Barely a second after her outburst, Crystal slapped her hand over her mouth and looked at me in horror.

"I-I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to use your name, it just slipped out!"

I just rolled my eyes at her overreaction. Yeah, if I was trying to separate my identities I'd probably be pretty mad. But like what had been mentioned several times already, my costume really didn't hide who I was. And it wasn't like the PRT couldn't figure out who I was by asking Paladin…or if they didn't want to do that, just asking around the charity for my name.

"Relax, it's not a big deal." I reassured her. "Calm down Crystal. You know I wasn't super careful with my secret identity anyway."

"Yeah, but I still should be more careful. You might not care, but if the girls were with us I could have just blown their identities just as easily."

Point to her, I guess. It probably would be worse for Sam, Alex, and Clover getting revealed to the PRT considering how new they still were.

"Fair, just don't beat yourself up over it." I said, considering the topic over with and turning to the other heroes watching us uneasily. "So anyway, like I was saying, nothing going on here besides me and Laserdream working up a sweat and getting her nice and loose. If you want to join in we can schedule something later because while I don't mind sharing partners, she's a little more shy about these things."

Crystal glared at me. "You're doing that on purpose." She accused.

Damn straight I was.

Too bad I could just tell Dauntless was going to be a pain about this by the way he flew forward, all stiff and confrontational. Not a good look for the local hero.

"Lucifer, you are under arrest. Surrender peacefully or you will be forcibly detained."

I raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. "Under arrest for what? We are simply sparring, far away from public property and not damaging anything important. Nothing worth arresting someone for."

"You're disturbing the peace and damaging private property." Dauntless said, waving a hand at the boats Laserdream hit during our spar. "Vandalism is still a crime."

"Right, because people really care about this rustheap." I said sarcastically. As if to punctuate my point, one of the wrecks we hadn't damaged groaned as something gave way and collapsed further into the water. "You're stretching a bit, supertrooper. Sure you're not just mad I got you in trouble with your boss?"

"Are you resisting arrest?"

That's a yes then. "So what about the rest of you? You want in on this too?" I looked at the three younger heroes.

"If it means opening the way for you to earn redemption, then of course I will join the fight!" Paladin exclaimed, earning him an eye roll from me.

"Pretty sure I have to actually do something villainous to need a redemption arc but whatever." I commented. "What about you kids, I don't care–"

I stopped talking as a bolt of lightning barely missed me.

"Enough. TALKING!" Dauntless growled. "I won't ask again, either surrender now or I'll bring you in for resisting arrest."

"Well someone's cranky." I looked towards Laserdream. "You should probably back off. Probably a bad look if New Wave gets in a fight with someone in the Protectorate."

"You just want me to leave you alone to fight them?!" Laserdream hissed, but I could tell she was conflicted.

"Oh please," I scoffed as five sigils bloomed around me. "You make it sound like they have a chance of beating me." And then I gave her a pretty forceful shove just so she couldn't reply before unleashing a pair of my own lightning bolts at both Dauntless and Paladin and sending one that would land in between the two Wards.

Or at least it would have if Gallant and Vista weren't suddenly a hundred meters further back than they used to be. I'd have to be careful of that, but most of my focus was on the two flying heroes since they could actually fight me.

Right now that meant Dauntless, since Paladin had caught the second lightning bolt I threw at him in the face and had fallen onto one of the wrecks while the Protectorate hero had blocked one with his glowing shield and dodged the second.

"C'mon, is that the best you got?!" I taunted the heroes. Seriously, they had to have some kind of plan if they were going to literally present themselves to me and demand I surrender.

"Not even close!" Dauntless roared back, and stabbed at me with his spear.

The thing was weird. It looked more like solid lightning than a spear, and now that I got a better look it was obvious that the thing was physically extending and retracting rather than shooting blasts of energy. Which honestly made things easier for me because I didn't have to worry about him 'dragging' the attack to hit me.

The only problem with that was the thing was also stupid fast.

If I stayed too far away I was going to get hit eventually, no doubt. That's how fast it extended.

And after the Greek themed hero blocked or dodged the return lightning spells I threw at him, I decided it was better to get a little more personal if I was going to win quickly.

My Boosted Gear appeared on my left arm but I held off on actually activating it for now in favor of slamming my now armored hand into the glowing field that made up Dauntless's shield.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

To my surprise, it actually held.

As in, it stopped my punch cold and the hero didn't so much as move, kinda held.

I had to admit I was impressed. While I didn't have exact numbers for how hard I could punch, I had easily cracked stone by accident before.

Dauntless took advantage of my brief inaction to line his spear up with my shoulder and extend it. His spear – that I finally remembered from one of my internet trawls was called the arclance – hit me in the shoulder and I found myself holding in a surprised scream at the force of the hit and sudden numbness in my arm.

"Ow, dammit!"

I backed off but kept the pressure on by surrounding Dauntless from above and on his sides with more lightning sigils and fired. I had expected him to either retreat or advance out of the way. I wasn't expecting him to pull the same move I had with Laserdream and extend his shield into a dome that caught all of the blasts at once.

"You forget about something?!" Paladin yelled as he flew up from below me and tried uppercutting me.

Though, the thing is about surprise uppercuts? They aren't a surprise if you draw attention to them by yelling.

The sudden noise and movement from below made me twitch my knee forward, incidentally hitting Paladin square in the face. His head snapped back and his fist passed harmlessly in front of my face while I blinked in surprise.

"...um…oops?"

Paladin clutched his face and retreated a bit.

"T-that was an impressive c-counter." he eventually managed. "You must have trained against attacks from below quite a bit."

"Dude, you yelled and I twitched." I deadpanned. "Don't make it sound more impressive than it was."

That was all I was able to say before Dauntless stabbed at me with his arclance again. I went low, both to avoid the spear and to put Paladin between the two of us, when I caught even more movement out the corner of my eye.

"You're kidding me."

"Gallant, she spotted us! Hit her now!" Vista yelled from where the two were standing less than ten feet away despite the coast being nowhere near me seconds earlier. Seriously, that level of space compression was bullshit!

The power-armored teen already had his hand raised and pointed at me, and dodging an energy blast with only a few feet between us it was going to be har-

[DIVIDE!]

-impossible when I suddenly felt a rush of energy leave me. Five prismatic beams hit me almost immediately after and I felt – happy/enraged/depressed/apathetic/irritated – confused as I went on a half-second emotional rollercoaster.

[BOOST!]

Then I felt it all rush back as I finally started using my own Sacred Gear.

I was prepared to admit I wasn't exactly in my normal mindset after Gallant's attack, so I might have been a little more aggressive than usual. A training orb the size of a beachball formed and fired, hitting Vista in the face and knocking the unfortunate Ward straight on her ass. That had the unintended effect of breaking her space manipulation so the second similarly sized orb aimed at the second Ward crashed harmlessly into the Bay waters as the coastline appeared to snap back into place.

"That was low, Lady Lucifer. Attacking a child? It seems your villany knows no limits." Paladin's scantimonious voice was particularly grating at the moment. "I'll stop you from hurting anyone else!"

[DIVIDE!]

He flew forward while I was forced to deal with Dauntless's spear herding me away from the waterline, probably to make sure I couldn't vanish behind or into one of the wrecks even as I sent blasts of my own lightning at the Protectorate hero.

"If they stayed out of it, I wouldn't have touched them!" I yelled back. "Don't take a swing if you can't take getting hit back!"

[BOOST!]

And just like the last fight we had, even with Paladin stopping me from actually boosting with my Gear, the difference between our base states meant it was easy enough for me to deflect his attack. Unlike our last fight, I wasn't content to just hit him once and let him off to recover.

This time, I seized him by the wrist and pulled him into a knee strike, then, when he was gasping for air, I landed a solid punch to his cheek that would have sent him flying through the air if not for my grip on his arm. Paladin struggled to counter but he was already at his limit and I–

[BOOST!]

–definitely wasn't. A twirling kick to the chest cracked something and I finally let the white annoyance fly into the distance, confident he wouldn't be an issue for the rest of what was probably going to be a short fight.

[BOOST!]

And with my reactions boosted by 4x after dealing with Paladin, I was able to dodge the arclance's attacks much easier now.

Dauntless did his best to retreat towards the shoreline while harrying me with his arclance but I was much faster than him at this point. I juked around his shield and pulled my hand back to hit him in the chest…only to miss when Dauntless was suddenly several feet further away.

My anger at Vista's continued interference flared again. I had let her off easy! She should have stayed out of this!

I spun around and quickly spotted the Ward along with her partner and both Laserdream and Paladin, who was staggering around clutching his side, not far off. They must have collected Paladin after I got rid of him because I was pretty sure he wasn't anywhere close to them earlier.

That didn't really matter to me though, because all that meant was I would have to waste another half-second going through him again before I got rid of the tiny pest that kept interfering.

My face must have given away something because suddenly Dauntless was between me and the group, but he wasn't attacking.

"Don't go there, Lucifer. Your emotions aren't your own right now, but this is between you and me." He warned.

[BOOST!]

I wasn't having it. "You and me? Don't make me laugh. I wasn't the one who dragged a couple of kids and a moron into an unnecessary fight because of his hurt feelings." Dauntless flinched at that. "And if they're too stubborn to stay out of it when I play nice? Well, I'll just need to be a bit less nice then, won't I?" A small orb of red energy formed in my left palm. Unlike the Training Orbs earlier, this one wouldn't be nearly so harmless.

"Dragon Shot"

That little orb erupted into a huge beam of searing red energy that slammed into Dauntless's shield. Impressively, the thing managed to hold for a few heartbeats before popping like a soap bubble and overwhelming the hero.

Even with how angry I was, I didn't want him dead so I made sure to hold back just enough that he should live, even if he was going to be feeling that hit for a week at least. I watched as he hit the water hard enough to bounce and then had to blink a few times as my brain tried to process the fact Gallant was able to fish him out of the Bay while standing a few hundred feet away.

That was fine though, I needed to…speak…to the Wards anyway.

Seeing no reason to rush, I slowly flew over to where the heroes gathered. After a while my enhanced senses were able to pick up bits of their conversation.

"...n't know why she's acting like this! It's like her anger is feeding into itself!" Gallant was saying. "My power doesn't work like that, it should be a quick change before she shakes it off!"

"Unless it left her feeling angry and every new thing started setting her off! You've been around Vicky, how have you not realized some people get irrational when upset?!" Laserdream snapped back.

The tension in her voice was enough to make me take a mental step back. We had come here to help her unwind and I certainly wasn't helping her do that right now. And she was right, I was irrationally upset at the heroes right now.

'Hey Ddraig?'

'Yeah Partner?'

'Any idea what's up with my emotions right now? I had much more reason to be pissed in our last fight, but for some reason this one is the one getting to me.'

'Ah. It might have to do with the fact your emotions were forcefully changed. Devils and Dragons are both creatures of impulse and emotion. You subconsciously associated the fight to the feeling of being angry, so you won't calm down until something knocked you out of it or the fight ended.'

'And you couldn't have mentioned that earlier?'

'You forget we haven't fought together much. I just assumed that was normal for you. I'll make sure to mention it if you start feeling strong emotions unexpectedly.'

'Ugh, that makes sense. Thanks then, I'll be counting on you.'

Thankfully just like Ddraig said, now that the action lulled and hearing Laserdream getting even more stressed distracted me from the fight I was starting to calm down. Not that that the others could tell. I was still rather pissed off, I just wasn't blindly looking to continue the fight or take it out on them anymore.

I landed a ways away from the heroes and started walking up to the now arguing group. Laserdream was demanding Gallant to fix his fuck up, Gallant was trying to convince her it wasn't his fault, Vista was trying to get them to focus on fighting me, and the still staggering Paladin was trying to say he would hold me off while they escaped.

Yeah, it was time to end this clusterfuck.

"Alright boys and girls, I'm calling it here. Get your boss, call his boss, and get lost." I stared down my three conscious opponents and ignored the way Laserdream let out a relived sigh that I wasn't going to keep attacking.

Of course Paladin had to stick his foot in it.

"We aren't beaten yet! The Power of Justice won't be defeated so easily, Lucifer!" He declared grandly, even managing to stand up straight despite his injuries. "Prepare yourself!"

[BOOST!]

[BOOST!]

[BOOST!]

"You sure you want to keep going?" I asked mildly.

"Y-yes!" Paladin managed to squeak, despite everyone else telling him to shut up. "We can stil win!"

[D-DIVIDE!]

I couldn't help but sigh at Paladin's actions. What was he hoping to accomplish? His wings were practically glowing white with how much excess power they were trying to burn off and I was still Boosted beyond what he could deal with. The only thing that would make a difference would be…no…he couldn't be that stupid, could he?

"Stop it, dumbass!" I shouted. "You're going to kill yourself at this rate!"

"Kill himself, what?" Vista and the other heroes' heads snapped between the two of us.

"Why, what is he doing?!" Gallant asked.

"I'm not done! If I've reached my limits, that just means I need to go past them!" Paladin declared even as more light bled from his wings and his power swelled. "B-Balance Br-Break!"

[VANISHING DRAGON! BALANCE–]