sixthiterationlogs | [i'm not crazy, i'm just a little unwell]

Entry tags:

[i'm not crazy, i'm just a little unwell]

WHO: Major Lilywhite
WHERE: The fountain, around the village
WHEN: July 23, then July 24th - the end of the month
OPEN TO: OTA; specific thread for Ravi.
WARNINGS: N/A

[Arrival - July 23, Early Evening]

The first thing Major notices when he breaks through the surface of the water is the sudden rush of air in his lungs, making his brain vibrate and buzz in his skull. It's a feeling he hasn't experienced since .. well, since he was last human. Does that mean that he's no longer a ... ? Huh. Will have to come back to that one later.

The instinct to survive, gather his bearings, figure out his sudden location change override any inkling he has to focus on the very human sensations he's experiencing. He crawls his way out of the fountain, tumbling up and over the edge of it, rolling onto the ground. On his back, he catches his breath and stares up at the sky overhead for a few seconds before the feeling of the fabric clinging to his body finally sizzles a few nerves in his fingers, and he realizes he isn't wearing the henley he remembers wearing, nor is he wearing the jeans he'd had on. Instead, he's wearing a .. very vibrant pair of magenta .. well, for lack of a better word, scrubs, and there's something digging its way into his back.

He sits up, loosening the straps of the strange pack he has on to take a look at it before deciding to get out of the open and somewhere sheltered. No weapons, no bullet-proof vests .. no hungering for brains. There's that weird buzzing in the back of his skull again.

He gets himself up, slips the pack back onto his shoulder, and begins to wander around the town.

[From July 24th to the End of the Month]

Major's memorized the layout of the town; it isn't all that large, and from his preliminary investigations, it also seems like there isn't a clear way out of the place. He's mostly stuck to the outskirts, having found some shelter in what appears to be an abandoned cabin somewhat near the river's edge (he thinks it's a river, anyway). He takes the subsequent days after his arrival to do more exploring of the village, this time venturing closer to the heart of it, as well as exploring the river to what he thinks is the southeast of his new "home."

He eventually finds himself wandering into the Inn at the center of town, intent on interacting with and asking the others any of the question he hasn't already gotten answers to.

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OOC: Continued from here

"Look, I appreciate the invitation and all, but I mean, I'll join you for the pizza and CoD, but you can take that bubble bath on your own," Major replies with a great deal of sympathy in his voice, as though he's trying to let his friend down easy with his romantic rejection. "It isn't you, it's me."

He exhales a deep sigh, then lightly tosses his hands up in the air as though defeated and surrendering.

"As long as it's the nicest." He lets out a bark of laughter as he reaches down to swipe another large splash of water over at Ravi. "You wish, man. You wish!"

God, Ravi's missed Major more than he can stand to describe. It's not just the connection to home, but it's the way that Major can sass him back with ease, making Ravi feel comfortable ribbing someone else to the point of near-tears. "Please, I could have had you a hundred times over," he scoffs. "How many times have you been at my mercy on the table?"

"That's power, bitch," he says, and instantly regrets it. "I shouldn't have said that, it sounded awful, I take it back immediately."

"Pffft, says you! You would've had to fight off the hordes of women I had throwing themselves at me constantly, with some guys thrown in there, too." Major rolls his eyes while giving Ravi a playful shove. "Yes, because I trust you to live up to and follow that - what's it called? The Hippocratic Oath? Do no harm or whatever? Do no harm, do not take advantage of a vulnerable yet disgustingly attractive human-but-also-probably-a-zombie under your care. I'm sure that's in there somewhere."

He gives Ravi a light tap on the shoulder with the back of his hand.

"Yo, dude, if Peyton were here, she'd give you a feminist kick to the balls."

Wanda was standing outside of her home with her gaze focused on her six fully grown chickens. Her palms were pressed to the makeshift fence she was leaning on while a puppy ran happily through the yard. Unlike Lilywhite, she was wearing green cargo pants and a white tank top. There wasn't any indication that she had scrubs, let alone wore them. The only thing she wore that implied that she'd received a pack like Lilywhite was her boots, which were the exact same as his.

She was lost in her thoughts, her expression grave as she sorted through the recent changes in the small village.

The puppy wasn't so lost as Wanda and catching the strange scent of the new arrival took off towards him. Wanda knew that the small fence around the yard wouldn't keep the dog in but she was usually good at staying put. Riza had trained her after all and Clint was now taking up that mantle. The only problem was that the pup didn't listen to Wanda all the time.

She went running after the pup, using one hand to jump over the fence. Wanda paused when she saw the strange and then sighed as the puppy begged him for attention. "Sorry about him." She walked over slowly, a little guarded but not willing to leave her pup's side.

While Major walks around, he's trying to subtly uncling his drenched scrubs from his body, but it doesn't seem to be doing much. He thinks of peeling the shirt off of himself, stuffing it in the pack, but as he's about to do so, he hears the approach of some sort of creature. Given its cadence, he figures it has more than two legs. He's still on alert, so he drops into a bit of a defensive stance, but at the sight of the puppy, he lets out a bit of a laugh and bends a knee to greet it.

As he stroked its head and scratched behind its ears and under its chin, he glanced up at the woman with a bright smile. For all his defensiveness .. it all seems to melt away at the sight of a seemingly human face and the gentle nipping of a puppy's mouth on his fingers.

"Nah, no need to apologize," he says warmly, glancing down at the dog. He speaks in typical puppy speak to it, "Who's a good puppy? You are! You're such a good puppy! Aw, you're so friendly!" He looks back up at the woman. "What's its name?"

Wanda watched as the man's demeanor relaxed. It was obvious that he was new and Wanda wasn't in a hurry to take away his smile. This place felt like it was in short supply of smiles.

"She's a Norwegian elk hound puppy." Wanda exhaled, feeling her lips tug into a soft smile. "I keep forgetting her name. She belongs to a friend of mine." She was a glorified dog sitter for whenever Clint decided to leave the pup at home. Wanda didn't mind, they were something like a small family, but it took a lot of energy to keep up with the pup. Which was probably why Clint stopped taking her hunting.

"You're new." It was a statement, not a question. "I'm Wanda."

The look on his face is one of abject sorrow and he realizes that it's been months since he's actually thought about Peyton. It should be a good thing, in a way. Things hadn't exactly ended off so well, what with her leaving him because of Liv's zombie condition, but they were getting back on track. Besides, he's got Helen here, but it's something else to realize how long it's been since you thought of home.

"I've told you before," Ravi says, trying to overdose in wit and sass to avoid feelings, "you're far too handsome, I'm just going to have to start working in scars. That, or have you considered the zombie white hair on a permanent basis? I think you could make it work."

"A Norwegian elk hou-- wait, have I suddenly wound up in Norway?" Major asks out loud before answering his own question by adding, "No, you're speaking English without a Norwegian accent. You're - Russian? Polish? Yugoslavian? Something else I'm not mentioning for fear of already having offended you?" He preemptively winces a little, apologetic if he has offended, and brings his attention back to the puppy.

"Aw, little thing. I hope she has some totally badass name fitting her lineage. Freya or something. Wait, no, Freya had a bunch of cats," he backtracks, thinking better of it. Not that it matters. The creature has a name already, anyway; you don't have to come up with one for it, Major. "You'd hate them, wouldn't you? You'd hate the cats?" he asks the puppy, framing its face with his hands.

He thinks of Minor, the Bassett Hound he'd acquired for a brief period of time through .. some tricky circumstances, and feels a pang of sadness and nostalgia.

"That obvious? Was it the soaking wet clothes that gave me away?" he asks, glancing back over at her with a continued smile. He stands, going to wipe his hands off on his pants only to realize .. well, that doesn't help much. They're still wet. He instead gives a bit of a wave, motioning with his hands to show that he doesn't think they're really handshake-ready. "Wanda, nice to meet you." He gestures towards himself while adding, "Major."

Major's fucked up a bit, he realizes, as soon as he sees the drop in Ravi's expression. He immediately dons one of sheepishness and repentance himself, nudging his friend with his elbow lightly as means of an apology. Thoughts of Peyton, of course, stir up thoughts of Liv for Major - and, soon enough, their expressions mirror each other. He thinks to ask Ravi if Liv's shown up at all, or if .. anyone they know from home has. But, based on the downward turn of Ravi's mouth, Major thinks he probably already knows the answer.

"I'd totally rock it, Billy Idol style, I think. I can't get my lip to do that thing that he does, though," he says, trying to imitate it, but mostly looking like he's about to sneeze. "And hey, at least you've got Princess Sparkles going for you. She's something to be envied and admired."

Edited 2017-07-25 03:27 (UTC)

Sam tried her best to make herself useful where she could, but the fact of the matter was that there wasn't much of a call for a geneticist in the aftermath of an earthquake. Really, aside from patching a few wounds here and there, she was fucking useless. But after awhile, she just decided to own it.

It was the second time her world had come crumbling down on top of her. She figured she ought to get good and used to it by now.

In the evenings, when the clean-up activities died down, she usually found herself sitting in the kitchen of the Inn. Food still seemed super strange and exotic to her, so she didn't eat more than a few bites here and there. Mostly, she just liked sitting up on a counter, sketching on some of Jude's homemade paper. For some reason that she wasn't nearly introspective enough to investigate, she'd taken to drawing the sky. Dozens of different skies, actually. Some flooded with sunlight. Others darker. And many of them broken. Just like the Los Angeles she'd left behind. Crumbling. Ruined.

Okay, it was becoming something of an obsession, really.

Fortunately, there was people watching to distract her. And when she happened to raise her eyes and catch sight of a truly hunky newcomer...well. That was a lovely distraction.

Major scans the room for a brief second, subconsciously gathering something like intel about the other villagers. They all seem to be so .. at home here, even if they seem like they're here due to a glitch in a randomized generator. He's no longer carrying the pack, having decidedly left the thing back in the cabin he's unofficially claimed as his own, and his scrubs - though garishly bright - are dry. It's obvious, he thinks, to the others that he's still new, given the glazed and deer-in-headlights sort of vibe he's giving off (look, he's trying, okay?), but not so new that he's just crawled his way out of the fountain. He wonders if people randomly materialize in various locations or if everyone has the distinct pleasure of almost drowning upon arrival.

He makes his way over towards the bar, figuring it's as good a place as any to start trying to get some answers. He rests his forearms on the counter, giving another glance around until finally landing on a young woman with hair as bright as his scrubs, albeit a different color. She's furiously scribbling away and creating interesting pictures as a result.

"Hey, I know this is kind of a weird question to ask, but .. where the hell am I?"

Well, if nothing else, that proved that he was a n00b. And if Sam still felt the urge to paint him like one of her French girls...yeah, she'd deal with that in her own way. A human libido. Who knew?

She pointed the tip of her pencil at him. "Not a weird question," she said. "In fact, possibly the most normal question anyone could ask. And spoiler alert: When I tell you that you're in history's biggest Skinner Box, being experimented upon by unknown and clearly evil overseers, the normal response should probably be 'what the fuck?' followed by a rapid succession of the five stages of grief.

Sam uncurled her long legs, swinging them over the side of the counter and sitting up. "Ready? Okay. You're in history's biggest Skinner Box, being experimented upon by unknown and clearly evil overseers."

That was Sam. Subtle as a sledgehammer. And she was trying to be friendly.

Wanda laughed softly, shaking her head when she spoke. "Not Norway." Though she wished that they were somehow on Earth. At this point in her stay she doubted it. "I'm from Sokovia. It's near Russia." It's a small country, one that she didn't expect people to know about. It was a battle ground for others battles, ruled by Russia much like Kazakhstan.

It wasn't just the wet clothes that tipped her off but that was one of the larger indicators. It was also the way that Major held himself that suggested that he hadn't been in the village for every long.

She gestured behind her, towards the house at the end of the row. "Do you want to come inside? I have some blankets, a fire and soup. You can also change if you have dry clothes in your pack." She'd been in the middle of feeding the chickens, the dog and herself so everything was already ready. Considering the summer heat she didn't keep the fire going long, just long enough to cook, but if it'd help someone she can toss another few sticks on the fire to keep it going.

"You would," Ravi says, wishing he didn't sound so disappointed that he's got such a handsome best friend, but despite Ravi's own good looks, they never really come across when he's standing next to Major, what with women's tendency to overlook a really good accent and beard for jock meat.

"Princess Sparkles is not a she," he retorts, dragging himself away from thinking about Peyton and that can of worms he'd rather not wriggle around in. "He's a masculine beard that was unduly assaulted with glitter."

"I think you could rock it, too. I mean, you're actually British, like Billy Idol, so you've already got that on me," he says, eyes drifting up towards Ravi's dark hair with some consideration. He catches the sound of disappointment in Ravi's voice, and when his gaze drops back to his friend's face, there's a sternness in it. His brows knit together as he gives him an affectionately hard nudge. "Dude. Stop that. You know I'd totally date you if I could."

He reaches out to give Ravi's beard a good-natured scratch.

"I mean, if it's a she, she gets to sit on your face all day, so I mean .." He suggestively waggles his eyebrows.

Great.

Skinner Boxes. He remembers learning about those in undergrad. He wonders if he's a rat (like the ones Ravi kept in the morgue, named after Star Wars references) or if he gets to be a fruit fly. Does this mean he'll be electrocuted into behaving?
Or maybe baked alive instead?

After some morose consideration, it seems only right that he should be subjected to something like this. He couldn't have expected to have done what he did and get away with it all scot-free, no consequences, no repercussions. It's some karmic form of justice, he thinks, to be caught in a glass cage and experimented upon considering ..

"So, yeah. What the fuck?" he asks with a laugh. "I mean, do we at least get like, treats or something? Ice cream? Brownies? Really good hair days?"

"Sokovia," he repeats, then winces a bit sheepishly. "This is the United States education system, failing me horrifically right about now. .. Sorry." Major's strong suit wasn't ever Geography in school, but he likes to think of himself as a generally educated person. He can't recall ever hearing about a country called Sokovia before, though, and he feels terrible about it.

He glances at the house over her shoulder before bringing his attention back to her.

"Oh! Uh - are you sure? That's really .. generous of you. I wouldn't want to - I don't know, impose or anything. You don't even know me. What if I'm some psycho killer?" He leans in, shielding his mouth with his hand as though divulging a secret. "I mean, I'm not," that's sort of a lie, though, isn't it, Major? "But y'know."

Diana's spent her few days she'd been in the town to explore as much as she could. She'd also explored a bit around the town and had managed to find a hot spring and a waterfall. Both, she figured might be useful at a later time. But nothing she had found had given her any clues about why she was there, why she had been brought there and how to get back home.

By the time she wandered back into the inn, she was hot, had streaks of dirt on her face and even had a few twigs that had broke off in her hair. She just needed a bath and food... And perhaps sleep. Sleep hadn't been something that had come easily to her since she'd arrived and she blamed it on her mind not being able to slow down and not being able to try and think of ways to get back home.

Diana hesitated just inside the door and then began heading over to the counter to order a drink and then realized that she was about to walk right into someone. "I'm sorry. Where you going to order something?"

Edited 2017-07-26 04:58 (UTC)

Okay. Sam liked him. And Sam didn't like anyone. So that was saying something. She gave him a laugh in return. It was a rusty sound, like a hinge that hadn't been used in awhile. But at least it was genuine. And coming from a girl with blue hair, genuine was definitely a precious and rare gift.

"Haven't figured out the pattern yet," she said. "Sometimes, rewards just appear. A guy I knew got about three thousand gallons of ice cream one day. And this other woman got some chemicals to make soap. Can't really figure what they did to earn it."

Sam herself had received no such gifts. Then again, she was doing her utmost to be a royal pain in the ass to whoever was running the clown rodeo.

She bounced her heels against the cabinet. "If you're in the denial stage at this point, I can slap you to prove this is all real."

Wanda didn't expect him to know where she was from. There were those in Russia who didn't know of her little country. At his apology, she shook her head. "It doesn't matter here. We're very far from Earth." She paused a half second to see if he believed her before heading off towards her home with a wave.

She wouldn't have offered if she wasn't sure but Major had time to learn that about her. "Yeah. I could be a psycho killer." She used his phrasing though it was a little bit harder to tell if she was joking. Wanda has killed too many people; she didn't even know all of their names.

The pup turned and ran after Wanda as if sensing that his potential at getting a meal was walking away. She'd pause long enough for Major to catch up but if he wasn't interested then she wasn’t going to linger. She still had to feed the pup and finish her soup. She didn't want to burn down her house because she'd been caught up in a conversation.

Major instinctively reaches a hand out to steady both himself and the person he almost collided with, gently touching the inside of his fingers to her bicep. There's some little spark in the back of his head that is surprised at the hardened muscle he finds there, but not in a negative way. If anything, it's a sort of delighted surprise, and his eyes flick up to the face of the woman attached to the muscle.

With a pleasant smile, he shakes his head, dropping his hand to his side.

"No, no, my fault entirely. I wasn't paying attention to where I was going. People say that we're more accident prone because we're always staring at our phones, but some of us," he gestures towards himself, "Are just a tad absent-minded without a handheld device." In truth, Major had been on his way out, still caught in a curious whirlwind of where the heck he'd wound up, but at her question, he glances back towards the bar with some quiet consideration. "Ah, I wasn't, but mostly because - I wasn't sure what to even order? There isn't a menu or anything, and if it's anything like a Starbucks, I don't wanna look like an idiot and order a medium instead of a grande, you know?" he asks, turning back towards her. "Would it be super rude of me to offer to buy you something though if only so I can pick at your brain," Haha, nice zombie joke, "for some answers?"

"... Three .. thousand .. gallons?" he asks, eyes going wide. He remembers the first spoonful of ice cream he'd had after he'd been turned human, the disgustingly erotic sounds he made while he was eating it, Ravi's face - contorted with displeasure and revulsion - while Major kept shoving spoon after spoon into his mouth until he'd eaten the entire gallon in one sitting. Three thousand gallons sounds like overkill, though. Even for Major. "Can you even store that much? I mean, there aren't freezers or anything here in the houses, right? Unless I just happened to pick the dud without the cool tech." Entirely possible, and more than probable.

"Maybe they rescued a kitten from a burning building or something. Or maybe the woman who got the soap just needed to take a hint about her B.O.," he offers, jokingly. He furrows his brows as if seriously considering her offer, rubbing at his cheek. "Ah, nah, I think I'm okay in that department, but thanks for the offer. I'll keep it tucked in my back pocket if I need a slap later on, though, if that's okay with you."

Wha? Far from Earth? He thinks to ask her about it because what the actual fuck but he figures it might be a question for when they're inside the house. At least then, if he has an emotional and/or mental breakdown about it, or if he conversely gets super excited about being on another planet, he can save some face and maintain good standing with the other villagers. No need to reveal his final Dweeb Form to everyone right away. He can be a little bit mysterious.

"Totally true, in which case, following you right now's probably a terrible idea," he says, trailing behind a few steps. "But if you're gonna do it, do it American Psycho-style. Wear a raincoat and cover your cabin in plastic, pop on some Huey Lewis and the News beforehand. Lecture me about the inner workings of Hip to Be Square. I won't accept a death any less honorable than that."

Wanda stopped walking when she reached the backdoor. She pulled it open, first letting the pup walk inside like the princess she was and then gesturing to Major. "If that's the only way you'll go then you won't be dying today." As soon as she had the door open the rich scent of spiced soup could be smelled curling pleasantly through the air.

"There is a small room there if you want to change." Wanda let him wander, walking pass him and into the kitchen.

She grabbed three bowls from a cupboard and two spoons. The spoons were shoved into the back pocket of her pants as she carried the bowls to the fire where her soup had been simmering. She scooped a bit of soup into each one, passing Major a bowl and spoon first. The pups bowl got put on the mantel until it cooled off, she didn't trust the dog not to burn her tongue.

Sam's ginger eyebrows disappeared for a moment, beneath the fringe of her wig. Okay. Maybe the guy was still too shell-shocked to process intonation. She'd give him the benefit of the doubt. "Sarcasm, dude," she said lightly. "And a healthy dose of hyperbole. It was probably more like thirty gallons. And all of it got snarfed up before storage even entered anyone's mind. It was like an ice cream social only without the socializing."

And frankly, she would have paid money to see Ravi try to rescue a kitten from a tree. Or rather, to see Ravi falling while trying to rescue a kitten from a tree.

Actually, she would have paid money for a kitten, too. Even Sam needed the occasional snuggle, prickly though she could come off, at first. And she hadn't exactly made a lot of friends in town.

"There's something distinctly kibbutz-y about living here. Everyone tends to share whatever they have."

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Page 1 of 11

[i'm not crazy, i'm just a little unwell]

For Ravi

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[Arrival - July 23, Early Evening]

yay!

<3

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July 25; Inn

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Inn

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