Rally Vincent aka Larry Vincent

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Background

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Powers & Abilities

Larry is utterly obsessed with firearms. She knows everything there is to know about those. Even about heavy weaponry such as AT guns.

She’s an incredible markswoman (usually using pistols), and a highly proficient gunsmith. She can empty eight rounds from a 9mm pistol in five seconds and still get a single hole from overlapping impacts at 25 yards. With her favourite 9mm handgun she can reliably place shots at 60+ metres. Even as a little girl she was an incredible shot.

Now watch this !

Vincent can perform all sorts of impossible gun-related tricks, such as :

• Perform basic ballistics forensics with the naked eye, accurately retracing bullet trajectories from impacts.
• Identify a model of shotgun from the sound of its pump action being worked.
• Time the rotations of a revolver with a single bullet chambered in so she can confidently squeeze the trigger five times without shooting… 12 times in a row.
• Fire her gun blind because what she’s actually aiming are the empties that hit the guy standing behind her in the eyes.
• Drop a loaded magazine held between her teeth on her foot and kicking it straight back into her pistol’s grip to immediately shoot.
• Flip a pistol she’s holding by the barrel into shooting position impossibly fast, by twirling it around her finger in the trigger guard.
• Improvise a small explosive charge using a box of matches and the powder from five .22 rounds.
• Shoot the hammer off an opponent’s gun, though that is usually only possible at melee range. At longer ranges and with time to aim, she can often shoot off the safety instead.
• Catch a .223 round tossed in the air while driving past it at 150+ mph.
• Take fine control of an opponent’s pistol using a suitable random item (such as a scarf or a bed sheet).
• Instantly eyeball whether a given obstacle will stop a specific round. For instance how well the paperback novel in her coat pocket will stop rounds from a silenced 9mm para pistol at one foot.
• Shoot off the handle of a briefcase with but two bullets at 50 yards.
• Shoot a grenade flying toward her from a launcher, though in DC Heroes terms she clearly maxed out her AV with Hero Points .
• Shoot open the front of the feeding tube of a pump-action shotgun, causing the shells within to fall out.

Larry prefers not to shoot to kill if that is a reasonable option, particularly against opponents who aren’t moving. Her signature move in this case is to shoot off the thumb of the person, disarming them and crippling them. In more dynamic situations, she can reliably place multiple shots in limbs and other non-lethal locations.

Other skills

Beyond her gunfighting skills — which also make her quite hard to hit in a firefight — Ms. Vincent is a general action heroine. For instance she’s remarkably perceptive, and has peak human reflexes.

Ms. Vincent is also a surprisingly good hand-to-hand combatant with unspecified martial arts training, and a good athlete. She has a solid pain tolerance, and has repeatedly managed to shake off shocks, wounds, concussions, etc. despite her low body mass (in DC Heroes terms, a solid Hero Points total).

She’s a superb driver with combat driving and stunt driving skills, though to her dismay she’s clearly not as good as the master – Bean Bandit. Not that she’ll admit it, of course. Still, she can perform some impossible bits of driving and race cinematic professional drivers.

She’s also a decent car mechanics – not on the level of a professional, but she can certainly do her own maintenance, or her own engine improvements using spare parts.

Social

Vincent has a small network of informants throughout Chicago, who use a secure BBS  to communicate. Her star informant is Becky “the nose” Farrah, who knows everything about what’s going on in Chicago. Becky has become, despite her greedily mercenary nature, a friend.

She also associates with another improbably-talented teenager – 18-year old Misty Brown, who is a superb thief, locksmith and knife fighter and has become a friend. Larry has access to the usual skiptracing and P.I. databases, though these aren’t usually necessary if there’s enough money to hire Becky.

Vincent and her associates share a simple code to covertly exchange information when necessary. They’ll discuss a fictional case — that the case never took place is what alerts them that the other is talking in code — and use a few key words to indicate what sort of information is being conveyed (for instance, the description of a car). The rest seems to mostly rely on simple idea associations.

Handguns – primary

Her usual piece is an early model CZ-75 9mm pistol from Czechoslovakia. Which as she’ll gleefully explain on and on… and on… and on… is in her eyes the ultimate semi-auto handgun.

This specific production run (1975-1979) featured an unusually high grade of steel. It was much tougher than the one later used for export models sold in the US. However, the real reason she always wants a first-gen CZ-75 despite the difficulties in finding one is that her father used one.

She once affixed a powerful underbarrel tactical light to her CZ for night combat.

Handguns – backups

If she doesn’t have access to a first-gen CZ-75, Larry will use a SIG P210 instead. But she will not be confident enough with it to take the most demanding shots.

If she needs a disposable gun, she’ll pack a Glock 19.

At the shop, she’s normally armed with a Walther PPK in a small-of-back holster.

Handguns – holdouts

Her backup is a tiny .25 Colt Vest Pocket (a 1908 John Browning model made in 1960) mounted on a sleeve ejector. This setup is exactly like the one with the S&W Escort (erroneously described as a “.25 Colt”) in the movie Taxi Driver. The Colt’s trigger guard is sawed off, and the steel spar of the ejector once saved Larry’s arm from being chopped clean off.

Her backup’s backup is a ankle gun, specifically a Grendel P-10 .380 ACP subcompact. Though .25 or .380 aren’t combat-grade rounds, she can place her shots precisely enough to compensate for that. Especially since they’ll normally be used at close ranges.

The P-10 is sometimes replaced by a CZ DUO (reportedly carried as a garter gun, and never actually seen). Though depending on her clothing she might use a Freedom Arms .22 WMR 5-shot mini-revolver as a boot gun instead.

All her guns save the .25 have proper permits.

Other ordnance

In heavy situations Vincent will pack a shortened, pistol-grip pump action shotgun — probably a vintage Remington M870 with the older mount for the pistol grip — and a concealed ballistic vest, plus a boot knife. Sometimes she wears an armoured leather jacket instead of the concealed vest, but that doesn’t change much.

For further protection she sometimes wears motorbike leathers.

She once used what seemed to be a Browning BPS 10 10-gauge shotgun, and obviously her shop and personal guns cabinet constitute an arsenal. The latter hosts a Colt Anaconda, a Desert Eagle, a Mauser 96 with stock, an Ingram MAC machine pistol, a H&K MP5, a SPAS-12, a SIG-550, two other unidentified assault rifles, etc.

The shop also includes :

• A prison cell in the basement (for recaptured bail-skippers who can’t be handed over to the police right away).
• A secret room (to hide the illegal firearms and explosives when the police is there).

For particularly demanding sniper shots, Larry uses a distinctive Walther WA-2000 rifle. One of her most prized possession is an AR-7 survival rifle that her father gave to her as a girl, though it was damaged during a case.

Beloved Cobra

Her ride is her beloved Mustang Shelby Cobra GT500 muscle car. It’s the 1967 model with a 360 HP V-8 Interceptor engine (0 to 100km/h in 6.21 seconds). It has a car phone and a small TV, but no-one in Chicago will agree to insure it. This car gets damaged so often that it is a major drain on Vincent’s finances.

The engine is clearly modified or replaced. Larry’s Cobra can do at least 170 mph, whereas the 1967 model topped out at about 135 mph. The Cobra also has a SIG-550 rifle in its sniper variant and a few clips in the trunk, plus an unspecified shotgun (probably the Browning). Its thick windshield could take a pair of 12 gauge shotshells at close range before breaking.

Minnie-May also installed a tracer in it, and the trunk further includes some surveillance equipment such as compact, real-time listening bugs.

History

Larry Vincent (“isn’t that an odd name for a broad ?”, inquires a puzzled thug) is a 19 year-old girl who’s the best bounty hunter in Chicago, a superhumanly skilled gunfighter and a gun shop owner. She uses forged papers to pretend that she’s 21 and can thus legally handle firearms in Illinois.

Her best friend is a diminutive 17-year old demolitions maven and ex-prostitute, who looks maybe 13 if she puts some effort in it.

So far, so good ?

Larry runs a small guns and ammo shop, with an attached firing range. It has a solid customers base as guns enthusiasts appreciate her expertise. But it is badly managed and doesn’t bring in much money. Like some older role-playing game shops, Larry seems to mostly run the shop as a place to stockpile and shoot her own guns rather than as a business.

Her real, actually lucrative job is bounty hunting.

Skiptracer

Ms. Vincent often chases bail skippers. Most Chicago lawyers with a germane speciality have her number, and the Chicago PD routinely informs her of cases of interest. She’s a good friend of a senior detective called Roy Coleman, who considers her nearly as a part of the PD.

Officers on the street know that Larry is a trusted bounty hunter unless they’re absolute rookies, and she gets considerable leeway. Few field cops really care about her being present on a cordoned-off crime scene, for instance.

Being an action heroine, she’ll also routinely get into adventures by investigating some small detail that seems off. Or having enemies she spared come back for bloody vengeance.

During her documented career, Vincent developed a serious case of bad blood with an elite made man named Gray. Gray is eventually killed, but an elite drugs-runner and enforcer from Italy nicknamed Iron Goldie then falls in love with Rally, and swears that she’ll have her.

Larry also develops a rivalry with extraordinary driver and strongman Bean Bandit, though that slowly morphes into a friendship. Vincent wins a bet/competition with Bean, after which he agrees to never run drugs again.

Secret origin

Irene Vincent is the daughter of a wealthy couple. Her father was an Olympic medallist in marksmanship. Even as a little kid she was very interested in guns.

That made her controlling mother furious. She wanted Irene to be a model upper-class daughter and to practice such hobbies as horse riding and violin. Even though the kid was a terrible violinist and ashamed of it.

Against his wife’s wishes, Mr. Vincent opened a gun store called the Gunsmith Cat. This was part of what led to a divorce, and Mrs. Vincent came to the store to serve the divorce papers to her husband. However, the store was attacked and all persons therein killed. Mr. Vincent wasn’t present – he came in a bit later.

When Irene was 17 or so, Mr. Vincent told her that he had a lead about his wife’s murder, then vanished.

Bounty hunter

Irene became a bounty hunter to acquire the skills to find her dad. Within an impossibly short time, she was a reputed skip tracer.

She used the pseudonym “Larry Vincent” to avoid losing the business of those who wouldn’t trust a female bounty hunter. So they would at least meet her or call her once. She also obtained forged papers making her two years older than her real age. ”Larry” quickly became her assumed first name in her new life.

However, she never found any lead about her father.

Father issues

As it happened, Mr. Vincent was embroiled in a vendetta with the Gambucci gang. They were behind the bloody Gunsmith Cat heist. By the time he killed his target, he was a mass murderer, having killed a score of Gambucci men.

Near the end of the original series, Larry is reunited with her father, who had been brainwashed by Iron Goldie into becoming her elite enforcer. She breaks his conditioning, and apparently kills Goldie.

Though Ms. Vincent hesitates to continue as a bounty hunter, her friends throw a birthday party where they invite many people whose life she saved – and Larry decides to carry on. By this point she’s actually 21, though officially she’s 23.

Description

When she’s not working at the shop, Larry dresses smartly and with tight-fitting clothes. Fitted men’s business suit, pantsuits, business casual miniskirts, etc..

She’s often wearing glasses, but these are shooting glasses for light protection and to ignore glare.

She is usually wearing a dark tie over a light-coloured business shirt or blouse.

Larry is half-Indian, her father being of unspecified Dravidian heritage. In the B&W art her skin is markedly darker than that of Caucasians around her, but in colour art she’s often just a bit dusky or even depicted with a Eastern Asian or Caucasian skin tone.

She’s fairly tall, very slim yet busty, very young and unusually attractive. Though she likes wearing men’s clothes and is plenty tough, her physique and her hairstyle mean that she isn’t looking meaningfully butch. And her body language and expressions are conventionally feminine.

As the series advances, Larry’s choice of clothing become more conventionally feminine, and she’s usually wearing miniskirts.

Personality

Larry insists that she’s just a gun shop owner and gunsmith, but her main income source is bounty hunting. She often has to keep the shop closed as she tracks down criminals.

She’s a cinematic, reckless, thrill-loving arse-kicker. Though the Chicago PD appreciates her results, they also see her as an endless source of trouble.

Generally, Larry Vincent follows 1980s/early 1990s US action cinema tropes, the author being clearly a fan of the grittier “urban jungle” movies of that time – and classics such as The French Connection. She’s not unlike the typical maverick cop character from those, though there’s something Steve McQueenian about her as well.

Other traits

She’s a white hat. For instance she will not normally shoot an opponent who is not posing a clear and immediate danger, even though she can confidently shoot to wound.

Though she’s supposedly 19 as the story begins, she’s highly experienced as a manhunter and gunfighter and knows exactly what she’s doing. On a job she comes across more like a woman in her late 20s, with some exceptions having to do with her temper and narrative conventions in this genre of manga.

On the other hand, with her friends, she feels more like an impatient and somewhat temperamental teenage girl. It’s not rare for her to yell at Minnie over her immature and oversexed behaviour, and she’s curiously protective of her associate even though they don’t even have a full two years age difference.

This recedes as the series advances and the characters mature, and Larry and Minnie both become less conflicts-prone and more responsible.

Guns, sex and justice

Larry’s fixation on guns (and to a lesser extent on muscle cars) is textbook Freudian sublimation. Though she has nothing resembling a love life, that she finds guns and cars quite arousing is apparent in her speech and body language. She can only sleep well if there’s a gun under her pillow.

When she feels mean, Minnie-May will accusingly point out that Larry is a virgin, which unfailingly leaves our heroine embarrassed given her wish to appear tough and worldly. According to an interview with the author, Larry’s romance-free life stems from her inability to deal with (or even admit to herself) her homosexuality.

Her friend Misty Brown has a crush on Larry – but the tightly repressed Vincent would rather spontaneously combust than acknowledge this. Ms. Vincent does ping the gaydar of a handful of lesbians, but everybody else assumes that she’s asexual, or straight and heavily repressed. Especially since she’s so obviously uneasy in sexual-ish situations.

Motivated

Vincent is extremely confident and faces dire threats with little fear. On some level, she’s genre-aware and knows that she’s the badass action heroine.

She also makes a lot of effort to appear all adult and reasonable and pragmatic. But this cautiousness and level-headedness will vanish at the drop of a hat, particularly if guns and cars are involved.

Plus, she has the traditional heart of gold despite her attempts to come across as professional and purely mercenary. What Larry really wants is to help people and save lives.

As the series advances this desire to do good deeds becomes her primary motivation, and replaces recklessness as the primary reason as to why she gets into such messes. Of course, in practice, having to pay her bills is also an important motivation. Her finances are never good.

After a terrible experience with a designer drug called Kerasine, Larry has developed a personal problem with drugs traffickers. Due to her childhood issues, she also tends to melt when it comes to little children separated from their father.

Her own relationship with her father essentially froze when he left, so she still reacts toward him like a teenage daddy’s girl would.

Quotes

“Judging from the bullet trajectories and blood stains, I figure a third party wasted the cops.”

(Enthusiastically being reunited with her Mustang) “And that throbbing, five hundred cubic inch V-8 vibration right under your BUTT !”

(Glancing at the weapon she just took from a junkie, which is the only gun available) “Gack ! An RG14 ! A lousy Saturday night special ! This sucks !! With a piece of crap like this I need to get within 15 yards… no, it’s a lousy .22 — that means just ten yards…”

“I figure I’m number one on his hit parade, ever since I blew off his hand back in the parking garage.”

(Puts one of her Colts .25 auto in her bed) “Aaah ! This is it ! This is what I’ve been missing ! This hard, firm feeling through the pillow… the tantalizing whiff of gunpowder by my head !” (falls asleep like a baby)

“Can’t shoot a gun with a broken hammer, sugar. I shot it off during the firefight.”

Minnie: “What’s a hotshot bounty hunter like you doing messing with a mere manslaughter ?”
Larry: “He’s a celebrity for one thing. And the bail was huge. Plus, they say there’s a chance that D.A. may decide to up the ante to homicide.”

Larry (to Misty Brown): “Don’t get me wrong, girl ! I’ve just got it in for the jerks who shot up my Cobra ! Larry Vincent doesn’t put her arse on the line out of sympathy !”
Minnie-May (muttering under her breath behind Larry): “…pants on fire…”

Doctor: “And how come a 22-year old woman held a bounty hunting licence for years ?!”
Vincent (giggles embarrassedly, shuffles nervously on her arse and puts up a goofy grin) “It sure wasn’t easy.”

By Sébastien Andrivet.

Source of Character: Gunsmith Cats manga by Kenichi Sonoda, specifically the Revised Edition published by Dark Horse.

Helper(s): Darci, Capita_Senyera.

Writeup completed on the 8^th of April, 2014.