2012-3-6 - A Dream of Flight (Open)

[superman]

( Note: Please PM me first before you reply so we can set some things up. )

Little Petey Lambert had decided that he'd had enough of his parents. For too long, they had pushed him around, making him eat those nasty green vegetables and denying him his right to play his flight simulator games. From now on, the seven-year-old was going to camp out outside of the apartment and learn to fly on his own.

Oh, how he loved to fly! Even now, as Petey jumped around on the fire escape of his apartment building, he had his beloved model airplane in hand. The toy was flung back and forth while the child let out a variety of engine noises from between his lips, simulating the real motions of the propeller. But then, imagine Petey's severe emotion when the airplane quite literally went flying out of his hand, escaping from his grasp. Out of sudden desperation, the boy reached over the railing to try and grab his beloved toy, his eyeglasses hanging off of his face as he reached in vain. But while he had been concerned with his toy, he had no concern for his life, which would cost dear Petey when he lost his grasp and went tumbling over the edge.

Down he went, one story, two story, thr--no, not three. In between the first and second floors, Petey found himself staring up into the night sky, but no longer falling. But how? Was he suddenly flying? Did he finally learn to fly?! Chubby cheeks pulled his lips into a grin, but then he looked to his left, finding that instead of a wall, there was a bright red "S" in its place.

"Take a trip, kiddo?" Petey's eyes trailed upward in order to see the face that the "S" belonged to, finding a pair of piercing blue eyes and a black spitcurl. Immediately, the child looked to his other side, finding that while he was in the man's arms, they were still hovering in the air. Okay, so maybe he couldn't fly - but this guy could!

Clark gently flew upward, passing the remaining three stories until he was drifting directly next to Petey's fire escape. There, with the boy held by his armpits, he dropped Petey off outside of the window. From within his red overcoat, the Last Son of Krypton produced Petey's cherished airplane, but to the boy's disappointment, the left wing had broken off in its fall. But before tears could well up in his bright green eyes, the mysterious man who saved him stared intently at his toy, only for Petey to find that the wing was melting itself back onto the plane that it had previously been attached to. With the toy as good as new once more, it was handed back to the boy, who had an even wider and toothier grin than before.

"Don't hang around outside anymore without your parents, okay?" The awestruck boy just nodded quickly, watching as his savior began to hover upward with a wave.

Five minutes later, Clark landed in an alleyway, and a couple of moments later, was back in his civilian garb, emerging into the street while putting his eyeglasses back on over his features. Of course, the Kryptonian was completely unaware that somebody had been watching...

[River Song]

Wel.

Well.

In the shadow of a taller building, River leaned against its shorter brownstone cousin with an air of casual indifference. She was, if anything, far from indifferent; in fact, her curiosity was decidedly piqued. This little prize was more interesting than any gathering of twenty-first century socialites. And, alright, maybe she’s getting a bit wibbly, but it wasn’t every day you met a living legend. Sometimes not even every second day.

Blessing the good sense and current fashion trends that had prompted her to wear a dark cocktail gown, the woman slunk away from the wall, moving like a cat on the scent of something tasty. She rather doubted it would matter much if she was being actively looked for, but part of being clever was not being stupid, after all. And conspicuously bright colored clothes were stupidly ill suited for hiding in shadows. So was black, for that matter. The deep pewter of her dress, on the other hand? That was just lovely.

Now if only she could say the same about her shoes-pretty little things that looked like the bastard offspring of a horse’s harness and a dominatrix’s dream. Perfect for accentuating and drawing the eye just so, and entirely wrong for any sort of fun.

And this looked fun. Might even get her one up on the Doctor, and that was better than flirting her way through another round of drinks and expensive nibbles, looking for that one bit of information that might help her find a certain very missing, very rare Golkonda Green Sun Diamond, looted from the solar temple on Golkon III. And now quite probably on Earth.

And it was always Earth, wasn't it? But that was a problem for a later day. Right now, she had Other Things to worry about now. Like catching up without being noticed. Or, at least, not being caught.

Didn't have a clue what she'd do afterwords, but, then, plans weren't her sort of thing-they never survived the first battle. Her thing? That was answering questions. That was the important bit, the when and the why and the how.

[superman]

To say that Clark was still getting used to New York was an understatement. For 18 years, he had lived in a hidden nook of Americana, sheltered and protected from the world at large. Sure, in the monotony of small town life, he had bared witness to the likes of meth labs and bar brawls, but nothing on a severe scale. In the last five years, he saw genocide, starvation, and meaningless war across the globe.

New York was something of a middle ground. It ran the gamut from drugs and petty crooks to corporate greed and weapon sales. But the reason that he had chosen to settle down and attend university in New York was because of its status as one of the world's most prominent cities. He could finally figure out his last step here while receiving a fine education at New York University.

It was there that he was now headed, appearing to be like any other bespectacled university student with a typical messenger bag slung over his shoulders. Unfortunately, Clark would have to stop just a block away from campus, where he heard some suspicious movements at Famous Ray's Pizza, a popular campus restaurant. The super-sensitive ears of the Kryptonian picked up the faintest of calls from within the restaurant. At this time of night, the restaurant was closed, leaving it dark and empty. A quick scan with his x-ray vision, however, revealed the source of the groan: a prone skeleton, barely moving in the freezer.

Sneaking back to the rear entry, Clark made sure to look around before he used his mere index finger to push into the lock, his strength causing it to fly out through the other side of the door. With the lock now removed, it was quite easy for him to just turn the handle and walk in, preventing any excessive use of force.

The locked freezer that he found, however, would be more difficult.

Glancing at his messenger bag, which held his makeshift uniform, the soon-to-be hero briefly considered throwing it on before deciding to bite the bullet and just open the freezer. After all, from the sound of the man within, time was a factor. Tossing the bag onto the floor, Clark directed his attention to the large freezer door. One hand grabbed the handle while the other dug firmly into the direct center of the metal, clenching the steel like tin foil in his grip. The door was easily removed from his hinges and then lightly dropped to the floor, revealing...

A skeleton. Literally, a mere skeleton. It wasn't just his x-ray vision's typical way of seeing the world. Far more frightening was the bubbling green liquid underneath the skeleton, which ran a trail past various frozen doughs and toppings to the back to the freezer, where a couple of barrels resided. When Clark brought his gaze back to the skeleton, it moved one final time before finally falling limp, its joints separating its bones into individual messes.

It was the same thing that he had seen at the soup kitchen. Removing his glasses and rubbing his face, he took a moment just to think. What the hell was happening in the Big Apple?

[River Song]

For someone so cheerfully flamboyant, River was surprisingly adept at blending in. She had, after all, learned from the best.

And it was the City that Never Sleeps. One of her favorites, New York. Not new new anything, yet, the city was still earthy and dirty and beautiful and so very, very human-a microcosm of all the best and worst. And no one took particular notice of a pretty woman in a party dress, even in the less than lovely barrios and ghettos.

Or maybe it was the .38 Special strapped under her skirt.

Whatever worked, really. She was easy like that.

River kept her quarry just in sight, the ubiquitous student sort who wouldn’t have looked out of place in SUNY or Berkley.

In point of fact, she was pretty sure they were on a campus, now. No idea which, but there was an air, a feeling of the unreal on every campus, every where, every when. Like they were in an airy sort of bubble, cut off from the real world. It wasn’t entirely unlike being in the TARDIS, now that she thought on it.

But she was drawing more notice now. More long looks. She was too old to be an undergrad, and dressed to well for a grad student, even here. She had to hang back and hope she didn’t lose him, now, because the hairs on the back of her neck were standing at attention; a lovely fission like electricity that played across her skin whenever adventure was in the offing.

He vanished in the shadows of a building, and she thought she’d lost him. But no, the door was still ever so lightly ajar, the lock neatly demolished. Naughty, naughty, leaving a mess behind, but at least it was convenient.

A restaurant? A pizza place? Oh, she hoped it wasn’t those tomato-y-things from Moussaka Prime again. It’d taken her weeks to get that mess out of her hair.

River just missed seeing the break in at the back door, but not the freezer. Or the screaming horror within. In an instant, she was pure professional. An impressed professional, but professional none the less.

Her scanner would give better readings, but first glance showed an in situ human, or humanoid, probably male. Young adult, at first guess, and defleshed-but not butchered-by unknown means, and wasn’t that interesting? Yes, yes, unfortunate, but interesting.

She flicked the little record button to 'on' and set it to scanning as she sauntered closer. She was sure to be noticed now, and it may as well be in the way she chose. The little computer was a bit anachronistic for the time, but not so terribly different from an iPhone or iPad in appearance, and more often than not, she didn't terribly care. Besides, it fit nicely in her clutch.

“Humanoid male victim, seventeen to thirty. Defleshed and dis-articulated. Unknown liquid." She would have to remember to get a sample. Just as soon as the got the inevitable out of the way.

"Hello, Blue-Eyes." Because she was her mother's daughter in many key ways, and that tone and that look opened some doors just as fast and easily as a jolt from a sonic device.