In the morning, the number of angels was fewer than there had been previously. I just looked at Malaliel. She returned my gaze without shame. “Some of them aren’t coming back. And no, it’s not because they were stupid enough to give up on life. We seem to have filtered out most of those already.”

  I shrugged. “I suppose it doesn’t matter too much anyway. That makes this easier, since we don’t have to fit so many people through.”

  I looked at the angels lined up in ranks. They were good at that, at least. They didn’t have magic swords to menace people with anymore, but they also weren’t currently restrained. At least not physically. There were extra agents lined up all throughout the portal room, weapons at the ready. And most of said weapons were guns with either a supernatural bent to them or made with advanced tech. Extra tried to minimize how much they used equipment disallowed to others, but there were times when it was appropriate.

  For some reason, the angels didn’t look happy to see me. That was probably because they were sore losers who couldn’t make their own portals. I thought that should be a reason to be pleased by my presence, but they weren’t.

  To minimize what they learned, Midnight was with me. If they thought Gate needed two of us, it would probably be better. It was unlikely we would be done with this particular dimension soon given their reappearance, so thinking about what future trouble they might get up to was best.

  “Whenever you’re ready,” Malaliel said.

  I nodded. I didn’t usually create a Gate terribly far from where I was standing, but I could place them a reasonable distance away. In short, Midnight and I were standing behind the defensive line. Though really, if the angels rushed us unarmed they would lose both their way home and probably their lives. Midnight preferred to not risk getting punched, though.

  We evenly split the spell mostly for purposes of regeneration. The gate opened up to a dry wasteland I’d never seen before. But it was most certainly the correct plane, as I had the resonance of dozens of angels. The location was presumably nearish to the other portal. I didn’t want to make it to the exact same place because people might be waiting, but somewhere on the ground was good enough. I could probably make Gates in the air, but they certainly didn’t default to anywhere except above a solid surface.

  “This is the correct place,” I confirmed.

  “Start moving!” Malaliel gave the order. The angels started shuffling through. “If you’re not fully through at the end of a minute, some of you might be bisected by the portal closing! So you’d better hurry!”

  That made them more eager. I didn’t bother to correct her that it could actually last a minute and a half- the connection was relatively easy and stable so I expected we would have the maximum time based on my upgrades. Either she didn’t know or she was engaging in information warfare. She didn’t need me to say anything in front of these angels.

  Once the last one was through, I called out. “Portal closing!” Even if they didn’t like whatever language I spoke, it didn’t matter. They understood, and that was enough. If anyone tried to slip through they would find that closing portals were plenty happy to leave part of you on one side of things and part in another dimension.

  “Good thing it’s short duration, huh?” I asked. “It’s inconvenient, but it also means we can’t accidentally let a lot of enemies through.”

  Malaliel raised an eyebrow. “I thought you liked ‘enemies’?”

  “Sure, but I wouldn’t want them to show up by accident,” I explained. “Are there any other Halloween people you need sent back to their home plane?”

  Malaliel squinted her eyes suspiciously. “You’re offering to expend more mana on non-combat stuff?”

  “I did do a lot of fighting yesterday. Say, do you think their swords are a good material to store mana?”

  “Ah, I see,” Malaliel grinned.

  “Subtle,” Midnight commented.

  “I’m just thinking it would be nice to have some greater flexibility.”

  My staff only worked for Dispel, which was fine, but it also had limited storage capacity. Then again, considering it was salvaged from a bunch of assassin’s daggers by a tech super who didn’t actually understand magic I thought it was quite exceptional.

  I wondered if Vilhelmiina would think it rude to ask for a new staff? She did spend a lot of effort making the wood. Probably. Though maybe she would have done that project anyway, since tech supers tended to get weird obsessions with certain ideas.

  Instead of a new staff, maybe I could ask for… upgrades? The question was whether or not I could get her to do anything for free. Or at least, get her interested enough that providing materials covered most of it. Because I was pretty sure I couldn’t afford to pay for her actual work, since I didn’t have the budget of a city.

  -----

  The best part about Gate was I could send any number of people through in a limited time. The worst part about Gate is how the time was limited and it cost the same no matter how many people went through. Thus it was that sending Halloween visitors back home when they were alone was… inefficient.

  But not everything that came through on Halloween was a monster. It was certainly monster-heavy, but sometimes there were just lost travelers who stumbled through the edges of their world when they were particularly thin in one direction.

  I found myself looking at a massive stone griffon. Not a statue, just one whose feathers were made out of rock. Not great for flying, I imagined. Probably magic. The flying, of course. The griffon himself was obviously magical even aside from the stone thing.

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  “He just showed up at the park,” Ceira commented. “The poor guy was lost and confused.”

  “But we’re friends now!” Zeb commented. “He still wants to go home, though.”

  Technically, this business still fell under the category of helping Extra. This guy was still an extradimensional problem, after all. Just because my friends happened to also want to help him didn’t mean that it wasn’t their business.

  “Do you know where he came through?” I asked. “Does he?”

  “Not precisely,” Ceira admitted. “Is that a problem? Can’t you track down the remnants of the portal around here?”

  “Normally, yes,” I said. “But it was Halloween. So there was a portal there,” I pointed towards a pond. “Some sort of weird magic there,” I gestured towards a bench that seemed to have separated itself into a neat pile of boards and metal components, with the screws placed all together in rows. “And definitely some more portals near the park.”

  “Does his resonance help?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “We’ll have to look around. And we might need to fly.” Because he very well could have come through a sky portal. Which might increase the radius of where we needed to look significantly.

  “Oh! I want to fly!” Zeb bounced up and down.

  “... I was going to just do Midnight and myself,” I said. “Unless you can feel portal resonance?”

  Zeb lowered her head, placing a paw against it and thinking seriously. “I can sniff for him? Air tracks are hard but I can do it!”

  “Fine,” I agreed. I looked at Ceira who I thought might be trying to not look interested. “You can learn to cast this, you know. And share with your companions.”

  She frowned. “I’m not sure if it’s a good idea to let Bun and Cel fly. They can already cause a lot of chaos.”

  I shrugged. “Shouldn’t be worse than Zeb,” I pointed out.

  “Yeah,” Ceira admitted.

  “Either way, it’s worth the effort to try to learn it even if you don’t want to spend points.”

  A minute later, everyone was waiting around to get magic cast on them. Zeb was bouncing, obviously. “I can share with my companions, right?”

  “Yep. Fluffy will be able to fly.”

  “And Miss Flutter!” Zeb declared.

  “She… can already fly,” I reminded Zeb.

  “But with magic she can double fly!”

  “... It will probably just confuse her.”

  Related to Miss Flutter, the giant bat was now wearing a pink scarf. Fluffy had a hat and a collar. Both had Power Brigade markings on them, and while most people might not immediately know exactly what that meant, animals wearing clothes were far different from simply seeing something wild. Which was good because they were big and Miss Flutter looked dangerous. Though Fluffy was actually the one who was probably more dangerous, especially if you happened to have electronics you cared about. Even then, it was only if Zeb let him.

  “Please let her double fly!” Zeb begged.

  I sighed. “You have to ask her first. Make sure she understands it will be different.”

  So we took some time for that, and then I Multicast Fly on myself, Ceira, and Zeb. And then all of our companions, which was a much greater total number than it would otherwise work on. It was almost unfair. Companions were good and everyone should have them- though most people didn’t have magic that could take advantage of the bond.

  Miss Flutter seemed to find flying the hardest of all of us despite being the only one who did it naturally. I spared Rocky from the magic, even though I could have technically included him. Who was Rocky? Obviously the griffon.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to stay, Rocky?” Zeb asked as she pretty much sprinted through the air, circling around as Rocky tried to fly vaguely towards where he thought he came from. Rocky screeched in a way that sounded intimidating but I assumed was something like ‘thanks but I’m going home’.

  I opened up my portal senses, by which I meant I was just feeling around for lingering magic or other powers. Fortunately some of the spooks on Halloween just existed the rest of the year and others were transformed from something else, so there were fewer portals to worry about than when Doctor Doomsday really got going.

  When considering only those in the air, I was actually able to narrow it down quite considerably. When backed up with what recollection Rocky had and Zeb’s nose, we didn’t actually do a whole lot of searching. Which was good, because Fly didn’t last all that long.

  “Alright Rocky. I’m going to open a portal as big as I can. Uh, can one of you two explain to him that he might want to tuck his wings?” Maybe I could make the portal… wider? The dude had a big wingspan. Fortunately I was pretty sure the edges of the portal would just force him to pull in if he hit them instead of being sliced open, but it still wouldn’t be fun.

  Our two animal friends explained what we needed to do, then we all left room as Rocky gained some distance so he could maneuver into the portal properly. Then Midnight and I split the cost for Gate.

  Maybe it was because I was trying to adjust the shape to be wide instead of perfectly round, but it was difficult. I almost thought it wouldn’t form at all, but we managed to push through. That wouldn’t have been possible without upgrades, I was fairly certain. Must be one of those difficult to reach planes. If we hadn’t had the lingering remnants of the old portal it might not have worked. Good thing we didn’t wait.

  Rocky shrieked as he flew through the twenty plus foot wide portal.

  “He says that it’s home,” Zeb said. “And that he appreciates our help.”

  Oh good. I didn’t think it would go to the wrong place, but it was nice to confirm.

  I let the Gate close behind him.

  All of us descended, except for Miss Flutter who was now enjoying flying without the use of her wings- she would be able to catch herself when the magic wore off in a couple more minutes.

  “I’m surprised Zeb didn’t attempt to form a companion bond with Rocky,” I mentioned to Ceira.

  “Well, he did want to go home,” Ceira shrugged. “Also, from what I heard she wants her next companion to be a squirrel.”

  “What kind?” I asked.

  I thought Zeb was out of hearing. I was wrong. “There are kinds of squirrels?!” she shouted in surprise.

  Well, this would be fine. She probably wanted a tree squirrel anyway.