A year after the destruction of Sunnydale:
"What're you saying, Xan? We just don't bother with New York? HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MIND?! It's the biggest city in the country, so we need to put our best Slayer team there – maybe a couple – to fight all the vampires and the other hostile demons that have to be around!"
"Buffy, I'm telling you, there's no point! Everything's being taken care already! Almost every vamp in town is already dust. The smarter ones left in a real big hurry and spread the word so well throughout the supernatural underworld that only the really dumb vamps come in now from outside the city, figuring to take over. They don't last any longer than the rest who got wiped out earlier. The same goes for the other demons living there, who got the message loud and clear. Leave humans alone and stay peaceful, and you won't be bothered."
"That doesn't sound too good. Who's doing our job? Some secret government agency who thinks they know about the magic and demon stuff and is sure to screw up like they did in Sunnydale? Please tell me the Initiative isn't back!"
"Ummm…no. Definitely not. Strictly a private enterprise, you could say."
"Alexander LaVelle Harris, you might be thousands of miles away across the Atlantic from Scotland, but even over Skype, I can tell you're keeping something from me! Where's Faith? Is she out looking for whoever's cleaning up the town? That's not such a good idea, remember."
"Actually, she's right here in her hotel room, having a friendly chat with- HEY! This is personal!"
"Bite me, asswipe. That the old bitch with a stake up her butt?"
Buffy Summers stared open-mouthed in utter incredulity at the computer screen which now had on there a scene of a resigned Xander facepalming himself while a complete stranger leaned closer to the far-away camera in a New York hotel.
From under a purple wig and a domino mask, a pre-teen girl in a black costume sneered at the Slayer. "Hey, sweetcheeks, New York's my fucking territory. You people wanna operate here, you ask nicely first. Oh, and send Faith as the one in charge of your little band of heroines if you get permission from me. I can work okay with her. You, on the other hand, sister, I don't got time for corpse-humpers even if I'm one myself now."
The unknown girl's face then shifted into ridged evil with flashing yellow eyes.
Six months earlier:
Oh, come on! Seriously?
Not showing any signs she was alert to the guy sneaking up on her from behind, Hit-Girl continued to watch the Brooklyn warehouse across the street from inside the squalid alleyway where she was lurking tonight. Who fucking needed this latest distraction?
Being a bit out of touch concerning the city's gang life for a couple months because of attending stupid goddamn junior high meant Hit-Girl needed to know what changes had taken place since she'd promised Marcus to give up crime-fighting. Well, that hadn't worked too well, what with her going nearly crazy due to the total lack of excitement while living the suburban dream. In the end, Mindy McCready put her costume back on and went out again to show the crooked scum that their days were fucking numbered.
The potential mugger a few steps back shuffling through discarded newspapers which crinkled under his feet was in some way a definite insult to her. Please let him be a honest threat so that she could put him away instantly and get back to more serious business. The word around the streets was that come midnight, a huge drug deal would be going down at the warehouse. At least, until it got interrupted in blood and slaughter by none other than yours truly. A lot of unmarked cash was sure to be on hand, and Hit-Girl could definitely use it.
Mommy needed new combat boots.
Speaking of which, when a hand fell on Hit-Girl's shoulder, along with a panting, "I'm gonna drain you dry, you little cunt," she kicked back hard with her steel-reinforced heel, sweeping out the fucker's legs from under him along with fracturing his shin. A nice little bonus, there.
When someone idiotic beyond belief then collapsed howling to the alley floor, his pained yelp was abruptly cut off when Hit-Girl reached out to cup her hand at the back of dimwit's skull in passing to both shove down with all her might while also dropping to the ground to add gravity's assistance to her martial arts move.
It worked just great, with the damp crunch! of the guy hitting face-first on the asphalt indicating the entire front of his head had probably caved in. Getting back up on her feet with an air of satisfaction, Hit-Girl ignored the still body now lying there. There were gonna be a lot more dead people around in a while, so who cared if there was—
The body rolled over onto his back and glared up at Hit-Girl who was sincerely taken aback at this new development. Even more surprising was how that guy's totally unmarked face now transformed from a human one into that of a monstrous visage of fanged ferocity.
Okay, this wasn't what she'd expected, but that had been foreseen long ago by Big Daddy in his intensive training of a normal child into the most lethal daughter in existence. Since nobody could anticipate everything occurring in a fight to the death, it only made sense to accept whatever took place then and just get on with killing your enemy. A comic-book obsessed man did things like setting off firecrackers, letting loose a live rabbit through their training area, and about anything else he could think of to distract his little girl getting the crap kicked out of her by him.
It eventually resulted in hardening Mindy to ignore the most absurd, illogical, or startling events in combat. Fine, that fucker looked weird now? So fucking what? Stomp his ass and wonder about it later!
Lifting her right boot to kick his balls up into his throat, Mindy's opponent reacted far faster than was possible. He grabbed her boot and pushed it, her leg, and the rest of her body entirely off the ground and through the air into the opposite alley wall. Slamming hard into the bricks there, Mindy's breath was smashed out of her lungs.
She dropped to the ground in a fighter's crouch, already planning her strategy while sucking in air. Faster and stronger than her – no problem. Be smarter and trickier, then.
Still in her crouch, Hit-Girl's left hand swept up a handful of alley debris and tossed at the head of the guy back up on his own feet and advancing at her. Batting the debris away with one arm, her opponent missed how Hit-Girl's other hand dipped into the utility belt she wore and pulled out a small metal orb with a miniature switch protruding from the orb's surface.
Flipping the orb with her thumb like she was shooting a marble at the guy's sneakers, this action also depressed the switch. Bouncing once off the alley floor, the orb reached ankle-height before exploding in a gout of white phosphorus.
Screaming while bending over to flail at his legs on fire, the guy almost let Hit-Girl escape in rushing by him when he was busy trying to extinguish the flames. A speedy grab caught her by the neck, alas.
Paying no heed to the phosphorus even then searing his flesh, the supremely pissed-off guy glared with yellow eyes at the young girl he was easily holding a foot off the ground with one hand. Growling through what had to be fake fangs, the man snarled to Mindy,"That's it! I'm gonna make you last for days before finishing you off-! OW!"
Hit-Girl had just latched onto the guy's hand with both of her own and bent her head as far forward as she could to sink her teeth deep into his wrist. Hey, you use whatever you got.
The even-angrier guy reached out with his other hand and pushed with savage force onto the girl's forehead, breaking Mindy's neck. This also yanked her free from his wrist, though a gory wound was still evident there.
Hanging limply in the man's grip, her head lolling back and a very sour taste of rotted pennies in her mouth, Mindy felt her life slipping away even before fangs ripped into her throat. The only thing she regretted was being unable to even twitch a single finger. It would've been so nice to set off the hunk of C-4 plastic explosives molded into her belt buckle as a last revenge…
Licking his bloody lips, the vampire contemptuously threw the girl's body far down the length of the alley into a trash heap. With that done, Hit-Girl's killer went off to find someone else to murder for their intact pants, promptly forgetting all about her. This obliviousness included not caring enough to even watch what then happened, either in the following seconds or the ensuing couple of days.
Hitting the piled garbage which hadn't been picked up for two weeks and would remain so for another week, the costumed corpse had this tottering heap fall over onto Mindy, completely concealing her from both human sight and the sun's rays the next morning. Staying motionless in the trash, a dead girl with vampire blood in her mouth had soon enough another demon come calling to take over her body.
Around then though she could never exactly remember the how of it, Mindy McCready probably decided with every fibre of her soul staying firmly in place, "LIKE FUCKING HELL, YOU COCKSUCKER!"
It wound up with Hit-Girl rising out of her would-be grave three nights later. However, unlike virtually every other newly-made fledgling vampire, she'd kept her human essence even if this was shared with an unholy demon. Not that this fiend would be making any trouble for Mindy, given it was now totally submissive to this young female.
When you were the master of your mind and an uninvited guest party-crashed there, it wasn't that difficult for Mindy to dream up the entire torture oeuvre of humanity from the Spanish Inquisition onwards to then apply everything against a shrieking demon strapped down upon an imaginary table. That same evil spirit had called itself something different among all the pleading, whimpering, and lamenting its captivity, but Mindy didn't bother to remember it. Nah, she already had the perfect name for it:
Shithead.
Celebrating this bestowing by picturing the worse, most scuzziest restrooms she'd passed through in Big Daddy's and Hit-Girl's exploits to next half-drown Shithead in the reeking toilet bowls, Mindy then started some serious interrogation. It ended with quite a lot of information for the girl and a close to insane demon.
So…she was a vampire, Hit-Girl considered to herself in the dark alley. Well, fuck. Still better than the alternative, decomposing in that garbage heap until the horrible smell finally caught someone's attention.
An extreme hunger suddenly overcame Mindy. She glanced towards the warehouse across the street where she'd been about to break up a drug deal then…and listened with her new powers.
Wow. Who'd have figured it? Another damn cocaine transaction, set up by…what kind of dumb prick calls himself the Motherfucker? He wasn't there, though, just his guys and the other side.
All of them with just filled up with warm, juicy blood.
Hit-Vampire grinned and went off to have her first meal. Feeding to the brim, she kept one of them undrained for now, simply to test herself. Taking that mook back to Big Daddy's lair, Mindy locked him up in the cell built by her very prescient father until the blood hunger came back again.
For the next twenty-four hours, even when her demon began begging for nourishment, Hit-Vampire held off her craving by sheer will. Finally convinced she controlled her appetites and not the other way around, a lawbreaker paid for his crimes down to the last delicious drop.
During this, Mindy had plenty of time to think about what to do now. She sadly concluded that all previous ties with her foster father Marcus and even Dave had to be severed. Ordinary people just couldn't deal with what Mindy had presently turned into, or come along in her new life. Uh, was that unlife? Fuck, who cared?
She'd just have to stay on her own…for a long, long time. Her little talks with Shithead revealed that as long as she avoided being staked or losing her head, Mindy could exist for virtually forever. Problem was, that came with the unpleasant fact she'd be a twelve-year-old girl throughout all of it. Apparently, vampires didn't age further from when they'd been turned.
Shithead paid with an incredible amount of pain for this little tidbit. Chainsaws and skinning knives were involved…
Goddamn it, she was never gonna get her tits!
Sulking about the whole thing, Mindy did make a point of checking something which the above consequence had suggested to herself. Some experimentation revealed that while she was still vulnerable to sunlight, religious symbols or even holy water had no effect upon Hit-Vampire. Guess she still had her soul, which was nice to know. Of course, seeing how she hadn't exactly been living the saintly life before getting bitten, it looked like one day she'd see first-hand the lower depths of Hell.
Mindy simply shrugged over that latter outcome. She was who she was and she didn't give a rat's-ass who had the vapors about it. Instead, she tested one more thing to find out a very interesting result. Unlike other vampires, she had no problem with entering people's residences, even uninvited into there.
That led to Mindy soon going back to crime-fighting, which didn't exactly turn out as she expected. Oh, it was simple enough to find out the Motherfucker's real identity and confront that little turd known as Chris D'Amico who'd taken over from his mobster father after her former partner Kick-Ass took out the older man with a flying machine gun.
The main problem was that it was just too fucking easy. Hit-Vampire wiped out every one of the D'Amico crime soldiers without encountering a single challenge in the process. Not even that blonde bimbo known as Mother Russia gave her any trouble. Feeding the Motherfucking Wimp his left eye was all it took for him to give Mindy the computer passwords for every cent the D'Amico's had, along with their business records describing all their financial crimes to the last detail.
Mindy transferred the mobster funds to Big Daddy's account in the Cayman Islands and sent the records to the FBI, just before kicking MW into his personal shark tank with accompanying Jaws-devouring action. Unfortunately, not even that cheered up Mindy. How could it, when the only thing to describe it was so crapstatically boring?
Going off to mope in her lair, Hit-Vampire's glum attention was caught a week later by some really odd television news reports of how sewer workers were mysteriously disappearing on the job. Deciding she might as well as kill some time investigating, Mindy stumbled across her very first supernatural apocalypse.
The final aftermath had Hit-Vampire staggering out of the under-construction New York City Water Tunnel No. 3 just before the next sunrise, costume in tatters, covered all over in demonic slime, healing up from numerous broken bones and tentacle punctures, and the widest ever grin on her face.
Damn, but that had been a rush!
Hit-Vampire next proceeded to clean up her hometown of inimical demons over the next several months, and continued having a great time during every minute of it. An indication that things could turn out even weirder but likewise exciting presented itself by the visit of a crew of superhuman young women barely older than her but almost as aggressive.
The throw-down between Mindy and Faith was one fine brawl, with both of them enjoying it so much they eventually got to talking. Mindy learned about Slayers, and Faith told her kid opponent about another vampire with a soul.
Mindy privately considered that this Angel asshole should've just pulled up his big-boy panties and quit whining.
Nonetheless, she agreed to talk with the Head Bitch in order to work out things between the New Council and her. She didn't mind Xander; he reminded her of Dave more than a lot. And if Faith stayed, that'd really be fantastic.
Now, all it needed was for Buffy Summers to get past the fact there was someone in New York City younger, smaller, blonder, cuter, and much better able to kick some aged skank's ass.