That night he set up an actual rotation of who would be awake to take care of and watch the baby bats.  Since they were nocturnal, they would likely need a little more care at night.  He didn't include himself in the rotation, though.  It wasn't that he didn't want to care for the baby bats, but he realized that straining himself for them wouldn't be good, especially considering he was planning on getting more and it would be tougher soon.

Thus Jelin and a few of the girls, like Zaer and Lei, were the ones to wake up feeling perfectly refreshed and awake while the others all were acting groggily for the morning.  Once they had all eaten breakfast, he took a moment to ask Clare to the side if she had an estimate for the time until the mother bat birthed the other pup.  After hearing her guess, he held a quick family meeting.

<Okay, ladies.  I'm sure some of you have started to realize that you're pushing yourselves a little too much already.  Think about it.  Right now we only have three baby bats to take care of.  What happens when we have thirty?  What about when you have your own children, who will likely be less well behaved and require even more attention?

In another month or less there will be at least one more baby bat, barring the death of the mother bat next door.  So far, I don't think we're ready for more bitty batties.  We don't even have things ready for them after they're healthy and stuff and all of you are too focused on trying to take care of them immediately to help prepare anything.  So, I though about it and came up with a few ideas.

I can go ahead and make them linked and turn them into familiars that way.  Then you'll always know if they need something or whatever and can relax otherwise but if we end up not being able to keep them alive we'll all feel it a little more.  Like Gash.  I won't add any more baby bats, though, and these little guys would have to learn to help with any others.  That also means we'd have to wait before rescuing more.

The other way is if you guys can actually find a way to calm yourselves some.  Then we can try to get a place and whatever else ready faster and start rescuing more of them.  We still haven't even heard about what Zaer found down there, yet.  I figured that would have made you, Ell, most curious.  So we need to take a vote based on how you think you guys can handle it.  Link or wait?>

<<Link.>>

<Well, that was mostly unanimous.  Okay.  Here's hoping it works out fine, then.>

Jelin wasn't fully enthusiastic about it but he reached out to the three baby bats with the link and found no resistance as he connected to them.  They grew a little excited at first and he had to send soothing and calm feelings to them so their little hearts didn't explode.  Immediately afterwards he warned the girls that such a thing could happen just in case.  He waited for a bit after that and when he thought they were safe, he turned back to the girls.

<There we go.  They aren't sapient, though, so they'll be more like family pets.  Now that that's done you can all stop worrying as much, right?  We'll know if something's wrong.  Also try to remember that they're supposed to sleep during the day...>

He realized that they were barely paying attention.  He sighed and consoled himself with the fact that they were all a little more relaxed already.  Since he doubted he would be able to do much else about the situation, he gave Lei permission to go ahead and do her morning stuff with the children and little fox.  Then, with one last look at the girls, he left with Zaer to talk about what she had found underground.

A lot of it was difficult for Zaer to explain so simply since she hadn't any knowledge of similar things.  According to her initial description, though, it was like caves made of weird stone.  They were more empty and went far down.  There were a bunch of small openings that went to more caves all over and they were so extensive that she couldn't even have her drones explore nearly as much of it as there appeared to be.

After hearing her try to explain in a bunch of nonsensical details, Jelin finally had the idea to try and have a joint drawing in a nearby dirt patch.  It took a few times and a lot of adjustment from Zaer, but eventually he had a bunch of small little drawings to help explain the first few rooms and the overall view.  He couldn't be sure, since he didn't see any of it himself and Zaer's senses were a little different, but it looked like it was some kind of artificial structure.

Some of the details they ended up drawing out looked like doors and furniture of a sort.  Then the actual cave rooms were more uniform than a natural cave should be.  Also, there was the weird stone she mentioned, which might not mean a whole lot normally but Zaer was like a library of information by herself and had seen what most stone even could be like.

If there really was some underground structure made by some ancient civilization there, though, then it might be what they were looking for to help them in their own underground project.  The problems were that there were now bats that had become an important part of the ecosystem living there and they had no way to get into the structure.  His thought was that there had to be an entrance somewhere, though.

He worked out a few plans with her about searching for some way for them all to enter the structure.  As they talked about it, Jelin came up with an addition to the plan.  If he could work on the rat a little more, then it might make a good way to search the place without as much worry.  It was made of bones so if it didn't move whenever it was near bats, then it should be able to search the entire place night by night.

It was almost lunchtime when they had finally finished making what plans they could so they decided to just call their plans finished and went to wait for lunch.  They would both have things to work on for a while to try and get ready.  Jelin had to start working on the rat again and Zaer intended to start a new mutation of drones meant specifically for searching things like this. 

They also had to train their new pet bats up and prepare to rescue all the baby bats they could.  There was also the issue of where the bats they rescued would end up living.  There would have to be some minor changes to their original plans for the underground structure they were building in the territory.  If they could work it out right, though, then the bats could end up providing decent security.

Jelin was starting to wonder if he would even have time to work on himself anymore.  He had both regular evolutions and classes that needed to be built up which made it all take longer.  There was still the upper part of his territory that he needed to try and develop to some extent as well.  There was a chance that he might be trying to do more than he should all at once.

Then again, he had been using most of his afternoons to help dig the underground section so that is would be done faster.  It was in a vaguely useable state already and now they even had a new one to explore that could provide something extra so he could probably slow down on that particular project.  That would let him use more afternoons working on the rat and allow him to keep his mornings for himself.

If he let the girls know that there was going to be a slight change to how the first underground section would be done to make a home for the bats, they might be more into it.  As long as he limited it to only two of them working on it a day, it might take a little longer but he could also spread everyone out to start or finish other projects.  He didn't want to keep them from working on themselves, either.  With a vague plan in mind, he headed to the lunch call that just came and got ready to try and talk with the girls again.