TEST DRIVE

[whitechapelmod]

TEST DRIVE MEME

OPTION A

With the cooling weather came the changing of the leaves, the lighting of candles and the advertisements in all the shops and bulletin boards for the Annual Whitechapel Road Fall Festival. Overnight your quaint little neighborhood has been transformed from a typical Victorian-esque scene to well, a typical fall festival scene. Strings of lights have been wound between the lamps, scarecrows have been put up in shop windows that hold signs with arrows on them, directing you down the main street toward the park. In the park, you'll find a small carnival. No big gaudy rides, of course, but booths set up by local businesses where they sell items from their shops. Games like bobbing for apples and pin the nose on the scarecrow have been scattered in the places between the face painting booths and cotton candy vendors. There's also booth offering food and drink-- and doesn't that cider just smell wonderful? Of course, they have hot chocolate too, if cider's not your thing. Mingle and enjoy your night! But be careful-- you might just end up in the dunking tank..

OPTION B

You wake late in the morning to a strange chill in the air. The weather, sure, but also something else, something wrong in the energy. Maybe you've never been much of a person who believes in that sort of stuff-- energy, vibes, whatever-- so you brush it off and go about your day. It's not until you're out and about that you really start to notice something. The streets are mostly empty, the shops closed down. A cold wind blows through and makes you shiver as you turn down the street toward the Town Board. The papers flutter in the wind, but it doesn't matter, you're not reading them, you're reading the message written in red over all of them. YOU WILL ALL BE PUNISHED. Is that blood it's written in, or paint? It's hard to tell, but the color seeps into the fliers and advertisements-- "puppies, free to a good home" or "half off on all clothing TODAY ONLY"-- staining them, ruining them. You know without even turning and walking the extra block that something very bad has happened. Yellow tape surrounds the board, you just notice, and blocks the entrance to a nearby alleyway. An officer stands guard, but he looks pale and shaken. This isn't the first. Just last week, someone was killed too. The boy who delivered the milk. Eddie. Throat slashed and a message written in blood on the wall above him, similar to this one. An ambulance arrives but you stay where you are, watching as more officers emerge from the alley, carrying something on a stretcher. Someone, you realize, because what else do they carry on stretchers? A shock of red, curly hair pokes out from the top and you think of the girl who runs the register in the bakery, a waitress from the cafe you tried last week, your sister back home who will (hopefully) never end up here. Could this really happen here? Some maniac killing people because they think you need to be punished? It's wrong, it's confusing, and it's terrifying, isn't it?

Make a top-level comment below, with whichever option you'd like in the subject, and maybe a little starter. Please also feel free to disregard the options and choose your own adventure! Below are links to the setting and premise, so feel free to use those as reference in guiding your post. Tag around and have fun!

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Comments

[albuquerque]

One second, Severus is simply sidling by, watching the frivolities happening around him with seeming disinterest. The next, he finds something being rudely shoved into his hands. A top hat, no less, which he peers down at with a frown of surprise, then darts his attention to the source.

A tall, gangly-looking man shoving his rather large head into a bucket of water like a fool to bob for apples.

Well. Severus glances around him before settling his gaze back on the man with a quiet, impatient sigh and a flat, equally impatient, bordering on irascible look. He waits until the man comes back up for air.

"Are you quite done? Do I look like a hat stand to you?"

[raggedydoc]

He shakes his head like a dog, spraying the water from his hair everywhere, then pushes said wet hair back with one hand and takes his hat back with the other. "Do you look like a hat stand?" he echoes thoughtfully, resettling the hat on his head and straightening his bow tie. Well, there is something to be said about that nose - but, no, that would be rude, wouldn't it? He's pretty sure that's rude. Anyway, you certainly couldn't hang a hat on it. "I didn't hang my hat on you, so no, I suppose you don't look like a hat stand. A hat-holder, perhaps."

What's happened to his hat stand in the TARDIS, anyway? He misses that hat stand. Maybe it's in a storage room somewhere; he'll have to look for it whenever he returns.

"Do you know, I once met a duke - I think he was a duke, maybe, or a viscount, I lose track of titles sometimes - who'd trained a monkey to follow him around and carry his hat." He pauses as the implication of his words sinks in. "Not that I'm calling you a monkey or anything! Quite the opposite, in fact." Technically, of course, humans are, but he's also learnt that they don't usually appreciate having that fact pointed out to them.

[albuquerque]

He watches with mild incredulity - which is little more than a stony furrow of his brows - as the tall, lanky man takes back his hat and sets it on his drenched head. The little anecdote the man follows it with has Severus resuming the bland, unimpressed look on his face.

When the man finishes speaking, Severus says nothing at first, just lets a silent lull fall between them. He's not impressed at the man's implication that he's some kind of lowly servant. A monkey, no less.

A number of different retorts are on the tip of his tongue but instead, he simply reaches into his sleeve and draws out his wand. He flicks it with idle confidence at the man's hat, uttering, "Wingardium Leviosa."

The hat lifts off the man's wet head and, keeping his wand trained on it, Severus guides it up into the air, over the people and the carnival, towards the trees, and he lets it hook onto one of the branches, which sags under the weight of the hat.

[raggedydoc]

The Doctor tilts his head to watch his hat float up onto a branch, then disregards his poor chapeau entirely. The hat isn't important. What's important is all the laws of physics that have just been broken in a quiet little English village where he hadn't expected to find anything like that at all.

He pulls his sonic screwdriver from his coat pocket and steps forward, activating it with a button and examining the- wand? he wonders. He's not sure what to call it, but it certainly looks like a magic wand. Not, of course, that there's any such thing as magic.

"How'd you do that?" he asks finally, unable to work it out from his screwdriver. "Is it some form of telekinesis?" There are a few species capable of doing such things, but not humans, and the man appears to be quite human - though, as the Doctor knows, appearances can be deceiving.