Greetings dear readers. This is my answer to Makokam's fanfic challenge about Mindy learning to ride the bike that was given to her in Chapter 40 of Precocious Crush. I hope everyone likes it.

As all the readers of The Case of the Santa Claus Strangler know, reviews are my addiction. Please feed said addiction. :-D

And awayyyyyy we go.

Mindy Macready, was –to put it mildly- frustrated.

The task at hand should NOT have been this hard. She had been taught a vast number of skills over the preceding years. She'd been taught martial arts, swordplay, firearms maintenance, marksmanship, you name it. Fuck, she'd even mastered driving a stick-shift car five years before she could even think of getting a driver's license. (Even Marcus and Dave didn't know how to drive a standard.)

On the whole, whenever Mindy had been thrown a task, she'd caught it, mastered it and threw it right back where it came from. That meant Mindy was at a loss to explain why she'd just planted herself into a snow bank, AGAIN, after falling off while attempting to ride her new bike.

"Mindy, you ok?" She heard Dave's voice call to her as she pushed herself out of the snow.

"FUCK!" Mindy screamed in frustration. She removed the purple bike helmet she was wearing and brushed snow out of her blonde hair.

"You almost had it there." Dave said helpfully.

"That's what you've said the last three times!" Mindy growled as she stood up and hoisted her bike up off the ground.

"Well, you did almost have it." Dave said sheepishly. He got a dirty look from Mindy in return.

"Almost doesn't count! There has to be something I'm the fuck doing wrong!"

"You're not doing anything wrong, Mindy."

"Then how come I've wound up on the fucking ground four times now?" She couldn't understand it. Dave rode his bike all the time –especially before he'd gotten his driver's license. He made it look easy. What the fuck was up with that? She breezed through routines that Dave was still working at. There had to be something fundamentally wrong with the space-time continuum if Dave has so easily mastered something so elemental and she couldn't seem to do it. "How old were you when you learned to ride?" She asked him.

"A two-wheeler? I was about five or six."

"You see? I'm twice that age and I'm eating as much snow as Justin Bieber eats dick."

Dave couldn't help but break in laughter. That comment was so…Mindy. "You're not playing the Bieber CD you got yesterday?"

"I'm saving it…For the next time we go to a shooting range." Mindy replied with a smirk.

"Can I try out my .38 on it?" Dave asked with a smile.

"Sorry dude, but my Colt 1911A1 has Bieber Fever and the only cure is to launch a .45 ACP round at it."

"That's my Mindy." Dave laughed. Mindy smiled back and fought to hide the shiver she was feeling. He'd referred to her as his Mindy. She definitely liked the sound of that.

"Was it hard for you when you learned to ride your bike?" She asked him.

"Not really. It wasn't entirely new to me. I'd had a tricycle when I was little, and then I'd had training wheels when I'd gotten my new bike." Dave recalled. "Do you want me to put some training wheels on the bike?" He said jokingly.

"Do you want me to rabbit punch you in the throat?" She asked with a dangerous smirk.

"No thanks." Dave laughed. "You're doing a lot better than I was doing, in comparison, you know. I started with smaller stuff and had worked my way up. You're jumping in headfirst. Shit, I'd have been terrified to start out on a bigger bike like this."

"Really?" Mindy asked him with narrowed eyes.

"Really. You're diving in head first."

"I'm diving into the fucking snow head first is what I'm doing."

"Don't let it get you down. I fell when my dad took my training wheels off."

"You did?" Mindy asked. It was stupid of her to ask, she thought. Of course he would have fallen. That's what people did when learning to ride bikes.

"Yeah. My mom was freaking out. She was afraid I'd break my neck or something. My dad just told her I'd be fine and I'd get it."

"My dad was starting to teach me martial arts when I was that age." Mindy said with a wistful tone to her voice.

"He was?" Dave asked rhetorically. He knew that Mindy's childhood had been pretty much a more benevolent version of what David Cain had put Cassandra through.

"Yeah. He never tried to teach me to ride a bike. It wasn't important to The Mission. He started me out with martial arts. Then he moved up to edged weapons. Next, he started me on guns."

"I guess you were great at all that right from the start?"

"Oh fuck no. I couldn't do anything right the first few months of martial arts. I could barely lift my first sword. And, I could barely get my fingers to pull the trigger on the guns we were using."

"Hold on! You mean, you didn't get it perfectly right away?"

"Fuck, how could I? I'd never done it before, I…." Mindy's voice trailed off as a smile crept over her face. "Oh, I've gotta hand it to you…That was smart." Mindy said in an admiring tone.

"Well shit, you shouldn't be so hard on yourself. You can't expect to be perfect when you're learning. When we started training, did you think I was going to be perfect right away?"

"Fuck no! To be honest, you've surprised me at how fast you've been picking it up, but I sure as shit didn't expect anything close to perfection."

"Then why do you expect it from yourself?"

"It beats the shit out of me. I guess I was so used to being able to pull off all the stuff my dad set up for me that I've forgotten what it's like to be *new* at something and not be really good at it."

"Well Mindy, if it makes you feel better riding a bike is pretty easy compared to some of the stuff I've seen you do." Dave looked up and down the quiet residential street of Mindy's neighbourhood. All was quiet on this Boxing Day, and there was nobody within earshot. "What you did that night in Rasul's apartment…I didn't think anybody could pull that off. Believe me, if you could do that. You're gonna nail riding a bike."

Mindy smiled at her friend's comforting words. "You really think so?"

"I know so." Dave said with a smile. Mindy found herself fighting an urge. She wanted to pin Dave down on the ground and start to kiss him. She really wanted to do that. She kept thinking back to the kiss they'd shared the night before. That had been really great…until Marcus' uber-bitch of a niece started taunting her about having a crush on Dave. Where the fuck did she get the idea she had a crush on him. Crushes were something dumbass tweens had on Justin Bieber or those either of those two fuckers in Twilight. (Team Edward or Team Jacob? Come on! Mindy had an inkling they were both more into each other than either was into Bella. Their scenes together contained as much homo-erotic content as the entire movie Top Gun.) She did not have a crush on Dave. She wanted to fuck his brains out, but she did not have a crush on him. She was (or had been) Hit-Girl and Hit-Girl did not do crushes.

"My dad said, when I was learning to ride, that you're winning so long as you don't quit." Dave said.

"Is that why you didn't quit being Kick-Ass after your first time out?"

"Maybe it was. Mind you, I think if my dad had known what I'd been up to, he might have said that quitting in that instance was OK." Dave laughed.

"I've never quit anything. And I'm sure as shit not starting now." Mindy said with a steely determination to her voice. It was the same determination he'd heard when she declared she planned to finish what she and her dad started.

"That's my Mindy." Dave said with an approving nod of his head.

Mindy replaced her purple bike helmet atop her head and fastened the chin strap. She stood the bike up again and mounted it.

"OK, just take it nice and slow. I'll run along and help keep you balanced until you get it. OK?"

"OK." Mindy said with a determined look to her face as she stared down the sidewalk.

"All set" Dave asked as he put his hands on her hips. Mindy suppressed a shiver of enjoyment at having Dave's hands on her like that.

"All set." She replied, as she found she was forcing herself to concentrate on riding the bike, rather than Dave's hands on her body.

"OK…Go!" Dave cried as he broke into a fast walk as Mindy began peddling. Slowly the bike began to move forward. He fought an urge to yell encouragement. He didn't want to jinx her or break her concentration.

Mindy's peddling motions became more rapid. Dave found himself moving up to a jog and then a light run. Ever so gently, he lifted his hands off her hips. Mindy didn't seem to notice their absence. Instead, she was peddling confidently and had enough momentum that she was moving forward smoothly. He slowed his running and Mindy pulled ahead of him. She was cruising down the sidewalk easily. She apparently hadn't noticed his absence. He saw she was coming to the end of the block.

"Ok Mindy, stop!" He called down to her.

Mindy squeezed the hand brakes and skidded to a stop. Putting her feet down, she turned around apparently expecting to see Dave standing right by her. Instead her eyes went wide in shock to see him standing about a dozen houses away from her. A wide smile broke over her face. Dave gestured for her to ride back as he returned the smile.

Mindy looked down towards him and began to peddle the bike back. With a small wobble, she started out slowly but soon picked up speed and her motion smoothed out. As she reached Dave, she braked again with a triumphant grin and leaped off –to his surprise- right into his arms.

"See? I told you that you could do it!" Dave laughed at her.

"Well, I had an awesome coach!" Mindy replied with a smirk. Impulsively she threw her arms around Dave and pulled him into a hug, trying not to let the shivers she felt at his closeness get to her.

Dave returned the hug as his own thoughts went into overdrive. The previous night, he'd gotten home and thought about the kiss she'd given him as he left her house. It was, to say the least, strange…but not as awkward as he'd have thought. He had Katie…and Mindy was not only five years younger than he was, but was his best friend to boot. Yet…the kiss she'd given him had felt…different than when he kissed Katie…but not in a bad way at all. He dismissed the thoughts from his head. As the old song said, it must have been the mistletoe.

"Well, you've been an awesome coach to me, so it was the least I could do." Dave replied with a grin.

"Thanks." Mindy said with a genuine smile. "I mean that."

"Anytime"

"Aren't you working later?"

"I have a short shift later in afternoon. I'm free this evening. Why?"

"I thought I'd come over to your place. I want to take another crack at I Wanna Be the Guy."

"Glutton for punishment?" Dave laughed.

"Fuck, if I can master the bike, I swear I won't let that game make me its bitch. I don't give a fuck if it drops the moon on me…again!" Mindy said with a determined laugh. She saw Dave was looking at her with a smile while shaking his head.

"What?" She asked him.

"Don't ever change Mindy. Don't ever change."