sixthiterationlogs | you had one job, lassie

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you had one job, lassie

WHO: Ravi Chakrabarti
WHERE: The lonely bottom of a fountain
WHEN: September 15th
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: Having to haul 6'3 of British gorgeous out of a fountain (otherwise, n/a)
STATUS: Closed

Until now, the most frustrating things in Ravi's life numbered roughly twofold and went: 1) Having to dig up hole after hole after hole looking for a source of tainted utopium without any indication of where they had to look and 2) Having to deal with Blaine on a regular basis without him actually recalling any of his wicked ways. It's not hard to hate a person when you remember the ridiculous laundry list of their crimes, but it starts to require reminders, after a time.

Now, though, oh, now, Ravi gets to add a brand new number one to the list.

"Hello!" he shouts for the third time, his voice bouncing off the walls of his strange little prison. He can't help but wonder if this is some unexpected twist in his discovery that Major is the Chaos Killer and whether he's been drugged and placed here for his own good, but he understands a little better now. Besides, Major wouldn't do that. Right? He wouldn't strip Ravi of his clothes and equip him with some very stylish black medical scrubs and a backpack he's been too wary to look into. He just wouldn't (hopefully).

So instead of having any answers, he's been pacing a tight circle while his mind concocts worst case scenarios (ranging from Saw to the much more frightening Human Centipede or if it's really and truly bad he could be in, good god help him, the Blair Witch Sequel) and then coming around to thinking this has to be some prank. Liv and Clive are going to pop over the top and laugh and laugh at him and won't they have a wonderful time of it?

"Fine, you want to leave me down a fountain well, then you're going to have to get Lassie to get me out of here," he mutters half to himself, though his voice carries upwards. "C'mon, Girl, don't let a man starve to death down here!"

He's a man who's been surviving the cusp of the zombie apocalypse for months now. And, right now, he's being bested by roughly fifty feet of stonework.

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Clint had been watching the fountain for new arrivals, shortly before Ravi's arrival. It was almost uncanny how, just before then, some panicked deer had raced out of the woods and - Clint assumes in some sort of misguided fight or flight response - had tried to stab him with its antlers. Clint, sensibly, had run away, and it had been a good five minutes of the worst game of tag ever before the deer had spooked again and fled into the trees.

When he gets back and hears a voice coming from the cistern, he groans and rubs a hand over his face. "Nat's gonna kill me," he mutters under his breath, then strides forward to take a look at the newbie.

"You could always get lucky and have a rat fall in," he says, totally helpful. "Doubt they're very good raw, but it'd be better than the alternative."

Rats are friends, not food. No, scratch that, in a survival situation when it's Ravi or the rats, they'll be whatever he damn well needs them to be. He squints out of the darkness to try and see who it is up there, but voice and slight glimmer of a face don't show him anyone recognizable, which is a touch of a problem. Stranded could still just be a practical joke.

This? This is starting to feel scarily like him going down to fetch a zombie near the docks. "Am I going to have to trade special favours to get out of here?" he questions. "I've been told I have a mean backrub." Maybe? Who knows, he'll say anything to get out of there.

Clint waves him off, chuckling. "I wouldn't say no to a backrub, but no," he says, before dropping a length of braided sheets into the hole for Ravi to climb out on. Or be hauled out on, which is more likely by Clint's estimation.

"Can you climb out or do you need a hand?"

"Am I Spider-Man?" Ravi retorts, staring up at the top of the fountain with as much sarcasm as he can project, but he worries that it's not really communicating properly what with the darkness. He is a weak man. He is not Major with his immense and unnecessary muscles, nor is he Liv when she's in Super Zombie mode. No, he's plain old medical examiner Ravi.

He starts to work the sheets sort of around his waist. "I mean, I'd try and climb," he shouts, "but no one needs to be that humiliated today. By that, I mean me. Specifically, me, and my lack of upper arm strength."

"Nah, he's skinnier than you," Clint says, bracing his feet on the edge of the fountain. "Hang on, I'm gonna pull you up." It's not easy, exactly, but thankfully Ravi is not particularly heavy, and Clint's arms and back are pretty damn strong, all told. He pulls until Ravi can get himself up over the edge, then grabs his hand and helps pull him the rest of the way up.

"So, welcome to Craptown, population a bunch of people who appeared in the fountain in scrubs like you." Clint offers his hand for shaking. "Clint Barton."

Ravi narrows his eyes because that's what a crazy person does -- they talk about knowing what cardigan size Spiderman might actually wear rather than laugh along at his excellent joke. He's grateful for the help, really, and manages to clamp claw-like fingers over the well as he struggles to haul himself over, collapsing in a thud of dust and grass and 6'3 of tall doctor in a pile as he reaches up, exhausted, to shake Clint's hand.

"Ravi Chakrabarti," he introduces himself, trying not to whine about the physical exertion when Clint had done all the heavy lifting. "Actually called Craptown or affectionate nickname? Because I've seen some terribly named towns and I wouldn't want to assume."

Or a person who recently met the little nerd. Remarkably annoying, in Clint's estimation, but he sounded young, so that's probably the reason.

It's a good thing Clint doesn't feel self-conscious about being shorter than people, 'cause he's definitely looking up at Ravi once he's standing. He's even got some height on Steve, though obviously not the build.

"Affectionate is a very strong word. I don't think it has a name," Clint admits. "If it does, no one's told me. I'll gladly dub it Craptown semi-officially if nobody's got anything better to suggest."

Ravi is already cycling through names in his head, which is problematic because it means that there's a part of him that's genuinely thinking that he might stick around here for a while, but then, he also just does love to name things. "So, a Tatooine situation," is his knowing nod, though it doesn't have all the hallmarks of an awful deserted planet with minimal entertainment value and an overabundance of Hutts.

"So, I'm in Craptown, population...how many?" he asks warily.

"If by Tatooine situation you mean a bunch of people stuck in a nameless place they really don't wanna be and no apparent way of escaping? Yeah." Clint isn't quite pop culture savvy enough to be sure, but it seems plausible enough.

"Craptown, population... thirty-ish, last I checked?" Clint estimates. "I haven't done a census or anything, but that's what my unofficial guess is."

Thirty people is ... frightening and promising. It means that while he's not alone, there probably aren't the resources there to figure out how to escape. Exhausted from his Ring-esque escape, Ravi pushes a hand through sweaty hair and tries to control his breathing.

"So where are we with the escaping?" he asks, steepling his fingers together.

"Deep breaths, Mr. Chakrabarti," Clint says, almost as an afterthought, pronouncing Ravi's surname with an ease born of... well, it's hard to tell. Mostly, it's that Clint has had a long time to get used to "odd" (aka non-English) surnames. He's actually very aware of Ravi's breathing patterns at the moment, but there's no point in making that obvious.

"As far as I know, we're still stuck in 'not sure how to do it' land," Clint admits. "Not where I'd like to be, admittedly, but I'm hoping we'll make some strides soon."

"Doctor, actually," he corrects, because apparently even when he's in a post-traumatic asthma-like induced state, his ego needs to get out there and make a fool out of him, but he worked hard for that title. "If thirty people are here and no one's figured out an escape, something's wrong, isn't there?"

He also may be a touch of a pessimist, but he'll go on record insisting that it's just being realistic.

It had been quite a long while since Helen had been referred to as "girl" by anyone and it took her by surprise. She'd taken to haunting the fountain day and night in hopes that she could somehow figure out the mechanism of arrival but as of yet, she'd been unsuccessful. She always managed to get distracted by something - wildlife, another person, sleep. It was the damndest thing.

She'd been distracted by a particularly-interesting group of birds this time and she wondered if she'd ever manage to sees someone come through the damn thing. Probably not, at this point. Still, there was someone who needed her help and she would aid him as best she could.

"I'm no girl," she said, peering down the fountain at him. "Which is good for you. It means I may have a chance yet of getting you out of there."

She's also no Lassie, but Ravi feels like pointing that out might get him in more trouble. While, prior to Liv, he had mainly interacted with the dead, he's not so socially stunted as to misunderstand what you do and you don't call women. Liv's just sort of extra help in that department (depending on the brain, that is).

And yet, stressed and tired, Ravi's brain is quicker to sarcasm than sense. "Is that something all women inherit at puberty?" he calls up. "Sorry, I'm sorry. It's been a very long day already and I'm not deliberately trying to get myself stranded down a well forever."

Helen laughed a bit and shook her head. "You've got me there. If you can hold on for a moment, I'll see about getting you out. You aren't the first person we've had to rescue out of there in the past few days."

To that end, there was a particularly-sturdy piece of wood that had been salvaged from one of the houses that had been destroyed in the earthquake some days prior. Helen lowered it down into the fountain.

"Grab hold of this? Considering your height, I think I can lift you enough that you can get hold of the lip of the fountain."

Ravi looks at the board warily, but has the feeling that if he doesn't go limp and pretend to be a corpse on a board, he could end up like Liv's friend, minus the zombie hunger part. He reaches up and wraps his arms around it like a security blanket, feeling only completely and totally ridiculous.

"I'll hold on, Jack," he can't help adding, as if he's freezing in the mid Atlantic and not freezing his arse off down an indescribable hole. No, wait, he can describe it. Stones and not much else. There, he's described it. Clinging a little tighter, he glances up to give her a wary look, then a thumbs up.

Helen laughed a little and tugged the board up, using all of her strength to hold him just close enough to be able to help himself out. She'd seen Titanic and had been there, unfortunately; she'd never met a Jack or Rose but at least she hadn't drowned.

"There! Can you grab hold of the edge there and pull yourself out?"

Later, when Ravi finds out about the lack of technology, he's going to look back on this exact moment and be grateful that his clasping, clawing, desperate escape over the stones can't be shared on anyone's social media account. As it is, he's panting breathlessly as he uses the little upper body strength he has to haul himself over, collapsing on top of the backpack he's suddenly wearing.

He stares skywards, heaving and nearly passing out. "This is not an indication of my general fitness level," he tries to lie, gesturing to himself on the ground underneath the pretty woman who rescued him. "Though, thinking on it, that little girl in the Ring definitely had to be doing a lot of pull ups to haul herself out of all those wells," he ruminates, still wheezing to get a breath.

"So, if not Lassie, then to whom do I owe my rescue?"

"Dr. Helen Magnus," she offered, giving him a smile. She'd offer her hand except that he'd only just climbed out of the fountain and she didn't want to bombard him all at once. That would be rude, after all, and she did try not to be rude.

"And who do I have the pleasure of hauling from the fountain this afternoon? If you're coming from there, it's obvious that you're new to our...particular prison."

Apparently, this year's Seattle Medical Convention might be taking place outside a fountain. He staggers into a sit, when he's able to breathe again, and when he catches his breath, he's only too happy to return the introducing favour. "Dr. Ravi Chakrabarti," he says, managing a weary smile. "Am I not in Seattle? The soul crushing greyness and perpetual feeling of being trapped does evoke Seattle," he points out.

Which isn't to say he's not used to it. After all, he's a Londoner, born and bred. He's also been lucky enough to experience Atlanta, though, with the sun and the heat and did he mention the sun? Not to mention Seattle had the whole zombie crisis going on, which was about the only good thing it had going. That, and extremely good coffee.

Helen laughed a little and shook her head. Having spent quite a lot of time in that region of the country, she was aware that Seattle did have a perpetual pallor to it that took some getting used to. Old City wasn't much better, situated as it was on the bay.

"Ah, no. I know Seattle well and this is not it, I'm afraid. The vegetation does seem typical of the Pacific Northwest, though, so perhaps that gives us a start as to where we might be?"

She's right. Ravi's starting to get his breath (and subsequently his brains) back under him as he works his way to his feet. This, though, gives him a chance to see what he's wearing, which makes him feel very sleek, but also like he's back in medical school. "My sweater vest," he maligns, hand on his torso as he already keenly misses it, despite the fact that this place is nowhere near as cold as the morgue where sweaters are necessary, unless you're a certain undead employee.

And there's a bag on his back, too. He hauls it off and gives Helen a wary look. "I'm guessing this isn't a packed lunch with a treat?"

"That would have been useful and I don't think this place is in the interest of being useful," Helen said, shaking her head a bit. It was the first time she'd really coaxed someone through a first arrival and it was a bit of a learning experience.

Everyone dealt with it differently. She'd hit the ground and been very practical about it, had wanted to find answers as quickly as possible. Ravi, it seemed, had a bit more levity.

"Mine did have a change of clothes in it, though."

She's talking about the environment like it's somehow sentient, which is not something he wants to get into. Mainly because after dealing with zombies for so long, he's not sure he's going to be able to rule that out as a possibility he's actually worried about, quite honestly.

Managing to work his way to his feet, he slings the bag around so it sits at his ankles, feeling the press of a headache starting in his temples. "I don't mind the scrubs, though it is a bit of a wayback playback," he confesses. "Mine were light blue back then, though."

"I favored blue, myself, so I was pleased to be given navy when I arrived. Of course, you don't get to choose it, so it's very arbitrary that I'm even pleased by it."

Helen brushed off her scrubs at the moment, trying to get a bit of dirt and grime gone. She never quite won that battle. "At least you got black. It doesn't show filth as badly."

Ravi is pleased to see that he has black scrubs and that they do make him look as handsome and distinguished as ever, but he stops preening when he remembers that he's apparently trapped in a strange place. "What about getting back? Or getting a message home?" he asks, now that he can start prioritizing things. "It's fairly important I do that. I'm not saying the world depends on it..."

But it sort of does, doesn't it?

"Neither of those things appear to be possible. I haven't really tested the boundaries of this place as much as I'd like but there's no phones and there's no technology - at least not as we'd recognize it."

Based on how he spoke and carried himself, he seemed to be from the modern era. Helen suspected the village proper was rather on a level akin to her childhood in the 19th century; it was a vast difference.

It's lucky he's not the social media maven that others can be, choosing instead to live with work and his other hobbies, but then, he gives her a horrified look as the rest sinks in. "No technology?" he echoes, his eyes showing the horror of such a claim. "Which means no computers and no televisions and probably no Call of Duty."

In a moment, his life sort of flashes before his eyes, and it's a very boring life, but it had a lot of good raids in it. Damn, Major is definitely going to get ahead with skills, if he's not too busy fighting off craven zombies.

Both of those things reminded her ever so much of Henry and there was a painful twinge in her heart for a moment before Helen shook her head and cleared it. No time for that. She had to focus on this place and surviving until she could work her way out of it, not on those she'd left behind.

"Ah, I'm afraid not. It's going to make our escape that much more difficult."

Well, at the very least, someone here is talking sense. Ravi clings desperately onto those very words, because 'escape' means getting back to his terrible, awful, no good world, but at least it's the no good world with his friends in it and he stands some chance of actually helping to stop a zombie apocalypse.

"Has anyone gotten near to an escape? Secret back door, maybe?"

"Haven't even gotten close. I tried to explore the edges of the ridge but I couldn't seem to find a way out," Helen explained.

"It's the damndest thing. I've done plenty of hiking, plenty of tracking. This can't be that large an area, really, but I can't manage to find the edge of it."

It's all so hopeless sounding, which is awful for someone like Ravi who lives to investigate and pursue results. Even his worst times during his experiments always had the hope that he might find an answer. Then again, maybe this just needs a pair of fresh eyes and he's able to come into the situation anew. Or, he can freak out for a while, have himself a nice little private weepy moment or two, and then get to work.

"Is there an operational base set up?" he asks. "Somewhere that people are holding down the fort and sharing information?"

"Well, we've all sort of congregated at the inn to share information and food," Helen explained. "I'm happy to lead the way and introduce you around, if you'd like? That's the closest we've got to a central base at any rate."

She hadn't referred to it as such before now but, in thinking it over, it was the best way to think of it. The inn was a natural gathering point for everyone and a natural staging point for any attempts to explore the land.

"Is that where people are compiling data? Test results?" It seems like if there is a wall when it comes to escaping, then there ought to be some tests being done in order to somehow fix it. "I'd love to get a look at the central place," he agrees, though he's already anticipating that it's going to be immensely disappointing as far as technology goes.

"...what are people doing with injuries?" he asks warily, not sure he wants to know, fearing infections.

"I've only treated one injury so far, a grade three ankle sprain. It's not bad but my patient is absolutely noncompliant with being non-weightbearing and it's driving me mad," Helen admitted.

It was so nice to actually talk to a physician for once, to talk to someone who understood what she meant when she said things like that.

"See, this is why it's so much easier when all your patients are already dead," Ravi replies cheerfully, seeing as being a medical examiner does help him in that regard. Of course, lately, between Major and Blaine, he has been operating on the slightly-more living. He gives Helen a curious look. "What's she been doing to aggravate the issue?"

After all, this place doesn't seem like they're doing major sports or issues that would cause a grade three to heal so slowly. "Clearly, this is what Netflix had been invented for."

"Oh, you know, hard labor," Helen said, barely refraining from rolling her eyes. "Child works twelve to fourteen hours a day scrubbing floors and cleaning house and cooking. I don't know how she expects to heal it if she's going to be on it constantly."

Helen didn't know what to do about the situation but at least having someone to bounce ideas off was a good thing.

"Well, that's just awfully selfish," he remarks with an amused air of irritation that's very put on. "There's no one that she can pass the work off to? Do you have any sedatives?" he wonders, adjusting the strap of his backpack. "We could always take drastic measures and make sure that she's not going anywhere."

Again, the 'mostly treat the dead' thing tends to inform Ravi's priorities.

"I haven't catalogued every herb available," Helen admitted. "I've catalogued some but I haven't run across any sedatives or hypnotics. It's high on my list, if only for pain control in case I need to do some kind of field surgery."

Christ, the idea of doing a surgery out here was frightening but Helen knew it was a very real possibility.

What he wouldn't give, right now, for some of the zombie lack of feeling that Liv and her kind display, but it's not like Ravi can bottle that up for use, so he's pretty much in the same boat. "I'm afraid that I'm very good with tests and variables and tweaks in formulas, but not finding the base version of something," he says. "So if we don't find it, is there someone with meaty looking fists that might be able to knock a person out?"

"There's a fair few of those," Helen said, smirking a bit. "So I think we might well be in luck in that regard. I wouldn't recommend it, mind, but it's an option if we have to use it. I just would rather not utilize concussion as a method of anesthesia. Tends to be bad on cognition later on."

Dear God, they were really in for it, weren't they?

"I'd prefer the concussion over dealing with rampant screaming for hours at a time," he shares, because he's rather weak in the stomach himself and he can't imagine that hearing that will give him any will to want to do surgeries like that so much as avoid them. "And given the very Little House vibe I'm getting from this place, I imagine infection is lurking at every turn."

He can practically see the 8-bit version of himself with a warning message flashing that he has 'died of dysentery'.

Helen laughed a bit and nodded her head. "Ah, yes, infection. I fear it at every turn. I'm afraid we're going to run into it sooner rather than later and I really hope it doesn't turn out to be something we can't treat with basic cleanliness."

How did men and women survive before antibiotics? Well, problem was, only those with the best resistance to infection did. She was living proof of that.

"I look forward to a long existence boiling water," Ravi deadpans, searching around them as he struggles to find his bearings. "Clearly, my flat and all my possessions didn't follow me, so I'll ask the question even though I'm dreading the answer."

"Where do people live?"

"Some live in the inn. I've appropriated one of the houses down the way," Helen explained, tipping her head down the road that led through the village.

"It's a large house, so that way I have a little room to keep recuperating patients with me if I end up having any. I haven't had any serious injuries as of yet but if I did, or a serious illness, I have room there to keep a patient close by for monitoring."

Ravi turns his head to look at the houses in a new light. He doesn't know why, but he'd sort of figured that there might be some kind of real estate market afoot, like the homes here are all settled into and a realtor would be required to pick one up. Ravi's not sure why he'd figured upon that, seeing as nothing else about this place follows the normal standards of society. "So, really, I can just turn up on a doorstep, smash something, and claim it manfully as mine?"

Better than pissing all over the place, but it does ring a similar bell when it comes to marking one's territory.

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you had one job, lassie

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