I was fully willing to admit, Hookwolf’s declaration caught me completely off guard.

  I didn’t like Nazis, or any idiots that shared similar beliefs, but as far as I knew I hadn’t done anything specifically against the Empire recently.

  Hookwolf apparently thought otherwise.

  “You’ll have to expand on that a bit, because I’m pretty I’ve never done anything to you.” I said calmly while I frantically searched my memory for any hint of what the hell the jackass was on about.

  “Bullshit, you think I don’t know about your group leaking my shit all over. I know you’ve been pointing that one,” Hookwolf jabbed a finger towards the Undersiders table but I didn’t bother looking to see who specifically he was pointing out. “Hellhound or whatever to–”

  “Bitch.” The dog-cape in question interrupted, which was slightly hilarious. “Only the panty-ass heroes call me Hellhound. It’s Bitch.”

  “Don’t fucking care. I’ll deal with you in a minute.” Hookwolf growled and turned back to me. “I know you were the one pointing the crazy bitch at my businesses. Having her sick her dogs on my customers.”

  I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about.

  As far as I knew, no one in my group even knew how to contact the Undersiders, let alone feed one of them information about one of the Empire’s businesses.

  “That’s quite an accusation. I assume you have proof of that?”

  “Course I got proof, you smug whore. Victor traced all those posts about the leaked Empire locations to an account belonging to that tranny bitch of yours.” He accused, waving a hand towards Bitch. “You think we wouldn’t figure out you pushed that bitch into attacking us?”

  …well that narrowed down the culprit if he was telling the truth.

  Carl had been pretty focused on helping us hunt down Bakuda recently, but I hadn’t exactly been paying attention to everything he was doing before then. It was completely possible he decided to mess with the Empire and didn’t tell me or one of the others.

  I’d need to have a talk with him later.

  “Okay? So what?” I said blandly. “Considering how he was treated by the Empire the last time you crossed paths, are you really surprised he felt like retaliating? If those words are too big for you I can say it another way, ‘start shit, get hit’.

  “You think you’re funny?!” Hookwolf snarled and started stalking forward only to be held back by Kaiser casually raising a hand.

  ‘You think they practice that routine?’ Ddraig said suddenly, and I had to stop myself from laughing.

  I hadn’t immediately noticed but now that Ddraig had pointed it out it was kinda obvious. Hookwolf backed down far too easily for how ‘enraged’ he was acting while Kaiser was still calm and composed.

  It was a cheap tactic to put people off balance and subtly convince everyone Kaiser was in charge, but I guess they didn’t care as long as it worked occasionally. They probably had other approaches for when it didn’t work out.

  ‘Please don’t distract me. I’d rather not start giggling in front of all the villains.’

  Out loud I said, “On occasion. But I’m also waiting to hear the reason why I should care.”

  “It’s a matter of respect.” Kaiser said calmly. “Unless two groups are at war, disagreements should at least be attempted to be solved through talks first. Not through some amateurish attempt at a proxy war.” He leaned forward and steepled his fingers together. “So is this a declaration of war, Lucifer? We just agreed to a truce, if you recall.”

  I was starting to get angry.

  The bastard was making it sound like I was the one threatening to break an agreement for something that happened before the truce was even a thing. Trying to pressure me into caving out of fear.

  “It could be.” I said deceptively lightly, and the entire room suddenly tensed up at that. “If you consider one of my members targeting your organisation after having the unwritten rules shattered, burned, and thrown out the window an act of war, then I don’t mind getting involved.”

  “You keep trying to use the Rules as a shield, girl.” Kaiser said like he was talking to someone slow. “It’s only showing your naivete.”

  “Those only apply to Capes, too.” Hookwolf added. “Not some unpowered tranny fuck.”

  I glared at the greasy blonde man for a second before refocusing on Kaiser. “Well, if the Empire considers a Tinker targeting a few businesses after he was kidnapped in his civilian identity, beaten, used as bait for his sister - who didn’t have powers at the time, by the way - and then shot while he was helpless to ensure Krieg, Victor, and Othala could escape after I defeated them grounds to declare war…welp, we can go down that road together.” I said. “The fact you still didn’t know he had powers and not his sister isn’t my fault or concern.”

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  There were a few subtle intakes of breath from around the room as I spelled out the whole situation. Most of the people here didn’t care about an unpowered person they didn’t know, but hearing that a Parahuman had all that happen to them had at least a few thinking ‘damn, that could have been me’ on at least some level.

  It also put Kaiser on the back foot at least a little.

  “Is that so?” He mused, leaning back in his chair a bit. “It seems the situation is slightly different from what was presented to me. I will have a discussion with my subordinates about misrepresenting things and will punish them accordingly.”

  Somehow I doubted anyone was going to be ‘punished’ more harshly than a slap on the wrist.

  “In that case I’ll consider the matter square, so long as there are no more proxy attacks by your or,” Kaiser turned to look at Grue, “any other groups for the duration of the truce. But if that changes…” He trailed off with an unspoken threat.

  “I can agree to that.” I replied.

  “That’s settled then. And the Empire and Peerage will make no attacks against each other for the duration of the truce?” Coil asked.

  “As long as we are not attacked first, yes.” I confirmed.

  “Agreed.” Kaiser said simply.

  To my quiet horror, I could feel my magic solidify around the contract that settled in place.

  Fuck!

  “Then are there any other points to discuss? Issues, negotiations, requests?” Coil asked the room in general but got no reply. “Then let’s conclude the meeting. Thank you for attending. Faultline, could I have a word before you leave?”

  The meeting quickly broke up as the leaders moved back to their groups and Capes began leaving.

  I didn’t really pay attention to that as I rejoined my Pawns and quickly ushered us out the bar door and far enough away that I could safely teleport us back to the mansion.

  “Wow, that was so cool! That was like something out of a movie!” Clover gushed once we reappeared in the main hall. “And Rias, I can’t believe you talked down Hookwolf like he was a–” She suddenly cut off as my adrenaline rush finally ended and my legs gave out.

  Sam, Alex, and Clover were quick to rush to support me, and a distant part of me appreciated it. The rest of me was too busy dealing with the fact I stared down a mass-murdering Nazi, basically dared the biggest gang in the city to ‘come at me, bro!’, and then accidentally locked myself in a magic contract within the span of ten minutes.

  -o-

  “That was such a clusterfuck.” I groaned into my hands once I had recovered a bit.

  “I thought you handled the whole thing pretty well.” Sam commented as she placed a mug in front of me. Peeking through my fingers showed it was hot chocolate, something I eagerly grabbed to comfort myself.

  “Did something happen?” Gloria asked, worriedly glancing between us.

  “Kinda.” I temporized, knowing I couldn’t really put this conversation off but doing my best to anyway.

  “Rias gave Kaiser and Hookwolf a verbal beatdown!” Alex said enthusiastically. Too which I could only snort gently into my mug.

  Beatdown? I wish.

  That was a draw. At best.

  Actually considering I had blundered my way into a magically enforced contract while Kaiser wasn’t, it could actually be considered my loss. I really needed to spend some time figuring out how to not make any deals I agreed to into binding contracts, and formalize the whole process in general, but it simply hadn’t been an issue or priority until now.

  Amy’s discovery that her hospital work could count as a contract had put the idea on my to do list, but even then it was beneficial so I didn’t care that much. It was just my bad luck the first time a contract was negative for one of us was when I made a deal with a neonazi. The only silver lining was the contract would be broken if Kaiser pulled anything.

  “The Empire was trying to bully the new and smaller groups.” I expanded on what Alex said when Gloria shot me a worried look. “They were going to go after the Undersiders next, but Kaiser abandoned that idea when I brought up the situation where they were trying to ‘recruit’ you after kidnapping Carl.”

  “Yeah, Rias showed him who’s boss!” Clover cheered. “She stared him down and even got the tin-plated dictator to back down!”

  “I guess.” I said neutrally. “But, yeah, the truce is in place until the ABB is dealt with. We’ll get details later on exactly what we’re going to be doing. If you want to hear about the meeting, those three will probably be happy to fill you in,” I waved a hand at Sam, Alex, and Clover, “But I’m going to take a sec to sort my head out. Let me punch out a giant monster over trying to politely talk with a racist murderer any day.”

  The rest of my Peerage made sounds of agreement and said their goodbyes, but there was one more thing I had to tackle as ‘King’ before I could fully turn off my brain and tell today to screw off.

  “Hey, Carl? You mind hanging back for a sec?” I called out to my Pawn. ”I wanna talk about what we can do for recording our outings with the truce coming up.”

  My most distant Peerage member tensed up before plastering on a neutral look. “Yeah sure. I have time.”

  I think only Gloria picked up on the tension going by the glances she was giving us as she shut the door behind her, leaving the two of us alone in silence.

  I took a moment to try and figure out how to start this conversation, but Carl beat me to it. “Alright, what did I fuck up now?”

  “I…what…?”

  He gave me a surly glare. “Look, I’ve done this song and dance before. Getting me alone? Being reluctant to talk about what happened? You at least waited till the others cleared out before bitching me out so you’re being more considerate than dear old mom, but like I said, I’ve done this before. So? What did I do, and how much am I going to have to grovel to fix it?”

  At some point I was going to have to get more information about Carl and Gloria’s family life before they joined up, because that had implications. But this wasn’t the time for that.

  “The reason the Empire targeted us during the meeting was that someone was leaking information about their fronts.” I raised my hand to stop him from interrupting. “I ended up making a contract to not attack the Empire for the duration of the truce.”

  “I…fuck…” Carl cursed. He wasn’t stupid, he knew what I meant by contract in this case. “So once again I fucked up hard enough I can’t fix it.” He hung his head. “Okay, how long do I have before you kick me out?”

  “Sorry?” This conversation was not going how I expected. “Why would I kick you out?”

  “Gonna make me say it? Fine, I went after the Empire behind your back and you got blindsided for it. Now you want me–”

  “Carl, I don’t give a fuck about you going after the Empire.” I interrupted him bluntly to his surprise. “Yeah, I’d have preferred you would have brought it up to me before I found out you hired Bitch to attack one of their dog fighting rings, but-” I paused as a thought occurred. “Actually, did you hire her?”

  “I don’t even know who that is.” Carl mumbled, sounding a little dazed.

  “Bitch, Hellhound, the member of the Undersiders that makes giant monster dogs.” I clarified.

  “No, I never contacted anyone directly. I just put the info out on the web. How…how’d they figure out it was me?”

  Great, so the whole thing was either coincidence or Kaiser trying to manipulate things.

  “Hookwolf said Victor traced the info to an account they knew was yours.”

  Carl looked up, shocked. “Isn’t that against the unwritten rules?”

  I huffed. “The Empire seems to treat them more like ‘guidelines’. Not that they thought those applied to you, can you believe they still didn’t know you were the tinker they were after?”

  “How?!”

  I shrugged. Not really sure what to tell him.

  After another moment Carl steeled himself to ask another question, “Okay, so where does this leave us?”

  “Nothing’s really changed,” I pointed out. “I mean, yeah, I’d prefer if you at least tell me before you pick a fight with a major gang but we can work on that.”

  Carl looked at me like I was crazy, or an idiot. “Rias, you got trapped in a magical contract because of me. We don’t know what happens if a Devil breaks one of those yet!”

  “A contract to not attack the Empire during the truce.” I reminded him. “Something I don’t think anyone was planning while the ABB are doing their thing. Yes, it sucks and I’m not happy about it, but I’m not going to kick you out for it.”

  I think I stepped on an emotional landmine because Carl’s eyes misted over and he suddenly found the ceiling very interesting. It was probably time to move on. “So yeah, talk to me more. I know joining up wasn’t exactly your idea, but I’d like you to at least feel comfortable here.”

  “Ye-yeah, I can do that.” He said and started inching towards the door. “We done here?”

  “Um, before you go,” I stopped him awkwardly. “I did actually want to talk to you about a way to record things during the truce. Just so we have proof if someone tries to screw us.”

  Carl took a deep breath and tried to compose himself. “Yeah, I have some things that might work. Give me half an hour and I’ll get you the pros and cons of each?”

  I smiled at him. “Sounds great. Thanks.”