New Avengers Snippets!
Jul. 14th, 2006 04:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rabidsamfan7. Target!
Oct 18 06
Disclaimer: The New Avengers are copyrighted, but not by me. I think Canal+ or Mark One Productions owns the rights at the moment. Which means, of course, that this is fanfic – me playing in someone else's sandbox. Even moreso, anything in dark blue is a scene taken straight from the screen, dialogue and all, that either didn't hit the novelizations, or that didn't hit them in a way that satisfied my sense of the character arcs that I'm exploring. Links to quotes and screencaps (where they appear) are courtesy of bromfield hall.
As a rule
*** means I'm still adding onto a piece or scene and
### means I'm satisfied with that bit for now.
---
http://www.bromfieldhall.co.uk/tnaquotes7.htm
http://www.bromfieldhall.co.uk/targetpics.htm
Summary: For them as hasn't seen it lately: The training shooting range has been seeded with curare darts, so that agents who are taking a practical examination before going on leave get poisoned and fall over, dying eventually as their heart muscles are paralyzed. Steed and Gambit figure this out, but only after Purdey has gone through the course and taken a single hit.
Scenes
</>
"Extraordinary," Kendrick said, examining the corpse. "Without the benefit of autopsy, my diagnosis is natural causes."
"You better try again, doctor," Gambit countered. "I was with Bradshaw when he died. He knew he was going to die. Just like Dick Palmer. Now one case of premonition I can accept. But two… try again."
"Oy! There." The physician beckoned Gambit over to look at what he'd found. Tiny red marks showing up against the skin. "Must be a dozen at least."
"More than a dozen," Gambit said thoughtfully. "That's what Bradshaw said. But what are they?"
"I don't know. Bite of an insect? Skin infection?"
"Try curare," Steed came into the autopsy room. "Test for curare. It's virtually undetectable, but if you look very closely, now isn't that possible, Dr. Kendrick?"
"It's outside my experience," Kendrick said. "There are tests, yes, but it would be easier and quicker if I had something for comparison."
"I can arrange for that too," Steed said, waving in a stretcher with yet another body on it. "Professor Lopez that was. It's ninety-nine percent certain that he died from curare poison."
"Yes," Gambit said, looking thoughtfully at the new arrival. "But it's the one percent that kills you."
"Eh?" Steed said, having caught the edge of the remark.
"Oh, nothing. Nothing important." Gambit frowned, feeling the unhappy sensation of knowing an answer and not being able to produce it start to settle into his gut. "I think."
-----
Kendrick worked quickly, and soon came up with a test tube of amber liquid. "Well…"
"Curare?" Steed asked.
"It could be." Kendrick said, passing the tube to Steed.
"It is." Steed said decidedly. He passed the tube on to Gambit. "Undetectable."
"Administered through the merest scratch." Gambit eyed the deadly stuff unhappily.
"But how?" Steed wondered.
"All those agents were on leave, or about to go," Gambit said, clinging to the one factor that the dead men had had in common.
"That means a medical checkup," Steed said. "Poisoned stethoscope?"
Dr. Kendrick retrieved the test tube of curare. "I'm in charge of the medical division," he said with indignant dignity.
"Then it has to be some other way.," Gambit didn't want to press Kendrick until they had to. "An ordinary blowpipe." That was the usual method of delivering a curare-poisoned dart.
"Why only those who were going on leave?" Steed asked, poking a hole in the theory.
"Plot to disrupt the tourist board?" It wasn't much of an offering, and Gambit knew it.
"That's funny," Kendrick said.
"Not the way I said it," Gambit was already trying to think of a better idea.
"Those little red marks, they've been bothering me, but I remember now," Kendrick was talking, but Steed and Gambit weren't listening.
"We must check back through the files," Steed began…
"Perhaps there's something else," Gambit continued…
"Something we've overlooked," they finished together, and only then registered Kendrick's reminiscences.
"When I was a child the boy next door shot at me with an air pistol. Hit me in the hand, left a very similar mark."
"Guns!" Gambit and Steed exclaimed, their eyes lighting with mutual comprehension.
"It was staring us in the face, the medical, the practical test." Steed said. "The Target Range!" Gambit joined in.
"Simulated combat."
"People firing at us all the time."
"From every angle."
"We expect to be hit."
"One hit and you're dead." Gambit finished the exchange and went suddenly pale. "Purdey." He said, diving for the door. " Purdey went through there a couple of hours ago!"
Steed caught him up as they reached the parking lot. "My car!" he ordered, thinking that there was less chance of them being stopped for excessive speed if he were at the wheel. Not that Steed didn't intend to hurry! He flinched as he stumbled into the child on the tricycle who had maneuvered into his path on the way to the car. "Whoops, sorry, sonny," he said, his mind on Purdey as he climbed into the drivers seat and turned the key. If only they'd figured out this plot sooner!
Gambit pounded a fist uselessly against the dashboard as they went along. "I should have known. I went to ask Bradshaw about the results of the practical tests for all the dead men and then I forgot all about it when he died, too. I should have known."
"Purdey must have gone through the test before that happened," Steed pointed out, absently nursing the leg which had banged into the tricycle. "Are you certain that she's in danger?"
"She was hit. Just the once, but that's enough if we're right. Bradshaw was hit a dozen times, he died in only a minute or two, but the difference in dosage probably killed him sooner. At least we can hope. What about Lopez? He wasn't at the target range."
"Bradshaw must have had a confederate. Someone he warned when I called to leave a message for the pair of you that I was going to see Lopez. I thought I heard someone leaving the greenhouse just after Lopez collapsed." Steed turned a corner, maneuvered around a bicyclist and veered onto the main route to Purdey's apartment. "Lopez can't have been hit more than once – but perhaps they must have used a stronger concentrate for him. The dosage for each shot at the target range has to be much lower, low enough to prevent anyone from suspecting anything. If the dosage were high enough to act right away we would have been onto this after the first death."
"Let's hope it's low enough that Purdey's still all right," Gambit growled.
"We'll soon find out." Steed didn't waste time – just pulled up onto the sidewalk and jerked the gearshift into Park.
###
</>
There was no answer to Gambit's impatient knocking on Purdey's door and Steed wasn't about to wait long enough to pick the lock. He kicked it in, apologizing mentally for the damage even while he fought his way through the bead curtain that marked Purdey's bedroom. Gambit arrived on the other side of the bed at the same time, and Steed thought he'd never seen the man look quite so stricken. He couldn't blame him. Purdey was dressed in her slip and lying on top of the covers, sprawled as if she'd had no more time than to undress before she'd collapsed.
Gambit gathered her up in his arms. "Oh, Purdey."
To Steed's immense surprise and relief, her eyes fluttered open and she sat up under her own power, "What is this?" she asked indignantly.
</>
Gambit, mortified, let go of her and turned away. "Oh, Purdey," he said again, in a much different tone.
"You're awake!" Steed exclaimed.
"Well, what girl could sleep through two men bursting into her bedroom?" Purdey looked from Gambit to Steed, her expression somewhere between anger and fright.
"It's good to find you alive!" Steed told her.
She relaxed. "Oh, you're not still going on about that are you?"
Gambit plucked the shirt she'd discarded from the bedrail and displayed the red marker that still clung to the fabric. "But you were hit," he said, and looked to Steed. "She was hit."
Steed couldn't figure it out either. "We were wrong," he hazarded.
But Gambit was still chasing the puzzle. "You were hit," he said again to Purdey. "Only ninety-nine percent."
"And it's the one percent…" she began.
"That kills you," Gambit finished. It would have been a chorus except that Purdey's eyes suddenly rolled back into her head and she collapsed across the bed again.
Steed's stomach did a backflip. "Doctor!"
"Kendrick!" Gambit was already leaping for the telephone.
***
She wasn't in her own bed; that was the first thing she knew for certain. That and that her mouth tasted like she'd been gargling with greenery. Purdey swallowed and shifted her tongue behind her teeth, instinctively trying to ease the taste away. There was a warm hand resting on her bare shoulder, more warmth behind her, as if she were propped up against another person. She thought it might be Gambit. It smelled like Gambit.
"That's the lot," a voice said, so close she heard the words through the bones of her skull.
"The question is, will it be enough?"
"Half the bottle brought you back. And there isn't any more."
Gambit. And Steed. They sounded worried about something. About her?
"I think her color may be better," Gambit was definitely worried.
She worked on remembering how to open her eyes. Ah… that was it.
"She's coming round." Purdey recognized the interior of Steed's car, wondered why he was looking in the window at her. He raised an eyebrow at her like a provincial prig. "Some party."
"Lucky for you, we brought a bottle." It was Gambit holding her, Gambit waggling a flask in the hand that wasn't resting on her shoulder. She peered at it, hoping to make out the label, and then gave up on trying to understand what had happened. The smiles on her two companions' faces were reassurance enough for now.
"Are we going on somewhere?" she asked, as if it were any night after the restaurant had closed and the discotheques were still getting started.
That set them both to laughing and she laughed along as Steed climbed in behind the wheel and started driving.
###
Epilogue
Purdey listened to the explanation with growing alarm. "You had to run the entire range?" she asked Gambit. "With them shooting at you?"
Gambit shrugged. "What else could I do?"
"Did you take any of the antidote?" she asked urgently.
He shook his head, smiling. "I couldn't be sure how much you and Steed might need. Anyway, I wasn't hit."
"I didn't think I'd been hit. Neither did George." Purdey pulled Gambit forward and started checking the back of his coat. Nothing. But, "Your hands are scratched."
"I went through a plate glass window," Gambit said. "Really, Purdey, I'm all right."
"No harm in making certain," Steed said from the back seat. "Kendrick may have located some antidote by now. We'll have him give you a prophylactic dose."
"Better stupid than dead," Purdey reminded Gambit and he grinned.
"Okay. If you both insist, I will. Although I think you just don't want to admit I might have topped your score." He tapped her nose with a teasing finger and she made a face at him, but she couldn't help grinning back. He was so pleased with himself!
***
Alternate versions
Ficbits and Dialogue notes
Curare! K
We know that! What we want is the antidote. S
I've been trying to locate a supply all day. K
Then where is it? (with his hands full of the doctor's lapels… Steed pulls him off.) G
A lethal dose of curare is unknown in this country, why would we keep an antidote on hand? K
We mustn't let her die. S
Antidote. Your hat. Your bowler hat. (looks very stunned at first, but quickly picks up Purdey to head out after the antidote")
_____In car.
Steed. If she dies.
I know I feel the same.
I'll hunt them down and I won't stop until I've found them.
We'll hunt them down. She means as much to me as she does to you. But we're all expendable.
I know the rules. But it is Purdey.
If she dies. If she dies. Must save her. (S to himself.)
At range.
Steed! Steed!
Purdey. Gotta help Purdey.
Steed!
Oh, Purdey.
Hat. (after shooting steed model) Sorry.
Mr. Gambit. You aren't going to shoot. You shoot and I drop this bottle. Please. The gun. Give it to me. Draker
Anything you say. *shoots* Steed… I think you ought to let me have that.
Catch!
Steed!
Thinking Out Loud
Klokoe dealing with melted darts at Lopez's hothouse, prevents him from killing Steed right away, and he has to fake out the syringe (diluting the concentrate in the process) but is still confident it will work.
They went to Kendrick, of course, because Steed wasn't about to take a chance that Purdey's recovery wasn't absolute and Gambit was equally adamant that Steed be checked over.
Gambit took his own car to go and check Draker's office…
In My Not So Humble Opinion
Top of the class. This is the episode I can watch over and over and over. Klokoe saves the villains from being deadly dull, and the triad is as good as it gets. Between Steed and Gambit having a horse race and that wonderful interchange between Gambit and Purdey at the target range, I'm a very happy fanfic writer, and when Steed and Gambit both acknowledge that Purdey has gone into a different category from "all expendable", well… *turns to goop*
my TNA fic links
***
Oct 18 06
Disclaimer: The New Avengers are copyrighted, but not by me. I think Canal+ or Mark One Productions owns the rights at the moment. Which means, of course, that this is fanfic – me playing in someone else's sandbox. Even moreso, anything in dark blue is a scene taken straight from the screen, dialogue and all, that either didn't hit the novelizations, or that didn't hit them in a way that satisfied my sense of the character arcs that I'm exploring. Links to quotes and screencaps (where they appear) are courtesy of bromfield hall.
As a rule
*** means I'm still adding onto a piece or scene and
### means I'm satisfied with that bit for now.
---
http://www.bromfieldhall.co.uk/tnaquotes7.htm
http://www.bromfieldhall.co.uk/targetpics.htm
Summary: For them as hasn't seen it lately: The training shooting range has been seeded with curare darts, so that agents who are taking a practical examination before going on leave get poisoned and fall over, dying eventually as their heart muscles are paralyzed. Steed and Gambit figure this out, but only after Purdey has gone through the course and taken a single hit.
Scenes
</>"Extraordinary," Kendrick said, examining the corpse. "Without the benefit of autopsy, my diagnosis is natural causes."
"You better try again, doctor," Gambit countered. "I was with Bradshaw when he died. He knew he was going to die. Just like Dick Palmer. Now one case of premonition I can accept. But two… try again."
"Oy! There." The physician beckoned Gambit over to look at what he'd found. Tiny red marks showing up against the skin. "Must be a dozen at least."
"More than a dozen," Gambit said thoughtfully. "That's what Bradshaw said. But what are they?"
"I don't know. Bite of an insect? Skin infection?"
"Try curare," Steed came into the autopsy room. "Test for curare. It's virtually undetectable, but if you look very closely, now isn't that possible, Dr. Kendrick?"
"It's outside my experience," Kendrick said. "There are tests, yes, but it would be easier and quicker if I had something for comparison."
"I can arrange for that too," Steed said, waving in a stretcher with yet another body on it. "Professor Lopez that was. It's ninety-nine percent certain that he died from curare poison."
"Yes," Gambit said, looking thoughtfully at the new arrival. "But it's the one percent that kills you."
"Eh?" Steed said, having caught the edge of the remark.
"Oh, nothing. Nothing important." Gambit frowned, feeling the unhappy sensation of knowing an answer and not being able to produce it start to settle into his gut. "I think."
-----
Kendrick worked quickly, and soon came up with a test tube of amber liquid. "Well…"
"Curare?" Steed asked.
"It could be." Kendrick said, passing the tube to Steed.
"It is." Steed said decidedly. He passed the tube on to Gambit. "Undetectable."
"Administered through the merest scratch." Gambit eyed the deadly stuff unhappily.
"But how?" Steed wondered.
"All those agents were on leave, or about to go," Gambit said, clinging to the one factor that the dead men had had in common.
"That means a medical checkup," Steed said. "Poisoned stethoscope?"
Dr. Kendrick retrieved the test tube of curare. "I'm in charge of the medical division," he said with indignant dignity.
"Then it has to be some other way.," Gambit didn't want to press Kendrick until they had to. "An ordinary blowpipe." That was the usual method of delivering a curare-poisoned dart.
"Why only those who were going on leave?" Steed asked, poking a hole in the theory.
"Plot to disrupt the tourist board?" It wasn't much of an offering, and Gambit knew it.
"That's funny," Kendrick said.
"Not the way I said it," Gambit was already trying to think of a better idea.
"Those little red marks, they've been bothering me, but I remember now," Kendrick was talking, but Steed and Gambit weren't listening.
"We must check back through the files," Steed began…
"Perhaps there's something else," Gambit continued…
"Something we've overlooked," they finished together, and only then registered Kendrick's reminiscences.
"When I was a child the boy next door shot at me with an air pistol. Hit me in the hand, left a very similar mark."
"Guns!" Gambit and Steed exclaimed, their eyes lighting with mutual comprehension.
"It was staring us in the face, the medical, the practical test." Steed said. "The Target Range!" Gambit joined in.
"Simulated combat."
"People firing at us all the time."
"From every angle."
"We expect to be hit."
"One hit and you're dead." Gambit finished the exchange and went suddenly pale. "Purdey." He said, diving for the door. " Purdey went through there a couple of hours ago!"
Steed caught him up as they reached the parking lot. "My car!" he ordered, thinking that there was less chance of them being stopped for excessive speed if he were at the wheel. Not that Steed didn't intend to hurry! He flinched as he stumbled into the child on the tricycle who had maneuvered into his path on the way to the car. "Whoops, sorry, sonny," he said, his mind on Purdey as he climbed into the drivers seat and turned the key. If only they'd figured out this plot sooner!
Gambit pounded a fist uselessly against the dashboard as they went along. "I should have known. I went to ask Bradshaw about the results of the practical tests for all the dead men and then I forgot all about it when he died, too. I should have known."
"Purdey must have gone through the test before that happened," Steed pointed out, absently nursing the leg which had banged into the tricycle. "Are you certain that she's in danger?"
"She was hit. Just the once, but that's enough if we're right. Bradshaw was hit a dozen times, he died in only a minute or two, but the difference in dosage probably killed him sooner. At least we can hope. What about Lopez? He wasn't at the target range."
"Bradshaw must have had a confederate. Someone he warned when I called to leave a message for the pair of you that I was going to see Lopez. I thought I heard someone leaving the greenhouse just after Lopez collapsed." Steed turned a corner, maneuvered around a bicyclist and veered onto the main route to Purdey's apartment. "Lopez can't have been hit more than once – but perhaps they must have used a stronger concentrate for him. The dosage for each shot at the target range has to be much lower, low enough to prevent anyone from suspecting anything. If the dosage were high enough to act right away we would have been onto this after the first death."
"Let's hope it's low enough that Purdey's still all right," Gambit growled.
"We'll soon find out." Steed didn't waste time – just pulled up onto the sidewalk and jerked the gearshift into Park.
###
</>There was no answer to Gambit's impatient knocking on Purdey's door and Steed wasn't about to wait long enough to pick the lock. He kicked it in, apologizing mentally for the damage even while he fought his way through the bead curtain that marked Purdey's bedroom. Gambit arrived on the other side of the bed at the same time, and Steed thought he'd never seen the man look quite so stricken. He couldn't blame him. Purdey was dressed in her slip and lying on top of the covers, sprawled as if she'd had no more time than to undress before she'd collapsed.
Gambit gathered her up in his arms. "Oh, Purdey."
To Steed's immense surprise and relief, her eyes fluttered open and she sat up under her own power, "What is this?" she asked indignantly.
</>Gambit, mortified, let go of her and turned away. "Oh, Purdey," he said again, in a much different tone.
"You're awake!" Steed exclaimed.
"Well, what girl could sleep through two men bursting into her bedroom?" Purdey looked from Gambit to Steed, her expression somewhere between anger and fright.
"It's good to find you alive!" Steed told her.
She relaxed. "Oh, you're not still going on about that are you?"
Gambit plucked the shirt she'd discarded from the bedrail and displayed the red marker that still clung to the fabric. "But you were hit," he said, and looked to Steed. "She was hit."
Steed couldn't figure it out either. "We were wrong," he hazarded.
But Gambit was still chasing the puzzle. "You were hit," he said again to Purdey. "Only ninety-nine percent."
"And it's the one percent…" she began.
"That kills you," Gambit finished. It would have been a chorus except that Purdey's eyes suddenly rolled back into her head and she collapsed across the bed again.
Steed's stomach did a backflip. "Doctor!"
"Kendrick!" Gambit was already leaping for the telephone.
***
She wasn't in her own bed; that was the first thing she knew for certain. That and that her mouth tasted like she'd been gargling with greenery. Purdey swallowed and shifted her tongue behind her teeth, instinctively trying to ease the taste away. There was a warm hand resting on her bare shoulder, more warmth behind her, as if she were propped up against another person. She thought it might be Gambit. It smelled like Gambit.
"That's the lot," a voice said, so close she heard the words through the bones of her skull.
"The question is, will it be enough?"
"Half the bottle brought you back. And there isn't any more."
Gambit. And Steed. They sounded worried about something. About her?
"I think her color may be better," Gambit was definitely worried.
She worked on remembering how to open her eyes. Ah… that was it.
"She's coming round." Purdey recognized the interior of Steed's car, wondered why he was looking in the window at her. He raised an eyebrow at her like a provincial prig. "Some party."
"Lucky for you, we brought a bottle." It was Gambit holding her, Gambit waggling a flask in the hand that wasn't resting on her shoulder. She peered at it, hoping to make out the label, and then gave up on trying to understand what had happened. The smiles on her two companions' faces were reassurance enough for now.
"Are we going on somewhere?" she asked, as if it were any night after the restaurant had closed and the discotheques were still getting started.
That set them both to laughing and she laughed along as Steed climbed in behind the wheel and started driving.
###
Epilogue
Purdey listened to the explanation with growing alarm. "You had to run the entire range?" she asked Gambit. "With them shooting at you?"
Gambit shrugged. "What else could I do?"
"Did you take any of the antidote?" she asked urgently.
He shook his head, smiling. "I couldn't be sure how much you and Steed might need. Anyway, I wasn't hit."
"I didn't think I'd been hit. Neither did George." Purdey pulled Gambit forward and started checking the back of his coat. Nothing. But, "Your hands are scratched."
"I went through a plate glass window," Gambit said. "Really, Purdey, I'm all right."
"No harm in making certain," Steed said from the back seat. "Kendrick may have located some antidote by now. We'll have him give you a prophylactic dose."
"Better stupid than dead," Purdey reminded Gambit and he grinned.
"Okay. If you both insist, I will. Although I think you just don't want to admit I might have topped your score." He tapped her nose with a teasing finger and she made a face at him, but she couldn't help grinning back. He was so pleased with himself!
***
Alternate versions
Ficbits and Dialogue notes
Curare! K
We know that! What we want is the antidote. S
I've been trying to locate a supply all day. K
Then where is it? (with his hands full of the doctor's lapels… Steed pulls him off.) G
A lethal dose of curare is unknown in this country, why would we keep an antidote on hand? K
We mustn't let her die. S
Antidote. Your hat. Your bowler hat. (looks very stunned at first, but quickly picks up Purdey to head out after the antidote")
_____In car.
Steed. If she dies.
I know I feel the same.
I'll hunt them down and I won't stop until I've found them.
We'll hunt them down. She means as much to me as she does to you. But we're all expendable.
I know the rules. But it is Purdey.
If she dies. If she dies. Must save her. (S to himself.)
At range.
Steed! Steed!
Purdey. Gotta help Purdey.
Steed!
Oh, Purdey.
Hat. (after shooting steed model) Sorry.
Mr. Gambit. You aren't going to shoot. You shoot and I drop this bottle. Please. The gun. Give it to me. Draker
Anything you say. *shoots* Steed… I think you ought to let me have that.
Catch!
Steed!
Thinking Out Loud
Klokoe dealing with melted darts at Lopez's hothouse, prevents him from killing Steed right away, and he has to fake out the syringe (diluting the concentrate in the process) but is still confident it will work.
They went to Kendrick, of course, because Steed wasn't about to take a chance that Purdey's recovery wasn't absolute and Gambit was equally adamant that Steed be checked over.
Gambit took his own car to go and check Draker's office…
In My Not So Humble Opinion
Top of the class. This is the episode I can watch over and over and over. Klokoe saves the villains from being deadly dull, and the triad is as good as it gets. Between Steed and Gambit having a horse race and that wonderful interchange between Gambit and Purdey at the target range, I'm a very happy fanfic writer, and when Steed and Gambit both acknowledge that Purdey has gone into a different category from "all expendable", well… *turns to goop*
my TNA fic links
***
