Sword lady nods and announces, "Anyone who wants to get, get." Seven of them follow her directions to fly outside and proceed north into the surrounding wilderness.
"Once again I apologize for this invasion, Empress. I am Captain Morgana McAllister of the United Defense Force. I think we have a lot to discuss, is there a better place than this hallway?"
In they go.
Captain McAllister begins, "I am not actually authorized to negotiate on behalf of the UDF, just the clan of McAllister, but Grendyne's... Summary... Indicates there are good possibilities for cooperation between our worlds."
"Naturally I would be interested in weapons or magic to help defeat the Neuroi. Lytee can make a one-way trip between our worlds approximately twice a day, bringing up to 20 individuals or 10 tons of objects. There are other teleporters available, but not immediately. Is trade of goods or magic an option here?"
"If teleporters consistently exist on your world, trade of goods is absolutely of interest and certain forms of trading magic are possible."
The captain nods. "What kinds of goods or magic are you most interested in?"
"Considering the situation I think we can consider some initial shipments foreign aid. It isn't overwhelmingly likely that you have any manufacturing that we need here in quantity, nor the means to effectively collect any natural resources we use; I'm more likely to be able to make effective use of creative works from your world, which will differ. I am definitely interested in the possibility of hiring more witches of your variety, though."
"I'll buy out my contract if you insist," Gren says, "But I was cut off and had no hope of returning. And I probably just landed the UDF the mother of all force multipliers. I'm not going back into combat without a damn good reason."
The commander scowls and mutters 'coward' too low for any but the vampires to hear. "Yvette?"
"Take someone there or bring someone here to negotiate. Either way, good things."
"What do you think, Empress? Here or there?"
"Yeah," winces Alice, "can't see anything in or after a visit to the other world."
"In that case I'd prefer to hold negotiations here."
"At any rate, I'd like a piece of tech to serve as proof to get someone high enough up the chain to believe this."
A very bored-sounding Witch drawls, "Better show me where to land next time too."
"Do you care what the piece of tech is, or can we just give you something convenient like a flashlight?"
"Flashlight would be enough for a diplomat, but if you want to get the UDF opening negotiations in any kind of a hurry, it should be walkie-talkies or a gun or something similarly militarily obvious."
"Getting guns is a little legally complicated in Canada and we don't keep them around or have established channels for getting them... I'll have Razi pick up a walkie talkie set." She pulls out her phone and sends a text.
"Not off the top of my head. UDF has witch directories, we can have them look it up."
"I'm perfectly happy to have appropriately vetted people turned into nonvenomous hybrids," says Bella. "That doesn't have the same containment problem."
The last witch who hasn't spoken yet is busy scribbling a summary of what the hell is going on.
"Gren, perhaps you should introduce us to your friends," remarks Bella, offering the package to her.
"Captain Morgana McAllister here is the overall commander of the 42nd wing. She's a tracker. Yvette Polska is precognitive. Lytee Normanson is the fabled inter-world teleporter. Miyako Mio has enhanced vision."
"So you work between worlds, Yvette? How good's your vision, Miyako?" wonders Alice.
Mio glances at a compass, then around her. She says, "I have distance and object-piercing vision, not any great detail. For example, there is a bear 9.3 miles at 279 degrees heading from here, but I cannot tell if it is male or female."
"Ooh, you see through things, we can't do that," says Alice. "And yeah, I get actual visions, no sound though, and I have blind spots."
Lytee pipes up, "Anybody gonna give me a better spot to aim for next time? I had to adjust at the last moment to keep us from appearing inside a wall or each other. I would prefer to not have to do that again, if possible."
"While we're at this capital site you can land outside, as long as you're prepared for the cold. We can show you," says Bella, and she leads the witches out of doors.
"I'll fetch my charged gold," Gren reports, "Be back in a few minutes if Shawn doesn't mind running me."
The captain says, "The diplomats will probably want to meet outside of your husband's range, if possible. Any ettiquite or customs they should know?"
(Shawn wolfs again to run Gren.)
"We're fairly casual for most purposes. Vampires present can and will hold multiple parallel conversation threads above the range of human hearing too rapidly for humans to follow simultaneously with the audible conversation, which you might want to know in advance. If there are wolves present, it is of utmost importance that everyone avoid any appearance of threatening their imprints, such as Gren or my daughter. Vampires have comparable attachments but are less likely to consider our mates relevantly vulnerable so it's less of a concern. Some of the species we have here age oddly and we've made some cultural structures around that which may seem odd, but which I assure you make sense under our circumstances. Vampires don't sleep, and you'd have trouble blending in in a human town even if we got you hotel rooms, and putting female humans near wolves does run the risk of more imprintings, which risk you may take assuming you can be individually trusted not to misuse wolves you may acquire but which should be considered carefully and with full information. The bottleneck in transit means that it would be most convenient to speak to someone who is at least almost as authorized as I am to make agreements, but you're probably in more of a hurry than we are so if that's inconvenient it can be dispensed with."
She helps Miyako write up summaries until Gren returns with jewlery. Then they report an estimated return time of 6 hours when they depart to find the Witches who declined to be near Edward.