you can bury my body, but I'll never die

[eumenis]

Furiosa enters the Nexus on the second day of Autumn, flanked by three War Boys. One remains by the gate with a motorbike, but the other two follow her on a trade negotiation with a third party. They're being offered technology that will increase the fuel efficiency of their vehicles, but they need to make sure the cost isn't too high. In the end, the negotiations go well, and Furiosa has a written proposal to take back to the council. She and her men will make a brief stop for medical supplies and a meal for themselves before returning home.

Nexus trips are largely business these days. That's just how things are, but she's also not above buying herself an enormous peach and strawberry boba tea and letting her War Boys get smoothies. And that takes them through the Plaza, past the central area where new arrivals often find themselves dropped, dazed and puzzled from the last thing they experienced before arriving here.

Comments

[eumenis]

"Hard not to like anything that's fried," Spanner cracks a grin. He looks like he's had severe burns on his neck and torso, which have healed to thick ropy scars, and he moves stiffly, but there's warmth in his smile.

"Right?" Crux chuckles softly. "Fry it and serve it with butter? I'm in."

"Oh, you'll like the place we're going to, then," Furiosa says to the men.

To Lyanna she nods. "The place you're in now is a sort of crossroads where thousands of worlds meet. The history of our world and yours are probably very different. We had oceans once, but wars destroyed most of our world."

[missursaminor]

"That's what wars do," She pointed out, mulling over the information given. "And I'd think you mad, but then the idea of what might be real has been rather violently expanded of late, what with the dragons, and the Night King with his armies."

A soft huff, considering the idea of the oceans simply being gone. "We've oceans still, but winter had just begun. I've heard tales that the oceans around Bear Island all but froze solid in the last winter... there's whispers that with the Night King's influence removed that the season might not be so terrible but with as little as we know about him it's hard to say for sure."

[eumenis]

"Mm." Furiosa nods. "Usually not on the scale our world has seen, from what I understand, but you're not wrong."

"Dragons, and Night Kings, and giants?" Crux has a deep voice, and it sounds gentle when he asks, but there's no particular condescension in it. "We don't have any of those."

"That we know of," Furiosa says darkly. "Anything's possible. But nasty, degenerate, violent humans are enough to worry about."

She turns down an alley, glancing over her shoulder at Lyanna. "It was like that here last winter. Snowdrifts so deep buildings were lost in them. I'm sure any waters that were here were frozen deep. I'd say I hope you're braced for winter, but if you're dead already you probably won't be going back to where you came from."

"Don't want to rush you, since you just came off of it, but when you have an idea of what you want to do now that you're here, you're welcome to let us know. I'd like to help."

[missursaminor]

"Undead giants and dragons, as if the normal sort weren't trouble enough." She huffed, brows drawing. "And Westeros has plenty of awful people, especially the farther south one goes."

She grimaced, but nodded in agreement. "Aye, as much as I can be having never seen winter. It snows, we lose buildings to it, but actual winter is something else entirely from what reports I've heard. As for what to do..."

Lyanna frowned thoughtfully. "I can't say. I expected to be caring for Bear Island for years assuming we didn't all die to the undead armies. I don't suppose there's a militia here?"

[eumenis]

"I'll bet you have some shine stories, though," Crux raises an eyebrow, thoroughly impressed.

"You're taking all of this quite well," Furiosa tells her. "I've seen soldiers come in shell-shocked after dying before. Struggling to process what's happened."

It's probably because she's a girl, she thinks, but opts not to voice this in front of her men. "But just so you know, if you do hit the point where you need a chance to rest and recover, that's not wrong or weak."

"There's no militia right now. We did have a raiding party in the winter, but I'd love to not have to deal with that shit again," she says, pauses a second like she's about to apologize for swearing, then dismisses that because the girl already demonstrated her ability to curse like a sailor. "But if you can bear dry heat...we can always use more teachers at the Green Towers."

Her men say nothing, but the way they look at her suggests this is an unusual invitation.

[missursaminor]

"I knew I was dead the moment I charged the giant," Lyanna responded in a matter-of-fact matter. "No surprise to process there."

She'd cope in her own way, but it would remain to be seen how well that would work in this new place. The looks cast Furiosa's way are certainly noticed and interpreted, her own shifting to something appraising at the offer.

"What sort of teaching?" She knew she needed to keep busy or go stir crazy, and something practical like training others might be just the ticket. Depending on what they were expecting, that was.

[eumenis]

Furiosa has been known to fall in a kind of maternal love with children, on occasion. In the Nexus, she doesn't always get to see the little ones she tries to take under her wing again. She feels she's been lucky with Kippa, getting to see her now and again. There have been others she's tried to embrace who vanished back to their own worlds--and that's a good thing, at least she can hope it is, but it's a little bittersweet, too.

This girl, though. No matter how competent and strong she is, she will do better with company, backup and care than she would alone. Furiosa sees something of herself in the fierce child, and something of Valkyrie, and more than that, she sees someone who comes from a harsh enough world that coming to the Wasteland might not be a downgrade. At least they don't have fucking undead giants and dragons.

"Surprise, no, but battle-fatigue happens even to the bravest and most ruthless," she says with a smile.

"I'm not quite sure what your age is, at a glance, but I think I was about there when I started riding with the War Boys, learning how to throw a lance, new ways to fight. I could shoot before that, and fix engines, and tussle like an angry cat, but I remember being tested against boys my own age, and learning quick that the biggest ones had the most trouble facing off against me."

"I heard you laid Rictus out twice," Crux says with a smirk.

"...well. That was later on." Furiosa looks sheepishly pleased. "And he was unarmed. Ask me later. Anyway, I'm on the tall side now, but small people need to learn they can take out enemies twice their size if they're smart, and big people need to learn not to underestimate small ones."

"And all of us could use some instruction with swords, if I'm being honest. Me included. Most of our fighting has been done from vehicles up until now, but that doesn't mean it always will be." She can fake it with a sword, swing and guard with it like any large object, like she did with the boltcutters way back when. That doesn't mean it's elegant, or that she couldn't improve.

[missursaminor]

"True enough I suppose." She'd seen it happen often enough, in men and women alike, no matter how old or skilled they were. She knew that for as tough as she was, she wasn't immune to this but accepting it would be a different story entirely.

"I'm thirteen," Lyanna informed them, well aware that she likely still looked younger than that. Annoying, but being underestimated was a useful tactic at times. "I've trained with a sword since I could hold one though, other weapons too. If it's martial training you need, I don't see why I couldn't provide it."

A tart twist of her mouth, arms crossed. "The first one to complain about my age in the process gets a club between the eyes, though."

[eumenis]

Furiosa suspects if battle fatigue doesn't ruffle her, homesickness eventually will. Even a girl of chrome has a heart somewhere. But trying to convince her of it prematurely would be offputting, stifling. Best they get to know one another first.

She nods at the age. She does look young, but Wasteland children tend to look young and be malnourished, so really she's as fine a figure of a thirteen-year-old as Furiosa would expect from a harsh world. "I was Initiated at about that age."

Crux and Spanner break into smiles of varying degrees of amusement at the threat. "I'm gonna ask the Ace if you ever said that," Spanner tells Furiosa.

"I don't remember," she muses. "But I think I mostly went for the crotch when I was angry, back then. Either way, fair enough."

They're coming up on a cafe with picnic tables, umbrellas open over each to cast a pleasant shade. Furiosa selects a table and sits, catching the eye of the waiter. She and the men still have their drinks, but she says, "Don't worry, we're here for food, and plenty of it."