Lisa watched her enormous new friend talking to Legend, then turned and peered at Eidolon and Alexandria, who seemed to be having something of a disagreement. The news crew next to her were recording Kaiju, but sooner or later they'd point the camera at the other two, which she couldn't help feeling could cause some potential problems. Glancing at Danny she saw he was watching both the two Triumvirate members, and her.

She shrugged, then let her ability go to work on them.

Alexandria very angry

Eidolon somewhat angry, at… not getting his way? No, not getting the result he expected

Expected to provoke Kaiju into fight

Wants to fight

Needs to fight

She blinked a few times. That was a little excessive even in cape terms. Lisa probed harder, wincing a little at the headache that was building.

Needs conflict, challenge, feelings of fighting overwhelming power

Thinks Kaiju best opponent

Frustrated she will not rise to bait

Will escalate until stopped or gets his way

Not thinking entirely rationally due to ?

That was unusual. Lisa felt confused. With Taylor, she got basically nothing, except hints here and there. She'd worked out this was because the Varga was so alien to whatever her power actually was that it had basically no frame of reference to even begin to interpret any data it got back. But in this case, it was more like something had been redacted.

Which was just weird.

She tried again and got the same result, as well as a rapidly intensifying headache.

Sighing, she gave up for the moment, turning back to watching Legend talk to Kaiju, while she waited for her headache to subside a little. If it did, she could see if she could extract more information later. Danny was watching her with concern but she smiled reassuringly, making him look assessingly at her, then nod. He turned back to the Mayor who was audibly wondering what the enormous reptile and the Protectorate hero were talking about, Kaiju's voice only a distant rumble like surf on the beach.

Stopping next to the filter towers, Kaiju waved at them. "I'm quite proud of these," she went on. "The DWU engineering team designed them, I made them. They should last for years. I can replace the filter material easily, of course, but we won't need to do that more than about once a year."

"They're very… large," he told her, studying the things.

"They need to be. Originally Raptaur was going to make them but once the guys in the engineering department ran all the calculations, it turned out to be more efficient to make a small number of really big ones rather than more smaller ones, and I was the obvious choice to do that." She reached out and put a hand on the top of one of the enormous shiny cylinders in a proprietary way. "I like making things, so this was a lot of fun. And the most complicated thing any of us have made so far."

"A born engineer, or a Tinker?" he smiled.

"More the first than the second, but not really either," she chuckled. "All of us are really curious about how things work, we like learning new skills and combining the ones we know to do interesting things. We're a good fit for the people around this place, I think."

Hearing faint shouting, he turned in mid air to see Rebecca waving her hands and berating David, who had crossed his arms and was standing in a pose that suggested he was being stubborn. "Now what?" he grumbled. Her back was to him so he couldn't read her lips.

"Grassman is still saying that clearly I'm hiding something, which is true, it's called my private life," she told him, "and he's saying you guys should figure out how to force me to explain my agenda. Alexandria is calling him an idiot who nearly started a fight that wasn't necessary." She listened some more, before sighing. "He's quite rude at times."

"I have no idea why he's acting like this," Paul commented, watching the figures of his friends a few hundred yards away. He was hoping that the microphones on the TV crew's equipment wasn't good enough to pick up what they were saying. It was already embarrassing enough to have the Triumvirate squabbling in public.

"Neither do I," she remarked. "Now he's saying something about how it's their job to find out the truth, even in this damn city? That's a bit harsh." She looked mildly insulted. "It's not that bad, aside from all the Parahuman gangs, constant violence, and regular murders."

He gave her a look, making her smirk. "OK, not the best argument in favor of it. But I was born here, so I have to defend it."

"Fair enough," he smiled. They watched as the two figures, who were now hanging in the air, exchanged more words, before Rebecca pointed back at the TV people. David turned his face that way then flew out over the water about a quarter of a mile, the woman following him, before they resumed arguing as mere dots in the sky to most people.

"Is he always like this?" Kaiju asked curiously, turning her head to watch the distant figures.

"No. He can be a bit quick to join a fight at times, but I've never seen him like this before."

"Something to prove, I think," she said, making him look at her, somewhat impressed by the assessment. Catching his glance, she added, "I've met people like that. He shows a lot of the same signs, although nowhere near as bad. Personally I think he wants to fight me to show how good he is."

Paul didn't reply, but he knew she was essentially right. The man had been angling for that the entire time he'd been in the city, even though he'd agreed not to take it any further. But watching him, his old friend could easily tell he was still looking for that ultimate fight. Kaiju was simply watching and listening with an air of bemused interest, making him wonder if she'd actually do anything even if David did just attack out of sheer frustration.

"I'm sorry about all this," he finally said quietly.

"Not your fault." She shook her head firmly. "You're a good man, and I think of you as a friend more than anything else. From everything I've seen and heard about you, you can be trusted and you think things through. You can't be held responsible for anything your friends do, you're not their master. All of you are more than old enough to take responsibility for yourselves."

"I'd like to think so," he agreed wryly, making her snicker.

They kept watching, until David threw his hands in the air, then started flying back towards them, radiating anger. Rebecca was hanging in the air with her arms folded, looking extremely irritated as well. Paul got a sinking feeling in his stomach.

"He's moving again," Dragon pointed out, unnecessarily. Sure enough, the vector was slowly extending again on exactly the same course, at the same oddly low speed.

"I haven't got the faintest idea what is going on there," Colin muttered.

"Neither do I," she admitted, thinking hard. "Is there anything odd about Brockton Bay at the moment?"

"When is there not something odd about Brockton Bay?" he asked in a tone of long suffering irritation. "We have Lung, the E88, the Merchants, the Family, and now even the Triumvirate. To be brutally honest every day I wake up and find that the place isn't a smoking hole in the ground is a good day."

Smiling to herself, she nodded her understanding. "Poor Colin. This city is certainly interesting."

"Not quite the way I'd have described it," her friend grumbled, watching the screen. "But I can't think of anything going on right now that would, or could, cause that." He waved at the monitor in front of them.

"No, I can't either," she sighed. "I wish I could work out what the Endbringers actually wanted."

"Destruction and death, as far as I can tell," Colin said in a low voice. "Nothing more, nothing less."

She nodded silently. That pretty much summed it up.

"Oh, fuck it," Paul murmured.

Kaiju sighed. "He's going to push again, isn't he?" she asked, pretty much rhetorically.

"I hope that's all he does," he said. "I'll go and talk to him."

She held up a hand. "No. Let him get it out of his system or he'll just come back."

"You aren't going to fight him, though?" He looked hopefully at her, having no wish at all to see what a Kaiju vs Eidolon fight with no holds barred would look like.

"I won't throw the first punch, but I reserve the right to stop him if necessary," Kaiju said quietly. "Don't worry, I won't hurt him if I can avoid it."

With severe misgivings but also knowing that there wasn't much he could do right now if Rebecca couldn't talk their friend down, aside from fight either him or her, neither prospect making him feel any better, he waited next to her until David arrived, holding position level with her head and about sixty feet away.

"Hello again," she said calmly.

"I don't like you," he snapped.

"Fair enough. I'm not entirely fond of you either, Grassman," the huge lizard smiled.

"Don't call me that," he growled.

"All right. I'm sorry if it offended you, Eidolon, I just happen to like small jokes. Mr Foot here took it a lot better than you did. But if you don't want me to call you that, I won't." Her voice was still calm and even.

"What are all of you doing here? Where did you come from?" David queried, sounding irritable. "I don't trust you, no one does all the things you're doing just out of the goodness of their heart."

She tilted her head a little to one side. "Really? Why not? Anyway, you're a superhero, I'd have expected someone like you to understand if anyone would." Now she sounded genuinely curious. "All we want to do is help make the world better. Don't you?"

"Better for who, people or whatever you are?" David asked in a menacing tone.

Kaiju tipped her head the other way, while Paul sighed, wincing.

"I like to think of myself as being people, actually, even if I'm not human. We want the same things, more or less. By which I mean we both value friends and family, and a nice place to live, not that we want to take your things." She snickered, while David folded his arms.

"And you're incredibly evasive. You haven't answered any of my questions."

"As I said I wouldn't, less than fifteen minutes ago. Those are the sorts of questions we don't answer." She studied him thoughtfully. "I have to wonder, are you still trying to goad me, or are you genuinely angry? Only there are a number of things about you that don't quite add up."

Paul looked at her, then David. She was right. He looked angry, and he actually was to some extent, but now that he examined his friend closely, it was quite possibly more due to the way she wouldn't rise to the bait rather than what he was saying.

"Eidolon, please stop this," he asked. "You're embarrassing yourself and all of us as well. This isn't like you."

"This thing is wandering around without a care in the world, claiming it doesn't recognize our authority," David said quite loudly, pointing at Kaiju, who rolled her eyes. "It makes Leviathan look like a bath toy, yet we're supposed to believe all it wants is to move old boats around?! That doesn't make any sense."

"Now I know you're trying to insult me," Kaiju chuckled. "That was bizarre. Any chance you could go away and let me get back to work?"

"What guarantees do I have that you won't suddenly snap and start killing people all around you?" he asked.

"None, any more than I have about you," she replied reasonably. "You just have to assume that I'm not a mass murderer any more than you or most people are. Now, if you don't mind, this is getting both silly and boring, so I'm going to go back to doing something useful. If you want to watch, please either put on the safety gear or go back to where Alexandria is. If not, please find someone else to annoy." She held out a hand on which was a hard hat and high-visibility vest. David looked at them, then her, before mumbling something under his breath.

"Very rude of you," she said, shrugging. "Suit yourself. If you really want a fight, like I said, find a good place a long way from anyone and let me know when I'm not busy. It's stupid, but I'll go along with it if you insist. See you around." She made the clothing go away then turned around, heading back to where she'd been working when they arrived.

David stared at her as she walked off, then raised a hand and fired a glowing beam of energy at the back of her head.

'Ow. That was uncalled for,' Taylor grumbled, rubbing her head. Whatever had hit her had marked her scales, although she could feel there was no actual damage. Scratching it a little, she turned around. 'Why the hell did he do that?' She asked the question out loud as well, not getting an answer from the floating hero. His scent still reeked of that odd excitement, which had grown stronger if anything, mixed with some genuine anger under it all.

"You have somehow irritated him, Brain," the Varga commented as she headed back to the two men, wondering what she'd do when she got there. "He's trying very hard to provoke a reaction for whatever reason he has and I think he got carried away. By the look of it he knows this too but can't back down now."

'Legend looks very annoyed, and Alexandria is furious,' she noted, coming to a stop where she'd been. 'Any ideas?'

"Ask him again to desist, and if he doesn't, gently stop him. We can't avoid confrontation now but at the same time neither side will come off well if there is a real fight. We can easily deal with him without harming him, since he won't be expecting it. But if you do something major his friends will have no choice but to help him and the public will be very worried no matter what happens," the Varga advised.

'Not to mention that I really don't want a fight here. Dad's only three hundred yards away, so is the Mayor, and Lisa. Not to mention everyone else. If this fool tries anything serious everyone is at risk.'

Taylor was quietly annoyed about the whole thing, and wondering if there was anything she could have done to avoid it. Perhaps he just really didn't like people making fun of his name?

"I don't think you could have avoided this," her friend told her. "He arrived spoiling for a fight. The more you refuse to react the way he wants, the harder he's going to try. I have no idea why, but I can recognize it when I see it."

'Sophia was the same, although she'd already be in a fight by now,' Taylor replied, sighing. 'He's got a lot more self control, although his attitude leaves something to desire.'

"He's older and much more experienced, which is another odd thing, as you'd expect him to know how this makes him look. The fact that he's prepared to do it in front of a TV camera is the most peculiar part of the entire thing."

Now the Varga sounded puzzled. "If I didn't know any better I'd think he was under some sort of compulsion spell."

'Weird. Oh well, let's see if we can talk him down, and if not I'll just have to deal with him,' she muttered, deciding on an approach then opening her mouth to speak as Legend flew between them with his hands up and a pleading expression in his eyes.

Paul gaped in total shock. What the fuck was the idiot doing? The attack had been completely unprovoked. Behind David, he could see Rebecca was rapidly approaching and hoped that she wouldn't jump in as well.

"Don't you turn your back on me," David shouted.

The beam, some sort of electrical attack, had splashed light and heat across the back of Kaiju's head with a loud fizzing crack sound, making her stop in her tracks. One hand came up and scratched the point it had hit as she slowly turned around. There was no obvious damage visible.

"Why did you do that?" she asked, sounding more confused than anything else. "You could have hurt someone."

Paul watched, more than a little worried, both at the way she'd basically ignored what he knew was a pretty powerful attack, and at the way she was now returning to David. Moving between them, he held up his hands. Rebecca halted some fifty yards away and watched carefully. "Stop, please. We don't need to do this."

"I'm not doing anything," Kaiju said, still not looking annoyed, but sounding mildly exasperated. "I don't want him shooting his little energy beams around the place, though. If he misses me he could really cause some damage. And I have no idea why he's doing it in the first place. Nothing I've said or done seems enough to warrant an attack on me."

"She's right, Eidolon," he said, turning to his friend. "She was just walking away to get back to doing something she's promised to do. Let it go, you're not getting anything useful out of this. No one is."

He could see that David was now both angry and puzzled. The man was clearly trying to provoke the reaction he'd spoken about wanting to avoid, but was confused by the way she simply wouldn't cooperate. Paul wasn't entirely surprised, considering what he'd read of Hannah's report on the sniper shooting at Saurial, who had likewise more or less ignored it at the time. The entire Family seemed to be way more patient in the face of provocation than seemed normal. But David's response was the much more peculiar thing in his view. He'd never seen the man like this, although he was a lot more eager to engage the Endbringers than Paul considered sensible.

"Look, why don't we arrange a time for me to give you a good beating if that's what you really want, Eidolon. Maybe if we go north somewhere there might be some empty places we could wreck," Kaiju said in a tone of someone humoring a person they suspected of not being entirely all there. "We could ask Dragon, she'd know. Lots of Canada is practically empty. I bet if we recorded it we could even sell the recording." She looked at the man with a somewhat hopeful expression. "But I really don't have time for this right now, and this is about the worst possible place to do it anyway. Look at all the people around, someone could get hurt or even killed. Neither one of us wants that."

"You're just mocking me now," David growled, floating closer until he was only about fifteen feet from her face. Paul slapped his hand over his eyes in disbelief. The idiot had just put himself in range of one quick bite, and they already had proof she was wildly quicker than she had any right to be. Rebecca flew over, moving slowly and non-threateningly, to float next to Paul.

"No, honest, if you insist on trying yourself against me, I'll go along with it, to keep you happy," the vast creature said earnestly. "I don't know why you're so worked up about it but I'll play along. But not here and not now. Deal?"

"Why would I trust you?" David asked, sounding extremely suspicious.

Kaiju shook her head slowly, then looked at Paul and Rebecca. "You should do something about this before he says something to someone who takes him seriously," she commented. Turning back to David, she continued, "You're a hero, and I believe a good man at heart, but for some reason you're acting really weird. Go home. Or I'll have to put you out and your friends can take you home. Your choice."

"You think you can do that, you go ahead," David snapped.

She eyed him curiously while Paul sighed, as did Rebecca beside him.

"If you insist."

About three seconds later David went limp and dropped like a stone, to be neatly caught by an enormous hand that blurred into motion and stopped dead a couple of feet under him. Paul stared, while Rebecca jolted forward a couple of feet, the visible parts of her face going pale with anger.

"What did you do?" she demanded, suddenly radiating danger.

"Exactly what I said I'd do," Kaiju replied, carefully moving her hand over to them. Paul landed on it and knelt down, feeling for a pulse. "He's just unconscious, he'll be fine in a few minutes. Might have a headache though. Please take him away before he wakes up and starts whatever that was all over again, will you? I really have got a lot of work to do and it's getting dark."

"He's simply out like a light," Paul reported, standing up on her palm and looking at Rebecca. "No harm done."

"Except to our image," she growled in a furious tone. He shrugged, nodding a little.

"He's stopped again," Colin noted, sounding extremely puzzled.

"Looks that way." They watched the trace on the screen, which about thirty seconds later began moving back the way it had come. "And now he's backtracking. What the hell?"

Shortly Leviathan was back into his holding pattern exactly where he'd been. They stared, exchanged a confused glance, and stared some more.

After a few minutes, Colin started wondering something. Poking the keyboard, he found the exact coordinates that Leviathan was more or less circling around, then ran some calculations on them. The results made him stare even more.

"You think the movement was odd, look at this," he finally said, showing his results to Dragon, who was currently inspecting the Simurgh's image on the other monitor.

She peered at the tablet he'd calculated his results on, then lifted her head to meet his eyes. Shock was apparent in her body language.

"He's not just more or less as far as he can get from here. He's exactly as far away as he can get from here. Leviathan is on the precise antipodal point from the center of Brockton Bay."

"Why?" she asked in a stunned voice.

"I have no idea."

"It's not ideal, but it could have been worse." Paul turned to Kaiju, who was watching them with interest. "How did you do that?" he asked, genuinely wondering. She hadn't apparently moved or done anything he recognized from the reports of her abilities, but David had simply dropped on the spot. Yet another new power?

"If I tell you I might not be able to use that trick again if I need to," she replied, smiling a little.

"Fair point, but I'm extremely curious," he told her. She inspected him for a moment, then shrugged.

"OK, since it's you, Legend," Kaiju finally replied. "I just surrounded him with a bubble of pure nitrogen. Interesting thing about inert gas asphyxiation, there's no warning at all about it. You just fall unconscious, often in only a few breaths. He was worked up, breathing fast, so it hit him very suddenly. He'll wake up just as fast in a minute or two. It was the simplest and least dangerous method to stop him that I could think of."

He nodded, impressed by the sheer simplicity of her technique. With the matter creation power at her disposal, there were all sorts of other things she could have done now that he considered the possibilities, most of which would have been far more dangerous. Some were horrifying. But it certainly seemed to work.

"I'm sorry about all this," he said.

"So am I. And very puzzled. I didn't mean to upset him, but he was acting a bit weird even when you guys arrived, so I don't think it's all on me anyway."

"I don't think any of it is, Kaiju," Rebecca said, landing on her hand next to Paul. "I'm going to get to the bottom of this. I hope you don't mind if I come back at some point? I would still like to talk to you some more."

"Sure, but I'd suggest that you leave him behind," the enormous reptile smiled, indicating the now slightly stirring form of David with a claw. "Just in case."

"We'll do that," she sighed. Looking over at the TV crew, she added morosely, "And now I have to work out the damage control. This doesn't look good."

"I'll ask them not to broadcast that part, if you want," Kaiju offered. "They want to interview other Family members, maybe they'll do a deal."

"Which means we'll owe you a favor," the woman muttered. Kaiju smirked.

"I wouldn't put it that way myself, but if you want to think of it like that, go ahead," she chuckled.

"What about all the camera phones?" Paul asked.

"They're all DWU people. If I ask, they'll make sure that part doesn't get out. The rest, that's too much to ask, it was a public spectacle," she replied. "You'll have to live with it. But we're far enough away that most of the more embarrassing parts will just be a blur anyway. The TV camera has a really good lens on it though."

"Oh, hellfire," Rebecca grumbled loudly. "This didn't go the way I thought it would, at all. Come on, you idiot, get up. We're leaving." She poked David with her toe, making him mumble, then sit up.

"What happened?" he muttered, sounding disorientated.

"You bit off more than you could chew and got sandbagged," she sighed. "We need to talk. A lot." Heaving him to his feet, she gave a good impression of an annoyed older sister. "Can you fly, or do I need to carry you?" she snapped.

"I..." He shook his head, coughed a little, then tried again. "I can make it."

"Good. Get moving."

She watched as he lifted into the air, wobbling a little, then evened out. Sighing, she followed him, glancing at Kaiju on the way but saying nothing.

Paul followed them with his eyes as they headed out across the bay, making a wide loop to bring them in from the water toward the PRT building some miles away, then turned to look up at Kaiju's face. She lifted her hand higher, until he was at eye level. "That was very strange," she commented in a dry tone, making him smile.

"You're telling me? I have absolutely no idea what caused all that, I have to admit. It was very out of character to put it mildly. He seemed to react to you in a much more… enthusiastic… manner than I'd have expected."

"I hope he's OK. Eidolon is a major hero, I'd hate to be the cause of any problems for him."

Sighing, Paul shrugged. "I don't think it was you, at least not directly. There's something else going on. Thank you for your restraint and the chat, it was interesting."

"No problem. You're always welcome here, but your friends should make an appointment, I think." She smiled at him, no threat or anger in the expression.

Rising into the air, he nodded, waved, then accelerated to catch up with his friends, while wondering what the hell had happened.

Peering after the blue streak in the sky, Taylor sighed slightly. 'I never thought I'd meet the entire Triumvirate, and certainly never thought that Eidolon of all people would want to fight me. Even like this. What an odd afternoon.'

"It was definitely unusual," the Varga agreed. She could feel he was thinking hard. "If Legend is correct about how out of character it was, and even with the way Eidolon appears to be, I suspect he was, perhaps there is some sort of external influence at work."

'Magic of some sort?' she inquired, turning to go over to the group of people staring at her from near the admin building.

"Perhaps, but much more likely is some form of Parahuman power. I haven't detected any form of magic so far in your world, other than ours. Neither could I detect any such influence on Eidolon and I did check very carefully."

'Oh, that's what that weird feeling was?' She'd noticed the sensation of active magic coming from him, but hadn't thought much about it at the time as she was puzzling over the way Eidolon seemed desperate to get her to react.

"Yes. I'll explain what I did and how later. Right now, I think we need to talk to the news people, finish our work, then find Lisa and your father and talk to them about what this might mean. I need her insight and his wit."

'OK.' Stopping near the group consisting of the reporter and her team, her father, Lisa, and Roy, with his security man behind him, she carefully lowered herself to the ground. "Hi, guys. Odd thing just happened, and I was hoping you might do me a favor," she began, looking at Kate, who seemed both curious and confused.

"What the fuck was that for?" Rebecca asked in a furious tone, landing on the roof of the PRT building having motioned to the guards to give them some space. She whirled around and poked David in the chest, hard enough to make him yelp. "We agreed that you wouldn't push Kaiju, and instead you shoot her in the back of the head?! You idiot, that could ruin everything. Aside from the fact that she took you down without even trying. That's just embarrassing. Now she's got the upper hand, we're no closer to learning anything useful about her and her relatives, and you made us look bad in front of a damn TV news crew! One you knew was there as well, which is even stupider."

"I'm sorry," the man replied, shaking his head. "I'm not entirely certain why I pushed it so hard. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Sure, I intended to see what she'd do if I poked her, but I didn't mean it to go that far."

"Well, we're fucking lucky that she seems about as non-aggressive as anyone I've ever met," Rebecca sighed. "That little trick she knocked you out with could have killed you just as easily if she'd wanted, and you'd never even have realized it."

"What did she do?" he asked. "My head is killing me."

"She made you inhale pure nitrogen, it dropped you in seconds. If she'd used hydrogen cyanide gas instead you'd have been dead so fast even your powers probably couldn't have saved you. Christ, that lizard is dangerous. I never even considered a trick like that, but she'd already worked it out, it was way too smooth to be a spur of the moment thing. Don't ever do that again, we may not be so lucky next time."

"I would hope there never will be a next time," Paul remarked from behind her where she'd heard him land half-way through her short lecture. "That was a really idiotic thing you did. Why?"

"Like I just said, I don't know. It got out of hand much faster than I expected." David sounded both puzzled and worried.

Rebecca exchanged a glance with Paul. "Mastered?" she said very quietly. David froze, while Paul looked thoughtful.

"It's… not as impossible as I'd like," he finally said. "I wouldn't have thought it was very likely, though, we're not aware of any human Masters that powerful anywhere in the area, certainly not ones that could affect him without closer contact."

"Maybe the Family has one," Rebecca mused darkly.

"I doubt it, to be honest, and even if they did why would they do that? All it did was confuse the entire issue."

"Maybe that's the point. Or it was to embarrass us. Or just trigger a fight to see what would happen."

"The fight part, no, I don't think so. As far as I can tell she genuinely doesn't want to fight Eidolon, but she offered to do it if he really wanted as long as a suitable place could be found. Why would she do that, but try to start something right here, next to people she obviously values highly?" Paul shook his head. "No, it doesn't sound very likely. Someone else trying to stir things up between us and her, maybe, but I doubt that as well. And I can't see any point in embarrassing the Triumvirate, the Protectorate in general, or the PRT. What would the Family get out of it that they don't already have access to?"

Rebecca thought over his words and reluctantly nodded. He made sense. Which left a number of other possibilities, some even more worrying.

The single most worrying was the one that she feared was the most likely. Carefully checking around, she lowered her voice even further. "What if it was his Agent?"

Both men stared at her.

"How do you mean?" David asked, equally quietly.

"I'm not sure yet," she admitted. "But I have the strangest hunch that it's connected in some way. Here and now isn't the place to discuss it. Let me think about it for a while. And you're going home tonight, before something else happens." She turned to David. "We'll talk to Director Piggot, who has undoubtedly already heard about this, she'd got a lot of sources, then you go. I'm staying for tonight at least. What about you?" She glanced at Paul, who shrugged.

"I've got plans in the area which will keep me here for a little while. I've already told New York about it."

Wondering what those plans were, but concentrating more on the peculiarities of the DWU visit, she merely nodded.

"We did learn one thing that's useful," he added, making both the other look at him. "Kaiju is amazingly hard to provoke. Your worries would seem to have been misplaced." He looked at David, with a small smile on his face. "Luckily."

"That's true, I suppose," the other man sighed. He shook his head. "I really am sorry about what happened, and confused as well."

Clapping his friend on the shoulder, Paul shrugged. "So are we, but it's over with, no harm was done except a minor hit to our reputations, and Kaiju is fine with it. Let's go and talk to the Director, then I need something to eat."

He urged the other man towards the roof exit, while Rebecca trailed along behind them, thinking hard. Something didn't make sense, and she hated that.

Deciding that David needed some discreet careful checking just in case it was a Master at work, even though Paul was probably right, she went inside the building, still pondering the matter.

"She's going dormant again."

Dragon watched as the orbiting Simurgh closed her many wings into a shell around her body, the satellite image very clear. She puzzled over the matter, thinking hard. "Something happened today. Here. I'm sure of it. We need to find out anything we can about the events of the last… hour and fifteen minutes. Any Parahuman activity, anything out of the ordinary at all," she declared after a moment, turning to Colin. "Something did what we've never seen before, it changed the Endbringer behavior. We need to figure out what, it might hold the key to understanding them better."

"I agree," he replied, "I'm already checking PHO. As puerile as it often is, it's remarkably quick to be updated with anything related to Parahuman activity." She joined him in checking various local forums, having a massive advantage in speed and access ability. Even so, he was the one who found it first.

"Someone just posted a video from the Dock Worker's Union facility. The Triumvirate, all of them, were there talking to Kaiju. At…" He checked the time stamp as she quickly found the relevant forum. They stared at each other.

"Exactly the same time that Leviathan first began moving," she finished for him, stunned.

Both Tinkers turned to look at the monitor displaying the data relating to the far away Endbringers, wondering what the connection was.