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Daycycle 122 [ January 15 - January 21]

daycycle 122

[Jan 15 - Jan 21]

[OOC Plotting for this Dacycle can be found here.]

Early, Early Morning [0200 - 0400]
At approximately 0200, several explosive devices planted in Technical Services by PURGE will detonate, damaging several memobanks. In a rush to prepare for the morning upload several Technicians will mistakenly put the wrong memories in the wrong banks. They will catch their mistake before the final upload, but as a result several memories will now be shared across different alpha citizens' consciousnesses. These memories will be experienced as dreams and characters will retain knowledge of them when they wake.

Memory Swap Pairs

Adam Parrish - Derek Hale
Zatanna Zatara - Oliver Queen
Steve Rogers - Ronan Lynch
Katniss Everdeen - Matt Murdock
Morgana LeFey - Tony Stark
Clint Barton - Allison Argent
Isabelle Lightwood - Lydia Martin
Buffy Summers - Barry Allen
Emma Swan - Parker
Cisco Ramon - Gracie Cannell
Natasha Romanoff - Jack Harkness
Primrose Everdeen - Alcide Herveaux

Room 1101 will be woken up at 1200 when a squadron of Internal Security Gray Ops come to arrest Bucky Barnes for treason. He will be led away at gun point and his roommates, Ronan Lynch, Adam Parrish and Oliver Queen will be immediately taken into IntSec for questioning. They will be questioned about the activities of their former roommate for several hours before being sedated and returned to their room before 0500. Bucky's roommates will not remember his arrest or their questioning when they wake, though they may feel the lingering active effects of the sedative for several hours into their day.

The memory of Bucky Barnes having ever been present in Alpha will be erased with varying degrees of success from all those he came into contact with.

Early Morning [0800 - 0900] — All Troubleshooters Report for Duty

No Specials will be selected for a mission today.

Morning & Afternoon [0900 - 1600] — Service Firm Positions
All Troubleshooters not assigned a mission should report to their Service Firm for their daily duties.

At 0900 it will be discovered that the shooter from Steve Roger's assassination attempt has, ironically, been assassinated along with her guards in Armed Forces the night before. The letters mod will be left written in the shooter's blood along her cell wall.

Evening [1600 - 2200] — Citizen Improvement
All Alpha citizens are encouraged to better themselves through Alpha’s wide variety of educational, entertainment and cultural opportunities offered each evening. Attending these sanctioned events are not mandatory, but is highly encouraged by The Computer. Citizens choosing not to take advantage of these opportunities, have a growing number of other options available to them in how to spend their hard earned credits and free time.

Tonight’s event will be at 1900 in the Commissary and will be overseen by Clint Barton. Izzy Lightwood from Medical Services has been assigned to assist him in giving a demonstration on basic first aid and wound care.

Alpha Curfew Restrictions
All Alpha citizens should be in their quarters within the Wagon Wheel by 2200, unless they’ve been given permission from a GREEN or higher clearance level citizen. Sleeping Aid gas is dispelled each night in the Wagon Wheel at 2200 to assist citizens in getting a productive sleeping period.

Confession Booths
There are hundreds of confession booths available around Alpha Complex if a citizen would like to communicate directly with the computer. Please use these confession booths to report mission statuses, report treason or terrorist acts, unregistered mutants, confess your trespasses against Alpha Complex, request propaganda or speak with Your Friend, The Computer, at any time.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Exhausted was a constant state of being back home. She can handle exhausted. She plops down into the seat beside him. She actually hates that part about being ORANGE as well. It's been her biggest complaint.

It's not so much ORANGE as it is everything that's been going on since she was promoted. She's chosen not to sleep, use the gas mask and patrol more intensely. She takes a deep breath. "You've heard about the shooter? Plus I'm now in charge of patrolling Commissary, 14th floor and 16th." She pauses a moment. "And then when I did sleep last night...wonky dreams.: The way she says dreams suggests that she doesn't think they're dreams. She knows they're memories, but some one else's.

She's okay, and she'll take that for now. She turns her attention to Derek. "How are you doing though?"

It's something of a relief to Derek when Buffy actually does sit down. "How that Steve guy was shot, you mean? Yeah, I think everybody did," Derek replies, frowning. This place is a nightmare and he feels useless and vulnerable without his abilities to protect himself and the people he cares about. Like Katniss. Like Buffy. But Buffy already knows how he feels about that, so he doesn't see any reason to bitch about it for probably the hundredth time.

"Wait, by yourself? What the hell, that's way too much ground to have to cover all by yourself," he says, annoyed both by the fact that it's going to run her ragged and by the fact that it means the security on those floors is, in a word, shitty. One person cannot be everywhere at once and if she's got to patrol three floors, one of which is the goddamn Commissary, there's no way in hell that all of those floors are safe. Not fourteen and sixteen while she's here, for example, or the Commissary and fourteen while she's on sixteen, and so on. That's just a way to cop out. When something terrible inevitably happens on her watch but she was watching another floor at the time, she'll get blamed and it won't be her fault. Again, Derek feels a surge of rage on his friend's behalf that he has to swallow back.

But then she mentions the dreams and Derek's eyes narrow in thought. "Yeah, well, you're in good company with that," he tells her. "I think a lot of us had them." Katniss did. He did. Adam did. Now Buffy. He's willing to bet that if these dreams work for everyone they way they seemed to work for Adam, then whoever Buffy dreamed about and whoever Katniss dreamed about experienced it as well.

"Been worse," he replies. "But I've also been better. Pretty much par for the course around here." He pauses. "We miss you in the room, though."

She nods. "Yeah." She presses her lips together. "Things are...not good right now. Between Specials and Alphas." She's feeling pretty vulnerable now and hard pressed to protect the people she loves. It's part of the reason that she's feeling vulnerable too. Yeah, she knows how Derek feels. She feels the same way.

She shakes her head, smiling. "No. I've got another person with me. We trade shifts and that sort of thing." She's going to run herself ragged quite honestly. She hesitates and her voice drops in volume. "And if you're interested, I'm going to be patrolling most nights after lights out." Because she will feel guilty if anything happens to anyone else while she was snug in her bed, or if something gets put into effect while she's asleep.

"I sort of figured that out," she sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose. It's a mirror of something Giles used to do; she definitely learned it from watching him. "You too?" she asks, glancing at him, concern in her expression.

She tilts her head a little in a sort of shrug then smiles. "I miss you both too. Look out for each other, okay? And I'm going to be around. We can always do the exploring thing." In fact, she wouldn't mind patrolling through the halls at night with both her boys.

Derek huffs a humorless laugh as he looks back at her. "Yeah, breaking news: everybody hates us. That's pretty much the status quo, here, isn't it?" he asks. Derek doesn't, however, point out that it also feels kind of like the status quo back home. He'd rather leave home where it is and tackle it when he finds his damn way out of here, whenever that might be.

His eyes shift over in Buffy's direction, up from the table in front of him. "Yeah?" he asks. "So you are patrolling by yourself, you're just not on patrol twenty-four/seven," he says more than asks. Then, Derek nods. "Yeah, I'm interested. How long are you on this shift? I have to be up early tomorrow to turn in this shit but after tomorrow..."

With a nod, Derek frowns. Yeah, I spent last night getting the shit kicked out of me, he thinks to himself but if he wants Adam to keep his mouth shut, then Derek has to keep his end of the bargain, too. It isn't his place to go spouting off the crap that kid went through anymore than it's Adam's to shout from the rooftops that Derek is a monster. "It was a long night," he says, instead. "You know, you don't have to stay in that ORANGE room, right? You're always welcome in ours. We kept your bed for you and we won't let anybody else take it," he promises.

She tilts her head and raises her brows in a little shrug sort of gesture. He's not wrong. "Pretty much, but someone has amped up the haterade."

"The situation is not perfect," she admits. She doesn't blame Steve though. He's doing the best that he can. She smiles when he says he's interested. "I thought you might be. I'm on it indefinitely." Until things calm down.

Yeah, Buffy hadn't gotten the shit kicked out of her, but she hadn't had an easy night either. She may end up taking a nap and waking up in the middle of the night to patrol. She nods a little. Yeah, she understands. Derek's offer makes her unsurprisingly teary but incredibly happy. "You know, I think maybe I'll drop by and have a nap. You haven't gotten a new room mate yet?"

She really, really hopes that they haven't.

"And I'm sure it won't be the last time it happens, either. If these people have been living this life their entire lives, no wonder they hate us. It's a hell of a lot easier to turn their discontent and rage on actual people they can actually kill instead of the man behind the curtain controlling a machine controlling this wasteland," he complains with a frown. "I'd probably be the same way in their shoes, as much as I hate to admit it. I feel like this is probably just the beginning."

Buffy says the situation "is not perfect" and Derek has to hold his tongue to keep from pointing out that that's the understatement of the century and...that she sounds like she's trying to placate an uninformed party. Like this soldier shit they have her doing is getting in her head a little too much. That's not her fault, she's probably had to say stuff like that a million times over since waking up here. Eventually, repetition becomes reflex. "Well, that sucks for you, to be sure. But yeah, I'm in. Starting tomorrow."

Seeing her teary-eyed response to his comment, Derek huffs a small laugh. It's endearing how much something so simple can mean to a person in a place as unwelcoming as this one. "No, just me and Alcide. Unless you count the nighttime visitors both expected and unexpected, but they don't stay." By that, he means they don't live in that room. Katniss comes in pretty much every night now and when Derek woke up this morning the first time, there had been someone else in Alcide's bed — which, he probably would've been pissed off about on Buffy's behalf, except she looked like a kid, so he doubts there's anything to that.

Buffy makes a face at that, but she can't argue with it either. Yeah, people have a right to be upset, but at the same time none of the Specials get a say in where they end up. She scrubs a hand over her face. "At this point, I'm just going to get used to being permanently exhausted again." At least if she had her powers, she'd be able to function on the little sleep she's getting.

Well, she meant it vaguely sarcastic and she's really not trying to placate anyone. It just is what it is. Could it be better? Yeah, but there aren't resources for that and Buffy would rather take care of this understaffed than not take care of it at all. It's become something of an accepted fact both here and back home. She nods. "Good. We can meet at the elevators."

Maybe it's because this place is so unwelcoming that it means so much. She arches an eyebrow up at that. "There's someone besides Katniss?" Yes, that might be jealousy creeping into her voice. She appreciates the solidarity, though she's very aware she has no claim to Alcide because she's not laying one. He's made it pretty clear he'd be okay with the whole...claiming thing (since she's started with that word...at least is' not a cookie dough analogy) and she's dragging her feet because of the memories and people she has back home.

Derek has the grace to give her a look of sympathy. He knows that feeling; permanently exhausted. He spent a good decade or so of his life in permanently exhausted mode. Derek does not miss it. "That really sucks," he says empathetically, frowning. It's a shitty feeling and what's worse is that the literally won't get a day off to recharge. Ever. Days off are not a thing here.

Her plan sounds good enough for Derek, so he nods. "Yeah, that works. You want me to get Alcide to come or...?" Derek lets his question trail off. He doesn't really know where the two of them are with one another because he and Alcide aren't that close and he hadn't seen Buffy in a few days. In Derek's experience, a lot can happen in a couple of days and he doesn't want to assume.

Seeing that eyebrow arch, Derek laughs a little. "Not like that," he insists gently. "Nah, that kid he hangs out with was in our room when I woke up in the middle of the night. If I had to guess, she got hit with the fucked up dream bug, too. And while Derek has no idea where Buffy and Alcide stand, her reaction does give him a general idea of where they might be, whether she means for it to or not.

It is what it is. No one is making her patrol at night. It's something she's taking upon herself to try and protect people. She shrugs a little. "Maybe I'll check myself into medical for a mental health day," she jokes. She probably won't and if she wanted to, she probably couldn't. She'll survive. Besides, when she really is too tired to function, she'll lock herself in her room after work and sleep for twelve hours straight. She knows she's no good to anyone if she is too exhausted.

"Yeah. You can bring Alcide. I was going to ask him later too." And yeah, she says that without any outward nerves, but her stomach does flutter a little and she chides herself for it. She and Alcide as still exactly where they were before, which is to say dancing around this attraction between them. That is a hundred percent Buffy's fault. They've made a little progress in that they went on an actual date, but it's a relatively small step. Again, totally Buffy's fault. She'll figure it out some day if Alcide sticks around long enough for that.

Despite all of that, she's grateful to hear that it's Zee that was in his (their) room. It probably shows too. "Zee," Buffy nods a little. "I wish we could get down to the bottom of that." The glitches and the memories, dreams, whatever.

Derek laughs at that. He doesn't know Buffy super well, but he likes to think he knows her well enough to know that she'll never do that. "Yeah, right," he replies, sounding as amused by the idea of it as he actually is. They're both completely aware of the fact that Buffy, like Derek, is not the type for slowing down or taking it easy when there are people who need protecting.

"Okay, cool, I'll let him know, then," Derek replies, nodding. It's good to know that at least whatever is going on there is still on the positive end of the spectrum. There's nothing worse than being caught in the middle of two friends, especially if they ask you to take sides and even more especially if you live with one but would side with the other if it came down to it. His relief in the fact that Buffy says he can bring Alcide is more selfish than anything else.

The relief Buffy feels at hearing that Derek's only talking about Alcide's friend and not some woman he's decided to take up with in Buffy's absence is plenty visual and Derek offers her a little knowing smile. "Right, yeah, I couldn't remember her name. Zee," he confirms. "Yeah tell me about it. The thing is...that's something I could do to someone back home. I can't do it here and I honestly wouldn't do it anyway because it's really dangerous. Which makes me wonder how safe what happened to us actually is, in the long run." He looks more serious then, smile melting away. "What kind of lasting effects we're going to suffer beyond the memories themselves, I mean," he admits, lowering his voice. "I don't like it for a lot of reasons, but that's one of the bigger ones."

She would never do that. She hates hospitals, plus she's unlikely to take a sick day when people need help. Sometimes, she wishes she were. It would be easier to be that sort of person, but Derek is right, she's just not that sort of person. She knows that he's not either.

She wouldn't ask him to take sides and she really hopes it doesn't come to any sort of 'sides' situation. They're all friends and she wants it to stay that why (which is probably one of the reasons she's dragging her feet on anything more than friends with Alcide).

"I think she's kind of like a little sister to Alcide," Buffy says more to have something to justify her relief about Zee. There's no real justification except that she likes Alcide. Her brow furrows as she listens to Derek. "Wait. Do what? The memory thing? Dream thing I mean. Dangerous how? Are we going to start bleeding from our noses or something?"

Now you've got her worried , Derek.

Nodding, Derek clears his throat. "Yeah, I get that feeling, too. That he's kind of like me; he needs someone to protect and she's easy for that because she lets him. You, on the other hand, we both know you can take care of yourself." Derek supposes Katniss is that person for him, but it isn't necessarily because he feels like she's not able to take care of herself so much as she sometimes needs protection from her own mind. He's been there, too, so he can see it a mile away.

"No, no," Derek says, shaking his head. "No, I mean, it's not exactly the same. It's not like a swap, or anything. But technically, I could share my memories with someone or extract theirs — even the subconscious ones they can't recall on demand — but it's dangerous because if I don't do it just right, it can kill them. So I don't do it. But if I was going to, I'd have to have my claws. Sink my claws into the back of someone's neck and then we share a consciousness for a minute. My friend is pretty good at it," he says, thinking of Scott. "And my uncle is scary good at it. I could do it and find out, but I'd rather not find out the hard way that I'm the one member of my family who sucks at it, you know what I mean? The stakes are a little too high for my taste in that regard."

He reaches up to rub the back of his neck before dropping his hand back into his lap. "It's a conscious effort, though, it's not like...it just happens or anything, I have to consciously try to make it happen, so you're safe, don't worry."

"I like those kinds of people," Buffy tells him with a fond smile. She's glad that Derek has found someone to protect, someone he cares about and while she doesn't know Katniss well, she does seem like she needs someone to help her, maybe not protect her, but to help her in some way. Sometimes, she wishes she were more like Derek and Alcide. She doesn't need someone to protect, as in an individual, but she does need to be able to help, to protect a group at large. This place gives her plenty of opportunity to do that, but not very many successes in that. Buffy needs people that care about her, and that she cares about, to be strong, to remind her that there's a good reason to fight even when it doesn't seem like it. Derek is one of those people for her.

Her concern doesn't go away as Derek explains it. Her focus just switches from overall side effects of this switch, to concern for Derek. "Yeah, definitely don't do that thing." She says it in a stern voice, brows a bit drawn together. She doesn't want him to get hurt nor does she want him to hurt someone else. She can imagine how that would hurt Derek.

She reaches out to touch his arm. "Don't be silly, Doofus. I was never worried about being safe with you." And that much is true. It's not because she doesn't think Derek could hurt her (he probably could) but because he knows he wouldn't.

Derek smiles a little and ducks his head as he takes a deep breath, letting it out in a soft huff. It's hard to be one of those people, because it makes it all too easy to make stupid, rash decisions that have a negative outward ripple when you're tunnel visioned to keep one person or a very small group of people safe. Too often, he's made that sort of mistake and too often, it's resulted in the deaths of the people around him. He doesn't want to make that mistake anymore. He hopes that Alcide never has or does. "Yeah, I guess we don't suck," he replies playfully rather than reflect verbally on the downfalls of being That Guy.

"Don't plan on it," he assures her again. If there ever comes a time that he does get his wolf back, it's definitely not something he envisions himself being able to do with confidence and without confidence, he's a lot more likely to screw it up and do some serious damage to himself or the other person. Or, worse, both.

He laughs a little, though, when she teases and he looks back up at her. "Well good, because you don't have any reason to worry." And she probably has no idea how important it is for him to hear that sometimes, because after everything he's been through, really, he knows that the people around him generally are not safe. That's just how things go for Derek. "You should probably get back to it," he says, changing the subject as his eyes drift toward the clock on the wall. "I gotta finish this up anyway. Tomorrow night, though," he says to confirm their plans.

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Daycycle 122 [ January 15 - January 21]

daycycle 122

[Jan 15 - Jan 21]

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