I glared up at the cheerfully blue sky.

Gods or beings close enough that the difference was negligible might exist, but this was proof that they were malicious bastards. Would it really have been too much for no one to interrupt our shopping trip?

"I can assure you it won't take long." My self-proclaimed 'rival' continued, heedless of the annoyance he was causing me.

"Sorry, we've got a lot of stuff here and my mom needs the car back in a few minutes. Maybe some other time?" I could have called Gloria an angel. Too bad for heaven though, I got her first.

Too bad for me, Paladin couldn't take the hint we didn't want to talk. "Oh, no worries. We can walk and talk at the same time. If you want I could help carry something?"

"No thanks." I denied immediately. "Now if you don't mind, we have to get home."

"Ah, that's kinda what I wanted to talk about…"

I sighed and partially turned to face the white-clad hero. "Look, if you need help getting home I'm sure the Protectorate can give you directions. If they can't help you for some reason I'm sure the police will help if you ask them nicely."

My peerage members chuckled at the joke but to my mild annoyance, so did Paladin.

"Heh, funny Rias. No, I meant about the people staying in your home." he pressed on. "The other heroes are really worried about Panacea and how you're not letting anyone talk to her. I also overheard some agents talking about how they're worried you might have kidnapped the Mayor's niece. Oh, but don't worry I don't believe that one."

"You're not really good about outing people's secret identities, are you?" Amy scoffed with a raised eyebrow.

"Huh? What do you mean?"

She waved a hand at me, "You said that Panacea was at her house, but that would only make sense if Rias was Lucifer. So you just outed her."

"It's not like she really hides it, though." Gloria muttered low enough that only we could hear.

"A-ah, sorry about that! It's just that I've always called her Rias, well I usually called her Rias-tan cause it's cuter that way, but some of the guys from PR said not to use things like that cause it might imply I support the ABB somehow? I don't really get it, but I've been trying. Anyways, sorry again. I guess it's a good thing no one else was around to hear that?" Paladin suddenly spewed word vomit at my Bishop. "And you're new, but if you knew Rias was Lucifer you're probably part of her Peerage, right? Maybe another Pawn? What's your name? But all we want is a wellness check on Panacea. She was really hurt the last time I saw her and my bosses just want to make sure she's okay. Maybe convince her to come in for some tests to prove there isn't any lasting damage from her injuries. I mean, I told them there wouldn't be, but they just want to be sure, you know?"

D-did he not recognize Amy?

'You're wielder sure is something, White.' Ddraig chuckled at his rival. 'Does he really not realize?'

'I don't want to talk about it.' Albion actually whined.

Part of me wondered what Paladin was getting up to that made the White Dragon sound so pitiful, but the rest of me simply wanted nothing to do with him.

Amy seemed to be surprised that Paladin didn't recognise her, too. I mean, sure she usually hid in the robe and scarf combo that made up her Panacea costume so most people wouldn't recognise her at a glance, but for him to not notice who she was after directly talking to her…

"Uh, Amy. Bishop." She stammered a bit, a little lost at the sudden rush of words.

"Well Miss Bishop, it's nice to meet you!" Paladin gave her a bright smile and turned back to me. "So, yeah, if you could have Panacea give us a call sometime?"

'He can't be serious.' I mentally directed to Ddraig, who just started cackling. It looked like my partner wasn't going to be much help in retaining my sanity.

He seemed to be enjoying himself though.

"You know what, fine, I'll ask her later." I sighed and put a hand on my forehead to try physically holding back the headache that was forming. "And it's not like I was stopping her from talking to anyone. But if she doesn't want to talk to the PRT I'm not going to make her."

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I pointedly did not look at Amy when I said this, because I didn't want the two brain cells bouncing around in Paladin's head to suddenly make the connection, but the small smile I saw out of the corner of my eye almost made up for the headache.

"Excellent! Another step complete in the eternal mission for Justice!" The hero cheered. "Oh by the way, do you think–" And then he was interrupted by a ringing sound.

"Uh, one sec."

While Paladin was busy with his call I subtly nudged Amy and Gloria off to the side and started preparing to teleport away. While Paladin didn't seem to be trying to do more than annoy us, the fact that everyone else had not so subtly cleared out still had me on edge.

"Sorry, citizens, but I have to go. It seems some dastardly villains are attempting to rob a bank. But don't worry, I'll be there to thwart them!" Paladin declared as his holographic wings popped out of his back. "We'll have to finish this conversation later, my rival!"

I'd rather we didn't.

But if that meant he left, I wasn't going to complain too much.

"Good luck with that." I said, mostly to be polite.

Paladin grinned and made a pose. "Appreciated, but I'm a hero, we make our own luck!"

And with that he took off and headed off into the city, quickly vanishing over a rooftop.

"You know that last line wasn't half bad." Gloria commented. "Too bad he tries too hard the rest of the time."

"Please, he sounds like an extra from a Mouse Protector cartoon." Amy scoffed.

"Yeah, it's kinda funny."

"It's painful is what you mean."

"Oh come on Amy," Gloria said, giving the grumpy Bishop a nudge. "Don't be upset just because he didn't recognise you. It was kinda cute. In a derpy golden retriever kinda way."

Someone please help, my Pawn is defective and I don't know if I can fix her.

"Alright, come on." I said, pulling our shopping bags from the cart and dumping them in my storage space. "Let's get back home before–"

Naturally, that was when a man in a black bodysuit with a red, demonic looking mask with two stripes of green running down it suddenly appeared in front of me, holding a grenade out to me almost like he was presenting me with a gift.

My eyes barely had time to widen before the world exploded with light and a wall of force slammed into me.

A few seconds later I groaned and picked myself up off the street.

That definitely hadn't been a normal grenade. Besides the fragments any one of my peerage would have been able to mostly ignore an explosion that small.

A quick check confirmed that both Amy and Gloria were…fine. They didn't look hurt – more scuffed than anything – but they obviously felt that blast more than I did and were struggling to breathe thanks to getting the wind knocked out of them.

But why the hell–

The man in black appeared again and now that I had more then half a second to actually look at him I recognized him as Oni Lee, the second of the ABB's public capes and serial teleporting suicide bomber.

I instinctively moved to cover my Pawn and Bishop even though that didn't mean much when my opponent could teleport instantly and glared at Lee.

Something Oni Lee just ignored as he stared blankly at me.

"Well? What do you want?!" I snarled. "Or is the ABB just looking to pick a fight?"

"This is a reminder," Lee said placidly. "That while you might have strength, it is the ABB that will control the Bay. Play house with the Capes you gather as you wish, but should we give the order you will obey."

"Or what?" I growled, the Boosted Gear appearing on my arm, gem glowing thanks to my heightened emotions.

Oni Lee gave a signal and about twenty people in gang colors carrying guns rushed out of the surroundings to surround us, some of them pointing their weapons at Amy and Gloria.

"Then some of the people surrounding you may suffer 'accidents'. They don't seem to share your durability after all. Do we have an understanding?"

I thought I was mad before. Now my blood was practically boiling from anger.

"Oh, I understand."

I understood I was going to have to crush the ABB for this.

-o-

[Crystal Pelham POV]

It took a lot of self control for Crystal to not stomp through the mansion slamming doors after the mildly disastrous call with her family.

It had started off…okay.

A little tense because no one wanted to address the elephant in the room regarding Amy's situation, made a bit easier by her cousin deciding to just not be there. Which was another problem in Crystal's opinion, but not one she was ready to push just yet.

There was some smalltalk, some meaningless chatter about how people had been over the last day or two, which inevitably revealed to the adults that the younger members of New Wave hadn't actually been in Brockton Bay for a week and tempers started flaring.

Aunt Carol had called them all irresponsible for allowing a villain to kidnap them without even attempting to let someone else know where they were in case things went bad, which had Vicky snapping back about whether that included Amy or not since no one had even asked how she was doing.

That had gone over about as well as you would expect and everyone started speaking over the others for a while. More than once Crystal had thought about just ending the call and trying again some other day, but she also didn't want to keep freeloading in Rias's house. So she stuck things out.

Tempers settled back down to a low simmer while Eric told their parents about the week they spent in Rias's mountain house, doing a good job of jumping from topic to topic so no one could start arguing again. Especially since it was obvious all the adults had done was either go to work or spend the day working with the PRT to break into Rias's house. As much as he hated it, as the baby of the family everyone did treat him a little differently, so he could actually tell the story without people talking over him. Most of the time…

Those tempers flared again when at the end of Eric's recap the first thing her mom demanded was for them to meet up so they could all get checked out after getting into the fight with the Cult's parahumans and to check for any Master influences.

She had probably been concerned about them getting into a fight on their own, but at the time all Crystal could think was that they were accusing Rias of Mastering them all and lashed out. Vicky had also demanded to know who they would even go to since the only healers in the Bay besides Othala were in Rias's group.

And outside of a truce, none of New Wave were going to trust a Nazi that was part of the same gang that had killed Aunt Jess. Maybe not even then.

More shouting happened and the call ended when Vicky grabbed the phone to shout more directly into it, only to crush it in her hands accidentally.

The last Crystal had seen of her, she was off begging Carl to take a look into fixing it.

That still left her pissed off and fuming from the call, though. And she decided she needed to find her friends and hopefully decompress for a bit. Spend some time around people not dealing with any kind of drama and hope some of that calm rubbed off on her.

So the heroine was a little surprised to see that not only was Rias back from her shopping trip, she, Amy, and Gloria all looked like they had gotten into a fight while they were out there. Something she might have expected from Rias, but definitely not from Amy.

"What happened?"

"The ABB jumped us outside the store." Gloria answered quietly. "Oni Lee told Rias personally that she needed to stay out of their way or they would target us."

Crystal's eyes widened at that.

She knew the bigger gangs would break the unwritten rules if they thought they could get away with it. More than one independent cape, both hero and villain, had quietly disappeared after annoying the ABB or E88. But usually they were more discreet about it than announcing they would kill a Cape's friends if they didn't toe the line in public like that.

"Are you serious? No, sorry, obviously you are." Crystal apologized, Rias looking angrier than she had ever seen the other girl was proof enough for that. "What are you going to do about it?"

As she looked to the red-head Crystal couldn't help but shiver at the look in her friend's eyes. For all that Rias came off as a trollish airhead sometimes, it was hard to forget that first fight where she casually tore through half the heroes in the city like it was nothing.

"First I'm going to make a few plans." The devilish villain declared, gritting her teeth and glaring out a window towards the city. "Then I'm going to burn the ABB to the ground…"