… Sara gives a sigh of relief…
and Irons groans, grasping his wrist in obvious pain at a sizzling sound from the pulsing scar on his hand...
...Lazar sweeps the street, watching with a small smile as Sara and Danny leave, and Jake hangs up the payphone he’d been “using”, perplexed that they are going, while Ian watches from behind a corner, still in full armor and their cruiser is reflected in another car…
… Irons stares at the scars on his hand, pulsing red as they did when Sara underwent the trial in the Periculum – his eyes are empty, stunned, and boiling with cold fury…
Danny berates Sara as they leave, Sara hounded him for days about Gallo, now she’s leaving the scene, he tells her, “It’s not like you.” Sara reassures him they will get Gallo, just not now, and Danny is silent. Sara fiddles with the radio, it’s Crosby, Stills and Nash, “Déjà vu”. She looks down at her wrist as Danny drives, exasperated with her.
Gabe is cleaning a fancy silver pocket watch in his shop: it reads 11:11. A young man – Sly – surfs the web, and chides Gabe about his choice in music. Gabe is good-natured, he likes the music, it helps, “conjure up global sales tools for the relics I hock.” Sly asks what Gabe is conjuring for the watch he’s working with, and Gabe says he’s not sure yet, he knows only it used to belong to Winston Churchill. Sly absently replies, “that’s cool.” And Gabe responds, “Yeah, it’s cool, but not as cool as Joan of Arc’s gauntlet.” Sly is mesmerized by the laptop screen, asking who was Joan of Arc? Gabe is amused, he explains Joan of Arc was a “warrior chick”, he saw her gauntlet at the museum, it’s supposed to be one of the most powerful talismans on the planet. Sly is now paying attention, although he’s trying to surf, it’s a good spin, but Gabe says it’s no spin, the gauntlet helped Joan win all her battles, and whoever wields it has enhanced mental and physical powers. Sly asks what Gabe means, “whoever wields it?” Wasn’t it Joan of Arc’s? Before Gabe can answer, Sly makes an offhand remark it would be like Gabe telling him this computer was once Arnold Schwarzennegger’s, and Gabe laughs at Sly’s analogy.
Ian and Irons walk down the street, Ian saying Irons wanted the blade to choose a wielder, and Irons says not really, he was hoping the blade would bond with Sara in a more violent way, he says, “The blade should have left a trail of carnage, and Sara is not proving to be sufficiently violent.”
Ian’s tone is insolent, “Control the Witchblade, control the world, can I at least arrange a meeting since you haven’t even seen her yet?” and he spins, stopping inches before Irons. Irons is scornful, what makes Ian so certain? He continues walking; Ian follows, his eyes reflective, and Irons says he has a new plan for the blade. He glances at Wired Orb Productions across the street and stops. He ruminates, perhaps one homicide will lead to another – he continues his examination of Wired Orb, and continues, perhaps a new wielder will emerge. Ian is disquieted as he stares at Irons’ back.
Gabe says to Sly if it wasn’t for Winston, they wouldn’t be sitting there, he tells Sly, who asks why, it’s because Churchill kept England unconquered during WWII. He realizes Sly is not paying any attention to him. Gabe reproaches Sly, because the watch used to be Winston’s, it is connected to them being able to sit there right now, and Gabe says Sly should be reading something besides binary software instructions. Sly is thrilled, he tries to interest Gabe in Wired Orb, a “live” site where the girls talk to callers and “perform” on screen to paying clients. Sly chooses Debbie’s Desires, and Gabe is derisive, but Sly doesn’t care.
Irons removes a glove before bending to touch a rose wet with dew in a street vendor’s bucket. The wind whistles over the rooftop and he says to Ian a man can’t touch a flower without changing his environment. Ian listens and watches speculatively. Irons orders Ian to get the blade back, and Ian goes. Irons continues his study of the rose…
… and the rose is visible in the blade on Sara’s wrist. She stares at it, pensive, and her face is clearly reflected as her wrist sits before the keyboard in her office. Vicky Po is looking through a microscope and looks up as Sara enters her lab, asking how she’s feeling. Sara gives an awkward smile, scratching at her head and she declares it hurts. Vicky says she should be glad her head hurts, and quickly examines Sara – her eyes aren’t dilated, so she asks does Sara feel nauseous, or hear strange voices in her head? Sara replies, “Everyday,” with a smile. She fiddles with the blade on her wrist, and Vicky admires is. Sara thanks her for the compliment and asks Vicky to do a carbon test on it, she thinks it’s from the museum, but she’s not sure how she got it. Vicky takes the bracelet, surprised.
Sly is panting heavily as Debbie does the things he asks, while Gabe maintains his pace. As Sly is watching, a man is tossed into the room where Debbie is dancing for him, she screams, blocking the camera for a moment, and the man on the floor is shot before Sly’s stunned eyes – he drops the phone.
Sara is looking at the body on the floor as another officer tells her it was three shots to the head. Another officer points out the dancer who was in the room to Sara, and tells her the other woman comforting the girl was in the back room with the man who was shot moments before it happened. Sara approaches them, introducing herself and Danny, attempts to shake the woman’s hand, but the woman only stares at Sara’s hand. She names herself as Christina Wales, and the dancer is Debbie. Sara pulls back her hand, and asks mildly if Debbie saving up to buy a last name? The dancer responds hotly, “It’s Buck, Debbie Buck.” Danny asks her to tell them what happened, and she says she was taking a call when someone burst in, fighting with the man, Jeffrey. She ran from the room, but when she heard the gunshots, she came back to the room and Jeffrey was dead. Danny asks her how many shots she heard, and she is testy, she wasn’t keeping count. Sara asks about the shooter, and Debbie describes him as, “big enough to be his own area code.” He had a stocking on his face, that was all she saw. Meanwhile, Sara is uneasy, Christina has been staring at her the entire time. Debbie asks to leave and Danny excuses her, but Sara gives her a card, first. She looks to Christina before leaving.
Sara asks Christina what she saw, and she says she was in the office with him before the man burst in, grabbed him, and dragged him off. It was all over before she got to Debbie’s room. Sara asks her relationship to Christina, and she says they were business partners. She explains she was a dancer for Jeffrey when he first started up, but they got along, and he promoted her, made her a partner. Danny asks who may have wanted to kill Jeffrey, and Christina is glib, Christian Rights groups, anyone from Utah? She tells them there was a cop three years before who beat Jeffrey up, put him in the hospital for several days. She stops and tells Sara with a cunning smile, “You have very pretty eyes, Detective.” Sara is astonished, and Christina is suddenly rude, “I have to get back to work.” She walks away as Danny and Sara look at one another in amazement.
Vicky holds a molar under a microscope, reciting into a recorder about discoloration on the tooth. Sara greets her, and Vicky says she’s heard she has a new body coming in, Jeffrey Gordo. Sara is surprised, Vicky knows who he is, and Vicky says she’d just read about him, he was worth $10 million dollars. Sara is taken aback at this news. Vicky shifts gears, the bracelet is a conundrum; Vicky has done extensive testing on it, it is *not* from the museum, Vicky even got a brochure and called the curator to double check. Sara is baffled, she really has no idea how she got it. Vicky offers to take it if Sara doesn’t want it, but Sara declines cheerfully.
She walks down the hall, her reflection in a two way mirror [odd place for it], and as she puts the bracelet on her wrist, the lights dim: a red light glows before her, her hair moves as a light breeze blows from somewhere, and she hears her name called by a strange unidentifiable voice. The lights come on again, and she continues down the hall.
Jake is tapping away on his keyboard in Sara’s office, and she asks what’s up as she enters. Jake did a little research on Arnold Buck, he “wallpapered a Soho tavern with our dead porno slacker” two years before. Sara wonders about a connection between Arnold Buck and the dancer Debbie Buck.
Sara exits a cruiser on a quiet street. Gallo walks down the street with a couple of his boys. Ian is driving, his hair dancing in the breeze through the window, his eyes intense. Gabe puts on his working glasses. Jake is in the office. Irons stands before a roaring fire in his study, his face stone; a slow, smug smile spreads across his face. Danny picks his daughter up after her basketball game, her shirt is #13, and she is excited as he spins her around happily.
In spikey thigh-high boots, Debbie dances online.
A grey-bearded man sits in the flickering light of the TV screen, drinking from a highball glass. Sara knocks on his door, and he tells her to come in. She introduces herself, and he is disrespectful, what does she want? She says Jeffrey Gordo was killed, and he says contemptuously, “It’s a friggin’ pity.” She asks where he was at the time, and he says he was in front of the TV with his whiskey – he gestures to the bottle on the table, beside a black and white picture of Debbie with a guitar. After a moment Sara asks what precinct he was with, and he says the 33rd, he was involuntarily discharged a month before some of his pension benefits and a promotion went through. Sara asks, “Gordo?” and he affirms, he beat the hell out of the guy. He admits he wanted to kill him, but Gordo had a girlfriend with a pipe, hit him on the head – the injury gives him migraines. Buck is scornful, he knew they’d come talk to him. Sara asks why he beat up Gordo, and Buck says Gordo messed up his daughter with booze and drugs and now had her dancing on the web-site. Sara apologizes. He goes on to tell her the last thing his daughter said to him was how much she hated him – he doesn’t know where she is now. He wants to see her, talk to her, get to know her again. He doesn’t care what she’s doing now, he just hopes it’s not the same thing. Sara closes her eyes, she can’t tell him the truth. He says to Sara she’s pretty young to be working homicide, and she smiles at him, he’s kind of old to have such a young daughter. He smiles quietly, he’s a late bloomer; too bad his daughter wasn’t. Sara tells him her father was a cop, too, killed when she was young. She gets up to leave, tells him to take it easy.
Outside Buck’s house, Sara stops at the cruiser, whips out a gun and aims it at Nottingham. “Who are you?” she asks, and he smiles, “My name is Ian.” After a moment, he continues, his eyes on the ground, not proud, “I work for Kenneth Irons.” Sara replies, “‘The’ Kenneth Irons who owns the half of the city Trump doesn’t want?” Ian chuckles mildly, “Yes.” Sara asks why he’s following her, and he tells her because she wears the Witchblade. Sara is confused, the “Witchblade”? Ian points to her bracelet and tells her it belongs to Kenneth Irons. He chews at his gloved fingers, and asks if she would come with him to meet Irons; Ian thinks Irons would like it if Sara returned it personally, and she becomes irritated, she never took it to begin with! Ian reminds her it came from the museum, but Sara says the only thing in the display case was the gauntlet that belonged to Joan of Arc.
Continued on next page
David Chokachi as Jake McCartey
Anthony Cistaro as Kenneth Irons
Will Yun Lee as Danny Woo
Eric 'Kaos' Etebari as Ian Nottingham
Conrad Dunn as Tommy Gallo
Kathryn Winslow as Vicki Po
Joe Butler [yes, Yancy's dad} as Arnold Buck
Kenneth Walsh as Joe Siri