As her mentor turned to stomp towards the man who shot her, Erika grabbed Kelly and inspected. She didn’t see anything. Despite her fear, the shotgun was a robust thing. Simply dropping it wasn’t enough to cause any damage. Satisfied, she glanced up to see Pinpoint looming over the man, her hands balled into fists.

  “Where’s your badge?” Pinpoint growled.

  The man shrunk back from her. “You’re a criminal! Assaulting a police officer like that! I bet you’re that bitch’s partner!”

  “You identified yourself as police. Where is your badge?” Pinpoint’s voice grew icier with every word she spoke.

  As Pinpoint questioned the man, Erika turned back to the counter, only to see nobody there. The cash register drawer was still open, but the owner was nowhere to be found. “I’m not a robber damnit,” she muttered to herself as she walked around the counter and pushed the drawer shut.

  From her position, it gave her a perfect view of the hidden security camera monitor that showed the counter and the entire shop. She sighed again and shook her head, then an idea came to mind. A quick scan of the area next to the cash register was all it took for her to find a blank pad of sticky notes and a marker. In a few seconds she jotted down a message and held it up to the camera for a few seconds.

  Satisfied the message was seen on the cameras, she ripped it off and stuck it against the cash register before moving back to Pinpoint. “I’m not a robber. - Firefly” it read.

  “I ain’t gotta show you a damn thing, let me go!” the man screamed as Erika stalked past the shelves. Before she came back into the man’s view, she unslung Kelly from her shoulder and cradled it in her hands. As she walked into view, finger on the shotgun’s trigger guard, the man seemed to choke on his words.

  “What the fuck, cop?” she growled, practically spitting the last word as she fixed the man with a glare. With her gaze locked onto the man, Erika couldn’t help but see his pants darken at the sight of her. Gross.

  “I-I—” the man sobbed as he choked on his words.

  “Police! Everyone guns down!” a new voice yelled from outside.

  Pinpoint straightened up and glanced out the door before smiling. “Onishi, shouldn’t you still be resting after getting shot?”

  “Pinpoint?!” the voice yelled in surprise. “Why are you robbing a convenience store? Tell your partner to put down her gun and surrender!”

  The hero waved the question away. “Big misunderstanding. My mentee Firefly was on her first patrol and introducing herself. Dispatch should’ve notified you she was operating in the area.”

  “...yeah, heard that go out over the radio. So why’s she robbing the place?”

  “I’m not robbing the place!”

  “She’s not. She went in, owner started screaming, and this dumbass pulled a gun and ran in screaming that he’s police then shot Firefly.” Pinpoint jerked her thumb at the man sitting in a puddle of his piss.

  “I see. I’m coming in.” A familiar looking local Japanese man in a dark blue police uniform with sergeant’s insignia on his sleeves stepped into the store, his pistol out but pointed down and away from anyone. As he saw Erika, he flinched slightly but regained his composure near instantly. “Firefly I presume?” he asked cautiously.

  “...yeah,” Erika said.

  “Mind putting that down, Firefly?”

  Glancing between the man on the ground, Sergeant Onishi, and Pinpoint, Erika slowly nodded and set Kelly down on the shelf next to her.

  “Thanks. Can you keep your hands up for me?”

  Erika briefly considered refusing the man’s order disguised as a request. Her recent experiences with police did little to build any trust in them. More than once she’d had guns pointed in her face or worse, and she was getting tired of it. But the pain of being shot was fresh in her mind. Even if the bodysuit stopped the bullet, she had no desire to experience being shot again.

  “Great, Kanakoa, can you secure her weapons?” Sergeant Onishi said, not taking his eyes off Erika even with her hands up.

  Another familiar looking officer stepped into the store, his eyes flicking between the police sergeant, Pinpoint, Erika, and the piss-stained man on the ground.

  “Arrest them!” piss-puddle man yelled, his bravado suddenly coming back to him.

  “Shut it,” Sergeant Onishi said as Officer Kanakoa stepped up to Erika and holstered his weapon before he grabbed Kelly off the shelf.

  “I’m going to have to take the gun on your hip for a bit, miss,” he said, carefully approaching her.

  “Fine, but I want Finn back.”

  “...right.”

  Erika had to resist the urge to strike the cop as he took Finn away from her. Being disarmed so casually ate at her, but fighting now seemed like a bad idea.

  “So,” Sergeant Onishi said slowly. “Does anyone mind explaining what’s going on?”

  ***

  It didn’t take long for things to get cleared up. While Sergeant Onishi questioned everyone, Officer Kanakoa found the store owner hiding in the back and brought him up front where he reviewed the store’s security footage.

  The video and the questioning revealed that the store owner overreacted when he saw Erika’s guns, and the man who’d shot her wasn’t even a cop. He was just a guy named Robert, a civilian with a concealed carry permit and a hero complex. The so-called good guy with a gun heard the store owner’s screaming and rushed in trying to play hero and got trigger happy.

  “Wait, what?! Why are you arresting me?!” Piss-puddle Robby screamed as Pinpoint helped Onishi slap a pair of cuffs on his wrists.

  “Impersonating a police officer and attempted murder,” Sergeant Onishi said, looking at the other man as if he was an idiot. “Kanakoa, read him his rights and radio a car to come transport him for booking.”

  As Officer Kanakoa grabbed the protesting puddle producer and his pistol, the gun and magazine in separate evidence bags, Sergeant Onishi personally handed Erika her guns back. “Sorry about that Firefly,” he said with a sigh.

  “It’s fine.” It really wasn’t, but Erika couldn’t think of anything else to say in that moment.

  It didn’t take long after that for things to wrap up, and they were on the move again as the police officers were shoving the damp man into the back of a squad car. Thankfully, the rest of her first patrol came and went without incident, and Erika finished the day training with Pinpoint.

  With her first patrol done, Erika started a new routine. Every other day, Pinpoint would take her to an area to patrol, though after the first ill-fated one, the experienced hero joined her in costume. On the days they patrolled, half their time was spent in different parts of the city and half was spent training. Some days they returned to Pinpoint’s warehouse gym to lift weights and spar in costume, other days Pinpoint made her run obstacle courses or climb buildings and jump from rooftop to rooftop. Once a week, they went to the range together and practiced .

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  The days were mostly peaceful, only marked by a couple incidents. Once, Erika chased down a purse snatcher that tried to fight when Erika cornered him. That fight ended quickly. He outweighed her by at least fifty pounds and had at least half a foot of height over her, but that was it. Even though she’d only been training with Pinpoint for a month, it was enough for her to dismantle the man as he swung at her head with his skateboard. All she had to do was duck under the wild swing and hammer him in the gut with a solid punch that took the fight out of him. It was the first time she got to hand someone off to the cops in handcuffs, and the capture even netted her a couple hundred dollars in bounty money.

  The second incident was worse. It happened during a lunch break on one of their patrols.

  Erika led Pinpoint into what had become their regular lunch place, a local plate lunch place named Kimo’s Plate Lunch Place. Though the place was small, it was popular. They served the kind of old fashioned plate lunch foods that came out of Hawaii’s plantation past. Chicken long rice, beef stew, kalua pig and cabbage, and more, each one a local twist born of the melting pot that was Hawaii.

  “‘Ey Fiyafly, Pinpoint!” Auntie Lucy said with a warm smile as they walked in. “How’s my girls doin’ today? You keepin’ us safe yeah?”

  “Hey Auntie! Yeah, we’re keeping an eye out!” Erika said with a smile. She’d always loved coming here when she could. Auntie Lucy was always a friendly woman that greeted everyone like family.

  “Auntie Lucy.” Pinpoint nodded at the woman, her tone warm but professional in costume. “How’s the family?”

  As Auntie Lucy and Pinpoint started to chat, Erika’s mind tuned them out, focused on the food in the steam table in front of her. Patrolling around downtown was hungry work. Kimo’s, like so many other local plate lunch places, was pretty simple. You could either order something from the kitchen like chicken katsu, a loco moco, or saimin, or you could get a plate with your choices of entree, rice, and mac salad.

  From how low some of the options were, it was obvious many downtown office workers had already descended like locusts to feast, or more likely picked up plates to take back to their air conditioned break rooms in the towers around the area. Kimo’s was a popular place even though she rarely saw anyone actually eating there. Though they had tables, she and Pinpoint were the only ones she’d actually seen stop to eat there. Everyone else rushed in to grab take out and left.

  “‘Ey Fiyafly!” Kimo, the cook and person the restaurant was named for, said as he came out of the kitchen lugging a heavy tray of freshly cooked chicken. “Watchu’ wan’ try today?”

  “Hey Kimo!” Erika nodded at the large Hawaiian man as she glanced at the steam table in front of her. As she watched, the man lifted the nearly empty tray of bbq chicken out from the steam table and slid the fresh tray in. The lightly charred pieces of boneless chicken glistened as wisps of steam rose up from it. She could practically taste the sweet and salty marinade Kimo soaked the chicken thighs in for hours before grilling them. “I’m thinking the bbq chicken today.”

  “Jus’ dat?” Kimo said with mock surprise. “You a supa’ hero! You gotta get dem muscles fueled to scrap with da kine monsters and bad guys! Grind some long rice too! Some stew for powa’!”

  “‘Ey, let da’ girl eat what she like!” Auntie Lucy said, smacking Kimo on the back of the head.

  Kimo laughed and playfully flinched away, but kept up his antics. “We no can let ‘em go hungry! No can fight on one empty belly!”

  “And no can fight if dey as big and round as yours!” Aunty Lucy snapped back with a false scowl, the edges of her mouth twisted up in a smile.

  Erika couldn’t help but laugh at the older couple’s banter. They did this every day to everyone, even when she was just Erika, the barista. No matter who walked in the door, they tried to make sure they had enough to eat. More than once she’d seen the two giving out food to the homeless in the area at the end of the day. They didn’t let people go hungry.

  “Just the chicken for me,” Erika finally said, siding with Auntie Lucy. “I can’t eat that much!”

  Auntie Lucy smiled at her as she started to put her plate together.

  “But I can,” Pinpoint said, smiling at Kimo. “I’ll do the beef stew, teri beef, and the bbq chicken.”

  “See? She know wats up.”

  As Kimo moved to make Pinpoint’s plate up for her, Erika heard jingling footsteps behind them. She didn’t expect what she saw when she looked over her shoulder. A man dressed like an actual cowboy filled the doorway to Kimo’s behind them. He looked like an evil gunslinger from a shitty spaghetti western in his cowboy hat, duster, and cowboy boots complete with spurs. But the thing that drew her attention to him the most was the pair of hand cannons strapped to his hips.

  “Name’s Alamo Andy,” the cowboy cosplayer announced in a deep Texas drawl, as if his name should mean something to any of them. It didn’t. “I heard this was the place to try some real barbecue in these parts.”

  “‘Ey Alamo! We got da best bbq chicken in Hawaii!” Kimo said with a warm smile. “Just wen’ bring out one fresh batch from da grill!”

  “Grill? You grill your chicken?”

  “Yup! Right on da hibachi!” Kimo said proudly, gesturing to the fresh batch of chicken in the steam table.

  Alamo Andy’s eyes narrowed as he glared at the chicken. “That ain’t no real barbecue! Real barbecue is Texas style! Smoked for hours, bone in! You’re a fraud!” he shouted angrily, his hand drifting towards his hip. “I challenge you to a duel!”

  “Dude, what the fuck’s your problem! Kimo’s food is great,” Erika said, moving between the cowboy crybaby and Kimo.

  “You standing up for this offense against Texas, little lady?” Alamo Andy growled, his fingers twitching towards his guns.

  “The fuck’s Texas have to do with anything dumbass? This is Hawaii!”

  “The only things certain in life are death and Texas! This so-called barbecue is a crime against Texas!”

  “Wat you say ‘bout my food?! You like scrap?!” Kimo shouted in anger as he marched around the counter, Auntie Lucy close behind.

  “And you’re a crime against good sense,” Pinpoint sighed, turning to look at the gunslinger for the first time.

  “Let’s solve this like civilized folk with a duel,” Alamo Andy drawled, his eyes fixed on Erika. “You wanna stand up for these criminals, meet me outside, if you got the guts!”

  “I’m gonna knock him out!” Kimo growled, trying to march out after the man.

  “No you aren’t,” Pinpoint said, intercepting the man. “He’s a metahuman. D-Class I’m pretty sure. It’s superhero business. Keep my plate warm, I’ll handle it.”

  Erika stopped Pinpoint before she could go outside. “No, I want to handle it.”

  “You sure? You’re a few classes below him. From the way he was moving, I’d guess he has enhanced reflexes and aim, and those guns of his…”

  “He wanted a duel, I’ll give him a duel to remember,” Erika said confidently.

  “No.”

  “Trust me, I can handle it.”

  Pinpoint stared at her for a few seconds, her body language screaming disapproval. “Letting you fight him right now would be stupid.”

  “I have a plan.”

  “Fine, but I’m stepping in if I even think you’re about to get yourself or someone else hurt. And…” Pinpoint’s voice took on an evil tone. “I’m going to step up your training so you can understand why this is a bad idea.”

  “Fine by me,” Erika said with false bravado as she exited the restaurant.

  Alamo Andy stood in the middle of the shopping street waiting for her. “Finished jawing?” he asked, spitting a wad of something dark to the side. “About time, let’s duel!”

  “Wait! What’re the rules of the duel?” Erika said, taking a few steps to the side so that restaurant was no longer behind her.

  Alamo Andy gave her an assessing look, his hand hovering near his holstered weapon. “You’re actually going to duel me?” he said, surprised.

  Erika nodded slowly.

  “Alright then!” the cowboy actually smiled warmly at her. “What’s your name?”

  “Firefly.”

  “Right then Firefly! It’s easy! We start with our backs turned and walk 10 paces away from each other, turn, draw, and shoot. Simple right?”

  “Simple. So we just turn around now?” Erika said, starting to turn away from Alamo Andy

  “Yes! Oh wait! Make sure you count your paces out loud!”

  “Sure, can do.”

  “Great, now let’s turn around!” Without waiting for her, Alamo Andy spun around and started to walk away from her, his spurs jingling as he counted his steps out. “One…”

  “One!” Erika echoed the man, taking a step as she unslung Kelly from her shoulder.

  “Two!” Alamo Andy yelled.

  “Two!” Erika said, turning back around as quietly as she could and flicking the safety on her shotgun off.

  “Three!” Alamo Andy took another step away from her as she lined up a shot.

  “Three,” Erika pulled the trigger. Kelly bucked in her arms as a loud boom echoed through the shopping street. Once, twice, three times, Erika shot Alamo Andy in the back with bean bag rounds. The less lethal rounds were designed not to kill a baseline human, so she wasn’t confident they’d be as effective against a metahuman that actually had the durability that normally came with powers. She was right.

  Alamo Andy stumbled as the first bean bag slammed into his upper back, the second and third sending him stumbling forward another couple of steps, but they didn’t take him down. “Why you cheating—!” he screamed, spinning back around as he drew one of his guns.

  Erika didn’t let him finish his sentence. Quick as she could, she pulled the trigger four more times and sent four more bean bag rounds flying at the man. From this close, she couldn’t miss. The fourth shot hit him in the shoulder as he spun. The fifth slammed into his forehead and sent his hat flying off. The sixth hit his thigh as Erika overcorrected and aimed lower than she intended. The seventh hit him in the throat as his gun cleared his holster.

  Alamo Andy’s gun clattered to the ground as he fell backwards on his ass, struggling to breath.

  As calmly as she could, Erika released her spent mag and slipped a new one into Kelly, this time the lethal slugs she carried. “Looks like I won,” she said, pointing Kelly at the man’s head. “Give up?”