Smoke

Gil panicked as a tidal wave of insects assaulted him; they bit, stung, and forced themselves into his ears. Gil had been in swarms of enraged insects before; do this job long enough and they are inevitable. Most of them were disorganized masses that stung when they happened to notice you, but this swarm wasn't like that. They were all uniformly trying to do as much damage as they could, while making room for one another. Flies made room for wasps, and spiders had pride of place over worms or most ants. If Gil had Stress Defense, he might have even noticed; as it was, he was too busy panicking to care.

Gil took two seconds to realize he needed to flee, and from there it was ten long, grueling seconds of waiting. He tried with minimal success to roll, crushing a decent number of the bugs but accomplishing little. It made him feel a little better to be doing something, even something ineffectual.

Gil arrived home with a grateful heart, He scrambled to the box and pulled out one of the two Rim Elm antidotes and a Healing Leaf baggie. It wouldn't do to go into anaphylactic shock when he didn't have the ability to go to a hospital, and an RPG antidote was practically Body Defense in a bottle. He collapsed on the ground, covered in slowly fading welts and tiny cuts, while Snow and Ireena pestered him.

"Master Gil!" Snow fretted, "are you alright? What happened?"

"I picked a fight with a supervillain team," Gil groaned, "and got my shit kicked in from halfway across the block. I really should have known better. The good news is that I succeeded on my missions."

"Really?" Snow asked, "what were they today?"

"I had to mark a specific superheroine, kill a truly horrid young woman, and arrange for the defeat of a warrior cult in battle." Gil explained, "I had Rose take a look at the woman before the execution. It's hard to lie to someone you share a mind with, especially when you don't even realize she is present."

"What were her crimes?" Ireena asked cautiously. She'd been raised by a good and just man, and found Gil's cavalier attitude distasteful.

"Rose knows better than I do." Gil hedged. "I think she can explain later. After all, she saw the woman's guilt first hand."

"Not a very compelling argument for her death." Ireena noted, frowning.

"I go where I'm needed and do as commanded." Gil lied breezily. He'd be perfectly happy to ignore a mission that didn't please him. "It's not my place to question why."

As he spoke, he studied his tablet again. He wasn't sure if he should risk heading out again. Rose was on her last legs, he'd finished two of four possible mission objectives and had a third on a timer, and Brockton Bay just wasn't a terribly clean or attractive place to visit. Not very safe, either, and his guard wolf was injured on top of everything else. He had rewards to examine, and he sucked on a small wad of dried Healing Leaves while he went over the loot.

The Bikini Armor was something of a misnomer; the point was that it appeared to be form over function, not that it was actually a bikini. This suit actually covered most of the body, even including a mask and hood, but clung to the physique like shrink wrap. Despite that, it was nearly impervious to most forms of damage and absorbed impacts far better than such a thin suit really should. It did so by sheathing the body in a subtle forcefield, one which grew progressively weaker if the wearer covered it with anything else. Gil knew from experience that at its weakest it was still equivalent to a thick leather coat; one of his companions in another life had worn a more literally named set of bikini armor under her actual armor for a tiny bit of added protection.

The suit shifted and reshaped itself whenever someone touched it, assuming it wasn't already being worn. In Gil's hands it became a light tan and brown outfit that left a conspicuous bulge visible. He tossed on his cloak overtop it and pulled up his mask, which only really covered his mouth and nose. He made for a reasonably convincing (if generic) superhero, in his own humble opinion. He spent roughly 3 seconds choosing a name, and Nomad was born.

He checked out the Character Card out of pure curiosity. It resembled a small, collectible trading card with a picture of a buxom blonde woman with curved black horns and a pair of orange shades. Her outfit was vaguely evocative of the American West, with cowboy boots and a belt with a large bull shaped buckle, but Gil was fairly sure that the bare midriff and denim short shorts would raise some eyebrows in any true Western setting.

On the back, he found a very brief description and a few salient points.

Cow Lady, an American Superhero from the world of My Hero Academia, is a low level but experienced professional hero. Her quirk, Cow, allows her to take on the mass and speed of a cow while maintaining the agility and dexterity of a human. For her setting and profession she is a fairly underwhelming combatant, but she is still quite strong compared to a normal human and a highly trained in unarmed combat.

He could scroll the text and reveal a list of example traits and skills she had. Unarmed combatant, Bombshell Physique, Cow Quirk, First Aid Certified, and Adaptable Tactics were presented as options, but when Gil wondered if he could turn Blackpaw into a human with this, the trait "human" was added to the list. Thinking of Rose, Gil focused on a possibility and was rewarded with a mildly disappointing flash of red text.

"Likes Men" trait unavailable. Sexuality unspecified in canon.

Gil smirked and noted that the trait was "likes men" as opposed to a more narrowly defined trait like "heterosexual." Good to know, as he didn't want to completely invalidate Rose's nature. He largely shared her taste in women, after all. Gil put the card into his box; he had no real intention of picking any fights tonight, and he wanted to consider how to use that card before he did anything rash. Timers always made him too antsy to think.

Finally, after confirming he'd gotten the Waifusion wand, Gil broke his normal policy of "no snap purchases" in order to buy Target Tracker on the spot. 2 credits for the ability to easily track down his mission targets was a better value proposition than anything else he'd been presented with, and still left him with 11 credits. Gil stepped out into the world again hoping to examine the new perk he'd bought.

The navigation tool had been upgraded, adding additional lines like the ones pointing him towards the portal and his retinue members. At a glance, he could see that two were pointed broadly towards the Wards HQ. One for Flechette, one for Vista. Another was pointed more vaguely at Merchants territory, a dim cone instead of a bright, narrow line.

With about 4 hours left on the clock, Gil decided that he wasn't going to manage much more with the supergirls tonight. It took nearly 3 hours to walk to the Wards HQ last time, and he sincerely doubted that he'd be able to bed Vista in under an hour.

No, instead he decided to kill two birds with one stone and head towards Merchants territory, checking out randomly selected buildings as he went. He wasn't quite invulnerable with the Bikini Armor on, but he was close enough to risk it. If Rose stuck with him, she could loan him her sword skills in a pinch; that would be enough to handle anyone short of another super.

Alas, his improvised attempt at looting didn't bear much fruit; most places were either well guarded, locked up tight, or picked clean. He found a number of broken bike locks outside of various buildings, letting him know that he had a good idea for a few weeks in the past. Gil did manage to find someone who knew about the gang enough to give him a basic idea: an extremely stoned transient who was a bit cagey about whether or not he was a member. Another bribe of jerky and some clean water, and Gil was the junky's best friend.

"Members get a black one for a near death experience, assuming it was worth doing. Tussling with Hookwolf and walking away? That's a black armband." He explained, before rambling about how he almost died choking on his vomit once. It was likely that he'd been aiming to explain what wouldn't be worth a wristband, as he didn't have any blacks himself, but he never got to that part.

"And yellow?" Gil prompted. "I've got powers, how do I prove myself?"

"Courage. Raiding for supplies, guarding borders. That kind of thing." The man giggled. "Unless things get messy. Then it's red. If your powers aren't shit, you should be able to get red or yellow easy."

Gil nodded and asked about the leadership of the group, pulling apart the small kitchenette and shoving everything in his bag. Unsurprisingly, the Merchants were led by a small team of supers. Unfortunately, the stoner was in no real position to provide comprehensive dossiers even if he knew exactly how their powers worked.

"Skidmark's the leader. He can make this purpley blue force field thing. He's fuckin this blonde chick who's good with cars or something. Nice tits on that one. Then there's the chick who makes things spin, and the robot guy and the guy who can eat trash to get bigger."

The rest of the descriptions were no better, providing only the very most high level information. He noted a few of the girls sounded decent looking and had somewhat useful powers; if he needed to infiltrate this group, he might as well keep an eye out for worthwhile recruits. As he listened, Gil ransacked the abandoned apartment for unwanted treasures. It wasn't the man's full time home, thankfully, just a place he sometimes went to be alone.

No food and no knives, but Gil found a decent number of random cooking implements and a few spices. Intact spoons and forks would probably sell for a modest price in Rim Elm, and he hoped that dish soap might be able to help remove the tarnish from the Durst family silver. Cleaning rags, scrubbing pads, some books that didn't appeal to the average junkie looter, and a box of table salt all went into the backpack. It wasn't his best haul, not by a long shot, but Gil felt like he'd done as much as could be expected. As the timer ran down, he dropped all pretense of having standards and shoved whatever was in arms reach into his bag. He hefted a couple folding chairs as he teleported home.

He mostly just hoped that nobody would track what happened to Shadowstalker back to the new cape in town. It wasn't an absurd hope, either. Unless time stopped, Gil would be gone for a week at the absolute minimum.

••••••••••

Across town, a skeletally thin man in a tight black bodysuit leaned over a strung-out teenage girl with shoulder length brown hair. She was wearing a simple white dress that hung limply on her thin form. The man was her captor, stealing her away for his personal use. Not sexually; oh no, Coil was not a particularly lustful man and could find companions in other ways if he really wanted to. His pet, though barely 18, was far more valuable than any amount of carnal pleasure.

"Pet. Wake up." He said gently, soothingly, as he stroked her hair with the tips of his fingers.

"Is it time for candy?" The girl moaned. "It's been so long since…"

"No, not until you've answered my questions." Coil admonished her lightly. "You know that."

"Ok, ask three. I can't do more." She griped. "My head hurts."

"What are the chances that this new individual will interfere with my plans again?" He asked, "the one in robes that Skitter saw throwing the orbs."

"Too vague." The young woman moaned, shuddering. "I need more than his clothes. I don't know him."

Coil sighed. He supposed he should have seen that one coming. He also didn't have the intel he'd sent the Undersiders to gather, so he fell back on some old standbys. It was good to see if anything had changed.

"What is the chance that I'll find a solution to The Travelers' problem?"

"Thirty one point zero two percent." His pet answered, relieved to answer an actual question.

The room went silent. Coil was flabbergasted. The last time he'd asked this exact question, only a few days prior, he'd received a number closer to 7%.

"That's more than four times what it was last time." He wondered at the thought. "Is the solution death or a cure?"

"That's another question." She snapped. "I'm not answering it for free."

"Of course." Coil soothed. "Candy after one more question, once you've answered that one."

"Thirty two percent death, sixty five percent a cure." The girl answered. "Three percent chance of something else happening. I don't know what."

"Fascinating." Coil said, steepling his fingers. "What happens to my chances if I assign men to investigate this mysterious person's movements? Answer, and you can have your candy."