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.
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