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| Scene Title | Things That Go WEEOOO In The Night |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Bad things happen to you, if you stay out after dark. |
| Date | January 10, 2011 |
It's a clear and cold curfew, with some stars tossed scattered across a night sky, and the air taking on a special kind of iciness that draws air from lungs in plumes of steam and seems to replace it with ice crystals jagged in the lungs. Sometimes, Midtown can seem like the most quiet place on earth. Except in some areas, where the crack and crunch of ruined debris snaps beneath some gigantic, heavy weight of crushing steel, a whisper soft creak. But that's somewhere else. That's—
Not here.
Moonlight and light of other places in the city reflected back down from the black atmosphere provide illumination you can sort of squint by. It's not snowing now, but it has been in former hours and days, so the streets are lined with an ugly kind of snow — it clings to curbs and relatively horizontal surfaces with the same grey and vaguely greasy visual quality that fat clings to meat. Melted from the day, there are only sparse, thicker patches where foot prints and strange tracks in the white actually show themselves up in the half-light.
One set sporadically make their way towards where a store that used to sell something before it was overwhelmed by a nuclear explosion one day and everything that was in it was then looted over the course of two years. Plastic sheets drape where the windows used to be, but an errant wind snags the corner and reveals some movement inside.
Man movement, human, Brian Winters' exploration exposed to only those who might happen by.
With his van parked a few blocks away, Amadeus isn't expecting to run into any cops all the way out here. With a pair of black Chucks, blue jeans, a black zipped up jacket, with a black Yankees bat bag on his back and a joint smoking from his mouth, he's walking around because… who knows.
Sometimes he walks around hoping to find the elusive 'clean hooker', who he can then dupe out of her money. Some days he just hopes to randomly find a drug cache he can steal and sell to some gang. Tonight is just a night for hunting the important treasures in life, not far from Brian.
Grasping his head, the young man gives a light groan. Another memory. They get more annoying as time goes on. He used to get excited about the random memories he would regain. Now they're more like a hinderance. He's been doing alright being Brian Fulk slash Winters but..
An old man. Something about pirates. Flint Deckard. With a shotgun in the seven-eleven. Glancing at the overturned rack, Brian takes a step over it. Smiling lightly. He shot some guy in the kneecap. Probably the first person he had ever shot. Unfortunately it was far from the last.
Calvin had gotten harder to follow. It's hard to follow someone when there's not supposed to be people around. He had to slow down, had to bequiet. But eventually, Calvin got away. So.. Brian decided to drop in on one of his old drop points.
Glancing outside the flapped up plastic sheet, a booted toe drives into plaster once again. "There we go." Lowering himself to one knee, the plaster is scraped away. The tiny safe is pulled out from the wall. "Good to see you again, honey. You haven't been seeing anyone else have you?" Brian goes to unstrap the duffle bag from his shoulder, unzipping it quickly.
It's hard to say sometimes what will lead a person into Midtown, but jaggedy, ice-encrusted destruction's siren call seems to have no shortage of visitors this fine Monday night. Sex, drugs, weapons caches. The shrill whistle of freezing wind punctuated by cracking ice and slithering drifts of dirty snow. Nostalgia.
Calvin became harder to follow once he recognized a prickly tickle at the back of his neck and picked up the pace, wide-bottomed boots planted solid through sinks of damp debris and eventually up a fire escape onto the burned out corpse of an old thrift store. Breath stirred quiet into the wind, he sits at a jackal crouch on the roof's near edge, watching at least one familiar wanderer in the form of Amadeus leave fresh tracks across the wind of an older set. All black coat and crest of ginger dreads gone a bit stiff with cold, he looks more like a clod of debris at some twelve or fifteen feet above street level than most clods of debris do.
On any given evening, the random trajectory of a wanderer through the rougher, abandoned areas of Manhattan will drift alone and unimpeded through the dismal streets. On occasion, some paths cross. There is a fourth to converge on this patch of city, moving so slowly and quietly that a panther crawling through an Amazonian jungle might envy its stealth. Steam rises off warm metal, unseen from some shadowy corner of a nearby alcove in the ruined buildings.
Something snaps and twangs as great, crushing weight forces debris underfoot to skid out from beneath it, echoing off the nearby walls, audible to all three men and their varied purposes from somewhere opposite the abandoned store, across wrecked street. Then silence, and stillness. For now.
"The fuck was that?" Amadeus asks as he quickly reaches behind, drawing his baseball bat with 'Deckhard' carved into the side. Don't tell him he's about to get mugged! He'll have to break some skulls. "Who the hell's makin' all that noise? I'll kick your ass!" He hasn't noticed the others yet, smoke still rising from his joint in the midst of all his yelling. It seems to be perpetually stuck to the bottom of his lip whenever his mouth opens.
The safe is lifted and eased into the duffle bag. He peers at it. Oh fuck. He might have forgotten the combination for this one. There was one that he had on a sticky that was…
Somewhere in Chinatown, a Brian is moving things rapidly looking for a particular pink sticky note. Papers are flung, furniture is moved…
"Moth—" Twang. Immediately Brian is pressed against the counter of the abandoned store front. Head tucked down to his chest, gun sliding out from his jacket smoothly. There's a voice, someone yelling too loud. He remains stuck to his counter. Running into others in midtown is never a good thing. People get their kneecaps shot, you get picked up into the sky and dropped, a thousand million feet. It's just not good. So Brian opts to remain quiet for now.
Calvin's of a similar mind.
Which is to say he flattens his crouch out against the edge of the roof like an alley cat, guts gripped taut under a duck of his head and a winch down at his shoulders. Eyes wide with instinctive alarm, he has to struggle to stay where he is, the previously steady flume of his breath battered down into froggy little fits and starts.
Which do not abate when Amadeus sets to yelling. And yelling some more. Fffuckin —
For a few seconds, the only thing that greets Amadeus' yelling is silence and darkness. There's no creak, no returning voice, no nothing. But he isn't left alone for very long.
Two glowing red lights, so much like eyes, suddenly flick on in the shadows, nearly ten feet from the ground.
In a sort of languid motion of heavy machinery and many moving parts, the creature abruptly comes barreling out from its chosen hiding space, a vaguely equine shape of four legs, long neck, a metal body that is both organic in spiny angles and rib-cage affect, as well as inherently robotic. Steam winds white off its silvery flanks as the robot begins moves directly for Amadeus in a sort of dinosaur-like unstoppableness of thudding metal feet. Sensors spill like tentacles where a jaw might have been in its metallic skull.
Klaxons immediately screech out in an alerting wail, a siren howl that pierces through the once quiet evening.
"It's gonna make New York a land of eternal night!" Amadeus suddenly exclaims and starts running in the opposite direction, bat held firmly in hand. Gun, gun, gun… Oh hey! He reaches into his jacket, pulling out a glock, shooting blindly and badly without actually looking back.
Remaining silent, Brian counts the breaths that drop from his mouth. It gets boring in that unending silence, he idly tries to make rings with the steam on his breath, but then…
The loud thuds have him instinctively springing away from the counter. His back slapping all but inaudibly against the wall. A siren, loud thudding. And then gunshots.
Slapping his hand against the ground, his duffle bag is forgotten as he sprints to the edge of the store, peering out of the plastic. "Holy…" His mouth claps shut as his eyes track the small man springing from a… Decepticon.
Brian looks down at his gun that reeks of impotency at the moment. "Sorry man." He whispers to himself, crouching near the edge of the window. "Holy fuck.." He whispers, eyeing the giant monstrosity. He's seen a lot in the last few years but… "Jesus." His free hand leaps into his jacket pocket. What weapon does he choose to battle this metallic foe?
A cellphone with a camera.
Click
"Ffffack—" Calvin hisses aloud this time, the whites of his eyes showing shockily wide out've his hunch when those eyes light red out of the night and the chase is on.
As graceful as he can be under the circumstances, he has a moment's pause brought to you by self-preservation before he hoists himself lithe over the roof's iron and charcoal lip, gloved hands catching briefly at a gutter partway down to stifle his landing on all fours in a shallow pool of slush.
"Get off the ground!" his voice breaks, nasal shout pitched high against wailing klaxons as he propells himself up into a slip-slidey sprint at the procession's rear. "Climb something you stupid fuck!!"
Bullets fly wide and wild around the metallic monster that bears down on the unfortunate souls this winter evening, plumes of steal ejected out the ribbed sides. Hook shape, scythe-like edges on its limbs glint sharp in the darkness, and with the hiss of melted snow and rise of steam, they look to be as heated as they are sharp. Impassive to any kind of photography or shrill yells of warning and instruction, it stoicly pursues Amadeus at its neutral, long-limbed rangey stampede.
Sparks fly where bullets do scrape its cagey hide, one clipping dangerously close to its skullish head which has it swaying beneath the blow, sensors wriggling like seaweed. That keening wail of siren continues, and the heat it gives off can almost be felt by Amadeus by the time its gaining ground.
Amadeus suddenly jumps up on to an old rusty car, grasping his bat in both hands as he continues to smoke, waiting for Calvin to do whatever he's going to do, and preparing to stand off against the robot himself if he has to. "Fuckin' cats, come on, cats!" he calls out, knowing he can't use his ability anymore, but damned if he doesn't wish he had it right now.
"Damnit."
The picture looks like two red lights that he was jumping up and down in front of. Not proof that he found a robot llama in Midtown. As he rushes towards the back of the store he idly wonders what other treasures Midtown holds now. Maybe Nessy lives here! Grabbing a flashlight out of the duffle bag, Winters is rushing back for the front. Barreling out of the empty window, he peers down at the robot chasing Amadeus. A light sigh is let out.
And then there's some guy being mean to poor Amadeus from the sky? A reluctant step is taken. It's not like he's going to really die anyways. And the other guy probably will. So..
Raising his firearm, Brian inhales deeply. Taking his time in aiming carefully, he exhales slowly and unloads the entire clip at the robot. Ears ringing from the gunshots he remains diligent in the firing. Re-aiming after every shot with all the precision he can muster.
NO.
"MAD, NO. High — HIGHER."
Jeezy christ life is difficult sometimes. Crestfallen a bit by Amadeus' choice of 'higher ground,' Calvin flags uneasily in his pursuit. Someone else with an even stupider face is shooting, muzzle fire scattered bright in his peripheral where ricochets pitch into the shattered concrete and ice humped around his boots.
The only thing to do then is to keep running, because spent bullets like still targets better, yeah? So he does. Run. For the steaming iron beast and the car rather than away, coat furling matte black when he catches up enough to thread round glistening scythe legs and leap, plant boot tread to driver's side mirror and then push off the opposite way. This time to tackle Amadeus off of the car.
Hopefully there is something soft on the other side.
Amadeus finds higher ground. Not high ground. Just higher.
A foreleg ends in a narrowed point and instead of thudding scrapily against the slick road, it raises up and nearly punctures through car hood, a groan from the car as it tips forward beneath the immense weight of the robot. Its bright red eyes hover up above Amadeus, focused on him as it crumples car hood beneath its a forelegs, only climbing higher so that it might lift one limb, glistening sharp, and comes to slam it down—
Upon car roof, as Calvin tumbles its target way, sharp end piercing right through.
The robot shudders in its stumble, bullets pinging off its spine without much in the way of making impact. It stands for a few seconds, its legs buried in car, before it begins to reverse, wrenching leg out from ruined roof. If it's beeping like a truck, it can't be heard for all the sirens.
Spitting as he tries to push up from under Calvin when they hit the ground, Amadeus is spitting dirty snow from his mouth, eyes wide up at the gigantic machine. "Fuck, what the hell, fuckin' thing! Where'd my joint go?" he's looking around, momentarily distracted by the sudden loss of pot.
The entire clip gone, Brian's hand dives for a pocket. Then another pocket. Then his back pocket. Aha! Four more bullets. He knew he had a few extra on this body. Winters brings the four shells out, the clip popping out of the pistol. As he goes through the process his feet carry him toward the robot llama.
Bullets spill out of the clip, as Brian tries to— Fuck One of the good shells dropped. Cursing under his breath the remaining bullets are pushed into the magazine. Shoving it back into the gun, he pulls it back as his diligent march towards the monster continues. "Run!" He yells, most likely to Calvin and Amadeus. But maybe he's hoping to intimidate the robot. Trying to adjust everything in his hands, he holds up the pistol at the robot. Crossing his other hand under, the flashlight is flicked on. Shining on the robot. A shrill whistle is let out as he approaches the thing.
"Fucking focus, would you?"
Having landed on top with his nose rankled and his teeth bared both against impact and — against being on top of Amadeus, Calvin takes him by the front of his jacket and gives him a single, stiff shake hard enough to clonk his noggin back against the snow and cement under that. Over and beside them, the ruined car shrieks and wails its shrill protest, one tire still wrenched partway off the ground when he scuffs hastily to his feet. Clear eyes lifted and wild ginger mane craned back, he tries to drag Amadeus with him and around, maintaining the bulk of the vehicle as a buffer.
The car slams back down upon the ground, even more a wreckage than it once was, it's hood and roof looking like it's been idly stabbed with a gigantic pencil during a dull math class of the cosmos. Slick snow piles off it, partially melted where super hot metal made it sizzle and spit in the cold air.
The robot continues to back away from it for a few lengthy strides, klaxons squeaking off as it goes still and quiet for a few seconds. If it were a creature, truly, this might be a pause before it decides what to do. But it's not living, so either it's idling, switching modes, or— deciding what to do, in the robotic equivelant of the idea. It doesn't take very long, for its red eyes to now focus on Brian, light and motion and maybe something else reconfiguring its goals.
WEEEOOOOO goes the blast of klaxons. Near deafening.
Lacking grace in the turning department, but not much, the creature begins to bear down on Brian instead, mercilessly taking no chances as it eats up the distance between the two. Back legs fold to support its weight as it begins to rear up, forelimbs dagger like in the darkness.
"Fuckin' distract it." Amadeus holds his bat tightly, yanking himself away from Calvin to reach into his pocket. Out comes a vial, the top plucked off, then he snorts whatever white powder was inside of it before dropping said vial. "Ffffuck yeah!" He jumps up on to the car wreckage, then goes running for the back of the robot as it focuses on Brian, ramming his bat forward and repeatedly, trying to jam the joint by lodging his bat into it, with almost relentless enthusiasm. "Come on, I've fucked scarier things with a bat!"
Pain shoots through his ears, with a combination of his loose grip on the gun and the deafening blast of stupidsound, Winters drops the gun. Going to one knee quickly, his head jerks towards his shoulders much like a turtle. Before going to reclaim his gun, Brian takes out the phone again. It's going to be blurry but maybe.. With the flashlight trained on the robot,
Click
The phone is tossed towards the storefront that he had left. Hopefully it doesn't break from this toss. Glaring up at the machine his hand scrambles at the snowy slush before claiming the pistol. But Amadeus is coming back. What the hell. Recognition that the crazy dread hair guy is Calvin has not registered yet. While his gun raises, Brian idly wonders what all Amadeus has fucked with bats.
On his knees in front of the approaching robot poised much like he images a robotic snake would, he aims at what looks like wires and…
Pop pop pop
Amadeus tears out've Calvin's grip, and for the first time this evening, earnest fear rather than simple shock blanches cold through the ring of his eyes and the pallor of his face when he goes running. Breath spent at an exasperated gasp, wily Mister Rosen holds his ground in the background, coat swinging damp round the backs of his knees.
Between the hollow clod of the bat to reinforced joints and the pop pop pop of semiautomatic fire and one wrong move ending in corpses scattered in the snow, he raises both his hands instead. Evangalist-like.
Only rather than heal the masses or part any sea, he rends the mechanical monstrosity unevenly apart. Reinforced steel wrenches and squeals away from warped titanium, steam jetted out of a cascading vomit of sparks where the metal whole of it thrums sluggish resonance under the snarl of his influence. The siren cuts into a sick, squelching gargle and pop, exposed gearwork warmed orange round the fringes as the beast is pulled limb from limb in a nebula of glittering shrapnel.
It all happens quickly and viciously enough that Amadeus may well think it's his doing.
Breathing forced ragged through his sinuses, Calvin sizes Brian up opposite the debris field for an unsteady beat, recognition black in the shadows around his face in the three, two (one) seconds before the lot of it heaves itself scalding and sharp onto his dumb-face person.
"Take it!" Amadeus continues smacking and ramming his bat at the robot when Calvin rips it apart, kicking at it a few times. "Fuckin' robots! You think you can take over the future! I'm John Connor motherfucker!" he exclaims in his coke-fueled excitement, tossing his bat to the side so he can unzip his pants and start peeing on the robot.
Dropping the gun, Brian stares up at the machine. Closing his eyes for a moment the connection between he and his copies around the city is turned off. Preparing to block the pain of death that would inevitably spread to his other selves. But upon opening his eyes he discovers that he didn't have to turn off his link because… The robot is being torn apart. Blinking across the wreckage to the other man recognition sinks in.
"Fuck"
An exasparated look is given and moments before the heap of metal collides into him, his middle finger extends towards Calvin. And then he gets fucked up. Metal is thudding and cutting into his delicate flesh. And soon he is a bloody mess on the snowy ground. Bleeding from the head and chest, Brian barely recognizes that he's being pissed on through the mess of debris that lingers on him. Unfortunately he is not in a position to respond to such piss.
Boots crunched across snow-dusted concrete at a medium pace, Calvin is still breathing hard when draws up next to Amadeus to watch the end of the wee rather than the start of it. Which would be impolite.
Vibrant dreads swept back clean from his face, he filters his respiration forcibly down into a steadier stream before reaching to feel over himself for a pack of cigarettes. And a lighter. A half-hearted afterthought of a gesture drags the heaviest length of debris off Brian's torso before he turns to pick his way away from the core heap of metallic viscera, giving him room to. You know.
Not die.
"C'mon, Amadeus. I'll buy you a drink."
"I ain't a coke fiend, I just keep it in case I gotta put a bitch robot in its place." Amadeus zips up, grabs his bat and slips it into his bag, then lights up a joint and starts following Calvin. "I'm coked up and high, I wanna see what happens when I add drunk."