The Messengers of Sanctuary

13 - Chicory

Chicory felt her heart rise as she ran towards her destination. Sanctuary was the type of place that would feel like home no matter where one had been. It felt like getting a warm hug whenever she returned, and today was no different.

Chicory had long since tried coaching River on what to do once they got there, but by his own words, "there's no way you'll follow this script so how do you expect me to do so?" Which was really unfair, but ultimately true enough.

The two of them continued onward, Chicory trying not to increase her speed too much as she saw the palisade ahead. It had initially been built to last anything, but with several hundred bored fired people around, it had long since exceeded that entirely.

Chicory was fairly certain that Sanctuary was now the most difficult place to break into in the world.

There were still plenty of ways for fired people to get in and out at their leisure, but most of those required scaling 'impossible' cliffs or jumping to reach a ladder that most regular humans would be hard pressed to even notice.

Now that Chicory knew about sane zombies, she wasn't sure that they were entirely safe from infiltration, but with trained fighters that all happened to be very light sleepers? Well the whole safe area would know about an invasion quickly enough at any rate.

To Rivers credit, as the two entered the gate, Chicory nodding at the sentries, he didn't even gawk at the enormous area of enclosed land. He gave it a once over, paused to examine the setup, and then nodded.

A truly River-like reaction.

"Oh, by the way, if anyone touches me I might end up attacking someone. This place has a lot of people and my control will be kind of tenuous."

Chicory nodded, knowing exactly what would happen since she'd provoked him several too many times on their trip over. She would like to say that she was trying to desensitise him to her, you know, make him less shocked when all the other fired folks decided to say hi. But in reality she just took far too much joy in pushing his buttons. "Don't worry too much about that, there are plenty of people here more capable than me of making sure you don't kill anyone. Plus, just in case you didn't realize it, there's no such thing as a private conversation here."

River sighed exasperatedly, "great, it's like a stronghold filled with runners."

Apparently according to the ranked system, heartfire fell around runner height in the hearing department. Nothing crazy according to River, but traveling for several weeks together with very little else to occupy themselves...well it had made him curious about several of the specific limiataitions.

Chicory laughed and glanced up at the sentries, where a convenient Todd was looking down at the two of them, "hey, Todd, do you know if Roland is in? I need to have a chat with him."

Todd smiled and slid down the ladder, falling into step beside her, "yeah he got back from a trading run a few days ago. Keeps threatening to retire if someone can't get Wainwright to talk to us again. Since he's finally 'feeling his age' with all those terrible negotiations."

Chicory made a sympathetic noise, "well they'll come around, they were almost willing to let us inside the fence again for a bit."

"The base commander keeps saying that he's working on it. So hopefully they're getting over it."

Chicory winced slightly, remembering her one and only run to Wainwright, "I'm still sorry about that, I would help but I feel like me showing up there is the least productive thing we can do."

They walked for a moment longer in silence. After a bit, Todd cleared his throat, glancing at River, "so who's this?"

River didn't respond, to Chicory stepped in, "that's River, he's helping me out with something."

"Oh! You're finally asking for help? I've noticed that you've seemed stressed lately, are you still not adjusting to becoming the head of the messengers?"

River blinked, "she's in charge of the messengers?"

Todd grinned, "oh yeah, she's doing great. She's not here as often as most of her predecessors, but she makes it for most of the meetings."

River gave Chicory a complicated look that completely went over her head, especially since she couldn't see his eyes and therefore had to guess based on the position of his eyebrows and mouth.

River again didn't respond. What is with this guy? He gets his answer and then just stops responding? Chicory didn't doubt for a moment that he was paying attention to every word, but apparently being courteous of others was against his nature. Selfish man...

She continued chatting with Todd as he led them past the fields and other green areas, and toward the homes carved into the cliff. They went up to Roland's meeting room, where he was chatting with some of the cooks. They seemed to be trying to get him to find some cocoa powder for a wedding in a couple of months.

"-I don't care that it's all expired, it'll have lost most of it's taste by now but it's still perfectly fine to use."

Chicory groaned softly and Todd chuckled.

River glanced between the two of them, doubtless catching the crimson shade that Chicory was turning, "what?"

"I'll tell you about the cocoa beans incident later..." Chicory promised.

Todd simply shook his head lightly and entered the meeting room, Chicory and River close at his heels. Well, River was a bit farther back, well out of arms reach of anyone, but he was still walking in the right direction.

As if just to add to his absurd mysterious aura, River stayed right beside the doorway, Chicory had noticed he tended to do that more often than not.

Roland made a belated promise to "look for some cocoa powder" to the cooks and they finally filed out.

"You know," Todd said as they left, "at this point we should probably make a base down in mexico with all the traffic we're giving them."

Roland of course, being fired, had already noticed them, he nodded with amusement, half a smile leaking onto his face as he met eyes with Chicory, "now that's an idea. A chocolate factory."

"You'd have to figure out how to make it. From what I hear it has a lot more steps than any recipe I've ever attempted." River added from his position at the door.

"And who's this?" Roland asked, giving him a onceover with heartfire enhanced eyes.

"River Simmons." For once he responded himself. Sparking man...Chicory gave him a complicated look, which he simply ignored.

Roland smiled, "welcome to Sanctuary, I'm Roland, the leader here. Do you plan on joining? Are you after heartfire of your own?"

River was silent for a long moment, but just as Chicory was just about to interject, he answered, "sir, I'm fairly certain that I would die if given heartfire. Or at the very least lose my sanity. I'm not here to join Sanctuary. I'm here because I wasn't sure if Chicory was a threat."

Chicory groaned, "River, I thought we agreed to slowly ease them into it?"

River sighed, "Chicory, sometimes it's best to just let it all out at once. I really hate misunderstandings and I don't want to try fighting against an entire strongholds worth of superhumans just because I neglected to tell them upon entry that I'm a zombie."

"That's stupid, we're literally not going to murder you."

"That remains to be proven." He glanced over at Roland and Todd, who were...reacting, that's for sure.

------------
Every vote increases their communication abilities!!!