"Hi, guys," Taylor said after sticking her head out of the water, having made sure to make a lot of foam first so no one was surprised. It was near low tide so the water was only just deep enough to cover her, even in the areas where she'd cleared out the docks. She put her hard hat on and adjusted her safety vest.

"Hi, Kaiju," several people called, waving to her. She waded closer, then dropped to all fours near the shore, lowering her head to nearly the dock level.

"What do you want me to do first?" she asked, looking around. One of the engineering team in charge of the decontamination process raised a hand. "Yes, Charlie, isn't it?"

"That's me. We were talking to Danny about the filter system your sister was going to do, but the things are so fucking huge you can probably do it easier. I've got the drawings here, can you see them OK?"

She leaned closer, smiling very slightly so as not to expose many teeth. To his great credit, the man barely twitched. "I've got really good eyes. I can see it fine." He got a couple of colleagues to hold up the printed CAD drawing, one on each end of the four foot wide piece of paper and between them pulling it straight. "Hmm… OK, so there's this stand here, which bolts down over there..." She pointed to one section of the printout with a long claw, then indicated the end of the tanker. "Plus these towers which sit on the stands, the filter material goes inside. Water goes in the bottom?"

"Correct," he replied. "It should circulate up around the outside of the filter itself, out through the center and up. We need three of them with successively finer filtration, then one filled with activated charcoal. Can you make that?"

"Do you have a sample?" she inquired. He nodded, having been prepared, pulling a set of eight inch cylinders from his coat pocket. "Toss them in," she said, opening her mouth a little and pointing. He looked a little startled, but did as requested. Catching the, to her, minute specks of material on her tongue, she swallowed them. The Varga quickly analyzed it and gave her the patterns. "OK, that's easy. Right then, let's see about trying one. Everyone should move clear, please, I don't want to step on anyone."

There was a general exodus from the area. Carefully climbing out, she winced a little as the concrete made a tired groaning sound and crumbled under her weight. "Oops. I'll fix that," she said, looking down.

"It all needs to be replaced so it's not a problem," Charlie said with a grin. He watched as she moved slowly over to the place the first filter would go. Looking at the ground, she shook her head.

"This is even more rotten than back there. I'd better replace the surface first. Hold on a minute."

Leaning down she put a hand on the cracked and ancient concrete near where the foundations of one of the warehouses had been. A moment's work between her and her companion soon had a new smooth stone-like substance spreading out around her. When it covered an area about a hundred feet square, she stopped making it and nodded in satisfaction. "Is this OK, or will you need a different texture?" she asked.

Charlie and several other workers came over and poked the ground curiously, one of them, whose name she remembered after a moment as Alan, scuffing it with his boot, then raising an eyebrow. "Not bad," he said, looking at her with respect. "Good grip, hard wearing, non-porous… What is it?"

"Sort of granite, I think you'd call it," she replied. "It's a mix of several minerals, with the texture based on a road surface. I can make it porous easily enough, but I guess we need to make sure any contamination runs off it into the drainage channels rather than soaks away?"

"Ideally, yes," Alan replied. "You're going to cover the entire area with it?"

"Assuming that's what you want. If you have any different requirements, let me know and I can change it."

"This should do fine, actually. We've got the plans drawn up for where we need to put drains for rainwater and that sort of thing to connect into the main storm system. But let's get these filters in place first."

"OK." Returning her attention to the plans Charlie's helpers were holding, she studied them, then began constructing the first enormous steel stand. She decided to make it out of high grade stainless steel so it could be removed by someone else if she wasn't around, but wouldn't rust in the meantime. Not to mention that the scrap value would be fairly high.

Humming to herself, she made shiny metal tubes grow from nowhere, enjoying the usefulness of constructing things that helped people.

"Holy Mary, Mother of God," the sound man mumbled, crossing himself. Danny glanced at him, as did the rest of his party.

"I didn't know you were religious," Kate commented, looking somewhat faint herself.

"I wasn't. I'm thinking of taking it up," he replied shakily. "Merciful Allah."

"Pick one and stick to it," Roy suggested with a grin. "That's the normal procedure."

"That may not be enough," the man replied in a quavering voice. Even so, he kept walking as they approached the huge reptile, who was emitting tuneful hums so deep the entire area vibrated gently. Danny grinned, she was humming Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor and doing a remarkable job of getting the overall effect of an enormous pipe organ across.

There was a twenty foot tall, forty foot diameter tower in shiny stainless steel sitting on a pad of dark gray stone that hadn't been there that morning, with a huge gleaming cylinder over sixty feet tall sitting on and in it. The entire thing looked remarkably organic, more like it had been grown rather than built in the normal manner, which was pretty much the case. She was forming the top of the cylinder as they watched, the metal flowing under her hands like a potter working clay, and he could tell just by watching her expression that she was enjoying herself a lot.

"That is the most unbelievable thing I've ever seen," the reporter whispered in awe. "I can't believe how big she is."

"Certainly not someone you miss in a crowd," Roy snickered. She looked at him, then back at the vast creature, before shaking her head with a smile of disbelief.

"No, not really. Can we really interview her?"

"Sure you can," Danny's enormous daughter called, glancing at them. All three of the news crew jumped, more than a little surprised. "Let me just finish this one and the guys can test it, then we can talk."

They watched as pipework formed around the cylinder, spiraling down to the ground, where she made a complicated manifold system while discussing it in a low rumbling voice with several of the engineers, who were referring to a large unrolled sheet of paper from one of the big CAD department printers. One of the pump trucks drove over and parked next to the filter pack, the operators unlimbering a six inch diameter hose from it and heaving it over to the manifold.

After some minor modifications, the pump operators successfully managed to attach the hose coupling to the manifold, then run another hose from the pump into the water over the edge of the dock. They gave a thumb's up to the man at the rear of the truck. He nodded and started the pump, which whined into life accompanied by the roar of a huge diesel engine. Everyone could see the pipes twitch and writhe as they filled with high pressure water. A rumbling sound became apparent as the water started to fill the huge filter tower.

Checking some gauges that they'd attached to the manifold, the engineers all looked pleased. With a word to Kaiju, they shut the pump down, then put it in reverse and restarted it. While they were engaged in that process, she very carefully moved away from them to a clear spot on the concrete and lay down, folding her arms on the ground and dropping her head to them. "Hi. I'm Kaiju," she said brightly. "In case you were wondering."

"I think they probably worked that out," Danny chuckled as he led the small party over, the news team looking reluctant. Quite a number of the workers in the area stopped to watch. Stopping about forty feet away, which was close enough that he thought the cameraman could probably get his daughter's entire head in shot, he turned to the reporter. "Here you go. Interview away."

Kate swallowed, straightened her hair reflexively, then adjusted the hard hat she was wearing on her head. All of them had the relevant safety gear on. Danny had sighed heavily when he found the one hanging in his office had mysteriously sprouted the words "The Boss" under his name, and resolved to have words with Taylor when they got home.

The reptilian smirk she was wearing made him pretty sure she was aware of that. Luckily, he doubted that anyone else in the area was as practiced as he'd become at reading non-human expressions. Plus, he knew his daughter.

"Um, hello, Kaiju," the redheaded woman began, her voice a little wobbly. "I'm Kate Andrews, WCVB channel five news. From Boston?"

"Yes, I know," the huge reptile replied, "I've seen you on the TV."

"How?" the cameraman whispered to his colleague, who shrugged. Then crossed himself again, just to be safe.

"Oh… Great. Wonderful. Um. So, can we ask you some questions?"

"Sure." Kaiju raised the corners of her mouth in a smile. "Shoot."

Kate turned to her team. The cameraman swallowed, then visibly pulled himself together, a facade of professionalism covering the nervousness Danny could still see in him. The sound man looked at the enormous reptilian form, down at the lapel mic he was holding in one hand, shook his head, then rummaged through the pack full of equipment he was carrying. After a moment he emerged with a shotgun mic which he attached to the camera while the operator held it still, trailing the lead back to his recorder and connecting it.

"Are we up?" Kate asked.

"I think so. Um, Miss Kaiju? Can you say something, please?"

"Something," she promptly said, which produced an involuntary grin from him. He fiddled with his equipment for a moment.

"That should do it."

"Great," Kate said, looking more relaxed now. She turned back to Taylor. "Hello, Kaiju," she said in a more professional, practiced manner.

"Hello, Kate. It's nice to meet you," Danny's daughter replied politely, keeping her voice down. The sound engineer, who was listening with a set of headphones, minutely adjusted the controls some more.

"Likewise. I have to say you're the largest cape I've ever met. Or heard of, for that matter."

"Oh, I'm not really all that big," came the reply, which made everyone but Danny look slightly worried. "You should see my relatives. But, I guess I am fairly large by human terms." Kaiju raised an eye ridge, smiling a little. "Too big to go wandering around in the city, unfortunately."

"Ah… yes, I suppose so." Kate looked slightly flummoxed for a moment, then rallied. "Can I ask why it is that you are doing what you are doing?"

"Why not?" The huge form in front of them shrugged a little. "I enjoy helping people, and doing this sort of work. Mr Hebert came up with this whole idea, which we thought was both interesting and would make things better for everyone. We get some experience and a lot of fun out of it, the city gets all sorts of benefits that it's needed for a long, long time, and as far as I can see everyone wins."

"That seems reasonable," the reporter replied, sounding slightly confused even so. "But even for you this must be a lot of work. I understand you're doing all this pro bono at the moment?"

"Yes, it seemed the right way to go about it. We couldn't charge for the main job, of course, the whole reason nothing ever got done with that tanker back there is that it was way too expensive for the city to afford. Moving it was key to the plan. I don't mind doing it as a favor to Mayor Christner. I expect we'll get more work in the future once this whole thing is running, from other places. We'll charge reasonable and competitive rates for that sort of thing most of the time, which seems fair. But we're always open to helping out in cases of this nature."

Kaiju smiled again, while Danny listened, both proud and amused. "We don't want to put anyone out of work, of course. More the opposite, we want to do things that will make life better for everyone as far as we can manage. I'm a Union member, after all, I'm not going to take work from any of the other members. But there's no reason not to earn a decent living doing that where we can, right?"

"No, that sounds perfectly reasonable," Kate agreed. "To be honest I suspect that many in your position would squeeze the market for as much as they could get out of it."

"That's not our way," she said calmly. "We don't need it for a start, and none of us are driven by profit to the exclusion of everything else." Kaiju lifted her head and looked around at the dozens of workers listening. "I don't think anyone here really is. Most of these people are very skilled in all sorts of things. All of them are hard and dedicated workers. They could quite possibly move somewhere else and get jobs if all they were interested in was the money, even in this economy. But they stayed. From what I've been told they're the ones at least partly responsible for keeping the city as functional as it is. I respect that and want to help. We all do."

Lowering her head to her arms again, she added, "Not to mention that we've made a lot of friends here and like it. This is my city as much as is anyone else's here and I want to see it recover and thrive."

"I see. Can I ask, do you originally come from here? Or somewhere else?" Kate looked slightly apprehensive. Danny's daughter looked at her for a long moment.

"I was born quite close to here, as were Saurial and Raptaur. We've been around for a while but the time was right to meet people, I guess you could say."

The reporter nodded slowly. "I have a question about Brockton Bay Family Operations, the company formed to market your services and those of your sisters. Whose idea was that?"

"Originally, Mr Hebert's," Kaiju said, looking at him with a smile. The cameraman panned to get him in shot for a few seconds, then back to her. "We were a bit surprised. The legal people here at the DWU did an amazing job setting everything up. We have a lot of ideas we're hoping to market through BBFO."

"Such as?"

"There are some interesting technological prospects," she replied. "Not Tinker-tech, as such. More using what we can do, like that thing." The enormous head indicated the filter tower. "I'm not an engineer, although I'm learning everything I can. But I know quite a few really good ones and we can probably come up with some useful things. It's not going to happen right away, we're all busy right now, but who knows what the future will bring?"

"Interesting," the reporter said, sounding like she meant it. "One final question, if you don't mind. Our researchers tell me that your company documents mention providing other Parahuman services. Do you currently employ any Parahumans other than your relatives?"

"Not yet," Taylor smiled. "But we're considering it at some point. We did contract some security requirements out to New Wave during the tanker move, and they performed wonderfully. We may well wish to repeat that at some point if they're willing. They were very helpful and pleasant to deal with."

"Thank you, Kaiju. It was very nice to talk to you, and I apologize for being somewhat… disconcerted… at the beginning."

"That's no problem, Kate, it was nice to talk to you as well." Kaiju looked back at the filter tower, then turned to the reporter. "If you'll excuse me, I need to get back to work."

"Of course." They watched as she carefully stood up on all fours, then walked backwards until she had room to turn around, before returning to the group of DWU people near the filter unit. Shortly she was making the second one next to the first. The cameraman followed her with his rig, filming the process for twenty seconds or so, before turning back to Kate, who had spent the intervening time straightening her hair.

"That was Kaiju, the latest Parahuman to appear on the scene here in Brockton Bay, a city known across the nation as having the highest proportion of capes to non-capes anywhere in the country. The remarkable events of last Tuesday, which made news across the planet, are due almost entirely to her efforts." She turned to the right, walking a few steps, to stop beside Roy who smiled at her. The cameraman panned to follow her, smoothly moving sideways as well to keep Kaiju in the background of the shot.

Danny admired the skill the man exhibited, even though he still looked tense.

"With me is Brockton Bay Mayor Roy Christner, who together with Danny Hebert of the Dock Worker's Union planned out and brought to fruition this extraordinary operation. Mayor Christner, if I may ask, how do you feel about your city's redevelopment plan bearing in mind how well the initial stages have gone?"

"Well, Kate, I can only say that I am completely satisfied with the entire situation so far. Everything is going according to plan, which I can put down to some extremely hard work by the entire DWU including Kaiju and her relatives, excellent advice from a number of independent experts, and complete cooperation from the city council, who all have my immense gratitude for believing in not only the plan but me as well. It is an honor to serve this city, and I hope to do so for some time to come."

The reporter smiled, replying, "I suspect that if things continue to go so well, you may well stand an excellent chance of re-election, Mayor."

"That's some years off yet, Kate, but if the city chooses to entrust me with the responsibility again, I would be proud to continue for as long as they'll have me."

"Thank you, Mayor Christner."

The redhead paused for a couple of seconds, then nodded to the camera operator, who pressed a button on his rig then relaxed slightly. "Thanks, everyone. That should be enough for the report. Mr Hebert, would it be possible to see the BBFO office, just from personal curiosity?"

Danny smiled at her. "Of course. I can only show you the outside, the Family are, as I said, somewhat private and I wouldn't want to impose on them, but I doubt they'd mind if you looked at it."

"Great." Kate grinned, in a much less polished manner. He thought she was actually very attractive like that. "I find this all incredible, and I just want to see it, leaving aside my reporting instincts." They started walking towards the yard annex with the BBFO building in. "Thank you very much for allowing us this access. And arranging to talk to Kaiju." She looked back over her shoulder for a moment, to where his daughter was half-way through making the second filter. "That was probably both the most incredible thing I've ever done, and the most terrifying."

"She won't hurt you," he laughed. "But I can understand the impact she has on first sight. Trust me, it was a shock when I met her for the first time as well."

"I can imagine," she sighed, looking front again. After a moment she giggled. "I doubt that you'll get too much trouble around here with her around. If Raptaur was enough to obliterate Hookwolf like that, think what she could do!"

Hoping to himself they never had to find out, Danny merely nodded with a faint smile.

Inwardly Roy was very pleased. Kaiju had given a good interview, a surprisingly politically savvy one, in fact. She'd spread the credit across everyone involved, not trying to put it all down to her efforts, complimented New Wave, which should at least make Carol Dallon happy, expressed solidarity with both the union and the city, pointed out she wasn't in it for the money… Pretty much everything he'd have advised her to do if he'd had a chance. He wondered if Danny had done that instead, or if she'd come up with it herself. Either way, it worked out very nicely for everyone.

It certainly wasn't going to hurt his re-election chances. Kate was entirely right about that. That was still three years away, but with any luck, in three years the plan would be in full swing and the city would be well on the way to returning to the prosperity of decades past. Assuming something terrible didn't happen in the meantime, of course, but that was the nature of the world, especially since Parahumans came on the scene.

Not much you could really do about it except plan for the worst and hope for the best. He sighed inwardly. It was something that sometimes kept him up at night, but the last few weeks had given him more hope for the future than anything he'd seen for a long time. Looking back at Kaiju, happily starting the third filter unit while the engineering crew tested the second, now completed one, he shook his head in wonder.

'We live in a very strange world,' he mused, going back to listening to Kate chatter to Danny, who was smiling a little.

Amy mumbled to herself as Vicky picked her up and lifted off. "Detention. I've never had detention before! And it's all your fault!"

Her sister laughed. "I've had it before several times. And it's only two days, an hour each day helping the janitor clean the floors after school. I got four days. Dennis got a week."

"He deserves it," the brunette grumbled. "I should have hit him harder."

"The poor guy was already wincing with every step, Ames," Vicky protested. "You got your revenge, let it go."

Faint aggrieved muttering was all that she got in response. "Howell at least let you only do the detention on days you're not due at the hospital, so there's that," she added.

Reluctantly, Amy nodded, sighing. "Stupid name. Stupid Taylor. Stupid Dennis."

"I'll stop teasing you about the name, which I still think is hilarious, you know you don't mean it about Taylor, she's probably your best friend in the world, and Dennis is Dennis," Vicky said reasonably. "You could probably maim him for life and he'd still make some horrible joke about it. You'll never make him stop."

"I bet I could if I had to," Amy said in a dark tone, making Vicky laugh again.

"But you won't, because you're a good person. More or less."

"True," the other girl sighed. "It would be much easier if I was evil. So much easier." She was smiling now, just a little.

"Help, I'm carrying The Evil Amy," Vicky cried, laughing harder.

"Idiot," Amy snickered. "It's down there," she added, pointing at a car dealership five hundred feet below them. Her sister aimed for it, landing lightly on the tarmac and putting her down.

"Which one is it?" she asked curiously, looking around. Amy pointed.

"That blue one over there. They even polished it."

"Because they don't want Mom coming back," the blonde giggled. Amy nodded, laughing as well.

"Probably not, no. Come on, I need to sign the paperwork and get the keys. I've got a check in my pocket to give the guy."

Twenty minutes later, she was sitting behind the wheel of her first vehicle, grinning widely. Vicky was in the passenger seat, looking around the cockpit with interest. "Not bad at all. I like it."

"I love it," Amy chortled, starting the engine and listening to it. The thing seemed to be running slightly more smoothly now, which pleased her. Slipping it into drive, she carefully applied the gas, pulling out onto the road and heading towards Brockton General. "Going to take some getting used to, I haven't driven much before, but it feels really good," she continued, still smiling. After a few minutes acclimatization, she was more confident and started to relax, although she was still looking around constantly in case someone tried to run into her shiny new toy.

Vicky leaned forward and turned the radio on, prodding buttons until she found a music channel playing something she liked, then started singing along, rather loudly. Amy looked at her, down at the radio, shrugged, and joined in.

"Fucking..." Rebecca couldn't finish her sentence, staring at the vast lizard-like creature standing on the waterfront in a huge clear area near the docked tanker she'd shifted from the mouth of the bay so easily. Kaiju, in person, was indeed a hell of a lot more impressive than the TV conveyed. She made Leviathan look very small, and even Behemoth, something she'd never have thought possible. At least in something that wasn't killing everyone in sight.

The creature, clad in her comically oversized safety vest and hard hat, was slowly walking along the concrete which was disappearing under a differently colored stone-like surface. Several dozen workers were running around near her, marking out areas with cryptic symbols using aerosol paint, while three others were driving along beside her in the rear of a battered yellow pickup truck, apparently talking to her. She nodded every now and then.

About half the total area was currently covered in the material, while near the ship there were four enormous shiny cylindrical structures that hadn't been there the day before, at least sixty feet tall, with a series of wide pipes connecting them to each other and to a number of flat-bed trucks containing complex pumping equipment. She studied them as the three Triumvirate members hung in the air over one of the warehouses to one side of the cleared area, then turned her attention to the various people moving around with purpose.

"Interesting," she muttered, the breeze in her face carrying her words away. David glanced at her. "No one seems even slightly worried, although they're obviously being careful to stay out of her way," she said more loudly to his wordless inquiry. "Not surprisingly. She's being treated like just a wildly larger co-worker."

"Which is basically what she is," Paul put in from her other side. "And she knows we're here, by the way."

Rebecca looked at him, then back at Kaiju, who was now staring right at them, her enormous yellow glowing eyes expressing amusement. The vast reptile waved, then went back to doing whatever it was she was doing.

"That's a little worrying," she she muttered.

"She 's got incredibly good hearing, and eyesight as good as mine," he shrugged. "As far as I can work out, anyway. I know she easily heard Über and Leet talking, and Panacea shouting at her, from over a mile away. I couldn't hear a thing. It was in the report."

"I know, but I didn't realize quite what that meant," she admitted.

"Is anyone else worried about Panacea hanging around with those two?" David asked, making them look at him.

"It's Über and Leet, for god's sake," Rebecca sighed. "They're about as small time as it gets. That's a matter for her mother, not us. Kaiju and the Family are more the issue at the moment. Let's concentrate on that."

"Again, she can hear us," Paul mentioned. "Please bear that in mind, and please be polite."

After a moment, Rebecca started flying slowly down towards the giant cape, waiting to see what the reaction was. The other two followed her.

Taylor listened to the Triumvirate talking to each other with an inner smile, while continuing to cover the scrapping area in the stone substance she was producing. The material was over two feet thick and took her weight without any problems. Alan had described how it should be gently sloping towards the soakaway channel to allow rainwater and any spillages to drain into it, so she was doing it in passes a hundred feet wide, each one slightly thicker than the previous one and tilted away from the bay. The runoff would go into a thick layer of gravel and sand to absorb any oil, then run around the outside of the area towards the bay. With some care only water would enter it.

She'd started as far away from the water as possible and was now on her third pass, the surface behind her being marked for service conduits and the like, which she was going to go back and deal with when she'd finished the main area. By the time she got to the edge of the water she'd be about three feet higher than the original concrete and was planning on making a nice solid wall down to the sea floor there as well to stop the edge eroding.

Hearing Legend stop talking, she glanced over her shoulder to see all three of them slowly heading her way. She turned back to the engineering crew keeping pace with her. "Sorry, guys, but I think these guys want to talk to me. I'll get back to it when they're done."

"OK, Kaiju," Alan replied, looking up at her, then over to the three flying capes. "We'll take a coffee break. Let us know when you're ready."

"Sure. See you." She lifted a hand in a wave as the truck driver accelerated away, then turned around to wait for her visitors, wondering what they wanted. An amusing thought struck her which made her chuckle inside, and the Varga snicker.

A moment later, as the wind direction changed slightly, she smelled something she wasn't expecting at all. "That is… intriguing," her head companion commented slowly.

'Isn't it, though?' she replied with some shock. 'Looks like I'm not the only one with more than one public persona, but I'd never have guessed that. I don't think it's even legal, strictly speaking, considering her position. Positions.' She suddenly realized what Lisa had been talking about. Her power had clearly deduced the identity of the woman approaching and she was nervous about knowing, not surprising considering the ramifications. The bottles were her way to let Taylor know she knew without coming right out and saying it.

They watched the person known to the world as Alexandria, who smelled exactly like Chief Director Rebecca Costa-Brown, approach them fairly slowly, Legend on one side behind her and the equally iconic figure of Eidolon in a matching position on the other side. The greenish glow filling his cowl obscured his features to normal vision, but she could see enough through it in thermal wavelengths to get a vague idea of what he looked like. Probably not sufficient to pick him out of a crowd, but she could tell he was a middle aged man, most likely white.

Interestingly, he also had a very odd scent. There was something under it which bothered her for some reason she couldn't put a finger on. Alexandria had something similar but much fainter, indeed her entire scent trace was curiously much less apparent than a normal person's was, and now that she was aware of it, there were traces of it underlying Legend's scent as well. Barely there, which was why she hadn't noticed the first time she'd met him, but there nonetheless.

'What is that?' she asked curiously.

"I don't know," the Varga replied thoughtfully. "It's not human, though."

'Is he?'

"I'm fairly certain he is, which makes it all the more interesting. I'm going to have to think about it."

'OK. I guess I should probably talk to them, rather than just stare at them. It's a bit rude.'

Alexandria and her two colleagues stopped and hovered about fifty feet away, level with her eyes. She turned her head to look at each of them in turn, then smiled widely, which made two of them noticeably flinch. Legend was definitely amused by this judging by both his scent and the small smile than disappeared the instant the woman glanced a little uncertainly at him.

Visibly getting control of herself and also, based on her scent, a little irritated about her involuntary reaction, Alexandria opened her mouth to say something, but Taylor beat her to it.

"We meet again, Mr Foot," Kaiju said cheerfully, looking at them with interest. "And you brought your friends. The Grassman and..." She studied Rebecca thoughtfully. "Hmm. That one's a bit difficult. I'm going to have to think about it."

Knowing he was probably going to regret it, Paul asked, "The Grassman?" while glancing at David, who was somewhat confused, based on his body language.

"Well, yes, what else would you call someone who goes around saying, 'Yo, I da lawn?' Kaiju smirked. Paul stared at her for several seconds, before he burst out laughing.

"Oh, god, that's terrible," he snickered. She shrugged.

"Not much to work with. I did the best I could."

Shaking his head in amusement, he looked at his friend and colleague, who didn't seem to know how to respond to that. Rebecca was staring at Kaiju as if she couldn't believe either her eyes or ears. The monstrous reptilian cape looked at her, then smiled again. "Sorry, still can't think of a good one for you. I'll keep at it."

"Please don't," the woman floating in front of him sighed. "Mr Foot is bad enough."

"Hey, I liked it. So did PHO, from what I've been told," Kaiju chuckled.

Paul shook his head for a moment. "Way too much, thanks for that," he replied a little sarcastically but in good humor. She nodded to him, a definite grin present now.

"Sorry about that. Sort of. Anyway, how can I help the Triumvirate? Nice to meet you two, by the way." She looked around for a moment. "Technically this is an active construction site, but since I'm on a break and I'm also the main safety hazard, I suppose the rules will allow you to dispense with the normal OSHA equipment. If you're still here when I start working again, though, you need to either move back or wear it. I don't want to get into trouble."

Still looking somewhat confused, Rebecca waited for her to stop talking. "We wanted to meet you, since you and your sisters have been a fairly large part of the news over the last couple of days. Just to talk, really. Do you mind?" She was clearly doing her best to be as polite as possible, which relieved him.

Kaiju gave her an assessing look, which made him just a little uncomfortable. It was a tiny bit too knowing, as if she was aware of more than she should have been. After a few seconds, she shook her head, not taking her eyes from them in the process.

"No, that's fine. I have considerable respect for you all. But I have to point out that I'm on the clock here, or at least everyone else is and they're waiting on me, so if we can try not to take too long, that would be ideal." She waved an enormous taloned hand at the entire docks area. "I have a lot of surface to cover, as you can see."

"That's fair enough, Kaiju," Paul told her, moving forward a little in the air. "We don't want to interrupt your work more than we have to."

"Thanks, Legend. It's appreciated." She smiled at him. They watched as she sank down onto her belly on the ground. Waving to a spot in front of her, she added, "Feel free to stand, or sit, or float, whichever is most convenient."

They exchanged glances, then all landed in front of her, fifty or so feet away, which was far enough that they didn't feel like her head was filling the entire world. It was still filling a considerably larger amount of it than he was used to or particularly liked, but the result was only awe-inspiring rather than horrifying. The enormous reptile lowered her head until she was more or less at eye level with them. "So, what did you want to talk about?"

"Your family and the truth," David said.

Paul winced, while Rebecca frowned at him.

Kaiju looked at them closely, narrowing her eyes. She leaned closer, that enormous head looming over them.

"Really," she replied in a tone of thoughtful consideration. Her lips pulled back a little in a smile that wasn't entirely a smile.

'Oh, hell, David,' Paul thought, swallowing despite himself. 'Why did you have to say that?'

He hoped he could think of the right words to defuse what had suddenly turned into a tenser moment than he'd hoped for.