diff --git a/Story/0BattleRoyale.fountain b/Story/0BattleRoyale.fountain index 2a927bd..7095b41 100644 --- a/Story/0BattleRoyale.fountain +++ b/Story/0BattleRoyale.fountain @@ -1034,7 +1034,7 @@ He sheathes the sword. Walks out. CUT TO: -INT. FOREST - ALLIANCE ENCAMPMENT - LATER (GAMETIME ~3:00) +INT. FOREST - ALLIANCE ENCAMPMENT - SUNSET (GAMETIME ~3:00) /* The invoice. Ubear's arm is back on — imperfect, visibly repaired with scavenged folly-parts (a gilded Catmull-Baroque cog now turns as one of the elbow joints, incongruous, ornamental). He finds the alliance. He starts with Agate. */ @@ -1090,7 +1090,7 @@ Told you. The mech arm comes down. -/* The first kill. Write the VFX carefully. The body does the mist-poof per Rain's plant — specifically, a column of blue-holographic particulate rising in the shape of wings, the last thing to go, dispersing upward through the canopy. */ +/* The first (active) kill. Write the VFX carefully. The body does the mist-poof — specifically, a column of blue-holographic particulate rising in the shape of wings, the last thing to go, dispersing upward through the canopy. */ Agate's form dissolves, unhurried, into a soft poof of blue-holographic mist — the shape holds, for one instant, as a chimera in silhouette, wings at full extension she never got to make — and then the mist rises in a slow column through the gap in the canopy and is gone. @@ -1104,7 +1104,7 @@ UBEAR (turning to him, unhurried) Two. -Starboy is on his feet. Axe up. Chibi-serious. +Starboy is on his feet. Axe up, serious. STARBOY (voice cracking) @@ -1134,21 +1134,23 @@ UBEAR (quiet, close to Starboy's ear) Only a fool refuses to kill. -Starboy grins anyway — chibi-serious, teeth — and spits in Ubear's eye. +Starboy grins anyway — serious, baring his teeth — and spits in Ubear's eye. STARBOY (last line) You'll *never* be kind. +UBEAR +(smugly) +So I win. + Ubear squeezes. Starboy poofs. Galaxy-eye mist rises in the shape of a winking silhouette for one breath, then lifts up through the canopy in a column of soft blue. Azure has not moved. -UBEAR -(turning slow, looking at him) -Three's for later. Run along. +Ubear turns slowly towards Azure. His head tilts slightly to the side, his mech arm hanging at his side. The light of the sunset behind him casts him in silhouette, his grin shining towards the viewer. AZURE (voice gone) @@ -1172,27 +1174,30 @@ He goes. Beanie stays. -Ubear notices her finally. Tilts his head. Does not approach. They look at each other across twenty meters of moss. She does not move. He does not move. +Ubear notices her finally. Tilts his head. Does not approach. They look at each other across twenty meters of moss. They stare unflinchingly. Beanie glares. -Then Ubear turns and walks away, in the opposite direction from the one Azure ran. +UBEAR +I've raised your chances of winning, and you didn't even need to kill. You'll have to kill a friend eventually. Or will you die for one? + +Beanie says nothing, but her eyes narrow slightly. + +UBEAR +(turning to leave) +Stupid bitch. + +He lumbers away, in the opposite direction from the one Azure ran. His mech arm ticks true, in perfect alignment. Beanie watches him go. Beanie does not follow Azure. -From somewhere in her chest, very quietly, Ubear's voice comes back to her: +Beanie sits back down at her tree. Picks up a knife. Sharpens it with a ferocious look on her face. -UBEAR (V.O.) -(echo, from memory) -You are going to have to kill each other. - -Beanie sits back down at her tree. Picks up a knife. Sharpens it. - -She is not part of a pact anymore. +/* She is not part of a pact anymore. - editorializing*/ CUT TO: -EXT. FOREST - OPEN GROUND NEAR THE CORNUCOPIA - LATER (GAMETIME ~4:30) +EXT. FOREST - OPEN GROUND NEAR THE CORNUCOPIA - DUSK (GAMETIME ~4:30) /* Ubear takes Jenni. Fast, clean, and on-camera; she gets one throw in. */ @@ -1240,7 +1245,7 @@ Rooster scrabbles, tries to roll. Ubear grabs the cloak at the collar with the m UBEAR (breathing hard) -Loud bird. Never saw the inside of it. Never will. +Loud bird. Never saw the point of it. Don't care. He turns. Walks Rooster to the cliff edge. The cloak pools and drags. The hood stays up. @@ -1248,7 +1253,7 @@ Rooster's beak tips up, one last defiant inch. ROOSTER (from inside the hood, calm) -Put me down. +Put me down or face my wrath, beast. UBEAR (with a grin) @@ -1270,10 +1275,14 @@ A jumbotron-angle intercut from far away: the giant screen over the colosseum fl At the top of the cliff, Ubear gives up. Turns. Walks off. +/* At the bottom of the cliff — not shown, withheld, deliberately — a small sound: the faintest of cloak-on-rock friction noises. A single, short breath. We do not see it. But we hear it, if we are listening. +Cut because there needs to be next to no hint other than the fact we don't see a death poof. +*/ + CUT TO: EXT. FOREST - A DIFFERENT CLEARING - SHRINK ONSET (GAMETIME ~8:00) @@ -1288,8 +1297,12 @@ A chime — or what sounds like one — sounds through the woods. It is not from In the clearing, AZURE has arrived, hollow-eyed, short sword dragging. He stops in the middle. Behind him, twenty meters back, unseen by him: BEANIE, following at distance. She has been following him for hours. She has not called out. +/* At the north edge of the clearing, not visible to either of them: the top of a cliffside boulder where a **cloak hem** is tucked between stones, wing-tip pressed flat, beak angled down to a gap. Watching. Breathing. +Cut in lieu of intended reveal. +*/ + At the west edge, much further off: ADRIAN. Leaning on a tree. Arms crossed. Green sword sheathed. At the south edge: UBEAR. Arriving through the brush. Mech arm ticking wrong. Meat shoulder black with old blood. @@ -1320,7 +1333,8 @@ HEART Kindness is the bravest thing. MIND -Three of the bravest are already dead. +(with a hint of sarcasm) +But three of the *"bravest"* are already dead. A beat. @@ -1330,13 +1344,13 @@ Both are true. MIND Only one of you walks out. -Azure stares. Adrian, far across the clearing, tilts his head. Ubear at the south edge has stopped walking. Beanie at the north treeline has her hand on a knife and her breath very still. At the cliffside boulder, a cloak-hem does not move. +Azure stares. Adrian, far across the clearing, tilts his head. Ubear at the south edge has stopped walking. Beanie at the north treeline has her hand on a knife and her breath very still. /*At the cliffside boulder, a cloak-hem does not move. - no reveal yet*/ HEART -(quieter, head turning just slightly toward the boulder without looking at it) -— and one of you is already past the lesson. +(quieter) +— and at least one of you is already past the lesson. -Heart and Mind glance, simultaneously and without apparent coordination, at the cloak-hem. +/*Heart and Mind glance, simultaneously and without apparent coordination, at the cloak-hem. - no reveal yet*/ MIND Unfair advantage. @@ -1347,7 +1361,7 @@ Earned. MIND Acknowledged. -They look back at the clearing. +/*They look back at the clearing.*/ HEART The walls are not walls. @@ -1367,6 +1381,24 @@ Both are true. MIND Only one of you walks out. +HEART +Kindness is painful. + +MIND +You must learn to confront it. + +HEART +Or accept it? + +MIND +Whichever serves your purpose best. + +HEART +Both are true. + +MIND +Only one of you walks out. + They bend back into the light they came out of, and are gone. The eastern edge of the clearing returns to ordinary forest. The chime does not sound again. @@ -1472,10 +1504,15 @@ Adrian, on one knee, makes a small wet sound and laughs. ADRIAN (coughing, amused, hoarse) -You skekSil bastard. +Look at this foo'. + +/*A small cultural nod to the fact Adrian and Azure both share SoCal chicano heritage. Don't oversell it.*/ Azure does not meet his eyes. +AZURE +Lo siento, tío. + From the north treeline, BEANIE steps into the clearing. Two knives, one in each hand. Beanie hat straight. Eyes like she has decided something and is not going to unsed decide it. AZURE @@ -1507,7 +1544,7 @@ UBEAR Took you long enough. BEANIE -Yeah. +Yeah, whatever. She is in front of him now. Both knives reversed in her hands, blades flat along her forearms.