15626/HAPPY BIRTHDAY JASON

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JASON
Date of Scene:	16 August 2023
Location:	Pinball Wizards, Gotham City
Synopsis:	Happy Birthday Jason Todd, with Pinball, Cheap Pizza, and a lot of siblings around to wish him well!
Cast of Characters:	Phoebe Beacon, Barbara Gordon, Jason Todd, Harper Row, Tim Drake, Damian Wayne

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Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    PINBALL WIZARDS.

    Gotham's finest Pinball Museum, Enthusiast Hang-Out and place for cheap beer by the pitcher, slightly less cheap beer by the bottle, and a fourteen-inch pizza that assuredly comes in frozen and is baked in an convection oven in the back.

    It even has anamatronics!

    --THAT ASSUREDLY ARE NOT EVIL AND DO NOT KILL PEOPLE. Please stop asking. They're old and tired just like the owner.

    The jukebox (hackable) is currently playing Crocodile Rock (Phoebe picked it), and the sounds of pinball are all around -- buzzes, bells, whistles, "WAAAAAAAH!" and the whole place has been bought out for the night for a private party.

Barbara Gordon has posed:
Barbara was already here. She'd arrived twenty or so minutes ago, and had already somewhat settled in to the joint. She'd perused the shop where you turn in your tickets to plan her attack on what items she wanted to win, and now she was out on the game floor already scoring them phat tickets from the little chutes. Currently, the redhead is standing in front of one of the Free Throw Basketball games, tossing orange and red basketballs at the hoop, over and over with resounding thud noises as she sinks some, and fails to sink some.

Wearing a pair of black jeans and a black and white baseball tshirt with the number '11' on the chest and back, she's not far from where the tables had been setup, which is one reason the basketball game drew her in quick!

Jason Todd has posed:
Jason Todd has no idea why he is here. Probably someone just trying to jerk his chain. Figures they'd try to do that at a pinball arcade full of D&D geeks. Wait. That's an oxymoron, isn't it?

Pushing inside, he wears a gray jacket over a red tee shirt with a fading snarky saying.

'Coffee. Because murder is illegal.'

Adding to the fashionable outfit are ripped pale jeans and scuffed biker boots. And his rather dour expression for having to meet 'someone' here.

He looks around once inside the door, hands stuffed in his pockets. As he considers just leaving, he sees.. people. Family, actually. That's the first word that comes to mind. Phoebe, Barbara.

Well now he knows who lured him here. There will be a reckoning.

Harper Row has posed:
Harper Row comes crossing over the threshold of the place like there's a ribbon tied across the doorway. "Awwwwyeah." She can get into this kinda vibe. All her senses are crying out in a Boston accent ~wicked awesome~.

She's come dressed down, but not without flair. Wearing an array of piercings like she's trying to set off a metal detector or tick off Grandma. Torn leggings, thick soled boots, ripped jeans, and some terrible Gotham punk band's inappropriate, but vibrant, mascot adorned t-shirt.

She doesn't need the sensory suite in her uniform to make out chums and thrusts her fist in the air and booms out in a faux-deep voice to cut though the beeps, boops and ding-ding-dings. "AY." and makes her way up behind Jason. "What the... Oh, mah, gawd, fancy meeting you here." All innocent and a poop-eating grin.

Tim Drake has posed:
    Tim's rushing to get here on time. He'd left the Manor early, dressed casually in a pair of black jeans and a t-shirt (overjoyed at the thought of a party that didn't require suite and tie) but wouldn't you know, it took a lot of extra work to get past all the security measures at Jason's place so that he doesn't show up on the visitors log. Even now he's not entirely certain he managed to catch them all, given he was on a time crunch. But some gifts are best as a surprise, and also best opened where civilians can't ask questions like "why are you buying your brother body armor?"

    Except, excuse you, Tim made it himself in the fabrication shop of the Roost. So it's technically a homemade gift, and it's the thought that counts, right?

    He's toting an actual wrapped present with him too, a fairly hefty one by all accounts judging by the way he's holding it, so he nearly runs right into Jason and Harper on his way in.

    "Whoops, sorry, excuse me--ahhhh crap."

    He's just realized who he nearly shoulder-checked, and being that it's Jason, that means he's late. "This isn't a present. You saw nothing." He frees up a hand to wave it in the air, all faux-mystically, before he retreats over to the table that the group has apparently claimed as their own.

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    And Phoebe had been there for a bit for the set-up, which is why there is a red 'HAPPY BIRTHDAY JASON!' banner in sparkly red letters, a pile of brownies, and a cake that had a very cartoony version of Jason's :| face on it with 'Happy Birthday!' written in her own neat script.

    And because she's there it's not awkward at all. Because she is absolutely not wearing a Red Hood branded T-shirt beneath a denim jacket and a red skirt, and is definitely not attempting to carry a tray of non-alcoholic drinks in heels before she sets everything down.

    "WOO. That makes *two* parties I've been involved with planning and no one's dead yet!" she states, pumping her fists in the air before she teeters on those heels, and grabs onto a chair to steady herself with a o_o expression.

Barbara Gordon has posed:
Babs is finishing up her basketball toss about the time that people come filtering in, and she turns to greet them with a big smile, her hands evening her tee-shirt out around her waist as she moves over to where Phoebe is welcoming them to stand close to her, offering a hand to keep the young woman from falling over.

"Welcome! Happy birthdaaay!" She says, her voice filled with cheeky exuberance. Babs moves around the chairs then to spread her arms open and offer Jason a hug. "You're like what, fifty now?" She asks him, soon to give him a shoulder squeeze with her left hand too. She conveys her silly mood with a grin, and casts her green eyes to the others pouring in. "Hey, ya'll. Welcome to the party zone. Care of Pheebs here."

Damian Wayne has posed:
     ">tt< Of course it is a pun." Damian uttered as he walked in commenting on the name of the establishment, looking around and squinting his eyes from the overstimulation as he looks around.

  He was in mostly casual clothes, which for him, was business casual, black button-up, slacks, and shoes to match. He walked up to the others in the group with a slight RBF on his face. "Is this Hell? And if some guy in a mascot suit gets close to me so help me..." Is all he mustered, at least he was here.

Jason Todd has posed:
Jason Todd should leave. Yeah, this can't be a good meeting. Someone wants to have a Family bonding night. Again.

Then Harper greets her and she's standing between himself and Freedom! (Yes it is thought with a Scottish accent)

"Harper." It comes out as if Jason isn't decided whether he's happy or angry to see her. So like he usually greets everyone.

When Tim veers past Harper and bounces into him, Jason doesn't budge. Because Tim is scrawny. Not as scrawny as Damian. But not Jason-sized.

The promise his item is not a present is followed by Phoebe carrying drinks, dressed in a Red Hood tee.

Why the hell isn't he seeing royalties from all that Merch out here? Seriously. What the hell? Someone's gonna get kneecapped with a taser round soon.

"Tim. The fact that banner is hanging over where Phoebe is?" And Barbara offering him a birthday wish..

"Your words mean nothing." But it isn't a resentful comment. Just using his impressive powers of deduction.

Someone planned him a birthday party. There will be a reckoning.

Steeling himself, he offers a smile to Harper and Tim. And Damian who shows up. For a moment he spares a careful scan of the place to make sure Bruce isn't here lurking in some dark corner.. Then goes in farther, nodding to Barbara. Who.. wants a hug. Which he gives her, tightly. "Thanks Barbara. I.. appreciate it." He's trying.

Is there a bit of flush to his expression?

Then he moves closer to Phoebe, "At least I don't have to guess which one of you planned this.." pausing, but not offering her a hug (because usually he just looks stupid when she pulls back), he adds, "Thanks Pheeb." He had nothing else to do that wasn't wrenching on his car.

Harper Row has posed:
"No getting away J, Pheebs and Babs are already on location, prepped and ready. We got a dossier on you and everything. Special daaaaaaaaay. And you will have to admire the sandwich manuever, closing in on you from all sides with good wishes. It's the least we can do, old man." Harper harumphs, pretending to adjust an imaginary monocle. She goes up on tiptoes and rasps in Jason's ear. "I think they serve ovaltine so we got you covered." she ribs, friendly and annoying like.

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    "Sounds like Damian's volunteering to be in the Five Nights at Freddy's Movie premiere party." Phoebe gives a small smile, giving a wave to the 'younger' brother of the group. She takes a deep rbeath, giving a grin to Babs for the save with the chair as she hops back to her feet.

    "I feel like stilettos are still out of the question on work nights." she states quietly, and then she gives a bright smile to Jason.

    And she steels herself, and just very gently hugs him.

    "Yeah. I figured I'm the one you're least likely to beat up in a dark alley. Babs we both know would win." she jokes as she hugs Jason.

    And when she releases him she gives a big smile, and tugs her sleeves up, showing the faintly glowing white tattoo'd on circle at her wrist. "Okay! So there's like, a hundred pinball machines, they have skiball, and I kinda wanna see Jason wail on the Fright Night cabinet with both guns ablazing."

Barbara Gordon has posed:
Babs steps back then to where she'd set her black denim jacket over the back of one of the chairs. As the others itneract, she grins and leans over to dip her hand in to the interior pocket of her jacket. She plucks out a red and black envelope sealed by a black and gold smiley face sticker. She steps toward Jason then and offers it to him.

"Happy happy." She tells him softly before bumping shoulders with him. "It's just a Amazon gift card. Money money." She adds with a playful expression before she makes a bee-line for the pizza and a plate!

"I gotta get my pinball on, I have a pair of 3d glasses I plan on walking outta here with tonight."

Tim Drake has posed:
    "Guess I gotta work on my Jedi Mind Trick some more, then," Tim calls back to Jason, flashing him a cheeky smile over his shoulder.

    The gift is set aside for now, Tim leaving it with a fond little pat because he's proud of this one too, apparently, and then he rubs his hands together. He's grinning with a mischief-filled look on his face as he scans the various games, pinball and otherwise, available.

    "Birthday boy gets the first choice, as is sacred tradition. What are we playing?" he asks, glancing back to Jason again as he works his way around the hug circuit. For his part, Tim offers an arm-pat and a wide grin.

Damian Wayne has posed:
     The 'scrawny' 19 year old takes out a small box, placing something in each ear. Where once there was a perturbed young man was a...slightly less perturbed young man. "Haunted animatronics be damned." He comments, though he starts to look around for some game that wasn't an assault three senses. He walked up to one labeled 'Cheese Viking' and watched the machine go through its demo mode. "This one offends me the least."

Jason Todd has posed:
Jason Todd returns the hug to Phoebe. "Well yeah. That's a given. She'd take us all down. At once." Because she knows everything. Scary smart red head.

He turns slowly, finding this tactic of surrounding him to be entirely too effective. "Yeah.. I see that" he acknowledges to Harper. "And get off my lawn." Ovaltine.

He offers a nod and faint smile to Tim then spins around again as Barbara offers a card. He looks at it. "Thanks Barb. Really. None of you had to get me anything." Because it's more fun to be a hermit he lies to himself.

"Choice?" He looks to the games. "Cloak and Dagger" he nods to the more obscure upright arcage. "Jack Flack kids ass."

Harper Row has posed:
Harper frowns, and then her lips pout out far enough for a little birdy to perch on. "Waitaminute, there are ~prizes~?!" Her expression contorts like she just stepped on a 4x2 piece of lego, then twists into something more akin experiencing a flashbang going off at close range. "Yessssssss!"

There's little hope she'd be able to do much damage to Jason, which is why she uses him as leverage to shove off from. All so she can be propelled over to scan these vidja games and pin balling cabinets. Hey now, there are animatronics as well? Could she...program them to sing happy birthday off-key? Later...later...Must recon this place. There might be novelty dinosaurs to win if there are 3D glasses after all.

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    "Nah, most haunted anamatronics are *cursed*, not *damned*. There is a huge difference between the two, and the only ones I've come across were--" Phoebe begins, because of course she does, interest and talents lay in weird directions with the Weird Sister.

    She does pause though and trails off with a "-- not a great conversation topic on a birthday. Maybe some other time." she states, and then taps her fingers together, cheeks coloring.

    There is an anamatronic standing in the corner, powered down with a sign that asks that Management be alerted if people want to interact with it. It is a five and a half foot tall armadillo wearing a cowboy hat and Deputy star.

Barbara Gordon has posed:
Babs gets herself a paper plate and a couple pieces of the pizza, a clump of napkins, and with a grin she sets off over to the pinball machines. Her eyes look over the others, listening to them chatter as she steps down to a line of the pinball opportunities. She pases by two of them before she stops at the third one, and furrows her brow.

"Shawshank Redemption pinball machine?" She asks, her voice laced with uncertainty toward this theming. She stares at the pictures of Redd and Andy adorning the faceplate of the score board, and then .. well she shrugs her shoulder, and sets her pizza down.

Within moments, the redhead has the machine lighting up, with some poignant movie quotes coming from the machine's speakers.

'Get busy living, or get busy dying."

Needless to say, Babs is grinning stupidly as she starts to send the ball down the track, then clatter the buttons to stay alive!

Damian Wayne has posed:
     "Who the hell is Jack Flack?" Damian questioned, looking to anyone for guidance. Though the allure of the Cheese Viking was strong. "How do you start one of these machines? I want to become the Cheddar Champion, and dethrone this person with the ASS initials on the high score." He narrowed his eyes looking at the display. "I will beat that ASS."

Tim Drake has posed:
    "It's okay Pheebs, I'm sure this guy is neither cursed nor damned. It's just Deputy Dillo, he's a good guy." Tim stares up at the animatronic for a few moments as if actually daring it to move on its own, but then he turns around and shrugs.

    He has no guidance to offer Damian, only a burst of laughter as he talks about beating the unlikely individual who probably doesn't actually have initials that spell out ASS.

    He scores his own slice of pizza and wanders over to watch Babs play for a little bit, but really what Tim is waiting on is Jason to play, mostly so that he can cheer from the back in support of the birthday boy.

Harper Row has posed:
Harper nearly drags her fingers over 'Dillo's forearm. She's about as bad as a five year old when signs tell her not to do a specific thing. She doesn't make tactile contact, but the urge is strong. "Later Pardner." she squints and vocal fry's, Eastwood'ing the moment with gravitas and a little pointing of fingers from her own eyeballs to the vacant orbs of the Deputy. Maybe Phoebe's comments to the accuracy of what may plague the mascot gave her just enough common sense not to go threatening the birthday party with some crazy situation. Maybe.

Harper swings by to hover over Babs' shoulder. She admires the eye-hand coordination going on, and is way weirded out by quotes coming out of the machine accompanying the flashing lights and dire straits that a player could land in. Someone had an eye for detail adorning this machine with all sorts of stuff. That ball is almost too fast to follow with the eye at times. "Noice. Oo! Oo! Ah!" She's not helping.

Jason Todd has posed:
Jason Todd skipped pizza. Because Cloak and Dagger. "Jack Flack, Damian. From the movie. But in the video game he's called Agent X. Try to keep up." It's the little spy-guy on the screen shooting at the bad guys and stealing secret documents with panache.

His expression turns from serious to a grin at the between-level animation of Agent X riding the elevator to the next 'floor'. The overcoat and fedora'd figure pulls out a yo-yo and plays with it a molment before the elevator doors open and it's back to the action.

Barbara Gordon has posed:
Babs is dialed-in on the pinball machine and its strange motif. She is aware of others stopping by to check on her mad skills, but she's zoned-in on it, with her pizza getting cold.

The oddities of the machine are both large, and mixed in with an expert craftsmanship that shows why it was likely bought for this place in the first place.

"Avoid the Sisters!" Babs shouts as the ball nearly goes in to the 'bad area' behind the flappers, which is instant death. Back there lies the notorious face of Andy's truest enemy during his time at Shawshank.

She keeps smacking those little white buttons on the sides of the machine, frantically causing the flappers to do what they're named after!

But, as it happens, eventually her silver ball drops between them, and right over Brooks' face, and the noose artwork embosed beside it, hanging from a wooden rafter.

Babs lets her shoulders slump as her final score is tallied.

"This game is kinda morbid..." She mutters.

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    Phoebe goes to grab a couple slices of pizza for herself, and as the others go about investigating the games, she leans back in a chair and breathes out, letting her shoulders slack as she takes out some notebooks from her bag and thumbs through a couple of pages.

    Ba-dah-duh-dump. SNAP SNAP.

    She raises her head, and her eyes narrow.

    Ba-dah-duh-dump. SNAP SNAP.

    She stands from her place at the table and goes around a corner.

    

    Ba-dah-duh-dump. Ba-da-duh-dump. Ba-da-duh-dump. SNAP SNAP.

    "... oh, *hello*." she whispers.

    The Addams Family.

    Ba-dah-duh-dump!

Damian Wayne has posed:
     "This was a movie?" He asks, watching Jason play the arcade cabinet. Luckily the ear inserts made the cacophony of pinball buzzers, skeeball, and all sorts of sound effects much more bearable. His green eyes look to the CRT and then back to Jason as he continues playing.

  "That's it." He says, before he approaches the Cheese Viking cabinet and presses start. "Watch out, Gouda Gladiators, you're mine!" He says, already pushing buttons and defeating many an anthropomorphic cheese wheel to his mighty axe.

Harper Row has posed:
Harper follows the progress of the silver ball, and it seems as if to her that it just gets faster and faster the more perilous its existence is upon the slanted surface. "Awwwww...poor Andy." she clucks and hisses through her teeth as the final numbers tally. "Hey, that was a pretty good run though. You didn't even hip-check or Tilt the sucker neither."

She wrinkles her nose and sniffs with her snoofer. The smell of pizza that permeates the place has reached her olfactories and the factory in her tummy grumbles, prepping the digestive juices. "I...hungerrr." Awwwwyeah Sinistar quotes y'all.

Tim Drake has posed:
    A startling amount of pizza disappears on account of one Tim Drake-Wayne, who, if given the opportunity, can put away a whole pie on his lonesome. But today is not the day for that, because Tim spies something with his little eye... "Wait... is that Polybius? I didn't think it actually existed!"

    And off he goes into the corner of the arcade to do an Investigate.

    Whenever Jason gets around to opening up presents, Tim's is a VitaMix blender... wherein the box has clearly been opened, and the machine inside tampered with. Who needs a turbo-boosted, no-longer-street-legal blender? Apparently Tim thinks Jason does. This thing probably counts as a weapon in at least five states.

    A little note included reads "For those pina coladas we talked about!"

Jason Todd has posed:
Eventually the the Agent loses. Because video games are rigged. "Damn game cheats" Jason mutters. "Yes there was a movie, Damian. Next week we're watching it. All of it." No wiggling out of that night.

He turns just as Barbara loses, "Well you know.. you could go goth, Barb. Then you'd fit in.." he half jokes and nods toward Pheeb and the Addams Family game.

Moving over to grab pizza and a drink.

He drops into a chair for a few minutes. Time to recharge.