Resource allocation

Candress’s deal with Squealer was, unfortunately, a lot more complicated than it sounded. Candress was to avoid touching Skidmark in an open ended manner, though thankfully intent was properly conveyed. The pact wouldn’t be rendered null if she handed him a snickers bar while working as a minion. However, the pact wasn’t fully realized until all reasonable possibility of Skidmark and Candress sleeping together was rendered null and void to a standard Squealer had set subconsciously.

Candress would need to convince Skidmark that he didn’t want to sleep with her, which was unlikely for the sleazy supervillain. The other, far more reasonable option that Gil could see was, of course, ****. If Skidmark wasn’t in a touchable state, Sherrel Bailey’s soul would transfer into Gil’s possession. He wasn’t sure if he even wanted her, given her current attitude and the abundance of stacked blondes in Brockton Bay, but she was a tier 5 minor name. That was credits in the bank if he could secure her.

The other problem was, of course, that Candress was operating at a very dangerous deficit. Once he was able to extract her safely for long enough to sit her down and get an idea of what the fight was about, he realized that she was set up to fail. She needed mana to use her powers, she only had one source conveniently available. He needed to get her some backup, or she’d be fucked.

Given the resources available, that meant either somehow getting someone else to infiltrate the Merchants, a losing proposition which was utterly rejected by Charlotte, or powering up Candress directly. He had a card for that.

He gathered that superpowers didn’t change often in Brockton Bay’s world, so he’d be tossing out another anomalous data point, but so far only the Merchants knew about “Snowblower” in any detail. If she was going to develop new powers, now was the time.

He pulled out the Azula card and stared at it for a long moment. A full power swap would be reasonably effective. He’d even get a partial refund for it by “selling” her old powers. He didn’t really… want to. Candress had her own native power set. She’d worked for it, and it had cultural baggage. Most importantly, her new companions expected it of her.

He combed through the abilities on the Azula card. Most of them were chaff. Highly developed chaff, but Candress didn’t really need advanced infiltration skills for the group she was dealing with. She’d probably only be there until they’d undermined and recruited as many of the Merchants as possible; the whole gang would need to go once New Wave was fully online. Candress just needed to push them to fight harder and focus on the other factions of Brockton.

The first obvious choice was her mastery of a martial art called Bei Shaolin, which appeared to be a variant of Kung Fu. She seemed to have a blatantly superhuman tier of proficiency with it, the kind where punching through stone is just a normal thing to do with minimal prep time and standing leaps of ten or more feet were on the table. That was until he found Firebending, which was as far as he could tell the entire reason she knew kung fu. It was an extremely physically demanding style of magic which built on the motions of Bei Shaolin to channel energy, and it was the skill marked as Azula’s signature ability.

If Gil was right, firebending would be a bundle deal because it had prerequisite abilities baked in. Candress probably wouldn’t be half as good at kung fu outside of flamethrower hands, but all of the motions would still be ingrained into her. It was a bit like how many people used Tai Chi purely as a form of peaceful meditation, but with a bit of effort those same movements could fuck someone up. The physical conditioning might stop at “merely” an exceptional human level, but she’d probably still be a better close quarters fighter than Gil. Combined with Frost Armor for weightless protection, she’d be a terror.

He tapped the card against the tablet.

••••••••••

The next day was eaten up with a craft project: reworking the barracks into separated living quarters. Gil could theoretically spend 5 more credits to make himself a dormitory with tons of small apartments, but he didn’t actually have that many long term residents on the Skyblock. Why spend credits when a few hours of work could turn the open floor plan into 10 equal spaces, separated by curtains?

Sure, the privacy was limited, but it was still a massive improvement over laying on the ground around the tree of life. They even had a single bathroom and shower stall, with indoor plumbing! Good enough for Gil’s retinue as it currently stood; by the time he had any need to stably house more than ten people he’d probably have a lot less need for a mere 5 credits.

After three days, he decided to take a minor risk. One last retinue member he could justify contacting. He tapped a few buttons, sent forth Keilnei, and rubbed his hands together. As Keilnei’s eyes fogged over, he adopted a professional air as best he could.

“Alright Mr. Dallon. I’m sorry if the choice of temporary body is disorienting, but I needed to speak with you about your treatment.” Gil said, tapping randomly on his tablet, “I assume you weren’t in the middle of anything too dangerous, given your condition?”

“What.” Glory Girl sat up immediately, straining against the straps. “The fuck. Where am I?”

“This is my… let’s call it a lab.” Gil said, “I see that your mind is indeed still capable of speech. That’s good. Brain damage can sometimes have effects too deep for me to address.”

“Why am I here!” Glory Girl shrieked, “What did you do? Why am I tied down?”

“I used the beacon I asked your family to plant on you to temporarily swap your body with that of my friend Keilnei.” Gil explained, “Obviously your long term home is going to be something a bit more tailored to your… well, your gender. Growing new bodies is the hardest part, you know? Though I suppose your daughter could fix up any discrepancies. As for why you’re tied down? Well, obviously you’re panicking.”

Slowly, Glory Girl calmed down as she processed what happened, and how she fucked up. Keilnei’s face darkened to a deep purple as she processed his words. Gil put on a long face and snapped his fingers in disappointment.

“Damn. That’s going to be a problem.” Gil said. “It’s really hard to replace one of those beacons. He would have been up and walking around by now, though only part time, if the stamp had been applied properly. You need to trust me, Victoria. I generally follow through on deals, and I really do want to help your dad. You fucked up.”

Once Gil was sure that Victoria was suitably chastened, he sent her home. The whole process of dinner theatre had served to get her on-side by rubbing her nose in her mistake and presenting “Nomad” as the reasonable adult in the room. He was pretty sure he managed it.

She got to see some small part of how the sausage was made, and rightly believed that she’d robbed Flashbang of the ability to walk around and think clearly for the first time in weeks. There was a chance this would be misinterpreted or taken the wrong way, but he’d given at least one member of the family plausible evidence of goodwill.

••••••••••

Gil was not in any way surprised to see that a handful of superheroes had pretty damn impressive sell prices. Vista would sell for an absolutely mouth watering 25 credits, plus a character card for someone named “Porom” and a psychic talent tag. The 25 credits alone would be enough to go hog wild at the bazaar or buy some very nice perks, but he was a bit more tepid on the other two prizes.

Porom was probably powerful, whoever she was, as the prize for selling a T6 character. That didn’t really entice him much since she was, after all, a complete unknown. That was always the problem with this kind of thing. Gil liked gambling as much as the next guy, but right now he had a perfectly functional tier 6 cute girl that was already subconsciously aligned with him by the Mantle as long as he didn’t do anything her conscious mind would reject.

Psychic talent was a bit better, but he’d always felt a bit prejudiced against it next to soul talent. In Gil’s eyes, psychic powers were just magic with extra, or often fewer, steps. He didn’t see why it needed a separate talent. He was pretty sure it would help Rose develop basically all of her succubus abilities more efficiently, and he’d be perfectly happy to throw more resources into his favorite money pit if she could use it best, but still. The perk itself was mildly offensive to him.

In any event, he wasn’t going to sell Vista, nor was he going to sell Glory Girl despite her having an absolutely massive pile of rewards including a very exploitable lure, a few handy tag unlocks he could buy à la carte, and what he was pretty sure was just a classic vision-triggered love potion. The girl was still more valuable than the swag. Seriously, this whole sale system for this test had such a massive negative synergy problem.

He took a solid hour to write up a proposal about how he should be able to directly purchase items from his girls’ sell prices for their credit value, permanently reducing their sell price in the process. He was pretty sure someone, somewhere, would read it eventually. Possibly centuries in the future, but whatever.

It was late in day three on the skyblock that he decided he’d faffed about long enough and made an appointment with either Rose or Candress, whichever one could manage a certain task sooner. Dozens of quick swaps and careful monitoring later, Rose proved to be the better choice. Candress was ordered to abort mission and go try to make friends. Maybe try to convince that girl Schlick to agree to a pact in return for getting her out of Brockton.

Once he’d given Candress her marching orders, Gil didn’t waste a moment. The world flashed, and he was standing in a snowy field with a backpack full of useful items and Company assets. He wordlessly held out a hand, and Rose handed him a pair of red tinted goggles from Kid Win’s workshop. Gil handed her a trio of dried healing flowers that had dropped in Noa’s dungeon, which Terra thought had a small chance of addressing brain damage.

“Thermal.” She said idly. “They let you see heat.”

“Handy.” Gil answered, slipping them into his pocket. “These are for Flashbang, get them to Charlotte.”

••••••••••

Acquire a piece of stolen tinker tech and return it to the Skyblock.

Reward - 2 credits, jailbreak spike, jailbreak spike unlocked for purchase

••••••••••

And we are at the bazaar. Let’s be a bit more nitty gritty.

https://strawpoll.com/LVyK2O9l7Z0