Epidemic

"While planning one of his final comedy routines, after his diagnosis with lung cancer, Andy Kaufman suggested having Santa Claus show up on stage. He would ask Santa, 'What did you bring me?' And Santa would reply, 'Cancer!' So, I guess you can think of me as your own personal Santa Claus."

A singularly loathsome supervillain, Epidemic made the news in East Europe for his singularly horrifying acts of biological terrorism. Branded the "Cancer Cowboy" in English media, his motives are perhaps the more terrifying for being utterly unknown.

Backstory
The Cancer Cowboy's first recorded appearance was in Prague around five years ago, followed by more or less biannual appearances throughout Europe, including Great Britain, Italy, Spain, Sweden and Denmark. He is a wanted criminal by the E.U. and INTERPOL. He has not issued any demands or statement of purpose, and has managed to evade capture by the unpredictability of his attacks and overwhelming displays of force. His modus operandi is to appear without warning in crowded public areas. By and large he went initially unnoticed in his early days, remaining unnoticed until the outward rippling spread of virulent, explosive sickness around him made him its obvious epicenter. Nowadays, internationally recognized, he is much less subtle, appearing from seemingly nowhere. He generally works swiftly and devastatingly, before disappearing without a trace by means increasingly assumed to be supernatural.

Powers and Abilities
The ability for which Epidemic is best known is his mastery of disease. He is able to not only generate virulent infections, including influenza, poliomyelitis, tuberculosis, and even bubonic plague and extinct smallpox. Worse, his ability to transmit infection seems to accompany an ability to increase its virulence. Diseases transmitted via airborne vector from him tend to "jump" rapidly from host to host before infection can even settle in, and the incubation period of these pathogens drops from days to mere minutes. His touch is documented as possessing the capacity to induce cellular mutation that causes rapid-developing tumors. In addition to all this, he is an alarmingly, almost inhumanly skilled marksman. In cases where he has been met with force, he has combined his virulent powers with exceptional gunplay skills, effortlessly taking cover and returning fire to cover his retreat with a pair of powerful revolvers of unknown and possibly custom make. Recovered bullets and casings from the scenes of his attacks have revealed most of them to bear traces of anthrax and/or ricin.

It is highly suspected he possesses some form of teleportation and/or invisibility powers. He seems able to appear with absolutely no warning, and to disappear without any trace. However, reliable sources have yet to witness him using such abilities. A small cabal of English mages acting at the behest of the E.U. have attempted to track him repeatedly without success via sorcery, the failure of which they cannot yet explain. Their prior track records as "Locators" are solid, making this failure significant.

Trivia

 * Tomas' name is a play on words. "Tomas" is taken from Toma, the classical Greek word for Tumor. "Carson" is a play on "Carcinogen".
 * His unofficial press title is drawn from the title of an unremarkable short story by John Connolly, The Cancer Cowboy Rides.

thumb|left|500px|Inspiration, or just Daniel screwing with you?