Lady Brown Pt: 2

I panicked, unable to stand still. This guy just got stabbed right in front of me.

I’ve never been stabbed before. I’ve never seen someone stabbed before.

“Are you alright?” I blurted, like an idiot.

He turned his head, gripping the knife still buried in his chest. “What do you think!?”

I started pacing in tight little circles, covering my mouth. There are no doctors in G Sector. None. Zero. The closest thing we have is that guy who runs the liquor store and also maybe does stitches.

Maybe I could drag him to the underground fighting pits—there should a medic there. Or at least someone who owns rubbing alcohol.

“Seeing you procrastinate is making me bleed more,” he groaned.

I whipped around. “How are you joking right now?”

“Everything’s gonna be fine. Come here,” He waved his hand bloody hand to me.

“What—”

“I said come here.” He was more demanding now.

I crouched beside him, I didn’t know what else to fucking do so here I am.

“I’m gonna be fine. Just pull the knife out.”

“You what?!”

“JUST DO IT!” he barked, which was very bold for a man currently leaking.

I glanced from his face to the knife, and instantly regretted eating before coming here. A thin ribbon of blood was running down his chest, refusing to soak into his shirt like it had better places to be.

“I’ll be fine. Just pull it on three, okay?”

I nodded, eyes locked on the blade.

“One—”

I yanked it out before he hit two.

“AHHH, FUCK!’ he roared, curling forward like a shrimp.

I flinched, half-expecting a geyser of blood. But… nothing. The bleeding stopped like someone just hit pause.

My mouth hung open. “What the hell…”

“See? Told you I’d be f—”

He slumped over mid-word like a puppet with its strings cut.

“Sir?” I shook him. “Sir, are you deadass right now?”

No pulse.

“That’s her!”

I looked up.

The guy who stabbed him was pointing at me—only now he had two police officers with him.

Police. In the G Sector. Which is like seeing a penguin in the desert—technically possible, but you know something’s gone wrong.

“THE ASSAILANT IS ARMED!” one of them yelled.

I glanced down. Bloody knife. Still in my hand.

“Oh, shit.”

Before my brain could tell me how bad this idea was, I hoisted the limp man onto my shoulder. He was surprisingly light—like throwing a sack of laundry over your back, if the laundry occasionally groaned.

“Time to go.”

I tore off down an alley, weaving past piles of trash and startled onlookers. My boots slapped against the concrete, his arm flopping against my side like a wet fish.

By the time I got home, my arms were noodles. I shoved the door open with my foot and dumped the guy into my workshop chair like he was a sack of scrap metal.

I scanned my shelves. Wrenches. Pliers.

Shit—everything here was for machines.

I glanced back at the corpse. Sighed. Grabbed my drill and a box of screws.

“This is all I got, sorry dude.”

I raised the drill toward his face and hit the trigger. The bit spun with a high-pitched whine.

“Steady…” I muttered.

He yawned.

I froze.

“See? Told you I’d be fi—” he stopped mid-sentence, eyes flicking between my face, the drill, and the screwdrivers.

“…What are you doing?”

I immediately tossed them aside like they’d bitten me. “Nothing! Wait—how are you alive?”

He stretched like someone who’d woken from a nap, not from a stabbing. “Long story. Basically, I can’t die.”

I stared at him. “…That’s… not a joke?”

“Nope.” He said it so casually, like he was talking about his shoe size.

Then he glanced around the room. “Nice place you got here. Feels like you built it out of scrap.”

“Yeah… thanks.” My brain was trying to keep up.

“This whole area built like this?” he asked. “Where I’m from we’ve got trees—” he started counting on his fingers—“rain, depression, cancer. All the good stuff.”

I frowned. “…What’s rain? And… a canister of food’s expensive here.”

He groaned and facepalmed. “Not canister—cancer. The disease.”

I just stared at him.

“…Right. Different worlds, I guess.”

Cassian was still slouched in the chair, spinning a wrench in his hands like it was a toy.

“You built this place?” he asked.

“Most of it,” I said, digging through a box of screws. “Spare parts, scrap… whatever I can get my hands on.”

He glanced around at the walls, the shelves stacked with mismatched metal. “Looks like a lot of work just to… survive.”

I shrugged. “That’s what it is. Surviving.”

He tilted his head. “Couldn’t you do something easier?”

I let out a small, dry laugh. “Not really. People don’t exactly line up to give me jobs that pay.”

“Why not?”

“Because apparently, I’m not ‘the type.’” I mimicked the air quotes with grease-stained fingers.

Cassian smirked. “The type for what?”

“For anything dangerous. Anything that actually makes money. People see my face, and that’s it — decision made. ‘Too soft.’”

He gave me a long look. “And you believe them?”

“I know better than them,” I said, “but it doesn’t matter what I know if nobody gives me a chance.”

Cassian leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “So you’re saying, if you could… you’d fight? Or race? Or whatever it is people do for money down here?”

I hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah. I could win. But they’d never let me in.” I toyed with a strand of hair that had fallen in my face. “They take one look at me and think, ‘no way.’”

His eyes flicked to the strand I was twisting. “What’s wrong with how you look?”

I gave a sharp little snort. “This.” I tugged my hair. “Long hair just makes me look softer. Weaker. They judge before I even open my mouth.”

Cassian leaned back in the chair, studying me for a moment. “Alright. We’ll change it.”

I blinked. “…Change what?”

“The way you look. The way they see you. Whatever it takes to get you in.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Why?”

He smirked faintly. “Because you dragged me out of that alley when you could’ve walked away. And I like paying people back.”

From that day forward, he began doing jobs for me, giving me every penny he earned, I think he got lost often because of how long it’d take for him to return but it’s the effort that counts.

I was in the workshop, throwing punches into the air, I came up with it myself and it’s good practice. The only sound was the soft thud of my fists and the faint scrape of my boots on the concrete floor.

I didn’t notice Cassian standing in the doorway until he cleared his throat.

“Your footwork’s off,” Cassian said, stepping closer. “You’re leaning too far forward—losing balance.”

I paused, wiping sweat from my brow and shot him a sideways glance. “You know how to fight?”

He smirked, folding his arms. “Enough to know what you’re doing wrong.”

I scoffed. “That’s not the same.”

He crouched slightly, demonstrating a quick step. “Try shifting your weight like this. It’s not about brute force—it’s about efficiency.”

I rolled my eyes but tried it anyway.

“See? You’ve got the instincts. Just need to sharpen them.”

I ignored him and focused harder, who does he think he is.

One night, I slipped into my workshop again, i left something. Inside, he was hunched over something that looked like a mess of wires, metal plates, and scraps, definitely not what I expected.

“Hey,” I said, stepping inside.

He looked up, “Perfect timing. I’m calibrating the density modulators now. Can you pass me that micro-torque driver? The one with the red handle.”

I stared at him. “Micro-what now? That’s just my old screwdriver. You sure you know what you’re doing?”

He grinned, waving me off. “Trust me, it’s all about precision. If these circuits aren’t aligned properly, the gloves won’t regulate force correctly. It’s delicate work.”

I picked up the screwdriver and handed it over, watching him carefully unscrew tiny bolts from a panel. He muttered something about “piezoelectric sensors” and “load distribution matrices,” making me wonder if he was inventing words on the spot.

“Wait,” I interrupted, “are you seriously tinkering with my scrap parts? You talk about this old junk like it’s gold.”

“Exactly why it’s perfect,” he said, eyes twinkling.

As he worked, he kept giving me a barrage of technical directions — “Hand me the flux capacitor,” “Can you stabilize the ion capacitor pressure valve?” — and I kept giving him confused looks.

“I swear, half the time you’re speaking another language.”

“That’s science for you,” he smirked. “But once we finish, you’ll be thanking me.”

I sat alone in the crowded stands, the smell of sweat, blood, and burnt metal thick in the air. The cage below was a riot of grunts and crashing fists, but the noise had dulled into background static. The crowd’s shouts felt distant, like echoes from another world. Every punch thrown, every body slammed, just blurred together into one endless loop of violence and survival.

Watching another fight wasn’t enough—not anymore. I wanted out of this rut, out of the stench and desperation that clung to Sector G like a second skin. But this place was all I knew, and the fights were the only distraction from the gnawing hunger and the dead-end jobs.

Lost in those thoughts, I barely registered the sudden tap on my shoulder. Reflex kicked in before my brain caught up—I grabbed the arm like a predator ready to strike.

“You little—”

My voice cracked with anger.

“Hey, let go of me, your grip is hurting me,” came the calm voice of Cassian.

I blinked, caught off guard. Of all people.

I exhaled, lowering my hand slowly. Honestly, I was hoping for some punk to come pick a fight—at least it would be something to do

“Come on, I have something to show you.”

I slumped further into the plastic seat, the weight of exhaustion dragging me down. “Can it wait till after the fight?”

“No. Now.”

Before I could protest, he stood and grabbed my arm again, pulling me from the stands toward the grimy streets we called home.

Cassian held up some gloves, their metal surfaces catching the dim workshop light.

“These aren’t just any gloves. I call them the Gravitas Gauntlets.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Gravitas?”

He nodded, grinning. “Means weight.”

He slid one gloves onto right hand and made a loose fist. “See, the key is pressure-sensitive density control. The gloves sense how tightly you clench your fists. The harder you squeeze, the heavier they get.”

I frowned. “So if I ball up my fists lightly…”

“Then the gloves stay light, letting you move fast and free. But squeeze harder…”

He tightened his fist slowly, the glove’s weight visibly increasing as if it pulled him down.

“…and the density spikes. Suddenly, every punch you throw packs extra weight behind it. Like swinging a hammer instead of just your bare hand.”

He tapped something on the wrist. “It’s mechanical — pressure sensors inside translate your grip strength into density changes almost instantly using a mathematical formula. No brain toggling needed, just natural control.”

He smiled, “basically when you hit something, you can make your impact harder or softer by adjusting your fist’s pressure at the moment before of contact.”

I blinked. “That sounds… complicated.”

“Don’t worry it gets even more confusing,” Cassian said, slipping the left glove on, both gloves equipped. “They also have a second function—density manipulation.”

I tilted my head. “Isn’t that the same as the first function.”

“Not on you,” he corrected, “on whatever you touch.”

He reached for a rusty wrench sitting on the workbench. The moment his gloved fingers closed around it, a faint burgundy underglow pulsed from the seams of the metal, tracing veins of light into the tool like it was waking up.

Cassian tossed it up into the air casually. For a second, it was just a wrench—normal speed, normal weight. But then his hand clenched as it passed through his grip again, just for an instant.

The wrench kept falling. When it hit the workshop floor, the sound it made was wrong. A deafening THUD burst through the room, rattling the shelves and kicking up a cloud of dust. The tiles beneath it cracked, a spiderweb crater forming around the point of impact.

I almost fell out of my chair, blinking at the mess. “That’s… just a wrench.”

“Yeah,” he said, crouching to pick it up again like it was nothing. “Normal wrench, maybe weighs two pounds. But when I tweaked its density mid-air? It hit like it weighed a thousand times that.”

Cassian flipped the wrench in his palm again, eyes gleaming. “Alright now, watch this.”

He tossed it into the air a second time. I instinctively covered my face with my hands bracing, already picturing another mini-crater in the workshop floor.

But Cassian just scoffed at me, flattening his gloved fingers, like he’s about to fan his face with his hands. The wrench fell… and when it hit the ground, it bounced twice before rolling lazily to a stop.

My brows shot up. “What—what happened?”

Cassian chuckled under his breath, crouching to pick it up. “What goes up must come down,” he said with a knowing smirk. “The principle of gravity itself.”

He turned the wrench in his hands. “The same way you can make something impossibly heavy, you can also make it impossibly light. Easier to throw, easier to carry… hell, you could toss a car if you wanted. And yes,” his eyes flicked up to mine, “you can use these effects on yourself.”

I crossed my arms. “Alright, but what if I want to make my fist heavier and make whatever I’m hitting heavier at the same time?” I leaned forward, curious, “So they don’t run away.”

Cassian’s smirk returned. “That’s why you have two hands!”

I gave him a look. “You’re kidding.”

“Nope. Your right hand’s for changing the weight of the gloves themselves—heavier for training, lighter if you’re going for speed. I put that job on your dominant hand so it would help you edit the impact of your punches.” He wiggled his right fingers for emphasis.

“And my left?”

“That’s your trigger finger—well, trigger fist. That one’s for changing the density of whatever you touched. After you touch something, it’s open to manipulation for 5 seconds. Anything after you gotta touch it again. 

"One Mississippi, two Mississippi. To five.”

“What’s a Miss-I-Sippy?” I asked.

“If you say the number and that word after, that takes exactly one second, or close enough to it, so after touching someone, make sure to count in your head.”

I nodded, he took them off, and placed them on my lap.

“Start testing them out now. Because you’re fighting in the ring tomorrow.”

Before I could even react to that, Cassian’s face lit up like he’d remembered something delicious. “Oh, right—” He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a metal concoction. It had handles of rusty bronze.

My eyes narrowed. “…What are those?”

“These,” the hinge had a tiny turning gear inside, clicking faintly as he opened and closed them. The blades made Snip, snip “are scissors.” He clicked them again. “We’ll be cutting your hair!”

Cassian stood behind me, scissors in hand, humming some tune I didn’t recognize—something light, like he wasn’t about to mutilate my hair. The workshop smelled faintly of metal shavings and oil, but there was something oddly calm about the moment.

“Lean down,” he murmured, snipping a few strands.

I obeyed, and hair fell to the floor in light, uneven clumps.

“Now lean up.” Snip.

I tilted my chin, watching his concentrated face in a mirror shard propped on the workbench.

“Look at me.”

I turned my head, and his eyes darted between the scissors and my hair, tongue pressing to his cheek in focus.

After a few moments of silence, I muttered, “I don’t know how to thank you, Cassian.”

“You don’t have to thank me yet—one wrong cut and you could get a tetanus infection and die.”

I blinked. “…What?”

“Don’t worry about it, Rilke, you’ll be fine!” he said brightly, giving my shoulder a reassuring pat that wasn’t reassuring at all.

“By the way, just call me Cass, Rilke. After I’m finished with you, your hair will be amazing and you’ll look so beautiful—”

I whipped my head around and gave him a sharp look.

“I—I mean,” he stammered, scissors frozen midair, “you’ll look so menacing nobody will DARE mess with you.”

A smirk tugged at my lips. He grinned back, and we both chuckled, the sound bouncing off the cold workshop walls.