Angel is good as new health-wise, but has been still mentally recuperating. She could have died and many did die. She has yet to leave the supergroup base, where she has apparently taken up residence. Determined to help despite her fears, Angel has been doing any and all supergroup related activity that can be done INSIDE the supergroup, such as cooking, cleaning, looking for what needs repair, checking for salvage whenever someone needs it, and keeping a hand on the pulse of the outside world's problems, especially her specialty; politics.

It's still relegated to Alloy to take care of upkeep bills since that requires being outside of the base and Angel literally can't bring herself to leave.

Emerald recruited Lucky to help with the "make Angel feel better" task, but has since asked for adult volunteers to help out because Angel needs a peer or two.

Meanwhile, Alexis contacts the supergroup. "Hi... hate to say it, but I sense a possible large threat on the horizon. Meet with me in the base."

Needless to say, Angel is first in the meeting room, having little else to do anyway.

(OOC: Figure out which alts will want to hang out with Angel and which will eventually head out to deal with Alexis' concerns after the meeting.)
This message was last edited by the GM at 05:43, Sat 18 Aug 2012.

Spending time with Angel is a welcome break from practicing his new liquid shadow powers with Purple Cool-Aid Man for Lucky.  All the purring and fluffay kitten snuggles Angel could possibly want are hers for the taking.  Not to mention Lucky's endless flattery.  Mittens, Kitau, and Raymond are generally too busy punching evil in the face to be of much use to be of much use to Angel beyond saying "Thanks for the food" or whatnot.

Raymond and Lucky show up for the meeting.  Mits on the other hand...  "Up to my eyeballs in baddies.  I'll be listening on the SG channel."

Kitau: "Ditto."

  Sometimes, moral support comes from the familiar.  Something familiar in Angel's case? GUNS.  As such, Gadget Gun has been sticking around the base of late to make sure she didn't slack off there between mundane tasks.  Just because he was totally a better shot^* than Angel didn't make her any less worthy of his support... Same went for the time she punched his helmet 180 degrees.

  "I don't suppose you have any suspicions on what Alexis is worried about Angel?"

---

  Alloy get's the message, "Well, that's never a good thing to hear.  But it's always better to hear it ahead of time.  I'll be right there."  Direct shortcut to the Redemption base is go!  Alloy ends up in the Meeting room readily enough.

_{* If you count Targeting Drones, it being much more easy to snipe long distance targets with a rifle than a handgun, and other Aim Assist means.}

Angel answers Gadget Gun with, "Probably something to do with nature? Maybe someone's trying to destroy a nature preserve." As for who's a better shot? There HAS to be a way to actually test that some day...*

The meeting convenes and is also broadcast via the supergroup channel so other members can listen in.

Alexis explains the situation, "As some of you know, I've been doing a lot of research on Hammidon. What *exactly* does it want, why, are there peaceful means, so on. In the process, Hammidon has contacted me telepathically a number of times now, trying to influence me to come to its side. In one of these communications, I got a clue that Hammidon is planning to do a big push soon. Since its initial attack, Hammidon has mostly been on the defensive, but apparently it was gathering power in the time it has been relatively quiet. So why call a meeting? Why not just say; hey guys, Hammidon is making a push, let's get a bunch of heroes and make it go back to square one? Or for that matter, why not just tell City Council about it? Because Hammidon's new forces are much bigger than you might think. Knowing Hammidon would do ANYTHING to attain its goals, I thought "what would I do if I wanted something done that badly?" and the answer is simple: Recruit people you would normally be fighting. Make it beneficial to them. That's what Hammidon has done. Parts of its invasion involve Crey, Freakshow, the Circle of Thorns, and now I find out, Longbow. All these factions are convinced they are taking measures for the good of their respective causes, but all of them are helping Hammidon. Sadly, this is all from things I pieced together and no hard evidence. And without clear evidence, we can't bring it to the authorities. But we don't have time for that. The anxiety I felt from Hammidon felt like the push could be any week now. Whatever he's up to, he's just waiting for his latest fooled subjects to complete their ends of the plan. SO... we as a supergroup have to take all those plans out before they do whatever it is Hammidon has been impatiently waiting for."

Shelly raises a hand, "Do we at least know where these operations are occuring?"

Alexis says, "Yes." to those at the meeting, Alexis looks very uncomfortable. "I can show all of you the way on a map."

A holographic display of the city is brought up. All of the spots are outside of the protective fields and deep in forests and vegitation.

*Somehow reminded if a comic I read once where DC and Marvel crossed over into each others' universes, so Hawkeye and Green Arrow immediately started competing.

Lucky mews and reaches to give Alexis a comforting hug.  "I should go to one of these places.  With my illusions, it's safest for me because the badguys never even know I'm there."

Except when they shout out his name in rage anyway when they punch their lieutenant in the face.

Raymond eye-twitches.  "I've never been comfortable with allowing children into dangerous situations like these even WITH them plugged into the medevac system.  But in a case like this, one stray grenade will mean one very dead kitten."

Lucky ducks his head and ears, mewing plaintively.

"Uh... can I just point out that I can't see this map and that the conversation is starting to not make sense?" Mittens asks, "Am I to assume that the locations are outside the range of the medevac, then?  I could always send wolves and lions in after the badguys.  That's totally moral, right?  I mean, it's not like I can't summon new ones if they get blown to bits."

Raymond facepalms.  Kitau makes not comment.
This message was last edited by the player at 02:54, Mon 27 Aug 2012.

  "The only one on that list that surprises me is Longbow.  As for the Medivac system..."  It's easy not to pointedly look over at Angel thanks to helmet head, "Best not to rely on it too much, but it should work without another case of extreme circumstances."  It can bring you out from an alternate future where the Medivac system doesn't even exist.  But few things are completely resistant to Plot Induced Failure.

---

  "I think I have more practice fighting the worse Hammidon forces in Praetoria than the local one these days.  But that doesn't mean it isn't dangerous, especially if it intends to take some personal action soon.  I hope the Rikti don't try to harness his power when he shows up again, at least he was easy to take out that time though... So that might actually be a mixed blessing, who knows."

OOC: Turns out the one Lady Grey Taskforce I was in was a Speed Run, so it was all a Blur.  But I do remember how there was the whole "Rikti are trying to harness Hammidon.  Beat them all up (and Weakened Hammidon) and get Temp Power That May Or May Not Do Anything, to aid in the finale Honoree fight.

I think it's more of a Plot Tag than an actual power, "Enables your powers to affect transdimensional entities", so I guess plot wise it was "You need to yoink Hammidon Mojo to have the firepower boost to harm Incarnate Honoree.

Emerald comes up on the supergroup channel, "You assume correctly, Mittens, that this is outside the normal sphere of medivac influence. This is becoming a disturbingly common danger for our supergroup."

Eli comments, "Along the lines of what Raymond said, I don't like the idea of ANYONE winding up dead. Raymond, I'm sure you'd be more upset if your sis wound up dead than if Lucky did and Raichel isn't a kid. It's easy enough for any of us to say we're willing to sacrifice ourselves, but the problem is in sacrificing each other. I suggest sending out some non-sentient robots. They can't "die" and we can always repair or rebuild them. But more importantly, with spy bots, we can see what we're up against."

Alexis says, "Alloy is right that the medivac *should* work. But he's also right that we shouldn't bank our lives on that. With the recent attack on the medivac, there is no garuntee how well it works outside the city borders. I like the idea of sending probes to see what kind of team we would need, or if our whole supergroup put together couldn't handle this."

Shelly says, "Hammidon can manipulate Longbow. But Hammidon isn't the only one who can pull strings. Angel and I can be working with the politicians..."

Angel is quiet, though anyone looking at her can see her fists clenching and her expression hardening.

Raichel says, "Scout first. Always a good plan when putting safety first. Even with a time crunch, I think we can afford a day of scouting."

Alexis says, "Yes. But let's make it only a day if we can help it. The urgency was very... unsettling."

---

*eyes the date of Alloy's post* The day before the announcement. That reminds me... I was going to offer we could invite people from CoX to RPOL to play here as a haven. Lots of RPers on CoX. But more importantly, people we thought were cool that we otherwise won't stay in touch with. Just a thought.

"We should consider recruiting outside help too," Raymond suggests, "You have a good reputation, Alexis, and I'm sure that the members of this supergroup aren't alone in trusting you.  I'll be working on finding powerful heroes willing to risk confrontation with villains outside the influence of the medivac should it come to that."

  Gadget Gun comments, "I could probably rig up some rikti drones for that, faster with some help.  A little more complicated than what has been done with them, but possible."  After all, the original tutorial had the police department turn some Rikti drones into target practice dummies.

---

  Alloy shrugs, "Any help would be good, but over time almost everyone we have ever worked with at some point is part of our group.  Plenty of other Heroes and otherwise who could be up for it if we find them though."

And if this story were translated to game mechanics, this is a story arch, so contacting a coalition or simply saying on Broadcast "Hammi Masterplan" soon to be shortened to HMP would likely muster some help.

Things get under way and Alexis is seen heading straight for the portals. Eli intercepts her, talks to her, and then Alexis teleports out. Eli looks slightly bewildered, but shrugs and heads upstairs to the second level of the portal room.

Angel can be seen looking a little upset while chatting with Shelly, who seems to be trying to convince Angel of something. Probably trying to convince her to exit the base at all, seeing as the two are at the portal to Atlas and Angel is hesitant to step onto the telepad.

Raichel heads over to GG. "If you need some Rikti Drones in decent working order, you could ask the police. If not, however, I could always help you round up a few in the war zone. Speaking of... suppose Vanguard's a little too busy to help us out on this one? After all... on one hand, no Earth to defend if they back away from halting Rikti advances. On the other hand, no Earth to defend if we don't stop this Hammidon plan cold."

A nearby Tread says, "Can't hurt to ask... right?"

Meanwhile, Emerald heads over to Alloy. "Alloy... join me in my study. I think you and I could be of more use to the supergroup if we do a little research in some ancient texts. See, I think I might have a clue or two in my books on Hammidon, why it didn't decimate ancient civilizations, and maybe there could be some magics you and I can work on together to help with stopping it this time." She looks around to make sure others aren't listening. "And if Hammidon's plan is a success, that doesn't mean it's truly the end. We need to be prepared for that angle as well."

---

Attempts by the community to rescue CoX involve 3 major things. 1) The fan server "GREGS". 2) The petition (Most people know it's a stab in the dark, but worth stabbing anyway to show just how many people support it). 3) The City of Heroes Community website (I'm at work, so I forget the name of the place, but the people of the CoX forums are putting together a website meant to tie all CoX goers together into one spot, preparing for 1 and 2 not working out).

Personal attempts:
-Download Paragon Wiki (Being done)
-Create CoX comic at long last (I'll wanna know if John or Koo want their characters in it or not and if so, whether they mind me writing what their characters would do)
-Download all the videotmaps.
-Screenshot key places in CoX. Basically what I'm looking for here is having frames of reference such that I could draw any spot in the entire game, at LEAST roughly if not detailed, to where if someone took my drawings from in comic and remade the game, the dimensions of the given places would at least be relatively accurate. So screens of each corner, looking in towards the center of a given map.

"Lemme know when it's time to bust some baddies," Mittens says, "Whatever powerset you need, just ask."

Kitau, unsurprisingly, says nothing.

Raymond nods to the points mad and strokes his chin in thought.  "We have a member or two in our SG with connections to Longbow, right?  Maybe they could infiltrate and investigate that angle."

He then approaches Angel and waits for a break in the conversation.  "I'm reconsidering my volunteering to gather outside help.  On second thought it would make more sense to have someone with better people skills take charge of that.  Angel for example."

  "I think the safest bet for why Hamidon never devastated ancient civilization, is because Hamidon's full name is Hamidon Pasalima, a recent Scientist who turned himself into that.  Even the self made demi-god of Ecoterrorism stoops to kidnaping old girlfriends to mutate into breeders.  Hammidon is just another petty being who wants to twist the world into their own image, but one who grabbed the power to make that a valid threat."

  Backstory and philosophical commentary out of the way, Alloy continues "Though this does not mean we may not find something useful in your research.  Giving up just because one detail isn't accurate is dumb.  I don't suppose you know offand magic to upscale small medical and scientific procedures to the appropriate hamidon scale?  I mean, punching his darn mitochondria to death individually is a thing.  In the past defeating an embodiment of infection has been done by brute forcing the results of such things onto Hammidon itself."  Fittingly enough, Radiation Infection being one of the most popular powers to do it.   Nevermind that Lore Wise, the reason Praetorian Hammidon is so strong is 'They used Nukes on him', it's not like Comics lore is consistent.

---

  Gadget Gun nods, "Asking them first would be best, it would mean ready modified, or at the very least intact drones to work with.  Collecting drones without them exploding can be tricky.  Vanguard has enough to deal with, but you might be able to ask Lady Gray for information.  She seems to have a habit of knowing things she either shouldn't know, or people have no clue how she CAN know."

  He looks over to the skittish Angel and Shelly.  "Though, as petty as it might be in such circumstances. I think I have other things to take care of right now, that at the very least could result in an overall improvement of our odds."

OOC: http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Ginger_Yates#Story_Arc   So little actual backstory lore details to find though so far.  Its just, "Who they were, used science and dark magic (and maybe Incarnate power, somehow) to become Endgame Content, turned old girlfriend into monster. (After you rescue her like, 6 different times.  GM if we're supposed to fail for PLOT reasons, just tell us after the second time we derail you.)"
This message was last edited by the player at 05:00, Sun 09 Sept 2012.

Alexis smiles at Raymond and says, "Actually, Liberty is an honorary member of Longbow. And you were saying about how the children in our Supergroup shouldn't be doing the more dangerous stuff... I think her infiltrating Longbow is a safe bet. Worst I suspect happening to her would be them putting her in a holding cell temporarily." she gets on the SG channel again. "Hey Liberty, if you're still in the base, or close by, come on over to the portal room and meet up with me."

Liberty, one of the SG's child members, (and one of its toughest) hovers over to Raymond and Alexis. "You called?"

Alexis nods. "Raymond here was hoping you could use your connections with Longbow to find out more about that angle. What project are they working on that they believe is helping, but in the end could potentially serve Hammidon's purposes? Whatever you can find would be great."

Liberty gives a military style salute, complete with full body posture. Then smiles. "You bet. I'll give you updates as they come." she flies off.

The break in conversation Raymond was looking for happens and when he speaks out about Angel, the gunbunny (though currently in human mode) blushes. "Shelly was just trying to persuade me to go with her to talk with politicians..."

Shelly says, "But nothing says we can't go hang with other heroes before or even after."

Angel squirms.

Shally looks at Gadget Gun and says, "Not petty at all. All help is great, Gadget." Just watch out for Dr Claw.

Shelly then looks back at Angel. "Come on, Angel. I'll be with you."

Angel says, "It's not like I don't want to go. It's just... difficult to overcome my own feelings. This fear is frustrating. I don't like be parylized or imprisoning myself. But the fact I'm not going outside alone helps a lot..."

She steps over to the telepad and looks towards Raymond, Gadget Gun and Alexis, waving. Shelly steps onto the telepad with Angel and the two teleport.

Meanwhile, Timothius comments on SG, "You're useful for more than just smashing things, Mittens."

Raichel comments on SG as well, "Yeah, but Mitts also has a bit of interesting luck when it comes to finding clues on random missions. Mittens, maybe you could focus on any leads in your radios and tips concerning the factions Alexis listed." Freakshow: More yay than skulls because they come back to life to give you more XP! Only real thing to watch out for is their end drain (which is ironically nothing compared to Sappers) and especially the Super Stunner. Crey; Their most annoying thing being the "I'm invincible now and you must wait for it to wear off" mode. CoT, of course, are just generally annoying with their minus accuracy and narrow passageways of Orenbega. Longbow, well, Liberty is dealing with them from a different direction thankfully.

Raichel heads off with Gadget towards the Rikti War Zone in order to get to asking Vanguard about possible drone loans.

Emerald headshakes at Alloy. "Sorry, I don't know... I don't think I have such magics. Not yet anyway. But maybe there are clues in the study." She heads off with Alloy to the arcane study of the base.

---

As a reminder to myself, I *DID* make a moogle character once (I think that was Mocha Moogle, and then later showed herself again via Squiggly Squid). This could be the VERY moogle who uses moogle magic to help Mittens change jobs (In FFXI, you had to go to your moghouse moogle or a local job-changing moogle in order to change your job/class/powerset.)

As a side-note on factions: Longbow are more OUCH than annoying to me. Because the big danger with them is -defense and AoE, you just need purples, oranges and greens. CoT making me miss half my attacks is ironically more annoying. XD It took sitting here thinking about it to figure out "Why is it I'm happy when I'm doing a longbow mission and 'eh' when doing a CoT mission?"

Carnies are probably the most annoying faction to me. It's like Crey's invincibility literally being applied through half of every fight as long as there are leuts or bosses involved. Freaks have become my fave faction to fight, even more than skulls, because skulls don't pop back up to give you more XP. And if you are paying attention, you can avoid the Super Stunner's most annoying ability; his rez power.

Meanwhile, Alloy, I would like a solid front, back, and side view screenshot of each of your main alts. Alloy, Bamzor, Gadget Gun, and any others you'd like to see in the comic sooner than later.
This message was last edited by the GM at 12:36, Wed 12 Sept 2012.

"Be careful, Liberty," Raymond warned before she flew off.

He waves bye to Angel and thanks her and Shelly before they leave.  Without much better to do, he follows Rai and Gadget Gun to the RWZ.

"Thanks for the praise!" Mits answers her sibs, "And the practical advice!  Will do!"

She teams up with Kitau and gets cracking.

  Gadget Gun wears his purple and grey Vanguard armor for the occasion, "Somehow, while I could requisition several Vanguard HVAS, I'm expecting it to be more involved to get drones."

---

  "Well, I'm sure you could figure out something even without help.  My arcane specialty isn't quite as much help as one might think, considering Hammidon doesn't actually have any control over rocks or crystals.  But I could track down the sort of lab equipment he used in his original ritual.  Magic can do all sorts of crazy things to all sorts of things, but at least it would help narrow down things a little to work out what Shamanistic rituals interact with Lab equipment to infuse genetically engineered bacteria with sentience."  Why is it that the first step of so many ecoterrosist sorts in 'Protect nature at any cost!' was to twist nature to their own needs?  Did they have an irony quota to meet?

OOC:  The Circle can be... spectacularly incompetent at times.  http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Bad_Penny
This message was last edited by the player at 03:29, Tue 23 Oct 2012.

Vanguard:

Rai, Ray and GG arrive at VG. LOL XD

At Vanguard, Raichel explains the situation to Borea. Borea folds her arms. "Vanguard is aware of the situation. Unfortunately, Longbow isn't listening to our warnings. Well... MOST of Longbow anyway. I've gotten a few anonymous responses from people who are obviously members of Longbow by the way they talk and what they say, that seem to indicate they are taking Vanguard's warning seriously."

Raichel says, "I guess you can't have an entire organization think exactly the same way about everything. That's not to mention the times I've had to arrest members of Longbow... Well now that you know that Redemption knows, what can the supergroup do to help stop Hammidon's latest scheme?"

Borea looks at GG. "It sounds to me that what you are currently doing is helping. So keep it up and let Vanguard do our part. We are up to our ears in aliens, sure, but TWO can play Hammidon's recruitment game. If you're here to borrow Vanguard equipment, the regs are exactly the same as always."

"Hmm," Raymond ponders, rubbing his chin, "Vanguard frequently comes into contact with supers from the Rogue Isles...  Have any of them been warned of this plot?  It grates against my instincts even considering the possibility of tipping off Arachnos and their ilk, but Alexis made ti clear that this could very well be the greatest and most immediate threat the world faces today."

    Gadget Gun nods,  "Most of Longbow seems to be in a position of proper intentions complicated by their military structure.  Gausian works very hard keep that from effecting Vanguard operations." Those rogue Vanguard Sword agents HURT.  No wonder Malta and Artemis stays on the opposite side of the Warzone from the Vanguard base, Vanguard's Serious Business section must scare them.

  ...Oh right,  "Considering the Rikti are Vanguards primary concern, any leads regarding those particularly verbose Rikti who were tampering with the Shadow Shard portal I sent you a report on?  This Hammidon situation is going to be taking up most of our attention, but it doesn't hurt to check."  Not to mention the fact those Rikti were why Angel was so bent out of shape.  Gee, coincidence there was a recent spike in GG's Vanguard Merits?  Even if GG suspected those might not have been actual Rikti.

  Either way, Drones be bought soon enough.

---

Alloy Stuff later when Emmy says somethin.  Forgot I hadn't posted this.

Borea answers Raymond first, "Arachnos has not been informed yet. The higher-ups are still debating on who to inform and who not to. But whatever is decided, try not to worry about it. Any decision made by Vanguard will be thoroughly thought out."

She then looks at GG. "Your supergroup was on the scene. You probably know as much as Vanguard for the moment; The Rikti were there to steal the force field technology that was developed by that bomber villain. As to where they are and whether they have implemented that technology? No leads."

Raymond nods.  "Thanks.  For what it's worth, they probably already know.  At least... the worst of them do.  If something comes up we can help with, you know how to contact us."

He leans the hand truck back and starts wheeling the drone toward the base portal.  "To the tech lab over the portals, I presume?

  Gadget Gun nods,  "Thanks for sharing what little you had a least Borea.  If it's really the Rikti after better shield Tech, they probably want to stop what happened the last time Bamzor helped a Mothership assault from occurring again."

 :siren  Flashback! :ducksiren:

  It had been one of the longer trips to ruin the repairs on the Mothership already, the strike team had lost track of how many bombs they had planted, and U'kon Gr'ai had been punched off the side long ago.  The shields were back, and with it the ensuing forced teleport away from the center of the... wait.

  "...The shields are up, but we're still here.  Now what?"
  "Keep smashing!"

  It was probably the worst five minutes the Mothership had ever seen.  Vanguard was still sorting the Merit totals for DAYS after the fact.  Something about 'what you beat up more rikti than there are on the planet that's unpossible'.  Maybe the Rikti had hospital teleporters on their ship.

:siren  End Flashback! :ducksiren:

  Gadget nodded to Raymond, "At least I'm no stranger to programming drones."  Target drone, Gun Drone, Offense Drone,  phantom drone echos from the Well Of Furies (Such poor production standards from that Well.  Why label it LASER drone when it had PLASMA weapons?).

The Redemption SG symbol spins toward the screen and then away from it.

When the trio arrive at the Supergroup's blindingly white tech lab, Eli is seen at one of the tables, working on something. He has his goggles on and is too concentrated to notice the three enter the room. Speaking of goggles, Mocha is sitting like a plush doll on the other table, leaned against the support pillar asleep with a smile.

Raichel looks from one table to the other. Then looks at GG. "So you wanna interrupt Eli? Or Mocha? Eli could help you, but then there's no telling what he's in the middle of. Mocha is eager to help, but is currently sleeping..."

"Why trouble either?" Raymond answers, "I'm sure Gadget Gun knows what he's doing."

He turns to face the speedy marksman.  "Let us know if we're needed for anything."

He then turns back to Rai.  "We should check on everyone's progress and see where we're needed most."

  "Because it's a character select screen, Raymond."  Wait, that may be a bit blunt.  "Because help is still nice Raymond.  I'll let you know as soon as I set up, progress checks would be appreciated."

  Gadget goes to gently wake Mocha, because she's not working with something that may or may not comically explode if there is a distraction.

Mocha stirs and peeks an eye at Gadget. "Ku..po..?" She sits up, rubs her eyes with her fists and blinks several times before smiling up at the wielder of gadgets and guns. "Hello, GG. How may I help you today, kupo?"

Meanwhile, Raichel goes with Raymond.

Emerald is still doing research with Alloy. Alloy had tracked down and found some of Hammidon's original lab equipment. "I dunno, Alloy... I just... maybe it's Hammidon's influence still inside me from when I ventured into Eden, but I feel like Hammidon is more than just some mad scientist. Like he merged with a long-forgotten essence. At the *very* least, he has merged with the Earth's memory and is able to produce ancient life that nobody knew once existed." The little fox then notices Raymond and Raichel. "Oh! Hi there. What's up?"

Raymond checks up on the others.  Mittens and Kitau have of course been busy bashing baddies, focusing on Devouring Earth missions and missions involving the other groups mentioned by Alexis.

  "Well, a retcon wouldn't surprise me.  But until proven otherwise I am going off the basis that Hammidon's resources are no older than the incident that transformed him.  Just because he named his tailor made strain of Bacteria 'The Will Of The Earth', does not mean it is.  Besides, even if it were true that wouldn't change much."  Wait, guys!  The thing that wants to kill us all is all natural!... Why are you looking at me like that?  "It would make him no more special than the several dozen Moon goddesses you see roaming Atlas park.  Lord Recluse is linked with Tartarus, you get the picture."

---

  "Hello Mocha. I'm going to be configuring some Rikti drones for remote exploration, and it would go faster if I had some help.  If you can handle Lego instructions you'll be able to work with what I'll set up."
This message was last edited by the player at 17:37, Tue 20 Nov 2012.

  ____
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|  O   |
 \____/-------------------------.______________________________
______________________________________________________\
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
Emerald notices Raymond walk off without a word and says, "Heh... this whole situation certainly has our Supergroup pre-occupied."

Raichel shrugs with a smile. "Keep up the good work, you two." and hurries after Raymond. "I'll check the salvage rooms. You go ahead and check the others." Raichel informs Raymond before flying off.

Emerald looks back at Alloy and says, "It's not his specialness I'm worried about.. it's finding any clue on different weaknesses he may have."
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
______________________________________________________/

---

Meanwhile, Mocha hops, bounces, then spirals into the air a couple feet, fist thrust skyward, "Ku-po-po-po! Leave it to me! I'll be as kuporificly helpful as helpful can be! ....what's lego?" she asks with a finger to her mouth.

---

Raymond finds Alexis in the Medical/Nature room. She's laying flat on her back among the trees, staring at the ceiling. She looks like she's been crying, but notices Raymond and tries to hide the fact a little too late.
This message was last edited by the GM at 04:01, Thu 06 Dec 2012.

OOC: Sadface!  In the past, when I missed that my char was addressed, I was asked, "Did you miss that your char was addressed?"  I would then kick myself and fix the post.  This was much appreciated and far less sadface than a superhero char of mine being treated even more fail than the fail player who wouldn't miss being addressed in a room with only 3 other people in it.  In the future, being asked if I missed something will be much appreciated.  So!  Taking the bit about Alexis, folding it up and putting it into my pocket for future RP, and jumping back to msg #25....

"Hi, Emerald," Raymond answers, "We just got back from RWZ.  I think Gadget is working with Mocha reprogramming a captured drone so we can use it to look into the Rikti connection.  We're not exactly experts in that sort of thing, so Raichel and I are looking for other ways to make ourselves useful..."

He glances at all the arcane stuff and skews his lips, not expecting to be of much help here.

  "You are terribly sheltered Mocha.  I'll bring a Lego Mech Man box later."  House Mogs, what's an outdoors?

  "I've got some simple instructions with pictures for helping to set up the drones.  The both of us doing it ourselves would be faster than setting up an automated assembly."

---

  Alloy carefully retrieves Emerald's responses to him out of the fail gator.  "So far, hubris seems the popular opinion."   He looks over to Raymond and Raichel...  Raymond the Magical Origin person  "I'm sure you can pick up as we go, or perhaps notice something more innate to our problem we may be distracted by trying to find detailed reasons."

Emerald says, "If you could check up on the various members of our supergroup, starting with those who are involved in the Hammidon problem, that'd be helpful. See if more members can spare some time to get involved, and check that everybody is doing OK. I'd do that, but I'm a bit focused on this right now and, well, I'm sure one or two members might appreciate actual face time from you and/or Raichel."

Raichel looks at Raymond. "You check on the ones currently involved. I'll check on the others." She opens the HahaChat channel and starts telling various SG members who aren't involved yet to turn that channel on.

---

"Yippipippy!" Mocha comments of being brought lego stuff. She seems quite capable of following instructions! Her ability to understand them or why what part goes where seems decent too, though it's clear she mostly just putting two and two together. If this wire connects here, then the message being sent through the wire is coming from here and to there. Simple stuff like that. Like most mere mortals who haven't been taught electronics, or advanced alien sciences, Mocha can't simply look at a circuit board or alien crystal power source and simple figure out what it does. "Gosh, you're so smarterific!" she comments of GG.

Raymond nods to the others.  "Sounds good."

While checking on the well-being of everyone involved, Raymond finds Alexis in the Medical/Nature room. She's laying flat on her back among the trees, staring at the ceiling. She looks like she's been crying, but notices Raymond and tries to hide the fact a little too late.

He's not normally very forceful with people he respects, but this is one of those exceptions.  He kneels down beside her and reaches down to pull her in for a comforting hug.  "Too late.  I saw the tears.  There's no hiding it from me.  So you may as well let me be the shoulder you cry on."

  Of course Mocha can't figure them out by just looking at them, she has to check the Clues tab for the flavor text, duuuuh... Wait, that's not actually how science works.

  "I try to makes sure I stay aware of the difference of the fact I've learned more things, and being smarter than other people.  The second one doesn't actually happen all that often."  Gadget Gun tries to keep any insufferable genius tendencies restricted to ridiculing evil scientists.  Doctor Aeon has style though.

  "Good work either way Mocha, if it doesn't work out in the end it will just be because someone else had a bad idea."

Speaking of Doctor Aeon... Just then, Eli cheers, "WOOOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOO!!" bites his lower lip and starts waving his fasts in the air while hopping (You know the dance emote). He excitedly picks up what looks like a large two-handed laser gun and hurries over to GG and Mocha. "Lookit!" he says excitedly. "I've replicated Doctor Aeon's Dance Gun! You point, shoot, and those you shoot dance!"

Mocha says, "Oooo... neat!"

---

Alexis looks away, cheeks puffed. "....." then looks back at Raymond. Her expression softens slightly as her eyes water again. "It's not fair... this... this... PERVERT is forcing people to hate nature while he's supposedly fighting *for* it! He's making people want to destroy nature! And I know nature is a neutral entity and all, but couldn't it at least defend itself from Hammidon? Why is Hammidon the loudest voice of nature? Why can't Mother Earth kick his butt and tell him he's wrong? Is it because Hammidon is right? Is it because nature HAS had enough of the people here who like to mess it up?"

"Nature is kicking his butt, Alexis," Raymond answers, doing his best to take the edge off his usual serious tone, "Through you, through the rest of us.  Have you heard of the recent sudden proliferation of nature related powers?  Even Mittens is trying her hand at some of them.  And to me, that speaks volumes of Nature's popularity increasing.  Don't let Hamidon's thin disguise get you down.  Seems to me almost everyone sees through it.  And even if they didn't, Nature can handle a little bad rep.  It's been around long before any of us were born, and it'll be around long after we're gone."

If she looks encouraged, he'll let go of the hug, but only if she looks like she doesn't need his shoulder for crying on any more.

  Gadget considers the party time weapon "Well, that is definitely interesting.  Can it be set to popdance, or is that taking Science TOO FAR?"

Alexis is staring up into Raymond's eyes with hopeful, watery eyes. "Thanks, Ray. You're right. And you're also right about Hammidon's lies getting me down. I've been hanging around his turf too long and need a break from being there. I've been having self doubts and been afraid if I charge in, he'll win me over and I'll hurt my friends. If I don't charge in, everyone will think I'm a coward or worse."

---

Eli asks, "Wanna find out? I mean, even as excited as I am, the gun might not work at all, for all I know, because of some small oversight or something."

Mocha says, "We should TOTALLY inform the Supergroup, Kupo, and let them know where you're gonna test it out!"

Eli says, "Was thinking King's Row. The Gish always needs some cheering up."

Raymond's eyes lock on hers and he nods.

"Understandable.  But I have too much respect for you to ever consider you a coward.  Think about what happened to Angel and what she must be feeling, for example.  Yet I have more respect for her now than ever before.  Like her, you're a true hero, Alexis.  If ever you need to take a break, or if ever you need to take drastic measures to defend Nature, I will support you.  All of us will.  We need Nature.  We need you!"

Alexis sniffles. Then nods. "Thanks, Raymond. There IS one other thing bothering me, since you've offered your ear... the more I think about it, the more I think just setting Eden on fire and salting it would be for the best. But that's as horrible a thought for me as you deciding it would be best for everyone if you cut off the tip of Raichel's left ear. She doesn't *need* it to function, per say. And if there was a cancer growing there before that would have spread to the rest of her, it was worth it... but you'll always stare at it and cry inside knowing you disfigured your sister."

Raymond's brow furrows and he frowns at the thought, nodding gravely to Alexis.  "You're welcome.  Here's hoping that doesn't become necessary.  For what it's worth, I'm guessing that Statesman and the others have carefully considered that idea but haven't acted on it for good reason.  Maybe they're working on a better solution.  Either way, I'm sure they'd welcome any new insights you might have to offer on the subject.  Here's hoping we all make it through this un-scarred."

  "As tempting as it would be to witness a field test, I've still got to make sure these drones actually do their job.  Mocha has saved me a lot of time though, so if I had to wait around until putting them to use I could probably come along."

  Gadget lists the prepared state of the drones for those who pay attention to that sort of thing.

Alexis nods. "Well... thanks for everything. Say, speaking of Angel... do you think maybe she still needs a talking to?"

---

Eli nods to GG and heads off to do a field test. He doesn't bother inviting anyone else, figuring people are currently too busy. And, well, he can always show off later after the gun is already tested and proven functional.

The drones prove to be relatively easy to set up.

"I think she'll be alright," Raymond answers, "But if you were to ask her to listen to what's troubling you, I think it would do her a world of good and boost her self-confidence.  I'll bet being able to empathize with you will make her feel like it was that much more worth it to have suffered through what she did."

  "Right, I'll just be sending in these drones then.  He said to himself imitating Mittens."  Gadget Gun starts sending off the six pack of Rikti Drones, two at a time for less offs of a sudden TPK of drones.

Alexis nods at Raymond with a smile and heads off, waving over her shoulder at him. "Thanks!"

Fast forwarding a bit, Emerald asks the group for another meeting towards the end of the day. "Alright everyone! We've gotten a lot accomplished! Gadget Gun has some operational Rikti drones ready for us. Liberty has some info on the Longbow side of things, which she'll share with us all here shortly. Eli built a special gun that will slow the enemy down a lot, which he has tested and says it works. Angel and Shelly have secured us some special permissions and backup from our city's government. Mittens found out the involvement of the villain factions was only known to certain groups in said factions. For example, the freakshow in Brickstown don't seem to know a thing about this plan, while the freakshow in Crey's Folly practically brag about it. Alloy and I found a ritual that's gonna take some time setting up, but all magic-oriented members of the supergroup can help. I'll be performing the ritual tonight and will need all magic members to meet with me in my magic sanctum at 11pm. Alright... Liberty?"

Liberty stands in Emmy's place and says, "Longbow is no stranger to having renegades in its ranks at this point. Sad as that is, it also means Longbow was prepared for more renegade activity. They assured me that when the time comes and the renegade Longbow start attacking us, their weapons and super powers will simply stop working."

She makes room for Shelly, who squeaks at the mic briefly, then says, "The government has given the Redemption supergroup complete cooperation from the PDP, the Legacy Chain, and several super groups such as the Freedom Phalanx, W.I.S.D.O.M., the Civic Squad, and the Shining Stars. We have lots of help from lots of good people. The government has also given our supergroup complete authority for all things concerning the location of Hammidon's final stand. So when we get there, we don't have to worry about any of our actions leading to us getting in trouble."

Emmy re-takes the mic. "So the plan right now is; those of you who are magical, help with the ritual tonight, then go to bed. Those of you who aren't magical, just go straight to bed so you can get an early start. We are going to have assault teams each dedicated to the various factions Hammidon has at his disposal. Bamzor will lead the assault against Crey. Raymond will lead the assault against the Freakshow. I will lead the assault against the Circle of Thorns. And Liberty will lead the assault against the Longbow renegades. Once we've dealt with them all, we can all meet up and converge against Hammidon. Questions?"

Will handling three alts at once?  It really is the sign of the end times.

  "What does the ritual do?  Or is that a last minute tactical surprise?"  Bamzor is asking because the Robot Wizard asking would just look odd.

  "Do you figure more fire support will be needed against the Freakshow, or in case the Longbow failsafes fail, as failsafes often do?"  Does hitting on Luminary count as actions one would not get in trouble for?  Wait, that was the Vindicators (And not those other Vindicators a certain Panda lead).

Mittens would approve of the impersonation.

"I'm not one to refuse assistance," Raymond answers, "But I think you're more needed against the renegade Longbow."

To Emmy he answers, "I'll be there."

"With bells on!" Mittens concurs.

Emerald answers Bamzor because he asked, "In *theory*, it will make Hammidon revert more and more to his original human form with every attack he uses on us. So the more he fights, the weaker he gets."

Considering whole TEAMS form just to be the volunteers to die while everyone else blasts Hammidon, this will be very dangerous, but could really hurt Hammidon quickly too.

Liberty goes over to GG and reaches to grab his hand while smiling up at him. "It'd be great to have you along!"

Later on, at the ritual, many of the SG are there. Though this is where RP gets interesting in pointing out a few things about origin. Example: Shelly isn't there. While she was technically magic origin, that was due to a magic weapon passed down from generation to generation. Doesn't make HER magical. Liberty IS there because she's pretty sure being possessed by the spirit of America counts as magic. And so on.

Emerald is sure to watch to see if Mittens literally wore bells to the ritual.

OOC: Most characters I made defaulted to magic because it was a handy catch-all for Mittens' various incarnations (even though I leveled monk, rogue, samurai, warrior, etc. many many levels in FFXI).  Her story in CoX is that she originally came from Vanadiel but came to Paragon via some magic portal that opened up in her mog house.

Raymond's combat super powers are the result of hard training and a few bits of tech.  His tiny smidge of natural born arcane talent was just enough that he can deal slightly more damage with a shadow wand than most.  But he showed up just in case he can contribute at all.

Mits was unable to find her ankle bells, but she shows up wearing a Christmas scarf covered in a jingle bell pattern.  Today she showed up as a bard, wearing her artifact gear figuring she'd contribute most by buffing all the other participants.  If she's wrong it's very likely there'll be a moogle handy.  "La la la raise your intelligence song.  Doo de doo raise your skill song."

  "Ooooh, that could get interesting if I'm inside them punching his cells to death at the time."  The sort of violent science/magic Bamzor is looking forwards to seeing.

  Gadget nods, hand held by Liberty.  "Looks like I'll be along to deal with the more common problems then."  Really, more Longbow have been shot on Hero Tips than Devouring Earth at this point.

  As for the ritual, Alloy is using Runes and Binary auras at the same time, wow!

Mocha Moogle is there with Mittens. She grins up at Mittens and elbows Mittens in the shoulder. "Remember when you told me about those manaburn teams? I wonder if that's possible in this world." she muses with a smile.

Eli looks up at Bamzor. "...ewwwww."

Liberty says to Bamzor, "Don't get too excited... I'm sure you'll get ejected from him before he reverts too much."

Emerald performs the ritual. Magic flows over everyone in the room. But while it doesn't feel any different than standing inside Oranbega, it's obvious from visual effects that the magic is working. Once done, Emerald says, "Alloy... since you don't need sleep, I'm hoping you can keep looking into anything else that might help while those of us who need sleep do so."

"It is," Mittens answers Mocha, "My friend Scarlet put together a static with a few other sub rad trollers and their stacking accelerate metabolism powers turned them into an endless font of hyper stamina able to bust out their most powerful abilities in rapid succession."

In SG chat she announces, "If anyone needs a sleep song, send me a tell."

Raymond is glad he was able to contribute at least a little and chuckles at Bamzor's prediction.  He considers how unlikely it is he'll be able to get to sleep on his own and accepts Mittens' offer.

  Alloy nods to the short fox, "Sure thing Emerald.  More productive than staying up to clean exploded limeonuts off a lab ceiling at least."

  Bamzor meanwhile is disappointed at the lack of Totally 90s Doom for Hammidon.  You can tell from the lack of expression on his lack of face.

The next day comes. The moment of truth, as everyone is now prepared as they are going to be. The teams have been decided and the groups all head out in full force to their destination at the first light of day as agreed upon.

Team Crey: Bamzor, Shelly, Maximus
Team Freakshow: Raymond, Raichel, Batsmash
Team Circle of Thorns: Emerald, Alloy, Mittens
Team Longbow: Liberty, Gadget Gun, Jake

---

Crey:

Shelly takes Bamzor and Max to the location of the suspected Crey locale. Sure enough, nestled somewhere in the ruins of some of Paragon City's bout with the Rikti, there is an entrance to a secret Crey base that looks like it's been there for a while now. It doesn't take long for the group to find a bunch of laser sights on them and a voice demanding "Surrender!"

---

Freakshow:

The first Freakshow location Raymond was told to go to was Carnival Town in Crey's Folly. As the "capitol" of Freakshow, this is where Raymond and his group were told they would likely find the location and plans of the Freakshow division of Hammidon's master plan.

---

Circle of Thorns:

Unsurprisingly, more of the ruins of Orenbega are accessible through the forested parts of Paragon City. It is at one particular entrance that Emerald leads her team in and begins infiltration. "Scout ahead, Mittens. We want the path of least resistance to save on time." Emerald says softly. She then looks at Alloy. "Protections, please. I'll prepare to recall her if needed."

With that, Emerald holds her hands to either side, ready to teleport Mittens back to the entrance when Mittens is done scouting.

(Feel free to invent what the path of least resistance is like)

---

Longbow:

Also among the forested ruins of Paragon is the entrance to a secret Longbow forward base. Liberty looks pretty upset. While GG was sent as FIREPOWER for Lib, Jake was sent as the one who will hopefully find ways to counter any Longbow tech; either by re-programming their stuff, using nature against tech, or simply leaning on his psionics. "If we could talk some sense into this renegade group... that could make a huge difference in our fight against Hammidon." Liberty comments quietly.

With Emmy tanking and Alloy trolling, Mittens decided to back up the group with damage.  Yay fireballs!  Oh wait.  CoT tends to resist fire.  Guns then!  She donned her cowgirl outfit and strapped on her self-loading sixshooters.  One of which is pink.  She never did get around to fixing the color.

When asked to scout ahead, Mits salutes, turns invis, then dashes forward at super speeds.  Sure wish I had this power when scouting for a camps in Crawler's Nest.  Once she finds what the group is looking for she offers a teleport.  Sure wish I had this power...  pretty much anywhere I ever went.

---

Meanwhile Raymond mows through Freaks with his huge two-handed maul, shrugging off even superfreak's energy drain attacks.  "Don't be fooled!  Hamidon is just using you!"

---

"Well if we convince their boss, we've convinced the whole group," Jake suggests, "Or at least that works most times.  Or we could defeat the boss, then imitate his voice with an emulator to broadcast new orders to his troops."

---

Maximus doesn't look concerned and faces the ambushers.  He holds his tongue to see how Shelly handles herself in this situation.

  Bamzor would eyeroll if he were capable of such a thing (Nevermind the fact he has sniper distance eye lasers).  <goldenrod>"That word is in my vocabulary.  It is also not what we are going to be doing.  Speaking of eye lasers, he looks down the laser sights for anything within range to decide on contempt of being shot, or contempt of 'not even close enough to be shot'.

---

  Batsmash lives up to his name... He also lives up to other potential names for Warmace combat style users, as he is Hammersmashed.  "Ow.  Ow.  Ow.  He's still standing though, enough experience has quite literally pounded in some Toughness™ into him.

---

  Plentiful hula hoops are had by all.  Emerald is once again enjoying the wonderful feeling of being as durable as reality can handle, even if Alloy still can't make others less susceptible to being knocked on their behind.  He of course is Yes For Port

---

  Gadget has similarities to Mittens in being fast, invisible, and favoring bullets.  Of course he also has toys to detect those who try to do the same (hello, Longbow Spec Ops).  "As often as it seems to turn up, not having to shoot our way through employees of a high profile justice department for the sake of justice would be a pleasant change of pace."

Team Crey: Bamzor, Shelly, Maximus
Shelly says, "Tell you what; You surrender first and we'll talk things over!"

Crey Protector says, "Take theMFF!!"

Shelly's trident smacks the guy across the helmet and the trio of heroes start getting swarmed. However, the trio consists of a tank and two off-tanks(scrappers). Shelly immediately gets to doing the break dance of staff fighting.

---

Team Freakshow: Raymond, Raichel, Batsmash
"Nobody fools us!" a Stunner Chief yells while laughing and stunning Raichel, "Least of all "heroes" like you who come into our turf and start swinging in the name of justice!"

Raichel breaks free from the stun and says, "We don't have time to arrest you for your crimes! Hammidon's making a push and you bunch are protecting him!"

Raichel would give greens to Batsmash, but... well she needs 'em. >.> Blaster defense and HP < Scrapper. Thankfully, she has a lot of resist electric.

While hovering there, Raichel grabs a hold of her right wrist as it shivers and unleashes a torrent of electricity at the Stunner Chief, causing even him to get hurt and then stunned from the overload of electricity.

---

Team Circle of Thorns: Emerald, Alloy, Mittens
When teleported, Emerald and Alloy, being teamed with Mittens two-gun... yeah the fight is pretty one-sided. Emerald tears up a couple dozen right off the bat with Cryonic Judgement, and then just holds the attention of the rest of the enemies so Alloy and Mittens can tear them a new one. "Circle of Thorns! You were once respected, the pinnacle of civilization, and I'm sure you still mean to restore things the way they once were! But Hammidon means to destroy you just as much as he means to destroy all of civilization!"

"Hammidon is a TOOL! He believes he uses us, but we are the ones using him!" replies a Force Mage, "Now die and empower us more so our plan can come into fruition!"

"...not for lack of trying..." Emerald mutters before twirling her hands around, then SLAMMING her hand on the ground, causing a wave of force to knock over all the nearby CoT, making them all feel like they each got punched by the Undertaker.

---

Team Longbow: Liberty, Gadget Gun, Jake
Liberty suggests, "How about we try both? First we try to persuade him. Then, if he refuses, we beat him up and use your voice modulator."

Liberty is, of course, wearing her Longbow outfit. It's best when dealing with Longbow, she found. When you wear the uniform, you're "one of them". When you don't, you almost may as well be a civilian. Thankfully, there's some truth to this as the Longbow who are at the base ignore Liberty at worst, smile and wave at her, or even comment "Hey, Liberty! Thanks for your aid in taking down those Outcasts a few days back!" or such.
This message was last edited by the GM at 12:26, Sun 10 Mar 2013.

"Couldn't have said it better myself," Max says with a smirk on his face as he joins in the trident sweep attacks.  He does his best to cover for Shelly but blocking bullets with a trident tends to be much tougher than blocking blades for or fists.

"We should let Bamzor hold most of the attention of ranged attackers," he suggests in team tell, popping a green.

---

"They never listen," Raymond grumbles, taking advantage of the stunner's dropped defenses to hit him with a devastating finishing attack.
"Nice shot, Raichel," he commends.  With electric armor's self-heal handy, he can spare greens and hands a few over to Raichel and Batsmash.  Also, he's sure to taunt frequently to keep the enemy focused on him.

---

Why is it the first thing that comes to mind when I hear about them using each other is to tease them about having a sordid affair with a giant blob when I absolutely hate it when people twist my words that way?  Oh well.  "You so smart, let's see if you can outsmart cryo bullets!"  Blam!Blam!Blam!Blam!Blam!Blam!Blam!  She starts singing her own take on a Beetles song.  "Bang bang MitTens Silverbullet came down in his head!  Bang bang MitTens Silverbullet made sure he was _{incapacitated enough to be recalled by the medivac system then sent directly to jail do not pass Go do not collect $200."}

---

Jake thumbs-ups at the suggestion.  "Feels kinda weird to be openly walking through one of these bases.  At best I have to sneak around."
Sometimes he has to blast his way through.  But this is the first time he hasn't been shot at in a Longbow base just for showing his face.
"Doubt it'll help any, but feel free to mention my nature affinity.  I know what they'll say.  'That's like saying he's an expert on Recluse just because he's a mastermind.'"
This message was last edited by the GM at 03:42, Mon 11 Mar 2013.

  Bamzor does not half to walk far to reach the biggest cluster of VIOLENCE.  Not only because he can fly, but because travel in combat is for losers when you can just appear in a flash of lightning and fists in faces.  The end result as means a lot of minions and lieutenants in for a bad day by the sheer Melee AoE spam electric punch and long poles tend to cause.

  "So, which protector would you say you like the least?"  The answer will have a built-up finisher with their name on it (so far as Crey Protectors have names).
 

---

  Batsmash is fine, really!  He's only dead.  Wait, no, he's back up again. "Mot hates me a little more every day." He mutters, as he jams his bat between the exposed lack of stomach in a Tank and twists...  That looks more like Mortal Kombat than usual, but the huge Cyborg is still alive if now missing their legs.
 

---

  "We've been over this.  You can't steal and put in a magical crystal jar what isn't there in the first place."  Alloy's legal team (Aside from Angel, she's busy enough as it is) still hasn't gotten back to him on the prospect if simply getting all of the Mu bloodline simply disowned to fulfill that whole 'So long as those of Mu blood live' issue with the CoT's demonic contract.

  Speaking of things like hellfire and brimstone, Earthquakes and Volcanic Gas because really, they don't have time for this.
 

---

  Gadget messages to Jake, "I'd avoid it for the more likely 'plants, must be evil' reaction.  Because that is more dumb therefore more likely."

Team Crey: Bamzor, Shelly, Maximus
Shelly smiles and says, "Thanks, Daddy!" when he commends her. To his request of letting Bamzor aggro the ranged ones, Shelly flings her arm to the side, sending a wave of force in the direction of a runner who falls to his butt. Then Bamzor demonstrates his electrifying personality.

To Bamzor's question, Shelly says, "The one who demanded us to surrender."

The Crey Protector yells, "Fools! You dare take on Crey?! You wage war with us, you wage war with the whole organiza-OOF!" staff to the sternum. Ouch.

---

Team Freakshow: Raymond, Raichel, Batsmash
Of course, while Batsmash's fatality is certainly uncomfortable looking, rag doll physics has had bad guys see worse days. "Thanks, Raymond. And don't worry, Batsmash, I think Mot hates our whole supergroup. So you're not alone! From our toughest members to our weakest, the members of Redemption tend to knock on death's door and then give him a raspberry." Or a wedgy in some cases. Or a punch in the face. You know what? One might almost feel sorry for death in a setting like CoX if not for many a jerkface thing that cost actual lives.

The freakshow pull out a large honking gun. And by large, we mean it has a 3-foot wide barrel. They fire it at Raichel and she screams before spiraling from the sky she was hovering in towards the ground.

---

Team Circle of Thorns: Emerald, Alloy, Mittens
The CoT seem to be throwing a bunch of "cannon fodder" at the team while a bunch of others continue with a ritual. Emerald frowns. "This is why I studied teleportation extensively." she mutters.

With that, Emerald vanishes and reappears right in the midst of the ritual and smashes several of the ritual practitioners back with her cone attack. WHAM! "Alloy! Mittens! I recognize this! It's an energy funneling ritual! They are GIVING magic and this ritual sends it somewhere else! If we can defeat them without destroying this ritual, we might not only be able to siphon the power back, but we could potentially teleport to Hammidon directly!"

The CoT appear to panic as they start pulling all the stops and summon a couple dozen demons!

---

Team Longbow: Liberty, Gadget Gun, Jake
The team arrives at a room where what appears to be the leader of this base is. Liberty approaches. "Commander Duncan; I'm Sergeant Striker, aka Liberty. I'm here to talk with you about what's going on at this base on the authority of Ms.Liberty herself." she offers papers to Duncan.

Duncan looks amused and looks at the papers. "Sergeant indeed... you realize that rank of yours is honorary only and holds no merit. Nobody would put a child in an officer position, much less any fighting rank."

Liberty says, "In the same respect, sir, your rank holds no bearing on me either. I am here as your equal. Those orders from Ms.Liberty, however, DO hold bearing on you. Sir."

Duncan looks rather annoyed. "I know where I stand in rank structure, girl!"

Liberty says, "And I know where I stand. That said, please don't be upset with me for being a messenger, sir. I hold you in high regard and it is with respect I come here, sir."

Duncan calms a little, but still looks annoyed. "What is going on here is none of your concern. I'll telegraph the information to Ms.Liberty directly."

Max has a fancy hard-hitting attack as well.  A trident uppercut that sends the protector sailing up into the air followed by a leaping overhead attack that slams the enemy prone on the ground!  Hopefully between that, Shelly's and Bamzor's attacks, the protector won't have a chance to activate its invincibility power before he's defeated.

---

One of the disadvantages of wielding a huge maul is building momentum with that first swing of a combo takes time.  So in spite of having super-fast afterburner powered flight, Raymond was unable to put himself in the way of the blast to protect Raichel, but with a gun that big, it's debatable if even a brute like him could have survived the blast.

"Raichel!"

His eyes go wild and he pulls out all the stops, hitting the trigger man with a Judgement Bolt, followed by summoning a huge thunderstorm and tornado, hasten, a flurry of sweeping attacks against everyone near the cannon, then finally a crushing blow against the weapon itself!

"I have a spare wakie," he informs his team between the shouts of rage.

---

Speaking of pulling out all the stops...

"Don't have to tell me twice!" Mittens answers.

Super speed to next to Emmy, hasten, Fulcrum Shift to bring her team to near the damage cap, then a cryo-bullet barrage so fast it would make Cloud's Omni-slash proud.

---

"You're probably right," Jake answered with a heavy sigh.

Later, at the boss, he listens to the conversation and figures it best to keep his thoughts on how well this is going because no one has shot at him yet to himself and decides to apply some "enemy of my enemy" psychology.  He puts on his best impersonation of Maverick's "I mean business" face.

"Ours is the supergroup that repelled the Rikti invasion of Portal Corp.  Our more ranking members are currently fighting off an alliance of Crey, Circle of Thorns, Freakshow, and others.  Liberty, Gadget Gun, and I were entrusted with the urgent task of delivering this message to you in person because you stand in a uniquely pivotal position that could turn the tide of this crisis.  Your help in this matter could make the decisive difference for the countless lives that hang in the balance."

Bamzor

  Step one, angry power up pose.  Step two, Thunder Strike.  Phase three is Profit.  "Well yeah, I do suppose Crey will just clone more protectors even if I do smash you down into the basement like a railroad spike"  Every time an Ipod is sold, a Paragon Protector gets it's helmet.

---

Bat

  Batsmash brushes bits of Freakshow out of his hair.  He never could quite get the hang of Brutalities, but it looks like Raymond had the trick down.

  "If she forgot to empty her pockets, I've got a resuscitator device anyways" it's even got a 'This End Up' label and everything!  Temporary tools are so convenient.

---

Alloy

  Let's see, Earhquake and volcanic gas were already in use so what was left for the stops pulling?  Oh, right Liquefy!  the best of both worlds (He already used his judgment on the last mob <.< ).  From there it's simply extra strength hold spamming the evil wizard with the most fancy outfit, and keeping his friends inside the bonus bubble.

  Melty saves time by hitting the portal with a demon.

---

Gadget

  Gadget always found it interesting that Ms. (as opposed to Miss, LEGACY CHARACTERS ARE CONFUSING) Liberty both ran the harsh militaristic Longbow, and the redemption style Vindicators made up of reformed villains and assorted nonstandards.

  "We're the Soldiers given a desk job while a war is going on, basically.  At your rank I'm sure you've had at least a few run ins with the frustration that can cause."

Team Crey: Bamzor, Shelly, Maximus
The room full of Crey is taken care of. As the trio fight their way through more rooms and prove time and again that Bamzor + 2 staff seabears = win, they bump into a room in the base that appears to be overgrown with ivy, moss, grasses, flowers, and various plants that look foreign. In the room is a single Crey Scorpinoid. But he looks overgrown with plantlife too.

He speaks and sounds like an infested terran. "The King of Urser. His offspring. A powerful robot. I urge you to abandon your mission and turn back. If you do not, you too will become... one with Hammidon."

(Infested Terran: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOBtzjS_mvk )

---

Team Freakshow: Raymond, Raichel, Batsmash
The fight with the Freakshow proves harder than anticipated, but once they are all KO, Batsmash and Raymond are able to revive/awaken Raichel. "...what HIT me...?"

Soon, the trio is able to question the freaks, most of whom still seem stubborn. But it doesn't take long to find a weak-willed freak who joined the Freakshow just to be part of something. He tells the trio where the secret Hammidon Freakshow base is and how to get there.

Once there, the trio finds a standard Freakshow hideout with all the metal planks seemingly randomly placed, as well as the techno beats... but the place is overgrown and the only sounds are the music. There don't seem to be any dancers or shouts of celebration.

---

Team Circle of Thorns: Emerald, Alloy, Mittens
Emerald yips as she finds herself suddenly on speed and able to punch as fast as Raichel! The extreme power of a team like these three proves more than even the ever-annoying CoT can handle. Their demons fall too fast to build up much of a defense or immunity. Then the mages fall alongside their ghosts.

Within less than a minute, the CoT in the room are all felled and the portal undamaged (despite Melty using it as the curb to stomp a demon or two). The fight proved challenging enough, though, to merit a short rest. Emerald says, "Alloy, help me figure out how to siphon the magic back from where it was sent. Mitts, keep an eye out. We skipped a lot of baddies to come here, so it's only a matter of time before they start swarming us again."

---

Team Longbow: Liberty, Gadget Gun, Jake
Duncan is getting this helpless smile on his face at the two children talking all serious. "How cute..." he says, patting both Liberty and Jake on their heads. He looks at Gadget. "Not just desk job, but babysitting in your case." He looks a little closer at the papers and frowns, getting angry again. "Ms.Liberty doesn't understand my situation. She'll just have to pull me from Longbow to keep me from doing what I'm doing! Because what I'm doing is saving lives!"

Liberty says, "Hammidon is not just a blob. He's smart and clever. If you think you are using Hammido-" SMACK! Duncan's hand sweeps across Liberty's face!

Duncan yells, "Don't pretend that hurt, Striker! Listen, you presumptuous brat! You don't know a thing about my plans or what they involve! Leave!"

Max:
Every time an Ipod is sold?  That's a lot.  But likely accurate.  When Max comes upon the strange garden scene he scans it for traps and ambushes.  He eyes the scorpinoid cautiously.  "Thank you for the warning.  Of course, if we abandon our mission entirely, everyone will wind up one with Hamidon, so that's not an option.  But that doesn't mean we won't take a moment to help you out.  What can be done for you?"

---

Raymond looks relieved.  "Good to see you survived."  He points at the smashed cannon.  "That's what hit you.  Makes me wonder where they got it.  Perhaps Hamidon."

At the overgrown base he searches for signs of a battle.  "Looks like a trap.  Let's be careful."

He describes it on the SG channel.  "Any suggestions?"

He then activates flight to keep from triggering any pressure plates.

---

"You sure make earth trolling look awesome, Alloy!" Mittens cheers between winded panting amid the carnage.  She uses the quick break to activate her self-heal gizmo then sits to rest.

"You got it, Emmy!" she answers with a smile and a salute.  She gets back up, activates sneaky super speed, then zooms off to keep an eye on the nearest enemy team down the tunnel, making faces at them behind their backs.

---

Jake activates his nature related buffs, filling the air with the fragrance of an open meadow.

"Don't you pretend that throwing a tantrum and assaulting a minor are the hallmarks of a hero," he retorts.  He begins opening a rift to the pocket dimension where he keeps his assault bots.

"I might even have believed your lies about saving lives if you hadn't acted like a big crybaby when you don't get your way.  But by your own words, you've already forsaken Longbow and prove yourself a villain in candy-cane clothing."

Red and white stripes.  Longbow taste like peppermint.
This message was last edited by the GM at 03:28, Tue 02 Apr 2013.

Bamzor

  "It's probably not a very smart infected.  If they were, they would have given Shelly more credit."  Besides which, as completely awesome as Bamzor was, if he went overridden and crazy as opposed to merely aiming at acceptable targets Redemption had enough heft to bring him down if required.

---

  Batsmash

  "Nothing new here, unless you count how close to home it is.  Off in the Rogue Isles there's already Freakshow going through Coralax infestations."  Batsmash would be more worried about ambushes if this were in Pretoria.

---

  Alloy

  "Trick is that I'm not the most effective at smashing things, despite all the rocks."  While he did prefer his end result, a large percentage of his time had been spent envious of Alexis who could take a mob in less than six minutes with HAMMERTIME.  But had he been a Dominator, he wouldn't be nigh immune to enemy controllers nor would Melty be able to tank various Titans.

  He gets to work examining the mystic crazy.  "If it ends up as simple as reversing the polarity, which is still a thing even for Magic, I will be quite relived."

---

  Gadget

  "I don't think it bodes well for Longbow that I am completely unsurprised someone in your position has zero regard for your orders or chain of command."   Hmm, not one of the more physical sorts of Wardens then if it didn't hurt Liberty. "Punching the messenger isn't any less respectable.  Since we're supposed to be reasonable about this, I'm asking you to stand down rather than reply with a beanbag round to your face 'which won't hurt'."

  The audio and imagery of the career suicide captured by Gadget's targeting drone was transmitting back to Redemption, hopefully Angel's political skill could do something with it before they had to take out half a longbow base, again.
This message was lightly edited by the player at 16:42, Tue 02 Apr 2013.

Team Crey: Bamzor, Shelly, Maximus
Shelly hears Raymond on the SG channel and immediately responds, "We're staring down a Crey who's been infested with plantlife. Looks like some cross-breed. The place looks like what Raymond's describing. I advise you storm through there and look for anyone who might have survived. So far, this guy seems reasonable. Like being turned into Devouring Earth finally convinces people that working for Hammidon is a BAD idea."

The infested Crey says, "...nothing can be done for me now besides a mercy killing."

Shelly says, "No! Bamzor, knock him OUT and let's find out what else needs to be done here!"

---

Team Freakshow: Raymond, Raichel, Batsmash
...and nothing says updates can't change Primal Earth to be more like Praetoria. But the characters don't know that. They only can know Murphy plots against all living beings. Still, it is SOME comfort that so far, ambushes on Primal Earth are not like Praetoria or anywhere near as numerous.

Raichel says, "You heard her... let's look for survivors and try to STOP this!"

---

Team Circle of Thorns: Emerald, Alloy, Mittens, Mocha
There are plenty of baddies for Mittens to fight off as it becomes an endurance mission to keep all the CoT at bay as they try to disrupt Emmy and Alloy. Mittens is having a bit of trouble in that regard as she can dish out damage like nobody's business, but is having trouble taking it. She then hears Mocha on the SG channel. "Invite me, Emmy!" and her name soon gets added to the team roster in everyone's heads-up display. Then immediately, she pops into the mission. "TP!"

Emerald was in the middle of a critical arcane gesture, but she pauses and uses her other hand to summon Mocha. Mocha immediately flies off to Mittens. "Chang job!" the li'l brown bat-bunny-cat-thing yells towards Mittens while she flies in her direction. A tank job would fit nicely about now. Just the kind to hold attention.

Meanwhile, Emmy gets back to the arcane realignment with Alloy and the two are able to set all the runes correctly. "...why isn't it working?" Emmy asks, fully expecting Alloy to say he doesn't know why. "Theories?" she asks even as she looks around at the bodies of the fallen.

One of the fallen CoT chuckles darkly. "To fully reverse it, you need a willing conduit.... and none of you can handle that much magic entering your feeble mortal forms."

Emerald looks at Alloy with a worried look, only to hear Raymond's description and Shelly's response. "What Shelly said sounds good to me. Everyone, Alloy and I are working on a portal that may have been feeding Hammidon more magic power. My main thought is that Hammidon is likely drawing energy from the different factions in different ways. See if you can find anything that's feeding him and reverse it if possible. Then we strike."

She then looks at Alloy and in Team Chat, asks, "Well... I'm willing to be the conduit. I don't know if I can share the blast of magic or not, but if I get knocked out of the fight because of this, make sure everything continues as planned."

---

Team Longbow: Liberty, Gadget Gun, Jake

Does this mean Liberty tastes like peppermint? Either way, she is pouting and looking ready to cry, a mix of hurt and angry ( http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_tZHh...D2y0I/s1600/pout.jpg ) "...I'm stopping this operation with or without your help." she says with a slight quiver in her voice.

Duncan frowns at the reactions around him. "You're all in way over your head!" He activates his jetpack and flies up and backward before pulling out his rifle and aiming it at GG.

It's not that the guy wasn't one of the more physical sorts. It's just that Liberty's so tough that sometimes, it's hard to tell if she's been hurt. By the time you glance at her HP bar, she's already fully healed. But yes... the guy made li'l miss practically immune to physical attacks cry.

Liberty hears the SG comm and says, "Duncan, even as we speak, reports are coming in of people being turned into Devouring Earth! We NEED to stop this!"

Duncan just continues his assault without a word.

Team Crey: Bamzor, Shelly, Maximus
Max skews his lips, wondering why Shelly didn't knock the guy out herself rather than delegate the responsibility, but keeps his thoughts to himself.  This is hardly the time to be asking such questions.  He nods to Shelly's suggestion then answers Emerald.  "On it.  I'm guessing that if the CoT siphon is arcane in nature, chances are the Crey siphon is bio-technical in nature."

He turns to his team.

"But I suppose if something arcane sticks out, it's worth looking into."

He waits for Bamzor to take point.

---

Team Freakshow: Raymond, Raichel, Batsmash
"I'd offer to sneak ahead to scout it out," Raymond says, "but I think it probably best we stick together at least until we spot opposition we would save time in bypassing."

He does take point, though.

---

Team Circle of Thorns: Emerald, Alloy, Mittens, Mocha
"Woohoo!" Mittens cheers, "Thanks, Mocha!"

As the dramatic transformation music plays, ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dknzPgMkgqk ) she changes to her buster sword lightning paladin power set then charges back into the fray with renewed vigor!

"Could be he's lying and it's as simple as finding a glowie or defeating all these enemies."

---

Team Longbow: Liberty, Gadget Gun, Jake
"Here's hoping he's simply been influenced by Hamidon's mind-altering spores," Jake says, sounding like he's not expecting the guy to not be a villain, "Well two can play at that game!"

He sicks his robots on the enemy then starts loading him up with all kinds of spores, fungi, and various nature thingies to lessen his combat effectiveness.
This message was last edited by the GM at 02:12, Tue 16 Apr 2013.

Bamzor

  "Fiiiiine.  I will punch and electrocute him into submission gently."  There is a logical flaw there, but probably not a fatal one.  Violence likely ensues.

---

Batsmash

  Batsmash follows along.  He may bounce back okay, but he's still nowhere near as tough or at his best as when somebody else has all the aggro leaving him free to soak up incidental area attacks and club ancient demons older than the stars above to half dead in one swing with a chunk of wood.

---

Alloy

  Alloy was about to suggest 'because you stopped in the middle of a delicate ritual for team managment'.  But then the jerk mage gave away valuable information.  "As much as I hate to say this Emerald, I am much more likely to recover from being blown apart by an overflow of arcane energy than you are.  That and my form is not Mortal"  We're still up in the air about that Feeble thing, even with more hitpoints and resistance than the average controller.

  "Of course if you think the end result may be your floating and favoring bright green over your usual colors, then the Plot would likely suggest you do it in that case."

---

Gadget

  Gadget adds to the general air pollution by chucking a Web grenade to try and bring them down to Libery's more convenient punching height.  Ow ow ow ow body armor only does so much.  Instinct says to shoot back HARD, but experience says to get his floating minigun turret between him and Duncan, and open up with a Beanbag Taser Combo.

  Unless it says "Elite Boss" or "Archvillain", then it's straight to Hastened A-TEAM FULL AUTO

Team Crey: Bamzor, Shelly, Maximus
It becomes clear to Max why Shelly didn't KO the guy herself as she begins flying around the place, as if searching for something. The infested Crey battles Bamzor and seems to be able to go toe-to-toe with him for a bit. But Bamzor wins at the game of "out endure your opponent".

---

Team Freakshow: Raymond, Raichel, Batsmash
The heroes come upon an Infested Super Stunner, who looks like his parts were melded with a Freak Tank. This one doesn't hesitate to attack the heroes.

Raichel takes joy in stunning the stunner, even if it is just for 2 seconds. That's 2 seconds Raymond and Batsmash can get in his face.

The infested guy is in the same room as one of those HUGE generators. Which seems to be shooting an energy beam through a portal in the wall.

---

Team Circle of Thorns: Emerald, Alloy, Mittens, Mocha
Emerald says, "I'm built to take in energy... it's my super power. I'm going to try it. After all... I *do* have a not-so-mortal form myself, where I just become pure energy. It will probably take everything I got, but I think I can do it without getting destroyed."

She looks at Alloy. "But at the same time, I can appreciate what you're saying. Eli could repair you if you get destroyed. But if your memory circuits get fried... do you have up-to-date backups of your memory core at our base?"

Meanwhile, Mittens is just kicking butt left and right, while watching her HP bar drop only to pop back to full again. Mocha cheers her on. "Go, Mittens!"

However, there starts to be even more than Mittens can hold the attention of and they are starting to swarm past her.

---

Team Longbow: Liberty, Gadget Gun, Jake
Let's see...
Liberty: Near unstoppable tank with super strength. Check.
Gadget Gun: Glass Cannon that can take out groups of leut/boss rikti in one blow. Check.
Jake: Frickin' robots MASTERMIND with bloomin' nature control? Check.

The team tears Duncan a new one before he so much as gets more than a smidgen of HP off of Liberty.

Liberty is still teary-eyed as she looks down at Duncan. "Why, Duncan..." she asks nobody in particular, since Duncan is KO.

Team Crey: Bamzor, Shelly, Maximus
Mas wasn't expecting someone asking for a mercy killing to put up much of a fight, so he didn't think to join Bamzor in the fight.  Instead he took off flying around searching as well.  When he finds out Bamzor finished off the enemy he says on team tell, "Thank you for dealing with that for us, Bamzor.  Had I known he had so much fight left in him I'd have offered to help out."

---

Team Freakshow: Raymond, Raichel, Batsmash
And that would be why we love Batsmash so much.  :)

One glance at the Boss Freak has Raymond convinced this is going to be a long fight.  Super Stunnders are tough enough on their own, but stacking a tank on top of that?  But he takes courage when Raichel manages to stun the stunner so he wastes no time charging in and opening up with a massive swing from his titan mace!

"Nice shot, Raichel!"

He then provokes the enemy.  "Hey Rosebush!  Time for some weeding!"

---

Team Circle of Thorns: Emerald, Alloy, Mittens, Mocha
"I'll bet the villain made the suggestion GET OVER HERE! only because he expected DURHURHUR STUPID DEMON! it to be lethal to anyone who tries!" Mittens comments between taunts, "I'VE SEEN STRONGER CANTRIPS!  But it could be he didn't know AWW BABY CASPER GET A BOOBOO?! Emmy can turn into energy so CUT IT OUT THAT TICKLES! worth a shot."

She grins and winks at Mocha then tosses a grenade at the enemies.  "I LOVE MY JOB!"

---

Team Longbow: Liberty, Gadget Gun, Jake
Jake keeps the robots available just in case and heals his team with flying leaves.  "Well done, everyone."

He reaches to put a comforting hand on Liberty's shoulder.  "I'm sure Duncan's reasons will come up during his trial, Liberty.  I have the entire exchange recorded for evidence.  That and to use his voice to call off his subordinates."

He taps away at his holographic laptop and brings up the voice modulator program and imports the voice sample file.

"All set.  Now any of us can sound like Duncan.  Would either of you like to make the base-wide announcement, or should I?"

He offers a his smart phone for use as a microphone.

Bamzor

  It is fortunate that despite their design style and infestation, toxic damage is not A Thing when it comes to Scorpinoids.  "I'm expecting a few Infested Warwalkers to come out of nowhere considering I didn't need to ask for help."  He looks over to Shelly, "Find what you're looking for yet?"

---

Batsmash

  "Sooo...  Is knocking them into the energy beam an option?  Or would that be too brutally efficient even for us?"  Batsmash can think outside of just his namesake.  He can think of hitting people INTO things with a Bat, as opposed to just hitting them WITH a bat.  VARIETY.

---

Alloy

  "No backups, for reasons I will not go into."  Of course he'd be a sad excuse for a robot if he couldn't take what C3PO could.  Either way, Emerald has ALL OF THE HULA HOOPS.  Being as durable as reality is willing to let Emerald be will have to do.

  Meanwhile, Melty tromps over to Mittens and Mocha to add to the 'Starting with M' carnage (If you count the sound, Emerald makes 4).  "..."  Melty says hi.  Melty also drives a succubus into the floor like a railroad spike.

---

Gadget

  Multiple sources and camera angles should hopefully help later regarding Dunca's crazy.  "Considering she's far more familiar with the organization-" Not to mention actually dressed for it, "Liberty should probably handle that."   Gadget borrows from the Generic527823 (dem copyright namechanges) playbook and uses his web grenades to further restrain the downed Duncan.

  "I wonder if he got his job because of his name?"  considering Ms. Liberty's last name and all that.

Team Crey: Bamzor, Shelly, Maximus
Shelly's head peaks into the room. "Found it! This way, guys!"

Shelly shows the other two a spot where there is a HUGE vat of biological goo and it's all running through glass tubes FROM the vat and into a portal in the wall.

---

Team Freakshow: Raymond, Raichel, Batsmash
Raichel says, "Even if killing was in our repertoire, _{which it isn't}, there's no telling what effect that would have. It might turn the freak into a big baddy we couldn't handle."

She looks around. "Help Raymond smash the badguy and I'll look for the controls." she flies off. Great, Raichel, she thinks to herself, How will you even RECOGNIZE the controls, much less know how to use them?

---

Team Circle of Thorns: Emerald, Alloy, Mittens, Mocha
"No time for detailed conversation on the morality of backed up personalities, but I do have time to thank you for giving me the hoops, and for sending Melty to help Mittens. Thanks, Melty!" Emerald has hoola-hoops. That would have been awesome on its own. But then she goes all electric form and becomes a burning effigy of pure energy. Her voice, now distorted by the burning air around her, speaks out, "GIVE ME ALLLL YOUR POWERRRR...."

She activates the runes with Alloy and the portal's "send" mode turns into "receive" mode. Emerald gets blasted with energy from the portal and seems to redirect some of it by shooting lightning and energy waves at the CoT invading the room.

"No! You fool! You can't do this!" is the only retort the CoT have.

Emerald explodes with enough force to knock over everyone in the room and in the caves connected to the room. The energy beam has stopped coming through, and Emerald is changed back to normal before collapsing on the ground.

---

Team Longbow: Liberty, Gadget Gun, Jake
Liberty looks at Jake. "G's right. I'll do it." and she goes to use the modulator to send out a command to evacuate the base, while asking the techies to come to the command room. "Liberty Striker will be waiting there for you. Do as she instructs when you get there." she then turns off the com. "Let's go meet the techs. Far as they know, we are allies."

Team Crey: Bamzor, Shelly, Maximus

Max nods to Bamzor, figuring on much the same expectations.  He then follows Shelly to the goo room and does a quick scan for traps or villains.  He then flies in and begins searching for an off-switch or power plug.

"Stay alert.  Could still be danger around any corner."

---

Team Freakshow: Raymond, Raichel, Batsmash

"She has a point," Raymond agrees, taking another swing at the freak of a freak.

Seeing as Batsmash's stick of wood does more single target damage than the brute's titan mace, Raymond focuses mostly on trips and like maneuvers while taunting to keep the enemy's attacks focused on him.

---

Team Circle of Thorns: Emerald, Alloy, Mittens, Mocha

Mits is of course impressed.

"Nice one, Melty!" she laughs when the demon gets hammered.

Of course, she's impressed with Emmy too when knocked off her feet by the kersplosion in spite of her electric armor's anti-knockback power.

"Whee!"

She hops back to her feet and surveys the fallen.  If there are any baddies still conscious, she'll work aggressively to change that.  Either way, she plans to check on her allies.

"You conscious, Emmy?  Mocha?  Alloy?"

---

Team Longbow: Liberty, Gadget Gun, Jake

"Good point," Jake agrees, handing the phone over to Lib.

To GG's question he head-shakes.

"I doubt it.  Considering Longbow is already criticized enough as it is to invite nepotism allegations."

He nods to Lib and has the defeated Duncan Medivaced to jail before heading for the meeting place.  "We should get our story streight for the techs.  Does, 'Duncan left in a hurry after reading a message from Ms. Liberty' sound good?"

Bamzor

  "It would likely be highly irresponsible to simply break the tubes.  But I suspect before long that may be the required option if we want to put a stop to this in time."

---

Batsmash  Raymond's blender of doom did tend to outpace Batsmash on the DPS end of things.  Unless Batsmash got lucky and say, got a critical on his Clobber...  I said got lucky and... darn it.  "Thif guy if tuf."

  Batsmash, demonstrating eating whole fighting being awkward. Chew your Reds with your mouth closed.

---

Alloy

  Emerald was clearly at a disadvantage from dramatically floating off the ground, or something (Plus Bamzor is embarrassed to admit getting knocked on his robotic behind from some of the more extreme attacks anyways).  Dramatic scenery explosions tend to be Repulse instead of Knockback anyway.

 

  Alloy picks himself up, and decides it's best to Try Resuscitate First and ask questions later regarding Emerald.  "Hitpoint Cap Buffs, worth the effort."  The maddening, maddening effort.

---

Gadget Gun  "That depends, how much of his declerations of mutiny do we want to share just now while we're busy?"
This message was lightly edited by the player at 05:22, Tue 23 Apr 2013.

Team Crey: Bamzor, Shelly, Maximus
Shelly looks around for a control panel. "Why are these things always so complicated? Why can't people make the controls *simple* like with a car? You know... a nob that controls forward or reverse rather than a dozen nobs that each control nothing?"

Max and Bamzor are having the same luck as Shelly. What control panels they do find don't make much sense. "Let's call base and ask Eli's help."

On the bright side, EVERYONE in the SG has been to so many freakin' missions, that they know for a fact which are actual controls and which are not.

---

Team Freakshow: Raymond, Raichel, Batsmash
The freak is proving a difficult fight (he's an arch villain). He occasionally stuns Raymond or Batsmash. Thankfully, they have gotten him to hate them enough that even when both of them are stunned, he ignores Raichel.

Raichel finds the controls. She stares and blinks. Then pulls the single lever down. The beam stops shooting and the entire machine shuts down. "There's only ONE control! On or off!" she reports to her fighting friends. "Oh well..."

She takes to the air and starts joining in the fight, shooting lightning at the freak.

---

Team Circle of Thorns: Emerald, Alloy, Mittens, Mocha
Emerald and Mocha do not respond. Alloy's resuscitation causes Emerald to start breathing again, though it bears mentioning that getting close to Emerald causes hairs to stand on end, and touching her will give a nasty jolt. A sheen of crystalline emerald-green seems to pulse over Emerald every 2 seconds.

Between Alloy and Mittens, there are only 2 wakies left. One used on Mocha brings the little chocolate-coffee fluffball back to consciousness. "...what hit me?"

---

Team Longbow: Liberty, Gadget Gun, Jake
Liberty says, "Allies don't speak ill of allies. So if they ask, yeah... Jake's idea works. Duncan had an urgent case to attend."

When the group has a story worked out, they meet up with the techies. Who seem to work with the group without issue and don't seem to doubt that Duncan would ask for a sudden reverse of the power surge. Soon, Longbow is sucking power back from Hammidon.
This message was last edited by the GM at 21:10, Tue 30 Apr 2013.

Team Crey: Bamzor, Shelly, Maximus

Maximus turns on his headband mounted web cam and Skypes Eli.  Oh the marvels of super high-tech hero gear.

"We need your help figuring out these controls, Eli."

---

Team Freakshow: Raymond, Raichel, Batsmash

"Well we'll just have to be tougher!" Raymond grunts as he starts up a new combo, "Though I'm running out of inspirations.  Hopefully Raichel will be able to turn the tide."

---

Team Circle of Thorns: Emerald, Alloy, Mittens, Mocha

Mittens claps and hops up and down before answering Mocha in a Marvin-the-Martian voice, "It was a big kaboom!  The earth-shattering kaboom I've longed for!"

She rushes over to Emmy then grins when her hair starts to fwoof.

"Kitty fur is famous for static, but i think our favorite epic fox is more supercharged at the moment than any kitty ever was.  I wonder if this means she can buff allies and/or vaporize the Hamidon with a huge energy beam!"

---

Team Longbow: Liberty, Gadget Gun, Jake

"Thanks, everyone," Jake says, letting out a sigh of relief, "Here's hoping we were in time.  Well if the world doesn't come to an end, I'll be sure that Miss Liberty hears of your contribution to mission success."

He gets on the SG channel.  "Longbow team successful.  Power flow reversed!  Anyone need any backup?"

"Fighting an arch villain!" Raymond answers, "We'll take any backup we can get!"

"Be right there!"

Bamzor

  "I have prepared for such an occasion."<goldenrod>  Bamzor pulls out three square objects and three rod shaped objects.  <goldenrod>"I brought Technobabble Bingo;trade& cards and Bingo markers."

Batsmash

  Batsmash is particularly impressed by the Tank, considering he can normally get right back up from a viscous curb stomping without the usual wobbles most suffer through.  Of course, it just means high grade climax boss effects merely inconvenience him.  Poor Raymond is probably having to turn his lightning field back on over and over.

  "Grenades aimed at us can't hit her up in the air, She should turn out okay unless she falls back into the habit of shooting people close enough to tickckle the-" ELECTRIC HAMMER HANDS "...That was my favorite clavicle..."

Alloy

  Alloy picked up proper medical side training for a reason, but even that only helps so much with the rate people faceplant some days.  "Touching me may or may not be worse than a doorknob at this juncture then.  Emerald, speak in an voice echoing with the infinite cosmos if you can hear me.  Or the closest approximation."

Gadget

  "The end of the world is no excuse to stop shooting evil in the face.  Though it not ending is of course, always preferable."  Gadget follows Jake's example and starts on his way to Shoot More Evil, though he's saving that Mission teleport for the inevitable time sensitive World Is Doomed In Ten Minutes situation.
This message was lightly edited by the player at 01:56, Fri 14 June 2013.

Team Crey: Bamzor, Shelly, Maximus
Shelly looks at Bamzor blankly for a moment. Then giggles and says, "Leave it to you to be prepared with games. I'm SO having you do your thing for my birthday."

Meanwhile, Eli directs Max. Thankfully, it's not one of those "gee, in retrospect, that should have been obvious" moments. The device gets shut down. Eli says, "I can tell you how to reverse it, but... that would get messy and there's a chance you all would get coated in that mutagen slime. However, if you put it on a timer and then teleport to base, or simply run out of there like there's no tomorrow, we could try that..?"

---

Team Freakshow: Raymond, Raichel, Batsmash
As usual, it's gratifying for Raichel to occasionally stun the boss, even if briefly. However, the boss seems to finally get annoyed enough at Raichel to start zapping her right back instead of focusing on Raymond or Batsmash.

As usual, while Raichel may seem like an unstoppable tank when compared to a normal civilian, she is made of paper compared to her allies and falls from the air. She peeks and eye as electricity courses over her and aims her hand at the boss, zapping it with her final power, draining all her energy before collapsing unconscious.

That didn't down the boss, but it helped a lot. Batsmash and Raymond pull one of these "smash him back, uppercut into the air, then jump and slam him into the ground" combos that lands the enemy unconscious. However, two seconds later, the guy starts resurrecting. Geeeeeeeeeeeeeeeez!

---

Team Circle of Thorns: Emerald, Alloy, Mittens, Mocha
Emerald slowly peeks her eyes open, revealing bright green light in place of eyes. Her voice sounds echoed and coated in a kind of fiery sound as she speaks, "...don't be rediculous... this is still.... only a fraction.... of what Hammidon was absorbing..."

She grits her teeth. "It HURTS! If I don't discharge soon, I... will die... is the portal ready?" she looks over at the portal.

---

Team Longbow Freakshow: Liberty, Gadget Gun, Jake
Liberty says, "On it." and joins Jake and Gadget in mission teleporting. "please get there in time..." Liberty mutters to herself.

The trio arrive at the mission which, thankfully, is easily navigated since no freakshow are blocking their trail. Which was admittedly easy enough to predict since a team has already mowed through this place. Within seconds, Liberty, Gadget and Jake come across the scene where Raichel is down, Batsmash is near dead, and Raymond is about half dead.

Liberty wastes no time and charges in, "Help is here, guys!" the little girl yells, catching the boss's attention. And the attention of Raymond, who already mentioned back at the meeting about how dangerous this is for children. Now what he was afraid of was preparing to happen.

Team Crey: Bamzor, Shelly, Maximus

Max tries to calm his nerves while following Eli's instructions, worried that one false move will spell disaster.  The sound of Shelly's laughter goes a long way toward lightening his mood.

"We should throw a victory party when this is all over," he suggests.

To Eli's question he answers, "Good idea.  We want to weaken Hamidon as much as possible.  Just tell us what to do."

---

Team Freakshow: Raymond, Raichel, Batsmash

One of the problems with trying to titan weapon brute tank an arch villain without a healer is trying to maintain rage, attack chain, self heals, inspirations, hasten ans it's endurance crash let alone taking arch villain level endurance draining attacks to the face leaves little room for hogging aggro by spamming taunt.  It's a dirty little secret of those who aren't invincible to try and allow allies to share some of the punishment lest they fall in the first few minutes of the fight.

But doing his job well doesn't stop Raymond from feeling rotten when Raichel falls.  Or when a bunch of kids show up to pull his fat out of the fire.

Robots!  Lasers!  Missiles!  Super fast invisible kid genius!  Resurrected Raichel!  Leaf heals, temp HP, and regen!  Grassy endurance buff!  Mushroom debuff!  For those not used to him, the arrival of Jake could be considered rather... weird.

"I have inspirations of all sorts if anybody wants them."

---

Team Circle of Thorns: Emerald, Alloy, Mittens, Mocha

Score one for Alloy for predicting the sound of Emmy's voice.

"EPIC!" Mittens exclaims, snapping a picture of Super Emerald.  "Sorry about the ouchie, Emmie, but I doubt we'll be able to complete the portal before you kersplode.  And I'm guessing using the KO CoTs as targets is out of the question.  BUT!  With Mocha here I can switch over to demon summoner and open you a portal to Hades.  You're welcome to unleash your devastation there."
This message was last edited by the player at 02:24, Thu 20 June 2013.

Bamzor

  "I promise I won't even charge you, unless you really liked static cling."   He pays more attention to the just as important topic of world saving.  "Even if those Warwalkers have a bad habit of getting infested, I'm still much less likely to be adversely effected by a genetic mutagen for obvious reasons."

Batsmash

  Just shy of death, the team blaster faceplanted, angry enemies trying to smash everything.  Dejavu for the millionth time for Batsmash.  And now he's healthy!... And now he's near death... And now he's healthy!  You get the idea.

Gadget

  There were days where you waited to make sure someone else had all the Aggro, and then there were days where you just pulled the trigger on everything and worried about the personal risks later.  It was a mixed blessing that while unloading bullets, fire, and explosives, his Gun Drone was what got electrocuted so hard it exploded instead of himself.

  At least he still had the Laser Drones (despite using Plasma attacks) harassing the boss.

Alloy

  "She could always shoot it up into space, nevermind that we are deep in an underground cityscape, she's still probably reach it from here...  Granted that would only work out if we were under an empty chunk of the surface and not populated city.  Would you consider it safe to travel through a time portal in this state?  Considering there's a whole lot of nothing beyond the Ouroborus platform there."

OOC: Kombat Klown was one of Mako's champions characters.  I don't know for a fact the machinegun wielding clown did birthdays, but it would just figure.

Team Crey: Bamzor, Shelly, Maximus
Shelly giggles some more and goes to give Bamzor's leg a hug. "I cling to you even without a charge, Bamzor."

Eli gives directions on creating a timer that connects to the "reverse" circuit, using the computer console that's in front of Max. Within a minute, Eli says, "Perfect, that's all you need to do. Now push the button and get back to base."

Shelly waits for Max to push the button before she begins using Base Teleport. The countdown cuts it a little close, but the trio is able to teleport to base just as they saw the portal begin spewing mutagen back! Eli seems to be waiting at the base entrance with his fists to his chest and shoulders shrugged as if he was holding his breath. When he sees the trio, he immediately presses a button and a quarantine plastic tube comes slamming down around them, scans them, then lifts up.

"Sorry for the startle... I had to make sure you weren't radioactive or anything..."

---

Team Freakshow: Raymond/Jake, Raichel/Liberty, Batsmash/Gadget
Liberty frowns and activates Unstoppable. This power does NOT screw around. Liberty is up in the freak's face alongside Raymond and seems to not take any damage. She activates taunt and then leans back, planting a foot on the ground to have a surface so hovering won't soften the blow, twirls her fist around, and WHAM! Knockout Blow! The freak boss goes flying 5 feet into the air! Only for Raymond's titan weapon to play Freak Baseball!

Let's not forget Gadget's caltrops. When the freak falls, he falls hard and on a bunch of caltrops! It's like a power that inserts keys into your opponent's pants for them to land on! Oh sure his pants are made of metal, but DETAILS! That never stopped caltrops from hurting and slowing enemies down!

The boss actually goes down for good this time, his parts frizzing and sparking once in a while.

Raichel slowly gets up. "...is he DONE now?"

---

Team Circle of Thorns: Emerald, Alloy, Mittens, Mocha
Emerald winces, tears falling down her cheeks and hands balled into fists. "Make that portal work NOW! Darn it! One fourth of the power he was GOING to have is now mine..." one of her fists un-balls like the power shooting through it was too much to keep balled into a fist anymore and a wave of force throws that half of the room up against the walls. If those CoT weren't unconscious before, they would be now.

Emerald looks at the portal, her eyes shooting eyebeams at the portal. The runes start to correct themselves. "Get everyone to meet here fast! This is our entry to Hammidon! This is the way we can get to him and stop him!"

Her teeth are clenched as her earlier helpless looking tears are starting to look more like tears of pure rage. Her voice starts to sound like someone turned up the effects dial on whatever effects were already being used on her voice. "HAMMIDON! I'M GOING TO RIP YOU APART! YOU WILL KNOW PAIN!"

She's clearly beginning to lose it.

Team Crey: Bamzor, Shelly, Maximus

Max smiled at Shelly's continued adorableness and it helped take the pressure off the task of following Eli's instructions.  Back at base he blink-blinks at the decon tube but hardly has time to feel unhappy about it before it's done scanning him.  He shrugs at Eli.

"Thank you for taking precautions.  I wouldn't want to get anyone sick.  And thanks for the help with the timer."

---

Team Freakshow: Raymond/Jake, Raichel/Liberty, Batsmash/Gadget

Jake look over at Gadget Gun and says, "Let's get started."

He heads to the control panel and immediately gets to work setting...
(More to come later)

...the controls to reverse, drawing upon recent experience doing so at the Longbow base.

Raymond offers a hand-up to Rai.  "Yeah I think so."

He surveys the team and exhales sharply.  Partly in relief, partly in exasperation that a couple of kids risked their necks to help pull his bacon out of the fire.  But the fact remains that he and the others are better off for it.

"Good job, everyone," he commends, "And thanks for helping out."

---

Team Circle of Thorns: Emerald, Alloy, Mittens, Mocha

"Time portal!"  Mits exclaims, "Alloy you're a genius!"

Beep beep beep fwoosh!  She summons an Oboros portal and vanishes.  Through the miracle of non-linear wibbley-wobbley, timey-wimey technology, Mits informs the SG that they should assemble at Emerald's location (Mocha will be providing recall) to ready the attack on Hamidon, travels back in time to gather up a bunch of magical foci and books, brushes up on her studies on how to quickly patch up a magical portal, then returns to the very moment she left prepared to finish up the portal in short order.

Bamzor

  Bamzor doesn't bring up the various sorts who either use or are Radioactive.  "Tracking Hammidon goo on the carpet is probably frowned upon, even if tossing it into a storage bin next to the luck charms is acceptable."

Batsmash and Gadget

  Batsmash shrugs, "I could just start hitting them to see if they twitch more than usual."  Gadget has a very scientific way to determine if the Shocker Tank is down for the count, he attempts to set a Timebomb.

  He can never put those down successfully unless it's entirely pointless, so if it works then he's down for the count!... And next to a bomb.  Whatever.

Alloy

  Alloy looks to Mittens's departure and more educated return "The Wyld Stallynz maneuver also works, I'm sure the Menders will appreciate us not suddenly obliterating the landing platform with my first plan."  As Alloy gets to work helping the Mittens with the portal,  Melty walks over to offer Emerald a Hug, and words of encouragement. "..."  Well, a Hug and awkward silence of encouragement.

Team Crey: Bamzor, Shelly, Maximus
Shelly says, "Nevermind that, Eli... where are the others so we can go help them?"

Eli quickly guides the trio to the teleporter so they can get to Emmy swiftly.

Assuming Bamzor and Max agree to it, teleportation is GO!

---

Team Freakshow: Raymond/Jake, Raichel/Liberty, Batsmash/Gadget
Jake discovers what Raichel did; there is no reverse. The controls are merely set to "activate" the discharge. The only way they could hope for a reverse would be the same as turning a taser into a battery. Sure it could be done, but it would take parts and more importantly, time.

Liberty looks up at Raymond. "Always, Raymond." she says with a cute smile, reaching to punch his fist. She hears the signal from Mittens and says, "You heard Mittens; Let's get going!"

Raichel joins and ports.

---

Team Circle of Thorns: Emerald, Alloy, Mittens, Mocha
Mocha is calling all heroes in the SG, basically reiterating what Mittens said just in case anyone missed it. "This is Mocha, calling all members of Redemption! Join alliance so you can all Mission Teleport. Those without Mission Teleport are to join anyway, report to base immediately and use the base portal Eli configured to teleport to the area where I can then teleport us! Emerald's life depends on your swift answer!"

Emerald, her voice still burning, yet now sounding almost serene, says, "...so this is what Hammidon sees..."

To Melty's hug, Emerald seems to gently hug back out of reflex. Emerald's normal voice is heard quietly, if still kind of echoey, "....thank you, Melty..."

Mocha, standing outside the mission, pulls a complete assemble team for all those who showed up in the zone, but not at mission. Soon, Emerald is surrounded in members of the SG. "You're... all alive..." Emerald comments just as Mittens and Alloy succeed in completing the teleportation circle.

Maximus:

Luck charms and Plutonium.  Hazmat safety is kinda glossed over unless all dangerous salvage is completely self-contained.  Probably best not to think too hard on it.  Max of course joins the others in getting to the mission one way or another.

---

Raymond:

Raymond returns Liberty's fist bump, but not the smile.  He's already trying to figure out what he's going to say at her funeral should he live through this.  Nevermind that there has never been a case in history where it was acceptable  to allow a little girl to rush to her certain death...  there's always a first, right?

He nods and mission ports.

---

Jake:

Jake is torn about helping with the main assault or staying behind to try and finish rigging the controls.  While he's certain that the alliance will need every little bit of help it can get in the final fight with Hamidon, he's also certain that if he can reverse this control it will make a much bigger difference.

"I'm pretty sure I can reverse this in just a few more minutes.  I'll catch up once I'm done."

He then begins to cannibalize one of his robots for the parts he'll need.  Good thing he doesn't get emotionally attached to his combat robots.

---

Mittens:

Hovering magic books, sparkly magic runes, and a laptop with a database full of various Arcane formula: it's all very impressive looking.  Mits works furiously to finish up the ritual with Alloy ASAP, employing any newcomers as they arrive.

"Hold this for me pleasethankyou, Maximus.  I need these candles placed on their corresponding runes, hereyago, Raymond.  Good.  Now I need them lit in the proper order.  Here, take my laptop and follow the order displayed on the screen.  Be sure to say, 'Zumzum zabizabi' as you light 'em.  Anyone here good at dancing?  I've got some incense for you."

Bamzor

  Head for what may be a huge fight after a string of lesser fights?  Sure!  To just leave would be silly.

Batsmash and Gadget

  Batsmash obviously heads for the goal of further smashing.  Gadget meanwhile nods to Jake,  "Good luck, I'm going with the rest in case they need something similar on the other side between the shooting."  Besides, he's always been more hands on... Well, compared to a Mastermind, even if the first word in his name was Gadget.

Alloy

  "I'd say go through the portal in an orderly manner, but that never happens.  Just be ready to come out swinging without hitting a friend upside the head."

As the group gets on the other side of the portal, there is, in fact, Hammidon. Hammidon attacks Emerald like she's some kind of beacon and she laughs maniacally looking only slightly harmed as she then unleashes everything she's got into one nasty blast. It looks to make a visible difference. In video game terms, Hammi just lost half his HP and a decent chunk of his defenses.

But that just means he's fightable rather than garunteed that many would die with no chance for medivac.

Emerald looks dizzy and her color goes back to normal. She wastes no time getting her defenses up, though. "That felt soooo good..." she says with a sigh of relief.

Shelly and Raichel begin blasting Hammi, Shelly with debuffs as quick as possible while the tanks begin to do their thing. "Bathtime, Hammidon!" Within a second or two, Emerald joins back into the fight and goes into the fray!

Of course, the many members of the SG start showing up! The fight seems to be looking up! And just as Hammidon blasts everyone with an AoE (And nearly killing all but those with decent HP/defenses), Angel shows up with a decent number of other superheroes, as if this is what she was busy with. Meanwhile, Jake soon finishes the reverse process for the Freakshow portal...

ZAAAAAAAAP!!!! Hammidon gets even weaker as a beam of electricity gets yoinked from him! This could be a first in history, but Hammidon looks to be taking a pretty nasty beating!

Timothius shows up, having waited in the wings and casts a massive AoE cure, followed by a regeneration buff. Only for Alexis to assist with the healing buffs and such.

The teamwork of the Redemption Supergroup is showing.
This message was last edited by the GM at 17:45, Wed 17 July 2013.

Jake nodded to GG.  "Good point.  Contact me if you find something.  Thanks."

When he finally succeeded in reversing the flow, he can't hep but whoop and cheer in celebration.

Meanwhile Max and Raymond take advantage of their fast flight to attack the higher areas of the monster.  Mits figures there's plenty of tanky types so she opts for buffs and damage!  Kinetics!  Fire!  Yay!  When Emmy fires her uber hadouken, Mits cheers her on!

"Wooo!  Awesome!  Nicely done, Emmy!  _{Glad you're still alive.}"

Various other Redemption members show up like Lucky and Kitau and they each contribute what they can.

  Bamzor is using Melty as a club, a club that is punching things.

  Batsmash has put a big nail in his bat for the occasion.

  Gadget Gun... Shoots things, and has floating things that also shoot things.  He's not crazy enough to attempt landmine antics for this.

  Alloy archmage meanwhile, is sticking with Emerald to make sure she's allright between handing out as many pretty sonic hoops as possible.

  OOC: Incidentally, we talking Yo Olde giant Cell Hammidon, or something closer to the Avatar Of Hammidon humanoid monstrosity?

Mittens' comment reminds Emerald of the time she watched herself die. Her other self from another dimension, but still. Not a pleasant memory. She gives a sad smile to Mittens, weakly raising her arm to give a thumb up.

Emerald dizzily looks over to Alloy. "...my friends..." She looks down at her hands and begins twirling them around, creating kinetic energy. "We can DO this!" she yells with determination as her hands slam against Hamidon with a loud crash!

Hamidon proves to be putting up one heck of a fight despite his own buffs being turned against him. This is the hardest thing to beat in all of Paragon and possibly the world.

Back at base, Eli monitors the fight and begins diagnosing Hamidon, looking for further weaknesses and such. Whenever he finds something, he is sure to report it.

Shelly is one of the first of the tough ones to drop. Having been flying with Max, Shelly falls to Hamidon and begins sinking into him unconsciously!

OOC: Tis yon scallywag, ye olde giant amoeba.

"Shelly!" Maximus gasps when he sees his daughter fall.  He kicks in the afterburner and flies over to her to try and pull her free!  "Shelly's down!  Need a revive!"

"I believe Mocha is on recall and revive duty," Mittens answers, "But if needed I brought plenty of bounce backs and various other types of revive."

Raymond continues his smashy-zappy assault, moving away from Shelly, hoping to draw enemy fire away from her as well.  Jake uses base portal, starts raiding the salvage racks, and messages Eli.

"I have a hunch that Hamidon was trying to cover it's bases by building up an immunity to various power origins and developed a way to absorb them.  Chances are the mechanism consists of several specialized organelles each attuned to one of the origins.  If we introduce large-scale nanites into Hamidon, it could deliver an antibiotic tailored to shut down each of those organelles!  If this works, we could shut down it's regeneration!"

  Claims of difficulty hold true thanks to the wonders of disclaimers.  Considering anything else in the running keeps cropping up in alternate dimensions, time periods, or cracks in reality.  Of course even then, none of those had quite this many people involved.

  Bamzor fortunately has a handle on catching Shelly for the usual crazy reasons.  He was already inside Hammidon, because punching his smaller cells to death like the worlds most angry cold medicine commercial... No Bamzor, hurling Shelly like a Javelin out of the gooey innards is not the most gentle rescue method.  Melty makes the catch so hopefully Maximums won't hurl Bamzor all the way to cleveland later.

  Gadget says to Jake,  "Will we need to get in there and ram it into his major cell structures, or will it be small enough to just shoot into them from here?"  You know Jake was onto something good though, because -Regen was all kinds of great in these huge boss fights.

  Batsmash is bashing stray roaming mitochondria the size of cars, while Alloy asks "Will we have to stand back in order to not get our asses completely kicked by the science splashback?"  Bad thoughts about specialty acids against portal generators in Praetoria.

Shelly is caught, tossed, caught again, and given a revive. She opens her eyes to smile at Max and Melty. "Did I miss anything?" she asks before turning her debuffing blasts on Hamidon again.

Meanwhile, Eli considers the message. "You HAVE that many nanites handy for that?" Eli asks, "Of course.. if Emerald's ritual works, we may not need that many anyways. Wasn't Hamidon supposed to get weaker and devolve back to normal?"

Emerald, alongside another powerful punch, says, "Yes!" Now that Eli mentions it, Hamidon has gotten a little smaller. Instead of being the length of 2 football fields, he's only the length of 1.5 football fields. "But he should have been shrinking faster! Jake's idea might be all we need to finish this! Now get it going!"

Mocha, meanwhile, says over chat, "Terribly sorry, Shelly! I was busy reviving Timothius!" No sooner does she say that than the entire alliance feels their health jump up a bit.

Max usually punishes excessive force with a stern talking to, but if a hero hurt his baby girl while trying to rescue her he might just break down in tears.  He tries not to dote over her once she's revived and resumes the assault himself.

"Thanks for the help, everyone."

Raymond is working or smashing stuff with Batsmash.

"I do not have enough person-scale nanites, no," Jake answers, "But the 6' robots I take with me into combat can easily be considered nanites compared to Hamidon, and I have plenty of them.  They only need to be re-purposed.  With a large enough cannon they could be fired into Hamidon, but I don't have something like that handy, so they'll have to be introduced direcly.  As for how explosive Hamidon will be, that depends on the process the specialized organelles use to metabolize the disparate energies it takes in."

"Thanks for reviving Timothius, Mocha!" Mittens cheers, "Thanks for the heals, bro!  Keep up the good work, everyone!  200k inf says Hami totally explodes!"

  Metal Mettle Resolute Metal, totally not the same robotic Villain as Metal Mettle makes a cameo "Did someone say large scale nanite robots?  Also, the common robotic minion designs have ROCKET FEET, duh."  Jake gets a +10 Cameo bonus to nanotechnology.

  The rest continue to do their thing.  Humorous image of the moment is Gadget Gun reenacting a particular scene from Hotshots part Duex with the amount of bullets fired in one spot.  http://youtu.be/qQxvSsVQkoU?t=5m10s

The once uphill fight suddenly becomes noticeably easier when the nanites "infect" Hamidon. Other villains seem to join the fray as well, fighting right alongside the heroes! Hamidon starts devolving as per Emmy's ritual from before and the smaller he gets, the quicker he shrinks! Finally, Hamidon is nothing more than a scare, naked man curled up on the ground. But at least he's fully human now.

Emerald seems to be flashing occasionally with the energy from earlier and has her hands ready to slam him again with still more kinetic attacks.

The villains who joined the fight are all looking ready to kill Hamidon. Shelly rushes over to stand in front of him and squeaks out, "Wait! He's done! He's defeated! Do we really need to kill him now?!"

Raichel says, "If he really *is* subdued..."

Angel says, "Are you nuts?! After all the people he's killed and how hard it was just to bring him down?! He gets the death sentence thousands of times over!"

Burning Animus says, "Kill him!"

Very quickly, the voices who want Hamidon dead are outweighing the voices who want to spare him. For even among the heroes are mostly those who want him to just die. Alexis seems torn.

Max stands proudly beside his daughter.  Jake's just glad his robots were able to escape before their presence inside Hamidon would have caused an explosive fatality.  Because then he'd be put under a legal microscope.

"I'll be working on directing a boosted suspect medicac signal to your area," he offers, getting to work.

Mits and Kitau are in the "Not this again, can't we just put him out of our misery?" camp, but because of their love for Shelly and Timothius they stand defensively in front of Shelly.

"Mittens would like to thank everyone who helped with the defeat of this notorious nimrod.  On a more practical note, authorities are likely on the way.  Hint HINT.  Wink WINK.  Cough, Rogue Isles types might want to make themselves scarce, cough."

Wild-eyed Raymond looked ready to bash Hamidon's now human body into a bloody paste but seeing Shelly stand in the way he turns to leave.

"Tsh.  It's not worth it to go to jail for finishing off a condemned freak."

  Gadget Gun comments "It comes down to less of a question of right and wrong, and more of a question of if we want longbow shooting at you once they show up."  And as it is, the heroes seem to fight longbow more than the villains these days already.

  "I want to do the obvious, but someone would just leap in the way.  Then we'd all start hitting eachother over the matter while Hammidon sneaks off during the moralistic violence."  Bamzor may be direct and violent, but even he has pattern recognition.  Villains have escaped in flimsier circumstances.

  Alloy Archmage meanwhile is paying more attention to Emerald.  "Are you going to be allright?  I've seen what happens to you when a power surge wears off."

  Batsmash died again... Wait, no, he's back up.

Emerald answers Alloy, "I'm... not... fine..." she pukes up some blood and shivers before collapsing.

Timothius immediately gets to healing Emerald, but it looks like she may need more than his healing. PLOT SICKNESS!

Eli works furiously with Jake to get a makeshift medivac for Hamidon.

The villains seem hesitant to leave, but several among them make the point that there are enough heroes here to hold off the villains until longbow arrives. Others who make the point that the heroes have certainly earned everyone's respect today by helping beat Hamidon. Even a few of them admit it was the heroes' plan and that the villains were only help. Either way, all the villains get convinced to flee the scene before longbow arrives. Which they do.

Shelly hugs her dad once things start settling down, looking relieved.

Hami is eventually teleported and "secured". After a few arguments between Shelly, Angel, and Longbow about jurisdiction and law, an agreement is eventually settled.

It soon becomes known that Emerald is not well at all and Alexis is missing.
This message was last edited by the GM at 17:12, Tue 03 Sept 2013.

Jake sighs in relief now that the craziness is over.  "Thanks for the help, Eli."

"I'm proud of you, Shelly," Max says softly when he returns her hug.

Raymond is relieved the standoff simmered down and flies off.  As soon as he hears Alexis is missing he begins searching for her, frustrated there's little he can do to help Emmy.

Mits adds a little tech healing with her handheld first aid gizmo.  "Normal mortals aren't meant to channel that much arcane energy all at once.  It's impressive she wasn't erased from existence in the process.  keep up the heals, bro.  Me and Alloy can look into possible magical treatments that'll hopefully be more permanent."

  Alloy may be concerned about Alexis's sudden disappearance so close to dealing with a self proclaimed guardian of nature, but Emerald's health passing into projectile bleeding territory is the more clearly pressing concern until such a time it becomes clear he can do nothing to help.

  "I would go into the cans and can nots of such energy channeling in mortals, but that's academic nitpicking compared to facing reality.  So Mittens may have the right idea unless this is a problem solved either with sonic energies or a variety of crystals and lava."

  Melty is sad, you can tell because Sad Hulk Piano plays while he looks at Emerald.

  Gadget Gun goes to check in with Angel on the whole Hammidon legal snarl situation, as well as check up on the girl herself.

  Bamzor heads for the Rogue Isles to check up on the less antagonistic sorts in the aftermath of Hammidon's partial smashing.

  Batsmash FOUND FIVE DOLLARS!  Then follows after Raymond to give what little help he can finding his favorite elf.

Shelly, of course, hugged her dad and smiled.
Eli was sure to thank Jake back and immediately go for a nap.

---

Emerald is laying in a bed and looks over to see Mittens and Alloy. Her eyes are constantly changing color, occasionally flash (complete with sound effects that sound like sparks flying), and seem to go from glowy to normal to looking like some kind of high-tech cyber eyes. Her fur occasionally pulses with a variant color like a really slow heartbeat. She speaks in a weak tone, "Magic... not just magic like we normally know it... pure magic. The kind that made our world. The kind everything comes from. We're some of the few in our supergroup who have touched it via the Well of Furies. It may also be why I was able to handle the power that flowed through me. But I am sick and I can feel the Well is trying to take advantage of my current weakness to sway me towards being under its control. Go to Ouroboros. Maybe someone there knows of a way to cure me."

---

Meanwhile, GG finds Angel and Shelly at a meeting with the politicians of Paragon City. There are some famous supers there as well, such as the Freedom Phalanx. Shelly seems to be kind of stressing, trying to keep it together while the politicians argue over whether to kill the Ex-Hami or not. Shelly's argument is that the guy is not directly guilty of the atrocities his other form committed, so he should get something equivalent to involuntary manslaughter.

Angel has been quiet for the most part, only interjecting her thoughts once in a while. Her stance seems to be that guilty or not, the people of Paragon City need to find a way to make sure Hami, or something LIKE Hami, is prevented from ever happening again. So she is slightly siding with the ones present who are in favor of dissection.

When she sees GG, she waves. GG is being held off by guards who explain this meeting is by appointment only and such, but Angel comes to him. Angel asks, "What's up, Gadget Gun?"

---

Raymond and Edward's search isn't fruitless. He is actually able to find Alexis relatively quick. She is at the top of the hill in Eden, sitting lazily and gazing at Eden with tear-stained eyes.

Max is present to support Shelly and comforts her when she looks like she needs it, but he keeps his opinions to himself unless asked directly in the meeting.

Jake figures he'll leave all that other stuff in the capable hands of the older members of the supergroup and relegates himself to guard duty to make sure Hami doesn't get away.  He coms Lib and asks for her to accompany him.

Raymond's approach isn't very stealthy so Alexis had plenty of time to react.  He walks up to her and offers a comforting arm-around.

"Found her," he coms the supergroup, "She's unharmed."

Mits nods.  "Will do.  Hang in there!"

She takes some video of Emerald's Technicolor self to help with describing her symptoms later.

"Take care of her please, Mocha."

She heads for Oboros.

Gadget Gun

  GG is against dissection, if admittedly for practical reasons of it being likely pointless when the magical bacteria had already been removed by (mostly) magical means.  Look, just because he is a firm believer, and successful practitioner of 'even the most ancient of magics can't handle being shot too much', he can still accept some things just fall under 'Magic, whatever' categories.

  "Checking up on you, and the whole political tangle involved here.  Though it looks like I'll just have to find out after the fact."  He may be able to get in on his own merits later, but he has always preferred using what influence (of the non funny money variety) he has to stay out of the political spotlight, not step into it.

---

  Batsmash

  The joke character comes to a quiet stop beside Alexis and Raymond, and sits down beside them.  "Anything you'd want to talk about?  Or would you prefer more quiet time while we keep the psychic monkeys from interrupting you?"

---

  Alloy Archmage

  Alloy hopes the 'cure' from Oro isn't a more fatal than average stabbing with a fancy Rularu dagger.  But then Emerald isn't an insane Incarnate ghost worshipping Mot (Yet?).  "Take it easy Emerald, you'll be fine once this is over with.  Though if the Well was smart, it would leave you be for better results."  If The Well was fed by how badass something was, and favored the badass (and plot demanded arbitrary power ups), then Emerald all on her own would be better than Emerald given a metaphysical leash.

  The robot janitor turned wizard follows after Mittens.

Alexis glances in Raymond and Batsmash's direction, but not directly at them. She gazes at the waterfall in the distance. "It's so beautiful..." she manages to say in a cracked voice, eyes squinting slightly as if about to cry again.

---

The usual crowd is in Ouroboros. From the denizens to the miscellaneous heroes and villains who come here. Prometheus is looking directly at Mittens and Alloy when they arrive next to the portal. He doesn't move from his spot, though, and lets them approach him if they want.

---

Angel nods to GG. "Thanks for checking, Gadget. The talks are actually getting somewhere. Despite this, it does sound like they're going to retire soon and say something like 'we need to think on this' and then have another debate tomorrow. I'd say give the meeting another 10 minutes. Either the meeting will be done, or I will be."

---

Liberty shows up in her red, white and blue, wearing a cape and all. She lands about 10 feet from Jake before taking a few steps over to him. "You called?"

Seeing Alexis about to cry again, Raymond offers an arm-around.

"Yeah..."

He gives a glance to the waterfall, trying hard to think positive thoughts then looks back to Alexis.  Hard to think of anything nice to say that wouldn't sound awkward or trite.

"It's good to pause and admire beauty."

---

Jake nods.

"I'm expecting an escape attempt.  Not so much from Hami ragaining consciousness, though that is not outside the realm of possibility, but rather from one of the many factions who believe they can 'use its power' to their own ends."

He looks up from his digital device.

---

Mits doesn't really expect Prometheus to know how to cure Emmy, but he looked in her direction!  That's plenty to draw Mittens aggro!

"Take a look at this, Prometheus."

She shows him the video of glowie Emmie.

"Know what's wrong with her or how to fix it?"
This message was last edited by the player at 07:19, Sat 16 Nov 2013.

  Batsmash

  Smash has some philosophical thoughts about the sight, but they are probably not the sort that would help matters.  Considering the sight of a waterfall forced upon the landscape about as natural as the hoover dam.  "There's more like it well beyond the city, everyone needs a break from all this at times, even you Alexis."

---

  Gadget Gun

  GG nods, and says "Still faster progress than most anyone would have expected.  Still, even with all that has gone on it's good to see you doing a bit better."  The jump from 24/7 base living to self made monster combat and political drama is quite the distance, it's not like this Angel is a bunny.

---

  Alloy Archmage

  Alloy goes along with Mittens, hoping that the vague and nebulous man who lists mission objectives that get chat spammed away swiftly has something more noteworthy to say when it comes to keeping Emerald in one piece.

Alexis says, "I'm just... sad about this place. Sad that so much life was lost in the making of a beautiful scene. Sad that because of that, people are going to look at beauty like this with disgust for a long time. Sad that this place in particular is going to have most if not all of it removed and remolded because of the heavy memories that go with it all."

---

Prometheus says, "Yes." in answer to Mittens. "She needs the Evertime Stone. It is currently being sought after by Arachnos, so you will likely run into some resistance. Hopefully, knowing the location will get you there sooner than they."

He gives a location under the water between Grandville and Saint Martial.

---

Angel smiles at GG. "...thanks." and goes back to the meeting. About 10 minutes later, she exits. If GG was still there waiting, Angel says, "Wanna grab a bite to eat?" nobody else seems to be exiting the meeting yet.

---

Liberty asks, "Why call me specifically?"

Raymond nods, trying hard to think of something profound and comforting to say.

"They say time heals all wounds.  The habitat that was here originally had to be cleared out to make way for the city.  Which then had a beauty of its own.  Then that was replaced with this beauty.  In time this beauty will be replaced with another and then that too will change.

"It's like the changing of the seasons.  The breathtaking snow-covered winter wonderland must melt away for spring flowers to grow and bloom.  Then a beaver dam floods the flowers with a silver pond teeming with fish and ducks.  In time a wolf eats the beaver, the dam fails, the pond drains, and the flowers return.  Then in time a new beaver moves in.  You could say there is a beauty in the healing transformation that will happen here."

---

"Handy you know the cure!  Thanks!"

Mits of course shares the location with Alloy.

"Good news!" she coms the SG as she hurries to the mission, "Got a location for a cure for Emmy!  Likely dangerous.  All backup appreciated!"

She transmits the location.

---

Jake blushes a little, unprepared for Liberty's question.

"Uh...  Lots of reasons.  You're reliable, respectful, available, tough...  Why not?"
This message was last edited by the player at 15:55, Wed 04 Dec 2013.

  Batsmash
  Ed is less nature documentary about things, though Raymond's attempt was still nice.  "Even if Eden is never the same again, the people that remain will help eachother.  It happened here, it happened at Faultline..."  Galaxy.  "Its why so many remain in paragon even after so much.  You can always come to any of us when you need something Alexis, even if it's to let us know you need some time alone to think things over."

---

  Alloy Archmage
"Thank you, Prometheus."  He wonders if they will have to deal with the Coralax or Mako considering the location.

---

  Gadget Gun
  GG indeed is still around, and nods to his favorite person to ever punch him in the face (so far as helmet visors go).  "That sounds lovely, I'm sure we are both overdue for something approaching normal these days.  Name a place and I'll treat you if you'd like."

  OOC: Mailed the Gadget Gun costume files.  I still like the overall look of the "90% Imperial Guard" parts more, though included a 'From Beta' version where the chest and legs are "Armored Bodysuit" style for comparison.  Along with the Cyberpunk Detective look.

Alexis says, "Thanks guys... I guess I could ask one of the techies to scan this place and digitize it for posterity. I guess my main remorse is the fact people have to look on such beauty with hatred. I admit that at its core, this place will be more beautiful with people in it. But I just wish things didn't have to happen this way. And... Hammidon touched my heart before our mission happened. I will forever be connected with this place like one would be attached to a place they grew up."

---

<Mission: Retrieve the Evertime Stone from Arachnos>
Various members hop on SG channel to discuss who would be best to go with. Soon, Mittens and Alloy have a full team and get to enter the mission (in game, it would be entering a submarine that leads to the mission). It is an underground ruin of Oranbega.

---

Angel sees the SG request and says, "....Looks like we have a chance to help Emerald, GG. Lunch will have to wait."

---

Liberty checks the SG channel. "Aw man! Not a single tank on the team yet!" she looks at Jake. Then replies on the SG channel, "Jake's got me guarding Hami. Any other tanks available?"

Raymond nods his agreement with Batsmash's offer to Alexis.

"It is beautiful, isn't it?  Know then that you're not alone in thinking so.  And I expect in time hearts will heal and appreciation for this beauty will grow.  How 'bout we take some video of our own once we help with the mission for Emerald's cure."

He offers Alexis and Batsmash team invites and answers on SG channel, "I'm on my way.  I can tank."

---

"Mittens begins scouting the place out using her trusty stealth enhanced super speed, careful to watch for things that can see through her invis."

She of course updates the coalition with what she finds.

---

Must be nice to be something everyone needs on their team, Jake thinks to himself.

"I'll tank," Kitau says in SG channel.

  Batsmash

  "I don't hate the hole in the ground where Galaxy used to be, Alexis.  I hate the gooey skeleton jello monsters from space who made it that way.  Most people will only resent the trees trying to tear their faces off."  Then mission shenanigans turn up, he nods, looking back to Alexis.  He'll understand if she's not in the mood to crush things with large rocks, just as much as he would understand if she was.

---

  Gadget

  Gadget Gun nods to Angel, "Seems that way.  Looks like we will be shooting ghosts in the face once more."

---

  Alloy Archmage

  Alloy doesn't eyeroll at Mitten's antics because he is used this and accepts her personality quirks, not because he can't eyeroll.  "These places can be pretty big Mittens, don't run by any of those red crystals."

Alexis gets up. "We're on our way." she says on SG channel. She looks at the other two. "A chance to help Emerald sounds like just what the doctor ordered. Let's get this cure."

---

Liberty seems a little relieved. "Thanks, Kitau and Raymond." she flops against a wall. She's about to mention Jake helping, but Alexis speaks up on SG. So any plant control will be handled. Liberty says, "I really hope everyone will be OK..."

---

<Mission: Retrieve the Evertime Stone from Arachnos>
Pretty soon, the huge bunch of volunteers all arrive in the zone, ready to be mass teleported. Or just recalled one at a time.

Meanwhile, Mittens finds a single, robed CoT sitting on some steps with his elbows rested on his knees. The steps lead up to an altar with some levitating stone.

"You're welcome," Raymond answers Liberty.

He's relieved to see Alexis volunteered to help, figuring that'll be the best medicine for her.  He nods to her and Batsmash then uses his mission port power.

Mittens likes it when robots accept her personality quirks, especially epic awesome robot mages she respects.

"Thanks for the reminder, Alloy.  Will do!"

When she finds the lone CoT, she quietly informs the rest of the alliance complete with location and detaild description, then helps with the teleports as they arrive.

"Unless there's any objection as soon as everyone's gathered I'm gunna step forward and introduce myself."

"There is an objection," Raymond answers, "It should be either Kitau or myself who approaches him first.  No telling what sorts of ghost or demon hoards will suddenly appear once he realizes he's not alone, and we can't have our troller dropping from an alpha."

"You make too much sense."

Kitau lets Raymond confront the baddie, ready to step in and taunt should negotiations fail.

Meanwhile Jake nods to Liberty.  "Me too.  But should something bad happen, it'll be a good thing we'll be available to extract them."

  "I am inclined to agree.  Just because some controllers can take a punch from Marauder and stay standing-" in a lower double digit HP sense, after Max HP buffs "does not mean it is an incredibly bad idea."

  Meanwhile, Gadget arrives with Angel as Batsmash arrives with Alexis.  They keep their distance from eachother and Alloy lest the universe explode before they can help emerald.

<Mission: Retrieve the Evertime Stone from Arachnos>
The robed figure stays seated where he is and doesn't seem to react to the group or their conversation. Once addressed, however, the robed figure tilts its faceless hood upward to "look" at Raymond.

He speaks, his voice sounding baritone and echoing off the walls. "I am the keeper of the Evertime Stone. Why are you here?"

"Alright already, jeez," Mittens relented.

Raymond is taken aback by the so far rational interaction with the apparent guardian.

"My name is Raymond.  I'm here because I was told the Evertime Stone can help a friend recover from a serious condition."

To the alliance he comms, "This is unexpected.  He didn't attack.  You think he's stalling for time?"

"Keep him busy," Mits answers, "I'll sneak past to take the stone when he inevitably refuses to let us have it."

  Melty has a good reason for why.  "..."  Thanks, Melty.

  "If it helps the decision, Arachnos is already apparently on it's way and they don't ask as nicely as us."  While not here, Bladed Butler takes pride in the fact Arbiter Sands considers his coffee 'acceptable'.

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

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

Timothius readies himself for some mass healing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mocha responds with "Will do, Mittens!"

Another wave of healing from Timothius.

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

Raymond nods and charges to the front.

"Good point, Alexis!"

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

"Thanks, Mocha!" Mits says.

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

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

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

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

  Batsmash hits things with a bat.

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

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

Angel says, "More traps..."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Angel and Alexis go down.

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

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

Only to turn and see her allies getting slaughtered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

She braces herself and powers up!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Love that music!"

Mittens is waving her handheld revive device at Timothius.

"Wakie, wakie, fluffy kitty cat!"

She nods at Emmy.

"Ditto to what the fluffy fox said."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Raymond of course thanks Timothius for the heals.

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

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

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

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

"I will," Kitau answers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Glad to see you well, Emerald."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter Closed