Luke ran through the forest, cursing himself for only bringing a single healing potion along. He had grown complacent with his new mechs. They were plenty strong to kill most monsters, but clearly didn’t have a defense against magic dinosaur’s bullshit mushroom mind control.

  Vanessa wasn’t doing well. She had passed out two miles ago and hadn’t woken up again. Every time Luke looked down at her, he ran a bit faster.

  He had to carefully manage his mana. Frictionless Slide was perfect for traversing difficult terrain without jostling Vanessa. He had used half of his mana pool repairing his suit and now after several uses of Frictionless Slide he was down to four points. His pool was refilling as he ran thanks to his Acuity, but it felt so slow.

  Halfway through the journey, a trio of displacer bears blocked his way. They each had an illusion nearby, hiding their true location. Luke didn’t bother to slow down and used his over-the-shoulder spell rifles to shoot all six bears. Once the real ones were revealed, he used a Frictionless Slide to maneuver around them and kept running. They followed him for half a mile before they realized he was too fast for them.

  Finally, the metal skyscraper tree appeared in the distance.

  “Hold on, Vanessa, we’re almost there. Then we’ll get you a healing potion and everything will be fine. Just hold on,” Luke whispered to her. “Please.”

  A pair of dwarven women were tending the berry bushes north of the village, their pearlescent skin shining in the morning sun. They stood up when they heard him approaching. The orc guard had seen Luke earlier and was already back to ignoring him.

  Luke approached them at a run and did his best to say clearly, “Please, she is injured. Where can I get a healing potion?”

  The time between his question and when his cell translated it into Elvish never felt longer.

  Finally, the cell broadcast the translation from his speakers and one of the dwarves pointed to a hut just inside the village walls. Luke didn’t wait for a translation, he started running as soon as the woman pointed.

  His cell translated as he ran, “The storage room for our tools has an emergency healing potion on the back wall.”

  The dwarven woman yelled as after he ran off which was translated as, “Be warned! It is expensive!”

  The concept of money wasn’t important to him right now. Luke avoided the roads and made a beeline for the storage shed. He leapt over the rows of bushes and over the low runed wall around the city. He slowed down just enough to open the shed door without breaking it and rushed inside. He carefully set Vanessa down and looked around.

  There were rows of hand scythes, fruit pickers, and berry combs all along the side walls. The back wall was blessedly empty except for a wooden box with a picture of a potion bottle carved into it. It was locked but Luke easily crushed the padlock in his metal gauntlet and pulled the small door open. There was a red healing potion inside and Luke carefully pulled it out.

  He stepped back to Vanessa, suddenly unsure what to do next. How do you get an unconscious person to swallow something? He tilted her up and her mouth fell open. He uncorked the potion and dribbled a little into her mouth.

  She didn’t react.

  Jinx hopped onto her mech and meowed at her loudly. Luke bit his lip and forced himself to be patient. He dribbled a little more of the precious liquid into her mouth.

  This time Vanessa reflexively swallowed. He grinned and dribbled a little more. She swallowed again and he poured a bit more. By going slowly, he was able to get the entire bottle into her.

  Before he was even finished, she was looking better. The scrapes and cuts along her body healed up. He checked her lung and hip and they were sealed up. Her broken arm set itself and her sliced up forearm sealed itself up.

  He slumped back in relief. She was going to be ok. Vanessa had survived.

  As he watched, color returned to her skin and the scars from the dino claws erased themselves. Luke’s eyes widened as he realized what that meant. He hadn’t given her a healing potion. He had broken a lockbox and used a greater healing potion on her. The same kind that went for four million dollars on Earth.

  He bit his lip. That might cause him some problems.

  If he had known what potion they had in the emergency box, he might have hesitated to give it to her. Then again, she was on the edge of death, he might have given it to her even knowing how much it cost.

  Lord Edobar had said he could get healing potions as part of their agreement, but Luke doubted that greater healing potions were covered. He shook his head. He didn’t regret saving her life, so there was no point in regretting the cost that came with it. He would just have to deal with it when that bill came due.

  Vanessa’s return to consciousness was a violent thing, she sat up and thrashed around in panic. Only Luke’s quick reactions saved her from getting injured or kicking a hole in the wall.

  When she calmed down and realized Luke was there to help her she said, “What the hell happened?”

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  “You were really hurt and your health potion bottle had broken. I carried you back to the village and used one of their emergency potions,” Luke said. He climbed out of his mech so he could give her a hug.

  Once the embrace ended they both sat back. Vanessa put her head in her hands, wincing at the blood on both. The greater healing potion hadn’t cleaned the gore off. She looked down at the huge rip in her pilot suit and pulled the cloth over her breasts.

  “Is... is Sandwich ok?”

  Luke double checked with his magic drone and it showed him doing just fine. Sandwich had harvested the cores and was working on making a crutch big and sturdy enough to use while he was in a mech. “Yeah, he’s fine. His armor got busted up a bit, but he wasn’t hurt.”

  “That’s a relief. The velociraptors though. That was worse than a horror movie. I was so sure they were my friends, even as they tore into my suit.”

  “Me too. I saw everyone being attacked and all I could think about was how cute they were. Jinx and my drone were unaffected. If it wasn’t for them, we would all be dead,” Luke said and gave his cat a scratch under the chin.

  He tried to hug her too, but she phased through his arms and landed on Vanessa’s lap. She grunted slightly, Jinx was a big cat now. Vanessa still gave the cat pets. “Thanks, Jinx. You saved our lives. You are a good kitty.” She turned to Luke, more centered now. “How do we defend against that? We didn’t even see them before we breathed in the cuteness spores.”

  “It’s worse than that, both of our armors already have serious air filters. They were getting to us through magic bullshit.” Luke said, depressed that his countermeasures had been useless against them. When he saw her expression he hurried to add, “But those mushroom dinosaurs haven’t taken over the world yet, so I am sure there is an easy counter to their magic. I’ll ask Cormac about it when I can.”

  “Yeah, you are right.”

  Luke looked off in the distance and back at her. “Are you alright now? Sandwich is doing ok out there, but I want to help him return to the village. Do you feel good enough to be on your own for now?”

  “Yes, don’t worry about me. Although, maybe leave me your cell phone, I want to be able to talk to whoever comes here and demands to know why we broke into their house.”

  “It’s fine. This is a storage shed for the farm workers and they sent me here. You won’t have a problem,” Luke said and handed over his cell phone. “But just in case, here you go. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  Jinx decided to stay with Vanessa and Luke jogged out to collect Sandwich. On the way he stopped and bowed towards the dwarven women. He said, “???.” Which was thank you, if he remembered correctly. Considering his Memory stat was 12, he was probably correct.

  ???

  “Put me down, put me down. We’re here,” Sandwich said as they arrived at the village.

  Luke had been holding him in a princess carry and apparently that wasn’t manly enough for Sandwich. Luke chuckled and set him down just outside the city walls.

  Vanessa was sitting with Jinx in the same spot he left her. As he arrived she said, “Oh thank god you are back. I’m ready for a bath and a week off to recover from my near death experience.”

  “It will take me more time than that for me to recover,” Luke said and paused, his voice catching. “When you passed out in my arms, it was... traumatic. I thought you were going to die.”

  Vanessa put a hand to his face, “I’m sorry you had to watch that.”

  “I’m sorry you had to go through that. It must have been terrifying. The good news is that I used a greater healing potion. You won’t have any scars or lasting damage.”

  “What? Aren’t those super expensive? Where did you even get one?”

  Luke pointed to the wooden box he had broken into. “Right there. They make them here, remember? It isn’t too expensive for them to have them on hand for emergencies. But don’t worry about the cost. All healing is covered by Monster Jaegers Inc.”

  “That’s good, because an orc guard came by while you were picking up Sandwich. I told him we would replace the potion and the lock.”

  “Yeah, healing potions are expensive, but the company is making good money,” Luke said. A greater healing potion cost more than the company had made to date, but he wasn’t going to tell her that. “Let’s head home. Vanessa, don’t get up. I’ll carry you in the remains of your armor. It’ll make repairing it faster.”

  Luke lifted her up in the half armor, just like he had carried her there. Jinx hopped up to her lap and demanded pets. Vanessa was happy to comply. Sandwich grabbed his tree crutch and they slowly walked around the city and to the portal.

  They were stopped on the Earth side before they even left the portal room. An officious looking woman in a blue blazer was accompanied by a pair of scowling men wearing bulletproof vests and a handgun at their waists.

  She held up a clipboard as if it could stop thousand pounds of power armor and said, “Luke Moore, you are to come with me. I’ve gotten reports that your armored power loaders are in violation of the treaty between the Kalibutan Triumvirate and the American government. We are confiscating your machines until we have determined that they are not in breach of the agreement.”

  This was almost certainly the work of Atticus Adelson. Apparently he didn’t care for Luke’s little stunt this morning, blocking all scientists from Kalibutan. The rich asshole was going to regret firing back at him when Luke made his next move. But for now, he needed to get out of this without giving up his power armor.

  To give himself more time to think, Luke said, “And who are you? Do you have a warrant or whatever?”

  She gave him a harrumph and said, “We aren't civilian law enforcement, we don’t need a warrant. We are with a federal agency and there will be serious consequences if you do not comply right now.”

  “Which agency?”

  “What?”

  “Which agency are you with? And can I see some credentials?”

  “I don’t have to tell you that, but if it will speed things along, I am Margaret Weiss with the US department of Homeland Security,” she said and flipped open her wallet and presented a badge.

  Luke had no idea if it was real or not, but it looked official. Best to treat it like it was real. “I guess we will have to comply with your investigation. You don’t need to take our power armor though, I can tell you that we aren’t breaking the treaty. I get why you would be confused, it kinda looks like we have gun barrels poking out of our mechs.”

  He grabbed Sandwich’s arm and popped open the forearm panel. “As you can see, no bullets, just these little black balls. The runes here create a spell and the spring shoots it forward. These aren’t guns, they are spell throwers.”

  She leaned in close to examine the mechanism. Luke snapped the panel shut before she could get a good look. She scowled at him and said, “It still looks like a gun to me. And even if we were to determine your weapons don’t use gunpowder, there are more provisions in the treaty than just the one and I need to create a report covering every provision of the treaty. Surrender your machines for inspection, now. I won’t be asking again.”

  The two men in body armor by her side put their hands on their guns.