trans_9 | Target Practice

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Target Practice

Since living in the new castle with Ruffnut, Mindy had done her best to maintain upkeep, even "borrowing" a few things from the wreckage of Grand Central to spruce up the place. It helped, especially since the events of the homecoming, to keep her head busy. On the one hand, yes, dad had appeared: he wasn't dead, he was proud to know they won, and for just a little bit? She got to be a little girl again, to crack wise with her dad, to show him how far she'd gotten.

But then he was gone again, and the new pod pop didn't bring him out. She shouldn't have hoped for it, but she had, a little. Once that was a no go though, she was either training or helping Ruffnut patch up some of the frayed tapestries or fix up carpeting or overall making sure there were no holes for them to fall through anywhere. It had been good, but even Ruffnut had sort of side stepped asking her about dad. It was something she appreciated: Mindy wasn't known for easily delving into her feelings.

This naturally led to another thing on her mind: what had happened on the mission, where the Castle gun shootout had almost taken her out- SHOULD have, if it was anyone else. She had severely underestimated what she could do: the way she;d moved, the accuracy in each shot, the sheer carnage: that was akin to a limit break.

And now, she wanted to control it.

She emptied herself of all thought: that was how a fight in the dark was, if you had no edge. There were only a few precious seconds to gather your mind, and then you opened your eyes and all hell broke loose. Your eyes and your hands had to work in tandem then, and you pulled back and took out people one by one until you got the job done or you were dead.

Like now: it was those gun slingers from the castle, and she started with ten at first, taking them out easily. The background was the saloon again, only she made it bigger to accomdate the increase in shooters.She cursed to herself (it was too quick!) then brought the number to fifteen, then twenty.

Each took less time, and Hit Girl nodded: she HAD gotten better. She wasn't even using Zetta's gun or her artifact, and she was still taking these bastards down.

"All right: switch it to forty, and place them all over the bar."

Ok. GO.

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Hit Girl was moving with ease, and while she was still a little annoyed that she wasn't quite at that place from the mission, she was still faster than when she had taken down D'Amico's men. That was good too: unwashed cowboys tended to be pretty bloodthirsty. That, and the smell from them alone could knock you out.

But she was still sticking and moving, taking them out steadily. Definitely an improvement, and being small like this made her a harder target. For the moment she was in the grove, cutting them off steadily, stopping only when she sustained her first hit: a graze to the shoulder, and she rolled on the floor a moment, gaining momentum for a retaliatory strike when she felt there was someone real in the Sensorium.

Seeing the person, she didn't break a sweat: she tossed him a gun. "Hey, get those guys on the right? They're giving me shit."

The gun was not entirely unexpected, and he caught it easily. Not his weapon of choice - firearms seemed so impersonal sometimes - but it'd do. He took aim at the right most wing of enemies, emptying the weapon's clip into them with inhuman speed and precision. The last bullet had barely left the chamber when he tossed the weapon aside and darted into the fray to take on the remainder. He ripped the throat out of one of them with his bare hand, and grinned - god, he'd been missing this.

Well. Looks like that guy liked to get his hands dirty. Of course, the whole reason that Hit Girl had given him the gun was because you need to mow a few people down BEFORE you actually were able to get close. That, and well, she didn't really know exactly what kind of people were going to be walking into the Sensorium. The last thing she needed was someone puking their guts out in her simulation (that's right Ron, Lash told her that story). This, however, was a welcome change of events.

And now out came the bow, and a bit of stabbing to the closest guy. If that was how this guy was going to play it, may as well go all out.

In the Midnighter's eyes, weapons against guys like these was too easy. But, then again, not everyone thought at the speed of quantum super-computers. Or moved fast enough to make use of that. But he was a whirlwind of death in the pack of enemies, using the corpse of the first one as a make-shift weapon against another three.

Hit girl liked his style. It reminded her of Big Daddy in some ways, though she could definitely tell that he was much faster, and she didn't know if even daddy could be this ruthless. But that was OK: even if her trainer and all the supes on board thought the worse of people who used excessive force, she didn't. That was why, several moments later, there was an increase of thugs in the saloon, and Hit Girl grinned, her hands on her guns.

This should be good.

Ah, that was more like it. Though in a press this big, hand to hand got trickier. A quick thought, and his telescoping staff was in hand. Even the weight was perfect. Having a psychic ship was worth something, it seemed.

He grinned, and spun the metal staff, feeling the impact as it caught a handful of his enemies across the face, crushing their skulls in.

Oh that was how he wanted to play it? Well that was fine: she could definitely do that! She brought her staff out and now started to skewer people with the end of it, and the thugs accordingly either clamored closer or ran away...the latter seeming to have more appeal.

The blood was splashing all over, and the faster she worked with this new guy, the more guys went down. Pretty soon they were already down to twenty, and at this point, they were scared shitless and turning tail. Unfortunately for them, Hit Girl had pulled out her guns again, so maybe two were able to escape, clutching various bleeding body parts.

Hit Girl was breathing hard, her skin flushed. She looked over at the new comer.

"You got a name?"

For Midnighter, that had barely been a warm up, but he grinned anyway. "I'm the Midnighter. You?"

"I'm Hit Girl," she said, staring him up and down. "Nice costume. You're pretty cool: you kinda remind me of the Punisher a little. What's the deal with the costume? You a superhero too?"

He snorted. "I only get called 'hero' when the PR people are around. And only if they're in a good mood. I do what needs to be done, that's all."

"At least you have some PR people," Hit Girl said, shaking her head. "We had to be all secretive, leave no trace, that kind of thing. Anybody got a whiff that a little girl was going around doing the shit that you do, they would have been after us in half a second wityh child services. What a world."

She stretched a moment. "So you got any powers?"

"PR people are new. Not sure how I feel about that, not my bright idea. I did the secretive thing for five fucking years - it's good to know I can go six months without eating, but I really don't want to." That had been a low point. The last year hadn't been a hell of a lot better, but anything beat hiding from Bendix.

"I didn't get the flashy powers. Just a tactical computer in my brain that let's me see every fight from a million angles before it's fought, and a body to back that up."

"You do it all on your own?" Now she was beginning to get the idea. Dad and her had scored some decent cash from raids on D'Amico's crew. They hadn't starved: her dad had made sure of that once he'd gotten out of jail. Now she could see how other heroes had to deal without the cash. They couldn't all have Bruce Wayne cash, after all.

"That takes balls, kudos," she said to him shaking her head. Sure, he didn't have modesty mentioning his body, but if he was working alone, he deserved the self praise. "No sidekicks or nothing, just you fighting crime? What's your city like?"

He shook his head. "Nah. Got a partner. Good one, too" There was a faint note of affection in his voice, and, for a moment, he let himself miss Apollo. "Didn't have a city, though. Not safe to stay in one place too long, and everywhere has problems. So I've seen a hell of a lot of the world."

"What's your story, anyway? Kinda young for this line of work."

"So you go around the world?!" Now that was just cool: what the hell kind of a world was this, that she had to go all around it saving people? He still must have been a pretty strong ass guy though: even she and dad couldn't do something as fighting all around the world.

"Crime boss made my mom die, imprisoned dad for not going snitch on him when he was a good cop. Dad got out of jail, swore vengeance, trained me as long as I could remember to beat these fuckers. We teamed up with another guy, got tricked, dad got...burned alive, me and the the guy finished them off.

"Not much more to say."

Riight.

"Shitty deal." The sort of stuff he and Apollo had tried to prevent. Sure, she'd survived - but this wasn't their finer world. "And then what, you woke up here?"

"Pretty much," Hit Girl said. She would leave out the part where after taking out D'Amico she was supposed to just be a normal kid again: that was just too depressing. "but I'm dealing with it, considering it kinda sucks that there's no way to really come to terms with fighting in a huge interstellar war other than training your ass off."

"No special powers, right?" He couldn't sense anything, and she hadn't looked like it when she thought. But it was worth asking.

"I know a little magic, and I'm faster and stronger than I was on Earth, but no actual special powers," Hit girl admitted. "It's actually why I'm training here at the moment: trying to gain an extra level, to put it in video game terms. I want to earn my limit break. Did it once, a few days ago."

"That's pretty impressive." He actually meant it, too. That much skill took a lot of practice for someone who hadn't been enhanced.

"I'm kind of a perfectionist when it comes to stuff like this," Hit Girl admitted. "When I do something, I want to give my all in it. And we're facing a war that'll decide if we can go on living in the universe or die at the hands of fucked up alien bugs. I thought it was pretty clear whose side I was on."

He snorted. "I don't blame you - though I'm not sure if I want the universe in the hands of the guys in charge of this place, either."

Mindy shrugged. "What the people in charge to isn't something I'm too concerned about. All that matters is that I have to get stronger, and here I have the means to do it. There are people willing to train me and new moves I can learn, so...I'm going to take advantage of that. So long as no higher ups try to stop me from doing that, they could pilot us to the moon for all I care."

"Get strong enough, and they just might. Idiots with power don't like threats to that." A lesson that had been demonstrated to him far more clearly than he would have preferred.

"I suspect I'm a pretty lousy teacher, but if you ever want a partner for shit like this - I'm game."

Man, she was really starting to get a lot of offers of sparring lately! But Hit Girl was also not going to say no to all of that either: this was, after all, her time to get stronger, and she saw no reason to refuse that.

"If I get strong enough that they want to keep me down, they won't," she said simply. "But I'm not gonna turn out a way to get stronger. Yeah, I'll spar with you anytime!"

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punchesfaces.livejournal.com - 2011-10-13 16:49 (UTC) - Expand

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hit-girl-mindy.livejournal.com - 2011-10-13 17:40 (UTC) - Expand

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Target Practice

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