Chapter Text
“Caitlyn Kiramman, the legend, is staring down the barrel of a gun for the first time in her storied career.”
Caitlyn Kiramman, the mortal, is sitting miserably on a hotel bed, lit only by the blue glow of a television where a five-hours younger and much more chipper version of herself runs out onto the competition mats. That confident, eager, naive Caitlyn stands with her back to the audience, facing the last boulder problem on the competition wall and mimes out the movements she’d planned during the observation period. The announcer continues, “It looks like she intends to go dynamically,” as fresh-faced TV Caitlyn mimics a powerful pulling motion followed by a few rhythmic slaps.
“It’s a gamble, Rakan,” a woman’s voice chimes in, “We all know she has the strength and skill to get it done, but she only has two attempts to learn the movements or she’s out of contention for gold.” TV Caitlyn bends down to stick her hands into her chalk bucket and blows the excess chalk off as she walks to the starting holds. “For anyone else, silver is a phenomenal result, but it speaks to Kiramman’s dominance on the circuit that it would be a massive disappointment. She hasn’t lost a World Cup in… what?”
“Three years.”
“Three years,” the woman repeats and laughs. “That’s insane.”
“And she only dropped two the year before that. Do you regret retiring before she entered the senior circuit, Aurora?”
She laughs again and says, “Not even a little bit.”
TV Caitlyn jumps to grab onto a plastic red crescent and raises her feet to tap them against the hold. A clock in the bottom right of the screen counts down to 3:30 as she shuffles her feet over to two small red jibs screwed onto an angled plywood volume. Caitlyn pushes off the furthest jib and begins swinging back and forth from the crescent she dangles from.
“She’s getting more out of those feet than most of the athletes,” Rakan says.
“Most,” Aurora agrees, sounding ominous in retrospect.
Caitlyn releases her swing and arcs over to a small black triangle that she jumps immediately off of with her left foot, maintaining her momentum. She slaps the first of three red sloping holds with her left hand and pushes against it, propelling herself to the next one. She paddles through this hold with her right hand and reaches out with her left to grab the last one. She makes good contact, but her momentum pulls her past the hold. She pivots around her lone hand, turning to face the audience as she drops to the mat below.
Immediately, Caitlyn looks at her fingertips and then turns around to stare at the wall. Her eyes dart around the hold she fell off, the holds she moved up through, recalculating her approach with more knowledge of the angles at play, the feel of the slopers.
Rakan, excitement evident, says, “She’ll need to have understood the dyno on that one attempt to secure the win based on countback. My hands are sweating. This is massive.”
“She has the height to do it statically,” muses Aurora, as Caitlyn trods to the front of the mat to grab her chalk bucket, “but she’ll have decided that the paddle dyno seemed more likely to go.”
“You’d need outrageous core tension to make those long transitions statically.”
“Which she has in spades, except this finals round has been exceptionally burly. Paired with the compressed semifinals schedule because of yesterday’s rain, the whole field is exhausted.” Sympathy seeps into Aurora’s voice as she recognizes the situation. “Caitlyn Kiramman isn’t the best just because she’s the strongest. She’s ruled the circuit for the last five years because she’s whip smart. She’ll have done the math and decided she doesn’t have the juice left to go with a more reliable, static approach.”
With 2:40 remaining on the clock, TV Caitlyn, that chump, jumps back up to the red crescent start hold and taps her feet up against it. She winds up her swing beautifully, leaps off the triangle elegantly, paddles through the first slopers cleanly. When she hits the last sloper, she does so with two hands. It’s textbook: bent elbows to cushion the grab, open palms for maximum surface area, left foot flagging out to prevent the pivot.
Rakan exhales audibly and begins to shout, “She’s done it—”
And then, on the backswing, her left hand slides to the edge of the hold. Her fingers flex in as hard as they can, grinding off her fingerprints like rubbing sandpaper. The moment seems to stretch beyond the edges of the Void.
“No—” Aurora gasps.
Caitlyn’s hand fires off the hold like a rocket. She swings hard onto her right arm but can’t do anything to stay on from this angle. She falls to the mat on her side, a cloud of chalk puffing up around her.
“Caitlyn Kiramman has been dethroned,” Rakan says like he doesn’t even believe it.
Ignorant TV Caitlyn doesn’t know the score. She pops up, shakes her head with a smile and a light chuckle, chalks up and starts the boulder again. Perfection on the third try. She finishes the rest of the climb with ease. 23 seconds from start to top. The announcers barely acknowledge the finish.
“We knew she couldn’t win forever, but there are so many strong challengers on the circuit that she could have lost to,” Aurora says. “This is unprecedented.”
Caitlyn hops off the boulder, grinning, and waves to the crowd. She shades her eyes to look past the arena lights at the scoreboard and sees, for the first time in years, her name in second position. Above her, with six overall attempts to top instead of seven, a name she’s never seen before: Violet Lanes. Dumb fucking TV Caitlyn freezes with her mouth slightly open. The camera cuts to a muscular woman with short pink hair in a black and green uniform. She’s sitting down, also focused on the scoreboard, brow furrowed with her own shock and confusion. Arms from the other competitors enter the screen from the sides, patting her back and shaking her shoulders.
“When we say Violet Lanes came out of nowhere, folks, we mean it. The only other RFSC competition she’s ever registered for was last month’s lead contest in the Ridgeback Mountains and she didn’t make it out of qualification.” The shuffling of papers accompanies Rakan’s commentary. “This is her first boulder competition and she’s managed to upset the undisputed queen of the sport climbing world to take home gold.”
“Press packet says she prefers to go by ‘Vi’ instead of her full name.”
“Thanks, Aurora. Look, we don’t know much of anything about her. We’re as stumped as Kiramman on the mats down there.”
The camera cuts back to Caitlyn as Mel Medarda wraps her in a warm hug and whispers into her ear. Caitlyn barely returns her friend’s hug. She’s still staring off into the distance. Somehow she had made it to the edge of the athletes’ seating area. The rest of the athletes split up. Some go to congratulate Vi and others come to console Caitlyn, hugging her gently, temporarily setting aside the frustration of losing to her for years.
“There hasn’t been a Zaunite presence on the circuit since their political upheaval, but apparently they’ve been down there cooking with gas.” Rakan grimaces and adds, “Sorry, no pun intended.”
“We should have known this was serious when we saw Sevika listed as her coach.”
The camera jumps to an absolutely jacked woman in a red poncho, a smug smile on her face as she twirls a vape and watches Vi on stage like a hawk.
“For our younger audience members, Sevika’s accolades include,” Rakan reads off a list, “33 total World Cup podiums including 12 gold, four time overall bouldering World Cup winner, two time World Champion, two time Olympian with bronze in Fossbarrow and silver in Kalamanda, 8c outdoors. I could go on. She hasn’t been seen in competition climbing since the Progress Bridge Bombings.”
“Well, whatever’s been going on,” Aurora says as the camera returns to the athletes, this time with Vi and Caitlyn in the same frame, “it’s truly remarkable.” Vi finishes shaking a hand and turns to Caitlyn. She looks her up and down and up again. After a tense moment, Vi nods curtly at her and Caitlyn returns a jerky nod back, slight frown creeping into an otherwise blank expression. She freezes there on the screen.
The older, wiser (maybe,) worn out (definitely,) Caitlyn of the real world sighs at her TV self and scrubs her finger along a tablet back to the start of her boulder attempt. The screen shows a fresh 4:00 on the clock but she remembers it as an eternity. She taps play and hears Rakan Lhotlan, a genuinely lovely man, say for the eighth time tonight, “Caitlyn Kiramman, the legend, is staring down the barrel of a gun.”
Caitlyn Kiramman, the mortal, flings herself back against the pillows and groans. She closes her eyes and sees how easily she held that sloper on her third attempt. She remembers the friction against her palms, sticking exactly where she wanted them to. She opens her eyes to the dancing blue light on the hotel ceiling. She mouths “three years” along with the co-commentator, Aurora Bryni, because she’s clearly memorized the video. This is extremely normal and definitely not self-destructive.
Her phone buzzes at her side. She reaches into her yoga pants’ pocket to pull it out and stare at the photo of Jayce. He’s smiling and handsome at the cafe they’d visited in yesterday’s rainout. Clearly he’d swiped her phone and managed to change his picture from the one where he’s in a hotdog costume that she prefers. She mutes the TV and taps to accept.
“Oh good. I thought you were screening my call,” he says instead of hello.
“I only screen calls from my mother.”
“Careful or she’ll call you from Tobias’ phone.”
“Hm. Excellent point. I’ll screen his calls too.”
Jayce chuckles and says, “So look, Garen told me about this crag an hour out of town that isn’t in any guidebook. He’s been working on a few first ascents out there. Nothing on socials yet, though. I thought you might like to take a day to get off plastic and onto rock. Clear your head, you know? Change of scenery.”
“Thanks, but I can’t. I moved my flight to Ionia to tomorrow.”
“The Weh’le comp isn’t for two weeks, Cait.”
“I need to get out there and practice. I can’t afford to be jet-lagged.”
“Ok,” Jayce says like a question and changes tactics. “Come out with Mel and Viktor and I tonight. Find a pretty Demacian girl to kiss. Malcolm and Sarah are coming along with. And Demacians call their clubs discotheques, which is delightful.”
“Don’t do the ‘protective big brother’ thing right now.”
“I’m trying to do the ‘fellow competition climber who only bagged a bronze this weekend’ thing.”
Caitlyn sighs then says, “My flight is at six. I can’t stay out late.”
“So change it.”
“No.”
She imagines that one vein in Jayce’s forehead is bulging right now. He takes a deep breath and she knows immediately what he’s going to say.
They talk over each other:
“Don’t say I’m like my mother—”
“You’re just like your mom—”
Jayce laughs for an altogether unnecessary amount of time. She’s sure he’s wiping stray tears from his eyes when he finally calms down enough to say, “Fine, fine, you win. Go do your terminator thing and terrify the poor citizens of Ionia. I’ll see you in a week when I fly out. You know you can call me any time. I love you, Cait.”
“Love you too,” she mumbles, hangs up, and throws the phone down on the bed. She groans a little for good measure. She unmutes the TV, picks up the tablet, and scrubs to the start of the boulder again.
“Caitlyn Kiramman, the legend, is staring down the barrel of a gun for the first time in her storied career.”
17 Months Before
Late 2023
“You’re Vander’s kid, right?”
That isn’t the question that Vi thought she’d be asked by the scariest MILF she’s ever seen. First, Vander has been dead for six years. Second, she is freshly 22 and not really a kid anymore. Third, usually questions in these circumstances are of the ‘why are you trespassing’ variety.
“You knew Vander?” Vi asks instead of answering.
The scary MILF brushes her hair out of her face with the hand that isn’t holding a pistol and Vi sees it now. She was one of the regulars at The Last Drop before the gym turned into an ad hoc command center for a revolution that finally found its teeth. That year Vi had traded a shakily independent Zaun for a dead father. Her second dead father.
“Sevika, right?” Vi asks and Sevika’s dark lipstick cracks as she grins. “You stopped coming around before he…”
The pause when Vi trails off isn’t generous but it isn’t cruel either. Sevika tucks her hair behind her ear and looks Vi over. She says, “We had a difference of opinion.” Vi is pretty sure she doesn't want to know any details about that. If only because the statute of limitations on being an accessory to terrorism hasn’t passed. Most fissure folk tend to avoid talking about specific names and dates when they reference the Hostilities. As a people, they’ve become adept at alluding to things.
“Right,” Vi says, then points at Sevika’s pistol and the crafty trap her right leg is stuck in. “This is a little much.”
“Well, this is my building that you’ve been running around on and jumping off of.”
Vi looks around the bland industrial rooftop, identical to so many others. “It’s not the only one,” she replies, which doesn’t help her situation at all.
“At all hours of the night! Haven’t gotten a good sleep in months. I have a rash in my ears from wearing ear plugs every night.” Sevika points the pistol at her own ear for emphasis and Vi’s eyes widen.
“You sleep here? I’d have never guessed. It’s a warehouse,” Vi argues carefully, keeping her voice even. This isn’t the first time she’s been held at gunpoint, which is actually pretty fucked up when she thinks about it. Call it reason five hundred she didn’t have a healthy adolescence.
“Like you didn’t live in a gym basement as a teenager?” Sevika snorts. She’s pleased with her retort and starts slowly waving her pistol along with the cadence of her voice. “I know you’re not the only one treating my roof like a highway; there’s a mess of you sumpsnipes who parade through here. You’re not going to give any of them away because Vander will have taught you to protect your own. Mhm. And we both know whatever you’re running through here isn’t strictly legal, otherwise you wouldn’t have to take it through this neighborhood in the dead of night. If I was a betting woman, and I am, I would put money on a patrol of enforcers getting a tip off being bad news to you and your friends.” Sevika sets her free hand on her hip. “How close am I?”
Close enough, Vi thinks. Close enough to be dangerous to Ekko and his crew. Close enough to endanger Mylo’s hustle.
“What do you want?” Vi asks. She tries to surreptitiously pull her leg out of the trap but it just bites in tighter.
Sevika leans down next to Vi and taps the edge of the trap with her pistol, making a solid metallic clang. “Why do you think I set this trap here?”
“Because you’re a rabid bitch?”
Sevika laughs a deep and throaty laugh at that. “True enough,” she says. “But also, every other foot soldier takes the ladder over there between floors. Only one person comes up this way, swinging around the gutter and kicking off the awning there. The ladder is so much easier.”
“This way is faster,” Vi says.
“Exactly.” Sevika smiles. She taps the trap again. “Exactly.”
Vi watches the pistol religiously. When Sevika notices, she laughs even more and flings it to the other side of the roof.
“Relax,” she says. “I’ve never even bought bullets for that thing.” She leans over to start unlatching the trap. “Tell your friends to find another route. I don’t give a flying fuck what they’re up to, but they stop using my building to do it as of tonight. And you kid, show up here tomorrow morning. Front door this time.”
Sevika stares at Vi as she holds the trap’s release lever. Slowly, Vi nods at her and mumbles, “ok.” Sevika pulls the lever and Vi’s leg is free. Vi rubs the feeling back into it and grimaces with every sharp sting. Tomorrow, it’ll be bruised, but she’s not much worse for wear. It’s minor when it comes to her usual Undercity scrapes.
Sevika is halfway across the roof to the access door when Vi looks up. She pulls out a vape and spares a glance over her beefy shoulder.
“Fuck off, kid.”
Present Day
2025
Cameras flash everywhere. Several crews run around, setting up lights and microphones. A cute redhead with big glasses and the beginnings of gray streaks in her hair walks up to Vi.
“Sorry if this is overwhelming. I’m Aurora, Rakan’s co-commentator tonight. We usually do an interview with the winner after the podium.”
“Ok, sure,” Vi says and pulls off the hood of her sweatshirt to run a hand through her hair. The crowd in the arena hasn’t dwindled much since the end of the competition. She sees herself on the jumbotron and tries to channel the bravado she feels when she’s running along a rooftop and knows exactly where she’s going to land after a jump.
Aurora holds her microphone up and smiles. One of the tech crew points at her and she says, “Thanks, Rakan. I’m here with Vi Lanes, winner of this year’s Demacia City Boulder World Cup. Vi, you entered this competition as an unknown in the climbing world and walked out with a gold medal. Where have you been hiding?”
Aurora moves the mic toward Vi so she can lean in to speak. “I guess you could say I trained in parkour before working with Sevika to make the switch to climbing.”
Aurora smiles then says, “I don’t miss battling it out with Sevika on the wall. What’s she like as a coach?”
“She’s fucking crazy.”
The audience titters in the background. Aurora yanks the mic away from Vi and covers it with a hand to whisper, “Try not to curse!”
“Sorry! Sorry!” Vi raises both hands apologetically. “Do-over?
Aurora nods and gently whispers, “Don’t worry. You’re doing fine,” before holding the mic back up and asking again, “What’s Sevika like as a coach?”
“Demanding.” Vi pauses when Aurora laughs and then keeps going, “Sevika was friends with my dad when I was a kid. I’m lucky to have run into her again. She’s been an incredible mentor.”
“Well, that makes me feel old. Does that mean we have Sevika to thank for your entry into the circuit?”
“It’s fair to say that.”
Aurora gets a hand signal from one of the techs and nods. She says, “Winning a World Cup is never easy, but it’s remarkable that you unseated probable GOAT, Caitlyn Kiramman, to do so. How do you feel about that?”
Vi shrugs. “I don’t really know who she is.”
Aurora mutters, “Wild,” which just barely gets picked up by the mic that she’s still holding out to Vi. She pulls the mic back and says, “Congratulations on your win, Vi. I look forward to what else you have in store for us. Back to you, Rakan.”
The lights and cameras get shut down and hauled away quickly. A few techs scamper around winding up the cables that criss-cross the stage. The arena lights all turn on and the crowd who stayed start meandering toward the exits. Now in relative privacy, Aurora bumps Vi’s elbow to get her attention back and asks, “You were just saying that to fuck with Kiramman, right?”
Vi grins. “I just started watching comp climbing last year.”
“That’s not a no.”
Vi makes a face like that’s a surprise to hear. She flips her hood up and heads backstage, hands in her pockets, barely suppressing a smirk.
Aurora watches her go. Once Vi’s behind the partition, Aurora taps on her earpiece. “You hear that?” She smiles at what she hears back, watching the spot where Vi slipped backstage. “This is going to be fun.”
Caitlyn waits until she’s on the terrible airplane wifi to check her email. She ignores a message from her mother from last night titled Your Performance. Instead she opens one from her agent, Orianna, with a roundup of sponsor obligations, media requests, and collaboration offers. She jots out her thoughts on each. Yes, she does want to go on Blitzcranks’s podcast again. The man is dumb as a rock but a total sweetheart. No, she doesn’t want to re-sign with Sun Gate. They walked back their support of LGBTQ charities and thought no one would notice. Orianna replies immediately, she could be part computer with how constantly connected she is, saying she’ll take care of it.
Caitlyn accepts a cortado from the flight attendant. She decides to put on her big-girl pants and clicks onto an email chain started by Piltover head coach Marcus last night titled COMP VIDEOS AND TEAM MEETING !!!MUST REVIEW!!!, all caps as usual. She starts a download of the attachment DemaciaCityKiramman.mp4, knowing it’ll take a while in the plane, and begins the monumental task of reading Marcus’ latest fussing.
—
Athletes,
After a poor showing in Demacia this weekend, all Piltover National Team athletes are highly advised to be present at Piltover Training Center for team coaching Tuesday morning. While technically optional, it’s always good to remember that we’re not as high and mighty as we think we are and can all benefit from a return to fundamentals when we’ve been humbled.
Make sure to review your video. None of you should be happy with your results. Find three actionable changes you can make for Weh’le and we’ll train those in the coming week.
Sky, Elora, Rosa, Axel, Stevan, you’re expected at the airport next Sunday for the trip to Ionia. We can go over timelines Tuesday morning.
Camille, plan to meet with Viktor’s team Tuesday afternoon to retool your rehab plan.
If you have any comments or concerns, feel free to keep them to yourself.
See you at the spray wall,
Marcus
—
Caitlyn expands the next message in the chain, one from Jayce sent at 1:38 in the morning. She assumes he was still at the discotheque.
—
Whose dick do you think he sucked to take over for Grayson?
Sent from my iPhone
—
The next one is also from Jayce, this time at 2:16 AM.
—
That wasn’t supposed to be a reply to all. Ignore it.
Sent from my iPhone
—
The one after, oddly, is from Mel only a few minutes later.
—
Marcus,
Why was I cc’d on this in the first place? You know I climb for Noxus.
I’ll pick up coffee for the gym on Tuesday. Everyone, remind me of your order.
Best regards,
Mel Medarda
—
Viktor replies at 5:45 AM.
—
Camille: Please bring updated imaging if you have any. Don’t worry if you don’t.
Mel: London fog with a shot of espresso.
Jayce: Honestly, you’re an HR nightmare. Don’t be sexist. Marcus very well might have eaten a mean pussy to get the job after Grayson.
-V
—
The rest of the chain is everyone telling Mel what coffee they want.
If it was anyone besides Marcus, she might feel bad about how little respect he got, but Marcus walked ass-backward into coaching the most decorated team of the last decade and had never hesitated to take credit for it in the media.
Grayson had been the reason why Caitlyn wanted to climb, inspired a whole generation really. She’d gone missing on a climbing trip to the Varju Mountains the year before Caitlyn moved from the junior to the senior circuit which left her assistant-coach Marcus, a man with two podiums to his name, as Caitlyn’s head coach.
She had listened to him at first. She didn’t want to lean on her last name when she entered the circuit. She had taken his advice, attended his meetings, showed up to practices with her three actionable changes. It always felt wrong somehow. He never quite understood the way her body moved, what she could do easily and what wasn’t suited for her. Sometimes she felt his direction was so bad it was like he wanted her to lose. She doubts Marcus ever lost sleep over it; he is not a kind man.
Jayce had already been a star when Marcus was named head coach. He blew off any demands Marcus made and did so with gleeful spite. Early on, Marcus had threatened to bench Jayce if he didn’t get in line and Jayce had told him to take it up with Heimerdinger, president of the Piltover Sport Climbing Association. Marcus was welcome to explain why he was benching the only climber winning the team medals since the Grayson golden era. That had been the template Caitlyn followed once she’d won enough to prove indispensable. With Heimerdinger looming overhead, they’d reached a high-functioning stalemate. Marcus blustered, they ignored him, he told the media how proud of them he was when they podiumed, everyone kept their jobs and sponsorships.
Caitlyn sends a reply saying she’ll see them in Ionia. She doesn’t have it in her to be overtly mean to Marcus, but she does send a text to Jayce thanking him for being an asshole.
DemaciaCityKiramman.mp4 pops up in a new window. Caitlyn makes it fullscreen, hits play, and leans back in her seat. It begins with a wide shot of women’s boulder one from the finals. Yesterday’s Caitlyn runs into view and spins around to look at the wall. Marcus’ shoulder and furry little sideburns slowly drift into frame and cover up about a third of the screen, including the crux of the boulder. He stays there. Caitlyn scrubs forward to boulder three, which appears to have Marcus’ finger over the top half of the image even though he uses a tripod. She laughs embarrassingly loudly and apologizes with hand gestures to the rest of the business class cabin as they glance over to see what woke them up.
She ducks to seem inconspicuous, impossible at her height but whatever, and pulls out her phone. She messages the team+Mel group text, There’s no way Marcus gives good head. It gets spammed with reaction emojis by the members who are awake and Stevan adds, No, no, she’s got a good point.
Caitlyn switches over to another text thread and sends, Are you in Ionia City? She gets a thumbs up in return. She sends, Climb at Z-Crimp this afternoon? She gets another thumbs up.
“Excuse me, sorry to interrupt.”
Caitlyn looks up to see a flight attendant. She immediately checks her seat belt to make sure it’s buckled and her hands to make sure she hasn’t taken up smoking and lit a cigarette without realizing it.
“My kids are such big fans of yours. They would go nuts if I got a photo with you.”
Caitlyn sees the cell phone in his hand and smiles. “Of course!” She straightens up in her seat and he leans over to snap a couple photos together.
17 Months Before
Late 2023
“So you used to be hot shit.”
Sevika scowls at Vi and holds the door open for her to come inside. “Who said that?” she asks flatly.
“I looked you up last night,” Vi answers, stepping past Sevika into the cavernous dark warehouse. The door swings shut behind them. “That’s the first thing on your Runepedia. ‘Used to be hot shit.’ Wild stuff. Never seen that before.” Vi holds up her phone, a glowing firelight in the darkness, the screen showing a younger Sevika in a retro baby blue and yellow Piltover uniform. Sevika is holding a gold medal above her head while being mobbed by other Piltover climbers. A thin, lithe man jumps on her back and a woman wearing a silver medal with a hawk-like nose embraces her from the side.
Sevika pauses, observing the image carefully. She says, with a quiet voice that Vi hasn’t heard before, “You know, they call it the Grayson golden era, but most of those teams were Zaunite.” She reaches her hand out towards the phone. Vi thinks, for a moment, that she’s going to trace the image with her fingers, but instead she hits the button on the side of Vi’s phone to put it to sleep and plunge them into complete darkness. “Lesson one, kid,” Sevika says with the steel returned to her voice, “Don’t trust anyone from Piltover.”
“Lesson?” Vi asks. “What do you—”
Sevika flips a switch behind them and the lights in the warehouse hum to life, growing brighter and brighter as they warm up. The space is occupied by a maze of walls made out of a hodge-podge of materials, like she’d cleaned out a junkyard and turned it vertical. Cast iron beams hold up bits of cars that are attached to paint stained plywood that fasten to wooden struts that brace steel scaffolds that give structure to… so on and so on. The only thing tying it all together are brightly colored plastic shapes mounted to the flat side of each wall.
Vi recognizes the idea. Vander had that area of the gym with a climbing wall that had been Sevika’s exclusive domain when she came in. Those walls had been concrete and those climbing holds had been actual hunks of rock that had been chipped off the fissures. It had been Vander’s aim to let the community steer the direction of his gym, give them what they needed. In a washed out video that Vi watched the night before, an interviewer asks Sevika how she prepares and Sevika says a quick hi to her friends at The Last Drop as she talks about her training regimen. It had given Vi goosebumps.
Sevika runs to the wall closest to them. She springs up a couple low volumes, grabs a plastic dish, swings around it with her right hand and rockets upward. She grabs a ledge with the same hand and hauls herself upward with an awkward twist to sit atop the wall. Vi looks at all the steps again and follows her up the wall. She uses two hands to grab the ledge and mantle over much more smoothly to land next to Sevika.
Sevika chuckles. She pushes her poncho to the side revealing a prosthetic left arm. She doesn’t have to say anything. Zaunites know where injuries like that are from.
Vi starts swinging her legs, taking in how fucking cool this place is, winding her eyes along different problems on different walls. She imagines the path across them — a hop, a grab, a swing, a press, a kick. She says, “What makes you think I’d even be interested in something like this.”
“Look at you, kid,” Sevika says. “Second hand clothes, shady jobs, aimless. You’ve got the fight in you, had it back then too. Just don’t know what to do with it. You’re not going to stop thinking about this place now that you’ve seen it.”
Vi sets her hands on top of her head. She hates how right Sevika is about that.
“I promise,” Sevika says, “You and I are going to make each other a lot of money. We’re going to win a lot of awards. And we’re going to do it with Zaun written across our chests.”
Present Day
2025
Caitlyn is trying hard not to look like Caitlyn Kiramman, the legend. She’s got her ponytail through the back of a Knights ballcap she picked up in Demacia City International. Her sunglasses are innocuous — big but not huge, nice but not expensive, dark but not mirrored. She bought a windbreaker at a small boutique between her hotel and Z-Crimp, and she’s been fiddling with the collar, trying to get it to stay popped up just right so it obscures her profile but looks, you know, extremely casual. So casual. Just a regular casual windbreaker on a regular casual person that didn’t just have a televised disappointment that everyone who recognizes her feels the need to try and console her about.
After a deep breath, Caitlyn walks into the gym and quickly heads to the self service kiosks. She switches the language to Piltovan and scans her cogcard. Realistically, any gym on Runeterra would let her in for free, but then she’d have to be herself and get told that she’s got it in the bag next time, or that she was so close and did so well, or that silver is a really good result. An animated worax hops across the loading bar. Bold letters spin onto the screen saying Welcome Kiramman Caitlyn! She makes herself as wide as possible to block any bystander’s view and taps through the waiver forms. Eventually, an illustration of a poro climbing a rainbow pops up signaling, she thinks, that she’s done. She’s never checked in alone before.
The gym isn’t too crowded this afternoon. It gets inundated with professional teams when a comp is nearby, which is fun in its own way, but seeing it quiet with relaxed locals is gratifying. Z-Crimp has a reputation as one of the hardest gyms globally and serves as an incubator for the Ionian national climbing team. A few kids, maybe in their early teens, take turns on a boulder while chatting and joking with each other. Caitlyn sets her backpack down and sits on a mat on the other side of the room to watch.
The boulder consists of two bright pink semi-circular bowls facing each other so that there is only a thin gap between them. There’s a small foot jib to the lower left and a thin ridge to use as a side pull to the upper right. The only other hold is the top, a sloper that is incut just enough to be generous. The intended beta requires a difficult hand-foot match inside the narrow space between the semi-circles in order to reach out to the side pull. It’s a tricky move but possible with training and flexibility.
The stronger kids send it a few times trying to figure out a strategy for a straggler friend. Eventually they find a better body position for him to make the match from and he manages to reach the top. The kids all cheer and Caitlyn thinks to move on until the two strongest kids start messing around on it again, using the terrible match as a fulcrum to dyno from, skipping the side pull altogether. It’s impressive. It’s fun. She’s grinning when a man sits down beside her.
“You snuck in,” he says in Ionian.
“Not terribly well, apparently,” she replies, watching as the kids move their skillful antics to the next boulder.
“Akali said you were coming. I had warning. I promise you were very sneaky.”
“Thank you, Sett,” she says, turning to the man. His shaggy red hair hangs in his eyes and almost hides the scar running across the bridge of his nose. “It’s good to see you.”
“Hi, Cait,” he says, switching to Piltovan. He opens his arms and Caitlyn slumps into them. If the hug seems extra long or extra gentle, she refuses to dwell on it.
“Your Ionian is rusty,” he says when she pulls away.
“It’s never been polished.”
He chuckles and nudges her with his foot. “Why didn’t you just say hi at the desk?”
The kids have found a new game that involves climbing in pairs across each other. It’s very silly.
“Oh, you’re sulking,” Sett says. “Got it.”
Caitlyn watches one of the kids almost fall, only to be saved by clinging onto her partner’s legs. Another kid is filming and laughing while heckling her. The climber makes a rude gesture at her videographer buddy and they both laugh, invulnerable in their youth.
“They’re team kids?” Caitlyn asks.
Sett nods. “Yeah.”
“They’re good,” she says.
“Too good,” Sett mutters.
“How long until they make the senior circuit?”
“Four years. I’ll be thirty-one,” Sett says then adds, “if they haven’t taken me out back and shot me yet.”
“Dramatic,” Caitlyn chides.
“I’m serious. The field is deep. You don’t make decade plus runs like Jayce here in Ionia. Every day there’s new blood nipping at your heels. Every mistake is a chance they’ll submit someone else for the next comp. The kids are coming up behind us. One of these days will be the last time I bow to a comp audience and I won’t even know it.”
“Sett—”
Sett holds up his hand. “I’m fine with it. I’m just being practical. I started taking sports management classes.”
“You’ll be good at that.’
“I know,” Sett says and stands up. He reaches a hand out for Caitlyn to grab. “Hey, you don’t need representation, do you?”
Caitlyn laughs as Sett hauls her up. The team kids have started stealing glances over at Caitlyn and whispering among themselves. She feels a knot in the pit of her stomach pull to life. Normally she loves talking to young climbers, which makes her current discomfort feel even worse. Perceptive, lovely Sett picks up Caitlyn’s bag and indicates to follow him.
“Akali is going to accuse me of keeping you to myself,” Sett says over his shoulder. “She’s in the back with Master Shen.”
“He doesn’t like me,” Caitlyn says as she scopes out the parts of the gym they pass, making a mental tally of the boulders she wants to climb this week.
Sett snorts. “Master Shen? He loves you. He’s just salty you didn’t climb for Ionia despite being eligible.”
“I’m from Piltover.”
“You don’t need to convince me, babe,” Sett says and winks at her. He opens the door to the private training area and shouts, “I brought a present!”
It’s an unexceptional professional training room: a colorful spray wall on the left, hangboards and campus boards to the right, standardized training boards right across from the door. The difference between these rooms is always in the caliber of the coaching, the caliber of the routesetting.
Akali is near the top of a DragonBoard in front of them, moving from one glowing hold to another. Caitlyn quickly scans the board to see which holds are lit up and recognizes the problem as a V10 benchmark named Facelift. It’s a frustrating one. The high right foot can be gnarly if you aren’t prepared for it.
At Sett’s shout, Akali jumps off the DragonBoard, spinning to face them as she drops. She pulls down her gaiter to grin broadly at Caitlyn, then lopes over to hug her. Caitlyn returns the hug and feels the sweat on Akali’s back between her sports bra and her joggers.
“You’re training hard,” Caitlyn says.
“Weh’le in two weeks. Of course I am,” Akali replies. “It’s cool you’re here so early. I found a new Zhyunen curry place you’re going to love.”
“Sounds great,” Caitlyn says and looks over Akali’s shoulder to see Master Shen lurking behind her. He looks sharp as ever with his graying brown hair pulled into a high ponytail, sides of his head freshly shaved. He still walks with an air of strength that seems powerful enough to outstripe other climbers, but the whole climbing world knows about his rotator cuff and his early retirement.
“Ms. Kiramman,” Shen says with a small bow. “Welcome. What brings you here so soon after the competition in Demacia City?”
“Hello, Master Shen.” Caitlyn says, nodding slightly back. “I’d like to train coordination movements, if you’d be amenable.”
“We can train coordination,” Shen says. “I’ll work on whatever you would like with you, it’s a privilege. But you’re already exceptional at them. I don’t know how much closer to your ceiling you can get when you’re starting from the roof.”
“I need to get better.”
Shen shakes his head. “No. You need to consider that being the best at something might be a position that’s shared.”