Alexis is meditating in her usual spot just off Argo Highway in Talos Island. The work of a hero is never done and if you turn on your police radio, there's ALWAYS something going on. But heroes need rest as much as anyone. This is the place Alexis regathers her thoughts and unravels all the tangled messes in her mind. The sound of distant passing cars passing on the highway just 200 feet or so from her has an oddly soothing effect as its white noise helps Alexis focus.

---

A random thought that came to mind when discussing with Will what to RP. I thought it'd be neat to have backstory RPs. Either by RPing the ACTUAL backstory, or RPing stuff that exposes a character's background. Either way, it sounded like a fun idea, so here's hoping all our CoX characters get to shine at some point.

Fun Fact: The location I have Alexis meditating is where you earn the "Nature Lover" badge.

  Ah yes, the steady soothing droning noise of the wind, cars, and a plummeting man...  Wait, that one probably isn't as soothing.  Today's lesson, Crystal Titans hit HARD.  But, not hard enough for Edward Bartholomew Smashings to make a person shaped Crater by Alexis.  They fall short and bounce down the side of the steep hill.

  Eventually, there is at least an "I'm okay!" from below.

  OOC: Alloy is okay with the nature of the Badge, because it was a HUGE JERK robot that god beaten up by nature.
This message was last edited by the GM at 03:25, Tue 21 May 2013.

Alexis' face can be seen peaking down from the edge. She then casts Recall Friend to bring Edward up to her, if he's willing, of course. Even as she casts it, she yells down to Batsmash, "Still, let me heal you!" and by the time she's done speaking that sentence, Batsmash feels the familiar tug of the recall spell that requires the acceptance of its recipient.

  Bat is saved a walking/leaping trip back up the hill, as he pops back into place on his back looking up at the freckle Elf. (That was a specific type of Elf right?  there were so many it seemed).  "Thanks Alexis, help is always appreciated." Being able to heal yourself was nice and all, but some days the 'oh, he'll be fine' mindset can be almost as discouraging as it was painful.

  Stop being such a Baby Wolverine, just wipe off your heart and stick it back in.

Alexis holds her hands over Batsmash and the hands begin to glow. "What hit you so hard? Haven't seen you launch that far in a while..." Alexis asks as the healing magic begins working its pleasant results on Batsmash.

  "Took a wrong turn at the outskirts of Talos.  A Crystal Titan appears to have learned how to punt, when stomping doesn't work."  Mmmm, the pleasant feel of unfractured ribs.

  He sits up, shaking bits of crystal out of his jacket that Alexis's healing has hurried out of his chest.  "While I'm glad to have landed by a-" pretty  "friendly face, sorry for interrupting your quiet time."

Alexis smiles. "A friendly face is always welcome. And while I don't like that you were hurt, it's always nice to be able to help." and seeing Batsmash back to full health, Alexis retracts her hands. "I would say "Crystal Titans you will have with you always", but I don't think that's exactly true. They will probably eventually meet extinction. Though I haven't been involved with Ouroboros enough to know that for a fact or not."

"The Time Bus is still incredibly vague about, well, everything."  Except for Mender Silos being Nemesis.  "And unfortunately wrong about other things."   People still travel back in time to deal with the Shivan Meteor hitting Atlas park despite Galaxy being flattened by it instead.  "Hammidon's work hasn't really turned up much though."

  "Anyways, got any thoughts for how I can make it up to you for making your quiet time less quiet, as well as patching me up?"  Assisted healing always did tend to feel more pleasant than regeneration, after all.

Alexis giggles and then puts in her best impersonation of a male tone voice, "Can I make it up to you for being victimized and thrown against the side of a cliff?"

She then pshaws. "Tell ya what... if it will help make you feel better, let's work together on the nature room of the Redemption HQ."

  Alexis makes a perfectly fine giggling man... Wait.

  "Hammidon wishes they had an indoor lawn as nice.  But nooo it's all barren rocks or infectious fungus, on rocks.  Sure Alexis, I'll help make the nature room more naturey."  After all, even a Nature lover like Alexis probably wants to be able to enjoy scenic trees while it's raining out, without getting rained on at times.

It's true. While she is known to stand out in the rain and enjoy it trickling on her skin and even enjoy the mud under her bare feet, even Alexis occasionally enjoys the bennies of having an indoor nature reserve.

Alexis goes into the base with Batsmash and begins getting to where to plant certain plants. As she does so, she pauses to pet the side of one of the trees in the room. "I haven't really talked much with you about my kind, have I?" she asks. "I know our supergroup has all kinds of non-human beings, but I don't know if you thought much about the fact I'm an elf."

  Batsmash shrugs,  "While there are an unfortunate amount of people who seem to have suffered misfortune for what they are-" At least as many as those who are apparently Married to Tyrant.  "I haven't given it much more thought than other's have about me.  Granted, I'm one of the more Bland Mutants."

 Elsewhere, a certain mutant continues his search for a shirt that will not explode every time he does in a mass of spines.

  "Of course, I'm sure it's much more interesting in your case if you cared to tell.  Most mutants just sort of happen, wherever we're from and whoever we are.  You probably have a heritage, reasons for being here.  I'll admit some bias in you being my Favorite Elf, considering you are the only one I know well and I don't even know if you are a specific kind.  Beyond knowing you probably aren't the Christmas kind." even if she did look good in the outfit.

  Now, living in a tree making cookies?  That is still in the realm of possibility.

Alexis says, "There are several kinds of elves. Nowhere near as many as there are kinds of humans, of course, but still. You and I have fought Red Caps before, who are one of two kinds of Winter Elf. The other kind you met in the form of the Candy Keeper whenever the Ski Chalet opened and Father Time asked us to rescue Baby New Year. Then there's wood elves and high elves, who mostly keep to themselves. I'm a wood elf who decided to venture out and actually take part in human society. Mostly because there are more super humans than there are super elves, so I knew I would be more help to people in general if I joined a supergroup among the humans."

  Edward (Call him Eddy and goodbye knees) nodded, not commenting on those claiming to be whatever Blood or Night Elves were. He still had trouble telling apart the Night elves and Drow prancing about.

  "Probably a stupid question, but do the High Elves live around things taller than huge trees then?  Still, I'm glad you decided to help out.  Showing up to spend most of your time seeing people be huge jerks can't have helped first impressions of the place being worth helping."   Satanic street gangs, as far as the low level eye can see.  Occasionally leaving that view behind when a passing demigod punts them across the entirety of Atlas park.

Of course, Alexis didn't mention ALL the elf kinds there are. After all, Quelenna is in the SG as well.

"On the contrary, my first impression was quite nice. People were helpful, the police showed me respect, and every hero would come together whenever it was needed for those bigger problems, like the Clockwork King." Alexis answers, "So what about you? All I did was study magic, have a talent for it, and now I fight criminals with it. What's your story?"

  Bat had mixed feelings about the Clockwork king.  Crazy and violent, but also punched by Blue Shield so hard they're now a brain in a jar.  It takes a special brand of police brutality to hit a guy so hard they turn into a BIGGER villain, and that's coming from the guy named after what he does upside people's heads on a regular basis.

  "Let's see, why I do what I do."  Well, there were the incredibly shallow parts and the reasonable sounding parts.  "Galaxy City got reduced to mostly a crater by the Shivans, I was one of the people lucky enough to not have one of the meteors land directly on me."   Unlike his favorite nightclub.  "With all that going on, City hall was practically dumping registration cards down the steps hoping people would pick them up, more literally than usual." Ed got to skip a lot of paperwork that day.  "So, jerks with blunt objects and guns on one side, legal vigilantism cards on the other, I picked up one of each."   But he still had to wait several Security clearance grades before they let him into the Pocket D.

  "I've stuck with the Bat because, well...  It's less dangerous than me with a sharp object."   He's still trying to work out how he sliced those 6 cars in half, when three of them had been behind him.

Alexis leans over to give Batsmash's side a hug. "...sorry about your home." not that this is her first time hearing about it, but it's the first time she heard it from the horse's mouth. Or the human's mouth. Whatever.

  Bat hugs back, sometimes he can be more gentle than his namesake advertises.  "Thanks.  I try not to think about it too much, despite the pin.  Then I start thinking about how I'm comparatively lucky and it gets all awkward."  fringe benefits of a previously shallow lifestyle, not much in the way of those known or cared about lost when your hometown is flattened.

  "The people in Croatoa keep getting reminders when ghosts of people they used to know try to punch them in the face.  At least the skulls floating in Shivans aren't so recognizable."

Alexis winces at the mention of Shivan skulls. "Eww, yeah..." she eventually lets go. Hugging too long can get awkward as well, unless you are crying bitterly for a very long time. "I had actually heard about your home being Galaxy. Everyone did when you joined the supergroup. I hope we've all made you feel welcome."

Flashback to when Batsmash joined;

A cute little white-furred teddy bear with an apparently aquatic tail looked up at Batsmash while he was at the Supergroup Registration desk in Atlas Park City Hall. While Batsmash had never seen any creature like her before, her appearance was likely not as much a shock as seeing skull-faced blobs of goo. "Hi! I'm Shelly. Since you're here, if you'd like to join the Redemption Supergroup, I can help you get started." It was a common practice at the time. People were recruiting survivors of Galaxy left and right. Partly to give them a "home", but also because most of Galaxy's survivors who were at City Hall were already proven to be hero-hearted one way or another.

  Flashback land!

  Shelly was the cutest princess Bat had seen all week, even if he was less than aware of her princess status at the moment.  On the one hand, the cute fuzzy was desperate enough to proposition a guy in a cheap mask and cape barely attached to his jacket.  On the other hand, she wasn't throwing signup sheets at his head out of nowhere or screaming something about the color purple.

  "Hello, you've filled the cute and polite qualifications, so I guess I can give it a shot.  I'm E Batsmash" The E is silent, except when it isn't.  We don't talk about the /

"You think I'm cute? Thanks!" ^.^

Shelly has seen a LOT of hero names like "Liberty2" "Seppherroith" "C10ud" and other such attempts to have a different name without being inventive. But she's pretty sure Batsmash on its own would be inventive and not taken. Still, it's rude to ask stuff like "...why the E?", especially when you're just hiring someo- "Why the E?" ....OK, so Shelly may know her P's and Q's. Doesn't mean she always follows them. Besides, she was curious and didn't sound like she meant it in a "you're weird" sense.

  "Because they don't allow backslash E on the name form." Well, technically a true reason.  Guess we do talk about the / after all.  "Also just Batsmash was taken." also true!  There was also thematic with his actual name, but five minutes would be a dumb duration of even a half assed secret identity.

  "So, what can you tell me about the group I just blindly joined on a whim?"

Shelly says, "We're called Redemption because we believe in second chances. A number of our members come from the Rogue Isles and we have a goal of helping the people there so that heroism can rise up in that area. But there's plenty of work to do here in Paragon City, of course. So we actually have those members who have turned from evil and come to the side of good help us in Paragon for the most part. The more veteran members go to the Rogue Isles. Sometimes undercover, other times just in an all-out assault against the villains who oppress the people there."

  Hmm, on the one hand, a group filled with what could be a bunch of jerks.  On the other hand, don't villainesses, even previous ones tend to have hotter outfits?  ...Ed was kind of shallow back then/flashback okay!?  "I'm amazed they find the time to deal with stuff over there with so much going on here.  Do you have to fill out forms for all the Longbow they beat up over there while undercover or something?"  Oh Ed, soon enough you'll find out you don't have to travel to the Rogue Isles to have to hit Longbow in the face.

OOC: I'm still amazed the name Redemption was available for the SG.

Shelly smiles and says, "Me? Yes. You? No. You don't have to. As a member of our Supergroup, you're covered under the paperwork for our supergroup. Which my dad and I handle. Welcome aboard, E Batsmash." she thrusts a hand up towards the guy.

  Lack of paperwork (for him), yes!  Fingerless Gloved hand shakes fuzzy hand.  Batsmash's costume couldn't be more 90's without the addition of huge pouches, kneepads, or shoulderpads.  "Sounds like this will be one of my better decisions made with no forethought."

  And boy, did he have a lot of those.

And back to the present!

Bat nods.  "A Supergroup full of people who actually cared was a pleasant surprise.  Definitly worth sticking around just for that."

Alexis hears a jingle and pulls out a crystal ball. An image of another elf can be seen inside the ball and says, "Alexis, I hope you aren't busy. We need your help and the help of any of those friends of yours."

Alexis looks over at Batsmash, then back to the crystal ball. "I'll be on my way. And I know my friends will come to help. Hang tight, dad." The image fades.

  "Helping you out is definitely the idea Alexis.  Even if your dad was incredibly vague about it."  Maybe crystal balls had exorbitant phone bills?

  "Any idea what might be wrong?"

Alexis shrugs. "He didn't say. But if I were to guess, it could be drow. Where I come from, they're as common as Hellions." The urgency in her voice is like the urgency in her dad's: Not very.

She starts to hover. "Race you to the base portal?"

  "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.