Chapter 1111 - 15

304Brockton Bay wore its nighttime differently than in daylight. During the day, grime and neglect were obvious. At night, distance and darkness and streetlights turned everything into pieces: bright windows floating in black faces of buildings, headlights threading along arteries of road, the white flash of wave crests under a stuttering pier light.

Rias kept to a loose pattern. She let instinct and curiosity tug her from one lane to another, from roofs over the Boardwalk to the more industrial blocks closer to the docks, then inland again over neighborhoods with yards that shrank as she went.

She kept her awareness extended. Not as far as she could, not in the broad sweeping net she used when she was hunting something. Just…far enough to feel spikes of fear, sudden flares of anger, the sharp edge of violence when it started.

The first thing the city offered her was a man in a parking lot trying to jimmy the lock on a sedan with a coat hanger.

Petty crime was still crime, right? And newbie heroes often involved themselves with stopping petty crime, especially in their early years.

She hovered long enough to watch him fail twice, look around guiltily, then give up and walk away muttering. No one else was around. The sedan stayed shut.

"That one can wait for the alarm company," she murmured, and moved on.

Two streets over, someone kicked the side of a vending machine hard enough that a can dropped without proper payment. She let that one go too. The thing about petty crime was that most people who performed them did so because they had no choice–or, at least, believed they didn't. And, at that point, it'd just be a systemic problem that no amount of costumed heroics could solve.

On the north side, near a cluster of low apartment buildings, she caught the end of a shouting match in a second‑floor window. A woman and a man, faces tight, hands moving. No blows, no heat beyond words. She skimmed past.

"Petty," she said. "Banal."

She dipped lower near a late‑night convenience store just in time to see the clerk hand a pack of cigarettes to a teenager with a fake ID so bad it was almost impressive and then, after a long look, yank it back and jerk his thumb toward the door. The teenager swore and left. The clerk shook his head and went back to stocking shelves.

"Good for you," she said, amused.

She turned toward the Boardwalk.

The boardwalk at night felt like a different city. Neon signs and backlit menus, music leaking from open doors, the smell of fried food and salt and stale beer braided into something that tried very hard to be pleasant if you didn't pay attention. Fewer families now, more groups of young adults, more lone figures walking with purpose or aimless hunger.

She perched for a minute on top of a three‑story building with a faded amusement sign, half in shadow. From here she watched a pair of teens in stolen gang colors trying to decide whether to tag the side of a shuttered shop with ABB or E88 and arguing about which would get them stabbed less. They ultimately decided on neither when a patrol car rolled past two blocks away and they remembered they had homework.

The suit moved when she breathed. The helmet's padding pressed gently at her temples. Her wings folded and unfolded with each shift of weight.

"This is almost boring," she muttered.

She hadn't expected that. Brockton Bay had a reputation even in the bland PRT reports. Reading PHO threads made it sound like every block hosted a fight every other night and the rest of the time someone was being thrown through a window.

Tonight, the city seemed to have decided to be merely shabby instead of spectacularly on fire. Or maybe it was like this on most nights. Even villains and criminals had a rest day, right? Maybe that was what was going on.

She almost turned back toward home.

That was when the fear spiked.

It hit the edge of her range, a fast, high thread of panic. Breathless, sharp. Running.

She turned without thinking, wings sweeping. The source sat somewhere between the Boardwalk and one of the older residential blocks, in the grid of smaller streets that had never quite decided whether they belonged to the docks or to the people.

She dropped altitude as she flew, scanning.

There: a figure in motion. A woman in a dark coat, one hand clutching a bag to her chest, feet hitting cracked pavement in quick, hard strides. Behind her, three men and a boy in matching black jackets followed. Skinheads. Tattooed.

Rias slowed and watched for half a block.

"Hey, n-gger!" one of them called. His voice carried down the narrow street. "Where you going in such a hurry?"

The woman did not answer. Instead, she picked up speed. The men moved faster. One cut wide to the left to block the sidewalk. Another drifted right. The boy—sixteen, maybe, tall, still growing into his limbs—hung back half a step, nervous energy twitching in his hands.

The closer they got to her, the more slurs they threw her way.

Her jaw tightened inside the helmet.

"Empire Eighty‑Eight," she said. "Of course."

The woman did the smart thing and didn't let herself be boxed in. Instead of cutting inward, she veered into the street, between two parked cars, and ran down the lane itself. For three paces it looked like she might get away clean.

One of the men surged forward with a surprising burst of speed. He snagged her coat at the shoulder. The fabric ripped, buttons flying, but it checked her momentum just enough.The woman stumbled. He laughed.

That was enough.

Rias tucked her wings tight and dropped.

—

Three stories was not a long fall when you can fly. It was exactly the right height for a superhero landing.

The crack of impact rang off the buildings on either side when she hit, one knee down, one booted foot braced, fist on the pavement. The old asphalt spider‑webbed under her like it had a special effects budget. Dust puffed up. Her wings flared out behind her, catching and framing the movement.

She held the pose for half a heartbeat longer than strictly necessary because Sirzechs would have died all over again if she hadn't.

The world around her had gone very quiet.

The woman skidded to a stop a few meters behind her, breath loud and ragged. The man who had been laughing froze with his hand still half‑extended. The others checked themselves in mid‑stride.

Streetlight pooled around Rias, catching the red of her suit and the black of her wings.

"Evening," she said.

Her voice came out clear through the helmet, warm and amused and carrying just enough gravitas for people to take her seriously–at least, she hoped so.

The oldest of the three men found his tongue first. He recovered a little swagger, running his gaze over her suit, the helmet, the wings.

"What the hell are you supposed to be?" he said. His tone tried for derisive and landed closer to bewildered.

Rias rose from the crouch in one smooth motion. Dust slid off the suit as if it didn't want to cling.

"I was going to go with 'concerned citizen,'" she said. "But we can do the full introduction if you like."

She put her hands on her hips, like the Sentai always did in Sirzechs' shows when they were about to explain themselves to some unfortunate monster.

"I'm Sentai Crimson," she said. "And I'm going to give you one chance to go home, sober up, and reconsider your life choices."

The boy at the back whispered, "Dude, she's like…a Power Rangers thing."

The man nearest him snorted.

"What, some cape with a Halloween costume? In February?" He spat to one side, casual. "You're in the wrong neighborhood, sweetheart."

"I hear that a lot," Rias said. "Strange thing, though. I keep showing up in exactly the right place."

She could have simply pushed her will out and made them lie down. She could have turned the air around them into nothing, or their guns into mist, or their hearts into glass. The Power of Destruction sat inside her like a sleeping star, always ready to burn.

She had decided before she put the helmet on that Sentai Crimson would not use it.

Visually, she needed to be a cape. This world understood capes. It did not understand devils.

Conceptually, she needed the separation. Rias Gremory was the girl lost between worlds, the devil princess who had stood in a church and found no God. Sentai Crimson could be…something else. Someone who had a different set of abilities. She'd make another identity for Rias Gremory soon enough, one that would make use of the Power of Destruction.

The man closest to her—square jaw, blond hair, a faint scar along his chin—shifted his weight. Rias marked the bulge under his jacket where a gun sat. The others had similar shapes at belt and hip.

"Last chance," she said. "Go home."

"Last chance," he echoed, mocking. He bared his teeth. "You don't tell us what to do, you freak."

His hand went for the gun.

He cleared it fast–faster than most humans, probably. Too fast for the woman behind Rias to do anything but gasp and flinch. Not too fast for a devil who'd spent her childhood sparring with beings who could cross continents in a heartbeat.

She moved her head slightly as the first shot cracked.

The bullet hit the invisible field around her chest and lost most of its speed in an instant. It flattened and dropped, clinking against the broken asphalt.

She didn't need magical shields against guns, but she'd decided then that shields were a part of Sentai Crimson's abilities. Devils were tough enough to withstand most mundane firearms. The impact of a pistol would've felt like a light finger tap from Koneko. A .50 caliber sniper rifle would've necessitated a shield.

"Huh," she said. "That's rude."

He swore. Fired again. The others followed his lead in a rough cascade, guns clearing leather and barking in panicked rhythm.

Light strobed the narrow street. Muzzles flashed orange. The noise battered off brick and concrete, loud enough to make the woman cry out and clap her hands to her ears. Rias let the bullets spend themselves against the field, adjusting its thickness without any visible sign; to them it would look like their shots simply weren't landing right.

A few rounds sparked off her boots, sending chips of pavement flying. One ricocheted into a parked car's door with a dull thunk. A distant dog started barking anew.

"All right," she said when the magazines clicked empty and the sudden absence of gunfire left the street ringing.

Her wings snapped wide.

She went forward.

—

Devil bodies did not obey quite the same rules as human ones. Strength came easily. Speed came easier. The trick to fighting humans was throttling both down to levels that didn't turn every fight into an execution.

She crossed the short distance to the first gunman in two strides. His eyes widened behind his arrogance when she appeared in front of him. He started to bring the empty gun up anyway, some part of his brain unwilling to accept that the rules of the game had just changed.

She stepped inside his guard, caught his wrist with one gloved hand, and twisted, not quite as far as she could. The joint protested with a sharp, wet sound and his hand opened. The gun fell. She kicked it away without looking, heel connecting with metal.

He swung his other fist at her head. She tilted. The punch slid past her helmet.

"Good try," she said, and drove her elbow into his sternum with enough force to knock the air out of him and launch him backward into the hood of a nearby car.

He hit and slid off, landing in a wheezing heap on the pavement.

The second man had better instincts. He dropped his empty gun immediately and went for a knife. The blade flashed in the dim light. He lunged for her midsection in a motion that would have slid under foam armor and into soft human flesh.

Her suit wasn't foam, and she wasn't human, and she'd seen the move coming three steps before he'd thought of it.

She pivoted sideways, caught his wrist in a two‑handed grip, and let his own momentum carry him forward and down. His shoulder took the worst of the turn. He hit the ground with a pained shout.

She planted her boot between his shoulder blades and pressed just enough to remind his lungs that oxygen was a privilege. The knife skittered away.

The third man froze outright, caught between going for his weapon and realizing that his weapon might not matter. His gaze flicked to the woman behind Rias, then back to Rias herself, helmeted and impassive.

"Don't," she said, not unkindly.

He twitched anyway, a shallow jerk of muscle that sent his hand toward his waistband.

Rias sighed.

She closed the distance in a blur, caught his forearm, and used a simple sweep. His legs went out from under him. Gravity did the rest. He hit the pavement on his back hard enough to leave bruises but not break anything important.

The boy at the back hadn't moved at all.

He stood there with his gun still half‑drawn, fingers white on the grip, eyes enormous. His mouth worked around words that never quite made it out.

He looked more terrified than vicious.

Rias stopped just out of arm's reach.

"Don't," she said again, gentler this time. "You have three very good reasons on the ground in front of you to think about whether you actually want to be here."

He swallowed.

"I—I—" he stammered.

"Go," she said. "Drop it. Go home. Change your jacket. Don't come back for them until the police or the PRT do. That's it. That's the deal."

His fingers spasmed. For a second she thought he might make the wrong decision anyway, not out of malice but out of sheer stupid fear.

Then the gun clattered to the concrete.

He backed away, step by careful step, eyes never leaving her visor. When he reached the corner, he turned and ran.

She let him.

Behind her, the woman let out a long, shaky breath that sounded like it had been trapped in her chest for the last five minutes. Rias wanted to turn and check on her. She didn't yet.

First, the tidy part.

—

Rias lifted her hand and snapped her fingers.

Metal wire sprang into being in her grasp: long, flexible, strong. It gleamed faintly in the streetlight.

Hojojutsu had never been her main study. The art of binding with rope had come up once in a book of human martial practices she'd read out of curiosity, fascinated by the precise diagrams of knots and the way different patterns were meant to control movement, not just hold.

She didn't need full ritual patterns here. Just something effective.

She started with the man she'd dropped into the hood of the car. He was still wheezing, hands scrabbling weakly at his ribs as if he could push the pain back in. His eyes tracked her as she approached, pupils blown wide.

"Stay," she said, tone soft but sharp.

She looped the first length of metal around his wrists, crossed it, and pulled. The material responded to her will and flowed through itself, biting down just enough to hold. She wrapped it around his forearms, banding them together behind his back, then took a run of it over one shoulder, under the opposite arm, and back around his chest. By the time she was done, his upper body had become a neat package of lines, restrained but not crushed.

He tested the bonds, instinctive. The metal flexed and then settled, unyielding.

"What is this?" he gasped.

"Good behavior encouragement," she said.

The second man cursed at her in a stream of words and slurs that would have made some devils raise an appreciative eyebrow. She ignored the content and rolled him onto his side long enough to bind him as well, adding a loop around his ankles for good measure. She put a small twist into that one—enough that if he tried to hop away or run, the pressure would increase and send a sharp bolt of pain up his calves without actually damaging anything.

The third man tried to wriggle away when she approached. She cut that off by putting a gloved hand on his forehead and pressing him gently but firmly back down.

"Don't make me embarrass you on camera," she said. "Hold still."

His eyes flicked past her then, something like alarm rising there that had nothing to do with the rope in her hands.

Alarm that wasn't aimed at her at all.

It took her half a beat too long to recognize the direction of his gaze.

She tied the last knot—a simple twist that sealed the metal on itself with a faint, satisfying click—and then, finally, turned to see what he'd been looking at.

Down the block, at the mouth of the alley that opened onto the next street, a small cluster of figures had gathered.

Four teenagers, by the look. Hoodies, jackets, one in a too‑big flannel shirt over a t‑shirt with a logo she couldn't quite read from here. One had a phone out, held in both hands, the screen a tiny bright rectangle. Another had a cheap digital camcorder, the kind you could buy on sale at big box stores, braced against his shoulder like he'd been born with it there.

All of them stared at her.

All of them were recording.

Rias raised a hand. "Yo."

AN: Chapter 14 is out on Patreon! Award ReplyReport228denheim27/12/2025NewAdd bookmarkView discussionThreadmarks Chapter 13: New View contentdenheim9/1/2026NewAdd bookmark#314The first time Rias saw herself trending, she thought it had to be a mistake.

She sat on her couch with one knee pulled up, hair loose around her shoulders, phone held in both hands.

On the screen, a dozen reposts and mirrors fought for attention.

A freeze-frame of her landing in the street, one knee down, fist on pavement, wings flared behind her like a stage prop with teeth.

A second clip, zoomed too far and stabilized badly, showing her walking through gunfire like the bullets were embarrassed to touch her.

A third, filmed from farther down the alley, catching her voice.

SENTAI CRIMSON SAVES WOMAN FROM E88 THUGS.

NEW CAPE IN BROCKTON? WINGS + BULLETPROOF?

"POWER RANGER" HERO GOES VIRAL.

Rias stared until her eyes went dry.

Then she smiled.

It started as a small twitch at the corner of her mouth. It grew into something warmer, something she hadn't felt in weeks without forcing it.

She scrolled again.

The comments were worse than the headlines.

Half of them were people trying to be funny. Half of them were people trying to be clever. A few were people being sincerely grateful.

She kept reading anyway.

Someone had clipped her introduction.

"I'm Sentai Crimson, and I'm going to give you one chance to go home, sober up, and reconsider your life choices."

It had been ridiculous. It still sounded ridiculous. And yet it had worked.

In the replies, people argued about it like they were grading a speech.

"Okay but the VOICE FILTER??? 10/10."

"Girl really dropped a Power Rangers line in BROCKTON BAY and lived."

"She's got WINGS."

"Tinker-made wings. Bet. Calling it now."

"That landing cracked the street. Brute rating minimum 4."

"She caught bullets. That's either forcefield (Shaker) or she's just built different."

Rias's thumb hovered over a comment that read:

"Imagine being an E88 thug and getting folded by a cosplayer with bat wings."

She exhaled and a quiet laugh escaped her.

It felt…good.

She'd stopped men from hurting a woman.

The world had noticed.

And for three days, it had talked about her like she was a story instead of a problem.

Rias rolled the thought around in her head like a coin.

A hero.

Her phone buzzed with another notification. A link. A forum thread.

Parahumans Online.

She clicked it before she could talk herself out of it.

—

PARAHUMANS ONLINE MESSAGE BOARDS

You are currently logged in, [REDACTED].

You are viewing:

• Boards ► Brockton Bay & Surrounding Areas

• Thread #002104 – [NEW CAPE?] SENTAI CRIMSON – Winged Ranger / Brute? / Tinker??? (Bring Clips)

Rias scrolled.

The first post was already three pages long, full of timestamps and arrows and people arguing over whether her wings were leathery or "some kind of black polymer fabric."

One user had drawn a little diagram over a screenshot, circling her boots.

"Those are not off-the-shelf. Either custom or tinkertech. If she's a Tinker, that suit is a platform."

Another had zoomed in on the moment the bullets dropped at her feet.

"No impact sparks. No ricochet pattern. They slow down, flatten, drop. That's a field. That's not 'she's just tough.'"

Someone else had made a poll.

WHAT IS SENTAI CRIMSON?

☐ Brute/Mover

☐ Tinker (Costume + wings = tech)

☐ Case 53 (Wings = mutation)

☐ Breaker (Bullets don't behave right)

☐ "She's an angel, idiot"

☐ "She's a demon, idiot"

☐ Other (Explain below)

Rias stared at the last two options a beat longer than she should have.

Then she kept scrolling.

The thread had arguments. Of course it did.

"She didn't use any ranged power. So either she doesn't have one or she didn't want to."

"If she has wings, she's got a mobility package. Mover 3 minimum."

"Forcefield = Shaker. But she didn't project it anywhere except herself. That's more like Brute/Breaker."

"Maybe it's a Striker effect tied to her body. 'Anything that hits her loses momentum.'"

"Or she's faking it and the video is edited."

"Brockton doesn't get capes like this. This is a plant."

"Everything is a plant to you people."

Someone had posted fan art already.

It was bad. It was also affectionate.

Rias smiled again.

Three days.

Three days since she'd raised a hand and said Yo to a group of teenagers with a camcorder.

Three days since the internet had decided she was either the city's newest protector or its newest nightmare.

She set the phone down on her thigh and stared at the quiet room.

Nothing about her situation had changed.

And yet…

She picked the phone back up and opened a different tab. Local news. A clip from a press conference.

A PRT spokesperson stood behind a podium with a tight smile and tired eyes. The caption read:

PRT STATEMENT: UNREGISTERED CAPE ACTIVITY IN BROCKTON BAY

The spokesperson said the expected words.

They appreciated concerned citizens. They advised civilians not to intervene. They asked any unregistered parahuman to contact the PRT for assistance, registration, and coordination. They reminded viewers that vigilantism carried risks.

Rias watched the man's mouth shape around the phrase for your safety and snorted softly.

Her safety.

That was almost charming.

She closed the clip.

Rias leaned back against the couch.

Her smile faded into something thoughtful, but it didn't leave entirely.

"So," she said aloud, because talking to empty rooms was apparently a hobby now. "Sentai Crimson is a hit."

The words sounded silly.

They also sounded like a fact.

She'd wanted a distraction. She'd wanted something to take her mind off the hole where her home used to be.

She hadn't expected it to feel like this.

Warm. Light. Almost…fun.

A devil princess enjoying being a local superhero.

Sirzechs would never let her live it down.

The thought hit like a gentle punch and, for a moment, her smile wavered.

Rias inhaled slowly.

Then exhaled.

"Okay," she said, firmer. "We keep the bit."

She stood.

If she was going to do this—if she was going to let Sentai Crimson exist—then Sentai Crimson needed limits.

Sentai Crimson didn't erase matter.

Sentai Crimson didn't use the Power of Destruction.

Sentai Crimson didn't do anything that would make people connect her to Madison or Chicago or the things she'd done when she was desperate and lonely and angry.

Sentai Crimson punched.

Sentai Crimson kicked.

Sentai Crimson did dramatic landings and said stupid lines and made violent men reconsider their choices with bruises and humiliation, not annihilation.

She could live with that.

She walked into her workroom and shut the door behind her. The Haywire cases sat stacked in the corner like a reminder of failure. She ignored them.

The center of the room was open.

Rias snapped her fingers.

A heavy bag appeared, hanging from a reinforced ceiling hook that hadn't existed a second ago. The leather was dark, the stitching tight. It swayed once, then settled.

She snapped again.

A set of hand wraps appeared on the table, black cotton, simple.

"Martial arts hero," she told herself, and began wrapping her hands.

The cloth tightened around her knuckles. She stepped up to the bag and tapped it once with her fist.

The bag moved, creaking slightly on its chain.

She hit it again. Harder.

The bag swung.

She adjusted. Throttled her strength down, down, down until her punches were human-ish, until the bag behaved like a bag instead of exploding like wet paper.

She breathed.

Left. Right. Hook. Step. Elbow. Low kick.

Her body remembered more than she expected. Training with devils didn't translate perfectly to training with humans, but the principles were the same: balance, distance, timing, intent.

She moved for half an hour without thinking about anything else.

When she stopped, the room was quiet except for the faint sway of the bag settling.

Rias unwrapped her hands and flexed her fingers.

There was no fatigue in her muscles. She looked at her reflection in the dark window of the workroom.

"Sentai Crimson," she said softly.

The name sat there like a small light in a dark place.

Then, because she was still herself and she could never leave well enough alone, another thought rose.

If being a hero felt good…

What would being a villain feel like?

Rias stared at the heavy bag as it finally stopped moving.

A villain.

On her Earth, "villain" meant something different. It meant political enemies. It meant exorcists. It meant fallen angels or just angels.

Here, villain was a role you could wear like a costume.

A brand.

A job.

A hobby, if you were unhinged enough.

Rias's mouth curved again, slower this time.

She could test it.

A controlled experiment. She already had a villain name in mind too.

If Sentai Crimson gave her warmth, maybe Baal would give her something else. A sharper satisfaction. A thrill. A sense of power that didn't have to be polite.

And she could do it without killing the normal people.

She snapped her fingers and created an entirely new costume for her villainous persona.

All-black plate, medieval in silhouette but too clean to be historical. A chestpiece shaped to fit her without vanity. Pauldrons with sharp, predatory angles. Gauntlets with articulated fingers. Greaves and sabatons that looked like they belonged on a knight.

And along the edges—where plates overlapped, where lines met—ran a bright red glow. Cosmetic, yes. Also intimidating.

Rias traced a fingertip along the chestplate's edge. The red line pulsed faintly under her touch, responding to her.

"Baal," she said, tasting the name.

It had weight. It had history.

Family history, to be exact. The Bael Clan was, not too long ago by her reckoning, once known as the Baal Clan.

Here, it would just be a villain name.

A mask.

Rias lifted the helmet.

It was a full helm, face hidden behind a smooth black visor slit that burned red at the edges.

She imagined the internet's reaction already.

New cape in Brockton Bay: EVIL KNIGHT WITH GLOWING RED ARMOR.

She almost laughed.

Almost.

Then she sobered, because if she was going to do this, she had to do it right.

Baal would use the Power of Destruction.

But not the way she'd used it in Madison. Or, really, any other time she'd ever used it before.

The weakest possible state.

Enough to hurt.

Enough to push.

Enough to leave someone on the ground holding their ribs and reconsidering their life, but not enough to erase them.

Rias lifted her hand and let a spark of red-black gather at her fingertip.

It was tiny. A bead.

The air around it distorted, barely.

She looked at it like a jeweler evaluating a cut stone.

"Gentle," she told herself.

The spark pulsed, as if offended by the word.

She flicked it toward the far wall.

It hit the air a foot from the paint and popped like a pressure wave, invisible except for a brief ripple that made the shadows wobble.

The wall didn't break.

But the chair she'd placed too close to it slid backward a full meter, scraping softly against the wood floor, then tipped and fell with a hollow thunk.

Rias watched it settle.

She nodded once, satisfied.

"That," she said, "is acceptable."

Baal could do that.

Baal could be terrifying without being lethal.

And if she was going to play villain, she needed a target.

Not civilians. She'd get nothing out of that, because she knew that was something she'd never enjoy.

Gangs.

Because gangs were already part of the game. Because gangs expected violence. Because they hurt people and called it business.

And because one of them had tried to take her off the street like she was a piece of merchandise.

ABB.

Baal could make a statement.

Not Rias Gremory.

Not Sentai Crimson.

Baal.

A villain who walked into ABB territory and said, This is mine now.

It would be a lie.

But it would be a fun lie.

And fun, she was learning, mattered more than she'd expected.

Rias lifted the chestplate and began putting the armor on.

Black undersuit first, tight and matte, swallowing light. Then the plate, piece by piece, locking into place with soft clicks that sounded like closing doors.

Gauntlets. Greaves. The belt. The final shoulder plates.

When she lifted the helmet again, the red glow reflected faintly off the workroom window, turning her into a silhouette framed by ember-light.

She slid the helmet on.

The world dimmed for a heartbeat, then cleared through the visor slit.

She stood and looked down at herself.

A black knight in a small rented house on Willow Lane.

Ridiculous.

Perfect.

Rias rolled one shoulder, testing the articulation. The armor moved with her, not restricting, not clanking. Devil magic didn't do clumsy unless she wanted it to.

She adjusted her voice with a thought.

When she spoke, the sound came out deeper, layered, with a faint metallic resonance that made it feel like the words belonged to the armor instead of the woman inside it.

"Baal," she said.

The name echoed softly in the empty room.

She liked it.

She walked into the front room. The chairs and small table looked absurdly normal beneath her looming silhouette. The red lines of her armor cast faint reflections on the window glass like a warning.

She paused by the door and closed her eyes behind the helm.

ABB territory.

She didn't need a map. She had walked enough of Brockton Bay now to feel where the city changed. The docks, the industrial blocks, the places where gang tags layered thick and patrol cars rolled faster.

She pictured it.

She lifted one gauntleted hand.

The air in front of her folded, a clean tear in space, a door cut into reality as neatly as a knife through cloth.

Red light from her armor bled into the seam and Rias stepped forward.

The house vanished behind her like a breath held and released.

—

Rias stood in the middle of a street that hadn't been properly repaved in years. Potholes held shallow puddles that reflected streetlights in broken coins. Warehouse walls rose on either side like tired giants, brick and corrugated metal patched with graffiti and gang marks.

ABB tags were everywhere.

Red dragons stitched in paint. Letters slashed fast and aggressive. A symbol that looked like a stylized kanji until you stared long enough to realize it wasn't any kanji that made sense—it was just the idea of "Asian" sold back to itself in spray paint.

A car idled half a block down, bass thumping faintly through its closed windows.

Two men saw her.

Black plate armor. Red glowing edges. A helmet that hid everything human.

They froze.

One of them lifted his chin, trying to decide whether fear would make him look weak.

The other took an instinctive half-step back.

Rias stood perfectly still in the center of ABB territory, the red lines of her armor burning like a promise.

And then she took one slow step forward.

AN: Chapter 15 is out on Patreon! Award ReplyReport208denheim9/1/2026NewAdd bookmarkView discussionThreadmarks Chapter 14: New View contentdenheim17/1/2026NewAdd bookmark#334I told myself I wasn't stupid.

Stupid was the guy who walked past an ABB corner crew in broad daylight with a fresh haircut and a wallet chain and the kind of posture that begged to be taught a lesson. Stupid was the tourist who leaned on a dock railing that had a sign on it—DO NOT LEAN—and then acted surprised when it snapped like a tired bone.

I was careful. I was prepared. I had a plan.

I also had a brand-new sixty-minute tape, a second battery jammed into my jacket pocket, and a hand-me-down camcorder that could still pull a clean image if you didn't whip it around like you were filming a tornado.

And I had a need.

Some people had hobbies. Some people collected stamps. I collected moments the city pretended it didn't have. I kept them. I boxed them up and labeled them and posted them online with timestamps and shaky breath in the audio like proof I'd been there.

Because the thing about Brockton Bay was this: if you didn't capture it, it didn't happen.

Or worse—if you didn't capture it, someone else did, and then you had to watch your own city through their lens, with their commentary, their dumb jokes, their edits, their little watermarks stamped in the corner like they owned reality.

I wasn't going to let that happen again.

Not after Sentai Crimson.

Not after I'd watched that clip of the winged "Power Ranger" crack asphalt with a landing and then turn three armed guys into an afterthought, and I'd realized—too late—that I'd been at the wrong end of town when it happened. I'd watched other people's footage until my eyes hurt. I'd listened to strangers in PHO threads argue about forcefields and Tinkers and whether the wings were "bio" like it was a sports draft.

Then the next rumor came.

Not a hero this time.

A villain.

A black knight with red lines like ember cracks. A helmet with a slit of light. A name that sounded like someone had pulled it out of a textbook and decided it would look good on a gravestone.

BAAL.

The first text I got about it came from my friend Jonah, who worked nights at a gas station near the docks and had the kind of survival instincts that made him a good source and a terrible date.

JONAH: bro

JONAH: some thing just walked down koto's street like she owned it

JONAH: ppl say armor. glowing. like a knight??

JONAH: ABB guys are losing it

I stared at that message for a long time.

Then I checked my battery. Checked my tape. Checked my jacket zipper. Checked the pocket where I kept my keys.

I told myself I was only going to get a few seconds of footage. A silhouette. A glow. Enough to confirm it wasn't just dock-talk being dock-talk.

I told myself a lot of things.

By the time I reached the edge of ABB territory, the air tasted different.

I moved like I belonged, which is to say I moved like a shadow with a camera.

I kept to alleys. I kept to the lee side of dumpsters. I stayed out of pools of light. I watched corners before I took them. I listened for footsteps that didn't match mine.

My camcorder stayed off for now. No point advertising.

Then I heard it.

Laughter, loud and sharp and wrong for the space, a sound that bounced off metal walls and made the hairs on my arms lift.

A villain's laugh, the stereotypical kind.

I froze behind a stack of pallet wood and eased my head around the edge.

The street beyond opened into a wider service lane between warehouses, the kind trucks used to back into loading docks. Puddles sat in potholes, reflecting orange streetlight like broken coins.

Two ABB guys stood half a block down near an idling car, both of them looking the wrong way. One held a cigarette. The other had his hands jammed in his pockets like he could keep his fear from escaping by squeezing it.

In the center of the lane, under a streetlight that flickered like it wanted to look away, stood the black knight.

Armor, yeah. Full plate, but too clean, too deliberate. The edges of every overlapping plate burned with a thin red glow that gave the whole of it a very menacing appearance.

Helmet. Smooth. Visor slit like a wound.

And the way they stood—perfectly still, weight balanced—made it feel like the street had built itself around them and not the other way around.

One of the ABB guys lifted his chin. I saw his throat move.

"Yo," he called, voice cracking around the bravado. "You lost?"

The knight's head tilted.

Then the laughter came again, closer this time, and I realized it was coming from inside the helm. Filtered. Layered. Like someone had taken a woman's laugh and dropped it into a metal drum to see what it turned into.

"Ohhh," the knight purred, and the voice that followed the laugh was deeper than it should've been. "I'm exactly where I meant to be."

The ABB guy with the cigarette took a step back.

"Who the hell are you supposed to—"

A flick of a gauntleted hand.

The air popped.

The cigarette guy went off his feet and hit the wet asphalt hard enough that I heard the impact from where I crouched. The other guy stumbled, caught himself on the car, and then ran—ran like his legs were trying to apologize to him for ever slowing down.

The knight just stood there in the center of ABB turf and laughed.

My fingers moved before my brain finished arguing. I clicked the camcorder on and lifted it just enough to frame the street.

The image wobbled once, then steadied. The red glow looked brighter on screen than it did in real life.

The knight's helm turned slightly, as if they could feel the lens.

For one horrible second, I thought they were looking straight at me.

Then they spoke again, voice carrying.

"Come on," the knight said, amused. "I walked all this way. Don't make me knock on doors."

Somewhere deeper in the warehouse maze, something answered.

A thump. Heavy. Like a shipping container door being shut.

Then another sound—sharper, metallic—like a knife hitting concrete.

And then the temperature shifted.

The ABB guys who hadn't run yet were already running.

I swallowed and kept filming.

A figure stepped out from between two warehouses.

At first glance, he was just a man. Tall. Broad shoulders. Coat hanging open. Skin that looked too tough, like leather left in the sun. His eyes caught the streetlight and threw it back.

Lung.

I'd only seen him in clips and stills, always from too far away, always with too much smoke. Seeing him in person—even at a distance—made my stomach tighten. He had that presence that made your body want to obey before your mind figured out why.

He looked at the knight like the knight was a stain.

"You," Lung said, voice rough and low. "You're in my territory."

The knight bowed—actually bowed, one hand out, like a performer greeting an audience.

"Me," the knight agreed, and then they laughed again, louder, as if Lung had confirmed a punchline. "Oh, I was hoping you'd come. Everyone keeps saying your name like it means something."

Lung's jaw worked.

"You are not with the Empire," he said.

"No," the knight said, almost delighted. "I'm not."

The red glow along their armor edges pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat.

"I'm Baal."

The way they said it made it sound like a title.

Lung took one step forward.

The asphalt beneath his feet smoked.

I heard a hiss, like water hitting hot metal, and realized the puddles were starting to steam.

"You walk into my city wearing…that," Lung said, and there was disgust in the word like armor was an insult. "You assault my men."

"They were boring," Baal said, conversational. "I wanted a fight."

Lung's nostrils flared.

"You want a fight?" he echoed.

Baal spread their arms slightly, as if offering themselves up.

"Yes," Baal said. "Please. Tonight as been boring."

Then the air behind Lung split.

Oni Lee appeared—one moment the space was empty, the next it held a man in dark clothes and an oni mask. His hands were already moving.

He threw something small and round.

A grenade.

My brain shouted move and my feet did not obey because my eyes were locked on the screen.

The grenade spun through the air toward Baal.

Baal lifted one gauntleted finger and tapped the air.

The grenade stopped.

Not slowed—stopped. Hung in space like it had forgotten what falling meant.

Baal tilted their head at it, like someone studying an insect.

Then they flicked their finger.

The grenade zipped backward so fast it left a blur on my camera.

Oni Lee was already gone.

The grenade hit the spot where he had been standing, bounced once, and detonated.

The explosion was loud enough to punch my chest. Metal shrapnel screamed into the warehouse wall. A window that had somehow still had glass in it shattered outward in a glittering spray.

Baal didn't flinch.

They just laughed.

The sound rose over the crackle of the explosion like they'd found the funniest thing in the world.

Lung roared.

It wasn't a human sound. His coat burned away at the edges. His skin darkened. Scales started to rise up in patches along his arms, catching light like wet stone.

He surged forward.

Baal met him halfway.

What happened next was too fast for my camcorder to capture cleanly, but my eyes caught it in pieces.

Lung swung—an arm already thickening, knuckles swelling, claws starting to press through skin.

Baal sidestepped, impossibly smooth, and tapped Lung's forearm with two fingers.

The air popped again.

Lung went sideways like he'd been hit by a car. He slammed into a loading dock door hard enough to dent it inward, metal screaming. He hit the ground in a crouch and skidded, leaving a black smear of burned asphalt.

He looked up.

Baal was still standing in the center of the lane, posture relaxed.

Laughing.

"Oh, you're fun," Baal said, like they were trying out a new toy.

Lung's eyes narrowed.

He rose.

And as he rose, he grew.

His spine hunched. His shoulders broadened. Heat rolled off him in waves.

Behind him, Oni Lee flickered in and out—appearing on a rooftop, throwing knives, vanishing, appearing again on the opposite side of the lane with a second grenade.

Each time he appeared, there was a second Oni Lee behind him for a heartbeat, then another.

Copies.

Then the copies crumpled, collapsed into ash or nothing or whatever his power left behind, and the real one was gone again.

He was everywhere and nowhere, a swarm of knives and explosions.

Baal danced through it.

A knife flashed toward Baal's throat. Baal leaned, and it missed by inches.

A grenade rolled under Baal's boot. Baal lifted their foot delicately, as if avoiding a puddle, and the grenade detonated beneath them.

The blast blew a crater in the asphalt.

Baal was still there when the smoke cleared, untouched, laughter spilling out of the helmet like a song.

Their red-glow lines pulsed brighter, and for a second my camera lens flared like it couldn't decide how to process it.

Baal turned their head toward the warehouse windows above—the ones that overlooked the lane.

"Hey!" Baal called, voice bright, cheerful. "Everybody inside? If you're not inside, go inside!"

The words carried like an order.

A beat later, I heard a door slam somewhere. Another. Shouts in a language I didn't understand.

Baal's laughter cut through it.

Then Lung exhaled.

Fire.

A sheet of it—hot enough that the air rippled. It roared down the lane and washed over Baal like a tide.

My camcorder's microphone clipped into distortion. The image turned into orange smear and black silhouette.

When the flames cleared, Baal was standing in the same spot.

The asphalt around them had melted into tar. The streetlight above them had popped, glass raining down in tinkling shards.

Baal lifted one hand and waved it through the air like they were brushing smoke away.

"Is that all?" Baal asked, and there was genuine disappointment in the tone. "Come on. I was promised a dragon."

Lung's roar this time shook my teeth.

His arms thickened again. His claws lengthened. Wings—actual wings—started to bud from his back, not fully formed yet, but enough to cast broken shadows on the warehouse wall.

He charged.

Baal moved to meet him, not backing away, not bracing—inviting.

They collided.

The impact cracked the lane like brittle ice. My camcorder jolted as the shockwave hit the wall I was hiding behind. I cursed under my breath and tightened my grip.

Lung swung. Baal caught his wrist.

Just…caught it.

Like catching a thrown ball.

The sight made my brain stutter. Lung was getting bigger by the second, his strength ramping, his whole power built around becoming unmanageable.

Baal held him anyway.

Then Baal twisted.

Lung's arm went with it, dragged by physics that didn't care about pride. Lung stumbled forward and Baal drove a knee into his gut.

The sound was wet and heavy.

Lung went backward. He hit a stack of crates and obliterated them. Wood exploded. Nails shrieked. Something inside the crates—glass, maybe—shattered in a bright, tinkling cascade.

Baal laughed like they'd heard a joke at a party.

Oni Lee appeared behind Baal with a knife aimed at the back of the helmet.

I saw it clearly in my viewfinder, the blade catching red glow.

Baal didn't turn.

They just reached back, palm open, and caught the knife out of the air without looking.

Then they squeezed.

The blade crumpled in Baal's hand like foil.

Oni Lee froze—just a fraction of a second too long.

Baal turned their helm toward him.

"Oh," Baal said, delighted. "It's you again."

Oni Lee vanished.

Baal laughed louder.

"Stop running!" Baal called after him. "It's rude!"

A heartbeat later, Oni Lee appeared on a warehouse roof with both arms extended, tossing a pair of grenades down like he was feeding pigeons.

Baal lifted both hands.

The grenades stopped midair.

Baal held them there, suspended, and tilted their head up toward Oni Lee.

Then Baal flicked both hands outward.

The grenades shot sideways into the warehouse wall instead of down into the street.

The explosion punched a hole clean through corrugated metal. Fire belched out. Debris rained down in a glittering arc.

Baal didn't even glance at the flames. They were laughing too hard.

I realized then—somewhere behind the adrenaline—that the laughter wasn't just performance.

It was joy.

Maniacal, yes. Unhinged, maybe. But real.

Like Baal was having the time of their life.

Lung recovered fast. He always did, in the clips. He pushed himself up out of wreckage, scales thicker now, horns longer, his mouth full of teeth that hadn't been there ten seconds ago.

His eyes locked on Baal with something that wasn't just anger.

Respect, maybe. Or the closest Lung got to it.

He charged again.

This time, Baal let him get closer.

Too close.

Lung swung both arms in a wide, brutal arc, claws aimed to tear.

Baal stepped into the strike, not away.

For a second, it looked like Lung's claws would rake through Baal's chestplate.

Then the red lines along Baal's armor flared.

Not bright like a spotlight. Bright like a coal being breathed on.

The air in front of Baal rippled.

Lung's claws hit nothing.

Or rather—they hit something invisible that hit back.

Lung recoiled like he'd punched a wall.

Baal's laughter rolled out in a long, delighted peal.

"Yes!" Baal crowed. "There we go!"

Baal grabbed Lung by the arm.

I watched it happen and my brain refused to accept it—like watching someone grab a moving car by the hood ornament.

Baal yanked.

Lung's head snapped sideways. His whole body followed, dragged off balance, and Baal swung him like a club.

Lung's scaled bulk smashed into a warehouse wall.

The wall folded.

Metal shrieked. Bricks cracked. The building's side bowed inward like it had been hit by a wrecking ball.

Lung hit the ground in a shower of debris.

Baal let go and applauded.

Actually applauded. Two gauntleted hands clapping together, slow and mocking.

"Excellent," Baal said, voice practically purring. "Do it again."

Oni Lee appeared at street level again, closer to Baal, hands moving fast.

He wasn't throwing knives this time.

He was throwing something else.

Thin cylinders, like shaped charges. They clattered across the lane and stuck to the asphalt with little magnetic clicks.

I knew enough about bombs to know that was bad.

Baal looked down, saw the charges, and laughed even harder.

"Oh, you're adorable," Baal said, and then Baal stomped.

Not hard enough to crack the street—just a sharp, precise stomp.

The red glow along Baal's boot flared.

The charges popped.

The shockwave hit Oni Lee and threw him backward into a parked car. The car's alarm screamed once and died.

Oni Lee teleported out of the impact a heartbeat later—appearing on top of a shipping container, then another, then another, trying to get distance.

Baal looked up at him and tilted their helm.

"You know," Baal said, thoughtful, as if making conversation, "I've met mosquitoes with more commitment."

Oni Lee threw a knife.

Baal caught it.

Threw it back.

The knife struck the container Oni Lee had been standing on a second earlier.

Oni Lee was already gone.

Lung surged up again, bigger now, wings half-formed, fire leaking from the corners of his mouth like breath couldn't hold it in.

He roared and the sound shook loose more debris from the damaged warehouse.

Baal turned toward him, laughing.

And then Baal did something that made my stomach drop.

They looked past Lung.

Toward the street behind him.

Toward the wider road that led out of the warehouses and back toward the neighborhoods where people lived.

Toward where sirens were starting to wail in the distance.

Baal raised one hand.

The red glow pulsed outward in a thin wave.

Not an attack.

A warning.

A boundary drawn in the air—subtle, but my camera caught it as a faint distortion line crossing the mouth of the lane like heat haze.

Baal spoke, voice carrying, and for the first time the laughter dipped enough that the words sounded almost…responsible.

"Stay out," Baal said, like ordering the world. "This is mine."

Then the laugh came back, louder than ever, and Baal launched forward.

They hit Lung with a shoulder check that sent him skidding.

Lung dug claws into asphalt, sparks flying, and stopped himself like an anchor biting into ground.

He surged back and grabbed Baal.

For a second—just a second—Lung's claws closed around Baal's armor, and it looked like he might actually get leverage.

Then Baal's red lines flared again.

A pressure wave burst outward.

Lung was thrown off, stumbling, and Baal was already moving again, weaving, laughing, treating the fight like a dance.

Oni Lee tried to capitalize.

He appeared behind Baal again, closer than before, and this time he didn't throw anything.

He reached.

Maybe for Baal's helmet. Maybe for a joint in the armor. Maybe for a pressure point. Maybe he'd decided a knife wasn't enough.

Baal spun.

Their gauntlet closed around Oni Lee's wrist mid-reach.

Oni Lee froze.

He tried to teleport.

I could see the moment his body tensed for it, like a flinch.

He didn't go.

Baal held him there like Baal was gripping reality itself.

"Oh," Baal said softly, delighted, laughter bubbling under the word. "There you are."

Oni Lee's mask tilted, the painted smile suddenly looking less like intimidation and more like panic.

Baal lifted him one-handed.

Just…lifted him.

Then Baal laughed, a high, sharp sound that echoed off metal walls and made my skin prickle.

"You really should stop trying to stab people who can catch you," Baal said.

And then Baal threw Oni Lee.

Not tossed. Not shoved.

Threw.

Oni Lee's body became a dark blur against the streetlight as he rocketed across the lane and slammed into the side of a warehouse.

The wall did not politely dent. Corrugated metal and brick exploded outward as Oni Lee punched through it like a cannonball. A rectangular hole opened in the building's side and dust billowed out in a choking cloud.

The sound arrived a fraction later—an ugly, heavy impact, metal screeching, bricks clattering.

My camcorder shook in my hands.

I realized my mouth was open. I shut it, swallowed, and kept filming.

Baal turned back toward Lung, laughter still spilling out like they couldn't stop it even if they wanted to.

Lung roared again, enraged, and the roar came with fire.

He exhaled a stream of flame that lit the lane orange and made shadows dance like something alive.

Baal stepped through the edge of it, armor glowing brighter, and grabbed Lung by the throat.

Lung's claws raked at Baal's arm. Sparks danced where claws met whatever magic held the armor together.

Baal didn't care.

They hauled.

Lung's feet left the ground.

His wings—half-formed, ragged—beat once, trying to find air. His tail—longer now, scaled—whipped and smashed a parked car, crushing the roof like a soda can.

Collateral. Loud collateral.

Baal laughed like the noise was music.

Then Baal moved.

Not toward the street. Not toward the neighborhoods.

Toward the water.

Toward the docks.

Baal dragged Lung backward, step by step, through puddles that hissed and steamed where his heat touched them. Lung struggled, grew heavier, muscles bulking, but Baal held him like he weighed nothing.

I followed as best as I could.

I stayed behind cover, weaving between dumpsters and container stacks, camcorder pressed to my face, heart pounding so hard I thought it might show up as audio distortion.

We reached the pier.

The dock water below was black, oily, reflecting broken lights in trembling lines. The bay wind cut through the heat and made me shiver.

Baal stopped at the edge and looked down as if considering the drop.

Then Baal looked back at Lung.

"Time out," Baal said cheerfully. "Go cool off."

Lung's eyes burned.

He tried to breathe fire again.

Baal tightened their grip.

The fire choked off into smoke.

Baal's laughter rose one more time—wild, thrilled, absolutely unhinged.

And then Baal threw Lung upwards into the sky. Baal followed after him, surging. And then unleashed a red-black flash of energy that struck at the dragon and hurled him down.

Lung hit the water with a massive splash that sent a wave slapping up onto the dock planks.

Steam erupted instantly—white and furious—rolling up in a cloud as his heat met cold salt water.

The water churned.

The steam hid him.

Baal stood at the edge of the pier, black armor outlined in red glow, watching the boiling surface like it was the end of a show.

My camcorder zoomed in as far as it would go.

The last thing it caught clearly was Baal's helmet tilt, a curious little angle, and the way their shoulders shook—

with laughter—

as the bay frothed where Lung had disappeared.

Rias would be the first to admit that, compared to someone like Sairoarg, she really wasn't the most physically-inclined of fighters. Certainly, she was stronger than most humans could ever hope to be, barring a few anomalous existences, but still far below the norm of melee Devils. However, with a little touch of magic and the ol' razzle-dazzle, neither of which would even remotely be effective against even the weakest of magicians in her world, Rias could turn her moderately strong punches into extremely strong punches.

Steam rolled off the bay in white sheets. The water below boiled where Lung had gone under, the surface churning. The air stank of salt and hot metal and whatever oil Brockton Bay insisted on bleeding into its own lungs.

Rias stood at the edge and watched.

The armor's red lines pulsed, faint and pleased. Her own laughter still lingered in her chest, warm and bright in a way that did not match the night or the city or the fact that she had just thrown a dragon into the ocean.

Was Lung even a dragon?

He certainly didn't look like any dragon Rias had ever heard of.

Her ears perked under her helmet.

Sirens, far off, threading through streets like insects. Shouts in the warehouse maze. Footsteps running, running, running. The bay wind cutting under it all, cold and wet, trying to scrub the heat away.

Underneath all of that—Lung.

Anger burned in him like a furnace. Even in the water she could feel it, a raw, animal thing that fought and fought and fought because fighting was all it knew. His power fed on that anger, thickened it, turned it into scale and claw and fire. The more he raged, the more his power gave him permission to become a monster, to grow in response to whatever threat he perceived.

It was almost… elegant, in a stupid sort of way.

Also inconvenient.

Rias had let the fight go on longer than she needed to, because she had been curious and maybe a little bored if she was being honest. And also because she had wanted to see if his legend had any truth behind it besides fear and momentum. Lung was pretty much the one and only heavy hitter of the ABB. His name was legendary in Brockton Bay and famous across America.

Now the city's attention was turning toward the docks. Even through concrete and distance she could feel the shape of it—the pull of a crowd, the tightening of a thousand nervous systems as people realized something big was happening and did they want to see it and did they want to run.

Baal had made her point.

Time to end the lesson.

She lifted one gauntleted hand over the water, palm down.

"Quiet," she said.

She reached for Lung's mind like she was putting a hand on the head of a snarling dog. She found the rage. It was easy to find. Rage always was. It broadcast itself. It begged to be witnessed. It demanded an answer.

She closed her fingers around it and squeezed.

The water surged once, violently, as if Lung's body reacted before his mind did. Then the surge softened. Heat dropped visibly. The steam thinned, the white curtain tearing open in patches, revealing dark water beneath.

A scaled shoulder broke the surface, then sank, then rose again, slower this time. The churning became a confused roll. The boiling stopped pretending it was eternal.

Lung surfaced in pieces as his power slipped.

A horned head, half-formed. A snout that could not decide if it wanted to be human or alien. Claws that shrank as they breached the air, the webbing between them collapsing into fingers. Scales loosened and slid off him in wet sheets, dissolving before they could become evidence.

His eyes found the sky. They were still bright with anger, but the anger had nowhere to go. The calm Rias imposed sat on him like a weight, heavy and suffocating.

He coughed. Water poured out of his mouth, dark and salty.

He tried to breathe fire.

Nothing came.

His jaw clenched. His whole body tensed as if he could force his power back into place through sheer stubbornness.

Rias tightened her grip on his mind.

Calm.

Still.

Be quiet.

Lung's muscles slackened as if someone had cut a string. His head lolled. His body floated, buoyed by water and the last stubborn remnants of his transformation.

He looked suddenly… human.

Just a man in a villain's costume, soaked through, drifting under a pier light like discarded laundry.

Rias watched him for a heartbeat longer than necessary.

Then she allowed herself to fall. She dropped in a clean line, boots first, the cold air rushing past her helm slit. She landed on Lung.

Both feet.

Right on his face.

The impact was sharp and ugly. Water splashed outward in a ring. Lung's head snapped back beneath her boots, and the mask he wore shattered with a crack like snapping porcelain. Fragments skittered and vanished into the water.

Lung went limp.

His body rolled, stunned into unconsciousness, the last of his half-formed scales evaporating.

Rias let herself stand there for half a second, boots planted on a defeated dragon's face. Then she stepped off him.

The water bobbed him up again. His head lolled, his mouth half-open, breath coming slow and heavy. The mask was gone, and what stared up at the sky was not Lung.

It was Kenta.

Rias stared down at him, and for a moment the docks shifted in her mind.

This was the guy from that ramen shop.

Japan. Kyushu, he'd said.

Rias had liked him.

Of course she had.

"Well," she said, almost chuckling at the coincidence of it. "That's awkward."

The docks were not private. There were eyes. There were phones. There were cameras. There was, somewhere out there, a kid with a camcorder who would absolutely upload a close-up of Lung's bare face if given half a chance.

Rias did not want that.

Not because she cared about Lung's privacy. But because she understood that civilian identities mattered in this world, for reasons she was still learning but could already smell. It was a taboo of a sort and Rias did not want to break it.

Even if Lung deserved it.

She snapped her fingers. A mask appeared in her hand, whole and pristine. Identical to the one Lung had before. Rias pressed it to Kenta's face and let it settle. Straps formed and tightened. The fit was perfect. Lung was Lung again, at least from the outside. Inside, his pride was probably shattered.

Good.

She rose and lifted him out of the water with one hand. She carried him onto the pier, set him down for a heartbeat, and snapped her fingers again.

A length of chain appeared. She looped it around Lung's torso and under his arms, more harness than restraint.

He wasn't waking up. He wasn't going anywhere. The chain was a prop. Rias hooked the chain over her shoulder and started walking back into ABB territory, dragging their dragon behind her across wet boards that creaked under the weight of the night. Akeno would've had him crawling and barking on the ground.

The wind caught the red glow of her armor and made it shimmer across puddles like blood in motion.

She smiled under the helm.

If Sentai Crimson was a story people told themselves to feel safe, then Baal was going to be a story they told themselves to remember fear.

—

ABB territory at night was a maze of warehouses and service lanes and streets that had forgotten what they were built for. Lights hung too high and flickered too often. Music leaked from cars and buildings, bass heavy, like people tried to drown out their own thoughts in the noise of it all.

They noticed her.

They could not ignore her.

The first corner she turned, three men froze mid-conversation. All three stared at her armor. Then their eyes dropped to what she was dragging. Lung's unconscious form bumped over cracked asphalt, water still dripping, mask intact, the chain biting shallow lines into his coat.

One of the men's faces went pale.

"What—" he started.

Rias kept walking. She made sure her boots hit the pavement with a steady, deliberate sound.

Clack. Clack. Clack.

The men backed up like the sound itself could bruise them. A woman peeked through a warehouse door and went still, eyes wide, hand flying to her mouth. Rias stopped in the middle of the street and lifted her head.

"Phones," she said, voice carrying. "Cameras. Get them out."

The woman flinched like she'd been struck, then fumbled in her pocket with shaking hands. A cheap phone appeared. Its screen glowed as she lifted it.

Good.

Rias pointed at her with one gauntleted finger.

"You," she said. "Zoom in. Make sure you get his face."

The woman's eyes darted to Lung and back to Baal. She swallowed.

"Yes," she whispered, and did it.

A man leaned out of a second-story window across the street, eyes bulging, and lifted his own phone. A kid half his age stuck his head out beside him and started filming too.

Rias waved at them, casual as a celebrity acknowledging a fan.

"Hi," she said. "Make it a good angle."

She resumed walking.

Word spread in ripples. It always did. A shout down an alley. A door slamming. Footsteps running ahead, warning others. Shapes gathering behind curtains. Faces appearing in windows, then disappearing, then appearing again with cameras. Some people stayed back, wise enough to keep their distance. Other people edged closer, curiosity dragging them like a leash.

Rias let them.

She wanted them to see. She wanted ABB soldiers to see their dragon being dragged like a dead weight behind a stranger. She turned onto a wider street and stopped under a streetlamp that was still alive. The light painted her armor in harsh edges. It painted Lung's mask in wet shine. Rias lifted Lung's chain and hauled him up off the ground with one hand, holding him suspended like a prize.

For a moment the street went dead quiet.

Baal stood in the center of ABB territory, holding their boss like a bag.

She tilted her helm.

"Is this yours?" she asked pleasantly.

No one answered.

A man in the crowd—older, lined face, likely not gang, likely just someone trapped in the neighborhood—made a small sound, half cough, half laugh, like disbelief was trying to find a shape.

Rias nodded once, as if satisfied.

"Good," she said. "Then you understand the point."

She let Lung drop again. His body hit the pavement with a wet thud.

A few people winced.

Good.

Rias stepped over him and kept walking, dragging him along like the world's ugliest parade float.

"Keep filming," she called over her shoulder. "I want the internet to get this in high definition."

Someone—somewhere—laughed nervously.

Rias laughed too, because it was infectious.

A villain laughing while she dragged a dragon through the street. Sirzechs would have had opinions–mostly about how to look cooler while doing it. She shoved the thought aside and kept moving.

The largest building in the district was not hard to find.

ABB did not do subtle with their pleasures. They did not hide their money behind tasteful curtains. They put it in neon and gold and lacquered wood, power that liked to announce itself. The building rose three stories, sprawled wide, wedged between warehouses like a jewel stuck in rot. Red lanterns hung under the awnings. A sign in stylized English letters glowed bright:

THE JADE ORCHID

Beneath it, a smaller sign, dimmer but no less clear, promised what the building was for if you had any imagination at all.

Games. Girls. Drinks.

The kind of place people walked into with a wad of cash and walked out with less of themselves.

Two bouncers stood outside, thick men in cheap suits, eyes sharp. They had earpieces. They had the posture of people who had seen violence and decided it was a job perk.

They saw Baal approaching.

They saw what she dragged behind her.

Their faces changed in a slow cascade of disbelief, fear, and then stark horror. One reached under his jacket. A gun couldn't kill an infant devil. Rias stopped ten feet from the entrance and lifted her helm slightly, not to show her face—just a theatrical tilt, like she was studying them.

"Open the door," she said.

The first bouncer swallowed.

"That's—" he began.

Rias jerked the chain.

Lung's body slid forward, bumped against the bouncer's polished shoes, and left a smear of seawater on the concrete.

The bouncer stared down at it like he'd been slapped.

Rias let her voice soften into something almost gentle.

"Open," she repeated.

The door opened.

Not by them, in the end.

A woman inside—tight dress, too much makeup, eyes tired—peeked out through the glass and froze when she saw the street.

She saw Lung.

She saw Baal.

She did not ask questions. She yanked the door open and stepped back. Rias walked in.

The inside was annoyingly warm. Too much heat. Too many bodies. Too much perfume layered over cigarette smoke. Music thumped low, meant to be sensual, meant to make people forget time and consequences. A row of gambling tables stretched along one side—cards, dice, chips. Men leaned over them, eyes hungry. A few women sat nearby, smiling too wide, hands on thighs that did not want to be touched.

A staircase curved up toward the second floor, where dim red light promised private rooms.

Rias walked in dragging Lung behind her, and the music stuttered as someone fumbled with the controls.

Conversations died. A dealer froze with a card half-dealt. A man in a silk shirt stood up too fast, chair scraping, and stared at Lung's mask like he couldn't process what he was seeing.

Rias stopped in the middle of the room and lifted her head.

Her armor's red lines painted the walls in flickering reflections.

"Everybody out," she said.

No one moved.

Some people blinked. Some people stared. Some looked toward the back, where security might come.

Rias waited one second.

"Or die."

Chairs scraped. People stood. A woman in heels stumbled, caught herself, and then ran. A man dropped his chips like they were burning and bolted for the door. Someone shouted in Japanese, sharp and angry, and got drowned out by the stampede of bodies suddenly remembering survival.

Rias stepped aside as they poured past her.

"Good," she said. "Yes. Like that. Go."

A girl—maybe seventeen, maybe older, hard to tell under the makeup—hesitated near the bottom of the stairs, eyes flicking between the door and Rias and Lung.

Rias pointed.

"Out," she said, and her voice softened again, almost human beneath the metallic filter. "Now."

The girl flinched, then ran, shoulders tight, hands pressed to her sides like she was afraid someone would grab her before she made it outside. Rias watched her go. She watched the last of them spill into the street. Then she turned back to the empty room.

The Jade Orchid stood silent, abandoned in the space of a minute.

Neon still glowed. Cards still lay on tables. Chips sat in neat stacks like tiny towers of money that no longer belonged to anyone.

Rias exhaled.

She dragged Lung into the center of the floor and let him drop.

"Congratulations," she told the unconscious dragon. "You get to be the first witness as Baal tears your kingdom apart, starting with this place."

She lifted her hand.

The Power of Destruction answered eagerly, a star in her palm. And then, it grew into a black hole.

The Jade Orchid collapsed inward with a loud boom that just as quickly gave way to silence. Walls buckled. Floors folded. The roof caved as if kneeling.

Dust billowed out in a thick cloud, rolling across the street like fog. Neon shattered. Wood cracked. Steel screamed.

And beneath it all, for one brief moment, the red-black of the Power of Destruction flashed like a heartbeat in the dark.

Then the building was rubble.

The cameras kept recording.

The sirens kept coming.

Baal stood at the center of the dust cloud, black armor outlined in ember-light, and watched the biggest symbol of ABB's comfort turn into a pile of broken things.

She laughed.

Rias lay on her back and watched the ceiling.

The bedroom was dark except for the thin strip of streetlight that slipped through the blinds and painted a pale bar across the far wall. The air still carried the bay, damp and cold, with a faint edge of soot that clung to everything in this city. Her pillow smelled like clean cotton.

She had taken the armor off before she climbed into bed. She had cleaned it without thinking, snapped the salt and grime away, set each black plate in a neat line on the workroom table as if she were laying out silverware for a banquet. The red lines had dimmed as soon as she stopped feeding them attention. The helm sat upside down like a bowl, quiet, harmless.

The quiet in the room did not feel harmless.

Hero or villain?

She stared at the ceiling and tried to sort it into pieces that made sense.

Being a hero felt like warmth in a small room. A single stove. A bowl of broth. Being the villain felt like sugar. Sharp at the tongue. A rush that lifted her above the ground for a few bright seconds and then left a faint grit behind her teeth.

She had expected the opposite.

She let out a breath, slow, and watched it fog in her mind as if it could fog the air.

Her phone lay facedown on the nightstand. It vibrated again, once, twice, then stopped. She could hear the tiny buzz through the wood.

She didn't pick it up yet.

Her eyes kept returning to the same point in the ceiling where the paint met the beam at a seam that wasn't perfectly straight. Rias had fixed most of the crooked seams on reflex the first day she moved in. She had left that one. She wasn't sure why. It felt like a reminder that perfection was a choice, and choices meant she still had a hand on the wheel. Or something.

Rias sighed.

"I did it," she said to the ceiling, and the words came out flat in the darkness. "I played villain."

The ceiling didn't answer. It never did. She kept talking anyway.

"The part where I hit him was satisfying," she admitted. "The part where I dragged him was… funny."

Akeno would've thought it was hilarious.

The building collapsing had been something else.

She'd warned them. She'd given them time. She'd watched bodies spill out into the street and she'd pointed at the last girl on the stairs until she ran. She'd been careful.

She'd still felt the Power of Destruction bloom in her palm, eager and pleased, and she'd fed it until the Jade Orchid folded inward like paper.

The sound had been huge, and then it had been gone. Dust had rolled through the street like a tide. People screamed. Cameras kept recording.

There had been no warmth in her afterward. There had been laughter, because she'd been wearing a mask that demanded laughter.

Otherwise, she really wasn't laughing at anything particularly funny.

Outside, a car rolled past on Willow Lane, tires hissing on cold pavement. A porch light clicked on and then off. Someone's television bled a laugh track through thin walls.

Normal sounds. A normal street. A normal night.

She closed her eyes.

World peace, Sirzechs had said once at a table that smelled like tea and expensive ink. He'd said it with a smile that dared the universe to laugh at him. He'd said it like a joke and like a promise in the same breath.

He had meant it.

Rias opened her eyes again.

She sat up slowly and reached for her phone.

The screen lit her face in a pale wash.

The headlines were already there, because Brockton Bay didn't sleep when it had a new story to chew on.

Jade Orchid Destroyed in Suspected Parahuman Attack.

Dockside Blaze Contained After Explosions.

PRT Advises Public to Avoid ABB Territory Amid Ongoing Unrest.

A grainy still sat under one headline: a black figure in the middle of a street, red lines glowing, dragging something long and dark behind them.

Her own silhouette, framed by someone else's fear.

She clicked without thinking, watched a ten-second clip in silence. The footage shook. The audio peaked. She saw herself lift Lung's chain and hold him up like a prize under a streetlamp.

The person filming made a sound that was half laugh, half sob.

She stopped the clip before it could show the inside of the Jade Orchid.

The PRT spokesperson in the next video looked like he hadn't slept. His suit sat too sharp on shoulders that wanted to slump. He said words that slid around the truth, careful and practiced. Unregistered parahuman. Ongoing investigation. Public safety.

He asked anyone with information to contact the PRT tip line.

Rias set the phone down again and stared past it.

Sentai Crimson had gotten a press conference invitation.

Baal would get a task force.

She could live with that. She could always live with people chasing the wrong shadow.

She breathed in, slow, and let the air settle.

She swung her legs out of bed and stood.

The house floor was cool under her feet. The air in the bedroom carried the clean absence she'd made with her snaps. The window was cracked a hand's width. Cold air slipped in and touched the back of her neck.

She went to the kitchen, filled a glass with water, and drank. She didn't need it. The act felt grounding anyway.

Then she walked into the workroom.

The lamp on the desk cast a steady pool of light on the table. The Haywire cases sat stacked in the corner. Beside them, the black armor waited in a neat row, each plate catching the lamplight on its edges. The helm sat upside down, visor slit pointed at the floor.

Across from it, folded on a chair, Sentai Crimson's suit waited in red and white like a flag.

Two masks. Two stories.

Rias reached out and touched the black chestplate.

The red line along its edge pulsed once under her fingertip, eager, as if it recognized her mood and wanted to feed. She took her hand away.

"That was fun," she admitted, and her voice sounded tired in the empty room. "It was also… unsatisfying."

She turned and looked at the red suit.

"That one," she said, and the words came easier, "felt like breathing."

Her hand lifted, hovered over the folded fabric, then stopped.

She didn't need to touch it to know.

Rias sat at the table and pulled a notepad toward her. The pencil lay where she'd left it.

She wrote without thinking too hard about the shape of the letters.

GOALS.

She stared at the word. It looked strange on her paper in this little rental house.

Back home, her goals were wildly different–all of them quite out of reach now. In this world, she had all the freedom she could ever want and all the freedom she could ever regret.

That freedom was a gift. It was also a cliff.

If she didn't pick a direction, she would drift until the loneliness ate her from the inside.

In a world where she didn't personally care about anyone, why not save everyone?

WORLD PEACE.

Rias leaned back in her chair and stared at the two words.

It sounded stupid. It sounded arrogant. It sounded like something a child said in a classroom when the teacher asked what they wanted to be when they grew up and the child hadn't learned how life worked yet.

It also sounded like a rope you could tie around your waist before you walked into a storm.

She let the pencil roll between her fingers.

"World peace," she said aloud, tasting it.

Brockton Bay came to mind at once. Gangs. Poverty. People sleeping under overhangs with cardboard and plastic bags. A father with tired eyes offering spaghetti to a stranger because he was trying to remember how to be kind. A girl with glasses and a trash bag in her hands, shoulders tight like she expected the world to swing at her every time she stepped outside. She had seen Africa on the screen, ruined by warlords and armies. She had seen Madison, a white wing in the sky and the city below it turned into a wasteland.

World peace was too big to hold in two hands.

So she would start where her feet were.

She wrote underneath it.

START IN BROCKTON BAY.

Then she paused, pencil hovering.

How?

She could erase the ABB. She could erase the Empire. She could erase the Merchants, the little predators that clung to the city's ribs and drank what they could.

She could do it in an hour if she stopped caring about the rules.

She could do it in maybe half that time if she let herself be cruel.

Peace made by fear wasn't peace. It was just silence.

Rias set the pencil down and rubbed her thumb across the pad of her forefinger, grounding herself in the small texture of skin.

To do what she needed to do, however, she was gonna need a team.

She reached into the personal dimension tucked beside her ribs and pulled out a small velvet pouch.

It hit her palm with a familiar weight.

She poured the contents onto the table.

King. Queen. Rooks. Bishops. Knights. Pawns.

Her pieces.

Her responsibility.

She needed to choose someone who wanted saving and wanted her help and wanted a place to stand.

And she also needed to choose someone with power.

If she was going to change a city, she would need more than a single pair of wings.

Rias rolled the Pawn across her knuckles, watching it catch light and lose it again.

Parahumans.

If she could take one who was already strong and make them stronger, she could build something.She could build a team.

A peerage.

The thought made her throat tighten.

Rias set the Pawn down gently, as if it might break.

She opened her laptop.

Unregistered parahuman sighting help.

Case 53 found injured.

Missing cape rural.

Monster in woods parahuman.

She added terms and watched the results scroll.

Some were old, archived threads with dead links and jokes that had rotted. Some were local news stories full of polite phrases and blurry pictures. Some were government pages that said nothing in too many words.

She clicked, skimmed, discarded.

Her eyes moved quickly, pattern-hunting. It had always been one of her skills. Court politics trained you to read what people left out.

She found a story about a young boy in Brazil who'd set his house on fire in his sleep and then vanished into the rainforest. The comments argued whether it was a power or a tragedy. She filed it away. Too far, too messy, too likely to be a child who would hate her forever if she showed up with an offer.

She found a thread about a woman in rural Canada who'd been spotted walking through snowstorms in bare feet, leaving glassy footprints behind her. The last update said she'd been taken into custody by local authorities and transferred to "a federal program." Rias didn't need to ask which one.

She found a shaky video from somewhere in the Middle East of a man on a rooftop, arms out, turning the air into hard shapes that caught bullets. The caption called him an angel. The comments called him a fraud. The uploader had been banned.

She kept going.

She started searching outside English.

taiga demon tendrils.

лесной демон щупальца.

The first results were nonsense. Fantasy forums. Folk stories. Hunters telling lies to sound brave.

She scrolled anyway.

Then she hit a cluster of local articles, reposted and mirrored, the kind that kept surviving because nobody bothered to take them down.

The thumbnails showed snow and trees and a dark smear in the middle distance.

Rias clicked.

The page loaded slowly, old and heavy with ads. The headline came out in translated chunks.

LOCAL HUNTERS REPORT "TENTACLE DEVIL" NEAR … REGION.

The video embedded beneath it was low resolution. Someone had filmed from behind a line of birch trees. The camera shook with breath.

The frame showed white ground, pines, a strip of black water cutting through snow.

Something moved at the edge of the treeline.

At first, it looked like a moose a moose.

Then the shape shifted and the moose-shaped thought fell apart.

A body, low to the ground, too long in the torso. Limbs that looked like arms and then didn't. Tendrils, thin and dark, lashing out and pulling the body forward with a motion that was not walking and not crawling.

The creature paused. Its head turned toward the camera.

The footage blurred. The filmer swore in Russian. The lens jerked down and then back up.

When the picture steadied, the thing was gone.

Rias sat very still.

Her fingers hovered over the trackpad. The room around her felt smaller, like the air had tightened.

She replayed the clip.

Again.

Again, slower.

There was a moment—two frames—where the creature's head turned and a pale glint caught in the dark. Then it vanished into the trees like it had never been there.

The comments beneath the video were half jokes, half prayers. People tagged friends. People argued about bears. One man claimed he'd seen the same thing near a rail line and that it had "killed a dog and left nothing."

A second link on the page led to a follow-up article with a different angle.

WOMAN MISSING AFTER ENCOUNTER IN TAIGA.

The picture showed a smiling woman in winter gear, cheeks red from cold, holding a fish as long as her arm. The caption said she was a biology student doing field work.

The text said her team had heard screams. They'd found blood on snow. They'd found tracks that stopped in the middle of a clearing.

No body. No trail.

A local official said there was no evidence of criminal activity.

Rias's jaw tightened.

She clicked into another mirror. Another article. Another clip.

This one was at night, filmed from a vehicle on a road lined with pines. Headlights cut a narrow tunnel through snow.

Something crossed the road in front of the car.

A black shape, fast.

Tendrils trailed behind it like ribbons.

The driver hit the brakes and shouted. The camera swung. The shape was gone.

Rias leaned back in her chair and stared at her screen.

A creature in the taiga.

A parahuman, maybe, twisted and deformed by their own power.

Hunted by locals. Hunted by whoever handled problems in a country that didn't like admitting it had them.

Needing help.

Needing a hand that could reach into the trees and pull them out without asking permission.

Rias's gaze dropped to the Evil Pieces on her table.

She picked up the Pawn again.

"If you exist," she said quietly, "then you're lonely too."

The thought of it made her throat sting.

A monster in the snow, running from guns and hunger and whatever instincts their shard had sharpened into knives.

If she saved them, she could do it twice.

She could pull them out of the taiga and into her own arms.

AN: Chapter 18 is out on Patreon!