Despite how well everything had gone last night, the mood in the house was still fairly heavy for one obvious reason.
Dinah was still missing.
Coil had been thorough in his kidnapping attempt, and had actually incorporated the chance that Dinah could be followed or tracked after she had been taken into his plan. The Travelers had orders to find their own place to hide until the snake could confirm no one was coming after them before calling a burner phone for more directions.
According to the man himself, the idea was to be absolutely sure nothing could tie him to the kidnapping. If my Peerage or a hidden third party intercepted them? Then the Travelers were acting to rescue the Mayor’s niece and were simply hired for the job. If this was some elaborate plot by another mastermind to track down Coil? He could drop a timeline after discovering what he could about his hunter. If nothing went wrong? Then he could claim Dinah as his prize.
He obviously hadn't planned for himself getting captured only a few hours after the attempt though, and it meant until the Travelers made contact no one knew where they were hiding.
Which led to nearly all of us waiting impatiently for a phone to ring while I showed our new guest around the manor. I was at least trying to pretend the thought of our little mascot being held captive wasn’t rage inducing.
“And finally, we have the main kitchen.” I said as we arrived at the final stop of our quick tour. “We don’t have a formal schedule for who cooks, and most things are free for the taking unless they have a label on them. And if you finish off anything, make sure you add it to the list so it can get restocked.” I pointed to a whiteboard attached to the fridge where several items were written down.
I took a moment to actually look at the size of the list and winced at the length.
The next grocery trip was going to be a big one.
“...why?” My guest practically whispered.
A question! Progress! “Oh, mostly because most of us occasionally have things pop up that make set meal times hard to follow. We try to meet up as a group when we can, but we don’t expect you to starve if you miss lunch time for some reason. The list is also mostly so Sam knows what snacks have been finished off and not just moved somewhere. Most of the girls have a habit of grazing on whatever food is left out.”
“...no, I meant, why did you break me out of that Birdcage transport? What do you want from me?”
I sighed as the excuse to pretend nothing was wrong quietly slipped away. “What do I want from you? Honestly not much. You could stay, talk to my friends, and if there were no major personality clashes I’d probably eventually ask you to join my Peerage. Or you could decide to leave and we’d help you get out of the city before leaving you alone.
“As for why we rescued you? Simply put, I had access to some information that confirmed you did not deserve being sentenced to one of the worst prisons on Earth Bet for one incident. Are you completely innocent? Probably not, and if you had been sent to a normal prison for getting someone hurt even by accident with your powers I probably wouldn’t have stepped in. But the Birdcage? No, that was people playing with the justice system just because they could get away with it.”
Paige McAbee looked a lot better than when Sam, Alex, Clover, and Gloria first dragged her into the manor – a session with Amy had taken care of the bruising and rashes her restraints had caused. But she still looked rather exhausted and a single night of fitful sleep wasn’t going to change that.
Despite that, she didn’t bother hiding her skeptical look at my speech.
Which… fair.
Not a lot of people were going to pick a fight with the government even if it was blatantly obvious they were doing something illegal. Not unless they also got something else out of it.
“So it was just out of the goodness of your heart? How unlike a self-proclaimed devil.”
I huffed in amusement. I’d take sarcastic wit over grovelling any day.
“Not really. I was already pissed at the PRT and you were right there. If your transport had been in say, Mississippi, I probably wouldn’t have gone out of my way.”
Paige looked a bit surprised. “That’s more blunt than I was expecting.”
“If things had been different, I might have been nicer about it. But I’m sure you’ve noticed we’re a little tense at the moment.”
The former singer nodded. “I only overhead bits and pieces, but it was something about your home being attacked?”
“Someone staying with us was kidnapped for her power.” I said bluntly. “We know who was behind it and dealt with him, but the kidnappers themselves still have her so we’re all still worried. Sorry if we haven’t been the most welcoming because of that. It’s not you, I promise.”
“Oh no, you’ve all already done so much for me!” Paige waved her hands. “Even if it wasn’t really for me I’m still grateful. It’s just…” She paused and I turned to look at her. I gave her a gentle motion that she was free to say whatever she wanted. “I kind of just want to curl up on a bed and try to convince myself this isn’t some kind of dream.”
I nodded at her. “Sure, I can show you back to your bedroom if you want?”
“No, I remember how to get there from here. And you probably have things you’d rather be doing than showing me around even more.”
She was wrong about that because I was using this as a distraction from the fact there was literally nothing I could do right now, but I wasn’t going to tell her that.
Instead I let her wander off and went back to the rest of my Peerage.
“Anything?” I asked as I walked into the room, already knowing there hadn’t been any change. Someone would have called me if there had been.
“Not yet.” Carl confirmed from his temporary computer setup.
“It shouldn’t be too much longer though.” Sam said optimistically. “They were told to call for more instructions once they were certain they weren’t being followed so they should be calling—”
In a less serious setting it would have been funny that a phone started going off just as she said that, the issue was that it was both a very serious setting as well as being the wrong phone.
Instead I just pulled out my personal phone and stared at it like it personally betrayed me even as it continued to ring, an unknown number displayed on its little screen.
I was tempted to just ignore it since about 90% of the people that had my number were already in the same room as me and the other 10% were saved contacts, but there was a good chance after yesterday New Wave had swiped my number from Crystal and was calling now.
And as much as I didn’t want to talk to them, I should at least check to make sure something else wasn’t on fire after yesterday.
“Hello?”
“Rias Gremory. It’s time we had a talk.” A woman’s voice that I didn’t recognize demanded.
Well this was already annoying and I regretted answering the phone.
“Right. And who are you, and why should I care? I’m kinda in the middle of something at the moment.”
“That’s one of the things we need to talk about.” The woman commented. “As for why you should care? I’m the one person in this city that decides if you go from being a dangerous, but manageable, threat to something that has a member of the Triumvirate here in fifteen minutes to deal with you and your little group of friends.”
“Does that person have a name?” I snarked which got a few nervous chuckles from my friends. Most of them had grown up with the knowledge the Triumvirate were the Protectorate’s biggest stick and even though there were plenty of Capes that had held them off, or even outright beaten them, the thought of one of those three coming after us had to be nervewracking.
I understood their nervousness, but I was also pretty sure even if the threat wasn’t a bluff nothing would come of it.
Just going by the news headlines it wasn’t hard to see that several other Contestants were making messes all over the world in an effort to actually win the ‘game’ we were brought here for. Cauldron was probably working overtime putting out fires which meant the Triumvirate wouldn’t have time to stop by a minor city they had all but abandoned to the local villains anyway.
Not that it would be helpful to actually say that.
“I’m PRT Director Emily Piggot.”
“I’d say it’s nice to meet you, but like I said earlier – I’m kinda in the middle of something.” I grumbled. “So can we do each other a favor, skip the vague threats and insinuations about what we could do to the other, and just get right to the point?”
“...”
From her silence I had a feeling that this call wasn’t starting off like she was expecting.
I wondered if they were still listening to information based on Paladin’s idea that I was the original Rias Gremory. That would definitely throw them for a loop. Because while we did share some personality traits, I was a lot more aggressive in going after things that threatened my friends.
“If that’s how you want to do things, I’ll make this simple.” Piggot eventually said. “The city can’t handle another parahuman with more power than sense throwing a tantrum. And I’ll make sure anyone that starts another gang war gets the full focus from the PRT, the National Guard, and every hero I can call on until they are dealt with.”
I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at the ‘threat’.
“And why do I get the special warning instead of you doing that when Bakuda was putting bombs in people’s heads?”
“For one, there is no longer any point in the PRT pretending to not know who you are so we can simply call you instead of hoping a message passes through a third party. Two, I have a few more options available to me when dealing with S-Class threats. And your group definitely qualifies. Three, I’m hoping based on past behaviour you can at least recognize careless retaliation will wind up hurting innocent people more than anything you could do to the Empire.”
We were considered an S-Class threat now?! When did that happen?!
Also, we weren’t going to do anything more to the Empire for now, but she didn’t need to know that. “Alright, and what could you possibly offer that would convince me to let them just get away with ruining my friends' lives? Besides, I also have something I can’t just dro–”
“We’re going to give your entire group an unofficial one time clean slate.” Piggot interrupted me. “Nothing they did before this call gets prosecuted, even the attack on the Birdcage transport which is something you’re never getting offered again. The PRT tends to make examples of the ones that think they can get away with the ones that try too often.”
“How is Assault doing by the way?” I asked seemingly randomly. Or it would be if you didn’t know about his criminal past as Madcap, a cape that specialized in stopping transports from reaching the Birdcage.
I couldn’t directly say that because there actually was no information publicly available that I could use to connect me knowing that and was thus blocked by the metaknowledge geass, but there was nothing stopping me from just asking about a hero Piggot worked with.
“...” Piggot was silent about that, no doubt about to tear through her department to figure out how I ‘knew’ about the reformed villain after this call.
“And as much as I would like to take you up on the offer,” I continued, “the Empire wasn’t the only ones to attack us. The Travelers kidnapped Dinah Alcott at the same time Kaiser made his announcement. I’m not going to let them kee–”
“Several members of the Travelers were captured last night by Paladin and Dauntless. Dinah Alcott is currently being checked over before being returned to her family.” Piggot interrupted again.
“–eep her… bwah?” I said stupidly. The PRT? Actually managing to do their jobs? And it was Paladin that managed to rescue Dinah?!
The rest of my Peerage exploded into chaos at the news as well. None of us expected a third party to rescue our little mascot before we even had the chance to try.
“O-oh, well, good then.”
“This is the last time I’ll make this offer, Gremory. Do nothing to destabilize the city, leave the Empire to us, and we’ll let you and your friends go back to your normal lives as much as you can as outed capes. Do we have a deal?”
A small part of me wondered if Piggot knew she was offering a deal to a devil, but I had learned my lesson from the blunder with Kaiser – even if that did end up working in my favor.
“I can agree to that.” I said vaguely.
There were a few other things said, but Piggot ended the call shortly after and I was free to look around at the entirety of my Peerage.
“So,” Clover began hesitantly, “I guess this means that Dinah’s safe?”
“Part of me feels gypped. But Rias did get rid of Coil, so she should be safe now right?” Alex also commented.
“I guess there’s no point waiting to trace a call that isn’t coming.” Carl said, starting to pack up his equipment. “I guess the next thing we need to do is figure out what to do with the city we accidentally took over.”
Gloria , along with most of us, shot her brother a confused look. “What do you mean?”
“The ABB is gutted, Rias took out Coil and apparently recruited the Undersiders, the Empire is about to get torn to shreds when Coil’s plan to unmask their capes goes off.” He listed, “The only other groups in the city are the Merchants and Fautline’s crew.”
He looked around at all of us, “So uh, yeah. The Peerage is about to be the biggest established parahuman group in Brockton Bay.
Everyone was staring at him and I was feeling a little faint as he pointed everything out.
“Oh, Hell, we DID accidentally take over the city” I muttered as I collapsed into a nearby chair. “How did that even happen?!”
‘No idea, but you better be sure to rub that in White’s face the next time you run into him!’ DDraig crowed unhelpfully in my mind.
I just groaned and just cradled my head in my hands.