Several things happened all at once. Xina disappeared into the trees still smiling and waving cheerfully. Xalan and Jolrael prepared their weapons and turned toward the voice, which was, of course, coming from downwind. Amethyst quickly went over the list of shamanist and white spells in her arsenal. Then there was Tinuviel, who blithely tried to walk into a shadow and managed to knock herself unconscious by running into a tree. Soon after this something like twenty bandits rushed towards them.
"Okay, here we..."
"FIREBALL!!" Jol and Xal threw themselves to the ground as Amethyst's spell stalled the charge and incinirated five bandits.
"Warn us next time!"
"Sorry!"
Xalan and Jolrael recovered before the bandits did, giving them enough time to stand up. Xalan lunged forward twirling his staff while Jolrael let his opponents come to him. Well, one of them found himself suddenly thrown backwards, a second one started screaming as his muscles began cramping up.
"Hey where''d everybody go!" the third cried out as his eyes stopped working. His sudden random flailing involved another two bandits, leaving two severely overmatched thugs for Jorael and his sword.
Jorael looked to his left where Xalan was nudging the unconscious bodies of his opponents and blinked, actually impressed. Then he finished off the the various imobilized
"I thought I'd warn you this time, because there are more coming," Amethyst suddenly shouted. "Earth below me submit to my will!"
"You might want to run," Jol said to Xalan as the swordsman levitated off the ground. Xalan blinked and leaped for a tree, not knowing what exactly was about to happen.
"DUG HAUT!!!" The confused bandits never stood a chance as the ground ripped apart beneath them and launched spears into their midsts.
"That was very good!" somebody laughed. "About what I'd expect of a princess of Sailoon, but you have not yet faced me." The huge man launched himself forward at Amethyst shouting and weilding a huge axe.
Then a translucent sphere of energy surrounded the bandit and he landed in front of Amethyst, bounced up and then landed behind her. Rolled, screaming all the way, and finally wedging himself into a pair of trees.
"What is that?" Jolrael asked.
"Hey! It worked!" Xina declared hopping down from a heavily covered tree and then looking at the sphere of force.
"When did you learn how to do that?" Xalan asked, coming down from his tree. Xina turned to him and smiled.
"Sore wa himitsu desu," she answered cheerfully.
"Hey you said you'd help us capture the princess!" the bandit roared.
"Now I don't recall that at all," she said innocently.
"Let me guess," Jol said hovering crosslegged among the tree tops. "Your exact words, were 'take you to her,' am I right?" Xina smiled. "And you expected us to defeat them all right?"
"Xina-san, how could you do that? What if there were too many of them?"
"I'll deal with that when it happens." Xina waved it off. "Now there was something else I wanted to do." She regarded the bandit, inquisitively. "THAT'S RIGHT!!! You called me a boy!" She launched herself at the sphere only to be caught by her brother before getting there.
"Just how do you expect to get him with that bubble around him?" Xalan asked his struggling sister.
"Oh yeah," the bubble vanished. Everybody but Xina face faulted as the bandit found himself free.
"Now, I'm going to chop you all into..." which was about the point that the other three recovered. The remains would have made a unique study on any coroner's table.
"Umm, what happened to Tinuviel?" Jolrael suddenly asked.
"Oww," they heard the elf-girl's voice behind them. "But why did it hurt so much this time?"
"Tinu?"
"Hey, Jol! I discovered some great new spells and magical items! Now I just have to figure out how they work."
"What are you doing here?"
"Well I think I came here via a magical gate," she said. "How'd you get here? Didn't you just leave yesterday, hmm I might not be all that far from home after all."
"I've been travelling for nearly a month and a half."
"Really, hmm, you know, I haven't seen anybody around recently," she tapped her chin in thought. "Ah Ha! I'll bet I got sucked through a time hole some where."
"What is she talking about?"
"Either that or you wandered off again and were so busy investigating everything you ran across that you didn't notice you were leaving home." Tinuviel appeared to think about it.
"That works too!" Everybody facefaulted. "Now back to this shadow meld thing!" She tried to walk into the shadow again, and was stopped by Jolrael. "Hey, what's going on here?"
"You didn't walk into the shadow," Xina told her, patiently.
"But my head hurt, and then I couldn't see anything. If I didn't walk into the tree what happened."
"Maybe you hit the tree and knocked yourself unconscious," Xina suggested dryly.
"Xina-san be more polite." Tinuviel merely snapped her fingers.
"That would account for the pain!"
"Okay, Tinuviel, we have to track down this staff...."
"Staff...." the elf repeated. She whirled on Jol and cheerfully requested, "Can I come?!?" Everybody looked at Jol expectantly.
"Sure..." he said, everybody facefaulted.
"Well, I guess we really have no choice," Xalan said.
"Its not like we have time to go all the way to wherever she's from," Xina grumbled.
"And we can't just leave her here..." Amethyst added.
"Welcome to the group," Jol said sheepishly.
"Oh, YAY!" Everybody sweatdropped as she danced about happily.
"I wish he'd include us the next time he makes such a decision," Xina mumbled.
"Which brings us to the next point," Xalan said. "Xina next time you do that give us a warning."
"Do what?"
"Go off on your own and use us as bait, Xina-san!" Amethyst added.
"Okay, if you're going to be so grumpy about it," Xina hmphed. "I promise to warn you the next time I bait you."
"Good," Xalan said, looking at her a couple of times curiously.
"There is something fishy about that promise," Jol said. But then Tinuviel danced by and hugged him, and he lost his train of thought.