There And Back...

[Tartaros]

[spoiler]

Just a quick note - not gonna be using coloured fonts or anything anymore, after thinking about it for a while it just seems kinda tacky

[/spoiler]

The familiar barren, pearly white skies of the Nexus greeted Tartaros as he stepped through the gate. The same standing gates in the distance, the same flat, clean land. All that seemed to have changed was the figures in the distance, shuffling across the horizon, going about their business...

Taking in a deep, fresh breath of air through the strips of bandages and chainmail that covered his face, the wanderer started his aimless journey through the silent plain. There was a long walk ahead, a long walk indeed...

-----

Limping through the barren land, there was precious little but eerie silence, even Monkey T dared not to speak. All was peaceful, for the time being.

Finally, Tararos turned to his companion, with an inquisitive glint in his eye. "You know, I never did ask you about how you could understand that... thing back there. It sure as hell wasn't speaking."

Its beady pitch-dark eyes still fixed on the landscape ahead, the puppet responded. "It's the magic of a little thing called the fourth wall, sucka... Some fool's takin' a peek at what's going on around here, I find what they's thinking. It's simple."

"That's the... most ridiculous thing I've ever heard here. And you call me crazy..."

"Mark my words. Ya'll gonna understand some day."

"Whatever you say..."

The puppet ineffectually smacked the marine's cloak, "I'm telling ya, it's true!"

"Of course it is. Now, where are we go-", Tartaros wheezed, a few drops of blood launching out of his mouth, fading into the floor, "on second thought, bugger it. Let's just stop for a moment. Haven't had a moments peace in weeks.", pausing for another cough, the marine pointed towards the so-called "Fountain of Infinity", "Besides, if that hunk a' rock hasn't gotten up and somehow moved itself, we're close to the center of this place anyways."

Dropping to the floor, the wanderer flipped up his hide hood and carefully took of his helmet, revealing a face covered in bandages, patches of dark hair, and a less-than-healthy amount of blood. Searching through his bag, Tartaros found it disappointingly empty, containing nothing but a mere handful of rounds, a loaf of bread and a single cartridge of fuel. Sighing, the marine turned to his companion, "Right, give me a moment. There's something I have to do."

Taking the swirling sphere of colour from beneath his cloak once again and gripping it tightly, Tartaros steadied his thoughts. What he truly needed was ammunition, though of course some... extras couldn't hurt either. Closing the sunken pits inside his skull that masqueraded as eyes, the marine sat in an almost trance like state. A few minutes later, finally opening his eyes, the orb was gone... apparently having disappeared into thin air.

Scanning across the ground in front of him, there was a small pile of supplies. A trio of bolter magazines, stacked atop each-other, a single suppressor, a canister of promethium, four dark grey cylinders topped with a pin each, a shotgun with two sets of shells and slugs each, and one large, dark-grey bastard sword.

Fixing the suppressor to his boltgun with one hand and pointing to the blade with the other, Tartaros turned to the puppet staring out into the distance. "I forged that thing myself y'know. Now... where did I put that loaf..."

[Bandit With No Name]

The bandit trudged through the endless white, searching for anyone or anything but the blank emptiness that surrounded her. She wandered towards one of the many shapes in the distance, the only markers other than the fountain near the center. As she drew closer, she saw a familiar shape, white armor with a black eyed helmet. Stormtroopers.

For a moment, she considered turning back and avoiding the classically brutal law enforcers but as she began to turn away, she remembered her newfound immortality and stayed the course. “Hey, yo, you guys,” she called out from a few hundred feet away, her voice carrying far through the silence.

The troopers craned their heads as they looked at the woman, one pointing and mumbling to the other. One of the two guards left his post and ran out, the two meeting midway. “Greetings, citizen. Are you a Prime?”

“Uh, yeah,” she said, immediately feeling the presence of privilege for her new caste.

He gestured towards the gate. “The Empire welcomes new Primes into the Omniverse,” he said smoothly, as if reading it from a script, “If you follow a few rules and submit to a search, you can-“

The bandit held up her free hand, “Woah, hold up. I’m just looking for some directions or something.”

The stormtrooper paused and stopped his speech. “Coruscant is one of the few developed areas in the Omniverse and has the full amenities for loyal citizens. You’re most likely to be comfortable in our verse.”

They were already trying to recruit her for their bullshit power struggle. “Ok, I got ya,” she said, peering over the soldier’s head towards the portal. “So I’m taking it these are the gates that go places, right?” she asked, pointing to the shape the trooper’s partner stood by.

“Yes ma’am, they lead to each of the eight normal verses. As I said, Coruscant is the only one with wide-spread technological use. The standard of living is much higher for all of our law-abiding residents.”

Pondering, the bandit slung her sledgehammer to the ground and leaned on the handle, “Hm. Maybe I’ll stop in for a visit then.”

“Fantastic, ma’am. If you’ll check your weapons with me and my partner, we can lead you to the nearest information kiosk and find you an appropriate residence.” The stormtrooper began to walk back towards the gate, continuing to talk all the way.

The bandit’s lips folded up in an incredulous expression and she rolled her eyes. “Nah,” she said passively, picked her weapon back up and began to walk in the other direction.

“Ma’am?” the trooper looked back, confused.

“You ain’t takin’ my shit,” she laughed at him, keeping up her pace. “Maybe I’ll catch you later.” The men watched the bandit leave from their post, just waiting for their shifts to end for they could stop gazing into the bleached abyss of the Nexus.

The woman sighed and pulled out the carton again, flipped open the top and pulled out a cigarette with her teeth. Spinning the sledgehammer on her shoulder, she twisted the throttle and lit the tip with a burst of fiery exhaust. Inhaling deeply, the woman exhaled in a deep sigh, mostly motivated by her profound boredom. For a moment she considered returning to the Dunes, if only because combat would allow her to escape the horrible boredom of her surroundings.

In the far distance, from another one of the gates, a hulking creature emerged. The bandit grinned and began trotting towards the behemoth form, not caring if it was man or monster. As close as it appeared, it still took the woman a considerable amount of time to traverse the distance between the two gates, and she heard a faint conversation between the huge mass and some other, slightly more obnoxious voice.

As she drew nearer, she could tell that the man, who was easily over seven feet tall, was in rather rough shape. The parts of his bulging, hilariously oversized armor that showed beneath his dark brown robes seemed aged and horribly damaged, and his head was wrapped several times with blood-soaked gauze.

“Holy shit,” she practically gasped, “where did you just come from? So I know where not to go?” She gestured at his mutilated cranium, “What the fuck did that to you, a sand worm?”

“Sand worm?” the man grunted, only now acknowledging her presence. “The hell are you going on about? It wasn’t a bloody sand worm,” the titanic man boomed in a thick accent.

“I mean, what?” she scoffed, “Some drunk dude in a bar didn’t do this to you. I mean, who can even reach your head up there? Did somebody shoot you in the face and now you in the process of walking it off?”

The man shook his head, mournfully spitting, “More like smashed in the teeth by a shark the size of a damned boat.”

“Oh shit!” the bandit proclaimed, “A shark? Aren’t those like, big –ass fish or something?”

The giant’s eyebrow quirked, maintaining his steely expression as he stared down in bewilderment of the woman’s ignorance. “Erm… aye,” he affirmed after a few more seconds of consideration.

“Well, if you’re looking to get your face fixed, avoid the Dunes. There’s some serious shit going down in there.” She looked between all of the gates on their respective horizons. “You know, if I’m honest, I have no idea where most of these go.” She gestured towards the gate the man had emerged from. “Does this one go to the ‘shark zone’ or some shit?”

“Shark zone?” the warrior huffed, “Lass, where the hell do you think we are?”

The bandit assured herself that she was still within eyeshot of the fountain. “Well, we’re in the Nexus right? One of these goes back to the Endless Dunes, and since you got the shit beat out of you by a giant fish I’m guessing you didn’t just come from the desert.”

Turning, the gargantuan, hermit-looking warrior looked at his gate of origin. “Not sure where it was, really,” he said with the strong presence of disinterest. “This place is like a maze sometimes.”

Squinting, the fresh Prime re-counted the eight clearly-visible gates, wondering just how much of the man’s brain had been rattled out of place. “Oh, uh, ok,” she coughed, trying to fill the awkward void with more words. “Well, uh, where you headed now?”

“Nowhere, really,” he boomed.

Staring up at the man, her nostrils flared and her eyebrows peaked, trying to contain the sheer strangeness of the conversation. “Huh,” she chirped. “So, um, you know of anything interesting going on? I’m looking to burn some time, you know?”

The man shrugged his cartoonishly broad shoulders. “Hell if I know. We're all out in the ass-end of nowhere with a bunch of loons.” He tugged his robes back into position and continued, “But if what you said is anything to go by, a couple days travel anywhere could take us somewhere with some action."

The bandit grumbled in frustration, pulling her phone out of her pocket, “Well, do you know how to use this fuckin’ thing? I just made it but I’m still pretty new to… stuff with screens, or whatever. I know people used to find parties and stuff using their phones. Like, at Rick’s Café, when people would do a bunch of blow in the back rooms and stuff.”

“Vaguely.’

“Well, uh,” she pressed a few tabs on the screen, trying to muddle through the vast depths of the Dataverse. Pop-ups and other confusing data were pecked at, the woman frantically navigating in any direction that looked even vaguely interesting. “Oh shit, here we go!” she said with a broad grin, “A tournament, in a coliseum. Looks like it’s in some place called Camelot.”

The giant chuckled, “Camelot? Well that’s a name if I’ve ever heard one.” He hefted a massive ammo sack at his side, the contents rattling clanking as he did so. “Ah, well it can’t be much worse than what’s already happened to me here.”

The bandit shrugged, “Well, you’re a Prime right?” The man’s silence indicated her accuracy and she continued, “If you die, you’re just gonna end up back here, right?”

A throaty, deep, resonant laugh echoed in his chest. “You say that like I ever really cared for being alive.” He tilted his head to the side, offering a small concession, “Well, recently anyways.”

“Well then fuck it, right?” she laughed. “Let’s get our brains blown out by some weirdoes with a gladiator fetish.”

“Not the first time that’s happened.”

“Tits,” she replied, not really paying attention, trying to find direction to the location, “Let’s go, big guy.”

[Tartaros]

"Right then", the Astartes shouldered the grayed bastard sword in his hand, searching across the gates that dotted the horizon, "I'd wager this thing is rather popular, it's probably best if we follow the crowds."

The woman looked up, nodding. "Sounds like a plan...", squinting at the gleaming white rolling fields ahead, she points eastward, "that one over there looks pretty packed. Let's get moving!"

With an exacerbated sigh from the puppet atop Tartaros' shoulder, the group began limping towards the eastern gate.

-----

As they came closer to the array of standing stones, Tartaros reached into his bag, pulling out a steaming loaf of bread. Breaking it in half, a smell of pepper and sea-salt filled the air. Taking a bite of one half and gesturing to the bandit beside him with the other. "Hey, want a bit?"

The woman grinned, "Hell yeah! Barely eaten in days.", eagerly grabbing a chunk. Quickly tossing it in her mouth, she turned back towards the armoured figure, "Y'know, I never asked... What's with the getup? It's fucking massive..."

Finally, the almost-silent Monkey T piped up, smacking the side of the Astartes' head. "It's insecurity fool, that's what! Hah!"

Flicking the tiny woolen figure on the head, Tartaros' eyes darted towards the bandit. "Hrm? Oh... Well, I'm not really sure. Had it since almost before I can remember. It's not as heavy as it looks."

"Still, those things on your shoulders... huge."

"Yeah. Never liked 'em, get in the way sometimes. Take them off whenever I can. Besides, you aren't one to talk, Mrs. Let's-Put-Spikes-On-My-Armguards."

The woman scowled defensively, "Fucker... Whatever, we're close to this gate anyway."

Barely sidestepping a rock, Tartaros nodded. "The sooner the better. I'll trip over one of these things any second now..."

-----

Finally reaching the hewn-stone gate a few minutes later, the group stumbled through, into the afternoon sunlight of a grassy field.