Rory closed the door softly behind him so as not to disturb the children. Despite getting very little sleep the night before, their excitement had kept them wide awake, minds full of questions concerning the twenty-first century. And the Doctor.

Quite frankly, Rory was shocked they hadn't been joined by Tony and Steve, but he remembered overhearing that their teams were recovering from the battle that had resulted in the two of them being sent back in time in the first place. He could tell the two men were still trying to wrap their heads around the idea that while a week had passed for them, less than a day had passed for everyone else. Rory could sympathize.

Rory himself was trying very hard to look unaffected by twenty-first century marvels. He would take to his grave the fact that it had taken ten minutes of staring at the Keurig in the tiny staff kitchen to figure out how to make it produce coffee.

He walked past a string of offices to a small alcove where he found Amy, phone in hand, staring out of the tall windows and out onto the small lawn in the front of the building housing UNIT's temporary headquarters. Even in the middle of the night, illuminated only by street lamps and scant emergency lighting, it still managed to look clean and well-kept, the knee-high bushes along the front creating a clear property line.

Silently, he came to stand beside his wife. "So, did you manage to contact him?" he asked her.

"Not quite," said Amy, not yet looking away from the window. "His newest companion answered. I gave her the message and she said she's pass it along."

They were silent for a moment.

"You know, Kate said he'd regenerated again," said Amy after a few moments.

Rory nodded. "I wonder if he's finally ginger."

Amy finally looked over to him, her eyes sparkling with mirth. "No, apparently it's all white."

"I see."

"The children asleep?"

"Yes. Finally. Can you imagine what it's going to be like when they finally see the city?"

Amy smirked. "You mean like the first time you stepped out onto an alien planet? Or your first spaceship?"

Rory silently conceded the point. "Are you going to take Kate up on her offer to go shopping in the morning?"

"Yes, absolutely," Amy answered immediately. "I cannot wait to put on a pair of jeans again. Besides, we've all only got the one set of clothes and who knows when we'll have a chance to go otherwise. I'm on the fence as to whether or not I want to take Beth with me."

"She'd probably enjoy it, but she'd also slow you down wanting to see everything."

"Exactly."

Amy opened her mouth to say more, when there was a loud rumbling sound from outside. She closed her mouth and they shared a brief glance of 'what now?' to each other before turning to look out the window.

In the distance everything looked quiet. There was no smoke, no unexplained lights and no additional sounds or sirens. Rory scanned the street below them. Also nothing. The cars looked like they hadn't moved and he couldn't see any people moving about. He continued to scan further towards the building, until he got to where the perfectly manicured lawn of the import-export company was brutally disrupted by something that hadn't been there before.

"Amy!" he exclaimed, pointing it out to his wife.

She gasped. "Oh my god, that's–"

Amy didn't finish her sentence before they were both rushing off to the stairwell. Steve joined them part-way down, followed by another blond man carrying a bow and arrow and a petite woman with shoulder-length red hair and a cast on her arm. Rory narrowed his eyes at the cast, but left it for now.

Downstairs, the doors were already unlocked with UNIT soldiers standing guard, their weapons pointed towards the front lawn. Thankfully, they let them pass with only a nod of acknowledgement. Another group of soldiers was already standing around the disturbance on the lawn, carefully circling the three man-sized cylinders protruding out of the Earth on an angle. There were three other black-clad uniformed figures standing among the UNIT soldiers. A rather tall, imposing woman and two men. The second man's face was covered in a black mask shaped like a cat.

Rory turned to Steve. "Uh, is that a mask or is he really a cat-person?" he asked.

The other blond man let out a surprised snort of laughter.

"Um... that's the Black Panther, T'Challa, King of Wakanda," said Steve awkwardly. "The Black Panther is the traditional protector of Wakanda..." He trailed off and frowned. "Wait, have you actually met cat-people?"

Rory shrugged. "It was in the distant future."

Steve's eyes lit up. "Really?"

"Woah, wait, cat-people are actually a thing?" the other man asked incredulously. "Like, there are aliens out there who look like cats?"

Rory hesitated for a moment. "You know, I'm not actually sure if they're aliens or the result of some sort of genetic splicing. Travelling with the Doctor you see so many strange things, you sometimes just accept them and don't ask about every single detail."

The redhead with them was eyeing him speculatively. "So you're the guys who came back with Steve," she said after a moment.

Rory nodded. "I'm Rory and that's my wife, Amy," he said. "The children are upstairs asleep."

She nodded back. "I'm Natasha."

The blond man with the bow gave him a small half-wave. "Clint, aka Hawkeye."

"I'm sorry, ma'am, but we can't let you go near them until we've figured out what they are," he heard one of the UNIT soldiers say.

He looked over just as Amy rolled her eyes. "What they are, are Silurian transport pods," she said and then used the soldier's surprise to shove past him.

Rory hurried after her, the Avengers on his heels. Amy reached out to touch the side of the pod. The top panel slid open.

"It's empty," she said and Rory could detect both relief and confusion in her voice. Then she looked up towards the various soldiers around her. "Did anyone see anything come out of these after they came up?"

The Black Panther stepped forward. "We were just returning from meeting with my Washington contacts when they appeared," he said, his voice smooth and somewhat muffled by the mask he was wearing. "They have done nothing else since arriving and nothing has exited them either."

"Could it be a malfunction?" Rory asked as he came to stand next to Amy.

Amy snorted disbelievingly. "That'd be one hell of a coincidence," she said. "The pods malfunctioning at exactly this moment in exactly this place, where we all happen to be?"

He nodded, thinking the same thing. "Then we're being sent for."

"Probably, yeah."

Their eyes met yet again and Rory already knew what Amy's would look like: bright green and glittering with excitement, her thirst for adventure shining through. It was one of the reasons he'd fallen in love with her, those shining, fearless eyes. He'd never really been adventurous, generally perfectly content with mundane, everyday things. And yet he'd gone on adventures, courted untold amounts of danger, traversed the galaxy and beyond – all for her, to be by her side to watch as her eyes gleamed and her whole face lit up, determined to face the next challenge before her. He only loved her all the more for the fact that her eyes gleamed the same way for every challenge, whether it be space monsters, psychotic killers, or having children.

"Go," he said. "I'll stay with the children and explain what's going on to Kate."

She smiled at him gratefully. Then she leaned over to kiss him and he met those familiar lips with his own, savouring the warmth that spread within him at the contact.

She pulled away and began to climb inside the pod. "Come on, Steve, looks like it's time to go meet the lizard people!" she called out.

Steve's expression changed from fond to alert in seconds. "Lizard people?" he asked and Rory could see a similar sort of excitement threatening to stretch his lips into a giddy grin. "You mean that wasn't just a story?"

"Only parts of it." Anything else she would have said was swallowed up as the pod's door slid shut and then there was a whoosh of wind as the pod disappeared with another rumble of shaking Earth, though quieter than the initial one.

Rory looked to Steve. "The underground lizard people didn't have dinosaurs," he replied in Amy's stead. "We met those on a spaceship of theirs hurtling towards Earth about a hundred or so years from now."

There was a long pause of silence.

"Okay, I feel like I've missed out on a crucial part of the conversation," said Clint as Steve walked up to a second pod.

As Rory walked over to help him open it, he saw the King of Wakanda casually wander over to the third.

"The Silurians are Earth's original inhabitants," Rory explained. "65 million years ago they detected a meteor headed towards the planet and, since they weren't able to stop it, they built a massive underground structure deep beneath the Earth's crust and put themselves into stasis so they could sleep through the extinction level event the meteor would cause. Unfortunately, the timer they set malfunctioned and so they've, uh, sort of overslept."

"Sixty-five million years ago?" said Clint, sounding incredulous. "Are you saying they're related to dinosaurs?! Hang on, there's a third pod ri– aww."

The Black Panther's pod disappeared with a whoosh and a rumble mere seconds behind Steve's.

Rory chuckled as he listened to Clint continue to complain about not getting to go meet the dinosaur people. It occurred to him to wonder if Amy's leaving to negotiate (he assumed) with a Silurian ambassador of some sort meant it would be up to him to go shopping in the morning. Maybe Beth would get to go shopping after all.

Or maybe he'd just get them all Avengers t-shirts and be done with it.


Riding in the pod was... an experience. Steve wasn't sure if a regular person would've felt things differently, but he felt surprisingly fine for the most part – except for the moments where his head felt like it was going to explode both from pressure and the loud noises surrounding him on all sides. It was like being inside a small, moving MRI machine except the clacking sounds were less intermittent and accompanied by constant rumbling. Just as he was on the verge of becoming severely claustrophobic, it suddenly came to a halt.

The systems around him powered down and the top slid open. Steve scrambled out immediately.

"Sorry, Steve, I didn't realize how crammed it would be in there for you," said Amy with a wince in his direction. "I don't think the Silurians are all that tall."

"Uh, that's okay," he said, trying to sound dismissive. "I've survived worse."

At least this hadn't hurt the way the vita ray chamber had.

He looked over and blinked in surprise. "T'Challa," he greeted his friend. "You came too."

T'Challa had taken his mask off and was looking slightly paler than usual. "As a child I had held a great fascination with dinosaurs," he said with his usual quiet dignity, which was only slightly undermined with the excited twinkle in his eye. He looked back at the pods thoughtfully. "Though not the most comfortable mode of transportation, I must admit the technology involved must be impressive. At the speed we must have been travelling, our heads should have exploded part-way down from pressure. It was also a much smoother journey than I would've expected."

Steve nodded. "Tony'll be Hulk-green with envy when he realizes he missed out on getting to examine them."

The corner of T'Challa's mouth quirked in amusement. "Indeed."

Then there was a soft hissing sound followed by a faint clunk of metal. They both looked over to where Amy was now standing in an open doorway leading to what looked like a corridor – looking entirely unaffected by their mode of transport.

"Well, are you two just going to stand there or are you coming?" Amy demanded.

They hurried over to her side.

Outside, in the ochre-coloured corridor, they were stopped short by a pair of guards – quite frankly, now that he saw them, Steve wondered why they hadn't been waiting for them inside the pod room. They immediately turned and pointed odd-looking weapons that partially resembled guns only with extremely wide muzzles that ended with short rounded antennas that reminded Steve of a larger, more menacing version of Marvin the Martian's ray gun. The weapons, however, quickly became secondary as he took in the appearance of Amy's lizard people.

Their faces were the only parts of them visible beneath grey, slightly shiny uniforms that started with clunky boots and ended with a turtleneck made of extremely fine chainmail – only due to his enhanced vision could Steve tell it wasn't woven out of some sort of yarn. The small green scales on their faces brightly contrasted their dull uniforms and while their faces had human-esque features, their heads then flared outward past their small, inset ears. Orange-yellow eyes stared at him coldly.

Steve slowly reached for his shield. These weren't some goofy, dumb, awkward-moving creatures; these were trained soldiers. Amy's book hadn't mentioned the advanced technology.

Amy stepped right up to the soldiers. "My name is Amelia Williams-Pond and I believe we've been expected," she said clearly. If she was scared of the soldiers and their weapons, she didn't show it.

"Stand down!"

The two soldiers immediately relaxed their stances and lowered their weapons. Steve looked past them to the woman striding towards them. Her uniform was just as grey as the soldiers' and equally covered her from neck to toe, but a gold trim around her collar and a heavy red cloak that came to her knees seemed to indicate she wasn't just an ordinary soldier. A man and a woman followed behind her, without cloaks and with less elaborate trims around their collars.

The soldiers stepped aside to allow her to pass between them. When she was standing before them, Steve was shocked to note she was a full head shorter than he was – somehow she'd seemed taller from a distance. In fact, he seemed to tower over all the Silurians.

She eyed all three of them with sharp, analytical eyes before her gaze rested on Amy. "Amy, it's good to see you again," she said.

Steve's eyebrows rose in surprise and he glanced at Amy. She looked stunned.

"Uh, sorry, I'm afraid I can't remember where we've met..." she said.

The Silurian's eyes widened slightly in understanding. "Oh, of course," she said with a chuckle. "My apologies, it's been twenty years. I remember now: you warned me that when we met again, you wouldn't actually know me."

"The joys of time travel," said Amy dryly.

"Yes, indeed. In which case, allow me to introduce myself. I am General Larrsa of the Third Branch."

Amy smiled and stuck out her hand. "Then it's an honour to meet you, General Larrsa."

The Silurian general removed one of her thick gloves to reveal an almost dainty-looking hand covered in small green scales and decidedly less dainty-looking pointed claws. She shook Amy's hand and then her eyes strayed pointedly towards Steve and T'Challa.

"And your companions?" she asked.

Amy stepped away and gestured to each of them. "This is Captain Steve Rogers and King T'Challa of Wakanda. Both are leaders of men and renown warriors."

Steve nodded respectfully to the General. "It's an honour to meet you, ma'am," he said as her eyes bore into him.

"You have seen combat," she remarked after a moment.

He blinked. "Uh, yes, ma'am. There was a war a long time ago."

She raised a hairless eyebrow at him. "I suspect that our definitions of 'a long time ago' greatly differ, nevertheless, I am relieved to see my forces will be fighting along-side experienced warriors. Even if they are apes."

Steve blinked. "Your forces?"

"Of course, that is what we agreed upon." General Larrsa paused, frowned, and then looked to Amy. "Will agree upon, in your timeline of events. Hm, I see now why you were so persistent; you already know I'd eventually agree."

Amy shrugged. "Again: the joys of time travel?"

"Apparently. Regardless, from what you mentioned last we met, we do not have much time. Follow me."

The two Silurians who'd arrived with her waited for Steve, Amy and T'Challa to pass before falling into step behind them.

"Are you aware of what's going on?" T'Challa asked Amy quietly.

"Not really, no," she answered. Then a door opened in front of them and Larrsa stepped through. Amy paused for a moment. "Only one way to find out, though."

Steve couldn't find a single reason to disagree.


The first thing Amy noticed upon climbing out of the pod again – other than to take weary notice of the sun that was peeking in through patches of cloudy sky – were the soldiers now crowding the front lawn. The US army soldiers. More than a few had their weapons in hand and were watching her small group suspiciously. Thankfully a circle of UNIT soldiers surrounding the transport pod's burrowing site seemed to be stopping them from actually pointing their weapons at them.

The pair of UNIT soldiers who'd accompanied Osgood to meet them yesterday stepped forward to greet them.

"Ms Stewart left orders for you to be escorted to her upon your arrival," one of them told Amy loudly.

Amy nodded. "Of course," she answered, wondering if the escort was mostly for show.

"Cap!"

They paused as the Falcon – whom they'd all met yesterday – came in for a landing beside them. Amy heard several weapons being cocked and her frown deepened.

"Hey, Sam," Steve greeted. "Uh, what's with those guys?"

The Falcon pursed his lips into a hard line before responding. "They arrived at daybreak," he said. "Apparently, someone doesn't trust UNIT to take care of Kang. I just wanted to warn you, Ross is inside."

Amy saw Steve's jaw tense as one of his fists clenched tightly. "Thanks for the warning. Has he tried anything?"

"Oh he tried all right, but Stewart told us to get scarce and got the Wakandan guards to protect the injured." He looked to T'Challa. "She didn't think you'd mind and they seemed okay with it."

T'Challa nodded. "That was the correct assumption."

"Do I want to know who this Ross character is?" Amy asked.

"The Secretary of Defense," Steve answered darkly. "Let's just say he's not exactly a fan of super powered people."

Amy sighed. "Lovely. Well, at least we come bearing good news."

Steve snorted. "I'm not sure he'll see it that way."

She might not have had any idea who Thaddeus Ross was, but as they approached the conference room, they could certainly hear him, the bellow in his voice more than hinting at his prior military experience.

"Mom!"

No sooner had Amy turned around then she found herself with an armful of clinging twelve-year-old.

"Mom, I'm so glad you're back," Timothy immediately began to babble. "The soldiers showed up this morning and they're our soldiers so they should be the good guys, but the man in charge kept saying they're going to arrest Captain America. They can't arrest Captain America, mom, he's a hero!"

Amy felt her eyes widen and she looked to Steve, who was wincing down at Timothy and looking slightly embarrassed. He wasn't, however, looking guilty. She looked back down at her son and ran a hand through his hair. He went silent and looked up at her with teary eyes.

"Timothy, love, while I don't know what's going on or why that man thinks he needs to arrest Captain America, I can guarantee you one thing," she said softly. "No one is arresting anyone while there's a time travelling ecoterrorist to stop."

That seemed to lighten Timothy's mood. Amy looked up and saw Rory standing farther up the corridor, a worried-looking Beth and Ben standing beside him. She smiled at them.

"Now, I have to go tell Ms Stewart what we've learned," she told Timothy. "And you should go back to your father and brother and sister. I'll meet up with you when I can."

Timothy nodded. "We've been learning about the Avengers!" he said brightly. "Did you know they've even got two girls on their team? The Black Widow looks really cool! Hawkeye says she can kill a guy with just her pinkies! And one of them is just called Vision and he's real funny-looking mom. He's got purple skin and a yellow stone in middle of his forehead, like it's just growin' there."

Amy blinked down at him. "Well, as long as you're not bothering them too much..." she said carefully.

"Is Tony there?" Steve suddenly asked.

Timothy turned to him. "Uh... not anymore. This black man dragged him in to have his ribs looked at, but he left right after the doctors finished." Timothy scrunched his nose up. "He's a really big baby when he's hurt. Not the black man, though, he barely made any noise when they were lookin' at his burn. He can't walk well, 'cause he was hurt real bad in a fight."

Amy could see the effort it was taking Steve not to laugh as he knelt down next to her son. "That'd be Colonel Rhodes," he said. "You should go back and ask him about the War Machine."

Timothy's eyes widened. "War Machine? What's that?"

"Well now, that's not my story to tell, son."

"But you should hurry before the medics are finished with him and he leaves again," T'Challa cut in gently, a soft smile on his face.

Timothy turned to T'Challa, his eyes widening as he took in his armour and the mask he was holding under his arm. "Oh boy, that's right," he said. "I'll go ask him then! See you later."

And then he was running off down the corridor towards the rest of his family. Amy waved to them.

"You have a lovely family," T'Challa told her.

Amy turned and smiled at him. "Thank you." She side-eyed them. "Just how pissed is your friend going to be with you that you just sicced my son on him?"

Steve shrugged. "He'll get over it."

The voices on the other side of the door grew louder as the UNIT soldiers opened the door for them. Amy took a deep breath and squared her shoulders before stepping inside.

Kate looked slightly dishevelled – like she'd been dragged out of bed at the crack of dawn after very little sleep in order to deal with the US army. She was standing facing them on the other side of the conference table, her arms crossed in front of her and her eyes sparking with anger. Across from her stood a tall, thin man with white hair and a moustache wearing an impeccably-ironed civilian suit, not a hair or crease out of place. Amy assumed this was Ross.

Between them, at the foot of the table, stood Tony, looking not only tired and frustrated, but like he wasn't quite sure who to be frustrated with. He was the first to notice their entrance. His expression darkened.

"As always, you have the worst timing ever, Spangles," he said dryly.

That caught Ross' attention. He immediately whirled around and pointed at Steve.

"Colonel, arrest that man!" he said.

"Belay that order," Kate barked half a second later. She glowered at the former general. "Mister Ross, as I've already told you, this is a UNIT operation and Captain America and his comrades have temporarily joined forces with us in the name of saving the world. Which should, Mister Secretary, be your priority as well."

"You have no jurisdiction on US soil!"

"The United States is a part of the United Nations just as much as any country and while, under normal circumstances, yes, I would relinquish jurisdiction to you as the home country, the situation is far from normal. Your armies are too visible and Kang's technology too far beyond your reach. My jurisdiction comes from both having the experience and the resources to mount said attack."

Ross scoffed. "Exactly which resources are you talking about? All I see is a small contingent of soldiers." He looked over at the soldiers who'd escorted them in and sneered. "And aliens."

She felt the two soldiers stiffen and she frowned.

"Allies," a familiar voice corrected, sounding colder than Amy had ever heard it.

Osgood stepped out from behind them and came to stand just in front of Amy. "We are all allies in this room."

Ross' eyes narrowed at her. "And which one are you exactly?" he demanded.

One of Osgood's eyebrows rose slightly. "Does it matter?" she asked mildly.

"Of course it does! Do you think I'm not aware of what you're doing? Of what you're letting into my country and refusing to provide the Defence Department with their identities so that we can keep track of and control them!"

"The objective is peaceful co-habitation, not control."

"Enough!" said Kate. "No matter what you think of the Zygons, Mister Secretary, they are not the threat here. In fact, they are quite clearly standing by our side willing to risk their lives for the planet they are currently calling home."

Amy's eyes widened, her gaze straying to the identical twin soldiers. No, not identical twins, she supposed. One human, one Zygon. Which was... interesting.

Tony threw his hands up. "Okay, what the hell are Zygons?"

"Shape-shifting aliens from the planet Zygon," Amy answered automatically. "Their planet was destroyed, I think."

One of the UNIT soldiers looked at her and nodded.

Amy cocked her head thoughtfully. "I suppose this means you no longer have to trap your human double in a cocoon?" she asked.

Surprisingly, it was the other soldier who answered. "No, ma'am, we've developed a way to take on a human's form without putting them into stasis and thus allowing them to move around freely," he confirmed. "It doesn't actually require close proximity either."

"But we've found it useful in battle to have identical soldiers fighting side by side, especially on small ops," the first soldier added.

Meanwhile, Ross snorted. "Allies or not, it still only gives you a small contingent of soldiers, hardly what I'd call a significant force."

"I also have the Avengers, or have you forgotten that they now fall under the jurisdiction of the United Nations as per the Sokovia Accords?" said Kate.

Amy cleared her throat loudly. "You also have the Silurian Army," she stated.

Kate, Osgood and all the UNIT soldiers in the room turned to her with shock written all over their faces. Everyone else looked confused.

"I'm sorry, could you repeat that?" said Kate. "I have what?"

Amy smirked. "Two divisions of Silurian ground forces and one airborne division, standing by and ready to fight along side UNIT and the Avengers to protect the planet."

Kate just stared at her for a long moment before shaking herself out of her shock. "Well, that's fortuitous, if entirely unexpected. It took you only three hours to negotiate that?"

"Oh, no, not at all. After this is over, Rory and I will have to get the Doctor to take us twenty years into the past in order to meet with General Larrsa of the Third Branch in order to arrange this."

"And what is this, more aliens?" Ross demanded.

Kate smirked. "Oh, not at all, Mister Ross," she said. "The Silurians are entirely native to Earth. In fact, they are the planet's original inhabitants."

Beside her, Osgood was frowning thoughtfully. "UNIT's encountered them before, but I've never heard tell of an airborne division," she said.

Amy shrugged. "Apparently the airborne divisions were almost exclusive to the Third Branch, which you can more or less think of as the North American Branch, give or take a few pieces of Asia and Europe where their territory got divided up by the tectonic plates shifting about."

"This is unacceptable!" Ross stated. "You are planning on bringing more unknown forces onto US soil without our authorization. UNIT does not have the jurisdiction to do so!"

"UNIT can operate within the boundaries of any member country of the United Nations," Kate insisted.

"But you are not in charge here!"

Kate took a deep breath, clearly rallying herself for another rebuff, when a male voice from behind Amy said:

"Actually, I do believe I'm in charge."

Amy turned along with the rest of the room to get a look at the newcomer. He was a tall man with short wavy white hair. He was wearing sunglasses and a burgundy velvet blazer with blue jeans as he leaned casually against the doorframe, his hands in his pockets and legs crossed at the ankle.

He inclined his head so that he could look at them over his glasses. "I am still Emergency President of the World, am I not?"