redraft: rooster non-aggression

Story/0BattleRoyale.fountain

@@ -15,6 +15,7 @@ RULES OF THE ROOM:
 - The BATTLE ROYALE IS ACTUALLY A SIM. The audience is not told this outright — Rain's "death is unpleasant whether it's permanent or not" speech implies it without spelling it. Treat it as real-death tonally at every moment except Rain's one monologue and the recovery-area tag.
 - DEATH-VFX RULE (plant early, pay late): when a contestant is killed inside the bubble, the body dissolves into a **soft poof of blue-holographic mist** that disperses upward into the aura. ABSENCE of the mist-poof on defeat = still alive. Rain states this rule aloud in his ascent monologue. Use it faithfully every time a contestant dies — and withhold it exactly once, during Ubear's cliff-throw of Rooster. That withholding is the twist seed.
 - THE ROOSTER HOOD NEVER COMES DOWN. Not in the cornucopia. Not in combat. Not in the cookfire scene. Not at the finale. Not in the recovery area. Never. The disguise IS the character.
+- ROOSTER'S CODE (the quiet twin of Adrian's): he is a strict non-aggressor. From the first second in the bubble his plan is to initiate against no one, defend himself absolutely, end an attacker only while that attacker is actively trying to kill him, and otherwise withdraw toward the collapsing center of the shrink so he is simply the last one the wall hasn't reached. He never hunts, never bait-traps, never strikes the unthreatening. Every Rooster kill in the film is a threat already in motion against him (Noname's blade, Azure's lunge); the cliff and the cave read as a man who out-survived a kill-box, not one who worked it. He and Adrian are the two who refuse to become what Rain's arena is built to make them — Adrian says it aloud in the recovery bay.
 - AZURE'S KILLER-QUEEN STAND ("Killer Azure") deploys ONCE and only once, during the Azure+Adrian team-up against Ubear. Reserve it for impact.
 
 PRODUCTION DESIGN: read `Story/Worldbuilding.md` BEFORE storyboarding. Quick version:
@@ -1233,11 +1234,11 @@ EXT. FOREST - NORTHERN CLIFF - LATER (GAMETIME ~5:15)
 
 /* The cliff throw. Write this with care. The audience MUST register the missing mist-poof. Stage the toss in long enough that the camera has clear space to NOT show the VFX. Let the long silence at the bottom of the cliff do the work. */
 
-Rooster is moving through the forest at the base of the northern cliff — unhurried, hood up, bow strung, an arrow between his fingers already. He has been hunting Ubear the way an experienced predator hunts a loud one. Cloak flows silently over rock.
+Rooster is moving through the forest at the base of the northern cliff — unhurried, hood up, bow strung, an arrow between his fingers already. Not hunting. *Drifting inward* — angling, the way he has all day, toward the dead center of the shrinking field, where the wall will reach last. The arrow is for a threat, not for a quarry; the bow stays low. He keeps a wide berth around the noise on the ridge above — the loudest thing left in the bubble, the one body he most wants distance from. Cloak flows silently over rock.
 
-He does not hunt carefully enough.
+He does not keep berth enough.
 
-Ubear drops on him from a ledge above.
+Ubear — the noise he was trying to avoid — drops on him from the ledge above.
 
 It is not a fight. The mech arm — still repaired, still canted — is a heavy enough weapon to put Rooster flat in one swing. The bow flies sideways into undergrowth. The quiver scatters. The hood stays up.
 
@@ -1888,7 +1889,7 @@ CUT TO:
 
 INT. CAVE MOUTH - A MOMENT LATER
 
-/* The twist. Rooster has been here the whole time — inside the cave, past a natural alcove, in pitch dark. He waited. He could have intervened in the fight. He chose not to. He has his bow. He has one arrow. The hood is up. */
+/* The twist — and the proof of Rooster's code, not the violation of it. Rooster has been here the whole time — inside the cave, past a natural alcove, in pitch dark. The cave is the dead center of the shrink, the spot the wall reaches last; he came here to OUTLAST, not to ambush. He could have intervened in the Azure/Beanie fight. It was not his to enter, so he did not — a non-aggressor does not start what isn't aimed at him. He waited it out. Now the wall is closing on the final two: by Rain's rule, if both are alive when it shuts, NO ONE survives. The box Rain built leaves exactly one way for anyone to live, and Azure is the last armed body between Rooster and the wall. Even here Rooster will not shoot a kneeling man in the back — he makes Azure STAND, names him, gives him the moment. Azure says "take the shot." The first arrow ends the duel Rain forced; the second, after Azure lunges, is naked self-defense. He has his bow. He has one arrow nocked and one more ready. The hood is up. */
 
 From the dark at the back-alcove of the cave, a quiet movement. A cloak hem whispers on stone. A bowstring tightens.
 
@@ -2180,7 +2181,13 @@ Why —
 
 ADRIAN
 (small shrug)
-Wanted the glory of competition. Not the ruin of it.
+Same reason I never went looking for any of you. He doesn't start fights. Never has. He defended himself when something came at him, and the rest of the time he just... got smaller and smaller toward the middle, and let the arena eat itself.
+
+A beat.
+
+ADRIAN (CONT'D)
+(quiet)
+Wanted the glory of competition. Not the ruin of it. Last one the wall hadn't reached. That's not a killer. That's a man who refused to become one and won anyway.
 
 Azure is quiet a long time, looking at the panel. At the hooded figure.