It has been a couple weeks since the party celebrating the defeat of Hamidon. There were still the usual crooks stealing, kidnapping, and concocting evil schemes, of course, but the heroes of Paragon City were just as tireless as the villains.

However, while fighting some mooks, a member of the Redemption Supergroup found a clue in one of their many missions; a letter from a high-ranking government official of Paragon City to Emil Marcone, the man currently in charge of the Marcone Family (aka the faction called "the family").

---

This chapter is meant to be fewer characters directly involved. So basically, Chris: choose a character to have found the letter and that will be the character who finds a few SG members to recruit for this mission. Why Chris? Because he's going to work soon, so may as well give him something to post at work.

It was Kitau who found the note, but she passes it on to Raymond to follow up on without giving a reason for why.  Raymond shrugs and lets the others know over the SG channel.

"Anyone interested in coming with me, meet me at the base entrance."

He heads in himself.

"Better yet, meet me at the salvage racks."

He gets to work cramming valuable salvage into the storage racks.

  Impressive Guy makes his way down eventually.  Current thoughts, where do those clones/alternate dimension versions of himself keep getting shuriken? Seriously.

  "Hello Raymond, hard at work stress testing the shelving as usual I see.  What's this I hear about smashing Family members?...  That came out wrong."

An arcane circle appears next to Raymond's feet and Emerald appears from top down, eventually materializing, standing on the circle before it disappears. A sound like TRON rezzing accompanies the new, fancy teleport power. She smiles and waves at Raymond and Impressive Guy. "Hi guys. You called?"

 "Hello Emerald, always lovely to see you up and about." There is going to be a lot of smashing (damage) in the Family's future.

Raymond nodded to IG's comment earlier.  He stares and blinks in surprise at Emerald's special effects.

"Neat spell effects, Emmy."

He shows the letter to the other two.

"That's all I have to go on at the moment.  We'll likely have to do some violent investigating to get more clues."

"Thanks, guys.." Emerald says with a bashful, but playful grin. She takes a look at the letter and says, "The family... First place that comes to mind is Independence Port. We'll go and self-defense the family into submission, since it goes without saying they'll fire at us unprovoked. Then we can interrogate them. It's a place to start, at least."

  "Passive Aggression, one of the most useful tools in crime fighting."  Uh, what.

  "The sooner we can leave, the sooner we can get shot at."  Do you listen to yourself?

"You're welcome," Raymond answers, "Port Oaks is the first place that came to my mind.  I suppose it's telling of how much time I spend on the Rogue Isles.  I.P.'s a better plan.  Much easier to get to.  Thanks again for the help, you two."

He heads over to the I.P. teleport pad.

Once the group are in I.P., Emerald gets to flying towards the Family area. Emerald says, "Port Oaks, eh? Yeah, that's a bit of a trek from here, Raymond. But for what it's worth, it was the first place to come to my mind also. Guess they swarm there more often. Either way, the official is from Paragon, so the closer to home we fight the Family, the more likely we'll find the connection. I'm hoping."

Of course, once the group gets to the area where Family lurk, they see Emerald and don't open fire. Emmy forgot that grey-con enemies are smarter than to pick a fight with someone that much higher security level. That and two of the heroes are friggin' INCARNATES. "Hmm... not attacking us."

In the game, it's easy enough to just kick the butt of nameless NPCs who were technically not doing anything wrong. But in IC...? Might be a different story.

  "Don't worry, I have an idea."  Impressive Guy says, as he calls up an acquaintance.

  MEANWHILE, AT THE HALL OF JUSTICE POCKET D

  Briefs Boxer, Pink speedo pugilist is on break from his shift dancing in the cages.  He checks his PMs, invites Impressive Guy, resulting in a party security clearance of 1.

  MEANWHILE, WITH OUR HEROES

  Impressive Guy is now totally under leveled for the area, attracting the attention of mobs (of mobsters). "Get him!"  "Haha, see! My plan worked-owowowowowowow."

Raymond chuckled at Emerald's comment.  "'Swarm...'"

When the mobsters failed to attack, Raymond folded his arms.

"Looks like we'll have to use more tradi..."

He stops when the goons attack.

"Never mind."

ZAP!  Raymond uses judgement bolt on the lot of them!  He then uses his hand held revive machine on Impressive Guy.

"Clever plan.  Gutsy and effective."

He gets to restraining and questioning the baddies.

Emerald gets to comforting IG. She of course, is not so nice to the criminals who beat up IG.

Most of the guys have no idea what the trio are asking about, but one guy insists such while being a bad liar about it. Doesn't take much to spill, especially since he goes on about how "you'll never get me to snitch!"

Within minutes, the trio of tights managed to get from him that there is a secret Family base in one of Atlas Park's warehouses, and the guy who was supposed to get the letter should be there.

A quick send-to-jail technology later and Emerald looks at her allies. "Atlas Park... figures the current leader of the Family would be holed up right under our noses. Maybe he's taking a vacation from the Rogue Isles? Can't say as I blame him... that place is depressing."

Meanwhile, the camera pans to Emil in the secret base grumbling, "Ug... I have to hole up in this pajama party Atlas Park! This place is too bright and shiny. I miss the grunge of the Rogue Isles."

  "Perhaps he feels false security in the fact most heroes that could easily smash his face would pass right over it on the way to the auction house or latest costume contest."

  Meanwhile, at Wentworth's.  Captain Original Character Do Not Steal incarnate teleports several dozen of his guildmates into the auction house.

"Impressive interrogation," Raymond comments, "I'm not used to making progress quite this fast."

He hmms at IG's speculation.  "Possibly.  Then maybe we should take a subtle approach.  Surveillance, wire tapping, and the like.  He'll be less likely to let something important slip if he gets a visit from a bunch of heroes.  Until we have more to go on there's no telling what he's plotting.  So we don't want him on guard and tight lipped."

Emerald says, "Not exactly a false sense of security if they really do get passed over." then strokes her chin at what Raymond says. "So used to beating up the bad guys and calling it a day. Yeah. Let's tell the police and get some wire tapping going."

  "I suppose if only so we can yell wroooooong at him when he inevitably says we have nothing on him."  Look, spite and pettiness can be great motivators for proper heroics and crime solving okay?

Raymond nods to Emmy and smirks at I.G.'s remark.  "I do enjoy having ammo for come-backs, yes.  Not terribly confident in going to the cops with considering the nature of the letter.  Don't want to tip off any moles within the department.  We could check within the guild to see if there's any techies available to do the tapping for us."

Emerald says, "Then let's check in with HQ."

When the group checks for a techie, Eli responds. "I'll get on that. Gimme 48 hours or less, and I'll have 'em fully tapped for you."

Emerald looks at Raymond and IG. "Well... while that's being dealt with, whatchya guys wanna do?"

 

  "Oh, you know.  Just normal stuff."  Then his player realizes she asked what he WANTED to do, not what he HAS been doing.

  "Something aside from inventory sorting or auction scrounging, at least."
This message was last edited by the GM at 09:40, Sat 16 Aug 2014.

"Thank you very much, Eli," Raymond answered.

To Emerald he says, "Well I've been meaning to work some more on having Eden declared a protected nature preserve or something for Alexis' sake.  I did a little digging and it's not as simple as finding some endangered animal there.  Though such a find certainly wouldn't hurt.  The property values are expected to bounce back over the next few years, so the longer it takes, the more the commercial tycoons will resist."

Emerald ponders. "Maybe we can get the best of both worlds by turning it into some kind of money-maker. If the government feels they can make money off it being there, the ball will get rolling a lot faster. So, not just a preserve, but a memorial park with tours that has a "pay to get in" kind of deal?"

  "Well, I guess if Faultline can see progress then Eden might be able to as well."  Though Faultline's issue was a more simple (if widespread) hole in the ground.

  As opposed to an ecological disaster where it's current condition was due to ecological contaminants as bad or worse than any of the chemicals Crey had been playing with in it's factories.

  "Gonna be a hard sell trying to pitch what Hammidon did as a good thing to leave alone though.  People asking you if you think the Shivan meteors improved Galaxy will probably happen a lot."

"That's a great idea, Emerald," Raymond answers, "Much more likely to happen that way.  And likely more palatable to the general public than a nature preserve."

He nods to Matt.  "Appreciate the warning.  I'm sure you'd do a better job of answering such a question than me.  I'd likely lose my temper and shout insults if I don't have a ready answer for such a question.  So what would you say to something like that?"

Emerald says, "It's all about spin. You don't sell the event as a good thing, you sell the remembrance instead. People don't diss the idea of a holocaust museum and for good reason. No, we won't say Hamidon made improvements. We will say we will rise above what Hamidon did, and make his rise and fall not a place to remember him so much as remember those who were lost in his wake."

  "Well, when it come to Galazy I'd ask Batsmash to do it in that case.  Then I'd politely wait for him to stop hitting me in the face.  Wait, this is a terrible suggestion."

Raymond sweatdrops at I.G's suggestion but shakes it off assuming it was an attempt at humor.

"Thanks again, Emerald.  Glad I asked for your advice.  Maybe uh...  Would you be willing to take charge and make me your lackey?  I'm lightning fast at getting coffee...  but beyond that I'm not seeing myself as anywhere near as likely to succeed as you."

Emerald smiles up at Raymond. "Thanks. Though I think you sell yourself short.."

Just then, the group gets a tell from Eli, "It's set up. I had Jake's help. Sped things up a lot."

Emerald says, "Thanks, Eli. Now we have to wait even less. Those guys just need to bury themselves. Good thing Shelly got us those permits for wire tapping so that ours is admissible in court."
This message was last edited by the player at 02:35, Sat 13 Sept 2014.

  IG nod, "Of course, this also means we can't kill time by sending prank phone calls to evil."

Raymond nods to Emerald.

"Thanks for the encouragement Emerald."

Over the SG channel he says, "Thank you, Eli and Jake.  Icecream on me if you're interested."

Raymond's got no idea what to say to I.G.'s remark.

"Either of you interested?" he asks I.G. and Emerald.

Emerald says, "You bet I am!" then looks at IG. "And of course we can prank call evil. Just not the Family for now."

Eli says over the SG channel, "Yay! Ice cream! We having it at the base?"

  "Why would I turn down free ice cream?  Unless it was lame icecream that is."

  He shrugs in regards to Emerald "The Freakshow seem particuarly sore about prank calls despite being the most likely to troll message boards."

  ELSEWHERE, A Freakshow Tank Smasher cries into his hammer hands.  He has been banned from another forum for 'just posting unintelligible spam'. Typing is hard.

Raymond chudkles at Emerald's and the kids' enthusiasm.  He considers the lojistics and I.G.'s point about taste.  "It would be simpler if we all just pick an ice cream place and gather there.  That way everyone can pick their favorite from what's available."

Not knowing what to say about the whole prank call business, he fumbles through his smart phone, trying to get it to tell him where a good ice cream place is.

"I know a good place," Jake offers, "I'll send the coordinates."

"Coordinates..." Emerald muses with a chuckle, but not into the SG channel. "You know you're a super when coordinates are better than an actual address."

She looks at the others. "We should make a list of "you know you're a cape when..""

Once the ice cream place is revealed, Emmy heads there with the others. Soon, the ice cream place has a fox girl, a lightning mouse man, a guy in riot gear, and to children with techno-suits on enter. The ice cream vender is unsurprised. However, the group is soon asked for an autograph or two.

  "I know it's a general term, but why do the Hellions keep using it when they hardly see any heroes with Capes fighting them?"

  Guy with riot gear? Oh, right.  IG turns off his Halloween SWAT hologram which he forgot was still on.  Also causing the requests for autographs from him to cease.

OOC: Theoretical AE mission.  Break up a counterfeit 'Yeah, you can wear a cape before level 20' vouchers ring. Nevermind those of us who spent real dollars to have those and auras perma unlocked on every character

"I've often wondered that myself," Raymond answered I.G. "And the whole thing about 'tights.'  The nickname is hardly descriptive of many heroes."

While signing an autograph, to Emmy he comments, "At least one entry should be, 'You know you're a cape when: You're a piece of cloth attached at the shoulders of a shirt that drapes over a person's back.'"

Jake blushes and signs the autograph he's asked.  He asks for Neopolitan ice cream.  Raymond suggests the group could get a big combo like a family size bananna split with a scoop of each of the favorite flavors.

Emerald looks herself over and says, "I oft wear tights. Today, I happen to be wearing tights with modded armor."
Raymond's suggestion makes Emerald chuckle.
Eli is a blushy mess from the autograph requests and hits his invisibility device, refusing to give a vote about ice cream.
Emerald says, "....I'm thinking we'll need to eat at the base. Meet us there, Eli. We'll take your order."
She then pretty much votes for Raymond's idea and gets cookies and cream for her flavor.

  "I think adding a frappe on top of a banana split probably would not work out so well."  Icecream, in liquid form!  How come the astronauts don't bring it like this?  Probably weight, or something.

"Wh..."

I.G. once again breaks Raymond's brain.

"If...  that's what you want, I would ask that you move your portion to a separate dish first."

He nods to Emmy.  "That's fine.  The point of gathering here was to simplify the ordering process.  Eating at the base is only a teleport away.  Feel free to go on ahead.  I'll catch up once the order is ready."

He approaches the counter to order.

"My vote is for the base's park," Jake offers, "I could go for some non-ozone-laiden air."

Soon, ice cream eating is commencing at the base's park area. The area designed mostly by Alexis. Eli is still blushing and eats quietly.

Emerald says, "Sure is nice to relax like this while waiting for criminals to make mistakes and arrest themselves for us."

  "No, that's fine.  I believe I shall stick with a more traditional cup in my case."  Maybe asking for a shake in a dish was an electric animal person thing?  IG just didn't get Raymond sometimes.

  Back at the base, IG nods in agreement.  "Though hoping crimes are actually committed is always strange, may as well hope it is more than simply insulting people over the phone that gets caught."

Raymond doesn't know how to deal with shy boys so he simply asks, "Something wrong, Eli?"

"Too much public attention," Jake answers for Eli, "Unless I'm mistaken."

He looks over at Eli for confirmation.

Raymond tries to figure out what tries to figure out what to say to the I.G. response.

"Hoping a mobster under investigation suddenly has a change of heart and stops committing crimes would be like a disease researcher hoping that the deadly virus under his microscope will suddenly transform into a lab assistant.  Thoughts like that simply don't occur to most folks."

Eli blushes and nods to what Jake said.

Emerald says, "Not everybody likes fame. Fewer still can handle it without at least a butterflies in their stomach from time to time. Like me, for instance. I'm not a shy gal, but getting on stage to sing is still frightening."

Eli says, "As frightening as the badguys we face..."

Emerald says, "...yup. Sometimes more. Sometimes less."

The group then gets a com from the PPD; "This is the PPD calling Redemption! Please hurry! The Family has kidnapped a civilian and the Circle of Thorns took our weaponry when we arrived on the scene!"

  Impressive Guy nods,  "Emotional dangers are not the sort of thing you can solve with punching...  When it does not involves traveling through somebody's mind, or phsysical manifestations of their fears, or an evil emotion themed tiki mask... Okay, normally they are not the sort of things you can solve with punching... Wait, there's stage fright in boxing I guess."

  Brief's boxer doesn't imagine the crowd or his opponents in their underwear.  His opponent's don't even have to imagine when it comes to him and it does not help them, at all.

"It's liberating to not care what villains think of me," Raymond says, "As for how to deal with fame among the public, many heroes use disguises..."

He's cut off by the police com.

"On my way!" Raymond answers the officer.

He courses with electricity as he streaks toward the teleporters and gets the location from the officer.

"Your force shields could come in real handy for the officers, Eli," Jake mentions as he walks for the teleporters.

"E-102: put the leftovers in the kitchen freezer."

"Yes," the robot answers.

When the group arrives, it is as the police said; the police are getting their butts handed to them now that they've been de-clawed. Eli causes a force field to protect the bunch.

Emerald runs over to them, twirling her hands to create a ball of kinetic energy, jumps and slams her fist into the ground, causing half a dozen to fall on their butts!

The Family seem to be nearby, watching as if this was a TV show. Their boss is there, cigar hanging out his mouth, and petting a cat in his arms.

The CoT are quickly going to crowd Emerald... which is exactly what she hoped for since she is currently the designated tank.

  Impressive Guy will not particularly worry about Emerald unless a bunch of Behemoth lieutenants show up (And even then, only because they are quite annoying to hit in melee combat).

  He heads for the nearest Cop that isn't running in an aimless panic circle, and asks "So, who was kidnapped, exactly?"

Raymond charges into the fray and begins zap-smashing baddies en-mass, turning an angry glare at the family.  Jake backs up Eli, focusing on healing the injured with nature magic with a side of robot laser spam.  Those in the greatest danger he offers a teleport to.

The cop that IG asked answers, "We don't know the name of the civilians who were grabbed, just that they are innocent bystanders who have nothing to do with this mess."

Raymond manages to pull some hate, but Emerald just uses her incarnate power and reminds the enemy that she too is not one to be ignored. Eli's job is easy. So once he has everyone encased in force fields, he starts blasting enemies with his KO gun, specifically designed to not harm, but simply put to sleep the enemy.

But the CoT all suddenly stop and begin laughing.

  "Well, rescuing them is the general idea even if we do not know who they are."

  When the wizard laugh track kicks in, IG asks "So, is this some kind of new confusion attack?  Because it is mostly succeeding."  No making him target allies though.

Raymond is scanning the area for any sign of where the hostages are, but the situation is only making him angrier and angrier.  Being laughed at doesn't improve his mood any.

"Where are the hostages!?" he shouts, (assuming he didn't see them in his quick scan) taking a wide, thunderous swing at as many baddies as he can catch with it.

"Looks like they're pretty distracted," Jake coms Eli, "Let's stealth and rescue hostages."

He activates super speed stealth and heads over to where he can get a better view of everything.

As soon as Raymond swings and hits a few, they explode, causing harm to Raymond! A few manage to explode before being hit, though, and those explosions hurt worse! (In game terms; half damage if you hit them. Full damage if they explode before you can hit them.)

"What the-Ow!" Emerald yips as she gets hit with some exploding CoT.

A circle of them (is that a circle of thorns, or a circle of circle of thorns?) surround IG and begin closing in on him.

As Jake superspeeds off, Eli refreshes the forcefields and then hits his own invis and follows. Soon, Jake finds a group of Family who are guarding a single hostage with tommy guns. Eli texts the others with: "Found 1 hostage. Family guarded."

  Impressive guy is really glad he's a resilient build in this theoretical setting, let's hear it for pretend respecs.

  His clever plan to aid in his survival, Om Nom orange inspirations Om nom.  "There we are, now sweep kicking a horde of exploding wizards will only be incredibly stupid instead of incredibly suicidal!"

Spinkicks are go!  You crazy so and so.

(OOC: There's a switch.  Half damage on a hit.  Also, yay for CoH allowing a 2nd build you could switch to.)

Enemies exploding serves only to make Raymond all the more furious...  well...  that and lower his HP bar a good chunk.  Fortunately he's not the kind of brute that goes into a mindless rage when injured.  Instead he takes off straight up into the sky then summons some Mu to blast the CoT that were surrounding him.

"Use ranged attacks!" he suggests to his allies, busting out a pistol he crafted for times like these.

Now if only he could do more than just graze the enemy with it.  Not that it matters when they're about to explode anyway.  Meanwhile Jake is thanking his lucky stars for whatever ancient hero it was that made it so hostages would be invulnerable to harm for all time.  So rescue will be as simple as knocking out the kidnappers.

"Engaging the enemy," he coms the others, "Let us know when you're ready for a recall."

A beautiful grove of grass, flowers, and butterflies suddenly sprouts up.  Several robots armed with stun grenades and stun lasers rush to the center of the grove and open fire on the kidnappers!

"Feel free to forcefield by 'bots, Eli."

Eli nods and begins putting force fields on the robots. "Jake, be careful. Even with your robots and my force fields, the two of us are not likely to handle many of these guys... so I'll keep an eye out for adds."

The CoT switch to ranged attacks of their own, but some of them fly after Raymond! However, it is clear that Raymond and IG are keeping the CoT off of the cops, at least. And where did Emerald go?

Suddenly, Emerald materializes near Jake and Eli. "You didn't think I'd leave you boys all by your lonesome, did you?" she comments before charging into the fray and slamming kinetic energy into a Family thug, sending the guy flying and bouncing off a railing into unconscious land!

  A scorchmarked IG digs through his inventory  "Ranged stuff, well I guess maybe this counts?" Frivolous waste of Vangaurd heavy power core is go.



  OOC: Alternate build option was wonderful, even if I rarely used it (still gotta slot up both builds!).   I meant more along the lines of "IG is Willpower in this fantasy universe, not Oh God Why Am I The Worst At Super Reflexes I've Softcapped Endurance And Defense slots and I still run out of stamina if I try to jumpkick more than twice (which I put an endurance slot in)"

Jake thinks he and Eli are overkill for a bunch of mooks, but he knows better than to tempt Murphy by arguing the case.  Then Emmy shows up.  Jake searches for a way to thank her without sounding like he and Eli needed the help with a bunch of pushovers.  Or that Emmy wasn't wanted.

"Good point, Eli.  If some CoT demon god were to show up, that could prove annoying...

"Oh hello, Emerald.  Good to see you.

"No need to worry about overpowered adds now, Eli."

Eh sends Emerald a buff.

Meanwhile, Raymond is playing whack-a-mole with flying wizards.  If the moles were explosive.  He does a double-take at sudden giant robot out of nowhere.

"Yeah.  I'd say that counts..."

He's at a loss for something more clever to say.  On guild chat he asks, "Where are you, Emerald?"

Emerald looks like she is getting angrier by the moment and the whole warehouse starts getting cold quickly as she gets a light-blue aura and ice spikes shoot from the ground, instantly knocking out the group of mooks (Cryonic Judgement!). She replies on guild chat with a twitched smirk. "Backing up the boys in the warehouse. They found the kidnap victims." there is a slight reverb in her voice. She darts her eyes to Jake and says, "Good to see you too, Jake. Nice job locating the prisoners."

Eli squeaks and says, "Right... next group?" and starts flying with Jake to the next group of mooks.

Emerald says, "Race you." and vanishes, teleporting.

Eli asides to Jake, "According to my sensors, we got some incoming top-notch Mooks. Not only will we need Emmy, she'll need us." Eli only says bold self-confident things like that if he's absolutely convinced of the danger requiring his aid. Which happens, sadly, way more often than he would want.

---

Meanwhile, outside, the CoT, if they were sane, would be crying "mama" right about now. But we all know how sane the CoT are.

However, just as IG summons his monster, so do the CoT. A Behemoth Overlord arrives, laughing in its hellish laugh and flaps its wings to charge at IG's nice mech.

...how rude.
This message was last edited by the GM at 00:37, Fri 07 Nov 2014.

  Impressive guy totally didn't look worried for a second there at all, nor did that nonexistent look turn into one of relief when he saw it was a "bigger meaner" Behemoth overlord instead of the smaller 'have invulnerability toggles that makes melee combat annoying' sort.

  "I'd be upset at the robot getting trashed, but then they kind of explode after a few minutes all on their own when the power cell gives out... No wonder Vanguard lets anybody buy them for rikti punched tokens."

Jake may not like being shown up but overwhelming force against badguys is always fun to watch.

"Cool!" Jake cheers.

Realizing the pun, he builds on it.  "Now they get to cool their heels in prison!"

"You're free to go."  He directs his bots to release the hostages.  Jake then follows Eli's lead.  (Don't hear of Eli taking lead very often.)

---

"OK.  We'll catch up once we're done here."

Raymond doesn't want I.G.'s backup junked before then so he flies in the face of the big bad, swings his titan weapon at it, and taunts, "I'm sending you back to the pit you crawled out of!"

From one hostage to the next, Emerald gets increasingly angry only to be sadistically satisfied by the torment or destruction of the enemies. At one point, she transforms into that burning green powerhouse she appeared as, back when she absorbed some of the power that was meant for Hamidon. Then just explodes with cold and electric energies!

Outside, just as Raymond and IG are finishing the Behemoth, they see the entire warehouse light up and shoot out giant chunks of ice!

Back inside, Emerald slowly turns to look at Jake and Eli with those angry, pupiless, burning eyes. "....yooooouu..."

Emerald always did like purple, now she's a purple Con.

"Well, that is probably not a good thingblarg." ice chunk to the face.  "I'm okay, time to run directly towards danger as fast as possible."  IG of course, means this in a sincere manner.

See, he's using ninja run and everything.

With badguys defeated, Jake was busy releasing hostages.  Then Emmy starts acting all crazy toward him.  "Yikes!"  He immediately activates super speed invis and runs for the nearest exit.

"Emmy's acting crazy!  Like a demon's controlling her!"

Raymond zooms into the warehouse though a busted window.  He coms the SG.  "Yup.  She looks hostile.  Likely too tough to take by force without lots of radiation and energy drain.  Raichel, Lucky...  we might need your help if my first idea fails."

He approaches slowly, weapon sheathed.

"Emerald.  The people are rescued and the culprits defeated.  Good time for a victory song, don't you think?"

Jake finds the icy floor of the place to be very slippery. But before he can land on his butt, Eli grabs him by the shoulders, flying. He uses his flight to control Jake, but uses Jake's super speed to drag him along.

Emerald turns to look at Raymond and soon, IG. "Yes... a sooong...."

She raises her hands and a stage made of ice rises from the ground! She begins to sing,

"Any dolt with half a brain
Can see that humankind has gone insane.
To the point where I don't know if I'll upset the status quo
If I throw poison in the water main.

Listen close to everybody's heart
And hear that breaking sound.
Hopes and dreams are shattering apart
And crashing to the ground."

She clenches a fist and punches the ground, as if emphasizing her last line.

"I cannot believe my eyes
How the world's filled with filth and lies!
But it's plain to see evil inside of me
Is on the rise."

With that final line, she tilts her head upward to look at Raymond and IG, a twisted expression on her face, mostly malice, but some sorrow.

  Impressive Guy takes a few calm steps forward, before stopping and saying  "Emerald, even without your power incarnate there is little question of what would happen if I tried to fight you, I would need an emergency trip to the hospital for rectal boot removal.  However!  While it is true you are a badass, it is also true that you are not a jerk.  Even if you punch me through several walls, this will not change."

  He gestures to the stage,  "Besides, even when being melodramatic you still consider your friends and fans.  The well may love a showoff, but it prefers professional wrestling logic to stage shows."

Emerald's expression seems to be loosening up to a more stunned look. She double-blinks.

"Who's this 'she' you're talking about?" Lucky asks over the SG com with a cacophany of loud vomiting going on in the background.  This has more to do with the fact that he's in a sewer full of confused zombies than his ability to emit enough radiation to make even archvillains who eat radiation for breakfast queasy.  Or heal people with it.  Go fig.

"Emerald," Raymond answers, "But it seems she's coming back to her senses.  Good work, Impressive Guy."

"You sound amazing as always, Emerald.  I'm eager to get back to our ice cream party.  You feelin' well enough for that?"

Emerald stairs at Raymond. She puts her hand to her forehead and looks at the ground. Emmy takes a few deep breaths and her flaming green look dies down until she's back to her normal red fox look. "Sorry, guys... and thanks. Gosh, I don't know what that was about. Was I that upset over a bunch of Family grabbing kidnap victims?"

Meanwhile, outside, Eli pauses with Jake. "She hasn't chased us, Jake... and according to Raymond on SG chat, she's calming down already."

  "Well, considering how much you care about innocents it is entirely possible you were in fact, that upset.  You just happen to have more eldritch baggage that takes that as a sign to start going overtime on Incarnate spam instead of just making sure you punch them so they bounce off a few extra bits of scenery."

Raymond nods.  "You're welcome.  He's probably right.  I'll ask Alloy Archmage and Mittens to help you look into it later.  But first I think we've more than earned our ice cream break.  Eli.  Jake.  We'll be headed back to the base to pick up where we left off.  You are invited to join us."

"Meet you there," Jake answers.

"Well that was scary," he whispers to Eli, "Glad she's back to her senses.  What could have gotten into her?  Seems logical to assume it was magical in nature, but we should cover any technological possibilities just to be safe."

Emerald nods and follows Raymond and IG to the SG.

Eli is quickly running equations in his head and then... "Jake, do you think it was the Hamidon event? That really did a number to Emerald and she became really powerful. We had all assumed the power left her when she used it all on Hamidon, but it's possible her powers have been permanently supercharged from that."

  "Events of that magnitude can have a tendency to leave their mark, it is true."  Alloy Archmage for example has beaten up so many extradimensional evil counterparts to the city's most famous heroes that even before he started picking up Incarnate tricks he was able to withstand more punches in the face than the average robot janitor turned wizard.

  "Though usually, not quite so flashy."

Jake nods.  "Likely.  To put it simply, an overcharged battery is prone to explode.  But even if this magic doesn't follow similar general electronic principals like most magic seems to, the timing would suggest it too.  Unfortunately this likely means there's nothing we can do to help."

"Yet," Raymond corrects, "Helping Emerald will probably require rare magical ritual components or artifacts.  Those tend to be hoarded by Hellion and Circle villains.  And force fields and robots can be plenty helpful in recovering them."

"True enough."

As promised, Raymond sends a message to Alloy and Mits, letting them know what's going on.

"BRT!" Mits answers.

She teleports to the base.

Alexis arrives also, wearing some kind of arcane garb. She asks, "I know this will sound like an unusual question, but... do we have a biologist in the super group?"

Alongside Mittens comes Mocha. Who is levitating (wings flapping!) next to Mittens. Mocha has her own unique magic.

Eli nomnoms ice cream while tapping away at his holographic computer.

  After Eli's talk about how there is nothing Science can do in regards to Magic, the robot wizard shows up.  "Technological barriers are very nice when dealing with magic, especially when dealing with evil wizard duplicates." LOL /Sonic provides status protections to the caster and alloy is slotted with Kbockdown protection, he is his own worst enemy to people trying to make himself his own worst enemy because he is his own worst enemy.

  "Though, mine only make things hurt less, while Eli's make things not hurt at all"  When Alexis comes in with her own question, he comments "Considering how many people that is, probably at least one of them dabbles."

  Elsewhere, Gunblood is busy talking with his therapist, sorry Alexis.
This message was last edited by the player at 21:17, Tue 09 Dec 2014.

"Thanks for coming," Raymond says to Mits and Alloy, "Good to see you, Alexis and Mocha."

He begins nomming on the ice cream from earlier.

"No problemo," Mits answers Raymond.  To Alexis she answers, "Mittens is a magical girl.  Beyond knowing where to find the accelerator switch on my raptor pack, my science on my raptor pack, my science savvy is quite limited."

She poofs herself a Dr's outfit.  She then pretends to be professional.  "Always a pleasure, Dr. Alloy.  Shall we begin?"

She shines a light into Emmy's ear, making a rainbow sprinked with hearts and smileys shoot out the other.  Mits clicks her tongue.  "T-t-t.  Cronic awesomeness.  Incurable attractiveness.  This is a serious case."

"Um...  Eli and I dabble," Jake answers Alexis, "Why do you ask?"

Emerald shrugs a shoulder, giggling from Mittens' antics. "Awesomeness? Attractiveness? If you're trying to make me feel better from flattery, it's working."

Alexis says, "Our range of arcane practitioners is plenty. If her problem is purely arcane, we'll figure it out eventually*. But I was hoping to cover all fields and have us check if it was so infused that it became part of her genes. How often have you heard of a hero or villain born from falling into a vat of chemicals?* And while I'm sure Hamidon would not have given tech to Emerald, it's still possible there is some in her from something else entirely*. There could also be the fact Emerald is not originally from this world*. Jake and Eli could look into that. Maybe her body is reacting differently to the Hamidon experience than the rest of us would have*"

* Alexis is covering a bunch of the origins. Magic, Science, Technology, Natural, and Mutant. Basically, she's hoping a biologist can cover most of the "Science/Mutant/Natural" possibilities and then a doctor (like Timothius) can cover the rest.

  "Even if we end up lacking the appropriate expertise among us, there are at least people we can contact for insight if needed."

  OOC: Yeah, that reminds me Mutation Origin enemies (and therefore, stuff that drops mutation enhancements) seem to really vanish past early level Outcasts, and don't really show up at all for Villain side.   I suppose that rarity is because City Logic is only X-Men style "Born a mutant".  According to City Of Heroes, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles would be Science origin... Which leads me to some other cool nerd thoughts.

Jake nod-nods to Alexis.  "I was thinking we should cover all our bases as well.  Eli and I can cover the tech aspects, but I'm afraid checking for changes to other-worldly genetics is a tad beyond our expertise at the moment.  Lucky spends a lot of time with Positron.  Perhaps he can persuade Positron to look into it."

"Good thinking," Raymond says.  He coms Lucky.  "Lucky.  Please ask Positron to schedule some time to make sure Emerald has not undergone a mutation."

"OK.  Just bear in mind he is very busy with lots of urgent things.  May be a while before he can safely see her."

"Understood.  She'll be tested for magical and technological problems first anyway."

Mits grins.  "That I am, Emmy!  Glad to hear you're feeling better.  I can haz bite of ice cream?"

Emerald says, "I'm kind of embarrassed.. first the coma and now this. I feel like I'm eating up everyone's time and resources."

Alexis says, "Not all problems are solved in one single step. And remember if this was ANYONE else, you wouldn't be objecting to the same amount of effort and resources being put into them. And you would be right there among the people giving of your time."

Emerald rubs behind her head. "Heh... I suppose so. But you all would likely feel just as embarrassed if it were you in my position. We have a nice group of good people and it makes me proud to be counted among you."

Eli says, "Me too! I can barely believe I'm in the same group as you all. I mean, you guys are amazing!"

Alexis begins casting a spell to start the first of 5 corners to a larger spell. Clearly, it is a divination spell, meant to examine Emerald.

  "Positron always seems busy, except when you do not need him for something so of course he is standing around by the Steel city statues." Ah, the time demands of a usually static NPC.  "Eli, you make me wonder if modesty is a hidden requirement to our group or something."  Except no because Mittens. And Batsmash. And-

  Fortunately, Alloy has at least picked up enough by now to know more than just the Geomancy end of things.  The robot takes a corner next to the freckled Elf.  No hippie healing crystal arrangements are involved though.

"You're plenty amazing yourself, Eli," Jake commends, "Hence the fan boy earlier."

"Sorry," Lucky answers by com.

Raymond nods.  "They're right, Emerald.  You are well loved.  Nothing surprising about people showing concern for one they love.  But that you're embarrassed speaks to your good character."

Mits recognizes the ritual and poofs some footprints on the floor at the appropriate locations.

"Raymond stand over there, please.  Jake, over there.  You amazing people, you."

The two guys stand where indicated and the magical circle / pentagramahedrontron / arcane alphabet soup appears on the floor.

"Mathemagical arcane shape activated!  Dynamic love for emerald connected!  Mega modesty thrusters are go!  Go Redemption Force!"

Emerald smiles towards Alloy when he mentions about humility and says, "Look who's talking..." Emerald then blushes from Raymond's comment and says, "Thanks, Raymond."

Alexis, Alloy and Mittens also stand on corners. The spell activates.

Once the spell runs its course, the mages sense Emerald's connection to the well is stronger now than with anyone else in the circle. While not quite Statesman or Arachnos level, Emerald is clearly more connected than she should be. However, something else is off... Emerald seems to have a connection to some other entities besides the well.

Liberty walks into the room, eating an apple and curiously watches.

  "Hmm, normal expectations for a similar but unknown link would be Rularu on the basis of just because, but no solid indications of anything just yet.  Still, knowing there is something at all is more than we knew before."

  He stops to wave hello to Liberty.

Mits sings, "I. just want. a Roooolaroooo!"

"It would make sense that The Circle might know more," Jake offers, "Timing points to them having something to do with triggering what happened to Emmy today.  And it was a Circle ritual she interrupted.  The power they were siphoning into Hamidon likely came from a powerful demon.  And such power usually comes with strings attached."

"I'll be happy to smash some Circle for answers," Raymond answers.

"Positron says he can see Ms. Emerald tomorrow morning from 10 till 11:15 at his lab," Lucky coms.

"Mittens wonders if someone siphoned power from her they would have the sudden urge to sing a chipmunk song whenever they hear the name Rularu."

Emerald says, "I'm sure people siphoning power from Mittens would feel the urge to go out and see the world."

Emerald then looks at Alloy. "Rularu.. I have touched his mind before." she gazes away for a moment as if recalling something. "While I found a few lies, most of it was cold, hard truth."

She shakes it off and coms, "Thank you, Lucky."

Liberty asks, "Did I hear 'smash some circle'? If so, do you need me to come?"

Alexis says, "I would rather stay here with Emerald. Assuming Emerald is staying here."

Mocha begins hovering around Emerald examining her.

  "Which part of his mind?  He is split off into several stylistically labeled entities, after all.  Though I suspect it would not be so convenient to be Faathim"  Faathim The Kind, token not evil aspect, can only provide some healing aspect, probably isn't responsible for Emerald's flip out.
This message was last updated by the player at 06:43, Sat 17 Jan 2015.

Mits grins at Emerald's guess.

"Sure thing, Ms. Emerald!" Lucky answers, again with vomit sounds in the background, "Get better soon!"

"Don't know yet," Jake answers Liberty, "There are still a lot of unknown."

"We've got plenty of hunches to work with, though," Mits interjects, "While Emmy goes to Mage Guild for further diagnostics, the rest of us can pummel Circle and Rularu for ritual components and clues.

"Rularu once offered me a seat of power in his New World Disorder.  I sang him a kangaroo song.  He didn't like it and attacked."

"Sounds likely," Raymond says, "Glad you turned him down."

"I'm a hop hop hopping Rularu..."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5s3lAr_uTA

Eli says, "I love that song! ...why would Rularuu get angry at you singing to him?"

Emerald says, "Because he's mean." she glances at Raymond and then to Mittens. "Yeah. And believe me; I know how hard that is. Sounds easy enough until you go to the chantry."

She then turns to answer Alloy. "Every part of his mind touched me."

Mocha says, "Hmm... looks like Emerald has been transformed somehow. My magic allows me to record people's essence like fingerprints and store that information away, kupo. As you all know, I'm able to change people enough that their power set changes. But what has happened to Emerald is outside what I'm used to, kupo. I'm unsure if it would be safe to "restore" her to what I have recorded. I'll be checking her more while you all do your smashy things, kupo!"

Emerald goes to hug Mittens. "Be safe, everyone. And thanks for singing to Rularuu, Mittens. I should have thought to do that, but I was just too scared then..."

  "Well, Rularu the Ravager™ is the tallest thing any of us have had to deal with, even discounting his tendency to float."

  He nods to Mocha,  "The latest patch broke the saves."  You know, for a robot this is probably the closest thing to technobabble he's said in ever.

Mittens poses proudly for Emerald.  "Being the thrill junkie that I am, I live for scary moments like facing off against an immortal extra-dimentional entity of chaotic evil!  And then mocking them."

"Appreciate the techno metaphors," Jake says, "Magic isn't my strong suit."

Mits shrugs at Alloy's comment.  "We don't know that for sure yet.  And efen if it is true, broken saves can be edited to work with the proper software."

Raymond looks uncomfortable.  "Let's not forget that it will be up to Emerald to choose if she's tinkered with."

Emerald chuckles nervously, "You guys just focus on smashing things for now. We'll figure this thing out together when we have more facts."

Liberty is already heading for King's Row. "I'm off to King's Row! I'll check the police scanner soon as I'm there!" and with the tap of a button, she vanishes!

Eli says, "If anyone needs me, let me know. I'll be examining the data Jake and I found from scanning Emerald."

Alexis says, "I'll check Steel Canyon." and heads for the teleporter.

  "As little invasive procedure as possible would be preferable, yes."

  Alloy will decide on his target destination in a short while.

"Will do!" Mits answers Emmy cheerily, "You focus on getting well!"

"We should go in teams of at least two," Raymond suggests.

"Then we should balance roles in those teams where possible," Jake adds, "So it would make sense for you to join Alexis since you and Lib are tanks.  I can join Lib since I'm a healer."

"Fine."

"Mittens can be any role thanks to Moogle magic," Mits reminds, "But methinks maybe I'd be most useful staying with Emmy while we do more cat scans.  Harhar."

Liberty and Alexis inform the SG that they have already found some missions on the police radio. (Whoever goes where, I'm going to play Liberty and not Alexis for now)

  Alloy's tired brained player eventually settles on Kings Row for the meta reasons of 'that's where the active player is'.

  "Right, what random selection of crime gets it's violent surprise inspection?"

Jake sends Lib, Alloy, and anyone else headed for KR a team invite, as he heads for the teleporter.  Once in KR he scans with his own radio.

"Unsurprisingly, everything is beneath our notice.  I mean, there's a few that may be relevant because they involve the CoT.  But they're all low level.  So uh... which one were you looking to do, Liberty?"

Liberty says, "The skulls are making a big push in the Gish*. According to word among the heroes, the Circle started a fight with the Skulls today by kidnapping and stealing the souls of Skulls exclusively."

*For reminder sake: The Gish is the central area of KR where you had Skulls and CoT. It included the police station, that gutter area and the Architect building.

    "Yes, I can see how that would upset them.  They wanted those Skulls souls for the Skulls."  Crazy dark magic shenanigans was just as frequent with the Skulls, it's just that the Hellions were much more traditional by comparison.

"I always find it ironic when heroes rescue villains from other villains," Jake comments, summoning his robots, "I understand its the right thing to do and all, but it is statistically counterproductive since the vast majority of those rescued immediately return to villainy."

He'll enter the mission when the group is ready.

Liberty shrugs at Jake. "Well in this case, we're looking for information and it could be that the skulls have it or overheard something from the Circle... and with how angry they are at the Circle, they will be happy to help anyone who might be against the Circle."

She enters the mission and soon the trio find themselves not far from CoT who are performing soul-stealing rituals on Skulls.

Liberty doesn't wait for her team to say they are ready, she just charges in and taunts them, "HEY YOU! THORN-COVERED BATHROBE!" and uppercuts the one who was doing the ritual, sending him into the air!

The CoT begin attacking and the Skulls guy who was suffering just a second ago gets up, eyes narrowed with fury at the CoT, and picks up a baseball bat that was laying nearby.

---

Mechanically, the Skulls would be just "civillians" who will run off when the spell is interrupted, saying something like "Man, I thought I was a goner!" or such, but for fun, I'll be doing something different for RP and plot. :p

  "It happens fairly frequently in the isles, but usually because they can't take advantage of someone if they die."  Usually.  "Though I suppose that would be the case here as well.

  Alloy makes a note of the Skull going to bat, because Spite is one of the stronger buffs.

"Good point."

Whether the Skull is visibly injured or not, Jake sends heals and buffs his way while the robots open fire on the Thorns.

"Let that be proof that we are here to help you, sir.  But to better rescue your kidnapped colleagues, we will like for you to lead us to them once we defeat this group.  So please don't immediately run away when that time comes."

Jake sounds jaded.  Like he expects that he's wasting his breath.

Liberty's taunt works and brings the attention of the enemies!

The skull does bat the CoT and yells, "Fine! Whatever!"

The fight goes as expected: The CoT get stomped, though they manage to be slightly annoying before going down. After the fight, however, the skull faces the heroes and stares for a bit. "...alright. Why did you rescue me?"

  "Soul theft is generally frowned upon by out job description.  Any idea why the Circle has chosen to go on this sudden binge of ramming thorn blades into skull hearts?"

  Well, unless you had one of those grimdark biography entries we guess.

Jake heals up the last of anyone's annoyances.

"Good work, everyone."

He stares back at the skull, wondering why he seems surprised.  Perhaps a lot of run-ins with vigilantes?

"We are heroes of the Redemption Supergroup.  We have a long history of saving lives.  In our investigation of the Circle, we plan to question these prisoners.  So any clues you can give us will help spot a lie if they try."

Soon, the enemies are rounded up and the skull directs the heroes to the next room. And the next. And the next. As usual, it is a smorgasbord of soul-stealing and demon-summoning CoT. But eventually, the group finds the boss of this mission and defeat him.

By then, there is a dozen or so skulls that were helping the heroes. They look to the heroes. "...you ain't takin' us to jail or nothin', right?"

Liberty answers, "Being a member of the skulls gang is not against the law. The gang members just do illegal things from time to time. All we saw you doing was being victims and helping us out. So... no?"

  "I'm not saying you would have, but if you did happen to commit crimes in the next few days you would get rocks thrown at you harder than usual."

  Melty finally pulls all the broken devil horns out of what passes for his face, stuck there from headbutting demon overlords unconscious.

    "So don't do that."

Jake is impressed that not only did the skulls help with rescuing their fellow man, they also seem to realize when their out-classed by the heroes and are at their mercy.  He orders his robots to tie up the defeated CoT.

"As I mentioned to your ally earlier, in our investigation of the Circle, we plan to question these prisoners.  So any clues you can give us will help spot a lie if they try."

He searches for any other clue as well.  Mysterious note?  Ritual book?  Artifact?  Anything.

The CoT look annoyed, but what else is new?

The skull shrugs and says, "Wish I COULD help you, but my gang and I honestly have no idea why the Circle would kidnap us specifically. Just figured they were hard up for souls or they figured we would be less missed. Maybe if I knew WHAT you were investigating... well go ahead and question them. My buddies and I will let you know if they are lying... if we're able to."

Liberty smiles and goes to offer a fist-pump to Melty. "Don't leave me hanging, Melty."

The CoT, when questioned, do not really seem to understand why the heroes went to them. But one gets caught lying. After that, however, he refuses to talk at all.

With some searching, the group is able to find a note from some other CoT guy, giving orders to start capturing skulls instead of normal street people.

  Melty provides for Liberty's offer.  Magical BS means he's not burning hot anyways, so she'd have been fine even if she was the Psychic blasty Archerype instead of the Invulnerable one.

  "Well, the only group offhand that specifically dislike the Skulls are the Hellions.  I don't know if that is a coincidence or not, seeing how the Hellions and Circle both deal heavily in demonic pacts."  While the Skulls were more vaguely spooky dark powers end.

Jake rubs his chin considering the point Alloy brought up.  "Maybe."

He looks at his techie bracelet and pushes buttons to give the appearance that he's not paying attention to the captured liar.  In truth, he's recording everything on video and various other sensors and running the data through a polygraphic algorithm to see if the liar reacts physiologically to Jake's next statement:

"If there is a connection, it's likely that the Hellions will spill the beans when we interrogate them."

He then forwards the video of the guy's reaction to Emerald.  With her insight, she'll read the guy better than his computer can.

Liberty does the "exploding fist/wiggle fingers" thing in response to fist-bumping Melty. Then looks up at Alloy. "So what could that mean? Are we looking at a demonic conspiracy? Or just two factions of demon-pact sorts putting aside differences to take out the Skulls?"

The liar's reaction to the mention of Hellions seems indifferent on the surface, but the algorithm says otherwise. Emerald coms Jake with, "That's interesting. That Thorn Caster you just showed me a feed of seemed pleased that you want to interrogate the Hellions. He's hiding it well, but... yeah. I think he wants you to do what you just suggested. A thought: Send out someone to investigate the Hellion angle, but you guys keep digging in that part of Oranbega. My guess is this guy has an office somewhere in there that has documentation of what's going on."

Angel enters the com, "Don't worry about it. I'm putting together a team for the Hellion angle. Mittens has likely been itching to fight some demons and their worshipers anyway."

  "The hellions love collecting whatever random relics they can get their hands on.  So they'd probably love it if we found it in the process if so." Of course so to the Skulls, and the warriors, and-  "So the simplest thing would be 'they found loot we want'.  Or their demon lawyers are making them work together.  At least half of what the Circle does is because of infernal debt after all"

  Hey you kill every single Mu descendent yet? No? WHAT'S TAKING YOU SO LONG!?  A butler could beat up their goddess in five minutes!

Jake is sure to secretly forward Emerald's message to the others.  And to text her and Angel a thank-you for the help.  If no one objects he'll activate the auto-incarceration teleporter to send the prisoners on their way to magical prison.  That out of the way he has his robots spread out to search the area as Emerald suggested.

"a butler could beat up their goddess in five minutes..." hardly fair when a child could take out a whole base full of demons solo. But then, children are by law of fiction, some of the most powerful beings in the universe. So... unfair comparison! Nevermind!

Liberty flies around wherever Jake's drones don't so as to cover more ground.

Jake eventually finds some notes written in ancient script. Assuming Jake kept visuals up for Emmy to see, she reads, "If you can read this, you are over-educated. Smile; you're on candid camera. We totally distracted you fools with rescuing villains while the real problem was going on elsewhere. And by the way; your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries..."

  "That would be a very difficult feat, I'm a robot." It's a generic insult, Alloy.  It's not talking about you specifically.

  "Nice of them to let us know though."

"Thanks for translating, Emerald.  What I find most surprising about this note is the Circle of Thorns attempting humor.  This combined with Alloy's point leads me to doubt its truthfulness.  It at least tells us that they anticipated the possibility of our getting this far.  But why leave a taunting note if not to throw us off?  I'm inclined to believe that this is proof that we are on the right track."

Emerald coms, "While I agree, checking other avenues is why we have a supergroup. A rather extensive... supergroup."

Liberty says, "All this second-guessing and third-guessing is getting silly. They're badguys. Let's just knock on all the badguys' doors and lock 'em up!"

Emmy pipes in, "Wish we could, Liberty, but there are simply too many badguys. We at least need to narrow down our efforts to 2 or three factions."

Liberty gets a pout-frown and folds her arms. "Stupid bad guys... Stupid lies..."

Emerald says, "Well you've searched the place as good as you could and sent the villains to prison. So now, I guess, you may as well join Angel and Mittens. We don't really have any leads, so it's not like we have much choice. Unless you have any ideas."

"I'm sure certain members would be more than happy to take the approach you suggested, Liberty," Jake says, "Mittens for example.  And the frequency with which she finds useful clues that way sure beats the odds.  I don't have that super power, so I have to resort to second and third guessing."

To Emmy he says, "I'll drop this clue off with forensics.  Maybe they'll find something we missed."

  "Well all have that power, Jake.  Mittens just has narrative privileges more often." This is not all an elaborate Architect mission, no, that would be crazy.

  "Bad insults don't mean the rest is accurate taunting though.  At the very least, looking into that now would probably take about as long for forensics to turn up something."

Bump.  :x

Fast Forward!

Mitts, Angel and whoever went with them beat up some Hellions; no clues (though plenty of satisfaction)

Alloy, Jake and Lib are empty-handed as well. But Shelly asks them all to come to the SG base.

When the bunch regather at the supergroup base, Shelly calls them to the meeting room and looks to be nervous (if smiling). "I think I happened across a clue." she starts, "The hunch that Emerald's issue had to do with the well led me to searching for anything that had to do with the Well of Furies. I'm not big on research, but Emmy is. She found the location of the birthplace of the gods and theorizes the Well is there..."

She brings up a holographic projection of the Earth and then zooms in on the Mediterranean Sea. Near the center of it, a dot glows. "Here. Under the water."

Jake thinks it presumptuous of Alloy to assert that everyone present has the power to stumble upon clues more frequently than the statistical average when randomly smashing villains after he just said that he does not, but he tries to overlook the offense, thinking it not worth arguing the point.  For one, he rarely goes on a random villain smashing spree, so he doesn't have sufficient data to make a strong statistical case.  For another, there's more important things to deal with at the moment.  So he simply answers, "I disagree."

As he indicated earlier, he delivers the note to forensics.

"Woot!" Mits cheers, "Good job, Shelly!  I'll go with!"

  "It has been known to move itself. Though even if the actual Well was not there, such a place is bound to have named artifacts of some kind you wouldn't want jerks messing with."

  In Jake's opinion's defense, the RNG for tip drops can be a cruel Murphy monster.

Shelly spots Jake disagreeing. She pauses, sees Alloy agreeing to disagree, and bringing up something more to the topic at hand.

Shelly grins at Mittens, looking forward to having some fun antics...

Shelly nods to Alloy. "Everyone knows Statesman and Arachnos touched the Well and that they did so while not under water. So you are probably right. But even if that is so, we will also likely find clues on how to find the Well, even taking its movement into account."

Mits smiles and happy tail-wags after laying eyes on Shelly's adorable, welcoming smile.  "Good thinking, Shelly!  You've made the most progress out of the whole Supergroup!  Looking forward to underwater fun with my favorite aquatic teddybear!"

She spins in place and poof!  She's now wearing red and black tights, mini devil horns, and cute little bat wings.  "Good thing this costume doubles as a swimsuit."

Shelly's daddy is smiling proudly when she's given props.

"Non aquatics are invited to partake in water-breathing spell.  Guaranteed to feel weird!  At least as fun as a re-breather!"

King Urser just chuckles and lets someone else point out that not all non-aquatics need to breathe at all.

  "Thanks for the offer, but I'll be fine." Haha, robot wizards can cast that spell themselves just fine-wait he is a robot he doesn't need to breath.

  "Ah yes, that costume doesn't turn mysteriously transparent underwater.  They really need to up the standards on costume materials."

  MEANWHILE IN THE ROGUE ISLES, Frigid Fixer rolls his eyes behid his sunglasses as the torso of his coat becomes invisible, leaving only his sleeves in sight.

Shelly blushes from the compliment, her fur glowing some. "Right! To the waters! Coming with, daddy?" she asks Maximus Urser.

Soon, the group is at their destination: An underwater city ruin. It is eerily quiet. No enemies. No villains. Just normal aquatic life.

"Well of Furies type stuff is a tad more than me and my robots can handle," Jake coms over the SG channel, "I'll be canvasing for other leads while you all deal with that angle."

Kitau's a believer in having a backing, so she opts into Mit's offer, and grabs herself a re-breather from the vault.

Mits smiles and shrugs.  "Never ceases to amuse me, so I won't mind if costumes made from the disappearing Emperor's material never go out of circulation."

Max of course went along.  As the group approached, Mits sings infiltration music softly, "^Dun nun _{nun...  Dun} nun."

Once there she whispers, "It's quiet... too quiet."

Kitau shrugs and takes point.  Max and Mits not far behind.

  Alloy and Melty follow along, as one tends to in any instance you are not deliberately splitting the party for.

  He tries using his little medical device as a tricorder, but no good it only points at himself or allies.

Shelly is a little creeped out also. But the ruins are silent with no sign of danger. Soon, the group finds a secret door, passes through, and that leads to some underground area where eventually the group surfaces to an air pocket.

The air pocket is the start of some cave that leads to an opening huge enough to have its own Eco-system.

There is a single, glowing orb in the center, resting on a rock that is kind of shaped like a pedestal.

https://clawcarver.files.wordp...14/01/sondoong2.jpeg

"Woah cool!" Mits says, getting ready to rush ahead.

Kitau blocks her way.  "I'll take point.  I'm the tank."

"Must... touch... shiny!"

"We proceed with caution.  Could be traps."

Kitau moves toward the orb cautiously.

Mits summons fire imps and casts haste on everyone.

  While Alloy may be 'tough' for a Controller, that is like saying tougher than a Blaster.  Still, he follows relatively closely after Kitau so they remain within his auras.  Likely a token gesture, but it would at least help determine quickly if they were dealing with Plot Strength status effects or not should anything happen to Kitau.

When the group makes it to the glowing orb, the orb pulses and a voice comes from everywhere, asking, "What do you seek?"

Shelly says, "A cure for what is causing Emerald to do things against her own will."

The voice responds, "Emerald is lost. What is lost can always be found. But the cost may be too much. To restore Emerald, you have the following options:

-Restore Hamidon
-Take Emerald's Place
-Erase Emerald's Power"

Kitau appreciates all the added defenses she can get.

"Ooh.  An Oracle orb!" Mits cheers, "Probably the neutral aligned variety:  Gives honest and accurate answers, but there's always some 'Be Careful What You Wish For' catch or other moral quandary.

"'Take her place' probably means take the curse upon yourself in her stead.  I'm guessing why one of the options is for Emmy to give up her power is because the curse only works on, and can only be transferred to, especially powerful individuals.  Hence the restoring Hamidon option.  Probably the consequence for choosing, 'None of the above,' is that Emmy will eventually be consumed by the curse and become the next Hamidon."

Kitau frowns and asks the orb, "Which of her guesses are right?"
This message was last edited by the GM at 02:17, Mon 14 Sept 2015.

  "Probably everything but 'become next Hammidon'.  If you are tossing around alignments, The Well is Neutral and only cares about fancy notable power, not what it's used for.  It just happens that rampaging worldwide or multidimensional threats get more attention for 'oooh, look how strong it is' than something more reasonable about it's usage.  Which is why Statesman only goes all possessed for The Well to talk down to you but never cause problem.  Meanwhile both Tyrant Riechesman got an extra helping of incarnate juice but the Well never possess them."  And Reichsman had 'literally invincible' under his belt for a while.

  He considers a moment more, and adds "Which is why the 'erase Emerald's powers' claim is surprising, unless that's deliberately vague enough to refer to just her incarnate qualifications."

The orb answers the only question that was presented to it. "All of them."

Shelly asks, "...is it the well that is influencing Emerald?"

The orb answers, "No. She is being influenced by Lughebu."

Mits shrugs, "In my estimation arming both heroes and villains for them to duke it out for one's own amusement qualifies as evil enough, but good luck getting anyone to boycott The Well on moral grounds.  Or even create a 'Destroy The Evil, Manipulative Artifact So No One Can Have It's Power' task force.

"Oh wow!  Mittens batting 100 on plot guesses today!  Yay!"

She ohs to the orb's other revelation, "That makes some sense.  Emmy has been punching a lot of Banished Pantheon in the faces.  So she'd be a prime target for a revenge plot."

She asks the orb, "So what happens if we defeat Lughebu?"

  "Hmm, the Banished Pantheon.  I suppose the closest thing to good news is that Lughebu rates lower on the 'so you have to fight a god' scale than Mot."

  He looks over to Mittens,  "Deific entities and similar who are not outright antagonistic now, or since the mist of time are often given plenty of leeway.  I suppose it helps in evading the subject when you have things that are a more CURRENT risk of killing everyone on the planet, instead of just not caring, or having settled down after a messy past."

  He sighs,  "Besides which, we and those like us are the 'slow path'.  We're basically 'just that cool' to innately draw on what is termed incarnate power.  Which is also why it takes about thirty or more of us to fight those rare something that has a direct line on even terms."

The orb answers Mittens, "If you fight Lughebu, he will figure out why and possess Emerald to save himself."

Shelly asks, "Why doesn't he just possess her now?"

The orb answers Shelly, "Because his current form is more powerful than Emerald. But he knows his limits against a group of powerful individuals and will use her as an escape if forced to."

Shelly asks, "How did he even GET control of Emerald in the first place?"

The orb answers, "When Hamidon was absorbing energies from the different origins, the arcane energy was put together by the Circle of Thorns, who had been using ancient magics developed by the banished pantheon from before they were banished. When Emerald intercepted that, she inherited that power, but also inherited the strings that would have been attached to Hamidon if he had absorbed it."

"We may not have to fight a god at all," Mits speculates, "Not that I'd be disappointed if we went and kicked butt after releasing Emmy out of spite, justice, or amusement depending on who you are.  Not that I would ever admit to any similarity to The Well's enjoyment of a good fight..."

She ohs at the big reveal.  "I had a feeling that was the cause, considering the timing, but wasn't sure on the details.  OK then!  All we gotta do is reverse the ritual to channel the power she gained that moment out of her and into a magic item.  Then the magic item will be stuck with the strings!  Of course, it'll inevitably become a force for evil, manipulating whomever tries to carry it to Mount Doom to destroy it, but such things are unavoidable when dealing with his kind of magic."

Kitau looks frustrated and asks the orb, "Is that true?  Can't the evil be destroyed immediately after being pulled out of her?"

"Mittens will gladly take a hit to her batting average to be wrong on the Ring of Doom being very hard to destroy."

  Magical fine print does have that unfortunate tendency to also not be seen in the first place (or even print, so there goes that comparison).

  "It would be highly convenient, so likely not."

The orb answers, "The evil can not be extracted from her unless transferred to someone else. It can be destroyed with Emerald sacrificing all her power or with killing the person who possesses the power."

Less "can it be destroyed once extracted" more "you are assuming you can extract it in the first place" as none of the earlier options included putting Emmy's powers into an object.

Mits nods to Alloy.

"Looks like you guessed it.  Using that same convenience logic, I'm guessing 'sacrificing all her power' means she'll never have superpowers again.  Fortunately these days a hero can use gadgets and magic items to compensate for any lack of innate super power."

"I'll take her place," Maximus volunteers.

Kitau headshakes.  "No hero need give up anything.  We just transfer the power to a villain, then execute him."

Mits hmms and rubs her chin.

Max frowns.  "That would be murder."

Mits raises a finger.  "I believe technically this would qualify as reckless endangerment.  Assuming she meant legal execution.  Even if we somehow get legal authorization to execute a death-row inmate, transferring deific power to him just before the lethal injection risks them blowing up the facility out of spite or desperation.  And there's also the risk that his death will count as a 'human sacrifice' in some mystical 'gotcha' catch clause in the evil god rulebook and the evil power escapes to find a new host.  Alloy's 'too convenient to be true' applies here too, methinks."

Kitau frowns, frustrated.
This message was last edited by the GM at 02:58, Wed 07 Oct 2015.

  "Well, we could always take the power of Lughebu, and throw it back at Lughebu.  You skip all the moral issues, and while effecting Emerald this much it is still only a small piece in the long run to Lughebu's overall power.  Though even then, I doubt he want to see it lost entirely by refusing the catch."  'Give it back' probably isn't really a thought that occurs to most on the subject of holding any amount of power from a God, dark or otherwise.
This message was last edited by the player at 03:59, Wed 07 Oct 2015.

Shelly squeaks, "Whatever we do, we should probably avoid taking Emerald's power from her for good. She's a valued member of our supergroup and would likely be heartbroken if she no longer had the power to go on missions with us."

She looks at the orb. "If we tried to give it back to Lughebu, would he be able to refuse?"

The orb says, "No."

Shelly asks, "So... it IS as simple as Alloy's suggestion?"

The orb says, "Yes."

Shelly looks at the other. "Of course... I *say* simple, but finding Lughebu, getting Emerald close enough to him to give the power back, somehow have her do so without being mind-controlled by Lughebu before she can finish, all while surviving an ancient deity... isn't so simple."

"I wouldn't say returning power to an evil being skipping moral issues," Maximus argues, "No matter how little.  And this isn't little."

"Comparatively little is what I think the point was," Mits adds, "And certainly preferable to Emmy going evil bonkers."

She nods to Shelly.  "Nothing worthwhile is easy, they say.  But the Redemption Supergroup was never one to shrink from a challenge!  We can do this!"

Kitau hmms.  "If Emmy can be poisoned with tainted power, maybe we can do the same to Lughebu.  Like, hiding a magical time bomb in the magic that gets returned."

"That... is beyond my expertise.  I'm sure it can be done at least.  Great ideas, guys!"

  "It is a very tempting thought Kitau, but let's not complicate this any more than it already is."

  This is going to end with having to punch Emerald and a God at the same time, isn't it?  Alloy hates getting punched by Gods/Godlike entities.  'Tough, for a controller' only goes so far on how many times you can get punched by that.

Shelly asks, "Are we allowed to take you home?"

The orb answers, "Yes."

Shelly asks, "And if we did, would you be able to answer our questions while you are at our home?"

The orb answers, "Yes."

Shelly faces the others with a smile. "Well... we can discuss things with the others, then. Nothing says the plan has to be finalized here. But if Lughebu can listen through Emerald's ears, probably best we hide the fact we have this orb from her until this is all over with."
This message was last edited by the player at 00:57, Sun 18 Oct 2015.

Kitau looked encouraged by Mits' statement that it can be done then broods when Alloy points out that it would complicate things.

"Good point, Alloy," Mits affirms, "The chunk o power being returned probably would only annoy our enemy if 'poisoned' with opposite aspected heroic sweet goodness.  And then there's the risk of him pretending to turn a new leaf in order to make heroes hesitate to strike the finishing blow.  Best to just defeat him the usual way."

She grins and thumbs-ups at Shelly.  "Clever thinking!"

She broadcasts to the SG, "Mission successful!  OTW back!"

  "I'll make room by the Actually Magic 8 ball when we get back." That thing still doesn't give accurate answers, it just gives them in a spooky ghost voice.

A Shelly face spins toward the screen and then away from the screen to scene-transfer to the Supergroup Base.

The group didn't have issue getting back to base. Shelly faces the others and asks, "So now what? Now that the possibility has been raised that Emerald might be Lughebu's ears, do we even bother telling her the options? Or do we choose her fate for her?"

Mits rubs her chin.  "Do we even need to not tell her?  Suppose Evilface finds out we want to return his magic.  Will that make any difference?  It'll be like the difference between a normal and a surprise birthday party."

Kitau is looking annoyed again.

  "We tell her that we are not telling her.  If only to avoid any problematic misunderstandings.

Shelly nods. "Alloy's right. I've seen so many shows where keeping a secret even as innocent as a surprise birthday party can wind up with the person's feelings hurt at best. And lives being put in danger at worst."

Emerald walks into the room. "Congratulations on a successful mission."

"Thanks!" Mits answers Emmy with a big smile and thumbs-up.

She puts on a mock serious tone, "For your safety, we are not at liberty to discuss the details of our successful mission.

"But suffice to say it looks like we're fixin to get you cured soon.  After which I'll fill you in on what happened.  Till then, be ready to go on a sudden surprise mission to get you to wherever it is you'll need to go for the cure."
This message was last edited by the GM at 02:56, Wed 28 Oct 2015.

  "Yes, we didn't get where we are today by being completely incapable of pattern recognition.  Some ideas are in the works, how far those ideas get remains to be seen."

Emerald ohs and says, "Well OK. I trust you all. If anyone needs me for anything, I'll be in the Salvage room.* But if I need any of you all, I guess I'll contact you via the SG channel rather than walk in on a conversation I'm not supposed to hear."

*....that salvage badge was a lengthy one to earn, but gosh darn it Emmy earned it!

Emerald walks off towards the salvage room. Shelly smiles and waves to Emmy.

Shelly then looks at the others. "So do we have a workable plan yet?"

"'Not need you' isn't exactly accurate," Mits says to Emmy, "'Will just have to make due in the absence of your much-needed awesomeness' is closer to the truth.  You'll be missed!"

To Shelly's question she shrugs.  "Standard approach, I guess.  Ask villain tracking experts where to look for evil face.  Smash baddies there till we find evil face or a clue.  And meanwhile our ritual magic brainiacs figure out the reverse version of the CoT ritual that cursed Emmy."

When talking about magic experts she conjures images of Alloy, Alexis, Gale, and a greyed out version of Emmy captioned with, "Not an option."
This message was last edited by the GM at 04:20, Thu 05 Nov 2015.

  "Return to sender metaphysically speaking is less complicated than trying to shove it somewhere else, so we have that going for us.  Same for comparing it to the original cause.  Though just because I brought it up first doesn't mean I wouldn't love some second opinions and help here"

  As good at this he had become in the end, his initial arcane learning's had literally come out of the garbage, after all.

Shelly says, "So... our plan is to beat up bad guys until we find the right bad guy and then beat him up?"

Angel walks into the room, checking her guns and says, "That's about the sum of it." she looks at the others. "Count me in, though. I've been dealing with politicians all week long and they have put me in the mood to shoot people."

Shelly covers her mouth and squeaks. Then looks at her dad. "Daddy? I... am out of ideas. Mittens' idea is best I can figure. Not that it's a bad idea or anything, just..." She squirms, then looks at the others. "I'll back you all up if you need me. For now, though, I'll spread the word to our arcane experts about the orb and our present solution needs."

Maximums heads over to give a reassuring side-hug to Shelly.  "My other thought is to try and draw the villain out with false information and bait.  Exactly what bait and what information and how to let it slip into enemy hands will take some time to figure out.  You're welcom to work on that with me if you like."

Mits grins and rubs behind her head with a blush.  "Ritual magic and subterfuge aren't my strong suits, so I'll just stick to standard operating procedure and light evil on fire if that's ok with everyone."

She smiles at Angel.  "Come with?"

Kitau heads for the teleporters and pauses to see if Mittens and Angel are keeping up.

"I'll team up with you, Alloy," Gale offers.

 "I'll help with the subterfuge," Jake offers, "And I'll bet Eli would rather contribute in a non-violent way as well."

  "Thanks, Gale.  Hopefully we can work out some non blood sacrifice specifics sooner rather than later."

Shelly smiles at Max and nods. "Yes please."

Angel nods to Mittens and trots over to the teleporter Kitau was headed for. "I vote we start high-end and work our way down. Chances are higher we will find the clues we're looking for among the more powerful and higher-ranking members of the CoT."

Eli shows up in time to ask, "Contribute to what?"

Gale notes the children present and decides against expounding on her experience with baking sugar blood sacrifice substitutes.  She nods to Alloy.  "You're welcome.  I'm sure we'll do fine."

She heads for the arcane chamber to get started.

"P.I. it is!" Mits chimes, flying a barrel-roll to the teleporters.

Max returns Shelly's smile and gets started making plans with her.  Meanwhile Jake gets Eli caught up on the plan.

  Clearly they need to film an aztec ritual in black and white, so you can't tell the blood is really chocolate...  Hmm, would sepia tones in a flashback count?

  "Hello Eli, we are hoping you might have some insight on less violence filled means of dealing with current events."

Eli ohs at Alloy, looking clearly hopeful. "OK! Count me in!" and he nods at Jake while Jake is explaining the plan.

Meanwhile, Angel follows Mittens to the Peregrine Island teleporter and activates it. Once in P.I., Angel checks her police scanner. "Hmm... Carnies, Nemesis, Circle..." She looks at the others. "Well I got a tip here about the Circle. We still chasing them in particular?"

Back at HQ, Alexis goes over to Gale. "I was told we have new resources to play with.."

"So far I haven't been able to figure out any clever ideas for how a techie can be of much help in this case," Jake says, trying to hide his frustration with the situation, "Non-violent or otherwise.  It could be that the most we can do is to simply keep Emerald company while the others do what's needed."

Meanwhile Gale gets Alexis caught up.  "So it may be as simple as asking the orb for the ritual we'll need to return the power to Lughebu."

"Far as I know," Mits answers Angel, "They were the ones with the bright idea of trying to control Hamidon with power siphoned from an evil deity that doesn't care if they live or die.  So if anyone would know where that overgrown tiki mask is hiding, it would be them.

"At worst we'll have helped the city with a serious problem."

Kitau and Mits head for the mission.

  Alloy stops for a moment at Eli Jake's worries that a grounding in science will have no bearing on a mystic investigation, and just looks at him. So far as you can with an unblinking single off center eye.

  "Jake. I was a robot janitor.  Pretty sure you more than exceed my starting qualifications for starting to work out magical things, here.  Even then, I've already found you can mix the two somewhat readily."  Melty loves science hula hoops.
This message was last edited by the player at 05:38, Tue 24 Nov 2015.

At HQ:

Eli looks over at Jake and says, "Yeah. We can do this."

Alexis looks from Gale to Alloy and says, "Jake's just frustrated he doesn't have the answer yet. You know how that gets even on something like a simple answers on a test. But with Emerald's life on the line, it's extra stressful and frustrating. That frustration turns into despair and a desire to give up."

Alexis looks to Jake. "I'm with Alloy on this. I believe in you. And don't forget that one of those siphons was technological. Maybe you should look into that and reverse-engineer it."

She looks back at Gale. "Worth a shot. Let's ask. But let's take this to the arcanum study room." she heads that way, looking over to Alloy as if expecting him to follow.
-----
Meanwhile in P.I.

Angel nods. "You know what we need? More guns." she gets on the SG chat. "Hey, Running Gun. Meet Mitts and I in P.I."

Mittens then feels a tap on her shoulder. Flapping her wings, hovering, is none other than Mocha. "H-hi, Mittens! Heard you were running off... again. What job would you like to be for this run, kupo?"

Jake blushes, unable to figure out what else to say outside, "Thanks..."

He types away at his holographic interface to pull up what relevant data he can for Eli, hoping that'll help spark ideas in the both of them.

Gale nods to Alexis and follows along.  When everyone's ready, she'll ask the orb about the ritual used on Emerald and if it already knows the counter-ritual.

"Mocha!" Mits chimes with a big smile for her friend.  "Boy.  That's a hard question to answer.  On the one hand, more guns!  On the other, explosions!  On the third hand...  I wunna do it all!  I'll start out with a bang - guns!  Tag along!  That way I can change up if needed.  And we get to enjoy your yummy company!"

  Pfft, Running Gun never made it to level 50.  Suspiciously similar Gadget Gun did though, all while showing up for photo ops without people noticing. "I should be there shortly. With Guns that shoot explosions."

---

  Alloy totally heads to the arcane room to talk about arcane things with the arcane people (and Jake).

Mocha nods to Mittens. "...yummy, kupo..?" she asks with a squeak and blush.

Angel looks over at Mittens and smirks. "We eat Circle for breakfast. So it makes sense to have some Mocha along."

Mocha says, "Holy moley..."

Angel isn't alone as a number of other members of the SG keep referring to GG as RG. But CoX was so amazing, you didn't need level 50 to participate in lvl 50 stuff. Still, actual lvl 50 was really nice.

Angel waits for GG at the entrance to Orenbega. "When you enter P.I., Gun, I can teleport you." Angel and May both have to admire a guy who's nickname winds up Gun.

Angel then looks to Mittens and sings "Mittens got a gun... her whole world's come undone. Now CoT... are on the run."

Gale welcomes Alloy and compliments Alexis' hair while she waits for the orb to finish answering her question.

---

Jake prefers to remain in the meeting room with Eli while he works on his computer.  ((Will follow Eli.  If Tim wants the boys to be a part of the magical RP and sends Eli that way, that's fine.))

---

Big grin from Mits when Angel sings to her.  "Dittos to Angel's explanation.  Also, Yay explosions!  Thanks for joining the fun, GG!  So what's best vs CoT?  Fire?  Ice?  Or toxic rounds?"

Kitau shrugs and heads in.

"Fire for ghosts.  As for the rest, whatever you like." GG says, already there (Thanks, mission teleport!).

Alexis does a girly single-shoulder-shrug, reaching up to play with her hair a little and says, "Thanks, Gale.. this coming from miss magic-hair. Everyone knows yours is the most hypnotizing."

The orb answers Gale. "The counter-ritual would require the use of all the energy siphons that were used; You repeat the process, but in reverse, with Emerald at the center of it."

---

Eli was under the impression the arcane ppl were doing arcane things and, while he does know from such, he and Jake were supposed to work on the tech angle. So Eli heads with Jake to the site of the bad guy base that had the tech energy siphon to begin reverse-engineering.

Upon seeing the machine, it is beautiful in its complexity, mixture of different technologies, and flow of design. It is also, of course, the size of a large room. Eli is staring at one of the panels and says, "Gosh, Jake... how long was this energy siphon in the making? Or are we dealing with a genius on a magnitude we haven't dealt with yet?"

---

Angel switches to fire. "OK. Fire on ghosts. Flip guns around at your leisure to reload for fun." She thinks about it, shapeshifts into bunny mode and says, "I'm feeling gunbunny." before going into the mission.

Many extremely fun gunfights later, the trio soon have the guy in charge of this latest Circle of Thorns scheme. When questioned, he spouts things in an ancient language.

"Thanks, GG!  Bang-Fwoosh it is!"

After the fun, Mits takes her hearing protection off, and a Ska tune about tuna can be heard playing over the built-in speakers.  She records the boss-faces spew and forwards it to the SG for translation.

"Fluffy Bunny Bang Bang!  Coming soon to a theater near you!"

Gale gives Alexis a bright smile.  "Thanks!  And you're welcome!"this means we wont have to fight a deity."

Jake shrugs and gets to work.  "I dunno.  My guess is a small army of geniuses.  Arachnos was involved in this mess, and they seem to have an endless supply of brilliant inventors.  Would also explain the diversity of styles here."

  Alloy delegates translations to Melty, who crams a pair of reading glasses onto their eyeless lump as they begin working on it.

  "It would just figure all the siphons got stolen when were not looking in the few days since they were recovered from the hammidon fight. Or they might still be in their proper storage, that too.

---

  "Well, they might still attack us purely out of spite after we finish."

Eli reports back to the SG, "Jake and I are currently examining the inner workings of one of the siphons. It's pretty complicated, has the mark of multiple styles of technology, and yet very streamlined. Oddly not haphazard. It's... it's user-friendly! Jake and I should have this figured out in a couple hours, assuming things remain consistent."

---

The boss's spewings roughly translate to him laying a dozen curses on Mittens, Angel and GG. And saying "You'll never learn!" and other similar themes like "Your kind will never understand!"

---

Angel wiggles her bunny nose at Mittens. Why? Because Mittens commented on her bunnyishness. Is that a word? Who cares?

OOC: This the song I was referencing:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_H0Tk4-O1ZU

Gale can't deny the truth of Alloy's statement and chuckles.  "Sad but true.  We should be prepared.

"Let's get people on each of these nodes."

She gets started coordinating that with the rest of the SG.

To Eli and Jake, "Good work you two.  You're a stpe ahead of the rest.  Please focus on getting it operational...  in reverse."

Jake sweatdrops.  "Wow.  Sounds like they already have the solution.  Reverse.  Hmmm..."

Tinker tinker tinker!

"Mits figured as much so she mage-hands the nimrod's mouth shut then puts her headset on him so the tuna song will play over and over in his head.  Not a magical curse, but in some ways, worse!  Bwahahahahaha!"

She smiles to Angel.  "Cuuuute!  Me try!"

She tries to return the nose-wiggle but winds up looking more like a grinch trying to get a bug off its nose.

Melty takes the translated transcript, and shoves it into the cartoonishly budging file cabinet of translated insults.

---

  Helmet O'clock means you have no idea if GG can nose wiggle or not.  But Angel's the adorable best at it either way.

Mittens clearly has the advantage in tail wags departments though.

Yeah. For Angel, it's technically called a wag, but bunny tails are more of a wiggle.

Angel giggles at Mittens' attempts.

The CoT dude is quickly getting disgusted with Angel and Mittens' cute antics. "UUUUUG! STOP BEING CUTE!" He yells in genuine annoyance. "And force me to listen to the tuna song? I thought you people were supposedly above torture."

Angel shrugs with a smile and says, "So he can speak English. Sharing music? Being cute? I'm pretty sure these follow under moral grounds. It's not our fault if you consider it torture."

CoT dude says, "FINE! Fine... What do you need to know?"

---

Jake and Eli's tinkering will take a bit. Though "get it operational, but in reverse" will significantly decrease the time taken since they were going to take reverse-engineering instead of merely fixing and rigging. The time stamp has been reduced from a day or so to 10 minutes.

Alexis summons Crystal for Melty to hang out with. Then looks at the other magic users. "Hmm... with Jake and Eli working on the technology siphon... maybe we should work on the arcane siphon, just in case."

Once teams have been assigned to each of the siphons, Gale invites Alexis and Alloy to come with her to the arcane siphon.  Repeated use of short range teleportation spells will shorten the trip.

---

Mits chuckles, "The baddie caved before anyone resorted to ye olde feather-to-the-foot technique.  But if it's cuteness that bothers you, be grateful that Mocha or Kitau didn't join in."

Kitau sweatdrops.

Mits continues, "We're looking into the wereabouts of a tiki mask god."

---

Jake updates the SG as progress is made.  "So... I'm guessing the change in plans is good news?"

  Well, there are many villains would find a blood drenched Kitau cute yes.

---

"Yes, and as good as being able to fully build one ourselves degree research would be, the sooner the better with proven to work devices seems to be the situation here.

The CoT dude spills info about where to find Lughebu. He then screams, lights shooting from his eyes, mouth, nostrils, and ears. He collapses.

Angel frowns. "That wasn't very nice..."

---

Eli and Jake have a breakthrough on how to get the thing up and running quickly and soon have it on. It is still in the reverse mode from when they did that against Hamidon.

---

Alexis says, "Teleportation; always a wild ride..."

When the trio get to the arcane siphon, Eli contacts them letting them know the tech siphon is done and they are on their way to check the other siphons.

The arcane siphon requires a few magical patch-ups, but should otherwise be good to go.

Gale gives a knowing smile to Alexis and winks.  "When this is over, how 'bout we invite Emmy to a nature retreat.  Nothing quite like fresh air and beautiful scenery to help heal a burdened heart."

She stops short of suggesting, "Girls only," figuring that'll be for Emmy to decide.

---

Mits gawks in shock.  "And here we were being lectured for music and nose-wiggles.  Since when do the CoT explode after what amounts to informing on a rival gang?!  Maybe this is just a coincidence of timing and the magical time bomb that was planted on him for... reasons... just happened to go off right after info in Tiki-face is divulged.

"Wouldn't it be morbidly ironic if evil deity A secretly planted what amounts to a magical spy device / kill switch on evil wizard gang B...  Who are probably really good at detecting magical bugs and kill switches.  I just don't get it!"

---

Jake offers Eli a high-five when they finish up and smiles.

"It's probably a standard 'invoke dark god's name' smiteing clause" You know, so far as those are standard.

It took us a minute to remember that's GG and not Alloy, because his player is bad at dealing with multiple alts.

Alexis nods to Gale. "I'm sure Emerald will be happy to find another excuse to just hang out with friends."

Knowing Emmy, she'll probably do the "girls only" thing later and just celebrate with everyone. Besides... Alloy is not a girl and he is standing right there. Technically not a guy either, but seriously everyone refers to him as, well, him.

Alexis goes over more magic things with Alloy and Gale to make sure everything will work smoothly and suggests overseeing the other projects in case there was any magical element in the other siphons.

---

Angel shrugs. "It's confusing, but we don't have to understand it to help Emerald. Let's just hope what he said was the truth. One way to find out. We go to that location... with reinforcements."

---

Too happy and excited about the project and Emmy being rescued to bother with shy antics, Eli takes the high-five. "You know... despite how feasible this all is, I'm still worried it won't work. I mean, OK sure... in ancient times, you put paint on someone, dance around and sing some chant to make things happen, but removing a curse from a god with technology still feels weird... even if it was through technology Emerald received the curse in the first place. I guess what goes around comes around."
This message was last edited by the GM at 16:55, Sat 19 Dec 2015.

"Weird.  Remind me to play the name game with tiki face when we inevitably fight him.  With any luck my mispronunciations will infuriate him and he'll correct me, blowing himself up in the process.  Because he invoked a dark god's name."

Kitau nods to Angel and heads for the location.  Mits info-dumps what's going on to the rest of the "Rescue Emmy" team.

---

Gale nods to Alexis.  "Good idea."

She's quick to take charge coordinating the magical oversight.

---

Jake thinks and shrugs to Eli.  "Feels weird to me too.  Don't really understand how something like this even works.  But we're ahead of schedule, so maybe now if we focus on figuring out how this thing works, we can figure a way to shield against it.  So heroes in the future won't get stuck with this problem."

Bump!

  Robot gender questions are now in the pop culture eye more than they previously were, yes.  But Dude Bot is a safe bet with Alloy.

  "Considering how much cross coverage there is to deal with, checking the other devices for such things would make sense, yeah."

Shelly pops up. "So was it decided that we take Emerald along? And if so, maybe we should knock her out ahead of time so he can't "use" her against us?"

---

The other projects that Gale oversees are going about as smoothly as Eli and Jake's. Katy isn't gnawing on the wires or eating the chemicals of the "science" location and seems to be doing a decent job assisting (insert science origin character here).

---

Eli helps Jake. He suddenly gets a mind-blown expression. "Jake... if we solve this issue... what if we can free people completely from the Well's influence too?! We could free everyone! Heck... maybe even Arachnos will be grateful enough to be less of a villain! He certainly won't be a pawn of the Well to cause strife on purpose anymore..."
This message was last edited by the GM at 19:33, Mon 08 Feb 2016.

Lucky isn't science origin himself, but his missions have made him intimately familiar with it, so he's there to help Katy and the others.

Mits answers Shelly, "If I were Emerald, I would insist on being allowed to help.  It would be worth it to wear a shock collar rigged to knock me out if I get mind controlled.  Even if I only got one hit on the big bad before going rogue.  Besides.  We kinda have to bring her to the ritual circle for it to work.  Let's leave it up to her whether she goes awake or not."

Jake considers Eli's idea.  "Maybe...  Worth looking into.  Not that we will ever be thanked, but even the tiniest bit of progress toward that could change the course of history for the better."
This message was last edited by the GM at 04:07, Thu 11 Feb 2016.

  "We should likely wait until we are ready before bringing Emerald along.  As for Knockouts, I'd think no.  If only to prevent sleepwalking style control."  So many crazy variables to deal with.  Something is totally going to go wrong, so most they can do is try to make less annoying things go wrong.

OOC: One of the Valentine's events had you resurrect Recluse's old girlfriend.  It implied he would mellow out a touch on the 'take over WHOLE world' end, at least.

Taking out a god is no easy task.... even in City of Heroes. DOABLE, but not easy. So the super group assembles as many of their members as possible for the "raid" of sorts. However, for the GM's sanity and everyone's sanity, GM requests we each pick one character to focus on for the "raid" and RP that character while everyone else is kind of on auto-follow, but feel free to flavor up whatever attacks and such your other alts would be doing in the attack as you see fit.

GM is choosing Emerald.
Mittens picks Mittens.
Joe picks Alloy

The group arrives at the appointed god fight. Lughebu walks into the room. He appears as a black man with yellow face paint around his eyes and mouth (painted like a frown). His hair looks more like straw, hanging down from the top of his terrifying, almost mask-like visage. He body is disturbingly skinny and he has many a tribal feather hanging off his biceps, thighs, wrists and ankles. His voice comes from everywhere in the cave and seems to "echo" inside the minds of the heroes. His voice sounds... sad. "Why have you come here?"

Closest thing I found to something that might resemble his face:
http://paragonwiki.com/w/image...anne-Trent-Caves.jpg
This message was last edited by the GM at 07:40, Fri 12 Feb 2016.

Even Kitau is intimidated enough that she refrains from charging first thing.  Raymond is far more used to this sort of thing and simply stands sentinel style with a grim frown.  Mits glances at the magic circle, her raid team, then the creepy tiki god.

"Honestly?  We were minding our own business setting up a magical ritual to help our friend when you showed up.  So...  why are you here?  And uh...  you sound sad.  Do you need help?"

Raymond, Kitau, Jake, etc. sweatdrop at Mits' last question.

  Melty has a great response for situations line this.  "..."  Thanks, Melty.

  Alloy Meanwhile, wishes the Scan Target devices provided more relevant information for longer than ten seconds.  Knowing how many millions of experience an Archvillain needs to level up isn't quite relevant.

OOC: Seriously, it did let you know that stuff.  Though it was very awkward to pop open your numbers info screen then open the tab for the targeted boss like how you could pop open tabs for mastermind pets, during it's short effect.

The ruins begin to be superimposed with a massive illusion showing the culture that once thrived there. Lughebu says sadly, "This... is my home. This is all that remains of my once prosperous kingdom."

The illusion then shows the culture being wiped out and taken over by some deific beings.

Lughebu says, "I am sad because this fate awaits all. It matters not if you are hero or villain: In the end, all face the same fate. You have come to defeat me to rescue your friend, yet I am not fated to die at your hands. I wish I could. No, instead, I will die at the hands of the most powerful and most merciless enemy of all, and it is the enemy of all the universe: Time."

Emerald says, "But there is time travel. I've seen it myself."

Lughebu says, "Which has a limit, if you recall. No one can travel farther backward or forward than a certain number of years. Some day, even time travelers will find the end is unavoidable."

"And this would be why Mittens never seeks immortality," Mits narrates before continuing, "Talk about depressing.

"Look.  We modern mortals are not that much different from those of your long-ago kingdom.  Like them, we're not too eager to meet an early end in a fight against deific power.  We want to avoid fighting.  We simply want to heal a friend.  So if you're willing to allow us to finish up our ritual without a fight, we'll be happy to leave this place in peace."

Kitau and Raymond remain on guard, doubtful Mits can persuade an evil god to not fight the group.

  Alloy isn't even going to think too hard about the time travel stuff, it's already a big enough headache dealing with magical theology without adding grand uncle paradox.

  Yes, Grand Uncle paradox.  We don't like to talk about it.

  "If you feel the end result today is unavoidable, then why not skip the part where both sides wish getting hit in the face didn't hurt so much."

Lughebu says, "To the flames who wish to burn bright and die quicker; I am here to help you embrace the way you wish to live, short though it may be. May your stories end in catharsis rather than dissatisfaction."

He gives a sad smile to Mittens. "If you wonder why I did what I did to your friend; I did this for you, Mittens. For all of you. You would not have been led about in a search to find and fight a god if I hadn't teased you all with the promise of your friend losing a piece of her heart. Be honest; you may not have wanted to die... but you wanted to fight me. Dying to a god is more than can be said for all those people out there who died laying in a bed while pathetically wasting away. Give me one good reason we should not fight."

Mits thumbs at Alloy.  "Well there's that good reason right there.  Getting hit in the face hurts.

"Your intentions and well wishes are generous and all, but methinks our motives and desires may be different from what you thought.  Some may care mostly about the destination, others more for the journey, still others for both.  So since you've been so accommodating, and you've pointed out that the if or when of a fight don't really matter in the long run, might I suggest that those who want to fight you right now step forward."

Mits, Raymond, Kitau, etc. stay put.

  "Honestly, the whole priority here is helping a friend.  Throwing rocks at a god is more of a 'If I have no choice' category."

  Gasp!  Kitau has been replaced by an impostor!... Nah we're just kidding, Kitau actually caring about her friends more than carnage is why we like the tiny ball of murder so much.

It was, after all, watching friends and family get murdered that got Kitau where she is. Unless the CoX Kitau has a different backstory...

Lughebu looks dejected and says, "After you came all this way... and all you care about is your friend." He waves a hand. "She is released. And yet, you have to take my word for it."

Emerald says, "Even if we fought you and won, there is no garuntee that would fix things."

This Kitau does not come from a sunshine and gumdrop background either.  So she and Raymond are still on guard, waiting for the inevitable, "Sike!  Too evil to let you encounter me without a fight!" turn-around.

Mits is staring in shock.  Did she just succeed at diplomacy?!  Wow!  She grins ear-to-ear with fists on her hips, proud of herself.

"Yay Emerald!  Fluffy fox glomp!"

She offers Emmy a big bear hug!

  Alloy gives the cute kitty first go at the cute fox.  Melty gives Lughebu as slow thumbs up, because even wooden voodoo masks are more expressive than he is.

Tiki-man vanishes and Emerald looks at the others, appearing quite stunned. "...a god fight belayed by talk?"

Angel says, "People normally just charge in and fight, you know?"

Emerald proceeds to take Mittens' offered hug. "He had a point, though. I don't feel any different and it worries me. But I guess there is nothing we can do."

Kitau and Raymond are stunned speechless.  Mits bashfully admits, "I honestly only expected to catch him in some hypocrisy I could tease him with.  But even though he was right that I consider big fights fun, that doesn't mean I consider my fun more urgent than Emmy's cure.

"But fret not that we'll just have an evil god's word at face value!  Not only can me and my bro detect evil when in paladin mode, we have couple of archmages here who can verify your 'No longer cursed' status."

Gale nods to Alloy and offers to split the effort with him, then does her part of the magical virus scan.

  "Sassing dieties is a much more common temptation than fighting them, it is true."

  He gets to work alongside Gale checking over Emerald for notable problems.

  You need to be tricky with false positives in this city.  Countless curse detection magics keep flagging 'Cursed with good looks' listings -oh see there it goes now with Emerald.

All studies show Emerald no longer has a curse tying him to Lughebu. Maybe the deity tried something new just out of boredom and thus was telling the truth? Whatever the case, it does seem that Emerald is back to "normal", including being her normal level of incarnate as opposed to being more powerful. But this is plenty and Emerald is super-grateful for it, giving many hugs to all who want them.

If Emerald could, she'd hug Alloy's player for the "cursed with good looks" comment, but sadly, she is a fictional character.

Emerald returns to the SG base with everyone and orders a huge pizza party!

Mits snickers and thumbs-ups at Alloy.

"One thing fighting sentient evil has over fighting mindless monsters - their ability to understand when I'm mocking them."

At the pizza party, she opts for the topping lover style.  Don't even hold the anchovies!

Jake brings some snacks that survived the last party.  "So um...  Eli and I had an idea for maybe reducing the risk of this sort of thing happening again."

  Mittens you are a kitty cat, you keeping the tiny fish on the pizza falls well within sterotypes.

  "Dark voodoo gods specifically, or something more broad?" Alloy is curious, and being both A Robot and having No Mouth (the larger barrier) means he's got time to spare to talk at a pizza party.

Eli goes to hide behind Jake when Jake mentions him.

Emerald is nomming on a meat-lover's. She eyes Eli, but then pretends not to notice him for his own sake. Instead, she takes note of the fact Alloy has not grabbed any pizza.

Jake is pleasantly surprised that instead of being immediately shot down, he's being asked for specifics.  In spite of being among super-heroes, it's hard to un-learn what has long been drilled into his head - that adults don't take seriously the ideas of kids.  Sometimes especially if that kid is a genius.

"Specifically that, yes.  At first.  But theoretically it should be possible to block other powers from taking control of people.  Such as The Well."

Mits perks up.  "O Rly?"

  "Hmm, that would be rather impressive.  I admit my views of The Well itself are less dire than some, but that is still a desirable outcome."

Eli asks, "Do you think Arachnos could be brought over to our side if the Well's influence was taken away?"

Emerald says, "It's a nice thought, but I doubt it. Sounds like a worthwhile endeavor, Jake, if you think it reasonably attainable. For now, though, we should ALL relax, given we just faced a god and are still breathing. I thought for sure I was going to have to die."

Shelly says, "We wouldn't let that happen."

Emerald gives a sad smile. "Thanks." She saw it happen. Emerald has died in her own arms before. After having to fight other alternate reality Emeralds. Watching herself die after heroic self-sacrifice was possibly even more sobering than what the depressing Lughebu had to say. Which isn't to say Emmy isn't chewing on that too.

Emerald says, "Whoever is interested, I'd like a big slumber party here in the base."

"Anything's possible, I guess," Jake answers, not sounding so sure.

He nods to Emmy. "I brought it up simply as a bit of good news.  I didn't expect anyone to stop partying and start working right away."

To the offer for sleep-over, Mits cheers!  "Woohoo!  Sounds fun!  Thanks for the invite!  I'll be there with bells on!"

She offers Emmy a happy, excited glomp.

"Pleasant things are a good change of pace, yeah."

Sleeping is another thing there is a distinct lack of for Alloy, but then that just means he gets to win at slumber parties where the point counter-intuitively to stay awake as long as possible.

Wizard robes are close enough to pajamas as it is, especially the ones with stars and moons on them that Ally is also surprisingly lacking in.

Emerald yips and is glomped by Mittens before giving her a bright smile and a tail swish. "Love you all." she comments, as if barely able to contain the love.

Alexis may be a nature freak, but she could probably get her hands on some stars/moons wizard robes for Alloy. And if not her, definitely Gale.

Timothius mews at Mittens and says, "Me too. We can show up as belled kitties." the cat with a bell on the neck is a cliche, but not when Mitts/Tim do it. Since they hardly ever do.

Eli prestidigitates a bell collar on himself with a blushy smile. What? It's CoX. Eli is both a techie AND a mage. Just like Jake is a techie/psion/nature dude.

Tread squees and scoops up the little boy!

In very short order, the super group is having a super sleepover. With stars/moons robes, bell collars, and cute antics.

Mits giggles at Emmy's adorable yip.  "Luv you too, fluff face!"

Raymond is glad to see Alexis will be attending, but opts to pass on the party himself and goes to fight crime to let off steam.

Kitau's in her cherry blossom kimono and spring skirt, smiling at Eli and the adorable belled kitties.

Gale is more than happy to assist Alexis in making a classing Wizard Robe for Alloy.

Mits loves the idea of matching bell collars and is sure to bring high energy dance music to get lots of jingles.  For little Eli, she grins, poofs a cat-ear hairband on his head, and offers him a ball of yarn.

  Alloy is hardly super serious enough to turn down more festive look, and thanks Gale for the thought.

  He does hope the people who actually sleep can manage it with the increasing number of bells.  But you get used to sleeping to the sounds of explosions and rayguns in this business. Even if most of the time that is because of status effects.

In response to the cat ears, Eli looks up then looks back at Mittens and shyly says, "..meow?" Tread squeals in delight, but kneels down next to Kitau so as to share Eli with her. "Pretty kimono, Kitau." Tread comments with a bright smile.

Shelly spots Raymond heading off and follows him. "Hey Raymond.... you shouldn't be alone. Mind if I join you? We can get the criminals locked up faster and then you can join the party sooner." she wags her tail excitedly.

Maverick walks up behind Alloy. "So much girliness going on. But at least you get a cool robe out of it."

Emerald rubs noses with Mittens and goes to share herself with the others. Everyone here worked hard for the fox, so may as well let everyone get whatever conversation, cuddles or combo thereof with her.

Katy is watching Raymond and Shelly from a dark perch in the base, her eyes reflecting light to make them appear to glow.
This message was last edited by the player at 20:19, Fri 22 Apr 2016.

Gale smiles and bows to Alloy.  Mits giggles at Eli's meow, nods, and meows back in a decidedly affirmative tone.

Kitau joins Tread in the Eli cuddles.  "Thanks!  You're looking good too, Tread."

Raymond shakes his head.  "I need my alone time to let off steam, Shelly."  (Bashing a crowd of villains totally counts as alone!) "We can team up some time after the party.  Thanks for the consideration."

Mits smiles and blushes at the fox's eskimo kiss and gives her a hug in return.

  Alloy does not shriek like a girly bot at sudden Maverick, and this is in no way because he cheated and cut his vocal capabilities for a moment or something.  "Thanks.  Now if it was the Alphabits wizard robe, then it would be just embarrassing."

  When it's Emerald O'Clock, Melty goes to give her a shoulder ride so she is the tall person when high fiving Alloy.

Shelly pouts a little at Raymond's response. Katy comes up to her and says, "Let him go. There will always be other parties." She then looks at Raymond and nods to him before guiding Shelly back to the party.

The party is plenty of fun and leave people filled with pizza, coke, cake and ice cream. Thanks to Shelly, there are a number of games to play throughout, and plenty of activities. Just like in the "Trapped" SFH thread, Shelly invites people to swim with her in the pool.

But eventually, everyone is worn out and the party comes to a close.

Meanwhile, Raymond finds that Paragon City doesn't ever disappoint; there is ALWAYS plenty of villains to vent your frustrations on. But he too is eventually worn out.

Emerald sees off a lot of the SG as one-by-one, they head for wherever they planned to sleep (and since it is one big sleepover, nobody is far from Emerald... in so far as a supergroup base that is the size of a city district isn't far).

Emerald waits quietly for Raymond's return at the SG entrance, reading a book under the light of the holographic SG symbol display that exists under the entrance.

Mits can't help but pun about Melty's boost.  "Emmy's in the hot seat now!"

she's all over Shelly fun times and pitches in for the noms.  Kitau plays along as well, mostly quiet, but smiling at everyone having fun times.  Jake can't help himself and is frequently spaced out with thoughts about the machine he and Eli worked on.  When everyone's going to bed, he's getting started burning the midnight oil.

Raymond would return from time to time, inventory overflowing with salvage.  He'd only stay long enough to unload the more valuable ones onto the salvage racks.  This last time, he's looking exhausted, his uniform is a mess, and his hair is matted with dry blood.

"Hey there, Emmy.  I trust you had a good day?"

  Alloy makes up for his lack of snack eating capacity by helping out with the games, and providing waves for the pool when asked.

  As the scene transition progresses, he opts to give Emerald and Raymond some alone time.

Emerald says, "It went well. Any day I can say that my will is my own is a good day, but the party was rather nice too. So um... are you... still upset with me about attacking you and the others?"

---

Alloy is approached by Eli. "Hey Alloy, do you ever dream?"

Raymond looks bewildered by the question.  "I was never upset with you.  I was upset with the villain who attacked your mind.  If anything, I'm very impressed you managed to repel the power of an ancient god from your mind."

He thinks for a moment.  "Look.  Sorry for not attending your party.  I figure my sour face is about as appropriate at a party as Mittens' silliness is at a funeral."

He offers Emmy a purple recipe.  "Congrats on being rid of the curse.  While my perpetually frowny face toward injustice may not show it, I'm very happy for you."

  Alloy shakes his head,  "No, I don't.  The closest would probably when I do astral projection and the like, which all by itself causes a lot of metaphysical confusion in others."

Emerald nods to Raymond and takes the recipe. "Hey thanks... this is one I've been looking for." she looks up at Raymond with a concerned expression. "I appreciate what you're saying. Sometimes, you just have to take your frustrations elsewhere. But don't take my question as an accusation... I mean if it had been you that had been forced to attack us, even after the curse, you would feel everyone deserved to be upset with you. Even if you know in your head it isn't your fault, it takes a while sometimes for your heart to get the memo."

She opens her arms to Raymond.

---

Eli ohs and says, "Do you wanna be able to? I'm doing an experiment with dreams tonight..."

"You're welcome."

Raymond returns the offered hug.  "You're probably right.  Your point works both ways.  If you were the one who's friend was abused to the point of feeling undeserved shame, I'm sure you too would find it difficult to contain your rage.  I'm glad you understand."

He yawns.  "Man, I'm wiped.  Still room for me to crash?"

  "I have never actually been curious on the subject.  Though if it would help you, I may try." As much because Alloy likes and trusts Eli, as not picking up the plot hook and then throwing it off a cliff.

Emerald gives a cute half-smirk with lightly pursed lips. "Plenty of room, Raymond. We set up a communal sleeping arrangement. Come on. I'll show you yours."

Emerald shows Raymond to a spot that had been set aside for him, nestled between the sleeping mattresses of Raichel and Edward Bartholimu Smahings.

---

Eli nods and takes Alloy to his "dream machine" and begins hooking Alloy up to it. "For now, due to time constraints, I'm just going to hook it up to the part of your processor that translates your experiences. So it will be like a dream, but you won't actually be dreaming. Maybe when I have more time, if you enjoyed dreaming, I will help you with the ability to sleep and dream whenever you like..."

"Thanks," Raymond answers, not knowing what to make of the impish smile.

Mits wakes, yawns, and sleepily finger-wags at him.  "You're late, Raymond.  Penalty!"

A water balloon appears over his head and bursts on him, drenching his hair for half a second before returning to non-existence from whence it came.

Raymond sweatdrops. "Good night."

He planks.  Mits sleepily floats over to Emmy to glomp.  "Suffering fluffy fox deficiency.  Need 8 hour cuddle treatment."

Yawn!

  "I can multitask that sort of thing, at least.  One of the conveniences of my nature."  Why limit yourself to one stream of consciousness when you don't have to?  It has made managing spells and sonic frequencies at the same time much simpler.

Emmy yips and is snatched. "...g'night, Raymond." and once in the bed with Mittens, she smiles, tail-swishes, and says, "Nini, Mittens." She rubs noses with Mittens.

---

Alloy is given a dream. It is impressively dream-like; Alloy dreams he is on a mission and the bad guys are plotting to sell pogo-sticks in order to raise money for a boat trip. So of course, this means the bad guys are all bouncing around on pogo-sticks and the final boss is a boat with muscular arms and legs. Clearly, he is the boat they were going to take a trip on and it was his way of motivating his men to make money for him. The dream, being a dream and all, switches between first and third person on a whim.

Adorable Emmy is adorable!  But even sleepy Mittens doesn't want to left in the dust.  Cute yip gets answered with teeny mew.  Eskimo kiss would have made wide awake Mittens blush enough to make steam shoot out her ears, but sleepy Mittens instead smiles, purrs, and licks the fluffy fox's face before floating back off to lala land.  Lots of mommy cat cuddles ensue.  Mits is up bright and early the next morning.

  Huh.  Alloy was expecting dreams to be notably more ridiculous than his every day life.  Not less.

Alloy's expectations are way too high if expects anything to surpass live in Paragon City in any way. Though Alloy at least has not experienced the arbitrary first and third person switching at random intervals before the dream. That would be Alloy's player, not Alloy himself.

Emerald giggles and gives Mittens several hugs.

Breakfast is yummy and Eli offers to hook up Alloy to a "taste" machine he has recently built just for Alloy so the guy can enjoy breakfast with everyone.

(CHAPTER OVER. NOT IT FOR MAKING CHAPTER 04!)
This message was last edited by the GM at 05:56, Sat 16 July 2016.

Mits is all kinds of blush face when she wakes up and is too embarrassed to make eye contact.  Zoop!  She turns invisible and rushes to the bathroom.  Before long she exits, refureshed and dressed for action!

"Ooh yay!  Numnums!"

She pretends to be a TV commercial.  "This complete breakfast is part of this bowl of cereal!  Hmm.  What gimmick to use....   Vampire pirate parrot?  Or maybe a lebrichon caveman rabbit."

Raymond simply eats without comment.

Jake is all kinds of curious about Eli's machine. "Howzit work?"

  "Maybe later, Eli.  As much because I doubt it would live up to the hype as anything."  While normally on the friendly spectrum, Alloy has a bit more pragmatic view about his nature.  Though it comes up surprisingly little.

(Reminder: Chapter is over. Not it for making chapter 4. Enjoy making new chapter, Crow)