Chapter 1: An Average Saturday Night

Melissa had a routine. Wake up, go to uni, go to work, fight crime, home in time to catch Doctor Who. It wasn't a perfect system, but it was hers. 

She looked in the mirror to double-check that nothing looked too out of place before she headed to what was, as far as her roommate Jessica was concerned, “The Gym”. She never specified which gym she went to, because in truth an hour and a half each night of chasing after muggers and petty criminals was more than enough to maintain a frankly intimidating muscle-mass. Mel found that the trick to a convincing lie was to not so much lie as bend the truth. As a result, Mel figured that so long as she could convince herself that “The Gym” was simply her pet name for doing bad things to worse people, then she could hypothetically convince anyone that it referred to what its name would usually suggest.

However, one can’t generally call the standard black skivvy and half-balaclava of a vigilante appropriate gym attire, so a fair amount of effort went into looking the part. Her dark hair was tied back in a bun, out of her face. She was around one and a half meters tall, but her runners combined with the vertical stripes on her tank top were enough to give the illusion of just barely under average height. The gym bag was a nice touch; functional for both looking gym-ward bound and storage of the aforementioned skivvy, along with a few other odds and ends.

Despite her best efforts, she somehow got spotted on a handful of occasions and ended up in the papers. The thing about newspapers is that they absolutely love to death anything they can make sound dramatic. Headlines like “Masked Vigilante Roaming Melbourne” sell papers like hotcakes, but eventually someone starts throwing around a name, something like ‘Amazi-Girl’ or ‘Millenium’, something sharp and sleek. Melissa had wound up with ‘Mercy’. It made sense, she supposed. A few reports reports of victims being brought into the ER by a woman in black here, a few rumours of EMTs getting called out and arriving to find the same figure at the scene with just short of a completed OB-12, and suddenly you’ve got a vigilante medic.

Satisfied that everything was where it should be, she called out to her roommate that she'd be back by 9:30. She slung her gym bag over her shoulder as she closed the apartment door, eyes already locked on her usual rooftop. After a quick detour via the fire escape, she was up. Looking down, she saw the main street filled almost to bursting with people and cars, each going in a myriad of different directions. Basically, an average Saturday night. She grinned as she changed into her suit, the black fabric and the wraps on her fists feeling more like a second skin than clothing. She sat there, and she listened, and she watched. 

It was almost an hour before the white noise of the traffic and people was broken by an unholy screech of rubber on tarmac. Mel quickly threw a cow-hitch over the railing before rappelling down the side of the building. She dropped down once she reached the bottom of the line, rolling out of the fall. Looking around for the source of the noise, she found a motorbike trying to occupy the same position as a nearby lamp post. She ran over, and looked around. No other cars in sight. 

She carried the driver from what was left of his bike over to the slightly more stable surface of the footpath, and removed his helmet. The biker appeared to be in his early-to-mid-twenties, with light hair and cheekbones that you could cut yourself on. Most noticeably, however, was that he didn’t seem to have a single drop of blood anywhere on him. Great, either internal bleeding or something’s broken, Mel thought to herself. She went to check for a response, and got nothing. Before she could check if he was even still breathing, what little illumination the lamp post was still providing glinted off of a small piece of metal poking out of his collar. In hindsight that was probably more important than it seemed at the time, but there were slightly more pressing issues to deal with. Like the fact that the biker wasn't doing a whole lot of breathing. She cursed as she opened up his jacket to start on CPR, only to discover that this would prove somewhat more difficult than it should be. She pressed down, and was met with steadfast resistance. She frowned, before trying again. Still, his ribcage stayed staunchly in place, not so much as a millimetre of give.

She called an ambulance, and started a timer on her phone. Five minutes, so they say, is the furthest away you are at any given point from an ambulance while in Melbourne. Mel knew that in this part of town, it was closer to six, but she lived in hope. Meanwhile, this meant five minutes to figure out what the hell was going on with this guy's ribs before the EMTs got here. She lifted up his shirt, and for the most part saw nothing unusual. She rapped a knuckle on his sternum, and got a resounding metallic clang in return. She knocked again just to make sure she hadn't misheard, and once more her efforts returned the same result.

Well. Melissa thought. Metal person. Just when you think you’ve seen it all. Before she could go about doing anything to ascertain how much of the stranger was metal and how much was actual flesh and bone, there was a sudden pull at her collar, and a deep voice that sounded like the vocal equivalent of a Harley Davidson engine saying "I don't know who y-y-you are, but if you have plans to live b-b-beyond tonight, I'd suggest that you run very fast as far as you can from here."

"Don't suppose you'd be so kind as to tell me why? Or at least who's asking?" Mel found herself saying. The man (if you could really call him/her/it that) smirked. "Y-y-you've got guts kid; I'll g-g-give you that. My name is A-NT4257, but most call me Prophet. As for why?" He slipped a scrap of paper into Mel's hand. "If I make it past tonight, I'll do my best to explain here." Prophet stood up, brushed himself off, and grabbed his helmet before picking a direction seemingly at random and running.

Mel stood still for a second, doing her best to process what had just happened. She unfurled the piece of paper that Prophet had given her and began to read:

Mercy;

If you want answers, you’ll find them at 57 Pinemay Road, at 7:15 p.m. tomorrow. Don’t be late.

Kindest regards,

                   -Prophet

She spent a minute trying to figure out how he’d known that he’d need to have that card pre-written, or that it’d be her that caught him before she remembered that he had heavily implied that he was being followed. She scrambled back up the line to her rooftop before someone saw her. She checked her watch; She had about ten minutes until the time she'd told Jess she'd be back. On the other hand, she needed to be here to tell the EMTs what had happened, and possibly deal with whoever was following the mystery million-dollar man.

Mel cursed under her breath before searching for Prophet’s pursuers. She spotted a black armoured van with no plates that couldn’t have been more conspicuous about the fact that it was trying to be inconspicuous if it tried, and decided that it was the most likely candidate. The truck screeched to a stop in front of the ruins of Prophet’s bike, and a veritable conga line of black clad figures streamed out of the double doors holding something that Mel presumed was some kind of cattle-prod.

Shit. Shitshitshit. If the EMTs walk up into that there’s no way it’ll go well. I’m gonna have to clear them out, aren’t I? Mel thought. She opened her phone, and double checked that Doctor Who was set to record. She suspected that she’d be a bit late. Once that was done, she hit shuffle on the playlist labelled “Gym Mix”. If I’m going to do this, I may as well do it with a bit of style, she muttered to herself before calmly grabbing the rope and stepping off the roof.

Her wrapped hand started to heat up as she fell down the building, holding the rope just tight enough so as to avert the sudden stop at the end. She landed just as she heard the opening chords to On Your Knees. The figures in black dragged their attention away from what was left of the bike to focus on the more imminent threat who, despite what the papers may have dubbed her, wouldn’t be particularly merciful tonight.

The first strode up, and tried a jab with his cattle prod which Mel saw coming a mile off, which left him wide open for Mel to roll around behind and kick him onto the sparky end of his prod. Mel smirked. This’d be a breeze. Next guy walked forwards, gripping his cattle prod with white knuckles. She raised an eyebrow. Anyone who had to prioritise strength over style hadn’t spent nearly enough time at this whole ‘fighting’ shindig to pose anything vaguely resembling a threat to her. He joined his buddy on the floor just as the lyrics started.

Bitch in black, hard as stone;

Another goon, another roundhouse kick to the jaw, another one down for the count. She stifled a yawn.

Need no friends, work alone;

The remaining soldiers started to catch on, and began fanning out in a bid to surround her. Mel grinned at the prospect of this fight finally becoming something akin to interesting.

Three on one, but they shoulda sent four;

She dropped to the ground before sweeping her leg around the group, knocking nearly all of them of balance. She started working her way around the group, punching and elbowing with her left while blocking incoming blows from the handful that had had the presence of mind to avoid her kick earlier with her right.

Every time you stand up you’re back on the floor;

Mel became a whirlwind, a flurry of kicks, punches, and blocks. Graceful chaos. It took all of four and a half minutes to deal with all but four of the remaining goons. Make that three left, she thought as she felt cartilage crunch beneath her fist as it collided with someone's nose.

If you fuck with Tex you’ll be on;

She threw a punch which he blocked, using his other hand to throw a punch to her midriff that she didn’t quite block but was able to power through. She feinted right and got him with an uppercut to the jaw, and he went down.

Your knees;

Second-to-last goon stood up to the plate and wound up a punch that Mel was sure would’ve been terribly impressive had she not grabbed his fist and wrenched the arm behind his back, leaving him somewhat unable to defend himself against the kick to his tailbone that sent him sprawling.

For su-ure;

The last goon went between looking around at the bodies of his comrades in varying states of consciousness around him and looking at Mel slowly advancing toward him before doing the only sensible thing he could’ve done at that point: making a beeline for the van and driving away.

Mother fucker.

A minute later, the ambulance that she’d called for Prophet turned the corner into the alleyway. The driver hopped out and jogged up to her.

“So.” he started, “This is the infamous Mercy. Pleasure to meet you.” He went in for a handshake, which Mel returned. “Where’s this biker?” the medic asked.

“He got up and ran.” She started explaining. “Long story. These guys were following him with less than savoury intentions, so now they’re not following him anymore. I tried not to make your jobs unnecessarily difficult, but I think I felt a couple bones breaking in there. You guys got this from here?” Mel asked.

“We’ll need to call a few more ambulances to get them all back to the hospital, but yeah.” The driver said, turning around to look at what remained of the goons. “I reckon we’ve got this.” He said, turning back around to face thin air. He stood there for a moment before muttering something to the effect of “every goddamn time.”

Mel was up on her rooftop, having changed back into her gym clothes. She called Jess, recognising that it would probably be courteous to explain her lateness.

“Hey Mel!” Jess’s voice rang from the receiver.

“Hi Jess, just wanted to say I’m gonna be a bit late. Traffic’s absolute hell tonight. Two questions. Number one: Have you had dinner yet?” Mel asked.

“Can’t say I have.” Jess replied.

“Ok. Question two: If I were to pick up pizza on my way back, what would you be wanting on yours?” Mel waited for Jess to consider her options.

“Uhh…I’ll go with an Irony Pizza, thanks.”

“Half vegetarian, half meatlovers?”

“That’s the one.”

“Ok. See you in a bit.” Mel hung up. She needed to see someone about a pizza.

A.N. 

Alright, first chapter! Finally finished! That took longer than I care to admit. Any thoughts, comments, queries, spelling mistakes that I overlooked, please put in the comments section below. Thank you all, I'll see you next fortnight with Chapter 2 (which recently went through a name change).