"...in other news, the bombing spree orchestrated by the criminal Parahuman gang the 'Azn Bad Boyz' continues into its sixth day as the city reels from the disruption of public services. Despite the best efforts of local law enforcement, the Parahuman responsible remains at large.

  "We here at BBTV recommend that everyone continues to stay in their homes and reduce unnecessary trips as much as possible until the bomber can be brought to justice.

  "Hospitals and rescue teams are available to–"

  I turned the TV off and pinched the bridge of my nose. "I know. I know. We're trying to do something about it, dammit, but she keeps hiding!"

  Dinah had been technically correct about the bombing spree continuing, but the gang had shifted from drive-bys and direct attacks to pre-planted explosives scattered all over the city which made our previous method of hunting the gang members in hopes of finding Bakuda pretty hopeless.

  What made it worse was that she was really good at avoiding us too.

  Sam had come up with a really clever way to use Dinah's limited number of questions and a map to section off the city and ask what the chances Bakuda was in a certain sector, but by the time we would narrow down the most likely area Dinah would be spent and even when we'd head out to investigate it was pretty easy for the ABB to simply move Bakuda once someone spotted us before we could get there.

  None of us knew what she looked like after all, so she could simply stay out of sight or ditch her costume entirely and we'd have to chase down every vaguely asian girl in the area to see if she was the crazy cape blowing everything up.

  Then she would move to a different safehouse and we'd need to start again the next day.

  It was incredibly frustrating because I never wanted to get sucked into this kind of thing. The whole hero/villian dynamic with actual consequences.

  I wanted to be more of a professional nuisance or entertainer, to set up playfights over the bay, play with magic, and eventually fill out my Peerage. Not spend my days hunting down a psychopath that thought melting people with implanted bombs was a reasonable thing to do because the local heroes needed all the help they could get.

  Not that they were all that interested in our help.

  We'd initially tried feeding them the same information from Dinah by leaking it through Crystal, but it was either ignored or never reached the PRT leadership to begin with for some reason because they never got back to us or acted on it. I initially suspected that Coil was messing things up in the background, because that sounded like something he would do, but Crystal had handed over some of it to Battery directly and I doubted he could or would overtly control a Protectorate hero with everything going on. That would bring down way too much attention on him and went against his normal methods. Though considering how off I'd been in places – I was referring to a lot of my memories of Worm, especially small details, with a whole pile of salt.

  So the only reason the PRT wasn't working with us had to be–

  "Hey Rias! You still sulking in here?" Clover announced herself by barging into my room followed by the rest of my pawns.

  I immediately frowned at her. "I wasn't sulking."

  'You kinda were.' Ddraig added unhelpfully. "Psh, you totally were." and was immediately reinforced by my Pawn.

  "I wasn't! If anything I was brooding…" I tried to defend myself from the two annoyances, only to be betrayed by the others as they giggled at me.

  Gloria was the first to recover. "Sorry Rias, but only cool, calm, and collected people can brood. You? You're definitely sulking."

  Traitors on all sides…

  "Hey, I can be all those things!"

  "If you say so," Clover scoffed as she and Gloria grabbed me by the arms and started pushing me towards the door. "Now come on, we took a vote and decided today is going to be a relaxation day. No plans, no training, no sulking in front of the giant conspiracy board."

  I gave everyone an incredulous look at the crazy talk, but they all seem to agree with that plan. "You know the city is exploding, right? Kinda hard to relax with that going on."

  Alex took my hand and helped pull me down the hallway while the two blondes gave me a push from behind, mostly for show because I wasn't really putting up a fight despite the manhandling. "Yeah, but we've been totally focused on stopping that for like a week straight and we're just going in circles now. You need a change of pace unless you want to break that brain of yours."

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  Recognising that I was outnumbered and none of them were going to change their mind, I simply sighed. "Alright, what's your big plan for us to all relax then, huh?"

  "Parian is having a puppet show in one of the parks the PRT cleared. We figured you could unwind and then check in with her if you wanted. After that we'll hit up the mall and stop by that spa parlor. I heard they're still open for walk-ins."

  Okay, I could agree that sounded like fun. Not the kinda thing I'd do normally, but that was kinda the point right now.

  There was just one problem.

  "How is anyone approving public shows in a park with Bakuda bombing everything?" Because that sounded like the kind of career ending mistake that anyone in authority would be allergic to.

  Naturally, as the only other person who thought of things like that, Sam had an answer for me. "Apparently the PRT has some kind of Tinkertech detector Armsmaster and Kid Win whipped up for security. They'll be able to stop any attacks before they happen."

  I was slightly doubtful about that. I wasn't exactly sure how quickly a Tinker could make something like that, but less than a week seemed like a stretch. And if they did have something like that, why was it being used for something like a puppet show instead of sweeping the city for explosives?

  "According to the webpage it's too big and heavy to really move. Plus it works better when it stays still. Something about better readings." Sam clarified when I asked.

  Okay, now I was almost certain the detector wasn't actually a real thing. But as long as it gave people some illusion of protection I wasn't going to make a fuss out of it. If the PRT wanted to gamble what remained of its reputation, who was I to say otherwise?

  Besides, it would be nice to see Parian again.

  -o-

  The show was an interesting mix of professional and completely amateur.

  The plot was super generic but not uninteresting. The voice actors playing the parts put a decent amount of emotion into their lines but they mistimed things here and there and occasionally the sound guy would start a song early or late which caused some awkward parts. The actual visual portion was almost entirely done by Parian beyond some small confetti effects at certain points. It made the show incredibly realistic…up until the doll cape lost track of some of the background puppets that would stand completely still for a scene when everything else would dance around until she remembered to move it.

  There was clearly some kind of multitasking aspect to her ability, but there was definitely a limit.

  Still, it was lighthearted and fun and I could definitely say I enjoyed it. So did my peerage going by their own expressions and the amount of applause happening right by my ear.

  It wasn't something I could see myself watching too much but it had the same street performer charm that allowed me to overlook the flaws and just enjoy the show. And I could tell that a lot of the other people in the crowd were trying to do the same. A lot of them were just a little too focused on the show to be actually relaxing or were more interested in scanning the surroundings to actually be paying attention. There were also a lot of flinches from any sudden bangs, but people were trying to relax.

  So when the show ended and people started to filter out, me and the girls decided to hang back and see if we could meet up with Parian. I wanted to give her props for putting herself out there during this whole mess to help in her own way.

  "Let me guess, this is some kind of recruitment offer. Something I should accept for my own well being."

  Which is why I was a little confused by the mildly hostile reception from the doll cape.

  "Um, no?" I furrowed my brows and looked at the others. "We just wanted to say thanks for the show. Why did you think this was a recruitment offer?"

  Parian bristled a bit and a few of her puppets moved between us. "Oh, please. You realize most of your costumes are a bodysuit and domino mask? I'd have to be completely oblivious to not know who all of you are, Lucifer. Why else would you bring the rest of your gang to my event if not for a show of force?" I got the impression she was glaring at me through her mask. "I can't believe you are trying to pull this with everything going on right now!"

  …

  Ah, she was jumping to conclusions again. Except this time instead of assuming I was Empire trying to recruit her, I was going to press her to join my Peerage.

  Welp you know what they say about assuming. It was time to twist that irony knife again.

  "Oh, I've been going kinda crazy trying to stop the terrorist that thinks implanting bombs into the heads of her followers is a good idea. My friends thought I needed a break and decided we needed to spend the day doing something as far from that as possible and dragged me here because it's one of the few public shows in the city right now." I smiled angelically at her. "Besides, even if my secret identity is paper thin I do respect those rules if the other side does. I'm just here as plain old Rias Gemory. It's nice to meet you though. We really did enjoy the show."

  I held out a hand for a handshake that Parian just looked at for a while before slumping a bit.

  "...I jumped to conclusions again, didn't I?" She groaned.

  I nodded. "Little bit. I'm guessing some others have pressured you to join up?"

  "Yeah. The E88 again and the PRT." She said in a much more subdued fashion.

  "Eh, no worries." I shrugged and let my hand fall back to my side when it was clear she wasn't going to take it. "If you're being bothered by those two groups I can understand why you'd be suspicious. Anyway, I don't think you know the girls, this is…"

  As I introduced everyone, Parian began to actually relax and even made some polite noises back. I think she was beginning to realize this really wasn't some kind of elaborate recruitment attempt and really was my group just going somewhere to unwind.

  I think she might have a bit of a persecution complex but I wasn't going to say anything. When you had Nazis constantly telling you that you would be perfect in their group while secretly being everything they raved against, it was bound to make you at least a little paranoid.

  And as the rest of my group talked I realized she might have been on to something because there were some people hanging around that going by their clothes seemed like they could be Empire and were unsubtly listening in on us.

  I was just about to suggest that we move somewhere else to either force our watchers to leave or draw the attention of the PRT agents acting as security when I noticed a stern looking older man walk up to one of them who was quickly pointed in our direction. The one doing the pointing seemed deferent to the newcomer too. Someone higher up in the Empire?

  And he was making a beeline for us too. Something that our entire group noticed once they realized I wasn't paying attention to something and followed where I was looking.

  "Hey, buddy. Whatever you have to say, we aren't interested." Clover said confrontationally once the man was obviously undeterred by everyone watching him get closer. Alex and Sam moved to stand between the man and Parian while Gloria stepped forward to support Clover and I tensed to move in any direction as the man reached inside his jacket to pull out…a letter.

  "A message from Kaiser." The man said, never taking his eyes off of me and holding out the paper. "A meeting has been called to discuss how to respond to the ABB's actions. Feel free to ignore it, but any action to support the…undesirables," I had to hold myself back from punching him because I could have sworn his eyes glanced at Alex for a moment, "would be ill-advised. The details are inside."

  I glanced through the invitation and was unsurprised to see it was the details for Somer's Rock. I had initially thought we just hadn't been invited to the villain's meeting for one reason or another but apparently it just hadn't happened yet. The bigger issue was that the whole thing was scheduled for tonight.

  "Fine. I'll be there." I said flatly. The man nodded, turned on his heel and walked off. The other Empire members trailing after him.

  I guess that meant we weren't headed to the mall today. And that our relaxation time was done too.

  What a bummer.