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Chapter Text

Mindy McCready stared up at Wayne Tower with its big fuck-off ‘W’ and wanted to breakdown right then and there. Looked like all those shitty Sunday PSAs about drugs being bad were true. She shook her head. She was being fucking stupid.

It wasn’t like her being a little girl who dabbled with nicotine and alcohol and that one time she totally didn’t do a hit of cocaine would affect her mental facilities. Those types of withdrawals didn’t result in spontaneous mental breakdowns.

She took one step back, then another, until Mindy spun on her heel and started to pace away from that big phallic momentum to one man’s ego. She stuffed her hands to her pockets and stuck close to the alleys, as she revised her options.

Mindy McCready, better known as Hit-Girl, refused to believe she was in the fucking DC universe. Sure, she was labeled as a ‘super-hero’ in some perverted sense, but that was because, to every nerd and geek, any two-bit vigilante and Punisher-wannabe were like superheroes to them.

And she was pretty sure she could beat Frank Castle’s teeth in.

Given this whole strange turn of events, there stood a good chance that might actually happen. Y’know, provided she didn’t have an acute mental meltdown, but even if she did, she was pretty sure her subconscious mind would drape her delusions over acceptable targets.

But denial would get her nowhere.

If comic bullshit was in-effect, then she had to determine whether there was a full-blown Crisis going on or just weird crossover shit. She traced back her steps, trying to find the point of origin that led to her to this city.

She was in the city for business, after some of her escapades around the world. And it was only just now that she could recall the name of the city: Gotham goddamn City. Up until she first stepped into this city, it was like this place didn’t even exist.

Hit-Girl had been raised on a steady diet of red meat and comic book factoids. There were a few places named Gotham out in the world, but there were all hick places and villages. New York had a nickname of Gotham, but this place was clearly not New York City.

She just hoped that all her equipment was still at the hotel she booked. Mindy did not want to go out as Hobo-Girl.

XXX

Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition, all her shit was still hidden away in the hotel room. She strapped in and strapped on, putting on her body armor and then her purple super-suit. She clicked her cape on with the padlock around it and slid the domino mask with the accompanying purple wig.

She was ready to go out and do some work.

By which, she sat on the bed with a laptop and started googling things. What was a super-suit for if not for wearing it in every available moment? Either way, she had to be careful with her searches on the google equivalent.

Even if Brother Eye wasn’t a thing or had been a thing, Hit-Girl was pretty sure Batman would violate civil liberties if she pushed the boundaries too hard, her being an extradimensional immigrant aside. She sat cross-legged, binging all the information she could like a depraved fanboy discovering rule34 of all their favorite comic book characters.

There was more than enough information and video and a bunch of other needless details that confirmed, surface-wise, that she didn’t have a breakdown. The information present wasn’t immediately factual, as these were a people that didn’t have metaknowledge. But seeing was believing. She just needed to see with her two eyes to utterly confirm her predicament.

If she was in Metropolis, all she needed to do was throw herself off a building by the Daily Planet and wait for Superman to swoop in. Of course, she would make sure the fall was survivable, but Superman wouldn’t need to know that.

But she was in Gotham. Dealing with Batman, if Batwank was in-effect, was going to be an exercise in frustration. She set aside the laptop and fidgeted around in the bed.

What were even her plans here?

Be a fucking Gwenpool?

Barf.

She massaged her temples. As much as she wanted to go out and show those pussies that killing was the only way to put the filth down permanently, she had to remember comic-book logic. The public here were nothing but sheep. If she somehow turned the paradigm on its head, then she might cause a Kingdom Come scenario.

Besides, her research indicated that people have tried to kill all these supervillains. Take the Joker for example, given she was in Gotham. Either the stinkin’ animal died and somehow came back with vengeance or he executed a 5D chess move in the process.

She would have called it bad writing and contrivance and the universe bending over backwards to accommodate the Joker. However, if she truly existed in the same reality as Joker, then she better tread carefully. No matter how stupid he appeared, his insanity belied all the machinations he had up his sleeve.

As much as she wanted to gun down the bastard, it might end up with an Emperor Joker scenario. And that motherfucker would totally rez her dad just to kill him again to make her tango with his corpse.

Honestly, emulating comic-books were so much fucking better than experiencing them. It wasn’t fun to think of all these scenarios when they might actually happen. Hit-Girl closed her eyes, wishing she actually had a breakdown.

She breathed out.

Hit-Girl slid off the bed, wondering where she should start. The night was young and there might be any number of vigilantes out and about. Encountering Batman was atop the very worst possibilities and meeting Nightwing was the best possible outcome.

She didn’t get anywhere without any risk.

Plus, Hit-Girl wanted to steal at least one grapple gun. It was such a bitch to climb up buildings with her current equipment. She went out into the balcony, having already scouted it out as a blind spot for any outside observation.

It took her five minutes to find a safe way off this building from this height and onto. She had been trained in free-running, but the architecture here was unconducive to her own style. It practically seemed like it was built around the use of a grapple gun.

She hopped across the rooftops, taking in the polluted air. Right now, she felt directionless. And if she tried to engage in her usual stress-relieving activities, it would bring down actual superheroes down on her head.

Again, all of this was semantics. She needed a cold hard slap of reality, whatever that may be. Finding a nice secluded, shadowed spot, Hit-Girl settled down and pulled up the police scanner app on her phone.

This was the boring part of operating as a vigilante. You couldn’t dismantle a criminal network without surveillance, without knowing who to kill and when to kill. It was a sequence, when properly applied, could cripple entire organizations.

And if she wasn’t careful, going in gun-ho without any semblance or structure of a plan. It only worked on a few occasions by the skin of her teeth.

Finally, something beyond petty domestic disputes rose from the white noise.

“… repeat, we have a 203-c! Killer Croc is rampaging the 67th! Oh, shit!” The audio cut out for a few seconds before being replaced a ragged breathing. It rose rapidly before steadily out. “It looks like Nightwing and Robin are on the case.”

Hit-Girl grinned. It looked like cops were just as useless in every conceivable reality. At the very least, she would be able to see live superheroes in action and see how she held up.

XXX

She settled into her makeshift sniper’s nest and watched the ensuing battle through the scope. Killer Croc was huge and watching the two vigilantes dance around him was like art. They maneuvered so skillfully that Hit-Girl knew she couldn’t compare. Killer Croc swung wide and the two vigilantes dodged.

Nightwing pulled off that signature flip that outed him as Dick Grayson by Tim Drake. It didn’t even seem humanly possible. She would have snapped her spine trying. Hit-Girl debated whether she should lend a hand. But firing into an ongoing fight would surely endear her to the Bat-Family. Now, if it was Red Hood, it might be a different story...

Plus, she probably needed something like an elephant gun to even punch through Killer Croc’s hide. But what would even be the point? It was pointless. The rifle in her hands started to shake as stupid emotions overtook her.

For the sake of gun safety, she set it aside and curled into herself.

What was the fucking point?

Even if she did kill every stupid supervillain, not only would she marked as a supervillain, her kills would eventually come back. Then she’d be marked by the universe as a one-off character that would be fridged sooner or later. Her Hit-Girl was nothing more than a shtick, one that had already been done before. The latest had been the Grim Knight, an edgy Batman with guns, and he clearly didn’t have staying power.

Would she be killed to maintain the status quo or would she be swept under the rug, locked away to be forgotten, forever destined to lose? She was on comic-book logic now. If everything she did was pointless, then what was purpose of Hit-Girl?

Something stirred in the corner of her eye. Someone settled next to her without making a sound. Mindy knew who it was. Her dead Daddy. Logically, she knew it was all a hallucination, but some part of her hoped that it was actually her Dad speaking through a mental illness.

“Hey, Daddy,” she whispered.

“Hey, baby doll.” He wrapped a comforting arm around her. “So, you’re in a comic-book, huh? I beat Dave would have creamed his pants.”

“He’s not Kick-Ass anymore. He would have left it all behind. I don’t think he would have this problem I’m having.”

“Thinking about hanging up the tights?” he asked.

“Yeah… I’m redundant. And even if I don’t agree with the heroes, I can’t go against them.”

He sighed, pulling her closer. Or maybe she just leaned into empty air. “But, baby doll, this is everything you’ve been raised for.”

Yeah, raised on a lie, but that didn’t matter. She didn’t want to be like any of the girls her age. Harpies, the lot of them. They would never get to go around the globe, killing all the bastards that deserved it. But how would that hold up here? In a world with beings so much greater than herself. What was she going to do to Darkseid? Kill him?

Don’t make her laugh.

This wasn’t Hit-Girl Kills the DC Universe, though now that she was in the prime universe that stray thought was probably now a possibility in the Dark Multiverse. And wouldn’t that be a kick in the teeth if an edgy, evil Hit-Girl popped up to supplant her?

Of course, assuming she was even important enough to warrant such a thing.

Oh… goddamn it, she was turning into a Gwenpool.

“You’re afraid of whatever irrelevance brings you,” he said, breaking her out of those thoughts. “Be it death or imprisonment or even just a normal life.”

“Yeah...”

“You just gotta find your kayfabe.”

She turned, staring into his eyes. For a few seconds, they resembled nothing like all the positive memories she associated with him. They blacked and bruised and in her mind’s eye, his brains were blown out and she was too slow to stop it.

“What do you mean?”

“Every villain has a gimmick that they revolve around, right? Mr. Freeze, for example. He has that sick wife as his motivation. It made him iconic. Even when the iterations that followed didn’t have that motivation, he had staying power until a return to form occurred.”

“Until the universe or whatever resets itself.”

“It isn’t like the heroes would be able to do anything about that.”

And what about Superboy Prime? she thought bitterly.

He continued, “You just have to make sure you stay, so some version of you continues on.”

“And how would I do that?” She turned around to plead with the hallucination, but he was gone.

Hit-Girl stood back up, slamming a fist into the brickwork. She was going to have to pull a Gwenpool. But if, to be honest, if she tried to recreate the Gwenpool plot, all of it would fall flat. Their two stylings would be like fire and ice.

To be honest, that role might as well be filled in by Ambush Bug. And she couldn’t flint around like Gwenpool did in a desperate need to ingrain herself to continuity. No, she was a squishy human. Might even be even squishier… given that she came from ‘real-life’ and subjected to said real-life problems these heroes didn’t have to deal with.

Honestly, fuck comics. She didn’t even know why she liked them.

The closest niche she could fulfill was in Red Hood’s Outlaws. The problem was reaching that stage. It wasn’t like she could stroll up to the Bat-Family and unveil all their secrets in the hopes of securing a position.

If she blackmailed them, they came down on her head. She briefly mused on the notion of other heroes, but they held much higher entry bars. Why the hell did she have to start off in Gotham? Maybe she'd have an easier go if she started off in Themyscira…

No.

For all their faults, the Bat-Family was the easiest barrier to cross.

What had Daddy said?

Kayfabe.

She had to construct a compelling enough backstory and reasoning to stick around the Bat-Family. And the best way to do that was be a foil.

Hit-Girl smiled as she remembered who the current Robin was.

XXX

A week passed and Hit-Girl had done enough scoping about to enact her plan. She managed to narrow down Robin’s patrol route. In turn, she spied on him spying on a drug ring. Batman was most likely not in Gotham given that Nightwing strayed out of Bludhaven for the time being. She had to move fast, while conditions were still optimal. Her escape route was already planned out and all variables had been accounted for.

She stood above the drug-pushers, balancing on a beam and waiting. There were ten scumbags to take down. As far as she could tell, they worked for Two-Face. And she just thanked high heavens they didn’t wear tacky outfits that were black on one side and black on the other.

Hit-Girl would have scrapped her current plan and just bisected all of them. Out of habit, she rested her hands on the swords strapped to her sides. But her plan required these dirtbags to be alive.

She smirked. Nothing about her plan required about these guys coming out unscathed. Hit-Girl decided to be merciful and give them a small heads-up. She brandished her two brass knuckles and smacked them together with a clang.

“Hey, what was that –“

Hit-Girl stepped off the ledge and landed boot-first into someone’s face. His skull cracked and she was pretty sure the way his neck snapped back, he would be paralyzed for life. Hit-Girl surged forward, breaking one person’s ribs with one honed punch. It exposed her left side to a thug, who pulled out a .45. She may not be able to dodge bullets, but she sure as shit could move quicker than the guy’s aim.

One shot, two shots, the eruption of gunfire caused confusion and panic in the undisciplined. Some of the other thugs dove out of the way and a few others decided to frantically firing into the fray. Nothing like screams of pain to send fools into a frenzy. She punched one thug so hard in the face that he spat out all of his teeth with such force that it blinded another, giving her an opening. The gunfire continued to whiz by as she made short work of the rest.

She struck without care, bruising kidneys. Six left. Testicles were ruptured. Five left. An eye was sent flying like a snapped yo-yo. Four left. A kneecap to cripple a man down to size. Three left. Crushed windpipe. Two left. Dislocated jaw. One left.

He saw the fates of his fellows and had stumbled back on his back. She just thanked her lucky stars that he didn’t crap himself. That was one thing the comics left out: the smell of blood, shit, and piss. She started to chuckle to herself at the thought that the people here didn’t crap themselves when they died.

It further served as a psychological tactic to the trembling man. Hit-Girl circled him as a shark would do to its prey. As she past the cargo they were shipping, Hit-Girl covertly planted two IEDs on them before she straddled him, pinning him down.

“Probably the first time a girl ever got into this position with you willing, huh? You freaking pedo.” She leered at him with a grin. “But I want you to scream like the women you hurt.”

“I, I, I –“

Whether it was a denial or a build-up to a threat, it didn’t matter. Hit-Girl started to whale on him, beating him black and blue. She pivoted one fist after another, like a machine, leaving him just enough time in-between to scream.

It was fun admittedly to do so, but it was quickly becoming boring after the tenth hit. There had to be some variety in her life, otherwise she would be a dull serial killer and not a kickass vigilante. Then something flew in on her raised right fist and broke her wrist.

She slumped off the man, only slightly dazed by it all.

Fuck! Then she realized what had happened. The power and aim behind the throw was impressive. Fuck, he’s good.

Hit-Girl had been paying attention and he still caught her by surprise. Her eyes fell upon the batarang. Was the amount of force proportional to her own? Or was Robin having a bad day? Or dare she dread that she was actually weaker than the baseline humans here?

The time for fangirling was over. She threw herself toward the batarang in a roll, pulling out the detonator with her wounded hand. The roll was imperfect, the pain throwing her off her game and her desire to possess the batarang making the trajectory less than perfect. Her back smacked against one of the cargo crates. She tucked the offending hand underneath her armpit whilst concealing the detonator.

Robin landed in the midst of her carnage, surveying the damage with cool disdain. Did the al Ghul grandchild really think he was any better than her? Hit-Girl smiled at Robin, admiring his super-suit. Practical yet still held homage to the classical colors.

“Like what you see?” she asked.

“Sloppy,” he retorted.

“Only if you care about these scum. Brutality is only sloppy if you look through the scope of morality.”

“You think it’d be so easy to put on a mask and do our type of work. Frankly, it’s insulting. And it will undermine the people’s trust in real heroes. Trust is something not easily gained, yet it is so easily lost.”

“Like you’d know,” she sneered.

He didn’t so much as flinch. Oh, he was really good. It should grate on him, his heritage, a fear of losing his trust and going back to what he had been born for. Unless she was off-kilter and was in an Elseworlds, but that possibility had been dismissed during her research.

“The name’s Hit-Girl.”

“I don’t care. I’m taking you in.”

“You can try.”

Then she pulled the trigger on the detonator. Smoke poofed into the room, concealing her. He would probably have some bullshit to track her through the smoke, but she just needed that one second of surprise.

Hit-Girl shot toward her exit route, hopping on the crates to reach a window and jumped through it. Glass sprinkled all around her, but did not slice her to ribbons due to her training. She landed on a lower, adjacent rooftop and quickly switched out a detonator for a syringe. It was for emergencies only and she only planned to use it if she was losing. But the broken wrist was not part of the plan.

She stabbed the syringe into her veins before sprinting across the rooftop so fast that she was afraid of actually losing Robin. She slowed down, much to her good favor as Robin tried using his grapple gun to ensnare her legs. Hit-Girl easily dodged it with as spinning hop, landing on her feet to face Robin.

Now, the next bit was the hard part: getting into a brief physical skirmish with the Boy Wonder.

It was both to partly test her skills against a genuine superhero and to advance the kayfabe.

Hit-Girl smiled as the adrenaline began to rush into her heart. She unfurled her fingers, letting the brass knuckles clatter to the ground. They had been scrubbed down for any possible fingerprints, but who knew what they could gleam from it with supertech? But they were from another universe and should only add to the mystery of the character she was building.

She settled into a mixed martial arts stance and Robin fell into his own stance. She waited for him to come to her. He did, striking several quick jabs in succession. She managed to bring up her arms to block it, but then he redirected their torrent to her ribs.

A small oomph escaped her lips, but she swam forward, getting him into a complicated lock. They were in close contact for a few seconds. More than enough to try something stupid and more than enough to feel the perverse sense of intimacy that only grapplers knew. She forced the arm she grabbed up, to sidesweep his legs out from under him. He rolled back onto his feet, throwing out several batarangs.

Hit-Girl pulled out her own stolen batarang, deflecting one and weaving under the other two. She launched herself at Robin, wielding the batarang like an underhanded knife. Robin pulled out two more batarangs, blocking several of her blows in a controlled fashion.

The swings started off wildly, erratic, forcing Robin to take a more defensive position. He adapted so quickly and switched into the offensive so seamlessly that Hit-Girl nearly tripped over herself, overwhelmed. So, reasonably, Hit-Girl switched it up, adopting the actual knife style her Dad taught her.

The change caught Robin off guard and the slice across the wrist would have been near-fatal if it weren’t for the armored fabric. Before she could be elated in her victory, the two damn batarangs came hurling back like boomrangs and bashed her backside. She stumbled away as Robin broke away.

Okay, it was clear that Robin was better than her. Leagues better than her. It was to be expected, but her pride took a beating in admitting that. Any advantage she would have would be in trickery and treachery.

“You fight like someone trained by the League,” she threw out. In truth, she couldn’t fucking tell and just pulled it out her ass.

He settled into another fighting stance, but made no move to attack. “And how would you know?”

“Here and there. I’ve been around the world, ya know?”

It was all half-truths. She didn’t want him to pick up on micro-expressions or whatever other bullshit they had to pick up on her lies.

“Well, you haven’t been trained by the League. I can tell.”

“The League doesn’t like competition.”

Robin clicked his tongue in annoyance. “Care to elaborate?”

“Only if you want to explain why Batman has an ex-assassin as his Robin.” Hit-Girl paused at the appropriate dramatic moment and tapped her chin. “Or did you get one over him, the Great Detective? Hm? Wouldn’t that be a shit-stirrer? To find out his precious Robin is a killer.”

“You know nothing.”

“I know enough. Even if we’re both the same, deep down, I can’t understand why you care for these scum. It’s only out of some modicum of respect that I have towards you heroes that I didn’t kill them.” Another dramatic pause. “Of course, that’s up to you. You know. If you aren’t an assassin posing as a hero.”

“What do you mean?” he snarled.

“This was intended as a failsafe, but now I want to know what you’re gonna do. To see if you are a hero.” She knew already, that he was going to be a goody two-shoes. But he didn’t know that. She clicked the detonator again. The warehouse errupted into flames as Robin spun around. “There must be a few too grievously wounded to move. What are you going to do, hero?

He turned around to glare at her, before rushing back into the building.

Just as planned.

She stared at her pickpocketed prize in her hands: a grapple gun. Hit-Girl didn’t know if she was that good or Robin let her have it. It was most likely the latter and there might be a tracker inside it. Hit-Girl wasn’t about to go back to her base of operations until she was sure that her prizes weren’t bugged.

But all in all, she counted this as a win.

It lifted her spirits up, until she remembered she had yet to face an actual superhero with actual powers. This had been only the first battle, if it could even be called it that. It might as well be a minor skirmish, a precursor to the actual conflict.

She had yet to win the war.

Chapter Text

The blown-up image of Hit-Girl was taunting him. It was caught on a security camera and was now prominently displayed on the Batcomputer. Hit-Girl had looked directly in the camera and was holding out both middle fingers at it. She stuck out her tongue, mocking him. It especially grated when he found the tracer from the grapple gun in the sewers. Robin steepled his fingers, watching the computer analyze her face and try to find a match in every known database.

He had gotten lucky.

Most domino masks, despite their lackadaisical appearance, actually tended to distort search algorithms. Any vigilante or villain worth their salt would invest in material that, while capturing most of their visage on camera, would still protect their identity. Or the masks were charmed with magic.

Hit-Girl utilized neither and the super-computer generated what was most likely her face. A blonde girl that was roughly the same age as him.

Robin leaned back, working through the most likely theory.

She was trained as an assassin of sorts. If Robin had to guess, it would have been her father. And said parent would be deceased, silenced in the grim business of assassinations. The League of Assassins wouldn’t stand any competition if they got in the way.

If this hypothetical father did get on the League’s bad side without directly opposing them, there could only be two options. Either he stumbled and bungled into one of their operations or he was actively cutting into their profit margin.

The question was whether he should make an effort to investigate these circumstances. Doing so, no matter how trivial, risked drawing the League’s attention back onto him. And as a result, it could somehow reignite his mother’s interest in him.

Robin had no interest in dying again.

Besides, it was a much larger scale that required more than a single Robin. Father was still on that extended mission, but it did not yet beggar the need for a Batman stand-in for the city of Gotham. A job that would doubtlessly fall onto Grayson’s shoulders.

And it was very auspicious that a matter drew Nightwing’s attention away from Gotham. Was it a matter of circumstances lining up against them? In which case, there might be some force manipulating them.

For what?

A solitary vigilante?

He unclenched his fists. Hit-Girl was someone too much like him. Someone that didn’t understand the appropriate amount of force. It hearkened to the times before he became Robin. Violence only bred more violence, and in the end it only made things worse. It just created an inescapable feedback loop.

Because unless people were shown there was a better way, they would merely contribute to the cycle. It was a bitter truth to swallow at times. Because there were some people that Robin thought were deserving of death. It was a slippery slope. One that he saw Hit-Girl was already tumbling down.

But she didn’t understand, not fully.

The line hadn’t been crossed, because she was only fearful of the consequences. Yet, it didn’t stop her from crippling one man and nearly killing the others. Either she would kill by accident or stop caring about holding back. The name, Hit-Girl, didn’t exactly inspire mercy. It was very vocative of the term hitman. Perhaps more credence to his theory about her past?

And it was the damnedest thing, he wanted to extend the smallest of olive branches to her. If only because he didn’t want to see someone set down the road he narrowly avoided taking. Yet, what if it was some sort of misdirection?

A cup of tea was settled on the armrest.

Robin took it with a tentative sip. “Thank you, Pennyworth.”

“I trust it is up to par, Master Damian?”

“Impeccable as always.” Robin took another sip, watching the screen bring up no matches. Alfred waited, already knowing that he wanted to ask a question. He set aside the cup, not looking Alfred in the eyes. “How did Father initially deal with, urgh, Catwoman?”

“Do you mean whether he saw if Miss Kyle was worth pursuing redemption?”

Robin glared at the screen. “Yes.”

“And I take it, this relates to the young girl on the screen.”

“Yes, Pennyworth.”

He shook his head. “You are so very much like your Father.”

“Of course, I am. I am the blood son of Batman.”

“With all the faults that it entails,” Alfred commented dryly.

He scowled before turning the screen off. “You haven’t answered my question.”

“You will know.”

“How brief, Pennyworth. But what if this is a ploy of sorts?”

“Do you question your own judgment?”

“No.”

“Then there is your answer.”

Alfred took his leave with the now-empty cup. It did make sense. Father kept all these contingencies on his fellow super-heroes, but held the proper judgment whether or not to use them. The screen suddenly lit up with an alert at Wayne Enterprise’s. Someone had broken in. Robin got up and grabbed his sword.

XXX

Robin crept into the office of the break-in. There were any number of important files that could be stolen at this level and in the wrong hands, it could range from damaging to the catastrophic. He looked up, seeing the lights shattered above.

He crept in, drawing a batarang and furthered into the room. His eyes wandered, taking care in assessing any potential threats. When he confirmed there were none, they settled into the center where a message was left. He was ready to bolt, because in most cases, these places were rigged to blow.

Robin took out a pocket flashlight, illuminating the wall.

All those important files were plastered in a haphazard collage. A message was burned onto them.

On the roof, bird-boy.

Robin quickly checked the wall, making sure there were no hidden surprises. Satisfied, he went to the broken window. He hopped out, twirling around to aim his grapple gun toward the very top and fired.

There were a few seconds of weightlessness as gravity began to take grip. Then the hook connected and Robin adjusted his body’s equilibrium. It was as graceful as he could be, but there was a fluidity he would never have. But he was still leaps and bounds better than Drake, who only somehow survived the rigorous requirements that befit the aerodynamics of a grapple gun.

He free-fell in reverse, letting the forces wash over instead of tensing up and making it worse on his body. When he reached the top, the grapple hook disconnected and let the momentum carry the last leg.

His feet landed on the edge and there he spotted Hit-Girl, looking all the worse for the wear. Of course, it wasn’t so obvious to the casual glance. But Robin had been trained by the best and it was akin to being a shark in bloodied waters.

It was all blunt force trauma. Robin briefly suspected it came from a bout of harsh training. But who would train her? The rudimentary psyche profile he constructed accounted for a dead father, who had worked on her in solitude. A sort of predatory tactic to isolate and indoctrinate. She wouldn’t let herself be trained by anyone outside that paradigm, unless she had been coerced or forced into it.

And her rough tactics that she had demonstrated indicated Hit-Girl was a free agent.

He spotted the stolen grapple gun clipped to her utility belt. It looked significantly more beaten than before. Then it occurred to him – that it was the result of her own training, trying to get use to the grapple gun.

She blew a puff of smoke from the cigarette she was smoking. It seemed forced, like it came from bad acting rather than addiction. Hit-Girl looked over to him, lazy and cocky, before flicking the cigarette over the edge.

“Good. You’re here.”

Hit-Girl rested her hands on the twin pair of swords at her sides.

Robin fell into a stance, ready to draw his sword.

“Why?” he asked.

“Why not?” At his glare, she shrugged, started circling around on the rooftop. “All the fat cats profiting off the suffering, a thin fucking veneer of corporate PC wokeness that gives lip service that ultimately ends up amounting to nothing.”

Every word, while dripping with casual disdain, was absolutely insincere.

“You’re being nothing but a disingenuous Anarky. And every sentence you just spoke was annoyingly false.”

She nonchalantly threw her hands back, mockingly. “You got me. But that’s the way the world should be. Every goddamn company should be like LexCorp, fucking over the little guy. That makes sense. But instead. Fucking. Wayne. Burns. So. Much. Money.” Each sentence was punctuated with her hands thrusting out toward the city. “And it doesn’t matter! He gives so much to charity and earns even more. He could give away nearly all of his money and earn it all back in no time at all. And the cycle repeats. Over and over again! When would you realize that it is all it’s a sunk cost fallacy? What is the point?!”

“The point,” Robin gritted out. “Is that it’s worth doing, to fight the good fight.”

“Even if it’s never-ending?” Her voice was bitter.

“Especially then.”

“Fine.” It was a whisper for some unseen concession. “Fine. Fine! We’ll do this song and dance.” Hit-Girl drew both her swords. “But there’s no real stakes to it. The pieces are taken off the board and put back with such frequency, it distracts from the fact that the board is built upon the nameless dead.”

Her tone, and the distress laced within it, had peaked when mentioning the stakes, but not the death that this life caused. There was a clear line in this line of duty and it had been a harsh lesson to learn that being the heir to mantle was more than just fighting. That he not only had to fight for the people of Gotham, he had to save them as well.

“You don’t care about the civilians, whether they live or die. Not truly,” he said, coldly.

She laughed, even more bitter like she had been forced to self-reflect. “Of course, I don’t. Not truly. When some scum tries stealing a purse from some old lady, she should pull out a gun and shoot them. It didn’t happen then, because it didn’t even occur to them. But here? They would just wait for a hero to save them. And that might even be worse.”

Robin’s grip tightened on his sword, sensing the impending violence. There was an allusion to his place of origin and how her viewpoint was formulated through a lens of violence.

“Seems you’re just blaming the victim here, for things they can’t necessarily control.”

She smiled. “Of course I can blame them. I tried the normal life, be a nice Barbie girl for a fuck-ass Barbie world. And I hated it. Because when everyone’s normal, nobody’s really special. The wheat has to be cut from the chaff and when those who try to be special are cut down, those who remain are really something. I’m sure you would know… al Ghul.”

Then she struck, swinging both swords at him. The mention of his blood caused the barest of stutters in him drawing his sword. Two blades met one and Hit-Girl took more ground than he had expected with that stunt.

She withdrew one sword and tried skewering his chest with it, but he broke off and flipped back. Hit-Girl laughed, clearly intent on not holding back. But there was a resignation to it all, a hopeless inevitably that came when facing a vastly stronger opponent.

Yet she still fought all the same.

She slashed wildly, but it was directed. It was the homegrown type of fighting. Bits and pieces taken from what worked immediately and discarded what didn’t. Whereas Robin knew so much more and could pull from a vast repertoire to fit the situation.

He curved the blade’s stroke to slip past her guard, invading into her stance and shoulder-checking her hard. She stumbled back as Robin continued forward, maneuvering through. He stared forward at the city, sparkling with life, and behind him, there was only the sightless certainty of his sword at Hit-Girl’s throat. An inch or two deeper and she would have had steel embedded in her throat.

“You’re good,” she gasped.

He only clicked his teeth, refusing to acknowledge her.

“It only makes sense given who your father is… Damian Wayne."

The knowledge of his actual identity caused him to pull away, to spin around to grab her, and interrogate her. It was one thing to know him as a former al Ghul, but an entirely different matter to know him as he was now. It caused a slip-up, a second of opening that she exploited with a cold-cock blow to his face. Hit-Girl hopped back with a manic laugh, standing on the edge.

“How do you know?” he shouted. Because she had seemed so ignorant during their first encounter, this was like whiplash, leaving him reeling and afraid to look deeper in fear of further damage.

“Come now. Does it matter?”

He gritted his teeth, raising the sword to level with his eyes, letting it steady him.

“It matters, because only few know. And I can deal with them. But you?”

“I’m a wild card, aren’t I?” She smiled. “But you want to know what’s funny? Is that no matter how much I may or may know you, to be able to predict all your rote patterns or development, I will always lose. In the end. And then… and then, I will become known as little more than a footnote in your story.”

“So, you’re nothing more than a pathetic attention-seeker,” he spat.

The smile turned brittle. “I once knew an iron-clad surety in my life that I was cleaning out the trash, the scum, and the waste of humanity. I’m sure you knew it too. It was with your destiny to inherit the League of Assassins. Now, it changed and you don’t have to deal, it is your destiny to one day become the Bat. Even if that day may never come, it still remains a possibility. How simple it must be and how grand it must have that possibility. While I may remain the same until I am forgotten.”

Then a strange, sad sort of pity fell over him. How lucky he was. Annoying as his time with parts of his family were, they made him better than he had any right to be. Father… Grayson… But here was someone that could not change. He had seen what her definition of nonlethal was and she was even more of a lost case than Todd was. There was a listlessness to her actions like trying to pick a direction to swim toward, all the while she drowned in a vast ocean with no land in sight.

“Your father went to the ends of the universe to save you. Not even death can stop him from saving you. Your father taught you how far he would go for your sake.”

Robin’s heart clenched and he raised a shaky fist over it where the shard brought him back to life.

“When my father thought me dead, he was lost and I couldn’t save him. You know what my father taught me? You would think it would be not to overreach. But it taught me that dead is dead. A bullet to the head is a bullet to the head. If he should die, then so would all the rest.”

“Is that your answer then? To lash out like a petulant child?”

“Hey, hey, we’re the same age here.”

“And yet, I’m more mature than you.”

She sheathed one sword and brought up the other one to rest on her shoulders. “I think I’m more mature than you. I know enough about myself to know the futility of it all. That this world is not meant for me. Not if I want to stand on the side of good. How many edgy assholes do you Bats have to deal with, hmm? Like Red Hood, who think they brutalize for truth and justice? And yet, for all of Batman’s ruthlessness and paranoia, it is he who stands with the Justice League, with paragons like Superman. Batman knows where the line has been drawn, Red Hood scoffs at the line, but me? I don’t see the line, Damian. I don’t understand and I can only infer from what you heroes stand for.”

“Is that what you think? Might makes right?”

“In a sense. It’s respectable; it’s honest. But what heroes do with it: the leniency, the mercy, the kindness… that doesn’t make sense. It should undermine their might. But they still stand strong. Enough to know to go against them is suicide.”

Her soapbox rant petered out and she glanced toward the edge.

Robin honestly didn’t know what to say for something so wrong. It was a world where violence seemed to be an end of itself. Like she wanted to live in a martyred, hopeless world. That was all she had known and all she believed in.

Grayson would have the right words. Even Father would do so much better, in his own way.

Robin and Hit-Girl both understood violence, but only Damian knew beyond that. They shared a trek through a trackless steppe, but only Robin had found a path to guide him to better pastures. It was like the saying: you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.

“Then if it’s suicide to go against the status quo, what other recourse is there?...” Hit-Girl sighed, tired and resigned, as she sheathed the last sword. “What is the point of my existence here?”

Robin sensed the intent and started to move, as Hit-Girl stepped off the edge and started to fall. He threw his sword to the side and chased after her, swan-diving through the air. Their eyes met and Hit-Girl’s face was annoying blank.

Like she just hadn’t thrown herself off one of the tallest buildings of Gotham.

Robin scowled, quickly closing the distance. He was aware that this could all be a ploy and he could end up with a knife in his chest for his troubles, but he simply couldn’t ignore the vigilante’s plight. There was a burning need to prove her wrong, not to let her have the last laugh that would come with her death. Because it would always grate at him, like the failure would turn into a life-long disease.

For a damning second, he was in the role of Batman and her the Joker. Was this one of the reasons why Batman refused to let the Joker to die? Beyond the altruism, there had to be a petty determination to keep on winning.

He slammed into her, wrapping his arm around her and reorienting themselves around until they straightened out like a spinning top. The ground rushed towards them and Robin pulled out the grapple gun, shooting it at a nearby building.

Their descent shifted suddenly, but not so sudden to snap them like twigs. They cut through the air as the grapple disengaged, causing them to hit the rooftop. They rolled and parted in their tumble. Hit-Girl’s back slammed into a wall, while Robin flopped onto the rooftop.

He spat and coughed, forcing himself to get up before Hit-Girl did anything. It would be perfectly in character for her to ruthlessly exploit these precious seconds. But she just remained in her current position as though in a daze.

“Why?” For a fleeting instance, it almost sounded like she knew the exact answer he was going to give.

“I couldn’t just let you die.”

“But why? What does it matter if I die now rather than later.”

“I have to believe that everyone can change.”

“What makes it worth it then, huh? If nobody takes that chance?” Hit-Girl asked. For once, it almost felt like she was genuinely curious. But Robin didn’t trust his judgment at the moment. She had proven herself to be a vexing nuisance, one that might have been so broken that the line between truth and delusion blurred.

“Everybody knows the repeat offenders, because so much deeper into the dark than all the rest, but nobody knows the little people who stop and change their lives for the better. And even then, among those super-villains, some do change. That woman, Quinn, still remains the most annoying and disturbing woman I ever had the displeasure of meeting, but she changed.”

He breathed out, striding toward her and thrusting his hand toward her, like a half-finished punch.

She eyed it carefully. Then looked up. “Will you fight me if I don’t? Stop me if I don’t conform?”

“You’re trying to make it my fault that there would be consequences, when really, it is all up to you.”

“Answer the question.”

“Yes.”

She nodded, as if that made sense. Hit-Girl wouldn’t change, because of ideology, but of necessity. Would that even count as victory? If people didn’t commit crime because they were afraid of the consequences? It would be an injustice to the world if people listened to Superman because they feared him rather than respected him…

Hit-Girl pulled herself up, standing face to face with Robin. “If I’m going to die, might as well die trying to actually be better. I am not going to die like a stupid cunt, that last stunt notwithstanding.”

“Well, then you can start by telling me how you know me.”

She smiled coyly, the demeanor once again flipping on its head. “I have my ways.”

His grip tightened, ready to pull her in and disable if need arose. “You will tell me.”

Another switch was flipped and the coyness turned to anxiety. Was it real?

“I… I feel if I do tell you… things will change on a bigger scale. Not from the information itself, but the dominoes that will inevitably fall as a result.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“And yet, you’re going to let me go. Because you are not your father. You would no sooner muzzle yourself; we’re too much alike for that, unless you want to be a boldfaced hypocrite. You can always go the way of your grandfather, claiming to save the world with genocide. And because you are also like your father. I mean, how is Catwoman doing nowadays?”

He scowled. “Tell me why I should let you go. So far I have seen a loose cannon who only has given lip service into changing. There are rules –“

She flapped her free hand and somehow managed to slip her other one free. “Yeah, yeah. Don’t kill, don’t go too far, blah, blah… I’ll follow them.”

Did he believe her? How quickly her tune changed. He was afraid that if he pushed like Batman would, she’d snap and end up a super-villain. Or she’d kill herself. Because no matter how infinitesimal, some part of her was okay with dying. And somehow, it would be on him if she did the deed.

“You’re lucky that Batman is busy and away from Gotham. Because when he returns, I expect you to be presentable. And maybe he won’t kick you out of Gotham. If you dare to abuse my trust, well, I may not kill you, but I will ruin you.”

She smirked. “Nothing less than I expected.”

Hit-Girl leaned in close, too close. She could easily slide a knife between his ribs here. “And that’s why I like you, why you’re my favorite Robin.”

He could feel her smoky breath, so close. Nothing pleasant in theory, but somehow pleasant in practice.

She pulled away and he slipped a communications device onto her. It was also had trackers inside it, but Hit-Girl would probably figure it out. He didn’t need to say anything, because her smile was knowing. In a way, it was comforting in the way that they didn’t need words.

Hit-Girl turned away, leaping off the rooftop and swinging away.

He felt like he somehow made a mistake.

When he returned to the Batcave, it came with the news that Nightwing had disappeared and a sinking feeling that Batman was gone as well.

Chapter Text

Throwing shit at the wall and seeing what stuck was basically gambling, albeit less rigged. But suffice to say, she had many irons in the fire. From that idiom, her mind hearkened back to an inane webcomic, a stray thought rushing by her brain. If she tried using references from any sort of comics, that would be a chink in her credibility.

Even as something as strange as say, Homestuck, no doubt Batman would figure out whether or not there was any authenticity or canonicity to her offhanded references. If she pulled an 'Avengers Assemble,' (fucking God, was that crossover still canon to this universe?) and Batman followed up on that offhanded remark… well, her nerd cred would be shot and she would tilt further on the insane scale instead of being merely eccentric. And she didn't have the time to check every individual pop-culture dreck in her head. After all, that fucker knew about Sailor Moon, so who knew what else he knew.

She couldn't afford to be a killer with the trappings of a comic book hero.

Now, she actually had to play at being a super-hero. Had to play up her redemption, her reformation. Being a foil had enormous staying power. The trick, however, was know when to slip up and titter toward the line, but never actually crossing it. After all, she wasn't a main character and wouldn't bounce back.

There laid the ways of flanderization and would firmly cement her as a villain. At worst, she'd be a forgettable villain. What were her moments in-between the pages going to be? Locked up in Arkham? Sure, she'd break out… eventually, but she'd actually go mad in the mean time. And what happened when the universe decided to reboot itself? Would she fade into the ether?

She needed to carve herself into continuity. Because Mindy McCready did not want to be forgotten.

Hit Girl entertained the idea of controversy. It would almost certainly burn bridges in-universe and would fuck her over down the line, but she'd memorable. As memorable as that Tarantula woman and the whole 'is it rape' controversy with Nightwing … but that left a sore taste in her mouth.

She was already pushing the line when she blew smoke laced with a very, very diluted form of Ivy's pheromones at Robin. It was hard as shit to buy off the black market, especially since Poison Ivy was sorta wavering between the line of good and evil at the moment. It wouldn't last… and wasn't that a bitch. Like if some writer decided that she was more iconic as a villain, then contrivances would happen to enforce that idea.

Which was what she was banking on. Hit-Girl couldn't exactly condition Robin with just a whiff of smoke, but hey, comic book logic was a thing. With the way she rolled the cigarettes, she would have got good ole tobacco while it blew out pheromones.

She didn't quite understand it, but that was comic books for you. Hit-Girl remembered the sleepless hours trying to come up with several contingencies and then invested too much fucking time on such a small idea. How the hell Batman found the time to formulate proper countermeasures? Maybe it would give her a slight edge, maybe it wouldn't, but she needed an advantage, no matter how trivial. She tried properly recollecting how she pulled off the bullshit cigarette. It had taken hours, that much she was sure of. Especially the limited timeframe Robin imposed on her… a trial run of sorts… and so she scrambled.

Was it sleep-deprivation or just a moment that had fallen between the cracks of the pages… a moment not worth illustrating?

Or maybe it was all in her head, ascribing actual comic book logic to a reality merely adjacent to that type of logic. She went through shit as a kid and all the pain and the occasional hardcore drug must have wrecked hell on her body. And she was a therapist's wet dream with all the trauma she went through.

She simply just didn't deal with it any more than she had to and she wouldn't even dare consider it here. Even with DC at its best and most optimistic with rainbows flowing out of its ass, the entire mental health field was shot to all hell. Disregarding all the fucking psychiatrists that turned into supervillains, the heroes here thought a fucking computer system was a better alternative.

Though given the aforementioned supervillain therapists, it might have actually made sense at the time.

Christ…

She stopped halfway through assembling the bomb and rubbed her tired eyes. Stained hands tainted the eyes, burning with chemicals. It just led her to drag her hands up until the heels covered her eyes.

What she doing?

Truly… Hit-Girl wasn't one for retrospection. That was for fucks who thought they were much deeper than they actually were. And those were the most boring people out there, puddles acting as though they were lakes. Kickass… Dave… had a much better excuse: a volatile combination of loneliness and despair in a boring fucking life.

And then he shipped up, shaped out… before quitting the game entirely. A bit of a cop-out, but hey, it was respectable. The guy did his time, more than any other dweeb in a mask, and knew he wanted out.

Truth be told, even after all the shit they went through, if Dave was here instead of her… he would have creamed his pants at least six times before going off to jerk off to pictures of the real Wonder-Woman.

The heels dug in, messaging her eyeballs until they felt like marbles caught in a rut.

Maybe that comment was a bit too meanspirited… but in these idle moments, Hit-Girl had to ponder why the fuck was she even in the DC universe. She was only tangentially related to the nerd culture, having been raised in a rather extreme form of it.

Mindy knew of the laughable notions of Self-Inserts that acted as just another form of escapist masturbation for the downtrodden and the sexless. And then a certain thought came crashing through with all the chilling clarity of acceptance. That tingling sensation that refused to be denied.

Fuck.

Her dad… fuck… what was him being Big Daddy but another form of escapism? Jesus fuck… Even though the man went balls deep into it, the underlying root of it could not be denied. Despite the brief, passing derision of Kickass's initial reasons, Mindy never truly put it to thought about Dad's.

Why think about it when she could continue on like she always did? The path she traveled, despite its hardships, was familiar. It was easy to fall back on, much like a sinning, diddly priest that went crying to an empty confession booth and absolved themselves.

They could trust in the framework provided, to do what it had always done: be a ceaseless stone in front of a roaring river. Rather than recognize the problem, they proclaimed it a stumbling block or perhaps even a feature of the framework.

Hit-Girl looked back at the tattered remnants of the framework, seeing that it would not be able to bear the weight of what was to come. The only way out was to pull out and self-examine everything that led to this moment, before forging a new path through uncharted waters.

"Character development…" She finally pulled her hands away, feeling the smudges around red-rimmed eyes. Then she chuckled. "It would never last… not here…"

Christ.

There was something deeply wrong with her to persist under this assumption. Yet, she couldn't stop. The best she could do was keep on trucking until she left a pretty corpse onto the world. It wasn't like death meant anything in this hellhole. It might even give her proper meaning. And when she was dead or gone, another version of her would flit on.

Hit-Girl, immortalized.

Truthfully, back in her universe, she would have kept going on and on until she was killed. There was no other alternative, except she might actually make it mean something. Nothing as mundane as making herself a "legend" (fucking Bigfoot was a legend, but only idiots cared about him)… but something persistent.

The only logical endpoint…

She found herself yawning, the world slipping away into the unreality of the unwake. With blurring whirls and sliding angles, perception dimmed as light spiraled in the center of version. Until a shot of adrenaline pushed back the tiredness to the edges, where it remained present but not quite dominant.

Even though it wasn't the right genre, she was suddenly afraid of dipping into sleep, into the Dreaming and would have to deal Gaiman bullshit. She could, probably, handle actual supervillains as long as they were Batman-flavored.

Rationally, Mindy knew she could hang up the cape and fuck off. There was no real reason to persist on this dangerously suicidal course of action. Except she couldn't get the idea that it was futile out of her head. She had already distinguished herself in the world and to bow out now into obscurity… there would be a time of peace.

Except that would most certainly sign her doom forever and ever. If the spotlight was off her, then she lost whatever status she had, then she'd be a relative nobody. The sort of character that would languish away in nothingness before the universe or a writer or whoever picked them back up.

And then she'd be like chattel. If her luck was crap, then she'd be like some underused character a writer like Gaiman would pick up and be utterly expendable in the face of. A series that involved a madman warping reality in a dinner for twenty four hours.

It was one thing to torture and maim and murder, but at least there was an endpoint. The body could only stand so much in the face of mundane means… but reality-warping gems? There were literally no limits.

Why the hell did people complain about the Joker when there was other scary shit around?

Mindy groaned into her hands, knowing she had actually sealed her fate with whatever smidgen of freewill she might have had. As Destiny was literally a thing here and she wasn't so full of herself to think herself an aberration in his Book.

There was no other recourse now.

The ink had already dried on the page and the lettering was halfway done.

XXX

Robin was waiting for her, one foot on the ledge, him leaning that tiny body forward. For an instant, it seemed to her that he was a boy playing dress-up. Then the details started to fill in… the stuff that normal people couldn't hope to replicate. The hardness in his eyes, the toned muscles that the armor tried to hide, the way he was coiled to pounce at every little thing…

Crack a joke about him and he'd punch your teeth in, and Hit-Girl wouldn't have it any other way.

She squirmed only briefly. Just long enough to become painfully aware of her age and the dread beast called puberty.

No! She murdered that thought with all the zealousness of a crusader. It'd be really fucking weird to crush on an actual fictional character… that she might have had a infinitesimally small chance with… Like the ultimate sexless fangirl she was…

"What's the sitch?" her mouth blabbered to soothe away the embarrassment.

Fuck. When did she become a pop culture cracking asshole? She was supposed to be a murderous, precious vigilante amongst dweebs… yet, this role-reversal had her spinning out. And she just slipped up on her vow to cut back the nerd crap, which might undo everything.

Thankfully Robin just grunted.

Hit-Girl walked up to him and matched his pose.

"Where's the B-Man?" she asked, brazenly.

Throwing out such a term strongly associated with Harley Quinn of all people was a gamble of six faces. A veritable dice roll. On the off chance that Robin did associate it with Harley, then that could mean just about anything.

It all depended on how he took it. Perhaps it would further this little kayfabe of hers, by reminding him how close she strayed toward 'villainy.' Or maybe it would be a red herring, making Robin search for a connection that wasn't there, thus skipping over other details.

Or maybe she was overthinking it.

He turned to look her over, white lenses focusing on the twin pistols at her waist and the shotgun poking from her cape.

"Rubber bullets and bean bags," she said, forestalling any half-hearted protests.

He gave a tight nod. It was almost funny to consider that rubber bullets and bean bags were actually nonlethal here. Whenever she wanted a challenge, she used this type of ammunition. Because, with rubber and bean bags, if you hit people in the right spot with them it could crack their skull open or stop their heart respectively.

"Follow my lead," he declared, brusquely.

Then he leapt off the building, landing on a smaller building in front of them. Hit-Girl huffed, took a few steps back, and, then with a running start, followed him off the brink. Years of training and experience had taught her the best way to break a fall into a roll and she still came up with just a hint of breathlessness.

Robin had merely landed on his two feet and skirted toward the door atop the roof. He hunkered to the right side and she took up arms on the opposite side. The shotgun was a steady weight in her hands.

"So, who we beating on? This just looks like a rather lower-class apartment. We beating on the homeless?"

Robin held back a sneer. "The Penguin owns the building through various subsidiaries. Nothing that can be proven in court, but we know that his thugs often use this as a safehouse. And in some instances, they store contraband here."

"But not after tonight, right?"

"Maybe, maybe not. They have multiple safehouses and they might consider continuing using it. If only to misdirect us later."

"Makes one wish arson was a solution."

He chuckled darkly. "If only. But we do that, we risk the fire spreading to the less fortunate. And Cobblepot would make a killing off the insurance."

"Lose-lose."

"But we could certainly inconvenience him."

Hit-Girl smirked. "Go in loud?"

He nodded with a small matching smile.

Then he stood forward, kicking in the door and rushing down the steps with Hit-Girl in his wake. She only lagged behind by five seconds and when she came onto a landing, three thugs were already knocked out.

Robin was in the amidst of a melee, fending off one thug with a brandished batarang before ducking under two wide swings of metal and wood. Relieving Robin of the pressure, Hit-Girl shot the two of them in quick succession, the cocking of the shotgun music to her ears.

The Boy Wonder flipped the last man over his shoulder and he landed with a resounding thud. This was far-cry from the usual cloak-and-dagger M.O. from the Dynamic duo, but Hit-Girl knew what the point of this was.

Fear.

It all came down to fear.

By crashing into this place like a natural disaster, it fostered a sense of doomed inevitability into their targets. They could do naught but cower.

Robin stopped by a corner. Without looking at her, he outstretched his arm back and held up two fingers in the shape of a gun. After a beat, he spread them out. The message was clear: two gunmen.

Perfect.

Hit-Girl took up his place and adjusted her grip on the shotgun, holding up a few feet above her head. She poked the gun a few inches past the corner before suddenly reeling it back as if she made a mistake.

Then she rushed out from cover, crouching low with the shotgun poised. The two gunmen were side by side and Hitgirl knew she'd only have enough time to pop off one shot. So, she made it count, firing at the man's crouch.

His curses of pain were drowned out by the sudden gunfire that whizzed high above her. Perks of being midget-sized. Before they could correct their aim, Hit-Girl had already moved. In a smooth one-two-three sequence, she threw herself to the wall, replenished half her grip on the shotgun, and drew a pistol with her left hand.

The impact was abrupt, nearly throwing her focus off. Where her conscious mind stuttered, instincts took over. The gun snapped rim-rod straight and nailed the man right between the eyes. There was only the whuff of impact rather than the crack of brain damage.

He fell atop the other fallen man, each of them groaning. Robin hurried past them, stepping over them without a care. Hit-Girl hopped over them and, out of habit, double-tapped the downed foes. They grunted as the rubber bounced against their spine.

Robin's shoulders twitched at the sounds. It was probably a tell of some sorts, but Hit-Girl couldn't be bothered to unravel the complexities of body-language. She holstered the pistol and followed Robin until he came to a stop.

"Cover my back. I don't know if the rest of these tenets will muster up the courage to confront us. However, I do need time alone to conduct a proper interrogation."

"Awww, I don't get to watch you work," she cooed sweetly. At his dark look, she changed tone to something more blithe. "Break a finger or two for me."

He didn't do anything but burst through the door. Hit-Girl resisted the urge to peak in. With a valiance unbecoming of her, she closed the door to let Robin have some privacy. Hit-Girl hummed quietly over the sounds of meaty slaps and harsh crashes. Her eyes darted left and right, but nobody did anything.

Finally the cries died down and there was a heavy pause. Hit-Girl strained to listen, but only heard a few murmured words. Then there was one solemn snap and then a scream.

Robin stepped out, sealing something in a blacked-out zip bag. He, with the air of secrecy, hid it away into his utility belt.

He marched past her, stopped, and looked over his shoulder.

"You were adequate. I'll be in touch."

Before he could walk off, Hit-Girl's hand shot out and grabbed his forearm.

"Hey. Considering I helped you out, I deserve a little tidbit."

His shoulders squared and his face looked forward with an unwavering conviction. With muted words, he said, "This was the last known location of Batman before he disappeared."

The cape whooshed as he fled the scene. Hit-Girl tried following him around the corner, but he was gone.

"Motherfucker!" she hissed. "I never thought I'd get the disappearing treatment pulled on me!"

Then she digested the words. Batman… gone. It wasn't cause for concern in the grand scheme of things. Unless she was an elseworlds universe, Batman was going to return sooner or later. No, her concerns crystallized into one blaring thought.

Oh, fuck. I'm the B-plot.

Her hands were shaky with barely concealed frustration and fury.

Well, then… that's why I have Plan B.

XXX

When planning potential acts of terrorism, it was best to keep it simple, stupid. Any grand plans that required multiple wheels to spin would quickly blow out, breaking axles and launching projectiles all over the place.

Back when she had her shit-list full of mobsters, she -- as children were wont to do -- made it needlessly complicated with ironic killings and witty one-liners. Right up until her mom was threatened by the mob… and then she knocked out all the names off the list in one single night.

It was a valuable lesson.

Just get that shit done.

Of course, that was back in her universe, where things made some sense. This was DC, where masterminds like Lex Luthor plotted and thus an element of complexity was needed to get somewhere. She wasn't dumb enough to think she could get away with too much, but Hit-Girl needed to get away with just enough.

And that was a problem.

Any mystery here would be uncovered, any deception would be undone… eventually.

Plant a bomb and try to pin it on someone else would only mean that the blame would be undone. Try to falsify her heroics in such a blatant manner and it became a matter of time before the big reveal came. It was a common trope: new and shiny hero appeared on the scene, was more beloved than the normie hero, and then was eventually uncovered to be a sinister fake.

Tale as old as time, really.

Her hands worked the controls to the bomb, the message warning Robin of the bomb… all of it part of a rather hamfisted, but kinda plausible plot.

If she had a grander introduction, then there would be little need for this plan. She wasn't thrown into the fray like a Cassandra Cain -- who nailed the landing -- or wormed their way in like Harper Row.

Even if Cassandra Cain went from Batgirl to Black Bat to Orphan, she clearly had staying power. Harper had a brief stint as Bluebird or whoever and was now retired. But she was still somewhat present.

Such options were probably denied to her, considering she was just plopped here and forcefully inserted herself into current events.

Especially this whole stunt: blowing up the Iceberg Lounge. Or, rather, pretending to blow up the Lounge. If she went whole hog with the Bat Family, too perfect without any faults… well, she could hear the words 'Mary Sue' blaring in her head.

Didn't matter if she actually struggled or that her life was really on the line, but the perception of gelling too easily could be her undoing. Plus, in terms of integration, it should absolutely not be smooth-sailing. There should and would be road-bumps in almost any endeavor.

Training Kick-Ass wasn't easy and despite her best efforts, it didn't turn out great. Not a complete a disaster, but far from a good experience. If something as simple as that was rocky, then the kayfabe needed a little more.

Hence, she needed to backslide… just a little bit. Nothing too irredeemable, nothing that reeked of massive character assassination to railroad her to villainy.

There was no real intention for the bomb. Merely a ploy to get Robin running along. Half-formed justifications had swirled around her noggin, each with its own merits and downsides. She could have gone the whole 'mind control' route, but that meant bringing in Martian Manhunter in and then the jig would be up.

The best lies were ones based in truth and the only real thing that could rile her up was Mom. Who was a whole world away, who Mindy might never see again.

See, Robin, "they" are making me do this, otherwise I might never see her again.

She tasted the words in her mouth, feeling the spit shape and dissipate in unequal measure. It was a rather short-sighted plan, nothing substantial, but it was enough to craft the next link in the chain. Hit-Girl primed the bomb just as a strange, silent sort of hum shimmered behind her. Like the rumble of a jet, but something that came from within.

With an uneasy tension, she turned around.

Standing astride a white, motorcycle-looking glider was a roughly feminine form. She was wearing a white bodysuit and cape combo that was rather bland. Any different shades of white would blur together, but the lackluster suit paled in comparison to the parts that mattered.

The figure had two oversized gloves, lined with studded spikes and a large bulky headpiece adorned it all, heavily mechanical-looking at the side. Two sharp, red lenses stared back at her, two small nozzles jutted from the chin, and two sharp points topped it all off, shooting to the sides. At first, they could be mistaken for something similar to Batman's own cowl, but they looked more lynx's ears on closer inspection.

For a moment, Hit-Girl's mind stuttered.

Who the fuck…

<I don't do this hero shit often, so I'll tell you once: knock it the fuck off,> a modulated voice declared.

She delved in deep into memories, sifting through all the training and murders to recall the slimmest of comic book details. Dad had quizzed her on some of the stuff as way to train memory retention. Afterwards, she only kept up with comics out of habit and a schadenfreude desire to laugh at how stupid comics were.

Not so stupid now… a part of her whispered.

As she found nothing, a panic started to set in. If this was a new character, be it literally this universe or another, then Hit-Girl was on uncharted ground. How would she deal with someone else's OC? Or maybe her being an OC… DC oh so loved its meta-narratives.

Strangely, she focused on a single word from her inner spiel and the wires crossed from her earlier thought.

Panic.

Mom…

She clenched her fists and stood straighter.

Stupid Gerard Way.

The vigilante in question was Mother Panic and she was everything that Mindy feared would happen to her. A forgettable comic run that culminated in Mother Panic being shunted over to another reality and then… discontinued. Nothing more and not even dweebs wrote fanfiction about her.

Who heard about Violet Paige, an edgier, bisexual rip-off of Batwoman? Nobody cared about Mother Panic. And if Mindy wasn't careful, nobody would care about Hit-Girl.

Still… if Mother Panic was here… then she could, probably, suss out where she was on the timeline. But… Hit-Girl couldn't give too much away.

"Mother Panic, is it?" Her hands danced over her swords, before remembering the vigilante was cybernetically enhanced. Hit-Girl couldn't remember if it extended to durability or not. Her only hope was the magnum tucked in her belt behind her. "Heard you were gone."

<I was. Now I am not.>

Was she just being coy or did Mother Panic actually come back from that dimension? What did that mean for Hit-Girl? Two occurrences of dimensional transfers… hell no, it couldn't be coincidence. It had to be building up to something…

Hit-Girl hesitated, trying to figure out how to keep the kayfabe going. She couldn't progress without using some degree of metaknowledge, but that might break the kayfabe. Even if Robin wasn't here, the information could back to him. And she needed to talk, to drag this out in the hopes of Robin showing up to get this show back on track.

"Must have been tough on you. Universe travel, I mean."

<You with those freaks that turned Batman into a priest?>

Jesus, fuck. The more she actively tried to imagine living and breathing in this universe, the more she wanted to piss off and let this be all a bad dream.

"Nope. Just a little more in the know than everybody else." Hit-Girl paused dramatically, trying to rally her thoughts. Mother Panic had this plot about some church school that had human experimentation in attempts to be the future or some shit. Could she claim to be part of that? No… that would convolute her 'backstory' too much. She continued, "I know this isn't your M.O. Aren't you a little revenge bent?"

<I'm no hero. But… being in another universe tends to make you rethink your priorities. So, I guess I'm doing this. Disarm the bomb.>

Fuck, things weren't going her way. Her smile was brittle.

"I can't do that. It is beyond me."

Mother Panic hopped off the glider-bike and landed a few feet away from her.

<Swear to God, this better not be more cult shit.>

Crap, crap. Her hand circled behind her waist, gripping the revolver. Didn't Mother Panic have a sick mom or something? Was that something she could use?

"See, Mother Panic, they are making me do this, otherwise I might never see her again." The words came out just as full as pathos as she intended. It was just a shame that Mother Panic looked clueless. So, she had to belatedly tacked on, at the end, "My mom."

Mother Panic tilted her head and then spoke those damning words.

<I don't believe you.>

"Tough titties. That's the truth."

She ripped out the magnum and tried to pop off a shot. But Mother Panic jutted her head forward, the two nozzles spraying acid. It struck true, dissolving the gun and splashing onto her hand.

Hit-Girl cried out, stumbling into a charge toward her opponent. Two butterfly knives slipped out from hidden sleeves. Her right hand fumbled, the burning nerves unable to grab ahold. But where the right failed, the left held true.

The stab was practiced, but sloppy in its execution. Mother Panic sidestepped the attack and delivered an equally sloppy blow.

Pressure exploded beneath the meat and all the air was whooshed out. Hit-Girl couldn't even cry out as she felt the ribs splinter into many different pieces. Most of them punctured her lung. From that chilling panic, Hit-Girl threw everything into one desperate fling off the roof.

Freefall greeted her like a car crash, all panicked flailing and slow, slow eyes that couldn't process what was going on. Somehow, impossibly, Hit-Girl found within herself to pull out the grapple gun with her off hand and fire a random shot.

Luck was with her and a sudden tug stopped her descent, but not her momentum. As the grapple gun found its mark, it yanked her arm out of her socket but she still held on. Unable to scream, unable to do anything, she let herself be swung across the streets.

If she was in the proper mindset, she would have recognized that Mother Panic couldn't have gave chase without letting the bomb blow up.

But when Hit-Girl crash landed onto a rooftop, she broke off into a hobbling run, a skittish animal limping away.

XXX

Near a cold, unfeeling ocean, Mindy McCready couldn't breathe. The air leaked out of her and she couldn't feel her right hand save for painful tingles that only signaled the destruction of her nerves. A sobbing laugh spilled from her as she crouched down, as if by lowering herself could she escape the choking smoke wafting through the air.

She laid on her side, curling up like she was some sort of child… like the child she was. Smothering her wounded hand in her armpit, she managed to roll on her side, still gasping for breath.

Any and all fantasies of a super-heroic bent came half-mast. Even if robo hands were a possibility for her, it didn't change the fact that her hand was utterly ruined. This wasn't something she could just train away. Fucking Batman could train away a broken back, but Hit-Girl couldn't even deal with a punctured lung and acid-burned hand combo. Going to the hospital meant compromising her identity, going to the Thompkins clinic meant breaking the kayfabe.

All she could do was lay here.

Pathetic.

It just occurred to her that she was a Barbie Girl in a grindhouse world. Her knees scraped at the ground as she tried to stand back. Scratch that, she would settle for a hobbled, wobbled kneel, but her body didn't even that.

Only a brief surge of hate and adrenaline manage to propel her back to her feet. That magnanimous effort rewarded with a bullet smashing through her neck. Without any breath, there was no surprised gasp that preluded everything else.

Without any conscious thought, Hit-Girl pulled a pistol and twisted around, before crumbling. The action caused her to drop to one knee, but she positioned herself in a prime firing position. Before she even knew what happened, the trigger was pulled.

A shadow loomed on the rooftop next to hers. Then it stuttered forward, a flash of an American flag unwrapping to reveal a bald dome. The moonlight glittered red across the surface before the thing flopped over the edge.

The gun fell from flimsy fingers as she applied pressure to the wound.

Hit-Girl collapsed near the edge, the sweet release of unconsciousness denied to her. Short, ragged breaths marked the passage of time. She could scarcely move save for the occasional twitch that felt like the first stirrings of rigor mortis.

Eventually, after six hundred and seventy-seven half-formed breaths, voices rose up from the alleyway grave.

"Shit, man… that's a dead body."

"No shit. It's Gotham. The only question is if there's anything to him." A pause. "Look. He had a rifle on him. Which means this was either gang violence or the Hood, if you know, he's slipping again. Either way, those two are not the looting types."

"Hey… doesn't that guy look familiar."

"Oh, crap, crap, crap. That's Cory Edgars! Don't touch anything!"

"Who?"

"You know? The radio guy who hates Batman and vigilantes?"

"And?"

"He's well-known and those types of corpses tend to draw attention. And we do not want to be connected to this. Because at worst, we'll have to deal with the Bat."

"Then let's scram man!"

All of it… went over her head and her part in this play was so, so minor. Was this some old, unfinished plot that she couldn't be assed to remember? Or was the world actively flowing in ways she couldn't fathom? Or was she just delusional about how this place worked, having stumbled into this via odd chance and circumstance, and thought it narratively induced?

Did it matter?

Did she matter?

Hit-Girl… Mindy McCready had gone up against the DC universe and was found wanting. Tears stung her eyes as the stars twinkled above. She couldn't even handle a D-list nobody. How could she even fathom any real machinations within this universe with actual powers, with actual superintelligence.

Through this whole misadventure, she felt like there was a thread that her fingers grasped before it suddenly slipped through her fingers.

She wasn't a normal human becoming a vigilante; somehow she was an even weaker human trying to be a vigilante.

Whatever story she was in… it was one of utter failure. The rise before the crippling fall. Who was she to think that she had a chance at fitting in her? No… there was plenty of chances of integration.

Who was she to force it?

Mindy McCready found herself standing over the sullen waters. Her delirious mind chuckled, knowing how common it was for people to fall into the waters and resurface later. Another narrative trope… But her decision wasn't really based on that logic. Some dim part of her recognized this as the suicide attempt that it was.

Her feet wavered on the edge, the ocean calling to her below. After all, from this height, the waters would be like concrete and would break her even further.

Though a more hopeful part of her desired this to be her baptism. She would disappear into the depths and reemerge anew. Maybe if she disappeared for a bit, Mindy would be different somehow.

Or maybe she would be dead.

At least that would save her the embarrassment of basically being crippled by a D-lister. One foot hovered past the edge, standing on invisible ground. It was dumb to hope that if she survived this, there'd be a metamorphosis of sorts. Whether this experience would change her or some nebulous organization used her body for experiments or -- out-of-universe -- a new writer picked her up to make something out of her…

All of those were idle thoughts and baseless speculation.

This was a piss-poor ending for someone like her, but what else could there be for someone like her? Joining the Bat-Family, shipping herself with Damian, somehow becoming a superhero… hah. That reeked more delusion than anything else.

Delusions she hoped to silence, because she knew how poorly she fit into this world. She couldn't fit in and if she tried to wedge herself in, she'd break.

Mindy looked at her ruined hand, seeing the destroyed muscles and half-buried bone. She would have never recovered back home and she might not find a proper avenue to fix herself her.

No… this was the best option. If there was one trait she shared with the Bat-Family, it was that she couldn't really quit either. Not unless she was gone.

"This is it," Mindy whispered.

A beat.

"I don't really want to die," Hit-Girl muttered.

Nobody really did, but her presence here was an anomaly and there could be no rectification. She had already lied about herself and going back on that felt like a mistake. Even if she came out with the truth and somehow the Justice League got her back home… she would forever be tainted by this place. Nothing back home would feel real. She would never consider her home to be the real world – just a different type of comic book.

She tried pressing her ruined hand to her face. Felt nothing underneath her palm and felt the warm sting of sizzled meat.

Who's to say this will be a definite end? She pulled her hand away, not even feeling a crystal-clear resolve. This is just me going through the motions.

With a quiet exhale, she closed her eyes, trying not to think of this as death. This was merely the build-up to the end of the book. The conclusion of an arc that went nowhere and she could only pray that whatever happened next, she would fit into place.

Mindy McCready stepped out into the air and Hit-Girl fell into the waters below.

Chapter Text

A lifetime happened in the blink of an eye, as she drowned. There was a moment she woke up thinking everything that happened prior to the fall was a fucked-up dream. Then everything else happened.

A whole lifetime. She truly did live in a comic book world, but it had been stripped to a boring world of mundane terrorism and hidden hedonism from a group of people called the Fraternity. They ruled the world to their selfish desires, being utterly boring pussies about it all. There was no meaning, no substance to it. What were supervillains without superheros to make their struggles all the more mythic? Just another set of murderers and rapists that got high off their own supply. They were just way more dangerous than the normal set of thugs that Hit-Girl killed.

She didn't know about this at the time, of course. Not even when it all started to change. Superheroes started to appear. She didn't stop being Hit-Girl just because there were actual superheroes, but she had to slow down a bit. Pivot and adapt. But it didn't seem like anything really changed. She had been as extraordinary as she was before. It was already absurd that a little girl could go around knocking out whole gangs in careful planned murder sprees.

The more she continued on, the more she felt like it made sense. She was one of the world's best assassins, and that bordered on the superhuman.

It was all a far cry from the beginning, where the biggest clash between "superheros" and "supervillains" culminated in a colorful costumed riot. It seemed so small-scale, but it mattered. She had her ups and downs, a love and hate relationship with comic books in general. Sometimes she was embarrassed by them, or acted like she was better than some of the other heroes who put on their masks because they were huge comic nerds. She really did like comics, at the end of the day, even if she had a preference for a type of comic or a distaste for certain tropes. It was something that she shared with her daddy.

Otherwise, why else would she be Hit-Girl instead of a silent, nameless assassin that moved through the world?

In the beginning though she might have called herself a superhero with her daddy, it was more akin to living an extraordinary life with costumed flair. The publicity, and honor, of being the world's first superhero went to Kick-Ass. It was stupid, idiotic, and brave for going out with just a costume and a pair of sticks while she worked in the dark with her daddy.

She was still an assassin, in her own eyes, but she felt comfortable in calling herself a superhero when the need arose. Not all the time. Not like Dave, who became a superhero — a real, bona fide superhero. He was no longer Kick-Ass, but America of the Ambassadors with powers and everything. Hit-Girl was a hero that killed that pussy, Wesley Gibson, and helped bring about the Fraternity's end.

That was some real superhero shit, and it retroactively made everything she did extraordinary.

And then she was back here, drowning.

As she struggled against the waves, there was water in her lungs and blackness crowding the edges of her sight. But she wanted to live. Pushing against everything, against the despair and the depths, she managed to surface, choking and coughing.

Yet alive.

She would have whooped for joy or maybe dropped against some swear words against the world, but her throat was rough. Hit-Girl managed to swim to underneath the bridge and pull herself onto one of the pile caps.

Vomit and seawater never tasted so good.

She was alive.

Better than alive. She was in an entirely different reality! Why would that ever be a cause for despair? Even as stupid as DC was sometimes, it was still DC. It certainly topped being transported in time. As Hit-Girl stood back up, she took stock of her belongings. She wasn't in her old uniform, but her current one. She was older than she was when she first appeared her. Her equipment was different, but she still possessed that pilfered grapple gun. By all rights, it didn't make any sense.

"Comic book shit," she cackled quietly to herself.

Her wounds were healed. Had been healed? What was even the timeline to this? It was all absurd.

What was her previous plan again? Try to fit in? Well, she already did. As fascinating as it all ways, if she had a choice she would choose her now-interesting universe but Hit-Girl wouldn't mind living in the DC universe. There was no pressing urgency, as far as she could remember. So why was she such in a bullrush and created such a fucked-up situation for herself. She started laughing at the realization that she fell into the typical cliche of superhero fighting another superhero based on a misunderstanding.

I really do belong here.

She grinned as she used her grapple gun to fly up the side of the bridge, exalting in the simple feeling of being alive in an extraordinary world. There was no plan for here on out. She was gonna just be herself, be Hit-Girl. Not Hit-Girl like this, or that, but just be herself. This universe would probably label her as an anti-hero. And she was okay with that.

Maybe she'd hang out with the heroes that didn't mind a bit of blood on their hands, like the Red Hood or Ravager? Shit, was Ravager a bad guy or a good guy? Goddamn did comics get complicated sometimes. Okay, well, gripping about the continuity in comics was still fair game, because it was all sorts of stupid.

As she zipped past the edge, her boots landed on the ground. A figure stood twenty feet from her, the tip of his sword pointed down to the ground. Robin was there. The lenses on his mask narrowed at the sight of her. Whoops, was he pissed because of her hasty plan or because he expected Hit-Girl? She was certainly different now: older, dressed different, and probably had a better attitude. She almost laughed right in his face. No more pussyfooting around, no more hem-and-hawing about dumb bullshit. Hit-Girl wanted to enjoy this.

She drew her own sword.

His second hand gripped his sword. “Did you do something to Hit-Girl?”

Hit-Girl didn't attack. Instead, she smiled, tilted her head, and asked, almost mockingly, “What did you think I did?”

He hissed to himself before moving in to attack. The swipe was nonlethal, but it would have hurt something fierce. She danced back, redirecting the blade with her own. Then she flipped over him, spinning into a pirouette before standing guard. It was overly flashy, but that was the point. The speed she pulled it off would have seemed impossible to a younger hero.

But now she was proud of it.

She loved every moment of this brief swordplay with the actual Robin — Robin! — Damian Wayne, her favorite among all the other Robins. The one that had grit but didn't cross the line to edgy asshole. Most of the time. It really depended on the writers, but he seemed to be everything that she loved in the character. Hit-Girl laughed in glee, testing him out. She didn't attack but only ever redirected his blows and created a few feints. After twenty-five seconds, he seemed to realize that she wasn't fighting back. He turned this into an all or another, forcing himself forward with such strength that that there was no other recourse than to meet him in kind. Their blades locked together, as Robin pressed forward. He searched her eyes, but she couldn't read his. The white of his lenses blocked her attempts. Maybe that was something to look into while she was here.

Then he disarmed her. He slid down the blade to her hilt, did a fancy maneuver with both hand and hilt too quick to see. Whatever he did, it got her to let go of the sword ever so briefly. Before she could lurch forward and grab the sword again, he moved forward and smashed an elbow into her jaw. Her sword clattered downwards, which Robin caught with his sword. He kicked it back into his hand, now holding two swords.

He is good.

Hit-Girl had nothing to worry about. She pulled out her pistol, and Robin tensed up — ready to dodge — but she ejected the magazine and then popped out the bullet in the chamber. The gun hung from her fingers from its trigger guard before she let it drop. It was a very clear message.

"Okay, timeout," she said, making a t-shape with her hands. “As fun as this is, I think it has ran its course.”

“Afraid that you'll lose?”

She grinned widely. “Fighting you has been a joy, but I don't think I'll win without stooping to some real lows. And killing superheroes? That's not something I do.”

A frown. He paced from side to his side, his eyes keeping track of her. He spun her sword in his hand, getting a feeling for the weight of a thing. He seemed to come to some sort of conclusion based on it.

“Are you even Hit-Girl?”

“Oh, but I am.”

"Two things then. What's with the age-change, and your flip-flopping actions? Are you insane?" That last word was laced with pointed punctuation.

"That's three things." She gave him a wink. “But I don't know how I ended up here, but when I first did, I was younger. And I thought my world was boring. Yet, I ended up in a straight up fantastical world that's straight out of comic books. Because we're all fictional somewhere, right?”

"Of course," he said, in the way a person agreed with someone particularly thick. He was taking it so blase, and that was part of the magic for her. “But, why go through all these complicated plots?”

“So, I didn't know what the rules were, and what was exactly going on. I thought I had to play a part because, well, traveling to a whole other universe was a new one for little ole me. Especially one that I thought was fictional.”

“What changed?”

She shrugged. "Somehow I went back, and it turned out my world wasn't as boring. Supervillains killed all the heroes, made the world forget they ever existed, and then things started to change for the better. The heroes came back. So, I think I can roll with the usual bullshit this universe gets up to." He continued looking at her, reading her tone and intentions. “Look, you can get Martian Manhunter to read my mind if you don't believe me, but I probably got some secret identities rattling in there. Because as you know... you're fictional where I'm from.”

"Oh really?" he challenged.

“Hah! You want proof? Tell you what, I'll list all the Robins. There's Dick, Jason, Tim, Steph and Duke if you count them—.”

"Enough," he hissed, “You have made your point.”

“You'd think that Red Hood would be my favorite, but don't worry, it's still you. It's the sword, you see? It means you got more class than Jason.”

There was a curt huff that could charitably be called a laugh. Then a sigh. He pinched the bridge of his nose in exasperation.

"There's been a lot of stranded interdimensional refugees lately; I would have believed you more than you doing all of this." He gestured all around him. “We really could have avoided all this if you just were straightforward with me in the beginning.”

“But where's the fun in that? When have you ever encountered a costumed girl that made your life easy?”

Suddenly, she thought of Flatline — the sidekick to the villain Lord Death Man. Her previous attempt at fitting herself into a plotline seemed awfully reductive with that character in play. Flatline seemed awfully close to Robin. Wait, was that a pang of jealousy? God she hoped not. Robin would be fun, but she didn't need any more complications at the moment.

“If you're familiar with this universe, then you'll know how extensive we're about to be. If we find out that you really don't belong here, or if this is all a trick —”

“I know, I know all the typical threats you're about to deliver. But I also know, generally, heroes don't kill. I think I'll be fine.”

Robin gave her another look, before he held out her sword for her to take. She took it back and gave him a small bow of appreciation.

"Don't make me detain you." He took out his grapple gun and leapt off the bridge. “And try to keep up.”

Hit-Girl laughed aloud, following suit, and excited to see how everything was shaping up to be. This wasn't a Crisis event. Not really, not yet. She had been through one of that already, and even had a dead time duplicate to show for it. This was something different, something special.

A crossover.

Hit-Girl wasn't beneath consideration, or too good for it. This was exactly the type of bullshit that felt special. It was about time to start appreciating everything her life had turned out to be, and everything that the future held.