Yeah, this was a great decision.

Ruby definitely agrees.

An excellent use of the evening.

Mmmhmmm.

Much as she'd prefer not to, though, Incandesce should leave before morning.

Sad! Though she'll have Ruby's number if she wants to meet up again. 

She will keep it handy.

"See you around."

"Bye bye, cutie Ruby." And she shows herself out.

She spends some time taking a cat nap - not strictly necessary, but very nice - before seriously settling in to figure out how to make some money. There's ATMs, of course - ones in other cities - and she doesn't exactly have the qualifications for a competitively paying job...

Robbing ATMs is currently of uncertain benefit to her, though. It'd be good to have alternate income streams - once she establishes herself as a supervillain, those should be easy to come by... Hmmm, of other crimes, there's always robbing jewelry shops, or just flat out forging things to sell - pawn shops tend to be pretty suspicious, though, and she bets that'll be worse here. But if she can get ahold of the raw materials, her powers do actually lend themselves decently well to jewelry making, allowing her to launder stolen jewelry without much issue...

There's also always legitimately selling her art, but that's boring and would require some time to get established anyways...

Hmmm.

She heads to the library. What does the internet have to say about ways to make money with powers - ? Surely there's something technically legal (other than being a cop) even if just in other countries - and Ruby's fast enough that even the other side of the world isn't a horrible commute away. As long as their currency exchanges to USD, she'll be fine. (And obviously there's a whole host of ways to make money illegally, but she isn't in the mood to tie herself to an existing gang, which cuts off a lot of the usual means.) Bounties, maybe? One off 'consultations' somewhere with money but no real rule of law? 

(She isn't entirely familiar with this computer style or how the NSA works in a world with parahumans, but she does do what she can to make herself harder to track, just in case her searches trip any red flags. Won't be the first time she's ended up on a watchlist, though, and she'll be doing her supervillain debut soon enough anyways.)

Seems like other countries are less restrictive than the US in terms of economic application for parahuman powers in most ways- NEPEA-5 doesn't have universal analogues. The Protectorate is also not a universal institution, most everywhere else has their own smaller, more localized groups with their own norms and historical context. Some regions, either through a lack of existing state capacity or unlucky triggers have devolved into outright warlordism, and there's certainly no shortage of mercenary work to be had there. (She won't be able to sign up over the public internet, but if she's not afraid of watchlists she can put enough together to figure out where to go.) There are also bounty contracts floating around, though most of the truly well-paid ones are well-paid because the targets are too dangerous or too slippery for the official heroes or anyone else to have already taken out, and not for lack of trying.

Ugh, worse prospects than in her world. (Some magical girls - who run more aggressively law-minded than monsters - make serious bank working their way through 'most wanted/ reward for information leading to capture' lists.)

Some of those dangerous bounties might also be a good way to make her official introduction, though, especially if she wants to make it clear she's playing by her rules and not the stupid ones here - as long as she follows up with something sufficiently grandly supervillainous, so no one thinks she's a hero or anything gross. However, despite Ellie's general first impression of her, Ruby isn't actually stupidly reckless, just stupidly overpowered and aware of it. She doesn't know yet how her magic will interact with the local powers; if power nullifiers work on her, that would be really bad. 

'Slippery' might be a good bet, though - at least a good test of her magic versus their powers, given how shaky her scrying and all is compared to a lot of magical girls and other monsters. Looks like Strangers, mostly, or people able to nullify Thinker powers somehow, or powerful Thinkers themselves... Or crime lords with said capes on staff, a lot like the local mafia but with governments that actually want them arrested or, better yet, dead. 

Also, putting together enough to figure out where to go for the less official bounties is much easier when you have magic - she needs a lot less than a typical person to get a good heading. 

The question becomes, then, how far afield does she wish to travel?

Hmmm... Just about everywhere on the planet is within a couple hours even if she doesn't push herself. She doesn't super feel like spending all day on this - but like, that pretty much just rules out... This isn't too far from her usual reference point, so off the top of her head - southern Africa, Australia, southeast Asia, and like all the islands right around there would take too long for a first jaunt, unless there's a really tempting bounty out there. (She's assuming, of course, that she can daytrip this - if that looks unlikely, she might as well go farther afield.) That leaves the whole rest of the planet, though. 

There's a South American cartel that might fit the bill. After some years of relatively low-level activities, they're aggressively expanding their territory, ramping up distribution of a seemingly Tinker-made drug and certain global actors, governmental and otherwise, would prefer that neither the drug nor the cartel behind it become an endemic problem.

Largest bounties on the leader and the possible Tinker in question (if they exist), then, with... Looks like a small general bounty for 'information leading to arrest' for each of the other major figures in the cartel... She'll have to be careful about evidence for everyone but the leader, maybe the Tinker, if she wants the full payout... Cartel leader's 'dead or alive' but not the Tinker, what do you wanna bet shadowy government figures are gonna vanish that guy... Killing the cartel leader will also let her collect from that 'otherwise' crowd. (She double checks self defense laws in the area - looks like she probably wouldn't get in much trouble even if she did kill other cartel members, at least, as long as they're trying to shoot her first - but she then wouldn't get paid for them.)

Workable, and gathering and turning over evidence might let her get a small trickle of funds going as arrests play out. 

She makes extra sure no one's currently watching her, then leans back in her chair and spins up a scry in flames dancing before her. She's got the drug lord's picture, normally that'd be enough to go on especially since she's so helpfully gotten a name and rough location, too - does this guy have anything stopping her from finding him? (Getting 'looking glass' images is tough for her, but she can conjure up shapes in the flame in three dimensions. She won't be able to read anything, but she'll be able to identify people and architecture and all.) (If she finds him in the scry, she should then also be able to anchor a finding spell, get some distance and heading information.)

Looks like he's currently in a bunker-type space, conferring with some henchminions.

Simple enough... She gets the best location fix she can, then goes looking for defenses, hints of who his capes are...

Doesn't seem like there's much of that available online. Speculation is he's got at least two or three Brute-types, plus a teleporter and plausibly a Thinker that can spot incoming threats.

Bet the teleporter's near him for evac purposes... That plus the Thinker might be what makes him so slippery. She isn't worried about the brutes, but chasing this guy around would be a pain. 

So she needs to kill him - without destroying the body past recognition - before he can run, or take out his possible teleporter and Thinker first. She's not fast enough to get to his hideout before he could react - so, if the Thinker sees her coming, then he'll definitely have a chance to run. But he isn't running yet...

She shrugs and spins up the best notice-me-not spells she can - getting past precog is a pain, her theme lends itself well to manipulating light or heat, or to 'being like smoke,' and being a tiger lends itself well to hiding before an ambush, though she's uncertain if she can get that to cover her while she's moving... It'd be iffy against another monster, at least. 

But - hmmm, if she can thin herself out enough as a smoke tiger, that might work, and that'd allow faster movement too... Would also shield her from a wider variety of attempts to spot her...

That decided, she gets a motel for the day/ night, leaves her stuff there - 

Then turns into a tiger, becomes smoke and flame - and thins herself out until she's nothing more than a wisp. She flows under the door and out into the sky, picking up speed rapidly once she hits cloud level, continuing to rise and arcing south. 

Her goal is an area near her target, where she'll be able to do further scrying just to confirm he hasn't run. Right now, though, she's focused on speed and subtlety - and on paying attention to see if anyone tries to intercept her as she flies over. 

Her journey south is apparently uninterrupted.

And has her target gone anywhere? 

He is now in a different bunker-like location. There don't seem to be any doors on this one.

So they did sense her coming... Does his new place have any ventilation?