The Conventional Way

It was a very pissed-off Elizabeth that awoke from her slumber, to the sound of a huge, resounding thump. She thought little of it at first, not wanting to glance out into the sunlight. And then, what sounded like rain. That was fairly odd, as there wasn't a cloud in the sky today. Elizabeth merely rolled back over. She drifted back to sleep, and the hours of daylight began to fly by.

Knock Knock Knock

The signature, polite knock of her head of staff, Justus, came lightly across the door. Annoyed, Elizabeth sat bolt upright.

"Come in."

The old, dark-skinned man entered the bedroom gracefully, though his posture was something less then aloof at the moment.

"Miss Carnegie, you'll want to see this. I suggest you dress for warm weather." He told her, and she nodded in understanding. That had been the phrase they used to describe the need for journeys out in the daylight. She sat up slowly, reaching for a pair of glasses.

"What exactly is going on, Justus?"

"One of the servants found something on the beach. Quite advanced technology. I'm unsure of the details, but Carnegie science is in the process of recovering it. Elizabeth groaned. At present, her departments were all headed by walking corpses, and while a little undeath never heart anybody, her servants weren't really cutting it for handling things like this on their own. She would have to look into replacements.

She dressed quickly, darkening her glasses before peering out the window. The sun was still high, and she could see what appeared to be a set of feet sticking out of the beach, and sand lying positively everywhere.
"Huh."


Several Hours Later


The sun had just begun to set over Carnegie Science, and the advanced technology they recovered had finally been successfully dug out. A suit of sorts, and it had been going quite fast to have breached the storm. Elizabeth didn't know too much about the situation, as her technical knowledge was admittedly limited. Business and magic were her true areas of expertise, and she was admittedly uneducated in the area of technology.

Still, the occasion was important enough that Elizabeth herself had tagged along, watching the suit of armor lying there, inanimate. Her sunglasses still sat upon her face, complemented by a smart black suit, her dark brown hair dune up in a bun.

"So what exactly is it? A robot or something?" She asked. One of the corpses on staff shook their heads.

"We think it's a suit of armor. It might even still be occupied." Said the pale-skinned man.

As such, security measures were in place. The two sets of double doors were each manned by two body-armored guards carrying assault rifles. Still, Elizabeth felt a little uneasy. Her company had always been one to take risks, but bringing such an unknown entity so deep into what amounted to their lair seemed a bit too much.

As if just to reassure herself, Elizabeth stepped back from the group, her eyes glazing over beneath the sunglasses, as she muttered a short incantation under her breath. As she did so, the scientists in the lab appeared to discover that the suit could be powered, and so proceeded to immediately attempt to jack into it with an electrical output.

As Elizabeth left her body to glance ahead, she worried about what exactly she might see. The scene flickered forwards, and she saw the suit flickering back to life, awaking and wreaking havoc upon the lab. The thing inside the suit was still alive

Elizabeth tried to come out of her trance as fast as she could, but in her wooziness from exiting the trance (This one had been particularly difficult, for some reason), the most she could get out was;

"S-Stop!"

The suit whirred to life just as Elizabeth let out her warning, which seemed redundant now. The four researchers who had been crowding the table all stepped back in amazement. The machine's voice was cold and hostile, announcing that it was about to start blowing things up. Elizabeth didn't need to know what a "Photon RPG" was to gather that much, nor did she need the power of premonition, although that ability certainly helped.

About the time the thing started speaking, Elizabeth received a vision of the machine turning towards the doors and destroying them effortlessly, blowing up her guards in the process. Cold and calculating as she was, she allowed the doors to act as a distraction, so that she could close the distance unnoticed. She acted now, stepping forwards with supernatural speed, acting upon her premonition.

Elizabeth attempted to flip the table that the faceless being behind the armor had been sitting on, lifting it up and forwards with such force that it sent the armor and the table flying against the wall hard enough to crack the white stone of the wall across from the doors. The researchers scattered from the room, stepping over the remains of the guards, who were grasping for their limbs across the cold ground.

Elizabeth herself remained, advancing towards the place where the suit would lie, reaching for the table and thrusting it out of the way, so that she and the suit, which would likely be leaned up against the wall, were face to face, or face to mask, as it were.

"Please, don't make me damage your suit. It's quite remarkable." She cooed, her tone both hostile and coercive at once.

The machine voice's threat registered upon Elizabeth's ears just as her foresight warned her of what was about to happen. She took the bait.

"Darling, don't test me." Elizabeth cooed, just as menacingly, as the machine vanished into nothingness.

The blade of light pierced her back, impaling her heart. Elizabeth's arms were drawn back behind her head as she let out a scream of agony, that seemed to go on an on forever... She screamed and screamed, until she was coughing and choking, and then... Cackling hysterically.

By now, her hands would have reached the suit's head, where they clamped down upon it like a bear trap. She attempted to pull the suit up and over her, in such a way that the blade would be pulled out before the figure could move up. Spinning on her heels, she would hurl the figure down, head first, onto the cold tiles of the floor, once again causing it to crack.

Her foot would then draw back, attempting to kick the armor's center of mass, sending it flying into the opposite wall. Perhaps unfortunately for her, Elizabeth was not terribly used to combat, and so was not using the best form in her attacks. As such, countering or dodging her strikes would have been trivial to anyone with any real combat experience.

Elizabeth realized her mistake too late. She saw the sweep that would knock her off of her feet, and then the table, crashing her through the wall. At this point, she had already committed fully to the kick, and so had no option but to brace herself. The sweep knocked her foot free of its embrace with the tile, and the table came flying at her with force even she had not expected.

Elizabeth found herself crashing through the wall, her bones crushing under the force of the impact, making a sickening *Crack* sound each time she broke through the brick walls. She came to a stop three walls later, her form colliding with the fourth wall, and damaging it, although the fourth wall remained unbroken.

Sitting limply against the cracked wall, Elizabeth's form already mending itself, Elizabeth sent an order to her minions.

"Don't let him leave!" Came the voice of the Lich, menacing and horrible. As if at once, five more guards poured through the doors of the room they had first fought in. They each carried shotguns, and while it was likely not to be enough to take down her adversary, Elizabeth hoped that it would be enough to stall him as her bones knitted themselves back together.

Beth could not will herself to heal any faster. In the minute or so that the suit took to walk her way, her ribs slid back into place, and the hole in her chest sealed itself shut, her heart reforming. Her bones, which had been crushed into powder, were beginning to mend, so that she could sit herself up easier against the wall, and even move her arms.

"Heh..." She muttered to herself. The suit's inhabitant was just gloating, now. Wasting time attempting to secure a kill on an adversary who was already dead. Though her guards were largely ineffectual in actually defeating their opponent, Elizabeth, chancing herself a peek into the beyond as her adversary advanced, caught glimpses of her staff locking down the building, blast doors confining them to the insides of this building. More guards waited outside the building, armor piercing rifles aimed down towards the exits of the building.

As the machine reached her, it lifted the blade, about to strike, and Elizabeth finally found that her bones had returned to their rightful places. She prepared herself to stop the blade, likely entangling their feet to knock the armor down to her level, where she felt confident she could win a grapple.

And then, something strange happened. She caught a glimpse of the armor's form stop mid swing. Curious, she didn't move. A new voice resonated from the figure, this one male, and much more confused. It backed away as if Elizabeth had the plague, and she raised an eyebrow.

"Oh, are we friends now?" Beth inquired, her right arm now flexing. It was only now that she noticed that her left arm was not present, and had in fact been pinned under the rubble, several feet away. She flexed the arm experimentally, struggling under the weight of the boulder.