MAD MAX SANDBOX POST

[iamawaited]

Welcome to the Wasteland: a sandbox/open post for Mad Max RP

(Seriously, go nuts.

That's what this canon is for.)

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Threadstarter #1: The Fix It Thread

[iamawaited]

It's a long time before Nux comes to again, and at first, all he knows is that he should be dead and isn't. It doesn't take long for the pain to come blazing along after that to confirm it. This is no Valhalla. He's not sure at first that it isn't someplace else; someplace much, much worse. Eventually, though, when he gets upright and pain recedes and memory starts kicking back into gear, he starts to understand the truth. The remains of the war rig and the war drums lie smouldering in the canyon pass, what seems like miles of wreckage behind them. Corpses everywhere, glorious and inglorious. And Nux, thrown clear of the battle, bizarrely alive and alone.

After a time, he starts scavenging, because he doesn't know what else to do. He cobbles together something like a car out of spare parts and leaking guzzoline. It's not even close to chrome, but it limps along better than he can. He stows away the few supplies he can find and then... then he makes for the Citadel, because whoever holds it, it's still the only place he knows to go.

Still, he prays to whatever he can pray to now that what he did meant something. That the Wives have their water and that Capable still lives. He clasps his hands in makeshift prayer over the best approximation of a steering wheel he can make, and then he sets out west.

[preciouscargo]

No one thought Nux could survive such a massive wreck, although given how many times he had proven sorely lacking in the ability to kill himself off; someone should have gone back to check. She would have gone back herself if she wasn't so sorely needed to sort out the new change in regime at the Citadel. Water was no longer such a guarded commodity. Life for the people living there no longer such a terrible, awful, burden. Spirits began to lift. The Wives became known as something more than just property. They were called by their given names, names that were cheered in the streets even as Nux's makeshift vehicle sputtered towards the life.

Capable thought he was in Valhalla, that he had gone out in the blaze of glory he had always wanted and she made certain his sacrifice wouldn't be forgotten. Imagine, if you will, thousands of ragged strangers chanting his name once he announced who he was.

She couldn't stop herself from rushing out to meet him as soon as he was lifted up into the Citadel. Losing all sense of decorum entirely as she threw herself in his arms and tucked her face against his neck.

"Valhalla wasn't ready for the likes of you yet."

[iamawaited]

Nux had very few memories of the days before he started learning how to be a War Boy, but he did remember, very clearly, the very last one. That was the day they'd shaved and painted his head, the day they'd given him his true name, and all the members of his new family had chanted it for him as he'd sat under the razor. It was, they'd told him, only a small sample of the hero's welcome he would one day receive at the gates of Valhalla. His young chest had swelled at the thought until he thought it might burst.

The Citadel was not the promised land, but standing on the lift and hearing the approving roars from below, even Nux in all his devotion could almost forget that for a moment. The sound overtook the creaking of the chains and machinery, so loud that it was as though the people below themselves were raising him up. He gripped the side of his makeshift rig, almost afraid that between the hammering of his heartbeat and the shining, floating feeling in his head, he would faint and topple off the platform before he even made it to the top.

But of course, he couldn't: Capable was there. He'd heard them say it below, and seeing her run towards him was like a hero's welcome all over again. He enfolded her into his arms with a breathless, astonished laugh, almost on the edge of tears. "Witnesses," was all he could think to say. "You gave me so many witnesses."

[antiseed]

(angharad arrives in folkvangr with the same smile on her face that she had worn to her death.

waking up takes a while. it feels like struggling to come into focus. soon she realizes she is standing, and her body feels differently to how she remembers it. perhaps death is simply lighter. when she looks down over herself and notices she is no longer pregnant, she presses her face into her hands and breathes. her nails scratch up over the thin scars on her forehead, and they do not hurt. folkvangr is more forgiving than she could have known.

and it is green. the trees remind her of her childhood. for a long while she sits among them, toes scrunching into fresh grass, her legs up to her chest and her chin on her knees. she hopes her sisters have the same comforts in life as she does in death. she misses them terribly, but not enough to wish them by her side. folkvangr is lonely in hindsight, and she can't help but wonder if she is supposed to move on to something more.

finding that will come later. for now she is content to sit and catch her breath and enjoy the fresh breeze on her skin. nobody can touch her here, or take her away.)

[preciouscargo]

She thought he was a ghost, so pale and white, until her arms wrapped around him and he became solid and alive once more. Her heart was beating fast, although not nearly as fast as his. Her red hair blowing in the dry dessert wind like an eternal flame. She took a step back, reluctant as she was to release him, and raised a hand to the air. The sound of his name being cheered, chanted, applauded, was suddenly thunderous.

"Your sacrifice allowed us to reach the Citadel. All these people, they know of your deeds." She and her sisters had made sure of that. Recounting every detail of their perilous journey.

His rig would most likely be scrapped, but Capable was more interested in inspecting the damage done to him. She turned his face up with a hand under his chin, looked into his eyes, saw that at the very least he was severely dehydrated from his journey. "You need an IV and a blood transfusion. Both are in abundance now." Whereas before only a blood bag would be offered, now fluids in the form of an IV were now offered to those with medical need. "We ration the water now, but only in times of great necessity."

AUniverse

[iamawaited]

This city is a rough one, wild and barely tamed, and that also makes it messy and complicated to some. For young men like Nux, though -- the ones who fell through the cracks long, long ago -- things tend to be very simple. As much as the city holds, his world comes down to a few basic things: the cars he steals and scavenges from; the clinic he visits once a month to have poisons pumped through his veins; the tenement he calls home and the haphazard family that's grown up around him there. And Boss Joe, always. Boss Joe's word is law and Scripture both.

Boss Joe's word is what sends him into the alley behind the women's shelter on this particular day. The report comes down the chain that there's a car he's seen parked there that he wants. Nux is, of course, the first to volunteer. It's not hard to find the car Joe has in mind. Nux knows it immediately once he gets there. It's a true standout, a hulking beauty, and Nux is all too eager to get his hands on it as he quietly sets to breaking in.

[iamawaited]

He was in surprisingly good condition for a War Boy who was supposed to be dead, but that wasn't the same as being in good condition by anyone else's standards. He was indeed badly dehydrated, his face pale and sallow even under the faint remnants of paint and all the scarring. Larry and Barry had taken greedy advantage of the past few days and had swelled dangerously close to his throat. Beyond that, he wasn't all that badly injured -- being thrown from the rig had spared him most of the damage -- but there were plenty of scrapes and cuts and burns there all the same, and there would be pain when he actually started paying attention to it again.

At the moment, he wasn't at all. Overjoyed and overwhelmed, he kept turning his attention from her to the screaming crowd over the edge and back again, his eyes aglow like chrome itself. He managed to focus on her when she grabbed his chin, but he barely seemed able to hear the words that followed. "Okay," he said anyway. He would have said it if she'd told him to dive off the Citadel.

It caught up to him a moment later, at least in part. IV wasn't a word he knew offhand, didn't know why it would be connected to the water, although it was amazing to realize that she was planning to let him have as much of it as he wanted. Transfusion he knew all too well, and it gave him a brief pang of disappointment -- transfusion meant sitting chained to a spit of rock all day with a needle in his arm -- until something else occurred to him and he brightened up considerably again. "Is he here?" he asked excitedly, looking around. Where was his blood bag?

[sheiscapable]

Everyone had a purpose now. A real one, one that spoke for their skills, and not their bodies.

Toast had her books, her knowledge to share. The Dag had become the new Seed Woman, and even Cheedo began to find her way. That left only Capable, who took it upon herself to look to the War Pups and the War Boys grown, who now found their half-lives without purpose and wondering whether Valhalla could be reached. Some had cast away entirely to seek their own fortunes, hoping to find Valhalla in the desert or perhaps in the remnants of Bullet Town, while others carried on because they simply knew nothing else. Some, particularly the War Pups whose half lives were ending before they barely began, went to sleep held in Capable's arms, lulled by ancestral memory of the lullabyes she crooned to them before they closed their eyes and didn't open them again.

In every one of their faces, Capable saw Nux. And every night she went to the highest point she could find and look out at the Fury Road as if somehow by the sheer force of her will, she'd spot him driving down its winding path.

When the car he'd cobbled together finally did come down the road, Capable knew. And when it pulled up to the great lift, it was already down, and waiting upon it was Capable, no longer dressed in white gauze like some fertility idol to be worshiped on an altar. She waits, breathless, existing in a state of both hope and disbelief.

[iamawaited]

[This... is not what Nux had expected.

Green place, is the first thing he thinks, a little stupidly, when he opens his eyes. But no -- there is no green place anymore, except whatever is atop the Citadel, and he knows he's not there. He knows he died. He remembers dying very clearly. But there are no gates here, no feasts, no trumpeting horns or thunderous choirs. It's quiet. It's green.

He walks out onto the green eventually, hesitating when he feels the springiness of the ground under his feet. That doesn't feel normal at all to him. But his legs feel strong, and after a moment he realizes that he feels strong all over: his scars are still there, raised and proud, but Larry and Barry are gone, and he can breathe more easily than he has in years. Like the green, it's too unfamiliar to think of it as good yet. He moves on until he spots a still white figure up ahead and his eyes widen.]

Splendid.

[preciouscargo]

She was no doctor, but like anyone else who grew up in this toxic world, she knew dehydration when she saw it. Guessing he needed another blood transfusion was just added intuition on her part. After all, Larry and Barry looked bigger than she remembered them to be. She didn't want him to survive such a brutal massacre only to expire of his tumors. Something so many War Boys fell victim to in such a toxic environment. They were lucky to even live to their teenage years.

"Max?" Blood bag, his blood bag. Capable gave a sad shake of her head to verify he wasn't in the Citadel. Not to her knowledge. "He left as soon as we were safe. Slipped away...." They might never see that brave and insane man again. Perhaps Nux, who had share blood with him, would mourn Max more than the rest of them.

She touched his arm gently, urging him away from the crowd once he was ready to leave. "My sisters and I, we have a shared common room with a fountain. You can parch your thirst there until medical help can be procured."

/winging it

[witness_this]

Max is the one who drags him back, broken and bloody and clotted with red sand and the ashy remains of that ghostly white paint.

Furiosa, though, is the one who is there when he wakes.

They have dismantled the Organic Mechanic's dark lair, and taken over the Vault. It has some of the best light in the place, and rows of soft cots that can be lined up, access to running water and a great deal of clean linen. It's a bad place for the Wives, and probably always will be, but that just means they surrender it all the more gladly to the Vuvalini healers.

The room is empty, except for Furiosa lying two beds down, eyes gently shut, chest rising and falling in repose. A punctured lung isn't something even she can walk off, and there aren't really bodies to spare around here, so she is what passes for his welcoming committee.

Hearing him stir, she murmurs;

"You too young to remember cats, Warboy?"

[iamawaited]

It's dark out by the time he makes it home, and she looks different without the glow of white surrounding her or the sands of the wasteland on her face, but he knows the burst of flame that is her hair long before he arrives. There isn't much engine to flood, but he floods it anyway, yanks on the throttle and slams on the gas to send it flying the rest of the way as fast as it can go.

He is awaited.

It's more or less a suicide run for the rig, which sputters out its last the moment he skids to a stop in front of the lift. The War Boy who climbs out of it, though, is very much alive. Mostly alive, at least: he's limping, coughing, looks near to the end of his half-life, but he's not there yet. He limps onto the lift and looks up towards the Citadel, smiling faintly. "You made it," he observes, voice hoarse but full of relief.

[iamawaited]

"Max?" Nux echoed blankly. Who was-- oh. As large as the man loomed in Nux's mind, he'd grown used to thinking of him as a warrior with no name. No longer Blood Bag, maybe, but... well, there hadn't been anything to supplant that, either. Max, then. Max was gone. He wilted a little, disappointed, although not too much and not for long. Between Capable's touch on him and the wild noise of the crowd still in his ears, it was hard to feel the loss too keenly. Later, he would be surprised to find himself grieving.

For now, he let Capable lead him away from the edge, then reached out and took her hand. "You really drink as much water as you want?" he asked, a little amazed at the idea. He'd been allowed some, but he had never felt as though it was enough. That was why it was called an addiction, he'd thought.

[iamawaited]

He lives. Again.

He can't place at all where it is he wakes up. Certainly nowhere he's been before, not with the soft thing beneath him and the glow of sunlight on the walls. Not Valhalla -- it hurts too much for that. He blinks, scanning what he can with his eyes alone, then pushing himself warily up onto his elbows.

The Imperator is certainly not the first face he's expecting to see, either, and what she says is so strange that he thinks he must have misheard her. Or is he dreaming, somehow? "Polecats?" he asks stupidly.

[preciouscargo]

She hated that she flinched when his hand touched hers. It was a reflex to any touch these days. Immortan Joe might be dead and gone, but his memory and the actions he inflicted upon his breeders could never be fully erased. Instead of drawing her hand back, she relaxed and linked her soft fingers with his. She gave him a smile that seemed to say she would be alright. Not to worry. "We don't ration the water as tightly as Immortan Joe." It was necessary to hold some water in reserve for such a harsh dessert climate, but for the most part it ran freely to those who sorely needed it.

She led him inside and through several rooms before pointing out the old fashioned water fountain in the center of the room. It was a drinking fountain, but Nux had probably never seen anything like it. "Push down on the button and lean your mouth towards the spout. Water will come." The wives knew about it, but then again for all the cruelty they had endured at Immortan Joe's hands, they had lived a life of luxury.

[witness_this]

"Cats. They're animals. Small, fluffy, whiskered hunters, who can jump ten times their own height, who see in the dark, who are lithe and fanged and clawed. They were reported, rumoured, in religion, to have nine lives each."

Turning her head, glancing over at him.

"And here you are."

Here they all are, but him especially.

[iamawaited]

Four times, he thinks. This is four times the gates have stayed closed. Will there be five more?

There may or may not actually be reproach in her voice, but he hears it all the same and looks down, shame twisting in his gut as he stares at his beloved V-8. It's ruined now, at least temporarily, bisected by a swathe of bloody bandage, and all he can think is--

"Why?" He lies back again and stares at the light mottled on the ceiling. "Why bring me back?" Why waste bandages and medicine and water on a War Boy at the end of his half-life who just doesn't know how to die?

[witness_this]

"That redheaded girl of yours will pinch your ear for asking a question like that. She's gone to sleep, now, but she's been sitting a vigil at your bedside, waiting for you to wake. She wrapped most of those, you know."

Nodding at the kit of bandages. Furiosa is never entirely comforting, but she does, for Capable's sake here, try.

"We took the Citadel. She wants you to see the world she's building here."

[iamawaited]

There were a great many things in Capable's world that Nux didn't understand, and some that he would never. He saw the flinch in her, though, and stilled uncertainly, hand going loose on hers, easy to pull away. Only when she laced their fingers together did he tighten his grip again, and then a little more slowly, a little more carefully. Whatever it is that they had between them, the rules might have be different here than they were out on the Fury Road, where everything had been terror and adrenaline. She had let him kiss her on the cheek then -- but he had been a War Boy with one day left at most, and she had been fleeing for her life. They had curled up together against the horrors outside.

Would she let him kiss her now? he wondered, and let her lead, and didn't try.

He moved quietly through the rooms after her, looking around curiously. He'd never seen any of this part of the Citadel before. When they got to the fountain, he did indeed look completely blank, but he followed her directions a little awkwardly. He leaned down, pushed the button, and startled in surprise as water leapt out and splashed his scarred face. He jerked back slightly, blinking. "It's a... hose?" He leaned back in and took a tentative drink.

[preciouscargo]

They came from two completely different worlds. Capable, born perfect and without the common mutations that most people suffered these days from the toxic environment, had been bought from her mother before puberty and tucked away with the rest of the wives ever since. She was exposed to every luxury possible and yet it was a life she was glad to be free of. Immortan Joe had brutalized her, treated her as s shiny 'thing' to possess. Nux was completely different. He was sweet and innocent in his own way. His touch and even a kiss to her cheek was welcome. She just preferred to see him coming rather than be surprised.

She smiled when he jumped back in surprise at the sight of water coming from the spout. Granted, the pipes were old and rusted so the color of the water was a bit red, but it was water. Just the mere presence of it was miracle enough. "Something like that." With his back to her, she noticed some scrapes and cuts, but nothing that would seriously worry her. War Boys were trained to take a major beating and keep on going.

"Don't drink too much at once." Or he'd make himself sick.

[iamawaited]

Nux looks up again at that, and though he still seems embarrassed, it's shading more towards shy and pleased than ashamed and guilty now. His redheaded girl. Awaiting him. Wanting to show him things. What a thing that is, for something like that to be true for someone like him.

"I am glad you made it," he says suddenly, as if he's concerned that his own despair at being alive might translate into anything but relief for the rest of them. "Did everyone else...?"

[witness_this]

"Many of the Vuvalini fell." She admits, voice breaking, but only just for a moment, until she has her composure back and can look him over again. "But Capable, Cheedo, Dag and Toast live. I live, and Max, and each of those things is thanks in part to you."

Reserved, but serious praise. She has a reputation, among Joe's ranks, for meaning what she says, for offering encouragement sparingly, but seriously.

"They count you as one of us. One of the survivors of the mad dash down the Fury Road. You're part of something now."

[iamawaited]

He didn't, less because of that and more because whether the Immortan was dead or not, his words would linger on for quite some time in Nux's mind and in the minds of the other lost children of the Citadel. He took only a few hasty mouthfuls, not minding the coppery rusty taste of it -- like blood, he thought -- or the tepid warmth, although it did hurt a little when he swallowed. He coughed when he pulled away and bit back a grimace. He had been weak before her on the war rig, but it wouldn't do now. Not to show weakness because of a few measly war wounds. She was right: that had been trained out of him.

Instead, he took a step back and looked around, surveying their surroundings again. "This is yours?" he asked softly.

[iamawaited]

Max? he thinks, but what she says next overshadows that brief confusion, and he figures it out a moment later anyway. He sits the rest of the way up, so he can look at her properly, despite the pain it sends in shocks over his skin. War Boys can handle pain; with or without it, he definitely looks pleased now. Pleased and proud, in a quiet, simple way that's very different from the cocky crowing of the pursuit driver. "I brought you back," he says, very softly. He had done something. He had died for something.

But then... "You brought me back," he murmurs in that same soft voice, a little less pleased, and glances towards the door as if Capable might come through it at that very moment. His smile fades slowly. "I won't live much longer," he says, almost apologetically. Furiosa must understand that, even if Capable doesn't. She's seen enough War Boys die. "Should've let me go there."

[witness_this]

"You'll be the first among us, yes."

She agrees.

"But we're beginning a new faith. A new world. We can find another fight for you, if you want, or you can be the first one to try dying a peaceful death, in the arms of someone who loves you. If you're brave enough."

She connects to the mythology, in a kind of radical and utilitarian way that the girls just don't, and isn't scared to manipulate it to help the world she's building here. She has too much to do to have those kinds of scruples.

"You'll go to the green place."