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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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Morning | Closed to Jack Harkness

He got the text about the newest special after the briefing and headed over to Technical Services immediately. He was grateful to Steve for working out this arrangement for new specials, considering how confusing and disorienting his own arrival was. Or at least he was still thinking of it as an arrival, despite being consistently told otherwise.

He waits outside the processing room, glancing out the window at the artificially lit street below. When the door opens and a man steps through he glances up and then immediately does a double take. He knows this man.

"Malcolm Merlin."

Oliver is definitely not going to be happy.

Afternoon | OTA

Running into the fray without his speed and with a laser barrel that he's only 60% sure will work when it needs to isn't Barry's idea of a good time. But it's pretty clear that the maniacs driving around in stolen jeeps and motor cars shooting the place up are only concerned about their own party.

They have almost no chance of stopping them unless they set up some kind of trap or get a car of their own to chase them. Barry settles on the second and begins making his way towards Motorized Transport. Halfway there he ducks behind a cement wall to avoid being hit by random fire, only to find a grenade rolling to a stop a few feet away from him. Just like in the movies, he thinks to himself before his self-preservation instinct kicks in and he makes a run for it, yelling for the people around him to also run.

He really misses his speed.

Now this feels like home.

Natasha probably shouldn't find such comfort in the smell of burning rubber and smoke, and yet here she is, feeling more alive than she has in days. Her senses are heightened, her adrenaline is rushing through her veins, and Natasha is in her element, now, chasing down criminals and keeping innocent lives safe. She's a Threat Assessor. This is one hell of a threat, and she's here to assess it.

She's in the middle of guiding a woman to run in the opposite direction of the blasts after falling when she hears the screeching of tires, and Natasha looks over her shoulder to spot a group of maniacs peeling down the road with grenades clenched in their fists. People are running, and she understands why. But to Natasha, live grenades are tools, and she runs toward the vehicle when she finally sees one of them launch the weapon into the street.

What she doesn't count on is almost colliding with a civilian who was apparently hiding behind the cement wall she was rushing towards, and having him there puts him in her direct line of aim which is a Problem. She's counting in her head, there isn't enough time for either of them to turn away from it without losing a limb in the explosion, so Natasha makes a split second decision and wraps her arm around the mans waist. She doesn't stop moving, instead throwing her body down and using the force of her own weight to drag him down with her until they hit the ground, and her free arm reaches out simultaneous to her fall to grab the live bomb. Fingers close around it, she twists her torso to look back at her now clear path, her arm arches, and she swings the grenade to send it scattering across the asphalt until it's stopped by a large chunk of discarded concrete in the middle of the road.

Natasha doesn't see them try to cut the wheel of their vehicle to avoid driving any closer, instead turning her head away to lie flat on her stomach and grabbing the strangers head to pull it into her shoulder. Her natural instinct is to shield his face from the blast behind them, and less than a second later the explosion shakes the ground they're on. She holds him still for a lingering moment, as if she's waiting to see if she hears anything else. The goal is to make them crash, not blow them up with that much live ammunition in their vehicle, but it's possible that her toss was a little off considering the sudden drop she had to make to get the unexpected man out of her way.

No second explosion. She's just about to look back when she hears the sounds of them shooting again, and Natasha rolls back behind the cement wall for cover before reaching out and grabbing the stranger by his collar to drag him behind the wall with her. They crashed, but they're still alive, and now they're shooting from where their Transport collided with a building to avoid driving over the grenade. Natasha's back presses against the cement wall and she looks over at the man for the first time, blinking when she sees his face completely.

The poor thing looks like a choir boy.

"You know how to shoot that thing?" She asks breathlessly, nodding at his blaster, and she gives him a single nod. "Because if not you're gonna learn real quick. Don't worry, it'll be fun." She doesn't sound very convincing as she reaches for her own blaster and waits for a pause in fire to make a quick glance around the corner of the wall and fall back. "Three left, I think the other two are knocked out. I'm Natasha, by the way." She looks at him with an almost ridiculous amount of levity. "Didn't mean to ruin your escape route, I just didn't see you there, my bad. You wanna take first shot or should I?"

Barry only has time to widen his eyes in surprise at the woman who suddenly appears in front of him and manhandles him down to the ground. She reaches out and grabs the grenade in front of them and all he can do is yell, "Don't!"

And then she's hurling it away from them and Barry wants to watch it fly away from them, but his head is suddenly pressed against her shoulder and he would feel awkward about that, except for the fact that the world has turned into a mass of chaos around him. The explosion from the bomb rocks the ground their on and he takes a second to catch his breath, when he can feel the gravel around his hands pop up at more gunfire landing nearby. The woman rolls away as suddenly as she appeared and he's making a desperate attempt to push himself up when he feels her roughly pull him by the collar behind the wall.

He's leaning awkwardly behind the wall, heart pounding when he finally sees his rescuer. She looks like some kind of warrior goddess in red. He understands her questions but when he opens his mouth to speak, all that comes out is "Uh, hi. Barry."

He swallows and flops over, reaching for his gun. "I know how to shoot it, but it's faulty. I've tried to get them to replace it three times." He pushes himself into a better sitting position. "You might want to go first."

The somewhat stunned look on the boys face is, admittedly, more amusing than Natasha should probably think it is, but she has no time to make fun of him in that moment with the amount of gunfire taking place around the wall that’s giving them cover. Her eyes, instead, move down to his blaster when he informs her that it isn’t working correctly, and she nods with a look of distaste staining her expression. “Of course it’s faulty, why would they bother checking whether or not our guns work?” She mutters something else under her breath in Russian, and although she doesn’t bother to translate for Barry there’s definitely an unmistakable ‘motherfuckers’ in there somewhere.

“Well, Barry, you’re in luck,” she continues in English as she checks her own blaster, her eyes moving around the corner of the wall for a split second before she looks back at him. “Your highest chance of survival with anyone else is roughly around twelve percent. With me, you’ve got a solid forty-“ Natasha stops abruptly to wince when she hears a blaster shot clip the wall they’re hiding behind “-a solid thirty five percent.”

She makes her move, waiting for a lapse in fire before turning the corner and getting off a few blasts of her own, but it’s mostly just so she can scope out the position of enemy fire. She doesn’t have as long as she had hoped; there isn’t much need for downtime when they don’t have to reload. She quickly moves back behind the wall, back pressed flatly against it, and she presses her lips together with uncertainty before turning her head and looking at Barry completely.

“Okay, new plan,” she begins with a tone that mixes both casual passiveness and mild concern. “There’s a straggler parted from the rest of the group, he’s a good fifteen feet away from them and he’s got a nice gun. We could really use a nice gun right now. So.” Natasha holds her blaster out to Barry. “I’m going to run out there and take his gun. And you’re going to cover me to make sure that I don’t end up with a hole in my head. It’s like a game. It’s called ‘don’t let your new best friend get shot’, alright? Really easy. Rules are in the title.” Her other hand moves to clap Barry on the shoulder with a little squeeze as she holds his gaze. “Try your best. If you mess up I’ll probably die but, you know. Just try your best.”

Whatever she just muttered sounded like a grievous insult, but it was in another language so he can't be that offended. Though he's almost certain that it wasn't directed at him as much as the commissary officer who had handed him his laser barrel this morning.

He winces as a piece of the wall they're lying behind goes flying as a result of a well placed blast. "Thirty-five?" he repeats, his voice slightly higher than it probably should be. He licks his lips and nods. "Well, that's not terrible."

He takes in a deep breath and scans for a new place to run for a better vantage point behind them. They need to get to higher ground if they can. Higher ground with cover, but before he can suggest it, she's offering up another plan. Who is this woman?

He stares at the blaster for a moment before looking back at her. "Are you sure? Maybe I should make a run for him." It's clear by the way she's handled herself so far that she's got some kind of military or police training. He has enough confidence in her ability to shoot to be willing to chance it. And he might not have his speed, but if there's anything he knows how to do by now, it's make a run for it.

He's not amused by her joke at the end. He doesn't want anyone to die in this scenario, but especially someone he just met. "Right, no pressure."

He sets down his gun down and crouches. "I can get him," he says looking over at her with determination. "I'm fast and I like nice guns." He's actually not a fan, but he knows how to use them when he needs to. More importantly, he knows what kind of damage they can do in close proximity. He doesn't feel comfortable asking someone else to take that risk. "Cover me."

"Hey." Natasha looks back at Barry with hurt impatience. "Thirty-five is a solid 'we might not die' and you're not going to get much better in this place." She gives a pleased nod when he finally accepts that it's not the worst situation that they can be in, and she's about to move before he not only questions her, but offers an alternative that's much more dangerous on his part than hers. Natasha isn't used to that, especially not in the middle of combat.

She stares at him for a few lingering seconds, the blaster back in her hand as he positions himself with a promise that he's 'fast', and in any other situation Natasha would most likely argue with the man and tell him to sit his Book Of Mormon Broadway butt back down. She stops herself, though, because the look in his eye isn't fear, it's determination, and people who can look into this situation with determination have seen equal, or worse, many times before. She can't help but crack a smile.

"Looks like Barry is full of surprises." She moves, then, to get into position so she can fire as soon as he takes off. "Hey. If we don't bleed out by the end of this, I'm going to buy you a drink. I swear it's going to be the best damn drink you've ever had, just don't do anything stupid out there and you'll get it, alright? You're twenty one, right?" She looks at him suddenly with a side glance before looking back. "...Just kidding, of course you are."

She doesn't sound certain.

"In position."

He's not entirely sure she's not going to yank him back down by the back of his shirt, since that is clearly a move that she's okay with. Instead, she moves into position to cover him. He grins back at her, though it fades at the crack about his age.

Why does everyone ask him that? He knows he looks young for his age but... His thoughts are stopped by another round of fire and he gets his head back in the game. "I'm twenty-one," he assures her, looking over at her one last time. "And if we get through this, you owe me another drink for that."

He sucks in a deep breath and then he's off like a shot. It still feels like slow motion to someone who is used to going at mach speeds, but he gets lucky with the fact that the guy isn't looking in his direction and Natasha works fast to distract them. It feels like an eternity for Barry to actually get to the guy, which he slams into with all his weight. It's not much, but it's enough to knock the guy off his feet. Barry scrambles for the weapon the other man dropped in the scuffle and is rewarded with an elbow to the head that makes him see stars. Still, his fingers brush the barrel of the gun, just as the other man manages to get out from underneath him. Barry rolls towards the gun and holds it up at the man, just in time to discover he has another, smaller gun he's produced from nowhere and is pointing it at Barry.

He probably should've seen that coming. Oliver would've.

Edited 2016-09-27 17:51 (UTC)

Natasha can't help but feel her smile grow when Barry demands a second drink just for suggesting that he looks under the age of twenty-one, and she gives a little shrug before pointing her blaster and staring down the sight of it. "Fair enough." He takes off.

There are several targets that start to take aim at Barry and the only reason Natasha is able to split her attention between all of them is because she's been trained to do so. Suppressing fire is easy enough, and Natasha keeps her shots steady as she also tries to keep her attention on Barry to make sure that he reaches his goal and he does, but it doesn't go nearly as well as they plan. He gets hit in the head and he takes it like a champ, but by the time he's on his back with the gun in his hold the maniac is pointing another one, and they've got themselves an old fashioned stand-off.

The issue with a stand-off, though, is that someone who's willing to drive around throwing grenades at innocent people for the hell of it most likely won't stand down in fear of getting shot. She sure as hell can't shoot him effectively from this distance, not with a RED barrel, anyway.

Natasha releases a low, exasperated sigh - why can't anything be easy - before she sprints herself. She's not wearing the bulky riot gear that's provided to them and that certainly helps with the speed, but not with protection. She has no cover, she fully expects to get shot and it's just a question as to where, so she's careful to make sure her side is facing the active enemy to lessen her risk of losing a vital organ. She's just about to drop when she feels a searing pain erupt from her shoulder.

She drops anyway, falling into a slide with an extended leg to kick the man hovering over Barry in the back of the knee, her useless blaster still strapped to her hip. She's on top of him before he can flip over, her elbow crashing into the back of his head and knocking him out before she grabs the gun that he had pulled on Allen with her good arm; her left. "Enough." She sounds angry because she is - Natasha has no idea what clearance barrel she was shot with but it hurts, and the only thing she's sure about is that the heat of the plasma was so intense it cauterized the wound as soon as it made it.

She doesn't stop moving, standing from her spot on the unconscious man with fluidity before pointing the gun with her non dominant hand and firing two shots; one hits a man in the torso, the other hits a different target directly in the groin. She's pretty sure that he's the one that shot her.

Taking advantage of the lull in fire she drops again, now taking cover behind the wrecked vehicle that had crashed, and she hisses through her teeth before dropping her new gun to unzip her jumpsuit. She pulls it down halfway on one side to see the damage done to her shoulder. It doesn't look good. "There's two more," she informs Barry, finally turning her head to look at him. She reaches out with her good arm and grabs his jaw, turning his head so she can see where he got bashed with an elbow. "That's going to bruise, you'll be alright. Your vision still good? I need to you take down the last two, I have to look at this." And make sure melted pieces of plastic jumpsuit didn't get fused into the wound, but that's a little more morbid than she thinks Barry has to hear.

Natasha isn't moving with the kind of speed that Barry normally does, but it's close enough that he has to blink in surprise before he can register that she's taken out the guy pointing a gun at him and has shot two of the other assailants in a matter of seconds. He moves as quickly as he can, ducking behind the vehicle beside her so that her act of absolute heroism wasn't wasted.

He glances over at her as she begins unzipping her jumpsuit, his mouth going dry until he sees the nasty shot in her shoulder. It looks bad. There's no doubt that she got it coming after him. He raises his eyebrows in surprise when she's inspecting his own injury, a bruise when she just got shot.

"I'm okay," he assures her. His vision is clear, even if his head is pounding. He grips the barrel a little more tightly. He can hear shots hitting the other side of the truck and nods at her before moving to the edge. He shoots and misses the first man by a few inches, but he doesn't make the mistake again. He's not crazy about guns, but he aims for the knees and watches them fall before turning back to Natasha. He tries not to think what laser beams do to muscle and bone rather than bullets.

"Are you okay?" It's pretty clear by that wound she isn't. "Get in the truck. I'll take you to medical."

Jack listens patiently to everything the rainbow jumpsuit brigade has to tell him. He smiles, he nods, he looks for things he could possibly use as a weapon until the green jumpsuit shoves a stack of paperwork at him, cause that's new. He takes his time reading everything, looking for clues in the wording. There's not much there. Doesn't stop him. After a certain point, he's doing it just as much to piss off the trout faced man sitting across from him as he is to try and figure out what's really going on. Seems an awfully convoluted scheme for just a little free labour. Still, now he's got a few things to think about as he gets some gear and a weapon dumped into his lap. Well, half a weapon. Better than nothing, he supposes.

The kid waiting for him outside the door is another surprise. He looks even more lost and rattled than Jack does. Still, smile bright and carry on. "Captain Jack Harkness," he says, like it's all one word, like the name and the title are inseparable and define him as completely as anything ever could. He holds out his hand, grinning. "Hell of a name you've got there, kid. Still - nice to meet you, Malcolm Merlin. You'll forgive me if I don't stay to chat." He's got a lot of information to mull over, and some real answers to ferret out. Which is a shame. Malcolm has some amazing bone structure, and there's something about wide-eyed youth, still some new experiences left to bank. It's the only way Jack experiences anything new any more. Vicariously.

Maybe another day. He picks a direction, and starts walking.

Barry doesn't take Merlin's extended hand. Which doesn't really seem to phase the man much at all since a second later he's walking away from him. Barry stares after him for a long moment before running after him to catch up. He's still a special, even if he's a dangerous one.

"Hey," Barry says as he catches up to him. He steps in front of his path. "I don't know what you're trying to do, but there's no point in lying here. The Computer knows who you are."

His eyes narrow as he looks Merlin over. Is it him, or does he look younger? "Who is Captain Jack Harkness?"

Jack will err on the side of making friends. Life is more convenient overall that way. When the kid refuses to take his hand, though, he doesn't dwell on it. Hardly important, in the grand scheme of things.

Following him, though. That will have to be addressed. "I am." Jack tilts his head to the side, confusion and perhaps a touch of pity. "Didn't we just do this?" He places a hand on his own chest. "Jack Harkness." Then he extends the same palm in Barry's direction. "Malcolm Merlin." Back to his own chest. "Very busy, lots to do. Excuse me." He tries once again to move down the hallway, figuring that if there are any unbiased answers to be had, he won't find them just outside the official offices.

Barry just stares open mouthed at Merlin for a moment before, scrunching his face up. "What?"

He seems genuine, but Barry doesn't know much about Merlin, except what he's heard from Oliver, which isn't exactly a glowing recommendation. Had the Computer brainwashed Merlin into thinking he was someone else, or had he dedicated himself to pretending to be someone else?

"I'm not Malcolm Merlin, you are," Barry says, moving to block his path yet again. "I'm Barry Allen. Look, I don't know what you're trying to do, but it's not going to work. Why don't we drop the games and just level for a second. You're not fooling anyone."

He tries again, understanding the words but having no idea why they're being directed at him. He's never been a Malcolm Merlin in his past, and he's given up on the idea of trying to blend in, to have a normal life. "All right, Barry. Why don't you tell me about Malcolm?" He claps the kid on the shoulder once, and uses a little push to be able to side step him and keep on down the corridor. "While we walk." It's technically possible that this kid is from a point in his future when he's decided to start keeping cover identities again, but very doubtful. You really only need a cover if you plan on staying. Staying never ends well.

Is he... is he being manhandled down the hallway? A little bit, but Merlin's probably right about them needing to move. He takes a deep breath and shrugs off the arm. "First things first, being too familiar with a higher clearance level is treason."

He wouldn't mind if it wasn't someone who had caused so much trouble for his friends in the pass. "Second, I'm supposed to be showing you around. There are a lot of us that woke up here with memories, or glitches, as they call them. Oliver is here too."

He waits for that to land, watching Merlin closely as they move.

The mention of Oliver gets no reaction at all. Jack has known a few, of course. It's a common name. None of them served any function of note, however, and it still doesn't shake loose any memory of the person in front of him.

"As I understand it, it's only treason if I fail to defer to you," Jack says, still walking. "However, since you keep insisting that I'm someone I'm not, which is most certainly arguing with the Computer, I believe that deferring to you would be the larger offense. Speaking of, I believe framing a lower clearance for a crime is just as bad. While I'm not sure that the idle threat counts, I'm still not going to argue with the Computer for you. You're also clearly unhappy, and definitely curious." Jack grins, a glint of ic in his eyes. Is Barry a test? He's a pretty awful one, if that's the case. "Do you really want to play this game with me?"

Nothing. There's nothing there to indicate that he even knows who Oliver is. He was sure he'd get some kind of reaction, considering the interactions he'd witnessed first hand.

Barry's own eyes harden slightly at the man's return threat. He's not wrong and though Barry wouldn't turn his worst enemy over to the computer, he doesn't appreciate his bluff being blown so easily.

"Do you really want to play this game without knowing the rules?" He pauses at some stairs. "I'm trying to help you." Stay out of trouble, at least.

Jack stops moving, but does not let Barry get in front of him again, if he has to side-step to block his path there, he will, because the look he's giving Barry is extremely searching. He wants to know if the kid actually believes what he's saying. Based on what he sees, he sighs, shakes his head. "No. You're not." Help isn't an insistence that a person you just met is a liar, followed by a vague threat. Whatever Barry intended when he turned up, whatever he was expecting to offer whoever stepped out of that door, Barr is currently not helping Jack.

If he had his speed... How many times has that thought crossed his mind since he's gotten here? If he had his speed, he would forcibly move Merlin to a location where they could talk openly, but as it is they're being watched by cameras, if not more.

That and the other man is making it impossible for Barry to get in his way, now he's the one in the lead.

"You don't know how this place works," Barry says, a touch of desperation in his voice. "I know we're not exactly friendly, but I wouldn't wish the things they do to people here on my worst enemy. You're only going to make things worse."

He takes a deep breath. "Fine. Will you listen to me if I call you Jack?" He has to fight the urge to use air quotes.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Daycycle 108 [ September 18 - September 24 ]

daycycle 108

[Sept 18 - Sept 24]

Barry | Throughout the day

Afternoon

Re: Afternoon

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