audrey ikag script v1.1

Some parts need embellishing. Anything that doesn't have dialogue can probably use dialogue, narration, or some other scripted actions.

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The comic starts with a collage of Audrey noseying in on Rudy's business. It starts with 'hey what are you up to', but then becomes 'oh no I bumped into you whoops', and then they're trapped in a school closet, and then tied together and being lowered into a vat of lava, etc -- basically escalating in absurd ways to meet up. Rudy doesn't address Audrey's figure but it gets pressed against him a lot, so he's visibly distressed over trying not to bring it up. She's also visibly distressed at trying to maintain her composure around Rudy.

Audrey downtown after school, acting out as Golden Girl on building rooftops. Naming her attacks, narrating her stunts etc. When she's alone she can be boastful or dramatic, cool and confident. However she soon sees Rudy on the streets and ducks to the floor, embarrassed.

"This never happened to me at the circus! I don't understand it..."

Audrey spies a 'crime in progress' and, even though she shouldn't be on patrol yet, she investigates [partially due to striking out on her own as a teen, partially to prove herself as a heroine-in-training]. A thief has tentatively pulled a knife on Conner, who has his arms raised [still with handcuffs]. Conner is in the middle of a conversation that seems to have distracted or mollified the thief somewhat ("...so then he says to me, 'too bad you'll never graduate and get a decent job.' Prick. Anyway, I shouldn't keep you much longer, I know you have business to get back to--") until 'Golden Girl' gets the drop on the thief. Conner is saved by Golden Girl restraining the perp.

Golden Girl: "Are you -" [gasping for breath after leaping from the top of a building onto a crook's face, crotch-first] "Are you alright, citizen? No need to thank me, it's all part of the job-"
Conner: "Hey, Audrey."
Golden Girl: "(How did he see through my disguise?! No, wait, don't panic! You can turn this around, you've been trained in the art of rhetoric before!)"

A panel of a panicked Audrey with a caption of "masterfully-crafted rebuttal" entering her brain, and a dialogue balloon emerging from her mouth: "What's an Audrey"

Beat panel on Conner. He isn't quite certain of himself.

Conner: "Y-"
Conner: "You're an Audr-"
Audrey: "NO"

Beat panel.

Conner: "Alright, bye."
Golden Girl: "Wait!"

Golden Girl wants to convince Conner that she's actually Golden Girl and not an Audrey, because she thinks she'll be in huge trouble if her identity is revealed and the school learns she was moonlighting as a sidekick, but Conner just wants to drop the subject. He doesn't care to hold it over her - most of the rest of the class are also moonlighting, they can't shut up about it. It's bad enough being saved by a person he can't repay the gratitude to, but he doesn't need to be needled about her ID too.

Since Conner has isolated himself from the rest of his class, Audrey has never gotten many good conversations with him before. She doesn't know what sort of topic to approach him on. He doesn't like hanging around with supers, so he doesn't make it easy.

Audrey: "Did you know -"
Audrey: "Did you know I can punch a horse in the face and knock it out?"
Conner: "  "
Conner: "Are you threatening me?"

Audrey explains her experience in animal care, including anaesthesia [and euthanasia], coming from being in the circus as a child. She attributes her acrobatic ability ["but you already saw that..."] to the circus as well; Conner says he'd already seen her acrobatics in gym glass [as Audrey]. It doesn't take 2 and 2 for Audrey to realise that Conner's attitude throughout the whole encounter is dismissive and actually rather neutered, compared to his general posing and gestures in other comics.

Golden Girl: "You're usually pretty manic and cheerful. I've seen you shout a lot in class. Is something wrong?"
Conner: [in a voice of someone wanting someone else to stop talking] "Nothing's wrong, Audrey."
Golden Girl: "If you need someone to talk to--"
Conner: "I don't want to talk, Audrey. I already have enough supers to hang around with at school. When I go home that's my break away from all that. I don't want to hang around you guys if I can choose not to."
Golden Girl: "...would it help if I said I technically wasn't a super-?"
Conner: "NO! Look, you're still part of the rest of the class! I don't want to talk to you guys at all, alright?! Leave me be!"
Conner: [stopping himself and turning around] "....Thanks for the save! I'm sorry!" [walking off again]

Audrey tries not to let it spoil her night of empty patrolling, punctuated by helping citizens with groceries and crossing the road. Because she's self-conscious, and a teenager, it completely spoils her night.

Audrey lives in a penthouse apartment; there are stations dotted around the city for the middle and upper classes to get around. Conner lives in a run-down apartment built on top of a Chinese restaurant; he is aware of the collateral damage of fights on the street level. As he's lying in his bed, he only has one thing on his mind.

Conner: "Wish I could get those tiitties out of my head"

((He's a "beat off in the morning before shower, then go to work/school" kind of person. As a low-level student surrounded by girls in a school full of girls, he's gotten used to the situation.))

Because Audrey doesn't have Conner's short-term sense of temper [he's generally more of a 'get angry, then gradually forgive and move on' person], she isn't able to just brush it off and act like nothing happened, as Conner does the next morning. Audrey is still hurt from the night before. Something about Conner's talk of "you people" gnaws at Audrey because, despite being on friendly terms with everyone else in the class, she still views herself as isolated from everyone, as an outsider - someone from the circus, someone outside the school cliques. Being told as such, abruptly, is something of a shock but there's a sense of "I knew it..." in there.

She decides to poke her nose into Conner's business. Being something of a novice detective, she takes it upon herself to collect notes about Conner's past and about her own. She wants to set some common ground between the two of them. So she asks Conner's step-siblings, and then the councillors.

Rudy and Hayleigh were already scoped out by Audrey, as they're the children of retired supervillains. Audrey studied Hayleigh's routine and deduced she's too busy to get up to anything nefarious, since she manages both the Make-Up and the Soccer Club and does volunteer work, being on friendly terms with the councillors. Rudy dislikes them and avoids volunteer/club work as much as possible to avoid drama, hangs around with famed suspicious lad Conner, goes around school to make connections and find clients for bartering, etc.

Scoping out the suspicious behavior Rudy covers up is the only reason Audrey hangs around him so much. It's not that all the girls in school mob him.

Some of the students in Audrey's class try to placate her when she asks around about Conner, but they get the impression she's trying to turn him around and befriend him. "You don't have to be friends with everyone, you know. It's OK if some people just don't vibe with you." The way they see it, Audrey will try to relate some of her own past to Conner [who won't care] before attempting to go over Conner's own past [an unsolicited, 'taboo' topic of conversation and an invasion of his privacy] and just making things worse.

She tries a different tact and asks to borrow some gear for a project in the Mechanics Club. Conner goes along with it. In the Mechanics Club Audrey begins working on an engine and the two classmates have a conversation that starts one-sided and then eases into a back-and-forth. [[needs embellishing]]

Conner: "You just need someone to pass you along each of these tools?"
Audrey: "Yeah, for now. But also, I think we got off on the wrong foot yesterday. I don't want things to be awkward between us."
Audrey: "...So! Your sister says you've built a few machines-"
Conner: "Step-sister."
Audrey: "You've built a few machines yourself?"
Conner: "Ah, they weren't amazing. You just copy what you see off the big inventors, Doc Rockler and all of them. Half the stuff doesn't even get finished. I built a jetpod once, but the fuel transceiver went out on it and I couldn't get the parts for it."
Audrey: "Wait, like an actual jetpod? Did it take off?"
Conner: "Yeah, I was flying around school before Frank found me."
Audrey: "That's really impressive! Where do you keep it? I know the warehouse district sometimes-"
Conner: "I don't. The [student] council has it. Anything I build has to be run by them now."
Etc etc

When it seems like things have done well for the day, Audrey pushes her luck without thinking.

Audrey: "You see? That wasn't so bad! It wasn't that hard being nice, was it?"
Conner: "?"
Conner is thrown off by this and Audrey flinches. He pulls a face.
Audrey: "Ah, I didn't mean, I'm sorry..."
Conner: "...I wasn't annoyed by that. It was you falling back and dithering and making a deal out of it. THAT'S what annoyed me."
Audrey: "...Why do you have to be so bad-tempered all the time?"
Conner: "Why do you need me to pretend to be nice? You have a whole class full of people to be your friend! Isn't that enough?"
Audrey: "...Why do you have to be so bad-tempered all the time?"
Conner: "YOU ALREADY ASKED THAT"
Director: "Is something wrong? ...Are you working on another machine?"
Conner: "No, it's fine! I'm not touching anything. I'm leaving."

Audrey: "(I wish I could turn all my problems into a ball and then punch it in the face! ...I wish the bad guys would go to jail at the end of the day and that would be that.)"
Audrey: "(No, don't let it get you down! It's like Ms Sterling says - the sun isn't always out, so sometimes you have to make your own sunshine. I have to put on a smile for everybody's sake, and make them smile too.)"
Audrey: "(...but talking to people is so much easier when I'm Golden Girl! It's not the same at school at all!)"
Audrey: "(...no, wait on a minute. Why can't it be the same?)"

A couple days later Audrey asks Conner to meet her on one of the school rooftops after class. When he gets there he finds a tattered, homemade costume with a helmet, and Golden Girl standing triumphantly. Conner can assume the mantle of a hero or leave the costume be, but Golden Girl wants Conner to come at her, full force! Rhetorically. She'll take in all of his frustrations and make him a new man! Rhetorically.

Conner: "...you're not going to keep being like this for the rest of the year, are you? You don't even like me that much."
Golden Girl: "Acceding to the whims of the beaten and the heartbroken - this is the privilege of the protectors of Motown! I'll keep going for as long as it takes!"
Conner: "This is the problem with you people, you can't let go. You're all psychologically messed up."
Golden Girl: "I'm not messed up! I'm not! I'm just trying to help a classmate! I can hear your heart crying, Conner!"
Conner: [visibly embarrassed] "Augh! Don't say shit like that! You borrowed that line from Rudy, and even he doesn't make it sound good."
Golden Girl: "And who did Rudy learn it from?"
Golden Girl: "He learnt it from you! He told me himself!"
Golden Girl: "Everyone told me."

Golden Girl: "Everybody likes Rudy because he can understand their hearts, but he only knew to do that because he had someone watch over him. You were like a brother to him and Hayleigh and everyone else. You had the strength and heart to inspire others to do the same. What happened to you?"
Conner: [making to leave] "I ain't-n't having this talk."
Golden Girl: "Conner, if you're not going to talk to me, then I'm going to talk to everyone in class! And then the school! If we're not doing this in private, then we're going to do it with everyone watching!"
Conner: [turning around, infuriated] "That's not happening."
Golden Girl: "And who's going to stop me, little man? You, with no powers, no cape, no crown, no nothing? Do you even know how to throw a punch? How to stand up for anything at all?"

Audrey berates herself. Maybe she is just a meathead after all. Someone who despite being taught diplomacy and keeping a smile on your face, can only just fight when it comes down to it. Something tells her that her only option is to enrage Conner and wear him back down, so that he can clear his head and focus with a new-found clarity. If he treats Audrey as the representation of all heroes, maybe he can get his issues out in the open that way. Audrey has the better boxing experience compared to Conner, but he's no slouch in martial arts. It helps that both are... not 'evenly-matched', but there are no superpowers, super-strength or uniforms involved in the fray.

[[fight scene dialogue, if any, needs embellishing]]

Conner an amateur fighter and boxer, engaging a person he knows can send a sandbag reeling. His mind full of thoughts of jeering seniors and superiors, everyone talking shit about him and how he can't compare to his step-siblings. He stops holding back and starts throwing out moves to main and injure, switching to fragments of the different styles he trained in different clubs. Getting sloppy, losing momentum.

Audrey with more training but still an amateur compared to Silver Queen, taking on a 'villain' whose style she hasn't studied. Not trying to injure him but wear him out. Quickly gains the upper hand in strategy as she starts to 'read' what he's trying to do.

Conner stumbling to the ground. Audrey unable to stop herself from trying to give him a hand back up. Feeling intensely wounded in his pride as is. Instead he gingerly stands up himself, and walks over to his bag at the side of the rooftop. Pulling a crowbar out of his bag and tossing it slowly over to Audrey, while he takes out a golf club. Ostensibly a feeble choice of weapon. He runs in for round 2 as Audrey tries to parry with the crowbar. Although she has trained with it before, Conner's club is lighter and quicker. Between this and the fact Audrey isn't intending to maim in the first spot, she's quickly put on the defensive. She tosses the crowbar away and aims to disarm Conner; she gets him into an armlock, but realises the chains on his cuffs have trapped her too.

Conner: "All your talk of 'saving the day' and 'diplomacy' and 'stop right there, criminal scum'? Is that all a front, too?"
Golden Girl: "Of course it is! At the end of the day, it's all about throwing our weight around and asserting dominance! Might makes right!"
Conner: "Is that all it comes down to?! Is it, really?!"
Conner: [stopping fighting, collapsing on his ass, inadvertently pulling Audrey to her knees] "I don't think it is."
Conner: "What are you really trying to say, here?"
Golden Girl also stops struggling, letting go of Conner's arms. He does his level best to untangle the chain links, and soon both are free and tired.
Conner: "It seems too neat and tidy. 'Punch your problems away'. When it seems neat and tidy on the surface, it always gives me this gut feeling, there's something more going on underneath."

[When Conner seems like he's going to win, it gives him a gut feeling that he doesn't 'deserve' the win somehow, that he's inadvertently cheated or the opponent has a handicap. Or maybe he doesn't 'deserve' to win in general. He always gives himself an out.]

Golden Girl: "...I was an outsider too. I didn't have as much time in middle school or high school as everyone else."
Golden Girl: "Every day I made mistakes and kept questioning myself, wondering if I was doing the right thing staying here at all. But I had people around to help me catch up."
Golden Girl: "Sometimes I think about what could have happened if I'd just kept going on in the circus, or if I hadn't listened to anyone here. How much worse it could have all been."
Golden Girl: "I don't want you to make that same mistake."
Conner: "Don't act like you know anything about..."

Conner decides it'll be more prudent to assume Audrey does know everything.

Conner: "How I decide to live my life is up to me. The important thing isn't listening to people or making friends. It's about finding that dream that keeps you going and gives you purpose for living."
Golden Girl: "People give you purpose!"
Conner: "NO, GDDDDMNIT! I mean shit like sports, or chess, or baking, sewing, looking after pets! Making sweets, that sort of thing."
Golden Girl: "...baking and sewing, huh. Pets and sweets. Those are some pretty... some real girly examples you got there. What are you trying to say, exactly?"
Conner: [what-do-you-want-me-to-say exasperated arm flail] "...You got a problem with girls?"
Golden Girl: "I, er..."
Audrey: "I never really learned to make sweets before."
Conner: "...Really? Huh. I figured you'd be pretty good at it."
Audrey: "Oh, did you? Why? Because I'm a GIRL?"
Conner: "YES? You're like, the girliest looking girl in the class! What's wrong with that? You can make sweets AND punch people, too, it doesn't have to be some one-or-the-other thing!"
Audrey: "That's not what I'm -- I... ... ...what if I'm really bad at it? What if he hates them?"
Conner: [what's-the-big-deal shrug] "Then just practice some more. If you can learn to do a triple-quarter-backstand on some dude's nutsack, you can learn to make cookies."
Audrey: [trying not to smile]
Conner: "Either that, or, fucking, I dunno... you can always do a bridal carry, I guess."
An upset Audrey starts [lightly] thumping Conner.

Conner: "So how long have you liked Rudy for?"
Audrey: "[expertly-improvised comeback] N-no?"
Conner: "Don't feel too bad. All the girls like him. Some of the guys, too."
Audrey: "That's not--"
Conner: "Also, he says you've been hanging around him for days."
Audrey: "He's -- he's the son of two supervillains. I already scoped out Hayleigh and she's clean as a whistle." [Conner waggling eyebrows] "Rudy, he doesn't do any club work, any volunteer work, he's always disappearing to find work for YOUR business..."
Conner: "Ah. Profiling."
Audrey: "Yes, yes, very clever. ...Mmm. Maybe just clever enough." [clapping hands on knees] "I'm going to need your help with something again. Is that alright with you?"
Conner: "Yeah, sure!"

In the school's Cooking Club Audrey is already at a station. She wants to do something to win Rudy over. This is territory Conner's more familiar with [having been talked to by a lot of students who try to use him to get to his step-brother], and the category for today is 'sweets'. Audrey puts on a front of not knowing what to do and asking for 'a big strong man' to help her but Conner refuses.

Conner: "I'm only here to lead, mind. Not to teach. I learned my lesson with Holly."
Audrey: "You don't want to take a beautiful young girl by the hand and walk her through the fine art of food? I thought you'd love to help!"
Conner: "I'm losing more respect for you by the second."
Audrey: "And you said I was the girliest girl in class..."
Conner: [already walking away] "You have the biggest tits. Bye."

Audrey: "(In the end, the bad guy got away after all. I don't think he learned to open up to me at all. On the other hand... I'm learning how fun it is to cook for real, even without any help. I just need to practice at it.)"

Audrey ends up getting her food preference and makes cookies, after a few attempts. With a big bag of cookies, she also gives Conner a big smile and a small bag of 'left-over' treats, which he graciously accepts. As Audrey runs off to inevitably get stonewalled by Rudy, Conner admires the quaint packaging.

Conner: "Cute little decorations. Cute sweets. And she can kick a horse dead in the face. She had to train to do all that shit, you know. Didn't get it handed to her on a silver platter."

He hands the little bag over to Senmu, who sits a desk or two away from him.

Conner: "You like cookies, right? Put these in one of your freaky face-pockets."
Senmu: "Audrey gave these to you to eat!"
Conner: "Yeah, but I hate cookies."
Senmu: "It's not about the taste, it's about the meaning behind it! Anyway, if you really don't like them, you should've said something."
Conner: "Nah. She seemed happy enough. It would have been rude to say no."
Senmu: "(...huh. Looks like someone's starting to grow up a little.)"

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Bonus comic

Audrey: "It's OK, Conner! I understand how you feel!"
Audrey: "Maybe you don't have a girlfriend right now, but I know you'll find the right one for you some day! Even if you just have to change a few things about yourself, like your appearance, or attitude, physique, personal hygiene, or lack of social tact!"
Conner: "You're a true friend, Audrey." [imagines himself choking Audrey out]

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Bonus comic with Holly and Rudy

In the classroom at lunchtime Holly (the red-haired rural girl) is looking for advice from Rudy. She wants to improve her ice-breath capabilities, which are sad little puffs of snowflakes at the moment. (Whatever the inside of her lungs, throat, nose etc do to process this ability, it makes her extremely chilly internally, which seems to put her off.) Rudy reassures her that she just needs practice, and he has faith in her. Conner, from a couple desks away, asks if Holly does any singing practice.

Holly is self-conscious about her warbling, so she refuses to sing in public. Conner tells Holly that singers need to draw out breath from the bottom of their lungs and gestures to draw power from inside and bring it out. Pressured to perform, Holly attempts a strong vocal chord with a wobbly dialogue balloon and is humiliated when Rick and Gomez (geeks in the class with fire and magma powers respectively) sarcastically praise her singing. Conner then demonstrates drawing breath to sing and emits a tuneless yell that's strong enough to break panels, and necessitate the entire speech bubble being sliced in two in the next panel by Darkblade. Darkblade withdraws his sword and covers his ears, telling Conner "never do that again". Rick and Gomez also chime in. Conner snaps his fingers at the critics: "Philistines!"

But Conner reinforces his point - that you can't do breathless vocals with wimpy lungs if you want your songs strong enough to reach the back of an auditorium, so it stands to reason that wimpy lungs will produce wimpy ice breath. He encourages Holly to give the breath ability another try. Rudy chips in - if you don't practice pushing against your limits, even with freezing lungs, you'll never expand them and get stronger. Mollified, Holly draws her full breath and aims it thoughtlessly in Conner's direction.

Realising what's going to happen, Conner clambers under his desk, but Holly's improved breathing smears the entire opposite side of the room in ice. Although the other students weren't caught in the blast, Conner is surrounded on all sides and is dismayed by Rick and Gomez both offering to thaw the ice (and one-up one another).

Conner, sitting on a chair, wrapped in a towel, feet in a steel bucket with hot water: "I changed my mind. I ain't giving you fuckers advice anymore."

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>plucky
>put-upon
>self-conscious (because she's tall, a teenager, busty, and is afraid of making people dislike her)
>uses Golden Girl as something of an outlet for physical exercise and for being girly
>has experience in animal care, mechanics and boxing, but has trouble breaking the ice
>lots of wordplay and boastful/dramatic monologuing as GG, but only when she's alone
>presumably tries to practice wordplay at school and gets carried away with banter and alliterations, becoming proud of certain sentences that just seem out of place otherwise
>a novice detective, which means a conscious observation can lead to conclusions, sometimes jumping to the wrong ones [ala Sherlock Holmes]
>able to psyche herself up around most students and heroes/villains, intimidated by angry old men [childhood trauma of being kidnapped]
>no powers, no Code
>trainee superhero, practices around town in isolated areas like rooftops so as to not get caught out by most people
>some degree of homeschooling or non-school tutoring [Silver Queen] means there is some social stunting that has to been unlearned through the rest of her adolescence and possibly even young adult life