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Daycycle 108 [ September 18 - September 24 ]

daycycle 108

[Sept 18 - Sept 24]

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

There is no Mission assigned to any Specials today.

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.

Death Leopard is back! After nearly having nearly all of it's members hunted down and exterminated after the parade fiasco a few months ago, new leadership has arisen within the secret society and has been secretly recruiting new members hellbent on destruction for destruction's sake. A large number of Death Leopard members work within the Armed Services divison and at approximately 1400 today, a large shipment of weapons will be stolen.

At 1500 Death Leopard members stationed throughout Alpha will cause utter chaos by careening through Alpha in stolen motor cars, blaring loud music and shooting up the place. For the most part, they are not aiming for people, but their goal is to accomplish as much property damage as possible and announce their return. They do not, however, have any qualms at shooting officials clearance level YELLOW or higher. They have several grenades that they will use throughout their reign of terror, tossing them at random store fronts and service firms.

All Troubleshooters will be called on to stop them by any means necessary.

It will later be discovered that during this show of blatant disregard for Alpha Citizen Life, two more shipments of weapons were stolen.

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 1700 in Meeting Room F, Wagon Wheel Floor 27 and will be hosted by the Volunteer Form Checkers. Help Alpha Complex by volunteering your time to check forms this evening as the scanners in the Housing, Planning & Development sector is down.

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.

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Fighting is not Adam Parrish's strong suit. He's wielding a rather large wrench, however, and still losing the fight. He's got a black eye and been knocked to the floor when the car pulls up beside him and the passenger door swings open. He thinks he hears her say something full of dramatics like 'come with me if you want to live'. It's hard to make out amid the chaos.

There's a moment where Adam just looks at the woman in the car as if trying to decide whether or not she's trustworthy or not. But his most recent attacker is coming at him again with a snarl on his lips as if he'd really enjoyed punching on Adam's face and is ready for round two. Decision made, Adam hurries into the passenger side of the vehicle, probably one of the many vehicles he works on in the day-to-day, and slams the door shut.

Blue eyes look frantically to the driver. Clearly, he's shaken up. "Let's get out of here. Please."

It's understandable if he doesn't hear Parker clearly as she likely says it five times faster than she should. Blame the excitement of being behind the wheel. She's missed the freedom.

"Out of here, coming up." With the enthusiasm of a teenager, or NASCAR driver, Parker floors it, as if tread is a necessity on tires! Who needs it! It only slows things down.

She smells the burning rubber and laughs. There's no warning when she takes a corner, but Parker looks completely unaffected by the centrifugal force.

"Where to? And do you have chocolate?" Hey, nothing's free in this world, so she's seeing what she can get.

It's a little bit terrifying, the way she's driving. Adam has to quickly grab onto the 'oh shit' handle and the console to remain as upright as possible. But it's also obvious that she's enjoying it with a certain amount of glee that reminds him of Ronan and his penchant for driving too fast and furious.

That laugh, and Adam is pretty sure he just got into the car with a crazy person. Well, crap. This is what he gets for talking to strangers.

She asks him for chocolate and he has none. He has nothing, really, which means she's probably going to push him out of the car on the next sharp turn. "I don't have chocolate. But... if you get me out of here, I'll owe you!" It's the only thing he can think of... which, admittedly, isn't much.

There is a brief glance in his direction when he grabs onto the handle. Does that mean for .05 seconds she's not looking at the road? Yup.

Now if Parker knew that about Ronan, she'd be challenging him to a drag race.

"You will owe me, where to?" that's a as close to reassuring as Parker gets when it comes to him not being kicked out of the car. She turns again, this time for .57 of a second with her eyes off the road. The grin is even more manic.

"This is the best night ever here!" There's another squeal, but this isn't the from the tires. It's from Parker and it's a squeal of glee as she swerves around a protestor who is late to the party.

Those .05 seconds where they're staring one another down in the car feels like an eternity, mostly because they're still moving full speed down the road and swerving to miss obstacles in traffic. Yep. Just like being a passenger in Ronan Lynch's car on any day ending in 'Y'. The fact that he doesn't know Parker from the next person adds an extra edge that he's lost when riding with Ronan. He has no idea how good she is under these circumstances.

Really, it's just his luck to get into the car with a crazy person. He points ahead. "Watch the road! Please." His heart is up in his throat.

"I... the main compound would be good." He needs to find Ronan. "I need to find my friend." Adam decides that he should know who he's about to die with, by name at the very least. "I'm Adam. Thanks for... this." However it ends up, she got him out of a sticky situation.

Parker is a spectacular driver, as long as that driver is in Formula one, and taking the corners on the Monaco road race as full speed.

"Pffffft, calm down! I've been doing this since everyone else was in middles school!" she wasn't in middle school herself, so she can't include herself.

She takes a sharp left turn, towards the requested destination. "Who's your friend?"

It doesn't escape his notice that she doesn't give her name in return in spite of the deflected question. It's hard to fully trust a person who doesn't give their name. Then again, Adam doesn't trust easily to begin with.

His side pushes into the door at the sharp left turn. "His name's Ronan." He says tightly if just because his entire body is tense.

"He's in security." Adam shakes his head after a moment. "So he could be anywhere helping to take care of all this."

Conversations don't always have a chronological order with Parker. Give it time.

There's another bark of a laugh. It's one quick "HA!." She goes to slap her passenger a slap on the shoulder, if he doesn't somehow duck it. The mutual acquaintance gives her a slightly warmer feeling, like the person next to her is suddenly worth remembering.

"Laser tag! Laser tag is awesome!" This makes total sense to Parker, as that's her immediate association with Ronan.

"You play too?"

"I've played before..." Although he isn't really following the hows and whys of the trajectory of the conversation. "I'm not that great at it."

There is a memory though, niggling at the back of his mind, of Ronan mentioning playing laser tag here before, with someone. Eventually, he might put two and two together and figure it out.

"You play a lot? Do you have a license to drive?" Speaking of questionable trajectory of conversation as Adam grabs onto the door and the center console again to keep himself upright.

"He is." She's having some great memories of the destruction of a few choice places in the name of checking security. Parker figures the he in this conversation is obvious, but what she finds obvious, other people...

"Only when the competition's good, or if it's a good way to piss off the computer but it didn't even notice." Everything else about that game was worthwhile, so Parker doesn't regret it.

"Pffffffft," it's half raspberry, half dismissal. "I'm a great driver and I have plenty of licenses. Been driving since I was 9." Hardison would make them for her, because official, legal paperwork is hardly Parker's thing.

Adam is assuming the 'he' is Ronan. And yes, Ronan is good at lots of things, including laser tag, including destruction, including beating people up, including making Adam absolutely adore him in every way while simultaneously wanting to strangle his neck. Yep. Ronan's great at many, many things.

"You don't think it's a good idea to stay off the Computer's radar? To go about things in a smarter way?" If not, then he can see why Ronan and Parker would get along. Adam, of course, is the opposite of that. He likes to lay low, play it smart, then suddenly make a move without anyone having been the wiser until all is said and done.

Plenty of licenses? Adam learned to drive when he was very young too, mostly out of necessity, lack of parental guidance. "Don't you need just one license? I mean, not here, but back home?"

"Destruction>" Parker's thinking she's missed many more opportunities for fun. "And beating people up? Cool."

This time, her laugh is accompanied by a snort. For some, it might mean disgust, but snorting just sometimes happens. "Doesn't matter what I do. The computer notices nothing." She's likely getting too comfortable with being invisible to the computer. This couldn't be hubris, could it? "It doesn't even notice I disappeared." Yes, hubris.

"Don't you need one for each name?" Really, isn't that obvious? It is to Parker. "I have one for Alice, one for agent Hagen, none for Parker."

Well, now that he knows that Parker is off of the Computer's radar, he's looking at her in a new light. Adam is very good at going unnoticed, but not so good that he can stay off of the Computer's radar. That brings about any number of questions. His mind is going as fast as the car right now.

Finally, he settles on just one, simple and direct. "How do you stay off the Computer's radar?"

In the end, he has to ask another question too if just because Adam is already curious by nature and she is just giving him SO MUCH to think about. "And why do you have so many names?"

"It's my job." Technically, it's not the job description the computer gave her, but the computer gave her a rather vague one. She considers her invisibility an example of excellent job performance. There's another grin from her. "And it still pays me." One does not want to meet an unpaid Parker.

His question has her curious. "It's like robbing Greek Antiquities Gallery of the Louvre. Don't touch what you're not prepared to take. Don't jump up and down in front of the motion sensors. Know the blindspots. Every place has blindspots. Know the system upgrades in security." That's a perfectly clear explanation, right? It should be. She's robbed the Gallery several times, but two of them still haven't been found out.

Letting out a whistle, the second question is harder. "Hardison says I need them. Made the IDs and everything."

Adam is suddenly so fascinated by Parker's employment status that he could almost forget he was in a death-defying car ride, white knuckling the 'oh shit' handles for dear life. Off the Compputer's radar but she still gets paid? He knows of a handful of blind spots, but not enough to avoid detection entirely. While Adam knows a lot about mechanics and electrical in relation to cars, he's never thought of applying that to security spots or motion sensors.

"Maybe there's a way to bypass the security cameras altogether." He says thoughtfully, imagining the internal wiring and what it might take to disconnect that wire and reroute another to his benefit.

He looks back to Parker. "Do your ID's get you into higher clearance areas?"

"Can't avoid them altogether. Too many everywhere." It's like when she cases a place for the first time. Cameras are unavoidable, but it's the notice that's important. "Just be boring. Stay with crowds." Having never attended much school in her entire life, she wonders what the hell they prepare people for -- clearly no useful skills. "Then learn the blindspots. If you can't be invisible, be unnoticed."

How is this not obvious to other people who are not Parker? Oh wait.

It should also be noted that somehow Parker's still managed to drive like a maniac while carrying on a conversation. Sophie would be so proud.

"No. I don't need them here." There is genuine melancholy, a genuine affect that is hard for Parker. She can't explain Hardison and all he did, or how much she misses him.

"I'm usually pretty good at being unnoticed." Which doesn't make it easy to have any kind of social life. Really, he's lucky that Ronan noticed him at all. He's boring and he doesn't really fit in with anyone. "Today's kind of an anomaly."

He does take her advice to heart though. He'll have to pay more attention to the cameras and where they are and what they're looking at. And he can use other people as shields against them. Adam's never much cared for most people so he'll have no problem using them in that way.

"How do you know all this?" He wonders what, in her life where she comes from, has made her need to learn these things. Or maybe it's something she's learned from being here however long she has. "I mean, do you work security?"

Social life? Who needs that? Certainly not Parker, not anymore.

"Everything here's an anomaly." It's something she doesn't understand. There's no pattern to anything, even the days -- except for the drugs putting people to sleep. It's why she abandoned her room altogether.

"Infiltration consultant." By that, she's taken it to mean she consults herself and how to infiltrate places she's not supposed to be. She has the perfect excuse all wrapped up in her job title. "Security is to be seen. Infiltrate is to be, but not not be noticed."

Clearly a social life is overrated. And yet everyone keeps telling Adam he needs one. Parker is almost literally the first person he's spoken to in a long time that isn't a boy named Ronan. That is, not unless they were put together on a mandatory mission in which he had to talk to them.

Really, in spite of the crazy driving and the hopping from topic to topic, Adam has lucked out with Parker. She has yet to judge him. She has yet to make him really question her motives. She's been up front with him in a way most people aren't. Surprisingly, he's fascinated by her in a way that people don't usually fascinate him.

"Can you teach me? Sometime?" Not now of course because the place is being turned upside-down. But sometime after this. "How to be better at not being noticed, I mean."

Parker's circle is tiny, so she's reverted to the simple idea of her crew: helping the little guy (but this guy didn't look little, but Sophie explained that it's a metaphor)and working on an alternative revenue scheme.

Revenue is chocolate, but this guy's asking for more help. She's silent for 21 seconds. "Okay. Sometime."

There's a moment where he's pretty sure she'll say no. Adam Parrish isn't liked by most people. He isn't accepted by most. It takes him a long time to get close to people, close enough to let them in or for them to even want to be let in. He can be prickly and stand-off-ish. It's his own insecurities that make him think that Parker is going to say no.

He's preparing himself for just that thing, mentally kicking himself for even thinking to ask, when she surprises him. She says yes. "Okay. I can give you some of my credits. I'm not using most of them." And he knows nothing in life is free.

"Alternative revenue stream. I always work on an alternate revenue stream." Which means take only from the mark, not the client. In this place, Parker figures everyone (except for that oh-so-perfect-he-must-work-for-the-Computer Steve Rogers) is a client. Wait, Root's more potential crew. Relationships are hard.

"Chocolate and cereal right now." She'll figure out how to make some extra credits later. "When we work on it, you bring chocolate or cereal." These are also known as Parker's basic food groups.

Chocolate and cereal should be easy enough to get. Adam is going to have to start keeping an eye out for them. He's actually surprised that she doesn't want his credits. Maybe that says something about who Parker is to him, as a person. In spite of their speed, he relaxes a bit into the passenger seat, not so much the skittish, completely distrusting guy anymore.

"I'll get you some. Thanks." It's really a small price to pay for what Parker could teach him, he thinks.

"I mean I'll really see you again, right? After this?" After today. She really means it when she says she'll help him learn to work around the Computer, he hopes.

"Can live off those." Although Parker on too much chocolate needs supervision.

Parker lets out another of her odd bark laughs. "Yeah. It would be weird to teach someone to be invisible if I'm invisible." She has to ponder all of the implications of that statement. It's practically philosophical of her.

Chocolate or cereal, Adam makes a mental note of that. He thinks he has enough credits to get some off of someone. Somehow. He'll make it happen.

The prospect of having a direction to go in, with Parker's help, that gives him the hope he's been looking for in this place. Without really trying to, Parker has become very important to him in so many ways and for so many reasons. "Thanks."

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whosalicewhite - 2016-12-11 23:15 (UTC) - Expand

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