Disclaimer: Nope. Still not mine.

Note: Comic book continuity, not movie, and just for the first Kick Ass series with a few elements from the second series. (On account of I haven't gotten around to reading the second series yet. Someday, someday…) Doesn't make a huge difference, but mentioning it might prevent some of the nit-picky email about some detail being incorrect.

Hydrophobia

Mindy slipped into the room and shut the door without a sound. She didn't have any nefarious intent, it was just habit, moving silently and without being noticed.

Well, maybe a little nefarious…

"Mindy! What the hell?"

"Stop being such a pussy. We've taken showers together before."

"Yah, when you were ten and we had to get you cleaned up and you could barely stand up by yourself. You're not ten anymore. You're…" Dave waved toward her with the hand that wasn't covering his tunk, accidentally flicking a nipple because he determinedly was not looking at her. "Ah! Sorry. But that's what I'm talking about. You're not a little girl any more and it's not right for you to be in here with me."

"Jeez, fuckin' calm down, will you? I'm not in here to seduce you, I just want you to wash my fucking back. My shoulder's still stiff from the other night."

Dave wouldn't listen, just got out and left her to wash her own fucking back. And he kept that one hand in place, too, so she didn't even get more of a glimpse than when she first opened the curtain to get in. It's not like she was totally craving the cock, not even a little, but she was a little, you know, curious. Whatever. Dave was being such a pussy tonight, he probably had an innie, not an outie.

He took the towel, too. Douchebag.

...ooo000ooo...

Mindy glared at Dave, though there was no real heat behind it. "OK, fine. We don't kill them, you cockmaster. But we're still going to rob them. And you have to tie them up and call the police."

She had mixed feelings about all this. These guys were scumbags, they'd probably never amount to anything, and they were probably going to go on to commit more crimes after they got out of prison. If they even went to prison. Killing them now, before they committed more crimes, just made sense. Ounce of prevention and all that.

But Dave had a point, too. Killing in the heat of a fight was one thing. Killing them after they were down was another. It was a slippery step from killing a couple of fences who had a roomful of stolen stuff, to tracking down people who maybe might do something wrong.

Mindy let it bounce around in the back of her mind as she popped open a couple of lock-boxes. The best reason for killing any criminal that you found, instead of giving him to the police, was that he'd just be released and would go on to commit more crime. The robbers and killers and rapists were a problem, but the DAs and lawyers and judges were a bigger problem because they let the first problem keep on being a problem. Daddy had said something about that a few times.

And that didn't even look at high-level criminals, Genovese and the rest, who just bought cops and judges and never spent a day in jail.

She couldn't figure it out. Not yet, anyway. She'd only just turned twelve and still had a lot to learn. For now, she'd follow Dave's lead and turn them over to the police. Maybe they'd go straight, maybe they'd stay in jail, maybe they'd go back to what they'd been doing.

She could always kill them later.

...ooo000ooo...

"Dammit!" Mindy had just gotten dumped on her face while sparring with Dave. Growth spurts sucked, with her legs the wrong length and her balance being off and she'd miss when she grabbed for a weapon on her back. And now her tits hurt like a bitch because she'd just landed on them. "These fucking tits have got to go!"

"No, don't cut them off," Dave told her. "You're going to want them someday. Like when you want to get a boyfriend."

"Fuck that. You think I'm going to settle down and find some pussy normal guy and have two kids and a puppy and a fucking minivan? Shit, it'll be a fucking miracle if I live long enough to 'settle down'. And that's even if these fucking tits don't get me killed."

"No, you wouldn't work with an ordinary guy. Find an extraordinary guy. You're a hero. Find a hero."

"What, you setting yourself up for the job? You're not a hero, you're a sidekick."

"Ouch. This sidekick dumped you on your ass, I hope you noticed."

"Everyone gets lucky once in a while. That was your once. And that's the only way you're getting lucky with me."

"Hah. No problem. You're cute, but you're too young for me. You're barely a teenager. Now stop rubbing your tits while you're looking at me and get back to work. We're not done sparring today."

Oh, he was so dead now. Mindy beat him down in the next three matches.

...ooo000ooo...

"Mindy! Mindy! Stop it! Stop it now and get away from him!"

She'd just been minding her own business in this giant-ass bookstore, reading the book she'd just bought as she walked to the exit for Dave to pick her up, when this guy just started feeling her up. When she knocked his hand away, he jumped at her and tried to shove his hand in her pants. That's all she wrote. This dickwad is going down!

Someone picked her up and she lashed out, nailing a face with her elbow.

"Oof!"

She recognized that Oof. She'd heard it plenty of times in practice.

"Dave? What are you doing here?"

That had to wait as a manager and two security guards – the typical old-fat and young-scrawny – came up and demanded explanations.

"I– I don't know what happened. I wasn't paying attention, when he grabbed me and– and started feeling me. I was so scared!"

Big Daddy had taught her to play the Innocent Little Girl card when she was five. It stopped working so well when she was about ten but now it was working again, thanks to the tits she was growing. Who knew they'd ever come in useful?

"Don't… Please don't tell my mom, OK? She wants me to be a lady and she says ladies don't fight."

Suckers. They let her go after getting her name – "Mindy Reed" – and the number of the throw-away phone she carried, and they didn't even call her mother.

...ooo000ooo...

Mindy was running away from Dave. It was a slow night, so she'd smacked his arm, yelled "Tag-you're-it!", and scrambled up a fire escape. It was good exercise, good training, and good, clean fun.

Not so clean. Dave missed a jump. He was lucky that a dumpster was there and that its lid was plastic. She came down another fire escape to see if the doof needed help getting out and if he'd broken anything.

But what's that? From her perch two floors up, she saw that a car had just pulled into the little parking lot and let out four costumed Cunts with bats or something in their hands. It was like a late birthday present, just for her!

Dave caught up as she was checking the bodies. "What was that? Why did you have to kill them?"

"If you'll shut up a minute I'll tell you. Jeez! You babble like a girl."

Dave glared at her and then looked pointedly at the pile of bodies she was looting. He didn't say anything, though. Good. She'd been trying to break him of his habit of carrying on like a little bitch when they were out on the street.

"Look at them. Look at their costumes. They're Cunts, or Cunt wanna-bes. What do you need, business cards saying I'm a Cunt. It's OK for Hit Girl to kill me?"

"I can see how they're dressed. What were they doing, that you had to kill them? Did they ambush you while I was getting out of the dumpster?"

"Oh, like I'd let that happen. Real fuckin' brilliant idea, letting them get the drop on me. Look at that shit they were carrying. They were getting ready to break heads or something. They weren't going to just turn themselves in to one girl, not even Hit Girl.

"Now come on. Help me carry the loot back to the safe house. We need to hose you down. You stink like garbage."

...ooo000ooo...

Mindy smirked as she popped the lock an hour later. Did he really think a lock on an interior door was going to stop the unstoppable Hit Girl? Not that many people would recognize her as Hit Girl without her uniform and purple hair. Checking herself in the bathroom mirror, she nodded in approval. She wasn't even done growing yet but she was fuckin' Hot Girl.

"Dammit, Mindy! What are you doing here? I've told you I don't want you coming into the shower with me."

"Relax, dumbass. I trust you not to do anything I don't want and I hope that after three years you trust me."

"I can't even trust you to respect a locked door and let me take a shower by myself."

"Dave, shut up and listen for a minute. I need you to hold me. I almost died tonight. One of those Cunts almost got me. It was just luck that I didn't eat a bullet." She wasn't exaggerating, or not much. It had been close, but she'd gotten her face out of the way and chopped his wrist with both swords with a good half second to spare. Maybe a quarter second.

The big doofus wrapped his arms around her like she wanted. She ignored what she felt at belly level, both outside and inside her body. This wasn't about that.

"I'm glad you weren't killed," Dave said into her hair. "I'd miss you. Next time, slow down a minute for me to catch up so you don't have to take on four guys at a time."

"Ha. I'm only ever going to take on one guy at a time, you perv." She couldn't help rubbing against him. She wasn't here for sex, just holding, but it wouldn't be that bad if he wanted it. And it was good, if she could make that happen down at waist level. It gave her the control she needed.

"So, what, you couldn't wait five minutes for me to finish showering and get some pants on before you decided you needed to be held?"

"I was feeling vulnerable. Fuckin' sue me. I needed you to be vulnerable, too. Just be glad I got undressed, so you weren't naked while I was still wearing my uniform and my weapons. Besides, I know you're too busy to have a girlfriend, so I'm giving you some Grade-A prime jerkin' material as pay-back."

"Oh, fuck you."

Mindy laughed and handed Dave her shampoo, making sure to rub her ass against him when she turned to grab the bottle. It was good to have him helping her tonight. She'd gotten blood in her hair under the wig and in her eyebrows and even in her goddamn ears and it would have taken her forever to get it all out by herself.

They worked out some "rules" for showering together. She got Dave to admit that sometimes it would be necessary. He got her to agree to come in only if it was really necessary, and they'd both keep their hands off each other except for washing backs and stuff. She could work with that. He didn't nail down what "necessary" meant, so she could interpret it however she wanted. And he didn't really mind he coming in, if the boner meant anything. He must just be objecting because he was expected to. She could work with that.

...ooo000ooo...

Mindy saw a group of men walk around the corner of a building and thought Jackpot! The way they were walking, the way they were looking around, the way they left a couple of lookouts all spelled drug buy. Or some other illegal purchase. And that meant cash. Come to mama, she thought. Baby needs a new pair of boots. What movie did that come from? Fuck it, stay focused.

But if she was going to be thinking about a movie, it should be a war movie, with bodies everywhere. And a cute teenage girl looting the bodies for anything valuable.

No, dammit! Focus! What the fuck was wrong with her head tonight?

And Dave had been nagging at her about minimum force and letting scumbags surrender and giving them to the police and all that stupid shit. Dammit. She didn't want to make him mad but she was right. Once a scumbag, always a scumbag. But she should give them a chance to give up. Dammit.

She was still going to rob them, dead or alive. Mama needs a new pair of boots. Hiding her grimace under her "hunting" face, Mindy pulled her head back to the task at hand.

She signed for Dave to watch out for anyone coming, especially friends of these guys. Or cops. She didn't want any cops to come along before she was done because they'd take the money as evidence and make it disappear and she needed it. Body armor didn't buy itself and she hadn't finished growing.

Mindy slid toward the lookouts like a panther.

That's the kind of movie she should be thinking about, a nature documentary with lions killing a whole herd of zebras or something. That even fit because with real lions, the females did the killing. The male chased the prey to the females. She should train Dave to flush the game toward her and—

Dammit! Focus, you stupid shit!

She pounced.

"Hands up! You're under arrest!" she yelled as she swung her swords at the heads of the two lookouts. It wasn't easy to knock someone out with a sword, but it could be done if you tried hard enough.

"Don't move! Everyone down!" They'd have one chance.

They weren't cooperative.

Dave came running up just in time to see Mindy flicking the blood from her blades. "Jesus, Mindy. Again? Did you have to kill them all?"

"What do you think? It's not like they were letting me just take them in." She kicked one man in the crotch, getting a clunk. "Though this dumbass would have shot his own balls off getting his gun out. Now come on. Help me find their cash. One of 'em's going to be carrying a big wad."

Score! Ten grand in a bundle, a couple grand besides, bling, some handguns that weren't worth crap – chrome and ivory don't turn a piece of crap into anything but gaudy crap – and a couple bags of white stuff. Mindy pocketed the cash and jewelry and split open the bags.

"Hey, Dave, piss on this pile."

"What?"

"You heard me. Whip it out! I'd pour peroxide on it to ruin it, but my bottle got squished. Looks like it ruined my uniform, too. Doesn't matter. It was getting too tight anyway. But we need to ruin this coke before anyone gets here."

"I don't see why we can't just throw garbage on it, but all right. But if I get picked up as a sex offender for public urination around an underage girl, I'll never forgive you."

"If anyone comes by, I think they'll be looking at the dead bodies, not that little thing, you doof."

Even with Dave's yammering it was not even three minutes from the first rush in until the two were walking around the other way. She hadn't spotted any witnesses, either.

...ooo000ooo...

Mindy drifted off into the sleep of the just and the truly happy and the completely satisfied.

Dave had almost died. They had been out on patrol, looking especially for more of the Cunts, and he'd been distracting her with his babbling and gotten them ambushed. Sure, she'd killed them all – Dave did his fair share, she had to admit; he'd gotten a lot better – but one guy shot at Mindy and she dodged and it hit Dave in the chest. She'd killed the last two Cunts and helped Dave to their safe house, not even stopping to loot the bodies, and peeled off the top of his wetsuit so she could check him.

Just a broken rib. Thank God. There wasn't even much bleeding.

"You got lucky, you dumbass. And you're lucky you didn't die. I'd have been really sad and had to kick your ass."

"Well, I'm glad that didn't happen, then. Keeping you happy is the most important thing in the world, right?"

Mindy smiled and hugged him – carefully! – and thought about going for a kiss. She chickened out, but tugged his wetsuit the rest of the way off, followed by her own clothes. There was something wrong with their relationship if she could get naked with him but was afraid to kiss him. No, not something wrong and not something right, it was just the way it was. She was special and he was special and together they were something special.

"Come on, let's get you cleaned up before I dress that rib. I'll help catch you if you get wobbly."

Mindy blatantly violated the shower rules, and one thing led to another. Mindy had known that a bit of physical attraction had been growing over the past year – growing in both directions, thanks to shower time – but she hadn't realized just how much he meant to her until she almost lost him. She couldn't say the words, but she was going to show him how she felt, even if it killed them both.

Dave took some persuading, of course. He said she was too young, but who's to say what's too young? She was old enough to know what she wanted, and what she wanted was Dave. And it's not like he was pushing her into it, which was the usual concern with a younger girl. Quite the opposite.

The only real problem was his nerve damage. Mindy had to be more forceful than she'd expected, but eventually she got him in the mood.

And it was everything she'd hoped for.

She curled into him afterward. She could trust him. She hadn't been able to trust anyone since her father died, but Dave would always be there, always do what was right. She was safe in his arms. She had him and she'd never let him go.

Mindy went to sleep making plans for sex in the shower and then telling her mother about her new boyfriend. She smiled as she drifted off, thinking about how she'd never wake up without him again.

Author's Note: For the first time, I asked a few people to look over one of my fanfics before I published it. Thanks to Makokam (FFN author 713889) and The Fallen Sky (577635) and also to one of my sons (not an FFN author, so far as I know) for very helpful comments. (The Fallen Sky, in particular, showed evidence of having thought more about my characters' characters and motivations than I had. Rather embarrassing, that was.)