"You know you didn't have to walk with me. I'd have been fine by myself." I said casually as Crystal and her cousin followed after me once the meeting was done.

Crystal said it was because she wanted to make sure I got to a bus safely, Vicky said it was to make sure Crystal wasn't alone.

I was just amused everyone seemed to have forgotten I could teleport and wanted to see how long it took them to remember that little tidbit.

"Yeah, but this way I can get away from my parents." Crystal said. "Like, I love them and everything but I know the second I get back she is going to be nagging me with a massive list of things to watch out for regarding you. I'm just trying to delay it."

"Ah, bit of a helicopter mom?"

"You could say that." She said, clearly wanting to drop the subject.

Fair enough.

"And what about you?" I said, looking at Victoria. Apology aside I thought she would hold a bit more of a grudge because of the fight. I was expecting mistrustful stares or obvious aggression, but she didn't seem bothered by me much. "You don't seem like you're expecting me to attack your cousin out of nowhere."

"I wanted to know what was up with you and Paladin." She shrugged. "He seemed way too sure of himself when it came to you and what you could do and wouldn't tell anyone why. Yet you kept insisting you didn't know each other. It's weird."

"Well he thinks I'm an anime character he knows after a bunch of incredibly powerful beings calling themselves gods sent us and a bunch of others here for their entertainment." is what I wanted to say.

What came out instead was, "He's an obsessive idiot I met barely a week ago. Who knows what he's thinking?"

What?

'Looks like there's a compulsion preventing you from giving the game away.' Ddraig commented.

Well… shit.

I probably should have guessed there was something in place to keep my patron and his friends' involvement hidden. I might not have tried to tell everyone about it the first chance I got, but I'm sure others might have tried if they could. And watching your…contestant? character? …whatever, get locked up for crazy talk wouldn't be very fun in the long run.

"That can't be it. I can't say I know him all that well and he's certainly…weird, every once in a while, but he knew a whole bunch of things about your powers no one else did. Especially if you're as new as you said." Vicky pressed.

I shrugged. "Like I said, we met face to face for the first time when I arrived in the city." I paused and then decided to test how far I could push this newly found compulsion. "But I can say that before I got here, I saw images of someone with abilities similar to Paladin. Maybe he saw the same and assumed everything about the person he saw and I would be the same?"

The two blondes scrunched up their faces in thought. They were obviously skeptical, but there was not really much else I could say about that matter.

"Enough about that though." I said, changing the subject and pointing a finger at the older of the two. "You, Crystal, owe me one for tonight."

"Wait, what? Why?"

"You thought that meeting was going to be a disaster. I held back from doing anything fun and made it a complete success. You owe me."

"...you know what? Fine. If nothing happens by the time we get you to the bus station, I'll owe you one." Crystal said in the tone of someone who had stopped caring ten minutes ago.

I smiled at her and flashed a thumbs up. "Deal!"

Naturally, that's when the machine shop three buildings down exploded and threw the three of us to the pavement.

"...Not my fault!" I felt obligated to point out as we picked ourselves up. The other two just gave me a dirty look before running off to see what just happened with me tailing after them a moment later.

As we got closer, it quickly became clear the explosion wasn't some random accident. The person standing there laughing to the heavens made it pretty obvious who caused it too. What surprised me was the fact it was an old man in a labcoat with an impressively large mustache and bat-wing like hairstyle (despite the balding on the top) and not someone in a costume. What was more surprising was the fact I recognized him.

"Dr. Wily?"

The man's laughter immediately ceased at the sound of his name. Or what I assumed to be his name. His eyes snapped to the three of us and I almost twitched at the sheer manic energy in his glare before it faded into something less intense.

"Hooh, you recognize me girl? Excellent! You are just in time to witness first steps into greatness! To the beginning of a new world order under me! AHAHAHAHA!"

"Jeez, did he hit his head? He sounds totally crazy." Vicky whispered, earning a light slap from her cousin as she stepped forward.

"Um, excuse me, are you alright? We saw the explosion and came to make sure no one was hurt." Crystal called out. "Me and my cousin are part of New Wave, so we can call for help if anyone needs assistance."

"Alright?" The Wily-lookalike cackled. "I've just completed the final touches on my first masterpiece! Of course I'm alright! Now all that's left to do is watch as my creations take over this city, and then! THE WORLD!"

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

As he broke off into more maniacal laughter several shapes started walking out of the still burning machine shop, ignoring the flames as if they weren't there, and it was quickly obvious why they were unbothered. They were robots. Slightly comedic and goofy looking, but also probably hostile robots.

I recognized over a dozen of the small spherical looking metools with their iconic yellow hardhats, a few humanoid models with a red monoeye carrying a shield with a gun built into their left arm, but the one that really drew attention was the yellow, black, and red giant with a square block of painted metal for a lower jaw that towered over all of them.

"Okay, gramps is off his rocker." Vicky muttered before hovering a few inches off the ground. "Tell them to stand down, old man! We don't want you throwing out a hip."

I was about to congratulate the teen on actually learning something from our encounter and trying to talk things out when I saw movement from one of the robots in the back.

"Crystal, shield!"

Thankfully the heroine listened to me without delay. She had one of her reddish energy shields up just in time to block three softball sized orbs of yellow energy before they hit us. But that was justification enough for Vicky to decide the conversation was done with and try flying over the small army of robots.

What none of us were expecting was the giant one sitting in the back to simply leap twenty feet into the air and casually slap the teen hero out of the air.

I was worried for her since I wasn't exactly sure how quickly her shield reformed after a hit, but she was back on her feet (well, hovering in the air but semantics…) and charging the Gutsman robot looking no worse for wear in seconds.

"Hah! Get them, my minions! Show them the power of my genius!" Wily ordered and the rest of the bots started fanning out to surround me and Crystal, shooting those blasts of energy at us the entire time.

Crystal started making shields and firing her own beams back but unlike the games I recognised the little robots from, these ones were perfectly capable of protecting themselves with their shields or by ducking under their helmet and shooting back without leaving themselves completely open. But that didn't stop her from occasionally getting a good hit in and coring a couple metools, leaving a sparking hole clean through the small robots before they exploded.

While that was going on, I stuck to dodging the occasional shot and moving towards the edge of the growing fight when I could.

While it was practically confirmed I had no secret identity at this point, that didn't mean I was just going to jump into this without thinking it through. The heroes had clearly made the connection, but as far as I knew most villains should still be in the dark. Let alone another Champion like Paladin.

Another reason was that I was actually not convinced this was all Dr Wily had to show. None of the minions here really had the means to create the explosion from earlier. Which meant something had gone wrong with the equipment that he was using to make these guys…or he had another trump card up his sleeve.

Something I wasn't discounting considering how casual he seemed standing there with laser beams and energy orbs flying back and forth while the two brutes smashed into each other in the background.

Especially when he took the time to look at me and smiled, practically screaming he felt safe despite all his minions being pinned down by the two heroes. "Is the devil not coming out to play tonight?"

Welp, guess that meant he knew who I was. And whether he had something else backing him up.

"I think I'm a bit much for one old man, no matter how smart he is."

"Haha, good! Cautious of my genius even now! I will need people like you in the future once I rule the world." he cackled. "But you are right. I'm a man of SCIENCE! Not a fighter. I prefer to leave that to my creations." There was a flash of light followed by a crack of thunder as another robot appeared in front of Wily. "I think you'll find this one particularly electrifying."

Similar to Gutsman, this one had black, red and yellow armor along with a yellow mask with a lightning bolt on it. Even if I hadn't seen him arrive in a flash of lightning, or the terrible pun, I could have guessed this one was Elecman.

Something I did notice, though, was the fact that this one was just staring blankly at me.

There was none of the personality or signs of life I would have expected from a Robot Master. Whether that was because Dr Wily had been unable or unwilling to do so or for some other reason I had no idea. And this wasn't the time to find out.

"Well, you started it." I said as calmly as I could despite my growing excitement.

Elecman was the one to attack first. His hand coming up and several orbs of lightning shooting towards me that I dodged by leaping out of the way. The orbs flew by harmlessly, and thankfully nowhere near the two New Wave heroes, but they did end up striking some unassuming drum barrels in the distance which promptly exploded.

"Careful you fool!" Wily shouted in the background. "We're surrounded by volatile chemicals! Attacking precariously like that will only blow us all to smithereens!"

I briefly wondered why he didn't seem concerned by Crystal's attacks if that was the case, but a quick glance at the burning machine shop made the answer obvious enough. Everything there had already been lit on fire.

There still was none of the emotional reaction I was expecting from the Robot Master, but Elecman did stop shooting at me. Instead, he flash teleported closer to me and tried punching me with short lived versions of the lightning orbs that covered his fists like boxing gloves.

What bothered me was that he was…slow.

Like below human level slow.

It almost looked like he was being careful that his own movements didn't tear himself apart. And that got me thinking. Where did Wily get the materials to build his little army? Any kind of high-end materials would be expensive or hard to get in large quantities so why would he waste them on so many foot soldiers? Then I nearly slapped myself for realizing I was doing the same thing as Paladin and assuming that Wily was just like his videogame counterpart and that was all there was to him.

I punched Elecman in the face and felt something deform, proving he wasn't made of some superstrong metal like I expected, and risked looking around at the other fights.

Vicky had torn off Gutsman's arm at some point and was using it to beat the rest of him into scrap, while Crystal was facing off against the last two Sniper Joes having finished with everything else. But as I was watching, I saw the blasted remains of one of the metools slowly fade away like it was never there.

Ah, power generated minions. That made sense.

And it explained why the two Robot Master knockoffs were underperforming. They were probably the only ones Wily had actually built, but the lack of proper materials hurt their performance. Which made me slightly wary that Wily was still holding out on us because I couldn't see either of them being the 'masterpiece' he boasted about.

Right. Time to get this over with.

A spell sigil appeared in front of me before blasting Elecman with my own bolts of lightning. Just as I suspected, and avoided using this attack for that reason, he seemed to power-up from the electric attack. But after a few seconds something overloaded and he started spewing black smoke and exploded.

What an underwhelming fight.

I masked my disappointment as the other two finished up not long after me and went back to confront Dr Wily. Although, considering he was still here and looking pretty calm about everything…

"Okay, old man. I don't know what your deal is, but after the speech and robot army I don't care. You can explain it to the PRT!"

"Vicky, wait!"

I watched as Vicky didn't wait and rushed forward to roughly grab Dr Wily. I got a flash of dark amusement at the look of horror on her face when his head snapped back from the force she used and snapped at a distinctly unhealthy angle.

She released the body with a scream that quickly turned to rage when the doctor's head shot off his body and bounced around on a spring making some very mocking faces and sounds.

…yeah, he used the replacement robo-body trick. Which meant Wily was probably long gone from here and had used everything here as a distraction for something.

"Crystal, Rias! Help!"

Before anyone could do anything else, a frantic looking Alex sprinted up to us and practically collapsed. I wanted to ask what the hell she was doing here, even more so when I realized she had spots of blood all over her, but she started waving back the way she came from and forcing herself to speak as fast as she could.

"You have to help…Sam…she…!" My black haired friend tripped over her words.

Recognizing this wasn't the time to stand around trying to figure out what she was talking about, Crystal and I shared one look and ran back the way Alex indicated.

-o-

I was expecting something bad from the way Alex was acting. I had several scenarios flash through my mind at what could have happened to Sam to make her freak out like she was.

I wasn't expecting to see Sam down on the ground looking like she had been caught next to a grenade going off with several shrapnel wounds quickly dying her clothes red even as Clover was desperately trying to stem the bleeding with a sweatshirt.

Crystal immediately went for her phone, frantically calling someone while screaming back at Vicky to go get her sister. I was next to Sam in a second, gently pushing Clover away as I tried healing what I could.

"What happened?" I didn't even know who asked the question for a second before belatedly realizing it had been me.

"We heard the first explosion." Clover stammered. "We were just going to check it out and call for help, but something hit a few barrels nearby and they went up like a bomb. Sam was, she was just a bit in front of us and she…she…" The blonde trailed off although it was easy to guess what happened.

Sam got caught up in the blast and now she was bleeding out.

"Vicky's going to get Amy. She'll be back in fifteen minutes." Crystal was saying to a somewhat glassy-eyed Sam. "Hear me? Just hold on until then and we'll get you patched up right away."

'She isn't going to last that long.' Ddraig's incredibly unwelcome voice spoke up in my mind.

'She'll make it. She's tougher than she looks.'

'I've seen a lot of people near death over my lifetime. She has five minutes at most.' Ddraig said. 'Sorry partner, even with your help she won't make it.'

Part of me wanted to deny his words. Believe that she would pull through anyway.

But the sheer certainty in Ddraig's analysis made it hard to ignore.

Coming to a decision, I pulled my hands away and did my best to get Sam's attention through the shock and pain. "Samantha…" I started, using her full name to show how serious I was being. "...I'm not going to be able to keep you alive until Panacea gets here." "Rias, what are–"

I ignored Crystal's snapping and held up a certain red chess piece to the dying girl in front of me.

"But I can save you another way…"

"Would you like to make a deal?"