“Well that went about as well as we could have expected.” I muttered as I ducked out of the room.

Gloria had accepted the Pawn piece with very little fanfare, becoming my fourth peerage member and after taking a few hours to get used to her new state, dragged me off to do the same to her brother.

The good news was that the resurrection did, in fact, solve whatever issue was keeping Carl in a coma and he woke up not long after.

The bad news was that Carl did not take getting rescued from being held hostage so the Empire could forcibly recruit his sister because she had been mistaken as a tinker to being recruited by me instead very well. The fact that not only was he forced to at least remain close by in order to not go Stray, but also his sister left him feeling like he was responsible for both of them being trapped in my Peerage.

In short, he was pissed about his membership and absolutely did not believe I didn’t have another way of bringing him out of a coma I withheld to get my hands on the both of them.

I tried not to hold it against him too much because that did sound like something a few groups on Earth Bet would do, but after four fairly easy additions, having a member of my Peerage actively resent joining hurt more than I wanted to admit.

The situation didn’t improve when Gloria decided to argue in my favor, which Carl took as evidence I was Mastering her, and the whole thing went downhill from there. I wasn’t sure how long the argument went on, but when the two siblings started breaking out the deeply personal insults I decided to put my foot down and have us separate for tempers to cool off. Though I doubted they would actually listen to me.

‘Not everyone is going to like you or see being under you a good thing.’ Ddraig commented. ‘You’ve been rather lucky with your group so far.’

“That’s not what the internet is saying.” I said wryly. It was actually pretty scary how quickly I had picked up a group of ‘fans’ that had leaned hard into the devil theme. There were entire threads devoted to them trading ideas of how I would ‘punish them for their sins’. The fact that those punishments always seemed to take place in a bedroom didn’t seem to be a coincidence. I avoided that part of the internet pretty religiously now.

“What’s the internet saying?” Clover asked as I entered the living room. Oops.

“Nothing, just talking to the voice in my head.” I waved her off. “So what’s going on in here? Where’s Crystal?”

“Watching the latest Uber and Leet fiasco.” Alec chimed in, waving at a laptop. From the look of it…Final Fantasy?...huh, not what I expected. “Crystal had a phone call. Sounded kinda important. How’d the talk go?”

“Well, they’re staying for now…of course that’s partly because they don’t have anywhere else to go at the moment. Carl definitely isn’t my biggest fan right now.”

“He’ll come around once he gets to know you. It’s kinda hard to believe the whole ‘superpowered benefits package’ thing you have going on.” Sam joined in. “I mean sometimes I still can’t believe it.”

Anything further conversation was put on hold as a very flustered Crystal wearing her superhero costume rushed back into the room.

“You okay Crystal?”

“We’ve got an issue. Can you teleport me to the boardwalk?”

I blinked at the request. Crystal had never asked me to teleport her before. It was never a big deal because she could fly, but it was an indicator of how big an issue she had that she decided to ask anyway.

“Sure, did you want us to tag along?”

She froze. “Um, maybe? I didn’t ask, but more people wouldn’t hurt…but a bunch of technically villains showing up unannounced…”

“Hey, it’s cool. Sam and I can stay behind.” Alex came to her rescue. “We wanted to help defuse the mess with Carl and Gloria anyway. Clover can go and watch Rias’s back and if you need us, Rias can just give us a call.”

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

“That work with you?”

I quickly glanced around but it didn’t seem like anyone objected to that plan. After that Crystal, Clover, and I walked over to the teleportation mark I carved into the main lobby and I started the spell.

“By the way, what’s the sitch we’re rushing into?” Clover asked just as the circle lit up.

“Well, you see–”

-o-

“Hi Dauntless! How’s life been?” I cheerfully greeted the spartan themed hero standing in the group we were approaching while giving Miss Militia and the PRT troopers with them a wave. His helmet hid any reaction he might have made but I had the pleasure of watching something in his neck tense and twitch at my greeting.

“...Lucifer, what are you doing here–”

“Laserdream let me and my group know about the situation. Something big swimming up the bay and it isn’t Leviathan, right? We learn anything else about that yet?” I interrupted him, knowing it would drive his blood pressure up a few more notches. Was it petty to hold a grudge for Dauntless’s fuck ups during our encounters? Probably.

Was I going to do it anyway? Yep.

“Not yet.” Miss Militia answered, stepping in between me and Dauntless. “We are still scouting the situation but we’re treating this as a developing Class-A threat. We won’t be playing games if you’re just here to cause trouble.” She gave me and Clover a pointed look.

“We’ll be good.” I raised my hands in fake surrender.

MM nodded at me and turned to Crystal. “The rest of New Wave should be back from their recon run any minute now, but your father, aunt and uncle are all down the road if you want to meet up with them.”

“Thanks,” she turned to me. “I’m going to go check up on them, think you can wait here for a sec?”

I rolled my eyes, everyone was acting like I was just looking for a reason to pick a fight. “I just told Militia we would behave.”

“Uh actually, it might be better if you and your friend went with Laserdream.” Dauntless suggested, making some kind of hand signal at Miss Militia I didn’t understand. And he either did it wrong or Miss Militia disagreed with whatever it meant because beyond a raised eyebrow at him, she didn’t react.

“I mean, shouldn’t we let them know about our new arrivals?” He said awkwardly. “We wouldn’t want them to start fighting because of a misunderstanding or anything, would we?”

I almost wanted to laugh at him.

Was he really one to talk considering what happened both times I fought him? Well, fought was a little generous for the first time we met, but the second was definitely him choosing to pick a fight. Between him and Paladin…oh…oh, fuck me.

There was a crash off to the side as a white figure descended from the sky in a hurry.

I already knew who it was, but one small part of me held out hope it was just Glory Girl being a little too enthusiastic. Hope that was crushed when two holographic blue paneled wings appeared and blew away the last of the dust.

“Hey Miss M, I’m back with the repor– oh, hey Rias!” I sighed as another fifteen people officially joined the exclusive ‘definitely knew my identity’ club. “Are you teaming up with us for this? Ah, I mean, I knew there was a flame of righteousness buried in your heart that just needed the right opportunity to shine. I’m overjoyed that–”

“Paladin, the report?” Miss Militia thankfully stepped in before I was forced to punch him in order to stop the cringe.

“Uh, right…” Paladin stammered. “We – that is me, Lady Photon, and Shielder – flew out to where SONAR was picking up the thing coming at us. Didn’t see much for a while cause, you know, all the water, but eventually we saw the shadow of the thing. And Miss M? Whatever is coming this way…it’s big, like really big. Something alive too, cause we saw it flip around and chase a boat for a bit and Lady Photon says nothing mechanical can pull off that kinda maneuver. Unless it’s tinkertech or something.”

“I doubt it. Not even Dragon can make anything half the size of what’s coming our way move organically without issues.” Dauntless commented, turning towards his fellow hero. “Militia, we need to ask for help. Call for reinforcements or something…”

“We can’t.” Miss Militia immediately disagreed. “Director Piggot ordered us to handle this. She’ll sound the call if we need assistance from the surrounding branches.”

‘Interesting, most heroes I’ve run into tend to ignore their superiors and do what they want. It’s almost weird to see one just following orders like this.’ Ddraig said.

‘From what I know, Miss Militia isn’t much of a free thinker.’ I replied. ‘She’ll basically just follow orders in most circumstances. Makes her pretty disciplined compared to the other heroes, but then you get things like this where she won’t even consider something because her boss didn’t tell her it was okay.’

“Uh, hi. Quick question.” Clover asked from behind me. “Isn’t stuff like this the whole point of having an alarm system? Like, so you can call for backup when freaky stuff is going on?”

“You’re part of Lucifer’s group, right? Rook?”

“Pshaw, that was a temp name cause we weren’t expecting to be out in public yet. You can call me Red Devil.”

I turned to her. “Red Devil? Seriously?”

“Yeah! It’s super easy to remember, cause I’m the red one. We all talked about it earlier and thought it was a good idea. You like it?”

“It’s fine. Kinda plain, but it works.” I said, but in my head I was dreading where this was going. If Sam and Alex really agreed with the name choice, then we were one step closer to winding up as a Power Rangers knock off.

I really hoped there was still time to stop that. Maybe if I talked to Gloria…

I shook my head and returned my attention to the group and instantly regretted not paying attention as Paladin was in the middle of spilling another one of my secrets, this time one I would rather have kept secret. “So if you're calling yourself a Devil, you’re part of her Peerage, right?! What piece did you get? Miss M said you were a Rook?”

“Uh, no. I’m a pawn.” Clover answered uncomfortably. Understandable given the enthusiasm Paladin was putting out. “And how did you–”

“A pawn, huh? Cool! How many others has Rias reincarnated? Oh! And do you think–”

“We’re not having this conversation right now.” I cut in. “Shouldn’t we be doing something about the thing coming for us? If not calling in backup, then getting in position or something? Me and, ugh…Red Devil are willing to help out but we kinda need to know what to do instead of just standing here talking!”

Paladin at least had the decency to look sheepish for sidetracking us. “Right, sorry. So what’s the plan, boss?”

I looked at the white-clad cape in mild horror. “You’re part of the Protectorate now?!”

“Oh yea, after the fight in the–”

“Save it for later Paladin. Lucifer is right. We can’t keep getting distracted.” Miss Militia ordered. “The unknown is less than a mile offshore, we’re going to split up into groups along the coast and wait to see what it does. If it tries coming ashore, we’ll do our best to drive it off. But if it just stays in the water, we’ll use our fliers to track it as long as possible.”

“I don’t think we’re going to need that last part, ma’am!” One of the troopers yelled. Everyone turned to follow his gaze out into the bay where a giant dark shape was starting to rise out of the water.

“SKREEEEE-EEEEEONGK!!”

“...seriously, just fuck today…”