejection.

"It's all my fault."

Jinx muttered to herself.

"It was perfectly fine when it came back!"

"If I hadn't fired those random shots, that big guy wouldn't have died. How am I going to explain this to Aaron when he wakes up?!"

Fire a cannon?

You call blowing up half of Jing Shui Prison just "setting off firecrackers"?

Seeing Jinx wallowing in self-pity, Caitlyn couldn't help but mentally complain.

She certainly cared about Aaron, and it had taken a great deal of determination for her to escape with Jinx here, but she still couldn't understand Jinx's strange focus—

Come on, is the focus now on fixing this piece of metal?

"Ahem, Jinx."

Caitlin made her voice as serious as possible.

"I have to remind you of two things. First, Aaron is currently being treated by that bald guy who doesn't look like a good person, and we don't know if he'll... "

"Oh, don't worry, Singed is very strong, Aaron will definitely be fine."

"...Hesitating. There's a second point."

Caitlin didn't know where Jinx's confidence came from.

She and the other person had just been carrying the unconscious Aaron in the Cheng Ying tactical mech, speeding away and quickly shaking off the pursuit of the prison guards.

But the feeling of unease in her heart never left her.

The second point she wanted to make was to tell Jinx, quite seriously, that strictly speaking, they were now...

"That's illegal!"

Caitlin's eyes widened, her hand tightly gripping the folded Hextech rifle, as if trying to give herself a little courage.

She pointed to herself, then to Jinx:

"I don't know if Zaun has any written laws, but I can tell you with absolute certainty that you, and I, the enforcer, have both violated the most serious laws of Piltover!"

Caitlyn, worried that Jinx wouldn't understand, leaned closer and continued speaking:

"Think about it, no matter why we were attacked today, if the law enforcement officers come to investigate Stillwater Prison, they will find that we not only killed people, but also turned half of Stillwater Prison into ruins. This is simply..."

"But there's still half left."

"This isn't a matter of whether it's half or half!!"

Jinx's joking attitude finally angered Caitlin.

She is currently under immense stress, constantly oscillating between "I did nothing wrong" and "I became an accomplice," unable to find any reason to put her mind at ease.

After hearing Jinx's words, she really wanted to stand up and fire a burst of bullets at the other person!

"When we were at your house, I told you that you'd better arrest me."

Caitlin was in a bad mood when she suddenly heard Jinx say this.

The blue-haired girl seemed completely relaxed, resting her head on the trapezoidal metal plate she had just used, staring blankly at the moon in the sky.

The words he spoke seemed to be a soliloquy, calm and soothing.

"Kate, you're a really nice person, unlike any other Piltover guy I've ever met."

"I'm so grateful to you for not only not running away, but also for taking care of Aaron and coming back with me."

"but……"

Jinx turned to the side, as if deliberately avoiding Caitlyn's gaze.

"But what can I do? I'm not a good person."

She unconsciously began to curl her legs up, as if trying to hide herself:

"You saw it too."

"If anyone dares to shoot Aaron, I'll rip their head off. If anyone tries anything in Stillwater Prison, I'll blow the whole place up."

"And if you get to know me better, you might find that besides Aaron, there aren't many good people around me. Because that's how you have to live in Zaun. According to Piltover's rules, there probably aren't enough rooms in the Stillwater prison, haha."

"Sometimes, I can't even control myself and I always cause trouble for those around me, so it's normal if you're disappointed in me."

"If you still have the strength, you should go..."

"Why all this nonsense!"

Jinx's voice grew softer and softer, but just as she was about to ramble on and on, Caitlin rudely interrupted her.

Caitlin, who was swearing for the first time, blushed and hid all her emotions behind her deliberately stern face. She pulled Jinx up with a look of disappointment, forcing Jinx to look her in the eye.

"Now we have a third thing to do."

Caitlin stared at Jinx.

"The third thing is, I need to think carefully about how to clear our names, so you won't say anything like 'I'll abandon you' again!"

After saying that, Caitlyn stood up abruptly, no longer looking at Jinx, whose eyes were filled with a mixture of surprise and delight, and quickly walked out of the courtyard.

As she walked, she said, "As for what you just said about not being a good person?"

"Since we're all criminals now, you'd better stop talking about good guys and bad guys."

Caitlin suddenly stopped, turned around, and pointed to her face:

"Because I'm not a good person anymore, you know?!"

……

"hey-hey."

"You can still laugh! You're happy to see even a law enforcement officer like me commit a crime, aren't you?!"

"That's not what I'm laughing at."

Jinx sat on the grass in the backyard, her eyes seemingly regaining their vitality. After giggling, she bit her lip.

She pointed in another direction:

"You've gone to the wrong place. The exit for the courtyard is here."