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2.05 - Neighborhood Watch

Scene opens in a crowded bar in Eastside, during the after-work rush.

The place is packed with stereotypically annoying bar-goers. A young professional in a business suit hands his card to an attractive woman: "Hey, call me," he says, pointing gun-fingers at her as he goes. A couple of balding hipsters argue over the ironic kitschiness of the bar's decor. A group of college students in tee shirts and fraternity caps cluster around the television in the corner, screaming at the football game. One of the students accidentally jostles a local trying to squeeze by, spilling the man's beer. "Whoa, sorry dude," he says, before turning back to the game. "WOOOOO!! GO PTARMIGANS!!"

The camera pans across the bar, which is so crowded that patrons must order drinks by making hand signals in the air, like day-traders on the stock market floor. There is hardly room to stand, much less drink or socialize... except for two stools at the very end of the bar, which are inexplicably empty.

The camera continues to pan, eventually resting on a "No Smoking" sign hanging on the wall. A meticulously groomed metrosexual in pressed khakis and button-down shirt emerges from the restrooms and stops for a moment under the sign. He sniffs the air and make a face, coughing slightly, but seems unable to detect the souce of the odor.

The camera pans back to the two bar stools, which are no longer empty. Two ghosts sit hunched over the bar, their heads wreathed in smoke.

Cut to a reverse shot, so the two ghosts' faces are visible. The one on the left is Bozzie. He is dragging on one of his ghost-cigarettes and puffing smoke from his tracheotomy wound at an alarming rate. The other ghost is named Harrison. He has no cigarette, but there is smoke trickling upwards from a largish bullet wound in his left temple. Both look glum.

"Boy, Truman's sure isn't the same as it used to be," says Harrison.

Bozzie scowls. "Ah, the whole neighborhood's gone to shit. Ever since the suburbanites started moving in with their goddam Starbucks..."

"I hate Starbucks."

"This place used to have character!" rants Bozzie. "Hell Eastside used to have character. So what if there were rough edges? Rough edges equal character. You know, some neighborhoods don't need 'gentrification.' And I'll tell you another thing—"

He stops abruptly as the ghost of a young woman walks in through the back wall. She looks as though she's in shock. "Can... somebody help me?" she asks, swaying a bit on her feet. "I think I'm lost. I got out... but I can't get back in...."

"Aw, crap," mutters Bozzie. He gets up walks around the ghost, and exits through the wall where she came in.

Cut to the alley outside. An attractive young woman, dressed for a night of partying, lies comatose next to a dumpster. Emergency lights flash from the nearby street, and cops and paramedics mill about. A glass pipe smeared with black residue lies on the asphalt next to the woman's limp fingers.

"O.D.?" asks Harrison.

"Goddammit, that's the second one this week!" fumes Bozzie. A paramedic stomps on a small bouquet of roses left on the ground near the alley's entrance. "Aw, man! That does it!" Bozzie turns and storms back towards the bar. "This shit has got to stop."

"Where you going, Boz?" Harrison calls after him.

"I'm gonna make a phone call."

Harrison looks incredulous. "Who're you gonna call?" he mutters.

Cut to close-up of giant Orpheus logo on the front of Orpheus Group Headquarters.

Cut to black.

Walter Hanley surreptitiuosly contacted Agents Herschler, Watts, MacMillian and McGee, and asked them to meet him away from Headquarters. They gathered at a nearby coffeehouse, along with Agent Reynolds, a new recruit whom Herschler was showing around. After ascertaining that Reynolds was trustworthy, Hanley explained the purpose of the meeting.

Pigment, the most popular drug in the City.Bozzie had recently contacted Hanley and asked for help regarding the recent influx of pigment trade in his neighborhood of Eastside. Hanley warned that this mission would have to be "off the books," since Bozzie was not a paying client. He could not help Bozzie himself because, as a member of the "old guard," the Board of Directors were watching him too closely. However, he would use his administrative pull to doctor up clearance for Agents Herschler and MacMillian to use the projecting facilities.

Energized by the prospect of being able to do some tangible good for someone who deserved their help, the Agents immediately projected and went to visit Bozzie. Bozzie, who was staying in the storage room at Truman's instead of his usual haunt in the alley, explained that recently pigment had become fashionable among the yuppies and hipsters of Eastside, and since most of them weren't willing to venture into The Gardens to buy drugs, the dealers were coming to Eastside to sell. The alley behind Truman's had become a favorite spot for transactions. At least two or three times a week there was someone back there high on pigment, acting stupid and treating Bozzie like a tourist attraction — or worse, policemen and paramedics trampling all over the place to help some fool who had overdosed.

One dealer in particular had made Bozzie's home his personal stomping grounds: a young, ambitious gangbanger who called himself "Chain." Bozzie wanted the Agent's help to scare Chain off, in the hopes that it would discourage other dealers from encroaching on Eastside.

The Agents waited in the bar until Chain arrived to make his deliveries. Invisible and intangible, they followed Chain and two nervous hipsters out into the back alley, and watched until the transaction took place. Then, while McGee watched the alley entrance, they struck.

Herschler haunted the alley and sealed its endpoints so that no one could escape. Watts enshrouded one of the pigment syringes and rematerialized it transfixed through the wrist of one of the terrified buyers, leaving him in tremendous pain. Reynolds puppeteered Chain and forced him to perform numerous indignities, including stripping naked and soiling himself. And MacMillian morphosed into a terrifying demon-shape and materialized visibly before the drug dealer, commanding him to run away and never come back.

Reynolds and McGee followed Chain as he sprinted naked through Eastside, eventually hiding in the apartment who appeared to be his girlfriend. Reynolds, who was still skinriding Chain, listened as Chain attempted to call someone, but the person on the other end of the line hung up as soon as Chain revealed that he had been attacked by ghosts.

Reynolds and McGee staked out the apartment for the night. The other Agents went home.

The next morning, Herschler was awakened by Sam screaming in his ear: Bozzie had been hurt, and needed help right away. The Agents quickly reconvened at Truman's, to discover Bozzie, his corpus savaged to within an inch of discorporation, nailed to the alley wall with plasmic spikes through his arms. Goons sent by the pigment dealers, he explained, as the Agents fed him vitality to bolster his strength — sent to teach him a lesson.

Meanwhile, McGee and Reynolds followed Chain into The Gardens, to an old, abandoned canning factory by the west side. Projected, they watched as he began talking to three manifested ghosts — two that the Agents had never seen before, and Rook.

They got in touch with the other Agents, and the team regrouped outside the factory and discussed their options. They decided to attempt a strike at Chain and the two ghosts who seemed to be highly placed in the pigment supply chain, while avoiding Rook and hopefully conveying that they intended no threat against him.

The team charged in. Immediately, several bodyguards collapsed as the spectres who had been puppeteering and animating their corpses ejected and attacked. Rook, growing impatient with his underling's excuses, shot Chain in the head with a bullet that physically materialized halfway through its trajectory towards its target's skull. Herschler attempted to haunt the factory and warp space and gravity in order to keep their targets confined, but Rook grabbed the two pigment dealers and flickered away.

This left the Agents with only the spectres and zombified bodyguards to fight, and since there were no longer any clear targets, they decided to retreat. Tommy Fabrosi tossed a gasoline jerry can into the factory, and Agent Reynolds ignited it with a pistol shot, incinerating the remaining bodyguards.

Returning to Orpheus Headquarters, the Agents were severely upbraided by Tad Eccles for undertaking an unsanctioned mission and initiating hostile contact with Rook. All involved Agents are now on disciplinary probation until further notice.

At the end of the day, MacMillian received a phone call fom Walter Hanley, who told her to come to Truman's right away. The Agents reached the site of Bozzie's haunt just in time to see the firefighters hosing down the last of the embers. Someone had driven by and lobbed a molotov cocktail through the front window. Fortunately, it was before the after-work rush, so no one was hurt... but Truman's had burned to the ground.