When I had told Crystal of my intention to crush one of the major criminal gangs in the city I had half expected her to try and convince me to not do it. I was not expecting her to call her brother and start pitching ideas on how to help.

Apparently everyone was in a violent mood today. I guess their call didn’t go very well.

Unfortunately, heightened emotions and a lack of any actual information about where the ABB gathered meant we weren’t exactly productive. It was one thing to know certain businesses paid ‘protection’ fees to certain gangs. It was another to do anything about it without hurting regular people.

None of us had a convenient list of strongholds or meeting places we could crash and the people that might have such things – the rest of New Wave and the PRT – probably wouldn’t give them to us if we asked nicely.

As time dragged on, the lack of any realistic plans to take down one of the biggest criminal groups in the city that had been firmly entrenched for years gave Crystal and Eric enough time to calm down enough to start asking why the ABB had suddenly decided to declare war on my group when they were at the weakest they had been since Lung took over, considering the same man was currently held prisoner by the PRT.

“It’s probably a combination of things.” I grumbled as I glared over a city map, trying to convince it to give me the answers I wanted by sheer willpower. “They’re a bit desperate thanks to their leader being captured, especially because without him they don’t have a good way to hold off the Empire if they make a big push for territory. Oni Lee is a good threat and can cover a large area, but he’s one person and the Empire has enough capes that they can afford to wear him out by making him fight continuously until he makes a mistake they can capitalize on.”

“There’s also the fact that my group is a little bit of a gray zone considering despite being ‘villains’ we keep hanging out with you guys in New Wave. The ABB is definitely gearing up to make a jailbreak on Lung and want us out of the picture. Threatening us and making us bunker down for a few days would be a good way to do that.”

“I’d be willing to bet at least part of it is just ingrained arrogance, though.” I sighed. “When you can threaten people constantly and get away with it, it probably becomes second nature to do so.”

Crystal grimaced at that but eventually nodded. “I guess that makes sense.”

“What I want to know,” Amy muttered, “Is how they knew where we would be. I get Oni Lee showing up quick, he’s a teleporter, but the rest of them? There were too many of them with too many weapons for that.”

“You think someone tipped them off where we would be?” Gloria asked.

“I mean Paladin showed up really quick and wasted a bunch of our time. He doesn’t hesitate to break the unwritten rules around Rias either.” My Bishop pointed out.

Eric raised an eyebrow at his cousin. “So you think he led the ABB to you guys? Isn’t that a bit of a stretch? He is a Protectorate hero, you know.”

“You mean the same people that have been trying to break into Rias’s house and capture her for committing the horrible crime of saving my life?”

“...I mean that’s not exactly what they are doing but it doesn’t make them sound good, huh?”

I decided to step in before things got sidetracked. “As much as I don’t want to defend Paladin, I don’t think he was working with the ABB. If anything, I think we saved him from getting ambushed.”

“Huh, what do you mean?”

“Amy was right about there being too many gang members for it to be a quick response, but what if they weren’t there for us? What if they followed Paladin so they could take him out and we just got in the way?”

Crystal frowned at me. “Why would the ABB target Paladin, and even if they did, why would they hold back just because they saw you there?”

“Because they are probably going to try and spring Lung soon,” I pointed out. “And Paladin’s power is a pretty good short term counter. Taking him out would give them a much better chance of breaking their boss out of his cell, but Paladin got called away before they could attack. Oni Lee could catch up to him easily but if he got hurt in a fight then I doubt the ABB could actually get close enough to Lung’s cell. So instead he decided to threaten us to save face with his minions.”

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The faces of everyone else darkened as they considered my theory. No one liked the idea of Lung escaping when he was finally taken off the streets, and even worse, none of us were really in a position to do much about it.

Part of that came from my villainous status, but even more came from the perception around our ages. No matter what, the PRT would take the involvement of a bunch of teenagers as a slap in the face. Even if we were on better terms I had a feeling Piggot and Armsmaster would tell us that they had everything handled and then shove us at the Wards or younger Protectorate members to handle while the ‘Adults’ dealt with the important things.

“So what, we just do nothing then?” Gloria grumbled. “We can’t find a place to hit them, so they just get to walk off until they try to break out Lung?”

I shook my head. “Not quite. We can’t find a place to hit the gang directly, but we do know of a front they use that’s important enough that Lung had to respond when it got hit.”

“We do?”

“Yep, the Ruby Dreams casino. Lung was chasing after the thieves that robbed it on the night he was arrested.” It was easy enough to check online and find a few posts about the robbery. PHO even had a few gang members on obvious throwaway accounts boasting about how they were going to make the robbers pay before the thread got locked down.

“Okay, so the casino is a front for the ABB.” Crystal acknowledged. “But what do we do about it?”

“It’s simple, we burn it to the ground!”

““Rias, NO!””

I winced as several people in the room shouted at once.

“Why not?!” I didn’t whine, but I admittedly came closer than I’d like.

“Because that’s arson?!” Crystal exclaimed.

“And will put dozens of normal people out of a job?!” Amy added on.

“Or because that will get the Protectorate to drop everything and attack us?!” Gloria finished.

At that point only Eric hadn’t chimed in and when everyone looked at him, he just shrugged. “What? I think it would be awesome. Let’s do it!”

“Idiot.” Crystal rolled her eyes at her brother. “But seriously, Rias, what are you thinking?”

“I was thinking if we can’t figure out where to find them, we make a big obvious attack on a location the ABB has responded to already and make them come to us. Either we give them a solid black eye and buy some time to find another location or they try to stop us and we take a bunch of them down and maybe even cause issues for their planes to jailbreak Lung if we can take down Lee or even just injure him a bit.”

“Okay, that’s a bit more reasonable. But you still can’t burn down a casino!”

“Aww, not even a little?”

“I mean…” Everyone exchanged glances and it said a lot about how pissed our group was that they were actually considering it.

So I decided to give them a little push.

“How about this? We don’t burn down the building, but instead we’ll…” I said and started laying out my new plan. This one got much fewer protests and eventually got a green light from the heroic members of our group.

-o-

The Ruby Dreams casino wasn’t actually in Brockton Bay, but was pretty close by. Something I was grateful for because that meant no one besides my Peerage knew that I flubbed the teleport and appeared several miles away from where we wanted to go.

It was easy enough for a quick flight where we needed to go, but the lack of people meant that the police or PRT shouldn't know where we were just yet. Assuming they didn’t have some sort of Thinker tracking me after the whole cult thing…which wouldn’t actually surprise me if they did.

There wasn’t much I could do about that though, so I decided to focus on the present.

I landed close to the front entrance and started walking up to the doors while Sam, Alex, Clover, and Gloria fanned out behind me.

Amy didn’t want to be seen doing something obviously villainous and Carl was more interested in getting his workshop up and running. It was a bit of a bummer I wouldn’t have my full peerage for my first intentional outing doing cape stuff, but honestly even just my four Pawns were already overkill.

I took one glance back over my shoulder just to make sure none of them were getting second thoughts about this, but between the eager grins on Alex and Clover’s face, the angry frown on Gloria’s, and the serious mein on Sam’s, it was clear they were going to follow my lead.

Okay then, game time.

After one more deep breath, I lifted up a leg and kicked the large casino doors open. Necessary? Not really, but it did a good job of grabbing nearly everyone’s attention really quickly.

“Good evening, Ladies and Gentlemen!” I shouted over the sounds of the bells and whistles of the gambling machines. “I apologize for the interruption but we have some business to discuss with the manager. If you all could follow…” I paused and gave Alex a pleading look, hoping she changed her mind, only to have that hope crushed when her smile just widened. “...Yellow Devil, to the side where you will be safe until our business is concluded.” I sighed. “Green Devil will be going around to make sure no one is missing, while Red and Blue will be accompanying me.”

And with that I did my best to avoid cringing at the terrible names my Peerage had decided to stick with and made my way towards the Staff area where I eventually found an overweight, balding man in the office sweating at the fact he was alone with three ‘parahumans’ presumably robbing his building. Curiously he wasn’t Asian. I wasn’t sure if that was intentional by the ABB to make their front a little more deniable, or if Lung didn’t actually care about nationality as long as he got paid.

“Hello, Mr Johanson.” I greeted the man as I let the office door swing closed with a loud thunk. “I know you probably aren’t very happy to have us here but I just need you to do one thing and then we will get out of your…” I paused as I looked at the thin wisps of hair on the man’s head. “...hands.”

“L-look, I don’t want any trouble, I can give you the money we have in the vault, but after the Undersiders robbed us the other month we don’t keep that much on site anymore.” Johanson mumbled as he raised his trembling hands.

“Oh, don’t worry. We’re not here to rob you.” I assured the man. “We just want you to call out your ABB friends and then we’ll be on our way.”

“B-but we don’t have any ties to the A-ABB!”

“You don’t have to pretend. We aren’t the cops or anything like that. Just give them a call and say that Lucifer is calling them out for their threat the other day and we’ll leave.” I said again, adding just a touch of hypnosis to move things along.

“If I could, I would in a heartbeat. But I really have no way of contacting them. We aren’t associated with the Asian Bad Boyz in any fashion!”

Wait. What?!

I was just about to press him for details when a concerned looking Sam opened the door with a cellphone in her hand.

“Hey, Lucifer? We have a problem…”