ikag-guy-a-draft2

GUY A OUTLINE SECOND GO AT IT

A politician is inside Guy A's office, demanding priority in being healed. He'll give Guy A anything he wants - fortune, riches, cash - but these are anathema to the doctor. Guy A says that something like Smallpox will always be a low priority to him. The politician, backed by a fleet of armed bodyguards, decides he has to do something he really doesn't want - and drops to his knees begging like a child. "At least spare my son, he's been poisoned by radiation!" All Guy A can say is, "What? Again?!" With no context given to the audience, Guy A then recovers and demands the man have dignity - if he and his son want to be cured then they can join up with the other patients at the next scheduled curing. The elated politician promises to make Guy A famous; he blanches and kicks the politician out of his building in rage, where we see protestors and cult followers mixed with confused football fans and a vendor or two.

Guy A responds unpleasantly to a phone call, which turns out to be from the principal of the school Princess Daughter attends. The principal would like to organise a field trip to a certain city on the East Coast, and the 'children' would be delighted if they could tour Guy A's facilities. Guy A snarks that he can't cure superpowers and the principal laughs (out of courtesy). If the children can keep their hands to themselves, a tour shouldn't be a problem.

The tour isn't mandatory for school students, though the facilities for those staying behind are fairly limited. The methods of transport to Coastal City [placeholder name] reflect the students' ranks - the councillors ride in a private plane, unescorted; the A-B students get a flying bus with a share of the supervising teachers; the C-D students test-ride a sea-train with tracks built across the sea as well as the countryside, with a nice-but-shaky view of the ocean, escorted by the other half of the supervisors; the E students have to hike, possibly swim. This is treated as a normal experience by the students and staff.

[Rudy rides the flying bus, but I'm torn on how Conner gets to Coastal City. On the one hand he could trade privileges with an A/B-rank student who simply didn't want to go on the trip, we'd have some more interaction between Rudy and the students who are trying to sandbag/keep Conner out of the group around Rudy. On the other hand we could have Rudy alone on the bus and another student mocking Conner for having to hike, only for everyone to arrive at the City and Conner is escorted out of the private plane (handwaved as him being far too dangerous to be left unsupervised, even on the bus, so the councillors kept a closer watch on him), but that might be a bit too favorable for the character. We could also have Rudy on the private plane instead, mostly for his own safety from being mobbed by fans. If Pepper is around at this point in the story she could also blag her way onto the flying bus, though since she's a B-rank student it's not necessary at all.

Regardless of how it works out, this is the ideal opportunity for an ignorant/tired student to express skepticism and for another student to bring up an unauthorised YouTube video of Guy A's mass-healing in action. Some of the people in the video deify Guy A and he grows furious at their perceived helplessness.]

We get a better look at the football stadium that's been cleared out for a scheduled mass-cure session - a verbal acknowledgement between Guy A and the manager of the local sportsball team, the Coastal Fireguards [placeholder name] means that Guy A can use the stadium each day at certain hours without interrupting training or matches. As soon as the students arrive they're immediately asked to stand on the stadium grounds, filed up beside the day's wounded and diseased, and hold hands - which understandably takes some encouragment. Guy A has his own bodyguards that work with the teachers to get everyone holding someone else's hand, including the politician and his son, a bright-eyed boy younger than Rudy and Conner. It all seems like a weird hippy practice but the healing aura is no joke - 10 seconds pass and everyone in the staduim is reasonably healthy at the very least. The politician's son explains to Rudy that Guy A is his hero and treats him regularly - he explains that he has the superpower of nullifying and absorbing radiation, but his father quickly asks him not to spill his guts to random strangers. The cured are asked to leave while the councillors and teachers get the students to congregate for an impromptu talk with Guy A.

Guy A attempts to explain his power the best he can and leaves the floor open for questions - many questions, some of which have clearly been asked a trillion times before (Student D asks can you bring back the dead, Student A asks if a guy was missing all his limbs could you bring them back etc), some of which explain the Guy's backstory and power capabilities for the audience's benefit. Rudy asks Conner what he wants to ask Guy A -- he thinks of a mundane unrelated question like, "what's your favourite baseball team" -- he is chided for wasting the opportunity by asking a stupid question -- another student asks about what if a person were to be missing limbs -- Conner complains that ALL of these questions are stupid. Student D flinches.

Now we get a tour of Guy A's offices proper, which are located in the same buildings that house the facilities for the stadium. Row after row of employees taking calls, studying chemicals, studying patients for the severity of their ailments - Guy A explains that he finances the entire operation because his medical expertise stretches as far as his arm, but he has taken on tutors to improve his medical understanding and taken on more supervisors when the initial job of supervising the research grew massively out of his own control. He complains about having to fire people who attempted to abuse their position (from his perspective it's abuse, from their perspective he was being paranoid as shit), then shows the tour group the door leading to his own office. He walks on, leaving the group confused - aren't they going to have a look inside? Guy A adamantly refuses and instead changes the topic to lunch.

The stadium has a cafeteria for the football teams, fans and patients (paid out of Guy A's own expense but he would never admit to it being charity). The students dine there before the buildings start to shake violently - Guy A's bodyguards reassure the teenagers and supervising teachers that attacks on the stadium are common and there is a forcefield and other countermeasures for these situations. We see a supervillain trying to break through the forcefield, before being stopped by a wonder-woman who is rumored to have radiation-induced superpowers. Guy A himself is unfazed by the attack until he wonders if he left the five locks on his office door unlocked and runs blindly back.

At the end of the day the A-D students are escorted back to their modes of transport, while the E students are still on the road towards Coastal City. Student D, Darien, attempts to stop Rudy before he gets back on the bus/plane, but Rudy is surrounded by other people. Darien then spots Conner with his enormous bag, having just passed through the security checkout; Darien asks if Conner can hold onto his books for him. Conner obliges without a second thought - assuming Darien is running from bullies or in a natural superpowered-teen sort of hurry. "Whatever weird business it is, I won't be involved for long anyway." By the time the students return back home the school period is more than over, so Conner decides he'll meet up with Darien in the morning. In the meantime he opens one of the books - bound in black with a gold trim and rainbow lace - purely to verify that it isn't an artifact or some kind of banned book...

The students are put into a state of panic when the school is put under lockdown - the councillors announce an inspection of everyone's bags and lockers. "An inspection, this early, unannounced?" Conner's class is confused, but Rudy had already heard the rumors - Guy A apparently rang the principal up, furious that something had been stolen during the school tour. Another rumor is that Guy A is in fact on school grounds - this would mean he uncharacteristically left his office and flew all the way down to their town, to visit their school on personal business, the day after the school had a tour at his facilities. Meanwhile Conner has gone missing.

By happenstance Darien runs into Conner, who jovially has a walk with him around the corner. Conner pins Darien against the wall and explains that his own ass is toast because of the books on his person that Darien handed him, so he needs to immediately explain what he was doing with those books. Shifty and felt-picked-upon by nature, Darien explains: for the longest time he's been browsing Lablive, a page on the Deep Web where hobbyist/barred scientists will upload streams and clips of their experiments. The top video creators and commenters speak of Guy A with respect - someone who hasn't uploaded a single second of video - for his research and development of techniques in resuscitation. In essence, Guy A must have made greater strides than anyone else to bring the dead back to life, and according to Darien the well-guarded books in his office must contain those findings. This is all conjecture, so Conner asks why Darien needs the books. Darien apologises, and knocks Conner unconscious with a tazer.

Conner is woken up by some students from other classes; enough time has passed that they have left one class and were advancing to the next. Conner realises that his bag is missing, and the students have neither seen the bag nor Darien around recently. Now Conner's mind kicks into overdrive. He runs around school looking for the bag thief, asking anyone he meets to look out for said bag and said thief. A half-hour passes and he panics even more - his bag is missing and if the books are found in the bag then he'll be expelled or worse and if Darien is missing and he has the books then something awful will happen...

----* STORY PLAN NUMBER ONE

What will happen, exactly?
He'll... use the notes to inflict horrible experiments?

Conner stops to think about it.

Darien is in another class trying not to show his panic, even as Bucky (student councillor) is leading up to an inspection of the students in the room. Darien has his hand up comically to ask to go to the bathroom but Bucky and Frank (other student councillor) go through the students' bags regardless. They're about to ask Darien to relinquish his bag...

Darien complies, and Bucky and Frank rifle through his belongings. They find the black books, with gold trim and rainbow lace. Frank speedreads the books, then looks at Darien.
"They're definitely mine, and absolutely not stolen from anyone."
Bucky and Frank step outside the room to converse. They re-enter the room.
"We're going to have to ask you to come to the student council office with us."

In the office Amelia sits across the desk from Darien and explains the situation - he's been caught with a series of troubling books about experimenting on dead and dying animals - books that he is adamant are his. Darien struggles to suggest that, in fact, the book aren't strictly his? Written by him, per se? Which Amelia chooses to interpret as him lying about owning the books, meaning they're likely stolen. Which is strange, because someone popped into the office to make an inquiry about some stolen books! What a weird turn of events. Either way the books are definitely going to be confiscated, it's just a matter of whether Darien is expelled, or merely suspended and put on psychiatric watch. Darien elects to reach for his tazer [not knowing that the person in front of him can read minds and that one of the other people in the room can teleport].

There's a knock on the door.

Conner enters, ostensibly to ask about the location of his missing bag, until he sees Darien. Conner decides to drop the bombshell - the things that went missing yesterday were taken by Darien. ("We've just gotten to that.") Darien had given him some books to hold on and Conner just assumed they were random things of his until the next day; the books didn't ring any alarm bells in the school's security so it seemed fine. ("Why didn't they set off the alarm? Have we had problems recently with them?" "[shrug]") Conner gets halfway through his next sentence about the contents of the books before being asked to wait outside.

He does.

The door opens and Amelia asks him to sit down. Darien has disappeared - apparently "he escaped somehow into thin air", which as a contrivance is upsetting because he's the only one who knows where Conner's bag went. Conner explains the contents of the books (even though Amelia is fully aware, she decides to let him explain out of courtesy) and calls for them to be destroyed - they're full of cold, clinical details of wretched experiments on dead and dying animals, and none of the resuscitated animals actually reached a stage beyond being brain-dead anyway. Amelia believes that Darien hadn't actually had the chance to read the books like she or Conner did, but he put his faith in them more out of desperation. Darien's sister was struck by a thrown car the year before, which may have been the cause of the upset. Regardless Amelia believes in Conner's innocence for now, regarding the books; the only crime he's committed is being in the halls during class, but since he was tazed at that point he can be reasonably excused. Conner leaves to track down his bag.

[He does not realise how Amelia knew he had been tazed.]

Conner gets a tip from one of his classmates that the bag is in the Lost & Found Department, which he scoffs at but has no other leads. He enters to find Amelia, Frank, Rudy, Darien and Guy A all at a standstill. Rudy is attempting to reason with Guy A regarding Darien's actions, but Guy A is angry with the two 'naive' kids and tells Darien to grow up and move on, go through the grieving process with dignity. Rudy asks Conner to back him up in the debate, but Conner sides with Guy A - let the wound heal and move on. Rudy is dismayed but Conner is really more concerned about finding his bag - Darien is surprised/annoyed that Conner is still surprised/annoyed over the bag and tells him he left it around the mens' bathrooms near the teachers' lounge.

Conner finds his bag and makes his way back to his own classroom, only to see Rudy at his desk having a heart-to-heart with Amelia as the rest of the class watches/pretends to be interested in their own conversations. Conner facepalms as Amelia explains that the books weren't a How To guide, they were a How Not To Make The Same Mistakes Again manual. Guy A had hope that his powers would somehow allow him to bring a loved one back to life, but exploring all the upper boundaries of his powers didn't lead to the results he wanted, while still being hounded by other people for the results he *could* give. In the end Darien would only end up making the same mistakes that Guy A did out of the same sense of false hope. Rudy hopes that Conner learned something through this experience, but he merely splutters incomprehension at the storytelling of the last 48 hours.

----* STORY PLAN NUMBER TWO

As Conner searches desperately for his own bag and for Darien, he also struggles towards an epiphany. Why did Darien need the books badly enough to attack him? Can Guy A raise the dead, contrary to what the books suggest? Can the councillors be trusted to stop him, or are they working towards bringing the data back to him? Is the principal working with Guy A, making a public display of the inspection as a smokescreen? Is everyone else In on It except him? Without realising it, Conner's ligament start to groan and his skin cracks apart as he starts running faster and faster. Conner eventually staggers into the school's Lost & Found Department, hoping against reason that his bag might have ended up there somehow. He instead finds Rudy, Amelia (student councillor), the Department's receptionist, and Guy A - who has been furiously pacing around the department floor until now.

Surrounded by people who could be conspiring against him (but don't know the books are in the bag he's holding onto, and in fact don't even know the cause of his mental and physical state), Conner wonders how to buy time until he can escape. He refuses Guy A's offer to have a look at his body, attempts to civilly demand that Amelia and Rudy keep their distance, and wracks his spinning aching brain for ideas. Amelia and Rudy try to talk Conner and he alternates between "I must seem like I'm acting crazy, let's be rational, clear our heads" and "No, they want me to drop my guard! They're buying time, maybe(?)!"

Eventually Conner comes across a solution that seems so absurd, it must be the only logical course of action -- they all want the books, so he'll simply destroy the books. They can do what they wish with him when he's already won. Conner produces a BBQ gas lighter from his sleeve and repeatedly attempts to activate it, ignoring Amelia and Rudy's orders to stop. As Conner gets the lighter to work, he realises that key component of the plan hinges on him actually having the books to burn. Rats. After an embarrassing half-minute Darien enters the Department escorted by Bucky (student councillor) and Frank (student councillor), but Darien freezes when he sees Guy A, who has to be cautioned by Rudy to stop advancing on Darien. The distraction allows Darien to attempt to escape, but Frank immediately pins him to the floor.

Amelia finds Guy A's books within the bag and Darien beging writhing and clawing in desperation, refusing to talk. Guy A initially handwaves the details written in the books, and Darien refuses to divulge what he knows to Amelia or why he wanted the books or what was written in them. Conner explains to Amelia that Darien had given him the books, implicating him in stealing them, but then Darien took them back so he planned on taking the bag to exonerate himself. As Frank puts it, "you thought you'd be accused of stealing the books, so to fix that misunderstanding, you were going to steal the books and someone else's bag? a random boy walked up to you asking you to hold 'his' books and you didn't ask any questions or think it suspicious at all?" Conner cannot explain his thought process, but he confesses to reading the books ("You what--?") and asking why Darien had them, but Conner didn't get an answer - and he still doesn't. He also still doesn't have his bag, that's annoying him a little, but that's a small concern in the grand scheme of things. Rudy attempts to coax some rhyme or reason out of Darien so that Guy A can better empathise with him.

Amelia and Frank are ready to just hand the books back to Guy A and deal with both Conner and Darien later, and Guy A is already on the verge of threatening action against the school, but Conner insists that Guy A can't be allowed to keep the books - they're full of research on bringing the dead to life, albeit in a weird braindead state. Guy A tells Conner that isn't what the books are about at all, but he hasn't finished yet - no normal person would fly all the way down to this shitty little town if that set of books wasn't extremely important to them somehow. Guy A just happens to have this extreme cult following of dying and diseased people, tonnes of cash and the backing of dozens of researchers, books about resuscitating the dead? His name is "Guy A", for fuck's sake! That's practically "mob leader" material already! "What are you trying to imply, exactly?" Guy A dismisses Conner's crazy talk, but is quickly provoked into yelling that the books are "mistakes" and has a breakdown.

Guy A reiterates that the books are records of the trial-and-error mistakes he made as a researcher. He never got rid of them because he wanted them to serve as reminders - if he destroyed those books it would be the same as pretending it never happened, the same as allowing himself or anyone else the ignorance of doing it all over again. If "that stupid kid" had read the books then he would have likely misunderstood it all the same, or misinterpreted the text, he would have gotten it wrong and made a mess, needlessly tortured people and probably even himself, trying to get the results he wanted but never could.

So with everyone else on the scene suitably made aware (hammered over the head with) of Guy A's tragic ineptitude, Darien would have to cope with the fact that the books he sought so desperately didn't have the answer he was looking for at all, and everyone would be made suitably aware of the parallels between the two characters. And Darien's backstory would be elaborated on by Amelia or Rudy, about his sister being the victim of a trafic case of collateral damage (thrown car by mind-controlled hero Super Joe), which Guy A regards as the sob story of a child disgracing his sister's memory by refusing to go through the grieving process with dignity. [The dirty hypocrite.] Rudy asks Conner to back him up on this, but Conner actually sides with Guy A - Darien has to let the wound heal. Beating yourself up over something you had no control over isn't healthy for you. [The dirty hypocrite.]

All's well that ends well, Guy A is mollified and almost decides not to sue the school when Bucky and Amelia force everyone else to bow and apologise for being colossal fuckups. Instead he leaves shaking his head, never wanting to leave his offices like this again.