Looks like there's some more of this available. Yay! 
President Sam Richardson stared at the intelligence man who had just dashed into the meeting and given a breathless verbal report. He blinked a few times, taken aback to a level he'd never encountered before, even in the job he had.
"Excuse me?" he finally said, after a very long pause during which everyone else present seemed as stunned as he was. "
Dinosaur people? With ray guns? In
Wyoming?"
The man, who was still slightly flushed having apparently run from one side of the Pentagon to the other flat out, nodded. "Apparently, sir. The local sheriff's department contacted the nearest PRT branch office in Cheyenne, which is quite small since Wyoming is practically empty. He reported an attack by the villain group known as '
Hell's Champions.'"
"Who on earth are they?" Richardson queried, not recognizing the name.
"A bunch of murder-hobos who are… or more accurately
were… trying to out-Slaughterhouse Nine the Slaughterhouse Nine," one of the other people there responded before the intelligence man could, in a rather disgusted tone. "They had a habit of roaming around the less populated areas doing hit and run attacks on small towns, killing dozens of people, then escaping before a response could be raised. Last I heard they'd been down in Mexico for a few months, but there was word they'd come back once the S9 were wiped out."
"Correct, sir," the man from military intelligence said, taking a seat as Richardson motioned to it. "Three extant members. Killfyre, a Blaster seven with pyrokinetic abilities, manifesting as plasma shots emitted from his hands, a completely psychopathic lunatic who enjoys killing people for fun. Lockdown, a Stranger/Master, ratings six in both categories, with the ability for limited control of humans, apparently restricted to forcing people within approximately five hundred yards to follow simple orders, and one that makes his victims forget about an area for several hours. He was a key part of their strategy, they'd roll into a small town, make everyone congregate in one area, block knowledge of anyone outside that area from realizing anything was amiss, then they'd have their…
fun." He paused for a moment, shaking his head in revulsion, then continued.
"The last current member was Gungear, a weapons Tinker with minor Brute abilities, four on the Tinker rating, two on the Brute one. Approximately three times as strong as a normal person, slight regeneration, somewhat faster reflexes, but nothing exceptional in such terms. Her Tinker specialty was building massive hand-held gun platforms, her favorite being a gatling cannon with an ammo backpack that held far more rounds than it should have done. Think of the M134 minigun but scaled up approximately two times. She was more than happy to spray rounds all over the place into a crowd of civilians, and has done so quite a few times."
Shrugging a little, he shook his head. "None of them are a problem after what happened."
"What
did happen?" Richardson queried, wanting a recap since the first report had been so fast he'd barely understood half of it, and the half he
did understand sounded completely ridiculous.
"We're still not entirely certain, sir," the man replied with a sigh, "The PRT is on the way there, but Hulett is a very small town quite a ways from Cheyenne. The Cheyenne field office only has two aircraft, one of which is out of service being repaired after an incident two days ago, and the other one was on a routine mission to Salt Lake City, most of the way there. They've called it back but the flight time is over an hour and a half just to get back to Cheyenne, then it's another hour and a half to Hulett. It's nearly six hours by road. They've already dispatched a team even so, but no PRT presence is expected to reach the site for at least two hours from now." He looked at his watch, then nodded. "Yes, two hours minimum. Unfortunately that part of the country hasn't got much in the way of PRT presence, for a number of reasons. Wyoming as a whole only has about two hundred and fifty thousand people in it, and most of those are to the south. Several of the neighboring states are have even lower population densities, for reasons we all know."
"Can we get someone from further away to get there sooner?" someone queried, looking annoyed. "LA for example? Supersonic transports are a thing after all."
"The Chief Director is currently unreachable, but we've put in a request to LA even so, sir," the man replied immediately. "As well as other large PRT stations. We're waiting for responses right now but the amount of bureaucracy involved is incredible, due to all the different jurisdictions." He shrugged again. "By the time everyone sorts it out Cheyenne will probably be there."
"Fine," Richardson said with irritation, waving that part aside for now. He'd be talking seriously to Costa-Brown about her timing on vanishing at inopportune times later, though. It wasn't the first occasion something like this had happened. The woman was a pain in the ass in many ways, he thought with a scowl. "Go over the actual incident and leave the response for the moment. What actually
happened?"
Taking a deep breath, the intelligence operative thought for a moment, then exhaled. "From the initial report, the villain group did their standard approach, picking a small town in the middle of nowhere, then infiltrating it from the south. The first anyone there knew of it was when they were forced to head to the school, and the Master corralled everyone in the entire town in the school gymnasium. We understand that the group likely attacked a ranch on the outskirts of town first, as the Sheriff had a report of a large fire from that direction, but before he and his single deputy could investigate, everything went to shit. In a manner of speaking, sir." He looked mildly embarrassed although Richardson merely nodded for him to continue, which he did.
"In any case the entire population of the town, some two hundred and ninety four people, found themselves in the school unable to flee. Several who attempted to resist, being on the edges of the Master effect, or possibly just slightly more resistant to it, were gunned down by the Tinker, but almost everyone was rounded up. This all happened sometime around eleven PM local time, so most of the population was either asleep or about to be. Over the next seven and a half hours, Killfyre murdered more than fifty people in cold blood, one after the other, apparently because it amused him. He'd pick one out, as far as we know at random, let them run, then blast them."
Everyone looked and felt sick at the described events, delivered in tones of professional calmness underlaid with deep fury.
"At just after oh seven thirty hours, without any warning, all three Parahumans were killed by what witnesses claimed were some form of energy weapon, fired through the windows of the gymnasium door and intersecting each of the villains with extreme accuracy," he carried on after a few moments. "All three died instantly. The Sheriff reports that they each had at least one hole a good two inches across completely through them, and anything they were wearing. The Tinker was hit by two weapons, the other two by one each. Center mass, right through the chest. He said it was remarkably good shooting and in his opinion the result of military training."
Everyone exchanged glances. Richardson was leaning back in his chair, listening intently. A couple of the military people present were making notes, seeming fascinated.
"Not the usual rules of engagement for Parahumans, or the PRT," he noted.
"No," the operative agreed, nodding. "In any case, as soon as the Master died, the captives were released from the effect, and as you might expect, promptly panicked. Not surprisingly, since they'd experienced dozens of gruesome murders all night. About thirty seconds later, the doors opened, and the people who'd eliminated the villains walked in." He paused, and looked around at a dozen intrigued faces. "The sheriff described them as something out of those Aleph '
Jurassic Park' movies crossed with a special forces team. Dinosaur people, is what he said, carrying ray guns, wearing uniforms, and obviously military."
"Jesus Christ," Richardson breathed in shock.
"They came in and just looked around, weapons lowered, and seemed non-hostile. Everyone present was staring at them until someone said he thought they were from The Family."
There was a mass twitch. "Oh, god," the highest ranking military officer there groaned under his breath. "
Those crazy lizards?"
Shrugging, the intelligence guy replied, "It's kind of an obvious conclusion to jump to, you have to admit. Intelligent reptile people who are terrifyingly competent? Yeah, we've got some of those. Not that anyone realized they had special forces teams. And no one has the vaguest idea why they'd be in Wyoming. We thought they were from the sea, which is an awfully long way from there." He sighed faintly. "We may have been wrong."
Richardson leaned forward. "Then what happened?" he questioned.
With a wry smile, the man replied, "Weirdly, the moment people assumed it was the Family that had saved them, they calmed right down, and just got on with dealing with the situation. The sheriff's report said it was the damnedest thing he'd ever seen. He made sure the bodies were preserved as evidence and started documenting everything, deputized half a dozen townsfolk to help him, while the Principal of the school along with the town librarian approached the '
dinosaur people' and tried to thank them. The problem is that they apparently don't speak or understand English or any other language they tried, which is… odd. They managed to convey the message through interpretive dance or something and the report ended saying that everyone seemed to be getting along, life was very strange and getting stranger, and please send someone who actually knows what the hell is going on." He grinned for a second, as Richardson couldn't help chuckling.
"Verbatim, from the report filed," he added. "The man seems to have his hands full, but he's dealing with it a lot better than many would."
"Christ. This is one for the books," Richardson finally said, shaking his head. "So what do we
do about it?" He looked around at the baffled expressions. Rubbing his forehead, he sighed. "Lizards. More lizards. The existing ones were bad enough, now we have more?"
"On the bright side, sir, it's only another four," the Secretary of State commented. "How bad can it be?"
Every single person in the room glared at him, making him appear embarrassed. The intelligence operative's phone pinged, making him pull it out and look at it.
"Sir?" he said in a resigned voice.
"Now what?"
"A dragon just landed at the high school in Hulett," the man replied slowly. "The sheriff is asking what he's supposed to do now."
"Their response time is better than the PRT's," General Landry from the Air Force remarked with a somewhat sarcastic grin. "Costa-Brown could learn a lot from them."
Richardson gave him a hard look but internally couldn't help agreeing.
"Director Emily Piggot is in charge of that madhouse in Brockton Bay, isn't she?" he asked.
"Yes, sir."
"Get her on the line. I want to know more about the Family, and maybe she has some ideas about why they're sending strike teams to the middle of nowhere," he ordered. "And someone find out where the
hell the Chief Director has disappeared to and ask her to contact me, will you?" he added in a deceptively mild tone that made several people wince. He was particularly angry when that tone came out to play. And wasn't a fan of Rebecca Costa-Brown at the best of times.
The room swung into action, the original intent of the meeting forgotten. It had been quite boring anyway so no one was all that upset about this fact…
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Sheriff Jason Whitley was feeling out of his depth. Also exhausted, murderously furious, absolutely grief-stricken, and generally about ready to collapse, but out of his depth was the current top one of all those. He was doing everything he could to try to bury the others for now, since what was done was done and they could mourn the dead later while right at the moment caring for the survivors was the most important part.
And work out what on God's green Earth was actually going on.
He really wanted someone to tell him, because
he didn't have a fucking clue.
Standing near the three deceased super-villains, who had been left where they'd fallen since the entire area was a crime scene and he didn't want to contaminate the evidence any more than could be helped, he kept glancing at where several of the townspeople were gathered around the reptilian combat team who had saved them all. He still found even thinking that phrase completely ludicrous but he couldn't deny his own eyes.
What was even less easy to believe was how everyone had calmed down as soon as the Family was mentioned. Even here, more than half the country away from that bizarre city on the East coast, they were known about and discussed, of course, since a series of reptile people that apparently came in a vast range of sizes from scary to holy
shit tended to get attention. The moving of that huge tanker a while back had introduced Kaiju to the world, and while her vastly smaller sisters
might have remained mostly a local phenomenon, something that stood better than eighty feet tall and was probably capable of crushing Leviathan like a grape tended to get noticed.
He suspected there were
very few people on the planet who had access to the internet and
hadn't heard of the Family by this point…
But he'd never expected to
meet any of them. All the information he'd seen had suggested they lived mostly in the ocean, and Hulett was nowhere near anything much larger than a small lake, never mind salt water.
Yet they'd been saved, out of nowhere, by what certainly appeared to be a reptilian special forces team, and he somehow doubted that there were any of those
not connected to the Family, even if no one had known about them until now. Why they'd picked this moment to appear he didn't have the foggiest idea, but he was certainly grateful for that appearance despite the completely baffling nature of it.
He just didn't quite understand how the mere idea that it was those crazy lizards from the east that had saved them had affected everyone so strongly. There had been a moment or two of stunned shock as the three Parahuman villains had dropped dead with smoking holes in them, a long pause as everyone stared at each other, then total pandemonium as they all realized en masse that their nightmare was over and promptly went into the sort of reaction you'd expect. Even as he was wondering what had saved them, and how to control what was rapidly turning into complete chaos,
they had pushed the doors open and walked in.
Every single person in the room had gaped, utterly taken aback, until young Dave Inman, the sole mechanic in the small town, had made the comment that it was the Family here to save them all. And at that moment, Jason had literally
felt a kind of tension just vanish, as people sagged in relief and somehow calmed down from ready to bolt or collapse screaming into a still-tense and horrified group, but one that was suddenly able to deal with the current situation about as well as could be hoped.
He'd never seen anything like it, even as he'd found himself feeling much the same thing. And he had absolutely no idea why.
Which kind of bothered him on the one hand, and on the other made him unbelievably reassured that things were so abruptly better than the horror show they'd become without warning last night.
Once he'd arranged the preservation and documentation of the evidence for the no doubt exhaustive and tedious investigation the PRT and the other outside agencies would begin the moment they finally arrived, deputizing several willing volunteers to aid him in this, he'd quickly left the school gym and dashed back to the tiny sheriff's office he and Fred Watson, his only full time deputy, shared. From there he'd typed up a report of the recent events and sent it to the Cheyenne PRT office, as was procedure in case of Parahuman problems, and also copied it to the PRT headquarters in LA because it seemed like a good idea at the time, the FBI regional headquarters too, and as an afterthought to the PRT in Brockton Bay just in case. Since they were the ones who actually had experience of the Family, basically.
Then, having thought it through some more, another copy to the state police, for all the good it would probably do.
None of those people were within at least two hundred and fifty miles, so he doubted much of a response would happen for several hours yet. But he'd done what he could to get the word out to the people who handled this sort of insanity on a regular basis. Until someone with practical experience of Parahuman events of this magnitude arrived, he was more or less on his own. And, indeed, completely out of his depth.
Hulett was a very small place, and while his jurisdiction covered not only the town but quite a lot of the surrounding countryside, that still only meant about two thousand people at most and since the tourist visitor center a few miles outside town had burned to ash four years ago after a massive thunderstorm had ignited it due to lightning, he'd be surprised if it was
that many people. Quite a few had moved away after that, since the jobs had gone, and there wasn't enough tourism dollars these days to afford to rebuild it. Wyoming had a very small population compared to even thirty years ago, tourism was much less healthy nowadays in out of the way places like this since roving Parahuman assholes like the S9 had caused so much damage and paranoia, and the end result was that visitors from out of state were fairly rare.
It was only the timber mill on the outskirts of town that kept even this population going, to be honest. That, some farming, a few ranches, some little mining, and the occasional hunter, was more or less it. Hulett was a fairly quiet and very out of the way place these days. Nice if you wanted privacy, but awkward if you needed help in a hurry.
And now he really wanted help in a hurry, as he didn't quite know what the hell he was supposed to do next.
Once he'd sent the messages, he went back to the school and checked that nothing had gone horribly wrong in his brief absence. To his relief people had kept organizing themselves over the time he'd been making his report. Doctor Hollins had grabbed a few people with basic first aid knowledge to help him check over everyone, especially the older townsfolk, several of whom had been looking very close to collapse from stress. There were a fair number with injuries too, most minor but a few more serious such as broken limbs. At the moment he came back into the gym, the doctor was giving Al Corden an examination, the nearly eighty year old farmer complaining in an irritable manner and pushing him away every time he tried to use his stethoscope. The doctor persisted, ignoring the patient's uncooperative nature, until he was satisfied and stepped back.
Al glared at him and made a rude gesture which made Hollins shake his head, then move on to the next person, while Jason chuckled. Al was like that to everyone.
Reassured that nothing had exploded while he was gone and the new arrivals weren't eating anyone, he moved through the crowd, talking to various people, having first checked his new deputies were keeping everyone away from the bodies and the Tinker's gear. He didn't want anyone accidentally triggering some sort of self destruct or something, which he was led to believe was a risk, or just making a mess of the evidence which would lead to complaints from the PRT. He had more than enough on his plate without that added.
And now, a couple of hours later, he was standing watching Beth Young, the only employee of the small library Hulett possessed, and someone he knew was very good with several languages as well as having a wide knowledge of all manner of odd things since she had probably read every book the library possessed after running it for twenty years, attempt to communicate with their visitors. The reptilian people had stowed their weapons and seemed relaxed and curious as best he could tell from the completely alien body language, but also more than a little baffled themselves. They were watching everything closely, and one of them was intermittently waving around something that he thought was probably some sort of scanning device, then discussing the results with its friends. He'd noticed that one had paid special attention to the three Parahumans, which didn't really surprise him all that much under the circumstances.
Studying them yet again, he tried to get a feel for what they were and what they could do. Reptilian, definitely, with tails, claws on their fingers, and an overall body structure that was remarkably reminiscent of something out of the Jurassic Park movies. Not quite like a more human-shaped version of the raptors from those movies, which he'd seen on TV more than once, but the similarity was very strong even so. Mouths with very obvious sharp teeth, alert slit-pupiled eyes that watched everything carefully, like a curious cat… Feathers on their heads and down their necks, which were much longer and more flexible than a humans. But at the same time, they were obviously quite a lot closer in some ways to a human too. Their heads were bigger proportionally, making him think their brains were pretty substantial, their arms were longer than the movie raptors, they weren't quite as large, standing roughly six feet tall or so, they had very dexterous long-fingered hands with three fingers and a thumb… And of course they were wearing clothes, odd-looking boots that still reminded him of a good work boot despite the shape, uniforms that were surprisingly close to what he'd have expected to see on a soldier, equipment vests that were instantly recognizable as such, packs and pouches that wouldn't be out of place in an army surplus store… It was an odd effect but one that radiated a sort of competent menace which only avoiding being worrying because all four of them were so obviously fascinated by the entire situation, as well as non hostile and generally friendly.
Which did fit the profile as he understood it of the Family overall. Friendly, helpful, absolutely lethal if provoked, but took one hell of a lot of provocation.
And, of course, he and everyone else here owed them their lives, so that went a long way towards making people feel safer. Even so, the sheer level of acceptance still confused him.
Beth was now drawing something in a kid's notebook she'd found, probably not too hard seeing as they were in a school, while all four of the reptile people peered at the page. When she finished, she pointed at parts of what she'd drawn and very slowly explained it, while they exchanged curious glances. He shook his head in wonder, musing on how long it would take her to teach them English…
Feeling a tap on his shoulder, he looked around to see Geoff Lindow, one of the men he'd deputized, standing next to him. The other man looked pale. "Yeah, Geoff? Problem?"
"…"
Geoff swallowed, then tried again, pointing over his shoulder to the door that led out into the parking lot, and the sports field on the other side of it. "You need to see this," he managed to say.
Puzzled and worried again, Jason followed as Geoff led him over to the door, skirting the body of the pyrokinetic mass murderer which was covered by a sheet from the school infirmary. Both men stepped outside, and Geoff pointed upwards into the clear blue sky.
Jason followed his finger.
There was silence for a few seconds.
"That's a dragon," Jason finally said in tones of slow wonder.
"Yep."
"And it's heading right at us."
"Yep."
They exchanged a glance, then Jason rubbed his neck tiredly. "More of them."
"Yep."
"I just hope this lot can tell us what the fuck's going on, because
I have absolutely no goddamn idea by this point." Pulling out his phone he sent a very quick email to the same list of people he'd filed the report with, because this was getting out of hand in his opinion and he was basically winging it at this point.
Geoff just shrugged helplessly.
They watched as the huge black dragon, straight out of either myth or the nine o'clock news depending on your viewpoint, circled the school grounds a few hundred feet up. He could see a slender blue figure sitting on its back even from here. A moment later the flying reptile aimed directly for the tarmac area in front of them, some distance to the side of where far too many piles of torched remains of Jason's friends and acquaintances lay. He'd been doing his best not to look at them or think about them.
A moment later the dragon backwinged gracefully, and landed without fuss about a hundred yards away. The wind from its wings barely disturbed the dust on the ground, he noticed. The figure on its back, which he recognized from the internet as Saurial, the first of the Family to have arrived from wherever it was they came from, hopped lightly down and landed on the ground next to it. She pulled something from a pouch on her belt and fiddled with it for a moment, then tossed it to the side, watching as did they as it instantly expanded into a cube about twenty feet on a side without a sound.
"Holy shit," Geoff breathed in shock, as Jason just stared. The gray metallic cube had a door in the side facing them, which opened to allow two more, larger, reptilian figures to emerge. One was a light-absorbing black, the other a deep purple-blue color. Again, he recognized them immediately. Metis and Ianthe, Saurial's cousins. And the dragon was of course Breksta, because how many giant black dragons
were there?
He hoped only one…
One was more than enough.
The four reptilian arrivals had a short conversation, all of them looking around the area. Saurial pointed to where one of the sad piles of remains lay, even from where he stood the expression on her face making Jason sure she was extremely unhappy about what had happened. Nearly as much as he was, for that matter. He got the impression that if the asshole responsible hadn't been killed by the first bunch, she'd have done the job herself. After some seconds more, the whole collection of strange people headed in his direction.
He heard Geoff swallow slightly next to him, but he kept his eyes on Saurial and her friends. When they were only a few feet away, Saurial in the lead and the others hanging back somewhat, they stopped. She'd been studying him with as much interest as he'd been studying them as they approached, and now took a couple more steps and held out her hand to him. "Hi," she said. "I, as you may be aware, am Saurial. These are my cousins Ianthe and Metis, and my sister Breksta. She's right there." The lizard-girl pointed at the enormous dragon, which made him, despite himself, smile.
"She's kind of hard to miss," he pointed out, getting a deep chuckle from the dragon, and a grin from the others. "I'm aware of you all, although I have to admit I never expected to meet you. Especially like this."
Her smile faded for a second or two as she looked back at the signs of violence that lay everywhere. Meeting his eyes again, she sighed. "No. I wish things could have worked out differently too. We're sorry for your loss."
He nodded slightly, feeling she was sincere. "Thank you," he replied quietly. "And thank your people for saving us."
Saurial glanced at Ianthe, then nodded a little. "One minor issue with that is that they're not our people…"
He and Geoff stared at her, then each other.
"They're
not Family?" he said after quite a pause, not sure what to think.
"Not that I'm aware of," she replied with a shrug. "But I'm sure when we talk to them we can find out where they come from."
"As far as we can tell they don't speak English," he noted. She smiled a little mysteriously.
"We're good with languages," the reptilian girl chuckled. "And like meeting new people." Turning a little she waved at the cuboid construction in the parking lot. "We brought supplies and equipment if you need anything, and Ianthe and Metis are both healers, so if you've got any injuries they can sort those out. I'll go meet these new guys and we'll see what happens. I guess the PRT are on their way?"
"I filed a report with them, the FBI, and the state cops, so we'll probably be buried in feds sooner or later," he told her, "Although that most likely won't happen for hours yet. Bad roads, long way to come, so I guess they'll probably fly in. We've got a small civilian airport just over yonder." He pointed off to one side.
"We saw it on the way in," Breksta rumbled from behind her much smaller sister. "Luckily I don't need a runway." She sounded amused. Geoff twitched a little at the sound of her voice, but Jason managed to control himself and avoid doing the same.
"Well, I guess you'd better come in then," he said with a sense of bemused wonder, trying to make sense of all this. If their saviors
weren't Family, who the hell
were they?
Turning, he led the way into the building, Geoff going in before him, and Saurial, Ianthe, and Metis following him. Breksta stayed outside, mostly because she simply wouldn't fit through the doors. The moment they stepped inside, the various conversations taking place around the gym slowly started to die away as people noticed and turned to gape.
He wasn't entirely surprised when a round of applause started.
"Probably best not to mention those guys aren't
your guys right now," he remarked in a low voice to Saurial, who was looking around with interest. "Everyone's strangely calm and thinking they were saved by the Family is probably the reason. No point riling them up again."
"Fair enough," she agreed, with a quick smile at him, just as half the people present started coming over. It got quite noisy for a while after that.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"
Good morning, Mr President," Emily Piggot said as she looked back at the room via the video link. "
I understand you wanted to talk to me?" The blonde woman appeared interested, not entirely surprised, and cautious, Sam Richardson decided as he looked back.
"Yes, Director Piggot, I do," he replied. "We have something of a… confused issue… happening at the moment in Wyoming. I was hoping you might shed some light on it as the initial reports suggest it involves the group known as the Family, who I believe you are well informed about?"
She sighed faintly, while everyone present listened intently.
"Far more than I want, and far less than I need," she responded wryly, shrugging a little.
"We're on generally good terms with them, they're helpful, polite, and on balance a positive force for good, but they are also the most bizarre collection of people with the strangest sense of humor I've ever even heard of. Weird things happen when they're around. Trust me, they're nothing like anything you've encountered before."
"We did somewhat gather that from the reports of Kaiju," he noted, making her smile briefly. "It was something that sticks in your mind, to be honest."
"Imagine what it was like seeing her from about four hundred yards away," the woman chuckled, shaking her head.
"I doubt a video recording did it justice."
"Possibly not but it still left an impression." He looked down at the notes he'd made, then back at the screen. "Do the Family have special forces teams?"
She shrugged again.
"I have absolutely no idea," she replied.
"I wouldn't be surprised if they did but to be honest they don't actually need them from what I've seen. Their engineers and healers are more dangerous and capable of any special forces group I know of. I've read the report from Wyoming, Sheriff Whitley copied us in on it, presumably because of the assumed Family connection, and I passed on the information to Saurial after discussing it with my own staff. So far we've never seen what he described here in Brockton Bay, and Saurial didn't actually confirm that whoever it is in Wyoming is part of their group, but I have to admit the description is plausibly Family related. Let's say I wouldn't be particularly shocked if it's connected to them."
General Landry leaned into the view of the camera. "The report stated that these… dinosaur people… didn't speak English. Is that normal for the Family?"
"All the ones we've met with one exception spoke English fluently, and Saurial at least is also fluent in Japanese to my knowledge, and of course they have their own language we so far have zero ability to understand," she said immediately. "
Finding out that some members of their people don't speak English wouldn't come as a surprise to be honest. Our analysts are of the opinion that the ones we've so far encountered prepared for some time to deal with us, which presumably would include learning our language. Possibly whoever this new set are didn't get that training yet."
"Where
do they come from?" Richardson couldn't help asking.
She shook her head.
"In the end, we simply don't know for sure," she told him.
"We do know they seem to live in the ocean somewhere, but where exactly is a complete mystery, as is so much else about them."
"Are you aware there's a dragon in Wyoming at the town this all happened in already?" he asked after thinking that over for a few moments.
Piggot snorted with laughter.
"One thing you can certainly say is they don't waste time. If Breksta is there, Saurial probably is too, and I'd expect either Ianthe or Metis with her. We got reports Breksta was seen leaving the DWU compound about five minutes after I spoke to Saurial, which was…" She glanced off screen for a moment.
"… about one and a half hours ago."
"They flew from the eastern seaboard to the middle of Wyoming in an hour and a half?" Landry looked impressed. "How the hell fast
is that dragon?"
Piggot shook her head.
"I've learned never to put a hard limit on any assumption about anything the Family can do," she replied ruefully.
"You'll be wrong every time, believe me. Basically, they can do it. Whatever it is. I don't know how but that's just the facts of life where those crazy lizards are concerned." Leaning slightly forwards, she added with a certain amount of intensity,
"If they say they can do something, or will do something, believe them. No matter how insane it sounds. Because so far we've never caught them exaggerating any of their capabilities in any way at all. Safest thing to assume is that for any question you have about what they can do, the answer is 'yes.' Probably in a way that amuses them and confuses everyone else."
Staring at her Richardson turned her statement over in his mind. It left him with a hell of a lot of questions and no real answers, as well as a sensation that the situation was very different from even what you'd normally expect when Parahumans were involved. Looking around at his staff, he could see they were thinking similar thoughts.
"On the bright side, Mr President," she went on after letting him think over her words,
"The one thing I can pretty much guarantee is that with the Family in this Hulett place, the people there are safe, and by the time they're done, every last one of them will be perfectly healthy as well as wondering what the hell happened. That's the normal result of the Family taking an interest in something."
"I'm not sure whether to be relieved or terrified," he commented with a sigh.
"Welcome to my world, sir" she replied with a rueful smile.
"It's an experience."
"So it would seem," he agreed quietly, trying to work out what the next move was. By the looks of it no one else appeared to have any more idea than he did…
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"That strange energy reading faded away entirely a short time after those three were killed," the female, Xiva, remarked in an absent tone to Crex, their comms and tech specialist, not really paying attention to him. "No signs at all of it, or a source, now. I have no idea what it was. Intriguing.."
He was watching as their squad leader Oqol listened to the small group of these strange people they'd found attempt to work out how to communicate more practically with them. Trux was standing next to Oqol, studying with interest some of the drawings one of the mammals had produced. So far they'd learned a few words, mostly personal names and what seemed to be the term the species described itself as, which was
'human.' But this process was, while functional, not very efficient at all. He suspected it would take quite a long time to learn enough of the language to be considered even minimally fluent in it, and it was likely that going the other way would be even more time consuming as these humans didn't seem to have a great a vocal range as they did.
He found it fascinating as communications was one of his specialties, but learning an entire alien language was well outside his current skill-set. It needed a better linguist than he was, and probably several years work. The scientists back at base would be working on this problem for some time and likely finding it enormously interesting, but that didn't solve the current issues.
At least the humans appeared both friendly and grateful for being saved from the bizarre individuals his team had killed. He still had no idea how those three had pulled off what they'd done. Xiva had taken a lot of readings and was none the wiser as to where the energy the one in red had been using had actually come from, nor how he directed it or even survived it, since it was obviously extremely lethal.
There were all too many bodies, or what was left of them, outside to show that beyond doubt. And while these people were not
his people, he didn't like thinking about
anyone having that happen to them. Especially due to what appeared to be some sort of psychopathic desire to simply cause distress and death to someone else.
He wasn't sorry the perpetrators were dead, and by the looks of it none of the humans were either. Although Oqol was still dreading what would happen when they got back and updated their superiors on exactly
how they'd made contact with the new species.
Wincing, he tried not to think about that. There was likely quite a lot of angry shouting in their futures…
Xiva was still muttering to herself as she went over the data she'd recorded, making notes in the process and occasionally referring back to the scanner and other instruments. He listened with half an ear, while keeping an eye on Oqol and Trux, and also on the rest of the humans. Not really because he was worried about anything specifically, but mostly out of curiosity and general interest. It was an entirely new culture no one had ever encountered before, with many ramifications that would take a lot of thinking about.
For example, how many humans were there? Did they fill the entire planet? What would happen when they found out about
his people? How would everyone back at base handle the fact that their world was apparently now home to an entirely alien, while still related even if distantly, new species that had evolved over the vast time since they'd entered the refuge? Could they share this world?
He had no idea yet, and was certain both sides were going to have a lot to talk about once they
could communicate effectively. However, as first contacts went, saving the lives of over two hundred individuals was probably a good start…
Time would tell. And he assumed that sooner or later some sort of authority would arrive, since this seemed like a sufficiently major incident to attract the attention of whatever government these humans had. Unless this sort of thing was so common it wasn't noteworthy, which was a highly depressing and disturbing thought.
He hoped such an event
wasn't just a run of the mill thing. If it was, it boded ill for any sort of viable relationship between them and the humans, since his people wouldn't accept random mass slaughter as something that should be allowed to happen.
There were few enough of them left, and life was a valuable thing.
He noticed that the human who appeared to have some sort of authority, the one who'd taken change shortly after they'd arrived and directed some of the others to protect the corpses and take lots of images of everything with their own tech, presumably for official records, was heading towards the exit to the outside with another one. The human had vanished for some time a while back, but having returned, had spent the time watching everything, talking to various people, and generally giving off an air of not knowing quite what to do next which reminded Crex remarkably strongly of Oqol at the moment. His eyes following the two humans, he watched as they disappeared outside, wondering what they were doing.
After a moment or two, he went back to looking around, but not long afterwards, motion at the same doorway attracted his attention. Turning his head he gazed at the other side of the big room, seeing the humans coming back inside, accompanied by…
He stared, his eyes widening, then nudged Xiva. "Stop that," she complained, slapping his hand away with hers and not looking up from her instruments. "I'm busy."
"This is more important," he said, prodding her again, quite hard. "Look."
She raised her head and peered at him quizzically, then followed his motion. Her eyes also widened rather comically. Even as she opened her mouth to say something, the humans became aware of the new arrivals and stared, then began hitting their hands together in a sound that filled the room, apparently some sort of welcome or greeting. Oqol and Trux started at the noise having had their backs to the door and most of the crowd, then quickly turned to see what was going on, Trux aborting a motion towards his sidearm almost before it started.
The three new people looked around, the one in the lead waving at the humans, then headed towards Crex and the others having had a quick conversation with the other two much larger figures, who went in the other direction and were quickly surrounded by most of the humans who seemed pleased to see them. The human who appeared to have some sort of authority walked next to her, talking quietly and getting a few nods back.
"Those aren't humans," Xiva noted as the pair approached, her expression showing complete confusion.
"No, they're not, unless humans come in more variety than I thought they did," he agreed, moving with her to stand next to Trux and Oqol. Their leader was watching the new person with a startled look on his face, which also showed a certain level of relief. Which Crex shared, and by the looks of it his teammates did as well.
"They're not us either," Trux said, glancing at Crex and Xiva, then Oqol on his other side. "Unless our species evolved into something completely different. Which I suppose could be possible considering how long it's been."
"They're a lot close to us than to the humans though," Xiva pointed out. "Not mammals, certainly. I wonder if we'll be able to talk to them properly?"
"We're about to find out," Oqol murmured. "Keep calm, don't do anything stupid, and let me handle this."
"As you wish, sir. Good luck."
Their leader gave Trux a hard look, the slightly sarcastic tone making both Xiva and Crex suppress a smirk, sighed silently, and returned his attention to the front just as the reptilian person stopped directly in front of them, the human standing off to one side and watching with interest. Oqol stepped forward a pace and said, "Greetings," holding out his hand in the human fashion.
The reptilian newcomer, who Crex felt was probably female, since he found her body language and appearance much more familiar than that of the humans, even though she(?) was clearly
not of their own species albeit looking related, smiled and shook the offered appendage. Oqol looked slightly relieved that he'd guessed correctly.
"I am Oqol," he added. Pointing to each of the other team members in turn, he went on, "Crex, Xiva, and Trux."
"Saurial," the new person replied, her voice noticeably different from, but still similar to, that of the humans around her. The ones who had been trying to work out a method of communication were standing watching intently.
"Can you understand me?" Oqol asked hopefully. Saurial cocked her head slightly, looking intrigued. She said something in a language neither that of the humans or their own, making the team exchange glances. It
sounded a lot closer to their language, but only in some respects, in all others it was completely alien.
"Sorry, I don't know that one," Oqol replied carefully.
She tapped the side of her face thoughtfully, examining them closely, and appeared to think, while everyone waited to see what happened next...
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
'
What do you think?' Taylor asked the Varga, feeling Amy and Lisa watching from the other side of the room through the link, neither of they saying anything while both got on with healing a number of injuries. '
It's certainly not Famtalk, although it's got some vague similarities.'
"It's almost familiar," he mused thoughtfully.
"I can't quite place it, but I'm sure I've heard something very close to this. A very long time ago indeed, even in my terms, but…" He gave a mental shrug.
"We need more."
{Get him to talk some more, Taylor,} Lisa commented, sounding fascinated. {I might be able to fill in the gaps if Varga can get something close enough.}
{OK, I'll try,} she replied. The four reptilian figures facing her were certainly different to anything they'd come up with for '
Family' forms, but she could easily see why Sheriff Whitley had referred to them as dinosaur people. Out loud she said to the sheriff, "This might take a while."
"That doesn't surprise me," he replied with a nod. "Think you can communicate with them at all? I've never heard anything like what they're speaking."
"I might be able to, but…" She shrugged. "Like I said, it'll take a while." Turning back to Oqol, who was looking between them with a somewhat puzzled expression, as were his friends, she asked, trying to make it obvious what she was trying to get across, "Where did you come from?" At the same time she pointed at them, then the door behind them, then waved her hand around at the room itself. She knew full well this was the next best thing to completely useless, as they might well not have the vaguest idea what she was talking about, and she probably looked like an idiot, but the point was to get them to say more things. Not really anything in particular, just enough of a speech sample to let Varga and Lisa have a crack at trying to figure out their language.
It might not work at all, of course, for the same reasons no one else understood Famtalk and probably wouldn't unless they deliberately taught it, but it was worth a shot. If it
did work it would save a lot of time, and she rather suspected that time was of the essence, since when the PRT and other authorities finally arrived, things might get quite complicated.
Not that they weren't already complicated, it had to be said…
Oqol stared at her, then looked at his team-mates, giving the impression of someone who was attempting to handle something he wasn't trained for. The female, Xiva, which Taylor could identify simply through scent, said something which made Oqol listen, then do what was probably his species' version of a nod, a slight bob of the head back and forth. Taylor and her friends listened closely to what they were saying, the Varga pondering the speech so hard she could feel it in the back of her head. Turning back to her, he asked what sounded like a question. She shrugged and he stopped, apparently reading the gesture correctly, thought for a few seconds, then said something else to Xiva.
She pulled out an electronic device a lot like a tablet computer but with a very thin, very high resolution display that had an odd color balance, which Taylor quickly realized was because it seemed to extend more into the infra-red range than normal displays did. Presumably these people had a wider range of vision than humans did, at least at the red end, which wasn't surprising really. The woman prodded her device for a couple of seconds then held it up, showing Taylor and Jason an image of what appeared to be a burned out farm.
"Oh, shit," he sighed as he studied it. "That's Kelly Oldfield's ranch. It's south of here about two miles. Looks like the fire we got reports of before… all this… happened was there. I guess those bastards came that way and hit there before they came after the rest of us."
Xiva did something, and the image changed to one of a road. "And that's the road that leads past Devils Tower," he added. "These guys came from south west of here." Pointing at the road, Xiva said a few words, then stopped as Oqol cut in, giving her a look which made her stop talking. The quartet started having a quiet argument about something, which made Taylor and Jason exchange glances, then just watch and listen.
A couple of minutes later, the Varga exclaimed triumphantly,
"I've got it! I know where I heard this language before. Or what I suspect was a precursor to it. My, that was a very long time ago." He sounded pleased with himself.
"I haven't thought about those times for… well, it's probably time enough for mountain ranges to form and erode."
'Can you understand what they're saying?' Taylor queried, pleased.
"Nearly. Let me listen some more…" After another minute or so, during which the four reptilian visitors got quite heated with each other, he finally expressed a sort of mental nod.
"Yes. Close enough. I think it's an archaic form of this language, but it seems to be sufficiently close to let me understand most of it. Right now Xiva is saying that communicating with us is more important than being secretive over where they came from, since the humans can probably just follow their tracks back if they try hard enough and it's not all that far away. Oqol is annoyed because he's worried about operational security and saying that they weren't supposed to get involved like they did, and thinks that their superiors will be upset. Apparently they haven't really reported exactly what's happening at the moment…"
Taylor smiled inside a little. She could understand how that might cause problems. Hopefully not serious ones, because these guys had done the right thing in her opinion.
"Crex is saying they had no choice and saving people is never a bad thing, despite what the people back at base might think," her friend went on a moment later.
"And Trux is agreeing with him. Oqol isn't disputing that, he's just concerned that as the one who's supposed to be in charge, he's the one who's going to get shouted at the most, and after last time, he's not looking forward to it."
Snickering very quietly to herself, Taylor asked, '
Can you show me this language?'
"Hold on, let me work out the best way to do that… Teaching you directly would take a couple of hours at least, but I think if I do this…" A strange sensation of warmth filtered through Taylor's mind, making her blink a few times, and suddenly she had a new language available. Even faster than when he'd taught her Japanese.
'Ooh. That was tingly,' she commented with a laugh. '
How did you do that?'
"We're connected so closely now I worked out how to transfer knowledge directly to your own mind," he replied, sounding rather pleased with his own work.
"I have to be careful not to dump too much in at once, but a single language isn't difficult. I doubt I could have done it that fast with any previous Brain though."
Nodding a little, she listened to what the reptilian military team was discussing, waiting for an appropriate point to join in, and gathering useful background information at the same time.
"
You're not the one who's going to get yelled at," Oqol remarked acidly to Xiva, who stared at him with mild irritation as far as Taylor could tell.
"I'm sure there will be enough irritation to go around," she replied. "As there always seems to be. But I can live with that. This is more important. We've made the biggest discovery of our lives…
Anyone's lives for that matter. A sapient alien species, but they're not alien, they evolved right here on our own world. We're related! Certainly not closely, but they still share blood with us in a sense. And we need to talk to them. Explain what happened, ask them so
many questions…"
"The security issues are…"
She cut him off. "Important, agreed, but also not something we can just hide behind. These people aren't stupid. Their technology, from what we've seen, isn't as advanced as ours is, but it's not so far away from it that they're primitives or something like that. Sooner or later they
will work out where we came from and investigate, even if we don't say a thing."
"And being open with them may help make them less suspicious of us," Crex added. "I'm not saying we need to tell them
everything right from the start, but we can't hide everything either. Unless we go back, and just give up on this time. Turn the field back on and wait. Sure, we could do that. I'm not sure anyone would
want to do that though. We've been in there more than long enough. Much longer than anyone expected at the beginning."
"Indeed," Trux added wisely.
Oqol sighed. "Fine. We'll let them know where the base is, but we're not telling them how big it is, how many of us there are, or anything too critical. We don't know enough about them yet to trust them that far."
"What about the new ones?" Xiva asked with a glance at Taylor, then past her at Lisa and Amy who were just finishing up with their patients. "They're almost like us. We may have more in common with them than the humans. Since they're not mammals, I mean."
"I've never seen anything like them before," Oqol replied, looking over to Lisa. "I agree they're closer to us than these other ones, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. And we still can't communicate with either the new ones or the humans yet, beyond pointing at pictures and simple words. So there's a limit to how much information can go either way. We're going to need a lot of help to establish some sort of common language, I think."
"Not necessarily," Taylor put in, rather enjoying the look of reptilian shock that crossed four faces when they all snapped to hers. Sheriff Whitley looked rather surprised as well, as did the other people who had been standing watching and listening. "I think we have a lot to discuss."
After a
long pause, Oqol ran a hand over the feathers on his head in a very human gesture and asked somewhat warily, "How did you learn our language so quickly?"
She grinned at him. "I have hidden depths," she responded cheerily. "Let's talk."
Oqol opened his mouth to ask something, then peered past her to where her other aspect had just stuck her head, the only part that would fit, through the door from the parking lot. He stared at Breksta's face, the Varga, who was driving that aspect, winking at him, then slowly dragged his gaze back to hers. Beside him the rest of his team was fixated on the draconic grin sixty feet away.
"Yes," he said faintly, seeming stunned as far as she could tell. "We should definitely talk."
So they did.
And by the time the Cheyenne PRT vehicles finally arrived, followed within minutes by about fifteen nervous FBI agents, all four of the reptilian visitors, Taylor, Lisa, and Amy were gathered to one side of the room deep in discussion. Sheriff Whitley was making notes as the latter, who was getting information relayed to her silently by the Varga, explained the highlights of what they were learning.
It was a fascinating story with all
sorts of weird implications for the future.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"
How many of them are there?" President Richardson gaped at the intelligence man, who was looking pale and worried. Then he put both forefingers on his temples and massaged them, wondering if this job was worth the effort...
