Anue teleported away in a flash of light yellow light once they and the Timechasers exited the abandoned laboratory that led to Mars’ Point of Power. A distant rumble sounded from up the mountain as Arix sat down and pulled out the two PSI discs the team had obtained recently. A small tray ejected from below his eye, and he put the PK Thunder Alpha disc on it. The tray slid back, and after a couple of seconds, a small jingle played from him. He repeated the process with the PK Beam Gamma disc as Ralivil peered outside, looking both ways with his upper eyestalks.

Arix stood up again and walked closer to Boson and Buzzy Bol. The three of them watched as Ralivil stood in thought. Ralivil put a tentacle to his chin as he mused to himself, “There is that hall entrance not too far away…”

“Yes… *click* But what does this have to do with our situation?” Arix asked. “Anue gave us orders to—”

Ralivil stared outside again. “That’s where we’re going next.”

As Ralivil slipped out the door and back out into Mars’ barren valleys, Buzzy Bol replied, “Wait, aren’t we supposed to go back to the ship?”

Ralivil’s voice came from afar. “I don’t care what Anue wants us to do right now! There’s something going on here, and instead of rushing from one planet to another, I want to help somebody, for once.”

Buzzy Bol and Arix exchanged nervous glances. Boson simply stared outside, a disgruntled look still settled on his face. Buzzy Bol darted after Ralivil, and Arix followed, quietly notifying Boson.

The still, humid air of Mars’ surface was a change of pace Ralivil welcomed; though the absolutely dry state of the planet was greeted with less of a positive outlook. He led the Timechasers past a signpost with RPG-maker leakage gnawing on its’ upper end to a small, metal building nearly identical to the first one they had encountered in outward appearance. Unlike the first one, this one had two small, square windows on each side of the door.

The interior was similar to the first underground hall’s – dim, but a notable lack of tubes, boxes and any kind of screen embedded into the wall. The ladder that led down to the halls themselves was long; almost as long as the ladder down into the first hall with the Martians in it, but there was no tunnel surrounding it this time. Ralivil couldn’t help but feel what confidence he had drain away as he made his descent.

The metal rings holding the first of the halls’ ceiling made everything feel much more enclosed. What he assumed – and dismissed as workings of his imagination – to be whispers echoed from further inside. A dark haze obscured most details beyond, and crackled every now and then with static. Buzzy Bol gave Ralivil an uneasy and concerned look as Arix scanned the paths ahead. Boson’s mood had shifted, though he tried to conceal it. Ralivil went ahead anyway.

Ralivil turned right at the first crossroads. The whispering grew louder. It sounded… pained. There was no distinct source. It all sounded garbled. It was akin to what Ralivil had heard after visiting the Prophet at the Eye in the Pyramid, but more intelligible – not that it helped much. The garbage noise was still there.

It was cold. So cold.

An electrical buzz and a yelp sounded from Boson’s UFO. Arix, who was following behind him, asked, “What’s up?”

Another buzz sounded from Boson’s UFO before he decided to climb out and perch on its roof. “Somethin’s jammin’ up my mic. Can’t get much across like this.”

An electrical buzz then sounded from Buzzy Bol’s UFO. Moments later, Buzzy Bol popped out of his UFO. “You think the RPG-maker has something to do with it?”

“Yeah. There’s somethin’… unreal about it.”

There was a pause before Boson looked around. “Wait, where’s Ralivil?”

“O-Over here!” came Ralivil’s voice from behind them.

“I thought we were going THIS way!” Boson shouted, pointing further down the hall.

“I think those voices were telling me to go this way, though,” Ralivil explained.

“Oh, now you’re listening to the VOICES, are ya now, dog?! For real?!” Boson huffed, then returned to the control panel of his UFO. Buzzy Bol followed suit, and the three other Timechasers followed Ralivil up the hall and down the other path.

At the end of the long hallway was a door, and possibly something else, but the haze obscured most of their surroundings, so it was almost impossible to tell. Ralivil hesitantly reached out to the door, which loudly, and slowly, hissed open. The inside of the square room the door led to had a minimal amount of dark haze, but was filled to the brim with other things. A green tube in the furthermost left corner, some smaller green tubes beside that, some purple boxes stacked on both sides of the door, a Martian log computer in the center of the room, and a Martian leaning on it. Her face was familiar.

Arix, keen-eyed and sharp-minded, said to the Martian, “You’re one of the Martians from before that was with Dionaea, aren’t you? *click*”

The Martian weakly sputtered out a cough before replying, “Yeah, that’s me. Drosera.”

The Timechasers came closer to Drosera, and the door hissed closed, as Ralivil asked, “What are you doing here?”

“I should be asking you that,” Drosera replied, glancing at Ralivil, who had knelt down beside her.

“W-Well, I wanted to help here, somehow! I haven’t been doing a lot of saving anyone since I got offplanet, despite Anue saying that I’m a hero, somehow…”

Drosera hummed in thought as she glanced down at the floor.

“But, uh… you didn’t answer my question,” Ralivil meekly added.

“Your que… Oh, what I’m doing here, right? Well, my boss, Dionaea, told me and Aldrovanda that he and Malik were heading down here to check in on the government officials. We all know what’s been happening down here. It’s only been getting worse. I ran after Dionaea; I wanted to change his mind, get him to live just a bit longer, but—”

Drosera sputtered out another cough. “Stay out there in that… stuff for too long and the voices get to you.”

Boson glared at Ralivil.

Drosera took a quivering breath in, then continued, “Those voices, they all… They all used to be people. You could talk to them before this happened. But now, they’re all… gone. They’re just pawns of that RPG-maker thing Malik keeps ranting about, according to him.”

Buzzy Bol peered out of the top of his UFO and hesitantly asked, “Did that happen to… everyone…?”

“Not a lot of them, actually,” Drosera replied. “There’s probably only about five or six, maybe seven individual voices out there. Most of the people that used to work here were evacuated before the situation developed. Those people were separated from the government officials when they… they…”

Drosera took another uneasy breath in.

In an attempt to comfort Drosera, Ralivil put a hand on her shell and told her in a hushed voice, “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay—"

“IT’S NOT OKAY!” Drosera barked. “I don’t know what Anue’s been telling you, but they’re WRONG! There’s no way this can be fixed! Malik said all the options to save anything are out of question by some twisted quirk of fate, and I’m more than willing to believe him right now! I don’t know what happened in the time he said he’d build that—”

Drosera suddenly gagged. She felt something hit her pseudo-knees, and she looked down at them. Then she saw it: a drop of her own skin falling onto her skin like melted rubber. Her eyes went wide and her pupils shrank.

She looked up at Ralivil. “One, get your tentacle off me. Two, run.”

“Wh-What? No, I can fix this, I can fix this!” Ralivil stammered. “Let me just try…”

A soft, green aura surrounded Ralivil’s tentacle as he prepared a Lifeup Beta. He pressed it against Drosera’s arm, and the green aura slowly made its way toward its recipient. The green aura, instead of surrounding Drosera, was absorbed.

“It… It didn’t work, did it?” Buzzy Bol quietly asked.

Drosera coughed again. “Don’t waste your time on me. Just get back to your ship and go wherever it is you lot are headed to next.”

“No! I… I have to save you somehow!” Ralivil argued, eyes full of despair.

“There’s NO SAVING ME! I’ve already begun melting, just… leave me be, and let me meet the same fate as the others.”

A bigger drop fell from Drosera’s chin.

“…I don’t really want to find out what that’s going to lead to,” Buzzy Bol told Ralivil. “At the very least, we might be able to save ourselves. Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

Ralivil’s brow was furrowed as he stared at Buzzy Bol. “…No. We have to save someone else here, too.”

With that, Ralivil whispered an apology to Drosera, then stood up and exited the room. The other Timechasers followed. Out of the hall that led to Drosera, then straight down the hall. The whispering was suffocating. Ralivil did his best to ignore it, but the further down the hall he went, the more his pace slowed. It came to a halt when he found himself face to face with a tall stack of purple boxes. He knew he wouldn’t be able to climb over it.

A loud whispering came from inside one of the boxes. As it grew louder, a face appeared on it, and grew outward into a vaugely Martian head. It had a regular skin tone for a Martian, but from its hollow, black eyes, its now horn-like antennae, to the lack of snout it now had, it could barely be described as a Martian anymore. It attempted to converse with Ralivil, but all that came out of its wide, goopy maw was a hissing mess of half-formed words and unintelligable noise. Ralivil wanted to look at anything but its blank eyes as it spoke.

The former Martian head melted back into the box. A static formed on the stack of boxes, and in a flash, they disappeared. Buzzy Bol gave Ralivil a soft nudge in the back with his UFO. Understanding what the insectoid meant, he gave Buzzy Bol a nod, then continued forward.

The Timechasers turned the corner, and passed by more doors, tubes, and boxes. Tiny piles of Martian-coloured sludge sitting on the ground inched towards them as they walked, groaning in pain with each movement. Past another corner and through more halls, the Timechasers kept moving. They passed through an open area, littered with strewn vending machine contents, dents in the walls and the odd PK Fire scorch mark. Boson and Arix collected the misplaced Gummi blobs and grenades, making sure to check they weren’t Martian sludges in disguise. The ones that were got thrown back over to the vending machine. Ralivil’s eyestalks perked up slightly at the sound of coherent banter from further down the halls.

He was guided by the distant chatter as he led the Timechasers to the final hallway. The haze in the final hallway made it impossible to see much further than a couple of steps ahead of them. It was colder than it had ever been down there. Perhaps those two things were why Malik had a flame of PK Fire flickering erratically above his right tentacle as he argued with Dionaea.

“I TOLD you, Dionaea! The officials are GONE! But NO, you just HAD to go and check up on them, and drag ME along with you, and now… now… now… THIS! THIS HAS HAPPENED! I TOLD YOU it was a bad idea!”

As if to prove Malik’s point, a loud gurgle sounded from above them.

“YOU CAN’T HOLD THEM IN THE ROOF FOREVER! WE’RE GOING TO DIE HERE!”

Dionaea, who had his arms outstretched and holding a Shield Alpha above himself, responded, “I just wanted to make sure they were going to be fine! I wanted them to be comfortable!”

“They’re not individuals anymore!”

The tears that formed around Dionaea’s eyes instantly turned to ice. “But—”

A loud crack came from the Shield. Malik turned his head in the Timechasers’ direction. He growled at them. “Why do you four insist on following me?”

Ralivil began, “Well, I—”

“THAT WAS A RHETORICAL QUESTION!” Malik screamed.

Shoulders hunched and arms pressed against his body, Ralivil gave a glance over his shoulder to his teammates. They looked about as startled as him.

Malik looked back at Dionaea. “Drop the Shield.”

“Wh-What? But they’re right above me!”

“Drop. The Shield.”

“Malik… could you at least explain why? You haven’t been making a lot of sense since you arrived…”

“DROP! THE SHIELD!”

Dionaea flinched – that was all that was needed for the Shield to disappear. Dionaea’s eyes went wide as he looked up. A thick sheet of Martian-coloured sludge dropped down from the ceiling directly onto him. Droplets went flying into the mist – a small droplet landed on Malik’s face, which he wiped away with his free tentacle. Dionaea spat out a piece of sludge as it settled at his feet. It started to creep up his legs. Dionaea’s pupils shrank.

With wide eyes, Dionaea looked back at Malik. “Malik, aren’t you going to do something? Aren’t you going to help me?”

Malik’s only response was the narrowing of his eyes.

“Please! Think about all those times you’ve helped us! Those inventions of yours that made Mars so much better! You wouldn’t turn your back on us now – not when we need your help the most…?”

Malik remained silent.

The Martian goop was up to Dionaea’s waist now. It had expanded outward, starting to take some sort of form.

“Please… You’re still the same man I knew before, aren’t you…?”

Malik said nothing.

The Martian goop had stood itself up. Dionaea’s head was almost touching the ceiling now.

“What are you planning?”

Still, Malik refused to speak.

Dionaea’s face morphed from fear to anger. Before he could act on it, he was pulled under the shifting mass of Martian sludge as a tentacle-like mass emerged from it. Ralivil covered his mouth with both hands as he gasped. The other Timechasers’ eyes went just as wide as his. The Martian sludge’s tentacle-like mass wrapped itself around Malik’s waist, catching him off guard and dissipating the PK Fire flame. It then flung Malik deeper into the hall. His body slammed against the end wall with a thud.The Martian sludge mass made its form – a towering, quadruped thing with no eyes and a goopy mouth. It pulsated as it made a gurgling roar at the Timechasers.

The sludge monster swung its right paw at the Timechasers. Boson and Buzzy Bol were able to dart out of the way, and Arix simply teleported a short distance back. Ralivil, however, was caught in the sludge monster’s attack. The other Timechasers stared at the monster’s paw with concern as the air went still. A few silent seconds later, Ralivil popped up from the sludge monster’s shoulder blade, gasping and spitting out a bit of Martian sludge.

“You guys attack from the outside! I’ll try damaging the inside!” Ralivil called out, waving with a tentacle. The other Timechasers nodded.

Ralivil shoved his tentacle back into the sludge monster and prepared a PK Freeze Gamma. A small blue flash came from the sludge monster’s upper leg as the PK Freeze Gamma went off. The sludge monster let out a small yelp.

Boson began throwing grenades at the sludge monster’s left side as Buzzy Bol cast Shield Sigma on himself and his teammates. Arix launched a PK Thunder Alpha, which barely hit the sludge monster’s back. He then switched to a few PK Beams.

The sludge monster barely seemed hurt by the onslaught. It let out a gurgling growl, slowly turned its head to Boson and shot out a multi-coloured beam at him. The beam left Boson’s UFO dented and burned. It wobbled in the air as a thing wisp of smoke came out of its back. Buzzy Bol sharply inhaled as the other insectoid flew his UFO away from the action as gently as he could.

Seeing the damage done, Arix called out to Ralivil, “Ralivil, I don’t suppose you could find a way to deal more damage to this… thing? *click* If that beam hits anyone else, we’re done for.”

Ralivil hummed in thought before replying, “PK Freeze does seem to be its weakness. I’ll see if it has a weak spot.”

With that, Ralivil began trudging through the sludgy bulk of the monster as Arix and Buzzy Bol continued their assault. He made his way to the monster’s head, hoping that would do some good. The sludge monster caught on, and let out a roar. It began jumping up and down, sending shockwaves flying in front of it. Arix stumbled over the shockwaves. He summoned another bolt of PK Thunder Alpha, which landed directly on the monster’s head. Ralivil barely leaned back quickly enough to dodge the bolt. The monster yelped in pain again. It clawed at its head, but its right paw accidentally melted into it. The sludge monster growled as it then stood on its hind legs for a second, trying to get its paw out of its head. The movement caused Ralivil to fall back into the monster’s mass.

It was dark inside the monster. His sense of direction was instantly lost. He thought to himself for a moment, deducing where on the monster he would be, and acted accordingly. He propelled himself downwards.

After Ralivil hadn’t emerged from the sludge monster’s mass after a few seconds, Buzzy Bol hissed to himself, “What is he doing?!”

Ralivil, now in the middle of the sludge monster, outstretched his right tentacle and fired another PK Freeze Gamma. He heard the monster’s howl muffled through itself. He got ready to fire another PK Freeze Gamma, but a sharp pain, one he hadn’t felt in a while, flared up from the Prophet’s Mark. It dashed through his tentacle and burst in a brilliant white light. The entire hallway was engulfed in the light as the sludge monster exploded into a million itty bitty pieces. The light faded, and the pieces froze as they fell to the floor, creating a cacophony of tinkling. Ralivil, however, fell with an ungraceful thud.

Buzzy Bol hovered down to Ralivil and climbed out of his UFO to ask, “Was that intentional?!”

“Huh… The PK Flash? No…” Ralivil murmured in reply.

A faint crick sounded nearby, prompting Buzzy Bol and Ralivil to look to its source. Arix stood nearby, holding Boson’s UFO, but there was something wrong. The cracks on his shell had grown larger. Ralivil and Buzzy Bol’s pupils shrank.

“Arix, your cracks!” Buzzy Bol exclaimed.

“I know,” Arix replied.

“Oh stars, that was because of me, wasn’t it?” Ralivil asked.

“It’s fine, Ralivil. Like you said, you didn’t mean to use it. *beep* I’ll be fine,” Arix assured him.

Perched atop his ashy UFO, Boson added, “Yeah, he’s still walkin’ and talkin’ and ready to slam jam! But, uh… how about we head back to the ship now, huh?”

Ralivil nodded, then pushed himself off the ground. He looked around for a couple of seconds before saying, “Hey, I think the fog’s cleared a bit.”

The other Timechasers looked around for themselves, then nodded. Ralivil led them down the hallway. As they reached the end of the hallway, they looked to where Malik had been thrown by the sludge monster. He wasn’t there anymore, but the trail of thick droplets that had frozen onto the floor did indicate that he wasn’t dead, at least.

---

The Timechasers climbed into their ship, which had been piloted over to their location by Anue. For once, Elmadan was awake, though he didn’t look any less tired. He at least managed to get out of the hyberpod.

Anue stared at the Timechasers from under their hood for a few seconds before saying to them, “You took your time.”

“We were just lettin’ out some steam,” Boson replied.

Anue glanced at his UFO for a second, then said, “It must not have gone well.”

Elmadan leaned over to get a look for himself, then drowsily added, “Ehh, I think went pretty good.”

“I suppose I will help with the repairs during our flight to Earth,” Anue stated, turning away from the ship’s control panel.

“To– To EARTH?!” Ralivil exclaimed.

“…Yes. That is where the next Point of Power we will need to claim is.”

Buzzy Bol drifted up to the control panel, then glanced at Anue as he asked, “Which way from here?”

“North-east. But it’s more east-north. It is like… two easts to one north.”

“…I dunno how that makes sense, but that makes sense.”