"See. It's the same sort of mental controls as when you're in Ianthe. That turns the boosted reflexes and strength on and off, that sets the level. Even with it off you're much tougher than you were and probably around twice as strong and quick, but with everything at maximum, those go up a hell of a lot. But if you leave it turned up more than around, oh, maybe twenty-five percent or so, you'll find that you'll be eating a lot more to provide the energy."

Lisa nodded thoughtfully, lifting a large metal block with very little effort, something that astounded her as it was over three hundred pounds of steel. It felt like about ten at most. "Can you increase the metabolic efficiency like you did for the bioconstructs?"

"To a limit, and I've already done that for both of us. But it would take a pretty serious reworking of the human body to get it as efficient as they are, which isn't something I'm ready to do yet. Later, probably, yes." Amy shrugged. "If you want to look normal and have all the mods invisible, I'm sort of limited in how many changes I can make at the really high end right now."

"That's fine, this is already incredible," Lisa smiled. Putting the block down carefully she moved a few along the row and heaved on the much larger one, getting it to chest height with a bit of effort. "Shit. Eight hundred pounds and it's not all that hard."

They'd found out that she could lift just a little more than Amy could, her slightly taller frame managing more leverage. Looking at herself in the mirror the night before she'd noticed that like the Dallon girl the changes were just visible if you were looking for them and knew her from before, but very few people knew her body as well as she did. Probably only Amy, in fact. So there was no real chance of anyone figuring it out by looking at her.

Putting the large block down again she shook her head in wonder. "I can still hardly believe it. You're amazing."

"Thanks," her friend smiled. "I'm pretty pleased with the results myself. For a first serious upgrade it seems to work really well."

"Question. If we had kids, would it breed true?"

Amy looked at her, visibly thinking. "I can make it do that, yes. At the moment the answer is no. Do you want me to?"

"I'm not actually planning on having kids," she smiled. "Just curious."

"OK." Reaching out Amy put her hand on Lisa's neck, nodding in satisfaction a moment later. "Everything's in the green. Looks like it all works fine." After a moment, she smirked, Lisa felt a tingle, and the healer removed her hand.

"What did you do?" Lisa asked suspiciously.

"Do?" Amy asked innocently. "What makes you think I did anything?"

"I felt something."

"Really?"

Putting her hands on her hips, Lisa stared at the other girl who was still looking innocent. Entirely too innocent in her opinion, she had become very well aware that the brunette had at least as sneaky a sense of humor as Taylor, who was watching from the sidelines with her eyes glittering with glee.

"I know you, Amy. We may not have known each other for long, but even so, I know you. You did something."

"No idea what you're talking about," Amy smirked. She held out her hand, an organic baton made of that so far nameless material growing in it, until it was about two feet long. "Fancy seeing if I'm any good with this?"

"Hey!" Lisa yelped, ducking as the other girl swiped at her, triggering her increased reflex speed without thinking much about it and moving far faster than she normally could. The baton whooshed over her head close enough to make her hair move from the wind of its passage.

"Shit," she added, leaping over the return strike which was a foot off the ground. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Experimenting," Amy grinned.

"To see if you can break my legs?"

"No, I'd need something a lot heavier than this to do that now, with the upgrades you have."

"Want a bat?" Taylor asked, making Lisa glare at her as she ducked again.

"You stay out of this, your friend is insane enough without your help," she snapped, ducking to the side, then rolling to her feel more easily than she expected, her own power showing the best method to use as she let it run free.

"Well? Defend yourself, knave!" Amy called, charging at her. Lisa stared, then turned and bolted with a yip of shock, both girls running back and forth while Taylor laughed wildly.

"Defend myself? With what, you lunatic?" she screamed. A sudden thought, not even power-urged, struck her and she stared at her palm, then looked over her shoulder at Amy who had stopped and was watching her with an evil grin. "Oh, you sneaky bitch," she grumbled. "I didn't ask for that."

"You got it anyway. Free offer, valid except where prohibited by Family rules."

Sighing a little, Lisa held out her hand, doing the internal operations she'd learned in her time operating the Ianthe construct, then smiled despite herself as she felt the new ability Amy had added to her grow a similar baton in it. "You are utterly deranged, Dallon," she muttered. "Any normal person would simply have told me you'd added that function."

"This was a lot funnier," Amy giggled. She spun the baton in her hand like she was a cheerleader, nearly dropped it, then looked embarrassed. "Whoops."

Laughing, Lisa did the same, but with much more panache. Amy looked impressed, as did Taylor. "I actually was a cheerleader in school for a year when I was fourteen," she snickered. Reabsorbing the thing she made a knife instead. "Very cool. I should have asked for this at the time. Is it presets only, or can I do it free form?"

"There are a dozen or so presets, you can experiment with them, and mix and match pretty easily as well. Learning to do it in any form you want will take a little practice but as far as I can tell your power lets you learn to control all these mods way easier than most people would manage. It's remarkably compatible with what I can do, which is very useful."

"I'll say," Lisa noted, making a knife in the other hand as well, then tapping them together. "Do I get the drugs as well?"

"I haven't turned it on yet, but I added the ability. Want it enabled?"

"May as well." Getting rid of both blades as Amy did the same with the baton she was still holding, she walked over and held out her hand. The healer took it for a few seconds. "There you go. Same deal as Ianthe and the darts. Paralytic, soporific, and the antidotes to both. That should be enough for now. Nothing lethal, though."

"A knife is lethal enough, you don't need to poison it too," Taylor remarked.

"Which is a good point," Lisa noted.

"That helps on a knife." Taylor grinned at them. "A good point."

Groaning, Lisa walked over to the other girl and swatted the back of her head. Taylor giggled, then turned back to the table on which she was fiddling with weirdly shaped blocks of some dark material. Lisa looked at them, then at her.

"Two questions."

"OK."

"One: Why don't you have any legs at the moment?"

Amy came over to stand beside her and both of them studied their half-demon friend, who looked back at them with a grin. It was true, she was normal human Taylor above her waist but below that she had about twenty feet or so of snakelike body and tail. "That naga form was interesting so I thought I'd see if it was actually practical to use."

"Please refrain from pulling out the top bit you came up with, I can't handle seeing that again," Lisa shuddered. She inspected the coiled up snake part of her friend, which was covered in alternating stripes of brilliant yellow and deep black, like a reptilian wasp. "Any reason for the colors?"

"Are you toxic?" Amy asked with a smirk.

"Only my humor. I just liked the effect," Taylor laughed. She rose up a little, extending her lower body, then settled back comfortably. "I'm not sure this really is wildly practical for day to day use but it could be pretty effective at swimming, and moving around in tight spaces, like I thought. It's interesting though."

"Fair enough. Second question: what the hell are those?" Lisa pointed at the weird shapes on the table, which looked like something MC Escher would have come up with after a bad acid trip followed by a concussion. Probably by falling down one of his own endless staircases. "They make my brain itch, and my power is staring with an open mouth and dribbling a little."

The part-snake version of Taylor snickered, picking one of the things up and turning it over in her hand, which made Lisa and Amy both wince. "That whole Lovecraftian city joke you made has been making me think about suitably alien artifacts that could be… sort of accidentally found, maybe? ...which would give people something to think about. But I've been having a hell of a time making my angles suitably non-Euclidean. Everything keeps stubbornly coming out in three dimensions. I want a fourth one, damn it! Or at least three and a half."

"You're trying to make a scale model of R'lyeh," Lisa said in a totally flat voice.

"Pretty much, yep."

"You are completely round the twist. I hope you realize that. As a friend, I feel I should tell you that."

Taylor shrugged, making another block of material then watching as it warped into horrifying shapes in her hand. Lisa closed her eyes and moaned, while Amy stared wide-eyed. "Thanks, but I don't think I'm more than halfway around the twist at most." She glared at the thing in her hands. "Damn, so close. It's nearly there, but it's missing something."

"Sanity. Both you and it."

"So you keep saying, yet here you are, joining in with the entire thing. Why, I wonder?" Her friend gave her an amused look.

"I'm just trying to keep this… whatever the hell it is… grounded in reality," Lisa sighed.

"We left reality behind a long time ago, miss super-Thinker who can make drug-coated knife blades out of her hands thanks to a warper of life with a tail," Taylor chuckled.

"Another, annoyingly accurate and good point." Lisa pulled a chair over and dropped into it, Amy doing the same on the other side of their friend. "Fuck it. In for a penny, as the saying goes. Give me that thing, maybe if I can slap my ability into some form of consciousness I can see where you're going wrong."

"I'm not even sure that making a real, more than three dimensional object is actually possible," Amy remarked doubtfully, still staring. She reached out to pick up one of the weirdly shaped blocks Taylor had made, her hand missing it twice since it wasn't quite where it looked like it was. "Although, I have to admit these are the weirdest fucking looking things I've ever seen. What on earth did you do to them?"

"Bit of Varga magic, but clearly not enough. We're both trying to work it out," Taylor muttered, leaning back on her coiled-up lower body. "Hmm. The problem is the description in the historical documents is annoyingly vague."

"The 'historical documents' are entirely fictional, as are the descriptions," Lisa pointed out in a deliberately reasonable tone.

"But, they match Family history so well!" Taylor smirked. "Obviously they're based on interactions between our people and that Lovecraft guy a while back. There were some of our lot that were prone to practical jokes on the poor humans, you see."

Staring at her very smug expression, one familiar to her from her mirror, Lisa eventually started giggling, then laughing wildly. "Oh, god, people are going to wonder what the hell is happening, the ones that aren't already," she chortled, shaking her head. "This is crazy. What next, if you succeed, you're going to plant a few of these things somewhere they might get dug up if anyone gets curious and starts poking around looking for the origins of the Family?"

"That's the plan," the other girl grinned. "I've been looking up dating methods and so on. I'm pretty sure I can fake out radiometric and magnetic dating techniques quite effectively. How old should our underwater city be? Fifty thousand years? More?"

Both Amy and Lisa shared a look, then fell over laughing. When they recovered, they began making suggestions, Lisa taking notes and giggling the entire time.

She had to be poked awake yet again when Taylor finally made something they were all fairly sure shouldn't be able to exist a couple of hours later, her power taking one look at it and going 'eek-thud'. With some careful exposure, though, she was almost certain it was gaping in awe.

"Now we're getting somewhere," Taylor said with satisfaction. "In a couple of weeks we can find a good spot and make something that should cause some interesting results."

"There are easier practical jokes, you know," Amy noted, although she was still also sketching layouts of a non-existent alien city and snickering to herself.

"Yes, but they wouldn't be as funny," Lisa replied. She was flipping the thing Taylor had made, which had started life as a two inch cube, over and over in her hand, absolutely fascinated by the way her count of the number of sides and edges not only didn't match, but was different every time. It was impossible but she was looking right at it. "I have to admit, this is the best one I've ever heard of."

"I thought of a name for your Family identity, assuming you want to go for something with a sort of relevant meaning rather than just an interesting name," Taylor said as she made another thing. Lisa looked at it and winced a little, then tore her eyes away to peer at her friend.

"Which is?"

"Metis. Greek goddess of wisdom and thought in later years, but originally she was considered the epitome of magical cunning and a trickster goddess."

"That fits pretty well," Amy smiled.

"And it doesn't instantly equate back to Tattletale. Which is good, I think."

Lisa considered it, rolling the weird little block over and over in her hand. "Not bad, actually. Short and easy to pronounce, nicely mythological, sort of fits the theme… I'd have half-expected a Mythos name from you, though."

"Most of them are either a pain to pronounce or male or both," Taylor explained. "And they're almost all for things that are even weirder than I am. We could make you fit easily enough but most people would probably react… a little oddly. Too many tentacles."

"Tentacles get into everything in Brockton Bay, sooner or later," Amy giggled.

"Yes, let's not go there right now," Lisa sighed. "You're getting to be as bad as she is. Thank god I'm not Japanese, this would be too weird."

"I can make you Japanese, if you want. Or practically anything, in fact."

"I'm fine like I am right now. But I'll bear that in mind." Lisa shook her head with a small smile. "Metis. I kind of like that. Let me think about it."

"Sure. It's your name, I was just making a suggestion."

"We need a Family language, really, if we're going to keep people guessing," Amy suggested after a while, during which Taylor made half a dozen more and more peculiar and disturbing widgets.

"That's a good idea, I guess, but I'm not sure I'm up to making up an entire, functional, alien language from scratch." Taylor looked at the healer, then Lisa, who shrugged.

"Neither am I," she said. "If we could pull it off, though..."

"I may have a suggestion, if you're prepared to put some work in," the Varga spoke up.

"What do you mean?" Taylor immediately asked. Lisa still couldn't get over how odd it was to have two clearly separate individuals talking through the same mouth, apparently without even really thinking about it.

"With some effort, I may be able to teach you a suitably non-human language," he replied.

"You know one?" The girl looked surprised.

The Varga laughed gently. "Brain, I am many thousands of years old. I know hundreds of languages, from many species. I can come up with one that is far from human with little difficulty, trust me."

"You never mentioned that," she said, frowning.

"You never asked, and had no requirement for it until now anyway," he smiled.

"That's… true, I suppose," Taylor sighed. "Is this going to be some magical learning thing, or the hard way?"

"For you, I can implant the knowledge into your mind the same way I taught you the other things. In fact, if you look, you probably could access Princess Luna's language without too much difficulty. But that's not ideal for this purpose as it's not dissimilar to an archaic form of Japanese, for some peculiar reason. The one I'm currently considering bears no relationship to any language of this world, no human has ever spoken it." Taylor's mouth made some extremely disturbing hissing sounds mixed with a deep gurgle, which made the hair on the back of Lisa's neck rise. It was very unnerving.

Taylor's eyes were wide at the sound that had come out of her own mouth. "What the hell was that?" she yelped.

"The language of a species long dead and from an entirely separate plane of reality," the Varga chuckled. "My own kind had contact with them a very long time ago even in my terms. They were, oddly enough, aquatic and somewhat reptilian. A human mouth isn't very well suited to speak it, it needs something a little closer to their original form. Anything you can shift into should handle it well, as will Amy's constructs."

"It sounded freaky as fuck," Lisa said with shock.

"Which is, I think, exactly what you need. Not to mention that it is a fairly informationally dense language compared to English, so a short sentence can convey quite a lot more than the equivalent in that language. But it doesn't relate at all to English, which I suspect means that translating it without my knowledge would be very difficult indeed assuming it was even possible."

"OK, fair enough, Varga," Amy said slowly. "It sounds very alien and weird and all, and would pretty obviously make a good one for the Family language. You can teach it to Taylor. Great. How do we learn it, without years of practice?"

"Hopefully, with the use of your abilities, some creative modifications to your construct's secondary brains, and some hard work."

Amy looked thoughtful. "Huh. Now that's an interesting thought." She tugged her lower lip, mumbling to herself. "Bigger language center, maybe? Add more processing for the auditory functions, extend the frequency range maybe… Might not be needed… Hmm. Increased memory bandwidth, tweak the neural interface nodes..." She looked up at Lisa and Taylor, who were watching with interest, waiting, a smile starting to spread across her face. "It's so crazy it might work. Worth a shot, anyway."

"Table?"

"Table."

"God, here we go again," Lisa sighed, watching Taylor do her Igor act, which looked very weird for a half-snake person. Sighing, she got up and started taking her shirt off.

"Any luck working out what set him off?" Paul asked as he entered the room. He didn't need to specify who he was talking about.

"No. No signs of any cause, just residual traces that show he was worked up to a remarkable level," Rebecca replied, looking over at him, scowling. "He can't think of any reason either."

"I'm right here, you know."

"That's very worrying," Paul commented.

"It is. I don't want to risk it happening again, so he's staying well the hell away from Brockton Bay, the Family, or anyone connected with them until we can figure it out."

"Still here. In this chair, hearing everything."

"Probably for the best. That could have turned out extremely badly. More so than you might realize, actually."

Rebecca looked at him curiously, but with something in her eyes that made Paul think she also knew they'd got lucky. After seeing what Raptaur was capable of making he wasn't at all sure he wanted to see what Kaiju could have pulled out of nowhere given a sufficient threat. He got the impression that when she finally did lose her temper, assuming that could actually happen, it would be something that no one ever forgot.

"How do you mean?"

"Let's say I had an interesting demonstration of what a matter-generation power can do when coupled with a high intelligence and an outlook on life typical of someone who's a born engineer," he sighed, sitting in a free chair.

"Can you guys actually hear me?"

"That sounds ominous."

"Nothing to worry about at the moment, but I really don't think we should push the Family too hard without a very good reason."

"I'd have to agree," Rebecca muttered. She was definitely preoccupied with something, he realized, or she'd have probed harder to find out what he was talking about. But by the look in her eyes she was thinking about something else.

"What's the problem?" he asked.

"Have you come across the new one? Ianthe?"

"Yes, actually, I met her today, she seems… interesting."

"Weird as hell, you mean."

"That too," he smiled. "Enthusiastic, would be a good description. And a healer."

She looked at him again, in a more focused manner. "She's a damn sight more than a healer."

"Still sitting here, hello?"

Paul inspected her closely, then nodded. "So I understand. From what I was told the Family refer to her as a biosculptor, which we'd put down as a Biotinker, although it apparently covers rather more than that."

His friend looked unsurprised, but somewhat worried. "That's a useful confirmation of what we suspected."

"Suspected? What do you mean?"

"Miss Militia got a DNA sample from her on a drugged dart she used on some gang members and left behind. Not only are all the drugs used completely novel, according both the PRT ENE scientists and our own, but the material the dart is made of is also new. The DNA itself… Well, it's not human."

"That's not surprising, you only have to look at her to work that out," he replied slowly, although he had an eerie sense of anticipation about what she really meant.

"Not human, as in, not in any way related to anything that ever evolved on Earth. Ours, or any other. Not even remotely close."

"Ah."

He nodded his understanding.

"You don't seem particularly surprised." She peered suspiciously at him.

"To be honest," he replied after a moment, "I'm not. Leaving aside Ianthe and the impression she gave me of someone trying very hard to pretend to be sort of human without as much practice at it as Raptaur, Saurial, and Kaiju… I had an interesting conversation with Kaiju herself when we first met."

"Oh, for fuck's sake, you two are being complete assholes." There was a stomping of feet and a slamming of a door. Rebecca grinned a little, looking over at it, then back to him.

"Was there a reason for that?"

"He pissed me off and right now I could do with some totally petty revenge for his stupidity," she chuckled, before becoming more serious. "Go on."

"Huh. OK, whatever." Paul smiled a little as well. "To summarize, she told me that she and her sisters were born in Brockton Bay. I'd think that was probably actually meant to mean in the general area, in fact, by context. Not the city, and probably not actually the bay, but nearby, I'd guess at some depth off the coast."

Rebecca looked thoughtful, nodding a little. "That would fit, I suppose."

"She mentioned an older brother. I suspect a much older brother. He was, according to her, born a long way away. The implication I drew from what she said and the way she said it..."

"Not on Earth."

"No. I'm also virtually certain that she knew I knew, and so on. I think she may well have worked out that I wasn't quite surprised enough about that implication either. The look she gave me… It was very calculating and very curious. She didn't say anything about it and I didn't press her, but..." He shrugged. "If I had to guess, they've either visited several times in the past, have a colony here somewhere that's been here for a very long time, or some combination of the two. And I strongly suspect considerable contact with humans over a long period as well. The first three definitely have a lot of current knowledge of modern US culture and colloquialisms, although there are in her case at least some curious oddities in her speech patterns and actions. I'd assume she's the oldest, but I'm also starting to wonder if our estimates of how old they all are may be wildly out."

He sighed slightly, leaning back in the chair and relaxing a little. "Half the time I talk to her I get the impression of someone fairly young and very curious, the other half the time it's like I'm talking to someone ten or a hundred times my age with more experience than I could hope to understand. You can see it in her eyes as well. It matched with what our interviews of the Wards over their encounters with Saurial and Raptaur suggested. It might be that their species lives a hell of a long time, or has some sort of racial memory, or something even weirder. But there's a lot more going on there than is immediately apparent."

"This is getting stranger by the minute," Rebecca moaned, putting her head in her hands. "Why now? Why there?"

"No clue, I'm afraid. But on the bright side, they seem friendly, pleasant, ridiculously non-aggressive, and basically good neighbors." He smiled for a second. "Not to mention that if we're right, they've been here longer than we have, and probably have a better claim to Brockton Bay at least than anyone."

"And are technically US citizens even if they originated on some weird alien world, due to either being here when the US was formed, or being born on US territory after that," she sighed, lifting her head and regarding him owlishly.

"I don't think we can consider them illegal aliens, no," he laughed.

"So asking them politely to go back where they came from probably wouldn't work?" she asked, a little hopefully.

"Probably not. They'd most likely look at you as if you were crazy and reply that they already were where they came from. Truthfully. And it's not like we can make them do anything, I suspect. Or, for that matter, have any good reason to try."

"And if anyone does try something, they can simply ignore them," she grumbled. "Which would almost be more annoying than them fighting back and winning."

"But much less destructive."

"True. But I understand entirely why the Number Man said Tagg was to be kept completely out of it, that man could easily get the wrong end of the stick and do or say something that would get the stick taken away and used to beat him upside the head with."

Paul started laughing helplessly, partly at the comment, and partly at the tone of deep irritation it was said with. She gave him the evil eye until he ran down.

"Finished?"

"Yes, thank you," he smiled.

"Fine. Right now, I don't really care what the hell is going on, as long as it stays there and doesn't cause problems." She stood up, looking frustrated. "I need a drink. Again."

"They do seem to have that effect. Probably best not to think about it too much."

"Easy for you to say," she sighed, heading towards the door. "Are you staying?"

"No, I still have business in the city. Not sure how long it will take, but I'll keep in touch if I find out anything else of use."

"Try not to find out anything too earthshaking for at least a couple of days, I need a break from this." Rebecca opened the door to her office and waited for him to join her, then headed off mumbling under her breath. Amused, he watched for a moment, before calling for a portal back to Brockton Bay.

The Family certainly seemed to manage to have an interesting effect on anyone they came in contact with, he reflected as he flew towards the Rig from the portal, wondering what had happened in his absence.

"Good day, dear?" Danny asked, looking up as Taylor sat beside him on the sofa as he watched the late news. "At least today you didn't get in tomorrow, like last night." He picked up the remote and turned the TV off, nothing interesting being talked about.

She smiled at him. "It was a very good day, actually, Dad. Good weekend, in fact. We got all sorts of interesting things done. The weapon is finished, by the way."

"Is that what that horrendous noise was this afternoon?"

"More or less. I was testing my reload speed." She explained, making him smile.

"I had an air rifle once," he said.

"Did yours have a six centimeter bore?"

"No. That's closer to a punt gun," he laughed. "Neither did it fire anything at supersonic velocities. Which is impressive for compressed air."

"I could make it shoot a lot faster than that with a higher pressure, but that was enough for a test," she said. "I worked out another worrying thing with it after I made it. If I loaded it with a single six centimeter sphere of EDM, and we converted it back to true density once it left the barrel at twice the speed of sound, the kinetic energy would be about two hundred and seventy seven gigajoules. That's nearly sixty seven tons of TNT equivalent energy. Every time I work out what I can do with remarkably little effort I terrify myself."

She leaned against his side, looking a little upset. "I could cause so much destruction it's not even funny talking about it, so easily I can hardly believe it. Sometimes it's a little overwhelming."

He'd felt his heart jump in shock when she'd mentioned the potential of her casually created device, but he put his arm around her and held her. "You're a good person, Taylor, and I trust you. I know you'd never do anything like that. Not on purpose, and not accidentally, you're very responsible. Plus, you have Varga looking out for you, and me, and everyone else. Amy and Lisa are friends who also, despite having some very peculiar abilities and a slightly strange sense of humor, are people you can rely on. As they can rely on you. Don't be scared of your own abilities, use them responsibly and carefully as you've been doing up until now, and it will all work out well, I'm sure."

"Thanks, Dad," she said quietly.

"You're always welcome, Taylor."

"It just sometimes hits me, you know? I like being what I am, but every now and then when I sort of get a glimpse of myself from the outside, it's a shock."

"The scaly parts and the tail aren't the cause of that feeling?"

"Not at all." She smiled up at him. "That part I'm fine with. I love being able to do that sort of thing, and having Amy able to join in, and now Lisa as well, that's a hell of a lot of fun. The other things can be a little much, which is why I'm going out of my way not to let anyone I don't completely trust really know the whole truth, at least all at once. I know I probably can't hide everything forever, but if I let it out little by little to the right people… Hopefully everything will work out."

"I think it will be," he assured her, mostly truthfully, knowing that she knew. "So Lisa is getting her Cousin suit as well?"

"Yes, we're making it now." Taylor looked pleased. "It'll be fun having two cousins running around."

"Who for?"

She giggled at his dry tone. "Everyone, of course. Ianthe was apparently quite a hit today."

"I saw the posts on PHO, yes," he replied. "She made… let's go with 'an impression'."

"Did you see the bit with Vicky and her friends?"

"I did. The poor girl looked quite taken aback."

"Amy seemed to enjoy it," she laughed. "So did Lisa."

"Those two are way too much like you," he pointed out. "You found some good friends, though."

"I did. And I'm very pleased about it. Vicky too, and everyone else from Arcadia. Oh, right, your birthday. I 'd like to go out for a meal with you tomorrow, I was thinking of inviting Amy and her family along as well, if you're all right with that."

He smiled. "That would be nice. Where were you thinking of going?"

"The Thai place we like."

"The one that Saurial also likes?"

"That's it."

"From what I hear it's pretty busy these days. Will you be able to book a table?"

"I know someone who can probably do it," she snickered as her head changed into that of Saurial, grinning at him.

"That will probably work, yes," he agreed. "Misusing your influence for personal gain. Well done."

"Thanks." She held out her hand. "I made you something."

"What is it?" he asked, holding out his own, then gaped at the weird little… thing… she dropped into it. "No, seriously, what the hell is it?"

"An ancient artifact of the Family," his impossible daughter replied with a wide grin. "Fifty thousand years old, a relic of an alien civilization. It'll make a nice paperweight."

"I'm sure it will," he said faintly, turning the thing over in his hand and blinking at the eye-twistingly unnerving effect that the motion produced. "Assuming I have any suitable pages from the Necronomicon I need to weigh down to stop them blowing away. Although, looking at this thing, I suspect that any paperwork I put it on may well end up becoming pages from that book. How in the name of Lovecraft did you make it look like this?"

"Funny story," she grinned, then started explaining.