Tina Macintyre was having a rough week. Yet another boyfriend dumped her because she was never spending any time with him. She puts in these eighty hour work weeks, spends all weekend on call for portal disruptions, and she's still surprised when things don't work out. So its another Saturday night out for me with Tina crying on my shoulder at Spice Bar. Tina's a good friend and all, but this was NOT what I was looking forward to after a rough week of fighting crime.
This time, however, Tina dropped a bomb on me. I think she was partuculary distraught. Not only did she really like Darius, but he works at Portal Corp, making her humilation a bit more public. So, anyway, in between sobs and crying, she manages to squeak out about all the increased activity in Praetorian Earth and how she thinks its getting more dangerous for them to keep sending Bunny and I, but we're perfect for the job because WE CAME FROM PRAETORIAN EARTH.
I sat there in stunned silence for a few minutes before throwing my martini in her face to get her to stop talking and back up. Then she realized what she had said and started crying all over again. It took me all night, but I finally dragged the story out of her.
The very first time Bunny and I ran a mission for Portal, they were able to review their records of our portal trip and determine we weren't from this dimension. Apparently there's some sort of resonant wave pattern that shows up in the monitors when people jump to their own dimension and it wasn't showing up when Bunny and i came back.
Tina was tasked with sending us on a series of missions to try to determine where we came from. The whole series of Anti-Matter missions was actually a lucky coincidence. When they sent us to drop off sensors and we encountered Shadowhunter on Praetorian Earth, the resonant wave pattern showed up and they knew we were from that dimension.
After that, it was a simple matter to convince us to drag our other sisters, Connie and Muffy, along on a few missions so they could verify all of us came from Praetorian Earth.
Needless to say, after this confession, I was a bit pissed off at Tina. I nearly torched my couch. But, after I calmed down, I went back to talk to Tina about the recent increase in activity.
Bunny and I have been searching for our real parents for months now with no leads, and i wasn't about to throw this one away. Yeah, its going to be tougher tracking down clues ... Praetorian Earth isn't exactly easy to get to, and its filled with bad guys. All the more reason to volunteer to help Portal Corp with the recent spate of Praetorian activity.
Tina sent us to Maria Jenkins and Maria immediately sent us to Infernal.
Battling Infernal's minions
Infernal was trying to open a massive portal to unleash a horde of demons. Bunny and i weren't able to tackle him on our own and had to recruit some help. Thankfully, an old friend of ours, M Stewart had popped back up in Paragon City. She and Muffy came along with us and we managed to foil Infernal's plans.
Infernal
Immediately after we got back, Maria paged Bunny and sent us off to battle Siege and Nigthstar. M and Muffy couldn't stick around, but another friend of ours, Venn Detta was available, so we recruited her to help. Venn has a cute new costume ... i think i may have to copy parts of it next time i make a trip to Icon!
Venn's new costume
With Venn's help, it was pretty easy to put Siege away.
Siege
Which we quickly followed up by taking out Nightstar.
Nightstar
Venn had an appointment she had to keep, so she couldn't stick around, but Maria still wasn't done with Bunny and I. All these Praetorian Earth crisis had been backing up while Tina recovered from getting dumped, and couldn't wait. So, Bunny and I were shuffled off to the Shadow Dimension to fight Black Swan.
Black Swan
Black Swan was pretty easy to tackle compared to the others. Really, Infernal had been the most challenging so far. So we figured one more wouldn't hurt and Maria sent us off to fight Dominatrix.
Dominatrix's pretty boys
Domintrix was holed up in a warehouse filled with her "pretty boy" servants - guys dressed head-to-toe in leather with some nasty energy whips. We took out he minions without difficulty, but Dominatrix was another story.
Round One with Dominatrix
It was spooky battling Dominatrix ... not only were her powers similar to Bunny's, but she looked an awful lot like us. In fact, when we first showed up, there was a strange surprised look of recognition in her eyes.
Unfortunately, Dominatrix was too tough for us and we had to retreat. While we were recruiting help for another go at her, PFC Punchinello called and asked if we could help with Envoy. We had battled Envoy before, so we were happy to help, but we warned him we'd probably drag him after Dominatrix in return.
Envoy
Envoy was his usual self ... needing to be banished a couple of times before we were able to make it semi-permenent. But after we helped Envoy, McBain responded to a message we left on his cell and we took PFC, McBain, and Electra-Blast (a friend of McBain's) away to battle Dominatrix.
Round Two with Dominatrix
We had been hoping Muffy would show up ... we left a message on her machine, but she was out. We figured Dom's pretty boys were just Muffy's type. Unfortunately, she missed out. With PFC, McBain, and EB, we were able to take out Dominatrix. When we asked Maria about the strange similarity we shared with Dominatrix, Maria grimaced and said it was something Portal was looking in to.
To distract our attention, she sent us after Shadowhunter.
Doggies!
We had battled Shadowhunter once before. With Muffy added to our team, we were once again able to defeat him and his wolf packs.
ShadowHunter
Maria tells us she's got more work for us, but we're holding out to hear what we can get her to tell us about our relationship to Dominatrix.
