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Home ¦ Features ¦ Scripts ¦ Petty Crimes Part 2

18th December 05

From the pages of Megazine 239 we bring you the original script to one of the best recieved stories...

THE SIMPING DETECTIVE in PETTY CRIMES (Part 2)
By Si Spurrier and Frazer Irving

PAGE ONE

Text Block 1:

Welcome back. Let me bring you up to speed.

This is Angeltown. The name thing, it’s supposed to be ironic – like a calling a fattie “littlejohn” or a firearm “unnecessary”. Funny, see?

Takes a rare talent to see the funny side, this neighbourhood. Then again, surviving Angeltown and talent go hand in hand…

Panel 1: Small. Close on POINT’s face – eyes wide, pushed back up against the edge of the boat behind, awaiting to die. CLIQ’s shadow falls across him.

CAPTION: Case in point. Me, I got a talent for getting into sticky situations – and I don’t mean Han Joab’s Massage joint.

Panel 2: Small. Close on MRS STICKLE’s face – equally as terrified, standing just beside POINT… though of course she still looks slightly eeevil.

CAPTION: Mrs Stickle here, she’s got a talent for being poisonous like Black Mamba Madras, ‘specially to undercover jays with vicarious vices.

CAPTION: She’s SJS, which is sort of like if Judas came back with an official remit.

Panel 3: Wide view of the scene, focusing on CLIQ. The insane RAPTAUR leers over POINT and STICKLE, tentacles thrashing. He’s just about to mash them; claws raising for the strike, drool drooling, all of that.

CAPTION: And this here is Cliq. Up ‘til recently he had a talent for keeping me alive, looking after my interests and unstickifying them sticky situations.

CAPTION: Right now he’s up there with chooglue and pass-me-down porno.

DTP TITLE AND CREDITS: SIMPING DETECTIVE in PETTY CRIMES, Part 2

CAPTION: Grud only knows what’s got into him, but take it from me: he’s a pussycat. Honestly.

Panel 4: LARGE. ANNE THROPÉ comes bounding into the panel out of the shadows – maybe leaping off a rooftop NINJA stylee, something like that. She has a gun in each hand – both aimed at CLIQ. The first is a SONIC CANNON – which spreads weird wibbly distortions directly at the RAPTAUR. The second is a small flare-gun gizmo, which she’s firing once. Down below CLIQ is backing away, avoiding the wibbly sonic-effect – interrupted in his murderous plans. A small impact on his armour shows where the flare-gun thing has struck him. It’s a TRACKER, adhering to his skin.

CAPTION: Speaking of which…

THROPÉ: HA!

FX: CHOOM! WOOoooOOOoooOOOoooOOO

[CONTINUED]

Panel 5: Small. Close on POINT, standing in dumb bewilderment at all this. ANNE THROPÉ is sprinting past him, not even looking at him as she goes. POINT – being Point – is getting an eyeful of her boobs or her arse as she goes by. In the background beyond her, CLIQ is racing off into the city.

THROPÉ: GOT A TRACKER ON HIM!

LINK: LEAVE IT TO ME!

Text Block 2:

Miss Anne Thropé. Normal circumstances, I’d be wondering how the hell she got here so quick. I’d be figuring she must’ve been following me, and there’s something freaky going down.

As it happens, all I can think is—

Panel 6: Small. Exactly the same as Panel 5, but THROPÉ is disappearing off in the direction of CLIQ’s retreat. POINT stares after her with a misty expression.

POINT (quiet): …SHE’S SO TALENTED…

PAGE TWO

Panel 1: POINT makes to go after THROPÉ, but even as he goes STICKLE’s hand snatches at his collar and yanks him back, waggling a finger at him.

POINT: I… I SHOULD GO AFTER HER. SHE MIGHT KILL HI—

STICKLE: I DON’T THINK SO, MR POINT. YOU’RE NOT OUT OF THE WOODS YET.

Panel 2: POINT faces STICKLE, confused and annoyed. She’s crossing her arms, eyes closed unconcernedly, face set.

POINT: BUT OUR DEAL—

STICKLE: REQUIRED YOU TO SAVE OUR LIVES. INSTEAD YOUR ILLEGAL PET ALMOST SLAUGHTERED US.

LINK: THE ASSESSMENT GOES ON.

Panel 3: Close on POINT, retrieving a gun from one of the many ultra-pulped smugglers. He’s having a minor tantrum, staring round at MRS STICKLE. She stands behind him, poking him in the back with her stick, glaring nastily.

POINT: BUT I KNOW WHO YOU ARE! WHAT’S THE DROKKING POINT?

STICKLE: THE POINT, MR POINT – aha – IS THAT I’M NOT TAKING MY EYES OFF YOU UNTIL I’M SATISFIED YOUR JUDICIAL PROCLIVITIES ARE INTACT—

LINK: --AND YOUR COVER IS FEASIBLE.

Panel 4: Close on STICKLE, hobbling away from POINT. He stands glowering behind her (flipping the bird).

STICKLE: YOU NEED TO CONVINCE ME YOU’RE A SUCCESSFUL PRIVATE EYE. THOSE PIGEONFISH WON’T FIND THEMSELVES.

LINK: SEVEN O’CLOCK, OUTSIDE YOUR OFFICE. DON’T BE LATE.

Panel 5: Close on POINT, standing alone amidst the carnage. STICKLE is just a tiny figure, vanishing into the distance. There’s the quiet sound of engines from off-panel, getting closer.

POINT: BUT WHY CAN’T I FOLLOW CLIQ UNTIL THEN?

STICKLE: I SUSPECT YOU’LL HAVE PLENTY TO KEEP YOU OCCUPIED, JUDGE. REPORTS, PAPERWORK… THAT SORT OF THING.

LINK: AND JUST REMEMBER: YOU DON’T KNOW WHO I AM.

FX: RRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

Panel 6: LARGE. Wide. A phalanx of street judges comes roaring up along the dockpath, bike-lights illuminating the scene of horrific carnage, with POINT standing alone at its centre. Either we’re looking past POINT towards the approaching helmets, or past them towards him (or some other crazy composition, if you’d rather). His hat-mic has flipped down again, and he looks grumpily resigned to his situation.

POINT: BUT… BUT…

CONTROL(jag): POINT? CONTROL. THAT BACKUP ARRIVED YET?

POINT (linked): OH.

FX: RRRRRRRRRR

PAGE THREE

Text Block 1:

Time I get back to the sweat-factory, it’s getting on for dawn. You figure the helmets woulda quit the questions around the fiftieth “I don’t know”, but those guys are perceptive like how hyenas are hygienic.

Panel 1: Small. POINT steps in through the frosted-glass door of his office, expression dripping with exhaustion. He has his hipflask in his spare hand, preparing for a guilty swig. He’s looking up, spotting something just o.p – not quite sure how to react yet…

CAPTION: Funny thing, on the subject of scavengers…

Panel 2: LARGE. We stare past POINT – gagging in guilty horror – at the interior of his office. He has a GUEST, and she’s been waiting for him. It’s an SJS officer in the full getup: black leathers, death’s-head insignia, single-shoulder pad. She’s as sexy as hell, obviously, but very stern. S&M-tastic.

POINT: JOVUS…

FX: SNFF SNFF

LINK: THAT WHAT I THINK IT IS?

CAPTION: The credcard drops…

Panel 4: Change of scene – let’s bleed it off the page to the left. POINT stands in the street (it’s DAYtime – as much as it ever is in Angeltown) outside a really horrible-looking decrepit building: windows boarded up, winos and dying junkies propped-up around the base. POINT is wafting the dead rat towards the building, like a zookeeper tempting a lion with a juicy steak.

CAPTION: One last check. Scargill slum. More junkies than a littertek landfill.

POINT: COME AND GEEEEEET IT…

Panel 5: Small. A disgusting ADDICT – quite young, but totally ghastly looking – drifts over from the slum towards POINT, sniffing the air, eyes wide and hungry. Let’s get the rat dangled in the extreme f/g, so we can tell this is the target of the addict’s interest…

FX: SNFF SSSSNNFFFF

ADDICT: P-P-P-PRIIIIIMO… A-DREN, MAN…

LINK: GIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMME

[CONTINUED]

Text Block 2: (Quite a biggie, this one)

“A-Dren”. That’s adrenocorticotrophic hormone or bad drokking juju, depending on your vocab.

Cliq’s a silicate alien lifeform who drinks cerebral soup. Some twisted motherdrokker’s been loading rodents to the gills with junkie-juice, then sending them straight to him.

Hormonal Home Delivery. Pre-fab puberty. Jovus.

No wonder he’s grown.

Panel 6: Close on POINT, looking very, very grim. He’s stalking away from the slum, arming the gun he took from the docks with a noisy retort. Behind him the ADDICT tucks-into the rat revoltingly, dribble and blood all over his face, as other junkies come and try to have their share.

FX: SCRUNCHRONCHGNASH

CAPTION: This is starting to look like a big spugging setup.

POINT: RIGHT.

PAGE FIVE

My advice would be to compose this page as a 3X3 grid, with panels 6 and 8 being text-blocks, but do your own thang, geeza.

Panel 1: Small. Close on MRS STICKLE, waiting just outside SPURIOUS HEIGHTS, Jack’s officeblock. She’s staring up out of shot, at someone approaching.

STICKLE: THERE YOU ARE. I WAS BEGINNING TO THINK YOU WEREN’T C—

Panel 2: Small. Same shot, except miraculously a GUN BARREL has appeared in frame, and has jammed itself up the old hag’s nostril. POINT leans into frame, angry.

FX: GLUMP

POINT: SPILL.

LINK: NOW.

Panel 3: Small. Exactly the same. MRS STICKLE gibbers, eyes wide, scared. POINT just glares.

STICKLE: BUT… BUT…

Panel 4: Small. Exactly the same. MRS STICKLE has her eyes closed, concentrating. The whole panel seems to be wobbling; weird bubbles of light flocking around the crone’s head, changing her. She seems to be transforming into somebody else. This is all PSI-shenanigans: up until now POINT (along with us) has been having his mind manipulated by a PSI; forced to see her different to how she really is. Now, finally, the glamour is being dropped.

POINT: …THE DROKK?

Panel 5: Small. Exactly the same. POINT looks astonished to find himself standing with his gun pushed into the nostril of a fairly sexy young-ish woman, dressed similarly to ANNE THROPÉ. If you’re going with the spot-colour idea (ie: each member of the elite hit-assassin squad has their own personal hue), let’s signify her with the colour BLUE. Her name, for the record, is RITA DELPHIN.

RITA: HI.

CAPTION: She says her name’s Rita Delphin. She’s a Psi.

Text Block 1:

Up til three months back she was the kinda psi with a badge and a bike. The legal kind. Now?

She says she’s been tampering with my perceptions since we met, so I see her different. In Angeltown you get by on your talents, remember, so I tell her: hey, neat trick. Then I stick the gun even further up the little bitchdrokk’s nostril and tell her again to fess. She looks at the ground a minute, then she says: “Let’s get a cab.”

Panel 6: POINT and DELPHIN sit side-by-side in a taxi (the robo-cabbie facing us in the extreme f/g). POINT has his gun aimed discreetly at his companion, keeping it out of the robo’s sight.

RITA: BABY RAPTAURS.

POINT: BABY RAPTAURS?

[CONTINUED]

Text Block 2:

Baby Raptaurs. That’s what’ll drive a dame to such long gruddam lengths.

She says her job was to get me out of the office and into the hot water. She says all them animals at the docks last night were pumped-up like A-Dren balloons, so when Cliq played the smorgasbord snatch he went futsie.

Total hormone overload. Out of control. Reproducing like a randy rabbit.

Panel 7: Staying in the CAB. POINT looks glum: annoyed at himself for taking so long to realise what’s going on…

CAPTION: And who directed us to the docks? Who showed-up just in time to follow the fiend?

POINT (quiet): ANNE THROPÉ. STOMM.

PAGE SIX

Panel 1: Small. The CAB has pulled to a halt. POINT and RITA are exiting it: the latter with one hand to her forehead, weird trippy psi-bubbles wibbling around her, and her spare hand pointing towards a nearby alleyway. POINT is heading towards it, jaw clenched.

RITA: THEY’RE DOWN THERE.

LINK: I CAN SENSE THEM.

Panel 2: LARGE. Superdooper full-splash action o-rama. In the b/g POINT comes dashing into the alleyway, gun in hand. The alleyway itself is a scene of insane action: CLIQ dominates the panel, but rather than the vast thrashing unstoppable killing-machine we know and love, he’s almost dead. He’s barely able to stand, tentacles mostly shattered, claws blunted and cracked. He’s still snarling; trying to get away, but it don’t look good. The hormone-spiking has reached its peak: his skin is pulsing RED, and dozens of tiny little wormy embryos are hanging off his head and neck. He has two attackers: ANNE THROPÉ and another black-suited assassin-type: this one a MAN, wearing a face-concealing mask. (His primary colour, by the way, is GREEN). These two are all over the place: leaping from dumpsters and fire escapes, each wielding a SONIC CANNON, blasting CLIQ apart piece-by-piece.

THROPÉ: IT’S WOUNDED! FINISH IT!

FX: WOOOoooOOOoooOOOoooOOOooo

POINT: CLIQ!

Panel 3: Small – inset?: Close on CLIQ, reaching out towards us (POINT) with a supplicating “help me!” claw, bathed in the oscillating waves of a sonic cannon. It’s curtains for the creature.

FX: oooOOOoooOOOoooOOOoooOOO

POINT (off): NO!

Panel 4: Same image (perhaps a little larger). CLIQ splinters into a million pieces and explodes under the onslaught. The little EMBRYOS are scattered like shrapnel, flying in all directions.

FX: SKRAKKABOOM! SPLUT!

Panel 5: Close on ANNE THROPÉ and the GREEN ASSASSIN. They’re leaping down to grab the wriggling larvae, which writhe all around the alleyway floor, but POINT is right behind them and he’s not happy. His gun barks twice: the first shot blasting THROPÉ’s sonic cannon out of her hands, the second biting a big chunk out of the other guy’s shoulder (forcing him to also drop his cannon).

THROPE: GET THE LARVAE! GET THE LAAAAAA---

FX: KOOM! KOOM! AAAH!

Text Block 1:

Ain’t it always the way? There you are, minding your own business, getting ready to shoot the holy spugging bejovus out of the piston-perfect peach you been coveting all week--

Panel 6: Close on POINT. Out of nowhere the two PIGEONFISH swoop down on him yet again, pecking and attacking.

CAPTION: …when a pair of rare feathered barracuda try to chew off your head.

FX: AAAAA!

PAGE SEVEN

Text Block 1:

Times like this, the mind gets real focused. Starts wondering. Like: who could convince two edgy airborne icthyoids to attack a seething simpo? Same subject, who could make a hormonal rat take a voluntary zoom to its own drokking doom?

Panel 1: Seen through a haze of snapping, biting PIGEONFISH, this is a close on RITA, little psychic bubbles popping around her head. She’s controlling the creatures.

CAPTION: Psi.

Text Block 2:

I make a rule of never hitting a broad. Call me old fashioned.

Panel 2: Still batting away the PIGEONFISH with his hands, POINT pulls off a pretty impressive karate-kick to the PSI’s head, knocking her out cold.

FX: KRAK

CAPTION: Welcome to Angeltown.

Panel 3: LARGE. Freed from the psychic interference, the PIGEONFISH swoop down on the wriggling, wormy little embryos littering the ground. Beyond them THROPÉ – on her hands and knees, trying to get to the embryos herself – watches in horror as they’re all gobbled.

FX: SKREEEEE-----!

CAPTION: Pets, huh? Domesticate the little drokkers much as you want, they still do what comes naturally.

THROPÉ: NO! NO, YOU LITTLE BASTA--

Panel 4: Close on THROPÉ’s face, eyes wide, as a big gun barrel abruptly hoves into view on the left of the panel, up against her head. It’s POINT.

Panel 5: Same view, but THROPÉ has turned slightly to face JACK. He still holds the gun right up to her face, and he does not look happy.

THROPÉ: HI JACK

POINT: HI TOOTS.

Text Block 3: (It’s a biggie…)

We stare at each other a long time. I ain’t entirely sure why.

I tell her I trusted her, and it comes out like the noise a mouse’d make right before you trod on it. She doesn’t bother to answer.

I tell her she’s responsible for the deaths of thirteen ScandeNavy smugglers, and by all rights I should take her in. She reminds me I owe her one.

We stare some more.

[CONTINUED]
Panel 6: Exactly the same as 4 and 5, but JACK lowers the gun. He looks grim, angry with himself. THROPÉ has a very subtle little half-smile.

POINT: DROKK OFF OUT OF HERE.

CAPTION: That killer smile. It’s quite a talent.

CAPTION: Maybe I am going native.

PAGE EIGHT

Panel 1: Wide view. Night time in ANGELTOWN. A slick, expensive looking block somewhere, all in black, with very few lights showing.

FROM WITHIN(jagged): …STRUGGLING TO… EXPRESS MYSELF. MY EXTREME DISPLEASURE…

LINK: YOU CAN’T EVEN STEAL PETS FOR ME…

Panel 2: LARGE. Interior of a white, minimalist room. A black metal desk stands in the foreground, with a small electronic voicebox set-up beside a camera. The camera is staring at THREE FIGURES, side-by-side, in the foreground: like they’re on parade. They are ANNE THROPÉ, RITA DELPHIN and CORVID PETE: dressed identically in black assassin-style garb, with all the trimmings in colours RED, BLUE and GREEN. PETE is closest to us – he’s recognisably the same guy we saw on POINT’s TV screen, and has a bandage/arm-sling where POINT shot him. The trio stand like soldiers, getting a dressing-down from their C.O.

VOICEBOX(jagged): YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE MY ELITE, YES? ROGUE JUDGES! YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE INVINCIBLE!

LINK: I’VE DREAMED OF THIS… OF WHAT WE’RE PLANNING… ALL MY LIFE…

LINK: WILL YOU FAIL ME WHEN I NEED YOU MOST, MY LITTLE PRIMARIES? WILL YOU LET ME DOWN AS YOU HAVE TODAY?

Panel 3: Close on ANNE THROPÉ, staring straight ahead, towards the voicebox.

VOICEBOX(jagged): HHHHH

LINK: PERHAPS… PERHAPS I’M BEING UNFAIR. THERE’S ONLY THREE OF YOU…

VOICEBOX(unlinked): I TRUST YOU HAVE A CANDIDATE FOR THE FOURTH? SOMEONE NEUTRAL?

THROPÉ: YES, MASTER. VERY MUCH SO.

Panel 4: Another exterior view of ANGELTOWN: this time the outside of POINT’s office in SPURIOUS HEIGHTS.

CAPTION: “…AND HE’S PRACTICALLY ROGUE ALREADY.”

FROM WITHIN: …WHERE TO BEGIN?

LINK: LET’S SEE… PERHAPS WITH YOU AVOIDING AND OBSTRUCTING AN SJS INVESTIGATION? OR FILLING YOUR PREMISES WITH ILLICIT LITERATURE? EVIDENCE OF ILLEGAL VICE?

[CONTINUED]

Panel 5: Larger. Interior of POINT’s office. SJS JUDGE KOVACS sits in POINT’s seat behind his desk, giving him a damn good talking-to. She’s referring to notes from the huge sheaf of paper in front of her, gesturing vaguely with her spare hand towards a little goldfish bowl on the desk between them containing a single wriggly RAPTAUR embryo, counting-off offences on her fingers. A couple of guilty porno mags are on prominent display on the desk, and POINT’s hipflask and cigar-collection are laid-out like Exhibits at a court case. POINT is too busy staring at her boobs to even listen. Lots of dialogue here, so leave loooads of space.