"Hopefully they're only as much trouble as an armed demonically empowered street gang too...  Our standards are very skewed."  Let's see, if he grabbed onto Alexis then-wait no, that would be spectacularly rude just to win a portal race.

  "Well I guess I could ra-"  Rushing off mid sentence for a head start was slightly more polite.

Alexis takes off flying. She's actually not terribly good at racing. Her flight was standard (no boost power), she didn't have teleportation (only recall friend and teleport foe), and thanks to flight, she didn't need much else besides base teleport. Which would just be cheating. Alexis only cheats against bad guys.

In other words, chances are high that Batsmash beats Alexis there and would have beaten her there even if Alexis had the head start. But she meets him there either way and gently lands at the portal.

  Beating Alexis to the portals was down to one thing.  Would Batsmash get stuck on the railing to the kitchen again.  "Damnit!"   Welp.

  Well, there was also the second 'Only Alexis knew WHICH portal' detail.  But that one isn't as slapstick.

Considering the two were still in Talos, Alexis had meant the portal that leads to the SG base itself. Either way, what winds up happening is the two arrive in Croatoa, then Alexis leads Batsmash to one of the magic mushroom circles, like the kind you see inside the BYN mission at the start/finish location.

Getting to the circle means fighting some redcaps and monsters.

Entering the circle is as simple as standing inside and Batsmash finds himself in a very lush magical forest.

  Bonking a few Redcaps beat ten solid minutes of fending off pumpkin people from the shroom gates, man that had been lame.  Croatoa was always a bit off though, not even he was shallow enough to try to pick up Cabal chicks...  Despite the Irony of them sometimes trying to pick him up (not always with a tornado) between staring at a pay-phone in bafflement.

  "Even more trees to block the sky, yet still more well lit than Croatoa."

Alexis assures Batsmash, "There are many sky windows. This is simply a dense part of the wood." and with that, she leads him to the tree village where her people live. She hugs her mom and dad and the two explain the situation. Apparently, the drow are preparing to pull a jerkface move of causing all the elves of this wood to be forcibly teleported to Paragon City. "By getting rid of us and sealing the way back, the drow would have a foothold in this part of the wood long enough that by the time we found a way back, it would be too late. We need to stop them from making that move."

  Ed had thought it was because pleasant places tended to have better lighting than mean places (Case in point, oh god why can't I have a Klingon ship with some PROPER lighting?  Even the darkest Federation bridge was wondrous in comparison).

  "Worse places to end up, but being forcibly yanked from your home is never a good thing."  Still, Alexis's dad was smart enough to know that 'sealed' just meant 'temporary inconvenience' not just for ancient dark entities.  "I'm not really an expert on subjects of magic or electricity, but some I've worked with have pointed out a partial resistance to forced teleportation with more lightning styled shields."

  Or a dumptruck's worth of orange inspirations.
This message was last edited by the GM at 22:19, Thu 23 May 2013.

Alexis says, "Now that I know what's going on, where are the perpetrators and why hasn't a strike force already been sent?"

Alexis' dad sighs. "They were sent... but they never returned. The council believes all we have managed to do was slow their progress. But you and your friends in Paragon are more powerful and, more importantly, more diverse in power. With you and your supergroup, I'm positive the enemy can be stopped."

He gives a location on where to find the drow. Alexis then faces Batsmash. "I guess we need to inform Redemption and see about getting as diverse a team as possible."

  "Yeah, even my pride isn't stubborn enough to claim what I do has any sort of diversity."  Hitting things, despite the sheer variety of specific methods really was kind of samey when you got down to it.

Alexis informs the SG that her home is under attack and she would appreciate all available personnel. A good dozen or so show up, based on Alexis' instructions. In addition to them, a strike force of some wood elves is assigned to fight alongside them and have the added benefit of guiding them in this alien landscape.

Soon, the group is led to an entrance to underground caves and it's explained the drow like the darkness of the underground. Alexis looks about and stays alert. But the wood elves with the group seem noticeably more upset about being here than the others.

  Ed considers the later possibility of offering to set up Elven archers with Jetpacks, Wyvern style.  Provided Alexis's second opinion over if they'd just crash into things or not.

  "So, on a scale of One to Oranbega, how bad are Drow caves usually?"  There'd be Elves with actual experience dealing with Drow in the strike team, right?

Alexis says, "Actually, it's basically like outdoors, but under the ground. Seriously, they like having very large sections of open cavern. But that's ordinarily. THIS cave... well... we'll see."

Sure enough, seems the drow have picked some caves that are hard to navigate just to irritate (And for strategic advantage against any meddlesome heroes). On the bright side, the heroes are from Redemption and thus are equipped with LOTS of experience navigating annoying caves. Even while superspeeding and sliding on ice (Thanks for fun times, BYN!).

Admittedly, BYN was soooo easy compared to certain caves I considered even more annoying than Orenbega.

  Ed somehow doubts that he will hit Drow until the candy comes out in a literal sense.  "So, wide open caves preffered and they want to evict the wood elves to take their spot.  Were Drow always living in caves?"  Ed may not be on par with the various genius sorts, but he was at least smart enough to answer multiple choice questions to reroute a death ray.

Alexis answers, "They weren't always underground... they used to be surface elves too. However, their conquering of our town has little to do with living space and more to do with hating our people."

Suddenly, a group of drow attack! They are proportioned to the size of the assault group, of course. And whatever the difficulty rating may modify it to be.

  Let's see, scale to several assault teams and...  Batsmash hasn't seen as much of a cluster**** brawl since the last time he was dealing with Praetorian Devouring Earth underground.  No infested Warwalkers yet though, so that's something at lea-  "I don't suppose Drow have any relations with Arachnos?"

  He may have practice not getting glue to the ground by them, but webbing and poison all over his clothes was always annoying.  Though probably not as annoyed as some of the Drow after a web covered bat takes hair with it after hitting them in the head.

"Only that they both love spiders!" Alexis yells before slamming her fist into the ground and causing multiple spikes of rock jut out at almost all the enemies. It's a lot of enemies, sure, but it's also controlled chaos. Half the enemies are focused on fighting the wood elf escorts. Kind of like the Praetorian zombie ambush inside a lab mission; there were agents there to distract half the zombies while you kicked the butt of the other half.

....besides, Batsmash had plenty of experience with HUGE groups thanks to Architect mission grinding.

  The Crowd Control swing was getting a literal workout.  Unfortunately, as usual Ed was getting another reminder that being a kinder, gentler Wolverine can suck.  "Please stop ventilating my liver, seriously."  Says the guy hitting Drow while they are down.

The wave of drow is soon defeated and Timothius heals everyone up the rest of the way (because it goes without saying he was healing people DURING the fight). The lead guide points. "We're close... just past that cliff should be the ritual."

Sure enough, a quick peek over the cliff and it can be seen that there's a ritual going on. However, only those with flight or teleport can get there. Superjumpers would hit their heads on the ceiling where they are at and the other forms of transport require ground under your feet. There is a HUGE fissure between the cliff and the ritual.

Alexis says, "Those of us who can fly will fly down there. Then while some are grabbing their attention, some of us can teleport the rest of you there."

Liberty is SO glad she was available to help. She can fly AND tank. And what's more, she can send dozens to their pitfall doom by clapping her hands.

   "I wonder how they got all their ritual supplies there in the first place?"  Raptor packs were convenient, but he'd stick with those who couldn't cross for the moment, somebody had to keep an eye on the Wood elves at least.

  Though he wouldn't put it past them if they could fly all this time.

The plan works. Liberty is quite distracting with her taunts and those who make it past Lib wind up dazed from Alexis' rock spikes. Alexis then recalls those who couldn't fly. Soon, the group is taking out the ritualists with relative ease. Still, it is apparent how MUCH the members of Redemption were needed. Even as much as the group STOMPS the drow, it's obvious that without Redemption's help, the ritualists would have defeated any wood elf strike force and then finished their ritual.

  Ed actually kind of misses that last bit, probably from being so used to dealing with problems for other people that it just sort of blurs how much of a personal difference he makes.  Still, he is glad to have helped out Alexis and her home.  "Once again, peace is gained through unrelenting violence...  I probably could have worded that better."

Liberty moves to high-five her team mates, which of course means Batsmash.

Alexis says, "It is unfortunate the drow force my people to violence, yes. The wood elves would be content to just be left alone. But such is life. Those who do not fight wind up conquered."

  Ah yes, the wonders of text based vs actual MMO include functional high five technology.  It is a sign of trust to high five the girl recently slapping people to their doom.

  "Yeah.  Sometimes you have to punch a few people through a wall so hard their protruding legs spiral to... I've lost track of my metaphor."

Fast forwarding a bit, Batsmash and the others who helped in this mission are awarded honorary wood elf badges and given a nice dinner before they all head home. Alexis heads back to base with Batsmash and goes back to gardening in the green room of the base. "All in all it's been a fun and productive day, Ed. Thanks for all your help."

  Ed will have to get back to Alexis on the 'all fun' part of that claim, but at least the end results had all turned out pleasant enough.  "Oh, it was no problem.  You deserve help as much as anyone else, though that seems to be a common thing forgotten by people spending their free time saving others."

  ...Damnit, Ed never asked any other elf chicks for their phone numbers... Wait, they probably didn't have... but then how did he talk to ancient Cimera with his cell phone...  Eh, Alexis was cuter anyway, and knew some proper blunt trauma compared to bows and slender artistic swords.