CUT TO:
INT. RANNI’S APARTMENT – DAY
Ranni is sitting in her living room on a laptop talking to Grace on speaker. Grace is behind the counter in the occult shop poking around.
AMAZING GRACE
She said the four horsemen are going to ride, that’s some apocalypse shit. What kind of computer network did you install for these people?
RANNI
A custom industrial control system. The kind of thing you would find in a manufacturing plant.
AMAZING GRACE
So what, they’re going to open the dams the flood the city?
RANNI
There’s not enough water in the reservoir to drown a rat, we’ve been in a drought for ten years.
AMAZING GRACE
So what are they trying to do?
RANNI
How should I know?
AMAZING GRACE
You installed the damn thing didn’t you?!
RANNI
I just set up some hardware and ran some cables, I didn’t configure anything. I have no idea what they wanted it for.
AMAZING GRACE
Can’t you hack in?
RANNI
Hack in to what? What does that even mean?
AMAZING GRACE
I don’t know, can’t you connect to my phone and then I plug something into something here and then you find a big folder that says evil plans or something?
RANNI
Is that a serious suggestion?
AMAZING GRACE
You’re the expert, you tell me! A woman just burned to death right in front of me rather than tell me anything but the store didn’t catch on fire which means it’s warded. Which mean whatever’s here is pretty damn important to their plan.
RANNI
Warded with magic?
AMAZING GRACE
Yes Ranni, warded with magic.
RANNI
Well I don’t know! Magic wasn’t real until yesterday for me!
AMAZING GRACE
Okay, so it’s a control system, can’t you scan for whatever they’re controlling? Or signals coming from the store?
RANNI
Scan how? Scan what? Like in Star Trek? What are you talking about?
AMAZING GRACE
Jesus Christ Ranni, give me something here.
RANNI
Maybe if . . .
AMAZING GRACE
Hey, shut up for a minute will you?
RANNI
Rude.
Grace grabs a cable and follows it around the corner into a small cluttered office. She opens a drawer in a desk covered with cables and wires. Inside is a bizarre and nonsensical-looking array of carved bits of obsidian, human bones wrapped in copper wire, and a complete human skull held together with silver wire, connected to a wireless router with several vials of blood on it.
AMAZING GRACE
(clucking her tongue)
Right so when you were installing this network system computer thing how many skulls did you use?
RANNI
(alarmed)
What?
AMAZING GRACE
I’m going to assume that means zero.
RANNI
Maybe I should come down there
AMAZING GRACE
Nah, don’t come here, the police will be here soon. I’ll figure it out.
Grace slips her phone away and repeats the sequence from Dash’s apartment. She floats off the ground and her eyes turn blue. This time though she smiles.
AMAZING GRACE
(otherworldly voice effect)
Gotcha fucker.
We hear police sirens as Grace floats back to the ground. She closes her eyes, chants quietly for a moment and slowly turns translucent like the Predator. She walks out the front of the store as the police sirens get louder.
Police cars appear as Grace is walking down the sidewalk. Eventually she realizes that there’s a policeman following her, not running or asking her to stop, just following.
AMAZING GRACE
(voice reverb like she’s talking through a fan)
Shit can you see me?
The policeman holds up his hand and it transforms into a blade like the T-1000 in Terminator 2.
AMAZING GRACE
(voice returns to normal as she appears fully again)
You’re not a real peace officer are you?
He lunges at her with the blade and she sways back Matrix style, falling on her ass in the process. She trips him as he stabs at her and they have a brief ground-fight. Grace eventually choking him out with a triangle.
AMAZING GRACE
(coughing and dusting off her shabby clothes)
Jesus, how many of you magic assassins are there in this deal?
CUT TO:
INT. 3-2-1 ACTION! PRODUCTIONS – DAY
Messy office with various movie posters on the walls, think Bowfinger or Harry’s office in Get Shorty. Sitting at a cluttered desk is FRANCES SEWARD, think Anna Kendrick or Alison Brie. Standing in front of her are two gratuitously topless women making out. Hard. Frances half-rises in surprise as Grace comes out of the bathroom.
FRANCES
This is a closed set!
AMAZING GRACE
This isn’t a set this is an office.
FRANCES
Well this is a closed office then.
GRATITIOUSLY TOPLESS WOMAN
(looking at a script)
Are there new pages? Where are we?
AMAZING GRACE
(slapping her on the back, jiggle physics)
You got the part!
OTHER GRATITITIOUSLY TOPLESS WOMAN
What about me?
AMAZING GRACE
You got the part too! Now beat it.
FRANCES
(still halfway crouching awkwardly)
Hey you can’t just barge in here and . . .
AMAZING GRACE
(pulls up chair across from Frances the woman get dressed and leave)
Sure looks like I can because I’m doing it right now. You should probably sit down, your calves have to be burning.
(looks around)
I know that I’m not one to throw stones when it comes to conformity, but this is an odd sanctum for a magician.
FRANCES
I have no idea what you’re talking about.
(Grace points a finger at her and zaps her with a little spark)
Ow! My nipple!
AMAZING GRACE
Yeah, I have good aim. Look I’m magic, you’re magic, let’s skip over that part and get to the part where you tell me what the fuck you did at that Raven and whatever occult shop with your bailing wire and human bones and pieces of the true cross or whatever.
FRANCES
(goes pale)
How did you . . .
AMAZING GRACE
(wiggles fingers, sparkling with magic energy)
A little bit of this.
FRANCES
Look, I needed the money.
AMAZING GRACE
That’s a question about the human condition they’ve been debating for years isn’t it? Do we really need money? Society might be better without it eh? But then how would gross poor people get what’s coming to them? It’s tricky. I don’t care about the why honey bunny, I want to know about the what.
FRANCES
You know how wi-fi works?
AMAZING GRACE
No
FRANCES
Well I did like that, only for magic.
AMAZING GRACE
That doesn’t make any sense.
FRANCES
(annoyed)
You asked, I told you.
AMAZING GRACE
What would whatever you did be used for?
FRANCES
Working magic at a distance.
AMAZING GRACE
You don’t need a computer system for that.
FRANCES
(more annoyed)
Look, what I did is installed a talisman for the wireless signals from the network system to help carry magical energy, most likely to remotely control a techno-magic device. Several devices probably based on the power it was capable of handling.
AMAZING GRACE
I’ve never heard of anything like that.
FRANCES
Well now you have. Would you please leave, I have a lot of work to do today.
AMAZING GRACE
Yes, very important stuff going on here. Who hired you?
FRANCES
I can’t tell you that.
AMAZING GRACE
(with a hard look)
Oh, I bet you can.
FRANCES
I can’t actually, spell of silence, beat on me all you want and I can’t say anything. Since we’re both (air quotes) magic you know about that.
AMAZING GRACE
You can cast a spell of silence?
FRANCES
No but the person that hired me can. I can’t do shit. I’m just trying to make movies here. I want no part of your ugly magic world.
AMAZING GRACE
(looking around disdainfully)
Sure, you just sit in your crappy office keeping to yourself and making bomb detonators for blood magic cults. You’re not involved.
FRANCES
You don’t know what it’s for!
AMAZING GRACE
Neither do you do you? I bet you didn’t ask. You knew though, you knew. So this is what you do with your gift huh? The sacred gift of magic has been given to you and what? You use it to mindfuck some thirsty blondes from Nebraska into working for scale? To get some low rent wannabe bigshot moron to sink all their car dealership money into making Slime Planet Five?
FRANCES
(sneers)
Oh what, with great power comes great responsibility? Thanks Spider-Man. Don’t waste my time with that tired shit, get the hell out of my office.
AMAZING GRACE
Magic is a sacred calling, it is our responsibility to . . .
FRANCES
Give me a fucking break. Do you expect every person without magic to be a cop? Or a firefighter? Or join the military? Everyone has the power to do something, but no one gives them shit for not giving all their money to charity or bringing a homeless person to live with them. I don’t owe the world anything more than anyone else just because I have some very minor powers. We’re not special because we can do a few tricks, were just people. You do not have a sacred duty to protect the world. Do you understand how arrogant that is? How delusion you sound? You are not the sword in the darkness, you are not a superhero, you’re just a sad lonely woman trying to make yourself feel important.
AMAZING GRACE
I’m a person who’s trying to help!
FRANCES
(waves arm)
Go then, go help everyone and leave me alone.
(cutting off Graces next remark)
You want to call me a coward? Fine, I’m a coward! It’s easy for you to say that, look at you and look at me? What I am going to do about anything? How am I going to stop anyone from doing anything?
AMAZING GRACE
You don’t have to engage in a rooftop struggle to the death with anyone, you have magic!
FRANCES
Yeah, you definitely don’t look like you’re been in a bunch of fights. I can’t anything. My magic is weak. Unless you think I can fight crime by making lightbulbs flicker or fucking up someone’s router.
AMAZING GRACE
I can teach you, I can . . .
FRANCES
I don’t want to learn from you! I’m not like you. I’m just trying to make my way in the world.
AMAZING GRACE
(stubborn)
You have an obligation, you . . .
FRANCES
To what? Get myself killed because you watch too many action movies? To run around like an idiot until they shoot me down like a dog?
AMAZING GRACE
Yes. That’s what we do. We use our abilities to protect those that don’t until we die from it. Yes.
FRANCES
(shake head)
You are in insane
AMAZING GRACE
And you made a bomb.
FRANCES
(disgusted)
Well here we are then, I’m the evil supervillain and you’re the hero. You’ve got me dead to rights. What are you going to do? Beat the shit out of me? Banish me to the Phantom Zone? What’s it going to be “hero”?
AMAZING GRACE
(thinks)
Probably what I should do is break all the bones in your hands and feet. I don’t know how to cut someone off from magic, I know that spell exists but I don’t think anyone has had the juice to pull it off for hundreds of years. But the bone thing would probably stop you for a while at least.
