Sophia watched the vast ship disappear around the curve of the bay in the dim evening light, Kaiju preceding it and having vanished from view a little earlier. She could see that the tide was on the verge of changing by the patterns of the ripples made by the currents. Presumably the huge lizard would have to start working against it now, rather than with it, but she didn't think that was going to present much of a problem.

She'd nearly had a personal accident when the horrific thing had stood up out of the bay. Although she wasn't allowed outside, she'd managed to find a good view from one of the operations rooms that overlooked the water from ten stories up and could, with the window open as much as it would go at the top, hear everything perfectly.

The proof that the 'Family' actually did exist, and had much, much larger members than Raptaur or Saurial, was something that she was having trouble processing. She'd put the stories on PHO down as the usual babblings of the weak minded, something the entire place was rife with, but now… Now she had no choice but to admit that in this case at least they seemed to be telling the truth. It made her wonder, with a certain degree of disquiet, exactly how many other rumors she'd read there were true to one extent or another.

Especially ones about the 'Family'. She couldn't help putting quotes around the name in her mind even now.

Hearing that little bitch Hebert's father's voice, and all the things that the Mayor said about him, made her grit her teeth. She didn't like the reminder of why she was stuck in this damn place, or why she was wearing Armsmaster's little toy. Looking down at it she rotated the bracelet on her wrist, something that had become habit over the last few weeks. She was still sure that she could, eventually, work out a way to get it off, and then she was out of here. But he was watching and had mentioned how her earlier efforts weren't going to work. Not to mention that the shock intensity had been turned up.

Bastard.

She'd even toyed with the idea of simply cutting her hand off, but couldn't bring herself to do that. She wasn't that desperate.

Yet.

Muttering to herself, she took one last look out the window then went off to find something to eat.

Somehow, she'd get out, then people would pay.

But for now, she was starving.

Humming contentedly to herself, Taylor put a little more effort into swimming as the current direction slowly changed, until she was moving against the tide rather than with it as she had been doing most of the afternoon. The incoming tide had certainly made the job very easy, although she still thought she could have done it a lot quicker without any real danger of waves swamping the shore if she was careful. But like she'd told Legend, this way was probably best if only because it let people watch and get used to her in her Kaiju form.

She'd had a hell of a lot of fun as well, all things considered. Overall it was a good day so far. She'd entertained a very large fraction of the city, most of whom genuinely seemed to be having fun, talked to the Mayor, met Legend, which she was very happy about, and begun the process of getting the city back on its feet. All in all she couldn't see how things could have gone better.

Now that she was past the point where the general public could easily see her, in the exclusion zone surrounding the docks, she stopped playing around and just got to work. Über and Leet had gradually wound down the volume of the music with some sort of instrumental piece she vaguely recognized from a movie of a couple of years ago, once she was mostly out of view. Once again she thought that she needed to find and thank them. Their addition to the event had almost certainly helped enormously in making the public treat it as a day out rather than a terrifying Parahuman threat.

Amy having tracked them down and ended up helping them was a good start in that, she thought with an inner smile. She wondered how her friend had done it.

Lifting her head she looked back at the tanker, checking it was still on course. Obediently following her a few hundred feet back it was nicely tracking down the middle of her defined area. Looking ahead she could see the cleared dock area coming up in the distance. She increased speed a little, not much but enough to shorten the time it would take. She wanted to park this thing and find out what was going on with everyone else.

Hopefully there hadn't been any incidents, she certainly hadn't heard anything particularly amiss, but with New Wave on patrol she was fairly sure that if anything did happen it would get taken care of pretty effectively. She'd formed the opinion that overall they were actually rather good, despite some issues with Vicky being a little overenthusiastic sometimes. That seemed to have died down a lot in the last month based on her research, the blonde being much more careful recently for some reason.

Glancing over her shoulder she could see the girl in question dropping down to land in the park, probably to get something to eat. She'd been hovering a hundred feet up the entire afternoon, keeping an eye on the proceedings, and just her being visible had probably kept people from becoming over excited.

Further back, a block in from the shore and one of the taller buildings in the commercial district, was the form of the PRT building. She could make out dozens of people, including all the Wards other than Shadow Stalker, still standing or sitting on the helipad on the roof, staring at her. As she'd passed she'd waved, smirking a little when Dean looked worried. His friends had a wide mix of interesting expressions, ranging from impressed curiosity in the case of Kid Win through to barely suppressed fear in the case of Aegis. Who she was now certain was Carlos, although she still hadn't actually met him in his 'official' persona.

She had also noticed, with both a degree of satisfaction and some mild irritation, that a very familiar face had been watching from a tenth-story window, looking blankly shocked and more than a little worried. Resisting the urge to call a greeting to Sophia was difficult but she managed.

It was the final proof she'd been missing, although by this point it was almost irrelevant to her. She'd been damn near certain of her conclusions some time ago, so finding out for a fact that the PRT was indeed sitting on her former schoolmate was of some academic interest but not much more now.

Taylor felt she had much more important things to do with her life rather than dwelling on the actions of a former acquaintance. Especially as in some ways she had that acquaintance and her companions to thank for her current situation, which she was more than happy with.

Smiling internally she looked around some more. On the shore she was just passing one of the older parts of the docks, which had a few bars and other things of that nature, most of them sadly neglected these days. In the old days this area was full of itinerant seamen, short term accommodation and other such facilities catering to their needs. Now, most of them hardly saw any trade at all and quite a few had closed down years ago. A couple still stayed open, such as the one she could see people standing outside, watching her go past.

She peered at one man, who was sitting at a table and leaning back in his chair, smirking in her general direction while talking to a much younger man who seemed somewhat puzzled by life in general at the moment. Recognizing her acquaintance from the bay, she grinned back and raised a hand in greeting, slowing to keep position against the slowly increasing current.

He saluted her with his pint glass, calling out, "Well done, lass. Well done."

"Thank you, Sir," she called back.

"Name's Erwin, girl, nice to meet you. Glad you found gainful employment. Not much of it going around these days."

"Hopefully that will change soon, Erwin," she chuckled. "We'll see. I expect more fish will be around as well when I finish cleaning up out here."

"Would be nice, that," he laughed. "Carry on."

"Aye Aye, Sir," she snickered, throwing him a crisp salute which made him roar with laughter. The men standing around watching with their mouths open stared at her, then him, before almost as one shaking their heads. Most of them went back into the bar and she could hear sounds of beer being dispensed. Chortling a little she sped up again and kept swimming.

Peering down at Taylor as her enormous friend drew level with them, Amy grinned. She was obviously enjoying herself. Turning to glance at Über who had moved to stand next to her, she said, "Thanks, both of you. I think you probably made a huge difference to how well all this went off."

"It was a lot of fun, actually," he replied with a grin. "We don't often get thanks for our work."

"I wonder why?" she remarked sardonically, making him chuckle.

"I have no idea. We put so much time and thought into it but certain individuals just don't seem to appreciate it." He shrugged, smirking. "No sense of humor, those Protectorate people."

"Hmm." Studying him, she shook her head a little. "That's one way to look at it."

"It's the way I choose to." Über looked amused. "For some reason Armsmaster doesn't. But then he's not renowned for a sense of humor."

"All too true," she giggled. "He's a nice guy, and means well, but he's also… hmm, a little hard to understand, sometimes?"

"That would seem to be the case." He shrugged slightly. "I respect the man, oddly enough, but I also enjoy making him look confused."

"He's a very good Tinker," Leet put in from behind them where he was packing up. He plucked the audio emitter out of the air as it dropped down to eye level from wherever it had been and decloaked, making Amy stare for a moment then nod appreciatively. Putting it carefully back into the padded case everything else was in, he closed the lid and locked it. "Just a bit stiff. He needs to lighten up and we do what we can to arrange that." The shorter man snickered. "It'll work one day, I guarantee it. We'll make him laugh yet."

"I'm… not entirely certain that's actually possible," she remarked somewhat dubiously. "But it's probably worth trying."

"We'd better be getting out of here," Über commented. "Sooner or later I suspect someone is going to come looking for us and it might be best if you're not seen with us."

"OK. It was nice meeting you both. This has been a lot of fun."

"That it has," he grinned, holding out his hand, which she shook. "I enjoyed meeting you, Panacea. Hopefully we'll bump into each other again."

"I expect so. I'll pass on your message when she's finished."

He handed her a card. "You can get us on this number, if she wants to talk more," he replied. She took it, looked at it, then tucked it away.

"Great. I wouldn't be surprised if Danny or the Mayor want to talk to you two as well. Mind if I give them the number?"

"Danny already has it, actually," he said, making her look a little surprised. "We did some work for the DWU a couple of years back. They seemed pleased with the result and were happy to pay. Good people."

"Ah. Interesting."

"Anyway, see you around." He glanced towards the park. "Oops. Here comes your sister. We really need to go." With a quick wave, he and his friend bolted for the roof exit, making her laugh. Seconds later she was alone. Shaking her head slightly she grinned, then waved at Vicky, who was slowly flying along the shore looking around, apparently checking for trouble.

Danny watched as 'Kaiju' drew nearer. Checking his watch he nodded. He raised the walky talky in his hand and pressed the transmit button. "We're on schedule, the ship should be ready for the final docking in approximately forty-five minutes. Please make sure that all shore crews are prepared for it. We want to get it tied down as fast as possible. Danny, over."

Releasing the button he listened with satisfaction as all the various crews checked in, announcing their readiness. Around him, large floodlights were going on, brightly illuminating the entire dock area where the tanker would end up, and the machinery waiting for it.

The plan was for Taylor to produce cables fore and aft which the shore crews would use to tie the ship up, then she was going to make a wall around the entire ship, separating the water on the inside from the rest of the bay. This would get pumped out to form a temporary dry dock facility. The ship could then be carefully decontaminated and the polluted water removed and cleaned. He made a note to check on the plans some of his people were working on for enormous filters that his daughter could make, which would otherwise be prohibitively expensive to purchase. It was very convenient, he mused with a small smile, to have someone who could produce out of thin air almost anything one could describe in sufficient detail, assuming it didn't have any massive amount of moving parts.

She and the Varga were working on that, and he had no doubt that sooner or later she'd be making complex machines with little effort, but right now she excelled in large, but simple structures made of various otherwise impossible to acquire materials.

Early on she'd commented about simply making gold or diamonds, and both he and the Varga had spent some time explaining about the economic impact that would inevitably have. She'd got the point very fast and decided that wrecking the economy by flooding it with precious metals by the ton was probably not, in fact, a stunningly useful idea. He was proud of her ability to see that. Many wouldn't.

On the other hand, having her manufacture spare parts, tools, and construction materials, that he was fine with, and she enjoyed doing it. He was still pondering how Vargastuff could be used as a more general building substance. The sheer unbreakability and rigidity of it was amazingly useful, but as she was the only one who could work it in any way, they had to be careful not to end up leaving something for future generations that wasn't useful. It would take some thought.

Gently rubbing his arm where Amy's 'Mark 17' healing symbiote had disappeared completely into him, not a trace left now, he pondered the astonishing fact that 'future generations' might well have a lot of people around that had been there in the beginning of something remarkable. He still had trouble with the idea that the young woman might have essentially cured old age. Despite her protestations that it only extended life to a mere three centuries or so, he was pretty sure that given half a chance things would change in that respect. She struck him as someone who didn't like leaving a job half-finished.

Smiling a little at the way the last six weeks had utterly upended his, and Taylor's, life, he peered into the dark at the approaching form of his daughter, then went off to see how things were going with his crews.

Floating along the shoreline some way behind the slowly moving ship, a couple of hundred feet up, Vicky kept a careful eye out for any trouble. People in the park were slowly beginning to disperse now that the main show was over but there were still large groups of them hanging around the various food stalls and other interesting things that had popped up as if by magic, attracted to the gathering. She'd stopped off at one of them to pick up a burger, which had turned out to be remarkably good.

During the afternoon quite a number of minor calls had come over the radio, one or two of which had required her family to intervene, but none of them needing more than a glare from a flying Parahuman to resolve. There had been no serious incidents which she was pretty pleased about all in all, even though she could have made more cash in that case. But even two and a half grand for an afternoon out was a pretty good gig in her opinion, not to mention the cool costumes everyone got out of it.

Overall the entire thing had gone off much more smoothly than she'd expected. Possibly due to simple shock from the sheer overwhelming size of Kaiju, which had taken her at least as much by surprise as it had everyone else. Even with the warning Danny had given them, the reality far exceeded the anticipation. She'd nearly dropped out of the sky in stunned amazement when the unbelievably large creature had stood up out of the bay like that, and the massed indrawing of thousands and thousands of breaths had been remarkable to hear.

Spotting a couple of people in dark clothes using the evening dimness to their advantage, apparently trying to steal an expensive SUV parked at the side of the road and muttering to each other about how difficult it was, she silently lowered herself behind them to nearly ground level, folded her arms, and cleared her throat loudly.

Both young men froze, the one holding the small flashlight dropping it, while the other one who was fishing for the locking mechanism with a slender metal strip slipped down between the door and the window twitched violently and yelped. They looked over their shoulders then went quite pale.

"Hi, guys!" she said brightly. "I have a feeling that you didn't lose your keys. Perhaps you'd like to find something else to do, or should I just take you to the nearest cop?"

"Oh, shit," the flashlight-dropper whispered. The pair exchanged another glance, then bolted in opposite directions. Snickering, she retrieved the very good quality LED flashlight they'd left behind, turned it off, and stuck it in her pocket, before rising into the air again and resuming her slow course to the Docks.

A few minutes later she was catching up to Kaiju when she spotted a white-clad figure waving to her from the roof of one of the warehouses. Recognizing her sister she flew over and landed next to her. "Hey, Ames. What on earth are you doing up here?"

"I've been amusing myself with helping with the music," Amy chuckled, making her stare.

"What?"

"I'll explain later. Come on, you can give me a lift back to the Yard." Slightly befuddled, Vicky shrugged, then picked her sister up under the armpits and lifted off, heading towards the DWU facility.

"Weird day," she mumbled. "Fun, but weird."

"True enough," Amy giggled.

Paul stared at Colin, then Dragon, before glancing at Hannah, who seemed an odd mix of resigned, worried, and cautious. "That… is a very odd story," he finally said, feeling that this statement wasn't doing full justice to it. "But it puts some of this into context. Although leaving the actual origin of the Family somewhat debatable."

He noticed that Hannah looked momentarily unsure, an expression quite unlike her normal confident and assured one. It almost instantly cleared, although when he looked to the other side, he saw Dragon's reptilian helmet gazing at her speculatively. The Canadian cape looked away, glancing at Colin, who seemed to have missed it completely, which wasn't a surprise.

The Tinker was currently flipping through a number of high resolution images taken of Saurial and the other 'Family' members, some of them ones that Paul recognized from various online sources, some that seemed to be from PRT surveillance, and the ones of Kaiju mainly being from the long range cameras on the Rig. After a moment, he turned back to them.

"Indeed. My original thoughts on Saurial and Raptaur's origins would seem to have been invalidated by first Umihebi, then Kaiju." He sighed a little. "At this point in time I have no good theory as to where they come from, or for that matter where they go when they're not visible, except to suggest it's into the water. It's entirely possible that they could actually be based some distance from here in very deep water which would make them exceptionally difficult to track, and only come to the surface to visit the city." The other man shrugged slightly. "I have no good explanation for it at the moment. However, three out of four of the known Family members appear to be of a heroic, or at least neutral, outlook, and Raptaur at least has been both helpful and friendly to myself and Dragon."

Colin glanced at Hannah, who seemed to be thinking. "From what I know the same applies to her vis-a-vis Director Piggot. I'm not privy to the entirety of the conversation she and Hannah had with Raptaur but I believe it was productive."

"It was, very," Hannah muttered absently. She looked up, apparently rejoining the conversation. "However, Director Piggot has asked me to keep certain aspects of it confidential for the moment as it's on a need to know basis due to political aspects of the conversation. Bearing in mind the massive security issues we discovered, that's even more important."

"As you wish," Colin commented without apparent worry. He glanced at Dragon for a second, then looked at Paul. "That's the current situation. I apologize for not reporting much of this but as Hannah said, the Director believed it was for the best until we had more information. We now have a lot of information, much of which makes little sense, but it's shown she was undoubtedly right at least as far as the involvement of Coil's organization is concerned."

"Coil," Paul sighed. "Thomas Calvert. I know that man, but I never had any idea..." He shook his head. "He is… very intelligent, very ambitious, and morally somewhat… flexible. But I would never have suspected he was a Villain. And definitely not Coil. He's almost the worst person to oppose us, his knowledge of the inner workings of the PRT and Protectorate both is second to none."

"Which explains how he managed to so thoroughly compromise the PRT security system and computer networks," Dragon commented. "The work was exceptionally good, it passed the regular security audits without any trace. Probably for years. But considering he designed a lot of those audits, he knew exactly how to hide his backdoors and taps. It was only knowing they existed that let us find them so quickly. Otherwise it would have taken a total shutdown and scan of everything to even begin to work out how badly the network is infiltrated."

"Have you found anything on the Rig?" he asked, worried.

She shook her head. "Not yet. I can't say with total certainty that anything outside this room is clean, but I'm about ninety percent sure at this point. Colin's systems are definitely unaffected, that much I am certain of. I designed half of it and he did the other half. There's no way anyone without a seriously good Parahuman talent could access it and even then it would probably need physical access. Unfortunately the PRT systems are nowhere near as advanced, and of course Calvert had both physical access and top level security clearance for them."

"We suspect that he was infiltrating the system for several years before he retired," Colin added. "It's not impossible that his influence extends outside the local PRT systems, once he was inside that would certainly be possible, and we think it would be a good idea to check the entire network for the sort of attacks we have identified. But we also think we need to capture him first."

Paul nodded slowly, thinking about the situation glumly. The news of Calvert's betrayal was much more worrying than huge reptilian capes, at the moment at least. "I'd have to agree. You're sure you know where he is?"

Colin looked at Hannah, who nodded. "Raptaur told Director Piggot and me everything she found and everything she and Tattletale deduced. I've looked into it, very carefully for obvious reasons, and it all hangs together. It's going to be difficult to get that bastard out of his base without causing a massive disaster, she's certain that there are a large amount of explosives booby-trapping the place, and since it's under a major building..." She shrugged a little. "We're going to have to be very cautious in our approach."

"Do we know what his power is?" Paul asked curiously.

She shook her head. "No, not exactly. Tattletale is certain it's some form of probability manipulation or simulation, but at the moment she's not sure quite how that works. He apparently demonstrated by flipping a coin and having it come up heads every time but there are several ways that could be done. We need to find out what his ability is before we go in, I think."

Tapping his fingers on the arm of the chair, Paul nodded thoughtfully. "I agree. There's too much at stake to charge in blindly. We'll need to talk more about that, and I want to see the Director and talk to her as well."

"I'll arrange to have her come here," Hannah said, pulling out her phone and quickly entering a text message. Moments later she got a reply which made her raise an eyebrow. "Apparently she's thinking the same thing, she's on the way at the moment. She'll be here in about ten minutes."

"Good. I'd like to talk to both of you privately about your meeting with Raptaur, then I think we need to decide on a plan of attack." She made a gesture of agreement. "I'm going to stay in Brockton Bay and help with this. It's too important not to deal with immediately, or at least as soon as we can arrange to do so. I also want to keep an eye on the current situation with the Family. Chief Director Costa-Brown is going to want a report very soon." He shrugged. "I understand why Director Piggot wanted to do more research before sending it up the chain, and under the circumstances I agree with that decision, but today's events have forced our hand. We'll have to collate what we know at the moment and base a report on that even if we subsequently need to revise it."

"I've already written up threat assessments on Saurial and Raptaur, but they're going to need quite a lot of upgrading based on new information," Hannah mentioned. "I haven't even started on Kaiju, and we don't know enough about Umihebi to do much more than guess."

"True, but all the information we can scrape together should be enough for a decent interim report and recommendation," he said, shaking his head a little. "I think we need to get something official into the system as fast as possible. I can guarantee that there are parts of both the PRT, the government, and also foreign governments watching the TV at the moment with their mouths open. Sooner or later certain people are going to start thinking about how they can capitalize on the situation. My feeling is that we need to head that off right now before someone decides it would be a clever idea to rush in and attempt to get some leverage on The Family. I can't see any way that could do anything but cause far more trouble than I want to deal with."

Everyone in the room went silent for a moment as they considered his words. They all knew the sort of people he was referring to. Hannah shivered a little.

"No, I don't think that would be a good idea on the whole," she replied. Colin and Dragon nodded soberly.

"I for one have no wish to discover at any point in the near future just what Kaiju could do if she was sufficiently provoked," Colin commented quietly. "Nor do I wish to turn someone who is currently an ally into an enemy. Raptaur would react… badly… to threats to her friends."

Paul looked curiously at him. The man seemed to have more information than he'd passed on so far. Looking around the room at the others, he pondered the odd way that there seemed to be two groups who were both meeting with Family members without telling each other what the results were, and wondered why. He was going to have to make inquiries. Everyone involved was more than competent so he assumed they had good reasons for the compartmentalization of information, but it was certainly somewhat unusual.

However, right now that could wait for a while. After a moment, he asked curiously, thinking about something else that had puzzled him, "What does the last line on Kaiju's vest mean, do you know? None of the news people seemed to have any idea. What language is it in?"

Dragon glanced at Colin, then turned to him. "The language itself is a fictional one, or at least that is what I always believed. Apparently it was invented by the writer H. P. Lovecraft back in the early years of the Twentieth century. He and a few collaborating authors built up quite a body of work in what became known as the Cthulu Mythos. It's fairly popular even today."

"Ah, yes, I know of him, although I've never read any of his work," Paul commented thoughtfully. "I've read a little about him, a biography or two, in the past."

"He wrote about great alien creatures from beyond the stars or the depths of the sea who can be summoned with the correct ritual, or occasionally arrive without warning, usually to the detriment of anyone in the area. The 'Great Old Ones', as he put it, came in a huge variety of forms, most of which were supposedly so horrific that they would drive people insane by their mere appearance." She shrugged a little. "There are some uncomfortable parallels to all the odd things surrounding 'The Family', but how much of it is coincidence, how much is them merely taking advantage of the concept for their own reasons since they all seem to have a somewhat peculiar sense of humor to put it mildly, and how much could have a kernel of truth to it I have no idea. But I have to admit that I doubt the alien origin stories. Most likely they're just capitalizing on the whole thing for the amusement value."

"I see," he replied slowly, thinking that this was something he needed to look into. Huge aliens from somewhere else seemed… less impossible than he'd like, knowing what he did. Perhaps Mr Lovecraft had met some 'Family' members at some point? His stories were, from what he could dimly remember from reading about them, often set in this same general New England area, and the man himself had been from around this part of the country.

"The language is rather… loosely defined, and somewhat open to interpretation, deliberately or otherwise. The slogan on her vest, 'cathg sgn'wahi nnnshugg', can be translated in a number of ways. It literally says something along the lines of 'We contract/agree to share space and watch/protect the Realm of Earth'. My best guess is that its true meaning is meant to be more like 'We agree to share and protect the Earth', but without asking her I could be wrong. Overall, though, it seems to be a statement of protection rather than any form of threat."

"How… very strange," he noted. She nodded.

"I'd have to agree, but they've also used that language on their office sign." She told him what that one said. "My personal suspicion is that they think it's funny, but I also think they mean it. R'lyehian is a strange language to use to make a point but it fits oddly well under the circumstances."

"Great creatures from the depths. Indeed. Hopefully these ones are friendly, and not going to drive anyone insane." Paul chuckled for a moment. "Although I suspect that there are a lot of people around the world who are wondering whether they're seeing things."

"I've wondered that myself more than once," Hannah said in a slightly worried tone. Colin nodded a little, as did Dragon.

"They've certainly forced us to rethink a few things we thought we knew about Parahumans," the Tinker put in. "The fact that they all share a common power-set as far as can be determined is very unusual. The nature of that power-set is… exceptionally odd. And extremely powerful. On the face of it they're basically Brute/Shaker combos, but that combination coupled with a high degree of intelligence and an odd outlook lends itself to vastly increasing the possible uses. They're very flexible."

"Raptaur, for example, should in some ways probably be given a low Tinker rating," Dragon put in, causing him to look at her. "She's not a Tinker like Colin or myself, but she can produce as far as we can tell pretty much anything she wants to with some practice, at least as far as mechanical components go. To a very high level of precision and repeatability as well, which is more than impressive. Not to mention that she can generate any sort of material she desires on demand with no apparent upper limit."

"Could she make explosives?" Hannah asked, both curious and sounding a little worried.

Dragon nodded. "Undoubtedly, if she wanted to. I suspect that more or less any chemical compound would be something she could make. She showed that she could analyze a complex synthetic insulator, by the simple process of actually eating it, then duplicate it exactly in quantity. We were… somewhat surprised." Her voice had gone very dry on the last sentence. Paul stared at her, as did Hannah, then they both looked at Colin who nodded.

"The sample she gave us was a perfect copy of the one that Dragon gave her, only approximately two pounds in weight rather than the ounce or so the original sample was. She copied it in seconds."

"That's… scary," he said slowly.

Colin shrugged. "It's certainly strange, and could present a very severe threat if she so wanted. I would be extremely hesitant about engaging her at close range on that basis alone. But at the same time I don't feel she presents a threat, as long as certain very clearly defined lines are not crossed. She and Saurial were both good enough to tell us exactly what those lines are. I can work with her under those conditions without trouble. I don't know Saurial enough to be as sure but I doubt Raptaur is a threat unless we make her one."

"You seem to like her, if I'm any judge," Paul commented with a small smile.

Colin looked at him for a moment. "I think I do, to be honest. We both spent some time talking to her and discussing subjects that I can seldom talk seriously to others about and found her to be a receptive audience with a good grasp of scientific issues, mathematics, and logic. In my experience those traits are uncommon."

Dragon added with a smile in her voice, "She's interesting, is what he's trying to say. Yes, potentially extremely dangerous, but then, almost any Parahuman is in one way or another. She's just more… obviously dangerous." The female Tinker lifted an armored hand in a gesture of amusement. "But like Colin says, don't threaten her family or friends, be reasonable, and she's easy to talk to."

"Interesting." Paul could see that Hannah wasn't entirely on the same page from her expression but said nothing. Moments later, the military cape's phone pinged, making her look at it.

"The Director is on the Rig," she announced.

"Excellent. If you'll come with me, Hannah, I'd like a quick word with both of you, then I think we need to pool our resources and work out what we tell everyone else, and how. Do you mind if we use your lab for that, Colin?"

The other man looked around the large room, then sighed slightly. "I'll clear some space on the big table and have some more chairs brought in," he replied with mild irritation. He clearly wasn't entirely happy about it but was prepared to cooperate.

"Thank you," Paul smiled. "I understand you'd rather be designing things. Hopefully we can get this out of the way fairly quickly and you can go back to work."

"That would be ideal," Colin muttered. Dragon put a hand on his shoulder, making him glance at her, sigh a little, then relax. Paul watched with amusement, before getting up and following Hannah to the door as she refastened her scarf across her face.

"We'll see you soon," he promised, then left the lab, heading towards a meeting with the Director.

He was very curious exactly why Hannah seemed so twitchy about the Family and why she was obviously keeping something from both Dragon and Colin. He expected that she and the Director were running their own little project on the subject, as both Tinkers clearly were as well. It was odd, and potentially worrying, but he was sure he'd get to the bottom of it all.