Foolish Red-Haired Girl

For once, Claudia actually wasn't tinkering with something on the floor. Artie had her running searches for any pings on Ben Franklin's kite string -- she could have sworn that whole thing was a myth! -- so she was lounging on her bed while her handbuilt computer program trawled across the web for anything that screamed "two-hundred-year-old electrified twine".

Such was life as a Warehouse intern.

[ooc: expecting one, but also open.]

Claudia was in a very good mood today. Her classes this semester were, like, the definition of easy (movies and construction? Yes, please!), Artie actually gave her the weekend off on doing inventory at the Warehouse, and she'd even gotten to spend much of last night meeting new people, eating quality Italian food, and making out with the hot new blind guy on his roommate's bed.

For revenge's sake, of course. Claudia didn't just make out with guys on their roommates' beds all willy-nilly.

So when she got back from Art of Scrap, today, she decided it was time for an impromptu one woman dance party. She put on some Talking Heads -- thanks to Scully, she was totally rocking the new wave vibe this week -- and rocked out.

Well, until she turned her ankle, tripped over nothing, and fell headlong to the floor.

"Ow," she grumbled into the carpet. Something green and scaly darted out from under her bed and her eyes went wide. "Oh no. Oh no no no no --" She tried to roll away, but wasn't fast enough. The gremlin bit her hard on the left hand, and Claudia's "no"s tapered off until she was staring dreamily at the ceiling.

"I think I want . . . meatballs," she decided, then pushed herself up to wobble off to the common room in search of cooking implements.

[ooc: establishy, with a common room post to go up momentarily!]

Claudia came back from the causeway looking the very definition of downtrodden. She'd spent all day trying to book a trip to Geneva without having to be rerouted through places of which only Azerbaijan even sounded familiar with no success, and now Scully was stranded in Baltimore instead of back in the dorms where she damn well belonged.

She made it back to her room just in time to hear her phone beep. She pulled it out, found a number that more closely resembled an IP address than anything phone related, and frowned. She hit play and listened to the message.

When it was done, she stared at her phone. "WHAT THE HELL," she told it. "PHONES ARE NOT FOR TROLLING, DICKBAG."

[ooc: establishy but also open should anyone want to stop by.]

Claudia had barely made it to class yesterday, and once she'd seen they were doing a movie, had spent the whole time brainstorming in her notebook.

Why? Well, see, this weekend she'd gotten a really terrible voicemail. And it was the kind of thing she couldn't not follow up on.

Too bad she was running into dead-ends whatever she tried. Not that it was ever easy to hack into another dimension entirely to trace phone records.

Then she got the email from Portalocity.

"Technical difficulties, huh? Does that mean you broke my friend's dimension?"

What? It made as much sense as any other explanation.

[ooc: door is mostly closed, post is entirely open.]

Claudia, not really down with the whole getting up in the morning thing, forestalled the whole issue by lazily rolling over without opening her eyes.

Only to discover that, instead of her queen-sized bed from home, she'd been sleeping on the crappy, twin-sized bed in her old dorm room. And wind up on the floor.

Right. Reunion. At least she wasn't switching bodies with someone. That had been one of Pete's favorite stories to tell for ages.

Well, she supposed she could do worse than Fandom for her vacation from the Warehouse. She could be stuck in northern Nunavut, again.

[ooc: open, should anyone else possibly be up. I caaaaaan't sleeeeeeeeeep.]

Claudia had managed to lose her little stalker twice during the day -- but Stan was nothing if not persistent, and he managed to follow her all the way back to the dorms, where she proceeded to try to ignore him while he puttered about with her stuff, giving her tools a whir and basically pressing as many buttons as possible.

It was what he did.

"Geez, stop fidgeting," Claudia said finally. "Just . . . go online, or something."

It might be a long weekend.

[ooc: primarily for the kid, but the door and room are totally open.]

Claudia's side of the room had been even more taken over with random electronics than usual. She was about halfway through putting together an intelligent light for the new theater director, and kept having to reign herself in from trying to make it too complicated. It was hard enough getting everything lined up in a reasonably compact casing without trying to throw in an excess of pattern storage. Turned out, manipulating light was kind of hard.

She'd probably welcome an interruption at this point, before her brain exploded.

[ooc: door is closed, post is open.]

Claudia was lying on her bed, staring off into space, uncharacteristically idle. She didn't even have any gadgets lying about in pieces.

Any time she tried to focus on doing something, she got distracted thinking about Joshua. What he'd be doing if he was still around. Where they'd be living. What he'd think of Fandom and the classes she was taking and her friends.

She was usually pretty good about distracting herself from these sorts of thoughts -- she'd had five years of practice redirecting the nostalgia into something useful. But today she found herself just wanting to . . . daydream.

Joshua would love Fandom. She was sure of that. If only he could come see it.

[ooc: up for establishing purposes. Door is closed but knockable and the post is open for interaction.]

Zane had slept in. Allison was going to kill him. He rolled out of bed and groped around for a relatively clean t-shirt -- only to discover the one he'd grabbed wouldn't fit him in a million years.

Why did he have girl's clothes lying around? Purple wasn't exactly Jo's style. . . .

Neither was the rig on the desk. It was just about the style that might help clue him in on what the hell was going on here, and what had caused it.

He was betting Fargo. It usually tended to be Fargo. When it wasn't cloned chickens, anyway.

[ooc: open, though SP may happen as I must be off to work in an hour or so. Claudia Donovan has turned into Zane Donovan from Eureka]

Something was growling under Claudia's bed.

Which, you know, was new.

She peeked over the edge of the bed and spotted a bat-wing-eared shadow with glinty teeth and glowing eyes. She sat up sharply. No way was she putting her foot over the edge of the bed when there was a glinty-toothed, glowy-eyed thing under there.

After a few moments of deliberation, she grabbed a work lamp and her goggles off her nearby desk and leaned over the edge to get a better look. She got a good eyeful of green scales, long arms, and pointy claws as the lamp warmed up, then watched as its pupils shrank and it squinted as the lamp it full power. It let out a squeal and fled for darker corners.

Claudia, possessing at least a small amount of self-preservation, grabbed a heavy duty battery pack and a pair of pants, and rushed out of the room.

Marco could totally handle himself, right? Right.

[ooc: establishy, yo.]