The shoreline…did not look great when we arrived.

Despite Godzilla never directly targeting the shoreline beyond its final attack, a giant lizard stomping around the Bay had kicked up some pretty big waves. Most of the buildings I flew over while following Crystal seemed fine but there were a lot of broken windows and flooded stores. I had seen plenty of pictures on the news after a tropical storm or hurricane rolled through an area. The damage seemed to be on par with a pretty severe one of those. Not to mention the line of buildings that had been hit by Godzilla's breath attack. They looked like someone had hit the front half with a bomb and were either fully collapsed or on the brink of it.

All of this was idle thought though, as I rushed to join the people already scattered around the piles of debris trying to dig out any survivors from the rubble.

Gallant, Vista, and Clockblocker were already there and were definitely the MVPs of the efforts. The three Wards were all working together to locate, dig out, and stabilize anyone they could find with their powers and as depressing as it was that a bunch of teens younger than I was were the best S&R team here was, I didn't have time to sit around thinking about it.

I wasn't exactly some expert on disaster situations, but even I knew that when people were buried – possibly alive, probably injured – every second counted and it definitly couldn't be handled in my normal method of 'rush in and hope for the best'. So I was following the directions of a PRT captain, a construction worker, and a firefighter to carefully remove as much of the rubble as possible without bringing the rest on top of whoever we were trying to rescue from where Gallant had been able to point out a few people based on their emotions, so we weren't digging blindly.

It was a pretty good feeling when I moved the last bit of concrete that allowed rescue services to get the young man we dug out to an ambulance and then off to a hospital but a part of me was dissapointed we hadn't found Crystal's cousin.

All of New Wave was desperately searching at this point and even with every hero in the Protectorate and my Peerage helping out we still hadn't found her. And from the increasingly grim faces of the professionals and the almost desperate energy from the older, more exprerienced capes I knew we were running out of time.

Hours later I was spent, physically and mentally.

The good news was that we had managed to dig down to the first level of the building Panacea was supposed to be stationed at. The bad news was that we hadn't actually found –

"RIAS – GET OVER HERE NOW!"

Fuck, that didn't sound good.

I was in the air in an instant and heading to the other side of the wreckage where Crystal's group had been digging. I didn't have a good feeling about this, though. If they had found Panacea in good condition Crystal wouldn't have sounded so desperate. So it really wasn't a surprise to find the white robed girl lying half buried surrounded by her family and covered in dust and blood with some of the Protecorate heroes standing nearby.

My heart sank at the sight.

Between Manpower and Glory Girl it should have been easy to clear away the debris unless there was a reason not to…like stopping the person being crushed by it from bleeding out.

And given that Glory Girl was crouching over her sister, hands hovering uncertainly over her like she wasn't sure what to do with them or was afraid to touch her instead of trying to get her out, gave me a good idea that was the case.

"I'm here, what do you need?" I asked immediately, hoping I was wrong about the situation.

"Amy needs healing." Crystal said rapidly. "Everything you can give until another healer can be brought in. The rubble, it – her arm is pinned and her legs are just…"

"Got it, I'll do my best." I cut in to spare her from actually saying it. "What about my peerage? Are they on the way?" After the first couple hours I had dropped the communication spell. It was just not worth it when half the people we were working weren't included and my flying out to the PRT headquarters to include the PRT's leadership instead of everyone just using a phone or radio was deemed a waste of time.

"We're here. We heard the shouting." Alex said as the five of them touched down, Sam and Clover giving my two newest Pawns a hand with the landing. "What can we do?"

"Give me some space to work. I need to concentrate for this." I said, gently pushing Glory Girl away until my Pawns were between her and Amy.

Honestly I just wanted them here as a buffer. It was true that on the very small chance I was wrong I would need to focus on healing the more serious injuries the younger teen obviously had, especially considering how slow my usual method was.

I really didn't want an upset superpowered family member jumping in my face if…

…Ah.

I sighed and pulled my hands away. Too late huh?

"...Rias?"

I looked at Crystal and shook my head. There were a lot of curses and gasps from the people around us but to my shock it was Brandish that actually shoved Gloria out of the way to get into my face.

"What are you doing!? You barely even tried!"

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Despite the angry woman in my face I stayed calm. "I'm sorry. But there's not much I can do for the dead."

"...dead?" Brandish whispered and then flinched like she had been slapped. My guess was that Amy had been at least a bit conscious when they found her initially. That she had quietly died before anyone could even try to help must have been a shock.

"But you can still help her right?" I closed my eyes and sighed again as Paladin inserted himself into the conversation again. I couldn't be too mad at him though, not when I was about to bring it up myself.

"I could. I could make her join my peerage, but most people here know the consequences of that."

"She becomes a devil and one of your Pawns." Glory Girl stated. "So what? At least she'll be alive!"

"And she'll be MINE." I said seriously, pivoting from my normal stance of new peerage members being mostly free to continue on like before beyond just meeting up now and then to make sure they weren't going to come apart at the metaphysical seams. The thing is though, in both cases where I couldn't carefully coach the person about exactly what they were getting into, they still had people looking out for them specifically.

Sam had a fairly healthy life beforehand and most of her friend group had joined my peerage anyway. I wasn't too worried about her suddenly running off and going crazy. And while Carl's life was much less happy or stable, I couldn't see him abandoning his sister unless I did something specific to drive him away. And even then I gave it even odds he'd stay anyway to make sure Gloria was being taken care of if he couldn't convince her to take off with him.

I was much less sure about leaving Amy to her own devices because for the most part I was fairly certain she had no real support structure.

I was trying to avoid falling into the trap of using my out of context knowledge of the girl to paint her as an unfortunate victim that only needed a hug because I had met the girl and she was a bitter sarcastic mess and didn't seem inclined to change that. But she was also dealing with so much shit that when she was hunted down by a group of serial killers and lost control for one second that ended up driving her sister (and only real pillar of support) away, she decided that going into the worst prison on earth was the best solution even after she had saved the city from a mind destroying plague…and no one really tried to convince her otherwise.

Hell, the only reason I was considering adding her in the first place beyond how useful healers were and the fact she was Crystal's cousin, was the fact I'm not really sure she ever had the chance to be her own person. Between the overly controlling mother, mentally absent father, and a sister constantly hitting her with an emotion shifting aura, she'd be a mess even without the hour spent in hospitals dealing with everything that went on in there.

If Amy joined my Peerage I would NOT allow others to keep breaking her down for their own benefit. And I made sure everyone here knew both that and my reasons for it – minus the possible future events because of the geas.

To say that went over well would be…

"I WILL NOT TRADE MY DAUGHTER AS A TOOL FOR SOME VILLIAN! I'D RATHER HER STAY DEAD THAN BE SOME PAWN OF YOURS!"

"Carol, you can't mean that–"

"SHUT UP NEIL! DON'T THINK SHE'S ONLY AFTER AMY, I'VE SEEN HER LOOKING AT CRYSTAL TOO! SHE EVEN ADMITTED IT!"

"Mom!"

"Aunt Carol – you can't mean…"

…a total fucking lie.

So while I ignored New Wave publicly imploding, I turned to deal with the other interested party. My Peerage.

"So what do you think?" I asked heavily.

"About what? Raising the dead? Since when is that something you can do." Clover asked bluntly.

"It's technically what I did with Sam. She was going to die otherwise." I replied, making sure no one was close enough to hear us talking. Don't know if it was really needed…New Wave was being really loud. "But no. It's more about if I should do this." I held up a hand to stop my first three Pawns from talking. "And before you say it, I know this is Crystal's cousin we're talking about. But this will get a lot of attention on us. We're not talking about small time gangs. If it gets out we can bring people back from the dead, a lot of powerful people are going to throw their weight around. Make demands even if we can't actually do what they want."

"You only have so many pieces left." Sam realized.

I nodded. "That's part of it. But not all, people are going to think they have the right to who I bring back. And even if I felt like it that doesn't mean I can."

"I'm guessing you at least need a body." Gloria said.

"Yeah, but the soul is the more important thing. I can't bring someone back if there is nothing to bring back, you know?"

"You already pissed off the Empire just to get me and Gloria, why make a big deal about this?" Carl asked surprisingly reasonably considering our last conversation.

"No offence, but pissing off a gang by poaching a random Tinker that hasn't really done anything and his sister joining up doesn't really compare to bringing back someone from the dead. And that's if they ever figure out you were the Tinker and not Gloria." I raised an eyebrow at him. "Besides I thought you weren't my biggest fan?"

He shrugged. "I'm not. But I had some time to talk to the others between running around and watching you get in a fist fight with something the size of an Endbringer." He took a deep breath. "And I owe you an apology. I thought you just wanted disposable minions to do whatever you wanted or useful tools like the Empire. But if you did you would have forced us to fight with you instead of having us hang back. And you definitely wouldn't be asking us if we should bring back Panacea because it's dangerous. You'd just do it."

"So yeah, I still don't trust you. But you're not as bad as I thought. I'll give you a chance to fuck up before I grab Gloria and head for the hills."

"Gee, thanks. The faith is overwhelming." I deadpanned. I shook my head again and looked around. "But seriously, Countries are going to come calling once this gets out."

"They're going to do that anyway. You fought off a Kaiju basically by yourself and like three or four other people. Might as well have some of them back off because they don't want to get on the bad side of the most famous healer in the world." he pointed out.

"Besides, who cares about countries? If they try pushing us around we'll just kick them to the curb!" Alex declared, trying to inject a little positivity into the situation.

I made eye-contact with everyone. "Okay then, no objections? Cause from the sound of it if I do this, we're making an enemy out of New Wave. Possibly the PRT when they demand something and I tell them no."

"I say go for it."

"Same here."

"No issues from me."

"You gave me a chance, why not Panacea?"

"Just get on with it."

No one disagreed. Okay, that was good. Now to figure out what to do about the still arguing heroes. Especially now that they had broken out into three main groups. Brandish's, who refused to even consider the possibility if it put Amy under my control. Lady Photon's, who along with a few of the Protectorate and PRT were arguing that I should but I would need to submit myself to a bunch of regulations and testing – basically being put under the government's thumb in the process. And the one's saying I should just revive Amy and let that be the end of it, pretty much made up by the younger members of New Wave and surprisingly Paladin.

Although one person in particular was missing…

A hand firmly wrapping around my forearm startled me out of my thoughts as an absolutely miserable looking Victoria Dallon pulled me around so I was partially hiding her from the others still arguing.

"I heard what you guys said at the end. So you'll do it? You'll bring Amy back and make her one of your Pawns or whatever?"

I was probably going to make Amy a Bishop. I hadn't exactly had time to sit down with Carl and go over exactly what reincarnating as a Devil had done to his powers, but on the extremely unlikely chance he kept the connection to his Shard he would be relying on his own demonic power to do the weirder stuff for his abilities. Amy would be the same and could only benefit from the expanded pool of magic.

But I doubt Vicky really cared about the specifics.

"Yeah. Just trying to figure out how to do it without getting blasted or stabbed with a lightsaber in the process."

"You can teleport home right? Can you take–" Vicky swallowed, "–take Amy's body there and do it or does it have to be here?"

"Yeah, but I don't think your family is just going to let me–"

"Fuck them." She interupted. "Ames is– she's dead and there's a way to bring her back but they want to argue about it. We'll distract them, you get her home, and please – please – just bring her back." her voice cracked at the end and I sighed for what felt like the millionth time today.

Seriously. Fuck today and the whore it rode in on. Fuck its horse too.

Between adding two new members to my peerage – now three – fighting off Godzilla of all fucking things, and saving the city from becoming a flaming crater in the ground, I should have been riding high.

Instead I was just tired.

Vicky flew off to start the distraction by getting up in her mother's face which triggered Crystal to do the same. At that point everyone else was too busy trying to keep a full on free-for-all fight breaking out to do more than occasionally glance at my group, even as we shifted closer until Amy's body was in range of where I could include her in the teleportation circle.

There were cries of surprise as the red ring burst into existence, but no one managed to stop me from finishing the spell and a heartbeat later we were all back in the main hall of my home.

Then I removed one red Bishop piece from my storage space and pressed it to the body, watching as it was slowly absorbed.

"Welcome to the group, Amelia Dallon." I muttered formally. "You're one of us now. I hope your time here is better than how you joined."