Character Meet and Greet: Boo to You~!

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i. Main Street USA: Daylight Hours
The citizens of Main Street greet the coming of fall in a big way! The entire main part of town is decorated in the colors of fall, carved pumpkins on every window ledge, balcony and stoop! Some are rather creative, ranging from The King himself to various spook-tacular versions. There are also plain pumpkins, squash and apples arranged in a rather decorative (and tasty) presentation outside the Opera House!

Enjoy yourselves as The Candy Palace begins to hand out small, caramel and spice covered apple slices. The smell of apple fritters, grilled apples and apple bacon float through the air. Enjoy the rather relaxed daylight hours...

ii.Main Street USA: After Dark

Because the moment the sun sets, and the lamps have been lit- the entire street takes on a strange and unsettling demeanor. The pumpkins glow a soft, red color and bats and black cats crawl around the shadowed corners. You might see several citizens wandering the streets-but look to hard and they will suddenly vanish before you can even greet them.

The stores are still open and the sweets and treats are still pouring; but! Beware of happy haunts~!

iii. Yo ho, yo ho a Pirates life for me!

Ah! Smell that salty, briny air! It gives life to all those who are from or love the sea!

Which would be wonderful and invigorating, if this was the bottom of the beautiful briny sea. It isn't. It's the open garden in front of the train station which is no being over run by some rather fishy, lv. 2 Corroded! Can you help sweep the proverbial beach clean without being washed away by water based attacks? The conductors would be most grateful if you could!

iv.Come out and Socialize!

No need to be number one thousand! Imagination is the real host here, so go on and use your to come up with your own adventure. Just remember to take loved ones by the hand, please, our ghosts are frightfully sensitive to too much mischief~

Comments

[bigbadrose]

Rose giggles at the nickname. "You don't have to be gung-ho, surviving is enough." She dropped the hug and offered a more formal handshake. "Rose Tyler. Doubt you've ever heard of Torchwood, but we have a California branch... in some universes." A shrug. "Monsters are my thing, traveling more than Earth is how I get there."

[trashylittlesecret]

"Sounds like some period thing." He adopts a snooty, quavering, Maggie-Smith-esque falsetto. "And now, back to Torchwood. When last we left Ms. Thruppitybits, she and Sir Reginald Paddihose were teetering on the brink of reckless indiscretion..." A shift to something a bit more Alistair Cook: "I daresay, Ms. T, you might hold my hand, but kindly keep your gloves on."

[bigbadrose]

Still more laughing!

"That's kind of what it was named after!! Oh, except there was a werewolf involved and a crazy cultist plot to infect Queen Victoria. In my Dad's universe, she got eaten, so they wound up with a President instead of Prime Minister thereafter, but in the one I was born in, me and the Doctor rescued her, and she exiled us after knighting us, and made Torchwood to punish us. It's extra funny because my Dad's the director of it in his universe, and I have clearance through all branches in all universes now! That really backfired on her, huh?"

[trashylittlesecret]

The laughter is good. It grounds him. He's always felt more secure when he can make people laugh: it means he's really there, that he can still change his surroundings, that he's got some twisted form of control.

He listens to Rose go on for a bit, then something clicks for him in the middle of all that weirdness. Never mind the werewolves, and how once upon a time they scared the snot out of him, but he stayed fascinated by them. He can get back to that. There's something a little more important going down in this weird little backstory. "You ... you've done this whole 'other universe' thing before. Am I seriously hearing that right? Or do I have Yankee Candles jammed in my ears?"

[bigbadrose]

"Wow, you caught on quickly!" Rose laughed some more and shook her head. "Yeah! I travel falling timelines. Or did. Will do. Time... it gets... confusing. Normally I can't say that without everyone thinking I'm completely mad, but here everything IS mad, so I can just be honest, yeah?"

[trashylittlesecret]

Everything is mad, so they can just be honest, huh? He takes another swig, then dives right into the deep end.

"You travel failing timelines, I just killed a creature that's billions of years old, shapeshifts to feed off fear, has a taste for little kids in particular, and liked looking like a six-foot tall clown with glowing yellow eyes."

He raises his eyebrows at her.

"Honest enough? If not, I'm also gay and totally a chickenshit about it."

He's already berating himself for saying so, but he was half-drunk, and angry, and scared, and punchy. And all of those things made his mouth run way too much even without the booze. Beep beep, Richie, he thinks, a few moments too late.

[bigbadrose]

"That sounds like a demon, but why a clown??? Colourphobia isn't that common, is it?" She wasn't laughing, or doubting in the least, she had seen too much to ever doubt insane stories at this point.

She chewed her bottom lip in thought, and rested her hand on the top part of his arm, and smiled gently, "If it helps any, you sound like you're from a decade where that matters and here... I guarantee it doesn't." She made a face. "I started time traveling 2005. It was still not really... common in London then, yeah? Especially with like... working class or chavs. Everyone called me chav," she rolled her eyes, since they were being brutally honest and all, "S'like white ghetto for British. Not just poor, but kind of..." she made a face, "Not trying to do better? Anywayyyy..." a huff. Don't get her started. "My best mate is an alien that can change faces and gender," Because Missy, "And my second best mate is a Time Agent from the fifty-first century who flirts wiiiiiiiiiiiiiith... everybody. Just by sayin' hello." She laughed and took a sip of his drink. "I'm really proud o' him though! He's in the 21st century now, I 'aven't A CLUE how he got there, but he's got this boyfriend that is just the ultimate nerd type," She made a face and playfully stuck her tongue out the side, "Bit like you, but more coffee boy! And he, Jack, my second best mate anyone could ever be lucky to have, he just cheerfully drags everyone around him into the future with him," she giggled, took another drink and sat down behind the bar, hunkering down for now.

"Wish he was here, but mixed feels on it. I just miss him, that's my selfishness. But yeah, oh! Uh, Crowley and Aziraphale are an angel and demon snogging or shagging or hooking up or at least something. Anyway, once you take that worst enemies ever thing and throw that out the window, gender really comes into a great perspective, don't it? Mind... they're not really men or male exactly? Like Crowley currently looks like my best mate, a couple faces back -- he changes, like I said; but he's been all woman before and apparently bat his eyelashes at Aziraphale a century ago or something and got him to hold his umbrella??? He was trying to tell me how to win the Doctor over with my womanly wiles.... which would pro'lly go as well as it would on you, yeah?" Rose laughed. "But less because he likes men and more just... he doesn't notice anything or at least is so good at pretending not to, that there's no real difference. Jack used to hit on him too and if Jack can't get through to someone," Rose shook her head! "Nothin' doin'!"

[trashylittlesecret]

Richie is silent for a moment.

"That was a lot of shit for a man trying to get drunk to digest, you know that, right? I caught something about your Captain Jack guy, and a demon umbrella? Which I think I saw in a cartoon once. You're going to have to give me the Cliff Notes version of what you were actually trying to say."

[bigbadrose]

Rose giggled again, slightly at a loss herself, "Demon umbrella?" so much giggles. But she does give Cliff notes version as best she can, channeling her inner Rob who was in fact, the male counterpart to Rose, "Being gay is great, Captain Jack is -- I forget the word, but gender don't mean a thing to him. He's got a boyfriend! I love him. But not yanno... like I fancy him." Bleh, American, would he know what that meant? "Annnd..." she punched the air, "Sod anyone who has a problem with it! I'll punch 'em in the face, and kick their shins for you, yeah? Romance for all!!! Humanity is all about shagging the stars!"

The last part had sober Rose face palming, but only a little, so it's fine!

[trashylittlesecret]

"Shagging the stars," he echoed. "Well, I'm from California, so I can tell you that there was definitely a lot of that going on. Nudge nudge wink wink say no more." She got his best Michael Palin impression on that one. And of course he knew what she meant, he spent his formative high school years devouring VHS tapes of Flying Circus from the library.

"And yeah, demon umbrella. I don't even remember what fuckin' cartoon it was, but there were all these weird monsters and one of them made a whole squadron of umbrellas with devil horns that jumped up and down and breathed fire. They put some weird shit on kids' TV."

[bigbadrose]

She giggled and snorted at that. Of course Monty Python! Though she didn't really know as much about California, but she could guess from reputation.

"Wouldn't mind seein' that," Rose laughed, "Maaaaaaybe not live it though, but stick around awhile, and odds are, we just migh', yeah?"

[trashylittlesecret]

"As long as that's what we see, and not ... anything like that sloppy bitch Pennywise? Sure. Whatever." He sighed, taking another drink from the bottle. From outside, the faint sound of screams and commotion as some of the Apprentices started in on the Corroded at the station.

"Thanks for not dragging me out there kicking and screaming. I ... I tend to do more harm than good with that shit."

[bigbadrose]

"Pennywise is your thousands year old demon clown?" a chewed lip in thought, and Rose snorted. "Just go on a couple missions when you're comfortable, you'll be fine. S'not like --" she rubbed her temples and sighed. "Actual end days o' London, yeah? Had to see... a lot of that. Here... it's... manageable? That's awful o' me to say, I get it, they're still in survivor mode and need us, but..." she shuddered, "Blimey, no one gets it. They can't..." She didn't even want them to, really. End of the world, times several hundred. No one needed to see that. "It's just... a lot better, yeah? A lot." She wondered briefly what Gallifrey was like at the end, and quickly locked that thought away. No one needed to see that either, she expected. Burned before its time. Was ice and snow worse? Didn't matter. She'd make it un-happen. Where it counted.

[trashylittlesecret]

"I'll take your word for it," he says dully. It's not that he doesn't care about the fact that she's apparently seen the end days - that's some heavy shit, the kind of stuff Bill wrote about in his books that were 80% good and 20% steaming crap by the end, like that one where all the people ended up in Colorado or Vegas, no middle ground.

"Missions. Jesus. You're making it sound like we get uniforms and debriefings and all that crap. I dunno if you noticed, but I'm not exactly a military kinda guy. No Torchwood for me."

[bigbadrose]

Rose grinned tightly. "Trust me, I don't get on with military types either. But it's not. It's pretty disorganized, but it's almost like..." her brain searched for the next closest thing to compare it to, "One o' those old video games??" she asked hopefully, not really sure on what decade he was from yet. "Go at your own pace, as it were. But be careful o' Hades. He'll just send you out to fight, ready or not, so it's better if you have friends to help."

[trashylittlesecret]

"How old are we talking?" With those two words, she was speaking his language again, and he pulled hard on his internal reins to keep the neon DORK sign from lighting up over his head. "Super Nintendo? 8-bit? Atari? Or are we going dinosaur Commodore?"

[bigbadrose]

Rose giggled all over again, her face scrunching with it, "Blimey you sound like my ex. He collected a lot o' 'em. British ones, a few Japanese. Learned programming through it and then taught me a few things in the agency so I could get by. UM..." she scrunched her face, struggling to remember them at all. "Blimey, I don't rightly know. I think... Commodore 64 sounds right? Joystick, PC, yeah???" Rose rubbed her temples. "Look, specifics aside -- go easy on me, you wouldn't believe what weird little things change in every universe, yeah? And I've been lousy with any weird names..." A huff. "This one time, I got sent in as one of their... err... pilots, for a video game. Luckily, the Doctor was at the controls o' mine, so he was able to rig them so I could do whatever he needed..... no no no, that's nothing like this at all."

Another huff! "It's like a fantasy rpg," mentally praying she got that term right, "Where there's a mission board to help the village. And there's rewards, and sometimes you're not successful, but it's fine, because it's the same as dimension jumps. Sometimes you have to land in 'orrible dying timelines, just so you can even start to understand why the darkness is taking them all, yeah? But in this case, it's more like kicking the corruption back a bit, so everyone else can succeed on their next one. Slowly but methodically," she snapped her fingers, and nodded. "Yeah!" She punched the air, finally yelling as a title clicked in her head, "Final Fantasy!" and then a frown, "No, that can't be right, that series has like... a dozen sequels, how can it be final anything?" Rose groaned and facepalmed, "It's not that I didn't like them, I just always want to do real adventures. Sort of considered it a karmic punishment when I really was there for real. But basically... missions, message board, go with friends, solve puzzles, no one's died so far. And we have good healers, so that's really good, yeah?"

Rose held up a hand, "Here, if you want, I'll give you a charm. Magic blessing. I can do that here. Brilliant, right?"

[trashylittlesecret]

"Ohhhhhh, yeah, RPG type stuff." Richie snapped his fingers and pointed at her. "Yeah, yeah, I get it. Doesn't matter what order you do it all in, so long as it gets done, and then after a certain number you get a boss fight and everybody levels up, woohoo."

Those had been far more Bill's speed - he was the one who'd had every Final Fantasy and Chrono-Whatsis installation under the sun, and some other one about a giant magic tree. Richie was far more about the games where you just mashed buttons until something made out of pixels died. It was cathartic. But then she brought it back around into reality, and he had to shake his head a little bit to bring it all together.

"What, an honest to God magic charm thing? Seriously? Like what? How long do they last? Is it one of those-" serious announcer Voice and spooky fingers- "befooooore the sun sets on the thiiird daaaay things?"

[bigbadrose]

"As long as I want!" Rose boasted, tongue peeking out the side. "Yeahhhhh, but not really. I have to get more sparks -- level up as it were, right?" She snorted at the ridiculousness of that statement, but took his hand.

"You are stronger than you think, braver than you know, have another drink, don't worry about lettin' go!"

A quiet snort, "Not so bad right? But if anything else happens for at least the rest o' the night, maybe the week, or longer, you'll get a boost you weren't expecting, I promise."

HAD TO SAY IT THAT WAY DIDN'T YOU

[trashylittlesecret]

You're stronger than you think. His own words to Eddie, thrown right back in his face. He does feel the surge of confidence, but ... even as he does, his eyes well with tears.

Probably not the response she was expecting.

Yes

[bigbadrose]

Rose just hugs him, not poking the obvious wound. "You forgot to have another drink," she whispered. "Anything specific you wanna toast to?"

Look, she's been there so much that her favorite song now is Audioslave's Doesn't Remind Me, because the list of random shit that doesn't remind her of Jack and the Doctor is so much smaller than the list of what does remind her of them.

[trashylittlesecret]

He leans on her, just the way he would have leaned on his friends if he'd had the chance.

"Losers," he says tightly, moving his mouth and his throat as little as possible to keep his voice from breaking. A deep, rough, rumbling cough, the sort that most people use to clear out their lungs during a chest cold, and he shakes himself, pulling it together. He raises the bottle.

"To the Losers' Club, from its only present member. You guys were better at this shit, I don't know why the fuck I'm the one stuck here."

And down the hatch.

[bigbadrose]

Rose laughed softly. "Sometimes it how it goes. Micks, my ex boyfriend who loved video games, yeah? He was... nooooooot big on any of this," she laughed and shook her head. "He was always kind of... he just wanted to stay home and work on cars and computers, yeah? Whereas me? You couldn't tie me down anywhere. I've never met a good comfortable place I wouldn't run away from to seek out danger," she stuck her tongue out the side. "But one time, the first time I landed in an alternate universe, my... Dad's universe now." She scrunched her face, "Blimey, that'll take some getting used to. So Peter Tyler my Dad was killed when I was just a baby. In the alternate one, he was like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, but with Vitex -- 's this... fizzy pop drink with vitamins, he used the profits to fund his inventions. But his company was bought and part of a bigger corporation, always the way, innit? And I know I'm ramblin', but I got a point," she giggled. "So his boss was creating super soldiers. Wait for it... zombie robots." She scowled, huffed, sighed, and shook her head. "Cybermen, they're called."

Rose pushed her hair back with one hand. "So Da' was infiltrating this company there, and leakin' info out to Mickey's counterpart: Ricky, even though I was never born there at all. Happened a lot actually. You'd think that'd be upsetting, but given how much changes from such a small thing, it's kind of awe-inspirin'. Where was I? But when everything went to the shitter, Ricky died, and Mickey, bless him... decided to stay in that universe to help protect everyone." Rose held a hand up. "Thought we'd never see him again, but Dad there, took over Torchwood, that's my agency, yeah? And wound up coming to my universe following after the cybermen. Pete and my Mum got remarried, the Jackie of his world got turned into a cyberman. And--" Rose made another face. "I fought like mad not to go, because I'd have to leave my best friend. My other one. The Doctor, not Micks. It goes, Doctor, Jack, Micks. But, a lot of stuff happened, and I got stuck in their universe after all. And if Mickey hadn't been there, hadn't been working with Dad, in Torchwood for years before I got there..."

She shook her head.

"I was kind of a mess. And that's putting it way too kindly. I didn't call Pete Da'... ever. I didn't even treat him like my step-Dad. Blimey, I was thrilled for Mum, o' course, but I didn't want to be there, I just wanted to go back to my home, which I thought was with the Doctor, and they all just wanted to make it better for me there, and I was really ungrateful. Point bein'... Mickey was the only real tether I had! We'd broken up awhile ago, and I wasn't even, evar going down that road, besides, Jake was Ricky's boyfriend, so that would have been salt in his best mate's eyes, and Jake was the only Torchwood guy I'd really talk to..." Rose huffed! "So Mickey was there first. And even though I kind of... made it worse for him, not better, if he hadn't been there to help me not just be a tantrum-throwing brat for two years..." another huff and she bit her cheek, "Then yeah, forget saving the multiverse, there'd have been months where I'd have been hiding out under my bed. Mickey himself would tell you, he's the last of all our friends to be doing something like Torchwood. Seriously, THE last."

Rose laughed, facepalming, "Blimey I reckon even Keisha and Shareen would'a been more likely..." she giggled and shook her head. "But they were lucky to have him. ARE lucky to have him." She gave a wolfish grin, tongue out the side, "More cursed to have me. Da' wanted anyone else to try the Dimension Cannon - that's what rocketed me through the alternate universes, but no way would I let that happen, right?" Rose snorted quietly. "Mickey's always been like that though. He's so much smarter than he gives himself credit for, because he doesn't want to let anyone down so he never tries to get... anywhere exactly. Totally opposite me. I think I'm so clever, I jump headlong into danger, and think nothing of it, so long as it all ends up okay, yeah?" Rose shrugged. "So the funny thing is... no one else could have done it though, yeah? It had to be him. Mickey Smith. I've seen him go hysterical more times than I can count, but if he hadn't made it easier for me in Da's universe, I think I'd've given up. Everything would have been too hard."

And just in case it wasn't obvious yet or because it was soooooo rambling, "Maybe you're here first for that reason. Make it easy peasy on the others. Sometimes, the tough ones like me, are hiding a lot more damage than we show, and without a comfy landing, we can start to break. So having someone like Mickey do things first, just makes sure we don't after all."

[trashylittlesecret]

Holy shit this woman liked to talk. It was like being stuck in the deadlights, only with estrogen and gossip and drama instead of ball-shrinking terror: all he could do was sit there, and maybe occasionally manage a nod until she let him go. The recap was a blessing.

"So you're saying I'm like some kind of guinea pig...?"

[bigbadrose]

Just be glad you never met her Mum!!!

A face scrunch!

"More like trailblazer. It kinda sucks, but that way, your friends can keep up when they need to, yeah?"