# minigun.the-trick → SIEGE · "CARAPACE" · beat summary (MINIGUN, 27 Oct; approved with changes: renamed (flamer owns THE KEEP), the bell replaced by the carapace (DEAD RINGER owns the bell))

**Rebuilds:** the gag THE TRICK (the magician's sawing box) in its key. The full 0.1 s beat sheet is written at build time on
the CLINCH machinery (K58.CINE2 performers).

**Style:** SIEGE. **Rarity:** RARE (key kept). **Victim:** Fayiz, a survivor with a sidearm, not a fighter. He builds a keep of gold
casts and Faris breaks it, layer by layer, with sustained fire.

**Story:** a man who can't win the fight tries to wall himself in. Three walls, each closer to his skin. A minigun is the one
weapon that eats walls: rounds by the thousand. Every layer that falls costs him a piece, until the last wall is his own hands.

**Length:** scene ~19 s; trigger to final ~22 s at real time.

**Needs:** FLOOR + space (w ~300); no map element. **Range:** mid → pointBlank.

**Casts (4, each a fight move):**
- **(1) Fayiz · THE BARRICADE** ('thrust'): a chest-high gold wall of stacked gold sandbags between them.
- **(2) Faris · THE MOUNT** ('slam', his free hand): a squat gold tripod he drops the gun onto for the long siege burst. He kneels
  behind it, the gun braced, the recoil going into the tripod.
- **(3) Fayiz · THE PAVISE** ('thrust'): a tall gold shield in his hands as the barricade fails.
- **(4) Fayiz · THE CARAPACE** ('fist', both hands): overlapping gold plates that ink onto his back and over him as he curls up
  on the floor like a pillbug, palms pressed to the inner edges of the plates to hold them shut.

**The dismemberment, the opening, the end pose** (specific to this story):
- **The EAR and a slice of the face:** a round through a hole in the pavise as he peeks. Siege fire finds every gap.
- **The FINGERS, one by one,** where his palms hold the edges of the plates. The stream strips the plates and then the hands
  holding them shut.
- **The opening is the FLANK:** the side torn open, the ribs in section, the lung, as he uncurls with the last plates gone.
  Not the belly; not the chest cluster.
- **The end pose: KNEELING** in the ruins of his own keep, sitting back on his heels. The head falls back so the dead face is
  upright to the sky; the fingerless hands lie open in his lap; gold rubble ringed round him. Never propped on gold.

## BEAT SUMMARY (scene s)

| t | beat |
|---|---|
| **0.0-2.2** | **THE WALL.** Faris advances, braced, the spin-up. Fayiz backs off and casts THE BARRICADE between them, drops behind it, pops up and fires his sidearm. A round sparks off Faris's barrel shroud. |
| **2.2-3.0** | **THE MOUNT.** Faris casts the gold tripod, swings the gun down onto it (a heavy two-handed set), kneels behind it. |
| **3.0-6.0** | **THE SIEGE BURST.** A long, sustained stream into the barricade. Gold chips and sparks spray; the sandbags split and sag; holes open with light through them. The recoil walks the tripod back a hand's width on the floor (contact scuffs). Fayiz curls behind the shrinking wall; his feet drag as he shifts along it. The wall collapses in sections. |
| **6.0-7.2** | **THE PAVISE.** He runs back, casting the tall gold shield in his hands as he goes. Faris lifts the gun off the mount (the weight) and walks after him, firing from the hip. Dents bloom, then holes. |
| **7.2-8.2** | **SLOW-MO 1 (the peek).** He peeks through a hole; a round through the same hole takes his ear and a slice of his cheek. The ear tumbles, blood hangs in the air. Snap back on his scream. |
| **8.2-9.6** | **THE THROW.** The shield is a shredded frame. He hurls it edge-on at Faris. Faris ducks under it (a heavy duck, the gun swung low, a step), comes up firing. |
| **9.6-11.0** | **THE CARAPACE.** Fayiz drops and curls up on the floor; overlapping gold plates ink over his back, head and legs like a pillbug's shell. His palms hold the inner edges shut; he breathes between the plates. |
| **11.0-14.0** | **STRIPPING THE SHELL.** Faris walks round him firing short bursts: plate by plate the carapace is stripped, each plate ringing and flipping away, light through the holes onto his face. **SLOW-MO 2 (the fingers):** the stream takes his fingers where they hold the last plates, one by one; they hang in the slow light. Snap back. |
| **14.0-15.4** | **THE BREACH.** The last plates fall away. He uncurls onto his knees in the ruin, twisting away. The point-blank burst opens his FLANK: the side torn open, the ribs, the lung. |
| **15.4-17.2** | **THE KNEEL.** He sinks back onto his heels. The head falls back; the last breath fogs (cold grade). The hands drop open into his lap, fingerless. Faris stands over the rubble, the barrels coasting. |
| **17.2-19.0** | **FINAL.** Low and close: the dead face upright to the sky, the torn flank, the ear gone, the fingerless hands; the gold ruin ringed round him; Faris's boots at the edge. |

**Camera:**
- Long lenses on the siege burst: a locked-off side shot that slowly pushes.
- A floor-level shot behind the barricade as it falls apart over him.
- Handheld on the run with the pavise.
- Close-ups under the plates with light beams through the holes.
- An orbit round him as the plates are stripped.
- A crane up as the last plates fall.

**Grades:**
- Sodium amber on the siege.
- Cold white light shafts under the plates.
- Bleached on the breach.

**Sound:**
- The sustained stream as a wall of sound.
- The plates clanging off one by one.
- Muffled under the shell, with his breathing.
- The snap back to full.

## LADDER (after XT approval)

- **VH:** the shell stripped, the burst through the flank; he falls face-down into the plates.
- **H:** the fingers taken through the plates, he goes still under them (dark).
- **M:** the shell knocked rolling; X eyes.
- **L:** the pavise knocked out of his hands; out cold.
- **VL:** the barricade turns out to be cardboard-gold; it folds; he faints.

**Uniqueness:**
- vs the LEDGER: THE SHIELD has a riot shield; QUIET has brass.
- No kill builds three gold layers and breaks them in sequence.
- None strips a curled gold carapace plate by plate, or takes fingers holding it shut.
- None has a flank opening in a kneeling end pose.
- No springboard. Not propped on gold.