"What do we do?"

Newter looked at their leader, the woman known in public as 'Faultline,' then turned back to the TV. All four of them were in her and Elle's room, the older woman having plugged her laptop into the TV on the wall so everyone could see it. She was currently playing a number of videos pulled off the web, showing the exploits of the Parahuman group called 'The Family' which seemed to have come out of nowhere while they'd been on their mission. Now, the group appeared to be deeply embedded into Brockton Bay in almost every way one could think of, and quite a few he'd never even considered.

Gregor was reading something on his phone, looking up at the TV every now and then, while Elle was watching the videos with a curiously focused attention that was a little odd. Melanie, their boss, friend, and leader, clicked on another video.

This one was very recent, only a few days old, and showed an honest-to-god walking mech right out of a computer game running around what he recognized as the DWU yard at a ridiculously high speed. The background shots of the yard itself showed it was much larger than he remembered, and a number of the old warehouses in the area seemed to be missing. There was also an obviously brand new fence around the entire thing, while he could also see a long train of rail cars, all of which appeared full of cut up metal. Just at the sea wall was the remains of the ship that this 'Kaiju' creature had towed there in the report that Gregor had found on the TV in their room, that ship being the tanker than had been blocking the entrance to the bay for something like fifteen or twenty years.

He shivered a little, remembering the information they'd quickly found on Kaiju. She was fucking enormous, nearly a hundred feet tall, and if PHO was to be believed, probably five hundred tons or more in weight. But even with all that, she moved so fast it was impossible to believe. He felt faint when he though about how strong she must be to even stand up, never mind being able to move faster than many Brutes built on a more human scale.

He couldn't figure out where so many reptilian capes of such enormously disparate sizes had come from. One called Saurial was the first, arriving just after they'd left town for the job they'd finished earlier. A little while later, her sister Raptaur turned up, and promptly curb-stomped Hookwolf of all people so hard Newter was pretty sure he was still feeling it.

And she'd made it look easy…

He shivered again. That was flat out terrifying.

Then Kaiju popped up, somehow connected like the rest of them were to the DWU and that Danny Hebert guy who seemed to run the place. He and Mayor Christner had come to some arrangement, it looked like, since the Mayor was way too pleased with himself not to have been in on it for a while. Apparently this Family was going to help clean up the bay and the Ship's Graveyard, the DWU doing the bulk of the work, which wasn't something he'd ever expected to see happen. That tanker was the first, and very spectacular, move in the process. Probably at least as much for the publicity as the work itself, he suspected.

Some time later two more turned up, Ianthe and Metis, apparently cousins. Then this cat-woman Tinker Vectura just the other day, with her mech, and there were even rumors that Über and Leet had joined them, or were at least associated with them in some way. Not to mention the Undersiders who had disappeared somewhere in the docks area after some sort of interaction with Lung and the ABB. Normally that would just mean that Lung had killed them, or Oni Lee, but in this case Oni Lee had ended up dead and Lung had dropped off the radar completely. No one seemed to know what had happened, although there were an awful lot of theories on PHO.

He couldn't believe that a mere two months or so could have changed things that much back home. It was insane. Yet the evidence was all over the web. News reports, PHO and YouTube postings and videos, even things from other countries about it. Several governments seemed to be quietly freaking out about Kaiju from what they'd read so far but no one seemed ready to do anything other than stare in horror yet.

And even the Triumvirate had apparently decided not to interfere after talking to Kaiju. That was even worse.

Mel played another video, this one showing yet another new cape called 'Cloak' who was at least as weird as the reptiles, and was somehow connected to them. She was wandering around ten feet off the ground like she was walking on the road, giving some muggers a very unpleasant experience while laughing in an eerie hissing voice.

Newter sweated a bit. It went right down his abnormally long spine, that sound.

"It would appear that things have changed considerably in our absence," Gregor commented, scrolling through something on his phone with the flick of a finger. "Much more rapidly than I would have thought likely."

"Looks like it," Mel agreed, her aquiline features fixed in an expression of concentration and thought. "There's definitely some new players in the game and they're heavy hitters."

"Without any real battles they've entirely neutralized the E88 and the ABB from what I can determine," he added in a way that was almost admiring. "Their only real fight, if you can call it that considering how one-sided it was, was with the Merchants."

"That was more of a pest control operation," she snorted, bringing up the relevant video. "Very well done, I admit."

"What do we do, though?" Newter asked again, a little plaintively. "Do we go home? Do we stay here? What?"

"I like the lizards," Elle said without looking away from the TV. "They're pretty."

Everyone looked at her for a moment. Then each other, before deciding that there was no good answer for the young girl's comment. Mel reached out and stroked her hair for a second, then picked up her phone. She dialed a number as Elle lay on her stomach and propped her chin on her hands, appearing weirdly happy as she smiled faintly at the screen.

"Benjamin," Mel said a moment later, having put the phone down on the table and tapped the speaker icon. "Talk to me. What the hell is going on in Brockton these days?"

The voice of the Palaquin night club manager, the guy who looked after their affairs when they were off on jobs, and was a first rate intelligence source as well, came out of the device. "You've missed a lot while you've been away," he remarked, almost sounding amused. "How did the mission go?"

"We don't want to talk about it," Newter shouted. Mel cast a warning glance at him and he subsided, grumbling a little under his breath.

"Newter is right, it wasn't one of our proudest moments," she sighed. "I'll tell you later. We only just found out about this 'Family' group half an hour ago. What on earth is going on back home?"

They could virtually hear the shrug in his voice. "Your guess is as good as mine, Faultline. No one really knows much, most of the stuff on-line is a guess more than anything else. The Family don't talk all that much about their origins or anything like that. Metis and Ianthe have PHO accounts and seem prepared to discuss certain things but they're very tight-lipped about anything that could be considered private. Good security. As far as I know Saurial, Raptaur, and Kaiju don't have any presence on-line although Saurial and Raptaur have both been in the background of a couple of photos Ianthe took. This new Tinker Vectura, no one knows anything about her at all so far, same for Cloak. Although in her case there is a lot of video of her doing weird things. The tourists really seem to like her for some reason."

"And none of these people are starting fights or going after the gangs?" Mel asked, sounding a little confused.

"Not really, no," Ben replied. "I mean, you start something around any of them, they'll fucking finish it for you, that much is true. Hookwolf found that out the hard way."

"We saw," Gregor called. "And were impressed."

Ben chuckled. "I can understand that, brother. Couldn't have happened to a nicer psychopath. Word is that Kaiser was absolutely furious about it, and when Kaiju turned up and scared the shit out of the entire city, passed on the word that the DWU, the Family, and any of their friends were completely off limits. Couple of his boys have tried things and he came down on them like a freight train, I'm told. He's been on holiday for a couple of weeks, just got back. Guess he probably needed time to recover."

"Understandable," Mel nodded. "And Lung?"

"No idea, sorry. He's gone totally quiet, more than ever before. Rumors are that he's been seen in a few places, including in a pub on the Docks, which seems pretty unlikely. Just drinking and playing cards. It's pretty weird. I did hear that he might have met with Saurial a couple of days ago at Somer's Rock but I can't say if that's true or not, I don't have anything more on that yet."

"Interesting." Their leader scratched her chin, thinking visibly.

"Got one bit of news you'll like, though," Ben went on. He sounded amused.

"Which is?"

"Coil's gone."

Mel froze, then looked hard at the phone. "Is that a fact…?"

"Yeah. Talked to a guy I know in the PRT. They had some massive operation on Sunday, some sort of chemical spill or something. Worst fucking stink you've ever smelled. Shut down the entire center of the city and evacuated it for hours. I'm thinking that either it was something that Coil did that went really badly wrong, or it was a cover for some covert operation. Anyway, end result is that apparently practically the entire PRT, the local Protectorate, Legend, Dragon, and the Family all jumped him at once. His base was right in the middle of the fucking commercial district, underground, if you can believe that. Bastard didn't stand a chance. They've got him, all his mercs, all his data, and everything else locked up in the PRT building and are probably dancing with glee by now."

There was silence for some time, then Mel started laughing, sounding very pleased. "I always hated that bastard. Hats off to the PRT and I never thought I'd say that."

"Thought you'd like it. No one liked the fucker. Not many people know yet, it hasn't hit the public, and from what I was told, it's not going to for a while. Probably best to keep it quiet, I don't think Piggot has any sense of humor about that guy at all."

"I think there's some sort of history there," Mel said.

"Dunno, but that woman can sure hold a grudge. Coil's fucked. No one is going to even think of trying to help him escape, he burned all his bridges months ago."

"Good." She fell silent for a moment, then asked, "Any danger in us coming back?"

Ben was also silent for a couple of seconds, taking his time to reply. "I… doubt it. The Family keep to themselves most of the time. Anyone who fucks with their friends, the DWU, anything like that, they're going to regret it, but other than that so far as long as you don't commit a serious crime right in front of them they ignore you. Weird people. But everyone knows it. Hasn't stopped most of the locals either retiring or going on holiday for a while. Street crime is apparently lower now than it's been since Marquis was around. Probably less that that, even." He chuckled again. "They don't need to fight people, no one wants to find out what they'd do if they got mad. They're bad enough when they're just having fun."

Mel nodded slowly. "I can understand that, having seen the videos. I wonder what that means for business?"

"If you keep to avoiding any local jobs, if anything it'll probably be good for it," Ben replied. "I know you don't like to take on work in Brockton anyway, but I'd say you really don't want to from now on. Just in case."

"I see." The black-haired woman thought some more. "Any word on the Undersiders?"

"No. No one's seen them since that time Lung went after them and Oni Lee ended up dead. I have no idea what happened, but the word is that the PRT put it down as suicide, for what it's worth."

"Going after the Family probably counts as that," she remarked. He snickered.

"Might be. Or maybe he fucked up with those grenades he liked, or something. Don't know. But he's in the ground, Lung is the only ABB cape left as far as anyone knows. And he's either retired or is taking time off too. E88 are hiding somewhere, Merchants except for Skids and Mush are gone too, Squealer's dead, Undersiders have disappeared, Über and Leet seem to have joined the Family from what I hear, Circus fucked off weeks ago in a hell of a hurry, most of the other independents have done the same or just gone dark..."

"That's a very large change in only two months," Gregor said, sounding astounded.

"It is. And the really funny thing, or maybe weird thing, is the way it just sort of… happened," Ben replied. His voice sounded bemused. "Except for the Merchants, and I guess Coil, the rest of it was almost accidental. And even there it wasn't an attack, it was a counter-attack. Everyone knew Skids is trying to set up something to hurt them, they shut his organization down flat along with the PRT and the cops. Coil… I don't know what happened there but rumors are that the PRT asked for their help. The cops seem to think they're the best thing ever, even Piggot seems to respect them, but they aren't going looking for trouble at all. Doesn't stop them finding it, of course, not around here, but there's a lot less of it than you'd think."

"What about Skidmark?" Mel asked curiously. "From the reports I've read there are a lot of people looking for him."

"Everyone is looking for that bastard," Ben said. "Massive reward out for him, from everyone from the FBI to the fucking mafia! It's just crazy. But no one seems to know where the idiot is, although everyone knows he'll turn up at the worst possible moment and make a fool of himself. Then get eaten or something."

Elle giggled, making her friends glance at her again with quizzical looks. She didn't say anything, though, so they went back to listening to their comrade across the country.

"The biggest weird thing right now, though, is the Parahuman who's apparently after Hebert's daughter. Lots of people talking about that. The PRT are at Arcadia where the girl goes, and Saurial is her personal bodyguard."

"Any idea who it is?"

"Not yet. I'm still working on that."

"I see." Mel leaned back in her chair with a small sigh. "Life is very strange sometimes."

"Tell me about it. You guys haven't seen the weirdness up close yet. Trust me, it's a lot more peculiar than you think it is." He was quiet for a moment, then added, "Hey, Newter, think they're your long-lost relatives or something?"

Everyone in the room looked at the orange boy, who froze. "Um..." He looked around. "Noo…?" After a long moment, he added weakly, "I think?"

"How would you know?" Ben said slyly. "You can't remember anything. Maybe you're Saurial's little brother or something. She's said she's got a lot of relatives and they keep turning up."

"I don't have scales," Newter replied quickly, very embarrassed.

"But you have a tail. She has a tail. You're sort of like a lizard. She's a lizard. You..."

"Oh, shut up, Ben," Newter yelped, while Elle inspected him closely, her head tilted and a definite look of amusement in her eyes which were much more focused than they often were. Ben laughed for a moment.

"Just yanking your chain, bro. But maybe there is something there. Might be worth asking if nothing else."

"Have they said anything about Case 53s?" Mel asked intently.

"Nope. Or, more accurately, I was told a while ago that when Saurial first met the Wards one of them asked her about it and she said she wasn't one and could remember her entire life. Don't have any more on that, though, it was just an idle comment from a guy I know in the PRT. Sorry."

"Don't worry about it. Thanks, Benjamin." Mel thought again, looking at her watch. "We're going to relax for a few days and unwind, this mission was not only a bust but an expensive and tiring one. The client is going to get a very large bill. I'm minded to add a 'don't fuck me around' surcharge to it." That made Ben laugh again, since her voice was completely disgusted. Newter knew exactly why. "We'll be back on Monday. See if you can find out any more about any of this, I'm curious, and it's best to know the situation you're entering."

"Got it, Boss. I'll see what I can find out. Might cost, though."

"That's fine, within reason."

"OK. Take care, bring back some souvenirs or something."

"I'll see what I can do," she smiled, before tapping the disconnect icon. "Well. Home does seem to have had some interesting things happen to it."

"Implausibly so," Gregor nodded. "I wonder where these people come from?"

"This guy says they're demons," Newter said, pointing at the screen where Elle, who had taken over the laptop, was scrolling through some PHO threads and giggling under her breath. "Or aliens. Or demonic aliens."

"That has to be Void Cowboy," Mel commented without looking, from where she was staring at the table and her phone, obviously mulling over the information they'd received.

"How did you know?" Newter asked wryly, reading the various posts.

"Experience," she sighed. He snickered.

"Oh, look, now he's saying they're alien demons..."

"Someone needs to find that kid and shut him the hell up for everyone's sanity," their leader grumbled, picking her phone up and putting it in her pocket. "I'm going to lie down for a while and think about this. We'll go out for something to eat this evening."

"OK, Mel," Gregor replied.

"Keep the children quiet, please," she added, smiling a little as Newter scowled at her. Elle didn't seem to notice, as engaged in reading the thread as she was.

"That's difficult at the best of times," the large man grinned.

"Hey!" Newter scowled more fiercely, which didn't seem to help. Gregor merely chuckled and went back to his phone. In the end Newter lay on the floor next to his younger friend and they read the latest idiocies out of the virtual mouth of the Cowboy of the Void, both of them laughing every now and then.

The guy really didn't seem to know anything about anything, not that that stopped him having an opinion which he was more than happy to share with the world...

Mel woke from a light doze on her bed to the sound of her phone making little twittering sounds at her, the ring tone for a number not otherwise assigned to a contact. That was slightly unusual, since she didn't give that number out to anyone she wasn't dealing with, and they got assigned unique sounds.

Reaching out she picked up off the bedside table and looked at it, seeing it was about four hours after her conversation with her club manager. The number shown had a Brockton Bay prefix, but she didn't recognize it. After a couple of seconds thought, she prodded the call connect icon with her thumb and put the device to her ear. "Hello?"

"Hello, Faultline," a voice that sounded familiar although she couldn't immediately place it. "I understand you've finished your most recent job and are coming home."

The voice was male, very smooth and confident, and with a slight current of amusement under it. After a few more seconds she recognized it with a jolt of shock and mild confusion.

"Mayor Christner." Her own voice was flat, not giving anything away.

"Quite," he said. The amusement was a little more obvious in the word.

"How did you get this number?" she asked after a short pause.

"I have my sources, as you do, my dear young lady."

"More to the point, why do you have this number?" she asked, not sure she liked being called young lady, although the way he said it wasn't in any way insulting or demeaning. He sounded if anything somewhat respectful, oddly enough.

"I merely wanted to have a quick chat. I understand that you're going to be returning to our fair city shortly, as I said. You may have already discovered that there have been a number of… changes… to the overall social dynamic in Brockton Bay during your absence."

"The Family," she replied. "Hard to miss hundred foot tall lizards pulling ships around the place." Her voice was now rather dry, causing him to chuckle for a second.

"Yes, that one did rather leave an impression. Favorable, to my relief. Overall things are going very smoothly here at present." He paused, then added, his voice not altering tone at all, "I would prefer that doesn't change."

She thought quickly. The subtext was clear and easy to read, but her response required a little care. "You know we don't take local jobs, Mayor Christner," she replied carefully after a couple of seconds.

"I am aware of your aversion to… shall we say, 'fouling one's own doorstep?'" he said, sounding thoughtful himself. "A sensible attitude that I wish more people would learn. All I'm saying is that it would probably be in your best interests to ensure that this doesn't change. Speaking as your Mayor, of course. City hall is fully behind local businesses that are responsible and civic-minded. With the recent changes to the city, I feel this is more important than ever, since we seem to have been gifted an opportunity to improve the lot of every Brocktonian."

"I thought it was Brocktonite?" she couldn't help saying.

"Opinion is divided on the subject," he said. "One day we really should work it out properly. That aside, none of us want to risk anything that would prevent the economic and cultural recovery of our city, do we?"

His voice was still calm and amused, but she got the message loud and clear.

"No, I don't think we do. Brockton Bay is my home as well, Mayor."

"I'm very glad to hear that. And call me Roy, my dear, there's no need to stand on ceremony between two friends."

"Are we friends?" she asked carefully.

"I suspect that for most purposes the answer to that would be yes. Or, at a minimum, people who can work together with mutual respect for the complexities of their own and each other's jobs." His tone was now slightly pleased. "I'm glad we had a chance to talk like this. Perhaps we'll meet at some point. In any case, I hope you and your people have had a successful time and have a good trip home. Goodbye, Faultline."

"Goodbye… Roy," she said, feeling both confused and just a little worried. The phone connection went silent and she put the thing down slowly, then spent some time staring at it and thinking.

Eventually she got up and changed, before heading out to take her team for a very well deserved meal.