The Story That Went On... (Formerly Death Cut. Completed.)

[Rosemary Mori]

Having no apparent weapons Rosemary held her arms up, so did Sephiroth who didn't drop or reach for his. They stepped aside gaining the attention of a couple of soldiers who kept an eye on them.

The spider creature proved to be a wonderful distraction as The two of the soldiers who were staring at Rosemary's face turned and shot their new target: their comrades on the roof with their stun guns. The one closest to Rosemary dropped his weapon from shaking so bad and wet himself.

The other two soldiers on the ground had their weapons snatched from them before anyone could blink. One second Rosemary was standing there and the next she was in the same place with their weapons at her feet.  

[GamingLord]

The soldier that had wet himself in fear had now curled up in the fetal position on the ground, mumbling something, eyes wide and pupils small in pure horror.

Frightened Soldier: "The horror.... the horror...

Jacob, still ever so weak from the strange blast of energy that hit him, struggled to crawl behind Rosemary. He tried to speak, but no words came out of his mouth. He hadn't felt so helpless in forever...

Jacob: Can't speak... can't get up. ...Something stinks of piss.

The two soldiers that weren't firing at the ones at the ceilling that had been captured by Rosemary's gaze were mostly just standing there... One of them was attempting to struggle however, trying to go for a sidearm on his belt.

Up on the roof, the soldier holding the jar fired a device on his belt that launched the strange grasping hook from before, clinging to a different portion and pulling him rapidly to it to keep him from falling with the section of ceiling Sephiroth had cut away. The other soldier was stumbling back from the stun gun hits, but otherwise seemed fine, and started to fire rifle rounds at Sephiroth.

Firing Soldier: "Back up, back up! A.I., now! We have a mindbender!"

A blast of lightning from Harold knocked the man on his a** as he tried to avoid it,  

[Rosemary Mori]

Humans are very annoying most of the time. Rosemary grew annoyed at these people. All she had wanted to do was stop them so that the people with her could finish their business and be on their way before she released them. She would have had Harold open a portal to another dimension and make them think he went there...no fuss, but now...they were plain pissing her off. Especially the one who had half a mind to kill her and the other one who called for back up and an A.I. unit, which she could only guess to be a machine. She readied to summon a large gun into hand to destroy it the moment it appeared.

She did feel very lucky to not have to worry about Jacob's life otherwise she would have picked him up...actually...Don't touch me! Your weakness might become even more contagious. If he touched her she was afraid he would accidentally zap her strength and recover his more than he already was.

Now as for the guy reaching for his gun, he was going to be about as lucky as his comrade on the floor. The reason the guy was like that was because he had been closest to her and hadn't looked at her, so she wanted to take him out before he did anything. First she made him nervous and rethink grabbing that gun. Then he began to have disturbing thoughts. If that didn't work into getting him into submission it kept getting worse and worse until he got to relive every horrible moment from his life in a matter of minutes.  

[GamingLord]

Jacob seemed to collapse after a bit.

Jacob: Don't worry, I won't.

The soldier that had fired at Sephiroth, fell on his a**, and now landed harshly on his gut on the rafters groaned. Losing his grip and balance, he fell on the floor, right in front of the arachiathan. Trying to react quickly, he aimed his rifle at the creature's head, but one blow knock the gun out of his hands, and a nother sent him screaming and flying into a wall, knocking him unconcious.

The man trying to go for his sidearm was sweating bullets and gritting his teeth, arm shaking wildly as he just barely managed to grab the weapon. He was whimpering, tears streaming down his face. Slowly, he pulled it out of it's holster, until a heavy clawed hand smacked him upside the head, knocking off his helmet and knocking him off his feet. He was out cold, and now having horrible nightmares. The spider creature almost seemed to grin at what he did.

Sephiroth meanwhile had landed right in front of the fleeing soldier with the Jenova blood samples, his sword chopping his gun in two... though he noticed he had a hard time of doing it, and had to put nealry all his strength into destroying the weapon, whatever material it was made of. The gun reacted badly to this, and gave off a small explosion in the soldier's face, his armor the only thing keeping him from severe harm. Finding a sword at his throat suddenly, the soldier realized he had no other moves left if he wanted to keep his head attached to his neck. Sephiroth demanded the jar back. A tense moment later, and it was handed over.

Just as Sephiroth's fingers began to wrap around the container however, there was a tearing sound in the air above him, and something metallic smacked hard into his back, knocking him over, and causing the jar to drop down to the floor below. Thankfully, Harold was there to catch it.

The thing that hit Sephiroth landed heavily in front of the group, cracking the floor beneath it's feet. It was humanoid mostly in appearence, with several thin horizontal blue bars for it's optical sensors. It held a rifle like the soldier's had in one hand, and a large tower shield in the other. Rosemary fired her weapon at this new enemy, but her shot was blocked by his shield. The resulting blast left the shield dented, cracked, and melted on the floor, along with a large chunk of the thing's arm.

In a flash, the machine's rifle was aimed for Rosemary's head and it fired. However, the arachiathan was already close to Rosemary, and seeing that it had raised it's arm at Rosemary, growled and rushed it... only to receive a number of fire bursts into it's chest, splattering dark yellow blood everywhere as quarter sized holes appeared. The creature squealed, and stumbled backwards until it fell.

Harold fired large bolts of lightning at the robot, but nothing seemed to happen, and the mage was forced to run and put up a barrier as he was fired open, the bullets making him slam against some pews.

With Sephiroth knocked off balance, the soldier had pulled his sidearm and pressed it against the man's head, kicking away his sword with a heavy boot.

Soldier: "Hands behind your back! Do it now, or I shoot!"  

[Rosemary Mori]

Rosemary was very angry at this point deciding to shoot to kill anyone that wasn't under her control. She attempted to finish off the robot with as many shots as it took, bringing up the shield she had gained from Sephiroth's shield materia on herself, Jacob, and the large bug.  

[GamingLord]

Soldier: "s**t... Base, recall my squad! Situation is FUBAR! Repeat, mission is fail!"

Before anyone could give the soldier an order, he was swallowed up by cackling green energy, and vanished. The same happened to the incapacitated soldiers inside the church.

Meanwhile, the A.I. unit was dodging Rosemary's shots, and circling her. Each shot that was missed caused a small explosion on the surface it made contact with, causing further noise to attract attention. A blue orb was fired, and suddenly Rosemary's bullet deflecting shield was gone, almost popped comedically like a bubble in a surge of energy. Not a second was wasted, as a burst of bullets followed the orb. Rosemary managed to get the main part of her body and head out of her way, but the rounds still striked into her arm and leg... and the realization of how large and powerful the rounds where finally struck her as they left huge gaping holes and tore through tissue and bone, ripping out the other side and into Jacob's side, who could only give a muffled grunt in pain since he was still unable to speak.

Harold managed to come out of his hiding spot from where he was trying to avoid the deadly machine's bullets earlier, and casted a powerful spell. A cold win blew into the church and ice began to form rapidly on the robot's arm and legs, caking into a thick, bulky layer. Another wind, and a frozen spike tore through it's mid-section, making it spark. The machine struggled to free itself, it's gun clicking as it tried to fire to shatter the ice, but to no avail as the rifle's insides were frozen solid.

Jacob: The damn thing can't move? ... Blow it's effin' head off, Rosemary!  

[Rosemary Mori]

Rosemary had barely managed to sidestep the oncoming bullets and found herself off balance as one side was almost taken out of commission. Well she could float there still at least. Since the thing had its attention on her, Harold decided to be brave and freeze the thing. She was slightly surprised that Jacob didn't use the vulgar word when he told her to 'blow its effin' head off."

The calvary entered just as she blew the robot's head off and then hid all her goodies. She then let herself sink down to the ground and sighed. The dog ran in and sniffed the creature and then went directly to Jacob. This got many of them to stop pointing their guns at them at least.

Sorry Jacob, but I'm going to check the creature first. She moved to the fallen bug and ignored all the "what happened, what's going on, where are the others, and are you alright" questions to see if it was still alive and pour a healing potion or two onto its chest if it was. After she did what she needed to do, she said, "I don't know who they were. They appeared, attacked, and vanished when you got here. We wanted some of that to help a friend of ours."

Someone actually picked up Jacob and put him into the little pond so that it could help him healed. It did more than heal people of demon cells.

Sephiroth whined a little as Jacob was carried away, and received pats, and comfort of "He'll be alright soon, boy."

Sephiroth stared at Jacob. "Teach the planet how to prevent people from portalling in and out of the atmosphere as they please. Teach her. We can't have anymore of them show up and we can't allow the ones here to leave."  

[GamingLord]

The robot's head was reduced to a cracked and shattered chunk of metallic skull, embedded into a wall, it's main body sparking and spraying blackish blue fluids

Harold went over to the spider and began casting a healing spell... With the Limboian potion soaked into it's wounds, the liquid literally pushed the bullets out of it's chest, and began to seal up the injuries. Harold looked surprise at this, as if he hadn't seen anything like it before.

Jacob sighed, as he felt his body push out the bullets that entered his own body, the blood seeping as his injuries closed. He also found he could talk again, though a bit hoarse, thanks to the water.

Jacob: "Ah... ahem.... thank you."

As Jacob laid there in the water, he attempted to commune with the planet, trying to keep in mind that it essentially to him it was a large bundle of spirits that basically made up a soul for the world. After he finished a subtle ritual that would allow communication between him and the souls of the world, he thought of spells that could restrict movement, make transportation difficult, and unless the travelling party had a lot of power, how to keep portals from being forced open, and even if they were, how to fight back to close them back up.

Jacob then thought of Sephiroth's charms, and how they had proved useful in helping them so far, in helping Sephiroth. In the role they would play soon to help gather up Jenova and as a side effect, remove the taint from the life stream. The charms would be useful in the future if anything similar ever happened, wouldn't it? So he also thought about how to make the material the charms were made of.  

[Rosemary Mori]

Rosemary looked relieved and rubbed the critter's head. "You did well."

Next time I'll kill them. They're not worth the trouble. The reason she hadn't killed them earlier was because she had a plan to get them off their back by having Harold open a portal to another world and make them believe he had moved on. Well that had failed and she didn't think it would work now anyways.

You shouldn't put that creature in front of their guns aga... It was about this time someone prodded her bad arm. This caused her to flinch, stiffen, and growl a little.

After much debating, she found herself in the pool next to Jacob, which wasn't so bad. She leaned into him and gave him the attention she neglected to give him earlier. Now they were able to get what they came for. She discretely put water in the containers elites carry around. Unlike Jacob, she shone in places for a few seconds. Someone in the crowd said, "She had geostigma. That must have been why they came here."

As a result of Jacob sharing his knowledge, probably the most difficult to remove anti-portaling barrier was created. Unlike other world entering portal blockers, this one wasn't centered on one or more people or some other device that could be killed, destroyed, or deactivated, but the planet itself generated it.  

[GamingLord]

Jacob: Sephiroth, let me see one of those holy charms...

Jacob managed to get out of the water, healed, and pulled a towel out of his dimensional storage to dry himself off. When the others weren't looking, he took one of the blue materia-like charm from Sephiroth's bangle, and dipped it in the water for a moment. He then dried it off, and put it back in it's proper place.

Unseen by everyone deep in the heart of the planet, a small crystallic growth began to sprout.

Jacob then helped Rosemary up, and gave her a towel.

Jacob: "Yes, that's exactly why we came here..."  

[GamingLord]

Jacob: This is probably why I'd normally wear black clothing, Rosemary. But I guess white woudn't kill me now and again. Getting a good look at my chest? Wait, something... something's different about you. I can feel something has left your body, Rosemary. You just glo.... Jiluzix's influence, it's gone from you...

He strongly wanted to hug and kiss Rosemary, but he settled for almost going teary eyed.

Once everyone was nice and dry, the damage done was surveyed.

City Dweller: "Whoever that soldier person was on the roof, he and his toy robot sure did some damage. Wonder how he just up and vanished like that. Why were they trying to stop you anyway? Who are they?"

Some people were inspecting the still sparking robot body, stuck in a standing position still in Harold's melting ice. Harold himself seemed to be dipping his hands in the water... for a brief moment, only Rosemary, Jacob, and Sephiroth could see Abigail's spirit before it quickly faded again. The mage himself look exhausted, whether because of the late hour or of his magics, nobody really knew.

Harold: "We don't know... they just attacked us out of nowhere. They had strange weapons that could greatly weaken magic users... Perhaps they're hunting those with potent magical abilities?"