Eventually I agreed on crashing the PRT’s part with Amy for a few reasons.

  The first and most important was that I wanted my Peerage members to get the credit they deserved for their actions during the whole disaster. Amy might be the only one actually going to attend, but anyone with a functioning brain should realise that if Amy had been working in the hospitals while the ABB was bombing the city, then the rest of my group had obviously been busy elsewhere. Especially considering there had been whole pages on PHO threads on us helping out even before the villain truce.

  The second reason was I thought it would be funny to thumb my nose at the Heroes over the fact they were basing their entire ‘victory’ party on the results of a villain of their own making – technically two if we counted Skitter’s initial take down of Lung – while they couldn’t do anything about it without publicly setting the Unwritten Rules on fire.

  Several more petty reasons included getting free food out of the PRT, getting the opportunity to dress up in fancy clothing, and generally just enjoying the night while giving myself an alibi.

  Because while Amy and I were at the party? Depending on the situation with the Birdcage transport, the rest of my Peerage were going to be executing a kidnapping.

  One of the many examples of how Earth Bet just sucked was a peek into how criminals were sent to the most secure prison in the world following Lung and Bakuda’s capture. Because on the same transport as a gang leader that promoted human sex trafficking, murder, and drugs and a bomber that terrorized a city, committed mass murder through her devices, and surgically implanted bombs into people’s heads to force them to do her bidding, was a pop singer that accidentally Mastered her abusive ex into maiming himself and having two passing similarities to the Simurgh. That she had a voice based power and that she had feathers growing in her hair.

  That was it.

  Her ex’s maiming was certainly a crime she should have been punished for to some extent, but nothing that deserved a life sentence in one of the worst prisons around.

  I still didn’t consider myself a hero or anything like that, but the thought of just allowing something that unjust to happen because a single judge decided that it was the ‘correct’ thing to do even if that meant ignoring the written law, all precedent before him, and everything the system was supposed to stand for? That filled me with the same urge to do something about it that I got from the ABB bombing my city.

  So I started preparing.

  Dinah had pretty quickly volunteered to use her power for anything we needed – she was still riding high from the planning sessions at the beginning of the truce encouraging her to use her power creatively – and while I was disinclined to rely on precogs for much of anything, I asked Dinah one question about whether Paige Mcabee was going to be on the same transport as the ABB villains just to make sure nothing had butterflied that whole scenario away.

  I couldn’t really say if it was fortunate or unfortunate that she confirmed that even with the addition of gods knew how many others like me, Paladin, and Wily…Paige’s fate was unchanged so far.

  But that would change. Because while Amy and I played nice for the PRT and the general public, the rest of my Peerage would be staging a breakout/kidnapping. Carl was already busy throwing together the gadgets we figured the extraction team would need while the rest of my Pawns were thinking up scenarios they might run into during the mission.

  They were taking it surprisingly seriously too.

  I had half expected them to throw in at least one joke scenario that had them going up against every hero in the city all at once with potential backup from one of the Triumvirate for laughs.

  Instead they were doing serious analysis based on who they were likely to run into based on the event guest list, suitability for guarding a moving transport, and input from Dinah whenever they thought of a troublesome new variable.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  Thanks to that we now knew there was basically a fifty fifty shot of Wily’s forces making an appearance even if we couldn’t figure out exactly what his goal was. Poor Dinah ended up giving herself a headache trying before we could learn anything concrete because it seemed like the conditions for him getting involved in the first place were so random.

  Just about everything we could think of was considered and planned for except for two very serious things.

  The first was how the Protectorate would respond at the party if they realised my Peerage was attacking the transport and how the younger members of New Wave would react to us not telling them about the whole operation at all.

  It was a calculated risk that could very easily blow up in our faces down the line if Crystal, Vicky, and Eric felt slighted or betrayed by us doing something undoubtedly illegal and for most without proper context, actually villainous. But I didn’t want any of them to be forced to lie about our upcoming plans even by omission or get put in a situation where our plans could get leaked to the PRT.

  I could explain everything to them later.

  Hopefully.

  But eventually there was little else more we could do to prepare other than just wait for the right time to act, so I was forced to deal with the less exciting part of the night. Preparing for the party itself.

  Unfortunately, while I didn’t really care much about getting dressed up for a PRT sponsored event, most of my Peerage did not share my attitude and were very insistent on making sure that I properly presented myself.

  Which is why I found myself stuck in front of a full body mirror while Clover and Gloria looked me over with a critical eye.

  “The cut is good but I think it’s too much red.” Gloria muttered as she twisted me around.

  “Clashes with her hair too much.” Clover agreed. “Maybe a darker shade? Either that or swap things up and use blue.”

  “Then she won’t match Amy.”

  “They haven’t picked a color yet either!”

  I sighed and looked across the room to where Amy was stuck in a similar situation as me, only with Sam and Alex acting as fashion coordinators.

  Unlike me though, they seemed further along and had at least settled on Amy wearing some flavor of gothic themed dress.

  The look definitely fit her, and now the conversation over there seemed to be on the pattern of the lace and embroidery and if they would try matching accessories.

  Amy herself had obviously mentally checked out and was just staring blankly ahead with the other two Pawns arguing over her head. Considering how into shopping her sister could be, I wouldn’t be surprised if Amy was just used to being used as the occasional dress up doll and figured it was easier to go along with it instead of fighting the inevitable.

  I, for some reason, was still trying to pretend like I had some control over my image…

  “Couldn’t I just wear a pantsuit? It’d be easy to match whatever Amy ends up in without standing out too much.” I tried, and got two pitying looks in return. Like I had asked if jeans and a sweatshirt was considered business casual.

  “If you were going as the invitee, then sure.” Clover said. “But as a plus one there’s some expectation to show off a bit without upstaging the person you’re going with.”

  “And no one is going to think you’re a plus one in a suit.” Gloria nodded.

  “Major faux pas in those kinds of circles.” Clover confirmed. “Anyways, how about–”

  …and I was failing miserably because I didn’t know anything about the fashion world’s hidden rules that had my helpers shooting down all my ideas.

  It was actually a little scary how much people would read into things like color choice, accessory arrangement, and style when I had just thought people mostly just wore things they liked and looked good on them.

  And that was only for clothes! Thank goodness as a devil I didn’t need much makeup beyond some color around my lips and eyes. Because if I had to spend hours putting on makeup only to have to take everything off and reapply something else because I changed outfits, it was entirely possible I’d go insane.

  Which wasn’t exactly a high bar to clear when constantly changing my clothes was starting to drive me insane.

  Seriously, how did people do things like this for fun?

  Thankfully for my fraying sanity it wasn’t much longer before Amy’s group decided on what she was going to wear.

  I had to admit, it looked nice. A deep red dress with black rose pattern lace that went down to her knees without being restricting and complemented her skin tone. I wasn’t too sure about the inverted pentagram that prominently made up the collar, since that was a pretty obvious reference to our group. But then again, I was going and half the people there probably knew Rias Gremory was also Lucifer anyway, so I guess it wasn’t that big a deal in the grand scheme of what we’d be doing that day.

  So that was one outfit down and only one more to go. I just had to hope that with Amy’s figured out, mine would be easier to–

  I stopped thinking as Crystal walked over to the pile of discarded outfits that had temporarily accumulated while we were doing all this and pulled one from the very bottom of the pile and handed it to me while saying, “We figured that would be Amy’s choice. Which means Rias has to go in this one.”

  With Gloria just nodding along.

  I looked from the dress to Clover, then back to the dress.

  Then I had to stop my eye from twitching and repress the urge to throttle my Pawn because this was literally the SECOND dress I had tried!

  I carefully set the piece of fabric aside and gave my two blonde Pawns a look.

  “So, just out of curiosity. If you knew what Amy’s preference was…exactly how much longer did you four draw this out than it needed to be?” I asked calmly.

  From the way all four of them instantly broke out into a nervous sweat, my guess was going to be ‘much longer than Amy or I preferred’. And from the darkening glare on my Bishop’s face, Amy realised that too.

  “I see.” I said in the same calm tone even as one of the training orb spells manifested in my hand. “What do you think Amy, five second head start sound fair to you?”

  Amy had her own training orb in hand as she moved to my side. “Seems generous. I’d say three is more than they deserve.”

  “Wait…” ”Hold on…” “We can talk about this…” Three of them tried to beg, only for Gloria to sprint for the door, abandoning the rest of them.

  “Well then, looks like the clock is ticking. Better get running.”

  The rest of my Pawns sprinted out of the room with me and Amy hot on their heels after a three count. And for a long time after, the only sounds throughout the mansion were the screams of my terrified Pawns and my Bishop’s slightly unhinged laughter as we took revenge for being used as dress up dolls for the day.