sixthiterationlogs | [MINGLE] PLOT: Siren's Call

[MINGLE] PLOT: Siren's Call

WHERE: Anywhere
WHEN: August 25-26
OPEN TO: ALL - MINGLE
WARNINGS: Mental manipulation, drowning, death
NOTES: Details here. This post is for EVERYONE, not just the affected. Please make sure and note if your thread is locked for plot purposes.

It began slowly.

A wisp of song or familiar sound on the breeze swept in from the lake. No source to be found, only the uneasy feeling it had been heard before as it coiled itself steadily inside the minds of the chosen. The sound was a mantra, pulsing soft at first and then louder, growing over days until it seemed to fill the skull, relentless. Come here, the lake whispered, cajoled, shouted. It is cool and quiet beneath the waves.

Come here, it presses now in time with the melody until there is nothing but to blindly follow. The water is calling.

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"Like a song," Ravi says, trying to narrow in on the exact thing, straining to recall what's going on in his head and whether this a sign that he's truly lost his mind. He hopes not, because there's a lot of shows on Netflix he'd been saving up to watch and if he's gone insane, he's not sure what his future looks like, then.

He squeezes his eyes shut tightly and thinks he can name it as the Cure, if he focuses hard enough. "It just led me here, like if I wanted to hear more of it, I had to keep walking this way. That's mad, right? That's not normal?"

"Like a song," Major repeats, as though having the explanation in his mouth will somehow force his brain to make sense of it. He gives a slow, processing shake of his head in response to Ravi's questions, but then his eyes widen for a second as he snaps his fingers with a realization. "There's .. there's some thing about that, right? A song leading people to the sea? Except it was .. sailors? The .. the things that live in the ocean. Beautiful women, usually. Damn it, I wish I paid more attention in that Mythology class."

Ravi's still a little too fuzzy in the mind to be seeing clearly, but if he were, he'd understand that this is something out of the Odyssey, but he's not trying to go anywhere. He just wants to follow the tune in his head until it goes away or he satisfies himself with it, whichever of the two comes first.

"I mean, I also wouldn't say no to a beautiful woman," he quips. "It has been a while."

Major snaps his fingers in rapid succession as he squeezes his eyes shut, trying to remember. But the more he tries, the less he seems to be able to grasp anything from that class he took in college. It was an elective, and he was more focused on football. After a bit, he groans and shakes his head with a groan, opening his eyes.

He looks over to Ravi.

"When did Helen disappear?" he asks, voice soft and sympathetic.

"Few months ago," Ravi says, and if he didn't already feel like shit because he nearly wandered into the abyss of the water, then he feels like shit now to think about it. "Then I went home and went through getting back together with Peyton only to come back here and also be missing her," he sulks, giving Major a dejected look.

"My luck hasn't exactly been stellar these days," he admits, at least in the romantic sense. And in the practical sense, given what nearly just happened.

"Geez, man, I'm .. I'm sorry," Major offers, reaching over to put a hand on Ravi's shoulder. He can begin to understand, to a degree, with his relationship with Liv. The last time he was here, all he wanted was to see her. It wasn't even that he wanted her in the village, per se, because he didn't want to wish that sort of thing on her, but .. he wanted to see her. Be with her again. They'd had a brief thing when he went back home, but after he was given the cure, well .. it was like a reset button. They were back at the beginning, and unlike Julie Andrews' advice, sometimes, the beginning is not a very good place to start.

"Interested in anyone? Hoping to find them in the bottom of the lake?" He has to give Ravi a little bit of a hard time.

"Honestly, things have been a bit wild since you got back, so the most time I've spent with anyone is you, Liv, or the new boyfriend by virtue of him being around," he admits, but winces when he realizes he's just gone on and talked blithely about the new man.

Great, Ravi, real great. Some best friend you are.

"If there's a beautiful woman who loves Star Wars at the bottom of that lake, I genuinely might consider drowning for a little while," he says. "That's how bad I am."

The corners of Major's mouth tense slightly at the mention of the new boyfriend, which Liv had told him about fairly quickly after his arrival. It doesn't come as a shock, of course, on a number of levels. He isn't surprised - or upset - that Liv's found someone here in the village. Nor is he surprised - or upset - that Bucky's smitten with her. She has that effect on people. And it isn't like they haven't done this whole thing before, multiple times over.

Still, that doesn't mean it's .. easy to swallow and digest the fact that they're both here in the village, together, and are unable to be together. It's worse considering the fact that they could technically be together now, with the whole zombie-zombie thing. That was something they could never seem to get right back in Seattle.

So he does shoot Ravi a look mixed with disappointment, annoyance, and frustration, but he also knows Ravi's almost just taken himself out, Virginia Woolf-style. He'll let it all slide, just this once.

"I'll only let you do that if she has a sister or a friend for me. Then I'll come with."

"All right, so suicide pact by drowning, but only if it gets us some action," he jokes, even though this is the sort of thing that you're not really supposed to joke about because it's in poor taste, or whatever it is that people say about it. It's not like Ravi's always avoided the crude jokes before, so maybe it is a good time to start.

"Don't worry, we can be bachelors together," he says. "Maybe not with Call of Duty and our televisions, but we could always start a D&D campaign?" At home, he'd been a little ashamed, but here? "I think Sirjay would be excellent at this place."

"Deal." Major agrees flatly, holding out his hand, pinky up, to pinky swear on it. He loses himself in his thoughts as he looks out towards the surface of the lake. The village would make something like this happen, wouldn't it? He could imagine the lake being suddenly crowded with beautiful, scantily clad women, maybe in costumes from their nerdiest pubescent fantasies. The village would do that.

"Battle of Pegasus is what I miss the most," he states with a heavy, heavy sigh attached. But at the mention of D&D, he looks over towards Ravi with renewed hope and widened eyes. "Sirjay Esclaborne, the human paladin." He reaches out to put a hand on Ravi's shoulder. "And Mosco Bandywax of the Mirkwood Bandywaxes, the Halfling monk." He feels something like hope for the first time in what feels like forever. "Do you think we could get something going? Do you think the others would wanna play? I mean, what's the off-chance we have a DM brain loitering around somewhere for Liv to nom on?"

He thinks that it would be a shame to play without Clive and even the other men from the station, but if this is the only people they have, he's sure they could make do. "I hope Liv still remembers some of that. Do you ever get that?" he asks, because Ravi is still fairly new at the whole zombie thing, so he's not entirely sure of how it all works.

"Do the brains sort of linger in your mouth, so to speak?"

"No, not really. Once it's out of your system, it's .. out of your system. For good, as far as I know. Especially if you're munching down on someone else's personality the next week, you know?" Major replies, disheartened but not entirely discouraged. Even if Liv can't tap into that DM brain she'd had, he knows she'll give it the best effort she's got. "Linger in your mouth .. taste-wise? Or personality wise?"

"Well, in that case, I think one of us is going to have to learn how to be the..." He gestures with his fingers, sort of uselessly casting around to the general population, searching for the word. "The dungeonmaster? I don't know if that's the right term when we may be in a literal dungeon, it might be too soon."

Major's eyebrows lift with curiosity as Ravi searches for the right word. He moves his head in a similar trajectory to Ravi's hands as they gesticulate all over the place, and he lets out a laugh when his friend has finally nailed it down.

"I always figured a dungeon was more like .. a room? Or a series of rooms? Like what they kept Leo in in Man in the Iron Mask. That sorta thing. This is a whole village, so it feels ... less like a dungeon, more like a .." Now it's Major's turn to try and pinpoint the right term. "Like that island in Shutter Island. No escaping, really. And a lot of crazy folks. But at least we can move around. And don't have to wear iron masks." He snaps and points at Ravi. "Or like The Truman Show. I think that's a better comparison."

"If this is the Truman Show, of course you'd be the protagonist," Ravi complains, making a face. "They never choose the handsome British doctor on those shows, it's always just handsome white man," he says with a flap of his hand towards Major, annoyed.

"I mean, you are handsome, but you're always the lead character, aren't you?" He never gets a go and that's just unfair.

"Hey, hey, I'm on your side with that! I'd much rather watch a movie about the handsome British doctor than the handsome white guy," Major protests with a look to match Ravi's flapping hand. He scoffs with disbelief, pointing at himself, then motioning vaguely between the two of them. "It's not my fault! Besides, if we had a show, we both know who the main protagonist would be, and it wouldn't be me."

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[MINGLE] PLOT: Siren's Call

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