I let out a contented sigh as Gloria brushed her fingers through my hair and just kind of basked in the background chatter of my Peerage around me.

  Since the raids on the ABB and Lung’s takedown, most of us hadn’t actually done much of anything that could be considered ‘Cape activities’.

  We didn’t see a reason to.

  Lung had been captured, Bakuda was apparently taken down in a surprise raid by the PRT that had Coil’s greasy fingerprints all over it, and the ABB was being torn apart on all sides.

  The Truce was technically still in effect, but there hadn’t been any more coordinated efforts now that most of the parahuman support for the ABB was taken off the board. And now that my city wasn’t randomly exploding constantly, I was happy to let others deal with raiding drug stockpiles and safehouses or dealing with the people Bakuda forcibly recruited with a surgically implanted bomb.

  We also didn’t have a use for that stuff and I didn’t want anyone getting close to a Bakuda bomb if I could help it.

  Not after what happened to Clover…

  “I think I got it!” Amy exclaimed, jolting everyone out of their conversations.

  “Really?! You mean it?!” Clover rushed over, eyes wide, ears back, and tail extending stiffly behind her.

  Yes, ears and tail. Because Clover had been the only one of us to get hit with a Bakuda bomb and ended up being transformed into a catgirl. Not the anime type either, with just a few extra features tacked onto a human body, but full on anthropomorphic catgirl with fur, snout, teeth and claws as well.

  I thought she pulled the look off fairly well, but fully understood why she wanted to be changed back to normal as soon as she could. Thankfully, Amy had offered her help in trying to figure out what exactly had happened and how to reverse it and had been fairly confident she could come up with something.

  And from the sound of it, our faith in her was paying off.

  “Yeah, it took me a while because I thought Bakuda had made something that was trying to overwrite your DNA with an animal’s or something, but it wasn’t anything like that at all. Instead she made a teleporter that didn’t differentiate what it was transporting and combined everything at the destination.”

  I blinked at that and shivered. It sounded like an exceptionally cruel way to kill someone that only got worse the more people that got caught up in it.

  “Wait, if I was teleported, how did I end up looking like this then?” Clover asked, apparently not getting it immediately.

  “It’s like that old movie ‘The Fly’,” Sam chimed in, “you were teleported along with a cat and fused at the molecular genetic level.”

  Amy nodded. “Right, which is why it took me so long to figure out what happened. You weren’t ‘injured’ or ‘changed’ you were just moved and fused with whatever else was caught in the bomb’s radius – in this case, a cat.”

  “Is that why she keeps getting distracted by the laser pointer?” Alex asked, to Clover’s embarrassment and frustration.

  “I do not get distracted–!” She started to yell, only to get immediately distracted when Dinah ran a laser pointer dot across her hand.

  Clover immediately focused on the little red dot in exclusion to everything else and began to chase it around the room while the little precog giggled in the corner. It wasn’t the first or even fifth time Dinah had done so, and Clover admitted after the second time she didn’t mind as long as it was a harmless prank and made the girl smile.

  Some of the others minded a little more when they ended up getting trampled by the transformed Pawn or smacked with a tail when she didn’t pay attention, but usually got their revenge on Clover directly rather than taking it out on Dinah.

  My Pawn had rather unfortunately found out that her transformation had left her incredibly ticklish in certain spots that the rest of my Peerage would mercilessly abuse whenever they felt like taking revenge.

  “So you figured out how to fix it?” I prodded Amy while ignoring the renewed chaos unfolding in the background.

  This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “Yeah. I mean, theoretically anyway.” She shrugged. “All we need to do is separate Clover from the cat somehow. Could the teleportation circles be configured to do something like that?”

  I immediately shook my head. “No, they don’t work like that. They basically create a wormhole through dimensions and move everything at once, they don’t break down the things inside the circle and reassemble them on the other side.”

  “Can you make it just target a specific animal?” Carl asked, “Make a circle to specifically teleport a cat so Clover gets left behind?”

  “We’d still have to break down their bodies somehow. And I’m not sure I can target just the cat parts accurately enough.”

  “I could do that.” Amy volunteered. “My power changed when I turned into a Devil, but the scanning and diagnostic part is still the same.”

  “And I can probably whip up a device to break their bodies apart long enough to separate them.” Carl added.

  Gloria paused brushing my hair to look at her brother. “Can you? I thought you could only make spy devices?”

  “It’s not that hard to create a molecular disintegration effect in a specific area, any Tinker could do it really. Probably.” He shrugged. “The hard part is making it strong enough and portable enough to do anything. That part I can’t do, but since we just need to give a little push so we can separate Clover and the cat? Easy enough, I can have it done this after—oof!”

  Carl was cut off as Clover vaulted over his head and off his shoulders in her pursuit of the elusive red dot while Sam and Alex ran after her with Dinah on Alex’s shoulders, laughing the whole time, only pausing long enough to shout an apology before taking off again.

  “Did I say this afternoon? I meant tomorrow.” Carl grumbled from the floor. “And I’m going to get them back for that…”

  I ignored the grumbling. “So do we have anything coming up that I forgot about? Between the bombing and the raid I kinda lost track of everything.”

  “Crystal and Vicky are planning on stopping by tomorrow. They’re still pissed at Carol and Aunt Sarah and now that the ABB is mostly dealt with they don’t think New Wave needs to keep waving the flag.” Amy said.

  “Oh? What about Eric?” Gloria asked in a deceptively casual tone.

  It didn’t stop Amy from giving her a thoroughly disgusted look. “We seriously need to introduce you to someone who isn’t my cousin.”

  Gloria shrugged. “Hey, I’d ask Rias to introduce me to Paladin but it’s pretty clear who he’s set on.”

  “Please don’t remind me.” I pleaded.

  “Besides that…nothing springs to mind until the Truce is officially over.” Amy continued.

  Huh. No fire that needed to be put out or disaster to deal with? Truely? After the week we had, it was almost unbelievable. But I certainly wasn’t going to complain. Especially if that gave us some time to actually unwind before the next crisis decided to pop up.

  Even if we decided to keep our heads down the Empire, or more accurately Kaiser, was going to come take a swing at us. He sort of had to after everyone saw him get slapped around by Lung while I managed to defeat him. Thanks to that and me standing up to him at the truce meeting, he had to do something to make it look like the Empire wasn’t weaker than the Peerage. It was just typical bully mentality. I had ‘beaten’ him twice so now he needed to get one over on me or his friends would start doubting him.

  Coil was also an issue that would need dealing with, but I was pretty sure he was going to focus on the Empire first. They were still larger, more entrenched, and a much bigger threat to his plan of ruling the city than we were for now, but I was fully expecting him to start probing us at some level pretty soon. My bet was on either a false flag by the Empire or by pointing the PRT at us.

  And there was absolutely no telling what Wily was up to. Not with the bastard doing whatever he wanted during the whole ABB crisis and not even bothering to talk once.

  And those were only the local issues I had to worry about. There was no telling what kind of chaos the other Contestants were causing elsewhere and if they planned on somehow making it my problem.

  I sighed and leaned back into Gloria, prompting her to continue her brushing.

  Nothing to do about those for now except try and recuperate and prepare. We needed to appreciate these moments of relaxation or I was going to risk burning out and razing the city just to get some time for myself.

  -o-

  Skitter POV

  It was finally almost over. Three days and nights of pressure from the police, military, all the good guys and most of the villains in the city had basically gutted the ABB.

  Tonight’s raid on an ABB stash house was just the latest in a long string of fights since that night with Lung, and honestly Skitter couldn’t tell if she was getting better at fighting or just desensitized to all the violence.

  It was almost trivial too, considering the amount of powers they had on hand to throw at what was just a bunch of normal gangsters. Men and women that little old Taylor would have running for the hills were causally swarmed with insects and disarmed or knocked out with some help from her baton.

  So when Coil had suddenly called a meeting after the attack, Skitter hadn’t thought much of it beyond noting that once again no member of the Peerage was in attendance.

  Lucifer not being here was understandable, since she had gone hand to hand with Lung and almost surely walked out with some kind of injuries. Skitter also heard that apparently one other member had a bomb go off in her face and knowing Bakuda’s work, likely hadn’t survived.

  It was a sobering reminder that bad luck and the right power could take down anyone.

  “Alright Coil, the floor’s yours.” Fautline spoke up once each group had some sort of representation.

  “I realise everyone would rather head home so I’ll keep this brief. Some of my informants received some troubling news about the Peerage.” Coil said smoothly. “I trust most of you know about the PRT’s blockade around the mansion Rias Gremory took over when she came to the city, correct?”

  Skitter shifted uneasily at the comment, both because of the casual disregard of the Unwritten Rules and because she didn’t know about the blockade. Thankfully, Tattletale stepped up to make sure that everyone was on the same page.

  “You mean when they sat outside her front lawn for a few weeks after she apparently brought Panacea back from the dead and ran off because they couldn’t get inside? Something about defenses no one could get past.”

  Coil nodded, “Precisely. According to my sources, Panacea wasn’t the only person the Peerage has been keeping in that mansion.” One of his mercenaries handed out sheets of paper to everyone that had stayed for the meeting. When Skitter received one for herself she saw it was a blurry printout from what looked like a low resolution camera. Or one that had been taken from extremely far away and zoomed in even further later on.

  On the sheet was what looked like a member of the Peerage – the girl with the yellow jumpsuit – carrying a young girl under her arm like a sack of potatoes into the house.

  “Meet Dinah Alcott, a twelve year old girl that has been missing for several weeks now and just so happens to be the niece of our dear mayor. The PRT reached out through some…let’s call them backchannels… and requested any assistance we’d be willing to give to retrieve the young lady. For which you would be compensated for, naturally.”

  Skitter felt her stomach sink at the revelation.

  She had worked with the other villain groups over the last few days enough that she felt like they were decent enough people. She had thought the Peerage, and Lucifer especially, to also fit in that group.

  And now she finds out the whole time they had kidnapped a girl and locked her away for weeks just because of her family? Skitter did her best to push her anger and disappointment down, but at the same time she had an epiphany.

  It might not be the same as discovering the Undersiders' secret boss, but rescuing a family member of the mayor would definitely be something to prove herself as a hero. Something she could bring to the Protectorate to prove she wasn’t just a clueless teenager playing around.

  And, a small part of Taylor she refused to acknowledge too closely, it would mean she wouldn’t have to betray her new friends after she got what she needed.