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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Acquana" data-source="post: 1054533" data-attributes="member: 1616">Independence Day, Part IIAnd so a brawl begins in the middle of a movie theater.  Most of the other movie-goers close to Jared panic at the sight of the horrific, decaying woman.  In the midst of people running everywhere, no one notices how . . . collected Jared Belmont is.  He’s highly unnerved, but not incapable of defending himself.  As the zombie attempts to lunge for him, a silvery second shadow appears beside Jared.   Tall, muscled, and stoic, this second image raises a fist, and follows Jared’s mental command.  Jared’s psychic manifestation strikes the zombie, throwing her off her feet onto the cold floor.  “No!  Sandra, you’re fine!  No one is going to take you away from me!”  The wizard lifts a hand, and as it glows Jared tries to explain he was only defending himself.Delria finally makes it close enough to the wizard to grab a discarded soda and chuck it at him.  His lightning bolt spell is thrown completely off and it arcs straight over the aisles and into the back exit.  Watanabe ducks as rubble from the ceiling collapses directly in the path of the door.  She grits her teeth angrily, glaring past the screaming crowds around her at the fight in the middle of the room.  Twilight, among those trying to get out through the entrance back into the lobby, has now been blocked.  For a moment she is about to follow the crowds as they change direction for the emergency exit, until she again hears a small voice.  No, she doesn’t actually hear it . . . she is simply “aware” that a male, distinctly Russian voice is speaking to her.  She opens her purse and cries out in shock as she looks down a fruit bat.  How she knows this is what was speaking her she doesn’t know.  Her first, instinctive reaction is the fling the purse as far away from herself as possible, which she does.Meanwhile others are reacting to the lightning bolt.  Jared is nearly thrown off his feet in surprise, and quickly pulls out a concealed handgun.  “I know you’re not a psion, so I don’t know how you just did that!  Just don’t do it again!”A resounding cry of “He’s got a gun!” sweep through the panicking crowds running by Jared.“We were just going to a movie!” the man snaps as the zombie very slowly pulls herself back to her feet. Delria tries her best to calm the necromancer and the young mundane with a gun.  She tries to explain to the magic-user that her presence there was purely coincidental.  However, before she gets much farther Delria ducks a purse that has flown from nowhere and lands nearby her.  Trudi has noticed all the commotion by now and angrily storms up to the fight, leaving a trail of popcorn that flutters from the hefty bucket still in her arms.  <a href="http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/news/modules.php?set_albumName=album71&id=TrudiPopcorn&op=modload&name=gallery&file=index&include=view_photo.php" target="_blank">“Hey!  I was trying to watch the movie too!  Now the back of the theater is messed up and there’s people screaming and stuff!”</a>Jared tries to stop Trudi from getting any closer, but it’s too late.  The zombie pushes past her husband and swings at the young woman.  Trudi manages to avoid her, but the zombie knocks the popcorn bucket out of Trudi’s arms.  Trudi stares at the popcorn now her feet with the look of a hurt child.  “You . . . YOU SPILLED MY POPCORN!”With that Trudi takes a massive swing and punches the shambling woman directly in the face.  The zombie falls into the mage, who had been shooting spells at Delria.  Trudi then pulls out a set of nunchucks she rarely leaves the dorm without, and frowns hard at the two.Jared is left speechless, but decides to take this opportunity to leap over the seats and get around to the mage’s other side.  At the same time Delria has been having to avoid spells from the mage and is currently kneeling behind the seats.  She takes a moment to see what is struggling in the purse that is near her.  Inside a small fox-faced bat looks up at her.  She lowers an eyebrow, unsure of why it’s there, but simply shrugs and gives it a gentle lift to give it an easier time of taking off.  The bat flies straight for Twilight, still trapped in crowds.  She hears the voice again and looks up at the bat.  A moment passes as the two of them stare eye to eye, and she suddenly realizes that she had nothing to fear from this creature.  She realizes more and more the longer she stares at the bat.  Twilight readjusts the strap to her camera, and thinks of her older sister.Jared has moved to the other side of the mage, and diverts the attention of the mage away from the very short woman a row away.  He warns the man to stay still or he’ll shoot, the man responds by grabbing Jared’s wrist.  A horrible, searing cold whips through Jared’s arm and as he flinches the gun goes off.  The mage cries out and grabs his wounded shoulder.  Then Jared strikes the man with the butt of the pistol.  He didn’t realize quite how hard he’d done it.  The man is thrown to the floor, bleeding heavily from the top of his head.  Jared pales in horror at what he’s just done.Trudi is having a hard time with the zombie, not understanding how someone who looks so sick is so strong.  The smell of blood makes the zombie turn and face Jared.  Jared looks dumbfounded and tries to pull the body of the mage away from the growling corpse.The zombie starts to lunge at the two, when a magic missile flies through the air and strikes the zombie.  Jared, Delria, and Trudi turn to the woman with blonde hair standing nearby now.  Twilight smiles and pulls out her camera.“Okay, now beat it up!  I wanna get this on film!” she calls as the bat on her shoulder seems to grin.Watanabe has taken to the emergency exit and is trying to direct the waning crowds.  She notices the large number of cars pulling up around the parking lot, but makes no more note of it than that.Jared smiles to Twilight and once again his metallic shadow appears.  As Trudi swings her nunchucks, Jared and his imprint both raise their hands; from the copy’s hand a psionic bullet drills into the zombie as it shudders from Trudi’s attacks.Satisfied that the crowds are getting out safely, Watanabe faces the conflict again.  Soon all of the PCs are trying to knock down the zombie, including a black dog that Twilight summoned.  Jared finally gets the proper shot, which blows more than half of the corpse’s head off.  As she zombie falls to its knees and then to the floor, Jared takes deep breaths and mourns the fact that all the zombie movies he’s seen didn’t show this sort of thing being nearly difficult enough.The four mundanes stand in silence, all watching as Delria kneels beside the necromancer and heals his wounds.  The mage groans, but doesn’t awaken.  However he does begin muttering “Sandra . . . Sandra . . . Nothing will keep us apart . . .”Delria shutters, Jared blanches again.  Trudi looks down at Sandra’s body as though for the first time.  “Woah!  Is she okay?!”Delria looks up at Trudi and sighs.  “She’s been dead for weeks.”  Delria is forced to explain that the man at her feet is a <a href="http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/news/modules.php?set_albumName=album71&id=Jim_Sandra&op=modload&name=gallery&file=index&include=view_photo.php" target="_blank">mage capable of reanimating the dead.</a>  As she speaks, Watanabe shakes her head.“Look, I don’t believe a word of this.  I’m going to make sure no one was buried under the rubble near the lobby.”Twilight only smiles and focuses her still recording camera in on Delria’s face.  “I believe you.”“Hey, that thing you did!” Trudi says to Jared, “That was cool!”“Uh . . . thanks.  It sorta . . . runs in my family,” Jared replies sheepishly.Delria follows Watanabe to the blocked exit.  Watanabe begins sifting through it, trying to heave large chunks despite her size.  She calls to anyone who might be there, telling them to remain calm.  However as she tries to shove aside one bit that would have taken two men twice her size, the rubble begins to rumble.  As though it has a mind of its own, the rubble moves aside.  Watanabe sees no one trapped there, but instead is met with a warm smile.<a href="http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/news/modules.php?set_albumName=album71&id=Alex&op=modload&name=gallery&file=index&include=view_photo.php" target="_blank">A strange-looking man</a> with olive skin stands at the now clear door to the lobby.  Beside him are five men, holding their hands up in the same sort of gesture that the mage had been using.  Jared’s jaw drops as he studies them.  He knows enough about the paranormal to recognize a Man In Black when he sees one.  He tries to turn and bolt out of the other door, now even more confused than before, but stops in mid-stride when he sees even more men in black suits entering from the other exit.Delria lets out a sigh of relief.  “What took you all so long?”“If you’d actually made a call we would’ve known sooner,” the olive-skinned man replies.  “Y’alright, Del?”“Yeah.”Jared steps back as a <a href="http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/news/modules.php?set_albumName=album71&id=TerryMarks&op=modload&name=gallery&file=index&include=view_photo.php" target="_blank">man in a suit with platinum blonde hair</a> steps up to him.  “Well then.  You’re a psion, aren’t you?”Jared can’t bring himself to do anything else but nod.Distantly the man nods as well.  “I’ll have to let J’qwuan know about this.”The Bureau agent speaking to Delria allows his fellow clean-up crewmen to move past him.  He holds out a bag.  “Ya like Raisinettes?”“Not really,” Delria shrugs.“So hey everybody,” the man says, seeing the demanding look on their faces.  “I’m Alex, and we’re gonna have to escort the lot of you outside.  Kay?”“Tell them everything then,” the blonde man beside Jared snaps.“They already know, Terrence.  By the way, I’d suggest you do your job before some other mundane kicks the living <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> out you.”The agent named Terrence glares knives at Alex, then turns and stalks off.  Some of the agents clearing rubble snicker at Alex’s comment.  Alex shifts his weight and continues eating movie snacks.A third agent steps up the PCs.  “Delria, will you please help me escort the mundanes outside?”“I wouldn’t call them mundanes,” Delria says with a smile to the group.“Then that’ll make this even more interesting.”</blockquote>

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