"Do you want to start with heroes or other villains?" Ellie pulls out her phone to look up reference photos.

Hmmm... "On the one hand, it's good to know my competition... On the other, any respectable supervillain needs a nemesis, so I should scope out the heroes for candidates sooner or later..."

"So... heroes?"

"At least an overview."

"All right. So that'd be the local branch of the Protectorate, pretty much. Fortunately they've got lots of nice pictures," including one showing the whole team as the top banner on their website, so she can pull that up and show it to Ruby. "In the plate armor with the sword is Chevalier, he's the leader. He can combine multiple objects and pick and choose which properties get shown. Mainly uses that to make his armor and sword ridiculously more versatile than you'd think- the sword has a gun in it, for example. His second in command is Rime," tight blue outfit with fur trim, "she throws ice crystals that explode, and she can control the shape of what the ice grows into."

"Atlas," a beefy linebacker type who has what look like chiseled shoulderpads in his costume, "can grow out those plates on his shoulders, use them as shields or bludgeons. Hologram is the one with the excessively shiny armor, he's a tinker with a specialty in hard light projections. Flexor," tall skinny man in a shiny yellow bodysuit, "can extend any of his limbs out like twenty feet and bend them like they're boneless."

"Then last is Incandesce, the newest member." A blonde who wears a visor with flame decorations, her suit has a daringly low neckline which she is posed to show off to best advantage. "She gets stronger and faster the hotter she is, and has some low-tier pyrokinesis to go along with that."

Interested hum. "Incandesce is definitely hot, and given my own fire themed powers, and her clear sense of style..." (Ruby approves strongly of flame decorations and also cleavage.) "Think she'd be down for a nemesis?"

"It's not like I know her personally, but the image she projects is very into the, uh, game of it all? Cops and robbers sort of thing, photo ops to help kittens out of trees or whatever."

"I'll give her a try, then."

"Try not to burn my city down while you're at it."

"I'm not an amateur."

"You're not from around here, either."

"My home town's just as flammable!"

"So maybe you want to experiment somewhere other than there."

"Nah; I got a lot of that out of my system over the ocean or up in high atmo."

"Really?"

"I'd be an embarrassment as a monster if I couldn't fly!"

"How many powers do you have?"

"Turning into a tiger, fire, and anything thematic for those - though I need to practice the magic, and the more of a stretch the theme is the harder it gets. - Plus general being extremely magic, like the flight's something every meguca gets. So is transforming healing any wounds you have."

"Capes are usually a lot more limited than that."

"Then maybe I'll help liven things up!"

"One way or another, I'm sure."

"Oh, this is our stop."

Baked goods, here she comes!

She is planning on paying, right?

Well, she's got cash from her world, which hopefully doesn't register as counterfeit here? And she's got a credit card, which she can probably convince the system works. (This should even deposit money correctly! She's unsure if her little trick will also result in her account being charged, or if it'll just conjure numbers from the ether...)

Let's stick to cash, at least at places Ellie likes.