Just One Girl

The trouble with vampires sometimes is that they're too easy to kill. The stab and poof of a good lurk dusting is kinda unsatisfying when what Mel really wants to do is beat senseless one or two of the lousy bloodsuckers.

She finds herself taking it out on some poor radie whose only mistake was to get involved in a brawl at the tav where Mel happened to be for her post-dusting cup of sak. Pulling herself off him, she buys him a drink and leaves some coin behind the bar to get him through the night before heading out.

Fray, she tells herself, you got to get your head back in the game.

At another tav she hooks up with a girl called Xiu, and is invited back to her place. Mel stops after a while, though, when she realizes that Xiu's heart isn't in it, and instead the two of them sit out on a rooftop talking about Xiu's abusive ex-girlfriend. It doesn't fix Mel's problem, but it does seem to do the job for Xiu, at least part of it.

"Always about me,"she says. "I needed to try harder, she weren't a psychic. She needed me, you know?"

Mel nods. "Seen it." Too many times. Never lived it, always avoided that, even before 'Ways gave her a new perspective on what relationships could actually be.

"What up with you?" Xiu asks. "You clearly got toy to spin yourself through, too."

"S'complicated." Which of course is equal parts 'I don't wanna talk about it' and 'it involves magic interdimensional bars and I don't even know where to begin explaining that.'

"Something to do with the lurks?"

Mel eyes her sideways. "You know about that?"

Xiu gives her a half crooked smile. "Com'on. Ain't a folk in Versi don't know Mel Fray, big bad lurk duster."

It makes Mel smile. "Yeah," she admits. "It's something to do with lurks." And a lot of other things, certainly including her own baggage about ex-lovers. But today it comes down to lurks. "Sometimes it gets like just dusting them ain't enough."

"Oh yeah,"says Xiu. "I know how that goes." And maybe she does.

When Mel gets back to her library, there's a bug from Gunther with a job for her. A tough one, too; running the uppers, requiring meticulous focus on a couple tricky locks. And like a bonus, a couple of Rubin's boys turn up with an clear desire to be pummeled into the ground by an angry thief.  

Fishstick always knows what she needs, somehow.

These last few months, the hallways in Milliways have been quiet at night.

Some of the lights have gone; exploded in bursts of energy leaving husks of broken glass instead of bulbs. You'd've thought they'd all be replaced, but maybe the Loompas haven't got around to it.

Mel finds an odd sort of comfort in patrolling - beyond that it's what she does and gives her a target to focus on, it's a way, at least, to get out of the suite with quality Mel-time.

And to explore new ways of getting around the place without being visible. Right now, for instance, she's turned her regular, fruitless patrol into some sort of parody of the game 'Floor of lava', using her skills as a cat burglar to make it down the hall never touching the floor, thanks to doorframes and tables and light fittings, and an occasional dado rail.

Attacks have been down, and she's not expecting much satisfaction tonight. The comfort is in being by herself.

It's familiar ground.

It's more than familiar ground. It's ground she visited nightly for five years. It's ground she pounded time and time again before a floodgate was switched in her brain, letting through torrents of fights and vampires and monsters and horrors that were a relief after knowing this.

She's here again, but she can't change it.

She can't change any of it.

"Mel.. This is stupid. We're gonna get celled..."

"Not a prayer, Scaredy. We're eating Meat tonight."

It washes over her like a blanket; warm, familiar and comforting. Family and trust, self knowledge and assuredness. And Love. Love with all of the strength and the power that can only be felt by the innocent, those yet to be hurt by love.

"Whoooaayhhh! Melaka!"

Two halves of the same person. Together forever, no matter what life throws at them in their future. They can face together. They can face anything together. Mel will always always protect her Harth.

"Scaredy. You're lucky I got two hands. 'Cause if it was you or the food..."









"You. Are the Food."

-------------------

Mel jerks in the bed, fighting the urge to scream herself awake.

-------------------

Don't scream.

Something's wrong.

Of course something's wrong. There's a lurk standing in front of Mel, lips curled back over fangs, forehead twisted in that way they have.

("Melaka..." "Harth... Just start walking.")

"Don't be frightened, little ones..."

His accent isn't Haddyn. Mel's never met anyone didn't have a Haddyn accent.

Don't think.

"Fight? You? That's..."

She's doesn't have a choice. She has to fight this lurk. This tall, thin, black haired lurk who wants to kill her - kill her brother.

Thin? Black Hair? Something's....

Don't think.

"Harth, go!"

He's not going. He's staying. He's watching. It's like a scope to him. He's not going to run. That's the problem. He's going to stand and watch his sister's face torn open and he's going to go to him and she's going to watch him be killed.

Again.

Again.

Again.

"NO!"

The hand closes over her face, and she's so terrified she's aware she might soil herself, but at the same time, she's relieved. Now she just has to fall to her doom and it'll all be over.

She has to watch Harth die first.

It's as the lurk's teeth crunch into Harth's neck, as Mel succumbs to gravity, that she realises what's wrong.

That isn't Icarus.

Think equals scream.

--------

Mel wakes herself screaming.

Mel has plans for Christmas.

These involve staying well out of everyone's way all morning, eating and drinking vast amounts in the suites at around midday, then skipping out before the clean up with a huge hamper of food and drink and doing the same in the tav in Versi. She spent most of yesterday helping to clean it up, and Erin should be helping out now. It's going to be a great day.

Right now though, is part one of the plan: stay out of everyone's way and avoid all work. She's marked it as pre-dawn training, and is running around the lake a few times, wrapped up snugly in a tracksuit, but without her scythe: Steph has co-opted it for present opening.

It's not like she'll need it or anything: it's a run around the lake: what can go wrong?

It's been a long night. Mel had a particularly tough grab in the Uppers, and set upon by an unusually together group of lurks on her way home. Oh, and then she had to clear up after a murder.

Rutting domestics. She hates men sometimes.

OK, not all of them. But she's tired, messy, and no longer looking forward to a shower in the near future. Maybe once she's told Mike of the situation, there'll at least be snuggles.

Once she finds him.

The suite's eerily quiet without babies in it.

Which is why Mel moved a four-armed monkey demon into it. And then promptly locked him in the bathroom. Maybe he'll flush himself down the waterslide and she won't have to worry about him any more.

Meanwhile, Mel has a much more important task at hand; what to do with her sword.

It's not an expensive, perfectly balanced piece of swordcraft by any means; it's a practice weapon from the bar and she's only used it once. But it did look interesting above the mantel with Lilly's sword. Without its partner now, it just looks a bit sad.

So Mel's standing in the middle of an empty suite, swinging the hardly used weapon in her hand and debating what to do with it.

There's been a lot going on with the tenants of suites 132 and 134, what with Slaying and grabbing and invalids and blossoming romances and relaunching businesses and security and bartending and things. A lot.

What there hasn't been, in someone's very important opinion, is enough Stampy-loving.

And when there's not enough Stampy loving, bad things happen.

Like sacred dedicated scythe-like weapons that certain miniphants won't let go off, no matter how much dangling-from-her-trunk it involves.

"No, really, Bignose, I hafta go to work."

She's gotten so used to coming and going through her window/the front door, that Mel pretty much takes it for granted now that she can come and go between Milliways and Haddyn as she pleases. So when she climbs through the window this time round, it takes her a few seconds to realise she's not in Kansas any more.

That's a twentieth century expression. She's been hanging around Mikey too long.

Her slouched posture doesn't change as she glances around this strange formless place, but she does slide her not'scythe out of the sheath on her back, taking the opportunity as she does so to glance at the switchblade inside her wrist. Not glowing, so she's not actually in danger yet.

She stands still, waiting for something new to happen.

Stupid lurks. Why do they always gotta fight back?

Mel and Mike are sleeping in 132 all the time now, so when she slips in 134, it's with the confidence that he won't be there to see her limp stiffly in and over to the guest bathroom, where she grabs a quick shower to wash the blood off. Pulling on the fresh pants and T-shirt she brought with her, she drops the blood stained clothes in the laundry as she limps back out again.

Failing to find an Indy to occupy her, she doesn't intend to stay long. Just long enough to grab a bottle of juice and head downstairs for an hour or so shift while her leg heals.

Super healing. A time honoured Slayer tradition of making sure the ones you love don't notice how beaten up you are every night.

It takes Mel by surprise.

Not the lurks - though they're not as common since she killed Harth. Maybe Makita's right and the rutters are killing each other. Mel can only hope. These guys, though, are the lowest of the low, four skeletal corpses of what were almost certainly shooters, not even on the way to being pumps, before they caught vampirism like some sort of disease. She stubbled upon them on the way home from Gunther's and it's almost a welcome diversion, something to play with.

So she launches into them with characteristic lust for violence.

And it's not the ferocity of their attack that surprises her either. From the looks of things they've gone a few days without blood. From the litter strewn aorund their nest, death hasn't exactly cured them of their shooting habits, which is probably why. But a vampire starved of blood is a desperate, dangerous thing, and fights with more violence than usual.

So it's harder to dust them off than normal. They fight back. This is fine. Mel likes to fight.

Nor is it that temporarily they get the upper hand. That's OK, too, sometimes it happens. Mel will get her way up again. Besides, it's almost good. Brings a challenge, makes the blood pump just a little louder and harder, makes her feel alive.

It's not even that when one catches her a nasty blow on her wrist, it bends backwards and she's forced to drop her scythe, sending it clattering across the roof. Temporary setback.

What surprises her is the way that moment brings with it a feeling of sheer utter , which starts in her centre, seizing her lungs and heart in tight hot claws, driving out the air and sending every once of concentration from her brain. That's what surprises her, and gives the lurk fighting her the opportunity to throw her against a wall so hard blocks of concrete fall onto the roof from a few stories above. Hard enough that Mel's head whips back and hits the wall.

She's still trying to catch her breath when another of the picks her up and knocks her against the wall again and she feels her shoulders crack.

She's still trying to figure out what's going on when he laughs, and tosses her like a doll to his companion, who leers at her with yellow eyes and brings a toothy mought don to her neck.

Of course, that's when she decides she's had enough, and rams her head hard into his face.

Landing on her feet, she kicks him hard enough to send him flying off the roof, and sends the others sprawling as she sprints over to her weapon.

The sense of relief that washes over her as her hands close over the leather bound shaft is tangible. But it's not just relief, she's sure of it.

As the Slayer leaps to her feet, waving the scythe, and makes short work of one, two, three, four vampires, she feels it coursing through her, the power, the knowledge, the rightness of it all. She feels like she belongs.

Standing in the spiralling clouds of dust, she realises something's changed.