Finding the others turned out to be pretty simple due to the fact there was nobody else around. Between the robots, the fighting, and just the general chaos of everything the mall was now a wrecked ghost town. All I had to do was follow the noise until I found both groups.

My Pawns were cheerfully celebrating their victory, animatedly waving their arms and jumping around as they reenacted some part of the fight they had just been in, while the Heroes were a little more spread out and just kinda standing around for now.

I didn’t announce my arrival as I walked over, even if Miss Militia noticed me almost immediately, which allowed me to hear the end of Rook's story.

“-and then out of nowhere all the little guys just burst into smoke! I guess they realized how awesome we were and gave up!”

“Weren’t they robots? Can robots give up?” Knight asked thoughtfully.

“I’d give up too if I was facing off against the Wards, Protectorate, and the Super Satan Action Squad.” Clockblocker added in from a few feet away.

I shivered as the name brought up memories of Devils much stronger than me cosplaying as knockoff Power Rangers. It was funny when I was just watching characters on a screen, but the thought of being associated with that personally sent chills down my spine.

…And I was suddenly very self conscious that the four of us each wore mostly one-color form-fitting bodysuits.

None of us would be getting full head covering helmets. Not if I had anything to say about it.

“We are not calling ourselves that.” I said firmly as I announced my arrival to the few in the group that hadn’t noticed me approaching.

“Rias, you’re back!”

“Did you beat the boss?”

“Do you know what happened to the little bots?”

My lip twitched as Roo- Clover continued the tradition of my real name being the least kept secret in the Bay, but ignored it for later. “Yeah, I beat Elecman. What’s left of him is over there if you want to try analyzing the scraps but I don’t think there's much left after he exploded. If the little bots aren’t around anymore I guess they were somehow tied to him.”

The heroes bristled and Clockblocker actually took a few steps back.

“Uh, you know that murder isn’t something we can just let slide…”

“Relax Stopwatch, Rias wouldn’t do that. Right?” I mentally added Alex to the punishment list. The whole point of coming up with codenames was to use them. I might not care if they didn’t use mine much but it wasn’t a good habit to ignore with other people.

“Well since he was a robot, legally speaking it wasn’t murder.” I clarified before the heroes could get too jumpy. “I’m not actually sure I even killed him. He said he’d be back for a rematch at some point, so he either has a backup somewhere or his brain might not have been in that body to begin with.”

“Yeah? You know that before you off’d him or what?” Shadow Stalker tried baiting me before getting told off by Miss Militia, but I had no problems answering her.

“Definitely before. This is the second time I beat him after all. Didn’t Laserdream or Glory Girl tell you?”

I had a feeling Shadow Stalker was the type to ignore things unless they were forced on her or she was personally involved. Something that seemed to be backed up by the reaction - or rather the lack of one - when I mentioned the two New Wavers from the other heroes, which meant they at least knew something about the last time we ran into Wily’s robots. I didn’t pay much attention to her after that. I already knew she was a massive bitch and didn’t want to get involved if I could help it.

Thankfully for everyone, Miss Militia decided to use the brief lull in conversation to debrief my group about what happened before anyone else showed up starting with my Pawns. She made it clear that Sam, Alex, and Clover wouldn’t be in trouble no matter what but since my status was complicated behind the scenes, and I was still publicly a villain, she didn’t want to risk someone starting something later.

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It didn’t escape my notice that she sent Shadow Stalker off to check on Triumph instead of one of the boys. Though it might have been better if she had, considering the conversation they were having between themselves.

“So ‘gis, I didn’t know you had a thing for redheads. Or were such a ladies man! What’s your secret? Think you could set me up with one of her friends?”

“Drop it Clock.” Aegis hissed back. “It was an accident. I didn’t mean to grab her…there.”

“Hey you don’t have to lie to me.” Clockblocker held his hands up. “She’s smoking hot. I wouldn’t pass up a ‘reward’ like that either!” He leaned back and put a hand to his chin. “Of course I’m more the shy, retiring type so I wouldn’t have gone straight for second base, but you do you.”

Well I couldn’t just ignore that now, could I?

“Oh? And what kind of reward would you be interested in?” I practically purred, ignoring Aegis’ remark of ‘Oh shit, she heard us.’

“Uhhh….” Clockblocker said intelligently.

“You helped my girls deal with the minions while I was fighting the leader, right?” I said as I sashayed closer. “I’d say that deserves some kind of thanks, wouldn’t you?”

Clockblocker tried moving back, but ended up bumping into a booth that survived the fighting. “Uh…um…I need an adult?” He squeaked.

I smirked. He was making this too easy.

“Oh my, both me and Miss Militia?! How bold.” I fake fanned my face. “And here I thought you were ‘shy and retiring’.”

Clockblocker bluescreened while Aegis did his best to hide his laughter behind a coughing fit. For some reason he thought he was safe, but I wasn’t going to leave him out of it!

I turned to the red-colored Ward and opened my mouth, only for two people to slip their arms around mine and start dragging me off.

“Aaand that’s enough of that.” Sam muttered. “C’mon, Miss Militia wants to talk to you now.”

“Yeah, no bullying the junior heroes!” Alex added from the other side.

Traitors! The both of them!

The two of them ignored my protests and kept herding me towards the Protectorate heroine, who was looking pretty amused at the whole thing.

“Please don’t tease the Wards too much. You aren’t the ones that need to deal with them later.” She joked mildly before shifting to a more serious demeanor. “Before we say anything else I wanted to thank you personally for helping us. We were able to keep damage to a minimum thanks to your help.”

The thanks was nice but it was a little weird that she was so serious about it.

‘It’s probably the only public thanks we’ll get.’ Ddraig put in his two cents. ‘The local leaders won’t want to admit they needed three unknowns and a villain to clean up this incident.’

Ah. That made sense.

If it does play out that way I’ll need to remember to bring that up the next time I talked to the PRT. Should at least give me a little bargaining power.

“Sure, no problem. How’s Triumph? I didn’t see him around and Elecman said he beat him. He doing alright?”

“Yes. Shadow Stalker found him and Panacea is on her way. He should be fine in a bit.”

“That’s good.” I didn’t really have much to say to that.

From there it was pretty much just Miss Militia asking me to walk her through the whole incident from my point of view and occasionally asking for clarification on a few things. Considering the only thing no one else was really around for was my fight with Elecman, there wasn’t much I needed to add that one of my girls hadn’t already said.

Once that was over, we were basically free to leave. Something we did in a hurry because the place was starting to get swarmed with PRT agents and regular police. A quick detour into an area with no cameras and a teleportation circle later we were all back in normal clothes and lounging around my living room snacking on some stuff I had lying around.

“That was SO awesome!” Alex announced for the fifth or sixth time. I had stopped counting after a while. “We were all like, WHOOSH BAM POW! And Sam was all like PEW PEW PEW! And then Rias was like ZAP!”

“Heck yeah! We kicked butt and looked great doing it!” Clover cheered alongside her, both of them enthusiastically digging into the new bowl of salsa I brought out.

“It was really cool.” Sam agreed, reaching out with her own chip. I subtly stopped her before she could which earned me a raised eyebrow but thankfully she didn’t comment on it. “Think we are ready to do more stuff now that we’ve been out?” She asked instead.

“Depends on what you want to do but I don’t see any reason why you can’t.” I replied before changing the subject entirely. “So Alex, Clover. How you enjoying the salsa?”

“It’s good!” Alex said, scooping another bite for herself. “Little spicier than I normally get but I like it!”

Clover nodded along. “Yeah, where’d you get it?”

“Oh, around. Nice little specialty store that focuses on all kinds of different hot sauces. You know, chillies, jalapeños, habanero…” I gave them a mildly malicious smile. “...Ghost pepper...” My Pawns’ eyes widened and glanced desperately around the table, only to find anything capable of cutting the growing heat in their mouths conveniently missing. “But don’t worry about that! Why don’t we have a little chat about using people’s real names when we’re out in costume, hmm?”

-o-

“Hehe, you really did that?” Parian chuckled as I recounted the story of what went down at the mall. “How devilish of you.”

“You aren’t as funny as you think, Par.” I deadpanned and continued chatting with her.

Today was one of the days where all my Pawns were busy for some reason or another and Crystal had some family stuff going on. Normally that would be fine but I didn’t like the feeling of eating by myself anymore so I went out and decided to see if I could bug Parian for a bit. I had only managed to talk to her a handful of times since our awkward first meeting, but we had settled into something more than acquaintances but less than friends. Conversation partners, maybe?

Well whatever our relationship was, the Doll cape was happy to have someone to talk normally with while she worked. I felt a bit bad that I was the only one eating, but the only way to change that would be for her to either get a new mask that let her do so or just remove the thing entirely. Not something she was keen on doing. But she also said she didn’t mind, so I didn’t get hung up over it.

Though to be honest, there was another reason for seeking out Parian every once in a while.

I was actually taking a page out of the PRT’s handbook.

I was letting myself be seen out in the open acting normal, just like one of the infamous PR patrols that the Protectorate did. Not only were people getting used to seeing me out and about without some battle going on, it also challenged the PRT’s stance of me being a villain. Because if I was a criminal, why was I able to wander around and talk to a local Rogue without someone coming to arrest me?

The main downside was that I basically was stuck with Lucifer as a codename since occasionally someone stopped to ask for an autograph. Like the one girl that just pulled me aside for a photo.

“I’m sorry, I lied. I don’t actually want a photo.” The girl confessed while keeping a practical deathgrip on my arm to keep me in place. “I need help. My brother is going to be murdered by the Empire!”

What…what?