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teja

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OOM: The World We Live In.

Fury is out back doing sit-ups. Rather more specifically he's got his legs hooked over a tree-branch and is doing sit-ups from that position, curling up toward the sky until crossed arms touch his knees and then relaxing until his head is again pointed at the ground. His sword is hung within easy reach of him, and there are several knives strapped to visible portions of his body.

He has a modern shirt draped near his sword, as purple as his armor, but his boots and trews are proper garments for a man of his time and place. He only wears modern clothing when he must.

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"I would not mind a man doing his exercises, as any must that will hone his fighting skills," Teja says, turning his axe around to lean on it. "I do the same, most mornings."

"At my age a loss of condition could be deadly." Fury agrees with the next relaxation, "It is far easier to lose it than to regain it. Sir Nicholas Fury, late of 1602, currently of 2020."

"Greetings, Sir Nicholas Fury," Teja says, in acknowledgement of the introduction. "I am Teja, son of Tagila; I was the last king of the Ostrogoths in Italy and fell in battle, on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius, in the year 552 of Christian reckoning."

Pause.

"And even though I am dead, I would stay in fighting condition!"

"I know no other way to be." Fury admits, "I have fought all of my life."

He is what he does.

"So have I," Teja says. "All my adult life, there was war in our lands -- hidden and brewing at first, devastatingly in the open later. I would swing my axe in earnest, more often than not."

Pause.

"The oldest among the fighting men of my people was Hildebrand -- I was of one age with his grand-daughter Hilde, with whom he raised me in my youth; and yet, he stood beside me in my last battle, with his mighty stone war-hammer, and went on with my people, after my death. Compared to him, you are yet young!"

"Five and sixty." Fury says with a small shrug, "It is still old for a man in my position."

Which position he holds fairly close right now. "I was born in the slums, and fought my way to cleaner wars."

"It is old," Teja agrees. "Most men of that age, in my time, would remain at their homes and train their grand-sons to be fighters."

Pause.

"But all wars are dirty, in one way, or another."

"All wars are dirty in some ways." Fury agrees, "Yet some are squabbles to the death over bread, and some are outright and up front."

"But those that are fought between armed men, on an open battlefield," Teja says, "may decay, fast, into pitiful squabbles to the death over the last piece of bread left in a devastated village, or a city under siege."

"If you intend to impress upon me the futility and devastation of war you speak to the wrong man. That is simply another tool. I have lived the difference between fighting for a cause and fighting for the scraps of survival, and I will use either for my ends."

Captain Kirk had once described Teja as 'hating war as much as he revelled in it', and that had been very much to the point.-

"I saw both, also," Teja says. "I fought for a cause -- to keep the home of my people, and ensure their survival! In the end, we merely fought to sell our lives as dearly as we could."

The difference between them is that Fury holds no hatred for war.

"I am Fury." he says simply, "Whatever the world, whatever the time, my path is marked in blood."

"And if you happen upon a world that holds no war, at the present?" Teja asks.

As he himself did, in this strange afterlife.

That gains a laugh, "There is always a war."

"Somewhere," Teja concedes. "But not always in the lands that a man finds himself in. If you happen upon peace, would you leave, and go to find the next war?"

"That is what I am suited for." Fury says, "I have never known peace, and would be of no use in a peaceful land."

"I would have thought so of myself," Teja says, "but what I found myself missing was not war itself, but the purpose that had driven me to it -- my people! It was always only the end that called for the means -- any means necessary!"

Fury pauses for a moment and then says very clearly, "I am not you."

"No," Teja says. "And not much like me -- I never lived to be your age, for one thing."

"I am like unto only the other Furies of other worlds." Fury says, "None of me seems to die young, and all of me walk a path of blood and death."

He doesn't mind.

"You know of other versions of yourself, in other worlds?" Teja asks, astonished.

He has heard of such things, and indeed, they make much sense, considering the shape of the many worlds -- but a man that would speak of them so casually, he has never met.

"I am mistaken for other Furies nearly every time I am here." Fury states with a shrug that doesn't stop him from his curls, "All of them named Nicholas, or Nick."

"But you have seen none of them, yet?" Teja asks.

Pause.

"I have met men that share the same face, as if they were the shadows of the same thing, in different lights -- but not with the same name, or similar stories!"

"I have not, nor care I to." Fury says, "One of me is enough for any universe."

"One would assume so," Teja says, with the earnest admiration for one that is much more dangerous and ruthless than himself -- himself, Teja, the most feared fighter of his people, among their enemies!

"Also, as long as universes do not cross, and none cross their boundaries, there would not be more than one of you in an one universe," he then adds.

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