this is a place where i don't feel alone.

[ohshutup]

WHO: Clara Oswald and OPEN
WHERE: Various cities
WHEN: Throughout September
WHAT: Monthly catch-all
WARNINGS: See heads for specific warnings

(( ooc: if you'd like a specific starter, send me a shout at gizmatico))

Comments

for danny.

[ohshutup]

Detour a few thousands miles that way, and we'd make it to Blackpool.

[Clara drapes over the railing, finger pointing out to the horizon. The ferry, puttering through the southern half of Chesapeake Bay, grunts and grumbles in protest. It's barely cut out to make it between Newport News and Smith Island, much less take them home to England.]

Can't believe I still haven't gotten over there.

[soldierman]

Well, that's hardly a detour at all.

[ He smiles as he joins her at the railing, following her gaze to the horizon. It really is the furthest outside of the porter cities he’s been since arriving. He isn’t one for adventure, and she knows that, but a short trip like this is right up his alley. ]

Why haven’t you, then? It's still home, isn't it?

[ohshutup]

[She shrugs. In big sunglasses and jeans, of all things, she looks almost like a normal tourist.]

Not if the people aren't there. And they were always here.

[soldierman]

Fair point.

[ He shrugs in agreement, but his life was always so quiet in London. He has no family waiting for him back home, few friends, he can’t really know how that feels. ]

I think I’d still like to take a trip over. Just once. It might be worth it to see if the food tastes any different.

for cosima.

[ohshutup]

[When Cosima arrives home, it's to the smell of cookies. This can only mean two things - either sweet Mrs. Emmerdale next door brought over dessert, or Clara's baking.

Certain disaster.]

Cos', that you?

[Clara's slightly panicked voice comes from the kitchen, where she seems to be trying very hard to conceal a baking sheet behind her back.]

[doubleblind]

[Usually the smell of cookies wouldn't be a cause for concern, but when it's only Clara's voice coming from the kitchen... Cosima starts to worry. They don't smell inedible, but Cosima's been burned by that logic before.]

It's me. Am I entering a baking crime scene?

[ohshutup]

Well...

[Clara hums, innocent. She's wearing a Christmas apron, and there's cookie dough on her nose.]

At least there's only one victim this time.

[She steps aside, and reveals a single amorphous blob of cookie.]

[doubleblind]

[Cosima reaches out when finger to swipe the cookie dough off of Clara's nose before moving to get a closer look at the baking disaster.

Honestly? She's seen worse. It still looks edible. Mostly.]

Maybe three if we decide to eat this thing?

for sarissa.

[ohshutup]

Wait.

[Clara looks up from the pavement, her leather glove pulled halfway off her fingers. The cover of night isn't enough to hide the bewildered amusement on her face.]

Did you break up during the bowling, or after?

[Technically, she's not supposed to be here. Nonah PD already has jurisdiction, and murder doesn't really fall under her investigative license. But she saw Sarissa's face in the alleyway, and it's been far too long since their last chat.

Even if it's taking place over a puddle of a small-time gangster's blood, while she scans the scene with her glasses.]

[magnitudes]

After. While after.

( Sarissa's crouching down beside a dumpster, looking at the brick wall, and some paint chips on it, frowning as she makes notes. ) I asked her which whale emoji she liked better, we went out for lunch. I'd say Jess walked in there determined to break up with me and not talk about it, but I think she started dating me determined to break up with me and not talk about it.

( She is trying to make light of t, while still being salty. She's not sure that's the healthiest way to deal, but Jess isn't a villain, she ain't either. They're just humans. )

[ohshutup]

Maybe she- oh, oh, this is definitely cocaine. [She waves Sarissa over to where the victim's shoe is still sitting abandoned.] Maybe she isn't good at relationships. Maybe she really cares about you, but didn't know how to do this.

[magnitudes]

Oh, nice. That'll help us pull an all-nighter. ( Dry and typically Sarissaly off-hand. She's still collecting the paint chips carefully, then frowns, and moves to the victim, carefully leaning it to inspect his hand. ) Paint on the wall might be a match for the stuff under his nails. Colour looks close.

( And, back on topic, or back off-topic depending how you look at it: ) I know she cares, and I know she's complicated. And I told her I was okay with complicated and helping her figure shit out, but I'm not gonna beg someone to keep dating me if they want to bolt every five minutes. Seems shitty for both of us.

for peter.

[ohshutup]

Look, last time you saw me I was being straddled by a bank robber. This can't be much stranger.

[Clara barely turns her head as she speaks, watching Peter approach out the corner of her eye. She's perched on a low wall in De Chima's central park, surreptitiously trying to take cell phone pictures of a man some yards away.

Sometimes her day job feels more like professional stalking.]

[shutterbugged]

On the one hand, it's probably less.

On the other-- [ he's literally bobbing his hands like the two sides of a wobbly scale, for the record ] --it's not not selling me on the idea that you were assigned "Professional Creeper" as your imPort job assignment.

[ohshutup]

My assigned job was boring, so now I stalk married men.

[She reaches into her blazer pocket, and pulls out the leather case that holds her badge and ID. "Private Investigator", they both read in very official print.]

Harold over there is cheating on his wife. She's paying me quite a bit to find out with whom.

[shutterbugged]

[ Peter politely leans over to look at her badge, then over towards ol' Harold, then back at Clara. ]

So, just to be clear... you think this is more interesting than whatever your job was before.

for ruby.

[ohshutup]

[The woods outside of Nonah are not a completely foreign place to Clara. She's visited her own sisters-in-law regularly enough that even the remote roads of the forested foothills have started to make sense to her city-trained mind.

At night, though, it's a different story.]

Dammit.

[It's past midnight by now, and she's starting to think that the werewolf sightings she heard about in town are complete rubbish. The only frightening thing she's encountered on this trip was a man peeing in a creek. But it's been twenty minutes since her phone lost its signal, and even with enhanced senses she can't seem to find her way back to the road. Clara is truly and fully lost in the woods, and she hasn't even found a monster to justify the trip.

At least, not yet.]

[notsheepish]

[Okay, Ruby usually just avoids people when she goes out for one of her runs in this form, both for her own safety and to avoid scaring the pants off of anybody. It's not like it's particularly hard to do so with her acute hearing and smell, but, strangely enough, there's something familiar that she can't quite place about one of the scents she's picked up tonight, and given the hour and just how deep she is in the forest right now, curiosity and concern have pushed her to attempt to investigate.

From a distance for now, sure, but that might almost make it worse when Clara realizes there is something very large now slowly stalking her through the woods, stealthy enough that anyone without her enhanced senses wouldn't notice it was there at all.]

[ohshutup]

[She's just about to turn around when she hears it - the press of a foot against early autumn leaves, the low rumble of an exhale.

Something is behind her.]

H-Hello?

[Clara's voice comes out very small, and she hates the sound of it. She's a space traveler, for goodness' sake. She's been in much more frightening situations than this. But there's something about the banality of it, of being followed through woods by an unseen animal, that chills her bones more than anything she's faced on a distant planet.]

for jesse.

[ohshutup]

[Honestly, Clara had the escape worked out perfectly. Trip the silent alarm, dive out the window, disappear into smoke before anyone could see her. Police would be at the scene in two minutes, and the gun runners would have no warning to hide their stock.

Of course, this all counted on her foot not catching on the window sill, and - of course - that is precisely what happens. The toe of her boot snags, and she flips right into the brick wall, striking her head before plummeting the rest of the way down.

It's only a twelve foot fall, but it's a twelve foot fall right onto a passerby, and she makes it with absolute precision.]

[heisenbitch]

[ Stopping short on the pavement for a moment, Jesse cups his hand around his lighter, trying to shield the damn thing from the wind so he can light his smoke. He clicks it, and he clicks it, and sparks flare up from the lighter, but the asshole won't light. He gives up on that a second to give his lighter an irritated shake, and he mutters, "C'mon, yo," under his breath while cupping his hand around the cigarette to attempt lighting it again. The flame jumps alight, to Jesse's relief, and he hurriedly ignites the tip with a grateful drag. Hearing some kind of commotion above him, he tilts his head up as he's exhaling—

And he doesn't even get a chance to widen his eyes in alarm, or even let out a shout of surprise. Next thing he knows, he's crumpling to the ground in a flattened heap under someone slamming down onto him. ]

[ohshutup]

Shit.

[Clara groans out the curse, rolling off of Jesse as quickly as she can under the circumstances. Her arm aches where she landed on it, and Jesse's cigarette has left a small burn in her leather jacket, but she's otherwise undamaged.

As for her poor victim, however... ]

Are you alright? [She scrambles, turning around on her hands and knees to see him.]

SOME PARK AT NIGHT as we discussed

[h2no]

[batman might've told archie to quit letting crobat out and around at night in the city, but archie doesn't really give a fuck about what batman says. batman is a stupid idiot who fursuits in public.

this is why crobat is currently sitting perched on someone's balcony, surveying the park. it's quiet for a moment, then spots a fox stalking across the grass.

see, crobat is a bit of drama queen. it spreads its wings, shrieks, then takes off heavily (leaving a bit of a dent in the rail because of its size, honestly) and descends on the poor fox, using Supersonic to confuse it and then gulp it down inside two seconds.

it stops on the ground, leaning forward on its little spindly hands at the top of each wing, ears pricked as it looks around.

ugh. no-one was there to see it look cool. archie hasn't caught up yet, so it just rocks back onto its ass and pouts in the dark.]

[ohshutup]

[Crobat isn't entirely correct on that count. One person absolutely saw it gulp down that entire fox, and she's currently staring at it with something between awe and horror.]

... What the hell ...

[She slides her (suspiciously buzzing) sunglasses onto her forehead, and takes a step towards it.]

[h2no]

[it whips around at the noise then... chitters happily, flapping its bigger wings. it was so cool, clara, wasn't it cool?!]

Crobat! Bat!

[say it was cool. say it.]