Daycycle 13 [ DEC 26-31 ]

[computerized]

DAYCYCLE 13

[ DEC 26 - 31 ]

[OOC: This Daycycle will run for six ooc days instead of the usual 5 ooc days from Dec 26-31. ]

MORNING

Troubleshooter Team: Alec Hardison & Jason Wilcox

Mission:  There is an INDIGO corridor in R&D that we want you to inspect.  We’ll give you 5000cr each at the end of your mission just for walking from one end to the other.  Here are vouchers to let you walk through it legally.  Make sure you wear these telemetry suits when you go through it.  

All other Troubleshooters:  You are to report to your Service Firm positions for the day, until called on for Troubleshooter duty.

Intel:  The Humanists staged an attack last night and left many citizens temporarily blinded by pepper spray.  There is a 1000cr reward for any participants being handed over for punishment.

A special was attacked yesterday by an anti-Specials group.  Steve Rogers has asked to address all Troubleshooters in regards to this incident.

AFTERNOON

The afternoon is mostly uneventful.  Save for a Vulture pilot who crashes his copter into the Armed Forces mess hall at approximately 1423.  What is initially thought of as a treasonous act is quickly determined to be a Happitime overdose and is hushed up by the highers ups.

EVENING

The evening is launched with a very special and mandatory showing of the Teela O’Malley show.  The show begins by describing the state that humanity was in when The Computer took control.  People were a slave to their whims.  Alpha Complex is held up as a paragon of innovation and cooperation among people and technology.  In fact, many REDs watching the show may not recognize the Utopian society being depicted as anything close to the society they find themselves in.  It ends with a touching montage of citizens swearing their allegiance and thanks to The Computer that brings the legendary host to tears.  

Sleep aid gas is expelled at 2100.

Comments

Daycycle 13: Debriefing

[computerized]

You are welcome to play out missions from any point (beginning, middle, end) but are not required to. You will, however need to provide information on the debriefing post below once you've determined with the other players involved how the mission played out. You can indicate if the mission is complete (finished), pending investigation (still being discussed occly), or in progress (currently being threaded out.) You are encouraged to approach other characters for assistance with missions whenever possible, as almost every sector has a playable character. They may be able to provide you with valuable information from their roles within Alpha Complex or assistance in tracking down a traitor. You'll soon find out that the more avenues you have through the bureaucratic nightmare that Alpha Complex is, the better.

Reward and punishment will be determined by the outcome of your missions, though they may depend entirely on the current processing power of The Computer at the time and classified information not available to you. In other words, everything is never as it seems, so be prepared for anything.

Please debrief The Computer and your Briefing Officer on your mission using the form below.

<b>Mission Status:</b> Complete (Finished), Pending Investigation (Being discussed oocly) or <a href=THREAD LINK>In Progress</a> (link to your thread, if there is one). <b>Troubleshooters</b> <b>Mission outcome:</b> <b>Alpha Complex Damage:</b> <b>Traitorous Casualties:</b> <b>Citizen Casualties:</b> <b>Intel gained:</b>

humanist capture -- lmk if this isn't kosher???

[avemachina]

Mission Status: Complete
Troubleshooters Samantha Groves
Mission outcome: Success -- coincidentally (or not?), the RED that had assaulted Samantha Groves on her first morning in genpop (D11) has been revealed as a Humanist sympathizer, if not a full member. Groves provides detailed reports conveniently accessible at RED clearance level to prove recent traitorous movements, and it should be easy (too easy?) to discover pepper spray residue on the RED's hand. The RED's account was also deposited with 5000cr after the attacks were executed, but the source of the transfer could not be identified.
Alpha Complex Damage: None
Traitorous Casualties: None
Citizen Casualties: None
Intel gained: An eye should be kept on the traitorous RED's closer associates (profiles attached). Samantha recommends probation for a few days. Upon inspection by a very skilled hacker, it might be proved that the evidence provided used to be available only to higher-clearance access. The source of the credit transfer, if inspected by a very skilled hacker, will look like a Computer-sanctioned transfer of minuscule amounts from Commissary transactions.

It's totally kosher!

[computerized]

Thank you, citizen! Your dedication to Alpha Complex is commended. The traitor's associates will be monitored with prejudice.

Addressing the Troubleshooters

[a_man_out_of_time]

When Steve Rogers moves in front of the microphone, the sound of his steps are the only noise that echoes through the Commissary. There's a silence in the room is heavy — stuffed full of anger from those in the room who hate that a Special has been given the floor, much less one that has been promoted to ORANGE, and the only thing reining them in are the over two dozen cameras that cover every single angle of the Commissary.

What angers the anti-Specials even more, is that there's no awkward tapping of the microphone, or shy tests of "Can you hear me?" Nothing about this particular Special projects weakness. Instead, there's a fierce solemness in the Captain's eyes that sets the tone immediately. And when Steve talks, his voice is loud and clear.

"Yesterday, five individuals trapped a girl in a room and assaulted her. They laughed as they kicked and punched a young woman who had no way of defending herself. And when they were done, they left her, barely moving, and bleeding on the floor."

A beat of silence, as he stares out in the crowd, looking at the sea of faces. Some of them had only heard rumors. Since most of them weren't Specials, most hadn't even seen the video.

"I know this, because they sent a recording of that event to every Special in the Alpha Complex. Their message was loud, and clear. That they don't like us, they want us gone, and all of us will be next."

Another beat. When he talks again, he naturally starts making eye contact with the wide-eyed or stern-faced or furrowed-browed in the audience.

"I get it. I would be angry too if I were you. All of you worked hard for years to get out of INFRARED, and suddenly, people who have just shown up are getting to skip ahead of the line. They get better food, better housing and better treatment than you had when you started out. If I were in your place, I would be asking myself one question: What makes them so Special?

“Truth is, I don’t know. All I know is that thirteen days ago I woke up on a table, my lungs gasping for air like I’d never used them before. I was told that my life before this moment — all the years of memories I had, was a glitch. Then I was given a RED uniform and told to report for duty in the morning.

“I know that on my first day here, a Troubleshooter in Technical Services taught me how to use my PDC. Later on, two veteran Troubleshooters in the Armed Forces showed me the ropes.”

Steve looked for his fellow Very Special Forces members Cooper and Nakamura in the audience, subtly nodding to them in thanks when he saw them. He didn’t dare name them, or Alexeyev in Tech Support, for fear of putting them in danger.

“Three days ago, many of the Troubleshooters standing in this very room put their lives on the line to protect citizens from becoming collateral damage. We worked together and saved lives. It didn’t matter who we were or what label was slapped on our backs.

“The anti-Specials Society? They don’t want that. They want to divide us. They want us to start hating each other, so that the next time we’re passing in the hallway, or eating shoulder-to-shoulder in this Commissary, we’ll be so pre-occupied with our hate that we could never build trust again. And then the next time that we’re out there, taking fire from unknown shooters, we’ll stop having each other’s backs when we need it the most.

“I’m not going to tell you that this situation is fair. It’s not. But what I can tell you, is that fairness isn’t what the anti-Special Association has in mind. What they want is violence and chaos.
They proved that when they kidnapped a girl and nearly beat her to death.

“I don’t know who they are. They could be standing right next to you. They could try to recruit you next week, tomorrow. Maybe even tonight. They’ve already attacked one person and I know that it won’t end there. But if you disagree with them — if you disagree with mindless violence, don’t join them. Stand with me instead. We’ll find a way to make this fair, together.

“My name is Steve Rogers and my schedule and contact is public information in every one of your PDCs.

I hope to hear from you soon.”

The air was as still as death itself, and as Steve moved away from the microphone, he could only hope that his words have changed a few potential enemies to potential allies this morning.

Re: Addressing the Troubleshooters

[whosalicewhite]

Parker never trusts those acting like they're in charge. Plus, the speaker had been promoted by the Computer, so a double reason for the distrust.

Thus, despite of all the seriousness, a spitball will be headed directly for the speaker's ear.

[a_man_out_of_time]

It was the return of the spitballer.

That or, spitballing was a common hobby amongst the Troubleshooters and Steve just didn't know.

Through pure luck, Steve had just begun to lean forward as he emphasized his next point, and the spitball cruised against the back of his neck. He ignored it.

[whosalicewhite]

Damn moving target.

While Parker had little patience for many things and a complete inability not to steal, she does have stubbornness going for her.

Round two: again for the ear.

[a_man_out_of_time]

This time it hits. Right in that little ledge below the outer rim, and bounces down near his foot.

But Steve doesn't even flinch, doesn't even look. He just keeps right on talking.

[notasoldier]

It didn't take a genius to see that Steve was pissed about the events that had happened the following day. Tony had taken Steve's lead and had kept his interaction with his fellow Avenger to a minimum when there were a lot of other people or cameras around. This morning as Steve took the stage there were plenty of both.

Tony listened to Steve's speech, one hand over his mouth as he tried to gauge the reaction it was getting from the room. It was clear from some of the faces that they had agreed with the attack. For those of them that seemed to relish in the retelling of the events, Tony made a mental note to check them out when he got a chance. Others, however, looked surprised at the account. If they had heard about it, they hadn't given it much credit.

Then of course, Steve threw them all a curveball and started preaching togetherness. Tony really shouldn't have been surprised, but as Steve went on he couldn't believe what he was hearing. If Steve thought he was going to win these people over, he was wrong. Tony wasn't even sure that half of them knew what cooperation meant.

As Steve stepped off the stage, Tony waited to fall in line beside him as the Troubleshooters filed out. "That was some speech," he said, his voice low. "I hope it's not your only plan."

[a_man_out_of_time]

Talking low was starting to become his second job.

"Part two of the plan is making sure no Special is ever caught out alone. Did you see the encrypted message that went out this morning? Do you trust it?"

Hopefully what Steve was implying was clear. They needed to create a buddy system, one that made sure every Special who couldn't fight was always with one that could. Without an encrypted messaging system, logistics for a plan like that was going to be more than difficult.

[notasoldier]

"The buddy system?" Somehow he had thought the Captain would be thinking bigger. "I saw it. I don't know Hardison, but I met Matt Farrell. He seems like an okay kid. I don't think he has it in him to turn himself over."

"I checked out what I could this morning and it looked legitimate, but I'd need more time to say for sure. I can let you know by this evening." They were approaching the doors and Tony knew that he would have no reason to follow Steve at the end of the hall.

"You know, if we don't do anything that more attacks are going to happen, buddy system or not. They sent us a message. We need to send one back. One that says we can protect ourselves."

[avemachina]

"Rah-rah. Go team."

The voice comes from Steve's left as he passes the slight brunette. Samantha Groves (if the Computer had its way) had watched with more interest than she'd intended. It was a nice speech, all things considered.

She's perched casually on the chair, but to someone like Steve it's probably obvious she's making every effort to look comfortable -- too languid to be natural. After dealing with the rough treatment the morning after her arrival, she'd had no problem reverting to her old ways of self-reliance and mistrust. Or so she likes to tell herself.

"You give a lot of speeches where you come from, Quarterback?"

[a_man_out_of_time]

"Would it surprise you to hear that I do?"

Steve stopped when he was addressed, an amused smile passes over his face. Not quite the response he expected, but he'll take it. Talking to a group of people — or what normal people like to think of as speeches — came naturally to him when he had something to say.

"I haven't seen you before. Did you ..." He choses his words carefully, so as to not draw too much attention to their conversation, not that it was entirely possible to do. "... wake up recently?" Plenty of people seemed like they were torn about whether or not to approach Steve, so they didn't linger too close, but they also didn't stay too far away either.

[avemachina]

Her eyebrows lifted even as Root shook her head in response. Her surprise (and vague amusement) was prompted by his continued air of optimism -- that he'd tried to protect whatever semblance of privacy he perceived either of them having. It chipped away at her display of forced comfort, enough to make her stand up and move to his side.

"In this instance, you could accurately say I was kinda born yesterday." Arms crossed over her chest, Root took her time looking over Steve now, as if she hadn't gotten an eyeful as he spoke before them all just moments ago. She was close enough that he could probably see the fading redness where her cheek had met table the morning before. "You're military, right? I mean-- your 'glitchy' memories?"

Root's voice lowered a bit, though she couldn't resist the finger-quotes around the word glitchy. Fake privacy hopefully maintained...?

[onthedot]

Her head was still spinning, memories and jumbled thoughts fought against the merciless greeting upon waking on a table. The only certainty she had began and ended with her name. Her name and the pervasive wrongness of the situation she was in. They had let her roam freely throughout the complex, to a point, and that alone was enough to raise every single hair on the back of her neck.

And then she had been ushered into a room with a group of nameless people she'd never seen in her life. Many of them who looked quite prepared to start a brawl under the slightest provocation, more irritated than curious about why they were dragged in there.

Peggy stood near the back of the group with her arms crossed, prepared to deal with whatever ridiculous propaganda they were about to be fed, and she was beginning to grow more and more certain that's what it was, when he stepped in front of the microphone, and then very little made sense at all.

He should be dead. It was the very first, clear, and real thought she'd pulled from the muddle of her mind and it shot her in the chest with more impact than any bullet could have achieved. It was an aching sort of distress, coupled with outrage, and for a moment she wasn't sure which would win out.

The words, though unfamiliar, were spoken with such a frank honesty that she wanted to lash out, possibly would have had there not been cameras to record what she was witnessing and no one was speaking out about the wrongness. There should have been nothing left to produce a clone of him, she had made certain of that.

He couldn't be a clone, which meant he was...something else.

God knew he always had been.

Peggy shook her head and tamped down on her anger until it was nothing more than a bitter ember and began to work her way through the small crowd until she was no more than a few people away from him.

All she could do was wait.

[a_man_out_of_time]

Steve was thanking God that he hadn't laid eyes on Peggy until after stepping off the stage.

People had finally decided to approach him — most of them didn't even know what to say, though some managed to muster up the courage to let him know he had their support — and as always, Steve was doing his absolute best to garner support for what was right. He almost felt himself again this time.

Until he saw Peggy.

Caution was almost thrown entirely the wind. Every drastic measure he'd taken to ensure no citizen or computer would suspect that he knew Bucky or Tony previous to the Alpha Complex was left shredded on the floor. Apologizing to the young man he was currently speaking with, Steve made his way to the woman who was the love of his life. A woman whose existence here should have been impossible, and yet here she was.

Even in their hideous starter red jumpsuits, she looked as confident and beautiful as the day he'd met her.

"Peggy."

Under the eyes of the Commissary, Steve had to stop himself from reaching for her cheek, or reaching for her entirely just to see if she was real.

[onthedot]

God help her.

He was close enough she could feel the heat of his body and hear the Brooklyn in his accent. He stood close enough she could reach out to touch.

Swallowing against the swell in her throat, and blinking against the heat in her eyes, she cocked her head, pursed her lips, then said, "You never did learn how to stay out of trouble."

Jason Wilcox & Alec Hardison - Mission

[divagating]

He's still reeling a little from the orientation videos over the past couple of days, the fact that his life — or what he remembers of it — is supposedly a glitch; the speech that took place at breakfast and the sudden realization that he's apparently one of the Specials...which apparently does not bode well for his safety. Jason's fast and agile, but he's not a fighter and never has been. He's always been the type to resolve issues with words whenever possible. Hearing that some girl — a fucking girl; who beats a girl?! — was assaulted just for being what he's been told he is is rattling at best and terrifying at worst.

But he takes his orders and, if he's honest, they make him even more nervous. He makes a mental note to look for the girl when he gets his tour and orders in the medical wing. He doubts she'll trust a new face, whoever she is, but if he's like her; if there's a way to prove that, then maybe he can intercept her care from the other doctors and handle it on his own. The last thing anyone needs is for another attack to take place, especially if it means whoever they were are coming to finish the poor girl off. Jason doesn't hate much, but people who hit women or children? He hates the hell out of them and if he can prevent round two, then he wants to do that.

Putting on the suit that was given to him and pocketing the vouchers that make it "legal" for him to walk down a goddamn hallway — pin a rose on someone's nose if they're so damn special that they have a hallway that's illegal to walk down if you're not one of the clique — and he heads to the rendezvous point to meet his mission partner, a man he's never met or heard of, but whose name he now knows.

When he sees who he thinks is the man, Jason extends a hand. "Are you Alec?" he asks. "I'm Dr. Jason Wilcox. We're assigned to this mission together." Jason pauses and waits for a response, gauging the reaction until he's sure that it's the right guy. "Quick question: if we're getting paid 5000 credits to walk down a hallway, on a scale of doubtful to absolute certainty, what are the chances we're being sent on a suicide mission, you think? I just want to write a note if we're going down, is all I'm saying. Know what I mean, man? Gotta go out with a bang if I gotta go out."

[geekage]

The telemetry suit looked like something out of Tron and the vouchers were watermarked and printed on some kind of special paper, but Hardison had confidence that he could find some way to reproduce them in the future. All he needed was a genuine excuse why one of them had gotten misplaced.

"Hardison," he corrects, taking the hand and shaking it. He hasn't seen this guy's face around, but he recognizes it from the Specials roster he put together that morning for the encrypted message. "You just got here, didn't you?"

Hardison had the same feeling in the pit of his stomach about this mission. That kind of money didn't come around everyday, at least not through legitimate means. "We're probably gonna die," Hardison said with a nod at the building in front of them. "This place doesn't really give away money like that."

[divagating]

"Fair enough," Jason says with a nod and a facial shrug. "Hardison it is. And yeah, I did. Lucky me, huh? Showed up just in time to catch a speech at breakfast about some pussy shitbags who wanted to pick a fight, but needed to gang up on some girl in order to win it. Good times," he adds in a low voice laced with sarcasm, a roll of his eyes to punctuate it.

Another nod comes and he looks down at his suit, then back up at Hardison. "At least we're going down in style?" he asks more than says. "I don't know, I used to play laser tag back in the day with my buddies, back in high school. I might actually give them a run for their money," he jokes. Jason's line of self-defense tends to be his charisma and, with that, the sense of humor he honed in high school to get attention. He's just used to falling back on it when he's nervous and hopes that Hardison, like so many others before him had, won't feel put out or offended by it.

"Shall we?" he asks, lifting an eyebrow and gesturing with dramatized grandeur, using a sweep of his hand in the direction of the hallway.

[geekage]

"Welcome to the neighborhood," Hardison said, taking a deep breath. He had seen the girl around, even if he hadn't met her officially yet. The fact that the group who had attacked her had the audacity to film and post it made him more angry than what he knew what to do with. If Eliot were here... He needed to stop thinking about Eliot. Eliot wasn't here.

Hardison let's out a low huff and gives Jason a second look. "You're pretty cheerful for someone who's about to go on a suicide mission." He reached up and touched his ear. "Just a second. I've got some inside help on this one. She's a security specialist. Maybe we won't have to die today."

for parker!

[shrinkage]

It's not until the second spitball that Ray realizes they're coming from an unexpected source right behind him. A Special.

Well, if Steve's OK weathering the storm, Ray can wait until he's finished to finally turn around and cock his head at the slight blonde. He's mildly amused and so not remembering an old adage about a cat and curiosity that he should probably be heeding...

"I take it we're protesting the promotion?"

Re: for parker!

[whosalicewhite]

Cat and curiosity doubles thrice over when the curiosity is about a cat burglar.

There is no way this man is going to spoil her fun, or rat her out.

Parker literally hisses and bears her teeth at him.

Cats, dangerous creatures.

[shrinkage]

Ray leans back, nearly losing his position at the edge of his chair as his eyes spring wide.

"Ooookay then." He flounders, righting himself on the seat before trying again. "Do you maybe need some ... HappiTime or something?"

That'll definitely help. Totally.

[whosalicewhite]

This one's a fool. He's an observant fool, which makes him a danger.

And now he's suggesting medicating her?

What would Sophie say? Sophie would talk him down from this. Parker's a terrible talker.

"Come with me." Sophie's always told Parker she's pretty, so maybe that would work?