guzcomic finale script

Guz & Rutherford are crawling in the tubes.

Guz, sadly: And that's when I ran to the tubes, and got lost.

Rutherford: Is Tendi okay!?

Guz: The photonic pulse charges weren't radioactive, if that's what you mean.

Rutherford: well... that's a silver lining.

Guz: I really gunked up with her, didn't I?

Rutherford: I doubt it. The rocket launch was an accident, and she's usually pretty patient with outbursts and meltdowns--I mean, uh, she probably has to be because she's a medic!

Rutherford: Look at that! One of the six impulse clusters is dead!

Guz: Then it's worse than I thought. We're almost there.


In the Jeffries Tube, Guz and Rutherford come to a removable wall access panel.

Guz: We're here.

Guz removes the panel. Rutherford and Guz climb through, down a ladder, and and look into the Impulse Engine Room. It's a huge room with enormous tubes running the length of it, each tube covered in warp coils. The room is waterlogged and space in the room is warped.

Rutherford: What the heck?

Guz: WHAT?

Rutherford taps his combadge. "Rutherford to Main Engineering." (BZZT)
Rutherford: Comms won't work.

Meanwhile, on the Bridge. Freeman and Ransom are in their chairs, Eyeless Iris and Shax are at security, Lisdolin is at the conn, and Tendi is at the ops console.

Iris: I'm reading a distress call from the large planetoid in this system's Kuiper Belt.

Freeman: Ensign Kerman, set a course for the dwarf planet. Warp me, factor two!

Lisdolin: I can't!

Tendi (with pasta sauce still on her shirt): Amazing! The rainbow magnetodisk of the gas giant is interfering with the warp engines. The superjupiter's magnetic dynamo seems to be interacting with a small minor moon made of Dilithium & Verterium to produce a small static warp field, so the warp drive can't couple to normal space.

Freeman: Then give me maximum impulse.

Lisdolin: Aye, Captain. ETA is in 10 hours, 34 minutes; but we clear the magnetodisk in 15 minutes.

Back in the impulse field control room. The engine room gets brighter and hotter.

Guz: Clearly something's gone wrong with the driver coils. But that doesn't explain the water!

Rutherford: I've never seen anything like this in my... oh my god! [Rutherford's eye turns red, and he collapses to his knees in the water.]

Guz: We have to cut power to the impulse engine internally. If comms are out, then it won't even matter if one of us gets back to...
Guz turns to Rutherford. "RUTHERFORD!"

Flashback to Young Rutherford panicking over an experimental impulse engine design. it explodes.

Rutherford wakes up. "I have seen this before!"

Guz: "A waterlogged impulse engine?"

Rutherford: "No! The--the arcing, the powerplant--it's--Guz, you have to get out of here! I can fix this! I have to fix this! I can do it this time!" Text background color flickers between yellow and red.

Guz: I'll bring help!

Guz turns back towards the jeffries tube and climbs the ladder. Rutherford approaches the control panel, but is hit by the control panel sparking and rocks exploding out from behind it. Explosion sfx should include blocky "ROCKS!" text. He falls to his knees, but picks himself up and staggers forward and starts tapping buttons on the panel.

Rutherford: "Keep it together..."

Guz: "Wait! The water! It's leaking from the coolant loop!"

Rutherford looks back. R: "Of course! The coolant loop must have been dumping water from the propellant tanks into the room when the engine started overheating! But then, why did it stop?"

Guz: "When the engines turned on, the propellant had to run through the engine instead! "

Rutherford: Stand back! I'm gonna reroute some water!

Cut to Matt and Kimolu playing with a ball in cetacean ops.
THUD
the water begins to drain.
Matt: <you hit the drain valve>
Kimoulu: <I did not!>
Matt & Kimolu swim out of the lounge and let the hatch lock.

The water pours into the impulse engine room and washes Rutherford away. He shouts.

Guz, crawling in the hatch to the jeffries tube, turns around and shouts: Rutherford!

Rutherford is being pulled by currents and warp fields into the water. He ends up in the water loop, and Guz watches as he is moved from one side of the engine room to the other. Guz dives off the ladder, losing her pants. Below her torso is an amorphous blob as she dives.

In the water, Guz's bottom becomes a mermaid tail, and she swims after Rutherford.

Rutherford's holding his breath, but he's about to give out, when--
Guz grabs Rutherford, pulls him to the surface. He gasps, and Guz brings him back to the ladder. She swims back to the control panel to finish fixing the engine, but she's hit by an arc of electricity, and dissolves into the water.

[Interlude for Ray's contribution to Guzcomic]

green to blue to black gradient with text. R: "Billups..." / B: "you shouldn't have come here without an EV suit" / B: "Lieutenant, cut the power" / white:"aye sir." / B: "Where's Ensign Guz?" / R: "I don't know!"

Fades from black to sickbay. First person perspective.
T'ana looks at viewer: "Hey, you. You're finally awake."

Guz: "What happened?"

T'ana: "What DIDN'T happen? Radiation poisoning, electrocution, dissolving in water... lady, it's a miracle you're still alive!"

Tendi is hugging Rutherford tight. She is sobbing. "I thought I'd lost you again. I was so scared you'd wake up and you wouldn't remember your best friend! Or that you wouldn't wake up at all!"

Rutherford looks at Guz, then stares blankly at Tendi. R: "Do we know each other?"

Tendi looks at Rutherford, devastated.

R: "No... I'm sorry... I'm an idiot. Of course I know you Tendi. It's just..." Rutherford looks at Guz.

Guz: "Oh. You lied to me."
Her blank, depressed expression turns to anger. "You lied to me so I'd open up to you. I shared private information under false pretenses."

Rutherford: Guz...

Guz's anger fades to sadness: Don't even. worry about it.
Guz leaves sickbay. We can see that Guz is fighting back angry tears.

[resolve guz's disappointment with rutherford in a second story or wrap it up in the conclusion later]