Shattered Ladder 1-18 (Patreon)

Chapter 18

With more strength than someone her size should have, Wangzi dragged him out of the busted-up building as she kept talking faster than he could listen; the both of them back on the street in moments.

Her grip a warm iron cuff on his wrist, tight enough he felt his pulse against her palm, Ken stumbled to keep up with her quick pace. To be honest, his mind was even further behind than his body, the apprentice still trying to process everything, thoughts circling the same three words without landing. Outsider. False root. Wangzi Xiao. 

The words and more buzzed in the back of his skull as he wiped watery eyes with the back of one arm. By the time he blinked again, they had left the backstreets long behind.

There was no more panicked running, and he wasn’t just a scared ghost flashing his way through the much-emptier alleys. He was in it again, Wangzi tugging on his arm through the messy chaotic main-streets as she didn’t even pretend to be listening to his complaints. 

The girl didn’t seem to listen to anything and he could see why, eyes going wide as people actually stepped out of the way for her. Not much, maybe like half a foot, but they made way for the blonde girl; enough that she didn’t have to shoulder her way through. Who are you?

Biting back the question, Ken tipped his head all the way back, staring up at the impossible metal ceiling of the world that was still there. High, high above, the fake suns studded into the sky were cycling around on massive gears, shining down with uncaring too-bright light. He’d seen it for years and it still made less sense everytime he looked at it, just like the Tower or City inside what he knew as the Wall. Hell, he knew they were supposed to be inside a huge tower, but looking as far in the distance as his eyes let him, Ken wasn’t even sure he could make out anything at all…

The whole place was that big.

Enough to make his stomach do a constant slow flip the longer he looked straight up. Teeth gritted tight as he tried not to shudder, Ken lowered his gaze a little to the tall buildings he hadn’t really gotten a good look at  the day before; the wires thick as his body snaking their way across and between the rust-stained buildings rising high.

Some of the cables seemed fine enough, even as others trailed visible bursts of electricity from open wiring. If that wasn’t bad enough, more than a few were frayed so badly he had to wonder if they weren’t about to snap and lash down into the crowd where he was still moving through. 

The crowd didn’t seem to mind at all, though, nobody in the river of people flowing around them even bothering for a second to look up at the swaying death overhead. No, all Ken saw were hard faces, a few giving the Wangzi girl a weird glance as they backed off, but mostly just a lot of tired eyes.

Sparks flew — literally; hot copper smell mixing with sweat and fried oil as merchant and customer went insult for insult, voices cutting through a low mechanical groan that sounded off from somewhere. The second man gestured with thin arms to what looked like a leg on the table, the thing crude and broken if the electricity arcing off the mangled tech wasn’t obvious enough. A group of kids ran past both men, one of them carrying something tall and long that flickered with its own light; the whole place was loud and alive, Ken just blinking at it all as nobody even bothered to look at any of what was making him stare.“Stop gappin’, thickhead!” Wangzi cared about it even less, the shark of a girl moving through the current of the streets in a flow that seemed to exist only for her, and pulling him right along in her wake. Ken snapped forward to look her way, another verbose and clearly well-reasoned question on his lips. “Wha-huh?”A scoff burst out of her mouth, a frown forming on Ken’s face as he realized he was already getting used to that sound from her. "Welcome to One-Four-Four, Mr. Outsider." The name might have been a joke, but it felt like an insult as much as anything else she said. "The Dumps of the Sump."

Dumps of the Sump. Ken let that sink in as he looked around one more time. “How many people live here?” A scream from nowhere almost had him jump, nobody else even twitching as the crowd kept on moving like the sound never happened. “H-how… how big is this place?”

"How big is anywhere?"

The non-answer forced a frown into full-force on his face as he picked up his pace. “…wha-what are you talking about?”

Gold eyes landed on Ken as he pulled up to her side, still in her grip. "Cause the question’s crazy, y’know?"

There were a lot of things he could say were crazy, sure. In fact, just by looking around, he was pretty sure it was possible to name at least half a hundred without trying that hard. But that question… “No… no, I don’t think it is."

"Disagree." 

Ken almost rolled his eyes at another non-answer, Wangzi not even trying to help. "I don’t really know you and I’m pretty sure you’re just a disagreeable person.” 

"I disagree." She picked up the pace as punctuation, pink sandals slapping the ground faster as she started dragging him forward again.

This girl… If it was even possible, his frown got even deeper. Any more and it’d be etched into his face like stone. "My whole point, right there."

He could actually feel her eyes roll from behind, Wangzi picking up her speed again. “C-come on!” He almost spat the words as he kicked up his own steps, moving up to her side as someone nearly bumped into him. “Would you slow down?”

“On these streets?” This time, he was able to see those golden eyes roll hard enough to be an insult on their own. “You empty up there or what?”

Ken clicked his tongue as another insult flew his way. “Can you at least answer my other question? How many people even live here?”

"On this floor? I…" Now, it was her turn to frown, Wangzi glancing over at him for a second before looking forward again with a shrug that was half as lazy as her last. “Somethin’ past a hundred billion, I think?”

B-b-b… His mouth fell open, Ken’s lungs pulling in a breath deep and raw enough to be as loud as any shout. Nearly tripping over his bare feet as the crowd pushed into him, the apprentice shoved his way past as Wangzi tugged him forward; still more than a little breathless despite himself. “D-d-did you say… million?”

"Nah, Mr. Outsider, I said billion.” She shrugged again as if hadn’t said anything absolutely insane just now. “What, how many’s the Outside got?”“I…” That was a question he couldn’t really answer. For several reasons, honestly. His village was a decent-sized one, more than a couple hundred definitely; he’d counted that much and he knew too many faces for it to be that low. Still, though, it was nothing too close to even just one thousand. Other villages — the ones they traded with, warred with, or just ignored — weren’t much bigger and most were probably smaller, as far as he could guess.

Especially the ones that got ignored.

Even if one whole horizon hadn’t been eaten up by the Wall, the Valley was just too full of trash, gunk-rivers, and junk-beasts to let a lot of people live off it. Farming was a struggle, clean water was tough to find, and hunting was somehow harder than that, even when the warriors with Sparks helped. A couple thousand for miles would be hard enough… 

But a hundred billion?“Forty-Four’s just like that, packed all over, tight and all.” Wangzi interrupted his thoughts with a laugh, the sound as sharp as her canines looked. “They say it’s as packed as the floors way up. Only one that comes close down here in the Sump is One Forty.”

Ken kept walking, one eye twitching. Thoughts kicked and started up, only to stall to nothing as he tried to figure out what to say to that. …Nothing weird. He nodded slowly, keeping his eyes forward even as his eyes saw nothing, trying to pull back memories of a life long dead. Nothing weird about that. A city of a hundred and something billion. Normal stuff.

His head bobbed along to nothing.You died, you lived, nothing weirder than that. He was pretty sure as long as he kept lying to himself, it’d all make sense eventually. Right?

His nose twitched, scrunching up as a wave of smells forced their way up his nostrils. Ken glanced around just to see mystery meat dipped into more rancid bubbling oil, and pulled right back out. Thick grease dripped all over the ground, the stuff slathered all over what looked like fried lizard-on-a-stick, each one’s skin a poisonous-looking red as a cloying smoke wafted his way.

His stomach rumbled low, the sound enough to make his hand go for i- “Hey!”

A small hand, quick as a rust-rat, slipped inside the front of his blood-crusted tunic.

Ken’s own free hand snapped out as he froze, catching a thin, grimy wrist in a tight trap. He looked down, blinking at a kid; no older than eight with a face so smeared with dirt it looked like a mask, scared eyes blinking back up at him.

Disgust shut down his hunger to nothing, stomach turning for another reason, as the memory of being exactly like that — small, helpless, dirty — washed over him.  

He immediately let go. Just a kid.

The kid didn't run or thank him or anything. 

No, he hissed, sound more animal than anything else, and kicked Ken right in the ankle, bare foot connecting with bone. With another hiss, the grimy boy darted away, vanishing into the river of legs like he'd never been there at all.

Ken stood there, barely even feeling it but confused over everything else. What the hell?

"Rule number one of the Dump, Outsider-boy.” Ken looked over at the blonde girl as the words burst out of her with another laugh, suddenly pulled forward again. "Never trust no one. You’re just lucky the kid didn’t have a cutter."

No need to think all that hard for him to piece together what exactly she meant by that.

Ken just sighed and let himself be pulled forward again. J-just worry about the billions thing later. There were more important questions to get answered, like… “Little kids just walk around with knives? That seems kinda…”

“Dangerous?” She shot a look over her shoulder at a man glaring their way, the tall figure in black immediately looking down as if he’d spotted something interesting on the ground. "Course it's dangerous. If you're weak." 

She laughed again, the sound both harsh and bright. "We ain’t like everybody else, though."

We. The word felt strange in his head. We meant nothing to him. As far as he knew, they had nothing in common. He opened his mouth to say as much but Pinky was still talking, unbothered by his silence.

"I'm a Stage 2 Walker, Mr. Outsider.” Once again, Ken didn’t miss the emphasis on the word as she said it almost like she was singing. “Ain't the strongest Martial, nothing to brag about y’know? But the Dump’s too weak to touch me half the time. So, I got a real solid spot on the food chain."

He was still trying to figure out what a "food chain" had to do with anything when the other part of her sentence snagged his attention, thoughts flicking to the Card she’d pulled from her puffer not too long ago. “Wait…” His voice came a little faster now, curiosity he rarely used for anything outside alchemy breaking through the haze in his brain. "Wangzi, what’s Stage 2?"

Zee almost stopped dead, the girl slowing down enough to force the river of people to flow around them. She turned his way, mouth a thin line as her gold eyes darkened. "Don’t call me that, yeah?”

But… Ken blinked. But it’s your name?

“You call me Zee or nothin’, y’hear?” She poked a pink finger his way, grip tight enough around his wrist he could feel bone grinding bone. “Y’hear?”“I hear.” He almost hissed the word back at her, breath easing up a split-second later as her hand eased up. This girl…

“Good-good, you said Stage 2?” All at once, Zee’s face cleared up, confusion slipping back in as she started her pace back up. "Why you aski-” She let out a low hum, the sound a lot calmer than he was used to from her. “Outsider. Duh, my bad."

She shook her head, blonde hair catching the bright light from the ‘suns’ up above. "...don't even know the Stages. But you know what the Path is, right? Y’know, your Climb? Tell me the Outside knows that much, right?"

“Uhhh…” His eyes flicked up, blinking at the suns as his thoughts went back to the hunters in his village, their rebar spears glowing with a dull cherry-red heat just from them staring at it hard enough. Sparks… The chief, old and thick as a junk-hauler, lifting a fallen support beam that should have crushed three men. Old Wei had mentioned spirit roots, had mumbled things about the soul building the body, but it was all hazy, like one of his more complicated tea recipes. 

The old man never really got into the real details about it. Probably because he thought he was trying to teach a fish how to climb a wire-tree.

When he finally spoke again, his mouth moved slowly, the words already tasting stupid on his tongue. "...it's body... magic?"

She just gave him a look, those golden eyes staring at him like he’d been dropped on his head a few times as a baby.

“I don’t know a lot, okay?”

“Don’t know a lot…’ Zee just sighed. “Alright, listen close, Mr. Outsider, ‘cause I’m not goin’ over this again.” Her eyes went hard his way and he knew she wasn’t joking just from that. “The Path is… the Path. You gotta walk your Path to get stronger, and some people got harder Paths than others, y’hear?”He nodded his head just as fast he spoke, paying close attention as they kept moving.“There’s 12 Realms to the Path, and 12 steps or Stages inside each of those. Each step makes you stronger than the last, so good reason to keep tryin’ to walk it. People call the people who walk their Path Martial Warriors, or Martials. Hardbodies too, Walkers, Floor-fighters, Breakers..." Zee tilted her head to the side, words coming fast as if she was already bored of the conversation and trying to speed right past it. "A lot of names, whatever, just think of it like… workin' out, but for your everything. Body, mind, soul thingy, whatever makes you… you. It just makes you more of that, y’hear?"

His brows mushed together as his brain worked at it. "...so it’s…” A sigh spilled out of Ken’s lips as he went with the only thing he could think of to describe it, “magic exercise?"

"...yeah, close enough.” Her teeth clicked together, and Ken couldn’t help but feel like she was biting down on saying something else. 

Another insult, probably.

"Magic exercise, sure. Except your muscles are your insides too. Do it right, you’re a real hardbody, livin’ long and breakin’ skulls. Do it wrong, your heart pops in your chest. Or even worse, you burn out and end up twitchin’ in a gutter. Which is why- " 

She gave his arm a sharp tug, forcing him to keep up as she moved even faster. "-your ass better listen when I'm talkin'. My Realm, the first one, is 'Body Spark', the basics. All about pushin' your body and pushing it even more till you’re past it’s limits and eating lead to the chest like it’s nothin’.”

Eating… eating lead? Guns? Ken blinked, processing that as he waited for her to continue the explanation but Zee seemed to think that covered it somehow. Okay, then.  “...what about the next… Realm?”

Zee snorted, the spiky haired blonde shaking her head. “Okay, Mr. Outsider wants to know about the next one, does he?” She glanced back at him, another laugh leaving her like a bark, the sound as mocking as anything he’d ever heard. “Maybe focus on the here and now.”

He just frowned back as she kept laughing, too used to it by now. Again, something he wasn’t a fan of. “Maybe if you explain the here and now a little bit better?”

She clicked her tongue. "What’s there to explain? Give a hit, take a hit. Get stronger, get used to it, then you push harder. That’s it."

He thought about that first big thug the night before and the impossible force in his fist. "That seems… easy."

Another laugh left her, a harsh bark that made people around them give the girl more than half a foot. "Yeah, sounds easy. Goin' up a floor sounds real easy, too. You think people ever break Body? You can move forms till you’re like fifty and never hit Four, and you’re talking about breaking a whole Realm like you got miracles up your ass." 

Gold eyes slid his way, a sharp sideways glance shutting down any thoughts before they had the balls to become words. “Ain’t  just about pushin'. It's about money and materials. You gotta pour coin and real good meds into your body just to keep it from breakin' down. Then there's talent. Some people got an easier Path, whatever." She waved a hand at the tired-looking people shuffling past them. "Most of these losers'll be lucky if a tenth cousin in their family they never even heard of goes from normal to half-stage. That's just how it is."

"...but what about effort?" His free hand clenched at his side, unable to forget all the breathing exercises; everything he had done, him and Old Wei, to stop the hunger clawing in his chest.

Zee stopped again for a second, shooting him another hard look, before she kept on moving again. "What's with you? Even for a thickhead, you’re too… simple. Where’s the ghost who dropped two Scrapperz?" The blonde girl shook her head, the motion coming with another click of her tongue. "Effort ain't enough. Not for most anyone out here. There's always a reason they can't make it. The world's just built unfair."

"...what if..." He hesitated, the words quiet enough they almost disappeared in the crowd "what if your soul is... broken?"

Zee didn't just disagree. She scoffed, the sound loud and sharp with all the disdain that could fit into a single burst of air. "You die, then. What? What’s that even mean?"

Without even giving Ken a chance to say anything else, Zee turned away, the girl already done with the conversation. "C'mon. Idiot’s just up here."

Idio- Zee yanked him to the left, out of the crowd and into a near-empty alley; the whole place lined with large metal boxes in all sorts of different states of disrepair. One especially grimy container had a messy booth just outside it, a cheap poorly-painted sign on the side of it showing what looked like one of those cards being split clean in half by a badly drawn lightning bolt. From how hard Zee was dragging him, and what direction, that was the place. Unfortunately, it seemed somebody else had gotten there first. "N-next week, I get it to you next week! Swear on it, swear, j-just til next week, yeah?” 

Zee stopped all of a sudden, the blonde dropping and pulling him down into a crouch, the girl just as gentle as always. Ow! 

Both of them stared through the open doors of the shipping-container--store at the sight of a red-haired kid —not much older than them— but with arms thick as two of Ken’s. His arms might have been pretty big, but it didn’t seem to be helping him all that much as he was backed into the corner of the shop by five big men all in black.

“Y’said that same mess last tw’ weeks!”

“N-no! I m-meant this week, y’know?” The red-headed boy held his hands over his face as he crouched back, his thick sideburns the only part of his face Ken could spot behind the guy’s over-sized arms.

The men laughed at each other; the biggest one of them, the one that just yelled, stepped forward as he grabbed the redhead by the front of his ratty blue shirt. With a scarred face that looked like he’d been beaten over the head with a hot iron, the man’s voice was just as rough as he shook the boy and growled in his face. “We bust ya up and then sell ya for what owe, how ‘dat?”

A quick sharp hiss came from his left, Ken’s head snapping to the side as Zee shook her own slowly. "Scrap. Course, it’d be Junkerz. Didn’t think they’d find him so quick."

"...back off him."

Zee’s head snapped over to him, six heads inside the shop turning to face both him and Zee for no reason. Why are they…

Ken blinked slow as he realized he was standing up straight all of a sudden, fists out in front of him clenched tight. Oh… 

Before she could move, before he could even figure out what was happening, his mouth opened. The words that came out were quiet, but they cut through the tense air of the small shop, heavy with an authority that wasn't his.

The biggest of them dropped the redhead and took several heavy steps toward the door of the booth, nostrils flaring wide enough that Ken could have sworn he saw steam. "Y’talk to me like that, mudboy?"

As much as he wanted to, Ken didn’t flinch. Eyes narrowed, he met the man's glare, voice coming out just as hard as before. "I said, Back. Off. Him."

"Y’interrupting business ‘ere, scrapshit.” The big man stepped even closer, scarred face pulling tighter with each growl he called a word. “Fader in th’ booth ‘ere owes us some Gray."

"They're l-lying! I don't owe nothin’!" Each of the redhead’s words were more screams than anything. "L-Lady Zee! You g-gotta help me!"

Ken’s eyes never left the man in front of him, searching all over as something about the guy pricked his memory. The scars were new but… 

That droopy eye... It was familiar. More than that, it was a memory; a memory from the warm, herb-scented quiet of the apothecary that tickled the back of his mind. "...let him go."

The big man let out a harsh laugh, one three-fingered fist clenched at his side tight as the man could manage, Ken’s eyes drawn to it. "Or what?"

The memory clicked, every bit of it coming back to him all at once. A man built like a wire-tree, bleeding from his side, his speech a low rumble as Old Wei stitched him up with silver thread, movements calm and voice a lesson. Power is not always in the fist. Sometimes, it is in the needle.

Ken’s hand went up, finger pointing in front of him as the air in the booth and outside it went still for a second. "...I know you."

The big man froze mid-step, scarred face twisted up as the other four men behind him looked just as confused as he did, each of their harsh grins faltering.  "Y’spewing. Y’lknow nothin’.”

"...my master healed you.” The words were slow as they left him, Wei’s careful cadence sliding in as he thought back to that day. "A while ago.” 

Maybe a whole year, probably longer, but not long enough for him to forget. “You had a hole in your side. From a pipe-knife."

The thug’s eyes went wide, the same moment his face went red enough to make his scars vanish. “You…” He took another step forward, voice an even lower growl than before. "Y’talk too damn mu-"

"He said you could make better choices.” Ken interrupted the gangster, the words not his own, just a memory of something the old man had murmured after the thug had stomped out after leaving too little money on the counter.

A choked, half-manic giggle erupted from the corner, the bruised up redheaded kid staring his way with one hand over his mouth. From his side, Ken heard a loud sigh, the sound drawn-out as Zee slapped a hand over her own face.

The big man took a breath.

His fist, as big as Ken’s own head, flew out.