I wasn't quite sure what to say. I'd only spent two days in Gilpatrick's company, but while he struck me as what old timey folks would call a 'rake', he still seemed like good people. Like he did the whole Super Hero thing not out of being a thrill seeker, but because people needed help and he had the time and skills to be the help they needed. But he'd basically just revealed that not only was he, a D list nobody at best, sure that Achilles, a borderline A lister, was the real deal, an indestructible Hero from the time of the Trojan War, but that the two of them had some kind of ongoing beef.

I couldn't well leave that alone, could I?

"Don't take this the wrong way, but what's your problem with Noah Perez?"

He snorted. "Is that what he's calling himself now?" Then he stopped, considering, before shrugging and saying, "his first name might be Noah. Or he might have used that alias long enough to have a claim to it, y'know?"

"Next thing you'll tell me he's the guy who built the big boat with two of every kind of animal in it."

He shook his head. "it was two each of the 'unclean' animals. More than that of the 'clean' ones. Don't feel bad, people get that one wrong all the time."

I shrugged. "I never pegged Noah as a Super, so not really something I've studied. First rule of being a serious academic; don't pretend to be expert about anything you're not. No point in feeling something about being wrong about some random bible trivia."

Gilpatrick shot me that brilliant smile again. "Good attitude! I try to do the same thing, although," he shrugged, his face showing a mix of humility and embarrassed pride. "When you've been kicking around long enough, paying attention, trying to learn enough to make yourself useful and pay the bills? You get pretty good at a lot of stuff."

"I read somewhere once that it only takes six hundred hours to learn a new skill, so I guess if you've been doing that for years, you've gotten good at a lot of things."

He nodded, taking a drink of the shake Denise delivered, saying, "thanks, Denise," before she'd finished setting out our drinks.

"No problem, hon. Food should be up in about ten."

Gilpatrick sent her on her way with a smile, then turned back to me. "Back in the military there were a bunch of 'milestone times' that went around at one point. Something like ten thousand hours to master a skill to the point where if you didn't know some detail, odds on nobody else did either. That's like five years at forty a week. Next one was five months, or about eight hundred hours, to be 'professional good'. It's why despite what they tell folks in Basic and Advanced, the guys they join when they're deployed don't expect them to be fully trained yet. But those last bits? Are usually things you can only learn by doing. Which, when you're talking about situations where getting it wrong can mean getting you dead, it explains the superstition and some of the hazing and why old combat vets during wartime don't emotionally invest in the new kids until they've been there a while."

He waited while I jotted down more notes, taking a long pull from his shake while I did. When I'd caught up and I waved for him to continue, he stopped, closed his eyes for a long moment, brows drawing down, before opening them with another smile. "Sorry. Ice cream headache, 'cause just because I know how to drink a milkshake without getting one doesn't mean I actually employ that particular one reliably. Anyhow, the next marker is five days, or forty hours. That's long enough to give somebody enough of the basics of something that they won't immediately faceplant themselves and their unit. Enough to teach somebody the basics of a new weapon, or how to drive a new vehicle, or to have a rough idea about the layout of a place they're gonna drop into."

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He shook his head. "Then there's five hours. Five hours is long enough to give somebody a real solid idea of one small aspect of something. Enough for an escort target to have some knowledge about his detail, enough to know when to shit himself because he's down to the newest gun bunny and the officer. Enough to maybe have an idea of what turns to take in a maze." Gilpatrick shook his head, obviously disgusted. "Some Business Major a few years back decided that it only took 'ten hours to learn a skill', and started encouraging businesses to cut their training back to that. I can't tell you how many safety incidents, how many injuries and OSHA violations that guy's responsible for."

"You sound very passionate about that. And maybe a little bit pissed?"

He shot me a tight lipped grin, then broke down laughing. "Yeah. Yeah, pet peeve. Rich privileged folks who get poor powerless folks injured and killed with their arrogance and ignorance. Do you know the worst part?"

I shrugged, smiled, and said, "nope, but I'm sure you'll tell me."

He laughed. "Not subtle, am I?" He shook his head. "They've all got the worst kind of lawyers."

"The ones who let them get away with it?"

"That, plus the ones who will put you in a open faced concrete box for a few years if you go and happen to them without some clear and present reason."

I winced. "You sound like a guy who's done some time because of something like that."

He shook his head, but said, "maybe a time or two, when I was younger and stupider. Nowadays I'm savvy enough to visit them in public and couch everything in hypotheticals."

"Color me surprised and kinda impressed." When he tilted his head, asking a silent question, I explained, "I didn't even know you could deliver a hypothetical punch to the head."

He laughed. "Nah." When I had my mouth full of water he finished up with, "guys like that are way more concerned about a good swift uppercut to the taint." I managed to avoid spraying water over my electronics, but only by turning my head to the side and making a mess on the floor.

"Sorry, Denise, I'll clean that up."

"Nah, don't worry about it. I'll get one of the other girls to bring out some towels." She leaned in and whispered, "they all want to meet our hero here."

"Send 'em all, I've got time." Gilpatrick said with a smile. When he turned back to me, he said, "really, I think that's the core of why he and I never hit it off."

I shook my head, thought about it, and conceded with, "who?"

"Your Noah Perez. Achilles. Gilgamesh."

I blinked at that. "NO. Wait, no. Really?"

He shrugged. "Honestly? If you spot a figure in history who winds up with that 'indestructible' vibe? Or one who is all about bringing 'order' into 'disorder'? Or both, with bonus points for any kind of gardening involved? You're probably looking at that same guy."

"Really? How old is he?"

He sighed, "I don't know. Older than me?" He laughed. "I mean, I'd been wandering around a while the first time I met him, and hadn't really started my collection of old letters and stuff. Honestly? He might have been a bit of the inspiration for it. Finding some kind of proof of how old that smug bastard is." He paused, took a drink of his water, then shook his head. "Don't get me wrong. If he's got a heart, it's in the right place. He wants to make things better." He shrugged his shoulders, waving a hand in a way that somehow took in the whole world. "Hell, maybe he's sorta responsible for all this? Not, like, he did any of it? But every time one of us made some kind of improvement, whether incremental or a paradigm shift for the better? If he saw it, he grabbed on with both hands and just would. Not. Let. It. Die."

I jotted down a few notes, maybe smirking a little when I said, "it sounds almost like you admire him."

"Yeah, yeah, I do. No reason for him to be smug about it though. And with all of that? There's still one thing that gets in my craw about him."

"What's that?"

"With all that research? Everything I've seen of him and everything I've been able to find out? He hasn't learned one goddamned new thing in ten thousand years."