ic Back In The Day

[Fox]

Gaian Knight watched the ship appear with a great deal of curiosity and no small amount of caution. "That's...probably not going to make anything easier for anybody. Tiamat?"

That last bit was directed to his league communicator, and there was a pause before he got a reply. "Yeah, I saw. Subtle or grand, you think?"

"Subtle, please. We don't know why they're here, let's not give them any excuses if we can help it."

---

As it was, she showed up - in human form - just in time to watch their visitors arrive in person. Or...in drone? In suits? In something, anyway. "I don't suppose you give them a friendly Earth greeting?" Gaian Knight asked. He'd managed to position himself between the alien trio and as many non-powered personnel as he could, but with the surprise and this many people....

His request earned him a flat look, which slid sideways over to the alien visitors. "Yo," she offered, dryly, waving a hand.

Tarrant looked, briefly, like he'd developed a sudden and awful headache. "....in their language, Tiamat."

"And that language would be?"

"....right, okay. Get them to talk first. Ah - hello!" he greeted, taking a half-step forward. "Welcome to Earth. I don't suppose we can help you with anything - your appearance here has to be as surprising to us as our own is to you."

[Thunder King]

Aliens. And dinosaurs. Mali was a bit surprised, but at this point she was harder and harder to shock. She stared up at the strange craft and watched the ongoing situation at a safe distance. Sleep had been fitful, and when she didn't sleep, she meditated in an attempt to calm her mind to let her sleep. None of it worked. Now aliens had showed up and this could get ugly. Or it could be cool. Or maybe a bit of both.

[Avenger Assembled]

The lead alien stepped forward and reached up with three-fingered hands, removing what after a few moments turned out to be a helmet. Inside the helmet, a face was revealed that was at once a new, alien thing and terribly, terribly familiar. >Triple green eyes set in a triangular pattern stared at the heroes, while a long horn protruded back so far it must have been scraping against the inside of that bulky helmet the whole way. The most distinctive feature was unquestionably the serpentine 'hair' that rose up fitfully from the back of the skull to peer querulously at the heroes.  When the creature spoke, the lips moved out of synch with the voice, which came by a tinny, mechanical tone from inside the suit itself. "Traveler!" it exclaimed, even that mechanical voice full of something like awe. "I am Irdonozur of the Space People. Long we have awaited our first contact with an advanced species. And you are so many species at once!" declared the alien, pointing first to Gaian Knight, then Tiamat, then Paige and Kit, and then more broadly at the group behind them. "We came to this planet by interstellar gravitic voyage. How did you come to be here?" 

[Avenger Assembled]

"We'll run some tests with these blood samples once we get back to the present, but right now it looks like Crime FOILED - Dromiceiomimus may have been the fastest dinosaur, but they still only topped out at 40 miles an hour, even when we stole their eggs. I guess Dr. Dromiceiomimus may be a mutate after all. This is Fast-Forward, signing off." Richard handed the hand-held camera over to his son so Thoughtspeed could sign off too and stretched his legs. The morning's run had been enjoyable enough - he and Will had run up onto the mainland of North America, down in the lower foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, and found a Dromiceiomimus colony pretty early in their search. They were resting on a rockface high above the tropical pine tree jungle, eating the lunch that Paige had packed for them. 

 

The distant star that was the oncoming asteroid was an unpleasant reminder of what lay behind what had otherwise been a pretty rad father-son bonding day. They hadn't seen any of the sentient dinosaurs up north - maybe they were all down in the tropics. This whole forest'll be on fire in a couple of days. Jeez. "You know your nana took me back here the first time," he commented. "She and August Roman were doing that thing in Lemuria with the giant gemstones. We oughta bring her back a souvenir." 

[Fox]

"We are - ah, largely - one species," Gaian Knight explained, glancing sidelong at Tiamat. She snorted, but didn't try to correct him; no sense in breaking her human form now. "Some of our people have...unique gifts. We used them to travel a very long time to come here and study this place, hoping to learn from it and take that knowledge back with us before it is destroyed by a natural disaster."

It was at least mostly true, and he did his best to not seem deceitful - and when he chuckled, it was with genuine humor. "I have to admit, we're a little surprised to have run into you, he admitted, rubbing the back of his neck. "We weren't even expecting a local group of primitive reptile people in the area - you arriving as well caught us off-guard. I am called Gaian Knight, and these are some of my colleagues, including the scientists and documenters we're here to help in gathering information."

[KnightDisciple]

"We'll run some tests with these blood samples once we get back to the present, but right now it looks like Crime FOILED - Dromiceiomimus may have been the fastest dinosaur, but they still only topped out at 40 miles an hour, even when we stole their eggs. I guess Dr. Dromiceiomimus may be a mutate after all. This is Fast-Forward, signing off." Richard handed the hand-held camera over to his son so Thoughtspeed could sign off too and stretched his legs. The morning's run had been enjoyable enough - he and Will had run up onto the mainland of North America, down in the lower foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, and found a Dromiceiomimus colony pretty early in their search. They were resting on a rockface high above the tropical pine tree jungle, eating the lunch that Paige had packed for them. 

 

The distant star that was the oncoming asteroid was an unpleasant reminder of what lay behind what had otherwise been a pretty rad father-son bonding day. They hadn't seen any of the sentient dinosaurs up north - maybe they were all down in the tropics. This whole forest'll be on fire in a couple of days. Jeez. "You know your nana took me back here the first time," he commented. "She and August Roman were doing that thing in Lemuria with the giant gemstones. We oughta bring her back a souvenir." 

"They're pretty nimble, too, not just fast. They were practically dancing while we were herding them around. This is Thoughtspeed, signing off."

 

With that, the young man turned off the camera and breathed a sigh of relief. The smile on his face fell away as he started munching on his food. 

 

"What, you thinking we could chip off a gemstone fragment or something? Isn't that a long ways away? I mean, it's a cool idea, I guess."

 

His heart didn't really seem in the conversation, though his stomach seemed to be in the meal pretty well. 

[Avenger Assembled]

"It is a shame this people will die," agreed Irdonozur. "In this galaxy, in all our ages of exploration, we are the first people to have left their world and found others - some may join us in their time, but so many others have fallen and been lost. We have seen plague, and war, and resource depletion, but a natural disaster, with none to blame but the <deity> is terrible to witness. But if it is not witnessed, then this people will be forgotten." The other Space People, still in their suits, nodded a silent agreement. They were removing their helmets now too, each one that same hauntingly familiar triple-eyed, snake-haired form that bespoke creatures long gone from the world - though ones that had left a legacy behind. 

 

"Are you from one of the clouds?" Irdonozur inquired of Gaian Knight. "Or the great cluster..." It began to point in the direction of the blue sky overhead, no doubt indicating something in deep space, before it shook its head - hair-snakes seeming to hiss and sniff at each other. "No matter. All that can be determined later. What matters is that the great work has been completed." Was that a smile in that alien face, joy in that mechanical voice? "After generations of searching, we are not alone in the universe!" 

 

"May I scan you?" A green-skinned one was studying Mali with fascination, bending down from its seven-foot-height on a backwards-bent knee to wave a crescent-shaped instrument over her body. "Irdonozur," it exclaimed excitedly after a few moments. "They are bi-gendered! And endothermic!" It was hard to tell, but was that a young one's joyous voice at the sight of a new discovery?  

[Blue Rose]

Composure is a virtue.

 

Especially during the masking of aliens as disgusting as some of the worse demons Sam's seen in her life.

 

These... people are guests.  Sort of.  And gagging on sight is rude.  Do not be rude to guests.

 

She measures her words, wanting to ask all kinds of questions; she hasn't met many free aliens who weren't trying to kill or exploit her.  But wibbly wobbly, timey wimey laws tend to interfere.  Can't exactly tell them about future Earth, and about Dis, and about...

 

"Well, if it's such a tragedy, why not help them?  You could save them!"

 

Also, that.  Saying that is probably a bad idea.

[Electra]

Paige still had her camera in her hand, holding it in her palms with the viewfinder pointed up so as to make it look as nonthreatening and unweaponlike as possible. "You're welcome to scan us as long as it's nothing invasive," she said graciously. "We're sensitive to many types of radiation, though, so please have a care. Do you mind if we continue photographing you?" She held up her camera. "Recording visual images and sounds for later playback, so we can share them with others of our kind. It's our mission here, to learn and record so we can educate others." As she spoke, she reached out tentatively with her mind, trying to determine whether the nonthreatening and excited attitude was real or a facade.

 

As she tried, guilt had her sending out a quick message to her men. ~You should probably come back now. We've encountered sentient aliens of some sort. No hostilities so far, so be nice and don't come in hot.~

[Avenger Assembled]

Richard processed that fast as lightning, immediately leaping up and taking his son's hand. If it was dinosaurs with spaceships, Paige would have said something and that meant this crazy day was just getting crazier. As messed up as the situation was, he felt a moment of real pride as he took his boy's hand. What other parent could possibly do things like this with their kid? ~There in six.~ With roughly a thousand miles between them, he and Will could be back in about five minutes - faster if they hurried. "Let's go," he said to Will, a moment before father and son took off across the tropical landscape like twin bolts of lightning. ~They teach you anything about aliens in that school of yours? Any aliens in dinosaur times?~ Lacking any formal education himself, Richard had no idea what space had been like sixty-five million years earlier - though he wondered if anyone else did.

 

----- 

 

The aliens went about their scans with fascination, all of them finally removing their helmets and letting themselves be filmed. Their alien look, from the tentacles to the three eyes to the great height, might have made them intimidating if not for the joy that practically radiated from them - a joy that was almost overpowering when Paige opened her mind. It was as if they'd never had cause to learn to filter their feelings from each other, or from other sapients. It was hard to tell what fascinated them more as they ran their scanning devices - Kit with her mystical tattoo, Frances the assistant director (who had been born Francis), Tiamat (who had always been Tiamat), or Paige herself. Neither Paige's psychic powers nor Kit's magic seemed to trip any triggers for them - active use of their abilities got scanners waved at them, but the Space People themselves seemed far more delighted than unnerved. 

 

"We could divert the asteroid," agreed Sirohthajed, the green alien who had been studying Mali as she looked over at Kit, "but to what end? If we prevented all disasters and interfered with all worlds, then there would be no galaxy, no aliens like you to greet us. There would only be us, and our slaves, those who we have made, forever. Why, what do your worlds do when primitives are faced with destruction like this?"  

[KnightDisciple]

Will blinked at the mental message from his mother, before finishing the last of his food in a couple of eye-blinks. Just long enough for his father to stand up and start gearing himself for the big run back. The young speedster cleaned up his trash (not that it would overly matter, but habits were habits) and stood next to his father. He smiled as he and his father took off across the land at blazing speeds.

 

~Not in particular. I mean, they went over a couple aliens we know about, but mostly just the Lor, the Stellar Khanate, and then things like the Curator and Gorgon.~

 

Then again basically everyone knew about the Gorgon.

 

~There were never fossil records found of aliens visiting Earth in this day and age. No one really thought they had, but it wasn't an ironclad thing; just not something they thought about, I guess. One of those things nobody knows. Well. Knew. We know. Now.~

[Thunder King]

Mali didn't say anything when they started scanning her. They didn't seem hostile, just curious. After all, if she were a scientist, she'd probably be as fascinated about them as they were her.

 

"It's unfortunate." She said. "But life has it's way of doing things. A cycle, a line of succession from era to era." She looked down, almost sad for a moment. "Life is a delicate balance, and if we disrupt that balance, who knows what kind of things will happen. I've read A Sound of Thunder. Butterfly effect, bad things can happen when you mess with things. But, we can honor their existence and history by observing them to make sure that history doesn't forget they were here."

[Fox]

Tiamat growled when they scanned her - a sound far too deep to be coming from a humanoid even her size - but she apparently didn't want to be the only one to turn the aliens away, putting up with the invasion to her privacy as best she could manage.

Gaian Knight, on the other hand, frowned a bit at talk of the way of things...but couldn't quite manage to counter the point. "As to your broader question," he answered instead, putting his hands in his coat pockets, "when those less fortunate than us are in danger, we try to help them as best we can. It's...an imperfect ideal, admittedly; we're a diverse bunch, and some are more willing to help than others. And sometimes it's just not always possible," he added, glancing up at a threat that wasn't quite close enough for him to feel. "But many of us do what we can, when we can, if it's doable without causing further harm."

[Avenger Assembled]

The arrival of the Cline men got the Space People's attention as well, briefly causing the aliens to draw into a tight triangle before an explanation that the hypersonic new arrivals were friendly seemed to satisfy them almost at once. ~Keep an eye on things~, Richard told his son. ~Make sure your friends don't harsh anybody's vibe~ before going to join his wife beneath the shade of one of the overhanging pine trees. "I came in slow!" he objected, seeing the look on her face. "We were barely supersonic coming in. They must have tracked us. Brainwaves clear?" he asked her, their long-established code phrase for checking the security of telepathic communication. 

 

~Thinking dinosaurs, aliens...I knew this would work! This is going to be the best show we've ever made.~ he teased with a smile behind the thought. ~Assuming we don't screw this up, that is.~ The aliens were very interested in the new arrivals, scanning Will and inquiring about how his speed worked, their growing excitement like a building wave in the air, one of the many layers of anticipation that fell across the scene. ~We got great footage in the mountain run, everything we could have wanted. Is it just me, or do these guys look like you know who?~ The crew, all around them, was keeping busy - the cameras were running and directly uploading to the solar-powered data storage units at the campsite, the better to make sure that absolutely nothing of humanity's first encounter with aliens was missed. 

[KnightDisciple]

"Well, see, apparently my body builds up a huge excess of kinetic energy, right? And I'm able to harness that. That's how I move so fast. My mind is more powerful than average, too, which is part of what helps control that, and part of what lets me do a few other things."

 

Here he shows off his conjured blades, giving them a couple of twirls, even allowing the aliens to scan them and so forth.

 

"These babies are focused kinetic energy. Sort of like how light is both a particle and a wave and sort of neither one? Same thing here, it seems. I don't understand all the science behind it, I just know that my body makes the energy, and my mind harnesses it."

 

Talking about how awesome his powers are is a good distraction from the frustration that there's nothing that can be done for the village of sapient beings just a few dozen miles away. 

[Avenger Assembled]

The aliens studied and scanned the group for over an hour, not seemingly affected by the high heat and humidity. "We must return to our vessel and communicate with the homeworld," said Irdonozur. "You have made this a great day for our people. Long will we remember the place where we met the first peoples like us..." Its snaky hair seemed to flutter in the air as the 'heads' turned to focus briefly on the distant dinosaur city, "...even if it came with tragedy. Thank you; all of you. We will return when we have finished." With that the trio gathered together again in their triangular formation and vanished back up into their ship with the same burst of static - and the ship itself, a few moments later, seemed to spin on its complicated axis before vanishing as silently as it had appeared. It was hard to know if their guests had actually left. 

[Electra]

Paige blew out a breath and finally put down her camera, shaking out the arm that had gone numb from an hour of filming. She didn't usually pick up a camera herself, but in this case, there'd been a lot to document, and no second takes. "Okay guys, you got all that?" she asked her crew half-humorously.

 

Frank the director seemed to come out of a sort of trance state. "Hell yes," he said with great enthuslasm, looking as though he were about to hug Kelsey the boom mike operator. "Let's get to the editing tent and back everything up twice, then start in on some preliminary editing. This isn't just a special episode anymore. We're looking at miniseries, maybe even a feature-length documentary here. God, I wish we had IMAX gear!" He raced off toward the editing tent, the rest of the crew trailing after like excited ducklings. 

 

"Why don't we have some lunch?" Paige suggested to the others. "There's not much else we can do right now, and I don't know about anyone else, but I'm famished." 

[KnightDisciple]

Will had gone into his tent to change out of his "work uniform" into a short-sleeved shirt and some loose training pants. He wore a larger mask than he normally sported under his helmet, one that covered his face down to his cheekbones, as well as a hat and a bandana/sweatband. It was a bit unconventional, but it let him air out the self-cleaning costume just a bit (morphic molecules were wonderful things sometimes).

 

He gave his mother a faint smile at the suggestion of lunch, before speaking up, a hint of snark showing through.

 

"Is it beans again? Or do we get something a step above MREs to celebrate today's historic moment?"

[Avenger Assembled]

The film crew concentrated on the technical side of the project over lunch, gathering together excitedly to hammer out exactly how they'd film the Space People on a return visit - or if they made it onto their spaceship! Those not talking about the aliens were poring over the dinosaur footage, both taken that day and yesterday, and all in all it wasn't hard to figure out exactly why Supercrime! was one of the hottest career destinations at the Discovery Channel. Since none of them generally did much on the technical side of things, that left the superheroes (and the superhosts) around a snuffed campfire to eat their lunch and discuss their situation. For his part, Richard was feeling unusually thoughtful, the kind of introspection that was usually his wife's department occupying a significant portion of his fast-moving mind. 

 

"Our friends up there have probably scuppered any hope of us taking the raptors," he finally said, his MRE still in one hand. He looked at the others. "If they are, you know, I don't think we'd better let them see us go back the way we came. That's not something anybody needs to know about." 

[Fox]

"There's still some meat left on my brunch if you aren't happy with your military rations," Taimat said to Will, though the number of teeth in her smile called the selflessness of the offer into question. "It'll have cooled down a bit, and some scavengers are probably picking parts of it clean by now, but I guarantee it's fresher than whatever's in your little box there."

Gaian Knight nodded soberly at Richard's words, picking thoughtfully at his own MRE. "Agreed, so far as not telling them more than we have to. It's an odd feeling, considering who they are, but I'm not sure we have a lot of choices; there's changing things, and then there's changing things."

He sighed, rubbing the back of his neck. "When or if an opportunity to help the raptor people comes up, though, my vote is still firmly on the side of taking that opportunity, if we can. Goodness knows how, at this point, but...."

[Blue Rose]

Sam sits by the once-fire brooding, visibly becoming more and more frustrated with the group's inaction. Her new little dinosaur friend sitting in her lap helps her keep her cool as she runs her fingers across Lucy's scales. Still, when her host starts getting all defeatist again, she can't stay quiet.

"Alright. So the aliens can't see it. That just means the aliens can't see it. Easy. Dazzle 'em with the left hand so they don't see the right do the job; it's the oldest trick in the book. All we need is a distraction. And we even have a giant meteor coming to erase all evidence of our distraction after we're gone."

[Electra]

Paige fished a slightly crushed single-serve packet of cookies from the bottom of her camera bag and tossed it to Will with a faint smile. "There you go kiddo, the last, or maybe first, chocolate on earth. Mazel tov." She settled in with her own plate of less-than-inspired camping food balanced on her knees. "Even if we find a way around the space visitors," she pointed out, "we still haven't addressed all other problems that would arise trying to take thousands of dinosaurs into the present day. There's no feasible way to move them all with the time and equipment we have, and if we go back to the present and try again earlier, we risk splinching ourselves from the paradox or getting Dr. Tomorrow and the time police after us again." 

 

She took a bite of her meal and looked meditatively up at the sky. "It's a shame we can't get the aliens to take the raptors with them," she mused offhandedly. "Solve both our problems at once, and what a story."

[Thunder King]

"Yeah, but, who's to say where they'd end up." Mali said, shaking her head. "I think we should probably let nature take it's course, but I honestly am not sure. If we took them to the present day, do we know where we could put them? What if they have some sort of disease that they easily ignore but humans would be at severe risk of? I don't know what I think we should do, I do wish I knew how to help."

[KnightDisciple]

"The ideal solution-"

 

William stops to munch on a cookie.

 

"Would be to find someplace we could put them. Not just on our Earth, you know? There's nowhere that's really remote enough. But, like, another planet, alternate dimension, big space station, something. If we could, like, knock them out for transit or something, even better, but that's unlikely. But basically try to get them to someplace they can settle back down and do their thing, and there's not an immediate risk of a big conflict between them and modern-day humans or whatnot. Maybe we could ask the alien guys if they know a place? I realize they're all about natural order and stuff but surely there's some sort of middle ground. No way we need to, like, turn these guys into suit-and-hat-wearing raptor-men in a half-dozen years or anything. As awesome as I personally think that would be."

[Avenger Assembled]

The Space People returned early the next morning, appearing scattered through the camp around the time the sunlight reached the camp. An early riser since he'd become a father, Richard was up early to greet them. "Hello, visitors! Come in, make yourself at home; we're gonna have a totally radical day together!" Explaining that particular turn of phrase, something he was happy to do with great and elaborate enthusiasm that never actually broached the subject of what planet they originally hailed from, helped make sure nobody was taken by surprise by the new arrivals. Friendly aliens or not, they all had a job to do - even if that job had just gotten a whole lot bigger (since aliens, especially these aliens, was just as big a story as sentient dinosaurs.) 

 

When everyone was all together and had 'eaten their diurnal cooked meat and vegetable products', Irdonozur asked to make an announcements. "My friends," he said in that mechanical translator voice, "the homeworld weeps with joy at the news that we are not alone in the universe. All our hopes have been proven true by you, my friends." It was hard to tell if weeping was a translation artifact or not, given the way the Space People's voices (and faces) seemed to work. "After you have left this planet, we would invite you to our own. We can be there at great speed with gravitic drive, and you would be hailed as beacons of hope for the future." His snaky hair-tentacles waggled around his head excitedly at the thought.