Stepping into the American advanced headquarters, Agent Sam felt a shiver run through his entire being as an alien within stared at him. The alien was humanoid, but large. Well over two metres tall… probably a good eight feet, at least? Though the height wasn’t the end of it. The musculature of it was just off enough from a human to be unsettling, and the eyes…

Pure black eyes, large and set in a pale face that felt as if a cross between a shark and a skull was staring at him.

And the teeth, when it smiled. Sharp and terrifying. Surely a predator of some sort.

“So,” the alien said in a surprisingly cultured sounding voice. “We’re all here, then? Can the mission begin?”

“The SEALs are still a few minutes from the paradrop point,” a woman said.

Right, she was Doctor Montgomery. The American scientist believed to be in charge of the whole mess. Agent Lee didn’t like her, and Agent Sam could guess why. She gave off a furiously annoying sense of superiority. At least to everyone other than the large alien, who seemed to give even her the willies.

They were directed to a screen, which was offering a live feed from two SEALs body cameras, showing an aircraft full of Navy paratroopers. They all seemed rather more armed than Agent Sam thought they had any need to be. They were supposed to just be looking for the remains of an alien spaceship that crashed centuries ago. Sure, maybe there were some bears out there, but grenade launchers seemed like overkill.

After a few minutes a secondary screen showed they were over the energy signature, and the SEALs made their jump. The descent towards a clearing seemed fine enough. The land was boggy, but that was expected for Northern Ontario. The area made the Netherlands seem hilly and dry.

The men then made their way through the woods, heading towards the energy signature. It was expected to just be a matter of trudging across the landscape for ten or fifteen minutes. Until the radio crackled to life, someone saying they’d seen movement. The camera turned, and left them seeing a vaguely humanoid shape in the woods. 

A soldier asked if it was a bigfoot, but the alien man in the room shook his head.

“Looked like a Kobaroian in camouflage to me. See the horns?” he said. “I suppose that makes sense. As herbivores they could survive out in the woods… and they live long enough these would likely only be the grandchildren of those who crashed.”

Agent Sam didn’t want to believe they’d somehow missed an alien colony within Canada, but… it was a big country. And the extra terrestrial monitoring taskforce had never gotten nearly enough funding. A couple families could probably keep themselves hidden out there from anything less than boots on the ground.

“They’re hostiles?” one of the American naval officers present asked.

The alien man nodded.

“Why are they there?” Agent Lee asked.

“Servants of the usurpers,” the alien said. “Must have gotten separated during the crash.”

Before Lee or Sam could work out anything else to ask, or what was usurped, there was a crackle of plasma from the video feed. The SEALs were under attack, and returning fire. It seemed there were several Kobaroians present, and they’d set up a reasonably efficient ambush.

The Americans, however, had been prepared. The SEALs opened fire with the various heavy weapons they’d brought with them, while a series of support drones that had been escorting the transport plane flew over to offer air support. 

Despite those precautions, the ambush had still left the Americans with losses, even if the opposing side was broken after a reasonably short firefight. The SEALs chased down the fleeing enemies, though the endless woods meant at least a few surely escaped. Even the infrared eyes of the support drones lost track of the Kobaroians. Their camouflage made them hard to pick out, and they may have dunked themselves into muddy bogs as added protection.

Not that they were the primary issue for the Americans. Ottawa would be stuck on the clean up effort. The surviving SEALs focused on tracking down the energy readout. Which led them to a small earthen building that seemed partially influenced by Cree or Ojibwe design ideals, but also partially alien. Within it there was what seemed to be a sort of shrine or altar. A small disk sat upon the wooden dais.

One of the SEALs with the camera feed moved forward to retrieve it. Only for another pair of Kobaroians to burst out of the far wall. Sam knew enough to guess they were females from their height, towering over the SEALs. Both were wearing some sort of armour, which looked aging but still beyond Humanity’s science, and they were armed with plasma weapons as well. 

What happened next was a blur. The leading SEAL was shot, and the second camera was too far back to get a good view. 

Something caused an explosion, however. When the dust settled the Kobaroians and several more SEALs were dead, while the target artifact was shattered into tiny fragments.

Such a small thing, simply destroyed. It didn’t seem worth all the death Agent Sam had just had to watch. Especially when the artifact itself seemed to not actually be a threat. Merely a favour to this alien the Americans were working with. A trade to get him to deal with the threat of the Entity back in Halifax.

“Well… it’s been destroyed, it seems,” Dr. Montgomery said in a flat tone.

“Mhm,” the alien man said. “I had hoped to do it myself, but… this worked.”

“Now then, about your end of the bargain?” Dr. Montgomery said, turning to the alien.

He nodded, turning to walk towards the exit. “I shall engage the M’tethon.”

Dr. Montgomery followed him. “Where is the weapons’ platform? Would it be best if we transport it?”

The large alien turned to look down at her. “It’s here.”

He then pressed his chest, causing what seemed to be liquid metal to spread from his hand. It moved quickly, before his body was covered in a suit that made even the Kobaroian armour from a few minutes earlier seem primitive.

Then, as the humans present watched in shock, he ducked his head to walk through the door. A moment later he shot off into the sky.

“Is he headed to Halifax?” Agent Lee asked.

“I…” Dr. Montgomery muttered.

Agent Lee nodded, pulling out his phone.

---

“Sushi? What is ‘sushi’?” the Entity asked as it followed Tessa across the campus’ quad.

“It’s Japanese food. Sushi itself is stuff wrapped in rice and seaweed. Usually fish,” Tessa explained.

The Entity thought it over for a moment, before making a face. “I don’t think I like the sound of that.”

“Trust me, you like sushi,” Tessa replied, shaking her head a little.

Before she could say anything else her phone began buzzing. As did everyone else’s. Along with most of them making an alarm noise. Tessa pulled hers out, to see it was a call to evacuate the city. With specific instructions not to seek shelter, only to evacuate.

“Is that a test or something?” she mumbled.

“What’s that?” someone called out.

Tessa looked towards them, only to realise they were pointing into the sky behind her. She turned to see something glinting in the sky.

Also, that ‘something’ was moving towards them very quickly. Was it a missile? It seemed too small to be an airplane. 

Before Tessa could work out what it was, the thing had already arrived, slamming into the Entity and carrying it into the side of a nearby building. It had happened too fast for anyone to scream until after the impact. After a chunk of the building collapsed with the impact. 

Several people tried to flee, but at least as many began running towards the half collapsed building. There were shouts about the possibility of people being trapped in the collapse. 

Though Tessa barely registered any of that. She was still processing that the Entity had been beside her one second and then sent flying the next. Now it was buried in rubble, and… and… 

A large figure emerged from the half collapsed building, wearing a glistening silver body suit that covered every centimetre of them. The people who’d rushed forward earlier began backing away, clearly intimidated by the figure, who was surely pushing towards three metres tall.

The Entity crawled out of the rubble next, seeming unaffected by what had just happened.

“What was that for?” the Entity asked.

“What was…” the other figure said, speaking in a rich and masculine sounding voice before reaching a hand to their helmet. 

They pressed something and the helmet… well, it didn’t retract. It… it must have turned transparent? Which would have been proof enough the new arrival wasn’t human on its own. The face beneath, however, was also undeniably alien. Which led to panic in the crowd, most of them beginning to flee.

Now, the being was human-like, but with skin a sort of sickly off white that reminded Tessa of white chocolate. His eyes, as best as she could tell from her distance, seemed to be as black as a shark’s. His hair was just as dark, while his ears seemed pointed?

“Oh,” the Entity said. “One of you.”

“Yes: one of us,” the alien man said. “Your true lord and master.”

The Entity tilted its head. “I don’t remember having one of those.”

“My people defeated you. It cost us our empire, but we did it. Which makes you mine,” he bellowed. “It seems you must be given a reminder of that, however. Which I will be happy to provide.”

“I knew there was more to this,” a voice said near Tessa.

Turning, she realised it was one of the undergrads from her discussion group.

“Didn’t you get that alert message!?” Tessa asked, waving her hands at the younger man.

“Well, yeah, but, look at that. You expect me not to be curious about a conversation between two aliens?”

“If he’s here to fight the Entity then you won’t survive being up here,” Tessa said, trying to shoo him away.

“You’re still here.”

Was she going to have to physically drag him out of here? Wasn’t it obvious that she had a much better reason to be invested than he did? She struggled for words in the face of his irrational stubbornness—only to be distracted by a loud crashing noise.

Turning, she realised the alien man had slammed the Entity into the ground with one of his oversized arms. A string of angry words were flowing from behind his now once more opaque helmet. Whatever he was saying was in an alien language, but Tessa suspected there was little polite about any of it.

The Entity seemed to snarl, before raising its arm and letting out a blast of energy into the alien’s torso. The shining armour he wore seemed to reflect most of it, causing energy to blast out in a chaotic spread around him. The stray beams cut gouges out of the ground and surrounding buildings, though luckily none reached where Tessa was.

At least the force of the blast had still been enough to cause the alien man to stagger back, though he let out a laugh as he did so.

“You see, we’ve been studying your energy signatures while you were sleeping. This armour is designed to defeat you,” he shouted, picking the Entity up by a foot and swinging her through an arc to smash her against the ground once more.

Tessa turned to the undergrad, glaring. “You. Run. Now.”

The young man seemed frozen in fear for a moment, but then gave a slight nod. He made a break for it faster than Tessa had expected.

She also found herself hurrying, though she ran for a nearby boulder to hide behind. She hoped it would be enough to protect her without having to utterly abandon the Entity. Not that she was doing much by staying, but… well, she couldn’t just leave, could she?

Even if staying meant watching this giant abuse the Entity further, smashing her into another building.

“FIGHT ME!” he roared.

The Entity pulled itself out of the rubble and quickly took in the surroundings. It noted Tessa, but also seemed to assess that the university campus was likely mostly evacuated at this point. As such, it gave a small nod.

Then flung itself at the giant with surprising speed. It was its turn to slam him into the ground, dragging him across the courtyard before spinning and flinging him at a building. Despite the force involved, that seemed to do nothing but excite the alien. He burst out of the rubble a moment later.

Floating into the air, he whipped his hands into what almost seemed to be a gesture to cast a magic spell. Reinforcing the impression, a beam of energy then blasted out from in front of him, slamming into the Entity and driving it into the ground.

He then zipped ahead, grabbing it and pulling it out of the trench it had dug with its body. He pivoted, placing his feet on the ground, and hurled the Entity. This time, not into a university building. No, the force sent it well past that. Down University Avenue, smashing through the trees in the centre of the boulevard.

And well out of Tessa’s field of view.