The Doc hadn't forgotten Cartri's birthday. He just hadn't been quite sure how to mark it.
Sixteen might feel like a big number to the kid shadowrunners of Darkwire, but the Doc was closing in on his
third sixteen. That made him the old man of the group, and by a considerable margin; combine the ages of
any two partygoers, and the Doc would still be older than the
sum. Given that kind of age difference, he was concerned he'd just be the crusty old
buzzkill weighing down the young people's fun if he showed up at Cartri's door. Although Cartri hadn't actually organized anything or invited anyone, the Doc was sure that the kid's friends would set up some kind of party for him anyway, and he didn't want to bring down the mood for the birthday crew.
That left him in a bit of limbo. Cartri hadn't
asked him for anything, hadn't even mentioned the occasion to him directly,
certainly hadn't invited him over, so maybe he should just let the kid be today and wish him a late happy birthday the next time they risked their lives fighting corpo-fascists together. On the other hand, people Cartri's age didn't always directly
ask for the things they wanted. When the Doc had been sixteen, he wouldn't have ever
shown that he wanted his friends to celebrate his birthday, but he would've been hurt if they
hadn't all the same. Not every kid had bought into that faux macho attitude, of course, but since the Doc couldn't rule it out.
So where did that leave him? Wondering what to do for a coworker's birthday... when that coworker was a
teenager.
The Doc had ultimately landed on straddling the line, trying to let the kids have their fun without making Cartri feel ignored. He wasn't going to show up at the young man's door unannounced, but he
was going to send him a gift and a card. Okay, progress. But what the
hell did a grown man buy for a teenager (especially a teenage
freedom fighter) that wouldn't look creepy or out of touch? He already had a plan for Daiya's gift - the palm-sized portable medscanner was an expression of his faith in her developing skills as a medic - but he hadn't worked nearly as closely or as often with Cartri. The Doc had spent a
week agonizing over it, which was kind of funny in hindsight.
Fight a planet-wide dictatorship? Easy. Replace a damaged heart with cybernetics? No problem.
Shop for a useful, meaningful birthday gift for someone he only knew so well?
Terrifying.
Alcohol was obviously out for an adult man's gift to a teenager, which was a shame, as the Doc was something of a connoisseur. He accepted that Cartri and Daiya and Cassus and Brie and the rest of the crew drank from time to time, but he wasn't about to encourage it. Weapons were out, too. Again, the Doc accepted that Darkwire was involved in a war, and that they were going to have to kill people to have any chance at building a better Denon... but he couldn't reconcile himself to putting a killing tool in a child's hands, even if the kid was going to kill people with or without it. He didn't want to do anything extravagant, as it might overshadow someone else's present...
... and he wasn't really in any position to
afford extravagance anyway.
So he hoped he'd navigated that minefield and chosen something both practical and exciting. An
ASN Courier Droid drifted up to the door of Cartri's apartment as the uninvited guests continued to flow in, beeping confusedly upon finding that there were more potential recipients inside than it had expected. Given that only Cartri was
male, it could probably have figured out the correct person to deliver it to if it'd taken a minute to properly scan, but it wasn't paid enough to bother. Come to think of it, it wasn't paid
at all. With an irritable little
beep-blooop! the droid opened its cylindrical delivery chamber and let the contents slide out onto a side table.
Then it buzzed away, muttering under its figurative breath in low binary trills.
The contents proved to be a spray can with a card wrapped around it. The card was a simple affair; the Doc had clearly gone out and bought the least cringeworthy one he could find at the corner store, which meant it had colorful balloons on it instead of felinx kittens, hovertrains, or awful jokes. Although his arms were mechanical, and unnaturally steady with a scalpel, the Doc's handwriting somehow managed to be an almost illegible scrawl.
Happy Sixteenth!, it read.
I hope this helps you stay out of trouble even while you're out causing it. He'd agonized over that message, too. Was it too short? Too long? Too
cringey? Four discarded birthday cards in his trash attested to other attempts.
The cylinder proved to be a
stealth polymer spray applicator. Spraying a coat of the stuff onto one's gear would help it blend into the shadows, and also gave it good resistance to ion fire. The Doc had settled on something
protective, a balance between wanting to keep Cartri safe in this war and not wanting to directly support violence. Hopefully he'd made a good choice. Across town at his clinic, he found himself still oddly nervous about it. Brain surgery didn't faze him, so why did this?! He just didn't want anyone's feelings hurt, he supposed. He cared about these kids, but he didn't always know how to show it.
Well, how to show it without coming across like an uptight, judgmental, out of touch old man trying to control them, anyway.
Feth this whole underworld war for ever getting child soldiers involved.