Closed

[kill_switch]

Who: Max and Furiosa (and Katie!)
Broadcast: n/a
Action: Saavy trials and fail
When: This weekend

[It didn't take much to convince Furiosa which faction she belonged in. Moxie was tempting, Spirit something of an enigma, but Savvy felt like her people. While there was something unsavory about having to rely on survival instead of living life up, it was deeply ingrained; instinctual and second nature. Not having to explain herself for her eccentricities of hoarding foodstuffs, hiding weapons, checking over her shoulder in an empty corridor.]

[Upon expressing interest in aligning with Savvy, she was immediately assigned her survival tasks, and as she's heading out to the wilderness to complete them, she runs into another Fleet member who, frankly, she would have been surprised not to see.]

Max, I imagined I'd find you here.

Comments

[kill_switch]

[Furiosa is not buried at this point, having pulled herself out and wandered for a bit before huddling up against a tree. It's hard to concentrate on anything, beyond fighting the growing urge to just try to sleep it out. She knew, instinctively, that that was a bad idea.]

[She blinks up the figure before her, her brain sluggish in formulating a reply, or even recognizing quite what was going on.]

Cheedo?

[flickerflash]

[Katie blinks at the name, but she shrugs after a moment.] That's my name.

[She shakes her jacket out. It's far too small for Furiosa, but it was wrapped around Furiosa's discarded jacket, which falls into the woman's lap.] You probably should put that on out here. You don't want to catch a cold.

[Man, her head is shaved and everything and she looks so cool no pun intended-- but even Katie can spot when someone's kind of in the middle of freezing to death, so she shelves it, crouching down.]

You're a friend of Max, aren't you?

[kill_switch]

[She frowns at the girl, who didn't sound like what she remembered Cheedo sounding like. Has it been so long, that she's beginning to forget?]

[Her coat tumbles into her lap, and she looks down at it for a moment, before moving stiffly to try and pull it on.]

Max. [She's thinking hard to keep up with the conversation. Max. Sand. But this isn't sand. There's a ship, though, a space ship, like the kind that told stories. She's never been this cold. The desert nights, those seemed tame now by comparison, and she remembered walking by the war rig, blanket around her shoulders, talking with Max.]

Max. Yes. He ... yes. [She looks up at the Not-Quite-Cheedo Cheedo.]

Is he ... alright?

[flickerflash]

He doesn't like cats. [Katie will help, if Furiosa needs it, because a person stiff with cold and with only one arm might have trouble. Didn't Max say she had a pros... a fake? It must've been lost. She might be able to find it, but Furiosa is more important.] Nobody can be all right if they don't like cats. And I think he has snow in his ears because he doesn't listen. I bet he's warmer than you are, though.

[She bites her lip, wondering how to do this.]

Can you walk? Or do you want to sleep? If you want to sleep, it's all right. You'll wake up again. Probably.

[kill_switch]

Max doesn't like anyone. [She starts to stand, but it's difficult; some parts of her body felt like they were on fire, and others she couldn't feel at all. Her hand goes out to the tree for balance.]

Walk. No sleep. [If she's standing, she can handle it, and while she's not exactly standing straight or easily, it's enough to get her started.]

[flickerflash]

[Max should start liking someone. She's pretty sure he likes Furiosa, anyway. Katie holds a hand up to Furiosa, a little like a child looking for guidance from a parent. Other way round, isn't it? Her hands are mittened and warm, so that might help.

She spent a lot of her energy finding Furiosa, so they'll walk at least a short way before she tries using any more. But maybe she can pull the glamour she needs from present company. So Katie talks as she moves, whether Furiosa took her hand or not, heading slowly in the right direction for Max.]

You should probably keep talking! I know when I get really cold it's easy to sleep, so you should make your brain stay awake.

[She's not too worried, though. Worst comes to worst, she'll yank the glamour right out of Furiosa. It'll make the woman faint, probably, but that's better than freezing to death. She'll try and do it much nicer way first.]

[kill_switch]

[She does take Cheedo's hand, trying not to lean into it too much. At the same time, her movements are stilted and slow. She does take the girl's advice, though; talking would certainly help. It had the added bonus of helping her come to terms with her current situation.]

[But while she is definitely more talkative than Max, it's not by much.]

What should, I talk about? [Maybe the fact that she's more and more certain this isn't actually Cheedo at her side.]

[flickerflash]

Ummm.... something you like! It'll help. Favourite place? What you wanted to be when you grew up? Favourite food? Favourite memory?

[She shrugs her own jacket on while she talks, letting go of Furiosa briefly to wriggle her arm through a sleeve.] How you met Max? Any of those.

[kill_switch]

Max. [He is a sort of grounding influence right now; somehow the snow makes more sense when she thinks of him. She's not at home. Neither is he. The lines get blurry after that.]

He tried to steal our rig. He tried ... no one steals my rig. No one drives my rig but me. [Talking is turning out harder than she had imagined. The words feel like thick syrup in her mouth; it's hard to push them out. She couldn't feel her face. When the girl frees hey hand for a moment, she reached up and rubs her face. It's still there. Nux drove her rig once. Nux was reliable.]

Nux tried to fly into the sun. [It's a departure from the story, but it made sense in her own train of thought, and more importantly, it's the first clear thought she'd had about being in the Fleet. Gears seem to finally click in place. She's so cold. She had stopped to take her jacket off for some reason. Max was adjusting his pack.]

Max, is he okay [Who was this child? She was definitely not Cheedo. More was coming back to Furiosa but the thoughts and memories were still disjunct and unconnected.]

[flickerflash]

[She can't help but giggle at the jump from Max and rigs to Nux flying into the sun. But then she asks about Max again, and uh... well, that's probably not a good sign, is it? Katie's brow furrows. Does she have time to do this the safer way?

She can't keep answering variations on whether Max is okay or not.]

I think he's okay. But he's still searching, and he's not very bright. Should we find him faster, do you think?

[kill_switch]

[Furiosa nods, but she's not sure if the motion is enough; her neck feels painfully stiff.]

Yes. He worries. He shouldn't. [He totally should in this case] let's find him ...

[The easy way? She wondered just what the easy way was.]

[flickerflash]

[She's inclined to disagree. Max can glare and mutter and haul Furiosa back and look after her and feed her chicken sou-- oh. Actually. Never mind her imagination.]

Are you the one that gave him the plant?

[...she's shrugging off her jacket again, kinda stretching up to tippytoes to throw it over Furiosa's head like a scarf. It's the only thing she can think of to help right now. You have no hair up there to protect you :c]

[kill_switch]

[The plant. She thinks of Asteffiel's gift to her when she first arrived; her own plant. She'd gotten one for Max eventually, too. Their own personal little green.]

[She falls to her knees into the snow, letting the girl adorn her with her coat without much thought.] There's no green here. It's all white.

[flickerflash]

My coat is green! [Okay, yes. Fast way it is. She whispers a brief apology to Tully, before her hands land gently on Furiosa's shoulders.]

Close your eyes, okay? You can pretend it's green behind your eyelids. Don't go to sleep. Just... count to ten. I'm going to do a magic trick and summon fire.

[Regardless of Furiosa's response, she hooks into the glamour that makes up Furiosa's being-- low, guttering like a fire going out, but sparking in odd ways as the mind wanders. And draws it into herself. If Furiosa was at her best, she'd never even notice. But for this? She's already tired. It's a sense of emptiness that'll pull her another step down toward comatose.

She needs the glamour, Furiosa, sorry. The fae frown on dragging it out of people wholesale, but when the alternative is not getting you somewhere safe, well. They'll probably forgive this.]

[kill_switch]

[Furiosa has been in the Fleet long enough not to question whether or not little girls can summon fire. She's still grasping for details but this seems reasonable. She closes her eyes and starts to count, thick, troublesome numbers, but she doesn't quite make it to ten before she feels the pull and loses herself to the darkness. Wherever the girl brings her, she's slumping forward and hovering on the edge of unconscious.]

[flickerflash]

[Katie lets Furiosa slump down over her shoulder, staggering a little under the weight-- she's small. But her arms come up under Furiosa's, not quite long enough to do more than pat at her back in an attempt to be reassuring. She can't take proper hold, but it's enough.

She has enough glamour to make the distance now. She jumps. They leave the ground in a small puff of snow, and the air is even more bitterly cold up away from the ground, shearing into the wind. It's almost like flying, except for the fact they curve up into the sky and then down, crashing down into the snow not far from where she left Max.

It doesn't hurt at all, though.]