1 - Open as the Wasteland

[iamawaited]

Who: Nux and you!
Broadcast: Hello world!
Action: All around the Marsiva!
When: July 26

Video

[This video is either going to be very interesting or very boring to viewers, depending on who's watching. It opens on a blue eye in a very pale face, with some kind of dark makeup smudged around it. The eye tilts crazily to one side, then the other. The camera pulls back to on a second identical eye, a scarred nose and cheek -- then further still to reveal a mouth crossed from end to end with vertical scars, like skeletal teeth.

The boy -- it's definitely a boy, or really a young man -- squints at the camera, and then the image tips to the side again and jerks wildly back and forth as he bangs the communicator against the nearest surface and brings it back up to his eye with a curious sound. After a moment, he seems to give up looking for whatever it is he wants from it and puts it down, leaving the camera staring at the ceiling.]

Action

[He had done the same when he'd awoken. He'd opened his eyes on the cleanest, shiniest surface he's ever seen, and thought, chrome. Then it had hit him all at once: the rig, Capable, Rictus...

...Valhalla...?

Not like any Valhalla he's ever imagined, he'd thought when he'd sat up and taken a look around -- that was when he'd spotted the little machine with its blinking red light.

Now, he abandons it and starts exploring his surroundings closely. There's information trickling into his brain, but it's a lot to take in all at once. The room alone is a lot to take in all at once: real beds, glaring bright lights, equipment he's never seen before, the huge night sky out the window.

Eventually, he finds his way into the showers, blinking when he spots the tap. Guzzoline? Mother's Milk? He turns it and jerks back in surprise when liquid starts spraying out onto him, turning the tap off again quickly. His eyes widen when he licks his scarred lips: water. He wrenches the tap back on and turns his face up to the shower head, taking a few greedy gulps of aqua cola.

Eventually, he'll tear himself away again and resume his exploration, not seeming to care about the fact that he's soaking wet, or that the already-faded white-and-black war paint is running from his bare, scarred torso.]

Comments

[video]

[iamawaited]

[Nux waits curiously, the fidgeting and fussing and glitching on and off enough to hold his attention. He's not sure he knows exactly what questions to ask, when he can, but he knows that his mind is swimming with so many that just about anywhere would probably be a good start.

When the text pops up, he looks startled again, and then very slightly dismayed. He can read, but it's far from intuitive; there are things a War Boy needs to know how to read, like symbols and schematics and the letters Km/H, but not a lot. Even with that short sentence, it takes him a minute to parse it -- and Coil can see his lips moving on the last word, like he's sounding it out silently.

The keyboard is worse: that, he's never seen or used at all. If Coil was hunt-and-peck, Nux is hunt-and-hunt-and-hunt-and-peck. Eventually, though, he manages:]

whats your name?

[video]

[mortalcoil]

[this time, the reason for his frowning is twofold--both over Nux' obvious handicap when it comes to reading... and the fact that he's typing when he doesn't strictly need to be.

before he answers his question, Coil shakes his head, taps on what part of the screen still has the video feed open, and pecks out a text message to accompany it.]

i can still hear you

[video]

[iamawaited]

[--Oh.

Although--]

Did you see it?

[video]

[mortalcoil]

[his brow furrows and he tilts his head quizzically, hoping that will be enough to say that he doesn't know what Nux is talking about.]

Re: [video]

[iamawaited]

What's your name?

And-- [Where am I? He starts to ask, but he remembers he knows at least the basics of that already. On a ship. In space. With some kind of show.]

Do you know how I got here?

[I am the man who grabs the sun, he thinks, but the sun is nowhere here to be seen. No gates, no McFeast.]

[mortalcoil]

[oh, the words. he gets it now. and he answers by pecking out his name into another text message. and, considering that he's talking to someone already used to very... illustrative names, maybe his own name won't seem so strange by comparison.]

Coil [--and he traces a little spiral shape in the air in front of the camera with one finger.

as for an answer to Nux's question... he shakes his head, reluctantly. it's one more mystery that has been wearing him down for months.]

[iamawaited]

Coil.

[It sounds like a name that could belong to the Citadel, or one of the cities nearby. He sighs when Coil shakes his head.]

I was driving.

[That's the last thing he remembers. Well, no: the last thing he remembers is flipping the rig, closing his eyes, and thinking Valhalla.]

I was-- supposed to go somewhere else.

[mortalcoil]

[Coil offers a somber nod, and gestures around in a circle in front of himself--intending to include himself, Nux, the ship, all of the other ships. everyone.

yeah, they're all supposed to be somewhere else. they're all suffering that same displaced fate. he can't know all what Nux means by it, but he thinks it applies pretty well across the board anyway.]

[iamawaited]

[Well, then. He slumps a little, skeleton-scarred mouth drooping.]

No way to go back?

[mortalcoil]

[his look changes--since he's currently stuck using expression to do most of his communicating for him--going from somber and empty, to a distinct spark of determination. in this matter, he is unflinchingly sure. he even taps on the receiver, makes the speakers sharply pop pop just to ensure that Nux is really listening.

and then he types his message.]

not yet.

[but he is going to find a way back even if it destroys him.]

[iamawaited]

[Not yet, he mouths along silently. Hope, he thinks. He doesn't know Coil, but he does know hope now. He hopes they took the Citadel. He hopes, suddenly, that he can go back there someday. He hopes he can tell Capable about everything he's seeing now.

He doesn't know Coil, but hope spreads, and he wants to. He nods.]

[mortalcoil]

[Coil nods one more time, reaffirming it. and because it stirs up all of the gnawing, aching frustrations he's been suffering lately, he doesn't want to think about home for too long. hope is a fine fuel in the short-term, but when it goes unanswered for years, it becomes exhausting and threatens to become poisonous.

so, he shakes it off for a new question, because oh he has some of his own. only a few are easy to ask, however.

he tries again for the scars--this time with text.]

tell me about your scars

[iamawaited]

[That... is a surprisingly complex question for a boy who's never had much complexity in his life. He hesitates, rubbing his fingers along the scar running down his right cheekbone -- the shorter one, not the one that runs all the way down to join the one over his nose.]

It's -- the V8?

[He tries to start there, tilting the camera down so Coil can see the intricate design on his chest.]

[mortalcoil]

[Coil knows painfully little about cars, but he at least recognizes that term to mean something about engines. so, he mimics the motion of holding a steering wheel, with one of those questioning tips of his head?]

[iamawaited]

[Nux brightens and nods, tilting the camera back up.]

Yeah. Exactly. I'm a driver.

[mortalcoil]

[he likes seeing the enthusiasm at least, even if it's something that he can't relate to at all, and it tells him quite a bit about this guy.

the skull-themed ones are next. trying the miming game again, he draws the little teeth-lines over his own mouth, and the nose scar, and then points at Nux.

he really does want to know about each one.]

[iamawaited]

[The problem is, though he's only talked about the engine so far, they really all are interconnected. Nux knows how, but he's no Immortan and no History Man, and he's not sure how to explain it all when he's never had to do that before. It's never been a question. Everyone he'd ever known up until his Blood Bag and the Wives had been just as devoted to the V8 as he was, and when they got him, they -- Capable, anyway -- had only asked a little.

And then there's the other problem, which is that he's not sure where he stands with the V8 and vice-versa when the Immortan is dead. How do you have a religion with no god?

But it's the only one he has, and it's the one that's marked on his face, so he tries the best he can.]

Glory in death comes only to the best and the bravest War Boys. By our deeds, we honor... it.

[He tries that: it, not him. It still feels a little like traitoring.]

By our vehicles, we chase it. Our machines are what we ride to grab hold of the sun; they are the chariots we ride to the gates of Valhalla.

[But this all feels a little numb, a little rote. He just doesn't know if any of it is true anymore at all. He looks strangely lost again.]

[mortalcoil]

[Nux may find something missing from his homily, but Coil is a rapt, interested audience. it may not be his own creed, but there are enough keywords that ring true, and more than that... it's his conviction that he latches onto.

it's rare to find someone with that kind of faith.

War Boys, he mouths to himself. it sounds like something his own mistress would have called him and his brother in arms. they were knights, brave boys, huntsmen, the Queen's guard.

--not were. are. and he almost wishes that he could still speak, so he could say such wonderful-sounding words about his Red Queen.

he taps on the mic again, almost excited now... which is something he hasn't felt for a very long time. he points between himself and the screen, and forms a shape with his hands--two pointed fingers held side-by-side.

then, belatedly, he types out a word.]

alike

[iamawaited]

[A-like, he mouths, then blinks, eyes widening slightly.]

Alike.

[He looks from the text up to Coil's face.]

Were you supposed to go to Valhalla too?

[mortalcoil]

[and you know, he hadn't really thought about the specifics of what Nux had said until then. Coil had mostly only heard a heartfelt but misinformed mash of mythological references... until he asks about it like that.

and whatever his first reaction was almost going to be, it changes quickly. he blinks and his brow furrows, because if he's asking about actually going to Valhalla...

without thinking up a more elegant way to ask, he just types one short word--]

died?

[iamawaited]

[Well... yeah. He nods, if not with the self-satisfaction he once would have. This is definitely not Valhalla, and he's not sure yet that he'll even be remembered, that his last moments meant anything... But he remembers flipping the rig, and even for the toughest of War Boys, there wasn't going to be any coming back from that.]

[mortalcoil]

[for the first time, Coil kind of... sits back from the screen. maybe remembering where he is and what he's doing as he's spooked out of the conversation and forced to resurface for a minute.

he looks away, eye flicking around somewhere else. and then he moves away from the communicator altogether. for a couple of seconds, there's only the view of the inside of some dungeony inner room of a ship as he disappears.

pacing away, he takes a very important moment to roll a few things around in his head.

and when he does finally come back, it's a little bit sudden, and he goes right for the keyboard again.]

what happened?

[iamawaited]

[Nux is left blinking, frowning, not sure what to do when Coil suddenly vanishes. He brings the screen closer, looking all around the little room left behind, to no avail. He's actually about to give up and try to go looking for him, or at least continue his explorations, when Coil returns with a question.

One that Nux hesitates a little to answer. There's just so much to say, again. How to narrate the events of the past few days, much less explain them? He feels an instant connection to Coil, but if the man doesn't know the Citadel, the Immortan, the Wasteland, much less Capable and Angharad and their sisters...

He settles again for the basics, for now.]

Car crash.

[He makes a little boom gesture to illustrate helpfully.]

[mortalcoil]

[that gesture really does add to the mental image, and he nods.

and then he motions for him to continue-- and he means it as a 'then what?' sort of prompt, because maybe he's expecting something to have happened between that moment and now, but it's a vague motion. ]

[iamawaited]

[He shakes his head, confused.]

Woke up here.