"They’re getting into one of those planes," Jason, the scout, reported. "Is that part of the plan?"

"No." Gordon crawled on his stomach up to the top of the ridge to look for himself. The research facility was far enough away that he couldn't make out the details, but he could see a group moving into the back of the plane. One of two planes. One figure ran to the second plane, then back to the first after a very brief pause underneath.

"Do you have any idea what they’re doing?" Jason asked.

"Improvising." Gordon looked around at the gathered collection of people and monsters. "I don't know what's going on, but we need to be ready to move."

"Move where?"

"I don't know yet. Just be ready."

"How much can this thing accommodate?" Cassandra shouted over the sound of the plane taking off.

"Quite a lot."

"We have a T-Rex and a boss level giant centipede."

"It will be tight then, but it should fit. May need to jettison the partition." Terry reached up and flicked a couple of switches, then gestured behind him. "You should be able to disconnect the panels now, just chuck it all out the bay door.

The rear compartment, which was quite large and clearly built to accommodate large monsters, did indeed have a partition dividing the ‘upstairs’ from the ‘downstairs’ as it were. The lower section had seats and belts for holding onto, while the top section was bare for cargo and the like.

It took them all working together to maneuver the partition out of the vehicle. In addition to the switch Terry had flipped, there were massive deadbolt clamps holding the partition in place. Each of those needed to be disconnected manually, and the resulting floor/ceiling layer folded into quarters for easy storage.

Wrestling with that took all three of them nearly five minutes. By the time they had the entire bay open and usable the plane was descending to land behind their backup team.

Terry shook his head as he glanced over their collection of minions. "He didn't mention the giant snake and… how many kalvex do you need?."

"Can you fit this all or not?"

"Doesn’t matter. We have no other option. I don't see much chance of you escaping on foot. Once this all hits the fan, it's going to be pure mayhem."

Levi joined Cassandra in hauling open one of the bay doors as they descended, the wind whipping at her hair. She was still wearing that tight skirt that made her look somewhere between a businesswoman and a librarian. At some point she’d need to swap that out for armor, but it seemed to be a personal choice at this point.

Levi kept glancing back at the facility and the other plane, expecting something to go wrong at any moment.

It was a tight fit getting everyone inside, but the plane had been built to accommodate creatures of Reggie’s size - just not with quite so many others at the same time. The end result was very cramped, with several of the minions stacked on top of one another. Maggie sat coiled on Reggie's back well away from any of the plane walls so as to not melt them, though the T-Rex seemed less than pleased with his overheated passenger.

Snip and Snap elected to remain outside, confident in their own flying capabilities, though the harpies squeezed their way inside with the rest.

Mark’s team of kalvex took the confinement worst, not appreciating being stacked atop one another, snarling at each other and anyone else nearby. Frosty, by contrast, seemed to find the entire chaos jumble a wonderful new playground, crawling over and under and around and between everyone with her usual excitement.

They got the last of the minions shoved inside, the bay doors closed, and the mana engine primed.

That was when everything finally went wrong.

The engine whirred and hissed, but the plane didn’t move.Terry cursed. “I need a co-pilot,” he shouted. “We’ve got too much weight and I don’t have enough mana to charge it fast enough.”

Levi wordlessly jumped into the second seat, following Terry’s curt instructions to interface with the power system.

As he shoved mana through the series of power stones embedded into the control stick, he couldn’t help but wonder where this technology had gone in the first timeline. Having transport like this could have been invaluable. He couldn’t count the number of times an airlift would have saved dozens or even hundreds of lives.

There had been a lot of things lost between the first and third invasions, but the more he saw of the world before, the more things didn’t make sense. Tamers weren’t the most common class, but there were plenty of them around and some of them quite high level. People were researching monsters, building manatech, and leveling both themselves and their local dungeons steadily.

So how did things go from this to the future nightmare he’d lived? He was missing something. Something had fundamentally shifted in the way humanity approached the problem during those years he’d missed.

Remembering how he’d been as his world collapsed around him, hopeless, hiding from the world and running from his grief… he wasn’t proud of what he’d become.

He’d kept himself going with a dull tangle of loyalty to his family’s memory and sheer spite. Existing, surviving like any desperate scavenger, his days a blur not worth remembering. He’d barely paid attention to his immediate surroundings, let alone news or gossip.

In a way, being forcefully drawn into the fight had been the best thing possible for him. It had given him a reason to get up each day. A target for his anger, a hope that he might be able to save someone else’s family from the same fate as his, and if not, then at least make the bastards pay for every inch in flaming demonic blood.

But by then, it had been too late. By the time they’d started forcefully conscripting everyone they met, the battle had shifted too far toward the invaders.

Whatever happened in those lost years, Levi hadn’t cared enough at the time. Try as he might, there was no way to remember what he’d never learned.

“The other plane is taking off,” Jason reported, dragging Levi’s thoughts back to the present. “They’re heading this way!”

“I’ve got this,” Cassandra growled. “I’m taking Snap.”

Levi nodded consent. His sister-in-law opened the door and whistled for the lobsteroc, drawing her manabow from its sheath with one hand, grabbing Snap’s harness with the other and swinging herself up.

The plane groaned and struggled under the weight of the fully packed cargo bay, but Levi and Terry were high enough level to keep up the mana flow long enough to get it into the air.

Their plane moved sluggishly, unable to pick up momentum, and Levi’s mana drained far too quickly for comfort.

Levi risked a glance out the side window, where the other plane was visibly gaining on them from the direction of the storage facility. He caught sight of Cassandra firing off shots from her manabow, glowing spots of light that battered the pursuing vessel, then her mount slammed into the front of the plane with bird-claws and lobster-claws all spread to bite in.

He didn’t see the pursuers’ windshield crack, but the sound echoed across the air between them. The material had been designed not to shatter violently, but it hadn’t been designed to survive a high-level dungeon monster tearing it apart—which Snap proceeded to do, shards and chunks flying in all directions.

Their plane slowly built up speed, drawing away, while their pursuit rapidly descended, their vehicle crippled. Levi could swear he heard Cassandra delivering a full-on tirade, then she swooped back to join them. They were too high by now to safely depressurize to let her back in, and after working so hard to gain altitude they didn’t dare slow or descend.

I’ll meet you there, she signaled, then turned Snap and dove to where she could still breathe.

Levi opened a mana restorative, swallowing half of it in a single gulp before passing the rest to Terry.

They had a long flight ahead of them, and a few important loose ends to tie up before they got back to leveling.