003 || [action]

[bonescientist]

[ Ms. Tempe Brennan loves to roam the streets of the City after it begins to get dark and the flickering lights illuminate everything softly. The wealthy and the poor, the wicked and the goody two-shoes alike come out to play, and something especially mysterious is in the air. However, tonight she's not as happy as she usually would be. She's

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one nerve remaining, waiting on one look

[bonescientist]

Tempe's frazzled nerves are slowly beginning to calm, her mental equilibrium returning sluggishly. She's still angry at getting fired: the money was already tight to begin with, but now she's truly going to have to tighten the proverbial belt. A curse no well-brought up lady should know escapes her heavily rouged lips at the thought. It's a good thing she's not a well-brought up, and certainly not a lady. The cobblestones under her heeled feet are uncomfortable and she sways a few times precariously, the eye patch she insisted on wearing today further limiting her orientation. As if that wouldn't be enough, Brennan only has time to catch a sudden of glimpse of soft blonde with her seeing eye before something - someone - slams into her. Startled, Brennan exclaims in surprise, struggling to regain her balance even as the girl hurries to speak, "I am so sorry. Are you alright?"

Inhaling as she steadies, Brennan swipes her gloved hands down her flanks as if brushing herself off, frowning down at the smaller girl from her five feet-eleven vantage point. Well, what have we here? This young lady, for that she undoubtedly is, seems to be lost good and proper. Brennan's musings are cut off by the girl's apologies, and she finally jogs her mind enough to form a sentence.

"Don't concern yourself over that," Brennan says, perhaps a bit snappishly. Realizing she's sounding rude, she clears her throat and softens her tone, accompanying the next words with a small smirk. "I'm used to being slammed into, cherie. Really, it's all right."

Brennan is curious, very much so. Who the heck is this girl, and what is she doing in this part of town?

one nerve remaining, waiting on one look

[backbefore]

It occurs to Claire that something about the taller woman is familiar, almost as if she's seen her in passing or reflected through panes of glass while rushing by. Anymore, every face is familiar, an endless blur of cosmetics and tight hair and spine-achingly good postures, tinted through the lenses of Claire's boredom and overall detachment from the scene she's constantly surrounded with. Somewhere after she turned eighteen, parties and dresses and trips to the French countryside stopped being fascinating and the world right under her nose checkmated in to take that place. Her mother called it the lure of the unobtainable, and her father said it was because she was biologically inclined to disobeying him when she thought she could get away with it. Claire had always been of the opinion that she just had a good grasp on common sense.

"Still...." As it is, Claire only raises her eyebrows and does her best to keep the immediate annoyance at Brennan's comment off of her face, along with the comment Claire personally wants to make about Brennan and being slammed into. The previous idea that Claire could at all be moving through the streets and alleys as quickly as she was due to uneasiness seems a little laughable now, in the face of the woman that she's just run into, in the face of her reaction and the distinct lack of apprehension that Claire feels now that she's being presented with it all. Maybe she should continue on, put her head back down, look for the first well-to-do sort of person that she can find. It would be what her father wanted, but Claire thinks his opinions on biology might actually be true, so she crosses her arms over her torso, dropping the fabric in her hand, and gives Brennan a skeptical look. "Have we... met before? You look really, really familiar."

Angela is the only person that would have been capable of introducing them, and so the notion that Claire has run into this woman before is ten times less unlikely as it was whenever she literally ran right into her.

one nerve remaining, waiting on one look

[bonescientist]

Brennan watches the subtle emotion flicker on the girl's fine features, hoping she didn't offend her by being so brash and impudent. But does it really matter? The girl probably already thinks of her as a paid woman, anyway. She narrows her eyes and studies the girl. Brennan can honestly say she doesn't recall ever meeting this specific person, although she could be one of Angela's acquaintances, or perhaps Chase's. There is something strangely familiar about her. Maybe they have been introduced before, and Brennan was just too intoxicated to remember. It has happened before. And if she is one of Ange's friends, then it may make sense as to why she's running around in the slums like a chicken with its head cut off. But there's something elusive about this girl, something Brennan cannot pinpoint. She almost seems like she's running from something. But hell, wasn't everybody running from something?

"I don't think so," Brennan finally says slowly, tilting her head slightly in contemplation. The teardrop shaped earrings spin gently at the movement, tugging at her lobes. The girl looks about ready for a serious confrontation, arms crossed and fire in her eyes. She has clearly already labeled Brennan as an impostor, a whore with a dishonest mind.

A short fuse on this one, Brennan thinks to herself and smiles a slow smile, like that of a feline with a bowl of cream.

"Yet, I do have this strange impression that I've seen you somewhere. You a friend of Angela's? Or Bob Chase's, maybe?"

Brennan knows Chase would probably kill her if he caught her calling him Bob in public. Tough luck.