Episode 1 - Pilot

EXT. SCRAPYARD - DAY

Mangas can see small claw marks on the broken cranes and trucks just like the ones on the crashed car, but other than that, the outside of the vehicles looks mostly intact. As he looks closer, he sees a variety of subtle damage on them. Fuel and hydraulic lines are cut, screws have been unscrewed, panels were opened and the electrics are either smashed and missing parts. The conclusion is unequivocal: these construction vehicles have been expertly sabotaged.

Mangas also notices that multiple parts seem to be missing, presumably taken by whatever rendered these vehicles unusable.

Finally, just like at the crash site, there are no tracks consistent with the claw marks leading away from the vehicles. Whatever did this must have a way of moving without needing to touch the ground. Flying, hovering, teleporting, or something else...

INT. SCRAPYARD OFFICE - DAY

Matthew gets no answer from inside the temporary office. The place looks like it's been tossed. Papers litter the floor, some of the ceiling neon lights have fallen, one of the desks has collapsed... Matthew can hear a whistling sound. As he looks around, he sees some small holes in one of the walls. The whistling is the summer breeze coming through them. Other than that, the office is deathly quiet...

Matthew carefully starts looking around, weapon ready but still away.
“Bullets holes. Eyes open Eshe…”
He moves carefully around trying not to disturb anything, nudging things with his foot, looking for something someone might have missed.

Matthew goes through the office. It takes him some time to examine the discarded papers, rifle through the desk drawers, and look under the furniture. At first, everything seems to be normal. He finds an architect's house floorplans, a civil engineer's neighborhood map, contracts with different contractors for equipment and manpower, all the things you'd expect to find on a construction site. That is until he finds the shredder in the back office.

The last document that was inserted got caught in the blades and didn't go all the way through. It appears to be a handwritten letter. Matthew gently pulls it out of the machine and manages to smooth it out. It reads:

To Mr. Darlington,

It is with great regret that I must break our contract. I know there will be financial penalties, but I cannot in good conscience tell my workers to stay. You know I was as skeptical as you when it came to my guys' claims, but after what I've seen today, I can't ignore them any longer.

When Marty got hurt when that propeller fell, we all thought his head injury was responsible for the "creature" he saw. When our machines broke down and Josh said he'd seen a "creature" in the engineer block of his truck vanish into thin air, I said it was heatstroke.

Well today, I saw the damn thing myself. Or rather, things. I don't what they are, but there's a bunch of them in the yard. I pray to God you won't laugh this off like we did when the others came to us. They're everywhere and they're angry.

Get out while you still can.

(Illegible signature)

From his earlier search, Matthew remembers finding a contract with the same signature. He goes back into the main office and looks for a bit before finding the document. It is a contract with Rukavina Hauling, a company who was hired to clear the scrapyard prior to the beginning of construction. He finds the same signature and underneath is a printed name: Miloš Ivanković.

Matthew folds the papers and slips them into his jacket, before pulling his pistol out and sweeping the area again, as he slowly backs out into the open.
“Possible entities. Eyes open team.”

Once outside he looks for the other to, making sure he has eyes on everybody.

Eshe waits until Matthew's back is to her to roll her eyes. She was the lookout - obviously  she was going to keep her eyes peeled, but she could also admit that she hadn't been expecting to have to worry about guns.  Come to think of it, Matt mentioned bullet holes but not blood or a body.  It was hard to believe that a cleanups crew would leave bullet holes behind. Who or what had been shot at?  Eshe wondered and suddenly she had a number of questions for Matthew: How many bullet holes? Were they clustered together? How high from the ground?

She bobbed lightly on her feet, fighting to resist the urge to join Matt and poke around the office.   She could wait for him to finish searching and make sure that no one got the drop on him while he did.  She was the lookout after all.

When he emerges gun drawn, Eshe's eyes grow wide in surprise even as she instinctively shifts into a fighting stance ready to have Matthew's back. A quick glance suffices to see that he seems uninjured and not actively engaged with a threat, so Eshe loosens her stance a little. "Time to regroup and gtfo?"

When the crows showed to be just normal crows Sophia started walking around the place, maybe she would find someone or just get a feeling for the place. She kept Liz'power around her eyes just in case, and her lance ready.

EXT. SCRAPMAZE - DAY

The scrapyard is labyrinthine, with winding paths through precariously balanced piles of wreckage. The heat inside is suffocating, barely alleviated by the breeze that whistles through the gaps between the vehicle carcasses. The smell of oil, gasoline and melting rubber fill the air.

As she makes her way down of the paths, Sophia stops as she hears skittering inside the wreckage to her left. She wheels in that direction, but cannot pick out what made the noise through the dense forest of metal. Was it a pebble, carried by a gust of wind? A piece, finally falling off a rusty car? Or was it her quarry?

She walks forward, trying to peer through the wrecks to find the source of the noise. As she takes a step, she feels pressure against her leg, then hears the noise of something snapping. The noise is followed by the loud groan of metal as a pile of cars comes crashing down behind her, blocking her way back. Another noise comes from in front of Sophia, and she sees the crushed remains of a car swing down towards her on a steel metal cable...

This seems to be something small with great dexterity, or the ability to telepathically move things..., Mangas is pondering when he suddenly hears the sound of crashing metal. He jerks his head in the direction and sees the top of a pile topple over. Without giving it much further thought, Mangas starts running towards where the pile fell over keeping his eyes open for something small, possibly airborne and a definitely mischievous.

Sophia completely ignores the falling pile behind her, focusing fully on the swinging car, another freak accident or is someone trying to stop her from looking further?

She raises her lance getting ready to cut the car in two with it to avoid getting hit.

Sophia's eyes flash red and Liz's ethereal body moves from her neck to coil around the lance. When it comes down, even if the blade didn't touch the car, it is cut in half with the edges charred and smelling of lightning.

Half of the car goes flying to Sophia's right, released from the cable and carried by its momentum. The other half pivots away, spinning on the cable in a circle around the young woman. She reaches out with her spear and stops its lazy arc. As she does so, she hears angry chattering coming from the stacks, like dozens of frustrated monkeys jeering in disappointment. There's a series of claps and the sound suddenly stops, replaced by an eerie silence.

She looks down at the thing that had tugged at her leg and sees a wire, now limp, lying on the ground. It stretches from one side of the path to the other, and disappears into the stacks.

+++

Mangas comes running down the path and stops as he reaches a dead end. A pile of cars has collapsed, blocking the path. It looks unstable, threatening to collapse at any moment and rain sharp metal and glass shards on anyone nearby.

Through gaps in the wrecks, he can see Sophia, spear in hand, looking at something on the ground.

Mangas continues to hurry towards Sophia, but rushes in an arc around the fragile pile. When he reaches the wall of debris that marks the alley he is in, he starts climbing to its top. I need to push that pile over, before it buries someone. he thinks, determined to defuse this ticking bomb.

Mangas starts to climb the collapsed pile of rusted, wrecked cars. As he nears the top, he feels something give under his foot. Wrecks start to slide as the pile looses its cohesion and vehicle carcasses come tumbling down. One of them catches Mangas ont he shoulder and he feels a sharp pain as hears something snap. He loses his grip and tumbles back down to the ground.

From the stacks around him he hears the high-pitched laughter of a multitude of creatures, and he feels the anger rise inside him...

"Come out." Sophia says as she follows the wire with her eyes and into the stack, trying to see if anything moves there.

Matthew had started moving at the sound of the crash, and had been about to yell out to Mangas, stopped knowing he was more likely to stop a car thrown at him with a sword then slow that man down.
Instead he turns, puts his finger to his lips, and starts to slowly move into the scrap labyrinth, weapon at the ready, eyes searching.

The blinding pain shooting from his shoulder takes all of Mangas focus. All of it. The dark clouds in his mind rise again and this time there is nothing stopping them. With a roar, fueled by pain and anger, Mangas starts grabbing pieces of metal around him and hurling them in the general direction of the taunting, cackling laughter. Small cracks are faintly audible and the laughter comes from a different direction, and then another, and then another... Mangas blindly throws metal parts in all directions until he collapses exhaustedly and out of breath.

As Matthew carefully makes his way down the path, he hears chattering laugher followed by a roar echo through the stacks. He hears a metallic groan and sees part of a wrecked car come flying over a pile of scrap and head straight for him...

+++

Sophia gets no answer from the stack. As she looks closer, she sees some sort of simple mechanism hidden in the bottommost car.

Before she can investigate further, she hears the sound of Mangas' fall, the laughter from the stacks on the other side of the blockage, and Mangas' frightful answering roar. Debris start to fly from his position, destabilizing the stacks around her. Pieces start to rain down her, once again threatening to turn her into a meat pancake.

Eshe sees Matthew gesture to be silent, but it does not really register nor does the fact that he has begun to move forward without her.  She had heard that roar before; had been on the wrong side of it.
It is not every time that Mangas' rage gives her pause, but having been taken by surprise by it, with no enemy in sight, Eshe cannot bring herself to move for a beat.  Annoyed with herself, and glad that Matthew did not see her quiet freak out, she takes after him at a sprint and catches up just in time to see lethal scrap heading straight for him. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Her strides lengthen and her feet hit the ground that much harder as Eshe picks up the necessary speed to dive at Matthew.

"Watch out!

Shit! Sophia rises her lance once more and is about to spin it when she thinks better. The others are around.

So instead she grabs her lance in a horizontal position and starts running out of the pit of doom. Slicing her way out and ready to jump out into safety if needed.

Eshe tackles Matthew out of the way, but some of the debris falls on her back as she shields him from harm. They land on top of each other, sheltering until the debris stop falling.

When it finally does, Matthew realizes how uncomfortably (or it is comfortably?) close Eshe is...

+++

Sophia runs, swatting debris away. When she finally stops, the debris no longer raining, she is surrounded by the stacks, unsure about where the others are. She sees two paths before her. One carries a soft breeze, hinting at a possible exit. The other echoes with some soft metallic noises and distant chattering, but is it safe to investigate it without the rest of her team?

"I'm so sorry Matt!  I realize now that you probably could have dodged that yourself! In the moment all I could think was to make sure that you were alright." Eshe speaks very quickly and then sighs, letting herself relax as the adrenaline leaves her body. "You are alright, yeah?"

Matt’s eyes are already up and scanning the debris, when Eshe tackled him down and out of the way.
As they hit the ground her heard her stifle a shout, and felt her tense further.
He quickly put his arm around her, taking control of roll on the ground, and and finishing, with his body covering and protecting her, partial raised on one arm, the other with his pistol up and in the direction of the debris, scanning for a target.

His mind was focused on protecting Eshe and eliminating the threat, but other, more intimate thoughts crowded the edges.

“I’m fine, but are you?”

"I'm good.  I am going to have one hell of a bruise tomorrow, but I'm good. Cool moves secret agent man," she begins genuine in her praise, placing her hands on Matthew's chest. "But do you think that you could let me up? I want to go see how Sophia and Mangas are doing and I'd rather not have to flip you to do it."

Matthew looked down at Eshe as her hand touched his chest.
It finally seemed to dawn on him the position they were in.
“Oh…..ohhhh sorry sorry…”
He jumped up into a crouch, eyes up again and scanning the area…and hoping she hadn’t seen him blush like a school boy….

“Sorry…training and all that…”
He cleared his throat.

“This place is a death trap…we need to find the others and regroup.”

Eshe windmills her legs and seems to glide from supine to standing.  "Agreed."
Wincing slightly from her newly forming bruise, she draws out her sanjiegun and walks with Matthew deeper into the scrapyard in search of their friends.

Sophia smirks, twirling her lance before moving forward in the direction of the soft metallic noises.
Go big or go home. The faster they could finish this the better. That was a way to make this place more comfortable for Liz, right?

Panting, Mangas looks around himself disorientated, as if he just came to. He grinds his teeth, but pushes back the rage, like he does so often. I'm stronger than the beast within, he recites in his head, while trying to find the others. Eshe and Matt are rolling around in the dirt together, apparently in a conversation, but Sophia is missing. Mangas tries to see her between gaps in the debris, but to no avail. And then there is the issue with the laughter. The source of the laughter is surely their target. Some mischievous band of demon-like imps, it had seemed. Oh, how he hated the mischievous ones. He scans the piles of metal for signs of them, but everything seems quite.
He turns around suddenly ands walks back towards the car with determination, opens the trunk and gets out his shotgun. Then he walks back to the scrapyard, determined to find Sophia.

By the time Mangas returns, shotgun in hand, Eshe and Matt are closing on his position, their weapons drawn as well.
"Do not love this place. We need to get out of here and see what else we can learn about... Eshe gestures towards the debris. "all of this nonsense."  
She looks past Mangas, realising that he is alone. "Oh man, where's Sophia?"

EXT. SCRAPMAZE - DAY

Sophia bolts down the path from where the chattering and metallic noises are coming from. Whether by luck or divine intervention she does not meet any opposition during her sprint.

She nears the source of the noise, but her progress is blocked by a tall wall of scrap. She can see some movement in between the gaps in the ramshackle construction and hear the chattering from what seems like dozens of individual creatures. Intermittent clapping noises can be heard over the din, as well as the sound of metallic hammering and of whirring power tools.

"Come on! Are you scared of going against Long Wang's champion? I'm here, ready to go against you, at least show yourselves!" Sophia says trying to provoke these creatures, anything that will let her see them more clearly and find out what they are.

The area on the other side of the wall falls silent. Then, Sophia hears a flew claps from somewhere over there, immediately answered by a few claps from the top of the walls around her.

Wide black eyes lodged small, green, scaly, big-eared heads peer at her from the top of the stacks. Then, one screeches, followed by the others. A chorus of enraged, high-pitched screaming echoes throughout the scrapyard. In the distance, the murder of crows takes off, cawing angrily at the disturbance and adding to the surrounding cacophony.

The creatures start to pull debris from the stacks and lift it above their heads in skinny, scaly arms, preparing to pelt the lone woman with the sharp, rusty scraps.

Sophia raises her lance, making lightning fall from the sky on it for show and to get it electrified for extra punch.

She takes a good look at the creatures, memorizing every detail she can for later.

"Why are you here? If you attack, be prepared for me to respond in kind." She says covering her whole body is Liz's red energy as if it were some kind of medieval Chinese armor.

The creatures start to pelt Sophia with debris, throwing them with surprising strength and accuracy from the safety of their vantage point. The divine servant of Long Wang does her best to parry the incoming tide of metal, but much of it, coming from all directions at once, get through her skilled defense. Her holy armor shines brightly, but she still feels cuts lacerating her muscles and blunt impacts against her bones.

With the high ground, the creatures have every advantage. Sophia is a sitting duck and unable to strike back. And the barrage shows no sign of stopping...

"These beasts have no honor. You have shown courage. Now, show wisdom!" Liz hisses at Sophia.

"I know." Sophia says as she looks around to dive through any open space she has to get behind one of the gremlins to try and knock them out.

Matthew nodded at Mangas and started leading the trio through the maze, towards the sounds of screeching.
“You all good Mangas?”, he said looking at all scratches on his bare torso.

Going by the sounds, Matthew figured things weren’t ideal for Sophia.
“Heads up. Let’s try take some heat off Sophia”

As the are moving through the scrap labyrinth, he points at the ground in front of them and fires a couple of rounds into the dirt, hoping to draw their attention.
“If they don’t come at us after that, knock a car or something over team!”

Matthew's shots echo through the scrap maze, eclipsing every other noise.

The creatures attacking Sophia pause to look in their direction. About half of the beasts vanish with a clap and a puff of smoke. The young woman doesn't waste the opportunity, diving through the open window of a rusted SUV sitting at the bottom of one of the scrap walls surrounding her. When the remaining creatures look to resume their attack, their prey seems to have disappeared. Sophia hears a few more claps as they disperse to search for her.

Matthew, Mangas and Eshe hear a number of claps atop the surrounding scrap piles. Matthew's training kicks in and he wheels his pistol to point up at them and fires. A small creature, green, scaly, big-eyed and big-eared comes tumbling down from one of the scrap towers. The death of one of their fellows is met with angry screeching from the dozen or so other creatures and a barrage of scrap rains down on Matthew. A series of additional claps can be heard as more and more creatures appear to seek revenge for their fallen comrade...

With the creatures focusing on Matthew, Eshe runs forward to scoop up the strange little corpse.  Hopefully they'd be able to learn something about the creatures and I'm not just being a weirdo, ha!  "Sophia! Sophia!" Eshe takes the risk of drawing the creatures' attention (if scooping the corpse of one of their fellows hasn't already) by calling loudly for her friend.  "Are you okay? Text if you can!"

As Eshe calls out to Sophia, she feels some movement in her arms. She looks down and sees that the creature she just picked up is not, in fact, dead. It is injured, its black blood leaking from its wound and staining her shirt.

The creature almost looks... cute? Until it bares its teeth and sinks them into Eshe's arm. Reflexively, she drops the thing. It vanishes in a puff of smoke that smells strangely like exhaust.

The other monsters, who were focused on Matthew, seem to have taken notice of the other two hunters...


As Sophia considers her next move, she hears Eshe call out to her. Shortly after, she sees one of the creatures appear in the path on the other side of the wreck she's taken refuge in. It looks injured, bleeding from a single bullet hole in its chest. It vanishes and reappears a little farther down, clearly struggling with the effort of teleporting.

Sophia follows close, trying not to loos the creature but keeping her distance so they won't notice.

She takes out her phone and quickly texts Eshe:

[Following a green creature, we are heading west]

Sophia can see that the creature is heading towards the wall behind which she heard the metallic noises and the chattering before she called out her challenge.

As it nears the wall, it vanishes one last time. She hears a clap from the other side, followed by some chattering.

When the creatures start throwing debris around Mangas pulls up the shotgun, pumps and fires and pumps and fires.
He tries to pick down as many of the creatures as he can, but they are quick and always seem to know, where he'll aim next.

Sophia takes a few steps back, then runs to jump as high as she can to grab a hold and starts going up, peeking from the top to see where the creature is before carefully coming down the other way.

Mangas fires at the creatures as they fling debris at him. Every time he hits, one of the things explode, shredded to bits by the buckshot. In return, he feels the lacerations of the sharp metal pieces, the trauma of the blunt impacts, his blood running down his chest and arms. His world is pain.

Eshe inhales sharply when the creature bites her; it pinches something fierce, nearly bringing tears to her eyes.  
Eshe looks up from her phone to tell the guys that she wants them all to go after Sophia, but stops short when she sees how bruised and bloody Mangas is.
"This isn't working!  Matt! Mangas! Get out of the scrap yard. I am going to go find Sophia. We're leaving."

Sophia skillfully makes her way up the wall, light as a feather. Her training under Liz's stern supervision clearly paying off.

When she reaches the top, she sees a large courtyard surrounded by a circular scrap wall. Hut-like piles of scrap fill the inside, providing crude shelter for the village's inhabitants. There is a large, dark pool in the middle, where some of the creatures are bathing. Others are patrolling or working, carrying material to a large central contraption. A number of creatures are working on it. It is almost as tall as the wall and vaguely humanoid in shape. One arm has a wrecking ball hanging from it by a sturdy looking chain. The other is fitted with a small plane's wing, sharpened into a wicked-looking blade.

There is too much activity in the makeshift village for Sophia to make her way down without being noticed.

Once giving a good look over Sophia get down slowly, and send a message to Eshe again.

[I'm waiting on the west wall. Need me to come over or can you come over here?]

[Come over. We gotta go - Mangas isn't looking so hot  ]

As much as Eshe would like to join Sophia, she really wants to make sure that Mangas gets to safety, and she is not sure that he and Matt would leave if they thought that she and Sophia were going to poke around the scrapyard some more.

If Matthew and Mangas have started moving:

If Matthew and Mangas have not started moving:

Matthew had been fire shots off, not seeming to be making a dent in the swarm, but Mangas was in a bad way.
He moved forward, dropping the clip and reloading, before tapping the big man on the shoulder.
“MANGAS. Fall back now! I will cover you!”

Moving in front Mangas, he starts unloading the clip, trying to send the gremlin things scattering, and starts to push back, getting the big man moving.

“MOVE DAMMIT”

Glancing around, he sees Eshe as well.

“You too! Go!”

His clip empty again, he reloads and continues spraying the area in shots.