Chapter 2: Statistical Analysis for Fun and Prophet

The next twenty-something hours were a blur for Mel, going between pizza with Jess to passing out on the couch from exhaustion to class and work in a haze, running through the motions without any real thought behind them before finally finding herself at 57 Pinemay Road, at 7:15 p.m. In the preceding hours, she’d read and re-read Prophet’s note until it had reached the border of losing all meaning. She had questions, and hopefully here she would find some answers. Mel took a deep breath, counted to three, and gave a cautious knock on the door. She almost wasn’t surprised to find the door open barely a second after her knuckles had hit the wood.

Prophet’s head poked out of the door for a second. Mel waited while he closed the door, undid the various locks and latches, and finally re-opened the door.

“Hurry, get in!” Prophet whispered. She entered the foyer as he closed the door quietly. “Did anyone see you?” he asked, urgency almost overwhelming his desire to stay quiet. “I don’t think so.” Mel answered. She’d done her best to make sure no-one followed her, but it was generally pretty damn hard to be sure when you didn’t have the faintest idea who might be following you.

“Right. Answers. Who-“ was as far as Mel got before Prophet interrupted her.

“I am Prophet, created as an experiment into what artificial intelligence might do when given a body. The people who you dealt with in the alley last night are my quote-unquote “caretakers” in the loosest interpretation of the term possible, and I don’t look like a robot because of my shade. Those…were the three questions you were about to ask, were they not?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. Mel looked at him for a second, before deciding that there were at least two more questions before moving in for the big one. “How-“ Prophet cut her off again.

“How did I do that? Statistical analysis.” Prophet started. “I’ve had approximately twenty-three hours, one minute and 57 seconds to work through the most likely questions you would ask, and in what order. People do not call me ‘Prophet’ simply because it sounded ‘cool’, Mercy." He glanced down to her to see a look that was at best withering. Prophet considered for a moment before speaking. "I should-"

"Stop doing that? Yeah." Mel interrupted. Prophet looked sheepish fr a moment before continuing.  "To answer your other question, my ‘shade’ is a hard-light human façade to avoid my looking somewhat conspicuous among the general populace. Allow me to demonstrate.” He lightly touched the tab on his neck that Melissa had noticed in the alleyway, and the shade flickered before disappearing.

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.

Part 1: Welcome To Your Life (Chapter List)

Chapter 1: An Average Saturday Night
Chapter 2: Statistical Analysis for Fun and Prophet
Chapter 3: When It Rains...
Chapter 4: ...It Pours
Chapter 5: Showtime
Chapter 6: A Tale of Two Heroes
Chapter 7: This Town Ain't Big Enough

Interlude: When All This Was Fields

Welcome!

So, you're probably wondering why you're here. To be honest, so am I, but enough about life's great mysteries. This blog is the first proper testing bed for my story/novel/web-book...thing, An Ace Up My Sleeve. It's a story about a vigilante named Melissa, and a vigilante named Antony, and another vigilante whose name I can't tell you because it's kind of a spoiler. It's a story about an asshole whose name no-one says, and it's a story about two other ex-assholes named Felix and Jane. It's a story about justice, a story about fitting crime-fighting into a schedule that should ideally also involve getting your homework done on time, and a story about how occasionally having one more ace up your sleeve might just save your life.

But above all, it's a story about people. And I entrust their story to your care.

Housekeeping wise, any constructive criticism I will welcome with open arms, and can be left in the comments. I'll try to keep it updated with a chapter every other week, starting on 07/05. This post will be followed by a chapter list for Part 1. Thank you.