Bitter Pill

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<infobox> <title source="name"><default>Bitter Pill</default></title>

<image source="Image"></image> <image source="image"></image> <group><header>Basic Information</header> <label>Civilian Name</label> <label>Aliases</label> <label>Gender</label><default>Unknown</default> <label>Death</label> <label>Age</label><default>Unknown</default> <label>Post-timeskip</label> <label>Ward start</label> <label>Relations</label> <label>Family</label></group> <group><header>Professional Status</header> <label>Occupation</label> <label>Classification</label> <label>Unique Features</label> <label>Alignment</label>

<label>Status</label><format>

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<label>Location</label> <label>Teams</label> <label>Previous Team(s)</label> <label>Base of Operations</label></group> <group><header>First Appearance</header> <label>Worm Debut</label> <label>Ward Debut</label></group> </infobox> Bitter Pill is a Tinker villain operating in the City.

Personality

Bitter Pill is a mercenary, always working for a cost, and calling in hard favors.<ref name="10.x 1" /> She appears flippant about the unwritten rules, displaying a willingness to go after civilians.<ref>“Not good enough. You can’t go after civilians.”

“Can and did,” Bitter Pill said.

Bluestocking didn’t agree, but argued the point instead, “Cops. Cops are fair game. So are the anti-cape soldiers.” - Excerpt from Blinding 11.1</ref>

In contrast to the more violent clique of villains in Cedar Point, Bitter Pill's group is strategic and methodical in their actions, focusing on monitoring the situation and enacting long-term plans.<ref>“I’ll elaborate. We’ve got a few cliques forming already. Bitter Pill in charge of the brains, watching, listening, planning the longer-term plays. Not necessarily here, mind you. Could be jobs elsewhere.” - Excerpt from Shade 4.3</ref>

Appearance

In costume, Bitter Pill wears a medical mask, a scarf, and a white coat, with a short stick bearing a caduceus. She carries a bag resembling a fanny pack over her shoulder, which she uses to carry her tinkerings.<ref>Bitter Pill. Medical mask only barely visible behind a scarf, white coat, and a short stick with a caduceus. She wore one of those packs that looked like a fanny pack, that was worn over one shoulder instead. Tinker stuff was attached to the strap. - Excerpt from Blinding 11.1</ref>

Abilities and Powers

Bitter Pill is a tinker, specializing in medicine and drugs. Her drugs are primarily temporary in effect, requiring regular doses to have long-lasting effects.<ref name="10.x 1" /> She sells her drugs untested on the black market for money and favors.<ref name="10.x 1" />

Equipment

• Drugs that transform those who consume them essentially into zombies that obey her orders.<ref>On the other side of the bottleneck were sixteen villains with a scattered few mooks. Mooks augmented with Bitter Pill’s tinker stuff, it looked like. Foaming at the mouths, in a way.
  
  [...]
  
  Bitter Pill had a group of six men and women around her, toward the back. They looked like zombies. Each had their heads lolling back, and black fluid flowed from their mouths like water from the edge of an overflowing sink. She was giving them orders, her voice lost in the other noises. - Excerpt from Shadow 5.4</ref>
• Truth serums<ref name="3.6 1">“Powers complicate things, and they’ve got a lot of powers there,” Anelace said.
  
  “Bitter Pill, tinker,” Brio said. “A lot of the people in Hollow Point are expected to partake, and that means truth serums, just to start with.” - Excerpt from Glare 3.6</ref>
• Medicine capable of reversing her transformations.<ref>“What’s it going to take to heal them?” I asked.
  
  “I have the stuff. Healing. It should get them to ninety, ninety-five percent. They’ll be hungry. Good enough?” Bitter Pill asked, a condescending note in her voice, her gaze too casual and distracted.
  
  “Good enough,” I told her. - Excerpt from Blinding 11.1</ref>
• An unknown vial, apparently her last resort when surrounded.<ref>My team was standing beside me. I could see Bitter Pill holding a bottle so the cap was between her index and middle fingers, ready to drop it.
  
  I wondered if Sveta would be able to catch it.
  
  She hadn’t let herself be surrounded without a trick up her sleeve. The question was whether she’d throw all sense to the wind and go with that, or if she’d take the other route. - Excerpt from Blinding 11.1</ref>

History

Early-Ward

Bitter Pill was at the meeting where Prancer began to organize what would become the Hollow Point villain group.<ref>Daybreak 1.1</ref> She eventually settled in Hollow Point, organizing her own subgroup around herself, comprised of Bluestocking, Crested, Birdbrain, and Foggy Idea.<ref>Bitter Pill’s group had Bluestocking, the six mooks, Crested, Birdbrain, and Foggy Idea. That group was more visually distinct, all but the mooks being tidier, and they hung back. The mark between them and Prancer’s group was subtle. They were at the edge of the fog, and they held themselves differently. Crested with his fan and Birdbrain with a bullwhip were the only ones with weapons. - Excerpt from Shadow 5.4</ref> Bitter Pill was present when Advance Guard made an appearance in the town, and participated in the ensuing fight between the heroes and the Hollow Point villains.<ref>Shadow 5.4</ref> She later participated in the assault on the Mathers compound.<ref>Hollow Point’s capes were on the fringes, gathered like they had when Advance Guard had turned up in Cedar Point, with a divide marking the distinction between Prancer’s side of things and the others. Beast of Burden’s group, minus both Beast of Burden and Damsel, a twenty foot gap with only three capes in it, and then Prancer’s assembly, with an injured Moose, an injured Velvet, Bitter Pill’s group with Bluestocking frothing at the mouth, and the Speedrunners. - Excerpt from Shadow 5.12</ref>

Post-Fallen Fall

After the Hollow Point villains were devastated by their attack on the Fallen compound, Bitter Pill left Hollow Point. She was among the capes gathered in Earth N when Breakthrough visited Lord of Loss.<ref>Nursery and Lord of Loss were standing at the path leading between the manor and the dirt road. Lord of Loss was in his human form, massive. There were a lot of people standing to either side of the path we had to travel to reach them, and he wasn’t walking forward to meet us halfway.

“Be careful,” Sveta murmured.

Capes aplenty. I recognized a few. Bitter Pill was one. No Prancer, and none of the hyperviolent capes I’d come to think of as being the red-tagged, like the old capes on the parahuman online site who’d had the ‘do not approach’ banners across their profile. - Excerpt from Torch 7.8</ref>

Post-Goddess' Takeover

At some point, Parian and Foil reached out to Bitter Pill to help a parahuman kid with body issues, but didn't pursue the relationship due to cost and Bitter Pill's questionable motives. Tattletale used some of Bitter Pill's black market drugs after the Undersiders were attacked by March.<ref name="10.x 1">Tattletale raised her feet, closing one eye slightly in a wince. “Ninety percent better. Turns out taking untested, black market drugs have their merits.”

“Bitter Pill?”

“Yeah.”

“She’s mercenary. Doesn’t give anything for free, calls in favors and calls hard.”

“You know her, huh?”

“Reached out to her after Sabah and I ran into a kid in a bad place. Kid’s powers didn’t do anything to fix their body issues, and really complicated conventional methods to fix it. We thought Bitter Pill could do something.”

“Too expensive?”

“Is your power telling you that?”

Common sense. Bitter Pill did temporary work, but that work could be a lot of things. The only ways it would work were to pay for regular doses over the long term, or pay for her to drop everything and research something long-term.

“Yeah,” Tattletale said.

“She’s dangerous. We’re pretty sure she was looking to get the kid in a position where they were taking regular doses.”

“Yeah, probably.”

“And get a kind of control over him. Fucked up, and it says a lot that she was willing. There was so little to be gained. With you?”

“I get it. I know how she is, and there’s no need for warnings. Yeah, sure, she’s demanding and she’s really hungry to gain some ground right now, but I like having legs.” - Excerpt from Interlude 10.x II</ref>

Bitter Pill and Bluestocking were in attendance at the villain meeting at Sherwood Span.<ref>They’d all gathered out in the middle of an open space that could have been a plaza, a parking lot, or a market space in the summer months. Now it was covered in snow. It was cold and there had to be a dozen places across Sherwood Span where people could gather, but nobody wanted to be the one to wuss out, so they stood in the cold, ankle or calf deep in snow.

The wounds in her legs made her think of Bitter Pill. She looked for the woman and found her off to the side, talking to Bluestocking. Blue had been hurt in the Fallen raid. It looked like she was back in action. - Excerpt from Interlude 10.x II</ref>

With her group, Bitter Pill broke into a prison where Etna and Crested were being held, but Breakthrough and the Patrol Block interfered. They agreed to stand down and pay for the damages to the prison, in exchange for the two capes.<ref>Blinding 11.1</ref>

Trivia

• Bitter Pill's name comes from the phrase "a bitter pill to swallow," referring to a difficult thing to accept.

References

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