November 11th, 11:00 PM.
"Okay, you got this Kimmy. Remember your training..."
Stuffing her long blonde hair into her cowl, Kimmy Accardi was preparing for her first ever run. Heroes like her without any powers were rare, especially in a city like Chicago. The city was more dominated by bigger names with actual power, such as The Owl and Coffin of the Power Lounge, or the powerful villains Moss and Nosferatu. Prospective heroes without power were usually pushed to smaller towns, forced to deal with common criminals and unable to really advance.
And yet, Kimmy refused to leave town. Sure, she wasn't native to the country, having immigrated at the age of 8 with her parents following the onset of the Atlantean invasion of Italy. With the remainder of her childhood being in Chicago, she very much considered it as good of a home as any to do this sort of thing. And hey, she had one advantage that most other metahumans lacked due to a lack of either foreknowledge or a lack of care: an actual database of both heroes and villains, provided by her day job.
"Let's see... shotgun, check. Phone with a connection to my job's database, check. Uniform..."
Taking a good look in the mirror, Kimmy smiled heavily at the results of her work. Sure, it was latex and clung to her body like a sausage casing, but heavy silver and black sure did look sexy on her. Hell, her husband agreed as well, with her considering trying to wear it next time she bedded him. The cowl itself was the masterpiece of the outfit though, shaped like a bullet and giving her a clear identity for what she wanted to be known as: a Lone Bullet in a sea of powers.
"...Check, and a really beautiful one at that."
With that, Kimmy jumped out the back window of the local Wendy's, having used their bathroom to change into her costume. With everything ready, she got onto the Bulletcycle, which was a silver Harley Pan American 1250 Special with the numbers filed off, to prevent identification. Nobody but herself and her husband could now about her vigilante identity, so she needed to take every precaution in order to protect her identity.
Pulling out her phone, Kimmy checked the S.H.O.T.G.U.N database to track the locations of superheroes at this time of night. While things were normal during the day, at night it was the meta human's time to shine. Villains acted, leading to heroes reacting. Uptown for example was abuzz with activity from Moss, who was probably trying to do some plant-related crimes, with Coffin being nearby likely in position to stop the pudgy master criminal. Or perhaps hit on her. She had heard rumors of him trying to convince her to quit the life of crime to marry him, but she doubted that it'd go anywhere.
Dealing with those big names though was a no-go. She was just a regular person with no powers, and needed someone more around her ballpark of strength. Continuing to scroll down and down, she kept looking for weaker and weaker criminals until...
"Ah, perfect! Popcorn, attempting to rob the First Financial Bank. Looks like that'll be my first stop for the night."
Revving up the motorcycle, the Lone Bullet drove out onto the streets on the way to the First Financial Bank to stop a crime in progress. Robbing a bank was not as fancy as saving many different lives, but when the bigger criminals could control elemental forces or have immense super strength one didn't need to be picky in regards to taking jobs. You just took what you could get, and then you'd move on to the next job.
At the very least, Popcorn should be easy. A greenhorn criminal with barely a name to him, the food themed vigilante simply had the ability to spawn corn from his body, which he popped into deadly projectiles in theory. In practice though, it simply just meant he had what equated to gunshots to fire out from cobs on his body, which while it could wound her, was very much not as dangerous as most first time vigilantes considered.
"Quick, keep reeling in the money! We can't afford to be stopped tonight, or the Death Broker's gonna have my legs!"
Already, she could hear his voice as she approached the bank. He sounded afraid and panicked, which made sense. He may have posed a threat to normal citizens, but this was Power Lounge territory. He probably got stopped and sent to jail at least once a week, only to escape thanks to the help of other criminals. The Death Broker was also a factor in this behavior too, as while the database lacked any data on her, what was clear was that she did something to help in funding crime throughout the city, like some criminal loan shark with a hockey mask.
Doing her best impression of one of those anime bike slides, the Lone Bullet stopped her Bulletcycle in place as she got on her own two feet. Loading up her shotgun with rounds meant to stun and ensnare rather than kill, she'd slowly walk up to Popcorn from behind, and point the gun right at his back.
"First Financial huh? You couldn't host a fundraiser or something?" Teasing the criminal, she was prepared to pull the trigger as soon as he noticed her but decided to at least try to converse first. "I swear, you common crooks are so predictable."
"Gyaah, already! Look Dea- you're not Death Broker..."
Turning around to face the Lone Bullet, Popcorn sighed in relief as he formed a cob of corn from his palm. "Oh, you're not Death Broker. You're just some girl in a cowl and latex. What, are you trying to copy those caped crusaders you read in comics? Just because they wear latex in DC and Marvel doesn't mean it lakes you look cool, it just makes you look like a sex worker. Now how about you-"
*BANG!*
"Gyaaaagh! My face! My beautiful face!"
With a single burst from her shotgun, Lone Bullet released a burst of pepper spray directly aimed at Popcorn's eyes, causing his face to be surrounded by a cloud of painful pepper spray. While it probably would've been better to carry actual shotgun shells in her firearm, using trick shells was a much more fun thing for her to mess around with... though at the moment she only really figured out pepper spray shells for great irritation and butter shells to make the ground slippery.
Still, pepper spray shells were really effective. As soon as the metahuman dropped his corn cob in pain, Lone Bullet put the shotgun back onto her back before tackling into him. Delivering a series of jab after jab, she'd use her combat training to hit him hard in the liver, in order to apply enough pain to knock him out. He may have had powers, but in the areas that counted he was still basically human.
"Tu stronzo... deve essere sexy oltre ad essere figo. Now, who else wants some of this?"
"She... she knocked out Popcorn!"
"Get her!"
*Bang!* *Bang!* *Bang!*
Gunshot after gunshot ringed down in the dead of night, as Lone Bullet ducked down and ran forward to take out the rest of the goons. One of the bullets grazed her, causing blood to drip down her leg but otherwise she winced through the pain as she delivered a uppercut straight into the crowd of goons. Too close to safely reload, they tossed their guns to the side and attempted to bludgeon her with crowbars and bare fists.
They were not well trained however, and made good practice for the Italian hero.
*BAM!*
An uppercut into the jaw sent the first goon, causing him to land on a second and knocking both to the ground.
*WALLOP!*
A rabbit punch crumpled into another mook's gut, causing him to crumble to the ground like a piece of paper, and nearly lose his lunch.
*Krack!*
A hook crashed a third person through a window, shattering the glass into thousands of tiny fractals. Oops, thought Kimmy. She hoped that the glass damage would be attributed to Popcorn's attempted robbery, and not to her hero's guise.
Either way though, the rest of the goons went down fast. Most were just powerless individuals with little training, who were usually won over merely by the charisma of a talented metahuman or criminal mastermind. So long as you had some easy power or even boxing training, they were basically jokes. She didn't even need to pull out the shotgun on any of them, it resting on her back as she pulled all the goons outside and started applying handcuffs on all of the criminals and dragged them to the nearby police station.
*GROOWWLL...*
As she dropped Popcorn off in the MCC Chicago correctional facility, she could already feel her stomach grumbling. Her last meal had been at 4 PM, an early dinner of lasagna and garlic bread. Normally she would have slept it off, but now she needed to stay up throughout the night some days of the week do do hero work. She couldn't exactly stay asleep when she had other criminals to knock out and drag to prison.
"Hmmm... Cavolo, ho fame. Ho bisogno di qualcosa da mangiare. Maybe that Wendy's is still open? I've seen The Owl go through that in her hero costume during the day once or twice, I'm sure they'll be okay seeing another masked vigilante riding up to get a midnight burger.
At the very least, Kimmy thought, she had tomorrow off at work. Meant she could sleep in for the night after she was done. For now though, as she got on the Bulletcycle she revved it up and drove back off to Wendy's, to get a bite to eat. She was starving...
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