Greetings fellow Kick-Ass fans. Well, I've finally gotten started on my next major fic. I plan for this to be a long one, so get ready. LOL

Some of the characters seen here were originally shown in Makokam's Precocious Crush storyline. My fic-verse isn't connected to his aside from some shared characters, characters' names and possibly backgrounds.

For all of you Dave and Mindy fans...Good news. This will be the fic were they -eventually- realize their feelings and start to get busy. LOL Word of warning though, it'll likely be a good number of chapters before that happens. (I'm not even sure when certain things will take place.)

As my regular readers surely know by now, I'm as addicted to reviews as Mindy is to violence and marshmellows in her hot chocolate. Please feed my addiction or I'll have to sick her on you. LOL

BTW, props for anyone who can spot the Actor Allusion in a few lines I gave Mindy early on. :-D

And awayyyyyy we go. :-D

Kick-Ass and Hit-Girl: The War on Crime

Winter had arrived in New York City, turning the grey metropolis into a shade of…white and grey. Thanksgiving advertisements began to give way to Christmas decorations as the joyous spirit of the season took its annual effect…on most people.

In a high school cafeteria in Queens, one particular New Yorker was not feeling the Christmas spirit just yet.

"What a douche." Mindy Macready declared with disgust as she looked across the cafeteria of Millard Filmore High School. Her words caused her red-haired tablemate to turn her own head and look in the same direction as her friend.

Across the cafeteria, a burly member of the school's football team (The guy wore a letterman's jacket and appeared to be on steroids. It was as if he was at a casting call for 'high school jock' in a John Hughes movie.), who appeared to be in distress as he was attempting to eat three hotdogs at one time. He was being cheered on by his own tablemates –all of them pumped up jocks with vacuous looking girls sitting adoringly on their laps. The red-head's eyes went wide.

"Oh my God!" Angela Sullivan gasped. "Why would he do that?"

"To paraphrase Lisa Loeb, I don't know and I don't care." Mindy said as she resumed eating her –very- high protein lunch. She thought the school's jocks were nothing more than a pack of Cro-Magnons. (Not to say that all athletes were like that, only the current football team at Millard Filmore High.) They strutted around like they owned the place. They thought they were the greatest thing sliced bread and were in awe of their own abilities on the field. (Mindy considered them arrogant poseurs. Dave, she knew for a fact, was stronger, faster and tougher than any of them and could put any and all of them into the hospital with his bare hands if he had to…It went without saying that she could do that as well.) And, they seemed to think that any girl in the school was just dying to get into bed with them. Naturally, they steered clear of Mindy after she had –in no uncertain terms- demonstrated what she thought of them when one made a pass at her in September. (And the guy only missed two games until the splint came off his hand.) Angela, likewise, was unmolested. But, that was because she was viewed as Mindy's friend, as well as the fact that Mindy had taken Angela on as a new protégé in terms of the skills that made Mindy so feared/respected.

"Should we help him?" Angela asked, casting another glance over her shoulder and then back to her friend.

Mindy sighed. "Hold on" She said as she appraised the situation with a critical eye. "It looks like…Yes, it appears he's been able to get them down that gullet of his."

"Why would he do something that…dumb?"

"Does there have to be a reason Angela? This place is an intellectual wasteland. The only good thing I can say is that in six months…we're done!" Mindy said as a smile broke over her face. After spending much of her life being homeschooled, transitioning to a regular school environment had been a bit of a shock to her system. The first couple of months Mindy felt like she was going out of her mind with boredom. The monotonous routine combined with being "retired" from crimefighting had left her feeling dead inside. It was only her friendship with Dave that had kept her going. But then, after about two or three months, she and Dave had realized they simply could not endure being out of costume any longer. As a result, Kick-Ass and Hit-Girl made a triumphant return to the streets of New York City. After that, Mindy found she could cope with everything much better since she didn't have to give up who she was. The only real downer had come a year and a half before when Dave –along to her other two friends, Todd and Marty- graduated, leaving her to face her final two years of high school without them around. Fortunately for her, she'd met Angela by then and become friends with her. Angela, she now admitted, was almost as close a friend as Dave was. (Nobody would ever be able to surpass the importance for her that Dave had.)

"Graduation!" Angela confirmed happily as they bumped fists. She was about to say something else when a new distraction occurred. There was a raucous yelling and banging from the table where the hotdog eating jock and his buddies were.

"What's going on now?" Angela sighed, turning back again.

"If I had to guess, it's probably some homo-erotic chest bumping, in honour of their Noble Prize winning achievement. Without even looking, I'll go out on a limb and say it's the most blatant display of man on man love since the shirtless beach volleyball game in Top Gun." Mindy grumbled as she looked down at her notebook. She was mentally planning out patrol routes for the next few weeks. She and Dave made an effort to never be predictable in what area they'd patrol, unless there was some sort of spike in crime rates for particular neighbourhoods.

"No!" Angela said with alarm. "Mindy…I think this is serious." Angela intoned; her green eyes wide with concern. Mindy looked up and her blue eyes registered shock. As a rule people being loud and disruptive in the cafeteria was –more or less- a regular part of the high school life. For the most part, the rest of the student body ignored them. But this, as Angela had said, was indeed something out of the ordinary.

The jocks were pounding on the tables loudly and smashing trays down on them, scattering food everywhere. The offensive lineman who'd been eating the hot dogs to begin with was bellowing at the top of his lungs and pumping his arms in the air. His buddies at the table were joining him in his baying. The girls who'd previously been sitting on their laps had slipped off and scurried away.

The hotdog eating lineman began to then kick chairs across the room while pumping his fists in the air. To Mindy it was a display that looked like a mix of Tom Cruise and Jersey Shore in terms of insanity and stupid machismo. He strode over to his table and grabbed a hold of it. His buddies joined him and together they flipped it over easily. The cacophony of noise in the room increased even further if that was possible.

Just then, faculty members began to appear in the room, followed by some of the school's security guards. The teachers shrank back from the scene immediately and let the guards take over. One security guard approached the rampaging lineman and was promptly knocked back onto the floor, sliding through the spilled food.

"Shouldn't we do something?" Angela asked with a hushed urgency.

"No." Mindy replied quietly as Angela crept up very close to her.

"I can cover for you if you want to slip away to…change." Angela said in a voice so quiet only Mindy would hear her.

"No. I can't. It'd be too risky. It's inside my own school…in daylight." Mindy whispered back at her friend as she shook her head.

Slowly, Angela nodded her own head in acknowledgement and agreement as she saw the logic of what Mindy said.

Across the cafeteria, the rampaging hotdog eater had knocked two more security guards to the ground. Even his teammates had apparently felt this was going too far and had stepped in to try and calm him down. He promptly punched one in the face and knocked another over a fallen table.

Another guard rushed him and they struggled briefly, before the raging football player suddenly stopped and a strange look fell over his face which had suddenly become ashen pale. His massive legs buckled and he crumbled to the ground as more screams erupted in the cafeteria. Mrs. Zane, Mindy's English teacher –who Dave, it had grossed Mindy out to learn, used to put deposits in his whack-off warehouse in truly warped fantasies- came in and took charge of the scene. She knelt down and did an assessment of the fallen jock. She yelled for someone to get the schools automatic defibrillator and then began to perform CPR.

Mindy and Angela exchanged a worried glance. This was indeed something serious; VERY serious. Mindy decided that she was going to have to see if she could find out what she could. She pulled her cellphone from the holster on her belt and opened up her messaging function. Angela cast a glance down at her friend's hand.

"Let me guess. Texting Dave?" Angela asked with an arched eyebrow. It wasn't a hard guess. She knew that Mindy had three close friends: Dave, Todd and herself. She also knew that Mindy wouldn't text Todd about something like this.

"Damn straight."

"What're you telling him?"

"We might have some *work* to do later." Mindy said as she sent her text message.

"What sort of work would the two of you have?" Angela asked as they both heard the sound of approaching sirens. Angela cast a glance out the window and saw a fire engine pull up to the school and stop.

"I'm not sure. But I am sure that high school athletes don't freak out and crash down like that unless they have some help."

"Help?"

"Help from…chemistry class." Mindy said with a knowing glance as Angela nodded in understanding as she grasped what Mindy said.

More chaos then erupted in the cafeteria as a small group of men and women, dressed in the black and yellow bunker-gear of the New York Fire Department arrived in the cafeteria, carrying life support equipment. They immediately took over from Mrs. Zane and the vice-principal who'd joined her. More sirens sounded and Mindy looked out the cafeteria window to see a FDNY ambulance arriving along with a police car. The paramedics appeared seconds later in the cafeteria who summarily relieved the crew from engine. A pair of uniformed police officers arrived and began to take down statements from the various witnesses to the event.

An hour later and it was done. The football player had –thankfully- been revived by the paramedics who'd been carrying heart stimulant drugs. He'd been taken to the hospital where –according to the principal, who then passed the news to the rest of the school- he was expected to recover. Classes were cancelled for the rest of the day. Some of the students went home immediately, while others continued to mill about the school talking about what happened with one another. The school counselor announced that there would be traumatic incident counselors available to anyone who needed it.

Mindy, who'd witnessed things infinitely more horrible than that, had no need or desire to talk to anyone about it. What she did have though, was a desire to know what had happened. Her first step, she thought, was the guy's locker. It would be –she was certain- checked by the police and school faculty. Mindy's own locker was nowhere close to the jock's, nor was Angela's. Luckily, she did know someone whose locker was very close.

"Dillon" Mindy said sweetly as she and Angela flanked the lanky, dark-haired senior.

"Oh, hi guys." Dillon said awkwardly. He tried to fight down his nervousness. He thought Mindy and Angela were about the two prettiest girls in the school…and they actually talked to him as well and had even posed for some of his pictures.

"What're you up to?"

"I'm just getting ready to go home."

"We were wondering if you'd do us a huge favour." Mindy said with an endearing smile.

"Um…what do you want me to do?" Dillon squeaked. He was actually a very intelligent and capable teen. However, he always seemed to be tongue-tied around girls and had no real success with any of the girls at school. Mindy felt that was a shame, since in her opinion, he was a better guy than about 95% of the male population here. She thought she'd have been tempted to date him herself…Except for one thing –he wasn't Dave. Dave was the only person she knew she could ever feel anything beyond friendship for. She fought off a downturn in mood as she wished he felt that way about her as well, and refocused on the situation at hand.

"We need you to do some observing for us." Mindy said as Dillon's face brightened. As an aspiring photographer, he was good at that.

"What do you want me to observe?"

"That guy from the football team who freaked out and crashed at lunchtime…"

"Yeah?"

"Your locker is just down the hall from his."

"That's right."

"When they go to check it, we want you to try and see if they turn up anything interesting."

"Um…How do I do that?"

"With this." Mindy said simply and removed, from her backpack a miniature parabolic microphone connected to a miniature voice-recorder. Dillon's eyes went wide.

"Where'd you get that?" He asked in awe. He knew that stores that dealt in surveillance equipment sold items like that. But, it was both expensive and not the sort of thing an average high school girl would carry around in her backpack. (Mindy had actually been forced to call Dave's dad, who was at home, who'd brought it over from their secret "lair" for this exact purpose as Mindy didn't carry this with her as a rule.

"James Bond was having a garage sale." Mindy deadpanned. "It's easy. You just look like you're going through stuff in your locker. You point microphone where they're doing the search and hit the record button. That's all."

"But…" Dillon began to say until Angela stepped forward and put her hand on Dillon's shoulder with a smile.

"Dillon…You know, Jessi e-mailed me last night. She's coming back from Rochester to visit with some relatives over the holidays for a few days. You remember Jessi, don't you?" Dillon nodded his head anxiously. He'd thought Jessi was even hotter than Mindy or Angela. "Well, she tells me that she's single. She's got a new skirt that's really, really short that she wants to show off over the holidays. And…she's just dying to finally go out with a really nice guy for a change. And, wouldn't you know it…I think you happen to be the nicest guy in the school. So, if you do this for us…I'll put in a VERY good word for you with Jessi. Catch my drift?" She said with a smile and a nod. Dillon's face broke into a smile that looked like he'd overdosed on Smile-X gas and his head nodded so fast Mindy thought he'd have to go see a chiropractor later. He grabbed the parabolic microphone and took off for his own locker, practically hopping around the corner on one foot.

Mindy looked at Angela with approval. "That was good. I've got to hand it to you."

"Thanks" Angela beamed proudly.

"Shit, I think he'd break open that locker with his bare hands now." Mindy said with a laugh.

"Do you think I wound him up a little too hard?"

"I don't think so. What are you going to tell Jessi though?"

"Oh, um…keep a secret?"

"Angela…You remember who this is?"

"Well," Angela said with a laugh "Jessi did e-mail me and say that she was single and visiting. She also told me that she always thought Dillon was cute and was sorry she never paid any attention to him rather than going out with all of those jackasses she seemed to constantly dig up. She asked me if Dillon was seeing anyone and if he'd maybe take her out to a movie." She finished with a giggle that proved contagious as Mindy started laughing too.

"Oh hell Angela, this is like Ghostbusters and you've set up the Key-Master and the Gate-Keeper." Mindy gasped when she finally stopped giggling. Damn, she thought, she never used to giggle like that. "Let's go grab a hot chocolate and wait for what Cody Banks digs up for us."

An hour later, Mindy and Angela entered Atomic Comics and sat down at their usual booth, after each ordering a hot chocolate, that luckily was unoccupied. Mindy removed the ear-buds from her ears as she re-listened to the conversation Dillon had surreptitiously recorded. A scowl broke over her face.

"What is it?" Angela asked. Wordlessly Mindy handed her the recorder and earpiece. Angela listened and her green eyes went wide again. "Oh wow…"

"Shit….The steroids they found, I figured on; but methamphetamine?" Mindy said in a low voice as her mental wheels turned.

"And two other guys the team knew about it?"

"I wonder who else in the school is on ice?" Mindy said with a shake to her head. "Well, at least we know what we're up against now." Mindy said as she pulled her phone out again and sent a text to Dave.

Across the Borough, at Queen's College of the City University of New York, a very muscular young man with short dark hair and glasses walked across the campus. Dave Lizewski was planning on heading for the school's gym and hitting the weight room before attending his last class of the day. Just then, he heard a chime and felt a vibration on his belt. He removed his cellphone and looked at the incoming text message. It was from Mindy.

I found out what happened to the jock earlier She texted.

What? Dave responded.

What do you think about someone selling both steroids and methamphetamine to high school students?

I think that Kick-Ass and Hit-Girl should beat their fucking heads in for them! Dave typed back as a frown crossed his face. His alma mater wasn't perfect, but it had never been plagued with any major drug problems…until now. He simply wasn't going to let that stand.

Damn straight dude! Was Mindy's reply along with a smiley face icon.

We'll meet up at my place after class and you can fill me in? Dave typed back.

As Catwoman would say, purrrfect. Mindy replied.

Dave replaced the phone on his belt and quickened his stride towards the gym. His face broke out into a wide grin. He and Mindy hadn't had a big case since the start of November. Since then, it was all just the usual stuff: muggings, purse snatchers, armed robberies, drug dealers, attempted rapes and even the odd murder or two. All of them were crimes they took seriously and dealt with. But, there was nothing that really got his mental juices flowing since then.

He paused for a moment to reflect. It was approaching two years ago this month that he and Mindy had caught the Santa Claus Strangler and –in their minds and the eyes of much of the city- proven themselves to be truly serious crimefighters. After that, the routine street crime they'd dealt with before just wasn't as exciting. They still took out street criminals wherever and whenever they found them. But, it just wasn't as much of a professional challenge as the Strangler or the major cases that followed. Since then, he and Mindy had stepped up their crusade against the big crime bosses. Marcus had informed them that they were starting to make an impact far up the criminal food chain.

And then there were the Villains…In the last two years, more and more criminals had begun to commit crimes in costumes and with their own nom de guerre. Some were laughable (literally, a few of them were so lame they almost got away because he and Mindy were laughing so hard at them), others were fairly adept criminals who thought it'd be a gimmick to wear a costume, and others were stone killers who liked to dress up for reasons of their own. A few had even committed mass murder. One night, he and Mindy had realized they were truly developing their own Rogues Gallery of villains. What's more, in the last eight months, or so, a pattern had begun to emerge. Costumed criminals were committing all sorts of crimes across the spectrum of seriousness. They ranged from stealing a can of pop from a hot dog vendor in Central Park to a rape and double-murder of a Staten Island couple celebrating their wedding anniversary at the Waldorf-Astoria. The only connecting thread was all wore orange on some part of their costume. Needless to say, this was something he and Mindy were keeping an eye on.

Mindy…It was becoming harder and harder for Dave to spend time around her and conceal what he felt. She'd grown into such a stunning beauty and he still thought she clicked with him better than anyone ever had in his life. But, he'd sworn two years before to never reveal his feelings for her. The tension his unreciprocated (as Dave was certain they would be) feelings would cause could affect their working dynamic –and in their line of work, that could easily get one, or both of them, killed. He sighed audibly.

But now…The prospect of someone dealing drugs at his old high school was just the sort of case that would be a true challenge. Whenever Dave felt frustrated over his feelings for Mindy, he threw himself into a case: the more challenging the better. And this was just what the doctor ordered.

Back in Atomic Comics, Mindy set down her phone and looked at her red-haired friend.

"Dave said he'll meet me back at his place later and we'll go over stuff."

"You want me to do my thing?"

"Damn straight. Get online and get all the information from all the reports filed this afternoon. Hack the school records and see if there's any history the guy had anywhere else."

"I'm on it."

"I'll be at Dave's house." Mindy said as the two girls zipped up their coats and headed for the door. Angela had not failed to notice the way Mindy had said Dave's name. She shook her head in frustration. Two of her four closest friends seemed unaware they were both perfect for each other and that the other was clearly reciprocating the feelings they had. She did know better than to try and play matchmaker though. As Angela bade Mindy goodbye and began to make her own way home, she wished that for two people who were so intelligent, they were a little smarter about something that was obvious to anyone who knew them.