Mercy doesn't really think that she can take four people at once. She's not expecting any of the four to fight back. In her experience, most people are cowards. 

There are four of them, though, and there's a hyena cage below them. One of the girls pins her arm to the railing. Tor Hauer twists her so she's hanging halfway over it. The hyenas have woken up, and are staring up at her, probably wondering if she's food. Lance yells something about how they're all going to get in so much trouble for this.

She's not terrified of this situation. She has one free hand. She probably only needs a few seconds to push off the railing again and punch whoever she needs to punch to go back to having two free hands.

She doesn't get a couple seconds, though. The hyenas don't move, but something passes from the hyenas to her. Beyond that, she doesn't have words to describe the experience.

The grip on her arm loosens and Tor pulls her back.

He jogs around the corner and looks intensely irritated that nothing unacceptable seems to be going on. "This area is closed. Why did you all come down here?"

Mercy starts giggling. Everyone but Lance starts giggling, actually, like they're all in on a joke that everyone else is really stupid for not getting.

"You okay?" he asks Lance.

"Yeah. I - they - uh, yeah."

He hasn't been injured. He keeps glancing worriedly at the other kids, though.

"All of you get detention for a week for entering an unauthorized area, coulda been dangerous. If you'd thrown him in you'd be in jail so I'd say you should also thank Mercy for saving you from yourselves."

There's more giggling, but this time it dies down.

     "Thanks," says Kyle.

"No problem," says Mercy.

He shooes them out.

So the kids go back to wandering around the zoo, and at the end of the day everyone goes home. 

A few days later, principal Flutie has Herbert the pig hang out at gym class, so that kids will see their fierce razorback mascot and remember to try their hardest for the school. (Principal Flutie may not actually understand that gym class contains very little sports these days.) You can't really just let a baby pig run around wildly, so mostly Karen is holding him and and occasionally talking to other people about how cute he is. 

There's a dog outside. She thinks it's a dog. It's peeking in through one of the windows - the ones that must be at least thirty feet up. It's peeking from above. The dog is on the roof. It looks like it's staring very intently at her, until she remembers that she's holding a pig, so probably it's staring at the pig. She stares back.

One of the kids falls on his face, across the room from her. He's very insistent that Mercy tripped him.

He can swap partners if he'd like.

That resolves that.

The next day, pieces of Herbert the pig are found where Herbert the pig is supposed to be sleeping. He appears to have been eaten. Flutie is distraught.

So is he, actually. Herbert liked rain and was stressed out about there being so many kids around and loathed Cordelia Chase's perfume and thought the gym smelled like it ought to be tasty but wasn't and -

- and had a better life than nearly every pig out there, which he's doing nothing about because it makes him too sad -

He calls in sick. He goes out looking for demons.

Welp. Time to put on her big girl pants and figure out who killed Herbert, then. Herbert hasn't been around very long, but he's cute, or was before whatever got to him did, and bringing the pig-killer to justice sounds like a job for - the Sunnydale High School Sentinel doesn't really have investigative journalists, really, but it should, and something something be the change you want to see in the world.

She asks around the school for suspects other than the weird parkour dog, because she doesn't really know how she's going to track down a dog. Lots of kids have ideas, and while nobody has anything super substantial, enough people had seen Kyle DuFours and his crew in the vicinity that she thinks she may have a lead. One of the kids mentions that Principal Flutie already asked about this earlier in the morning, at which point she figures that maybe she should go down to the principal's office and see whether Flutie's put anything together.

She's too late.

Paging Alex. Flutie's dead.

Shit. Of what?

He, uh. He was eaten. In his office. Um - I'm not a detective or anything but he's - he's, uh, he's not all dried out like he'd be if it was a while ago.

Yup, that's recent. Can you look around - I'm sorry - I can only see what you see -

Yeah, on it.

She looks over Flutie's corpse and the scene in general. Flutie's had a lot of chunks taken out of him. The area is pretty messed up; Karen is, again, not a detective, but she'd say that there was at least something in the way of a struggle. 

It looks more like orcs than like wild animals.

He doesn't say that. 

I assume you weren't getting anywhere on Herbert's killers?

Oh, no, I had two entire suspects. Suspect number one was parkour dog from yesterday, but given that Flutie had just called in Kyle and his crew for questioning before - well, this - I am kind of leaning towards suspect number two, the aforementioned -

She happens to glance out the window.

Parkour dog is staring at her from outside.

"HEY," she screams, and takes off.

He runs a stoplight.

She jumps out the window and tackles parkour dog. Parkour dog is.... honestly entirely indistinguishable from a normal dog, and also seriously lacking blood on his face, which if he were a normal dog would pretty much clear his name, but a normal dog couldn't do that anyway, and she has no idea what qualities hypothetical demonic dogs might have.

This is either a vicious killer or the most innocuous red herring ever.

The dog whimpers pitifully.

He arrives at a run a short time later, carrying a tranquilizer gun and a real gun and a backpack. "You think it's him?"

She's holding the dog like a normal dog now and is giving him ear scritches.

"Well. On the one hand, he was definitely staring at Herbert from the roof yesterday, and he was also hanging out outside Flutie's office just now? On the other hand, he's like, small and adorable, and also actually seems to be a normal dog in all ways."

"Huh." He holsters the real gun and drops down onto his hands and knees.

He sends concepts. Eating people, getting scritches, climbing on roofs...