For several moments afterwards there was just silence as the old- and newcomers just stared at each. "So, how do you two know about Nick's mother?" Helen finally said in a relatively friendly, cordial tone of voice.

"Um, it was some time after you left, I think," Connor said, not noticing Nick's painful wince. "She came to visit Nick – or professor Cutter – um, you know who I mean, I was there explaining my latest thesis to Stephen, who`s Nick's TA, she sort of had Nick take us with them to a restaurant-"

"To a restaurant?" you could see Helen's hackles rise at last phrase. "Nick, one of the... bones of contention, let us say, between us was your insistence that I cook for us on that day, 'cause your mother couldn't be taken into public-"

"And that was correct," Nick admitted. "After she left on that day, the three of us – I, Stephen and Connor – got drunk for the rest of spring break. That's how we met each other for the first time, back then."

Claudia made some sort of a noise. She wasn't sure what she was trying to say, but somehow or other she still decided to make some sort of a general noise that caused everyone to turn in her direction.

"Oh, hey Claudia, did you want to say something?" Connor spoke in a kindly tone of voice to the older woman. "We're listening."

Without having any ideas as to what she was going to say, Claudia opened her mouth all the same... and there was a clanging crash.

"What the-?" Stephen, being the closest one to the open door, turned around and saw... a flying cover from a sewer that was flying through the air towards him at a speed. Instinctively, Stephen jumped into the open doorway, seeing how the cover struck the Cutters' door and got partially stuck in there, quivering like a de-activated circular buzz saw.

The next moment, however, this memory got overridden by the next one: a thundering shot from a rifle (must've been an elephant gun) and a shower of a liquid that was definitely wasn't rain water, accompanied by a massive piece of a ridged tentacle, which fell almost upon Connor...

James Lester was not having a very good time. For the last several days it had been raining almost non-stop and he was busy filling-out paperwork and otherwise executing various necessary functions to start his Anomaly Research Center (ARC, if abbreviated). This, naturally, was not a particularly easy process, and all that James Lester wanted to do for the moment, was to have a good, long sleep. Instead, he currently had to stand under the rain, alongside Becker and others, interviewing Nick Cutter and his merry men, except for Abby Maitland, who somehow managed to miss out on all the excitement.

On the other hand, though, the presence of Helen Cutter fully compensated the absence of Abby Maitland and then some. "Ah, Mrs. Cutter," Lester grinned nastily. "So glad to see you... once more."

Several weeks ago...

James Lester would never admit it, but he felt relief almost as big as one felt by Miss Lewis, when he saw Cutter and Becker emerge from the time anomaly. The presence of Cutter's wife was a less pleasant surprise, but the look on her face compensated that somewhat: the woman looked considerably less smug than before, almost shaken.

"Becker, Cutter, good to see you two come back in one piece," Lester spoke, almost smiling. "And Mrs. Cutter, glad to see that you've decided to join us."

"Don't get your hopes too high, Lester," Helen Cutter doesn't sound too different from her old self – that woman's got a killer poker face. "I just returned here, because it's closer to my next destination point, which most definitely does not involve you."

"Oh really? What makes you think that we'll just let you go?"

"Partially from gratitude and partially from this."

'This' was a very sudden, very powerful kick in the knee, which caused a lot of pain for Lester, and enabled Helen to get away from Lester undeterred. "Captain," he managed to ground to Becker, "ahem."

"I seriously hope that you know what you're doing," Becker calls out instead. "Because maybe-"

"That's the thing – I really don't," Helen calls back even as she disappears into the Forest of Dean. "But I got to do it anyways. And by the way? Earlier, I did lie: the future does not belong to bats or rats – the future does belong to us, or rather our descendants..."

Now...

"You are?" Helen nonchalantly asked. "Funny, I thought that that kick was very humiliating... or is it your inner politician speaking up?"

"Ha-ha," Lester said flatly. "Anyways, what has happened here?"

"Oh, we are gathered here to congratulate Nick on his upcoming divorce from Helen and also to remind him that his mother is coming tomorrow and that he should lay low for a while," Connor finally spoke, instead.

"And the tentacle?" Lester finally made it through the stream of Connor's chattering.

"Oh, it came in the end, through the sewer. We don't know what it is, 'cause while it looks like an octopus's tentacle, it doesn't have any suckers, only ridges-"

"You mean nobody here doesn't know?" Lester was a bit incredulous. So far, Cutter and his crew always had no problem identifying any of the animals that came their way, especially with his wife providing extra support.

"Why should we?" Cutter is not intimidated. "I study dinosaurs, Stephen and Connor - Pleistocene mammals, Helen was an anthropologist. This is most likely to be a mollusc, a cephalopod mollusc either from the ancient past or far-off future – and no one here specializes in them."

"And yet it came through the sewers," Lester mused, hoping that he succeeded in hiding that he felt rather unbalanced, for for Cutter to admit that he didn't know something this was a first. "Who shot it anyways, and whose car it is?"

"Mine," the speaker appeared from behind the vehicles, tall, powerfully muscles, prominently female and definitely foreign. She also carried something that was either an elephant gun or a massive club – or maybe it was both. "Please, call me Kuro."

"She's with me," Helen added helpfully.

"I see," Lester said with a grin, but Kuro (if that was her real name) interrupted him:

"Oh, get your mind out of the gutter, man!" she snapped. "She doesn't swing this way, and neither do I. I'd rather do him," she pointed at Connor, "than another woman."

There was a thoughtful pause, as Connor looked like he'd rather be anywhere else but here, and everybody else just sort of gave him a second look.

"So, do you have a license for this monster?" Becker finally decided to break the silence.

"Maybe," Kuro grinned again. "And who are you, anyways?"

Unfortunately, at that moment Lester decided to speak up once more. "Before we all get very jolly, here, maybe we should be focusing on something more important – like the question as to where did it come from?"

"It came from the sewers, obviously," Connor, apparently, felt particularly helpful at the moment.

"Yes, yes it has," Lester said, after counting to ten. "I guess that this means that the time anomaly from which it actually came from is located there, as well. Cutter, you're still the field team's leader, aren't you?"

Nick groaned. "This really isn't my idea of romance," he spoke turning to Claudia. "I was thinking rather of going somewhere, well, anywhere but the sewers, really."

"I know," Claudia said gently, "but it's one of those things that we'll have to do." She half-turned to Helen. "Are you in or out here, though?"

"I don't know, I don't see any reason, and this isn't really my idea," Helen said thoughtfully.

"Sure it is – as long as you have a reason, that is," Kuro said cheerfully. "Helen, come on, I'm calling you in on this."

"Well, fine," Helen shrugged, "since you're calling it, I'm in."

"You sure that you don't want to tell us something," Lester couldn't help but to comment.

"We're guessing that you won't be going down with us, little man," Kuro leaned slightly downwards, her teeth flashing in a death's-head grin at Lester.

"Of course not," Lester said unperturbedly, even though he suspected that he may be up for another kick in the leg. "I'll be up here, doing the controls."

"Claudia can do that," Nick said, smiling viciously.

"Hey, speaking of blondes, where's Abby?" Connor spoke up suddenly, half trying to defuse the situation, half in genuine concern.

His only reply, unfortunately, was silence.

To be continued.