***RESTRICTED JOURNAL REPORT***
Ethan, Ehlana, Naomi, and Aiden:
This is Ehlana; and I’ll take care of
writing this update for all of us.
We have just finished dealing with an
attack from Gwyneth Hathorne and her goons – an attack that began at around
twelve-thirty local time. Everyone in
the house was still awake when the Magi Masters in the group got the advance
danger warning, so that didn’t come as a wake-up call, but we still rushed out
of our rooms and gathered together even as we were still trying to assess the
danger. No details came to us at first,
and we didn’t have any foresight help either; so Cassie nominated herself and
Michael to go outside and try to figure out what was happening while Mom and
Dad stayed with us – the kids. Dad didn’t
like that, but preferred Cassie’s plan over Ethan’s offer to go out with Aiden
instead.
Once Cassie and Michael were ready to go
out; we shielded the house in various ways; Cassie and Michael did the same
once out there; and then we linked so that we could keep in contact
telepathically. Let’s take a moment here
to mention that at least a few of us might be crazy – or at least we’re
adrenaline junkies; since we were more-excited than scared; and it’s weird that
we were offering up jokes while trying to deal with a Dark Magi Master and
small gang of highly-trained mercenaries with deadly weapons about to be aimed
at us. My personal favorite for that
little round of banter was the suggestion that if a tree falls in the forest;
make sure it lands on a bad guy! ;^)
Cassie and Michael decided to head down the
path to the lake first, but didn’t find anything despite the ongoing sense of
nearby danger. Aiden was first to locate
something – a ‘void’ that he noticed when a bird that Cassie had been listening
to suddenly went silent mid-chirp. He
and I both knew then that Gwyneth was using her talents to hide the mercenaries
as she’d done with the snipers that attacked Cassie and Michael’s plane. We also knew that the rest of us needed to
get outdoors and ready to deal with our attackers while we also all started ‘listening’
for those voids of sound and sight; though we couldn’t see much of anything in
the dark. Cassie and Michael took the
lake-side search while the rest of us mentally searched from the chalet up to
the road. We started marking the
location of other voids; and Cassie and Michael used time-phasing too while
trying to make their way to one of the voids they’d found. That was tricky to do in dense woodlands, but
they did it; and then Cassie took care of another time-phase while Michael used
a phase-shift so that they could pop into the middle of that ‘void’ and find
out what Gwyneth was trying to hide from them.
They were able to pass through Gwyneth’s shields that way; found two
mercenaries there; and then popped back out again. We hadn’t know whether they could do that
without alerting Gwyneth, but since all remained quiet; we knew that it had
worked; so we put a plan together to deal with all of the mercenaries.
By then, we had marked all of the voids
around us; so the next step was to find out whether we could take down each of
those groups without setting off any alarms.
Cassie and Michael were given that job too; actually taking those two
mercenaries down proved unfairly-easy; since Cassie and Michael hit them while
still in a time-phase. It was also a bit
funny; since the two men were still standing after getting knocked out; so
Cassie and Michael had to wait a few seconds; pop back into the void and
confirm that they’d actually been neutraliz3ed and were down and out for the
count. Our impromptu plan continued to
develop; Cassie and Michael took out the second group on that side of the path
to the lake; and the rest of us got ready to co-ordinate our attacks on six of
the seven remaining voids. For some
reason, Ethan decided that he wanted to be on a team with the Mom that trained
our resident Ninja girl and Naomi; so Aiden and I were with Dad when we split
up and the parents took care of shielding our smaller groups.
Cutter and Trey – two of the bad guys that
Cassie and Michael had dealt with in the past, were the mercenaries that they
took out in that second group; and they confiscated one of their communicators;
so Cassie was able to listen in on the mercenaries. She passed on that news to us as we got ready
for our first set of attacks; so we knew that we were running out of time as
Gwyneth finally noticed that one of the groups had stopped moving and then
Devon – the mercenaries’ leader – couldn’t get a response from that team. While the bad guys figured out that not just
one but two of their teams had stopped moving; we jumped into action –
literally – with the same combination of time phases and phase-shifting; taking
down three more groups almost simultaneously.
Ethan and Naomi got to have Mom with them,
but in a way; I got to have more fun as the only Magi Master in my group. I got to do the heavy Magi powered lifting
with some power transfer help; and Aiden and I made a great team taking down
our bad guy while Dad dealt with the other mercenary in our first group. It really was funny to see them still
standing when we popped back out of the void, but I can assure you that we had
no doubt that the men were going to fall down in ‘real’ time while we moved on
to hit the next three groups.
I mentioned that our attacks were too-easy,
but keep in mind that we did use extreme Magi power, and since those bad guys
didn’t have our best interest at heart tonight; we don’t really feel bad for
knocking them out first. Thanks to
Cassie’s ability to listen in on the mercenaries – and Gwyneth; we knew that
they were still trying to figure out what was going on as we moved on and took
down three more groups of mercenaries and then met up in front of the chalet
again. Cassie and Michael got there
first; Dad, Aiden, and I were next; and Mom, Ethan, and Naomi were last. It’s totally wrong to find this funny, but
they were delayed because Naomi took an extra moment or three to move a skunk
next to the feet of the last two mercenaries they knocked out; expecting that
to end fragrantly for the bad guys when they fell down and scared the skunk.
One group of bad guys remained – along with
our favorite Dark Magi Master; and we soon learned from Devon and his remaining
mercenaries that only six of them remained in that last group near the road and
coming down the driveway. Instead of
keeping them wondering; Cassie decided to advise Devon – and Gwyneth – that the
rest of their mercenaries were now having naps; and that started another round
of banter with the bad guys while they futilely tried to adapt their attack and
continue the mission. When the last
group split up to either side of the driveway; Cassie had us take down two of
the three mercenaries on one side – the two that had been with Riley – Devon’s
right hand mercenary and partner in crime.
Cassie invited the remaining four mercenaries to disarm and come to us
for a face-to-face chat so that she could keep a promise and explain to Devon
why he should leave us alone. They didn’t
do that; we took out the two mercenaries with Devon; and then Devon and Riley
did disarm – supposedly – and walked the rest of the way down the driveway to
us.
Gwyneth wasn’t with the mercenaries, and
didn’t say anything while Cassie was talking with Devon, but while we didn’t
know where she was; we did sense the ongoing danger from her. When Devon and Riley came around to the front
of the chalet, Cassie stepped ahead of the rest of us to have that chat with
Devon. While Cassie really had wanted to
talk with him, Devon decided to try to kill her first and ask questions later –
somehow still sure that he was good-enough to achieve that goal.
He found out that he was wrong.
This is a good time to mention that we
haven’t actually gotten to watch Cassie in a real fight. She is amazing; and the jokes about being a
Ninja girl are funnier to us for actually being so close to truth. Devon might truly be an expert in
hand-to-hand combat, but he was no match for Cassie. He didn’t lay a hand on her; and got knocked
back or down several times while trying to kill her. Riley jumped in on the attack – or would
have; except that she got knocked out by a rock that Naomi hit her in the head
with after seeing her draw knives on her future sister-in-law. Sure, that rock had a Magi-powered boost, but
it was still a really good throw, and by the time that Riley was aware of the
danger to herself; it was too-late.
Seeing his favorite mercenary and partner
on the ground and unconscious infuriated Devon.
He grabbed a pair of knives and would have thrown them at Naomi, but
Cassie stepped in; broke his wrists while disarming him and keeping him from
the attempted underhand throws; defending Naomi in return for her help with
Riley. Despite his injuries, Devon
wouldn’t give up; chose to try and complete the mission; and attacked Cassie
again – this time with another pair of knives.
She stopped him; turned one broken wrist into a more-serious compound
fracture that will likely require surgery to fix; and then Naomi had another
telekinetically-aided rock with Devon’s name on it that put his lights out and
ended the fight.
Naomi rocks! ;^)
While the mercenaries were all down, we
still had Gwyneth to deal with, and while she’d sat back and watched the fight
with Devon and Riley; she’d also let down her shields so we were able to locate
her in a boat out on the lake. Cassie
started to talk to her through the earbud communicator; Gwyneth had some
insults for us; and then she attacked.
That was reasonably-impressive as she picked us up – along with about
four feet of the ground beneath us; and lifted us about two-hundred feet into
the air. Impressive didn’t mean scary –
unless that was in a thrill-ride sort of way.
There was more banter, but Cassie’s counter – with our help – was to
push down against her telekinesis. We
weren’t surprised when she tried to stop us from pushing back to the ground,
but when she couldn’t; she ‘set us free’ so that we’d fall the rest of the way
to the ground. We allowed that to happen
– until the last minute; while also defending ourselves against the laser-like
Dark Magi energy attacks she fired at us.
It’s time for another side-note. Gwyneth does not seem to understand Magi
powers very well; since she seems to think that concentrated energy can blast
through a shield where a massive blast would not. That really doesn’t matter against a
properly-made shield; so defeating a defense can only happen if the attacking
Magi is much, much stronger than the defender.
She ought to have known that she isn’t stronger than the four of us that
she knows about – and we had an eight-to-one advantage tonight!
Gwyneth’s target practice didn’t work; we
used a time-phase at the last moment to slow our descent; and then we returned
the ground we were standing on to exactly where she’d torn it away from the
rest of the front yard. That was very
disappointing for Gwyneth; and her night went downhill from there. Sure, our jokes about enjoying the drop-zone worthy
ride didn’t help her mood, but she really lost it when Naomi hugged and kissed
Ethan. She attacked with another blast
of dark energy directed at Naomi and Ethan; we defended; grabbed onto that
power flow; pulled hard; and then countered her attack with another power
shield that imprisoned her. That shield
was the strongest we’d used against her so far; and got stronger when she
forgot the first lessons we’d tried to teach her and attempted to attack us
again – or break free of it. We don’t
know how much time that added to her imprisonment, but it might have been by a
day or more – though I doubt we’ll ever know the answer.
We – the kids – were then put in charge of
sending her back across the lake and round up the bad guys’ boats while the adults
in the group took care of rounding up the mercenaries. Our chat with Gwyneth was fun for some of us;
not a happy time for her; and then we used a blast of telekinesis to send her
across the lake. Naomi took the blame
for it when we didn’t stop that boat from hitting a rock near the shoreline and
knocking Gwyneth into the water instead of getting her safely onto the shore,
but Ethan and I didn’t try to stop the boat either; and could have done that if
we weren’t being just a little bit bad too.
It didn’t take Mom, Dad, Cassie, and Michael to get the mercenaries to
the boats; and we found out that Naomi’s skunking had been just a bit
too-successful.
Hindsight and all that! ;^)
Once the mercenaries were safely delivered
to another part of the lake where Gwyneth couldn’t get at them without her
power to help her; we headed back to the chalet; got drinks; and sat down to
talk about the fight – and more; since Mom and Dad wanted to talk about the
future and Ascension of the Light. We
collectively semi-agreed that we’re a bit crazy for how we’ve been feeling and
acting tonight while fighting twenty-two mercenaries and a Dark Magi Master,
but we do seem to be well-chosen for the tasks ahead of us. We talked about Gwyneth a fair bit too, but
can only guess at why she reacted the way she has tonight – especially losing
her temper and control of her power.
We still have our gold mining adventures
ahead of us, and the fight and clean-up did take quite a while; so I guess that’s
enough for this special journal report.
Cassie and Michael have already taken care of the drinks clean-up and
have gone to bed; so Naomi is going to get away with going with Ethan to his
room for the rest of the night; and Aiden will cuddle with me while we have our
little nap.
It’s a good thing that Gwyneth doesn’t know
about that – or at least that she can’t do anything about it if she did know
while stuck in her temporary, Magi-power-blocking prison!
We really do need to get some sleep, so I’ll
wrap this up; and maybe we can write about other side-effects of our fight
another time – like the added links that have been created tonight because of
the shared defenses that now have Naomi and Aiden linked to Cassie and Michael
as well as with Mom, Dad, Ethan, and me.
This really is enough for tonight, though;
so that’s all for now.
***END OF RESTRICTED REPORT***
