Logan stayed low in the water.
The blue-haired woman was still glaring at the pink-haired woman. Vi was glaring at both of them. The pink-haired woman did not seem to understand or care that anyone was upset. She only looked delighted, soaked, and entirely too close.
Before Logan could decide whether he should look away, close his eyes, or drown himself for a minute, the pink-haired woman moved.
She slipped free of the blue-haired woman's grip with ridiculous ease and lunged at him.
Logan barely had time to brace.
She wrapped herself around him with both arms, pressing her cheek to his, rubbing against him with bright, happy little sounds. Her wet hair clung to his shoulder. Her bare breasts slid against his chest. Her tails rose from the water behind her, dripping and swaying like they were pleased with themselves.
Logan froze.
His brain produced several thoughts at once.
One was that she was very warm.
Another was that she smelled like flowers.
Another was that her big chest was pressed to him in a way that made thinking much worse.
The last thought was that he knew her.
He did not have the name yet. It was there somewhere, behind a door that had not fully opened. But his body knew. His breathing changed. His heart stumbled. Some part of him, deeper than memory, wanted to hold her back.
Across the pool, the blue-haired woman stared at him.
Her face twisted.
"No," she said.
Her voice cracked immediately.
She wiped at her nose with the back of her wrist. "Nope. Not this time. I am not crying again. I've cried too much the last few days. I'm done. Dry eyes. Tough girl. Stone face."
Tears spilled down both cheeks.
A thick sniff followed.
Vi looked at her. "That's the worst stone face I've ever seen."
"Shut up," the blue-haired woman said, already crying harder.
She waded toward Logan slowly, dragging one arm through the water like she was trying to look casual and failing at every step. Her nose ran. She sniffed again, louder this time, and held her arms out.
Logan watched her come closer.
The name was there too.
Closer than the other one.
Blue hair. Loud voice. Paint.
The name did not arrive cleanly. It came with pieces. A laugh in a dirty room. A hand in his. A bomb going off somewhere it probably should not have. Tears on his shirt. A kiss. A scream. A home.
Jinx reached him and threw herself against him.
The pink-haired woman was still clinging to his side, so Jinx ended up hugging both of them for one messy second before shoving for room.
"Move, fox," Jinx choked out. "I get middle."
The pink-haired woman made a protesting sound but did not speak.
Jinx wrapped her arms around Logan's neck and buried her face against him. Her shoulders shook. Then she lifted her head and kissed him.
It was wet, but not in the romantic way.
Logan tasted hot spring water, salt, and something that was definitely snot.
He pulled back slightly, blinking.
Jinx sniffed against his mouth. "Don't make that face."
She kissed him again, shorter this time, still gross, still desperate enough that Logan stopped caring.
The pink-haired woman watched them.
Then she leaned in, puckered her lips, and stuck out her tongue like she was about to copy the whole thing with no understanding of timing, privacy, or hygiene.
Jinx snapped a hand up and planted it over her mouth.
"No."
The pink-haired woman blinked.
Jinx kept her hand there, still crying, still sniffling. "Can't you see you're interrupting an intimate moment? This is where me and Logan kiss while we're crying."
The pink-haired woman made a muffled sound against Jinx's palm.
Vi stared at her. "Didn't you say you wouldn't cry?"
"Shut up!"
Logan looked between them. He was starting to recognize more.
Jinx...
His eyes moved to the pink-haired woman.
Ahri...
The name settled in his chest and immediately turned heavy.
Ahri did not speak.
Jinx was still holding him. Her face was pressed to his shoulder now, her breathing uneven. Logan's left arm moved before he fully decided to move it. It lifted from the water, slow and awkward, and rested against her back.
Jinx went still.
Then she clung harder.
Logan's right arm shifted toward Ahri. She made a soft sound and rubbed her cheek against his palm.
Something in him eased and tightened at the same time.
Then Jinx noticed the problem under the water.
Her crying stopped by degrees.
The sniffing slowed.
Her body stiffened against his.
She pulled back just enough to look down, then up at him.
The heartbreak on her face changed into something else.
A long smile spread across her mouth.
"Of course," she said, sounding more pleased with every word. "Naked Jinx is hugging him."
Vi made a disgusted noise. "Or maybe it's because naked Ahri has been rubbing her chest all over him."
Jinx's smile vanished. "Absolutely not."
Vi raised a brow. "Really?"
"It's mostly me."
Ahri tilted her head as if trying to understand the argument.
Then, underwater, her hand moved toward something hard, something it absolutely should not have gone.
Logan's soul left his body for a second.
Jinx screamed, "Ahri!"
Ahri made a curious sound.
Jinx lunged at her.
Ahri slipped aside with impossible grace, still half wrapped around Logan, still making happy little noises as if this was the best game anyone had ever invented. One of her tails flicked water into Jinx's face. Another curled around Logan's shoulder.
Jinx sputtered and lunged again.
Ahri dodged again.
Logan sat there, wet, stunned, and increasingly certain that death might have been less confusing.
"Jinx," he murmured.
The blue-haired woman froze.
"Ahri," he said next.
The pink-haired woman stilled too.
The names came out rough, the sound of them seemed to do something to the air.
Vi noticed.
Her expression changed at once.
"Okay," she said. "That's enough."
Jinx turned on her. "No, it's not."
"You can maul him later."
"I am not mauling him."
"You are crying, kissing him with snot and fighting Ahri. He's been awake for maybe ten minutes."
Jinx opened her mouth.
Vi moved fast. With one arm, she caught Jinx around the waist. With the other, she grabbed Ahri's hand.
Ahri resisted for one second, not violently, just stubbornly. Then Vi pulled harder, and Ahri let herself be dragged, though her tails kept trying to reach back for Logan.
"No," Jinx said, grabbing at the water. "No, wait, he just said my name."
"And he'll say it again after he gets five minutes without you climbing him."
"I was not climbing him."
Ahri made a sad little sound.
Logan almost reached after them.
Then he saw Jinx's face.
She was still crying, but she was also smiling at him.
Vi dragged both women out of the spring.
Jinx pointed at him over Vi's shoulder. "Don't go anywhere."
Logan looked down at the water around him. "Ok..."
"That's my guy."
Vi muttered something about clothes, boundaries, and needing another adult. Then the three of them disappeared behind the steam and the wooden screens.
Logan was alone.
For a while, he did nothing.
The hot water moved around him. The sunlight shifted through leaves overhead. Somewhere in the village, someone laughed. A bird called from a branch. The world remained strangely peaceful, as if none of the last several minutes had happened.
Logan sank until the water reached his chin.
Then he started thinking.
Slowly.
Carefully.
His memories were not gone. That was the first relief. They were scattered, but they were there. Some pieces came sharp. Others came covered in fog. He could remember entering the Void, Ahri beside him, losing parts of himself...
After that, things blurred.
He guessed the missing pieces were from when he had been unconscious or half-conscious. Those gaps would have to be filled by someone else.
Logan lifted his left arm from the water.
The scar around the shoulder looked cleaner now. He flexed the fingers. They moved better than before. The arm felt like his and not his at the same time, like a song he knew being played on a different instrument.
He looked down at his left leg next.
Almost the same feeling.
Same connection...
His chest tightened.
Ahri had six tails, not nine.
Ahri had not spoken.
She had only made sounds. Happy ones. Confused ones. Animal ones.
Logan's stomach sank.
"No," he whispered.
He closed his eyes and reached inward.
Spirit power answered immediately.
The power moved more freely through him, it gathered with almost no resistance.
And inside that power, he felt her.
Ahri.
Not like before. This was deeper. Threaded through him. Woven into the restored flesh. Her power lingered there, immense and intimate.
Logan opened his eyes.
The hot spring steam blurred the trees.
He thought of old stories from his previous world. Kitsune. Kumiho. Nine-tailed foxes who became something more when all nine tails were complete. Spirits, monsters, goddesses, depending on who told the story. Ahri was not exactly any one myth, but she carried pieces of more than one.
A fox with all nine tails was not just powerful, she was whole.
Logan gripped his left wrist.
"Don't tell me you..." he muttered.
The words made him angry as soon as they left his mouth.
He cursed under his breath. Then again, louder.
Of course she had done something like that.
He pressed both hands over his face.
"This is my fault."
If he had been stronger. Faster. Smarter. If he had not pushed too far. If he had found another way.
The water rippled around him.
He forced his hands down.
No.
He could drown in guilt later.
There were too many things to handle.
First, Ahri.
He needed to know exactly what she had done and whether there was any way to restore her tails, because those tails were what made Ahri a deity, and without them, she was almost an animal now. Logan hated himself for even thinking it.
Second, The Void. The Watchers. The giant Eye. Kassadin...
Kai'Sa.
Third, Aatrox. The transformation. The fusion.
Fourth, Jinx. Ekko. Vi. Anyone else who had come. What had happened in Runeterra while he had been gone.
Especially the Freljord.
The corruption. Lissandra. The tribes. The damage.
Fifth, how the hell had Jinx and the others gotten here?
Sixth, where the hell was he? A village in a forest full of mushroom roofs?
Logan stared at the water.
The list kept growing.
His thoughts tangled together until they became a swarm.
Logan inhaled.
Held it.
Then shouted at the sky.
"AAAAAAAH!"
A few birds exploded out of the trees.
After a moment, Logan sighed and let himself sink back against the stone edge.
There was no way to solve everything from a hot spring while naked and confused.
So he made the only decision that seemed reasonable.
He would go with whatever happened next.
One thing at a time.
Breathe first. Stand second. Find clothes third.
Maybe ask fewer questions than his brain wanted.
Maybe not.
Logan pushed himself toward the steps. His left leg complained. He climbed out of the water slowly, dripping onto the stone.
The air felt cool against his skin.
He looked down at himself.
Right.
Clothes.
"That," Logan muttered, "should probably be the first crisis."