im tired, im wasted, i lahve hyou darling // lena

[Ridley Duchannes]

"I did not sign up for this," Ridley muttered under her breath for what was probably the umpteenth time. Since when were they the friggin' ghostbusters? Saving the world from aliens was one thing, but saving a town from a murderous ghost? That just felt kind of...trivial. Not to mention creepy.

Or maybe she was just sulking because said town happened to be Gatlin.

Seriously. Who the hell sicced a Japanese spirit of vengeance on a town full of obnoxious, Bible-thumpin' god warriors? Ridley had jokingly put her money on Ethan's Great Aunts - the old biddies were crazy enough to try and pull something like this to 'teach their neighbors a lesson' - but somehow, in all seriousness, she doubted that they were capable of something this dark. Because when they'd stumbled upon one of the local men, strung up from a tree and disemboweled, it'd gotten pretty clear pretty quickly that this wasn't someone's idea of a joke.

The man hadn't been alone when he died. He'd been out near the swamps with his girlfriend and his best friend - a little group of college drop-outs who had nothing better to do with their time than to sneak off and get drunk, apparently. What was weird, though, was that the girlfriend and the best friend had two entirely different accounts of what happened. The girl had apparently insisted that she hadn't seen anything except the victim being dragged off into the darkness. The guy, on the other hand, had described the supposed attacker in vivid detail: a pale, thin girl with long dark hair covering most of her face. Gatlin, being...Gatlin, had dismissed this story on the basis of the poor sap being drunk off his ass, and had officially labeled the death an 'animal attack'. Funny how they could be so overly superstitious about things, and yet when something supernatural actually happened right under their noses, they refused to see it. Typical Mortals.

Ridley hadn't been entirely thrilled when the TARDIS had landed them back in Gatlin, but she and the rest of the little crew the Doctor had assembled had quickly become convinced that there was something off going on. A bit of research had found them their culprit: a shōjō (a word which Ridley had initially mistaken for Clara sneezing). But apparently, these were spirits used to curse a person or place, and murder their intended targets. Right. And the list of people who might want to curse Gatlin was...kind of infinite, so right now their main concern was just stopping the damn thing. When they weren't off...disemboweling the masses, shōjō apparently liked to lurk in cool, dark, places...and, if possible, around alcohol. And if this thing was haunting Gatlin, well...what better place fit the bill than some of the wine cellars that connected to the Caster tunnels under the town?

The authentic katana needed to kill the spirit was, surprisingly, not a problem - a trip in the TARDIS back to feudal Japan had made one easy enough to grab. No, the problem was that the shōjō was invisible to Mortals and Casters alike...unless you happened to be completely and entirely drunk.

Wandering around a maze of tunnels, in the dark, looking for a deadly Japanese spirit - that was one thing. That sounded like something out of a generic horror movie. Doing so while drunk, on the other hand, just kind of sounded like suicide. But out of everyone on the team, Ridley and Lena knew the tunnels the best - and also had the best means of defending themselves - and were thus selected as the best ones for the job. Ridley had briefly amused herself with the idea of calling Delphine up right about now: 'hey mom, just checking in - i took lena down to the tunnels and we're down here getting drunk. oh, and there's a ghost down here trying to kill us.' Hah. That would probably be the last phone call Ridley'd ever make. But hey, no need to get Del involved anyway - after all, what could possibly go wrong?

"Hey - hey, Lena." Ridley stumbled just slightly, catching herself against the wall, and quickly downing the last of what was...her fifth beer, maybe? She'd lost track. And she was kinda feeling like a drunken whore. This was really, really stupid, and a little bit demeaning, but - kind of fun? That was heroics, for you. She glanced back, making sure her cousin was still nearby, and flashed a slight grin. "Feeling nice and wasted?"

[Lena Duchannes]

At this point in her life, Lena had sort of abandoned the very concept of normal and begun to embrace the opposite. After all, there wasn't much you could do to be normal when you were time-traveling around with an alien, a Siren trying not to be Dark and a governess plucked straight out of the Victorian Era. Oh, and when you happened to be one of the most power Casters in existence and prone to lighting things on fire by accident because your powers were still kind of uncontrollable. And when aforementioned traveling involved going to distant planets and pretty much saving the universe on a daily basis. So, yeah. Lena was normally pretty okay with weird and occasionally dangerous stuff.

Hanging out in the Caster Tunnels getting drunk off her ass with her cousin and then proceeded to go on a ghost hunt, of all things, was not among that weird and occasionally dangerous stuff Lena was okay with.

But, Clara and the Doctor had made a pretty convincing argument for Ridley and Lena being the two that would do this. Because, y'know, getting the two powerful Casters drunk was definitely the idea of the century. What could possibly go wrong, right? Well, that and Time Lords apparently couldn't get drunk off of Earth alcohol and they didn't really have the time to head into space or whatever to pick up something that could do the job. Clara had actually been the first to volunteer, but they'd all quickly found out that it was actually impossible to get her drunk after spending a good part of an hour trying to do so. Lena wasn't sure whether to be impressed or horrified. Weren't Victorians supposed to be...y'know, proper and stuff?

Well. Either way, she and Ridley had ended up being the ones to do go after this...shōjō thing, descending into the Tunnels with copious amounts of beer and proceeding to drink until they couldn't anymore. Lena had never really had too much experience with alcohol, apart from the occasional glass of wine or champagne and had definitely never been more than just a little buzzed. But, apparently you needed to be pretty drunk to even be able to see this thing (which was, she had to admit, kind of a good defense thing. Who was going to go after something attacking them when they could barely walk?). Not exactly how Lena wanted her first experience really drinking to go, but really, how often had something gone exactly how she wanted to go?

Because god forbid Lena Duchannes have a normal experience of anything.

"How should I know?" she muttered, mirroring Ridley in finishing the rest of her own beer (their last, thank god, Lena wasn't sure how much more she could take) and tossing the empty can aside. Fumbling for the flashlight in the bag she'd bought along, Lena switched it on, trying to shine it around but ending up just sort of flailing it in the general direction she wanted it to go. Oh, yeah. This was going to go great. How the hell was she supposed to stab a ghost with a katana if she couldn't even get a flashlight to work right?

Well, whatever. They'd handle it somehow. Either that or get disemboweled. Fun stuff. "So...So Rid." Wow, since when was talking so hard? How had she ever really concentrated on it before? "Scale of one to ten, how...dead d'you think we'd be if someone found us down here?"