Fight night: couch violation, Crane stance, and the twirling heel-kick

pivotal · 11-12 Nov YDAU, ~2330h-past midnight

• When: 11-12 Nov YDAU, curfew through just past midnight.
• What: Nell's normal night opens the scene: she, Emil Minty, and sometimes Gavin Diehl "make a nightly point of going to smoke outside on the front porch and coming in only after Gately says twice he's got to lock the door, just as some limp rebellious gesture." When Gately musters the residents for the post-curfew car-move (the 0000h municipal parking-side-switch; the Nucks arrive mid-move) he has to roust Nell, "who's fucking sacked out slack-mouthed on the couch, in violation." Outside, with the armed Nucks holding the lawn — Clenette and the new girl, "clearly veterans at gunpoint-etiquette," prone with fingers laced behind their heads; Erdedy hands-up with his car keys — she does not go down: "Nell Gunther's assumed Lenz's old martial-arts Crane stance, hands twisted into flat claws, eyeing the guy's .44," while the pistol pans coolly back and forth over the residents. And at the brawl's crux — Green half-nelsoning the gunman, Gately down and shot — comes her strike: "Now a meaty thwack as Nell Gunther on the lawn leaps several twirling meters and kicks the Nuck Green's half-nelsoning in the face with her paratrooper-boot's heel," snapping the man's head back into Green's face (the pop of Green's nose breaking is collateral). The man's later death is not hers — see Dating notes.