Lucius watched the news broadcast with a sinking feeling in his chest. The alien ship that was slowly descending over the center of Metropolis was not, in his opinion, there because it had nice view of the city. He knew the setup for a hostile act when he saw one, and he was looking at one in high definition right now.

Add this current situation to the information he'd collected from various assets of Wayne Enterprises around the world in the last few days, and he had a very shrewd idea that if something wasn't done soon, there was going to be a disaster the likes of nothing the world had ever seen. And hoping this… Superman… could prevent it was taking a lot on trust.

As far as he'd been able to discover so far by collating all the information available, and quite a lot that in theory wasn't available, unless you happened to possess some interesting computer technology that originated a lot further away than Silicon Valley, the alien in the red and blue costume had been living quietly on Earth for many years. He'd only managed to come to the attention of the public and the military very recently. Finding that ship buried in the ice had given the government a nasty shock.

Having it subsequently pretty much stolen from under their noses had given them a larger one. The fact it was probably the owner of said ship who took it didn't really help all that much. It did, however, quite amuse Lucius. Now, though, he wasn't amused at all.

These people were undeniably hostile and militaristic, their initial broadcast demand that one 'Kal-El' be handed over to them was a good indicator of the first and their actions since were proof of the second. And that ship was in his professional opinion a weapon. As was the other one that was deorbiting on the other side of the planet.

Turning to his computer, he clicked a couple of icons, and typed in a long passphrase with a rattle of keys. The 'Draco-Tech' logo that came up for a moment was long familiar to him although very few other people would recognize the name, and no one would find it listed anywhere.

He had other resources. And other friends.

The US military would have been extremely peeved to know that the display he was now inspecting existed outside their supposedly private networks. And even more peeved when they couldn't work out at all how that particular trick was done. He'd studied it himself in depth and he only had the haziest notion even though he was fairly familiar with the technology of his reptilian acquaintances.

Their tech was… very weird. But it always worked.

He tried not to use this particular system except when it was essential, since it seemed somewhat impolite aside from being technically very illegal. On the whole he succeeded in restraining his curiosity although every now and then it became a requirement to dig up something to keep Mr Wayne alive in his latest escapades. Bruce was… slightly overenthusiastic at times. Although thankfully since one rather memorable experience a few years back his more violent tendencies seemed to have taken a marked drop in intensity. Probably to the great relief of criminals throughout Gotham.

Having most of his more dangerous opponents quietly retire, or simply disappear, had certainly helped in that. Gotham PD was still wondering what the hell had happened over that six week period, but the city had been a much calmer place ever since. And it had gained a reputation that even the Bat hadn't managed.

Criminals were scared of the Bat.

They were fucking terrified of whatever it was that lurked in the dark and snickered. Even when it wasn't there to begin with.

That almost made it worse, he'd heard. Not knowing if it was there or not. Because sometimes it was.

Shaking his head in mild amusement despite the seriousness of the current situation, he studied the various displays that were being collected by a large number of surveillance systems in the employ of the US government, several of which were very familiar as he'd designed them in the first place. That second ship was exactly opposite the one over Metropolis, down to a fraction of an inch. There was no way that was an accident, and no way it was good. Glancing over his shoulder at the huge TV screen that formed one wall of his office, he saw that the ship was now hovering in place a few hundred feet in the air.

Rechecking the computer readings, he noted with alarm that there was a significant energy buildup starting to form in the first ship. The second one was also doing something, but he couldn't determine what.

"Damn it," the elderly scientist grumbled. "Is it too much to ask that one single week goes past without yet another emergency?"

Apparently it was. He sighed faintly, then got up and walked over to the other side of the office, opening a cupboard to reveal a very secure safe, again of his own design. Putting his hand on the scanner on the door he waited patiently while it checked over a dozen biological signatures including brainwave patterns, before it quietly beeped and unlocked. If anyone else had done that, they'd now be unconscious on the floor and in need of medical attention.

Pulling the door open he retrieved a device like a cellphone from the safe. Turning it on he waited for a moment for the thing to wake up before entering a passcode on the touch screen and offering it his thumb, which did much the same as his safe had done only a lot faster.

Their tech really was impressive, he mused. When the screen lit up he prodded one particular icon and held the device to his ear while walking back to the TV. He was just in time to see the brilliant white beam of light roar out of the lower middle of the ship and disappear into the ground. The instant effect was… impressive and terrifying.

"I hate being right sometimes," he grumbled. A couple of seconds later, he added into the special phone, "Hello again, Saurial. We have a problem and I was hoping that you might have a solution..."


Just as Lieutenant General Swanwick was listening to the plan being explained by an alien and a reporter, something that the back of his mind was still having trouble with but was trying to suppress in the face of a genuine alien invasion, a shout came from one side. Everyone in the small group turned to look at the sergeant who was waving frantically from a communications truck, his other hand pressing one cup of a pair of headphones to his ear. "It's… It's stopped!" the man yelled.

"What has?" Swanwick hollered back.

"The alien ships! That beam from them, it just stopped with no warning!" The man listened to his radio as they all hurried over. "The one in the ocean seems to have gone dead, there's no energy output at all from..." He paused, his face expressing startled shock. "General… It's gone."

"Gone?" Swanwick stared at him, as did everyone including the newly dubbed 'Superman'. "What do you mean, gone?"

"Gone, sir. The satellites show it's not there any more. No trace of it."

"Did it take off?" Doctor Hamilton asked quickly, his unkempt hair blowing in the wind across the airfield. The sergeant shook his head as he listened to the report being communicated to him.

"No, sir. Not that they can tell. One moment it was there, the next it was just… gone."

They all looked at each other, then as one turned to stare at Superman. He appeared at least as confused and lost as they felt. "Any ideas?" Swanwick asked.

"No," the alien in the blue and red suit said quietly, visibly thinking. He looked worried. "None at all."

Motioning for the headset, Swanwick put it on and started making inquiries. Something had changed and he wasn't sure if that was good or bad, despite the apparent reprieve they had. Sudden changes were something he was always suspicious about. Although at least they apparently now had breathing room, if nothing else.

He just hoped it didn't herald the beginning of something worse.

General Dru-Zod roared, "What happened to my World Engine?" at the top of his voice, glaring at the bridge crew as they rushed around frantically checking instrumentation. The phantom drive had abruptly gone offline with no warning at all, powering down completely and totally ignoring any attempts to restart it, or even diagnose the problem. The link to the World Engine on the other side of the planet had shown it had also shut down at the same time, going totally dormant far faster than it was supposed to be able to, then the link itself had dropped out.

The scout ship they had hovering far above it to monitor the device had then reported only a few seconds later that the entire enormous machine had abruptly winked out of existence. Which shouldn't be possible. No unusual energy readings were detected, which was the most unusual thing of all. It was simply not there any more.

He was absolutely infuriated and ready to kill the next person who even looked at him wrong. All their plans, all their work, suddenly disrupted in a way he couldn't understand.

"Kal-El," he growled viciously. "This is somehow his doing." Turning to look out the view port at the city below and around them, he snarled with rage. "I don't know how he did it or what he did, but it has to be him. These humans are much too primitive to even scratch Kryptonian technology." He whirled to glare at Faora-Ul. "Find him. I'll kill him with my bare hands for this betrayal."

His second in command nodded curtly, turning to her displays, while he paced back and forth with his cloak billowing behind him. After thirty seconds or so, she snapped upright, turned to look out the window, and said, "He's heading directly at us, General. He'll be here in under a minute."

Zod ground his teeth. "Excellent," he said with a dark grin. "Time to deal with him permanently. Then these humans he likes so much." Raising his voice, he ordered, "Prepare to break atmosphere after I have finished Kal-El. We'll destroy this city first, we will show these insects what a more advanced species like us is capable of. After which I'll decide on our next move." He looked at Faora. "Keep watch in case the humans try something. If they do… wipe them out."

She nodded again, crisply and alertly. "Of course, General."

"I will see about Jor-El's spawn once and for all." Zod turned on his heel and headed for the nearest airlock.

Someone had a pressing requirement to be beaten nearly to death.

Then all the way to death, after he'd seen his precious humans… chastised.

Clark bounced a few more times and slid to a halt on the rubble filling the middle of the zone where Zod's ship had destroyed a large chunk of Metropolis before whatever had happened to the World Engine unit had stopped the process. Sitting up he wiped blood from his mouth, glaring at the figure of General Zod on the other side of the building his opponent had punched him through. The other Kryptonian stared at him with hatred, his black eyes glittering, then lifted into the air and headed directly at him accelerating hard and leaving a wake of disturbed air that threw debris around his path.

Doing the same, Clark braced for the impact that would occur, hoping that all the people he could still hear in the buildings around them would run rather than watch. Fractions of a second later, the two figures slammed into each other at over mach one, the shockwave rippling out from the impact and blowing out every window for half a mile. Screams and yells came as the observers ducked, more and more people overcoming their shock and desperately attempting to leave the area while the two aliens tried to kill each other.

Zod, whose armor had been destroyed in the first exchange of blows, punched a large crater in the ground as he hit it, while Clark rebounded upwards into the face of one of the still intact buildings, then slid down it in a shower of rubble. Both men groaned, then got to their feet.

"I will kill you," Zod promised banefully. "Just like I killed your father. Him… I regret the necessity of the act in his case. In your case..." He rolled his head, then cracked his knuckles. "It will be a pleasure."

"You don't have to do this, Zod," Clark said, trying to calm the other down and make him see sense. "We can work something out. But I won't let you hurt these people. You've done enough damage already." He glanced around, then added honestly, "As have I. We need to stop this before more people are killed."

It was a certainty that the death toll was already fairly high, the initial attack would guarantee that.

"People?! These… worms?" Zod laughed grimly. "You forget how superior we both are to them. They are nothing." He took a step forward. "What did you do to my World Engine?"

"I've already told you, I didn't do anything," Clark replied. He was confused, since the only people he could think of that could have done anything were represented by the man he was fighting, but from the imprecations Zod had been shouting when he'd intercepted him on the way towards the Kryptonian ship, it hadn't been them. Which left… who?

"You lie," Zod snarled, taking another step, his eyes beginning to glow. "It could only have been you."

"It was us, actually," an unexpected voice put in without warning, making both of them whirl to look at the source.

"And now I would very much like you both to stop smashing the place up, before I am forced to stop you doing that," the reptilian creature standing to the side said with a distinct lack of humor in her voice. "You've already done far more than enough damage with this idiotic fight."

"Who are you?" Clark asked, staring. Zod was apparently momentarily speechless, the General gaping at the lizard-like person. She was taller than either man although more slender, wearing some sort of metallic armor that looked rather archaic in human terms, although extremely well made, and had a pair of sword hilts protruding over each shoulder. On the chest of her cuirass was an inlaid gold tracery of some sort of reptilian head, forming what Clark assumed was probably a crest much like his House of El symbol, contrasting nicely with the otherwise dark blue color of the metal. The end of her long tail was flicking around in an irritated manner.

"My name is Saurial and I represent the Family," the creature said, her voice still hard. She spoke perfect English although with an accent he couldn't place. "And before you ask the next obvious question, we're not from around here. However, we do a lot of business locally and we have friends here. Friends who have asked for our help."

She started walking towards them, stopping when she was equidistant from both, all three forming the points of a triangle. "You will now cease hostilities. Immediately."

Clark couldn't help it, he glanced at Zod, to see the General looking at him with the same confused expression he was sure he was wearing. After a moment, the other Kryptonian's face hardened and he looked back at the self-proclaimed Saurial. "You took my World Engine?" he demanded with a fury-filled voice.

"We disposed of it," Saurial nodded. She smiled faintly, the expression obvious despite the entirely alien face.

"Give it back!" Zod roared.

"No. As I said, we disposed of it. It's gone." The reptilian woman appeared mildly amused at the way Zod's face went red. "Very dangerous things, planetforming machines. You should never use them on inhabited worlds, it's a safety hazard." Waving a hand around at the devastation surrounding them, she added, "As you can see. Fixing all this is going to be a pain in the ass."

"You dare…," Zod grated before spluttering to a halt, apparently so outraged he couldn't even get the words out. She tilted her head a little as if she was waiting to see what he did next. "You have interfered in something far larger than you know," he finally said, his face showing a killing rage.

She actually grinned. "I know a lot more about large things than you might expect," Saurial replied. "And I know exactly what that machine of yours would do. There are billions of humans and an entire ecosphere that you would have killed, you realize. Many of those humans are friends, and none of them deserve what you were about to do." The lizard shrugged lightly. "So we stopped you. Now, as I said, the pair of you will cease your hostilities right now, or I'm going to be forced to take further action." The small grin she was wearing literally grew teeth, extremely sharp and glittering ones. "You wouldn't enjoy that."

Clark watched her warily. There was something about the confidence this new arrival was showing that was telling him somewhere inside that it might be wise to not push too hard. And after all, if she was telling the truth which he had no reason to doubt, she and whoever else she was with had already stopped the World Engine and saved Earth. It seemed likely that they were, for a given value of the concept, the good guys.

Unfortunately, General Zod didn't seem to think any of this was ideal from his own viewpoint, based on his expression, which was getting more and more furious. "What do you think you can do, reptile? My species is as gods to this world. We may not have the World Engine, but we can still devastate the inhabitants, by hand if necessary."

"And what good would that do?" Saurial asked in a reasonable tone. "They've done nothing to you. You're in the position you now hold by your own actions if my understanding of your history is correct. Your own species holds you to be criminals. They were merciful in only exiling you, when they could have easily killed you. Don't make me do their work for them."

"You think you can?" he demanded with a snort of disbelief, looking her up and down.

"Oh, yes, believe me I can if I am forced to," Saurial almost whispered. "You haven't got the faintest idea of what my people can do. We don't like killing and we go out of our way to avoid it, but we're very, very good at it if we have no choice." She'd gone utterly still, her eyes fixed on him, only her mouth moving slightly. "I would strongly advise you listen to me."

There was something in the air that made Clark swallow, as if some huge being was peering down at them like a man looking at ants. Glancing around he couldn't work out why he felt like that, but he could see that even Zod momentarily looked uneasy.

After a couple of seconds, though, the man laughed harshly. "You bluff. I find I grow impatient, and you interrupted something I wanted to do." Saurial cocked her head the other way, regarding him with interest. "It's time for you to die, so I can move on to the more useful job of killing him." He pointed at Clark without looking, his eyes beginning to glow again as he prepared to use his heat vision, which they both knew was absolutely devastating at this range. One only had to look at the ruined buildings around them to see that.

Saurial merely watched him, not saying anything. Moments later a ravening beam of raw energy streamed out of Zod's eyes and impacted the lizard woman directly in the middle of the chest, the brilliance of the light forcing Clark to squint even with his Kryptonian heritage. The General was apparently pushing as hard as he could.

The sound of the discharge went on for ten, then fifteen seconds, until it abruptly cut off. Looking stunned, Zod stared, then involuntarily glanced at his old rival's son, who was also staring.

Saurial smiled back at them, totally undamaged. She was standing in an orange-glowing pool of glassed concrete and soil, the heat rising from it causing her form to waver a little. "That was nicely refreshing," she commented. "Almost up to the level of a mystical weapon I had to take away from an annoying god a while back." Looking down at her bare feet, which were up to their scaled ankles in molten rock, she lifted one and shook it, all three of them watching as glowing droplets hissed into the dust. "You done?"

"What are you?" Zod said in wonder and anger.

"Just someone who prefers to make things rather than destroy them," she said, walking forward out of the puddle of cooling lava with a series of crackling sounds.

His jaw worked, then he shot forward without warning, his fist raised. She ducked as he passed, moving as fast as he was, grabbed him with both hands, and executed some form of martial arts throw that put him on the ground with a huge boom and a shower of debris. Before he could react, or Clark could do more than twitch, she had both her swords out of their sheaths and crossed at his throat, touching the skin.

"You think that a mere blade will help you?" he asked with a rough laugh.

She closed the distance between the blades slightly, her hands applying pressure. The General froze and Clark stared as two lines of blood welled up along the gray metal. "I do, actually," she smiled. "I know what you are, Kryptonian. I know how your bodies work, possibly better than you do. And I know exactly how to kill you where you stand. Or lie in this case." She pressed a little harder, making his eyes bulge, before stepping back with a quick motion, whipping both blades out to the side in a small spray of blood, then sheathing them with another motion almost too fast even for Zod and Clark to see. All of this was done so easily it was obviously the result of years of practice.

Whatever else she was, she was incredibly good with a blade. And, Clark realized rather uneasily, whatever those blades were made of cut yellow sun empowered Kryptonian flesh like a knife through a hot-dog. He also discovered that his x-ray vision couldn't penetrate her armor or her flesh, when he rather belatedly tried it.

Zod slowly got to his feet, not looking away from her. "Are we done posturing or do you want to go again?" she asked, a note of slight amusement coming into her otherwise still mildly irritated and very serious voice. "I don't have anything else to do today, but everyone else around here does, so I'd like to finish this soon."

The General stared at her for long seconds, looked at Clark, then up at the floating mother ship. His face twisted and he snapped a hand to his collar, pressing a control embossed into it, then shouted an order. "Faora! Kill this thing."

Clark looked up to see a weapons emplacement on the repurposed prison ship move. Saurial sighed faintly. "Deal with that, please," she said conversationally.

Before the weapon could lock on and fire, a violet-white beam reached up from somewhere to the side and punched a hole entirely through the ship, taking out the turret in the process. Zod gaped in horror as the beam exited the top of his craft and disappeared into the sky. The brief moment of thundering energy lasted under half a second before it stopped as quickly as it had begun.

"Fine. You want to play it like that, we can oblige." Saurial had lost the slightly indulgent air she'd had for the last couple of minutes. "Lock down the ship."

Moments after she spoke, a ripple of blue light passed over the Kryptonian vessel, leaving it inside an egg-shaped force-field of some sort. All the illumination on the craft died and it went dormant.

General Zod looked up in horror, then slowly lowered his gaze to meet the glowing yellow slit-pupiled one of the lizard-like female who was watching him closely. "What… How did you..."

"I told you, you have no idea what we can do, General. We have a lot of different abilities."

He breathed heavily, apparently trying to work out what to do next. Tensing slightly, Clark readied himself to intervene if the man attacked or fled, although he was pretty convinced at this point that both of them were more than a little out of their depth. Whoever this 'Family' was, it wasn't from Earth and apparently had technology far past even Kryptonian equipment. Saurial was also at least as durable as either of them were, and seemed to be as fast if not faster.

"Now, I need to work out the best way to deal with you and your people," the reptilian woman mused, studying him with her head on one side again. "I suppose I could make sure your abilities were suppressed and hand you over to the humans, but to be honest there's been enough killing today."

"I'm going to destroy you," Zod informed her, his voice steady and his eyes blazing, although not as literally as before.

She smiled. "No, you're not. And that attitude is going to cause you trouble if you're not careful."

"Arrogant creature," he said, "You may have some tricks I didn't expect, but I'll..."

"Arrogant?" she asked with a chuckle. "Funny coming from you, although it's not the first time someone's said that. Little bit of truth, I admit, although I'd like to think not much."

He glared at her with hate. "I will see you broken at my feet," he vowed, taking a step forward.

Moments later he froze mid-step, while Clark suppressed a sound of shock. General Zod rolled his eyes to the left, then to the right, a look of sudden panic in them. The reason was due to his head now being neatly sandwiched between the muzzles of the largest guns that he, or Clark, had ever seen, which were being held by a pair of much larger reptilian creatures that had suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Each weapon was making a low hum that conveyed a sense of imminent doom only barely held off.

Clark was suddenly sure that one of these was what had taken out the weapons on the ship with one shot. Even for him, that amount of energy was probably instant death. Zod appeared to be thinking the same thing judging by how pale he'd gone.

"On your knees," the totally flat black lizard on the right ordered calmly. It appeared, based on the voice, to be another female.

"What?" Zod sounded confused and worried.

"You heard me. Kneel before Saurial." The muzzle of the weapon moved a little, making his head tilt to the other side. "Now."

Swallowing, and looking like he really didn't want to but saw no way out of it, Zod slowly and reluctantly knelt in the dust. Saurial looked down at him, then at her two companions. "Really?" she asked, sounding a little irritated.

"He was annoying me," the black lizard said, her voice amused. "This will be good for him."

"We need to talk when we get home, Metis," Saurial sighed. The other reptile merely chuckled. "OK. General Zod, I've had it with you and your friends up there," she went on, flicking a finger upwards. "You've killed hundreds of innocent humans, done an enormous amount of damage, and terrorized an entire planet. I very much doubt anyone would particularly mind if I did to you what you wanted to do to the population of this world."

The man was now looking resigned, although his eyes were still searching for an escape of some form. Clark took a step forward, opening his mouth. Saurial held up a warning finger without looking, causing him to swallow his words before they came out. "However, as I said earlier, we really don't like killing. Either seeing it happen, or doing it. So, I'm going to make you an offer. I will arrange for you to be transported to an empty planet in a star system a very long way from here, along with all the technology you need to rebuild your species. Yes, I know what you were going to do and why. I only have problems with the way you were going about it." She smiled at the look of raw shock on the General's face.

"We have many ways of getting information," she added as he opened his mouth.

He thought for a moment then closed it without saying anything.

"In return, you will give me a binding promise that your species will not, ever, attempt to interfere with Earth or any other world again. I know how xenophobic your lot can be. I don't mind you making peaceful contact, but no invasions, takeover bids, coercion, anything like that, got me? Or I'll be very annoyed and come and have a word." She slowly bent down to his level, looking him straight in the eyes. "Trust me when I tell you that you wouldn't enjoy what happened next."

He stared fixedly into her eyes for several seconds, until she straightened up again.

"Or you can reject my offer, and I'll either kill the lot of you where you stand or toss you back into that phantom zone thing your people used. Or both, possibly." Saurial watched as he paled again. She shrugged. "Your choice. Make it now."

Everyone remained silent as Zod visibly thought over his options. Clark kept quiet as he didn't know what was going on and how these creatures were doing what they were doing. Around him he could hear people still evacuating frantically, while military helicopters were cautiously orbiting at a safe distance. The wind was about the loudest thing as it whistled through the half-wrecked skyscrapers.

Eventually, Zod raised his head defiantly. "You can genuinely transport us to a suitable world and give us the Codex?"

"I can."

"And the equipment we require to repopulate?"

"Yes."

"Why should I trust you?"

"You have no real choice, do you?" Saurial asked soberly. "You started this. I'm ending it, one way or the other, here and now. I would much prefer that ending be peaceful and if you're as smart as you seem, you do as well."

He inspected her for nearly a minute, before he finally nodded. "I agree to your terms."

"Great." Saurial smiled brilliantly. "Let him up, guys." Both the other lizards stepped back, although they didn't immediately lower their weapons. Zod cautiously climbed to his feet. Approaching him, Saurial held out her hand. He looked at it, then after a small sigh gripped it. While she held on, she added, "This is a binding promise I will hold you to, General. Please don't disappoint me."

Releasing his hand she stepped back. "Now what?" he said with a look at Clark, who was rather bewildered at how things had suddenly changed.

"Now we clear up all this mess, get you guys to your new home, then I go talk to a friend of mine, and this one can explain things to the military," Saurial smiled, hooking a thumb at Clark. "Seeing as how he's the local hero, I think that's his job."

Zod looked at Clark, then Saurial, before starting to laugh.

"I don't like you but I can't deny you have a style all your own," the General said, shaking his head.

"Not the first time someone's told me that," she grinned. Raising a hand, she added with a definite smirk, "And I start the whole thing by doing this."

She snapped her fingers.

Both Clark and Zod stared around them, then their eyes met. Both of them could see the same sense of shock in the other.

They went back to staring at the dozens of heavily armed reptilian figures that had appeared all over the place, interspersed with nearly a hundred brightly colored robotic walking machines that also bore a distinct reptilian air in their design. Floating silently above them was an enormous craft which was apparently the thing responsible for the force-field still shrouding the Kryptonian vessel to one side.

"Lois is never going to believe this," Clark sighed, knowing that his friend was going to be asking questions near enough forever. And his mother was going to be worse.

Saurial snickered, apparently overhearing, then wandered off to talk in a completely alien language to her people, while General Zod, appearing weirdly happy in a sort of angry way, sat down on a piece of rubble and watched.

Lucius sipped the brandy he'd poured, then nodded appreciatively. "Very nice indeed," he said. On the other side of the table the familiar face of Saurial smiled at him.

"I thought you'd like it," she said. "Dad said it was one of the better ones. He knows a lot more about that sort of thing than I do."

"Please give him my thanks," the old scientist said.

"Of course." Saurial took a drink from her own cup, which was full of a very nice coffee. "Sorry we couldn't stop all the damage entirely, but by the time we'd got rid of their terraforming machine they were already kicking the shit out of each other." She looked apologetic. "Most of the damage to Metropolis is fixed now, though, and we've healed everyone we could find. And Metis took a couple of teams to deal with the other damage around the country, that's all sorted out."

"You saved the planet and a lot of lives, so I for one can't complain," he replied with a nod of thanks. "We owe you a lot."

"All part of the service," she chuckled. "We're horrifically good at some things but we don't want to throw our weight around. It's not our way. We prefer building and repairing things."

"Engineers rather than warriors," he commented. She nodded. "I can respect that."

"That doesn't surprise me," she grinned, which he returned.

"Business going well?" he asked after a little while.

Saurial nodded again. "Yep, actually things are running pretty smoothly right now. You saw the new ship, it's working to design and Vectura's half way through designing the replacement for the replacement for it. That woman is never satisfied, as soon as she finished one she's already picking holes in the design for the next one."

"Which is something we're both familiar with," he said wisely.

"Oh, definitely. Almost everything can be improved one way or another if you think about it." Saurial took another drink of coffee. "Applied Magic is coming up with new ideas all the time too. Hermione is remarkably good at that. One of the best things we ever did, taking her onboard."

"I'd like to meet her again at some point," Lucius said. "She was a very interesting young woman."

"I'll mention it to her," Saurial snickered. "You might get a visit."

"Any of you are always welcome here," he assured her truthfully. "Although, from what I've heard, you do pop in more often than I expected..."

She smirked. "We like to keep our hand in and your criminals honest," the lizard woman replied evenly. "It seems to work. And your friend in the cloak gets confused, which to be honest is hilarious."

They met each others eyes, then started laughing quite hard.