paradisalogs | (no subject)

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jennifer keller

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Who: Jennifer Keller and you!
What: While out walking her dog, Jennifer is suddenly struck with a terrible temporary loss- she is now a Wraith, and has to try and sneak back to the castle before she spooks anybody. OOC information may be found here.
When: July 25th, evening
Where: The castle grounds or anywhere else in the castle (please specify)
Rating: PG

It had been such a boring day, but there was still a lot on Jennifer's mind.

Tess was gone, having been whisked back to her home world, and Jennifer was filled with conflicting emotions about her departure. She'd first felt relief, then felt guilty about said relief because she knew what Tess' fate was back home, then reminded herself that there was nothing she, Jennifer, could do about it either way, then felt like a weight had been lifted off her shoulders.

At least there would be no more looking over her shoulder, no more dreading the other woman's visits to the clinic, no more mental teardowns that left Jennifer practically talking in circles to herself. Still... part of her knew she would miss Tess, just a little. Miss the constant challenges and the fire under her ass to improve herself.

And meanwhile, life went on, and tasks like walking Blue needed doing. Jennifer actually felt at peace, a warm breeze in her face as she and Blue jogged rather far from the castle, the sheepdog easily keeping up with her pace. However, when Jennifer stopped to catch her breath, she was suddenly struck with a huge wave of nausea, such that it almost made her throw up; she stopped, leaning against a tree, squeezing her eyes shut even as her doctor's brain wondered what had suddenly brought this on, if she were dehydrated, or...

Then Jennifer looked down at her palm. Her skin was a pale, sickly green, and her hand...

"No..." she whispered, dread creeping into her, and she felt her face... the familiar indents... her sharp teeth... "Oh, God... please, no..."

She had turned into a Wraith. Of all the things the castle could have done to her, this was one of the worst. Blue looked up at her, confused, and then a growl bubbled in his throat.

"Blue, it's me!" she cried out, trying to sooth him, but he shied away from her touch, tugging on his lead. "Blue..." The dog stopped pulling away, but he didn't seem to want to come any closer. "C'mon," she whispered, fighting down sobs. "Come on... let's go... back to the castle..."

The first thing she was going to do was lock herself in her room. She didn't know what was going to happen after that, but she was a danger to the castle residents for as long as this lasted... because who knew if she would be able to control her instinctual desire to feed? And she would rather die before eating one of her fellow residents.

It took a lot of coaxing, but she was eventually able to persuade Blue to walk with her. Keeping her sneaking lessons in mind, Jennfier tried to be as discreet as possible, as throwing a loud panic would just attract unwanted attention. She had a feeling it wouldn't work, but she had to try.

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As usual for this time of day, Conan was out on his skateboard looking for something to distract himself from his ever increasing boredom. When he sees someone obviously attempting to avoid notice, what else could he do but follow after her?

Blue's ears pricked up when he caught Conan's familiar scent; he turned toward the smell and began tugging on his lead again, whining. Jennifer froze in place, unsure of whether to turn around or just ignore it keep going.

Of course she had to run into him of all people right now...

Conan rapidly catches up to the two of them and hops off his skateboard. He peers up at Jennifer, trying to figure out why she looked so familiar.

Jennifer quickly turned away from Conan, covering her face with one hand.

"Conan... no offense, but you might not want to hang around me," she said quietly. "I'm in the middle of a loss."

"So it is you."

He moves closer.

"Why? What happened? It doesn't look like a normal loss."

Jennifer sucked in a breath. She figured it was no use lying to Conan; he would probably persist until he had an answer, anyway.

"I've turned into a Wraith," she said in a strained voice. "A creature from my homeworld. A very, very dangerous one."

"Why is that?"

Conan was determined to get the answers he needed to be able to do something to help.

Jennifer finally turned around and faced him, resisting a sudden urge to bare her teeth at him. She resisted the urge for now, but she really, really hoped to scare him off without getting into details.

"Look at me. I'm not exactly cuddly!"

Edited 2014-07-30 00:10 (UTC)

"That doesn't explain why you think its dangerous."

"I'm a predator," Jennfier said simply. "Of humans. That explain it to you well enough?"

Several pieces of information suddenly line up in Conan's mind. Specifically, an argument he had once had in Paradisa. Come to think of it, that man had had a very similar appearance.

"By any chance do you know of someone named Todd the Wraith?"

"... Yeah," Jennifer said, fighting down the urge to just ditch his questions and run. "He and I are from the same world, actually. He was in Paradisa for a while when I first arrived."

Edited 2014-08-07 18:44 (UTC)

"I met him."

They'd had an argument about ethics. No surprise there.

"What do you need to get it under control?"

"We were allies back home," Jennifer said. "I wouldn't really call him nice, but he was amicable enough."

She began walking away from him.

"Aside from actually draining a person, there's nothing I can do. Normal food doesn't nourish a Wraith."

"Then what do you intend to do?"

He follows her.

"Hide in my room til it passes. What else can I do about it?"

Because she wasn't entirely sure she'd be able to stop herself from feeding.

"I don't have enough information enough to say. What can we expect from this?"

"Depending on how long it lasts, I could get very hungry and very dangeous," Jennifer replied, wondering if Conan was comprehending the whole dangerous predator part.

"Which is why some planning is needed."

"What am I supposed to plan for?" Jennifer demanded. "Write on the journal and ask for volunteers? Oh, hey, I need people to eat, I might accidentally kill you or at the very least take a few years off your lifespan, anybody game?"

It isn't good practise for the Doctor to be left alone. He tires of most things easily, needs to be kept occupied. When he isn't, strange and reckless things tend to happen. Such as sleeping in the lobby to experiment with seeing if the castle can interfere with his dreams, waking the entire castle up just after midnight because he can, and getting it into his head this afternoon that the clinic needed to be reorganised and have its efficiency improved by 74.0556 percent.

Which finds him looking for Jennifer, as he is pretty sure she would have a set of keys to the medicine cases and cold storage. Making his way to her room and hoping she is there, he has knocked once already and is still standing in the hall.

"Jennifer? It's me. Do you have a minute?"

Jennifer heard the knock on her door and almost groaned aloud with frustration at the Doctor's voice, but she kept quiet. Maybe if she pretended she wasn't there...

However, the knock woke Blue up from his nap on the floor, and the sheepdog went over to the door, cocking his head quizzically, as if to ask, Aren't you going to let him in? Blue, at least, seemed to have accepted for now that she was still Jennifer, which was a tiny bit of relief, but that didn't mean others wouldn't freak out at her appearance.

"Shhh," Jennifer whispered, holding a finger to her lips- but Blue liked the Doctor, and scratched at the door in reply, whining, wanting her to open it for him.

Waiting a moment longer, he decided that she must not be at her room after all. Thinking a moment of where she might be at this time of day, he was about to step away from the door and had even got as far as to turn around when he heard the scratching and whining at the other side.

He didn't think it was normal for the dog to be left alone. He recalled easily that Jennifer would have Blue with her as often as she could, going so far as to have him at the clinic with her when she ran the one in town. Turning back, he rapped on the door again.

"Jennifer? Everything all right? I can hear Blue in there."

Jennifer sighed, getting up and going to the door, reaching down to scratch Blue's ears before going over to it and raising her voice.

"I'm here, Doctor. I didn't mean to be rude, it's just... I'm..." She trailed off, wondering how to phrase things in a way that wouldn't worry him, before realizing there was probably no way she couldn't make him worry. "I'm in the middle of a loss right now."

Waiting again for a response at first, he is getting worried. Hand on the door handle and ready to put aside manners and decorum to go in and check that she is all right, he sighs with relief when hearing her voice. The tones and the halts though still keep a trickle of his concern going.

"No, no, it's all right. What kind of a... What's the matter?" He looks up and down the door as if that will give him a clue. Obviously not.

"It's quite awkward talking through the panels, you know. I've been doing a lot of this lately and I'd like to break the habit."

"S... sorry..." She looked down at Blue, who scratched at the door again, and finally opened it a crack. The eye peering out was green and with a pupil not unlike a cat's, and the Doctor could probably see that her skin was a sickly light green-gray color. "I'm not myself. Far, far, far from myself."

At the scratch behind the door and muttered apology, he removes his hand from the handle just as the door does open up a little. He's looking at the bottom of the door at first, quite natural when there's nothing to be looking at, so when the gap opens up, up comes his gaze to her face as well.

His eyes widen at what he sees and is afforded by the gap given. The eye is definitely wrong and not what he was expecting, but her skin most of all has a pallor that makes him think she is deathly ill.

"Jennifer?" If not for her voice he would hardly believe it was her. His hand flat on the door by reflex, he starts to gently try and push it open a little more. "That looks like you need to be in the clinic more than it looks like a loss." Worried? Heck yes.

"I'm fine! I'm fine," Jennifer said hastily, placing both hands against the door, suddenly very aware of the Doctor's heartbeats, the vitality she could feel coming from him-

Oh, GOD. Why am I thinking that? Well, the answer was simple- she was a predator, after all. And to the Wraith, humans were food.

"The clinic is the last place I need to be. I'm- I turned into... I turned into a creature from my world. Called a Wraith. I feel perfectly fine, believe me, I just... look weird."

He has a lot of energy and a lot of life force; enough for a further eight regenerations in him yet. No doubt enough for some creatures to see him as a tasty feed and to want to gorge upon. He's had the threat of his life force being drained before and while there are some beings that can do that, the Doctor isn't human.

That doesn't mean that his emotional responses are so alien, because he is obviously concerned over Jennifer for how hastily she shouts and stops the door opening further. He takes his hand down off the door and makes a show of doing so.

"Strange is par for the course here and I've seen plenty before that. You should see the Zarbi. Giant ants, basically. I don't mind how you look," and of course he realises that she might mind and he is rambling along to try and be calming. "I'm sorry, I-- I've not heard of Wraith and you don't appear happy to be one?"

All of that vitality would have made the Doctor a tasty meal, indeed- but Jennifer was sure she'd rather starve to death than allow herself to feed on another human being. She couldn't override biology, but she could choose her responses.

"No," she whispered, feeling like she was about to cry. "Wraith feed on people, Doctor." She held up her right hand. Her middle finger was a little elongated and had a sharp spike on the end. "They drain peoples' energy. I don't want anybody to be around me while I'm like this."

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