Rimelion: The Exploiter

The exoskeleton was perfect.

Not 1.0-perfect, where “perfect” meant “it moves and I don’t fall down and that’s basically a miracle.” This was different. This was 2.0-perfect, where every step answered before she even finished thinking it, where her knees bent the way knees were supposed to bend, where walking felt less like piloting a machine and more like—like—

Like walking.

She crossed her room in seven steps. Turned. Crossed it again. Eight steps this time because she added a little pivot at the end, just to see if she could.

She could.

“Oh stars,” she whispered, pressing both hands to her mouth. Her eyes stung. “Oh stars.”

The framework was sleeker than the 1.0, matte graphite struts that hugged closer to her legs, joints that moved silently instead of clicking, a power unit so compact she barely felt it against her lower back. The old version had been a scaffold; this was a partner. It read her intent before her muscles could fully commit, filling in the gaps between what her body wanted and what her nerves could deliver.

She did a squat.

An actual squat.

Her thighs burned, the real burn of muscles working, protesting, growing. The physical therapist’s voice echoed in her head: Nerves first. Muscles will follow. But you have to push both. Her legs trembled on the way up, and she didn’t care, because they were her legs trembling, not the machine doing the work.

She did another one. And another.

By the fifth, her breath was ragged and her calves felt like they’d been filled with hot sand, and it was the most wonderful pain she’d ever felt.

Ian leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, watching her with a soft smile, the one he probably didn’t know he was making. The one that made his puppy eyes look less like panic and more like pride.

She caught him looking and grinned, bright enough to light the whole monastery.

He smiled back. No words needed. Just that, two people in a doorway, one standing for the first time in memory, the other watching as if it were the best thing he’d ever seen.

“Walk with me?” she asked.

“Always,” he said. Then his ears went red because he realized what that sounded like, and she decided to be merciful and not comment.

This time.

They stepped into the corridor together. Her footsteps were soft, steady; the exoskeleton’s hum barely audible beneath the sound of her boots on stone. She was slower than she wanted to be, but she was moving, under her own direction, through a space that wasn’t a hospital or a therapy room or a wheelchair-width hallway designed to accommodate her.

Just a corridor. Like anyone else.

The cool mountain air drifted through an open window, and with scent of pines. Ian walked beside her, matching her pace without making it obvious, his hand hovering near her elbow in a way he probably thought was subtle.

It wasn’t. It was adorable.

They rounded the corner toward the courtyard and stopped.

Lisa wasn’t there.

Lunaris frowned, scanning the gravel paths, the swept stones, the empty benches. “Wasn’t she just—”

Then she heard it.

Laughter. It was coming from deeper inside the monastery, from the direction of Mister Kai’s tea room. Lunaris and Ian exchanged a glance. The same thought crossed both their faces at the same time: What did he do to her?

“If he made her drink that weird green one—” Ian started.

“Move.” Lunaris was already walking, faster now, the 2.0 keeping pace with her urgency like it had been waiting for exactly this kind of mission. Ian fell in beside her, his hand now definitely on her elbow, and she let him because the floor here was uneven stone and because his hand was warm and because she wasn’t going to think about that right now.

They reached the tearoom entrance. The carved wooden screens were open, warm light spilling into the corridor along with the smell of jasmine and the unmistakable sound of Lisa being Lisa.

“—and then the whole field was just FIRE, right? Like, everywhere! And Katherine’s just standing in the middle of it like she’s taking a bath, and I’m screaming because the thing is still alive and it’s looking at me with one eye and I’m like NO SIR, and I just—”

Lisa thrust both hands forward, palms out, cheeks flushed, eyes huge.

“WHOOOOSH!“

The sound effect was accompanied by a full-body lean that nearly tipped her off her cushion. Across from her, Mister Kai sat with his teacup raised, his lips having the faintest curve of genuine amusement, which, for him, was basically hysterical laughter.

“And the fire just—it went sideways, like a wave, and it didn’t touch anyone on our side because I TOLD it not to, and—”

She turned, mid-whoosh, hands still extended, face still ablaze with the memory of her own magnificence.

Her eyes found the doorway.

Her eyes found Lunaris.

Her eyes found Lunaris standing.

“LUNYYYY!”

The shriek hit a frequency that probably registered on seismographs. Lisa scrambled off the cushion so fast that she knocked the teapot sideways. Kai caught it with one hand without looking and launched across the room.

For the second time that day, Lunaris braced for impact.

Lisa hit her like a comet made of joy, arms wrapping, voice cracking, the words tumbling out in a single breathless stream: “You’re standing again, you’re in the new one, it works, it WORKS, look at you, look at your LEGS—”

“Big sis!” Lunaris laughed, staggering but holding on, the 2.0 compensating, servos adjusting, keeping her upright through the assault of affection. “You already hugged me today!”

“I’ll hug you EVERY DAY,” Lisa declared, pulling back just enough to look at her, eyes glistening. “Every single day until you’re so fast I can’t catch you.”

Lunaris’s grin stretched until it hurt. “Deal.”

Behind them, Ian hovered in the doorway, smiling that soft smile again.

Mister Kai set the rescued teapot back on the table, poured himself a fresh cup, and took a measured sip. “Like the sun returning after a long rain,” he said to no one in particular.

—

Back to Lisa…

Mister Kai rose.

Every eye in the room followed him.

“The body has been nourished,” Kai said, his hands folding before him. “Tea warms the vessel, but the mind is a different garden—it requires different rain.” His gaze moved across them, resting on each face just long enough to be felt. “Before our guest departs, we shall temper what fire cannot reach. The mountain has offered us a place. We should not refuse its hospitality.”

Lisa blinked. “Wait—you mean me too?”

Kai tilted his head. “The Rimelion world affects and cooperates with your mind, which should be tempered. A flame left unattended does not grow stronger. It simply grows wilder. Even a brief stillness can teach the fire where it belongs.”

She opened her mouth to protest; she had a helicopter waiting, a schedule, but something in the way he said it made the words dissolve before they formed. Maybe it was the tea. Maybe it was the mountain air. Maybe it was the fact that Lunaris was standing beside her.

Lisa glanced at Lunaris. Lunaris’s eyes were bright, hopeful, practically vibrating with a silent please stay.

Lisa grinned. “Okay. One meditation. But if I have to chant anything, I’m freestyling.”

Kai’s expression didn’t change, but something behind his eyes suggested he’d expected exactly that answer. “The mountain will endure.”

They filed out of the tearoom and through the monastery’s rear gate, where the manicured stone gave way to raw mountain. The path was narrow; packed earth and loose gravel winding upward through pine and birch, the air sharpening with altitude and resin.

Sunlight fell in broken coins through the canopy, and somewhere above them, a bird sang. Ian moved to Lunaris’s side, hands half-extended. “Luna, the path’s uneven. As always, I can carry—”

“No.” The word was bright. She shook her head, eyes fixed forward, her exoskeleton humming softly as it navigated a root crossing. “I’m walking.”

Ian’s hands hovered for another second, then withdrew. His jaw worked, caught between protectiveness and understanding.

Kai, who had been watching from ahead, turned back. His gaze settled on Ian with the calm assessment of a man who had spent decades reading people through their posture. “A student without burden grows complacent, like a tree without wind: tall, but brittle.” He scanned the path, found what he wanted, and pointed.

A stone. Not a pebble, a proper stone, the size of a small melon, half-buried in the trail’s edge. “Carry that,” Kai said.

Ian stared at it. “That’s... Master, that must weigh—”

“Fifteen kilograms, perhaps. Like worry, it feels heavier the longer you hold it.” Kai’s smile was mild. “Pick it up.”

Ian picked it up. His arms strained, biceps cording under the weight, his breath hitching as he adjusted. The stone sat in his arms like a sulking animal.

They walked.

Kai set the pace, slow, each step placed carefully as if he believed the journey was the destination and the destination was also the journey and possibly also a lesson about journeys.

Lisa wasn’t sure, but suspected he could have moved faster.

She suspected he chose not to because Lunaris was behind him, and the exoskeleton was good, but the mountain was not a hallway.

Lunaris’s steps were also careful. Each one cost something; concentration, balance, trust in the machine that read her intent. It hummed and clicked softly, compensating for the uneven ground, but Lisa could see the effort in Lunaris’s jaw, the way her brow tightened on steeper sections.

She didn’t complain.

She didn’t slow beyond what the terrain demanded. She just walked, one step feeding the next, the same way she fought, with rhythm, with stubbornness, with a joy that refused to acknowledge difficulty.

Kai glanced back. “You walk like a warrior,” he observed.

Lunaris looked up, startled. “I’m barely keeping up.”

“Speed is not the measure,” Kai said, turning forward again. “A warrior does not rush. A warrior walks completely, every step intended, every step arrived at. You do not stumble toward your destination. You choose each stone beneath your foot.”

Lunaris’s cheeks flushed. She said nothing, but Lisa saw her stand a little taller; the exoskeleton didn’t do that. Ian shifted the stone in his arms with a grunt as sweat beaded at his temples.

The path leveled, then dipped, then opened.

The waterfall was small, barely two meters, more a curtain than a cascade, but it fell with clear, musical purpose. Water slid over a shelf of dark rock into a pool no wider than a dining table, then spilled into a stream that wound away through moss and fern. Mist hung in the air, catching sunlight into faint, shifting rainbows.

Around the pool, the ground was worn smooth. Flat stones had been arranged in a loose semicircle, not naturally. A scorch mark darkened one rock, old and faded. A strip of cloth, bleached by weather, clung to a low branch nearby.

Lisa smiled to herself. Their spot.

“Please,” Kai said, lowering himself onto the central stone with a grace that made sitting look like a discipline. “Find your place.”

They settled. Lisa chose a stone near the water, close enough that mist kissed her cheeks. Lunaris lowered herself carefully, the exo folding with her, servos whispering as she crossed her legs. Ian set the stone down at last, his arms trembled as they released, and dropped onto his own seat with a long, shuddering exhale.

Kai waited until the fidgeting stilled while the waterfall filled the silence.

“Close your eyes,” he said. His voice had changed to a deeper one. “The body is here. The mind is elsewhere; it always is, running ahead like a child chasing butterflies, or stumbling behind like an old man counting regrets. Your task is not to cage it. Only to notice where it has gone, and gently, as one guides a candle flame with cupped hands, bring it home.”

Lisa closed her eyes. The mist touched her face. The waterfall hummed.

“Breathe,” Kai continued. “Not to control. To listen. The breath is the oldest river; it was flowing before you were born, and it will flow after you are gone. You did not create it. You do not own it. You simply... ride its current.”

She breathed. In through her nose, pine, water, stone. Out through her mouth, warmth dissolving into the mountain air.

“Now, imagine the water before you. Not as a waterfall, but as time itself, pouring endlessly from a place you cannot see, arriving in a pool that holds it only for a moment before releasing it onward. You are the pool. Everything that has happened to you, every battle, every loss, every joy, has poured through you. Some of it you held too long. Some of it you let go before you understood its shape.”

The sound of water shifted in Lisa’s perception. Or maybe it didn’t shift, maybe she was just hearing it differently, the way you hear a song change when you learn what the words mean.

“The fire-bearer holds a particular burden,” Kai said, and Lisa felt the words land against her chest like a palm pressed flat. “Fire does not want to be still. It wants to leap, to consume, to answer every darkness with light. This is its gift. But it is also its blindness, for a flame that never rests cannot see what it illuminates. It sees only what it burns.”

Her throat tightened. She didn’t know why.

“So ask your fire, gently, to sit beside you. Not to extinguish, never that. But to rest. To watch the water and learn that there is a power in flowing which does not require heat. There is a strength in stillness which is not weakness, but patience gathering its breath.”

The mist settled on her skin like cool fingertips.

“The warrior-in-becoming carries a different weight,” Kai said, and Lisa knew without opening her eyes that he was speaking to Lunaris now. “You have been given legs that are not entirely your own. A body that answers to both will and wire. The temptation is to fight the machine, to demand that every step belong to you, to rage against the parts that are borrowed. But consider the stream. It does not refuse the stones that shape its path. It flows with them, and in flowing, it carves the mountain. You are not less because the machine carries you. You are the water that chose to move, and the mountain will remember your passing long after the stones have worn away.”

Silence.

“And the one who carries stones,” Kai said, his voice softening to something almost fond, “learns that the weight was never the lesson. The lesson is what remains when you set it down, the space in your arms where burden lived, now open. Ready to hold something better. Perhaps a sword. Perhaps a hand.”

Lisa heard Ian exhale.

“Sit with the water,” Kai said. “Let it pour through you. Whatever you are holding, grief, ambition, fear, fire, set it in the pool. Watch it swirl. Watch it dissolve. The pool does not judge what it receives. It only... continues.”

The mountain breathed around them.

She felt she understood the mana more, somehow. As if this had been what she needed. Resting beside a waterfall that had been falling since before anyone thought to name it, and would keep falling long after they were gone.

She breathed.