I took a bite of my sandwich, frowned and forced myself to swallow. Grape jelly was really the worst of all options. I’d have preferred strawberry, but someone had eaten all my other jars while my group had been in the mountains.
“If you don’t like it you could always make something different.” Alex pointed out while happily eating her own abomination. Peanut butter and pickles were not a valid combination, no matter what she said.
“I would’ve, but we ran out of sliced ham after Carl’s sandwich and Amy’s been hogging the marshmallow fluff.” Said grumpy Bishop actually grabbed the jar of spreadable sugar and hugged it defensively. Amy had a massive sweet tooth, who would have guessed? “And anything else requires actual cooking, which I don’t want to do right now.
“...does this mean–” I made a shushing gesture at the child intruder without looking at her.
I still wasn’t dealing with her just yet.
‘How mature of you’
Shut it.
“Besides, grape isn’t bad, it's just objectively worse than all the others.”
Clover slammed her hands on the counter and jumped to her feet. “You take that back! Grape is at least top three!”
“Raspberry, Strawberry, Apple.” I countered immediately.
“Top five then!”
“Blackberry and Cherry.”
“Blackberry and raspberry are practically the same thing!”
I smirked in victory when Gloria and Vicky looked at my Pawn in outrage. It turned out both of them loved raspberries and the thought of them being considered the same as blackberries was enough to kickstart a five-way argument as Clover tried to defend herself while Eric and Crystal teamed up to join in with their own opinions.
Leaving that to simmer in the background, I turned back to Alex. “So yeah, the sandwich is fine. But it’s literally ‘fine’. I’ll eat it, but I won’t be happy with it.”
“Couldn’t you just teleport to a grocery store?” Carl deadpanned.
“Yeah, but I don’t want to?”
Everyone not distracted by the blackberry argument laughed at that while Carl just grumbled something as he stuffed the rest of his sandwich in his mouth and said he was heading to his workshop.
Which really meant he was heading to the unused garage he was slowly filling with the stuff he needed for his tinkering.
That kicked off several members of our group heading out to do their own thing after asking if I needed them to hang around. I didn’t, at least not yet, so all my Pawns took off to unpack and settle in after our trip. All the New Wave kids decided to stick around though.
I had my fun, and I couldn’t keep putting off dealing with the intruder forever. So with a sigh I turned and faced the twelve-year old that broke into my house.
“Alright, I’ve put this off long enough. What’s your deal?”
“Oh, um, does this mean you’ll hear me out?” The preteen asked.
I raised an eyebrow at her. “Did you think I would kick you out when you went through the effort of breaking into the house of a known villain, one the PRT had presumably been trying and failing to do the same for over a week, without finding out why?”
“I guess not…” She murmured weakly.
Well now I just felt bad.
“Okay, let’s start over. My name is Rias Gremory. Why did you break into my house?”
“My…my name is Dinah, uh, Dinah Alcott. And the numbers said I would be safe if I stayed here.” She answered which had all the heroes perk up.
“Numbers?”“Safe from what?” Vicky and Crystal asked at the same time.
“When I ask certain questions I can see the future. I also get a number in a percent about how likely something is to happen.” Dinah explained. “We were going over how sometimes Parahumans get forced into gangs or kidnapped in school and I asked how likely that was going to happen to me.” She started tearing up. “It was around thirty percent then, and every time I asked it just kept getting higher!”
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“Did you tell anyone about that? Your parents or the PRT?” Vicky asked, softly placing a hand in front of the girl. Close enough to reassure her, but not actually touching and making her feel trapped.
Dinah didn’t grab it, but she did calm down a bit.
“I-I tried telling my parents, but they wouldn’t listen. Even when the headaches got really bad. I wanted to call the PRT or my uncle but the numbers got really bad when I asked so I didn’t do that. I don’t know why though.”
Vicky frowned. “Why would it matter if you called your uncle?”
“He’s the mayor.”
“Wha–, really?!”
“I do, don’t worry about it for now. Just keep going.” I said regarding Dinah’s previous statement, which got a few reactions. Vicky in particular looked like she wanted to grill me immediately but Crystal gave her a look that said leave it for later. Then she gave me one that promised pain if I didn’t explain later.
“R-right. I kept trying to s-stop it, but no matter what the numbers for someone trying to kidnap me went up every day. B-but then I overheard someone at school saying the heroes were still trying to get into your house after you did something to Panacea, a-and I asked if I would be safe here.” She ducked her head. “It was 83.592% likely I’d be safe.”
“Only eighty percent even with Rias’s bullshit magic defenses? Then again a kid broke in so I guess they aren’t that great.” Amy chimed in.
Dinah ducked her head. “Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. I know they’re kinda bad right now.” I assured her. Still, eighty percent was pretty low for literal magic wards when only one other person outside our group knew magic existed.
…of course that person was Paladin which meant he no doubt spread it throughout the Protectorate and PRT, which meant any moles the gangs had in the local office would know too.
So in short everyone knew. Fuck.
In that case eighty percent was actually really damn good in the short term but would only get worse as people started to start trying things just to see if they worked.
Oh well, I already knew I needed to make better defenses anyway.
“So were you just hiding out in Rias’s house alone for a few days?” Eric asked. “That must’ve been boring.”
“Kinda, but I just watched tv and browsed PHO.”
“You brought a computer?”
“Uh, no…someone left the password on a sticky note next to the monitor? I didn’t touch anything else but…”
I narrowed my eyes and glared towards the door Gloria had left through. She was the only one that would leave stuff like that lying around.
“That’s okay.” Vicky assured her. “And not to change the subject, but does anyone know you’re here? Your family? Or maybe a friend?”
Dinah shook her head no.
“Do you want to?”
“76.823 percent chance something bad happens to my parents if I call them now.” Dinah said, tearing up again.
“Okay, then we’ll hold off on that for a bit.” I said. “I assume you picked out a room while you were here?”
“Ah, no, I was just staying on the couch…”
“Then let’s get you set up and we’ll think of what to do later. If you need anything we don’t have here I can teleport somewhere and grab it.”
“...okay.”
Everyone made to leave, but Crystal held me back by my arm.
“Don’t think you wormed out of explaining why going to the PRT was a bad idea.” She whispered. “We’re going to have a talk about that later.”
Ah dammit. I’d hoped she’d forget.
-o-
“And you’re sure of this?” Director Piggot demanded into the phone.
The rest of the room couldn’t hear the answer but going by the expression on the corpulent woman’s face whatever was being said wasn’t making her happy.
“Looks like the bean counters aren’t going to sign off on the pizza party.” Assault joked quietly, trying to lighten the mood and at least getting a small smirk from Battery. The rest of the gathered Protectorate had smaller reactions. Velocity just rolling his eyes while Armsmaster and his second in command, Miss Militia remained professionally stoic.
None of them were having a particularly good week.
Not after they were getting eviscerated online for failing to really contribute during the Godzilla incident and the resulting disappearance of Panacea, though thankfully the exact reason she had been taken away hadn’t leaked.
The last thing they needed were people flooding the city trying to get a shot at a way to come back from the dead.
But the netizens were less than impressed with the fact the Protectorate had so far failed to retrieve Panacea after the fact. Something that would only get worse if they found out Lucifer and the group she had accumulated weren’t even in the building for who knows how long.
Many of them were even calling for Piggot to step down for it.
“You think they’ll finally send us some backup?” Assault asked a bit more seriously.
“Doubt it.” Velocity muttered. “Never got anything when we only had one giant lizard running around. And the higher ups have Paladin’s report. Panacea is probably perfectly fine, they just care about getting to Gremory before anyone else does. As long as we’re keeping her locked in her house they don’t care if we can’t get inside as long as no one else can.”
“You shouldn’t be using her real name.” Miss Militia scolded, but the speedster just shrugged.
“Don’t think it really matters at this point.” The internet had blown Lucifer’s identity wide open after the Godzilla incident. And once the genie was out, there was no going back in the bottle.
Hopefully the redhead didn’t mind too much. She didn’t seem to care about her identity that much from previous interactions, but you could never really know how a person would take being unmasked…
“The real issue is we aren’t keeping her locked in her house though.” Battery added. “The troopers were saying she was spotted in another town a few hours ago and we know she can teleport. Anyone know anything about that?”
There were a few head shakes. All of them were busy enough with local issues that they couldn’t investigate a random rumor that had nothing to do with the city. Though the fact Armsmaster remained silent was a surprise to all of them. Normally he was the first to look into new issues that popped up.
The tensing on his jaw said that he did know something too, just that he wasn’t interested in volunteering information at the moment.
“Hey, bossman. You hear any–” Assault’s question was interrupted by Director Piggot slamming the phone down on the cradle.
“Bastards!” She spat, glaring down at the device before shifting that glare to the gathered heroes.
“Something wrong, Director?” Miss Militia asked diplomatically.
The Director took a breath but it did little to calm her down. “Lucifer and the ‘Peerage’ have just been given a pending S-Class rating by the main office after the girl demolished a small town on national television. The only reason it's not active is because the fight was due to a parahuman cult that had taken over the town and was in the process of looking to expand.”
Everyone save Armsmaster was visibly stunned by the news. The fact the leader of the local Protectorate simply crossed his arms and clenched his hands so hard they could hear the servos in his power armor told them he already knew about some of this.
“How the f–” Assault cut off as Battery nudged him in the ribs. “S-Class?”
S-Class ratings were reserved for threats that were considered natural disasters rather than individuals. Even Lung, leader of the ABB and someone who had fought and defeated the entire Protectorate roster at the time by himself only had an A-Rank.
“Pending. Which means as long as she’s content to keep playing house with her friends we will not be receiving reinforcements to deal with her.” Piggot snarled. “Apparently there isn’t–” she was interrupted as Triumph, the youngest member to join the Protectorate before Paladin burst through the door.
“There better be a good reason for interrupting this meeting.” The Director warned the lion-themed cape.
“Sorry, ma’am, but we just got an alert about Dinah.” Triumph rushed out.
“And while I understand you’re worried about your cousin and hope to goodness she turns up safe,” Director Piggot said in a deliberate voice. “I fail to see why that is my problem. Especially when I’m trying to keep the city standing while half my forces are tied up trying to break into a fortified mansion or spreading themselves thin on patrols with very little rest and no backup.”
“So please, explain to me why this alert of yours is important enough to interrupt my meeting.”
Triumph visibly swallowed after being on the receiving end of his superior’s anger, but steeled himself anyway. “Some of the neighbors around the Gremory mansion allowed our agents access to their security cameras. One of them caught Dinah heading towards the building a few days ago and she never left.”
There was a stunned silence in the room as everyone contemplated the fact the Mayor’s niece had gone missing on the property of an S-Class threat they’d been unable to access for several days. Which meant she was either a Parahuman that had an ability that let her get through the defenses. Was smart or lucky enough to find a gap even their best couldn’t. Or had been deliberately invited inside.
“Well…fuck.” Assault summed the situation up. Battery didn’t even attempt to admonish him.