(by wizerd00)

Armsmaster looked up at the unmistakable sound of the Endbringer sirens and swore. The weapon was complete and ready for Kaiju to wield, and the distinctive pattern to the wailing indicated that the Simurgh was descending. But that same distinctive pattern, confirmed by a quick glance at his emergency comms, brought him nothing but helpless rage. Because the Simurgh was descending towards Austrailia, most likely to Canberra, and half a world away. They were nowhere near finished with the large-scale wormhole generator, and now they were out of time.

"Shit." Raptaur gave repeat to his frustration. "Not going to make it." A small voice at the back of his mind noticed that this was the most tense he had ever seen the reptilian, but he dismissed it. Unimportant. But even with his full focus, he had no solution; Kaiju was just too damn big. Around him, Dragon and the others were clearly thinking the same thing, looking at the ground or emoting anger and frustration. All, he realized, except for Ianthe, who was looking at Raptaur with … what? Apprehension? The object of his attention chose that moment to speak, and even Armsmaster's own atrophied social skills could hear the definitive hints of trepidation in her tone.

"Dear cousin." Even Leet interrupted his attempts to break through the EDM walls with his fists at Ianthe's tone; there was none of the strange humor and glee that they had all come to expect. It was practically a whisper. "I know you treasure your secrets, my friend, but a city's worth of people hang in the balance."

"I know that!" growled Raptaur, who had began to pace angrily. "I know! But this wasn't how I wanted it to come out, damn it! Fine. Fine!" She was practically yelling now, and Armsmaster, despite his great respect for her rationality, was starting to get nervous. Thankfully, she reigned herself in with a long, shuddering breath, and turned to face the Protectorate capes.

"We don't need to teleport Kaiju. I-"

"Nuntius can handle transportation." Ianthe interjected suddenly, and the way Raptaur faltered made Armsmaster suddenly suspicious that the two reptilians were talking about wildly different secrets.

"Nuntius?" Raptaur's mouth opened and closed a few times in what in any other situation would be a fascinating imitation of a fish. "Do you mean...?"

Ianthe nodded to the unfinished question. "The red one, yes. These humans are worth revealing our more wild branch of the Family, Raptaur. I know you've told us many times that it's too early, but I see no other way to get Kaiju all the way to Australia in time." Armsmaster looked around in confusion, only to find Legend and Dragon returning similar looks, and Uber and Leet seemed even more lost. Even Raptaur, alien though here features might be, looked like she didn't quite understand what Ianthe was talking about.

"Raptaur," Legend began, and from his tone Armsmaster almost expected the man, one of the mighty Triumvirate, to fall to his knees. "If you can make this happen, I beg of you, do it. We can handle any PR problems later."

Raptaur held up a hand, clearly thinking. Suddenly, she straightened."Oh. Oh. Now I get it. Of course we'll help. Now, I need to go and call Kaiju. Ianthe will call Nuntius, and they will meet you at the PRT Headquarters for transport. She clapped her hand on Ianthe's shoulder, and gave her a long look. "You have ten minutes, understand?" This was a side of Raptaur they had never seen before, her tone holding nothing but business and hard edges. Ianthe nodded, and without another word raced out the door, moving so fast that Armsmaster could barely follow. Raptaur turned to the others with a nod. "Ok, I have my own tasks. Good luck." Then she too was gone.

On an ordinary Endbringer fight, and wasn't that a sobering concept, Legend thought to himself, ordering Strider to wait for two capes would have caused a riot. Today, he had only needed to mention the Family. Once. He wished he was relaxed enough to laugh.

"There. Right on time." Armsmaster's relieved voice brought him out of his reverie, and Legend looked up. He didn't have to search far before his eyes fell on what could only be Nuntius.

He idly noted that the entire headquarters behind him, bustling in the mad rush of an Endbringer attack, had gone quiet.

Where Saurial and Raptaur, hell, even Kaiju, had radiated a calm, don't fuck with me and we're good sort of aura, and Ianthe had invoked nightmares of being dissected by aliens by body language alone, every aspect of Nuntius promised a wild, chaotic death. His (Legend suddenly realized they had never mentioned a gender, but if ever there was a male of the Family, this was it) scales were a matte black that seemed to drink in all the light in the area. Where his brethren moved with a quiet grace, almost silently, every step Nuntius took resounded with a brash metallic clang. His eyes were the same shade of green as Ianthe's, but shone with far greater intensity, clearly visible even in the midday sun. He shared a height with Ianthe, as well, but his sheer presence put even the larger (and already scary as all hell) Raptaur to shame. This was aided greatly by the vibrant plume of blood red feathers running down the center and back of his head and standing proud, like a mohawk.

Nuntius walked forward with a smile that made at least one nearby PRT Trooper whimper, and when he spoke, his voiced positively boomed.

"Ianthe here tells me you have a logistical problem. That there's a serious lack of deadly force in some faraway land, and that I might help you solve that problem." He chuckled, and the anticipation was clear in his voice.

Legend stepped forward and held out his hand, which the terrifying figure shook firmly. He introduced Strider and the others, and soon they had arrived overlooking Canberra, accompanied by a loud crack and the smell of ozone. Beside Legend, Strider staggered.

"Fucking heavy, these two. Way more weight than I was expecting. Think I need a minute." While Legend helped him to a seat, Dragon stepped forward.

"Nuntius, the weapon is ready for Kaiju, we have twenty-two minutes until the city is quarantined. Whatever you're going to do, please do it quickly." Nuntius only nodded and turned towards the city, several miles away. In the distance, flashes of light marked the battle already in progress. He took a deep breath, only for Ianthe to slap him in the back of the head as if scolding a child.

"Make sure to summon Kaiju, yes? Not a repeat of last time. We still don't know what that was. Far too many tentacles."

Armsmaster's head whipped up from what he was working on fast enough to risk whiplash. Dragon's metallic head moved in the same direction as if by a series of unintended twitches. Nuntius merely waved them all off.

"I know what I'm doing, thank you. Now, lets get started. And with that, he raised his arms, took a deep breath, and shouted loud enough for the whole camp to hear:

"Vugtlagn uln, Oh Kaiju, Azath nnn-lagl. NOG GEB!"

For a moment nothing happened, the strange cry echoing unnaturally across the open space. The tension was building to a breaking point when Nuntius stiffened.

"Wait, shit..."

The simultaneous, horrified gurgles made by everyone present only intensified when the area under the Simurgh started to glow a deep orange-yellow, fog billowing up and obscuring the shorter buildings entirely. Ianthe gasped, and pointed an accusing finger at Nuntius, who had begun scratching his feathers sheepishly. "That's not Kaiju you little shit!" Before she could finish her rant, and presumably murder her errant cousin, a noise like a thousand trumpets blared, and the Simurgh could be seen flying far more rapidly than normal away from what could only be the fires of some hell.

Suddenly, too fast to make out, so fast the sonic boom was readily audible, something blurred up from the fog and caught the Endbringer cleanly. The tentacle, for it could only be a massive, skyscraper-sized tentacle of mottled browns and yellows, was soon joined by dozens of others, though at a more sedate pace. The Simurgh, suddenly no longer the scariest thing in the country, let alone the city, stepped up its struggles, the air around it blurring and distorting as if in a mirage as it attempted to break free. It might as well have been throwing regular heat waves at the horror for all the good it did. Slowly, terrifyingly, inevitably, the rest of the tentacles closed around the Endbringer, and inexorably dragged it downward, down through the fog, until both the monster and the Endbringer had disappeared from view. Only then did the light fade and fog dissipate, until no evidence of either creature's passing remained.

The silence that followed was deafening. Everyone just stared at Nuntius, who had the grace to look embarrassed.

"My bad?"