[color=green][b]Brasilia[/b][/color]

Another day, another nightmare.

All around Conceicao, Brasilia was burning. Her honour guard was dead, mutant corpses strewn about the palace grounds. To the East, Paranoá Lake was clogged with the wreckage of thousands of tiny boats and millions of floating, bloated corpses. To the West, the city burned, the deafening roar of the inferno's flames narrowly failing to drown out the screams of so many innocent people. Jets screamed overhead, seeking to fight off some unseen attacker, only to be rendered unto heaps of flaming wreckage in the blink of an eye. Tanks and armoured cars littered the streets in every direction.

Brazil was [i]helpless[/i]. Her nation had thrown everything against the enemy, every piece of military hardware, every last-ditch weapon, every man and woman able to carry and fire a rifle... And it all amounted to nothing. Worse than nothing, perhaps. If they hadn't fought back, then they could have at least survived on their-

[i]"President Conceicao?"[/i] A voice whispered, so impossibly gentle that it couldn't have been human. In mere moments, however, the voice brought the listless President back to the world of the living, leaving her to jolt upward in her chair. Her eyes darted from one side to the other - left, then right - only to finally settle on the gently smiling face of a kind young man, dressed in the finest of suits, beaming at her from across the table.

"...Filipe." Conceicao groaned, rubbing her eyes with a furred, wickedly clawed hand. "How long was I out for this time?"

"Only a few moments, President Conceicao. You haven't missed anything just yet. Are you sure you are well?" The young man asked, canting his head to one side. A tongue, partway reptilian in nature, slipped out from beneath his teeth, idly flicking at the air.

Conceicao gave him a dismissive wave, carefully straightening her custom-made suit, noting the slight twinkle in his eyes as a nictitating membrane slid over each of the bright, blue, shining orbs. "I'm [i]fine[/i]," she groaned, forcing a wicked, fanged smile onto her discoloured face as she idly scratched at a splotch of bright green scales. "I will be, once the day is done. The others - are they here?" 

The boy nodded. She nodded back. Behind Apolônia, the door buzzed, swinging open - and in came a parade of Brazilian Ministers, diplomats, and generals, each dressed in practical, if well-made uniforms, sparsely decorated by medals. One-by-one, they took their seats at the table, a handful muttering greetings in Portuguese or one of the many languages native to pre-colonial Brazil. For the first time in days, a genuine smile graced Apolônia's features as she nodded to her aide, a pair of television screens unfolding from the scene at either end of the table.

"Ladies, gentlemen... You all know why I have called you here today." Conceicao began, taking in a deep breath. "Today, Brazil is more powerful than it ever has been, enough to nearly challenge the hegemony of the world's great powers on its own... But she is still vulnerable. Her armies are strong, but so are her people. Her people, however, are merely mortal. Morale alone cannot protect us - not against the American fascists, not against the communists should they decide to turn against us, and certainly not against the visitors, who we still know so little about. The Americans and Russians could flatten our cities with nuclear hellfire and weapons that hang high above our head, and... Well, even I do not understand what the visitors are truly capable of. Today, we show the world that Brazil will defend its soil to the very last breath." She continued, giving Filipe a sidelong nod. The screens, each and every one, flickered to life. The feed they seemed to depict a rapidly approaching metal speck shook violently, as if rocked by an earthquake, and all across the room, a handful of eyes widened in shock, others simply displaying their quiet assent.

"Some of you realize what I speak of, I think. Ahead of us, you will see the [i]Stella Maris[/i] - the largest space station Brazil has put in orbit, and enough to rival both the Soviets and Americans in size - though not in number. She is a state-of-the-art construction, equipped with the finest telescopes and sensing devices, all pointed throughout the solar system to watch for Visitor activity. That is what all of you [i]know[/i] of her. There is, however, much that some of you do not know."

Apolônia cleared her throat, gesturing toward the speck as it grew larger, finally visible to the naked eye as a large, slowly spinning cylindrical space station, thick metal rings situated at various points along its length.

"She is much more than that, however. The Americans and Russians will not like it, but the [i]Stella Maris[/i] is more than just a research station. She is a protector - a platform studded with state of the art KEM launching systems, advanced pint defense technology, and a custodial weak artificial intelligence that helps the station's crew manage the station's functions." Conceicao paused, allowing her ministers and generals a few moments to process the information before abruptly continuing.

"As of this moment, you are the ones to know this, but that is about to change. Tomorrow, once the second of the station's railguns are armed, I will announce the true purpose of [i]Stella Maris[/i] to the international community. I do not enjoy keeping secrets from so many of you, but in this case, it was necessary in order to prevent the station from being compromised, but that is not important. Was is important, however, is that Brazil is now more prepared than ever for any threat - she can strike unavoidably anywhere in the world with just over twelve megatons of energy, far more precisely focused than any nuclear blast - and, hopefully, the first step along the path to bringing ourselves into parity with the Visitors." She said, briefly scanning over the ministers arrayed before her. Some exchanged glances, some nervous, other enthusiastic - but none dared open their mouths to question their revered leader. 

"Filipe," she continued, settling back into her seat. "Our next matter of business concerns Angola, I believe?"

[hr]
[color=cyan][b]UN General Assembly Chambers[/b][/color]

Wayorá loved his country - Brazil - or at least the miracle President Conceicao had brought to it. There was, truth be told, little he could say hadn't been vastly improved, from the state of its developing economy to the way the average person was treated by the government. He, if nobody else, could say that much - a scant few decades ago, he'd been living in an ailing, dilapidated aboriginal village, struggling to stay sustainable due to near-constant exploitation by previous Brazilian governments. Bow, he was Brazil's representative to the world, its UN ambassador, but even he couldn't help but occasionally hate his job. What else were you supposed to think, after all, when you were staring down the barrel of hundreds of diplomatic guns, explaining to said diplomats that you had at least two enormous weapons pointed at all of their heads. Still, even with wrinkles already appeared on his newly aged face, he had a job to do.

"Ladies, gentlemen, friends of the world..." He began, quietly clearing his throat to grab the Assembly's attention. "Thirty years ago, the paradigm of human existence was forever changed. I won't bore you with the details, as I'm sure most of you remember the very events I refer to, and all of us have different stories. Different thoughts - a rainbow of opinions, one might say. Some of us were excited, terrified, simply awestruck, or any number of emotional states in between... But what we can all agree on, I think, is that none of us liked how helpless, vulnerable, and unprepared the Visitation made us feel. What, after all, could we hope to do?" He said, gesturing across the entire chamber, arrayed before him. 

"Even now thirty years later, we are still struggling tooth and nail to survive in this strange new world. We've all made great progress, I'm sure you can all agree, in so many different ways, whether that be through human ingenuity or sheer refusal to lie down and let these anomalies take our beautiful blue marble from us. Today..." He paused, though only for the briefest of moments. When Wayorá wrote the speech, he thought it was only for dramatic effect, but now, alone in his thoughts, it seemed so much more like fear. That meant he needed to move on quickly, of course - and so he did, relaxing his muscles into a more friendly, laid back posture.

"Today, I am proud to announce that Brazil has taken another step in protecting our planet from hostile extraterrestrials. The [i]Stella Maris[/i], a state-of-the-art telescope array and research station, joins the ranks of the great powers prepared to defend our planet with arms placed in orbit." He said, promptly continuing before the chamber had a chance to erupt into an uproar, even as murmuring broke out within the General Assembly, spreading like wildfire. "Now, I assure you, that is the sole purpose of the [i]Stella Maris[/i]: to study and protect, and nothing more."

In the brief moment of silence that followed, the chamber erupted into furious debate.

Inwardly, all Wayorá could think to do was wonder what else the government had been hiding from him.