Participants:
| Scene Title | Gasoline and Blood |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | When you get down to the core of it, that's all this scene really has in it. |
| Date | June 17, 2009 |
Who doesn't like donuts?
Nobody! Come on. Nobody doesn't like donuts. Oddly enough, there are plenty of people who probably don't like the idea of donuts that have been scavenged out of a dumpster that is dubious looking even as far as New York City garbage receptacles go. But the pangs aching cold and hollow at the slats of Deckard's poking ribs go beyond simple hunger, and swinging into a takeout place at this hour resembling some of his more distinctive mug shots the way he does now…probably not a great idea.
So here he is, left hand propping the dumpster's rickety lid open while he shuffles the right around in the black, box and bag strewn pit of restaurant-related garbage beyond. Wiry hair mussed and stubble collection fast approaching beard status in its grizzled, unkempt bristle, he already has one passably stale donut clenched between his teeth and is straining to reach for the box he managed to hook it out of, holster clunking dull against metal siding. Just — a little — closer —
Slam.
The lid of the dumpster — plastic as it is — crashes down on the middle of Deckard's back, followed by a sudden hoisting of his legs hurling him bodily into the trash receptical. The lid slams down once he's flipped end-over-end head first into the trash heap. A few knocks then rap on the metal side, followed by the tinny reverberations of a voice on the outside of the dumpster. "Mister Deckard," the hollow voice calls out, one not immediately familiar from Flint's rolodex of enemies who might put him head-first into a dumpster. "You lied to me." That still doesn't narrow it down much.
A heavy sound comes with a bowed dent in the top of the dumpster lid, presumably the weight of something seated atop it, keeping it held down. "You told me Ethan Holden was dead, among other assorted lies. Now I have different questions for you, and the answers you give will determine…" the other half of the dumpster lid flips open, followed by a nozzle of some kind poking through, and a horribly acrid chemical smell filling the metal confines as Deckard and the lion's share of the trash is doused with what is rather obviously gasoline. The nozzle of the metal canister slides out, and the lid closes lightly, no weight atop that one. "Well, it determines whether or not I offer you a cigarette. Do we understand one another?"
Feng. Yes, Feng Daiyu — the rolodex has come to a halt. INTERPOL seems to have very loose operating procedures, given what is now being threatened.
Ow.
One second Deckard is on the verge of enjoying a delicious banquet of stale chocolate sprinkle donuts. The next he is ass over elbows in a dumpster and being doused in gasoline. It happens so fast he fails to register exactly what's going on in a timely fashion, and he can't actually make himself feel surprised. Dizzy, sure. Static fog stirs white across the field of his vision with the rapid shift in his vertical orientation — one boot plants itself hazily against the lid that's been weighed down. By what? A test push yields little information, and there's the other lid swinging open to the acrid tune of gasoline spurting approximately everywhere before he has a chance to think about scrabbling in that direction.
He's going to die in a dumpster. The irony doesn't escape him.
Bone-rattling fear squeezed haphazardly out of his system in a hard blink, he shuffles himself up into a miserable sit, scruffy hair curled dark and damp over the soaked bristle of his beard growth. Gun clutched like rosery beads in his skeletal hands. "Can I call my lawyer first?"
There's a snort on the other side of the dumpster, too quiet to really transfer fully. "Where is Munin?" The correction comes haltingly almost immediately thereafter, "Ruskin— Eileen Ruskin. Where is she?" Gasoline mixes with the horrible stench of garbage that had been effectively baking in the dumpster most of the day, adding a sharp overlay to back of the throat sickness. Dribbling trails of it roll down one equally black wall of the dumpster from the next. From the scrape that the lid gave at the weight, it sounds and feels like a cinderblock, there was a stack of them — thinking on it — in the alley near the dumpster. Brick and mortar debris like that is so common in Manhattan.
Adam's apple lifting sluggish after a thick swallow, Deckard thumps his head once against the dumpster wall to his back. The tinny echo of skull to metal rings hollow through the choking stink the entirety of a world that has become very small and enclosed all of a sudden. Clonggghhh. There it is again, accompanied by a certain absence of answers regardless of the variations on Eileen's name being tossed out at him.
Where did his donuts go? Doesn't matter. They're probably all contaminated anyway.
More silence. What's really a few seconds seems like minutes while he tries to force himself to think. In the end, though…he's trapped in the black of a gasoline soaked dumpster with an angry chinaman outside who's determined to set him on fire. What's there to think about, really?
A shaky hand dips into the leather of his jacket, gingerly feeling out a dry patch of dead cow. The gun — first scuffed weakly off on his jeans — is pushed in after it, muzzle to leather, flush. His left hand clamps down over the arrangement, Flint turns his head to bite at his own collar, and… PSCHOOWW. The solid crack of the gun is ear-shattering in the confined space of the dumpster. The bullet ticks out through the plastic cover at an angle, followed narrowly by a spatter of warm blood and white bone that tick tick tickles off the cover's interior. There's a slump, a scrape. Then silence.
When Feng followed Deckard here, it was with a plan. He had an idea, he had a design for how this was going to go down, but the sound of a gunshot and the eruption of a bullet whizzing past his head was nowhere on that reference card he keeps tucked away in the back of his head. The can of gasoline soundly hits the alley floor with a sloshing clunk, followed by a hiss in Cantonese that is a lenghty slur that is mixed with so many confusing and choked back sounds it may not even be comprehensible to a native speaker of his language.
For a few long moments it is all Feng can do to stare at the dumpster with wide eyed disbelief. There's a few ragged breaths, and a sharp prickle of pain finally registers as the adrenaline dies down, followed by the tickling sensation of blood running down the side of Feng's head. One shaky, gloved hand comes up to dab away blood from a shallow flesh wound across his right temple, where the bullet fired from Deckard's gun came whistling out of the dumpster.
Flint Deckard just killed himself.
The thought rattles around in Feng's skull like a single bolt in a tin can — loud and clear. One hand still shaking from the abruptness of it, Feng reaches in to his suit jacket, withdrawing a pistol as he takes in a steady breath, edging towards the dumpster to confirm the grisly deed. Matches are forgotten on the pavement underfoot, the lesson in firestarting foregone as Feng's other hand begins to lift the dumpster lid open, peering down inside across the iron sights of his baretta.
This isn't how he expected this to go.
Blood is spattered irregularly across the dumpster's interior and drips from the lid, mingling thick and dark with the smothering film of gasoline that glistens over everything. Everything.
Everything including the gun poised waiting for that hesitant line of light pollution that differentiates out from in. There is no discernable movement in the garbage. And then there is. The trigger pulls once, twice, muzzle blasts painting the dumpster's interior bright against the backs of Flint's eyelids in starkly specific detail when he surges to his feet and further still than that, vulture-hunched shoulders and thick skull racking hard against the lid when he powers himself up beneath it. Up and out, into Feng to fire again, wilder this time — namely because he's in the way, shattered left hand swathing blood bright over the metal lip he flings himself bodily over and out.
Years of training and sharp reflexes are the only thing that keep Feng Daiyu's cranium intact and not spread out over a thirty foot smear of brick wall. Jerking his face back just in time to see the muzzle flash, it's the terrible report of the gun and the whistling proximity of a bullet that jolts adrenaline back into Feng again, his heart racing with each pop of Deckard's pistol — that was quite possibly the best laid trap.
When Deckard begins bodily pulling himself out of the dumpster, Feng has no choice but to play on the defensive, ducking to the side before rolling forward to hug his body close to the dumpster, a bullet raggedly cutting a path over and into a thin portion of his right shoulder. He slams into the dumpster just as Deckard's feet plant down on the opposite site.
Coiled on the ground like a viper, Feng launches himself forward at the other side of the alley, planting one foot on the brick wall as he wheels around to his feet, kicking off of the wall to bounce across the narrow alley to grab a hold of the fire escape above the dumpster, slinging himself over it as he monkeys around the rod iron and swings himself up another floor with a feat of gymnastics not fit for a man of his age. It's only then that a few too-wide shots are fired down into the alley below, ones thinking room has been afforded between he and the cornered animal that is Flint Deckard.
"Ffff — ffff — " A held breath is expelled all in a ragged gust, gasoline spraying forth from mouth and nose in a fine, whiskey-tainted mist as Deckard trips and stumbles sideways, damp and disoriented and bloody. It takes longer than it should for him to find slick footing. Meanwhile Feng is moving faster than the manic chill of his wild-eyed glare can follow, all white rims and flashes of all too human blue in the whip of his head sideways and then up.
His left hand swings out wide away from his side when he stutter steps a few awkward feet back towards the alley's mouth, slinging blood and meat in an erratic arc across the wall his shoulders bump into a second later. Shots fired; shots returned, he fires once up into the rickety rigging of the fire escape in the time it takes him to absorb another hit in return. A hoarse, pneumatic gasp rasps through bared teeth and now it's his turn to move again. Flagging, but running hard, he makes a break for the open air whisking beyond the alley's open maw, blood spotting tell-tale across the gum-studded concrete in his wake.
By the time Feng makes his loping and swinging way to the roof, his arms and legs burn with the pain of his exercise in escape, and he'll pay the cost for those acrobatics dearly come morning. Slouching up against a ventilation exhaust, Feng ejects the clip from his gun, retreiving the spare from inside of his jacket, slapping it into place before turning to tilt his head away from the direction of the alley, listening intently.
Eyes close, the fire escape fails to rattle, and scraping footfalls against concrete indicate that wounded prey is on the move. Holstering his gun back inside of his jacket, Feng pushes up to a knee, crawling across the rooftop as he peers out to watch Deckard's angle of escape.
"Subtle and insubstantial, the expert leaves no trace; divinely mysterious, he is inaudible. Thus he is master of his enemy's fate." Sun Tzu should be the last thing on Feng's mind as he watches from the ledge of the rooftop, between two crumbling chimneys. But some lessons, especially those ingrained in youth, are hard to forget.
So is a more simple adage, that a wounded animal will lead a hunter back to its den. In that, Sun Tzt has some commonality, and Feng has the patience to watch, wait, and hope that philosophy is worth slightly more than the paper it is written on.