Scene 4.03 - Fireball Plaza
INT./EXT. Eliza - Dusk.
(Again, so everyone knows who they are, it's like this: Jules T. R. Verne is Humphrey Bogart, Arthur C. Clarke is Clarke Gable, Clifford D. Simak is James Cagney, Herbert G. Wells is James Stewart, Robert A. Heinlein is Daniel Kaye and Isaac Asimov is Charles Chaplin. As for the ladies, Azalea is a young Jane Russell, Dahlia is Mae West, Rose is Judy Garland, Daisy is Jean Harlow, Lotus is Rita Hayworth, Iris is Hedy Kiesler-Lamarr, Poppy is Greta Garbo, Pixie is Bette Davis, Leah is Shirley Temple and Ronnie is a young Jane Mansfield. The characters they portray in homage is much more subtle, however. Verne is Philip Marlowe, Clarke is Sherlock Holmes, Simak is Dick Tracy, Wells is Dr. Watson, Heinlein is Charlie Chan and Asimov is Ellery Queen. Azalea is also Nancy Drew, Ronnie is also a blend of Veronica Mars from Veronica Mars and Chloe from Smallville. The remaining ladies in the cast are burlesque dancers and striptease artists. Everybody's vaudville. AZALEA looks from the blimp's secret cargo hatch and sees swatzikas, marching troops, prisoners and gallows in the camp across the tarmac below:)
AZALEA V.O.
(Echo chamber, her thoughts. She never moves her lips in this scene.) Oh no, not again.
(AZALEA makes her way to the cargo bay of the abandoned zeppelin, grabbing a leather sack, a strap and a small, velvet bag. She pilfers other supplies and picks up a pack of smokes casually left on a desk of all things. She lights one, hacks, looks at the brand, it's Tubby's Tasty Toasted Tobacco. A line-drawn image of a chubby, smiling VERNE with a square-in-hand graces the packaging. Written below his image, reads "I'm Toasted!")
AZALEA V.O. (Cont'd)
Hmmph! Tasty's not the word for it.
(She continues smoking the cigarette, however, and creeps past a safe, stops and backs-up.)
AZALEA V.O. (Cont'd)
Now what on Earth could be in here? Hmmmm. (She takes a big toke on the cigarette, blows three smoke rings and quickly-and-expertly cracks the safe, moving the combination dial with her mind, smoking all the while. The safe opens by itself!) Ugh! Fellopian Cacti! Yuck! (She blows many puffs of smoke into the safe before the flowers could muster enough pollen to spray AZALEA, and so, subsequently, the flowers cough and all die, hopping from the safe and contorting into odd configurations as they fall limply to the ground.) Hmmm. Luckily, I'm hooked-on too many other things already, or I'd-a been addicted to this smack the first time Verne tried to push it on me. Hah! He'll never get under my dress. Hmm, good thing those plants hate second-hand smoke. I bet the others are sure gonna miss having them around.
(Crushes the cigarette butt with the toe part of her stilletto-heeled shoe, ponders a moment and crushes the heads of the flowers with vindictiveness. She pauses, looks into the safe and pulls out a load of currency, bullion and raw gems. She inspects the cuts of the finer diamonds, finds a blue one and puts it inside her brassiere.)
AZALEA V.O. (Cont'd)
Hmmm. Dynamite. This may prove useful.
(Starts loading a black, leather bag with the goods. She rifles through the safe mercilessly, taking only explosives, weapons, ammunition, liquor, marajuana, seeds, paraphernalia, medieval-looking sanitary napkins, an odd time-piece resembling a pocket-watch, a compass, a sextant, a lighter, a crystal statuette, a diamond necklace, a gold brooch, a black-velvet dress, a red-velvet dress, five pairs of shoes, an ebony writing pen, a water-proof inkwell, blank parchment and an Art-Deco deck of playing cards.)
AZALEA V.O. (Cont'd)
Now to settle the score with Zero.
(She looks out the window, seeing the camp, now lit by electric lights, and the spotlights from the watchtowers occasionally cross the zeppelin and its side before going back to searching the tarmac for stray Poles or Jews. AZALEA slings the bag across her back, adjusts the glasses she now realizes she wears and puts a 1930s commando-knife in her mouth like a pirate and slings a strap around a mooring cable, tightens it, wraps the other end of the strap around her belt and holds it. She looks about one last time at the empty, darkened interior of the ship. She pulls the knife from her mouth, cuts the fuse of a stick of T-N-T in half, sheathes the knife in a lacey, leather garter-belt sheath found behind the slit of her high cut, black satin dress that also accentuates her cleavage. She lights the stick and throws it onto a pile of papers at the safe's door which begin to spark into flame. She jumps from the window and is momentarily suspended and begins to wrap around the mooring cable. Then she gracefully releases her tight hold on the strap and she begins a long slide down the cable, steadying herself with a stilletto heel resting on the cable. Her fish-net stockings are da bomb. Speaking of da bomb, when she's about twelve feet from the ground, the bottom portion of the zeppelin explodes and she releases the strap completely, dropping three feet in all and landing squarly on the ground. She begins an incredibly-graceful run across the tarmac toward the bushes as the fiery zeppelin crashes behind her. Chaos abounds. Sirens wail, but before that:)
AZALEA V.O. (Cont'd)
The first thing that got to go are these stilletto heels. (Takes them off, conveniently chucks them into the nearby bushes.) I'm woman of action, there; that’s more down-to-Earth. Now if I remember right, the interrogation room is that building there. And if Zero thinks what I did to The Eliza is trouble, he sure ain't gonna like what I got for him next.
(AZALEA puts on a pair of pumps, fishes through her bag, pulls out a smaller, black-velvet bag, and fondles it, knowing what it contains. She smiles in a very sinister way.)
AZALEA V.O. (Cont'd)
Oh yeah Verne, I'm gonna put the hurtin' on you. They can beat you all night, and they're only softening you up for me, baby.
(AZALEA lights a joint, slings the bag across her back, turns and jumps in a perfect arc twenty-five feet into the air, over a barbed-wire fence, into the Nazi compound. Two spotlights cross her path just before her leap and two others cross it after --and yet -- she goes undetected. AZALEA'S personality trait is Serendipity. She has incredible powers not known to man and perfect timing only rivaled by nature. She is only seen when she wants to be seen, and felt when she wishes to be felt. The Nazi chaos on the tarmac demonstrates this as we pan right and look back at the carnage she created.)
FTB