SWIM INSIDE THE SOLAR SEAS [open]

[kamikaze]

▶ WHO: Nux + OTA, will match style
▶ DATE: directly after getting rewards
▶ WARNINGS: probably none
▶ SUMMARY: Nux got a flamethrower. He's using it immediately.

a) "BURN SOME OF THOSE FUCKERS"

There's a god. There's some kind of god, must be, since they left him a gift. It's as dangerous as it looks when he lifts it, stands on top of a lone vehicle not far outside the compound and sets fire to a small approaching horde. Those aren't real people. Not real heroes, not ones he could talk to and learn from. Target practice. Ain't got feelings so Nux doesn't hold back as he blasts small infernos their way. Makes him think of Coma-Doof but this fire-gun is even bigger, even stronger! It's a rush he hasn't experienced since his first few days in this mysterious land.

No more Immortan to die for and grovel under but Nux knows nothing but the cult he was raised by. So he screams a chant, one he'd heard plenty of times on the Fury Road as the Wagon led the charge:

"Roasting flame, scorch the earth, sky and wind alike! Immolate! Immolate!"

Whoever might approach this loud, somewhat blinding scene best do so cautiously - no telling what a War Boy pumped full of adrenaline and handling a deadly weapon might do on reflex.

b) PREFERRING THE LESSER PSYCHO

At some point there's no more fuel left. Atop a bed he sits and it's the most comfortable bed he's ever known. Soft and warm and safe. This is the one he was shown by Silent Bullet Man and he's curled around the flamethrower like a snake with limbs as he counts his scrap. A raided television set rests up by the pillow and he's sorting the parts pulled out of it for the tenth time over, piling like pieces together and making a note of how many he has. He'll forget soon enough, so he has to do this often.

Periodically Nux coughs, ugly croaking noises that wrack his chest. Then he'll scratch the lumps on his neck. It's their fault. Always Larry and Barry's fault, making him sound sickly. They're even chewier when he's been active like today, but it's fine since he's calm now. Calm and sitting and counting. Nothing he can't deal with, even if his hacking's loud enough to bark out through the open door and into the hallways. If not that, the acrid smell of burnt metal’s strong enough to fill the air just the same.

Comments

[kamikaze]

Maybe there are seatbelts but Nux has forgotten them too. Then again, he's the driver and he can anticipate where the vehicle will swing. Feels faster than one-sixty right now but the numbers won't tell him. That's fine. Nux can just tell, been driving so long and no matter how different a car is from the last one you piloted, speed always feels the same.

Shiny. Nux hooks onto that phrase and spares Cole another enthused glance before focusing on the road again. This stranger's speaking his language! He's the first to do so! But he looks nothing like a War Boy save the paleness, the hard-spit name like Coal. He'll have to interrogate him once they stop. Whenever they stop-- if they ever stop.

Small bumps are like hills at this velocity and seeing the response from his passenger, Nux starts scouting for an actual one. Not just a rock or a corpse already extinguished by someone else. The skyline is very flat, but looking in every direction he can, Nux spots an actual ridge curving gently to the south. He eases into the turn this time then basically kicks the pedal as he races for that dune, fully intent on ramping them off it into whatever lies underneath.

[byheart]

This is really something! If you asked him to explain exactly what is going on, he might have trouble doing it—granted, he can't always do that anyway, least of all in a way anyone will understand, but he's fairly sure he likes it. Whatever its name. Being rattled around at high speed like dolls in a box on a dragon's back. But a dragon usually knows where it's headed, it can see for miles and miles, it knows the land and the sky above it. Maybe Nux's friend knows what they're about to see—but maybe it doesn't.

He's about to say something, a word of caution maybe, when the tremendous bump and lurch of the rise rudely interrupts, and before he can squeak out a word they're in the sky above the land. His guts seem to lift inside him, and for one perfect moment the queasy thrill of weightlessness eclipses all concern for whatever may lie ahead...

[kamikaze]

Seconds suspended in time. For just a split one it feels like they hover, the lack of knowing what lies under the dune exhilarating. Could be death. But they're already dead, so would they die again? Was existence just a string of deaths and reawakenings into something? Nux's thoughts are a spark in his brain for that tiny moment before they slam into the dirt. Hard.

So hard the force propels him from his seat inches into the air, throws him forward and slams his chest into the wheel. The horn blares and the vehicle shudders before Nux forces it onward; he's a ruthless driver, and he screams something ecstatic:

"Conquest!" Was just a meager, medicore hill but it's the most fun he's had in weeks. Now, though, they're in an ocean of plateau with no discernible landmarks save the compound being a speck on the skyline behind them, and the car's solar power can only last so long. Especially when a War Boy's working it. Nux flicks a glance to the fuel gauge, noting it has plummeted. But he hasn't seen any guzzoline around here.

"-- Look around for some juice," he barks at Cole.

[byheart]

The landing is kind of terrible, the aftermath a mess of jostling—oh, the great bang and clatter of falling down to earth. That is familiar. Nux's fast friend trumpets weirdly in victory—then Nux does, too. The ride is frightening, bewildering, but their joy is suffusive and it bubbles up and out of Cole in blurted laughter. He hasn't done much laughing that he can remember. Maybe none.

"It just came out," he says, squirming back into a reasonable position, recovering his hat before it can fall off entirely. Between the two of them, it's gangly legs and arms everywhere in here. "What a nice feeling."

But then—juice? Juice! He can do that. Maybe. The search, based in the passenger seat's immediate vicinity, lasts about four seconds. "I don't see any." They are almost certainly not talking about the same thing. Also, his voice is now vibrating as the tires encounter an abundance of little rocks and scrubby brown clumps littering the path ahead... but there's no time to marvel at that, he's on task. Bumping around in his seat, Cole leans forward, hands planted on frame and console to steady himself, and looks out at the landscape yawning before them. His eyes focus on no place in particular.

Without any warning but the movement itself, one skinny arm thrusts its way into Nux's field of vision, and one pale finger touches the windshield in front of him. "Should we look there?" There, to the left: a dark smudge in the near distance. It's difficult to see, especially at speed, and at this hour (is it twilight, let's say it's twilight), but it's there. There are many distant smudges around here, yes, but this one is different.

[kamikaze]

No juice? No more guzzo-- bad. Nevermind the fact Nux isn't aware this thing is running on the sun. The sun, disappearing over the plains like it's taking a dip under the dirt. That's something Nux has never actually questioned. Why does the sun leave and where does it go? It's crossed his mind but it's something else he's never thought to ask.

Doesn't ask now, either, because he's distracted by a hand in his windshield and a finger pointing at one specific lump of darkness ahead. Nux zeroes in on it. Yes, they should look there-- he nods, a quick motion as he zooms toward it. The zooming is decreasing. It's getting weaker, starting to slow to at least half the searing speed of before and Nux gives the pedal a kick like that'll help before they pull up several yards from the shape.

The Shape is something domed. Bright, if not smeared with filth and torn. What is it? Nux gets out and takes some moments to stare at what he cannot know is a tent before he starts to trudge toward it. Curiosity killed the dog.

[byheart]

It takes Cole a moment to work out exactly how his bald companion freed himself from the vehicle. After not too long a delay, he unfolds himself from the carriage and moves away from it, quiet as a ghost, the door left open behind him. He is well accustomed to camps, at least—and tents, too, although none precisely in this style.

The moment he draws near the site proper, his gentle, earnest voice comes slipping through the silence. "The air bakes, then chills, grit everywhere, something stubborn in my eye. Can't sleep, shouldn't, mustn't, in case the dead come dragging through the dirt. Keep it low, more smoke than flames." Now crouched by the dug-in fire pit, he pushes his finger into the dirty ash left behind, making little prints there just to see them. "Almost out. Too cold, too... empty. I can't do this anymore."

He's becoming accustomed to the average person's need for tl;dr, too, and so adds, "He was here, then he left."

(He has asked that very thing of the sun.)

[kamikaze]

Nux is lifting the tent as Cole speaks, fingers wrapping around a piece of black frame like an exposed bone. He raises it. It's light and vaguely familiar, too - War Boys have no need for tents; vehicles are safer and more efficient when having to spend the night in the wastes. But he's seen these things scattered in buzzard establishments way out past any sort of civilization. This one here, though - it's colorful! He's smearing away some dirt to expose bright red cut in between black panels.

He turns when Cole nears the fire pit, stares at him like he's preaching gospel. What's he talking about? What does it mean?

"Who left?" is the question since there's too many for all the other words, and Nux is letting the tent fall comically to its side as he leans in. Stares rapt, and listens.

[byheart]

"A man."

Cole has a piece of charcoal in his hand; he's turning it over, pinching it experimentally, looking at what's left behind on his fingertips. Black and grey dust, the same as it is at home. The hat's brim hides his face, his shoulder.

"He was afraid, aggravated, he didn't want to be here. So he went somewhere else."

The two knives strapped to his back are enclosed in leather scabbards, one curved slightly more than the other. The handles are weathered, but fine. The blades are quite long.

[kamikaze]

A man...

There's a lot of men in the waste but far less knives, especially ones so shiny and sharp. Nux's eyes dart to them when they glint in the dim light, a sheen of white zipping over one of the blades long and quick. Without thinking, he reaches out to them with the intent to grab.

"Can I--" Thinks better halfway through but it's a little late for manners.

[byheart]

Hey now, mister sticky fingers. Cole's on his feet again before Nux's mouth has finished making that last vowel, turning his back away from snatching hands, squaring himself defensively, smooth as water. This benign wisp of a boy can make himself serious, it seems.

"No." It comes out firm. "It isn't safe."

[kamikaze]

Such a reaction does more to intrigue than deter and Nux's eyes widen, for a second wondering if Cole will use those sharp pointies against him. No, no, just trying to keep them out of his reach.

"Why!" comes the question. Eager and tilting himself to try to get a glimpse of the knives, now hidden behind Cole's back again.

[byheart]

"Don't." He twists away from Nux's stubborn peering, backs off a little more. Shoes scuffing in the dirt. "These daggers are for danger, for protecting people. They... they're special. They belong to my friends."

His stern tone becomes more anxious in the face of such excitable persistence. Will it help to explain why, exactly why? It might—but what if it doesn't? He can't make him forget, not here, miles from anywhere safe, left all alone in the deepening dark... "Please, I don't want them to hurt you."

[kamikaze]

Hardly understanding the magnitude of the situation, Nux only closes his fist and slams it to his own bare chest, proudly, inadvertently hitting his sprawling scar. "Nah, it won't hurt! We're dead anyway! Heroes in the hall of the slain." That last bit, Nux is starting to not-quite-believe but his voice doesn't even waver when he says it. Swallows his doubt and just nods. Thinks back to the flamethrower, stinking of burnt metal in their car.

"Lemme see, can you?" Please and thank you are scarce where he comes from and even though they're in his vocabulary, this War Boy is much more used to demanding things.

[byheart]

Chest-beating is not generally a good sign, is it? Is he going to— oh. The pale boy's face is now bright with a fresh wash of fear and confusion, as if he's just now seeing this landscape for the first time and finding it frightening. He shrinks away, backwards. Dead anyway, the war boy said. Hall of the slain.

"No! We aren't. We can't be." It can't be true, this is nothing like the Fade—it's all so ordinary, the habits of things like light and gravity still predictable—but the possibility alone is overwhelming. "Darkness, then the room with the doll, knocking again and again, but I don't remember dying..."

The doll in question, its stuffed body meant to be a girl, black hair and a little pink dress, is hanging from his belt. The little charcoal has gone to powder in his fist. Rapid, quiet, as if running through words by rote: "Feel the ground, the breath in your lungs, fabric rustling against your skin. Feel the ground. Focus. Breathe."

[kamikaze]

"-- We are!" It's a joyous shout, oblivious to the idea of terror in the face of Being Dead - for it's a glorious thing! To be accepted beyond the gates! Even if this supposed Valhalla isn't anything like what he imagined, it's so different and little miracles keep happening that it must be true. His brain can't comprehend any other sort of explanation.

"If you don't remember, it must've been something magnificent and unexpected!" Those were the best kinds of suicides. Reaffirming this, he now steps closer, unable to tell when to back off someone. When not to touch. No, he's touchy-feely, so he reaches out to try to grab for Cole's shoulder in an effort to console as he chants.

[byheart]

"No," is soft and desperate, a plea for anything to start making sense—and at the same time, he disappears. No scuffle, no puff of smoke, just nothing there for Nux's hand to find. Nothing at all nearby but the abandoned site, the exhausted car, the evening air getting chillier by the minute.

But he hasn't been made to forget Cole, not just now, and though it might seem like he's alone now, he isn't. Won't be. He can't be here right now, but he can't leave him here, either.

What a mess.

[kamikaze]

His fingers curl into-- nothing. Just sort of hang there and then sag, a stupid look crossing his face as he stares at a space that was occupied just a couple seconds ago. How-- ? Nux crushes his fingertips into his palm like he's trying to feel if something's still there. It's not, and the most raw, excruciating confusion ever experienced is dug between a furrowed brow.

How-- ?!

"Oy-- !" Nux bleats at the air, like someone's trying to prank him. Like that'll bring Cole back.

[byheart]

Nope. Sorry, kiddo. Cole has made himself entirely overlookable and out of the way—he's not far at all, but not near the tent, or in the car, where a person would be most likely to search for someone hidden.

How can he prove they're alive if he doesn't know? But they are—they must be. Everyone he's met (though they haven't all met him) has felt just as vital as anyone he knew before. But how can he show someone who can't feel it? Won't see it? A great tower looms over his thoughts; a pale monolith of memory in the distance, flickering. No, no no no, not like that, never like that, never again.

He's rocking where he sits, digging his fingernails into his knees. People can be hurt here, people can die. There are no other people where they are, none besides Nux. They have to get back behind the wall—then he'll see.

[kamikaze]

Nothing comes when he shouts, so he turns to checking the car. Over, under, inside. Nothing there either but his precious new weapon, not even squished under the seats.

Nux steps out again. Kicks at the fire pit like maybe something's underground for just one second before he realizes that's a dumb idea, so he goes for the tent. Gets on his hands and knees and crawls into it, looking around-- not much to look at. It's one empty, dust-stained space, save a dull green sleeping bag curled into one corner. Fascinated by this, in such good condition, he scoots over and opens it up. Like a slit-open bloodbag! Minus the heat and the guts and spilling fluids. Nux examines the dirty gray plaid of the inside, somewhat marveling over the pattern and how pristinely it's been preserved.

Yet, Cole is not here either.