“Amy Dallon and her plus one.” My bishop said, presenting the undercover PRT agent her invitation.

  The guy took it like Amy was handing him a live cobra and briefly examined it and made a show of looking at some kind of list. Probably giving his superiors a chance to chime in with instructions on how to handle her situation.

  Because overall Amy was in a weird spot that didn’t really fit into the normal cape roles.

  Technically, she should be a villain due to being a member of my Peerage. But the PRT couldn’t exactly announce why the world premiere healer suddenly declared a villain without information about her resurrection getting out.

  Especially since the only thing she did publicly as Panacea since then was help out at a hospital while the ABB terrorised the city.

  So publicly she was still a hero, privately she was probably considered a villain, and if the PRT had any idea of the ongoing drama between the members of New Wave they had to know there was a powder keg just ready to explode there.

  Unfortunately for them, there also wasn’t really anything they could do besides turning Panacea away at the door despite having an invitation. Something that would be all over the internet in seconds thanks to the people lingering outside the event.

  It was a real damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation, so I wasn’t surprised when the agent went with the option that at least delayed any potential disasters.

  “Everything checks out, please enjoy the event, miss.” He said, keeping the invite and pointing us towards the elevators.

  “We will,” I purred, making the poor agent twitch, “I’m sure it will be a night to remember.”

  Amy smacked me. “Cut it out. Didn’t you say you wanted tonight to go smoothly?”

  “Sorry, can’t help it. They are just so easy to tease!” I said without really apologising.

  “Let’s just go. I’m already starting to regret agreeing to bring you.” Amy sighed.

  I just laughed at that.

  -o-

  It was a good thing I wasn’t shy, because barely two minutes after Amy and I arrived at the actual event more than half of the other guests were staring at me and Amy. Most of that was thanks to all the PRT and Protectorate personnel making sure to keep at least one eye on me and then the other guests picking up on the tension and trying to figure out why.

  I didn’t pay most of them much attention.

  The only ones I felt I needed to keep an eye on were Armsmaster, Miss Militia, Velocity and Triumph from the Protectorate, and Clockblocker, Vista, Gallant and Shadow Stalker from the Wards.

  Because even though New Wave in its entirety was also in attendance, they wouldn’t be the ones to start something. Not unless they wanted to make the little civil war they were dealing with public, and I trusted the adults of the group to at least be smart enough to not want that.

  The missing members made me nervous though.

  This was supposed to be a victory party, but both Dauntless - the rising star of the Protectorate and Paladin - the one publicly being given credit for the recapture of Lung, weren’t here along with Assault and Battery. One or two of them being missing could be excused for any number of reasons, but four very popular heroes?

  Something was going on.

  Nothing I could do about that right now though…Carl would message me if something popped up that needed my attention.

  “Hey Ames, Rias. You both look great.” Vicky said as she and her cousins walked over to us. Vicky and Crystal wearing nice if somewhat practical white dresses with a few accent pieces that mimicked their hero costumes, while Eric was in a white/blue suit that matched his hair. “You ready to do the rounds before everything kicks off?”

  “Rounds?” I asked, Crystal hadn’t mentioned this when she stopped by.

  “The ‘grownups’ don’t want a bunch of kids hanging around while they try to make themselves feel important.” Eric said casually. “So once enough guests arrive we’ll be banished to the kids corner. But Amy still needs to say hi to the Protectorate, show ‘solidarity between heroes’ and all that crap even if they’re ready to stab her in the back first chance they get.”

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  I blinked at the blue haired boy, a bit stunned by his attitude. Eric had always been pretty laid back about things but he’d been careful about saying anything negative about anyone so hearing him diss the other heroes basically in public where anyone could hear was a shock.

  “Just because we put aside our issues because of the ABB crisis, we’re still pissed at our parents.” Crystal said quietly enough that only our group should be able to hear her. “Until they back off about Amy and at this point fucking beg for forgiveness we might be making a bit more of a permanent split.”

  “Yeah, hope you don’t mind us crashing at your place again if that talk goes bad. I’m too pretty for the streets.” Eric said half-sarcastically but I got the feeling all three of them were serious about that.

  “You’re still Amy’s family.” I said seriously. “As long as she wants you around, you’ll have a spot with us.”

  “Thanks, Rias. We really appreciate it.” Crystal smiled and gently started pushing us all towards the Protectorate heroes. “Now let’s get this over with before enough people gather to make every little comment a spectacle.”

  The first few introductions were easy.

  To the public I was just Amy’s plus one, so I was able to sort of just exist off to the side while the New Wave group essentially said hello to Velocity and Miss Militia and made a token effort at small talk. The only real interaction I had with the two heroes – besides the cautious stares from the both of them, that is – was asking them to sign my autograph book I’d started when I’d been messing with Dauntless and the rest of New Wave.

  Hells, that felt like forever ago.

  Once this was all over I was going to plan something that just let all of us goof off for a bit before the next disaster landed in our laps, even if I needed to teleport all of us to Hawaii for it to happen.

  The rest of the heroes went even quicker. Probably because the New Wave group was expecting to spend most of the night around the Wards, so they didn’t really bother with anything beyond hello for now.

  It was only when we got to Triumph that things…got a bit tense.

  “You have a lot of nerve showing up like this.” The lion themed hero growled as he angrily signed the book, which made me raise an eyebrow.

  “Why’s that, kitty cat? Or are you just feeling grumpy you haven’t caught that snake yet?” I said somewhat flippantly.

  “What are you talking about?” he asked, confused.

  “What do you mean, ‘what am I talking about’?” I shot back, confused at his confusion.

  “I’m talking about you holding a young suspected parahuman prisoner because no one can get inside your mansion, what do you mean by snake?”

  “Triumph, New Wave brought that information to the PRT like a week ago.” Crystal joined our quiet conversation. “Dinah was being targeted by Coil for her powers. She’s staying there because it’s the safest place in the city for her, but she isn’t a prisoner or anything.”

  “I set up a way to get in contact with her too, but no one’s used it other than Dinah’s mother.” I added. “I figured everyone was too busy with the whole Bakuda thing… but you’re telling me you didn’t even know anything about that?”

  “I… no… who did–”

  “I told Battery myself.” Crystal said with a frown, something I was mirroring because this wasn’t the first time information around Dinah had been ignored but it didn’t make sense for Battery to not mention anything to Triumph about getting in touch with his cousin.

  “I need to talk to someone about this.” The hero growled before stomping off towards the direction of Armsmaster and none of us made a move to stop him.

  The lack of coordination among the Protectorate heroes was concerning, but that was both currently not my problem or something I could do anything about at the moment. If I was on my own I could have followed and poked my nose into things, but I was still here as Amy’s guest and she and the rest of New Wave had other people to greet before too many other people showed up.

  While I kinda was here to make a scene, I didn’t want to give anyone an excuse to throw me out too quickly.

  But even that brief talk with Triumph had thrown a wrench in some plans, because a fairly large group of other guests had arrived. And once they saw our conversation with the lion themed cape end, they took that as permission to come introduce themselves to the New Wave group instead of letting us all walk away.

  For the most part I didn’t have to say much. Once I introduced myself as Amy’s plus one, most of the crowd lost interest in me beyond some small talk while they waited for one of the four New Wave capes to finish talking to whoever was greeting them at the time.

  A pretty redhead just wasn’t much compared to four public heroes… or at least that’s what I assumed at first, but after a few minutes I started seeing a few groups of the younger crowd staring between their phones and me. And it was specifically me, because once I noticed the stares I subtly moved a bit further from Amy and the others just to make sure the looks weren’t because of one of them.

  But nope, the stares were definitely on me. Had some of the more chronically online crowd made the connection between me and Lucifer? Considering I only wore a domino mask despite my rather distinctive…everything…it wasn’t much of a stretch to connect the villain with near thigh length red hair and a bodysuit to a girl with the same hair and body type in the same room as them.

  At some point I was going to have to have someone in my peerage show up in the same place as me under an illusion of my alter ego just to see what happened. Who knows, maybe I’d break the internet getting the netizens arguing over me having a twin or a duplication power…

  “Rias, we might have a problem.” Amy interrupted my musing with a light tap to my arm.

  “About the people looking at me? I noticed but I don’t think there’s much we can do about it.” I said.

  “No, not that – here, look at this.” Amy said, shoving her phone into my hand.

  She had a social media site I wasn’t familiar with – but knew the name and reputation of – pulled up. One of those sites everyone ‘who definitely, totally, absolutely wasn't a Nazi’ tended to lurk.

  I turned to my Bishop and raised an eyebrow at her while she just huffed and waved at me to hurry up. So without further delay, I went back to the phone and hit replay on the video she had pulled up.

  Only to know I was probably going to hate whatever this was immediately when Kaiser’s gaudy helmet appeared on the screen.

  “Good evening, Citizens of Brockton Bay. As many of you know, I am Kaiser – leader of the Empire 88. And while we may be labeled a villain organisation thanks to the PRT’s soft on crime approach even as criminals and immigrants rot the foundation of the American people, there are times when it is best to set aside superficial labels like hero and villain in the face of true evil.”

  “Times such as the barbaric crisis organised by the gang leader Lung and his Pan-Asian group of criminals where they held our city hostage through fear. A cowardly tactic that only united the true proper Americans on both sides of the law to remove such a blight from our fair county.”

  “But while many of us set aside our disagreements over the law to do what was right, one group used the chaos to kidnap and hold a young girl hostage to exploit her for her powers.”

  The video changed to show a picture of Dinah being carried back into the house by Alex after what was probably a of the games of tag or something, but without context the photo was being made out to be much more sinister.

  “So once again the Empire has made a decision to set aside our disagreements with the PRT to expose the evil that preys on the most innocent of us. A group that wraps themselves in false nobility by calling themselves the Peerage, led by Rias Gremory aka Lucifer, Alexandra Casoy aka Yellow Devil, Samantha Simpson aka Green Devil, Clover Ewing aka Red Devil, Gloria Baker aka…”

  I stared dumbly at the video as Kaiser not only framed me for protecting Dinah from being exploited for her powers, but also released the name, face, and alias of every member of my Peerage to the world.

  And there was nothing we could do to stop it.