Hit-Girl took a slow step forward, wretched her body ready for attack and…vomited into the Mediterranean.
"You're making too much noise," I couldn't help but smirk. She'd told me that more times than I could count when I wore this costume on a regular basis.
"Shut the fuck up," she threatened from one knee. "Don't think I'll forget you did this to me, you bas…" and she heaved again.
"Pregnancy really is a beautiful thing." She muttered something but all I could make out was goddamn and asshole. Such had been the joys of the morning.
.
Cain's "brothers" came to wake us before dawn. Mindy was already up and dressed when she tapped me.
"They're coming," is all she said. I was struggling with my boots when they entered. Without telling us much they marched us outside the dungeon we'd been imprisoned in the last few days. In the cool hue of a dark morning, I realized the castle was more a tower. From the outside you could see that it probably was originally meant to be a monastery - a very, very long time ago. Marcus Cain waited for for us. He no longer wore his priest attire and instead was dressed like a safari hunter. He had a buttoned down white shirt, tan shorts, socks pulled up to his knees, a worn hunting vest, and a brown hat that would have done Crocodile Dundee proud. All that was missing was a gun. Instead he had an HD video camera. Fortunately for him, he was surrounded by most of his men who were heavily strapped with serious firepower.
"Good morning, Kick-Ass. Good morning, Hit-Girl." He bowed with more faux humility. I fought the urge to hit him. Hit-Girl and I were still unchained, but we were also unarmed and could have been gunned down on the spot before we got close to him. "If you head four kilometers southwest from our location, you'll find buried under a round Burton-esque tree your weapons."
"I thought we could choose them," Mindy said dryly.
"In your case…I made the decisions for you. Trust me you'll be happy with the selection," he smiled. After a moment, the silence became awkward. "Go, go," he said. His men parted from blocking our path.
"You're going to just let us walk into the forest," I asked in disbelief.
"You'll find it's a very small island with no inhabitants, but we few souls. And the weapon caches for each hero or heroes are separate." He bowed again and Mindy and I had little choice but press down a hill towards the Southwest.
.
Cain was not kidding about the island being small. We found the weapons quick enough: two green batons based on my classic design and two Benchmade Model 42 Butterfly knives. I suspected Cain was smarter than he seemed by not handing a sword to Hit-Girl. Once equipped, the question was obvious: What now?
Mindy and I decided we didn't want to kill anybody, much less superheroes, unless we have to. So, instead of running back to the tower or around it looking for a fight, we pushed to the west for the coast. Surely, there has to be a way off this rock. There wasn't. As light replaced dark, we spent several hours walking the flat coastline. We rounded over what must have been a third of the island in such short time and there was still no sign of life, save for birds landing on watery rocks looking for fish. There was no dock on this side either. For Kick-Ass and Hit-Girl's comeback to boil down to an anxious walk on the beach honestly felt ridiculous. And that was before morning sickness fell upon Mindy.
Quickly, our concerns turned from finding a way off the island to hoping nobody on it heard Hit-Girl gagging into the water.
"Are you sure someone could hear me," she asked again.
"No," I replied. "But just in case someone was in the same earshot range as that of, say, a dying elephant…I'd like to get off the beach." She punched me in the arm as we made our way back into the forest. It was flatter on the eastern side of the island, but also muddier. If anyone was listening to us by the water, they likely heard our tracks in the soft ground. An hour earlier we had heard a scream, but it was so far away we couldn't tell whose it was. As we walked silently, my mind began to wander. If only there was someway of flanking Cain and his men. They form a line around him, but if we could get his attention…
Hit-Girl's arm ran into my chest. She stopped us dead in our tracks and held a finger up to her mouth. I listened, but couldn't hear anything. Then a branch shuffled and it didn't sound like wind. Fuck a duck. I don't know where he came from, but Ghost in the Darkness was swinging his long sword at my head. Mindy tried to move me, but I'd already dodged it easily enough by myself. I haven't forgotten everything, Hit-Girl. She smiled as she ducked backwards and then flipped over Ghost's second swing. She pulled out her butterfly knives and looked at me.
"Keep out of my way." I would have protested, but I heard a branch from overhead break and looked up in time to see White Lightning's foot. I moved just enough so the foot only brushed against my shoulder, but it still fucking hurt. He was stronger than I first thought. He caught himself in midair and was trying to chop me with his hand before his feet touched the ground. I avoided this all together, but he had me off balance. He hopped like a fucking jackrabbit to my right and around a tree. I heard him come wooshing from behind but couldn't stop him as he buried a jab in between my shoulder blades. I stumbled forward, but caught myself at the knees.
Further, down in the wood I saw Mindy in a very uneven sword fight. Ghost in the Darkness was striking overhead and slicing below with his katana. Hit-Girl was struggling to keep him at bay with her agility and quick reflexes. I noticed she wasn't using her knives. The reach of a katana around those things is too dangerous even for her. Within the same second, White Lightning stood in front of me and lifted a bow he had hidden behind a tree somewhere.
"Are you and Ghost working together?" I asked. The sudden question gave White Lightning pause and he hesitated in his attack stance. He really is a rookie.
"For now…Ghost in the Darkness says…" I lunged at him before he finished his sentence. My batons were out and aimed at his face. He blocked them with his bow and flashed anger at my impropriety. He literally flipped over my head. I turned around and he was gone. Then there was another woosh from behind. I was more prepared and turned to see the bow just as it crashed into my rib cage. I shortened my breath before I choked. White Lightning didn't stop for chitchat this time. Instead, he charged towards me. I readied my batons, but right before contact he hopped behind a tree to my left. You need to be less predictable. My feet were already in the air when I heard the woosh. By the time he reached me, I had thrown my right baton against the nearest tree, off which it ricocheted. It landed lower than I expected, crashing into his kneecap. He let out an eardrum-shattering cry and dropped his bow. I threw myself at him again and we went rolling into the mud.
Ghost had knocked away one of Hit-Girl's butterfly knives and was starting to close in on her with his katana. I wanted to help her, but instead I was trying to push the not-so-White Lightning's face into the mud. I was furious. I saw Marc Cain's face in his mask. I saw Stevie Augustus's face. Chris D'Amico's. Even Frank D'Amico's…until I actually looked into his eyes. The terror. I had killed before, but not in a long time and never this brutally. Not in the mud. My hands loosened from his head. He saw the opening and punched me under the jaw. When the world stopped spinning he was running through the woods. Fuck. I looked over at Mindy and she had disarmed Ghost of his katana. She now held the sword while he removed a thin needle of a knife from his sleeve. After a sigh, I followed after White Lightning.
Back on the beach I found him limping on the sand. I'd done more damage to his knee than I realized. As I approached, I could see the terror even more clearly on his whole face.
"Don't…please don't," he begged.
"You're the one who attacked us. Playing Cain's stupid little game." I took a closer step and he tripped, falling flat on his face. He rolled over and held his hands up.
"Please…I worship you, man. You were my hero growing up!" I gritted my teeth as I pulled at my baton.
"Funny way of showing it."
"NO!" he screamed with tears in his eyes. He removed his mask.
"I'M NOT A SUPERHERO! I only wanted to be like you!" Seeing his face took my breath away. "And now…I only want to go home."
"You're…just a kid."
"I'm sixteen!" he shouted back, finally showing some defiance. "The same age as when you started!" My God. He looks like he's twelve. I felt the baton fall from my hand. He noticed that and hope returned to his watery eyes. "Please! Please, don't."
"Can you walk?" He looked anxiously at his leg. He shook his head like a child.
"Good. Stay here and keep low. Hopefully, this will be over soon enough." He looked confused.
"You're going to leave me here?"
"Yes," I said picking up the baton.
"But, but—" I smacked him in the head with it. Nothing serious. But he would wake up with a shitty headache this evening.
When I came back to our battleground, Hit-Girl had Ghost in the Darkness on his knees. We couldn't see his face, but his composure seemed much more stable than White Lightning's. The man in black didn't even seem to mind it was his own katana being held at his throat from a woman half his size now towering over him.
"Do you yield," Hit-Girl dryly asked her prey. She must have seen me approach, but she did not acknowledge my presence at all. After a long silence, "Do you yield," she hissed with more anger in her voice.
"Never surrender, even in the face of Armageddon!" he suddenly yelled. Poser. He unsheathed another hidden blade from his other sleeve and Mindy cut him from ear to ear. He was dead by the time she let his head slide into the mud. She looked at me, her eyes as cold as her new steel.
"Shall we?" She hid the sword underneath her cape and pulled one of her new butterfly knives from the ground and placed it back on her belt.
.
If Marc Cain was filming this, we still hadn't seen him. Further inland at the base of a large hill, we found two more dead bodies. The first belonged to Asp. She had been stabbed in the belly and had a sickening shade of anguish spread across her face. She died in pain. This is so pointless. Near her body lay Iron Mask. I couldn't tell where the point of death had been, but whoever finished him off had removed his mask. For some masked marvel, he looked like a pretty normal 30-something schmuck underneath, save for the frozen agony on his face. His lips were swollen and discolored from something. We heard more yells at the top of the steep hill.
"Do you really want to see what's up there," I asked Mindy.
"No." I was surprised by her brevity. "But if we don't…" she touched her stomach. "Who knows, maybe Cain will show his face and I'll get to sketch on him too." I chuckled. I doubt he'll make it that easy.
.
It turns out the hill made up the center of the island. The further we hiked the more the geography made sense. I could see the top of the tower below our left flank as we climbed. Could Cain be shooting from somewhere up here? Wouldn't he be missing his movie?
Near the top, we found more stone foundations overlooking a steep drop. It looked like it was a house of some kind built around the same time as the monastery. It was situated in a clearing from the trees that overlooked the steep drop to the Northeast that was a little less than a cliff. With clouds gathering overhead, it seethed an ominously gray. Unlike the tower, whoever preserved that as a prison did not save this place. All that was left were ruins. That and K-9 battling El Chupacabra to the death.
K-9 swung his mighty club at El Chupacabra's head. The Latin anti-hero dodged it with grace and slashed with his customized dagger at K-9's throat. K-9 avoided the slash and pulled Chupacabra's bladed arm into a weathered stone wall where the knife stuck. As the red cape tried to pull it out, the old war horse garbed in camouflage simply smashed his club across Chupacabra's face. He hit the ground with a thud. K-9 stood above him and raised the club above his head.
"For the last time," he said between deep breaths, "I don't want to kill you. This is not Battle World or Secret Wars." Chupacabra spat blood onto the side of his mouth and gave a heinous smile.
"I wasn't forced here old man. I grew up idolizing you assholes. Now, I'm going to break you." The old man just looked tired. He lifted his head and saw us watching.
"This one killed The Asp," he told us. Good to see K-9 at least has some common sense left.
"And that cunt killed Iron Mask," Chupacabra said again with more blood spittle.
"Somehow he thinks if he kills us all, it'll make him better than us," K-9 sighed.
"I'm already better than you. Now, I will become you. You're golden age, pops." He clicked his boots together and a blade came out of the tip of one. He shoved it into K-9's thigh. The old man screamed. I was about to rush to help him, but Hit-Girl grabbed my arm.
"Mindy!"
"Just wait a second." K-9 fell to the ground and started crawling to the steep end of the clearing. Chupacabra kicked in his sides before going to the crumbling stones and pulling his knife out. He casually strolled over to the injured superhero, placed the cold dagger against his jugular and looked at us.
"I'm the next generation. I'm the hero for the social media age." He pointed to the button clasping his red cape on. "You see this, you old fuck? It's a wide-angle fiber-optic lens." He kicked K-9 again. "It already shows that Asp was better than Iron Mask, and I was too much man for that slut. And now?" He raised his knife arm back, "It will show that the mighty K-9 also died like a bitch."
"You two, will be next," he said with a wink. Hit-Girl smiled at him, as she still wouldn't let me go. "Any last words, pops?"
"…Attack," he whispered. Seemingly out of nowhere, a giant German Shepherd pounced from the trees and galloped at El Chupacabra with unbelievable speed. Before he could react it was on top of him, biting at his throat. He tried to push it off, but tripped backwards. He went tumbling down the steep corner of the hill with the dog.
Hit-Girl turned to me. "Now, you may go." We walked over to the edge of the hill and saw the dog happily trotting up the long face. El Chupacabra lay halfway to the bottom with his throat ripped out. I turned and grinned as K-9 used his old battle club to push himself to his feet.
"That little prick was insane," he muttered.
"No," I said. "He was young and full of shit." Hit-Girl walked up and let K-9 lean on her.
"Can you walk," she asked.
"Not really," he muttered. "I guess that means I yield to you two." Hit-Girl barely had time to smile before K-9's head exploded into a gooey red-and-pink gush across her purple hair. Mindy seemed genuinely shell shocked by that, but I clenched my teeth and prepared.
Strolling down from the very top of the hill's small tree line came Marc Cain in his ever-ridiculous outfit and his entire paid guard. They flanked around him and behind him with enough firepower to invade a small country.
"WHY?" Mindy screamed with a sense of desperate outrage in her voice.
Cain lowered his video camera and hit pause. "Hold on just a second…Sorry, about that, I can't actually be on the videos of this epicness. What were you saying?"
"Why," Mindy muttered. Her question was punctuated as one of his goons gunned down K-9's German Shepherd as it came running up the hill's corner.
"When we're done, go down and retrieve the camera," Cain said before looking back at Mindy. "Oh. He yielded." All that was missing in his tone was duh! "There's no yielding. I said this was to find out who was the best superhero. He obviously wasn't it." I resisted the thought of unsheathing my baton and trying to shove it down his smug throat. He smiled at us as he stopped about a hundred feet away still in the wooded part of the hill. I grabbed Hit-Girl's hand. It was my turn to pull her. I walked us up to Cain and his men. "I'm so happy to see y'all made it. I was afraid I wouldn't get you on tape at all, but I suppose it's not surprising some tried to find a way off. Where's Ghost in the Darkness and White Lightning?"
I cleared my throat of what felt like sand. "They're both dead," I have lied. "You have your winners. We're the best. yay."
"Winners?" Cain's smile vanished with that. "Did I say I was looking for the best superhero team or the best SUPERHERO?" Hit-Girl's funk vanished instantly as a cold, horrific sensation grabbed her.
"What the fuck," she mouthed more than said. Cain rolled his eyes like he had to explain subtraction to kindergartners.
"I want only ONE hero. One whose name will become the gold standard forever. Unlike Marvel or DC…we will know WHO IS THE FUCKING BEST!"
"You're God's perfect asshole," is all I said.
"And you have a girlfriend to kill…" Mindy looked at me with genuine fear and confusion. For the first time ever, she didn't know what she was supposed to do. "…or to be killed by, Kick-Ass." We just stared at one another. Her eyes were pleading. She then pulled out a butterfly knife and tried to jump on top of Cain. I knew what she was going to do before she did and caught her in my arms before she got close to him.
"What are you fucking DOING?" she screamed at me.
"Saving your life," I screamed back as she struggled in my arms. "If you touch him, they're going to kill you!" Indeed, all 20-25 guns were aiming directly at us as I tried to control this crazy girl. Cain was suppressing a giggle as he watched.
"Fuck it, we can kill them all!"
"Not like this…you'd need to surprise them. This isn't how we can win."
"Then what, Kick-Ass," she sneered with dripping venom.
"Um, hello?" Cain interrupted. "You fight. To the death." Mindy quit struggling in my arms and just glared at me and then Cain. Cain pulled the handgun from one of his merc's belts and aimed it at Mindy's head. "Or I kill you both, and don't have the best Youtube video in the world." I let go of Mindy and she stood her ground, burning holes in Cain's face.
"Pull the trigger, if you have the balls."
"Oh I will," he said before lowering his aim. "But it won't be at your pretty head." He was now pointing the gun at her belly. "I'll kill your kid, first."
"Motherfucker!" she cried. She looked at me. I nodded. It's the only way. I unsheathed my batons and held them up.
"Damn you, Dave. Seriously, goddamn you." She raised her butterfly knives.
"Finally!" Cain screamed. He raised his video camera and hit record. "This is what I've been waiting for!" He high fived one of his men with a laugh.
"Do it, Mindy," I said. She just stood there, with a blank defeated look on her face. Fucking-A, Mindy. Put on a show! "DO IT!" I bellowed. I swung a baton at her head and she dodged it. "COME ON DO IT!" I thrust the other baton at her left leg and she raised her foot and side stepped me. "FUCKING DO IT!" I rammed both batons down at her face and she deflected them with her butterfly knife and started moving. "THAT'S IT!"
"Fuck you!" she yelled. She deflected my batons again. And again. And again. She was now actually moving and it looked like a fight. It felt like a fight. She started slashing her blades at me, but I was dodging them with ease. Too much ease. She's still holding back.
"He's not going to let me go, Dave!" she said between strikes.
"I know that." I dodged another half-hearted stab.
"Then why are you trying to get me to kill you!"
"I'm trying to save your life. Our baby's life…"
"THAT'S NOT FUCKING FAIR," she screeched with fury. Her eyes were turning red as she was starting to push against my batons with real force. Her strikes trembled with rage and resentment. "You can't use that against me and play the martyr!" I spun around her and pivoted, so I could block her kick. I began backing up to the tree line to the right of Cain's many goons.
"I'm not."
"I won't kill you, Ass-Kick!" As we fell in closer to the trees, I wrapped my batons around her two knives and pulled our two bodies close together.
"And I won't kill you." As our weapons interlocked, I kissed her passionately on the face. This surprised not only her, but everyone watching. And they are all watching. I finally pulled back my lips. It was the second time I saw genuine confusion and surprise on Mindy's face. "Get your katana ready." She looked at me still not understanding. "And take cover, child."
"Dave, no…"
"And switch to Robin's Revenge!"
"DAVID!"
I released her arms AND spun with a sudden urgency.
"CAIN!" I screamed with both batons out. I charged the longest 20 yards of my life to get to him, centered amongst his men. They were all still looking at me as Hit-Girl jumped into a thicket of trees. Whoever was watching her either was too slow or aiming his gun at me.
"What the…" Cain began, but his men cut him off as they opened fire. Assault rounds. .9 millimeter bullets. Metal sprays. Machine gun fire. They were all flying through the air around me. I didn't feel the first one. Nor the second. Not even the third. I noticed I was stumbling after the fourth or fifth one went somewhere into my body. I caught myself with one foot and took a few more strained steps towards Cain, screaming my lungs out. The next two bullets entered simultaneously at different points. Now, the pain was rushing through every fiber of my being. I collapsed on my back two feet from Cain as a few more went in. Truth be told, I didn't know how many gushing holes were in my body as I lay there.
"Ah, fuck!" one of the faceless mercs cried from somewhere in their small crowd. A smile curled across my lips.
"…Hit-Girl."
There was screaming and yelling within the group. Mass confusion spread as they started turning their guns in all directions. At least two or three were probably killed by shooting each other. Mindy was cut through them with her sword like they were horses in a glue factory. Before they could hit her, she'd dart back into the trees and come from a different angle. They were completely confused and helpless. This won't last long. Seeing it from this low angle reminded me of when I first met Mindy. She was a pint-sized killing machine at 11-years-old. She cut through a slew of drug dealers in similar fashion while I sat there with my thumbs up my ass. The irony was not lost on me now.
Soon enough, there were only three or four left — plus Marcus Cain.
"Shoot her," he whined. "Kill her!" I actually saw her this time. As the last guys started spreading out, she came up from under a pile of dead bodies and slit one guy's throat with her katana within an instant. She tossed a butterfly knife like a homing missile into the heart of the man farthest from her. She pulled out a handgun she must have taken from a dead body a while ago and fired it into the stomach of the one merc trying to reload his gun and two more into his head, before pouncing on the last one with butterfly knife out. She stabbed him in the face and body at least a dozen times in a few seconds while she screamed bloody murder. Finally she turned to Cain who was trying to run away. She briskly walked up to him as he stumbled over dead bodies. She grabbed him by the shoulders and threw him into the blood and dirt.
"H-Hit-Girl, please. I just thought, I just thought, it'd be…." He wasn't allowed to finish that sentence or any other. With butterfly knife in hand, she began hacking away at his chest like a fiend. She didn't make a noise while the actor screamed true agony for his final death scene. In less than a minute she was holding a red, beating blob in her hand. When Cain saw it above him he stopped screaming long enough for his eyes to bulge out. She tilted her head and I could barely catch a glimpse of hesitation on her face. A promise is a promise. She took a small, but juicy bite out of the thumping organ before Cain stopped twitching.
"Mmmy wwife," I garbled with splashes of blood in my chuckling mouth. Mindy must have heard me, because her back stiffened in an instant and she turned to run to me.
"Dave," she whispered to herself as she knelt down next to me. She tried to place her hands over one bullet hole that was probably in my lungs. She then moved a hand down to try to cover another in my stomach. She even tried to cover one of the leg holes with her boot. "David…what have you done." I just leaned my head into her lap, happy to see her there, happy to see the flowing tears run down her face and mingle with the pools of other men's blood. My crazy, beautiful wife, I wanted to say. Don't cry. You're so much prettier when you smile. I tried to tell her that, but only blood was coming out of my mouth. She raised my head up next to hers and removed my mask. Our foreheads touched.
"You can't go," her raspy voice ordered, like I had a choice. "You have to keep your baby safe." I already have, Mindy. I tried to laugh, but there was only red.
