Rose muttered under her breath as she shimmied her way into a deep blue dress that fell over her in drapes of silken fabric. She hadn't had time to take a proper look at what the main fashion was, but it seemed like it would fit in just about anywhere, which was exactly what she was going for. Low cut enough to draw some eyes, curve-hugging enough to keep them there, short enough to move freely but long enough to keep from flashing her knickers if she happened to bend over. She wished she had been able to find something similar with straps, but she was in a bit of a time crunch and she would just have to deal with the urge to yank the top of her dress up on a constant basis.
Rose slipped into a pair of ridiculously high heels the same shade as the dress, roughly pulled her hair back in a messy up-do, slapped on as much makeup as three minutes would allow and grabbed at a small silver clutch with a long chain that she had found next to a whole heap of other assorted bags in the TARDIS wardrobe. In the tiny clutch she managed to fit her wallet (with some spare psychic paper), some money coughed up by the TARDIS, her phone, a torch and a few other bits and pieces she scooped up in her mad dash around the TARDIS, all of which shouldn't have fit in anything nearly that small. She spared a moment to blow a kiss to the TARDIS in thanks before she trotted back out into the night, the TARDIS key she always kept on her bouncing against her neck from its place of honour as a pendant on a silver and blue choker. On any other night, she might had spared a few minutes worrying about whether the Doctor would like her outfit, whether he would give her that big goofy grin of his when he saw her. Tonight she just worried she wouldn't get the chance to slap him upside the head for running off on her.
Approaching the front of the club she paused, wondering whether it wouldn't just be better for her to wait near the TARDIS or try and sneak round the back. She didn't know if the Doctor was still in the club and she knew just how unlikely it was that he was going to hear his phone – if he had it on him – above all that racket. Straightening her shoulders, Rose figured she might as well try getting in anyway. So what if he had left already? She could pick up the trail; maybe find something that he had overlooked. She wasn't useless.
Walking up to the bouncer, Rose tried not to think too hard about her mates and the times they had all gone out dancing. She missed them sometimes, even felt bad for taking off on them, but she couldn't say she would do things differently. Maybe say goodbye more often, or give them a ring every now and then. The bouncer looked at her questioningly and Rose smiled, clearing her head. She stretched out her hand. "Rose Tyler." She had learned that introducing herself confidently could sometimes open doors without having to pull any other tricks.
"You with the guy in the pinstripes and duster?" The bouncer asked.
Like now. "Yep, that sounds like him."
The bouncer stared at her uneasily before gesturing to someone just beyond the open door. "Go on in." He said, as his friend pulled back some rope for her.
"Thanks." She beamed, adjusting the strap of her clutch and strutting as carefully as she could across the slightly uneven folds of carpet lolling out onto the sidewalk.
"Tell your friend that we're not in the habit of letting people just walk in on big event days." The bouncer said, frowning as someone started causing a fuss near the front of the line.
"I will." Rose promised as sincerely as she could. The Doctor just barging in places was the least of the topics they were going to discuss once she found him again.
Before Rose had started travelling through time and space, she might have thought she had stepped into another world as she crossed the threshold into the club. The air at once became oppressive, weighed down with heat, sound, sweat and the distinctive tang of artificial smoke from the fog machines scattered about the place. The pounding bass notes thrummed through her chest, making her feel off-kilter as she scanned the dim room splashed in reds and blues from the coloured spotlights hoisted out of sight. The thronging crowd in the middle of the room seemed to heave and pulse as if it were one gigantic creature instead of about a hundred individual humans and the intermittent strobing seemed to shatter time into a rolling series of snapshots.
Shaking off her immediate feeling of displacement Rose fought her way over to the bar, claiming the first spot available at the wave-like counter. She absently ordered a drink and went back to scanning the room, looking hard for anything that might be out of place. The music was slightly different than what she was used to listening to, but she didn't pay too much attention to it, focusing on people instead. With no idea of what they had been chasing, what it might look like or be after, Rose could only rely on her instincts as to what might be abnormal. A good portion of people dancing looked out of it, but it was New Year's Eve at a club. There were people darting around the edge of the room, but they looked like the typical wallflowers, designated drivers, resting dancers and, wait, was that a drug dealer? Rose shook her head. She toyed with her drink as she glanced at the bar staff. They all looked busy but professional. So far she couldn't see anything out of place, not even someone in a suit and converse runners.
She could see an upstairs section for what looked like VIPs; that was her next stop. Surrendering her seat to one of the four-person-thick crowd waiting at the bar she skirted around the edge of the room, keeping to the walls to try and avoid racking up some bruises from the over-enthusiastic crowd. The stairs were next to a narrow hallway that led into darkness, pierced only by slightly flickering neon signs that advertised bathrooms. Deciding that would be the last place she would have a look around Rose climbed the stairs, already hating that she couldn't just wear sneakers into a club as her feet started to ache.
The noise muffled a bit as she climbed, the stairs and the plush padding of both lush carpets and cushioned booths creating a small well of tolerable music levels for the high-rollers. Rose tried her best to be inconspicuous, strolling slowly past each booth and listening carefully to the conversations inside. The first two booths seemed to have a single group spread amongst it, and everyone was loudly crowing about how wasted they were getting and how awesome the rest of the night was going to be. Rose smiled at the antics of one of the party-goers who was trying – and failing – to make her way up onto the sleek black table in the middle of the booth. Shaking her head, she kept walking, deciding that the next booth of people making out wasn't what she was looking for and the one after that with two guys feeling up their shared date probably wasn't going to get her the answers she was after either.
The last booth held four people hunched over in what looked like serious discussion and Rose's curiosity pinged like crazy when she spotted the suspicious looks one of the party was darting about the room. She made her way over to the railing of the balcony, trying to hear anything of their conversation over the howling and thudding music. The hushed conversation was almost impossible to make out, but she thought she could catch snippets, something like "surprise" and "everything set in place" and "vital for it to work" which yeah, there could probably be a perfectly reasonable explanation for, but Rose had been yanked out of bed by a time-travelling alien chasing an unknown creature into a busy club. She figured a little more eavesdropping wouldn't hurt.