Phoenix Feathers, Part II Chapter 15 Disclaimer: Joss is Boss, and…and…and all these ideas floating around in my head are mostly his doing. So it’s really just a lesser version of something that he could do much better. And I personally wouldn’t have any complaints if he did…

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CU of feet. Running feet. KOYI’s running feet, as a matter of fact. We see her tearing through the crowded streets of Dyton Colony towards the Stallion’s docking bay. This requires more than a little barging, careening, and swearing, but Koyi nevertheless manages to keep track of her two crewmates, CODY and NEBULA, as they run ahead of her. The three of them finally have the ship in sight. The other two keep running, but Koyi stops and looks back the way they came. She glimpses a group of men in crimson armor making their way confidently through the crowd after them. Talons. Her eyes widen in fear. She then takes off after Cody and Nebula. INT- STALLION MAIN BAY PRISCILLA, the first mate, is making notes on a clipboard and monitoring their cargo as MONTY sits nearby, doing captainy things. They both look up, alarmed, as Nebula, Cody, and Koyi rush in, gasping. PRISCILLA: What happened? She is greeted with a torrent of overlapping voices, sounding something like this… CODY: There was a fight- Phoenix jumped a gorram hoverskiff- not sure where they are, but they’re out there. NEBULA: A whole lot- Feds and these thugs after us, or him, I’m not sure why- Oh, Buddha, CLARKE. KOYI: We were attacked by a bunch of- had to make a break for it- lost Phoenix and Clarke, but the kids are safe now- MONTY: So…What happened? KOYI: There’s no time, Captain. We’ve got to move, now! NEBULA: They’re coming! PRISCILLA: Nebula, get us out of here! Nebula exits as Priscilla hits the ramp controls. MONTY: Who is “they?” KOYI: They belong to a local Tong. They wear body armor, beat up the locals, and call themselves the Talons. CODY: They came after us all at the Arena, and we had to hightail it out of there. That’s when we lost Phoenix the first time. PRISCILLA: There was a second time? CODY: Oh, yeah. That one involves a little imprisonment, a heroic rescue, and quite a lot of fleeing…manly fleeing. It was manly. MONTY: So, these Talons- they’re after us? Why? PRISCILLA: We’re not waiting around to find out. MONTY: What about the goods? PRISCILLA: We burn some fuel in orbit, go to ground elsewhere, come back for them. CODY: What about Phoenix and Clarke? KOYI: Come back for them, too. They’ll figure it out. DEADLY SNAKE: Aw, come on! What’s everybody’s rush? The enforcer has been hiding on the catwalks, presumably having gained access through a dorsal entry hatch. He has his gun out and leveled at the crew as he descends and moves towards the ramp controls. DEADLY SNAKE: I mean, sure, running. That’s how most people react, and who could blame you? But you, you’re up and leaving some of your guys behind. Now, that I just didn’t see coming. Some grovel and beg, some even try to put up a fight. Couldn’t care less myself, it always ends the same. So, my question is, what’s your rush? We’re just getting started here. The Deadly Snake hits the ramp controls, and the remaining eight members of the Talon strike team enters, their guns drawn. They quickly and efficiently search the crew for weapons, ignoring Koyi’s protests (“Hey! Watch it! I’m a doctor, you rutting twerp”) then stand off against the walls of the ship and guard their prisoners. Silence, while everybody stares at everybody else. PHOENIX: This a bad time? Suddenly, everybody is staring at one person, who is somehow standing in their midst, near the center of the main bay, coolly regarding the Deadly Snake, who quickly moves to cover him. DEADLY SNAKE: Well, look who decided to show up! It’s been a while, eh? PHOENIX: I…know you? DEADLY SNAKE: …You really don’t remember! Makes sense, actually. Otherwise you’d have stayed gone. Phoenix frowns off into space. PHOENIX: You were…Your name was Ernie Monroe. DEADLY SNAKE: Yeah, it’s “Deadly Snake” now. PHOENIX: We ran the streets together. DEADLY SNAKE: Until you hopped on that shuttle without any kind of warning. Put a bit of a kink in the works. Hurt our feelings, you might say. Didn’t expect to see you again, but here we all are. You don’t seem too keen to chat about old times with the Master, though, but that’s why he sent me. INT- Stallion- Bridge Nebula is at the helm, struggling with the controls. The ship’s four engines begin to start up, and the Stallion begins to come to life. INT- Stallion- Main Bay The low rumble of the engine and the high-pitched whine of the turbines makes everyone look around, but the sound stops as quickly as it started. The Deadly Snake jerks his head, and one of the goons heads off in the direction of the bridge to investigate, gun out. INT- Stallion- Bridge -as the console beeps at her. NEBULA: What the- Oh, that’s not any kind of good. She looks around, hearing the Talon’s booted feet echoing down the corridor, and glances about desperately. CUT TO the Talon, as he steps cautiously onto the bridge, looking around for signs of life. PAN UP to reveal Nebula, quiet and out of sight in Cody’s hiding place (Part I, Chapter 2) above the doorway. She bites her lip as the man stays put and starts to search the bridge, very alert. SNAKE: (O.S.) The time for hiding is over. INT- Stallion- Main Bay SNAKE: (Cont.) You can’t run from us anymore, friend. Come quietly and we will leave your people…unmolested. Phoenix just stands in the middle of the docking bay as the Deadly Snake reaches into his cloak and pulls out heavy-duty handcuffs. Begins edging towards Phoenix, pistol trained. CLARKE: Get away from my crew, filth. The hero shot. The ageing tracker is standing proudly at the top of the ramp, jaw clenched, ready for a fight. Everybody reacts. He seems invincible…for an instant. Then we notice that he is bleeding from a shocking number of gunshot wounds and scratches, souvenirs of his bar fight. KOYI: Oh, God… Clarke seems to notice that he is hurt for the first time, looking down at his maimed body. CLARKE: Huh. His eyes roll back and he collapses on the deck. The bad guys instantly turn back to the crew, wary of retribution, but Koyi runs to Clarke’s side and looks him over. A Talon tries to restrain her as she crosses the main bay to get to him, but she waves empty hands at the man. KOYI: I’m a doctor. Doctor, remember? Regardless, he stands over her, pistol pointing half at the floor, half at her. The Snake looks around at the crew and sees that Clarke’s entrance has made them very tense. Knows he has to move fast. SNAKE: (re Phoenix) Enough of this. Take him! Four bad guys around the Main Bay close in on Phoenix. CUT TO: Koyi, as she suddenly snaps her elbow up and back into her guard’s face, making him howl and fall backwards. KOYI: Oops. Kid- catch! She grabs Clarke’s pistol and sends it spinning across the Stallion’s Main Bay. SLOW MOTION as Phoenix jumps over his four assailants towards the crazily spinning gun that is currently sailing over the Deadly Snake’s head. CU of the gun as his fingers close on the grip. END SLOW MO as Phoenix lands, spinning to point the gun straight at the camera. Cool. Except we hear a sickening crunch as the heavy gun’s barrel smacks into the Deadly Snake’s temple, dropping him. Beat. Phoenix winces. He didn’t mean to do that. Then the bad guys are on him and he takes a massive kick to the gut that sends him spinning through the air. He loses his grip on the gun, but he somehow manages to pull himself into a spin and plant a kick to the head of one of the Talons as he falls to the floor, taking the guy out of the fight. No, his face is definitely not wearing armor. Phoenix hits the ground, hard, and two Talons are on him almost immediately. He pushes himself off the ground with his hands, bouncing above one man’s kick. Turns it into an incredibly low-altitude somersault. His hands catch hold of theirs as they lash out at him, a move that stops his fall with his head about a foot above the floor. Coiled like a spring, he pulls them off balance and rights himself in the same motion, landing between them. He fires of a blinding-fast flurry of punches to their ribs, but the Talons’ body armor dissipates most of the force of these blows. The Talons fight back viciously, but they aren’t fast enough to land their punches. One Talon steps back to aim a roundhouse kick at Phoenix, but the kid moves like lightning, trapping the leg and stomping down low and fast, breaking the man’s other ankle, before dumping him on his head. The deck rings with the impact, and the man doesn’t get back up. The other Talon steps in and grabs Phoenix from behind, trying to pin his arms and crush him to his chest, lifting him up into the air, but Phoenix reaches back and appears to pass his hand over the Talon’s face, and the next moment he is free and the Talon is on the ground screaming and scratching at his eyes. The fourth Talon shoots at Phoenix, but he is freaked out and Phoenix is moving way to fast. Phoenix rolls below the man’s line of fire and half-slides, half-leaps to kick the man’s legs out from under him. His last assailant hits the ground and doesn’t get up. During this action, the camera glances around the bay to see Monty grappling with his guard with the brute force of a bear while Priscilla pushes Cody down behind some boxes and reaches for a pistol that she had kept hidden in her boot, engaging their guard in a firefight, eventually disarming him. Monty takes a bullet from his guard as he rushes at him, but the shot doesn’t slow the huge Captain down- it just makes him angrier. Monty pummels his guard into submission, but another Talon rushes into the melee from the bridge, gun drawn. He looks for a target and sees Phoenix, lines up a shot, but Monty’s fist hits him like a sledgehammer and the force of the punch lifts the man up over a stack of supplies. He hits the ground just after Phoenix takes out his fourth opponent. Phoenix stands up, regarding his handiwork dispassionately. Then, a GUNSHOT echoes in the confines of the Main Bay, leaving Phoenix with a pained expression on his face. Pull back to reveal that the Talon with the broken nose is back on his feet with a leveled gun and a lot of blood on his face. Then he falls. PHOENIX: Nice shot. PRISCILLA: Thanks. Captain? MONTY: It's done, Prissy. How’re the kids? PRISCILLA: (to Cody) Go find my niece, will you? Doctor, are you okay? Throughout the entire fight, Koyi has been looking after Clarke. (Nobody has seen Phoenix’s entire fight, but they know he somehow took out five guys. Creepy.) KOYI: Why shouldn’t I be? These sterile tadpoles couldn’t spell Hippocratic anyway. They had it coming. PRISCILLA: And Clarke? KOYI: He’s in a bad way. We need to get him to the infirmary, now. (to Phoenix) Kid, could you…? Cody re-enters with Nebula and he helps Phoenix and Koyi to lift Clarke. They exit the main bay, moving him to the Stallion’s infirmary. Priscilla looks over to where Monty is standing. They share a look. Then she notices that he is holding his stomach with one hand. PRISCILLA: My God, Captain, not you, too! MONTY: ‘S nothin’, Prissy. I’ll be all right. Clarke, though… PRISCILLA: (To herself) Yeah, but he ain’t who I’m worried on. The camera pulls up and back to show the First Mate standing in the midst of Phoenix’s assailants, who are arrayed almost neatly around the main bay, except for the part where they’ve all suffered terrible damage in some way. CUT TO: Phoenix, as he, Cody, and Koyi rush Clarke into the Med Bay and start tending to his wounds. Koyi cuts his shirt off, revealing a mess of blood. Cody turns a shade of green, while Phoenix hardly reacts. Koyi gets to work with grim efficiency. KOYI- (shaking head) He’s messed up. CODY: Oh, Buddha, no. KOYI: No, I mean, he’s really crazy. Who takes on a criminal kingpin by himself? CODY: Is he gonna make it? KOYI: Don’t look too bad. CODY: What? How? KOYI: The rest of him looks like Swiss cheese, but they didn’t hit any vital areas. Cody notices an ugly purpled area spread all around Clarke’s chest. CODY: What’s that? KOYI: That is one nasty bruise. CODY: From what? KOYI: Who cares? It’s not gushing blood like the rest of him. Speaking of which, hook up some more plasma, please, before he bleeds out. While they talk, Phoenix stoops to rummage through Clarke’s shirt. He draws out a bag and spills its very shiny, very valuable contents out onto a counter. His back to them, Phoenix picks out no less than four bullets that would have killed Clarke instantly, but for the heavy Platinum coins over his heart. Phoenix smiles, then pockets the spent bullets and moves back to the operating table. INT- Dyton City Docking Bay- later Monty drags his senseless guard down the ramp to the floor of the docking bay and starts offloading the rest of the scum, helped by Nebula and Priscilla. They talk as they work. MONTY: Well, that went well. PRISCILLA: Sir? MONTY: Well, not well, but…Been a while since my last hostage situation, and granted, we didn’t all get away in one piece, but… PRISCILLA: Still flying. MONTY: Yeah. NEBULA: (entering) We’re going to have a small problem doing that, Captain! It looks like we’ve been grounded. MONTY: What? When? Why? NEBULA: I don’t know! They don’t exactly draw you a map in these parts. PRISCILLA: Feds are the only ones with this kind of authority on this moon. MONTY: Don’t bet on it. It’s likely our friends here pulled some strings when they put this business in motion. The local Federals will send out an inspector. Standard procedure. We have to move quickly, drop off the goods with Vitelli, and get our new registration codes before he shows up, or we’re finished. PRISCILLA: Vitelli. That’s going to be problematic. MONTY: Come again? PHOENIX: He’s in on it. NEBULA: How can you know that? PRISCILLA: Take a look at these uniforms, Captain. We’ve seen them before. MONTY: Outside Vitelli’s place of business. I’d say that’s a nice connection. Good thinking. All right, Prissy, let’s pay the little weasel a visit. He sold us out to these hun dahn, and I’d like to know why. NEBULA: Right now? PRISCILLA: Just the two of us? We can’t find our way in the dark. PHOENIX: (entering) Yes, but I can. MONTY: Who are you? PHOENIX: Isn’t there a better time for this? NEBULA: Captain… MONTY: You’ve jeopardized my ship, put us on the Alliance’s radar, and nearly got us all killed just now. I know none of my crew deserves the kind of attention you’ve been getting, and I guess I need to know whether you do, because the Feds sure think so. PHOENIX: I don’t know, and that’s the truth. I don’t know what’s going on, or why, and I sure as hell hate seeing my friends getting hurt because of me. I don’t have any answers, and that’s why I need to go with you. Also, Independent Armories took some nasty shortcuts with the guidance software package of the Daedalus-pattern hovertank, which means you’d have a time of it trying to plot a course back to this Vitelli guy’s place without me, even if Dyton Colony allowed public use of its GPS satellites. PRISCILLA: But how do you know how to get there? PHOENIX: Just do. I also know that he will leave his office in the next fifteen minutes and is expecting company, so he will not be late. Can we go now? PRISCILLA: I’ll get the Mule. MONTY: You know, kid, you kind of scare me. PHOENIX: Me, too. NEBULA: Captain? (re: the unconscious Talons) What do we do with them? Monty looks at the cargo containers, standing by the Stallion’s vehicle bay elevator, ready for loading. He grins roguishly. MONTY: I’m sure our esteemed buyer won’t object to a little more cargo, free of charge. INT- Docking Bay- minutes later ANGLE ON: Phoenix, as he hops into the waiting Mule, which is laden with the remaining crates. Monty and Priscilla are in their seats, and they both turn expectantly to him. PHOENIX: Let’s go. They zoom out of the docking bay, into the dark night of Dyton Colony. PHOENIX: (to himself) Time for some answers.