While there were many things we had to consider in our cramped burrow, the most urgent one was what to do with the rust mole. On account of it merely being knocked out and all.

“I assume it’s going to wake up angry,” I said. “Maybe we should just kill it? Since we can’t talk to it.”

“Noooo~!” Zeb protested, finally showing up as a black and white canine once more as Disguise faded away. “It’s so big and cuddly!”

Swiss Arms nodded. “We don’t exactly have a good way to restrain it.”

“It did try to eat us,” Kendrux pointed out. “But… there’s a problem if we take it out. We can’t exactly go outside right now, with ships flying all over looking for us. And if we shove the body out, it’s going to be pretty obvious. I’m not sure how quickly a rust mole starts smelling bad but it’s gonna be pretty quick.”

Midnight sniffed. “It doesn’t smell great right now, but I agree with your assessment.”

Khithae shrugged. “I can’t really help solve this situation with abilities or advice.” She glanced over at Swiss Arms. “Though I should be able to help you out with Repair.”

Swiss Arms frowned. “Everything is proprietary tech, I’m not sure…”

“It’s magic,” Khithae reminded her, gathering mana and reaching out towards the woman. Her Power Brigade outfit was quite battered and her skin seemed to have acted as another layer of defense, but she still looked pretty banged up. I saw her ‘skin’ grow back, and before it was covered up I saw a few dents and dings in her metal bones smooth out.

I hadn’t really considered it too much of a problem since she wasn’t bleeding, but she was injured. Well, it’s not like I would have had anything to do about any sorts of wounds.

Swiss Arms looked at her body, twisting and turning. “Impressive, though I think I’ll need more.”

“I have little more effective to spend mana on at the moment.”

Kendrux interrupted. “So about the rust mole. Zeb, if you want to save it… try getting its scent on you. Then you and these fellows can hold it back, should it try anything,” she gestured to Olim and Evans.

“I bet it’s hungry!” Zeb said. “Do we have anything besides us for it to eat?”

“What do moles even eat?” Midnight asked. “Roots? Because I only have tuna.”

“Tuna is good,” Zeb said.

“Alright, well, you guys figure that out,” Swiss Arms said. “If you can keep it peaceful, great. Otherwise we’ll improvise. Now then, Mage, how long will it take to Gate us out of here?”

I stroked my chin. “We’re basically out of mana. Natural recovery would take like a hundred minutes. We could-” something sent shivers down my spine. “Midnight, you feel that?” he nodded. “Khithae?”

She shook her head. “I’m not sure what you mean. I don’t have that much experience with magic other than my own.”

I shook my head. “Not magic, I think. It’s like a fog or mist?”

“My sensors are picking up something,” Swiss Arms said. “Purpose unknown. Some sort of wide area field. It’s permeating through the ground, too. So… they’ve either found us and we’re probably screwed, or it doesn’t do that and we need to keep working on our plans.”

“Right,” I agreed. “So, uh. We can speed up the mana regeneration process significantly by absorbing mana crystals. If we have a few minutes to absorb them properly, I think we can recover enough to cast a Gate between Midnight and I.”

“That fast?” Kendrux asked.

“It’s not unlimited,” I explained. However, I figured that even though we were currently allies I probably wasn’t supposed to provide details of my powers to technically-criminals. So I left out the exact limits and the part where I’d be vomiting black blood if I used too much.

“Then I think that’s the plan, right?” Swiss Arms said. “We already got what we can get, and we just need to leave.”

“Yeah,” I nodded. “Midnight, leave that trio to handle the rust mole.”

“One second! It’s waking up!” he replied. “You two said they eat lasers?”

“Well, it’s not quite like that,” one of the martians said.

“But it’s not exactly unlike that,” the other added.

Looking at the situation, Zeb had completely disappeared. Since there wasn’t anywhere to go, I realized she was buried under the mole, wiggling around. I saw her tail poking out sometimes.

“I smell like the mole now so it won’t bite me!” she said.

“Pretty sure it’s just confused about how to scratch or bite you where you are,” I replied.

A sparkling light made the room glow as Midnight shot a laser at the mole’s forearm. Not a full powered energy blast, but something more akin to a laser pointer. Which I had been told weren’t necessarily lasers, depending on definitions. How odd.

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Either way, when the beam struck the rust mole’s fur, it didn’t burn into it but instead scattered in all directions… while leaving a weird glowing residue on the paw. The mole started licking at its paw.

“Interesting,” I said. “Can someone else keep that up while I borrow Midnight?”

Kendrux shook her head. “Our guns don’t adjust to a safe level. They won’t be super effective on a rust mole, but they would still cause damage.”

“I can,” Swiss Arms said.

“Great.” I cast Storage to pull out a handful of my biggest crystals- yes, it took some mana but I couldn’t just carry a bunch of crystals in my jacket all the time. They wouldn’t be subtle even if they fit well, radiating a feeling of power for those with the right senses.

I pulled out five crystals total. Each would contain about six mana, which would put both Midnight and I close to our limits if I took three and he took two. Close, but comfortably under our limits, I hoped. Usually the negative consequences came after consecutive days of use, but it could still happen with too much all at once.

“We’ll absorb one each then wait a few minutes,” I said to Midnight. “Just to make sure we’re not pushing too hard.”

Midnight nodded. He didn’t use mana crystals very often, but he shared my technique so he could absorb them when necessary. I used them to boost my maximum mana still, but he was using a safer technique now that we had some.

The crystal cracked in my hand and I carefully absorbed it. I tried to concentrate on getting the mana from it and from the surroundings. Mars’ mana levels sucked, but they weren’t nonexistent. In fact, they seemed to be ‘normal’, as I’d been raised to think of it. Even if that wasn’t necessarily correct with what I knew now. After all, this could be considered a planet without magic. At least New Bay had some other sorts of supernatural people that used mana, though not many.

The mole didn’t seem to be happy with how things were, but it was easily distracted so Midnight and I managed to recover our mana levels. Each of us had used two crystals, leaving me with one larger one to spare. With 12 mana each, that was more than enough to share a Gate.

“Alright, everyone get ready. We’ll have something like a minute, but we’ll need to disentangle people from the mole.”

“No problem!” Zeb commented from under the mole’s belly where its fuzz covered her, just her nose and tail sticking out to the sides.

I was pretty sure that nothing made sense about that scenario, but what did I know. I wasn’t a Martian.

“Midnight. Even split. Ten mana each for Gate.” He obviously knew what we were doing, but habits were good for consistency.

We gathered ten mana each to boost Gate to as strong as it could be. With four upgrades now and an equal amount in Assistive Familiar Casting, even if going from planet to planet was less effective than normal planar travel we should still get a decent duration.

I aimed to place the Gate just at the mouth of the chamber we were in, since that was the largest place. Lights swirled and shimmered. Then they swirled back… without ever opening a portal.

“So,” I said. “That’s bad. They seem to have, uh, done something to restrict portal travel.”

“Probably that field you felt,” Kendrux grumbled. “Some sort of anti teleportation tech. I didn’t know Extra had a mobile disbursement form of that.”

“Well now we know,” I said. “Which leaves us in an awkward situation. Though… I did get an odd feeling.”

“Which would be?” Swiss Arms asked, taking a break from beaming a laser at a big mole.

“Like… it was really difficult to get to Earth?” I tilted my head.

“Because of the field,” she said. “...and?”

“I feel like we might be able to go somewhere else. Though it might still be effective.” I looked at Midnight. “I think Celmoth is out, yeah?”

“It’s probably more difficult than Earth to begin with,” he agreed.

“So, the bad news is we wasted all of that mana,” I said. “And we can’t risk failure again. So we need more mana. Because it started making the portal, so Midnight could use Alter Portal. And I have enough mana threshold to cast Gate alone.” I shook my head. “Unfortunately we didn’t get shot at enough for me to level up. I’m not that far, but it would take a battle that’s outside of my current capacity. So no extra points.”

“Alright,” Kendrux said. “How long does this take?”

“If I absorb this final crystal and concentrate on regaining mana… well, just short of two hours I think.” Around that time, I heard scuffling and growling in the back of the burrow. Zeb was tussling with the mole. It was clawing and biting at her. “Zeb! I’ll help stop it!”

“No wait! We’re just playing!”

“... Pretty sure I see blood,” I said. The mole was still glowing slightly, so other people could see slightly better as well.

“He’s still learning to be gentle!”

“You literally just met and that’s a wild animal,” I pointed out. “... And Translation is going to wear off soon isn’t it.”

“That doesn’t sound great,” Kendrux said.

“Midnight will be able to refresh it, and everyone here can at least understand English except Zeb. And only Midnight can’t speak it.” Khithae’s vocal chords weren’t meant for human languages, but she was still decent at it now. Enough to be understood, which was all that mattered.

It sure looked like the mole was trying to kill Zeb. But the Bunvorixian got to make her own choices. At least the mole was distracted for the moment?

I absorbed the last crystal, and slowly began to meditate. Burrows were not a great place for mages to regain mana, but it would have to do. Hopefully there weren’t any Martians coming to murder us, but we couldn’t do anything about it if they were so I didn’t let that distract me.

-----

“Alright, everyone understand the plan? Good. I have no idea how long the portal will stay open if we can get it open, so we need everyone to rush through asap. We might have a full minute, or ten seconds. When I give the word everyone goes. We’re going to come out in a building you don’t recognize but it should be secure.”

My current fatigue point was theoretically twenty-one mana. That was more than enough for any spell I knew existed- though I wasn’t willing to bet that higher than twentieth level spells existed somewhere or somehow. Multicasting did have costs that surpassed twenty, so there was some functionality to a greater fatigue point anyway.

Regardless, it was still near the limit so I couldn’t be careless. “Ready Midnight?” I said. “Alter Portal when it begins forming. We’re going to try to push through any resistance.”

Sometimes, when I focused things seemed to take forever. I could feel every ounce of mana forming in distinct patterns. And sometimes, it all came in a rush. Mana surged, the air shimmered and tore open. I saw a dark room.

Everyone scrambled through, and seconds later there were nine figures in a pile inside the Order of the Lion’s designated room for me popping up in secret. The Gate was indeed easier than it had felt going to Earth, though I wasn’t sure how much of that was choice of location and how much was the addition of Alter Portal. I was fairly sure both contributed.

I let the Gate close naturally after making sure everyone was around. There was myself, obviously. Kendrux, Olim, and Evans were all there. Midnight and Zeb. Swiss Arms had been the first through. I wouldn't forget Khithae. Nine people? I counted on my fingers. Wait, that was eight. Had I forgotten to count myself? Oh, no wait. The ninth thing in the pile was a very confused mole.

Well, that problem would solve itself probably.