"Why do we have to go to a stupid museum?" Brent asked as he paid for his admission. "Twenty bucks is a lot."
"You and I both know it's your dad's money," Elena replied as she pushed through the turnstile. "And I like museums."
"Why? It's just a bunch of dusty old shit," he said, stuffing his hands in his jacket pockets. He looked like a generic stoner: his hair almost covered his eyes, he had a t-shirt from some obscure metal band, and despite having three belts his pants were almost around his ankles. Elena on the other hand never smoked a day in her life. She liked fantasy novels and science fiction. But beyond that, she liked money. And money was something Brent's family had in excess.
"Well this 'dusty old shit' is amazing," she replied as she tried to show him around. "Where do you want to go first? Egyptian or Japanese history?"
"Can we go to neither?" Brent asked, regretting his decision to go with her.
"Japanese it is!" Elena decreed as she took his and and dragged him to the Japanese exhibits.
Elena didn't really come for herself. There was really nothing here that she could learn. She dragged Brent along so he could learn something. She had a naïve hope that he would actually take an interest in something here so they could discuss something other than drugs and sex.
She was a fireball. With a killer smile and a mop of red hair, she could make any boy do whatever she wanted. Whether it was a museum trip of a debutant ball, all she had to do was ask and it was hers. Capitalist, nihilist, opportunist.
"This is a statue of a komainu," she explained. Hopefully she'd be able to land a job as tour guide, but for now she hoped to educate her boyfriend. "It's a Japanese creature, part lion and part dog. They're basically watchdogs."
The statue was barely more than a foot tall, it was a stoney grey sculpture made from only one rock. Its ears twisted around toward its back and its face looked closer to a clown than a dog. Swirling patterns etched their ways across its body, from face to rump. A smirk tore across Brent's face when he realized where he saw it before. "Wasn't there one of these guys in a Godzilla movie?" And there was his weakness: kaiju movies. Anything involving giant monsters tearing apart cities got his blood pressure up.
"That's right, once there was a giant komainu named King Caesar. He protected a family in a Godzilla movie. If you liked that, maybe you'll like the Egyptian exhibit."
For some reason the Egyptian exhibit was right next to the Japanese exhibit, so they didn't have to walk very far before they were surrounded by hieroglyphs and cat statues. "What's with all the cats?"
"They were kind of like komainu," Elena explained. "They protect people from evil spirits. The Egyptians had a cat goddess named Bastet, she protects children and mothers in particular."
"Trippy," he said absently as he observed the hieroglyphs. "Why's the bird dude fighting a big snake?"
She almost laughed at the question. "The bird guy is Ra, he's the sun. He represents order. The snake is Apophis, he's chaos incarnate. They fight every night in the underworld when Apophis tries to eat him."
"Sick," was the best response she could get from him. "Can we go now?"
"It's been ten minutes," she answered.
"Exactly, it's been a whole ten minutes."
They would have continued fighting had an explosion not torn through the Roman and Chinese exhibits. Debris swept through the air, caking everything in a fine layer of dust. Countless artifacts from around the world were lost in the explosion, but something new found itself in the museum.
In the center of the new crater sat a small metal object, no bigger then a Nintendo DS. It glimmered in the sunlight that now shined down into the room. Nobody was injured, nobody was even around, so Elena took it upon herself to see what had happened. Brent trailer behind her, covered in dust and grime. The debris had barely touched her at all, not a single strand of her orange hair was besmirched.
The object in the crater began beeping with a faint blue light pulsing inside. It couldn't have been a meteor, that was obvious. Maybe a satellite or government drone? When she reached out to grab it, the device started beeping louder. She found that it could be opened like a flip phone. The screen inside displayed her solar system, but the labels were in a language she didn't understand. It looked like a cross between Hebrew and Japanese. She spoke English, French, Arabic, and Latin, but this was something new to her.
Sirens blared off in the distance, so Elena tucked the device in her backpack and dragged a speechless Brent to the door. Maybe he was scared or in shock, but she couldn't concern herself with that, this could have been a terrorist attack or something. If she'd just stolen a weapon, she needed to get out of there.
But something told her it was more than just a terrorist attack.
Elena wasn't the only one who knew about the explosion. Far away in Nellis Air Force Base, a team of scientists and soldiers observed the situation.
"It's launched something, sir," the colonel stated as he watched the screen. It showed the alien ship in orbit around the Earth, far beyond where any satellites lie. "It appears to have crash landed somewhere in north Florida."
"Someone needs to alert the President," a lieutenant interjected. "This thing has been in orbit for hours and now they've launched something at us. He needs to know."
The chief scientist, a thin, sickly old man named Dr. Snowell, ignored the lieutenant. "Gentlemen, situations like this are precisely why we are here in the first place. Our old friends have finally returned and we've even given two options. We can let the military ruin any chances of diplomacy we have, or we can greet them as the old allies they are. Either choice we make will change the world, but only one will allow us to keep the world. And I fully intend to keep Earth around as long as possible.
Deep in the military base Snowell's prized possessions lie forever asleep. Two humans, dead for decades, were cryogenically frozen. They had been found near a town named Roswell, in the wreckage of their ship. One male, one female. The red haired girl had died on impact and the brunette boy of his wounds shortly after. But they weren't the only organisms on the ship.
Whatever had attacked them had left a sample. Just a few cells, something very similar to fungus. Whatever it was, it was adaptive. It had maintained growth in every environment in which it had been placed, always taking on the qualities of its surroundings. In cold environments, it created icy scales. In soil, it started growing stones.
The ship's computers used a language very strange to Earth, but from what could be translated it was gathered that humans across the galaxy had been at war with this species from millennia. The people on the ship had come from a star system far away called Giorno before these creatures destroyed it.
When they landed on Earth, they brought a lot to it. Their technology had birthed modern space flight and avionics. Nellis researchers had barely scratched the surface before things like wormholes and portals were discovered, all before Earth's time.
But one things continued to bother Snowell. Despite every advance they made, they were still no closer to understanding the secrets of the fossils they found. As if that weren't enough, they continually failed to activate the device called the "Prizmod" that they found with the girl.
And now that their friends had returned, Snowell intended to get his answers.