The ship whined to a halt as it parked just above one of the many tall hills that made the valleys of northern Mars.

“This is the flattest hill in the area. We’re probably going to walk a fair bit to the Point of Power,” Buzzy Bol told Anue. “That’s fine though, right?”

Anue gave a nod.

Arix stood up to look out the front window, and Ralivil followed him. Boson drifted over to the front window as well. Mars’ surface looked awful. Any and all vegetation that may have once existed was gone. All that remained was dust, debris and patches of static.

“What… What happened to Mars?” Ralivil asked.

Anue replied, “The RPG-maker. It first destroyed all the life on the surface, sans the Point of Power, and is now eating away at the rest of the planet. It will perish within a week or so.”

The Timechasers fell into uncomfortable silence.

“I have made visits to Mars before,” Anue then told them. “Due to the sheer number of mountains on Mars, I will guide you toward the one the next Point of Power resides on.”

“…Is it the tallest one? Because we could totally find it on our own,” Boson asked.

“No, you would not. Trust me,” Anue said.

Boson glanced away at the wall.

Anue turned their body towards the hyberpod aboard the ship. “Let me notify Elmadan of our whereabouts before we leave.”

Anue trotted over to the lone hyberpod, bent over and gently knocked on its lids. There was a quiet thump from inside before Elmadan’s purple tentacle pushed the lids open. He slung himself over the edge and wearily looked up at Anue.

Ralivil sharply inhaled as the Timechasers saw Elmadan again for the first time in a while.

“All that napping hasn’t been doing him any favours, has it?” Buzzy Bol murmured to Ralivil.

“Elmadan? We have arrived on Mars, and I will be accompanying the Timechasers to the Point of Power here. You will have to be unsupervised for a while,” Anue told Elmadan.

Elmadan nodded as he mumbled in reply, “Mhm, yeah, I’m okay with that.” He paused before asking, “Hey, Anue? My eyes’ve been… really sore lately. Do they look okay…?”

Anue stared for a moment, before stretching out Elmadan’s lower eyelids. This prompted a small whine from the purple Mook as Anue took a closer look at his lower eye. Boson dared to quietly drift over and take a peek over Anue’s shoulder. There was a slight golden glaze over Elmadan’s red-and-green eye, most prominent in his pupil. The golden glaze was also subtly present in his sclera, but it was hard to detect, and made it look more off-white. It was very likely that the same could be said for his upper eyes as well, but impossible to check, since they were currently shut tight.

Anue let Elmadan’s eyelids fall back into place. Elmadan rubbed his eye, and Boson zipped back over to the Timechasers as Anue straightened their back.

“It is fine. You are just experiencing side effects from your powers of insight,” Anue told Elmadan.

Elmadan squinted. He was silent for a couple of moments before he looked up at Anue and asked, “…I've been usin’ ‘em?”

“Often.”

Elmadan sat with his brow furrowed for a couple of seconds before announcing, “I’m goin’ to sleep.”

“Before you do! If you have any dreams, or anything akin to dreams, could you write them down for me, please?” Anue asked Elmadan.

“Uhhhh…. I can try,” Elmadan said. He then laid back down in the hyberpod, closing the lids.

Anue turned their head back to the Timechasers and told them, “Let us be on our way to the Point of Power now.”

The Timechasers followed Anue down the drop ladder and onto Mars’ surface. Ralivil could immediately notice that the air was thinner than it should have. He chalked it up to the leakage – Saturn was further from the Sun, yet the air there was completely fine. It also explained the otherworldly stench.

The walk on Mars’ surface was silent. Anue gracefully trotted in front of them, their ears twitching inside their hood. Occasionally, they would point out chunks of leakage in their path by leaping over it and pointing at it with their tail. Similar to the smaller patches of leakage on the hills, the chunks were embedded in the ground. If he looked closely enough, sometimes Ralivil would see the chunks inches deeper into the ground.

Some parts of Mars’ surface had already been dealt a noticeable blow. The leakage could sometimes be spotted deep in the side of hills or a couple of feet into the ground. At one point, the Timechasers and Anue had passed a nearly decimated rust orange boulder. There was no debris, only silence and the horrifying realisation that they were witnessing the death of a planet that followed.

After what seemed like an eternity of walking, a small, metal building came into view at a dead end. The building was completely cubic, and the door appeared to be not much smaller than the average Mook. A speck of leakage nestled on one corner of the corrugated roof.

Anue’s head lifted slightly at the sight. “Ah, it seems the Martians are still okay.” They looked over their shoulder at the Timechasers and told them, “Come along, now. The Martians will not hurt us. I have spoken with them before.”

The doors slid open as Anue approached. They bent over a little as they entered the small building. Ralivil lowered his eyestalks as he entered, and Arix had to duck, but Boson and Buzzy Bol had no troubles whatsoever.

The inside was dimly lit. There was a turned off screen and a green tube on the wall with the door, and a pod similar to the tube near the furthest right corner. Opposite the pod was a lone ladder leading further underground.

The Timechasers followed Anue down the ladder and entered a hall full of aliens akin to snails. They had dark eyes and large white pupils, with skin tones in the varying from a pale creamy colour to dark brown. Their shells, all various colours of the rainbow, started from their foreheads and ended just above their long, almost worm-like tails. Their arms were noodly, like a Mook’s, but their legs were stockier and had definable feet, even if those feet didn’t have toes. They all sat on the cool metal floor, their eyes downcast, as the children huddled close to their parents. Only three of these aliens were standing – they all held stern expressions on their faces as a presumably important person to Martian society, wearing a tie around his neck, spoke with an all too familiar white Mook.

“Are you sure that these ‘horsemen’ you speak of will be coming?” the tie-wearing alien asked in a hushed tone. “And what of—"

Malik’s eye stalks whipped around to stare down the Timechasers as they entered the hall. They returned to the tie-wearing alien as he hissed in reply, “They’re here now, Dionaea! Forget about the officials, they’re already gone!”

Anue let out a simple “oh” as Malik turned to face them and the Timechasers.

“What are YOU FOUR doing here?! What are you doing… with DEATH here as well?! I thought I made myself clear on… on Jupiter,” Malik barked.

Anue appeared to be completely unfazed by Malik’s yelling. “I am here to guide the Timechasers to the Point of Power here. My name is Anue. I believe this the first time we have properly spoken.”

A silky, furred white hand extended from under Anue’s cloak. Malik squinted at their hand, then up at Anue’s concealed face. He slowly slithered up to them, ignoring any feet he tread over and maintaining assumed eye contact. He eventually stopped in front of Anue, and raised a tentacle for the handshake they offered slower than he had slithered. He then slapped it away in the blink of an eye.

“You’ve got a lot to hide if you’re refusing to show your face,” Malik muttered. He cast a glance to the Timechasers with his upper eyes before slithering back over to the tie-wearing alien.

Anue quietly cleared their throat before looking over their shoulder, gesturing at the snail-like aliens and telling the Timechasers, “These are the Martians. As I said earlier, they will not hurt you.” They then turned back to the Martians and gave a polite wave as they said, “Hello again!”

One of the nearby Martians wearily raised their head and glanced up at Anue. “Oh. Hi again, Anue.”

“D… Just Malik said that you and those other offworlders behind you are all bad guys, or something?” another Martian added.

“What? No, we’re trying to save the entire galaxy!” Buzzy Bol told them.

A third Martian hummed before saying, “Well, Anue is with you. It could go either way.”

The first Martian that spoke to the Timechasers nodded while the second added, “They’ve talked to us – well, the officials before. And they trust them, at least.”

“Yeah, but when was the last time the government made a smart decision? We’re in this sorry state because of them,” the first Martian argued.

“They—”

The second Martian was cut off by Dionaea turning to Anue and the Timechasers with wide eyes, telling the former as he began to step towards them, “Oh, Anue! I almost forgot to tell you. About the government officials, this w—”

Malik grabbed his arm and yanked him back over. “WHAT do you think you’re doing?” he hissed.

“I was just going to tell Anue that—”

“You’re not going to tell that demon ANYTHING! GOT IT?!” Malik’s voiced grew louder as he spoke. No one had seen his eyes so wide and filled with anger. No one had heard him screech as he did at the end of his sentence.

The entire hall was silent in the drawn out moments that Malik held his glare on Dionaea, and everyone else’s eyes on Malik. Dionaea eventually meekly nodded. Malik’s upper eyes cast a glare over everyone staring just a second before he dragged Dionaea away, muttering to himself about sorting something out.

Once Malik was out of sight, the Martians turned to each other and began to nervously chatter to their peers. The Timechasers cast each other anxious glances.

Boson dared to glance at the exit of the hall as he murmured, “That dude… is wack.” He glanced back at Arix as he asked, “You were the first of us to meet him, right dog? How did you manage to keep it together around him?”

“He wasn’t nearly as angry when I first met him *beep*” Arix replied. “He did yell a bit when he realised he forgot to take some sign down, and he did ask me to stay with him, buuuuut…” Arix then gave a shrug. Boson hummed as he frowned.

Ralivil blinked as he realised Anue had already gone ahead without the Timechasers. They were talking to the Martians who had been with Dionaea, as they had stayed behind. One of them, a woman, handed Anue something. It was hard to tell from a distance, but it did catch the dull lights for a moment. Anue gave the two Martians a small nod, and they headed for the exit Malik had dragged Dionaea to as the former returned to the Timechasers.

Anue extended their hands to reveal several different sized coins, all with a Saturnian B engraved on them. “Aldrovanda and Drosera gave me some money for you four to use during our trip to the Point of Power here. There are 700 Bowbucks in total – be sure to spread it out amongst yourselves.”

Ralivil carefully scooped the Bowbucks out of Anue’s hands, only to realise that he had nothing to put them all in. As he glanced around in search for something to hold the Bowbucks, Buzzy Bol asked, “That’s great, but where are we gonna find a place to spend it all?”

“There is a vending machine in this hallway. I quickly made note of what it contains; not only are there drinks, but also items that will help you in battle.”

Boson darted over to the vending machine a short distance away as soon as Anue said the word “battle”. Buzzy Bol quickly followed, and Arix and Ralivil carefully stepped around the Martians to catch up.

Once every member of the Timechasers had gathered in front of the vending machine, they began to study the contents inside. Ralivil rather quickly glossed over the contents of the vending machine compared to his teammates.

“I thought they would have something to eat as well,” Ralivil commented, looked up at his teammates.

“Anue didn’t mention food. They’re very to the point: like Commander Inpue, I’ve noticed. *whirr* It must be a habit of their species. Anyway, if Anue didn’t mention food, there wouldn’t be any food,” Arix explained.

“The Martians must have eaten them all themselves. I don’t blame them,” Buzzy Bol added. His eye caught the attention of a row of Balloon grenades, causing him to go, “Ooooo!”

As Buzzy Bol gawked over grenades with Boson, Arix looked between the row of protective coins in the vending machine and a sole PK Beam Gamma disc. He did this for a whole minute before he turned to a nearby Martian and asked, “How much is the PK Beam Gamma disc?”

“1000,” the Martian mumbled in reply.

Arix frowned as he looked back at the vending machine. Between Ralivil’s almost wistful stare at the Sparkling juice, the two UFOs’ excitement over grenades and the coins staring him in the face, it was hard to choose what to buy.

Arix turned to the same Martian again and asked, “How much are the other items, if I may ask? *click*”

“75 for the juice, 100 for the booze, another 100 for the Gas canister, 150 for the grenades, 650 for the coins.”

Arix gave the Martian a nod before looking back at the vending machine. He thought for a moment before tapping Ralivil’s shoulder. The green Mook flinched before looking up at Arix.

“Are you going to ask everyone what they would like?” Arix asked.

“Uh, well, I kinda already… figured it out.” Ralivil pointed to each item as he said, “You want the PK Beam Gamma disc but we can’t afford it, Boson and Buzzy Bol want the Balloon grenades, and I want some Sparkling juice because I’m desperate for something in my stomach.”

Arix blinked. “Impressive.”

“I’m thinking we’ll get more explosives and just a juice or two on the side. They won’t fill me up that much, anyway.”

Arix glanced up at the ceiling as he ran some calculations in his head. After a few seconds of thinking, he told Ralivil, “We could get four grenades and a Sparkling juice for 675 B, *click* but we would have change that we wouldn’t be able to use.”

Ralivil hummed in thought for a moment before replying, “It’s better than nothing.”

Ralivil slithered over to the number pad on the vending machine, causing Boson and Buzzy Bol to hover away slightly. Ralivil inputted a few numbers into the machine, then fumbled with the coins before putting them into the coin slot. Slowly, the grenades tumbled down, and Buzzy Bol snatched them up with glee. Ralivil inputted one number, inserted more coins, and a Sparkling juice tumbled down. He took it and held it in this right tentacle.

From just behind the Timechasers, the Martian Arix had previously spoke to said, “Hey, you still want that disc, blue guy?”

“Yes…”

The Martian stood up and walked over to the vending machine’s side. He whacked it with his tail, then grabbed it with both arms. Using a foot as leverage, he slowly picked up the vending machine and shook it. The items inside rattled about, but none fell down. The Martian whacked it with his tail again, and what sounded to be three items fell.

“Was that the disc?” the Martian asked.

Ralivil peered into the deposit, then looked up at the Martian and nodded. The Martian dropped the vending machine with a clang that bounced off the hallway’s walls. Arix grabbed the PK Beam Gamma disc, and Ralivil grabbed the Sparkling juice and the Balloon grenade that had fallen down with it, handing the grenade to Buzzy Bol in the process.

“I guess you got some other stuff with it,” the Martian shrugged.

“Thank you! *beep*” Arix said to the Martian. The rest of the Timechasers chimed in with their thanks as well.

“Eh, no biggie. There’s also some spare food in the room over there. My brother did that trick way better than I did.”

“‘Did’? Did happened to him?” Ralivil asked, his face written with concern.

The Martian glanced away at the floor, before quietly replying, “…It’s not important.”

He slunk into the room he pointed out had spare food inside. The Timechasers exchanged concerned glances. The Martian soon came out with a handful of small Gummi blobs and some strange vegetation Ralivil could only assume was native to Mars as it was shoved into his tentacles. The Martian then went back to sitting down on the cold floor.

Ralivil stared at the strange vegetation as he put a Gummi blob in his mouth, then asked his teammates, “Does this look dangerous to you guys?”

The answer was a “no, I don’t think so” from everyone.

Ralivil then turned his head to Anue and yelled across the hall, “We’re done shopping!”

Anue gave a nod, then leapt between the Martians over to them. “Shall we continue on our way?” they asked.

All the Timechasers nodded. Anue led them out of the hall and back up to the surface of Mars. It was the same on this side of the hills that blocked their path as the other. Anue’s ears twitched inside their hood, before they looked upwards at the many peaks they stood a short distance away from.

“We’re not far now. Come along.”