Character Meet and Greet

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"You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality."

I. Exploring Main Street! Take a trip through a little town taken straight from 1890's America. Visit the shops, dine at the restaurants- but don't forget you are here on a mission. As an Apprentice, you will need to gather some supplies. A weapon, or tool for producing magic.

But we understand if that corn dog cart on Market Street is your first stop.

II. Apprentice Class 101! Practice your spell casting and weaponship on the open commons behind the Firehouse. Sparring, casting or just general confusion abound here. Try not to hit anything or...anyone, the paint on the infirmary is still drying.

III. Look out! A level 2 corroded monster has managed to get onto Main Street! Protect the citizens and defeat the cur, and please watch the damage, the paint is still wet!

IV. One Little Spark! Go ahead, show us the strength of your imagination and come up with your own scenarios. Just, stay out of the Corroded Lands...if possible.

Comments

Re: 2

[bigbadrose]

Ugh. This, bar none, was the most emotionally rollercoaster day of her life. Far worse Bad Wolf Bay, even while some teeny tiny fraction of her thought he would take her home. She had steeled herself up to fight him for it, to say goodbye to her parents and Mickey, but she'd be going home, with him.

Adaptable, she was adaptable and could roll with the punches.

She shook his hand numbly, face already crestfallen and tried even harder not to cry, her mum's voice about how many tears she'd shed on him already, echoing somehow in between her ears like a bell. Deep breath. Which one. Two: one with big ears and the bluest eyes she'd ever seen, and the other one was kind of a dandy, but not who the Doctor meant for sure. Rose's heart is in her throat, remembering the dopey puppy grins and laughing and running together, and that trying not to cry thing gets harder by the second...

Screw him! -- this time Crowley's voice, and it gives her a bit of her fight back. Who needs him?! YEAH!!!

She took a deep bad wolf breath: the kind for blowing down even brick pighouses.

"I haven't seen him for at least two years," she said, considerably coldly compared to before. Her only means of both emotional distance, and not collapsing on him in a wet heap of tears, desperate for the Doctor in any form to fix everything. How to explain about the TimeLords? She wouldn't. Yet. "That's why I have a dimension cannon. To fight the Darkness. It's timelines that collapse and undo itself. Unreality. Where once was a star or planet, winks out of existence, and most people forget it was ever there. Entire universes have been eaten up, hundreds of timelines have fallen. I was looking for someone to help."

She started walking off. There was no way she was going to find alcohol here, right? Disney, America, possibly even prohibition era... It seemed unlikely, but she could try a restaurant. She was desperate.

Dead Doctor, dying TARDIS... She half wanted to go back and kick the tiny Doctor's shins, but that would do her no favors if she accidentally rewrote how the Doctor met her, came back for her... Created a paradox. Again. She really needed a drink.

Maybe she was supposed to tell him about the TimeWar and that's how he survived? Maybe she was supposed to tell him about Bad Wolf Bay so the little crack would be left? If the Doctor's youth could be hidden in a crack outside the universe, couldn't other TimeLords? But it was sealed. For stability.

Rose needs a drink or seven.

Re: 2

[funnylittleclown]

From friendly to crestfallen, the change was too sudden not to have been noticed. Anyone else might have let her walk away without another word but not this one. He took a few quick steps to catch up with her as she swept her way out of the classroom and then fell into a quick almost hopping pace beside her.

"Didn't part on the best of terms did we... he I mean, that older version of me you haven't seen in years."

He stumbled slightly.

"I am sorry. I flit around from place to place so often but I don't like leaving friends when they are upset, even if I technically haven't met them yet. You have a key. I wouldn't have given that to you if we had ended up hating one another now would I?"

A smiled hopefully, but it faded quickly when she seemed very focused on what ever mission was driving her across the street.

"Isn't there anything I can do?"

Re: 2

[bigbadrose]

Rose's courage faltered and wavered again. Right. Lonely. Even with friends, he was lonely. They couldn't stay, and he often wound up in places like this against his will, and he was just so good and tried so hard, and nothing was fair. Nothing was ever fair.

Her eyes misted up again, failing at holding onto the anger. He shouldn't have died, he should have kept fighting, he should have--

He was trying really hard to be cute and it was working, much like when she was distressed about him regenerating. She'd been mad then too, worked so hard to get him back, only to have him change, and reinforce how little she did know him after all... Reminding her that they were leagues apart even when she thought they were so alike.

"We didn't fight, it wasn't like that," she gently took his hand in hers. It wasn't rough like the first time the Doctor held her hands and told her they were falling through space, clinging to the surface of the planet if they let go... Nor was it as big and gentle as her dumb puppy-eyed fluffy haired, hyper Tigger version's either, but they were still sort of comforting, even though Rose was even more terrified than usual. She needed to protect him, she thought he would be protecting her, but in reality when had that ever been the case? So fine. She would protect him.

"I'm just..." she faltered, fumbling hard for words. To put the feeling into an actual thought and words, to look it directly in the face. "I'm going to say the wrong thing, and things could get worse, yeah?" she loved him, the future. But he was here. But she didn't know this one yet. And he didn't know her at all.

She desperately wanted a Doctor hug, but couldn't do it. She could still see through the unshed tears, but they refused to blink away.

Secrets. So many secrets.

"Come get chips with me. Help me, yeah? It'll come to me... what I can say or not, but only through practice. In a... calmer setting. Something familiar. Sound okay?" she finally looked back at him hopefully.

Ow Rose... That one hurt!

[funnylittleclown]

Ever the observant one he could see her inner turmoil playing out in the growing mist in her eyes and feel what he thought was a bit of trepidation in her touch. He couldn't imagine why he had inspired such a reaction. If it wasn't a quarrel that had pulled her and his other self apart, maybe it was just distance and finally meeting him again? But then her tears might be more happy. They tended to be when two old friends were reunited. It was a tragedy then.

This assessment seemed confirmed when Rose said she needed the time to decide what she could and could not say. If it were simple and straight forward there would be no need to worry about that at all!

The Doctor reached into his top breast pocket and pulled out his handkerchief, it was wrinkled but clean and perfect in case those mists decided to turn into rain. It was pressed into her hand before the palm of his free hand came to rest on top of hers. They might not have been the hands of a Doctor she was familiar with but they were kind and concerned for her.

"Of course we can have chips. That sounds a wonderful idea."

Actually there was a small diner he had passed on the way to the classroom that seemed up to the task. Her hand was given a warm pat as he lead the way back to the place... it was back on this street some where. A cute little shop with a checker floor and a sign boldly proclaiming they had the best chips in town.

"And you can take all the time you need. I imagine we will be here for quite a while yet so there is no reason at all to feel you need to rush."

oops

[bigbadrose]

"Thank you," she mumbled softly, and gently squeezed his hand. She grinned a little, even managing a tongue loll of amusement. "The best, they say? I think I'll be the judge of that!"

It was a lovely oops!

[funnylittleclown]

"Then let's not keep them waiting."

The Doctor was absolutely impish as he pushed aside the diner doors and allowed Rose to enter just ahead of him.

"You've a very important guest!"

He announced to the staff who looked up from their daily tasks of cooking, cleaning, and register manning.

"Rose Tyler! Official Chip Inspector! You'll have to do your best to impress her!"

Then with an almost gallant sweep of his overly large coat he whisked Rose away to one of the freshly cleaned booths by the window. Hopefully the chips would do them both some good. He was beginning to feel peckish himself!

XDDDDD

[bigbadrose]

She had to fight to keep back a laugh and instead stuck to character and got all brusque. "Right then, you better prove to me what yer sign says is real, or else I'll be havin' the whole board o' inspectors descend on you en masse!! Chop chop!!!" hand chopping motions, and she did laugh as the Doctor whisked her away. Younger or not, still the Doctor where it mattered most.

[funnylittleclown]

You never had such fine service! While the Doctor in his scruffy outfit was given a few odd pitying looks as he, but for the way he spoke, didn't seem to be much of an executive type he looked more like some one down on his luck Rose was treated like a queen. Complimentary chips for her and her guest, large drinks, would you like to try the special Miss and plenty of napkins in case anyone got crazy with the condiments.

"You know they are good these chips. But well, you are the authority," playful smile, "How do you think they stack up?"

[bigbadrose]

"Brilliant!" om nom nom. "Need more vinegar," nom nom nom, "Didja know they stopped wrapping 'em in newspaper in the chippies by 2007? The version that got separated from me said he always missed it, preferred the news-ink." So many giggles. "So I'd give 'im a tenner so he could get chips and a paper to wrap em proper in."

A beat. "Mind, anythin's better than those blue peppery ones," she made a disgusted face. "Very plastic, them."

[funnylittleclown]

He reached forward and touched the bit of paper their snack currently rested on.

"I did noticed this was little more than wax paper, but they did at least go to the effort of including printing on it as if it were newsprint."

He turned to give the staff a bit of a smile, just to show them the inspection was going in their favor.

"Celebrating 95 years," The Doctor read from the faux newspaper page, "Oh, that is nice. I wonder if they will throw a large party in five years. A hundred is something of a landmark for a company. But nothing about the corruption."

He sighed but was quick to agree with that.

"I suppose it wouldn't do much to keep the tourists calm if they knew what was going on."

[bigbadrose]

Rose instantly relaxed and smiled ear to ear. Still the Doctor where it mattered most. She reached out, her hand over his, not thinking about it, "We should go see it," she poked her tongue over her teeth, before realizing what she'd done and withdrawing the hand blushing scarlet, and just nodding curtly about the corruption.

"I've seen it," she said softly, glancing away. "In the latter stages. When it starts undoing existence. Reality." She glanced back seriously. "It's actually better that there isn't anything. It can't be noticed or felt until it's too late. When it's already started removing something important."

Back to glancing away and she savaged a chip to take out her aggression. "Like potato blight, but instead it's reality. And then it just all goes dark." Nom!

[funnylittleclown]

Her smile was returned with a bright and enthusiastically meddlesome of his own. After all she had just said they should go and see this corruption, something he had been absolutely dying to do since he arrived!

"If you are feeling up to it."

Still as eager as he was to go he wouldn't have forced her to go with him if she weren't ready to face it.

"It does sound very frightful doesn't it? But, I've found its actually very difficult to eliminate worlds entirely so I'm certain we will be able to find some way to put an end to it and set everything right again."

[bigbadrose]

She meant the 100th anniversary. They're definitely going to be seeing that corruption sooner more than later as they're meant to fight it and all.

... His line about how difficult it was to eliminate worlds made her want to curl up in a ball and cry.

Luckily her smile was somehow plastered on. Deep breaths. Don't crack.

Definitely need alcohol. Even if it meant she'd have to be more careful about not loosening up... "What have we got for wine or whiskey or... oh anything really here," asking for a menu.

Ugh. It'd been ages, but she still remembers leather jacket Doctor fighting with her over the Paradox. That if it was just as easy as going back in time to save his family, his planet...

She curled her hands in front of her and rested her head in them.

Still the Doctor where it mattered most...

Maybe if she'd met this Doctor first? But then he would have lost her to the war, like Sarah Jane.

Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah she needs a drink.

She can't even fake optimism. It's just not there.

How can she explain why she was separated from the Doctor when she can't even talk about the war and if the TimeLords were around...

Alas, trying to get him back by cheating, by completely undoing the TimeWar was probably worse than paradoxical and almost definitely a Greek tragedy, and just like she told Crowley, he wouldn't proud of her, just mad and disappointed.

"Difficult, but not impossible Doctor. It's been happening since before I met the first version of you," a quiet growl. Dangerous and lupine. "Planets are going out in all universes. Every version that should have them." She rested her forehead back on the table, cradled by arms, lifting only enough to rest on one arm and mumble to the side and grab more chips. "If not eaten, then they're just going dark. But people, whole... species, have been--"

She glanced up at the ceiling. "There was a crack between dimensions. A people called the gelth wanted to slip through. Become solid again." Side glance away. "They were forced into being gaseous because of the darkness, the corruption, whatever. A moon was stolen." She looked at him seriously, chin still resting on the table top and if he's paying close attention, her eyes seem a bit more yellow than they should. "Not like geocaching -- no wait. Geo-grafitti... geo-art??" She meant geohacking. "That thing where you steal bits of planets and monuments to make art, and we put Jack's face on a moon," because the face of Boe. "But like, it's gone," she snapped her fingers, "No one can find it. There's no gravity there, whoever was living there goes with it, it's just, darkness where there used to be light."

If only Rose had been a bigger Kaiju, sentai, or sci-fi fan, or even more into laser tag she might have known of the mythology in the show Photon, that people all generate light but when corrupted, the planet becomes dark, but alas. It's just as well she's running on instinct and what she's pieced out of everything.

[funnylittleclown]

It wouldn't have been the first time the Doctor had misunderstood something a friend said because his mind was busy working on something else. In any event he didn't imagine he would still be here in five years for the 100 year celebration. If they did manage to find the TARDIS it would be easy enough to pop ahead those few years... which was always what he said before his lack of skill at piloting the TARDIS led them some where else entirely.

"What I meant was, sometimes things that have been lost can be found again."

Rose meanwhile spoke about a great deal of things in that speech that didn't make one lick of sense to the Doctor. Events and people he hadn't met yet, gelth, some one called Jack whose face had apparently been added to the moon... The girl was practically delirious with grief. But hope springs eternal in the young, he had optimism to share!

"These missing worlds might not have been destroyed. And if it is just a matter of defeating this Darkness we might be able to set everything right again. We mustn't give up yet, Rose."

The menu was presented about then, a pair of them held out between them. This distracted the conversation for the Doctor as he took one of the menus and smiled warmly at their server.

"Thank you. I could do with a malt I think."

[bigbadrose]

"Well, that's been my assumption, yeah," Rose doodled a finger in circles on the table. Clearly: that was not the worry plaguing her.

She grinned and pulled up when he ordered a malt for himself though. "You know... I don't think I've ever seen you drink," she admitted coyly. "Whenever Jack an' I went out on the town, you just got banana smoothies -- and the one time you said you got a banana daiquiri, I'm not sure it wasn't a lie to confuse the enemy."

Not that she was plotting anything, nope.

[funnylittleclown]

How odd! His forehead knitted slightly as he wondered if it wasn't that then what could it possibly be! But he didn't ask, instead he dodged sideways, brightening to tease the lady he sat with.

"Oh, but you must have done!? I can't have avoided drinking anything whenever you were around? That would be silly!"

Of course when his 'malt' arrived it was one slightly different than Rose might have been expecting. It was a very pretty chocolate malted milkshake and the Doctor took a long thoroughly impish sip from it as Rose watched knowing full well she had been thinking it would be something alcoholic.

"I wouldn't have minded a banana smoothie, those do some rather nice."

[bigbadrose]

She giggles at his milkshake, but drinks her own ale, bitter though it was.

"Alcohol," she giggled. "'Cept when he went dancin' with Madame du Pompadour, but like I said, I think he was just pretendin' to be drunk to confuse the clockwork robots."

[funnylittleclown]

"Oh, did he? How very clever of me!"

Totally taking credit for his older version's ruse, if it was a ruse.

"I imagine you might be correct about that. I'm really not much of a drinker at all. A glass or wine here or there but really.. drunk at a party? You wouldn't be able to remember it the next day."

[bigbadrose]

A grin. "I've only blacked out once, and I wasn't drunk. I fused my heart with the TARDIS and dumped the time vortex into the Dalek god's head." She'd decided that this wasn't directly in his timeline, and very likely he wouldn't remember this, Doctor or not. And if he did, then good. Frustrate him a little in revenge.

[funnylittleclown]

"Oh, my word!"

Far from sounding impressed he looked worried.

"People aren't meant to do that."

It tended to be fatal. Though he didn't say that his brow furrowed and he looked to her eyes, which he suddenly recalled had been glowing oddly earlier. He hadn't known the reason then but now? Now he was terrified for her.

"How are you feeling?"

[bigbadrose]

She laughed softly and shook her head, "No worries, haven't done it since. The future you told me I nearly destroyed the Universe like that."

[funnylittleclown]

"The universe and yourself along with it..."

He said still some what unconvinced as her eyes had still glowed! Unless he had been seeing things? No, he was certain they had!

"Any lasting effects?"

[bigbadrose]

Rose doodled a finger in circles on the table, looking downward.

"Oh... here and there..." evasive, "Nothing I wasn't prepared for." She glanced back up at him seriously, "I don't like having decisions made for me. I'm funny about that, always manage a way to defy them, no matter who's the one deciding."

[funnylittleclown]

"Nor do I! But there are some things, some powers, that just shouldn't be tampered with."

And clearly he felt this was one of those. Just far too dangerous and unpredictable.

"You've no idea what it could do to you."

[bigbadrose]

Rose stops pulling her verbal punches.

"He sent me back," she growled dark and low. "He send me back so he could face the dalek emperor and their entire fleet cultivated from humans alone, so he could die without regenerations. And I was just supposed to watch the TARDIS die slowly and pretend it was all just some wonderful dream I woke up from. I'd rather die by his side than live as a coward stuck in the wrong time, wrong place, pretending I belonged there."

She clenched a fist and chugged her ale. She was angry again, which was a lot more comfortable. It was how she'd gotten through everything so far, after all. "You treat us as so fragile, but I've never met a man so--" However angry she was, she couldn't bring herself to insult him to his face, at least not this one, the cute daft one trying so hard to cheer her up. She sighed, un-clenched her fist, and rested her head on one hand. "I mean it. I'd rather die by his side, than live anywhere else without him." She finished her ale in one go.