Natalia quickly made her way back to the engineering labs to find Florrie, having changed back into her normal clothes, and was extremely relieved to find her safe and sound, though they barricaded the door again roughly the way it had been before so they’d have an alibi.

The police arrived shortly after, and no-one was permitted to leave campus until they were properly questioned. Natalia and Florrie stuck with their story, and the police seemed to believe it. However, their phones were seized and searched, and there was this one person in a suit with the authorities who approached them once they were done being questioned, speaking in a soothing voice. “What you experienced what a mass hallucination caused by a large-scale gas leak. There were no monsters or superheroes.”

Natalia felt her mind briefly haze over, and somehow, she actually believed what the man was saying. All of that had been way too unreal to be, well, real, right?

“You are under the influence of a mental spellcraft,” NIA spoke in her head, startling her a bit. “I would advise you to go along with the fiction being told to you and take your friend with you. The local authorities appear to be suppressing the knowledge of the paranormal.”

“Um, yeah, I guess that makes sense,” Florrie said beside her, clearly in a daze.

Natalia decided her best bet was to act the same way, trying to hide her shock as she mumbled, “yeah, that was way too unreal…”

The authorities, satisfied with this, let them go - everyone was to go home immediately. Natalia shook off the mental haze, and took Florrie somewhere quiet where they could talk off-campus, finding an alleyway where they’d be alone. “Florrie, that wasn’t a gas leak at all.”

“Huh? Nat, what’re you talking about?” Florrie blinked. “Of course it was…”

“No! Look…” Natalia made sure nobody was around, and suddenly with a flash of light, her rifle appeared from her chest into her hands. “Is this proof enough?”

Florrie blinked, slapped herself, and then felt the rifle with her own hands. “Oh. Oh my God.”

“Yeah,” Natalia said, recalling the rifle into her ‘internal storage’. “I know, it’s super crazy, but that guy back there was casting a spell on us to make us believe otherwise, according to my neural interface AI. There’s a friggin’ coverup going on.”

“Oh my God, yeah, there is. And you’re a superhero now?! Why don’t I get the fancy toys?!” Florrie pouted.

“Apologies for the interruption, but Captain Valitar is ordering you to meet him at your residence,” NIA said in Natalia’s head once again. “There is much to discuss.”

“Well, you might get your wish. The alien pangolin dude wants to meet up at my place,” Natalia said, wincing at Florrie’s indignation. She should’ve figured that her best friend would get jealous about something like this. “Florrie, are you sure you want to get involved in this?”

“DUH! If I can help figure out all this technology and how you can use it better to save the town? I wouldn’t miss it for the world! Besides, those bastards are kidnapping people anyway, I’m safer behind a superheroine,” Florrie grinned.

“I mean. Can’t beat that logic, I guess,” Natalia shrugged.

❖

“So. That happened,” Sonia said, glancing at Prometheus briefly peeking out of Anja’s skin as they walked, having arrived in a quieter part of town on the way to Anja’s place.

“Yeah, sure did,” Anja nodded in agreement.

There wasn’t a lot to say on the matter. Anja found herself and Sonia under the influence of some kind of spell, which thankfully Prometheus shook her out of. It didn’t take much convincing for Sonia to snap out of it as well. Sonia was grumbling about various conspiracies for a while as they left campus - seriously, a gas leak was the oldest cover story in the damn book.

But now Anja was worried that she may have made a mistake by breaking the spell over Sonia. Now that she was a superheroine of some kind, a shiver down her spine came when she thought about what might happen. “Sonia, maybe it’s best you don’t get involved any further than this.”

“How come?” Sonia blinked. “I can keep a secret.”

“It’s not you keeping the secret I’m worried about,” Anja said. “I’m worried about what might happen if the enemy uses-”

Sonia slapped her.

Anja stumbled to the side, rubbing her cheek. Prometheus was laughing in her head. “Man, I like this chick already!”

“Don’t you even start with that bullshit,” Sonia snapped at her, though she was keeping her voice down regardless. “I get why you’re worried, I know, but that whole ‘I gotta keep my friends and loved ones at arms distance to protect them from supervillains’ is overplayed and doesn’t make an iota of sense when supervillains go after loved ones and civilians anyway! Especially not now! This ‘Tenebris Imperatoris’ or whatever the hell he’s called is trying to enslave literally everyone, he won’t give a damn either way!”

Anja grit her teeth. Logically, Sonia was absolutely correct. If their enemy was willing to invade the university to try to capture everyone there, it was likely they didn’t have a lot of scruples to begin with, and would likely fight dirty. But her heart felt otherwise. “I… I don’t want to lose you, too.”

Sonia sighed, and brought her close for a big hug. “I know. I don’t want to lose you, either. But someone’s gotta protect this town. And someone’s gotta keep that person’s head on straight.”

Anja hugged her back, and they spent half a minute in a wordless embrace, before they continued to walk.

Another half a minute later, Sonia decided to change the topic. “So. Who were the other ‘heroines’ who joined in on the fight, you think?”

“Oh, those were my sisters,” Anja replied dryly. “They got their stuff this morning like I did. I dunno who the short dude was, though. I mean, Estella was the one with the sword, are you at all surprised that she’d dress like that?”

“Yeah, fair enough. Your older sister is totally shameless,” Sonia chuckled, shaking her head.

“She wouldn’t have it any other way,” Anja smirked.

❖

“Taking our phones to wipe any evidence is a complete violation of our privacy rights! And since when did they have the authority to alter our perception with magic?!” Jay grumbled indignantly as he started driving, with Estella in the passenger seat as Jay’s car left the car park parking spot. “Unbelievable…”

“You’d know more about the legality of that whole mess than I would,” Estella sighed. She felt somewhat drained after that big fight - likely due to inefficient use of Aether. “I’m sure they have their reasons for what they did, but man that whole thing felt really dodgy.”

“Oh, absolutely,” Jay nodded in agreement, keeping his eyes on the road as he made a turn to exit the car park. “I know the police aren’t flawless, but that was just… Egregious.”

“Maybe,” Estella replied, holding up a hand, and with a single rune, ‘Ahi’ (‘Fire’), a flame formed in her hand, as if her hand was a lit candle. But the flame itself, despite the heat, refused to burn her skin - according to her preliminary knowledge of runes, modern runes were explicitly designed to not affect the user unless the focus of the spell was on oneself. “I still can’t believe I’m a… Wizard? Witch?”

“Mage is the proper term most people use. ‘Magus’ or ‘Wizard’ may also be applicable, perhaps, but the term for a magic-user has no gender distinction, especially considering there is no binary,” Galowye noted to her, back in the form of a sword-shaped necklace.

“Can I become a sword-wielding warrior mage as well?” Jay asked. “If there’s some way I can help, I want to do what I can.”

“I’m afraid there’s only one of me around, there’s no other Arcane Arms available for you to take arms with,” Galowye sighed. “As for the ‘mage’ part, perhaps, but we would need to get you a proper set of runes as well, and as far as I know, only one set was prepared for Estella to use. With the circumstances, though, I’m afraid there might not be much of a chance for you to get one, at least not unless we contact another mage, but those are few and far between on Earth and the rest are on Thaumia.”

“Okay, what the hell is ‘Thaumia’, and what did you mean by ‘circumstances’?” Estella asked warily. She knew ‘Thaumia’ was likely derived from the word ‘Thaumaturgy’, which was about the the working or study of magic.

“That will have to wait until we return home. And don’t worry about your sisters. They’re the other two women who assisted you,” Galowye said. “The three of you have been chosen for the task of stopping this ‘Dark Emperor’ from taking over.”

“Okay, yeah, I guess I kinda figured it was those two,” Estella said.

“Wait, so you knew this was going to happen?!” Jay asked.

“My affiliates and I knew of the evil lurking in Angel Bay’s underbelly, and were preparing to combat it. But we didn’t know about the attack specifically. We needed to rush to prevent the enemy from claiming total victory and capturing Estella and her sisters,” Galowye said. “It was more of a rush job than it should have been, but unfortunately, something else forced us to split our resources.”

Estella would’ve asked further questions, but as they came up to her house, she saw her sisters, along with Sonia and Florrie, standing out in the front yard. “Oh boy.”

❖

Everyone agreed to postpone the discussion until they were inside the house and able to talk in private.

Sitting at the kitchen table and munching on some chips, however, was Captain Valitar, who casually waved to the stunned group as they came in, sitting in some kind of robotic exoskeleton about the size of an average human. “Ladies, gentlemen. Everyone take a seat (or don’t, I guess, that’s fine too if you want), we’ve got a lotta shit to talk about.”

He wasn’t alone. Standing next to him was and insectoid person, and they could see that he had four legs, and four arms, along with a pair of wings. He vaguely looked like some kind of mix between an ant and a bee. He appeared to have six eyes, but the most frontal set looked surprisingly humanlike. “Do not be alarmed. I am Agent Garthro Beathwe, at your service. I am a Zevurn of the Bethaxin Hive.”

“So are they magical creatures or aliens?” Jay asked, looking wary as he sat down.

“Aliens. Definitely aliens… I think,” Florrie said, once again looking flabbergasted, and a little creeped out despite Gartho’s assurances. “Was not expecting the bug centuar person…”

“I’m a Piancar, and yes, we’re from off-world,” Tharen said matter-of-factly, “grew up on the homeworld, Threese, formerly Threesian Special Forces, now a Galactic Defense Force officer.”

“Huh, that’s pretty neat,” Sonia remarked, sitting down as well.

The three sisters glanced at each other, before sitting down as well. Natalia was already aware of Tharen’s nature as an offworlder, but Garthro was a new face, and this was all new information for Estella and Anja. Estella spoke up first, “let’s get down to brass tacks, what the bloody hell is going on here?”

“You already met the bad guy making a mess in this town. But I’ll let our superiors explain for themselves,” Tharen said, turning around and activating some kind of device. Everyone turned as two life-sized holograms appeared.

The two figures sitting there were bipedal and humanoid in proportions, but with the distinct difference being that they looked reptilian. Their feet had four claws each, they had thick tails over a meter long, had notable snouts, and their heads had ‘hair’ in the form of feathers. They both wore futuristic jumpsuits with cybernetic components, though the male had a robe and the female wore a lab coat.

The male was tall, well-toned and had orange scales and blue feathers, along with brown eyes. The female had long, vibrant pink feathers, along with fuchsia scales and piercing blue eyes, and was somewhat slinky and voluptuous, and had breasts despite looking reptilian.

The male figure spoke first. “Greetings, whoever may be listening to this message. We are Miama, representatives of the living planet, Akasha. We have come on behalf of Akasha and the Galactic Defense Force to help protect this world from the evils that threaten to enslave it, and worse, potentially seek to enslave the galaxy. I am Vol’Dathar Ditanthas, archmage. And this is my wife, my soulmate through the centuries, Sal’Arzia.”

“It’s a pleasure, dears,” Sal’Arzia smiled, waving.

“Estella, Anja, Natalia, hopefully if you are listening to this, you have received your respective gifts. I wish we could do more, including mentor you three in person, but unfortunately fortune does not smile upon us this day,” Vol’Dathar spoke with some notable regret in his tone. “Not only did we identify that the insidious threat in your town was planning to attack your university campus, but we were also forewarned of something much worse that we needed to dedicate our resources towards as well.”

Gartho stopped the holographic recording, “yeah, you know that huge hexagonal pattern in the sky? That was our doing too. To keep out something even worse than what you guys are dealing with now.”

Florrie turned to Tharen with a grim frown. “Wait, you mean the thing in the sky is some kind of planetary energy shield?”

“Got it in one, missy,” Tharen said. “It’s high up enough in orbit to prevent satellite interference, and shouldn’t interfere with wireless signals, but yeah, your whole planet is encased in a shield array for its own protection.”

He continued playing the holographic recording as everyone focused on it. Sal’Arzia spoke next, as more holograms appeared, showing interstellar warships and an alien species that resembled a muscular female bull-like centaur with prominent horns. “The Galactic Congress is currently at war with the Salvron Empire. The Salvron are a hermaphroditic warlike species with powerful pheromones that were originally meant for mating rituals, but turned out to also be capable of enthralling other sapient species, allowing the Salvron to enslave those who are yet to be inoculated. And we have been alerted that a Salvron force is headed for Earth, both to enslave it entirely and secure it as a strategic position in the war effort, as Earth would be a valuable galactic access point. This cannot be allowed to happen. A GDF fleet is en route to intercept, but until they can relieve us, we must focus on keeping the Salvron from invading the planet, which means erecting and maintaining a planetary barrier, which fortunately we had the foresight to establish when we arrived.”

“I wish we could send more than just Captain Valitar, Agent Beathwe and the gifts we prepared, but our hands are tied. Our only hope is that this will be enough for you to overcome the challenges that lie ahead. Good luck, and stay strong,” Vol’Dathar said, as the message ended.

A whole minute of silence flooded the room, with everyone in stunned silence as they processed what exactly they just heard.

It was Natalia who broke the silence. “Jesus Christ.”

“I’ll say amen to that, sis,” Anja nodded.

“Our town is being attacked by a supernatural force at the same time as the whole planet is being invaded by an alien empire, and both of them want to enslave us all,” Jay said, collapsing into his chair and putting his head in his hands. “What the ever-loving fuck.”

“Yep, that’s the long and short of it,” Tharen nodded in agreement. “This was supposed to be a long-term program with more people involved, but when three of our top potential candidates turned out to be in immediate danger and the Salvron were coming? We had to prepare quickly. They ended up sending me down with the goods.”

“Wait, top candidates? We were hand-picked to be soldiers or something?” Anja asked.

“In a sense,” Gartho explained. “We were in the process of setting the ground work for a program to train humans to protect the planet against various threats - Salvron, the demons in Thaumia, whatever mess is going down in Gaia, and so on. You three were supposed to be part of a much larger task force. But now the Salvron are here, and this town is already in danger, so it’s just us.”

As everyone sat back down, the three sisters were in very similar moods. A great responsibility had been thrust upon them out of nowhere, with little to no support as far as they were remotely aware, against an enemy they knew little about and another terrible enemy looming off-world, with the prospect of an overwhelming force descending upon the planet if the shield failed.

The price of failure was high. But they thought about what would happen to their family if they did fail, and steeled themselves.

“Well. Nothing else to it,” Estella said. “We can’t just stand by and do nothing.”

“If we’re the only ones who can do this, we ain’t got any other choices,” Anja agreed.

Natalia nodded, casting aside her anxiety. “We’re not gonna let this ‘Tenebris Imperatoris’ guy take over our town.”

“See, now there’s the spirit,” Tharen grinned. “Alright, chins up, folks. We’ll do our best to explain what you wanna know, if I can. So lay the questions on me.”

“Well, what the hell is ‘Thaumia’ and ‘Gaia’? The Galactic Congress and the GDF are self-explanatory, but those…” Sonia asked first.

“I can answer the first better. Thaumia is a sub-world of Earth, specifically a magical copy of Earth created by the ‘old gods’ around the time of the birth of Christ - a ‘flip-side’ of Earth, if you will, on another plane of existence. It’s where most of the ‘supernatural elements’ of the world went in the intervening centuries, and where humans also settled, establishing civilisations in their own right,” Galowye explained, as Estella took him out and changed him into full sword form. “Unfortunately, due to errors made during its construction, weak demons were able to get in by themselves, and through building hellgates, they were able to summon their stronger superiors, initiating a war that has been going on for over a millennium.”

“A talking sword? That’s dope,” Sonia said. “Also bloody hell the internet speculation was true.”

“And ‘Gaia’? That’s a name originating from one one of the primordial deities of Greek myth, basically the divine spirit of the Earth itself,” Estella inquired.

“That we have much less concrete information about,” Gartho sighed, his mandibles clicking together in frustration. “It’s apparently a subterranean sub-world also on a pseudo-plane where an entire civilisation of monster-people live. We don’t think anything there is an immediate threat, but its queen, Echidna, has something of a long-standing grudge against humankind, apparently. We believe ‘Project Prometheus’ has connections to it, though the details are unclear at present, but we’re fairly certain someone from Gaia was bankrolling it.”

“Subterranean what?” Jay asked. “Good grief, that’s a mouthful.”

“Echidna is the name of the mother of all monsters in Greek myth… Well, mother of most of the monsters,” Florrie noted. “Husband to Typhon, who Zeus narrowly defeated.”

“And defeated by Heracles in Ragnarok, with the aid of Thor and Sun Wukong,” Galowye interjected. “Shortly after they defeated Jörmungandr.”

"Dude. Ragnarok in reality sounds way more metal than the myths said it would be,” Sonia said, in hushed awe.

“Ragnarok was a catastrophe, young lady. The countless divine beings engaging in a war that was nearly cataclysmic was bad enough, but then the demons got involved,” Galowye said sternly. “Countless Arcane Arms were either destroyed in the battle or self-destructed to prevent themselves from falling into the hands of the enemy. My former Arcane Knight, Sir Xandar Reach, was one of the few old knights standing at the end of it all, but…” He paused. Estella could feel the sorrow emanating from him. “He was infected by a daemonseed by one of demonic royals. He couldn’t purge himself of it, so with the last of his power, he cast me to the bottom of the ocean on Earth, with a holy barrier to keep him away for when he would succumb. I was dormant ever since, until the Miama discovered me.”

“We’re getting a bit off-track here, folks,” Tharen interrupted them. “Long story short, the two Miama are in charge of a special program initiated by the GDF to not only bolster Earth’s defences in case of Salvron invasion, but also to hopefully prevent Earth itself from becoming a threat to galactic civilisation as a whole.”

“Hold on, are you saying the GDF is worried that humanity might become a threat?” Natalia asked. “Do you guys not have a ‘Prime Directive’?”

“Humankind itself… Much lower on the priority list. It’s possible, sure, but not likely. Chances are you might wipe yourselves out via nuclear war or climate change before that happens,” Tharen said rather dryly. “No, we’re worried about the demons first, and what Echidna might be up to second. Especially the demons. If they took over Earth? We’d have to completely quarantine the planet and destroy anything that tries to leave the atmosphere, or if necessary, just straight up glass the whole planet.”

Tharen paused, evidently allowing that to sink in before he continued. “And we do have a ‘Prime Directive’ (yes, I’ve watched that stuff too), but potential intervention is on a case by case basis. In this case, High Command decided that the need for intervention outweighed all other concerns.”

Gartho took over after that pause. “Back to the matter at hand… Look, the long and short of this is that you three were supposed to have additional support, and perhaps even be accompanied by other humans who would have been recruited into the program, some who were already more qualified, but right now? Our hands are tied. My apologies.”

Another pause permeated the room as all of this sunk in.

There were mixed feelings on this from all three sisters. The impending responsibility weighed heavily on all three of them, though they had differing levels of enthusiasm when it came to accepting it. They had no real training, the people who were supposed to provide that training being occupied by even more dire circumstances, and they didn’t get a chance to refuse in favour of someone else more qualified handling this crisis. And the authorities were trying to keep things under wraps, leaving it questionable whether they could be trusted either.

The sisters ultimately had little choice. They couldn’t just walk away from this. Technically they could, but… They had the power to do something about the evil threatening the town. To do nothing would be utterly reprehensible.

“I think we have the general gist of things,” Natalia sighed, trying to ignore the butterflies in her stomach. “What matters is that we’ve been bestowed with great power, in hopes that we might be able to stop a threat we barely know anything about from taking over our town, or even the world.”

“Well, at least we’ll have time to do some investigation and training. The ‘gas leak’ has caused classes to be suspended for at least a week,” Anja said dryly as she leaned back in her chair.

“Maybe it’d be best for each of us to not travel around without the company of at least one of the Kendricks. Otherwise who knows when those shadowy monsters might try to jump us,” Florrie gulped.

Tharen suddenly pulled a collection of small coin-sized devices from his uniform, and scattered them on the table. “That won’t be necessary. Each of you take one of these, and keep them on you at all times. If something paranormal is nearby that ain’t us, they’ll buzz to alert you, and Gartho and I will know immediately.”

“Would there be any chance of teaching us all magic?” Jay asked. “Seems simple enough if it’s just about runes…”

“Unfortunately we’re not mages and don’t have the experience to create new runes,” Gartho said. “It’s not as simple as just writing down some arcane symbols, I’m afraid. The Librarians would know more, especially Vol, but they’re obviously unavailable.”

“Ah, that’s… A shame,” Jay said. Estella noted the tone of his response - had he been hoping to actually learn how to use magic?

“And I’m guessing we don’t have the time, resources or expertise to make more symbiotes like Prometheus,” Sonia noted, counting down with her fingers. Gartho’s nod was enough of an answer for her. “Yeah, figured.”

“Mostly because the aliens didn’t make me. I was some illegal experiment that the aliens basically stole while making it look like I broke out,” Prometheus said, speaking up. “Didn’t get around to making facilities to make more of me.”

“Why not just make us all cyborgs like Nat here?” Sonia asked, raising an eyebrow as she took one of the devices regardless, as did the other humans at the table.

“Because we ain’t got the extra resources needed to do the same procedure, and we don’t have more equipment,” Tharen replied succinctly. “It ain’t just weapons, she’s storing vehicles in those nano-compression capsules inside of her body as well.”

Natalia squeaked in panic at hearing that. “WHAT?! If even one of those capsules are activated inside my body-”

“Calm down, miss, they won’t,” Tharen said reassuringly. “Sal’Arzia’s a bit nutty sometimes, but her tech is rock solid.”

Gartho nodded in confirmation, “those capsules, even if they were somehow activated by some remote chance, are intrinsically designed to release their contents only if there is available space not occupied by existing solid matter.”

That lifted a huge weight off of Natalia’s chest. Such safety measures did make a lot of sense, at least. It was still very unnerving to be carrying what was essentially an entire armoury in her torso. On the flipside, she had an entire armoury that she could potentially make use of, which intrigued her to no end.

“As much as I’d like you to elaborate on the technology, I’ve got other questions,” Florrie spoked up. “Gartho, where were you while the battle was going on? Tharen was down there fighting, but we didn’t see you at all.”

“I was piloting our ship and ensuring that the payloads reached Estella and Anja in time,” Gartho said.

Before Florrie could raise any further questions, Tharen immediately cut her off. “Okay, that’s enough Q&A for one afternoon. I’m sure all of you need a bit of rest after that mess.”

“One more thing, actually… Should we approach the government?” Jay asked. “They might actually give the girls legal cover to do their, well, superheroics. But we don’t know how far they’re willing to go to cover up the paranormal.”

“We’ll look into that, just keep quiet and try to stay under the radar,” Tharen said. “We’ll be on our ship, patrolling the skies. And yes, it’s cloaked. Just go home, and recuperate.”

“I personally think getting civilians involved like this isn’t ideal, but having more eyes on the ground is probably for the best,” Gartho admitted. “Be assured that you should be safe on your way home. The enemy is routed and will more certainly need time to recover before they can strike again. We’ll contact all of you again later.”

“Arright,” Jay said, as they all stood up. Estella was kind of surprised when he came over to her and hugged her. “I’m rooting for you, Estella, but please, be careful.”

Estella smiled, hugging him back. “I’ll try, Jay.” Knowing he was at least there to cheer her on from the sidelines was comforting.

“Aren’t you two supposed to be exes?” Sonia said with a lightly teasing tone.

Jay cleared his throat, his face going red as he let go. “We’re still friends, though…”

“Yeah, I know,” Sonia smiled, turning to Anja, raising a closed hand to her, “you got this, Anj. Wish I could fight alongside you, but guess I gotta play the role of being one of the normies while you’re out playing superhero.”

Anja paused briefly as she looked down at the hand, formulating her thoughts first. “Eh, we’re both theatre kids, I’m sure we’ll both make a good show out of it,” she remarked, bringing her own hand up for a fist-bump.

“If any of your stuff gets broken, Nat, I could help with repairs!” Florrie said, though she wilted a bit immediately after, “then again, I don’t have experience with alien technology… Or access to the required tools… Or documentation and schematics…”

“That can be discussed later, there is value in having another pair of hands available,” Gartho said with a reassuring nod.

“Um, okay! Either way, I just hope we can stop the monsters before they cocoon everyone, so I’m rooting for you too,” Florre said, hugging Natalia abruptly.

Natalia understood how Florrie felt, as she hugged back. “Thanks. I just hope I can root for myself, in a way.”

As their friends departed, leaving the sisters and the two aliens alone, Estella decided to check on their dog while Nat sighed, taking deep breaths. “This is absolutely nuts.”

“I wish we could’ve been eased into this more, but what’s done is done,” Sonia replied.

“Well, we can help you ease into your new abilities, I suppose. Not exactly got many places around here where you can train in peace and quiet, so we’ve got something that might work,” Tharen said, beginning to pilot the exoskeleton as if it was an extension of his body. “Besides, you haven’t seen our ship yet.”

The sisters followed him and Gartho out to the backyard. Considering the size of the property, it only made sense that the backyard was also fairly spacious, with a well-maintained lawn, trees and a big garden lining the back that Atsuko maintained when she was back home, and a large swimming pool.

Which also meant the lawn was big enough to park a spaceship, much to the surprise of the sisters. The craft was sleek, about the size of a modern fighter jet length-ways, but it was also large enough vertically to have an airlock for what seemed to be a cargo bay at first glance. It was painted with a dark blue, with the emblem for what one would assume to be the GDF, which looked like a triangular formation of five stars streaking across space.

"You parked a spaceship in our backyard?! People are going to see it!" Natalia winced.

"Hardly," Gartho remarked, mandibles clicking in bemusement, "we've set up projection fields covering the perimeter. Anyone looking in from the outside won't see the ship, or any of us."

Gartho opened up the hatch, allowing them entry - apparently there wasn’t space for an airlock, just a direct entrance, though there seemed to be an energy field in the doorway that fulfilled that purpose.

Estella poked her head through to see, and her jaw dropped. “What the hell?!”