Five weeks later
Wednesday

The House

Things were very different.

I had learnt that Joshua was not a pushover, despite being British. Okay, the purple thing had been amusing, but it had been a total pain in the fucking ass to remove and Daddy had laughed about it for over a week, which was very annoying!

To all intents and purposes Josh was now my brother, in a manner of speaking, at least that is how I treated him. Josh seemed to have been taught a lot of skills by his father and although they were only the rudimentary basics, Daddy and James had helped him develop these skills and he could now fight me or Dave and inflict pain.

Sophia seemed very pleased that Josh was now living with us and enjoyed having somebody else to play with.

..._...

We were still looking to sort out a room for Josh. For now he was still sleeping on the floor in Dave's room. Speaking of Dave, I had learnt a few more things about my best friend. It had taken me a while to notice that there were always empty boxes of tissues in his bedroom and it wasn't until I went to pick up a discarded wad of tissues from his floor that my hand came away all sticky and I kind of freaked out.

I was fully clued up, on the 'facts of life' and knew immediately what the gooey substance probably was, not to mention where it had probably come from! I vowed never to touch anything that I found on Dave's floor – ever. I had washed it off my hand immediately and called Dave a 'disgusting motherfucker'; he had just laughed.

"But I thought we shared everything?" Dave had asked innocently.

"You want my fist, asshole!" I had responded, without thinking.

"Nah, I can do it myself, thanks!" Dave had replied deadpan.

It had taken me a minute to catch on and I had felt my face getting very hot. I just scowled and did my best to ignore the howls of laughter that came from Daddy. Daddy had then gone on to explain that it was all perfectly natural and a part of boys growing up. I knew that boys always played with themselves, but going as far as that was just plain disgusting and just don't get me started on Dave's internet browsing history! Some of the things I saw made me want to scratch my own eyes out. I also found out that 'a nice pair of bazookas' did not mean what I had expected it to!

..._...

Chloe. Chloe had been cleared by her Mom to start training with us. Cathy had said that Chloe could train and that Chloe would either kill herself or be killed by her father when he found out what she was doing. Chloe, though, did not care and enjoyed being shown the ropes, so to speak, and picked things up very fast, which was annoying. She was the youngest among us and tended to be an annoying little brat at times, but that was life. Dave actually commented that it was nice to have a new little brat, meaning that Chloe had replaced me.

I received so little respect!

..._...

In two weeks, Josh was going to be eleven. Daddy had a big surprise for his birthday planned. As far as becoming a vigilante went, Josh had already made his first kill, out of necessity. The kid could shoot really well, as I had found out to my cost. Dave had trained both Chloe and Josh on various weapons, some of which Josh had already been familiar with. One surprise had been Josh's fondness for throwing knives, more specifically the Fairbairn-Sykes Commando knife. Josh was lethal with the things and could repeatedly hit the same point on a target with them; that actually made me jealous, so I started learning to use the knives, but I was not as good as Josh. He had larger hands than me and could handle the large knives better, so I just stuck with my smaller throwing blades and ninja stars.

I felt sorry for Josh and his Dad's funeral had not been fun! Nevertheless, the boy fitted in very well, despite the fact that he enjoyed winding me up and we had fought plenty of times resulting in bruises and some blood. But it was good training. I had tried my 'hit me' trick on Chloe, but the bitch had just hit me and it had fucking hurt!

We had not stopped going out on the streets, only it was just Hit Girl and Kick-Ass, with the occasional outing for Eisenhower. Frank D'Amico was still alive, annoyingly, however Josh was proud of his father for putting D'Amico into a private hospital for the past five weeks and he was expected to stay there for another few months!

Things had calmed down on the streets without D'Amico's direct attention. Since Frank had left the City, we had seen a lot more of that other vigilante, Red Mist. We had met up and chatted a little. He seemed to hate criminals as much as we did, however he generally avoided talking about Frank D'Amico, which was weird.

Saturday night

We were out on the streets again.

This time we were on foot with our pal, Eisenhower. We kept to the shadows, Kick-ass was holding Eisenhower's leash, as he was stronger than I was and could control her much more easily than I could.

We had been out about an hour when Eisenhower started to growl. Over the past two and a half years, we had learnt to trust Eisenhower's instinct for trouble. We instantly went on guard, checking out the area around us.

Eisenhower's nose was working and she looked into the dark shadows a dozen yards away. That was where the trouble was going to be coming from and from the shadows, it did. A man came out of the darkness.

"A fucking ninja?" Hit Girl growled.

The man wore black and carried a large Katana. He started to weave it in threatening movements. I saw that Hit Girl did not look amused as then man waved us forwards; he was grinning.

"Fuck this!" I snarled drawing my Walther and shooting the man in the chest, twice. He went down hard and I holstered my pistol.

We both moved towards the man, but Eisenhower was still snarling. A second later, I realised why as the man sprang to his feet and launched toward us, Katana raised. We wore armour so why should he not? Lesson learnt!

I dropped the leash, drew my blades and launched forward as Hit Girl brandished her bō-staff beside me. We had never fought a ninja before and this man was skilled and fought with a very sharp and lethal blade. We circled and every time the man drove toward one of us, the other would strike. The man seemed to sense us approaching and spin thus forcing us onto the defensive.

Hit Girl was very close to being caught at one stage, when the point of the sharp sword almost cut her stomach, she faltered, but the blade had obviously missed. We were doing our best to coordinate our attacks over the comms. Finally, we gained our opening, we both struck together, and I drove both of my blades into the man's left side and directly into his heart.

The man dropped his sword and fell to the street noiselessly.

Where the fuck, had he come from?

He carried no identification, but we grabbed the Katana and accompanying Saya, before Hit Girl decided to call it a night.

This change was a concern.

Safehouse A

"Well done, kids!" Damon said. "Nice souvenir!"

Mindy passed the Katana to her father and then vanished into the bedroom to change. I followed a minute or two later and found Mindy standing in the middle of the bedroom, her suit on the floor. She was still wearing her t-shirt and knickers, but just standing there.

"What's up, Mindy?" I asked, as she had not moved.

She slowly turned around to face me. Her t-shirt was red with blood and she had it pulled up so I was able to see her stomach; there was a red line from one side to the other.

The Katana had penetrated her suit below her chest plate.

"Dave!" Mindy muttered as tears spilled down her cheeks and she collapsed to the floor.

"Damon!" I yelled.

Two weeks later
Saturday

Safehouse A

It was Joshua's eleventh birthday.

Initially he had been a little sad, as his Dad was not there, but we all got together to help make the day happy for him. Cathy and Chloe were over and Damon was revealing his new toys.

..._...

Josh appeared from the bedroom, only he was not 'Josh' any longer.

"Please meet the latest vigilante to hit the streets of New York: Firestorm!" Damon announced happily.

The suit was colourful to put it mildly! The suit looked very similar to that which Kick-Ass wore except that the suit was a combination of various vibrant reds and not so bulky. Firestorm carried a pair of Glock 26 pistols, one on each hip and three Fairbairn-Sykes Commando knives that were mounted on his chest armour.

He had shown an affinity for blades, so Daddy had produced a pair of two-foot long combat Wakizashi swords that had sixteen-inch blades. These would be mounted on Firestorms back once he was finished training with the lethal blades.

Josh was a few inches taller than I was and the suit made him seem even bigger. Did I feel intimidated? Yes, I did and that was good.

..._...

Now Cathy had made it clear that Chloe was not going out on to the streets until she was ten, as an absolute minimum. Daddy had agreed to this but that had not stopped us from getting the young girl her own suit and identity.

"Chloe, I know it is Josh's birthday, but we have present for you too," James said and Chloe smiled broadly. She looked up at her Mom.

"Don't look at me, girl!" Cathy said, feigning ignorance.

Thirty minutes later

A very uncharacteristically shy Chloe appeared from the bedroom, with a smirking Mindy.

She was wearing a navy-blue suit made up of a two-piece bodysuit, lined with Kevlar. She wore a very light Type I set of body armour in the form of a black chest and back plate, which, in time would be upgraded when she could handle the weight and when she started to go out operationally. For her face, she wore a dark blue domino mask.

"This is so cool!" Chloe grinned as she twirled in front of a mirror.

For now, Chloe had no weapons, but once we had trained her up, then we would issue her some weapons. Mind you, I was aware that Chloe was very good with a bow and arrow, so that may be something to look towards as a primary weapon for her.

Once we had decided on her weapons, we would adapt her suit accordingly.

"Daddy, who is she?" Mindy asked curiously.

"Everybody, meet Shadow!

"Shadow?" Shadow asked.

"Yeah, Shadow!" Damon repeated.

"I like it!" Shadow confirmed.

The following week
Saturday

Safehouse A

"You need to keep an eye on your surroundings, Firestorm!"

"Yes, Kick-Ass!" Firestorm moaned.

Mindy had just taken him out, from behind. Mindy could sneak up on almost anybody; she was a fucking ninja!

"Bloody hell!" Josh breathed, ripping off his mask. "This thing is hot to wear."

"You just need to get used to it," Mindy said. "As we did with ours."

"This is not going to happen overnight, Josh. We've been at this over two years and we are still refining ourselves," I said. "There's more to this shit than just killing people."

Josh nodded.

"Sorry!" Josh said, but then span as Shadow came at him from the side and he effortlessly knocked her to the floor.

Shadow scowled up at Josh, who grinned smugly; he was learning.

We were all taking a break from the streets.

Mindy now had a very small, almost invisible scar across her stomach. The wound had been superficial and Cathy had sorted it out in no time. There had not even been a requirement for stitches.

Damon was working on a solution, to improve the armour on our suits. However, so far he was limited by what he could get his hands on. He had been using our souvenir Katana as a test blade on various types of armour.

Neither Damon nor Dad wanted us to go back onto the streets until we knew more about this potential new threat.