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Daycycle 103 [ August 14 - August 20 ]

daycycle 103

[Aug 14 - Aug 20]

Early Morning [0800 - 0900] — All Troubleshooters Report for Duty
Samantha "Root" Groves and Cisco Ramon, have been selected for today’s mission. Details are below:

"Confirm circuit breakers are functioning properly by creating short circuits to test them."

Please debrief the computer on the status of your mission by the end of the Daycycle here.

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

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 hosted by the Amateaur Dramatics Group. You're invited to come see the one woman show that Mind Control called too "boring" to put on early morning television.

Specials Event - All Specials with knowledge of Specials HQ have been invited to a surprise party to celebrate wanted fugitive, Dick Grayson's, seventeenth birthday.

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

As Lydia was making sure that everyone was present and accounted for who could make it, Gucci started up with his metallic barking, tail wagging and paws clack-clack-clacking on the cement floor as he ran himself in excitable circles. Given the GPS system and the threat proximity features Root had installed, Lydia could only guess that he was reacting to picking up a read on Dick's approach — yeah, so...now she was completely convinced that Dick was his favorite.

If Dick didn't want a party, the last person he should've mentioned his birthday to was Lydia, so she really hoped, as the door opened, that he wouldn't be upset with her for it. Dick was greeted to a chorus of Surprise! albeit one that was kept at a manageable volume so that it wouldn't echo down the corridor and call attention to their location. Lydia gave him sort of a sheepish little smile before stepping forward and giving him a hug.

"Happy birthday. Don't be mad, okay?" she whispered in his ear, "parties are kind of my thing and, really, you brought this upon yourself." She let go of him and stepped back with a playful little smirk before nodding for him to follow her. "Come on, there's food food to be had!"

The very last thing Dick had been expecting when he stepped into HQ was a cry of 'surprise!' and his automatic reaction to the, well, surprise, was to drop into a fighting stance, hand going towards his pocket to grab a birdarang - until his brain caught up with what was actually happening and he relaxed sheepishly. Blinking around the room he couldn't quite believe what he was seeing - all the friends he'd made here, gathered around and - wait, wait, was this a party? For him?

He accepted the hug when Lydia stepped forward, still a little dazed, but appreciative of her clarification that yes, this was a party, a birthday party, and it was for him.

"I..this is all... I mean... wow, Lydia, just, wow, colour me not whelmed at all. Distinctly overwhelmed. This is - food?" he followed her over to the table and his breath caught in his throat. He swallowed thickly and he was definitely not blinking back tears, nope.

"You got pizza?"

In his defense, Lydia probably would've had much the same sort of overwhelmed reaction if she'd thought to keep track of the days to mark her birthday and the tables had been turned, so she couldn't really fault him for looking somewhere between deer caught in headlights and emotional.

Giving him a little smile, Lydia nodded, leading him up to the lab counter where the food was laid out, and she gave a little wave of her hand in a vague gesture toward the spread. "Real food," she promised. "And I made pizza, so...it might not be amazing or anything. It's been a long time since I made a pizza from scratch like that. But still, totally edible and not the garbage we were stuck eating in RED," she added.

She was glad that he didn't appear to be upset about it, though, at least. Even if he did look very much taken aback by the whole thing. "Oh! I have something for you, but I gotta wait another...hour or so? So, remind me so that I don't forget to give it to you, okay?" Some part of her was positive that she wouldn't forget anyway, but a little insurance policy didn't hurt when she was sort of wrapped up in the excitement of a party, even if it wasn't a great one.

"You made pizza?" he asked, amazed at all the effort she had gone to, and there was maybe just a little crack in his voice that he was obviously trying to hide. He sniffed, swiping a quick hand across his face as casually as he could manage. He felt kind of dumb getting all teary over some homemade pizza, but it was just exactly what he needed to see. Sure, it was bittersweet, he still didn't have his father here, and there were a lot of people from home that he missed a lot, but he had friends here and they were wonderful, everything he could want. There had to be ingredients here that they weren't supposed to have, meaning they'd broken the rules specifically to give him a good birthday, they'd put themselves at risk for him.

"And you got me a present? You really didn't have to do all this, Lydia, this is amazing, really. You've made my day. There's cake too!? This is the best!"

At his reaction, Lydia gave him a sympathetic smile. She could tell he was trying not to get emotional about the whole thing, but she figured it must be hard not to, considering the fact that he must have been feeling awfully alone given he has no one here from home and the other Specials with whom he spends his time had all been at their Service Firms all day. Besides, it was hard enough to keep one's chin up in the Alpha Complex; it was the least she could do for a friend.

"I gave it a whirl, anyway," she said, "but you can thank Steve and Morgana for the ingredients for it, and Morgana for nabbing the fruits and vegetables for the trays. ...and I can't even take credit for the cake, as much as I would like to. That was all Steve."

It was reassuring, though, that he appeared to be moving past emotional and into excitement. That meant, to Lydia, that she'd done well. "Yeah, well...sort of, I sort of made you a present? But yeah, we'll get to that. Go eat!" she chirped, giving him a gentle little push toward the table. "You first. The rest of us after. It's your day, after all."

"I can't believe how many people you got involved in this! This is amazing of everybody!" he grinned, half bouncing on his heels - he was tempted to do a backflip he was so excited. He knew he had Lydia to thank primarily, since she was the only person who'd known it was his birthday, but he couldn't believe that multiple people had gone to this effort for him.

"Okay, okay!" he was practically skipping over to the table and reached for the knife to cut himself a slice of pizza, mouth watering just at the thought of it. Real food, real, homemade pizza and he couldn't wait to share it with all of them. Even with everybody in their (mostly) matching outfits and the utilitarian surroundings, it almost felt like a real party, like they could pretend they were home. Sort of. With a weird and different group of friends, but still, it was almost normality.

"Oh my god this is beautiful," he half-groaned, words muffled horribly by the mouthful of pizza. He swallowed it quickly and gave Lydia a thumbs up "It tastes great. You should have some! Everybody should have some!"

In spite of herself, Lydia laughed a little when he complimented the pizza. At least that meant she'd done a decent job; it had been a long while since she'd tried to do something like that, so at least she hadn't lost her touch when it really mattered the most.

With his proclamation that they should all have at, Lydia went ahead and took a slice, grabbing a few veggies and fruits off the tray as well and the lot of them were largely quiet while they enjoyed real food. Lydia got to have real food once a week, but some of the others didn't get to have it at all...like Dick. She couldn't really blame anyone for stuffing their faces and leaving it at that for a bit.

A short while later, Lydia pulled Dick aside again. "Okay, so Barry helped with this, so it's really from both of us," she prefaced, taking his wrist to draw him nearer to where she and Barry had stowed the bin, "and it's probably going to need to set a little longer, but will definitely be ready by tonight when you need it," she added before crouching down and pulling the bin out. She pushed it toward Dick and smiled. "I guess you're getting yours first, after all," she finished with a little smirk, because she figured if she didn't give him a hint, it might still kind of just look like a blob of foam to him which, you know, wouldn't be all that great a gift.

Even though he thought she'd already done more than enough to make this the best birthday possible, he was excited when she pulled him aside for what he assumed to be his present. He watched, mystified, as she pulled the bin out, her initial explanation not making a great deal of sense - until he looked inside and her final words made it click.

"You made me a pillow!? Oh man this is the best!" He'd made a nice enough little nest for himself, tucked away where nobody could find him, but it still only as luxurious as a scavenged hidey hole really could be, and this would just make it that little bit more comfortable, make it feel the tiniest bit more like home.

Unable to resist, he threw his arms around her, hugging her tightly. "Thank you!"

Lydia grinned as she watched realization dawn on Dick's face and she nodded. "We made you a pillow," she confirmed and when he threw his arms around her, it surprised a little laugh out of Lydia and she hugged him back in kind, giving him a little squeeze. "You're so welcome. Happy birthday, Dick," she said quietly as she loosened her hold and finally took a step back to smile at him.

"Listen, I don't want to keep you, there's lots of people here. Leave this in the bin and I'll tuck it back out of the way and then before you're ready to go to bed tonight, take it out. It'll be ready by then. It might not be super firm until tomorrow night, but it'll still work. It sucks that you're stuck here on your birthday so I just...you know. Wanted to make it a little less sucky."

When he stepped back from the hug, his cheeks were a little flushed, and maybe it was from the excitement of everything that was going on, but, well, they hadn't been like that before the hug. He cleared his throat awkwardly, shoving his hands in his pockets.

"You... you made it a lot less sucky. A lot." he told her sincerely "I'm gonna go say hi to everybody... but, really, I can't thank you enough for this." he was definitely going to throw her an awesome party next year, no matter where he was at the time.

To her credit, Lydia doesn't appear to take notice of the color that's risen into his cheeks or the awkward body language after the hug. Instead, she just gives him a warm smile and a nod.

"I'm glad," she says sincerely, "now go on and go say hi to everybody, I'll be around. You're welcome. Go have fun."

((ooc: call it done?))

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Daycycle 103 [ August 14 - August 20 ]

daycycle 103

[Aug 14 - Aug 20]

Specials Event | Lydia & Dick

Re: Specials Event | Lydia & Dick

Specials Event | Lydia & Dick

Re: Specials Event | Lydia & Dick

Specials Event | Lydia & Dick

Re: Specials Event | Lydia & Dick

Specials Event | Lydia & Dick

Re: Specials Event | Lydia & Dick

Specials Event | Lydia & Dick

Re: Specials Event | Lydia & Dick

Specials Event | Lydia & Dick