“I’m very proud of you, you know.”

Rudra grumbled and winced as the bandages slowly tightened around his torso. “It hurts to breathe,” he complained.

“Of course it hurts to breathe, you have two fractured ribs! Those are painful! Now hold still,” Jaya chided. “Given your bruises, you should feel lucky you don’t have more.”

“I don’t know if I’m cut out for this whole pacifism thing,” Rudra sighed. “I don’t see what’s to gain from just letting people beat you up or worse.”

The bandage wrapping halted suddenly. “Hold on a minute, did you...” The woman rubbed her temples in exasperation. “Tell me everything that happened.”

“Well I was walking along when this one guy from a different gang who I’d beaten up before saw me and attacked me. He came at me with a piece of pipe and I was about to punch his lights out but then I remembered that I’m not supposed to fight so I didn’t and he got me. Then I fell to the ground and he kicked me a bunch and then he left.”

“You let him break your ribs?!”

“You said I can’t fight! No violence!”

“That doesn’t mean you do nothing, dummy! Uuuuugggghhh...” she moaned, her face in her hands. “All right, apparently I need to explain basic concepts to you. Let’s go over how you could have done this right.” She began to count on her fingers. “One, you could have tried to talk with him. Maybe work something out. If he knew you weren’t part of the gang anymore, maybe he wouldn’t have wanted to hurt you so much.”

“I doubt it. He seemed to take it personally.”

“Two, you could have run away.”

“I’m not the sort of person who runs away. I’m not a coward.”

“There’s nothing wrong with avoiding conflict when it’s not needed, but fine, whatever. Three, if you didn’t want to run away, at least you could have dodged. Just because you don’t fight doesn’t mean you have to just stand still. Even more, if you had the chance, you could have tried to disarm him. Take his pipe away, and maybe he would have run.”

“That doesn’t count as violence?”

“You’re not hurting him, are you? There’s many ways to prevent violence that don’t count as violence. I mean, you could have even gotten him on the ground and just sat on him so he couldn’t move if you wanted. As long as you’re not injuring him, you shouldn’t worry.

“The point is, being a pacifist doesn’t mean you have to be passive. In fact, being proactive is usually the best way to prevent violence. You need to see it coming and head it off at the pass.”

“And then what? How do you make things change?”

“Any way you can. Start a dialogue. Make a deal. Just because violence is off the table doesn’t mean that you have nothing to use as leverage. Find those things. Apply pressure. Or just refuse to cooperate. Sometimes doing nothing accomplishes more than doing something ever could.”

“This is more complicated than you made it sound before.”

“The world is rarely simple, Rudra. But that doesn’t mean a simple and pure idea isn’t what the world needs sometimes. Now stop squirming so I can finish this.”

He’d felt this pain before, though it had been much less painful last time. His head spinning and his consciousness still only half-there, Rudra took a deep breath and doubled over in agony. The pain made him cough, which only made it hurt more and triggered more coughs.

His vision swam, the world around him refusing to immediately form into recognizable shapes and patterns. He rolled over and suddenly pain shot through his hand as he put weight on it. He tried to move his fingers and found his hands wrapped in so much cloth that they were nearly spherical. The cloth was bound tight, keeping the hand and fingers unable to easily move. They throbbed like his ribs.

Slowly, as the coughing subsided, the world took shape and it became apparent that he was no longer in his home. The events from before crystallized in his memory — the Chos’s boiling rage, her swift and sudden attack, and everything that had come after that. He would be lying if he claimed that he’d expected such a reaction. He’d thought she would be upset, but not to such an extreme. But here he was, broken ribs, broken hands, fuzzy head, and now stuck here, wherever ‘here’ was.

He seemed to be in a cell similar to the one he’d been in before. The familiar poop trap door was back, and he could hear the sound of ropes creaking in the breeze as the cell swayed back and forth. The only difference was that what before had been a wall made from wooden bars with a door embedded in it was now a solid wall with a small barred open window and some sort of slot at the bottom just tall enough to slide a tray with food through.

Grunting through the pain, Rudra pushed himself to his feet with his elbows and staggered over to the window. Instead of the usual hallway and neighboring cells, Rudra found nothing but air. Dozens of meters off in the distance stood normal people’s houses placed on large platforms emerging from the trunks of the nearby trees, like everywhere else. Listening closely, he could hear murmurs of activity far down below. He was still in the city then, and not way out on the edge.

Unable to get a satisfactory picture from the small window alone, Rudra made his way over to the small trap door on the other side of the cell. It took him longer than he wanted to admit to lift the wooden plank with his bandaged hands, but eventually it flipped over and revealed the small head-sized hole beneath. Peering through the gap, Rudra saw dozens of people moving about far down below. Wait a minute... was he expected to poop through this hole with the knowledge that other people were walking below, blissfully unaware of the impending bombardment? How terrible!

Rudra fumbled the plank back into place and sat down against the back wall facing the wall with the window. He wasn’t sure exactly what was going on at this point, but he knew that answers would come soon. So he waited, counting the hours until nightfall. Maybe he’d take a nap.

He was ready for once. A few hours after nightfall, Rudra watched with a victorious smile as the shadows in the back of his cell seemed to bulge, the darkness seeming to gain substance. The bulge swiftly grew and sharpened, quickly gaining definition until it turned into two figures — Tepin and Sneak.

“Hello,” he said. “I didn’t expect you to come yourself.”

“This is practically the perfect place for a clandestine conversation,” Tepin replied. “Hundreds of paces from anybody, isolated in the air so it would take minutes to approach, no clear way to see in... it’s perfect. Since the Chos didn’t give me specifics for your prison, I was free to make sure we’d have some privacy.”

“I see. Why am I in here, exactly?”

“Sneak, go stand watch outside. Come back in an hour if nothing happens.”

“Sure thing.” Sneak nodded and seemed to melt, his form melding with the shadows around him.

“How are you feeling?” Tepin asked once they were alone.

“I’ve been better,” Rudra admitted. “The pain’s not as bad as it was this afternoon, at least. Doesn’t hurt too bad to breathe now.”

Rudra watched as Tepin inspected him, her eyes taking in his damaged hands, his torso, his head, and more. He could see indecision in her eyes as she debated something with herself. “I’m sorry this happened to you,” she said finally. “I wanted to warn you, but I... couldn’t get to you fast enough.” She hung her head in shame.

“I don’t understand why she blew her top,” Rudra admitted. “I thought she would be angry, but not that angry.”

“One of the dead people is her husband.”

“Oh. Oh.”

“She’s become very sensitive about people extorting her ever since the Drayhadans held her husband hostage and demanded that she obey them or they’d kill him. In a way, you did the same thing.”

“Those are not the same at all!”

“She would disagree.” Tepin shrugged. “Another factor might be her husband’s views. He’s much more traditionalist than even she is. He believes that the existence of us Shells are not just a stain upon the nation and that the current ways are too forgiving.”

“Hmmmm, yeah, I remember that now. The way he talked made it sound like he thought Shells weren’t even people.”

“Some people still believe that, sadly enough. But yes. I think a big reason she doesn’t want to give in to your demands is that she doesn’t want to disrespect her husband by contradicting his beliefs in order to get him back. She probably thinks that he wouldn’t want her to pay that price to save him.”

“Sounds like we’re in for the long haul.”

Tepin sighed and massaged her forehead. “I just wanted some extra leverage for later. I didn’t expect things to end up like this. We can take you out of here any time, just ask.”

“It’s fine, don’t worry about it.”

“How are you so calm about this? Are you really fine being locked up indefinitely?”

“Well with my strength I should be able to escape on my own if I really want to. It would just take some time to figure out how, and I have nothing but time. So I’m not really imprisoned indefinitely as much as I’m imprisoned only as long as I choose to be.”

“But why would you choose to stay?”

“Because I feel like I’ve finally found a reason to live again. Ever since my wife Jaya left me I’ve felt like life just didn’t have a point, you know? It was all just this endless cycle of nothing. Working a job, to pay the bills, so you can afford to eat and go home to your empty apartment to sleep, so you can get up the next day and do it all over again. I was just living for nothing other than to keep living, and it was killing me.

“When I was a kid, my grandfather used to tell me stories about the years before my country gained its independence. He worked in a textile factory and his life was hard, way harder than mine ever was. He had trouble getting enough money to feed his family and take care of them, and his work was tiring and paid little. But even though he suffered, he talked about those days with pride.

“When I was younger I never could understand why he felt that way, but I get it now. There’d been meaning to his life. There’d been a cause that he shared with millions of others — the liberation of India. And so even though life was tough and painful, he would speak of those times as if they were the greatest times of his life.

“When I look at you and the Shells, I feel like I found my purpose. It’s selfish, I know, that I’m thinking about this more as something for me than something for all of you, but the truth is that I feel more fulfilled right now, after sitting around in a box and doing nothing all day, than I have felt in years. So yeah, I’d like to stay. I’d like to help change the fate of a country, like my grandfather did.”

"That's all well and good," Tepin stated, still unconvinced. “Forgive me but I can’t help but have doubts that you’ll still think the same twenty days from now. The Chos is focused on you now and she won’t hold back.”

“There’s only so much that she can do. She needs me if she wants her husband back. If she tries something too wild, I’ll just escape.” He flashed a confident smile. “Don’t worry, I’m very very stubborn when I want to be.”

“Very well. I should take my leave then.”

“Are you going to come back tomorrow?”

“You want me to return tomorrow night?”

“Yeah, why not? It’s nice to have somebody to talk to. Think of it as keeping me strong so I can hold out as long as possible.”

“If you insist.”

“Oh also, bring Slinky with you from now on. I miss my little girl already.”

“You’re stuck in a cell hanging hundreds of paces above the ground and all you can think about is your little pet. You need help.”

“Doesn’t everybody, in their own way?”

“Not like you.” Tepin walked to the small window nearby and held up her hand. Suddenly her hand began to glow, pulsing twice. A few moments later, the shadows bulged again and Sneak reappeared. “Let’s go.”

“Don’t forget my Slinky! And bring some food for her too!”

Tepin didn’t answer as the shadows enveloped the pair and they disappeared.

The next day passed relatively like the last. Using his teeth, Rudra undid the bandages on his hands. The fingers hurt when bent, but not as much as they’d hurt the day before. His chest felt much better as well. Breathing still hurt, but it was noticeably better than yesterday. Around midday he heard the sound of pulleys and a small platform descended past the window, large enough for a single person to stand on it. Without a word, a tray with a single meal on it was slid through the slot at the bottom of the wall. Rudra eagerly ate everything provided. The food tasted bland but at least it was filling.

As the day passed, Rudra noticed the murmuring of the market below had grown louder. Not by much but enough for him and his extra-sensitive ears to pick up. At first he’d explained it away as an evening post-work rush, but the voices grew louder still even as the evening aged. Confused, he flipped over the poop door and took another peek down. This time, he saw hundreds of people below him staring up at his cell in the waning light. How strange. What were they doing there? Why had they stopped? He mentally shrugged. No use wondering about it too much. Tepin would explain it all later.

As expected, Tepin and Sneak appeared once again that night. Sneak held a wooden cage in one hand. “Here, take this blasted thing away from me before I murder it,” the man said, tossing the cage at Rudra. Rudra noticed that his one hand had several fingers wrapped in bandages.

“Slinky, don’t go biting other people!” Rudra chided as he let the animal out into the cell. The wruelit squeaked and skittered away from Sneak, eying the man suspiciously. Rudra chuckled and reached a hand out to scratch the furry beast’s head. Thanks to days of feeding the animal, Slinky had become far more accepting of him in the last few days before he’d been thrown in prison. He’d even woken up once to find her hiding under his covers for warmth. She still bit sometimes, however. Also, she was a female. He’d mistakenly assumed the wruelit to be male in the beginning. Good thing he’d chosen a genderless name.

“Sneak, leave us,” Tepin commanded. “Same as yesterday.”

“With pleasure,” the man replied, his eyes throwing daggers at the long fuzzy beast on the other side of the room. Quickly he was gone.

“Tepin, did you do something? There were a bunch of people standing around down there looking up at me earlier today and it creeped me out.”

“I may have helped spread a word or two about you,” she admitted.

“Why?”

“Rudra, I’m not sure you realize it but you’re famous. Everybody in Stragma knows who you are.”

“For what?”

“What do you mean, ‘for what’? For everything! First you humiliated the Chos in front of the whole country and willingly chose to be a Shell. That was enough for everybody to recognize you and made you a minor celebrity in the Shell community. Then you brought thousands of people back from the dead. Did you think people wouldn’t notice? Now that the army is back from the campaign, they’re all talking about it. You’re the talk of the city. And then you went and got yourself thrown in here. All the guards saw it happen, so now everybody knows you’re in here. All I did was spread rumors about why you’re in here so that Shells at least would know you’re on their side. You’re a bonafide hero to Shells all over. As much as I hate to say it, you might have built more influence amongst the Shell population in a season than the Hidden Fang has built in over a decade of effort!”

“That’s... uh... hmmmm. I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything. I just ask that you be willing to use that influence for a good cause in the future.”

“Gladly.”

“Very well, I shall be off.”

“Wait, hold on! You just got here! Stick around and talk for a little while. You’re my only conversation partner, after all.”

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

“Sure there is! Like... uh... how did you learn to do that glowy thing with your hand? It’s neat.”

The wolf-eared woman’s face became guarded. “I don’t see the need to talk about it.”

“Give me a break. I told you all about my sad life. Why not give a little after all that taking?”

Tepin’s eyes grew pensive. She looked away, seeming to withdraw back into a painful memory.

“I’m sorry, if it hurts to talk about you don’t have to tell me anything,” Rudra said.

“No, I... when I was young, I was just as weak as I am now. Weaker, even. They all shunned me. The other children would mock me and refuse to associate with me. The adults looked at me like I was an eyesore. Even my own parents treated me like I was nothing but a burden and a disappointment. I hated my life. There was only one time when I felt any better, and that was during the summer, when I could sneak out of my house at night and sit with the glowflies.

“I always found the glowflies calming. They flutter around, shining their lights without a care in the world. It didn’t matter to them that I was sickly. They’d land on me all the same. In a way, they were my only friends. It’s funny, at one point I even dreamed of running away and living with them, following them as they moved through the forest. I wanted to be able to talk with them, so I started to imitate their lights. That’s where this came from. It’s not a very good ability but sadly it’s all I have. If I tried to study a new ability it would tax my soulforce too much and put my life in danger.”

“Well I think it’s great. Being a living light bulb seems really useful.”

“What is a light bulb?”

“It’s... uhhh... imagine a torch, except it doesn’t burn. We use them to light our world.”

“A torch that doesn’t burn? Then how does it light anything?”

“It uses lightning. Basically.”

“Your people harness lightning?” she laughed, shaking her head. “No, I don’t believe you. There’s no way people who can tame storms would produce somebody as dense as you.”

“Heyyyyy! It’s true!”

“And how do you tame the sky’s fury, oh mighty one?”

“I don’t know that! I just plug it in and it works!”

“Then why are you taking credit for things you don’t even understand? Are you trying to impress me? Because it’s not working.”

“Quiet, you!”

For a little while longer, the two of them bickered and argued, talked and laughed. Rudra fed his pet and Tepin wrapped his finger when Slinky chomped down on it. Eventually Tepin took her leave, and to Rudra’s dismay, she took Slinky with her.

The rattling of pulleys woke Rudra from his nap. Strange, this was too early for his daily meal. Soon the single-person platform dropped down into his view and the fog from his nap vanished at the sight of a large wooden club standing next to two large feet as they passed the window.

“Why are you here?” Rudra asked as Akhustal Palebane’s face entered his view.

“I’ve come to see if you’ve come to your senses. I can have you released at any time. All you have to do is one simple task.”

“So what, you can lock me up again the next time you want my services? Give me a break.”

“We don’t have to be enemies. I can provide you with a life of ease and comfort.”

“You know my price. Quadruple every Shell’s pay and remove the rules about dismissal and I’ll bring you back your army. Until then, get out of my sight.”

“You... YOU!!” the woman snarled, her entire head quaking with fury. However, unlike before, she seemed to swiftly bottle it up. She gazed into his eyes with a steely conviction that frightened him far more than her explosive outbursts. “Remember, you brought this on yourself.” The elevator slowly raised her back up and out of sight.

“Here,” Tepin said immediately upon her arrival that night. She tossed a small sack of food in his direction.

“Oh thanks!” Rudra replied, catching the bag with his hands. No pain assaulted his mind as the bag landed in his fingers. It seemed that his body had healed multiple fractures in only a matter of days. On an abstract level such it freaked him out, but he wasn’t going to complain about being abnormally healthy. “I was getting really hungry. They didn’t bring me any food today.”

“The Chos has decided to starve you into submission. She’ll do whatever it takes now to get what she wants. The migration is closing in and she’s getting desperate to break you before that happens.”

“That doesn’t sound good. Do you think I should start planning my escape?”

“No, we can bring you food. As long as you don’t defecate in public they won’t know for a while.”

“So, what, you want me to poop in a pot or something?”

“Just for a few days.”

“Why, do you think she’ll change her mind after a while?”

“No, because after the uprising she’ll be dead.”

“The what?!”

“Did you think I created the Hidden Fang and spent years of my life cultivating the Shell population trust in my organization for nothing? I’ve been working towards this moment since the beginning!”

“Why didn’t you mention this before?”

“I couldn’t tell you until I was sure I could trust you. But now that I know that I can, I was hoping you would be willing to lend your support. I know you refuse to fight, but the others look up to you and even a word in our favor would be immensely useful.”

“Tepin, you know I can’t support anything of the sort. But even if I did, what you’re saying is crazy talk! You’ll all die!”

“You take us too lightly, Rudra. We’ve been planning this for years. In a few days, we will slay as many high-ranking Honos as possible while they are asleep and defenseless, crippling their organization. Then when they’re disorganized we strike with everything we have. Our people are angry, Rudra. They’re at the tipping point! If even a third of the Shells answer the call, that’s a million people striking from within the very heart of the city itself!”

“Tepin, you’re all Shells for a reason! Even if you catch them by surprise and unorganized, they’ll wipe the floor with you!”

“We have to show them that we are strong, that we can and will fight! That’s what we Stragmans understand! If we can show them that we have the soul of a warrior then they will have to respect us even if we fail! That’s what this is about, Rudra. If we succeed, then the age of Shells is over. If we fail, then we can still make the case for better treatment.”

“What if there’s another way?”

“There is no other way.”

“Sure there is! What about me? What about all of this?” he asked, waving his hands around to indicate the cell they stood in.

“The Chos’s love of her husband is not going to free us. It’s not enough. We know this now.”

“But what if it wasn’t just me?” Rudra asked, his thoughts whirling in his head. “Look, Tepin, I’m not against the idea of the people taking action. I just think you’re going about it all wrong. You’re trying to fight the wrong fight. Instead of playing their game, make them play yours.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look, you’re never going to beat warriors in a war with a bunch of janitors, porters, and others who didn’t have what it takes to be a warrior. You’re just setting yourself up for failure. You’re playing by their rules. You need to play by your own rules. What do Shells do? It’s all the stuff that other people don’t want to do, right? I saw how it worked on the trip through the forest. They did all the lifting, the cooking, the cleaning, the packing — you all built this whole society that relies on this group of people doing all the hard, bad jobs. So what would happen if they just stopped? What would happen if tomorrow every Shell in the city just sat down and refused to obey any order whatsoever?”

Tepin’s eyes widened. “All of Stragma would grind to a halt.” She began to pace, thinking about the ramifications of his proposal.

“What about that migration you were talking about? What happens without Shells?”

“It would be a disaster! Shells do most of the preparation. Without us... They’ll be in real danger. They won’t take this lightly, you know. They’ll try to stop it. They’ll hurt us and beat us, maybe even kill us.”

“But they need you. If you want respect, the most important thing to drive home is how critical Shells are to the workings of Stragman society.”

“What you propose will be hard. Anger and rage can be harnessed for a short while, but it will take something more to keep our people from breaking under the fear and the pressure.”

“You’ll need a symbol. A figurehead. Somebody to inspire, to provide hope and courage when it’s hard to come by.”

“Somebody like you.”

“Somebody like- wait, me? I was going to say you.”

“Can you name somebody more suited to the task? Somebody able to bear the brunt of the Chos’s anger? Somebody able to stand against the pressure of all the warrior castes and laugh in their faces? Somebody not just with the vision to carry through with the fight but with enough fame and respect to lift up those who doubt their own worth? Those who tremble under the harsh gazes of a Fleg or a Blou? Those who fear for their safety and that of their loved ones?”

“I... I guess it could only be me, huh.”

“But are you sure you can do it?”

“I...” Rudra reflexively began to answer, but stopped himself. It was a legitimate question. Was he up to such a daunting task? He liked to think he was, but that didn’t make it so. But even if he was the best man for the job, did he want to go through with it? While he was already involved to some degree with the Shells’ struggle, there’d be no going back after this. He’d be fully committed from the jump, and there would be no room for second thoughts.

What would Jaya have done in his situation? She’d have jumped at the chance, of course. Giving her all to help others was in her nature. She would want him to do it. Nothing would have made her happier. Rudra chuckled ruefully. Even now, on a different world, he lived for the imagined smile of a woman he’d never see again.

“I am,” Rudra said with renewed conviction. “And hey, the Chos already hates me anyway. At least it will take some of the boredom out of my life.”

“I need some time to think about this.” She flashed two flashes through the window. Seconds later, like always, Sneak appeared. “I’ll contact you soon.”

The time had come. Tepin had returned the following day and agreed to alter their plans to fit his suggestion, then asked for several days to prepare. Today was the day it would all begin, and it would begin with him.

Rudra grasped the side of the small window with his hands and pulled as hard as he could. With a mighty crack, a large portion of the wall broke free, leaving a hole in the side of his cell about a meter and a half wide and two meters tall. Making sure not to damage the wood any more, he put the piece in his hands to the side. He’d want to put it back into place later for some privacy.

He had no privacy now, however. Thousands of people looked up at him from the forest floor below, waiting for him to say something. Instead he simply sat down at the edge of the cell where everybody could see, folded his legs into the lotus position, closed his eyes, and didn’t move. He was never one for fiery speeches, but rather somebody who preferred to lead by example. After all, inaction spoke louder than words.