surf's up :] {clara!}

[Oswin Oswald]

Oh, it was just like the Doctor to leave her alone in a situation like this.

Okay, to be fair, Oswin had wandered off on her own, and on a volcanic planet no less, so the fact that she'd gotten into trouble was really her own fault, but would it really kill him to carry a communicator like hers? His pockets were like the TARDIS, after all. Bigger on the inside. Or, smaller on the outside, as she liked to say, just to keep him on his toes. Couldn't just go around spouting what all the other companions had said, could she? No, Oswin Oswald was far too good to conform, even if his other companions had been good too. But, Oswin was different. And she'd made that known to the Doctor from the moment she stepped on board his TARDIS.

Not different enough to not wander off, though, apparently.

Which was how she'd ended up fleeing from an army of Cybermen that apparently had been lying dormant in the heart of the largest volcano on the face of the planet, made possible by the network of caverns she was currently navigating. Or well. Not so much navigating than running blindly and hoping she could find an exit as quickly as possible. Same difference? Either way, Oswin needed a way out and fast. At the very least, the Cybermen weren't quick enough to catch her, not when she knew everything there was to know about running for her life. Being fast was a bit of a requirement when it came to what she did on a daily basis. But, on the upside, she never did have to look into doing cardio workout plans.

But, yes. Cybermen. Slow as they might be, she could heard them right behind her, their mechanical footsteps echoing off the stone walls of the tunnels. Oswin hated tunnels. Terrible things for people who weren't found of tight spaces. But, thankfully, these ones were wide enough for her to not get too uncomfortable. Or well. As comfortable as outrunning a load of Cybermen could be. Really, the only trouble was that it was hot. Stifling, even. But, then again, they were all in the belly of a dormant volcano. High temperatures were to be expected. Didn't mean Oswin had to like it. After all, that sort of thing generally made running hard. Bit of a shame she didn't really have much time to get her jacket off. Might have made things easier.

Well, that and actually having her pathway continue.

Oswin skidded to a halt as the tunnel suddenly dropped off. Lucky that she did too, because right there, underneath her, was a slow-flowing river of lava. Okay. So. Trapped over a river that was way too far to jump across with a load of Cybermen getting closer and closer every minute. She was definitely in trouble. Luckily, "in trouble" was exactly where Oswin Oswald thrived. Because she knew something about this volcano that the Cybermen, somehow, didn't. Must've escaped their radar or something. Now, if she could just work a bit of technologically-based magic...

The communicator around Oswin's wrist was by no means a supercomputer, or even a regular computer, but with materials found on the TARDIS, she'd managed to give it a bit of an upgrade. They'd been standard issue for everyone on the Alaska, and Oswin couldn't really find it in her to part with hers. So, instead, she'd turned it into a universal remote for anything it could possibly tap into. Including enormous, mechanical dragons that just happened to be lying in wait underneath the lava instead certain volcano for centuries. They made fantastic guardians, robot dragons. Little known fact. And how fortunate that this happened to be one of those volcanoes.

Adjusting the frequencies on her communicator, Oswin let out a little 'ha!' of triumph as it latched onto something directly below here. And just in time too, she was pretty sure she could hear the Cybermen right behind her. Luckily, a large, mechanical, vaguely reptilian head chose that precise moment to rear up from the molten lava below, quickly followed by a neck, wings and a body. Brilliant. She had transportation.

Now, to just get on it's back...

[Clara Oswin]

As far as Clara knew, most successful adventures didn't begin with robots and volcanoes. But, maybe she'd just chosen the wrong planet - though she could have sworn that this wasn't the planet she wanted to go to. Thinking back to it, she did read somewhere that the fact that TARDISes were sentient often came up when traveling, especially in certain earlier models. Little had Clara known that her TARDIS would be the sort that brings her to volcanic, robot-infested planets where she was more likely to get shoved into lava than she was to have an adventure.

It was a little weird, being cornered by robots the minute after she stepped out of her TARDIS. She pointed her sonic blaster at the robots, but they just kept approaching. She fired a blue blast of sonic energy at one of the robots, disintegrating it. She aimed at another one, but there were far too many to keep them at bay with the blast. Perhaps it really had been a bad idea to run away from the academy, steal a TARDIS and leave Gallifrey for good. Or, that thought went through her head before the robots were engulfed in flame. Clara looked up in surprise, only to find that the source of the flames was a massive, robotic dragon. This was a weird first adventure. For a moment, Clara considered simply getting back into her TARDIS and leaving, but... there had to be some reason why the TARDIS had brought her here.

With the robots gone, Clara was left staring at the massive dragon. It looked a little old, as if it hadn't been used in a long time. Suddenly, an idea popped into her head. Clara reached into her pocket and pulled out the sonic pen she'd stolen before running off. She pointed it at the dragon and pressed a small button on the side. The tip began to glow, followed by a whirring noise that seemed to catch the dragon's attention. The dragon, responding to the sonic's commands, flew down and landed in front of Clara. Without a second thought, Clara climbed up onto the dragon's back and flew off. Now, this was what she wanted from an adventure! Riding a mechanical dragon around a volcanic planet may not have been exactly what she was looking for, but it was probably better than what she wanted anyway.

Looking down, Clara saw another dragon burst out of the lava and soar up to an opening in one of the mountains. Clara's dragon, without the command of the sonic pen, soared down to follow the other dragon. Must've been some kind of override or something. The two dragons met in front of the opening and... standing in front of the other dragon was sort of a mirror image of Clara.

This was going to be interesting, wasn't it?

[Oswin Oswald]

The footsteps of the Cybermen were still getting closer and, looking over her shoulder, Oswin could see their shadows flickering on the wall opposite her. Okay. Time to make an escape. Hitting a button on her communicator, Oswin grinned triumphantly as the dragon rising from the lava below suddenly unfurled its wings, taking to the air and soaring up to the ledge where she was standing. Oh, brilliant. She could only imagine the look on the Doctor's face when she turned up wherever he was on the back of one of the mechanical guardians of the volcano. Actually. He'd probably want to hitch a ride with her, knowing him. She'd probably come across him in some kind of trouble. It was sort of a thing for them.

Just as Oswin climbed onboard her dragon, another metallic roar sounded from below and with a flurry of robotic wings, another dragon flew up to face hers. The dragon was just about the same as hers, maybe just a little bit bigger, but that really wasn't the biggest concern that Oswin had. That was reserved for the girl riding the other dragon, and the fact that she was a perfect mirror image of Oswin herself. Or, well. Sort of. The face was the same, but as opposed to the red dress and faded blue jacket Oswin had on, this girl was wearing...something else. Looked like it came off another planet, really, though she wasn't really in any position to identify it.

So, faced with this impossibility, this...conundrum that would have made others pause and perhaps question their very existence, what did the time-traveling, world-saving, total screaming computer genius Oswin Oswald do?

"Oi, gorgeous!" She flashed the other girl a grin, turning her dragon to the side. "Better hope your name's not Oswin, or we're in for a bit more trouble than I'd like!" With just enough time to give her doppelganger a wink, Oswin kicked down on a control panel, causing her dragon to surge downwards, swooping over the side of the volcano and following the huge river of lava that looked like it led...somewhere important. At the moment, she was a bit more concerned with getting herself and possibly the other girl away from the Cybermen and finding the Doctor, wherever he was. Probably off running away from them like she'd been.

Okay, so maybe the fact that the girl looked exactly like her was kind of freaky too, but come on, there were weirder things out there. Oswin has seen and experienced them first-hand. Sure, she'd like to find out why and who exactly the other girl was. Maybe it was herself from an alternate reality that had somehow managed to cross over into this one. Oswin wouldn't really blame another version of herself for getting too much pent-up wanderlust to want to explore whole other realities when the universe itself got boring. Not that she really expected this reality to get boring anytime soon, with the Doctor around, but maybe the other her came from one where the universe was smaller. Poor girl.

Laughing as her dragon soared over the river of lava, Oswin glanced over her shoulder, looking to see if she was being followed. Of course, she didn't expect the Cybermen to be after her...yet. But the other girl had to be going with her, right? Really, if she was Oswin, there wasn't any way that she was about to let a mystery go unsolved. And this was definitely an interesting one.