The robed figure says, "You should have brought your friend here. All the same, nobody may leave with the Evertime Stone. Be you Arachnos or not."

Moving Speech bubbles The sounds of people talking and approaching indicate the arrival of Arachnos. "Soon, the Evertime Stone will belong to Arachnos!"

Timothius readies himself for some mass healing.

Angel glances at GG and smiles. "Perfect time to set traps, if you ask me." she comments before then flipping her guns out and switching to chryo bullets.
This message was last edited by the GM at 05:19, Sat 11 Jan 2014.

Raymond is angry with the guardian's answer.  And the inopportune timing of Arachnos.  Maybe that's why he comes up with the idea.

"Let's allow Arachnos through!  Only aid the guardian if he agrees to let us heal Emerald!"

Kitau tightens her grip on her axe, conflicted about Raymond's plan.

"See if you can get Emerald here, Mocha," Mittens says on the SG channel, "Apparently this is not a lending library."

She activates her super sneaky jetpack to avoid any floor traps and continues to sneak up to the Evertime Stone.
This message was last edited by the player at 15:21, Mon 13 Jan 2014.

  Gaget Gun innocently comments "I have no idea what you are talking about".  The camera pans over to a dozen landmines, and one lonely patch of caltrops past them.

  Then Raymond brings up his plan.  "Well, I'm sure there will be more of them.  Not to mention those won't be enough to take down bane spiders and nightwidows." Though at least his little buddy targeting drone means he won't be blinded by their smoke bombs.  He so wishes his own were that strong, but at least he can spam his kind.

  Alloy just busies himself with hula hoop dispensing.  Raymond gets the rings of smash harder.

The place quakes with explosions as Arachnos troops go flying in various directions. The place KEEPS quaking as Alexis creates an earthquake that makes the surviving Arachnos troops continually fall on their butts!

Alexis says, "With all due respect for your sentiment, Raymond, I'm NOT letting Arachnos near that stone! It's Emerald's only hope and they might try to destroy it out of pure spite!"

Angel opens fire on the Arachnos troops and says, "Looks like we'll need you two tough guys back here against the wave of Arachnos!"

Shelly goes into break-dance-with-trident mode as she starts kicking butt martial-style.

Mocha responds with "Will do, Mittens!"

Another wave of healing from Timothius.

The robed figure looks at Mittens and says, "I see you. Last warning; stay away from the Evertime Stone!"

Raymond nods and charges to the front.

"Good point, Alexis!"

He then adds his own knockdown attacks to the mix.  Kitau also charges the front and unleashes her standard wordless taunt: a raspberry!

"Thanks, Mocha!" Mits says.

She stops herself from mocking the guardian and instead flies over to sit next to him, lob fireballs and controls at Arachnos, and switch to her cherub with halo costume.

"Mittens is curious.  Why defend it so?  What's in it for you?  Are you magically bound to it such that if it is taken you suffer some horrific fate?"

  Gadget Gun makes special note to shoot at Night Widows by virtue of little buddy targeting drone 'haha, -to-hit and blindness protections' making that job easier for him.  So far as hitting the dodgey funny hat ladies in the first place can be considered easy.

  Meanwhile, Alloy is careful not to stack his own earhquakes too close to Alexis's, because then it turns into all over the place crazy knockback.  Now, stacking quicksand and other earthy goodness?  Totally doalbe.

  Batsmash hits things with a bat.

The shrouded figure replies to Mittens, "The Evertime Stone must never be in the wrong hands! Mortals have proven time and again that when they get an ancient artifact, it inevitably transfers to the wrong hands. Even if I was sure yours were worthy hands, which I am not, it would only be a matter of minutes before someone stole it from you. You don't even know what the Evertime Stone does... do you?"

The fight dies down a bit, but more Arachnos agents can be heard further down the halls.

Angel says, "More traps..."

Meanwhile, Mocha gets on the SG channel. "HOLY MACKEREL! There's so much Arachnos out here, I can't even get in the entrance of the cave without getting slaughtered! I have Emerald! Someone come out, teleport her to the entrance and then someone else teleport her to the stone!"

Maverick says on SG, "Hi everyone. I'm at the entrance for exactly that. Stand by to teleport Emmy."

With that, Mav teleports her, using the recall tech that he picked up from a hero trainer and then slaps some stealth tech on her before tossing her inside the entrance, only to get a serious beat-down due to recall exposing him. "Now!" he calls in SG in a pained voice.

Meanwhile, Angel peaks around the corner and blasts some Arachnos with her snipe and hops back to the team.

Raymond and Kitau focus on the toughest enemies first, gulping down yellows as needed to see anything to fight in all that widow smoke.

"Nice shot, Angel!" Mittens commends, hopping go her feet to use recall on Emmy.

"Thanks Mav and Mocha!  Keep it up, everyone!  Except maybe Alloy.  Good chance I'll need help with the arcane stuff to heal Emmy."

She smiles at the guardian.  "You surprise me with your noble motives.  Be sure to call on us should you need help protecting the Evertime Stone in the future."

She gently carries Emmy to the stone to get started on the arcane stuff.

  Gadget may enjoy his explosives, but he's only so trappy compared to the sort of person with the word traps actually in the name of their power set.  He does have a nice long cooldown rocket launcher available though, explosions abound.

  Alloy wishes he could argue with the shrouded figure's points.  But yeah, for the most part it's pretty accurate.  Especially that last part sadly.

  Batsmash drew too much aggro and died... Wait, no.  He's okay.  "Running gags, hurt."

The Arachnos assault is relentless, but when they see Mittens carrying Emmy to the stone, they are freaking out. "Don't let them get to the stone!" an Arachnos agent shouts in panic. The efforts get doubles and tripled within seconds.

Angel and Alexis go down.

Timothius gets to rezzing, only to find another ally about to go down, so he cancels the rez in order to mass heal! Timothius goes down.

The shrouded figure walks over to the stone with Mittens. He barely touches the stone with one hand and then touches Emerald with the other hand. Emmy's eyes snap open as she gasps and jumps so suddenly that she falls out of Mittens' arms. The fox then nimbly gets to her feet! "I... I'm OK!"

Only to turn and see her allies getting slaughtered.

"Quick! How do we protect the stone?!" Emerald yelps.

The shrouded figure says, "You and your allies, including your fallen, must all gather at the steps. I will then take you all, myself, and the stone to a safe place."

Emerald activates her buffs even as the guy was talking. "Got it." and rushes out into the fray to grab the nearest ally to pull them back towards the steps. "Fall back to the steps, everyone! We've got a ticket out of here!"

"Good to see you're OK, Emerald," Mittens says, trying to stunn the worst AoE enemies.

Kitau and Raymond are increasingly frustrated with allies going down, but have their hands full staying up themselves.  Raymond gets taken out trying to hand Timothius a bounce back.  Kitau burns through the last of her inspirations to hold the line just a few seconds more, slowly backing up toward Emerald.

"I got this!" Mits announces, standing behind the guardian for cover, "ASSEMBLE THE TEAM!"

She braces herself and powers up!

  Gadget unfortunately, is reminded of certain unfortunate realities of being a Blaster as he gets stunlocked and bludgeoned unconscious by spider themed maces.

  Melty is having some difficulty walking through the pile of unconscious Tarantula Queens that has developed around him.

  Alloy does what he can to hold off the approaching army, but is being reminded his bonkers crowd control options also come with pitiful baby damage compared to the average controller, and the Volcanic Gas is about to go kaput.

  Batsmash fortunately has the League Teleport slotted for trolling Villain Group Trials just such an occasion.  Every freakin person teleport is go (hope you were paying attention if you weren't set to auto accept!).

The robed figure holds the stone and FWOOOSH! ....everyone is back at HQ. With a robed figure that's holding the Evertime Stone.

(Music jingle for mission completion ensues)
 *Mission Completed!*
(sound effect for badge ensues)
 *Badge Earned: Winning Evertime*

The robed figure says, "Farewell, brave heroes. Know that the Evertime Stone will now rest in a new location where even Arachnos will never find it..." He pauses a moment in case anyone has anything to say to him.

Emerald says, "Before you go: Thank you for your help..."

"Love that music!"

Mittens is waving her handheld revive device at Timothius.

"Wakie, wakie, fluffy kitty cat!"

She nods at Emmy.

"Ditto to what the fluffy fox said."

Raymond uses a bounce back and climbs back to his feet to dust himself off.

Kitau limps over to Gadget Gun and offers him a bounce back.

"So...  What happened?" Jake asks over the Supergroup Channel.

  "Hopefully that turns out to be true.  Thank you for helping us when we were not the most polite given the seriousness of the situation."  But then, having to stop to punch Arachnos in the face can be a bit distracting.

  Gadget's inspiration inventory is not full, so it works out and he (not literally) bounces back to his feet.  "Days like today I wonder how others go without helmets."

Emerald smiles up at GG and knocks on her head with her fist. "Hard heads?" she answers, sticking her tongue out. The robed figure says, "Be well." and vanishes!

Emerald then gets on the SG channel and says, "To those not present at the base, I am back! Mission successful. A big thank you to everyone who came together to help me. I'm touched and in your debt!" as she is saying this into the SG channel, she looks around at those who are present in the same room with her, a big, helpless smile with tears rolling down her cheeks.

Timothius immediately gets to mass healing, everyone finding their wounds closing.
This message was last edited by the GM at 23:52, Sat 08 Feb 2014.

Raymond of course thanks Timothius for the heals.

Mits offers Emmy a big hug.  Regarding helmets, she too knocks on her head, nods, and giggles.

"Dunno 'bout you all, but I'd say we've totally earned ourselves a victory party!"

"A relaxing one would be nice," Maximus suggests.

"Glad to hear," Jake answers, "Don't suppose anyone's willing to help Liberty and I guard Hammidon?"

"I will," Kitau answers.

"Why don't we have the party over there so the kids don't miss out?" Mits suggests, "I'll bring folding chairs for those who wanna take a load off."

  "Yeah, we can prevent any complaints from Longbow about having parties in a secure holding facility with free cake."  Maybe if you are lucky, the universe works that way Alloy.

  Batsmash shakes poison darts out of his jacket,  "Party time is good time."

Emerald grins and nods. "Yeah. Let's all go together."

And with that, the group is soon able to get to where Jake is at. Let's be honest... getting someplace in CoX took 5 minutes TOPS, unless you were sight-seeing.

As soon as Emerald appears, Liberty jet-flies to Emmy to glomp her. "I'm so glad you're OK!" She exclaims happily.

Emerald giggles and spins the hovering Liberty around before Liberty gently lands again. Emerald smiles over towards Jake and waves.

Bethany enters the building with a wagon full of cake and ice cream (and ice cream cake).

Jake was standing guard outside the prison figuring it wasn't worth even asking to be let inside.  He waves back to Emerald with a sheepish smile.

"Glad to see you well, Emerald."

When he sees the wagon-load of cake and ice cream his eyes go wide.  He then contains himself and moseys over to the wagon, trying to look cool.

"I'm impressed.  That's a lot of cake on very short notice."

Mits smiles at the Liberty glomp.  "Dunno if I've mentioned, but that was awesome what you did to help defeat Hami.  That much energy would likely have vaporized me considering how much tougher you are."

  "It is encouraging that Emerald did not explode violently, merely caused other things to explode violently."  Which really is one of the big points of being a proper wizard as well, even one that mostly deals in rocks, lava, and crystals.

  "I don't think as much time in the Pocket D as we have all spent can happen without picking up where to grab party snacks.  Not to mention all the flashy lights could be an attraction for Beth.

Emerald grins and pulls Liberty and Jake into the hug. "Thanks, Mittens. Thanks, Alloy. I wasn't sure I'd survive, but it's not like we had much choice... if I hadn't done anything, I may not have survived what Hammi was going to do anyway. But I couldn't have done my part if you all hadn't done your part, you know. ...You all mind if I provide the entertainment?"

Liberty nodnods. "Please! I love your singing!"

Angel asks, "You sure you don't wanna just relax?"

Emerald giggles and says, "I think putting smiles on your faces will help me unwind plenty. Besides... I've been laying in a bed long enough; I need to move!"

The party is soon under way. Various police officers and other contacts the heroes have made over their careers show up to the party and congratulate the group. Emmy's contacts show up, of course, really excited that she's OK. Emerald, of course, sings and dances for everyone as she offered.
This message was last edited by the player at 21:20, Mon 24 Feb 2014.

"Heh, good point," Mits agrees with Alloy.

She grins and thumbs-ups to Emmy's suggestion.  "You're welcome, Emmy.  And a mini concert sounds like fun!  Allow me to supply some special effects!"

Magical pyrotechnics and dancing fire elementals ensue.  She'll leave the lasers and strobe lights to Beth.  Jake blushes and returns the fluffy fox hug.  He'll be happy to to summon a karaoke bot for Emmy to have a mic.  After that he snacks on the sweets Beth brought and enjoys the music.  Raymond keeps an eye out to make sure Alexis is having fun.

  Gadget Gun's Target Drone is going to spin and have lasers and there is nothing you can do about it, so there.  It could be worse, he could be using landmines.

  "Emerald's singing has been worth the wait, but as nice as it is not worth her almost blowing up." Alloy comments.

Emerald is sure to thank people for their kind gestures, including compliments on her singing. The party goes really well.

Alexis seems to be feeling a lot better now that she's surrounded in happy people and party times.

Before the party is over, Statesman shows up and tells the group that he is assigning a special group of retired heroes to watch over Hammidon so that the not-retired heroes can be free to do other things from now on. He is also sure to congratulate everyone on their part in stopping Hammidon.

But evil never rests. Even as the sun sets on the party, the supergroup knows there is another danger on the horizon.

Chapter Closed