"So you going to go?"

"Hm?" I looked up from my milkshake at Crystal, who was looming over the table with an annoyed expression.

"Did you even listen to a word I said?"

"Of course I did." I half-lied. I only listened to maybe every third word, but that was enough to get the gist of everything. "Your mom wants to meet up tonight for that talk you mentioned at the charity thing."

"And are you going to go?" She asked again, to which I nodded vaguely. "Really? You don't have something else planned or a date you'd have to cancel?"

I blinked at her uncomprehendingly.

"No? I didn't try making other plans because you told me your mom wanted to talk and the only four people I'm even kinda friendly with are at this table." I waved a hand over the blonde superhero and the three girls trying very poorly to act like they weren't eavesdropping on our conversation. Sam, Alex, and Clover were actually pretty fun to be around. I wouldn't exactly call us friends, but I wasn't opposed to things moving in that direction.

"You sure? Cause we can always find another time if you can't make it…"

I narrowed my eyes at her. "Crystal, it almost sounds like you don't want me going to this talk. Any particular reason why?"

The heroine refused to meet my eyes for a few seconds but eventually gave in when it became clear she was going to have to say something.

"Fine, I don't want this meeting happening because I know it's going to be a disaster. Happy?" She collapsed onto the table and buried her face into her arms. "You're going to say or do something stupid, mom and Aunt Carol are going to get mad, and then we're either going to fight or argue and then I'm going to be forced to choose between either family or friends and that SUCKS!" She ranted.

Okay, apparently she was really stressing out over this whole thing. And she was going to fight her family over me?

"What? No, of course I'm not going to fight them over you." Crystal instantly denied when I asked out loud. Ouch. "I mean sure I like you Rias, even if you're an annoying troll, but not nearly enough to do that. I just don't want my family to keep controlling everything I do. I mean, I'm nineteen and I've never been able to do anything for myself. Costume design? Needed to fit in with the rest of the family. College? Had to be local so I could support New Wave. Friend throwing a party? I can't go because that's close to Empire territory and me being there might rile them up. I don't want my parents deciding who I can and can't be friends with on top of that. You giving them a valid reason to not let me just makes it worse."

The other three stopped pretending they weren't listening and showered the heroine in supportive words and hugs. I, as the source of the problem, could only give her a supportive smile.

"Well, I'll make sure not to do something stupid then. Fair?"

"I guess we'll find out…"

-o-

'Not going to do it then?' Ddraig asked as I walked towards the meeting place.

"Nah. If it was just Crystal, I'd probably still do it. But if her family is going to freak out I'll just save it for later."

I had planned on showing up for my meeting with New Wave in the most stereotypically villainous way I could think of – over-the-top laughter and pouring smoke/miasma with lightning flashes in the background – just to mess with them, but if that was going to have actual consequences for Crystal I would have to restrain myself.

'I don't know why you bother.'

"Because I like hanging out with her." I shrugged. "She and the other girls are basically my first few friends around here and I don't want to give that up for a cheap joke."

'hmph, fine be boring. Let me know when something interesting happens.'

I smiled at Ddraig's grumpy attitude. "Well hopefully nothing like that happens tonight. Have a nice nap."

Ddraig made it a point to project a snore at me.

Rude.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Anyways, I was actually a bit early to the meeting place, a good habit to get into when dealing with important meetings, and I saw I wasn't the only one here early.

Most of New Wave's adults were standing around looking at various spots in the sky – looking for me? – with the noticeable absence of Flashbang. Glory Girl and Laserdream seemed to be the only ones from the younger group here though. I wonder why? I wasn't really expecting Panacea because she would really only be in the way if a fight broke out considering she was mostly restricted to touch range for her powers to work and I could fly. Shielder was a bit more unexpected, especially because he gave me so much trouble in our fight.

Maybe he was making sure no one targeted Panacea when the rest of New Wave was busy?

Meh, I'd ask Crystal later.

Speaking of…

"Hi Laserdream, enjoying the night so far?" I asked as I walked into the open, which made everyone jump for some reason.

"Ria-ahem-Lucifer! Where did you come from?!" She shrieked.

Confused, I just pointed towards the alley I stepped out from. "Over there? I didn't think dramatically dropping in from the sky would be a great intro-, that's exactly what you thought I was going to do wasn't it?" I narrowed my eyes at Laserdream's rapidly reddening face.

"It seemed like something you would do." She said mulishly.

She must never know how close she was to being right.

"Well, stunning lack of faith in me aside, it's nice to meet everyone when they aren't trying to punch me." I addressed the rest of her family. Brandish – aka Carol Dallon, aka Glory Girl's mom – was staring at me with thinly disguised hostility, Lady Photon was more neutral but still a bit frosty, and Manpower was…checking me out? Eugh, I was his daughter's age!

"I'm glad you could make it." Lady Photon replied. "With how complicated things got a few days ago we thought it would be best to clear the air between us."

I nodded at that. It was a reasonable thing to ask.

So we started talking. Mostly me going over how the fight started and how things kept escalating, nothing which seemed like new information to any of them, and what led up to me dropping by at the charity and in return I found out what happened behind the scenes with them and the PRT.

Unsurprisingly, Paladin's credibility had taken a big hit. New Wave didn't particularly like getting dragged into his personal delusion that fighting me was inevitable, let alone the PRT, but ultimately he was a single independent hero. The way Cape law was written meant there really wouldn't be any direct consequences for him, but he no longer was trusted unconditionally by either group.

Dauntless, on the other hand, had gotten the book thrown at him by Armsmaster. As a member of the Protectorate it was his job to take control of the situation and attempt to de-escalate it unless there was an obvious crime in progress, not just go along with an unaffiliated person's decision, hero or not. Simply going with the flow made him, and the PRT by extension, look bad. Apparently he would be forced to attend several first response and leadership courses that just so happened to restrict the amount of time he would be out in public during daylight hours. A bit petty of Armsmaster, but apparently others thought the Spartan-themed hero keeping his head down was a good idea for a bit so he was being benched while going through some mandatory education.

I thought that Armsmaster forcing him to go through a course about how to handle first contact with an unknown parahuman was ironically hilarious.

New Wave as a whole actually came out of the whole debacle relatively unscathed. True, Glory Girl started the fight, but that was because she got bad information – no information, really – from Paladin and her cousins showing up to help against whoever she was fighting was perfectly reasonable. Lady Photon's commands shortly after less so, but again not something they could be blamed for. Although because the PRT needed someone to pass a bit of the blame onto, Victoria apparently was very undescreetly recommended some courses about threat management and acceptable levels of force. She was also told the PRT would be keeping an eye on her activities and verifying them independently to make sure more 'misunderstandings' like with me wouldn't happen in the future.

I guess that explained why Brandish didn't look super happy to see me. The PRT was using her daughter as a scapegoat and she considered it my fault.

"Now that everyone is caught up on the fallout of that…mess, why don't we get to the heart of the issue. What are you hoping to do as a cape?" Lady Photon asked. "We can't exactly encourage one of our members being seen with you unless we know for certain."

I raised an eyebrow. "So much for those rules, huh?"

"You aren't doing a great job of separating your identities, sweetheart." Manpower chipped in. "Don't blame us for putting it together when you made it so easy."

"Domino masks aren't great for costumes if you have other easily identifiable features." Brandish added, pointedly glancing at my hair.

I already knew people would notice that though, so I didn't bother holding it against them.

"Well, I'd probably like to be a Rogue over anything, not a huge fan of all the hoops heroes have to jump through, but I'm likely going to be labeled a villain soon enough." I shrugged.

"And why's that?" Brandish asked cooly.

"Because I actually liked fighting everyone all at once and I'll probably end up doing it again." I shrugged again. "I mean sure, I'll make sure to schedule things in advance when I can but the PRT is going to see me fighting heroes again and jump on the opportunity to push all the blame on me for tarnishing their rising star."

"Seriously? You're going to become a villain just so you can fight us?" Crys-Laserdream asked incredulously. "Why not focus on the villains we already have?"

"Oh, I will. I'm totally going to jump at the chance to take some of them down." I assured her. "The problem with that is villains are kinda hard to just track down when I want a fight."

"You're going to become a criminal just because you're a battle maniac?" Lady Photon asked.

"Not a criminal. I don't really need to steal or anything and I said I'd prefer to be labeled a Rogue. I just don't think that's what's going to happen."

And honestly the thought of meeting up with Crystal and having a big showy fight over the bay and then going out for food with the girls sounded really cool. I could be her nemesis! We could even do a merchandising thing after a while. I'm sure Alex would be excited to help out.

"Well, that's…worse than what we were hoping for, but better than it could be." Manpower said.

"I don't like it." Brandish scowled. "Powers aren't something you can use for…entertainment," she made the word sound dirty, somehow. "And she already hurt Eric pulling this stunt. What's going to happen the next time she makes a mistake? I'm not going to let her use Panacea just to cover up excessive force." No one seemed to notice Glory Girl flinch at that.

I raised my hand. "If it helps I do have a limited healing ability. Nothing great, but I can even do bones after a few hours." I had actually confirmed I had that ability earlier when Sam dropped a bookcase on her foot. It was a power sink and nothing really seemed to speed it up, but I could heal.

"That wouldn't be too bad, right?" Glory Girl spoke up. "I mean if it's staged fights where no one can get hurt, or at least we keep it to a level Lucifer or occasionally Amy can patch us up we can treat it like a training exercise or something."

The New Wave adults shared looks between themselves and seemed to have a private conversation.

"I'm not opposed…" Manpower started off. "If we can swing it so no one panics it might be good publicity. We've run into issues with that recently."

"We'd be endorsing a villain. Even just one in name only." Brandish argued. "If anything does happen or she crosses a line it will blow back on us."

"But having someone new to practice against might be what we need for the kids. Eric was saying he learned more fighting Lucifer than he did me or Crystal because he didn't know what she would do." Lady Photon said, though she sounded a bit reluctant. "And I'd rather someone they know than some unknown in a real fight."

They went back and forth a bit but eventually they seemed to come to a conclusion.

"We'll let the younger members of New Wave train against you for now if they want." Lady Photon said. "But if you cross any lines or try to manipulate them somehow, we're taking you down."

"I'm fine with that." I gave them all a smile. "And I'm glad we could clear the air."

I even gave Crystal a thumbs up. See? No explosions, no fighting or unreasonable demands.

Everything had worked out just fine…