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

the Doctor | some weird show about time travel | A

[raggedydoc]

The Doctor isn't likely to miss a festival, and once he's poked around enough to establish that there isn't something sinister going on behind the scenes of this one (because that's really been the case more often than he cares to count, at least in his experience), he's determined to enjoy this one. He's been in an increasingly cheerful mood lately - a better mood than he's been in since he lost the Ponds, since he started travelling with Clara - and said mood out in full force today.

It seems like he's everywhere at once, from the games - spinning around with a blindfold over his eyes and nearly pinning the nose on the hapless booth attendant - to the food stands - he's had fairy floss from all over the galaxy, you know, but this is much better than the sort found on Vega IX, which tastes vaguely of fish. He shoves his top hat into a bystander's hands as he goes bobbing for apples, ducking his head into the tub and coming up soaking wet.

[rappigdinner]

When he comes back up, he'll find that the bystander into whose hands he shoved the hat is now wearing it, tilted at a bit of a jaunty angle. Said bystander simply smiles and shoves his hands back into his pocket as he watches The Doctor continue on with his bobbing. Carnivals and party games aren't really his thing, but Jade does like apple cider and he does get some amusement out of watching people make fools of themselves. He also hardly minds getting a nice hat out of it - so Doctor you'd better grab an apple soon or else Jade is going to just walk off with your hat.

Oops - he is already turning to melt back into the crowd. (Normally he doesn't condone petty thievery, but he's bored and curious, and that makes for a terrible combination, does it not?)

[raggedydoc]

The Doctor finally resurfaces triumphantly, grinning around the apple in his mouth - before he remembers how much he hates the taste of apples and promptly spits it out to one side, the fruit rolling forgotten in the dirt. He makes a face and rubs his mouth with the back of one hand, looking for his hat...and finds it bobbing off into the crowd.

"My hat!" He lets out an anguished cry. He really likes that hat - not as much as he would like a fez, but the poor top hat can't help its unfortunate non-fez existence. He chases after the blond stranger, limbs flailing everywhere as he slips through the crowd.

[rappigdinner]

Hearing the cry behind him, Jade pauses long enough to look back over his shoulder, smiling pleasantly (well no, really it's more like a mocking smirk pretending to be a pleasant smile) at The Doctor. He brings his hand up to tip the hat at The Doctor before looking ahead again and continuing right on through the people. If he catches up, he catches up. If not, well - Jade has a new hat for next time he needs to dress up.

[raggedydoc]

The Doctor does, in fact, manage to catch up, plucking his hat from Jade's head and settling it back on his own again. "What do you think you're doing?" he demands. "You can't just walk off with someone's hat like that!" The Doctor has, of course, occasionally stooped to stealing clothes, but never let it be said that he isn't a hypocrite.

[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.

[bossily]

"Absolutely ridiculous," Clara's voice pipes up through the crowd, and she shoves her way between two men to stand before the Doctor. She does a good job of looking as if she's actually judging him, arms crossed over her chest and mouth drawn in a tight line. But when she reaches over to take hold of his top hat from whoever so happened to be holding it, she finds herself smiling, and laughs as she moves in close to stand at his side.

"I managed to get two apples. On my first try."

There's another soft laugh, and her hand goes up to his hair, flicking the wet strands back and out of his face. It's not exactly a good look on him, so she frowns a bit, and tries putting it back into its regular floppy place.

[raggedydoc]

"Preposterous," the Doctor scoffs - or he tries to, but there's an apple in his mouth. He removes it, frowning at the offending fruit (he still hates the taste of apple), and tries again. "Preposterous. Your mouth is entirely too small for that sort of thing, Clara."

His stomach does something funny when she reaches up to fix his hair, and after a few moments of letting her fiddle with it, he plops the hat down on her head and takes a step back, reaching up to rearrange it himself. "So! What do you think about this festival, eh?" He gives her a giddy grin and slips his hand in hers again, interlacing their fingers. "Anything you want to do?"

[bossily]

Her free hand reaches up to adjust his hat that's on her head, and she tips it back and off to the side so it's not about to fall down and over her eyes. His hand gets a squeeze at his question, and she shrugs a bit, musing it over.

"Not sure. Think I've seen bits and pieces of just about everything. Also -"

And she's grinning almost wickedly now, just due to sheer amusement at the teasing he's left himself open for. "My mouth might be small, but I can still work magic with it."

Two fingers are held up then, to signal the two apples she swears she's picked up. Eyebrows arch, the two fingers waggle, and then she's left laughing, giving his arm a tug as she leads the way to walk past some of the other booths. As much fun as it is to make him squirm, she'd much rather not have any outbursts that might potentially ruin their outing. As it is, she considers getting some hot chocolate in him, so she starts heading in that direction.

[raggedydoc]

He sputters for a moment at her entirely inappropriate remark - really, she's nearly as bad as Amy sometimes - but before he can say anything, she's tugging him off in another direction. The Doctor reclaims his hat, settling it back on his head as they walk.

"Well, I've been banned from the pin the nose on the scarecrow game - something about being too old, though I think the attendant was put out when I accidentally pinned the nose on him instead. No cider, I can't stand apples. And face painting? Definitely not face painting." What would he have painted on his face, anyway? No, that's entirely too silly.

[bossily]

"Why not face painting?" She pauses mid-walk to glance up at him, confused because she had assumed that sort of thing would be right up his alley. She doesn't fight him on it though, and instead just approaches the table that is serving the cider, gesturing for him to wait off to the side as she grabs two hot chocolates and rejoins him. He may hate apples, but no one could hate chocolate. Especially not someone like him.

"We could do face painting."

She doesn't think it would be all that bad, except for the fact that the paint could smear and might get itchy. So okay, maybe he's right. Face painting is off the list. "Orrrrr -" She drags out the word, in order to take a sip of her drink.

"We could do a bit of shopping, not that either of us have very much money."

[raggedydoc]

Of course the Doctor loves chocolate. Chocolate is brilliant - possibly on his top ten list of human inventions, right up there with zippers and pogo sticks. He really needs to introduce zippers to Gallifrey once he finds it again, he decides; it would revolutionise Gallifreyan formalwear. (Though he's not sure much would improve those bloody robes.)

"I've got money!" he protests, patting his pockets. "Loads of money. In here somewhere..." Well, okay, maybe not. "Do you think they take Selian credits? I swear I've got a credit chip with loads of them in my pocket." The Doctor's never been very good at carrying money - even his pockets couldn't hold every currency he'd need for any given planet and time period, and so he simply doesn't make a habit of having it with him.

[bossily]

"You have money?"

She doesn't bother hiding the shock from her voice, even as she scoffs a little. "You don't have money," she teases a little, giving their arms a swing or two. "You hardly ever work, how could you have money?"

She has a tiny bit that she's gathered from here and there since their arrival, and she moves some of the fabric on her dress to tug off a hidden fabric pouch. She keeps her valuables there, including said bit of money. She gives him a look, silently saying she's the boss.