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Daycycle 124 [January 29 - February 4]

daycycle 124

[Jan 29 - Feb 4]

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

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, Allison Argent will be reassigned to Armed Forces' Very Special Forces firm under Steve Rogers.

At 1300, VIOLET judge Bethany Abbott will be discovered dead in her chambers. Her death will ultimately be ruled murder by poisonous gas. Mind Control will immediately begin running coverage on her accomplishments, including the controversial decision less than a week ago to drop the treason charges against Oliver Queen and Parker and return them to Alpha. Once again, the letters "MOD" will be found at the crime scene. This time carved across Abbott's desk underneath her slumped body.

Gracie Cannell will be pulled from her blog to cover the breaking news due to her Special status.
News of the murder will spread like wildfire across Alpha, inciting fear in higher clearance citizens because VIOLET citizens were believed to be untouchable. In lower clearance citizens, the event will be enough to get ASS vocal again. Within hours there will be anti-special messages spray painted across Alpha.

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 1800 in the Wagon Wheel, floor 25, Room H and will be held by the Extreme Ironing Club. This group is for those Alpha citizens who can't get their uniforms wrinkle-free enough. (Though anyone who may attend this incredibly boring sounding meeting, will actually find an established Free Enterprise dice game in progress instead.)

During the dinner rush, at 1900 a group of twenty ASS members in masks and armed with steel bars will form a brief demonstration in the Commissary in which they chant "Down with Specials." If there happens to be any Specials present in the Commissary at that time, they will attack them with malice.

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.

Threaded | Flat

morning

On the one hand, it's nice to wake up in the morning wrapped in the warmth and safety of Matt's embrace again for the first time in what feels like forever, even if it's only been a couple of days. On the other, it means waking up and instantly being reminded how awful she is.

She can't shake the memories, but at least there's nothing new to add to the pile. Matt had stayed with her in her room the night prior and the conversation wherein he'd tried to pick her brain to find out what was wrong hadn't gone terribly well. Matt took it well, but Lydia had been vague and dismissive of her issues. She's hiding something and she's sure that he knows it, but at least he'd been willing to concede when she'd given a little and promised to explain in more depth once she could wrap her head around everything.

Lydia makes her way to the Commissary for the morning meeting a little later than she usually does, meaning that after the briefing, she'll have to grab breakfast on the way to True Alpha rather than eating before the briefing starts. Which, she supposes, is fine. Once the beginning of the troubleshooting shifts begin, her traffic is pretty slow and she usually doesn't get interrupted by a customer until a little later in the day. The mornings are usually for her and Matt; she helps him with his dictations when he needs her to, between stray customers, and she checks in on the progress Tony and Cisco are making in the back. This morning, when she checks in with Cisco, she's treated to the finally completed Cold Gun she'd commissioned from him. Well. She commissioned a weapon, but this one, admittedly, is pretty awesome.

She'll be in and out of the front of the store earlier in the morning and will be settled there until she takes her late lunch around 14:00.

afternoon

After lunch, Lydia makes her way back to True Alpha, and she checks her PDC. ...the news is bleak and unsettling. If the one person who had mercy on some of the detained Specials has been murdered, that sends a pretty goddamn clear message to the rest of the Alphas about just how they should feel about the Specials. There's no room for them to make their own decisions, even on a case by case basis. Matt, a Special, had argued well enough in court to get the judge to allow Oliver and Parker, two Specials, to be released back into the Complex. Now, she's dead.

If there's one good thing about her new memories, it's that she remembers all of the private sessions with Deputy Parrish learning how to fight and, while she hasn't actually put any of it into action yet, she somehow just...knows that she can do it. She remembers. Between that and the cold gun, even in the face of such a clear and hateful demonstration, Lydia feels a little bit safer.

She'll spend the remainder of the work day and a couple of extra hours in True Alpha, back and forth between the store front and the chemistry lab in the back room where she's been testing new products with the hopes of finding a solution that actually works for frizz without making things even worse. She's getting there.

evening; closed to Adam and Ronan

While she's doing some of her daily bookkeeping at the end of the day, just before she's ready to head out of the store a bit later than she typically does, a commotion outside her store in the Commissary catches her attention. It takes her a few minutes to realize what they're saying, but the chant is loud and clear once her brain catches up with her ears and her stomach turns.

Patting at her pocket to make sure she has both her standard issue laser gun (with its illegal and decidedly not standard ULTRAVIOLET barrel) and the cold gun, Lydia looks out the store front and inches toward the door. They're not right outside her door — which is actually kind of surprising, considering it's common knowledge that True Alpha is a store owned and operated by Specials — but they might as well be; they're close enough.

Edited 2017-01-30 01:57 (UTC)

M O R N I N G

Gracie's morning is normal (surprisingly, considering what the rest of the day is going to bring). She gets coffee in the commissary first thing then heads to her work station. She does her morning broadcast then starts working on putting other shows together, shows in which she's behind the camera instead. Everything seems normal and for a moment, Gracie starts to think that maybe it'll be a good day, or as good as days get in this place.

A F T E R N O O N

The afternoon starts out normal. She forces down some lunch, has more coffee then heads back to Mind Control. She's not there long before she gets pulled off her regular position and thrown right into the middle of things with the discovery of Judge Bethany Abbot's body. She starts a live broadcast, filling a lot of it with chatter and talk, asking anyone that knows anything to talk to Steve or if they don't feel comfortable talking to him, to talk to her. She reminds them that any information is important to share, no matter how small. She'll remind everyone to be safe, to make sure that they stick together. When she gets new information, she will interrupt her chatter to share it.

E V E N I N G

By the time evening rolls around and dinner is served in the commissary, Gracie is exhausted. She's been on camera nearly constantly since she was pulled off regular duty and it almost feels weird not to have a camera in her face, but it's also a relief. She's tired of talking, tired of thinking and the only processing she's really been able to do had been through the camera. Fortunately, her vlog at home is how she does a lot of processing, but unlike there, she'd had to be careful what she'd said here. She'd tried to be mindful and not incite anything more. She's picking at her dinner, trying to go over the afternoon and remember if she'd said anything she'll have to answer for later when she notices the commotion. At first, she doesn't do anything. She's frozen and that's when she remembers the cold gun that's tied to her thigh. Of course, that's not easy to get to and she should have thought of that before now. As sneakily as possible, hoping that no one notices when her elbows go to the table and she sort of hunches over, hoping people will see it as her just making herself as small as possible. She unzips the jumpsuit with one hand, slides her hand inside and very awkwardly fishes around in her jumpsuit (actually grateful for it's bagginess right now) then slips the cold gun out and zips the jumpsuit back up, straightening up as she does. She presses her right hand with the cold gun in it to her leg and edges toward a group of people. She's going to flip on the video feed of her PDC to do some more live coverage and warn people away from the commissary. When the attacks start, she goes into action. As Cisco had advised, she tries to shoot the floor in front of the attackers, sending them sliding all over the place. She'll grab any Special she can and try to escape from the Commissary. Her first thought is to make her way to True Alpha to the back room. Tony is there, Cisco is there and there are more weapons, at least as far as she knows.

Once the attack is over, Gracie isn't going to be interested in doing anything. She's going to go down to HQ and chill out there. She needs some down time in the worst way right now.

Edited 2017-01-30 02:50 (UTC)

evening;

After a full day of work, Alcide is in the gym area of his work when Gracie's coverage of what's happening in Commissary starts to air. He sets the barbell back in the rack and sits up, watching for a moment to learn what's going on and where. Then he's off, running through the hallways toward the Commissary to see what he can do about figuring out who the hell these people are and trying to shake some sense into them. They shouldn't be battling one another. The enemy is the Computer, he wants to tell them.

He wishes so badly that he could shift so that he would have that added edge. But you only have to look at Alcide to know that he's a force to be reckoned with in human form as well, taller and wider than most, built like a brick wall. The top half of his jumpsuit is still hanging down from the waist from his workout moments ago when he barrels into the Commissary.

It's chaos. Alcide grabs the first masked person he sees and throws them against a far wall and continues on, growling out of a wolf-like instinct and doing some serious damage while he goes. As he goes, he's pulling masks off so that he can see their faces and memorize them, and then grinding words out through his teeth. "We are not your enemy. You know who the fuckin' enemy is. It's the Computer." He doesn't give a crap who hears him say it either.

At some point, he feels the slam of a steel bar at the back of his head and Alcide goes down. He's good, but he's not invincible. He'll be momentarily dazed as masked people with metal bars go at him and could probably use some help. Once he shakes it off (mostly), he's up and back in it, going after every masked person he sees to try to either talk some sense into them or disarm and incapacitate them. Truthfully, there's more of the latter than the former.

Generally Tony isn't the type to go to the Commissary for dinner. Not only because the food is awful, or because he's able to just coast without eating until the next morning, but mainly it's because he keeps himself busy enough that he hardly notices he missed a meal until it's too late. Which, really, isn't that big of a deal to him. For as long as he can remember, he has always let his work consume him more to the point that he lets his body forget about the fact that it needs nourishment, and apparently being in this place hasn't changed that at all.

Except, tonight is different. After spending his whole day basically working nonstop, first in True Alpha and then in the lab in HQ, by dinner time he actually needs something considering he has hardly eaten. If he were home this wouldn't be a problem, because he would just reach into one of his desk drawers for some of the snacks that he has hidden throughout his lab, but here... Well. It's bad enough he hardly had anything to eat at breakfast, after not bothering with dinner last night. Now his PDC is telling him that it's dinner time, and holy shit, where did the day go?

The moment he steps into the Commissary, though, his thoughts derail from food pretty damn fast. There aren't a lot of people in their demonstration, but their chants are loud enough to make him pay attention. His eyes scan the room - not for an exit, but trying to see who's here. Who he needs to push out the door before things go to hell, because he's paranoid enough to believe that they would go to shit, and--

Sure enough, he's right. It happens almost too suddenly; a fight breaks out, and Tony is quick to move towards it as he tells everyone he passes by to get the hell out of there. Maybe he should be following them out of the Commissary, because he's obviously one of the people the masked group is here to rally against, but Tony doesn't care. He may not have his suit here, but when has that ever stopped him? People need to get to safety, and he'd be damned if he were to ever run and hide somewhere. He belongs here, in the thick of it. Suit or not, no matter how stupid it is.

Especially because he doesn't even have the prototype gun he has been working on. Both his prototype and the one he's building for Lydia are charging in his lab, and he knows he'll have to make due with whatever he can find. Which, right now, it's a discarded tray that he picks up as he walks.

He doesn't get a chance to break the fight, because suddenly something hits him along his back with enough force to make him feel as if the wind gets knocked out of him for a moment. He still doesn't run, though; if anything, he's quick to turn around, trying to disarm his attacker. The tray comes in handy as he uses it as a shield, and when he manages to knock the pipe out of the other man's hand, Tony swings a punch. He was never trained by SHIELD, or a soldier, but Tony has gotten into enough brawls throughout his life (along with Happy's training) to be able to know how to handle a fistfight just fine. He takes some punches right back, but that's okay. He doesn't even mind it because, if anything, getting to punch his attacker is apparently more cathartic than he could have expected. It's wrong, probably, to feel relief at the fact that he's able to punch the shit out of someone - and even getting punched right back - but it feels good to get some frustration out even if his anger is towards the Computer.

Well, and maybe some of his anger is towards these people, too. Because why the hell do they keep targeting them? They haven't done a damn thing.

Just as he thinks he has gained the upper hand, someone is suddenly behind him, pressing the pipe against his neck in an attempt to choke him. Tony tries to fight against it, tries to wiggle his way out as best as he can, but they only pull tighter still as little dots of light begin to cloud his vision.

Clint's late for dinner that night because he'd spent about an hour after service firm moving his boxes of weapons parts down to the Specials Headquarters and putting some of it back together into functional death machines. He tries to do that on an irregular schedule so no one can guess what's going on; while the Computer itself is too bonkers to notice a pattern of absences from a Special, other residents of Alpha definitely could. Keeping people off guard and unsuspecting makes half the job of working under their nose possible, and he's relying on the skills he's gained over his life to implement his plans. (It also gives him a chance to ponder over some of the fuzzy memories he can't quite remember but knows they're in his brain - somewhere - without looking insane.)

While the food's better in the small kitchen on the ORANGE level, it sometimes feels too isolated, and at least half the people Clint knows are still stuck on RED level clearance. All good reasons to take just over half his meals in the commissary. He's there when the ASS members troop in and start yelling, but he only rolls his eyes and keeps eating. People yell crap all the time, after all, and if you try to stop them, you just get rebellion behind closed doors rather than in the open, which is more likely to burn out quickly. Look at the Specials themselves, after all, all the plans they have going to reclaim themselves and their lives.

But it doesn't take long for them to realize there are Specials present, and Clint's been in more than enough danger that he can feel it coming. There's a tightening in the air that turns into a shiver along his skin, a tension rising like a plucked string, vibrating more and more quickly until it snaps - the lead protester is rushing forward, bar raised to attack, his fellows quickly at his side and yelling loudly as they focus on the faces that are more familiar than many people's in Alpha thanks to various media coverage. Without hesitation Clint shoves his chair back and kicks the table he'd been eating at the charging group, sending Soylent and trays and cups flying, rolling out of his chair as it crashes to the ground and reaching for his boot. The telescoping baton he keeps there is out in a flash and he slashes it open to full length in a second, surging to his feet and into the fray with no hesitation. This is his life, this is what he's trained for, and as many of them as there are, most of them don't seem to be weapons experts. If there's going to be problems, it'll be because of numbers, and even as Clint ducks under one bar and kicks his attacker solidly in the kneecap he's scanning the commissary and noting the number of Specials around ready to defend themselves. They won't be easily taken down, and he hangs part of his attention out looking for anyone who can't fight and needs help. Those that can need to protect those that can't, after all.

Still, if only he'd had time to stretch.

MORNING/AFTERNOON; OTA

The morning is like any other. She goes for a run before breakfast, and then walks to the morning briefing. Although Allison is good at keeping up a poker face as she goes over to her new job, internally she's actually very excited to be here. While she had liked her previous position, she wants to be able to do more, and she's hoping to do that here. She wants to help people - she wants to protect people - and she firmly believes that in VSF she will get the chance to do so.

That is why, when she's told she needs to work on speed and endurance drills, there's a moment where she almost points out that she could do more than just drills - especially when the news break out about the judge's death - but ultimately she just does it without question. It's technically her first day, and she knows had failed the speed test - as much as she would have loved to jump right into the deep end, it doesn't work that way. She can be logical about it, so she does as she's told as she reminds herself that this is temporary. Just training for what's coming up next.

After she goes to the Commissary to talk to Lydia, she grabs something to eat on her way back to Armed Forces, and then continues the rest of her training. By the end of her shift she can feel how sore her muscles are as she walks to the showers, but overall she doesn't mind it. This is what she wanted, after all.

EVENING; LOCKED TO MATT

Once dinner time rolls around, Allison makes her way to the Commissary as she reads all the anti-special messages that have been spray painted along the way. Her hair is up in a loose ponytail, and to anyone that doesn't know her she looks relatively relaxed after the shower she just took. Her eyes show a completely different story, though, because she's on very high alert right now. There's tension everywhere in the complex right now, and when the masked group makes their presence known, Allison isn't even surprised anymore. If anything, her eyes dart towards True Alpha and, as she sees people go in that direction, she's quick to rush in to try and stop them. Or to at least help Lydia.

A rough shove pushes her against one of the tables, though, and Allison can feel it as it jams against her, but she doesn't stay down. She turns quickly, using her pistol to fight defend herself against the pipe that the man that had shoved her was about to be used to hit her. He's fast, but she manages to stop him, even if he almost manages the knock the pistol off her hands.

She's not fast enough to avoid the way that a heavy backhand sends her to the ground, though, leaving her in a momentary haze. Another woman tries to attack her when she's down, but Allison reacts quickly enough to kick her off balance and sending the pipe rolling away from her.

"Get up, Allison," someone sneers, and Allison almost jumps out of her skin at the sound. "What are you going to do, let them win? You know what to do." She knows that voice. She knows that voice all too well, because it's Kate, loud and clear enough that she actually looks around as if to check if she's actually here, but...she isn't. There's no sign of her, just the chaos of the fights going on around her, and--

The sound of footsteps coming in her direction makes her scramble up quickly, reaching for the pipe the woman had dropped, and she uses it to block hits that come her way. She's trying hard not to hurt someone--

You know what to do

--but ultimately she's just trying to stop the fight before all this can get even more out of control.

Edited 2017-01-31 22:30 (UTC)

It felt like ages since he'd spoken to any of his friends, and he was still reeling from the encounter with Barry, to have someone he'd been so close to completely forget who he was had been disconcerting. It made him wonder. Steve hadn't been by in days, maybe everybody had forgotten about him? He'd spent so long feeling sorry for himself that maybe everyone had moved on and were getting on with their lives without him.

Maybe it was time to stop feeling so sorry for himself. It was difficult to force himself to do, but he had to try. Baby steps, however, so he spent his day splitting his time between the secret HQ and the regular special HQ, hoping a friend would drop by.

For the most part, Buffy’s day is very normal. She’s getting used to being exhausted all the time because she’s not sleeping more than a few hours at night. She’s spending the rest of her ‘sleep’ time patrolling thanks to her gas mask. She doesn’t trust that others won’t use gas masks to avoid sleeping and commit nefarious deeds, like planting bombs or killing witnesses. She has coffee for breakfast, makes a round of the commissary then heads to the floor below and above the commissary.She repeats the whole process over and over again. Sometimes, she’ll stop to speak to someone or to inspect something on a floor, or she’ll just linger because something ‘feels janky’.

During the lunch rush, she stays in the commissary until it’s cleared out then eats her own lunch relatively quickly before starting the whole circuit again. She makes periodic paths through the True Alpha store as well. Sometime in the afternoon, she’ll take a short break for coffee. Today, it’s a lot more intense in every way once the judge’s body is discovered. It makes her more hyper aware, more nervous and more anxious. The people doing this are definitely trying to get a message across and it’s escalating.

By dinner time, Buffy is technically supposed to be off duty, but she’s still feeling far too wound up to relax. As long as she’s not relaxing, she might as well be carrying her VSF issued baton and patrolling like it’s her job. She knows she could let her partner take over, but she’s used to being in control and doing these things. That means when the crowd starts to circle, she’s actually pretty on top of things. It’s difficult to tell who the leader is, but Buffy crosses over to someone who looks like they have some authority.

“Hey, you’re gonna have to break this up. It’s looking a little violent protest in here.”

In response, the man swings an iron pipe that he definitely shouldn’t have toward Buffy’s head. She blocks it with her perfectly legal baton then slams the butt of it into the guy’s abdomen. In the meantime, hell is breaking loose.

Once the guy is down, Buffy moves into action trying to get between attacks, and stop them where she can. She’s still operating on the idea that she would rather disable than hurt. Broken arms generally disable people really well, so does clonking them on the head with her baton. She’s long learned how hard she can hit with her normal human strength and not cause serious injury so she doesn’t think much of hitting someone strategically in the temple or hard enough along the jaw to pop their head around and trigger that thing (she can never remember that thing) that is responsible for someone going night-night.

She’s definitely not making it through the fight unscathed. She gets a pipe on the shoulder so hard it takes her breath away and her arm goes numb for a minute; she also gets hit hard enough in the mouth that she tastes blood. Despite that, she’s trying to make her way toward the Specials, toward people she knows like Alcide and Lydia, Derek and Zee. She knows Allison is somewhere in this mess, but as a member of the Very Special Forces, she knows Allison can take care of herself. She relatively close to a group of Specials when she catches movement out of the corner of her eye: a man coming toward her with his pipe already in motion. She ducks the swing of that pipe and comes up with a good amount of momentum and a burst of strength that feels so powerful and so incredible and so familiar, but her familiar reaction, to pull a punch so she doesn’t kill a human, isn’t quick enough. She slams the butt of her baton into the man’s temple. Blood so bright red she wonders for a moment if someone has thrown paint arcs through the air, following the downward swing of her baton. Another familiar feeling hits her: that feeling of time going still. She watches the man collapse, blood slowly pooling on the floor. For a moment, no one touches her, no one moves then everything breaks.

There’s a part of her that would like to let the crowd mob her, a part that would like to leave this moment regardless of how she does, even if that means being knocked unconscious, but there’s a bigger part of Buffy that refuses to quit, that can’t lie down. That’s the part that gets up and fights.

Since Matt’s legal office had been destroyed, he’s carved out a little corner of the True Alpha store to work in. He’s still doing the same job: working for the legal defense, but he’s doing it in a different place. He’s got no idea when his office will be rebuilt and he’s not terribly worried about it. He also spends a good deal of time out in the commissary when he’s dictating to his assistant so that he doesn’t disturb Lydia or anyone shopping in the True Alpha store.

When the judge’s body is found, Matt heads up to IntSec to see if he can find anything out. It has absolutely zero success, but does manage to waste the rest of the day dictating notes while up there and harassing people to tell him something. He gets a lot of ‘this isn’t any of your business yet, Mr. Murdock’ to which he responds ‘someone did this, it will be soon enough’. He’s not easily dissuaded or gotten rid of, but IntSec should have figured that out by now.

The day is practically over and it’s almost dinner time when Matt finishes. He stops by both his apartment and Lydia’s to see if she’s shut down for the day. When he doesn’t find her there, he decides to go back down to the commissary. Maybe he can catch her and they can go straight back to his place to make dinner and eat. He could use a little normalcy after this afternoon.

As usual, the complex has other ideas. Matt runs into a wall of protesters and even without sight, it’s not hard to tell that things are turning violent. Rage bubbles up inside of him; he has done nothing but try to help people since he’s been here; everyone he knows have done much the same and yet they’re still being targeted for things that they can’t control nor did they ask for. He doesn’t have weapons, but that doesn’t stop him from pushing through the crowd, fighting through the crowd to try and help people again, but right now the difference is that he doesn’t care what’s happening to the people that are attacking; he only wants to help the victims. It’s probably a good thing he doesn’t have weapons.

He doesn’t have sight, but he’s spent a lifetime learning to track an object or person’s location via sound and right now, he’s not afraid to reach out and grab people. At first, he simply punches, trying to avoid getting hit, but not being able to much of the time. He knows how to take a beating and keep moving forward. He knows how to get up when he’s been knocked down and he does get knocked down, but when he gets up, he wrenches a pipe from someone’s hands.

He fares decently once he’s got the pipe (he is still going to be a bloody, pulpy mess that needs medical). By his estimation, he’s nearing the center of the room, heading toward the True Alpha store, when the entire room crashes in on him, or at least that’s how it feels. For a couple of seconds, he’s crushed by the sound of so many heartbeats he can’t separate them, by so many scents that they make his stomach roil. It actually sends him to his knees and the pain is excruciating when the attackers take advantage of his momentary incapacitation to really pound on him with those pipes. Maybe it’s a hit to the head or maybe it’s just his brain remembering that it knows how to cope with this, but everything clicks into place and he can isolate scents and sounds. He can feel the whoosh of air driven by the pipe as it swings before his head and just before it connects, he reaches up, wrenching a pipe from the attacker’s hand and grabbing her wrist to flip her onto her back. He rises up from his knees, taking advantage of whatever it is that’s given him this brief blessing of his heightened senses. He slams his elbow back into someone’s nose, smelling and hearing the gush of blood. He turns to thrust the tips of his fingers into someone else’s throat. The person staggers back, gagging and gasping. He manages to isolate Lydia’s heartbeat and is headed toward her when it all disappears. He’s left feeling like all of his senses have been swaddled in cotton again. He’s lost Lydia’s heartbeat and any advantage he had outside of his refusal to stay down.

That’s okay. It’s probably always been his biggest advantage in a fight anyway.

Morning/Afternoon

Much of Jack's time preparing for his part of Teela's show is actually time spent doing recon. He recently pitched a new segment idea, spotlight on Alpha, where he does a brief one-on-one with a totally average citizen, letting them know that they are important, valued, seen. He incorporates Teela in the endeavour, having her record personalized messages and offer small gifts to the lucky citizens, giving her as much credit as he possibly can without handing it over entirely. She doesn't want to be usurped, and he has no interest in taking her job. Oh no, his aim is much higher. He can't step on necks as he climbs this ladder. He's going to need to be able to count on every rung beneath him for favours.

So he goes on the hunt for the next spotlight citizen, and in doing so, he learns the wheel, he learns the routines and the patterns and the people. He manages to get himself access to places he might not ordinarily be allowed, because what harm could an entertainer possibly do? He just wants to show everyone how hard this particular department works, how vital the work of that group of people is, how clever and funny and smart you all are.

Today is a scouting day, and the ~~coded~~ shorthand notes he makes fill page after page as he explores. If anyone wants to join, offer some insight, show him around, he's thrilled to accept your generous offer!

Dinner

Jack has no weapon, because Jack doesn't know that he can get one, because someone was the most unhelpful tour guide ever. Looking at you, Barry Allen. What he does have is an instinct to protect, and a certainty developed over the years that he's infuriatingly permanent. So when he sees the trouble going down (honestly, when he feels it, because there is a change in the air as it fills with malice) he's up without a second thought. This is fear and anger and pain causing people to join a herd and lash out, but they're people with pipes and murderous intent, and Jack can already see more than one person who won't be able to defend themselves against this, or get to the door in time.

He's one of the most easily recognizable faces in the place, thanks to his part on Teela's show, and he's also very close to the group out for blood. That makes him one of the first targets, which is a good thing, because he wants one of those pipes. Well, all right, he wants the fucking flamethrower that just roared to life at the far side of the room, but he'll settle for a pipe. He pastes on an expression of surprise and fear, and stares at the masked man closest to him. Like a shark to blood, the man charges, and when he's just close enough Jack flings the food from his tray into the man's face, then swings the tray through the air, angled to be aerodynamic, and slams it into the man's neck. He goes down hard, but the pipe also goes flying. Toward someone. Shit. "Heads up!" All right, tray will have to do for the moment.

Wildcard

Write a thing, get a thing. Let's do this!

[[OOC: There is also a plotting comment and a plurk if you want me to set up something else for you. Don't hesitate to ask. I want it all!]]

Evening; post attack

It's not that she had meant to freeze when the fighting broke out in the commissary. She knows better than that. She knows what freezing gets you. Injury. Death. Something far worse when you find yourself incapable of saving people you love. But she couldn't help it. Prim had been in that room. Worse, Katniss had gotten up to refill her water glass, leaving Prim alone at their table. There was familiarity in that. In danger, in separation, in being incapable of getting to her sister before something horrible happened to her.

So she had froze. And afterwards, after being moved to safety, she hated herself. Her bow and quiver had been left abandoned at the table she had earlier shared with Prim. She had needed Clint to intervene or she would be one of the wounded right now. Worse? Worse than anything else? Someone else had to save Prim. For the second time in her life, Katniss Everdeen had been incapable of saving her precious sister.

She hovers. Although the sight of the blood and wounded make her sick (no amount of time in the Hunger Games or fighting a war would ever fix that), it's where Prim wanted to be. So she anxiously sticks around the edges of the first aid station to keep an eye on her sister. Although her gaze might be fixed on her sister, her mind is everywhere else. There's a part of her still stuck in the past. Still seeing Prim light up like a human torch. She pushes up the sleeves of her jumpsuit and continues to run her hands over the skin of her forearms. There should be scars there. There aren't any scars. But she still remembers the burn of the fire like it happened yesterday.

Katniss couldn't help anyone in there. She couldn't save herself and she couldn't save her sister. Would HappiTime pills have made a difference? Actually paying attention to Dr. Aurelius or seeking out a proper counselor last night rather than just bugging the people she already knew? She can't be certain of that either. The game of what-ifs is not one that Katniss ever played. That hasn't changed now. Instead, she continues to focus on the facts. There had been people in there she liked, maybe some she even cared about. Prim had been there. And Katniss? Katniss was more useless, more in the way than she had ever remembered being in her entire life.

Most days, she still hates herself. Right now, she doubts that she's ever hated herself this much.

MORNING

In this place, Oliver had found, something that happened once was suspicious. Something that happened twice? That was conspiracy. Steve being shot at was worrisome. This? From a level that was supposed to be nigh-untouchable? That was definitely a conspiracy. He fielded more than a few calls about whether or not he was immediately going back to jail and made a few himself. If he was about to be arrested, he needed to be aware of the fact ahead of time. Because this time, he either needed a way out or else he needed a place to lay low for a while.

Most of Oliver's days were similar. He went out, watched for things that needed to be taken care of before they became problems he'd have to deal with, and then was off for the day. Today, for once, he spent his day inside the IntSec office. For one, it would probably be the last place anyone would look for him yet he could still claim to be 'on duty'. For another, it allowed him a place to coordinate everything he knew.

Finding the person who had assassinated someone as high-ranking as the judge was sure to be something no one would have a problem with him doing and he needed to know why. Had it been to send him back to jail? The woman who'd been released about the same time he had? Or was there something more sinister in mind?

EVENING

He'd still been in his office when he received a private call about people heading to the commissary in masks. He spread the news in the office and headed down to find out what was going on. It was chaos when he entered the room. Masked people everywhere and scared citizens who'd done nothing to warrant the attacks other than to exist. People didn't see that it wasn't the people who were here that caused the problems; it was the computer.

Still, there were people who needed protecting and this was what Oliver was good at. He didn't have his bow, but he did have a pair of good fists. His focus was on getting people out and taking down the ones that stood in his way. Once the innocents were out, he could focus on taking down the rest of instigators permanently.

Edited 2017-02-01 05:42 (UTC)

EVENING: DINNER

"I think that's mine." Izzy's voice is smooth as she stands a few feet away from a particularly angry woman wielding a metal pipe who almost brained somebody; luckily, the young red level escaped before he got any brain damage. There's not an ounce of fear on the shadowhunter's face, though, despite what she saw. She may not have her trademark whip in this place, but that doesn't make her incapable by any means. Armed with a pipe of her on, the petite woman is confident that not only can she handle her oncoming attacker, but that she can take the other woman's pipe no problem. The look of rage that pulls at her opponent's features only make the corners of Izzy's mouth tug further upward. "And I'll be taking it now...before you hurt somebody else, or maybe yourself!"

The scream that erupts from the ASS member, below the mask, doesn't scary Izzy. In fact, it just tells her that the other woman is about to attack. In a move that she's done a million times, probably, Izzy waits and once she's close enough and she snaps the pipe in her right hand against the arm wielding the weapon that Iz has claimed as her own. It clatters to the ground and the sound is lost in the chaos and the follow up blow is delivered strategically, causing the woman to crumple to the ground--after all, Izzy doesn't want to kill the woman, just incapacitate her...she might not feel great later, but she should live. Obviously not all of the attackers are particularly skilled...just angry. And maybe a few of them are, the others...probably just lucky and opportunistic.

Bending down to pick up the other pipe, Izzy feels much better armed than she did before. This isn't going to help with figuring out the influx of murders, that's for sure, and Izzy's been on that to the best of her ability. However, she's a shadowhunter...and she can't just let this happen. She can't watch as people who don't deserve it are getting hurt. The pipes are heavier than what she's used to training with it, but Izzy moves anyway. She came in late, to begin with, because she's been preoccupied, but the ORANGE made it, anyway....and in the midst of all of this.

Working her way through the crowd, guiding people who are afraid, hurt, or not capable of fighting out of the way of harm Izzy moves gracefully, using both of the pipes to intervene when necessary...and striking when she has to without hesitation, the metallic clangs lost among the chaos in the commissary. She moves just as fluidly as when she danced for the Charity Ball, perhaps even a little more so, considering all of the obstacles in her way (and okay she may have kicked a few chairs, but only when necessary, after all, with the crowd someone could get hurt). Sure, she doesn't avoid every blow and takes a few, but it's worth it in this case: to protect people. She doesn't shy away from any fight, even after the licks she takes, turning her body to divert blows, so that they aren't going to be as bad, and her hair coming undone from it's braid a little more with each fight until it's completely undone. Terrible as this all is, it's the most workout she's gotten since arriving here.

She can't just let innocent people be attacked because things aren't perfect here. Izzy's doing her part. Like she always does.

Once the melee, attack, whatever...is over with Izzy gives up the pipes and does what she can to help with the wounded, not bothering with her own bruises, busted lip, bruising and cut just above and coming down to meet her left eyebrow--all of which are minor in comparison to some of what she saw happen to people this evening. There's dried blood on both her orange jumpsuit and splattered near the rune on her neck, most of it not even her own. Hard not to get that way considering the people who were hurt, and the fact that she fought back. She's in one piece, though, and only a little worse for the wear. All in all, the petite shadowhunter faired about as well as she expected to: she got through safe and protected as many as she could. She can't help but linger, though, looking for familiar faces to check on and to help wherever she can when she can.

This is going to be a long night with everything that's already happened.

Edited 2017-02-01 09:33 (UTC)

Threaded | Flat

daycycle 124

[Jan 29 - Feb 4]

Lydia Martin | Open, throughout the day

Gracie | OTA

alcide herveaux || ota

Tony Stark ; Evening, Closed to Steve

Evening, for Morgana, Katniss, or whoever wants in (maybe Jack after?)

Allison Argent