As much as I would like to say that I descended on the ABB like an avenging angel – though in my case it was more like the satanic consequences of their actions – most of my time was spent running from explosion site to explosion site with little to show for it.
Either the ABB had set the bombs in advance or just cleared out once they set them off, the result was the same. I was simply too late to actually catch any of the ones who mattered and grill them on where their leaders were.
That wasn’t to say I didn’t catch a few of them.
A few times I was close enough to an explosion that I managed to get there while the gang members were still hanging around looking at the explosion's effects. One was some kind of hot pink fire that was managing to burn concrete and another that had made the entire area look like it had been covered in vantablack. The second actually made my brain itch every time I tried focusing on one object I’d manage to pick out.
But none of them were anything but the lowest tier of grunts. Guys that had basically met someone at a street corner, were given a bomb, and were told where to set it off. They could point me back to where they were armed, but obviously the other gang members were long gone by that point. I just left the gang members beat up, unconscious, and tied up on the roadside for someone to pick them up later when the city wasn’t exploding.
After flying around for a couple hours even finding that much became rarer too. Thankfully, the bombings also eventually tapered off allowing first responders to actually manage the crisis, but that left me in kind of a bind. The ABB had accomplished their goals before going into hiding instead of having Lung rampage through a few streets to let everyone know he was free again.
Good for the city, bad for me having any hope of tracking them down today. Especially if the PRT decided they needed to make a statement about a villain like me flying around during all this. I’d have liked to give them the benefit of doubt that they wouldn’t, but that was before they practically besieged my house because I had the audacity to save someone’s life.
Well, more because I showed off the ability to bring someone back from the dead and people got greedy, but still…
I shook those thoughts off for now and teleported to a random spot in the docks hoping to find another group of gangsters before calling it quits and heading back to the girls. But instead I found an already bombed out building being swarmed by…was Wiley seriously fucking robbing stores in the middle of this shit?!
‘Hold on a sec, partner, look again.’ Ddraig cautioned before I saw red and jumped down to dismantle the bots below me.
Part of me really didn’t want to but I trusted Ddraig and took a moment to reel myself in a bit before looking back down at the scene.
The building’s front looked like it had melted before resolidifying in a bizarre new shape like something out of a Dali painting and I could see about half a dozen of Wiley’s Mettools milling around it, hitting the melted wall with their little pickaxes while a pair of Sniper Joes were keeping the handful of bystanders from getting too close. At first glance they looked like a repeat of Wiley's earlier mall heist, but now that I was looking closer I could see some people trapped inside the building where the Mettools were carefully excavating. A flash a little further down the street drew my eye to another group of Wiley’s minions surrounding a smashed up car. The vehicle had obviously been in a crash, the mangled front end signifying something had run into it before taking off, and the driver was still trapped inside.
Wiley’s robots were huddled around the driver side door, carefully shooting their little energy balls at the door frame to free the man trapped inside and making no moves to hurt or threaten the man.
Wiley was doing the same thing I was. Spreading out and helping the people affected by the bombings just like I had my Pawns doing.
‘Any thoughts on why the Robot Maker is helping out like this? It seems out of character from what we’ve seen.’ Ddraig asked out of the blue.
I frowned at that. ‘You don’t normally care about these kinds of things.’
‘I don’t but I’m also trying to figure out if your anger is natural or something like what happened during the fight with White and that knight. I needed you to slow down a bit to make sure.’
I actually blinked in surprise at the dragon’s answer before I realized he was following through on his promise to keep an eye on my emotions back when we got hit by Gallant’s emotion altering blast a while ago.
‘Ah, thanks for that but that’s all natural. I REALLY don’t like it when innocent people are dragged into other’s fights.’ I mentally replied. ‘And as for your first question, it’s basically a no-lose situation for him to help out. It would be more surprising if he didn’t actually.’
‘Hrmm?’
‘Yeah, I’m making some assumptions but if Wiley is actually interested in winning the tournament we got thrown into he would want to be in the news as much as possible, his robots saving people is going to make that happen. Especially since the mettools and joes are projections of some kind. He can send them out to do things like rescue or bomb disposal without caring how many get destroyed in the process.’
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
It didn’t matter what persona he used now or going forward either. I was proof that just because someone looked like a certain character, that didn’t mean the personality would match. Wiley could be someone just playing up the mad scientist role, the actual personality, or someone darker and people would still be praising him over the gang that just launched a terror attack on the city. As long as he didn’t do something worse than Bakuda he could flood the city with his minions and there wouldn’t be an escalation in how the authorities tried to handle him until the ABB were dealt with. During which I had no doubt he would be making better and stronger Robot Masters.
My thoughts drifted to the idea of another Elecman, stronger than the one we encountered at the mall. Despite the current situation and my own admittedly bad mood, I couldn’t help but feel a little excited about potentially having a full on tournament between Wiley’s robots and my Peerage.
I shook my head. That would have to wait for later.
For now I needed to head back home and start planning what to do next now that the ABB had gone to ground.
-o-
When I did get back to the mansion, I was greeted only by Dinah and the members of my Peerage. It seemed that New Wave had decided to temporarily bury the hatchet and work together, minus Amy, and had gone back home for the night.
They weren’t the only ones missing either.
It seemed like it should be obvious, but the PRT troopers that had been camping out in front of the house had also cleared out now that there was something much more important for them to do. But they had also been there for over a week instead of going after the more active, actually criminal gangs in the city so I figured I was allowed to be pleasantly surprised common sense won out for a change.
But after a few quick questions revealed that no one had any urgent information to pass on and everyone was uninjured we all agreed to take a few hours to clean up before we did anything else.
I had to admit, the feeling of hot water pouring over me did a lot to help calm me down after everything I had seen today. I was still pissed at the ABB for doing what they did, but it wasn’t at the front of my thoughts anymore.
Freshly cleaned and dressed in a set of fluffy sweatpants and a t-shirt I joined Alex and Gloria on the couch while we waited for everyone else to filter in. Half an hour later Sam stomped out only to return a few minutes later dragging a noticeably wet Clover behind her.
“Rude, much.” The blonde grumbled as she took a seat.
“You went in ten minutes before I did, and Rias went after me.” Sam replied, unrepentant. “You can soak yourself as long as you want once we’re done.”
“Well, we’re all here now.” I jumped in before an argument, good natured or otherwise, could begin. “I know it’s been a really crappy day so I’ll keep this short. Let’s go around and summarize what happened after we left the casino. We can leave the in-depth stuff and what we are going to do next for the morning.”
I went on to fill everyone in on what I saw throughout the city. The bomb sites, the few ABB members I was able to capture, Wiley’s robots, and a few other things that caught my eye without going into too much detail.
Sam, Alex, and Clover had pretty much the same story as me, except since they couldn’t teleport on their own most of their time was spent in a smaller area than what I covered. They did end up working alongside a few fire crews though and apparently had helped out a good bit.
Gloria didn’t have much to share since she had mostly been focused on making sure Amy was okay while she was at the hospital and that no one decided to take advantage of the chaos to drag her off while we were busy.
When it was Amy’s turn was when the first screwball headed our way.
“Hold on,” I said, raising my hand at her. “Are you saying that you were able to establish a contract just by offering to heal people?”
“Yeah, I’m guessing you didn’t know that was possible?” The brunette scowled back.
“I mean, I knew we could offer services and stuff, but I figured it would need to be more clearly stated to count. But I’m not super clear on what counts as a contract.” I admitted. “I only really made the one by accident with your cousin.”
“Any guesses then? You’re the best expert we have for this kind of thing.” Sam asked.
“Oh! Maybe it’s because of Amy’s mindset? Like, she considered it her responsibility to heal someone when she asks and that makes it a contract?” Clover jumped in, getting everyone to look at her.
“...what? I think it could happen…”
I shook my head at her. “Honestly, it's not a bad idea. Hell, it could actually be what’s happening. We’ll just need to experiment in the future and be careful about what we promise or offer people until we figure out what’s going on. I don’t want one of us getting trapped in a bad deal because we misworded something.”
Amy raised a hand. “I don’t think we need to worry about that too much. I only felt a slight compulsion to heal at the hospital and I felt like I could ignore it or even break the deal at any point. And that was with me explicitly offering my services. I’m more worried about what that means about me healing in the future. Am I only going to be able to do that when it directly benefits me?”
I was about to say something flippant when I caught the look on Amy’s face. She was actually upset by this.
“Did you not get paid by the hospital for your help before?” Gloria asked, which I was grateful for since it bought me some time to think.
“Yeah, but it was put aside in a trust fund. I was there as a volunteer and for hero work, not to get paid or anything. And Carol said…”
I narrowed my eyes when my Bishop suddenly clammed up about her adoptive mother and exchanged a few looks with the others. We all knew that Amy’s family life hadn’t been the healthiest. It looked like this was another aspect of that we were going to need to work on.
“Well, look at it this way.” I suggested. “Growing your powers by helping people isn’t them paying you for your work. It’s an investment so you can do more when you need to.”
Her face eased a bit. “Right, I can’t just keep using my powers anymore…yeah, that helps. Thanks Rias.”
Don’t thank me for that. I’m going to make sure you don’t fall into the habit of thinking your only worth is how many people you can heal again. Even if I have to run you into the ground so you don’t even have the energy to think about healing.
“Carl, anything on your end?”
“Not much. I think I’m getting closer on building a jamming device that will stop any detonation signal Bakuda sends, but it’s pretty short range. No luck on finding her or the ABB either, sorry.”
I shook my head. “Don’t worry about it, you’re doing the best you can and we all got blindsided by this. Hopefully they make a mistake soon and we can get the jump on them but that can wait till tomorrow.”
From there my Peerage split off to do their own thing. Most of them wandered off towards the bedrooms or the kitchen and I saw Carl heading back towards the garage. I decided to hang back so I could check on the wards I had in place. The last thing I wanted was Bakuda or Oni Lee thinking they could slip a bomb in here whenever they wanted and they had already proven they wouldn’t hesitate to go lethal at this point.
“Ah, R-rias?”
It seemed like I wasn’t the only one hanging back either.
“Yeah, Dinah?”
“Why didn’t you ask me to use my powers to help you find the ABB?”
Well for one, I didn’t exactly trust precogs. They either failed at the most inconvenient times or very quickly became a crutch. And two, I didn’t want to start using a twelve-year-old as a magic eight ball.
I didn’t say either of those out loud though.
“I didn’t want you pushing yourself.” I said instead. “You were helping Carl here right? I bet you burned most of your questions for the day, right?”
Dinah nodded reluctantly before putting on a determined face. “Yeah, but I can answer one more today. It won’t even hurt that much.”
I felt my eye twitch. The correct amount of pain for using your own God – ow – damned powers was zero. Stupid fucking Worm…
But I could tell she was going to push this.
“Okay, one question then and we can try again in the morning. What are the chances that the ABB keeps their bombing spree going tomorrow?”
Dinah winced as her power kicked in. “86.375 percent.”
Well, damnit. I had hoped Lung would reign in Bakuda for a day or two before realizing she had painted a target on the entire gang’s back the rest of the city couldn’t ignore any longer and doubled down, but I guess we were going to be dealing with more of this shit tomorrow too.
I thanked Dinah and sent her off to bed before heading off to make sure the house’s defenses were solid and then heading to bed myself.
I had the feeling I was going to need to be well rested for whatever happened tomorrow.