It Takes One to Raise One

Sequel to the incredibly long titled No One Takes Down Hit Girl But Hit Girl. Welcome and thank you for reading and reviewing. Title courtesy of Makokam.

The Motherfucker was back. Why in the fuck hadn't he stayed dead! Life was just getting to be pleasant and now we were going to be buried back in the shit. I pulled the more identifiable parts of my costume off as I walked to the car. It was his fault my daddy was dead. And that Dave's dad was dead. And the colonel. I know he's just a kid like Dave and I, but it wasn't time to screw around anymore. He's hurt too many people. I'm going to kill him and bury fucking body myself. Then fill the hole with cement. And maybe dynamite. God damnit he's going to stay dead!

I climbed into the car, plugged my iPod into the stereo, and put it on my 'theme music' mix. When I was this mad, it was generally the only thing that let me calm down without breaking something. It was a weird mix of Death Metal, a few pissed off Avril songs, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, etc. As I pulled out into traffic, I hit the random button and let it choose a song. 'Let it Go' from Frozen started to play…. OK. I liked the song. And I had bought the album for Bethany about a week ago. Not really appropriate for my mood though and it definitely didn't belong in this playlist. Maybe I'd added it by mistake. I had it skip again. The 'My Little Pony' theme song started to play. What the fuck? One more try. Some song about cock sucking princesses being saved by princes started to play. OK, they probably weren't literally cock sucking princesses. At least, I don't think so; I've only seen a handful of Disney movies and they seemed pretty wholesome. Very few of them involved sex in any way. But any girl who waits to get rescued by some prince instead of doing it herself is a cock sucker in my book. Fuck it! The point was that this wasn't my music. I knew I didn't buy any fucking princess songs, which meant that somebody else did. I yanked the wheel and pulled over to the curb, earning me a few horn blares from the people I'd cut off. One guy looked at me rather angry and even looked like he might get out of his car, but when he caught my glare, he put his car back in drive and sped off.

I grabbed my iPod and started scrolling through the song list…. Holy Shit! I didn't recognize any of this music. Where the hell was my death metal? I kept scrolling. The song list was a little kid's delight. At this point, it was pretty obvious that Bethany had changed my playlist and added a shit ton of music. And while I might have usually just 'Let it Go' (not laughing now), I just wasn't in the right mood. I grabbed my phone and logged into the bank to check my debit card records. Yep. There it was. A string of $0.99 and $1.49 charges longer then I could count. It must have been over $200 bucks! And it wasn't the money so much as the betrayal. I couldn't believe it. Everything I gave that kid, and now she goes nuts on my iTunes account? And then I did something I'm really ashamed of. I snapped.

I parked a few blocks away and worked on calming myself down while I walked to Miranda's door. But it just ate at me. Somehow all of this crap and anger couldn't be locked away. I knocked on Miranda's door and when she opened it, I stepped right in and looked around. "Where is the little shit?" I asked.

Miranda stared at me, kind of shocked. "Umm, you mean Bethany I suppose?"

I stared back. "Yep. Where is she?"

Miranda took a couple of steps to stand between me and the living room. "She's in there. She's watching 'Barbie and the Twelve Dancing Princesses'. It's almost over. Do you want some coffee maybe? Or, umm, maybe a valium?"

"Go. Get. Her." I growled.

Then Miranda did something that surprised me. She stood up to me. "No." She said. "Whatever the hell it is, you're way too pissed. Come back in the morning when you've calmed down and we'll talk about it. I won't charge you extra or anything. "

"No fucking way." I said. "She's going to answer for what she did right now." I said. I took a step forward but Miranda didn't budge.

"What did she do? What the hell can a six year old do to get you this pissed off?" She asked.

I thrust my iPod at her. "She fucked with my iPod and changed the playlist."

Miranda looked at me confused. "And?" After a moment of dead silence, she continued. "And what else did she do? Not even you can be this angry over a playlist."

"OK, fine. Fuck the list. But the bitch spent over $200 on iTunes in the last 3 days. Two hundred dollars! And she bought princess shit!" I said, trying not to scream.

Somehow Miranda stayed calm under my glare of doom. "If you ever call that little girl a bitch again, I'll take you out. Got it?"

Somehow, I actually believed her. I mean, I barely noticed when I was swearing and I was more than certain that with Bethany's mouth, she wouldn't think anything about being called a bitch. Hell, she'd called me one yesterday and I'd laughed it off. Where the hell did this Miranda come from? She certainly wasn't the casual hero/fuck buddy that had been part of Justice Forever.

"So, how'd she spend all of that without the password?"

"Well, I gave her the password a couple of days ago. She wanted an extra lollypop hammer in Candy Crush and I said OK."

"Just to make sure we're clear, I'm going to make you repeat that. You gave her the password, correct?" Miranda asked as I stood there confused.

I could feel the moral high ground under me shift a bit. "Umm, yes, but…"

Miranda interrupted. "And did you specifically say she couldn't buy anything else?"

"Well, no, but…."

"And do you think a six year old really understands self control when you, an adult, fly off the handle over a changed playlist?"

The moral high ground had pretty much become quick sand. "Shit." I said. But quiet this time and not angry. I grabbed a chair from the kitchen table and sat down.

Miranda apparently wasn't done. "So whose fault was this?"

Son of a bitch! I'd never really had a mother but Miranda certainly made me feel like I was being dressed down by one. "Mine. It was my fucking fault." I looked up at her. "I'm starting not to like you." I said, but my heart wasn't in it and we both knew it.

She joined me at the table. "Look Mindy. Kids are tough to deal with. I'm not sure you know what you've gotten yourself into here. Especially since if what Dave said was true, you didn't really have much of a childhood yourself."

"So how do you know so much?" I asked. "It's not like you have kids."

"No, I don't have kids of my own. But I deal with a lot of kids at the ballet studio. When their kids don't behave or do things right, I watch their parents yell at them. And blame them. And attack them. All for things that aren't really the kids fault."

"What do you mean?"

"There's a reason they're called kids. They haven't grown up yet. They haven't developed good judgment or learned to understand consequences. That all takes time and a lot of patience to learn. So, a six year old in pre-ballet might want to stand and quietly pay attention, but at some point, she's going to wiggle and run around. Or she's going to have difficulty concentrating because her parents were running late getting her there and didn't feed her a proper breakfast. It happens all the time and just pisses me off. They yell at her but it's their fault!"

"OK, OK. Point taken. So what do I do?" I asked.

"Change your password, obviously. But wait until tomorrow when you've calmed down to explain to Bethany why what she did was wrong and what will happen if she somehow does it again. But let this one slide because if you didn't tell her the rules ahead of time, it isn't fair to punish her for breaking them."

I nodded agreement. This parenting shit was harder then I'd thought. Especially since I was kind of starting in the middle. For example, you don't have to explain to an infant that they're not allowed watch stuff on Pay per view. And it was time to admit that 'parenting' was what I was doing. Bethany was my responsibility. It was my job to help her learn, and grow, and stay safe.

Safe. Which she wasn't. Because The Motherfucker was on the loose again.

FUCK! I'd managed to forget why it was that I was actually upset.

I tried to put a good face on it. "Hey, Miranda, I don't really know how to tell you this. Umm, he's back" I trailed off.

"Who's back? Jason? Chucky? The Ghostbusters?" Miranda obviously hadn't caught on to how serious this was.

"The Motherfucker. Chris D'Amico. He just crashed Dave's graduation." I said.

And then I watched Miranda's face. I'd never actually seen the color literally drain out of someone's face. But that's what happened to her.

"Dave's OK." I told her. But apparently that wasn't the issue. Then she began to tremble. The woman who was willing to stand between me and the target of my anger was falling apart at the mere mention of that fucktard Chris.

"But the shark, and the all the blood and…. How?" She babbled.

"I don't know. He was in a wheelchair, but he had a lot of hired muscle and obviously still has lots of money. He's got to be totally insane now, not that he had a long way to go. He seems to think he's The Emperor from Star Wars or something."

"Muscle?" Miranda took a deep breath. "The same guys who…."

And I remembered. Her attack. Or molestation. Or whatever happened when Chris couldn't get it up to rape her. She was never that specific and nobody ever pushed her to talk about it.

"If they are, they'll die. Painfully. They'll probably die regardless, but I'll make a special point of it, OK? I've got a stake in this too. Chris is the reason my Daddy and Dave's are both dead." I looked into her eyes and she wasn't entirely there. Panic still ruled her. "Breath Miranda. Breath. There's no way they could know about your new place, but if you want to move, I'll take care of it. And if you personally want revenge, I'll help you."

"Then move me. Please. And I'll watch Bethany any time you need me to so that you can concentrate on making sure they stay dead this time. But I don't ever want to see them again. Just…. Make them be gone. Maybe the nightmares will go with them. Promise?"

"I promise." I said. "This time they will all be very, very dead."