Janace does the laundry

This follows the last entry of this character set, by about a day. Janace escaped with Carl from an R&D facility, found that the rest of their party had disappeared in their absence. After making contact, Carl and Janace start traveling to where the party is. This happens along the way.

Carl and Janace trek into a village. 

The first place they go to is the bar.  Here they learn about where they can get lodging and just where in the world they are.  Once their need for information is satisfied, they have dinner.  Everybody in the place leaves them alone.

They check into a hotel, and decide to just get one room to conserve money.  They have to specifically order separate beds.

In the room there are some awkward moments.  The seals on the suits are on back.  While the suits are self-contained, they only have about a week’s limit to this.  They then require some cleaning out.

Janace walked in, and threw her bag on the bed closest the restroom.  She then striped out of her cape.  She unloaded her vest/cape, spilling all its various pockets onto the bed.  She then hung this up. Carl tossed his bag on his bed.   Carl just removed his harness and LB-vest and dropped it on the floor with his gun and sword still in their holsters.  He then hung his cape up, and turned as Janace opened the upper seal of her suit, and pulled the neck piece over her head, to get at the main seal that ran down the back.  Her back was to Carl and he walked past, and deliberately pushed her off balance.

She had grabbed the draw cord that opened the suit and was pulling it to open the armor down the spine when Carl bumped her.  She took a step to catch her balance, and realized why he did that.

“Sorry.”  She gathered her toiletries and towel out of her bag, and went into the bathroom closing the door behind her.

She finished pulling the seal open, and then crossing her arms she pulled it off either shoulder and pealed it off her torso.   She then pulled her arms out of it.  The inner most layer was slightly sticky and clingy, but came off easily.  It also showed salt stains where that layer of the suit had not yet processed her sweat.  Janace pushed the suit from her waist over her hips and bottom, and sat down on the closed commode and peeled the suit off her legs, turning it inside out in the process.  Fully thus, she could see where it had connected to her cyber-muscles through her skin and drawn excess heat out.  She dropped the suit in the tub.

Fortunately the door had a full-length mirror.  Janace looked herself over for the first time since getting body-switched.  She was more trim than she had been, and showing considerably better tone for both skin and muscle.  Otherwise there were no major changes.  The cut on her pinky had closed and was healing quickly.  Her hair was a rat’s nest.  One last thing she noticed was that her face was slightly different.  Her cheeks bones slightly more pronounced, and her jaw slightly more narrow.  Janace shrugged her shoulders, noting that her bust did not look as old as it had, and got into the shower, and commenced to run it completely out of hot water.

First she pushed the suit aside so as not to stand on it, and washed her hair, and then the rest of her.  She noticed that her body was not just firmer in look, but had much less softness to her muscles.  As if they were always flexing.  This made her legs a bit more shapely, but was of no other real concern.  Once done with herself, she picked up the suit and rinsed it off, washing the sweat and other body residue off of it.  The material let moisture right through it, not holding any, and soon the suit was waterlogged.  But this helped to rinse it out.  Janace opened the drink tube and let the water drain from it.  Next she opened the pouches at the groin and thighs.  These she rinsed thoroughly, dumping the solid matter down the toilet.  Once it was completely free of any residue she dropped it on a bath mat, and then let the water just run over her, as she rinsed out her hair, and worked to untangle it.

Finally she got out, and toweled off.  She then picked the suit from its puddle and let it drip in the tub while she finished toweling her hair.  Once done, she wrapped her hair in a towel, and another around her.  She then took the suit and left the room.  She placed the last dry towel under the suit and hung it to drip dry.

Carl was asleep on his bed, having just lay down on top of the blankets, not having removed his suit.  He stirred as she finished with her suit.  She noticed as she began going through her bag.

“I used all the hot water.  You may want to wait.”

Carl nodded vaguely and settled back down.  His breathing evened, and he was soon completely gone to the world.

Janace found what she wanted in her bag.  Her last clean underwear and her flannel nightgown.  She put the underwear on, and the gown, discarding the towels as she did.  She put the one up to dry, and left the other around her shoulders as she brushed her hair out.  Finished, she turned down the covers and then knelt in prayer.  As she lay down, she spread the towel on the pillow, and then spread her damp hair across it to dry as she slept.

Carl showered in the morning.  He was only slightly surprised that he was still on top of the blankets when he awoke.  His disorientation passed quickly.  He rinsed out his suit then washed himself off.  He also took some time to look himself over in the mirror and see just what had been changed.  He came out clad in fresh underwear to find that every other bit of clothing, both his and Janace’s, was gone.  As was Janace.  Carl hung up his inside-out suit next to Janace’s and then sat down at the foot of his bed and began to sort through his vest and equipment and make a shopping list.

Janace had woke up to the sound of the shower and decided that now was as good a time as any.  So she gathered all her dirty clothes into her cape, then did likewise with Carl’s, and carried both bundles to the laundry next to the hotel.  She had on only her nightgown and underwear, and was not disposed to look for trouble.  But some tried to find her in the guise of some local punks at the laundry.

She divided the clothes into two sets and ran four loads.  His and hers under things and towels, and outer things.  As she sorts the clothes and starts the loads, the punks take notice of her.  One of them makes a loud comment about the old lady in her nightgown.  Janace thought briefly about tossing it and her briefs in with her other underwear, but decided not to.  The punks would be nothing compared to official trouble.

As she moved the clothes into the dryers, the punks got more boisterous about the old lady washing the old mans clothes.  Janace still let their insolence pass.  As the first load stopped, they got in her way before she could fold them.

“What’s the matter?  No washer at home?”  For some reason the rest of the youths thought this was funny.

Janace just looked at him.  “Go away child.  You bother me.”  Her expression and tone steeled as she spoke.

They all mockingly cowered.

“Ooh.  Is that a threat?”

Janace put her hand on the shoulder of the one in her way, and pushed him firmly aside.

“No.  It’s a friendly warning.”

Janace combined this with a psionic impression on the wisdom of leaving her alone, marbling this with contained danger.  She squeezed his shoulder a bit too firm to reinforce this, feeling his bones move slightly.

She pulled her laundry out and turned to put it on the folding table.  This load being her under things.  She opened her senses to the whole group.  As she did the one she had touched finally backed off. 

“Let’s go.”  He started to head for the door as the most vocal of the group began pressing harder.  Needing to massage his pride.

“You afraid of a little old woman?”  He came and stood right next to her.  “I’m not scared of you.”

Janace just kept sorting her pile, folding things as she did.

The punk crowded closer.  “You scared of me?”

Janace continued to ignore him, hoping he might be different than the many barflies’ she had swatted for similar behavior.  He proved it a vain hope.

She turned her back to his as the next dryer stopped, and he moved after the laundry she had folded.  He never got there.

She turned back, and grabbed his wrist.  In an instant crushing pain focused his universe to his wrist, as Janace squeezed the bones together.  He being slightly taller than her she reached up with her other hand and pulled his ear, and head down to her eye level.  The pain in his eyes was mixed with anger.

“Go away, before you injure yourself.”  Janace looked him in the eye as she said this.  She spared him any psionics, not wanting to bother.  She then let go of his ear, and pulled him as she spun and sent him moving toward the door.  He got a few steps before loosing his footing and falling on his face.  He yelped as he landed on his bruised wrist.

The rest just stood for a moment, the fun of tormenting having just disappeared.

Janace just turned back to her laundry.

The leader decided this was enough.  He picked up the one from the floor, and they left, all but two of them following.  These two were actually doing their own laundry.  They gave Janace a wide birth as they finished theirs.

When done, she repacked everything into the capes and carried these back to the hotel.  In the room she gave Carl back his clothes, neatly folded in his cape.  She then carried her bundle into the bathroom and dressed there, in her street clothes.

She came out, Carl having likewise dressed in street clothes, and they packed, stripped the beds, and checked out.  They walked to the bus station, and purchased tickets to the town where Yory was in the hospital.

Janace gets annoyed

Part of how this story came about is I wondered what it would be like to wear a T-1000 (liquid terminator) as an armor. Drawing on the further Terminator movies, this would be like the guy who got made into a cyborg in the forth movie wearing the liquid one from the second movie as armor. Except the narrative character is a woman, with psionic-mind powers, and is a practicing sorceress.

Janace came to, dressed in armor, with an amulet in her right hand. Unlike Yory’s armor, this was more like a padded diving suit or a muscle suit than hard plate.  It was fitted properly so that she had full range of movement.  As a sorceress she never wore powered armor to avoid mixing energy fields.  The feel of the head piece was comfortable, but almost constricting, as it covered her head in concentric tiara-like waves letting her hair come through them to billow free.  The head piece hugged her cheeks and wrapped around her chin and brow leaving only her face uncovered.  Her fingers were the only other part uncovered.  The armor was at full activation, the pads stiff to absorb impact, chrome blades and spikes reflected the stadium lights, and the shield causing slight distortion where it formed right angles.

She stood in a large room with only one way in or out that she could see.  She faced it from two thirds of the way across the sand-covered floor.  As she focused, the morphing adjusted to her attention.  She had never realized how reactive the armor was to mood and focus when watching anybody else wear it.  As she focused, the blades and spikes flowed a bit more in that direction, piercing the shield, leaving a thinner layer of the stuff texturing the opposite side of her body with much smaller spikes and blades.

The door opened and five Monsters and two Beasts came in.  Upon seeing her, they charged.  A monster arrived first.  Seeing them, Janace tossed the amulet aside, and primed her psionic shields. And went to a slight crouch.

Janace did not attack the front monster first.  Instead she mind blasted the two beasts at the back, stunning them.  She then turned her attention to the monster.  Large sickle blades formed off her forearms and fists.  She slashed both of these into its ribcage from both sides, under its outstretched arms.  The Monster being much larger than Janace the killing blows were not hard for her to make.  She then pulled the blades back out, and jumped back as the carcass fell in front of her, almost on her.  She then gave a telekinetic push to the other four, and knocked them over.

The blades retracted, and she raised her magic shields.  These came up at a lesser power than she expected.  She would worry about ‘why’ later.  She then sent heat and cold blasts at the closer Beast.  This combination had always been effective before, but was not nearly so now.

The singed Beast had frost on the ends of its fur.

The other Beast threw a psionic blast at her.  Her psionic shields held, but the related force knocked her from her feet.

‘Come on, Janace.  You’re better than this,’ she muttered to herself as she came back to herself.  The four monsters had picked her up, one at each limb, to physically tear her apart.  Stupid Monsters.  She sent a psionic blast in all directions, stunning them as the armor rippled spikes and blades in sympathy to her doings.  This tore their paws up some, but it was the blades that formed and stabbed out from each limb through the monsters that killed them.  Very quickly they were so much dead tissue.  And it all fell on her. “Stupid me.”

She pulled herself free in time to catch another psi-blast.  It collapsed her outer mental defenses.  She tried more magic, not wanting to get into a full psi-fight, yet.

The lightening crackled across her armor and at the beast.

It staggered, and collapsed as its cardio and nervous systems received a power surge.

The other Beast came leaping over the bodies of the fallen monsters.  Janace caused more spikes and blades to form as it came.  It backed her into the wall, and started to pummel her telekinetically, bypassing her armor and its shield.

This amazed Janace, as she felt the blows, but was only stunned by them, and not really hurt.

It sensed this and switched tactics.

They both attacked simultaneously.  She repeated her first physical attack, slicing several large blades through its lungs and heart most of the way to its breastbone.  It brought its fists down on her head in a combination physical and psionic blow that should have broken her neck as she collapsed to the floor.

The Beast tried psionically to close its wounds.  But as it shifted its attention to itself, Janace psionically blew its head to its constituent cells.

The headless body toppled onto her as she tried to get out of the way.

Janace was not normally strong enough to move a beast’s body by main force.  But she found that she was strong enough and then some.  She pushed the corpse aside and looked at the arena.

Seven in.  Six down, one in convulsions.

Janace hated to see anything suffer long.  Extending a blade, she stabbed the thing in the heart, and got showered in blood for her efforts.

As the blade retracted, she looked herself over.  The mirrored chrome was now covered with blood and gore.  Many of the spikes and blades relaxed and the armor thickened in spots.

She felt a probe of her mind distract her from self-examination.  But it lacked the feel of a living thing.  More like a machine trying to talk past her mind.

But it could not penetrate her psionic defenses.  She reinforced them, and inspected her body and memory.  Her time sense said several days had passed since she was last awake.  Her last memory was being hit by Carl.  Her scan of her body almost caused her to let her shields slip.

All her organs were there, but only part of her skeleton.  Some of her ribs, and a small bit else.  Most of her muscles were likewise gone.  An inorganic skeleton and muscle set had been somehow put in their place.  She had lost a good percentage of her organic body mass, so she had less to channel power through.  That was why her magic power was lessened.

She formed a blade around her right index finger, and slit her left pinky to the bone, to see for her self that it was not bone.  She then closed the cut and had the armor hold it closed to heal.  Her temper flared.  As it did, so did the spikes.

Someone was going to pay.

Janace crossed to the bars, and extending a blade, cut through them twice to make an opening.  She held on to one of the bar pieces, and went to the door at the end of this chamber.

The static in her head got louder as something tried to breach her psionic defenses.  She took a deep breath, and closed her eyes in concentration.  “One at a time,” she mumbled to her self.  She sensed the signal that was trying to take over her mind, and traced this back to its transmission source.  From there she followed it to its origin.  Here she sensed several minds, frustrated and excited both.  The frustrated ones were afraid of her.  The excited ones finally had a challenge, in breaking her.  And not a psionic shield among them.  The machine was just a plodding probe trying to pierce her psionic defenses. 

They were to far away for a psi-bomb.  But not a psi-burn.  First the excited ones, then the frustrated ones.  They all reacted as if physically stunned.  But this did not stop the machine.  Psionics never worked well on electronics.  At least not as well as magic did.  Janace had to strain to cast that far away, but… A little heat, a shock wave, and then just clean up the trash.

The equipment in the room flashed to ash in less than a second as they briefly superheated.  Then a shock wave blew everything to dust.  Everything had been reduced to its constituent elements in powdered form, creating a respiratory nightmare for the people in the room, and for the ventilation system.

And the probe on Janace’s mind stopped.  She returned to her self.  Throwing magic and psionics around an enemy base usually provoked certain reactions.  Either there were no further problems because there was nobody left that was willing to intervene.  Or the problems got worse because people were willing to up the stakes.  So it was time to make the most of her free moments.

First Janace scanned herself to find the transceiver that the probe had been trying to activate.  Until it was gone she was vulnerable.  And as dangerous as Carl.  She found the circuitry quickly enough.  But had no idea what part to fry.  Or what it would do.  So she just drew some strength from the world around her and redoubled her psionic and magic shields.

She looked at the door, expanding her senses as she did.  Metal door in reinforced frame.  Hydraulic mechanism.  Blast resistant.  There’s the valve.  Open-says-me.

The door opened into the pens for the Monsters and Beasts.  Never one to waste much time she ran down the length of the pens, bashing the keepers as they noticed her.  The next door she wanted led her into the complex.  As she ran through, several beasts tried to get her psionically.  But Janace was too focused to pay any heed.  She got to the door into the rest of the place and ripped it open, having left the bar behind somewhere.

On the other side of the wall, all the static from the beasts stopped.  Janace was able to clear her mind again, and focus on finding Carl.  If he was here.  She extended her senses, sensing the layout of the place, and found Carl.  She was in a basement; he was in a far wing, 4 floors up.

Janace set out; running like she never had before.  With almost no fatigue, she took a round-about course to the room he was in.  As she went, the armor sent small extrusions into her body, hooking to her mechanical body and acting like a heat sink.  Blades and ridges extruded as she went.

As she went, the generally token resistance she encountered did not surprise her.  This seamed to be an R&D facility.  So the guard compliment would be small.  But generally effective.  However she was worried that she evaded so easily, and only had to hit three people.  Then she crashed through the wall into Carl’s room.

He threw down on her as she came in.  Carl’s mind again not in control.  So she changed the rules, lifting him telekinetically, and oriented him away from her so he could not attack her.  His armor spiked out so that she could not easily approach him.  She scanned his body and quickly found the transceiver.  Not having time to be delicate, she found the power lines to it and severed them.  He went limp, his armor going to ridges and small spikes.

All the alarms in the place sounded at that point.

Janace released Carl telekinetically and tossed him over her shoulders.

“Nice to see you, too, Janace.”  Carl couldn’t move, but he was still in possession of his faculties.

Janace thought about trying to leave on foot, and decided not to.  She instead fixed an image firmly in her mind, and teleported to the clearing the group had been camping at.

More from Janace, Yori, and Carl.

Two days later.

Carl was out in the field, planting some fresh furrows when he heard a commotion from the orchard.  The dogs had something in there.  A returning snarl stopped him cold.

Carl dropped the seeds there, and taking the hoe as a weapon started across the fields toward the house.

As he nears the orchard, he sees his oldest daughter running through the orchard toward the house.  Her bow in her hand.  The five adult hounds are making fighting noises from farther in the orchard than Carl can see at the moment.  There were more snarls, not from the hounds.

He changes his course to intercept his girl.  He gets her and picks her up, and can then see down the rows of the orchard.  The five hounds were worrying a monster, which had two arrows in it.  They are all showing wounds from the thing.

Carl all but tossed his daughter over his shoulder and took off full tilt for the house.  When he got close enough he began yelling for Yory.

Yory came out the door with a battle rifle in hand.

Carl traded Yory, the gun for the girl, and turned back to face the orchard.  He then called the hounds to come.  They cleared the trees just ahead of the monster.  Carl stood his ground, and once the monster was clear of the orchard he fired three shots into its torso.  It took a few steps, and fell on its face.  Carl put one more shot into the Monster's head, finishing it off.

The hounds alerted to other monsters and were about to charge off when Yory called them to the porch.  She had a second battle rifle in her hands, the children gone inside.

“Where’s Boy?”

“Over at the neighbors.”

Carl traded guns and called the oldest hound and took off for the barn.  There he grabbed his bridle.  Out the back he went to the stockyard, and whistled for his horse.  They were all gathered at the far end of the yard, away from the orchard.

His horse came cantering up, still very nervous.  The hound was mulling about and alerting toward the orchard.  Carl slung the rifle and reached out to calm the horse.

Carl knew that he had to ride through, the orchard being between the stockyard and the road.  He slipped the bridle over the horse’s nose and ears.  Then gathered the reins, and vaulted onto the bare back.  The hound alerted at this.  He dug his heals into the flanks and headed across the yard, toward the fence of the orchard, the hound at the horses heals.  The horse tried to shy away but he pulled its head back and urged it harder.  This horse was used to mostly domestic duties, but it still had instinct.  It gathered and jumped the fence into the orchard.  The hound jumped between the rails, keeping pace.

They turned some to cut across the orchard diagonally.  They spotted the monster running to cut them off.   The horse tried to shy away again, but Carl refused to let it.  He pulled the gun around, and let fly, blowing the Monster's hip to a bloody mist.  He left it there, and called the hound to keep up, as it went to investigate the felled creature.

They jumped the other fence to the orchard and were on the narrows of the irrigation easement when Carl turned fully toward the neighbors.  He spurred the horse on to go faster.  One more monster tried to lunge out at them.  Carl put a shot in it and galloped on as it fell.

They jumped one last fence into the neighbor’s yard, and galloped across the grass to the house.  Carl reigned the horse in and vaulted from it and through the front door, adjusting the rifle as he went.  The hound ran around the side of the house.

A commotion was coming from the back of the house.  Carl ran to the great room to find one monster to his right tossing furniture aside and another on the left advancing on the kitchen through a steady hail of assorted dishes.  The one going toward the kitchen got a small ball of lightening in its back that stunned it thoroughly.

Carl then brought the gun up as a shield to block the paw of the other monster as it swung at him.  The claws missed, but the force knocked him through the end table and against the bookshelf.

Carl recovered in time to blast this monster at point blank, stunning it.  He thumbed the selector switch, and pumped two flichette rounds into it.  As it collapsed, Carl turned to the first and put a round into it, finishing it.

Neighbor wife is almost hysteric, and was about to throw a plate at Carl before realizing who he is.

Boy called out from the hall, where the one monster had been going.  Carl moved around the carcass and knelt to embrace his son as he and his friend came into the room.

Just then the horse started raising a fuss, as did the hound, from right out side the kitchen.

Carl let go of his son and turned to the damage and neighbor wife.

“Get into one room, and bar the door.”

She grabbed the biggest knife she had in the kitchen, and herded the children back into the master bedroom.

Carl went out the opening the monsters had made in the glass wall, and around the side of the house.

The horse was dancing back and forth and rearing at another monster, the hound was getting back on his feet after having been swatted across the yard.

This monsters fur had different coloring.

Carl could not immediately remember why that scared him.

So he brought the gun up and let fly at the head.

The flichette round hit a psionic shield and puffed to powder.

Now Carl remembered why these scared him.

He switched the gun back to energy and let fly again.  An unseen force knocked him on his back to slide twice his own length.  He shook his head to clear it as he fought to get air back into his lungs.

The beast was almost to him as Carl got the gun up and emptied it at the thing, nearly point blank.

The electrical discharge wreathed the beast, shorting out its nervous system.  It collapsed in a fit of spasms.

Carl switched back and put the last two flichette rounds into that beast, ending it.

The horse settled down at the end of the beast.  The hound came over, and sniffed and nipped at it.  It did not respond, so it was there after ignored.

Carl took a deep breath.  “I hope that’s the last of them.”

He set the gun’s power pack to ambient recharge, and shouldered it.  He then went in to the house, the hound following.  He knocked at the door of the master bedroom, and almost got shot for his effort to identify himself.