Brian made the left turn into the compound, slaloming through the staggered gates and stopped briefly by the guards who scanned his badge. Despite the early hour, he drove past the first lot and the garage and parked in the far lot, not far from the fence line. It was one of the compromises he made since he no longer had the rigors of enforced PT to keep himself in shape, nor could he do the same workouts he used to do when he had been active. It's one of the minor consequences of having a training accident that results in a medical discharge. As he got out of his car, he wryly smirked to himself - 'Right. "Active". "Medical Discharge." Shit. Even after 5 years, I'm still censoring myself. Eh. It's still a good habit." Those 5 years of college had earned his Bachelor of Arts and Masters in Political Science, with his associated minor in Statistics. Even so, his 4 tours had still left their mark on him. He still had the build and walk that marked him as an "operator" as the egos and the posers liked to call themselves. He preferred soldier, even if now his job title was "Analyst".
One of the other reason he parked so far away from the buildings was to give himself time to switch gears from newlywed husband back to professional paranoid. Some days the 10 minutes weren't enough. Usually they were, and today, by the time he reached the building, he was back in the mindset. As he passed through the turnstiles, and descended the atrium's escalators, he wondered what his first day in his real position would be like, now that he'd cleared all the training courses. Including the very tedious one on "This is how we write reports." Now he knew why it had always seemed like his new employers had suffered from excessive group think when reading their reports. Their training did a lot to push people into the same mold. And much deeper into that mold than his time in the service ever did. Oh the wonders of a backstabbing political bureaucracy. This was why he never wanted to be an officer.
He walked through the wave-guide , humming the "Get Smart" theme to himself, then after making a few more turns came to the plain white door, in the plain white wall, with a doorbell and the electronic spin lock. He pressed the doorbell and faintly heard the chime through the solid metal-clad door. After several seconds, he heard the door unlatch, then ponderously open. Before him stood a man that he was sure had to fight the "Napoleonic Complex" every day of his life. Probably successfully, if he read the wide grin correctly. Complex sufferers were usually "right pissy bastards" as his Brit colleagues liked to say.
"Yes? Who are you looking for?"
Brian held out his hand. "I'm Brian Santos." The shorter man shook it. "Just finished training, so they finally sent me here."
"Oh. Sam. Sam Miller. We weren't expecting you until later this morning." As Miller let him into the room, Brian noticed that this was definitely a working group. The nearest desks were covered in the typical cross-referencing mess of papers, the nearby office table had scattered books on and around it (including one chair), and the whiteboards both shared and cube-specific were covered in notes and diagrams. "You wouldn't happen to to know 'Hamster' Hodges, would you? He's talked a lot about a guy named Brian, and your resume implied you might have crossed paths."
"Hamster? Yeah, you might say I know him. I gave him his nick. Haven't seen him in years. He still try to stuff way too much food into his mouth?"
"Yep." Sam motioned around the vault. "As you can see, most of the team isn't here yet. Just me and Tom." He raised his voice "Tom!" A stick-like man as tall as Sam was short stood up, cocking his head to avoid the admittedly low-hanging lights. "This is Brian Santos. He's the new guy. Starts today." Tom just nodded greetings, then just sunk back down into his cube. Sam led Brian to a cube tucked behind a support pillar. "So here's your desk. I don't know what Fred wants you to do, but we just got a briefing packet on those Lizards up in Brockton Bay, and of course, the 7th floor wants it looked over by last Friday, and no-one else has any spare cycles, so I'll forward you the info. Coffee's on the main aisle, office supplies right next to it in the cabinet. I'd like to chat, but I've got to crank out a report on Los Banditos Mirables before 9:30. So, good luck."
Brian was a little taken aback; he expected a more involved check-in process. Then he noticed the welcome packet on his desk. It had the full details on the check-in process, and it was just as involved as he had expected and feared. By the time he finished, the vault was buzzing, and he had actually managed to crack open the briefing. He had just finished his first skim of the documents when he heard fingers drumming on the top of his cube wall. "Brian? I'm Fred Lirantini, your group chief. This is Minerva Athens, your branch chief. We have a little stand-up at 10:30 everyday. C'mon, I'll introduce the two of you to the rest." The rest were a little more than a dozen folks. Mostly analysts, like himself, but he was surprised to find there was a contingent of 3-4 programmers and a systems administrator attached to the group. This was more like what he had been expecting as a welcome. A quick whip-around for tasking status, then introducing Min (as she told everyone to call her in a thick Georgian accent), and himself. A little chit-chat afterwards, and then it was back to his desk.
As he read through the briefing a second time, taking notes, he was struck by something that the initial preparers had missed. "Huh." He looked over his notes again. "Yeah. Face." He tapped Saurial's picture. "Engineer." Raptaur. "Intel." Metis. "Medic." Ianthe. "Transport? Heavy Weapons?" Kaiju. There he paused, staring at Umihebi's picture. "I have no clue. She, on the other hand," tapping a drawing of Breksta, "is definitely air-support." He shuffled papers, placing them in order of their confirmed first sightings. Face. Engineer. Umihebi. Medic. Kaiju. Intel. Air Support. "That's a strange order. Why? They may be aliens, but they're not THAT alien. We have no trouble understanding their actions, at least in isolation. So what's their reason...?" He stared off into space, humming the "Lost in Space" theme.
"Aliens. No established presence, 'cause we'd have *definitely* seen traces of them before, and none of them could pass for Bigfoot. Amphibious, and Aquatic. No ship because Ziz didn't do anything and the sky watchers didn't report anything. Though Umihebi has invis, so maybe their ships do to? That doesn't seem to be the way they work though. Lots of very weird effects using math. Not tech. 'Bio-shaping'. Not mech tech. Hmmmm... OK, we've seen weird space-bending from them. So space-bend from wherever into the ocean. Not very big at first. Saurial make sense, she's the smallest. Unknown, maybe hostile conditions, so back-up protection from Raptaur. All good. Umihebi, though? She's the biggest, though mostly length. And she can't easily support the other two. So she's not here for them. Protect the portal? Hmm... drives off drones. So maybe. But that's a hell of a lot of protection for just drones - Raptaur could provide that... Leviathan! Got-to-be! Only thing that's makes sense... and didn't I see... Yes! Leviathan stays the hell away from Umihebi! And Kaiju as Heavy Construction makes sense. The dredging and ship-clearing is for their benefit; gives the bigger ones like Breksta and Umihebi shore-base access. Yes! Yes! ... So why come here?"
"They imply they've been here before, but it's been a long, long, time. So they like things better out there, wherever. They didn't just come back for no reason... They're setup for a long term educate and assist/friendly faces op. We do those ... they're not here to help us. At least that's not their direct motivation. They're spending efforts to acquire capes. They're here to help the capes. And Scion. Against the Endbringers. Why here? ..."
Brian knocked on Ms. Athen's door. "Ms. Athens, ma'am?"
"It's just Min, Brian." The slim black woman looked up. "What can I help you with?"
"I need to talk this through with someone. It hangs together, but I'm not sure I believe it myself."
"Sure. I'm still spinning up, but that much I can still do. Sit down."
Brian pulled over her small side-table and placed his notes down. Pulling his chair over, he grabbed the initial briefing. "So I was struck by how similar the Family's organization is to our Special Forces teams..."
Min Athens knocked on her boss's door, Brian Santos at her side, holding his notes. "Fred? You know how you tasked Brian here into looking at the Family?"
"Oh good. I hadn't. But I'm glad someone picked it up. Apparently, it's one of the Director's hot issues. What's up?"
"Well, Brian noticed how similar the Family Structure is to a Special Forces team, and he thinks they're here on an Aid and Assist mission..."
Two days later, Brian was standing at one end of a conference table next to a projection screen, looking down at a table, where his boss and her boss were the next two most junior people here, and very, very, nervous. The door at the far end of the room, not the one he and the others came through, opened, and a stressed looking woman in a severely-cut bespoke power suit strode through and sat in the chair carefully left empty for her. "I don't have long. Make it quick."
"Yes Madam Director. The Earth is the site of a proxy war between Scion's polity and the Endbringers' polity. The Family are the equivalent of UN observers sent here to keep the two sides' damage to us to a minimum."
The woman stared at him, considering. She looked at the rest of the unsurprised table. She silently considered the situation for a few seconds, then motioned to the man on her right. "Paul, go tell Anna to call the NSC and let them know I've been unavoidably detained by an emergency. Then go over there, let them know why, and schedule a meeting with the President, the Joint Chiefs, and the NSC as soon as possible. If you can, keep that bitch Da Costa from knowing about this. Go." The man rose, and quickly strode out of the room.
"You now have my undivided attention. Walk me through it."