Author's Note: this story is an experiment at envisioning a screenplay for a future production of Gunslinger Girl on television. Presentation of a script is as important as its content, and I would welcome comments from those more experienced with scriptwriting about the quality and accuracy of my formatting.
GUNSLINGER GIRL: CAMERATA
EPISODE ONE – "THE WOMEN OF TROY"
By
Robert Frazer
FADE IN - SUPERIMPOSE:
The sons of Dardanus shall come into their kingdom
In Lavinium (put that fear from your mind), but they
Will not enjoy their coming; I see wars, fierce wars, and the
Tiber foaming with much blood.
-VIRGIL
FADE OUT
A black screen.
JEAN (O.S.)
(searching)
Enrica? Enrica...
QUICK CUT – JEAN'S POV – ANGLE ON ENRICA
EXT. CROCE MANOR – DAY.
ENRICA is sitting at the base of a tree in the Croce Manor gardens, shaded from the bright sun. She blinks suddenly, disturbed from a daydream by JEAN's words, and turns her head round to face the camera with a surprised expression.
REVERSE ANGLE
Looking past ENRICA to take in JEAN as he stands above her. The sun is bright behind him, and so his face is in shade.
JEAN
(gently chiding)
Come on, sleepyhead, the car's ready – there'll be plenty of time to relax on the beach.
JEAN reaches down and helps ENRICA to her feet. Once she is standing, she flops against JEAN in mock exhaustion, but with a happy smile.
ENRICA
Oh, Jean – the heat! Carry me.
JEAN tries to peel ENRICA from his leg.
JEAN
Now, now, Enrica, don't be daft.
SOFIA and JOSE appear at a door leading into the house, carrying luggage. SOFIA spots JEAN's predicament and intervenes to help.
SOFIA
Enrica! Give me a hand with these bags, will you?
ENRICA turns and scampers across the garden to SOFIA.
ENRICA
Okay!
ENRICA takes a large wheeled suitcase, and bangs it noisily as she pulls it two handed down the steps before rumbling off down the path. Her straining effort is cute and comically endearing. As she moves past JEAN towards the gate, SOFIA and JOSE stop in front of her older brother. This movement across the garden can provide an opportunity for an aerial shot to take in a larger extent of the Croce Manor's comfortable grounds. As JOSE speaks below, ENRICA runs back and takes a smaller shoulder bag from him, before running out-of-frame again.
SOFIA
Are you sure that you two can't come with us? We can't even get a holiday without our time being cut in half.
JOSE
(joshing)
Not all of us can wangle a discharge with a half-pension, you know. The men still have to work!
SOFIA
(indignant)
Hey-!
JEAN intervenes by catching SOFIA's chin and turning her head towards him. He wears a tight smile.
JEAN
Until me and Jose can join you down there – he's a little parting gift.
JEAN kisses SOFIA deeply. JOSE harrumphs and turns away quickly as it becomes a clinch between the two lovers.
ANGLE ON – SOFIA'S ENGAGEMENT RING.
The two break away.
SOFIA
Well, that'll keep me going for... oh, a couple of hours.
They both put their heads together and smile.
JOSE walks away from the two impending newlyweds and back towards the door of the manor. As he reaches it, he meets GIOVANNI and CARLA. GIOVANNI, making a clumsy gesture at being endearing and fatherly, reaches out an arm - at full extension – to pat JOSE on the shoulder. JOSE nods glumly, and his head stays low. While his actual words are deferential, he can't keep the bitter edge out of his voice.
GIOVANNI
Jose...
(beat)
Serbia – all that fighting – it wasn't right for you. Listen to the minister – he's a friend, he knows what's best.
JOSE
Yes, father, you're always right.
Any risk of this exchange darkening the atmosphere is dissipated when ENRICA appears, running into the middle of the shot between GIOVANNI and JOSE. She dashes under the arch formed by GIOVANNI's arm.
ENRICA
Bullseye! (laughs)
The two adults start back as ENRICA runs back out, pulling another wheelie-case behind her. JOSE and GIOVANNI watch her bang it down the steps, making a nonsense-shout with each clatter, and smile genially. ENRICA is a sweet relief that improves everyone present.
CUT TO a frontal shot of ENRICA near the gate.
ENRICA
(happily)
Jean! Jose! I'll see you tomorrow!
REVERSE ANGLE
INT. CROCE MANOR – DAY.
JEAN and JOSE wave goodbye from the door of the house. As ENRICA runs off towards the gate, JEAN closes the door and he and JOSE walk together down the hall.
JEAN
Come on, then, let's get changed. I know you're still a bit sore about Dad getting you pulled from the Balkans, but the Minister's got a lot of good jobs to offer...
DISSOLVE TO – EXT. MOTORWAY – DAY – ESTABLISHING.
The Croce car travels down one of Italy's autostrada. This scene closely follows the manga and so it can be used for visual reference of the setting. There is scattered civilian traffic, but most noticeably contrasting with the silver colour of the Croce car are two black unmarked government escort vehicles which remain at a constant distance from the Croce car at all times.
CUT TO the inside of the car. ANGLE ON CARLA.
CARLA turns her head round from the front passenger seat to look into the back of the cabin.
CARLA
(chiding)
Girls! Seatbelts, remember?
REVERSE ANGLE
SOFIA and ENRICA are playing in the back seats.
SOFIA
Hahah! Okay, alright!
As ENRICA and SOFIA buckle up, GIOVANNI, driving, leans his head towards CARLA.
GIOVANNI
Don't be too demanding, Carla. Enrica's fourteen now, let her enjoy her childhood while it lasts.
CARLA winces and chews her lip.
CARLA
(hesitant)
Giovanni, dear... Enrica's only just thirteen.
ANGLE ON – GIOVANNI'S EYES
GIOVANNI glances away, chagrined.
GIOVANNI
Is that right...?
REVERSE ANGLE.
Focus initially on GIOVANNI's hands (and expensive watch) gripping the steering wheel. Then CUT TO exterior shot of the car as it continues to drive down the motorway.
GIOVANNI (O.S., CONT'D)
I'm sorry, dear, work's keeping me so busy that family things sometimes slip my mind...
ANGLE ON – ENRICA LOOKING THROUGH CAR WINDOW.
ENRICA (THINKING)
(excited)
I don't believe it! Finally, a real holiday! I can't even remember the last time the family was all together! This will be perfect!
ENRICA turns her had back into the car and looks across to SOFIA, who is looking out of her own window, lost in her own gentle thoughts.
ENRICA (THINKING)
I... don't mind that Sofia is sharing in it, too. I said all of those mean and hurtful things to her, but she's turned out to be a nice person after all... just like Jose...
ENRICA speaks aloud.
ENRICA
(hesitant)
Um, er, Sofia...?
SOFIA turns her head away from the car and smiles genially and warmly at ENRICA.
SOFIA
Yes, Enrica, what's the matter?
Enrica leans across the back seats towards SOFIA, trying to take her into a close, personal, confidence, removing the wall between them.
ENRICA
Sofia, I just want to say that I'm—
The car explodes.
BEGIN OPENING TITLES
The conventional opening titles will not be used for this episode. The following sequence helps to establish the setting. All of the shots simulate television news reports and so have varying sidebars, network idents, tickertapes, captions and deliberate low-resolution artefacts as the viewer surfs between different channels and networks.
MONTAGE
INTERCUT CREDITS ON BLACK BACKGROUNDS BETWEEN SHOTS
Continue to ZOOM OUT slowly from the wreckage of the car. JUMP CUT to a television view of the same scene from the same perspective. The scene now has rescuers and fire crew crawling over it.
REPORTER (O.S.)
The whole of Italy stopped in shock and horror yesterday as a terrorist atrocity took the lives of Milan Public Prosecutor Giovanni Croce and his family, including young daughter Enrica...
Scenes of the elaborate state funeral held for the victims of the bombing. This scene features in the original Gunslinger Girl manga and to provide a sense of continuity across the transition of reading to viewing, it can be used for reference here. There are ten coffins – CARLA, GIOVANNI, ENRICA and SOFIA were all killed in the attack, along with six bodyguards in the car behind them. At least one shot should include JEAN and JOSE in mourning dress – both are quiet, but with different emphases; JOSE is drawn and strained, JEAN is cold and stony.
REPORTER (O.S.)
A crowd of thousands assembled today to mourn the passing of one of the most respected figures in Italian public life, and those others taken away in a callous act of calculated brutality...
A vox-pop amidst a crowd of onlookers. A mike is being held underneath SPECTATOR A, a young woman with stinging red eyes who blinks back tears and is nearly overcome with emotion.
SPECTATOR A
(snivelling)
Prosecutor Croce was an inspiration... there are so many politicians, but he was above all of that... intelligent... incorruptible... someone who cared passionately for truth and justice...
SPECTATOR B (O.S.)
Bullcrap!
The camera pans round to SPECTATOR B, an angry young man, who has pushed forward from between other people and gestures with stabbing points of his finger.
SPECTATOR B
Croce was a stooge whose business was silencing those inconvenient to the government. He was no better than a mafia enforcer and the scumbag's reaped what he sowed!
SPECTATOR A
(indignant, interjecting)
Bastard!
A scuffle breaks out.
JEAN and JOSE, dressed in military dress uniforms, emerge from a public building at night. They are mobbed by a dense crowd of journalists on the way to their vehicle, and the hand-held camera trembles and jerks about as it jostles its way through the crowd, pursuing JOSE all the way and trying to press up against the glass when he shuts the car door.
PAPARAZZI
Lieutenant Jose Croce! Jealous rage over being recalled from Serbia due to your father's politics led to you murdering your own family! What do you have to say?
A noisy anti-government march. Initially a dense crowd of people cross the width of an entire main street, forming a line behind a wide banner advocating federalism. However, the march stumbles as a weapon report is head (there is no apparent source and no-one appears injured), and then the crowd breaks apart as teargas canisters arc into their midst and they are charged by riot police. Several shots of protestors tripping over dropped placards or being run down and beaten savagely by police batons follow.
REPORTER (O.S.)
Over a hundred arrests were made today in Turin as an anti-government rally turned violent – police claim that a dozen officers were injured in an unwarranted act of aggression by an extremist fringe...
An analysis segment on a news channel. A bookish academic leans forward in his chair and gestures animatedly as he speaks.
ACADEMIC
What we must understand is that from the fall of Rome to Garibaldi's Risorgimento, Italy was a threadbare patchwork of states and dominions – really, this modern unitary republic is an aberration...
A news report is being delivered outside the main courthouse in Trieste. The reporter has positioned himself across the road and he is speaking about an innocuous and entirely unrelated case, and then he ducks in alarm as a bomb rips through the upper floors of the building, flinging masonry into the street, while the camera tips over from the blast. The screen hurriedly cuts to a standby screen.
REPORTER
In summation, Judge Monteverdi stated that Mrs. Lambuccio had no right to—JESUS CHRIST!
A grainy amateur video of several Padanian militants delivering a statement. They wear blue berets and their faces are masked underneath white cloths with small eyelets (see videos released by the Basque terrorist group ETA for reference) and they sit at a table underneath a large Padanian flag.
TERRORIST
The Italian government is an imperialist oppressor and we require the withdrawal of all occupational forces from the free state of Lombardy or they will drain out through bloodshed...
Outside a government office. A suited official is delivering a speech on the steps leading down to the street, surrounded by a press of impatient journalists who shove microphones and Dictaphones under his nose. The official looks visibly uncomfortable, squirming under the attention as he struggles to stick to his script. The caption bar reads: "IOC: TURIN OLYMPICS TO GO AHEAD – Sponsors drop out"
OFFICIAL
(carefully)
These continued questions about 'the security situation' are unhelpful. Rumour-mongering does ten times as much damage as bombs and I would encourage you instead to focus on us pulling together to show Italy at its best. To insinuate that we're putting citizens at risk over a matter of face is a base slander...
A graphic. A bar chart showing murder rates increasing sharply in the last couple of years. In a boxout to the side of the screen is a haggard-looking government minister.
MINISTER
Well, that's an imaginative interpretation of the statistics, Claudio. The actual level of political violence remains low...
A left-wing public rally, with red flags and hammer-and-sickle symbols in evidence, but despite the change in politics it doesn't look all that different from the earlier Padanian video, seeing as there are masked goons flanking the indignant young speaker at the lectern.
SPEAKER
(outraged)
I do not seek to make common cause with the northern Fascists – we will eliminate them in time. But they flourished in the foetid sump of capitalism built up under this decadent government, and the red fire and blood of Revolution must annihilate both, branch – and root!
Panning across a blackened burnt-out mangled wreck of a Chinook helicopter in a mountain setting. Military rescuers carefully pick their way around it. The caption bar reads: "36 ALPINI DEAD IN CHOPPER CRASH".
REPORTER (O.S.)
...An Army spokesman insisted that this was an accident due to mechanical failure...
A talk show. The INTERVIEWEE is a stylish woman who leans back in her chair, waves her hand and laughs extravagantly (exaggeratedly?) in dismissal of the question she's been asked.
INTERVIEWEE
(laughingly)
...Oh, please, darling! "Civil War"? The very idea...! That's for tinpot African despots, not a modern progressive European democracy...
A news crew is picking over the aftermath of an open street murder. After panning over a still shot of an African woman in a headscarf lying in the middle of the road, cut to a civilian being interviewed on the same street, while police forensics work in the background. The caption bar reads: "RACIST VIOLENCE INCREASES"
PASSERBY
(bewildered)
She was killed for crossing the street here instead of a hundred yards down. It's... it's obscene.
Looking across another street to the aftermath of a different murder. The body is largely concealed by street furniture, but the blood splatter on the wall behind it and the crude Padanian symbol spraypainted beside are obvious enough.
REPORTER (O.S.)
...regional chairman of the Unity Committee...
Tarpaulins draped over the remains of a car bomb.
REPORTER (O.S.)
...off-duty municipal policeman...
Another car has veered off-road and crashed against a lamp-post after being plastered with bullets. The windscreen is starred, cracked and opaque.
REPORTER (O.S.)
...deputy of the metropolitan chamber of commerce...
A funeral. A mother in mourning is weeping over a coffin, but she begins rounding on and spitting at everyone around her.
MOTHER
(tearful rage)
Enzo! My son! You have murdered my son! I hate you! I hate all of you! I'll never forgive you! Never!...
CUT to the TITLE CARD against a black background.
MOTHER (CONT'D, O.S.)
...NEVER!
FADE OUT
END MONTAGE
END OPENING TITLES
FADE IN – NAPLES CITY – DAY – ESTABLISHING.
A panoramic view of the Naples, looking down from the mountains to take in the city in its full languid redolent spread and the iridescent curve of the bay.
SUPERIMPOSE: Five years later.
MONTAGE
A complete contrast to the opening titles, this is relaxed and exploratory, not a damage report but a tour. A sequence of panning shots across Naples landmarks, taking in the bustle of a thriving and vivacious city – but for all the speed of the lives beneath, the city's history looms above them in imperturbable, and lasting, hard stone. We move from wide vistas such as the sea expanding around the Castell dell'Ovo and grand structures such as the San Francesco di Paola, gradually reducing in scope to smaller statuary like the Statue of the Nile. Nothing at all seems threatening. Eventually focus on an apparently innocuous street.
END MONTAGE
ANGLE ON – APARTMENT BUILDING.
One window is open as a focus of attention.
INT. ANTONIO's APARTMENT – DAY.
Inside the room with the open window is a university student bedsit – although the room is larger than most student accommodation, it still has all the paraphernalia from posters of retro-kitsch music acts on the walls to a desk laden with textbooks and a laptop. The general atmosphere of scruffiness is emphasised by the rumpled, unmade bed – under the shapeless, creased and crumpled duvet are ANTONIO and his GIRLFRIEND, dozing into the lengthening morning and only visible as hair and maybe a stray foot poking out from under the covers.
A mobile phone on the side-table begins to buzz and vibrate with an incoming text message.
ANTONIO
(groggily)
Mwwwnnnnneh? Ngehhh... Fugg...
ANTONIO's arm emerges out from under the duvet and flails blindly around for a few seconds before eventually landing on the mobile phone.
ANGLE ON – ANTONIO
His face emerges as he stares bleary-eyed at the mobile's screen.
ANTONIO'S POV
The mobile has received a text message. It reads, cryptically, "IT WILL HAPPEN AGAIN SOMEDAY".
REVERSE ANGLE
ANTONIO
(irritated)
Damn it, of all the days...!
ANTONIO rolls over in bed and nudges his girlfriend, who also seems a bit groggy with stray hairs as she's roused reluctantly, mumbling into the pillow.
ANTONIO
(apologetic)
Sorry, love, I've got class today.
GIRLFRIEND
Bwuh-nuh-guh...?
SERIES OF SHOTS
A sequence showing ANTONIO getting ready for a day's hill-walking. ZOOM IN on particular details, such as him packing a light rucksack, tying shoelaces on walking boots, wrapping sandwiches in cling-film, filling water bottles, folding a map, and so on.
END SERIES.
EXT. APARTMENT STREET – DAY.
Changed into walking gear and carrying a rucksack, ANTONIO walks from the entrance to his apartment block and enters an inexpensive but decent car. The GIRLFRIEND, dressed in ordinary casual clothes, follows him out.
B.G. – HENRIETTA and JOSE, examining the sculpted cornices of a neighbouring building.
GIRLFRIEND
(gently laughing)
So, Antonio, when were you such...
ANGLE ON – HENRIETTA AND JOSE. M.O.S.
The fratello are apparently innocuous sightseers. JOSE points out interesting architectural details with apparent enthusiasm and HENRIETTA is snapping them eagerly with her camera.
GIRLFRIEND (O.S. CONT'D)
...a diligent soul? The Latin paper's not due until next week.
GIRLFRIEND'S P.O.V.
ANTONIO leans his head out of the car window and flashes a toothy grin.
ANTONIO
Hey, gotta show the tutor that you're keen, you might squeeze extra marks out of it.
ANTONIO drives off, past JOSE and HENRIETTA who both have their backs to the road.
CUT TO EXT. MOUNT VESUVIUS – DAY – ESTABLISHING.
Mount Vesuvius overlooks the city of Naples and the wide sweep on the bay. In the fine weather well-worn tracks snaking up the mountain are quite busy with recreational walkers and hikers. With the brisk movement of a fit and able body, ANTONIO makes his way up to a viewing point near the top, where PROFESSOR is sitting on a rock, sipping a hot drink from a small Thermos and looking thoughtful. Erratic stones and outcrops expand behind him in a theatrical circle. ANTONIO pulls out a water bottle from his pack as he walks and sits down beside PROFESSOR. They consider the panorama in quiet contemplation for a moment, not acknowledging or looking at each other. Then PROFESSOR speaks aloud.
PROFESSOR
Breathtaking, isn't it?
ANTONIO
(shrugging)
It's a view. There's quite a few.
PROFESSOR
(expression hardening)
I mean how it makes you hold your nose. How this place is utterly squalid.
PROFESSOR waves his arm in a demonstrative gesture, as if he could sweep away the grey expanse of the city in the bay like dust settled on a table.
PROFESSOR (CONT'D)
How everything is smothered and choked in heat and smog.
ANTONIO
(laughing gently)
I'm not sure it would have exactly been sweetly perfumed in the past, sir. Naples didn't even have sewers until the Bourbons commissioned them.
PROFESSOR
It's different in one respect, though.
As PROFESSOR and ANTONIO converse, JEAN and RICO come into view, walking up the footpath that passes behind the rock on which the two Padanians are sitting. JEAN continues along the path steadily and unerringly, but a bubbly, energetic and enthusiastic RICO is much more active, dashing about to see the view from multiple angles and eagerly and laughingly scrambling over the environment with boyish gusto, revelling in movement and exercise. Neither PROFESSOR nor ANTONIO pay this any mind – the younger man watches his mentor point to a cluster of tall new construction whose scaffolds and crane are in view.
PROFESSOR (CONT'D)
Steel and glass and concrete. It's a fungus digging into and leaching the life out of the city. We live and work, spend all our days of all our lives in buildings. Architecture is society's soul, the expression of our subconsciousness, the milieu around which our perspective is oriented – so do these stubby towers, that'll crumble away in a few decades like a rotten tooth, say about us?
ANTONIO
All buildings collapse, Professor – we're archaeologists, there wouldn't be much for us to do if they didn't.
PROFESSOR
True, child – but what will our descendants think when they see that our ruins collapsed in on themselves? That they were designed to fail? Concrete rots, steel rusts, glass breaks but stone...
PROFESSOR pats the rock on which he's sitting reverently.
PROFESSOR (CONT'D)
...stone lasts as long as the mountains.
EXT. NAPLES UNIVERSITY FEDERICO II – DAY – ESTABLISHING.
CUT TO INT. NAPLES UNIVERSITY FEDERICO II – DAY.
TRACK PROFESSOR as he makes his way through lobbies and hallways bustling with students, a cracked leather satchel of papers under one arm, struggling not to be bewildered and overcome and caught in the inter-class surging riptides of youth moving around him. He eventually makes his way to a quieter hallway towards his office, where he passes HILSHIRE and TRIELA inspecting a wall chart on the 5th-6th century Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy. Their foreign language catches PROFESSOR's ear, and he stops in curiosity he passes them.
TRIELA (IN GERMAN)
It seems very large for a barbarian tribe, wouldn't they have brought anarchy?
HILSHIRE (IN GERMAN)
That's just the thing, Triela, Gibbon and the 'fall of Rome' too facile; it served his own Whiggish preconceptions. The Ostrogoths preserved many of Rome's civic institutions—
PROFESSOR (IN GERMAN)
(interjecting)
That may be true, sir, but with their defeat in the Gothic War the barbarians illustrated that they lacked the discipline to suitably dignify those august – they were wearing clothes that did not fit them.
TRIELA
(smiling)
Well, sir, as Ovid says, Fortune is a fickle mistress.
PROFESSOR
(surprised)
Oh! You speak Italian?
TRIELA
(proudly)
I'm fluent!
HILSHIRE
(hocking a thumb towards TRIELA)
Little Hypatia here has got her whole life sorted out; she's considering places to study.
TRIELA
(knowledgeable)
Ability and education are needed for glory and virtue.
PROFESSOR
(delighted)
Cicero! Splendid! It's wonderful that a half-caste is open to such vigorous learning.
HILSHIRE
(astonished, not believing what he's just heard)
Excuse me?
PROFESSOR
(conversational, unaware of giving offence)
I just think it's heartening, that culture can override colour.
HILSHIRE
Uh... right.
PROFESSOR
Anyway, I must be off, but may Fortune see you through, young lady.
With an approving nod PROFESSOR disappears down the corridor, but the camera lingers on the fratello. TRIELA shakes her head in sad summation.
TRIELA
(shrugging in dismissal)
"There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it"
HILSHIRE
(admonishing)
Now you're just showing off! "As Ovid says", pfft!
DISSOLVE TO the door leading into PROFESSOR's office. A notice pinned up by the door reads "Etruscan Tutorial Group: 1060 – Reintegrating Private Collections, a Curatorial Study. 1400-1600hrs. Registered students only."
INT. PROFESSOR'S OFFICE – DAY.
The office is large, as much a tutorial room as it is a personal workspace. It is a well-appointed chamber for a professor of some seniority – not at all a boxy cubicle, rather a full study that he has been able to occupy and adapt for his own purpose in his own time. The two side walls are lined with bookcases and a generously large solid wooden desk – the Federico II is a venerable university and its fittings are suitably mature – it disdains plastic chairs and flat-pack IKEA furniture, to say the least. To reinforce this, there are no ceiling tiles but a solid one with a plaster frieze around the light fittings (also redolent of a building that has been adapted to multiple uses over its long life. The desk sits under three tall rectangular windows that occupy the far wall opposite the door (this is an important feature that will be relevant later in the episode). The blinds are currently lowered to darken the room for a slide presentation, projected onto a screen set up in front of the desk. And arranged in a semi-circle around it are several of PROFESSOR's students – and fighters. There are thirteen Padanians in total in PROFESSOR's cell but it is not necessary to depict all of them at once, not to mention that it would make the room seem crowded – a selection of six, including ANTONIO to maintain continuity with earlier scenes, should be more than sufficient.
With everything cast into a forbidding two-tone half-light by the projector, PROFESSOR leads his students through slides of Etruscan artefacts, his speech recounting the indignity heaped on a northern state by foreign interest and southern possessiveness, so serving indoctrination masked as education. The slides should be a frequently-changing and diverse mix of art, artefacts and maps so as to suitably illustrate the words he speaks and to maintain the interest of the viewer during a long monologue. PROFESSOR is probably eliding and parlaying a lot of the history, but he's a doctored academic so he must be right, right? By this focus on ancient history, we also appreciate the impossible, scarring depth of the grudges nursed throughout the internecine conflict currently gripping Italy.
PROFESSOR
(authoritative)
The great encompassing assemblage of Etruscan art was plundered and vandalised by dilettante antiquarians, but in its own way the avaricious greed of foreigners demonstrates Etruria's unique qualities and superiorities – the collections amassed by figures like Durand, Castellani and Campana show that the northern Etruscans had a commanding distinctiveness. Etruscan architecture evolved a unique style that owes no debt to the Greeks, and Rome was a subordinate, juvenile latecomer clumsily aping the expression of its mature and established neighbour, who indulgently and paternally sustained the whelp – only to be met by adolescent rage and ingratitude that led to invasion, conquest and subjugation. Making common cause with the barbarians of Gaul who overran the sustaining Po Valley of Padanian Etruria, it illustrates that where people cannot make – they will take.
PROFESSOR reaches out his arms to his students. They all consider his words – some eyes shining with inspiration, other brows furrowed and stern with concentration, but all absorbed and focused exclusively on the PROFESSOR, so that he has full command of them.
PROFESSOR (CONT'D)
In my career, I have witnessed that system repeat time and again from the times of Hiero Syracuse to Harold Alexander... but you... you are young, fresh, and those who can break the wheel.
DISSOLVE TO – EXT. NAPLES STREETS – NIGHT.
The light of the projector becomes the moon over the yellow sea of Naples at night, although it is less a glistering, undulating roll of cloth-of-gold as it is a mound of trampled, pale straw – or, even more uncharitably, a puddle of urine. Red flecks gradually expand into running veins, and then divide again into the rear lights of automobiles. TRACK a small, plain lorry – the Padanians' vehicle – as it rumbles down a street in a downheel quarter of Naples. MARCO and ANGELICA walking side by side (but not holding hands) pass it on the sidewalk, walking in the opposite direction.
The lorry putters to a stop near a nondescript, shadowy alleyway. CHIARA, SYLVIA, and BEATRICE – all dressed in cheap, scruffy clothes – are loitering with a suitable air of juvenile delinquency on a doorstep beside the entrance to the alley. NEMIA shoos them away from the driver's cab of the lorry.
NEMIA
Hey! Scram!
The three cyborgs scamper away out of frame, and the lorry turns down the alleyway before coughing to a stop outside a doorway leading down to a cellar. The rear door of the lorry rolls up, and multiple Padanians dismount.
INT. STORE CELLAR – NIGHT.
PROFESSOR leads his charges down a narrow staircase, their footfalls sounding noisily. They reach a long, low, rectangular room, but the light from the stairway only creates a narrow porch of light which the bodies of the Padanians themselves almost completely obscure. PROFESSOR reaches out to one side and activates a light switch, and with a harsh buzzing flicker he illuminates the chamber. The walls are coarse, whitewashed brick and the floor is hard concrete, lit harshly under un-shaded lights. The far wall of the room has some ragged political posters pasted up – nothing explicitly Padanian, but at least one image of the Prime Minister is visible – while the walls are lined with wooden crates with straw padding for their contents. The Padanians start to fill out the room as PROFESSOR waves them in. BENITO curiously takes a cloth-covered package from one of the crates, tsks in distaste when he notices that it's an oilcloth, and wipes his dirtied fingers on his jeans. He unwraps the package, and starts back in shock when he sees that it's a Luger pistol! Everyone else's eyes turn to BENITO as he himself looks around in bewilderment.
BENITO
What is all this stuff?
PROFESSOR
(proudly proprietorial)
This, my boy, is a collection of deactivated firearms maintained by the university Historical Society as props and demonstration pieces at public exhibitions – or so the police believe.
Interest starts to grab the younger Padanians, and they begin inspecting the the crates like eager shoppers with the affected expertise that only amateurs can conjure. As they poke and prod, PROFESSOR smiles, knowing that he's hooked them.
PROFESSOR
Welcome to our arsenal.
ANTONIO
(incredulous)
Are you serious?
ANTONIO remains unconvinced. He stalks furiously down the length of the room, gesturing to each weapon as he identifies them in the following lines. His movements are almost sword-slashes, such is the stabbing frustration behind them.
ANTONIO
(angrily)
"Arsenal"? This is a scrapheap! Piats? Thompsons? A – Jesus! – a Mannlicher-Carcano?
ANTONIO roughly grabs a Sten gun and holds it up, gesturing at it with his other hand with a bewildered expression.
ANTONIO (CONT'D)
Some Limey probably dropped this drainpipe in a ditch at Monte Cassino!
ANTONIO drops the Sten gun carelessly back into its box with a noisy clatter. He turns to the others and throws his hands out wide – beholding it all, and unimpressed.
ANTONIO (CONT'D)
These things are relics!
The other students start looking doubtful and uncertain, exchanging askance glances with each other. PROFESSOR, however, steps out from between them towards the centre of the room, appearing stern and disapproving. The pupil should heed the teacher!
PROFESSOR
They also work.
ANTONIO puts his hands on his hips and looks about him, unimpressed, grimacing and puffing out a sharp breath of disbelief. PROFESSOR observes this.
PROFESSOR (CONT'D)
What would you prefer, Mister Antonio Maccio? Laser blasters? Force-field belts? Maybe these weapons are not finished in nice smooth moulded plastic for your soft, sensitive schoolboy fingers, but look at the Yankees getting blown up in Afghanistan; how much is advanced technology doing for them?
PROFESSOR reaches into a crate and pulls out a Welrod Mk. 1 pistol (its integrated suppressor allows for a silent shot in this scene). As he speaks he makes it ready with familiar, practised movements, and levels it to fire at the wall.
PROFESSOR (CONT'D)
Whether it's a modern FN P90 submachine gun or a Napoleonic musket, one thing remains – you're lying there with a bullet in you.
PROFESSOR enunciates his point by firing. Everyone jumps as the shot rips through the poster of the Prime Minister and blasts a chunk out of the wall. Plaster and stone crumble down in a dusty stream to spread across the cellar floor.
DISSOLVE TO – UNIVERSITY BUILDING – NIGHT – EXTREME CLOSE UP ON CCTV CAMERA LENS.
QUICK CUT – ANGLE UP – ANTONIO.
ANTONIO is walking underneath the camera. His face stops in the f.g., while the camera whirrs in the b.g. Given the scalating situation, he is abruptly conscious of surveillance. With a sigh, he tries to brazen it out as he walks past the building porter's desk.
PORTER
Evenin' Antonio. Burning the midnight oil again?
ANTONIO
(cheerfully as he walks past)
No rest for the wicked!
(to himself)
And I'm as bad as they come.
INT. PROFESSOR'S OFFICE – NIGHT.
ANTONIO returns to the office, which is now dense with papers and maps as the "Etruscan Tutorial Group" are arranged around a folding table that has been wheeled into the room. At a casual glance, they are merely diligently immersed in coursework – an encouraging and heartening observation given this generation of feckless and indolent youth – but in actuality they are planning their operation. PROFESSOR walks around the table, presiding over proceedings. For added dynamism, instead of delivering straightforward this dialogue this scene can be INTERCUT with the below MONTAGE of the Padanians travelling to and setting up in Pompeii, and show the camera TACKING IN EXTREME CLOSE-UP over the maps and diagrams as they FADE TO streets and buildings in real life.
BENITO
(laughing)
Heh, this is great – if anyone walks in on us it'll just look like we're discussing fieldwork.
ANTONIO
(taking seat)
Well, if anyone does walk in on us, at least we're archaeologists – we're good at digging holes to put them in.
PROFESSOR
Glad to see you joining us, Mister Maccio. I would like to introduce you to Pompeii, the city of ghosts. A scar on the face of Vesuvius, a place that died in anguish and calamity – and whose corpse is picked over by millions of slack-jawed gawpers each and every year.
ANTONIO
What does that make us?
NEMIA
The difference between scoring a goal and just belting the woodwork, Antonio.
PROFESSOR
(holding up a paper)
And those who have access to the superintendent's itinerary instead of just the tourist's timetable of plastic gladiator re-enactments. Normally only a small quarter of the city is open to the public, but the heritage committee has been seeing a funding shortfall this year and so has granted special dispensation to take VIP groups deeper into the closed part of the city – that will be our opportunity. During a weekend session, when the excavators are off work and there are no have-a-go heroes underfoot will seize one of these groups.
MASSINO
(joshing)
The weekend? Good, that gives me time to finish my paper on Hannibal.
NEMIA
(sharply critical)
Be serious! We need to work out who we're hitting – we don't need soldiers on the cultural component for their annual bounty.
MARIA
What about this one, the... 'Social Welfare Agency'? That sounds like a government vanity project, spoiling it will be sure to embarrass them even more.
ANTONIO
(scornful)
Jeez, Maria, have you never heard of the Social Welfare Agency? That's the medical quango that provides hospice and palliative care for terminally-ill children. We really wouldn't earn much kudos for tormenting kids with cancer!
ANTONIO picks up and slaps another paper with the back of his hand.
ANTONIO (CONT'D)
Look, this one's much better. The "Cicerone Circle" – exclusive high-class cultural antiquarianism for the well-heeled seeking a shade of Grand Tour nostalgia. Businessmen, aristocrats, foreigners, all rich and well-connected, with plenty of strings to pull.
BENITO
We could squeeze them for bigger ransoms than dumb Mickey-eared Yankee tourists, anyway!
NEMIA
Makes sense – the government doesn't care about ordinary citizens, but here we can hit the elites, and lose them some friends.
PROFESSOR
(shrugs)
Let's do it!
BEGIN MONTAGE
Weapons are zipped into nondescript and ordinary civilian duffel bags and sports holdalls, with some foam padding stuffed in to stop them clattering!
NERO and CARLITO laugh noisily together in a bar, enjoying a matey, blokeish joke as they watch the girls go by.
A sketch of movements for the hostage-taking, looking for all the world like a football play, is drawn onto a street map of Pompeii
MARIA sits quietly and contemplatively in a church. A church cleaner is busy with the vacuum off to one side.
Slowly ZOOM on GREGORIO as he sits in the cellar storeroom and repeatedly tests his weapon, loading, dry-firing the action, unloading, and loading again.
MARIA and GLORIA shout loudly and vituperatively, charged with righteous indignation, as they walk at the front of a pro-Padanian protest march.
ANTONIO dances with his GIRLFRIEND at an upmarket restaurant.
PROFEESOR, quite serenely, contentedly, and entirely normally, scribbles at paperwork in his office.
The bags from shot (1) are lifted into the back of the lorry, and its rear door clicks down with a rocking slam of finality.
CUT TO – VESUVIUS COUNTRYSIDE – DAY – ESTABLISHING.
An AERIAL SHOT TRACKING the lorry as it makes its way across from Naples to Pompeii, sweeping over and taking in the breadth of the surrounding landscape, and the broken mountain that towers above them. Suddenly the Padanians seem like an awfully small molecule in a much vaster organism, and it punctures the gathering sense of importance from the previous montage.
CUT TO – POMPEII RUINS – DAY – ESTABLISHING.
Pan across several scenes of Pompeii being worked hard, busy and lively with tourists being conveyor-belted around all of the picturesque spots. The Padanians' lorry drives past a car park, and in the b.g. we can see multiple Agency cyborgs and handlers dismounting from a coach, and pulling much more solid-looking equipment trunks from the cargo hold. There is a brief indication of the cyborgs' abilities when they handle cases almost as big as themselves with ease.
The lorry continues on and drives to a quieter service car park, surfaced with dry dirt instead of tarmac. The Padanians dismount, heft their bags onto their shoulders, and with singular, solemn purpose – not quite The Right Stuff, although you might see shades of it – walk under an archway into the city. From an AERIAL SHOT looking down a street at an oblique angle, PAN down to follow the dwindling group as members peel off to establish their own positions. The morning sun behind them casts long shadows down the street from the charcoal stubs of their bodies. Eventually only MARIA is left, and tight-jawed but controlled she makes her way into a covered building whose upper floor is intact, where she puts down her case and extracts a PIAT anti-tank launcher.
(Continued)