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xp_logsThe X-Men follow Beetle and Vulture to their hideout where Rhino is waiting for them along with three massive death robots!
Miles stepped out of the teleportation portal just yards away from the harborside warehouse that apparently housed these mechanized jackasses who had been giving him quite a workout lately. Cliche hideout, but they were three grown men in giant robot suits. This whole mission probably checked off several boxes on TV Tropes.
The harbor was empty and poorly lit. The X-Men, now all in their uniforms after a pit stop to change out of their fancy duds, stood ready to end this and bring in these villains. Miles looked up at Scott, awaiting orders.
Scott held his hand up signaling the team to stop as he took in the view of the building and particularly the doors, "You know it's only polite to knock," he mentioned as energy built up in his eyes before spearing out to impact the doors blowing them off their hinges and back into the room. "We heard party crashing was the thing to do," Scott announced his eyes roving around the room, trying to spot their erstwhile enemies.
The warehouse may have been vast and dark, but considering its sheer size: also particularly empty. The light problem was promptly alleviated as the X-Men entered by the sudden appearance of three sets of ominous, flickering lights set high, high above where a normal-sized man would stand.
What they illuminated was not in scale with what Miles had expected.
Then again, nothing in this warehouse was on par to man or mutant: the lights, now clearly eyes, were set into the faces of three large scale robots that were almost human in their design. They were purple, grey, and reflective with what looked to be a whirring power core set into the chest of each one.
What they were missing, however, were pilot cockpits. This was was only underscored by the three smaller, but also more familiar, figures that sat in wait near the robots. It wasn't the two from the party that spoke, however, but the larger, horned one the X-Men had only seen in media footage.
Rhino laughed, "I say you are just on time, blast-man. Party cannot start without you."
Miles audibly gasped. "Holy shit, robots!" Was he excited or terrified? He wasn't even sure.
Nothing about tonight had felt especially right but Rogue definitely had the 'no' feeling after seeing those robots. Bad guys was one thing, but this? "Jeepers sakes," was all she could think to say. Whistling appreciatively would probably not be appropriate.
"Robots." Clarice stated. "I can break those. Let me break them. I want to see who cries."
Jean smirked a little at Clarice before turning back to the robots. She had no idea she had stepped into a collaborative project by Michael Bay and Guillermo Del Toro.
"Well, someone likes purple," she said.
"Oh em gee," Angel mumbled under her breath. She had a feeling she couldn't just light this on fire and be done with it.
"Someone had an inferiority complex they were tryin' to overcome," Logan said as he took in the sight of the giant robots staring at them. The red laser lights lent a nasty air to the whole situation if it hadn't already been from the get go. "Let's see how well they hold up to adamantium."
Scott very visibly looked each of the robots up and down slowly before giving the Rhino a long look, "So, over compensating much?" he asked the man in a dry voice, as he arched an eyebrow, "Some'thing you've got to learn, the bigger they are, the harder they fall." he noted waving his team forward.
~*~
The X-Men split up to take down the Sentinels. Firestar, Cyclops, and Spider-Man vs. the Rhino!
Miles cracked his knuckles and then his neck and his back. He was ready. This puto wasn't going to get the best of him again, robot or no robot. Although, seriously, robots? The future of mutant murder was now, apparently. "Round two is gonna be a lot more fun than round one was," he taunted. "For me, at least."
Scott was silent before he nodded spitting out orders. "Firestar, he may have a tough hide, but lets see how the animal reacts when you turn up the heat. Spidey, that thing is big, but it can't be agile. Wait for me to distract it then gum up it's joints and hit what exposed electronics you can. Something that big, gotta be something they missed."
"Got it oh fearless leader," Angel piped, hopping off into the air and flying around the gigantic metal piece of junk. Seriously was this what her tax money was going to? Really? "If you can't stand the heat, etc. etc.," she said as she aimed right at what would be the thing's ass if it was a giant human. And she shot off a long stream of flames.
Giant mecha-suits may have had little in the way of emotional-intonation vocalization technology, but if the X-Men listened closely they have been able to hear a lazy confidence in Rhino's voice as he, unmoving, commanded: "Sequence 6-1-6 Initiate."
The robot, which had been idling even as Firestar's flames baked it, suddenly whirred to life — eyes lighting up, joints moving — as it responded in a flat monotone, "Mutant threat detected. Commencing purge operations."
It raised a hand, and suddenly there was a single, unsettling robotic tentacle snaking toward Angel.
"Purge?" Angel repeated even as she kicked off into the air, away from the tentacle. "Didn't they make a movie about that once? Didn't end well for anyone involved, maybe we should avoid — whoa!" She dodged a quick left as the tentacle surged forward. "Purge, bad!"
A force beam shot out and hit the tentacle knocking it off course and away from Angel, "Multiple threats," Scott corrected the robot. Not that it would have much of an effect on the machine, but being able to quip helped him to relieve the stress of dealing with this fight and hopefully showed the others that he was relaxed enough to be making jokes. "Looks like we've got its attention now," he commented loudly launching another force-beam at the robot's knee before ducking under cover.
"Ay ay ay, I can't believe I'm actually fighting a giant robot! It's not even my birthday for a few more months!" Miles's laughter echoed in warehouse as he dodged the wayward pincer-tipped tentacle and crawled up the Sentinel's leg. He couldn't help but notice that the robot didn't look full built; while it wore a sort of purple armor, its joints were exposed. Not a good design choice. Coupled with what looked like an exhaust fan in the middle of its torso, Miles had to wonder if these were really built for combat.
His question was answered quickly, though, when, despite Scott's prediction, it reached a hand behind its back and plucked Miles off it like an errant louse and dropped him to the ground. Miles, not actually being a cat, fell hard on his back.
"Hey, muties, save a dance for me," came Rhino's low, electronic voice. It was clear to see that he'd taken his brief reprieve while the X-Men worried over the robot's tentacles to move himself into a better strategic position — a strategic position which allowed him to barrel into Cyclops like a freight train.
Only the instincts and training of years of working with the X-Men let Scott hear the sound of someone charging him and spin himself just far enough out of the way to avoid being mown down. As it was he was still knocked off his feet and sent sliding along the floor, that was a bruise he was going to feel in the morning, but not without answering in reply as he unleashed two forcebeams into the backs of the Rhino's knees knocking his opponent down. "I guess it's you and me then," Scott noted as he pulled himself up to face the his prone attacker, quickly unleashing a barrage of force beams to test the armour covering him.
Angel was still weaving through the air, trying to escape the giant robot. "Oh come on, of all the things you could possibly build a giant robot for, this is what you choose?" She complained as she dodged another attack and headed straight for a wall, hoping to run the robot into it.
Even when he was back on his feet, the room wouldn't stop moving for Miles. Oh, that had hurt. He promised to never flick off a bug crawling on him again, if that was how it felt. His spider-sense straightened everything as the tentacle made its way back to him, and Miles leaped over it like it was an evil metallic jump rope.
"Giant murder robots," Miles lamented as he grabbed the tentacle farther up, away from the pincers at the end, and tugged on it with all his strength like he was trying to win his school's field day. "How pedestrian, right?" Even with spider-proportional strength, he only succeeded at disturbing the Sentinel's footing. But that was enough to knock it off balance so it's eye laser blast went wild, blasting a hole in the ceiling but sparing Angel.
Rhino remained still as the mutant shot beam after beam of red, laser-like energy at him. The beams ricocheted off of the armor and left burn marks but no further damage, hitting walls and coming dangerously close to some of the other X-Men. "Initiate Knock-Down Propulsion Protocols," he said a moment later, unconcerned by the laser assault.
Nodules popped open at his shoulders and his waist, revealing repulsor-like units that immediately began to propel him upward into a standing position once more. Rhino dug his metal-encased fingers into the wall nearest him — it crumbled beneath the pressure until he found some rebar. Yanking it free, he flung it — and all the concrete still attached to it — at the mutant who had fired the laser beams at him from his eyes.
Scott grimaced as he rolled under the concrete coming to his feet as he opened fire on the repulsor units, hoping the feedback if he destroyed them would take the armored man out of the fight. "Seriously, what is it with people not knowing when to stay down?" he asked to no-one in particular as he launched a forcebeam at the next piece of concrete Rhino picked up, pulverizing it in the man's gauntlets.
"It's not a people, it's a robot!" Angel corrected helpfully, hands up above her heads as a giant fireball formed between her palms. "Do robots even have self preservation?" And with that, she launched her fireball - about the size of one of those giant yoga balls — at the robot's back.
Equilibrium disturbed, the Sentinel's laser eyes burned a hole in the floor a foot away from where Miles stood. In response, Spider-Man shot a dozen web bullets at its face, temporarily blinding it, but the lasers burned through the webbing with ease. Miles sighed as he used the momentary distraction to climb up its back again and slap where Angel had damaged it with a couple of venom blasts.
"Robots aren't even supposed to harm people!" he said as green lightning surged through the unit. He smirked behind his mask and pressed his hands against the Sentinel again, charging up another pair of blasts. "That's Asimov's first rule of robotics. That should go for Russian cyborgs, too!"
The propulsion units had already flickered off and closed, so the beams of red light scuffed their metal coverings but didn't do significant damage to them or the rest of the suit. "Is not my job to 'stay down,'" Rhino said, flexing his fingers within their metal digits. He couldn't dislodge all of the debris, particularly not the smaller pieces that had lodged beneath the plating over his knuckles. That didn't matter, though. What mattered was that he was still capable of picking up another piece of concrete-covered rebar to jab at the mutant's face.
Scott slipped to the side, parrying away the rebar as he unleashed a point blank force blast into one of RHINO's joints, "No, but it's my job to put you down," he countered. "And that's where you'll end up, one way or the other, so might as well make it easy on yourself," he noted ducking under another jab and unleashing another forceblast into the same joint.
Angel flew up higher, aiming another attack at its head. Most things couldn't survive without heads, right? Well chickens maybe. For a little while. But robots weren't chickens. Maybe if they damaged that enough it would go down.
"Things that aren't damaged by fire really aren't natural," she complained as she threw a series of fireballs at the head.
The Sentinel stumbled back under the force of Angel's attack, and Miles leaped off before he accidentally got hurt. Landing a few feet behind and to the side of the automaton, he shot a pair of web lines at the opposite wall to act as a tripwire. "Get it back a few more feet, Firestar!" he called to his teammate.
"Yessir!" Angel called back, repeating the attack on the head before flying down to aim at what would've been the Sentinel's knees if it was following a human structure. She aimed a series of successive attacks at each leg, driving the robot further back, then flew up for one last yoga-ball sized blast at its back.
Miles pulled the webs taut and anchored himself in place, sticking his feet to the ground like he did when climbing a wall. The Sentinel, unable to compensate for its balance, lost its footing and fell. Several tons of metal crashed to the ground, shaking the foundations of the warehouse. Like a turtle or one of those somersaulting robot dog toys, it remained prone, unable to get to its feet.
Scott spun to the side avoiding another swipe from the Rhino as forcebeams continued to pound the armour's joints with unerring accuracy, each attack hitting exactly the same point on the joints targeted. "See," he nodded at the Sentinel, "It's only a matter of time now," as he spoke Scott slipped behind RHINO unleashing a point blank beam full powered into the back of the man's knee causing the motors to splutter and give up the fight in a hail of sparks to protest the abuse they'd been put through.
Rhino stumbled and wound up using his latest piece of rebar-and-concrete to catch himself just before his suit gave out completely in that one knee. He had no idea how the others were doing, but they weren't his responsibility. The improved suit was his responsibility. Realizing he was once again outmatched despite the preparation that had gone into this venture, he braced himself with the suit's good leg and spun in a viciously fast maneuver, swinging the rebar as he went.
A forcebeam sheared through the piece of rebar sending it flying into a nearby wall as Scott calmly stepped back out of hte range of Rhino's fists. "Like I said, stay down," he warned menacingly, "If you keep this up I'll have to dismantle that suit of yours piece by piece." There was no give in the X-man's gaze, just the glowing ruby eyes that promised the Rhino that he was both more than capable and willing to back up his threat if pushed, and perhaps a little part of Scott hoped Rhino would get up again.
~*~
Rogue and Wolverine vs. the Beetle!
"Can I just say," Rogue started, backing up to take full measure of the robot and the Beetle, "you take me to the best places?" She glanced over at Logan. "How's about you take cold and metallic and I take ugly over here?"
''Fine by me. Long as cold and metallic ain't got some electric field goin' for him." And even if it did, it wouldn't matter in the end. There wasn't anything Logan had encountered so far that could stand up to adamantium. Sticky stuff on the other hand was a different story. But from the looks of it, he should be able to easily slice through the giant robot.
Sparks of electricity crackled along the Beetle's hands. "You're not going to underestimate me again, you mutie freaks!" he shouted, his voice mildly distorted through his helmet's speakers. "And you can't keep Osborn safe forever. He's dead. You're all dead!" The warehouse seemed to shake from the thunderous boom that accompanied the bolt of lightning Beetle hurled at Rogue, which awoke the slumbering giant next to him. It fixed its glowing red gaze on Logan.
"Mutant termination protocols initiated," it said coolly, as if it were just something so mundane as reading off a recipe and not in fact letting loose pinprick beams of blazingly hot energy at the feral mutant.
Rogue barely managed to get out of the way of the lightning, not expecting a creature called Beetle to have those powers. "Well shit," she called out, floating in the air, and trying her best to look around for a weapon. Maybe she should've taken the robot. "I already did, sugar. Seems you're not as terrifying as you think you are." Using her speed to her advantage, she launched herself at Beetle, with the hopes of knocking him in the head.
Beetle barely had time to brace himself before the impact swept him off his feet with the force of a tidal wave. He tried to align himself in midair as he was flung across the warehouse but his wings sputtered ineffectually and he tumbled to the ground.
Logan ran toward the Sentinel's legs. If the damn thing couldn't walk then it'd be easier to disable and maybe they wouldn't end up completely destroying the place. He barrelled into the left one, putting a sizeable dent into the metal sheeting. He then used his claws on the section where the foot was wielded to the leg in an attempt to disable all the connections there.
The Sentinel unit reared back but maintained its footing. Glowing eyes still focused on the clawed man before it, the robot raised its hands, palms out, and thick metal coils tipped with a four-pronged pincer shot out. One went to Logan to entrap him while the other, seemingly with a mind of its own, tracked Rogue.
Having already banished the robot from her mind (Logan would have it under control), Rogue was happy to see that the Beetle was not only stunned, but clearly had been knocked off his groove. So that made it worse when, as she neared her own bad guy, she heard a whoosh and felt something grab onto her foot. Yelping, she tugged and looked behind her. "These things got tentacles?!" Doubling over, she gave the strongest punch she could, managing to get her foot free barely.
"Don't let her escape!" Beetle commanded. The Sentinel unit was well ahead of him, though. While the blow had freed Rogue from its grip, the coil was not damaged, and the robot used it as a whip to slap her with bone-breaking force.
Beetle, meanwhile, charged and fired a lightning bolt at the other tendril. The Sentinel would withstand the damage, but the electricity was conducted in both directions and would fry Wolverine, still in the robot's grip.
Logan had his claws sunk into the tentacle in an abortive measure to get free and expected more resistance than several layers of thick coil slicing easily open. "Yeah, I kinda noticed," Logan said dryly. The sheer width of the tentacle was slowing him down along with having to shove pieces of coiled wire and metal sheeting aside. He wasn't moving fast enough to drop free before the electricity hit him with full force. He jerked and twitched, biting back a few yelps. The bolt left him dazed for a few moments, which the Sentinel used to widely swing him around.
Once his head cleared, he snarled and glared up at the robotic monster. He rapidly sliced his way free of what remained of the tentacle claw, dropping to the ground with a loud thud. The concrete flooring now had an impact crator and sizeable cracks spreading from it. He immediately had to dodge the lasers that were now searing the ground around him and doing even more damage to the floor. He called out, "Beetle, I'm gonna effin' slice ya in half for that, ya flyin' piece of waste!"
Even though she'd only been knocked out momentarily, it was enough to make her see double. "That's a concussion," she muttered to herself. The robot had already lost interest in her, assuming she'd be incapacitated for longer. Being invulnerable did have its benefits.
Doing her best to avoid detection (were those LASERS coming out of its eyes?!), she got as close as she neared before calling out an expletive. The sentinel spun around and shot out tentacles in one smooth motion. Having expected this, Rogue grinned and flew as quickly as she could looking behind her to ensure the coils were following her. Weaving in and out between its legs, she repeated this a few times before flying behind and pushing on the robot's back. The sudden motion caused the robot to trip, with Rogue scooping up Logan and getting herself into the air. "Timber," she cried out happily.
"Hope that damn thing squishes the insect," Logan muttered from his position in Rogue's arms. "Least all the damage was contained here. We won't be makin' the news for that anyway."
~*~
Marvel Girl and Blink vs. the Vulture!
The ground shook with every step the sentinel took as it made its way toward them.
Halt, mutant. The voice was tinny, authoritative, yet emotionless. Everything she expected in a giant robot.
Jean backed up, attempting to maintain distance as she tried to figure out a plan. She glanced to Clarice, who seemed to be the only one close by. Everyone else had scattered with their own problems to face.
"Okay, so we need to disable it....somehow. It's human shaped, but I'm not sure if the same rules apply as--" She was cut off as the Sentinel's eyes suddenly flashed and a laser beam shot out in her direction, one she quickly dodged by ducking behind a massive piece of equipment.
"Laser beams? Really? This isn't 1952!" she said.
"What did you expect?" Clarice shouted back from behind her own machinery, "They did horrible things to purple!" Pulling out a handful of pennies to shoot through her portals at the thing, she glared as they had little effect. They were effectively bullets the way she used them, gaining momentum between portals until she redirected them and their energy. "Well....we could take it apart?" She was good for that.
Jean eyed the giant behemoth, momentarily distracted by Clarice's power stunt.
"Works for me!" she said.
But the Sentinel had also suddenly noticed Clarice as a threat. It fired its laser vision her again, but then tried to anticipate where she was going to dodge and shot out a pair of tentacles at her to snare her with.
Clarice wasn't fast enough to dodge the snare and ended up tangled, "This is the plot to bad porn!" she shrieked, opening a portal both behind and below her to cut off the tentacles and then drop into her other portal, appearing behind Jean, already tugging the metal off herself. "See? Apart is a good plan," she stated eyeing the giant machine.
It stood for a moment, recalculating and determining where Clarice went, undeterred by losing its tentacles and instead powered up the lasers built into its hands.
Eying the separated tentacles, the wheels started turning in Jean's mind.
~I have an idea. Can you distract it?~ she said.
The Vulture chose that moment to make his move, swooping behind Jean and driving himself into the ground. The metal of his suit made a resonating clang as he landed and, using the weight of his body armor to his advantage, kicked her to the ground.
Jean let out something between a surprised grunt and a cry, skidding across the dirty warehouse floor. She'd seen her share of abandoned warehouses to last a lifetime.
Her head snapped up and she narrowed her eyes at the Vulture, aiming a telekinetic blast at him to try to knock him into the legs of the Sentinel.
"Wait your turn."
The Vulture let out a small cry as he was pushed off his feet and back toward the Sentinel, but he managed to catch his bearings quickly enough to activate what remained of his wings. The added drag kept him from flying into the metal, and he instead used the momentum from Jean's push to hover off the ground.
The Sentinel, noticing a sitting target in Jean, changed its focus. Mutant disarmed, it observed, the timbre in its voice barely shifting as it fired its hand lasers toward the genetic anomaly on the ground.
"Not hardly!" Clarice yelled as she teleported up onto the Sentinel's shoulder, trying to distract the machine from Jean so the red head could deal with Vulture while worked on the Sentinel. There had to be a control panel somewhere, right? She needed to find it and destroy it.
Mentally kicking herself, Jean sprinted to get out of the way, ducking and dodging the bright flashes of energy. The darkened room glowed red from the light, and the lasers bounced off a wall and a piece of equipment, leaving singe marks and sparks.
After a moment, Jean smelled something burning, and glanced down to find a few tendrils of red hair on the ground from the laser beam getting a little closer than than she realized.
"Oh, come on!"
Quickly patting bits of her smouldering hair out, Jean narrowed her eyes, then levitated off the ground and shot toward Vulture, using a force bubble to try to slam him into the ceiling.
"You're not the only one who can fly."
They had two opponents so it was a matter of picking and choosing who fought what battle.
In the seconds during which he was pushed further from the ground, the Vulture had a smirk on his face. He lifted his wings as Jean's powers launched him, allowing them to take the brunt of the impact with the warehouse's ceiling. Pieces of concrete crumbled beneath him, but he still managed to look entirely too satisfied.
"Maybe not," he said, moving to swoop over Jean. "But the sky is my element. Thought you'd have been able to guess that." He dove toward Jean, hoping the impact of his armored body would be enough to knock her out.
Ah ha! Control panel! Using her knife to pry it open, Clarice made a face at the blinking LED lights and circuit boards. This wasn't the wires she was hoping for like in the bad scifi movies. Fine. She'd break stuff anyways.
The Sentinel was trying to dislodge her and she flew off, teleporting around until she could get back to where she wanted to be, the Sentinel doing everything it could to protect itself and fulfill its mission. Stupid robot. "I am breaking you at the subatomic level," she muttered, opening a portal inside the machine and making it as large as she dared.
Jean waited until the Vulture was nearly upon her, sensing his approach before she abruptly dropped from the sky before he could hit her, intending to use his momentum against him to get him to crash right along into a nearby wall.
"You don't say."
It worked, sort of. Jean's motion was too sudden for the Vulture to recalibrate his flight pattern, and the warehouse wasn't big enough for him to swoop back around. He turned his back as he flew so that his wings hit the wall first, crushing the metal surface. He wriggled, trying to extricate a few of his metal feathers from the holes they'd made on impact.
With the man stuck in the wall, Jean attempted to telekinetically shove him flat against the wall and hold him there. "Stay," she said, glancing back to Clarice.
~Can you see if you can get him to try to grab at you by teleporting onto his head? I'll draw his laser fire. I'm thinking of a game of pop goes the weasel.~ she said, glancing down at the severed tentacle with a faint smirk.
~Know what I mean?~
"All around the mulberry bush!" Clarice half sang, half yelled as she teleported around the robot, ending up on his head and using a knife to help hold her up there, "The monkey chased the weasel!" she added, calling to Jean that she understood and was absolutely fine with being bait.
A grin blossomed across Jean's face, and she gave a simple nod of acknowledgement before her attention turned back to the Sentinel, and she took off into a sprint. The Sentinel's tinny voice issued an order that neither woman ever agree to.
"HALT MUTANT."
The Sentinel's eyes began to flash red, torn between the target on its head and the other in it's field of vision. So it tried to divide and conquer by firing a laser beam in Jean's direction, even as it's hands went to try to grab Clarice.
But Jean headed it off, and the tentacle that had been slice off coiled around the Sentinel's wrists like a snake, securing the it's hands to its head. The hands blocked the laser beam, refocusing the energy and causing it to build up.
"ERROR. ERROR. ERROR."
Burning metal and rubber filled the air, and suddenly the Sentinel's head exploded in a shower of metal debris and sparks. In all the chaos Jean's concentration slipped, leaving the Vulture unpinned.
The Vulture had managed to wriggle his suit free of the wall, but with Jean's focus elsewhere, gravity took over, and he slid for a second before falling to the ground. Debris landed around him, and a high-pitched screech filled the room as the semiconductors in the Sentinel's audio module blew. Rather than try to stand, the Vulture covered his ears as he tried to plot and escape route.
His brain and his technology had failed him. This one was over.
~*~
The Sentinels have one last trick up their sleeve, though.
Miles's spider-sense had been ringing pretty much constantly all night because there never was a moment he wasn't in danger. It had become a white noise almost, to the point that Miles hardly noticed it now that the Sentinel and Rhino were put down.
But it blared to life and set Miles on edge when the fallen Sentinel's eyes illuminated again and its voice boomed throughout the warehouse, joined in a threeway chorus with the other two units.
"Sentinel unit compromised. Activate self-destruct sequence in fifteen seconds. Fourteen . . ."
The Beetle, who was miraculously still on his feet even after suffering a disastrous beatdown by Rogue, cursed loudly. "Shit. I can't believe that fucker actually did it!"
Struggling up despite the damage his suit had sustained, Rhino chose not to speak. The litany of curses streaming through his mind was more than sufficient. Throwing chunks of concrete toward the laser-shooting man with one hand in an effort to stave off further conflict, he began pulling himself backward with his other hand. Using his functioning leg to assist, he scanned the area around him for an escape.
It was tough, but the Vulture had finally managed to get off the ground. His armor had seen better days, to be sure, but he was confident his wings would work. He would fly. He had to fly; something needed to go right today.
"Gentlemen," he said rather hurriedly, "this is our cue."
Scott gave the fleeing villains one final look before turning away and activating his communicator, "Everyone disengage and bail out, this place is going to blow and we don't want to be caught in the fallout." Putting action to his words the X-man started for the closest wall, if there wasn't a nearby entrance they could make one.
Opening portals to get everyone out, Clarice yelled, "All ashore that's going ashore!" because once her portals closed, they were out!
Miles spared a glance behind him before following the others through one of Clarice's exit portals. He kind of expected a scene out of Genesis, that turning back when fire and destruction rained upon them, he'd be transformed into a pillar of salt. And wouldn't that just be the best way to end this whole scheme?
"Self-destruct sequence in three, two, one . . . goodbye." The Sentinel's pleasant tone of voice stood in sharp contrast to thunderous explosion that took out the entire warehouse and much of the pier on which it stood, and probably woke up half of the Bronx. The Rhino, Vulture, and Beetle were nowhere to be seen, but the X-Men were all in one piece. Miles felt good about that.
He felt less good about the little meteorite that he had to leap back to avoid getting whacked in the head by. No, not a meteorite, he realized when he looked closer at the steaming pile of metal at his feet. The pincer from one of the Sentinel tentacles, launched into the air when the robot went kaboom. He wouldn't have given it much thought, but he'd seen that exact same pincer before. Before he came to Xavier's, before his own black and red suit, before he was even officially Spider-Man.
"This is Doctor Octopus," he gasped, accidentally bumping into Jean when he stepped back.
The world had turned upon its head after the explosion, and Jean had reflexively thrown up a telekinetic force field to protect herself from the debris. Ashes, smoke, and shimmering air curled off the wreckage.
When Miles bumped into Jean he had hit her force field instead. It felt like a solid mass of shimmering nothing. Jean let the force field drop, unconsciously glancing the boy, as well as her teammates, over for injuries.
"Doctor...Octopus?" she said curiously, eying the pincher. It looked more mechanical than a cephalopod limb but she had a feeling it was a figurative nickname.
"I take it you two have met before. Would you be able to tell us more about him when we get back to the mansion? It looks like he's been busy."
"Yeah, yeah, I'll tell you everything." Peter would have to know, too. If Ock was back after all this time . . . Miles shuddered.
Rogue normally liked to wait until everyone was safe but fuck it -- a giant robot attacked her today and she ruined her outfit. "One normal day," she grumbled to herself, as she tossed a grateful smile to Clarice. "Jus' one normal day." With that, she jumped through a portal.
"Well, this has been fun," Angel quipped as she flew for the portal. "Loving the giant robots, yeah, living the sci-fi dream!" And she was out.
"Giants robots explodin'. Just what the world needed more of," Logan said as he ran toward the nearest portal. That explosion would definitely make the news then they'd have to wait for the fallout and the PR spin. There'd be plenty of both.
"Fuckin' robots," Clarice was breathing hard from opening so many portals and bringing so many people through. Her limit wasn't distance, it was weight. She could teleport a good deal more than herself these days, but the weight still took it out of her, "I want pancakes."
"After this," Scott told her as he stepped through the portal after waiting everyone but Clarice to made it through, "I think we all deserve pancakes, or waffles. Something other than paperwork today," Scott wasn't quite sure how he was gonna write this report and explain to Charles how they gone to catch some bad had blown up a warehouse and found the Sentinels were back. That wasn't gonna be fun.
Miles stepped out of the teleportation portal just yards away from the harborside warehouse that apparently housed these mechanized jackasses who had been giving him quite a workout lately. Cliche hideout, but they were three grown men in giant robot suits. This whole mission probably checked off several boxes on TV Tropes.
The harbor was empty and poorly lit. The X-Men, now all in their uniforms after a pit stop to change out of their fancy duds, stood ready to end this and bring in these villains. Miles looked up at Scott, awaiting orders.
Scott held his hand up signaling the team to stop as he took in the view of the building and particularly the doors, "You know it's only polite to knock," he mentioned as energy built up in his eyes before spearing out to impact the doors blowing them off their hinges and back into the room. "We heard party crashing was the thing to do," Scott announced his eyes roving around the room, trying to spot their erstwhile enemies.
The warehouse may have been vast and dark, but considering its sheer size: also particularly empty. The light problem was promptly alleviated as the X-Men entered by the sudden appearance of three sets of ominous, flickering lights set high, high above where a normal-sized man would stand.
What they illuminated was not in scale with what Miles had expected.
Then again, nothing in this warehouse was on par to man or mutant: the lights, now clearly eyes, were set into the faces of three large scale robots that were almost human in their design. They were purple, grey, and reflective with what looked to be a whirring power core set into the chest of each one.
What they were missing, however, were pilot cockpits. This was was only underscored by the three smaller, but also more familiar, figures that sat in wait near the robots. It wasn't the two from the party that spoke, however, but the larger, horned one the X-Men had only seen in media footage.
Rhino laughed, "I say you are just on time, blast-man. Party cannot start without you."
Miles audibly gasped. "Holy shit, robots!" Was he excited or terrified? He wasn't even sure.
Nothing about tonight had felt especially right but Rogue definitely had the 'no' feeling after seeing those robots. Bad guys was one thing, but this? "Jeepers sakes," was all she could think to say. Whistling appreciatively would probably not be appropriate.
"Robots." Clarice stated. "I can break those. Let me break them. I want to see who cries."
Jean smirked a little at Clarice before turning back to the robots. She had no idea she had stepped into a collaborative project by Michael Bay and Guillermo Del Toro.
"Well, someone likes purple," she said.
"Oh em gee," Angel mumbled under her breath. She had a feeling she couldn't just light this on fire and be done with it.
"Someone had an inferiority complex they were tryin' to overcome," Logan said as he took in the sight of the giant robots staring at them. The red laser lights lent a nasty air to the whole situation if it hadn't already been from the get go. "Let's see how well they hold up to adamantium."
Scott very visibly looked each of the robots up and down slowly before giving the Rhino a long look, "So, over compensating much?" he asked the man in a dry voice, as he arched an eyebrow, "Some'thing you've got to learn, the bigger they are, the harder they fall." he noted waving his team forward.
~*~
The X-Men split up to take down the Sentinels. Firestar, Cyclops, and Spider-Man vs. the Rhino!
Miles cracked his knuckles and then his neck and his back. He was ready. This puto wasn't going to get the best of him again, robot or no robot. Although, seriously, robots? The future of mutant murder was now, apparently. "Round two is gonna be a lot more fun than round one was," he taunted. "For me, at least."
Scott was silent before he nodded spitting out orders. "Firestar, he may have a tough hide, but lets see how the animal reacts when you turn up the heat. Spidey, that thing is big, but it can't be agile. Wait for me to distract it then gum up it's joints and hit what exposed electronics you can. Something that big, gotta be something they missed."
"Got it oh fearless leader," Angel piped, hopping off into the air and flying around the gigantic metal piece of junk. Seriously was this what her tax money was going to? Really? "If you can't stand the heat, etc. etc.," she said as she aimed right at what would be the thing's ass if it was a giant human. And she shot off a long stream of flames.
Giant mecha-suits may have had little in the way of emotional-intonation vocalization technology, but if the X-Men listened closely they have been able to hear a lazy confidence in Rhino's voice as he, unmoving, commanded: "Sequence 6-1-6 Initiate."
The robot, which had been idling even as Firestar's flames baked it, suddenly whirred to life — eyes lighting up, joints moving — as it responded in a flat monotone, "Mutant threat detected. Commencing purge operations."
It raised a hand, and suddenly there was a single, unsettling robotic tentacle snaking toward Angel.
"Purge?" Angel repeated even as she kicked off into the air, away from the tentacle. "Didn't they make a movie about that once? Didn't end well for anyone involved, maybe we should avoid — whoa!" She dodged a quick left as the tentacle surged forward. "Purge, bad!"
A force beam shot out and hit the tentacle knocking it off course and away from Angel, "Multiple threats," Scott corrected the robot. Not that it would have much of an effect on the machine, but being able to quip helped him to relieve the stress of dealing with this fight and hopefully showed the others that he was relaxed enough to be making jokes. "Looks like we've got its attention now," he commented loudly launching another force-beam at the robot's knee before ducking under cover.
"Ay ay ay, I can't believe I'm actually fighting a giant robot! It's not even my birthday for a few more months!" Miles's laughter echoed in warehouse as he dodged the wayward pincer-tipped tentacle and crawled up the Sentinel's leg. He couldn't help but notice that the robot didn't look full built; while it wore a sort of purple armor, its joints were exposed. Not a good design choice. Coupled with what looked like an exhaust fan in the middle of its torso, Miles had to wonder if these were really built for combat.
His question was answered quickly, though, when, despite Scott's prediction, it reached a hand behind its back and plucked Miles off it like an errant louse and dropped him to the ground. Miles, not actually being a cat, fell hard on his back.
"Hey, muties, save a dance for me," came Rhino's low, electronic voice. It was clear to see that he'd taken his brief reprieve while the X-Men worried over the robot's tentacles to move himself into a better strategic position — a strategic position which allowed him to barrel into Cyclops like a freight train.
Only the instincts and training of years of working with the X-Men let Scott hear the sound of someone charging him and spin himself just far enough out of the way to avoid being mown down. As it was he was still knocked off his feet and sent sliding along the floor, that was a bruise he was going to feel in the morning, but not without answering in reply as he unleashed two forcebeams into the backs of the Rhino's knees knocking his opponent down. "I guess it's you and me then," Scott noted as he pulled himself up to face the his prone attacker, quickly unleashing a barrage of force beams to test the armour covering him.
Angel was still weaving through the air, trying to escape the giant robot. "Oh come on, of all the things you could possibly build a giant robot for, this is what you choose?" She complained as she dodged another attack and headed straight for a wall, hoping to run the robot into it.
Even when he was back on his feet, the room wouldn't stop moving for Miles. Oh, that had hurt. He promised to never flick off a bug crawling on him again, if that was how it felt. His spider-sense straightened everything as the tentacle made its way back to him, and Miles leaped over it like it was an evil metallic jump rope.
"Giant murder robots," Miles lamented as he grabbed the tentacle farther up, away from the pincers at the end, and tugged on it with all his strength like he was trying to win his school's field day. "How pedestrian, right?" Even with spider-proportional strength, he only succeeded at disturbing the Sentinel's footing. But that was enough to knock it off balance so it's eye laser blast went wild, blasting a hole in the ceiling but sparing Angel.
Rhino remained still as the mutant shot beam after beam of red, laser-like energy at him. The beams ricocheted off of the armor and left burn marks but no further damage, hitting walls and coming dangerously close to some of the other X-Men. "Initiate Knock-Down Propulsion Protocols," he said a moment later, unconcerned by the laser assault.
Nodules popped open at his shoulders and his waist, revealing repulsor-like units that immediately began to propel him upward into a standing position once more. Rhino dug his metal-encased fingers into the wall nearest him — it crumbled beneath the pressure until he found some rebar. Yanking it free, he flung it — and all the concrete still attached to it — at the mutant who had fired the laser beams at him from his eyes.
Scott grimaced as he rolled under the concrete coming to his feet as he opened fire on the repulsor units, hoping the feedback if he destroyed them would take the armored man out of the fight. "Seriously, what is it with people not knowing when to stay down?" he asked to no-one in particular as he launched a forcebeam at the next piece of concrete Rhino picked up, pulverizing it in the man's gauntlets.
"It's not a people, it's a robot!" Angel corrected helpfully, hands up above her heads as a giant fireball formed between her palms. "Do robots even have self preservation?" And with that, she launched her fireball - about the size of one of those giant yoga balls — at the robot's back.
Equilibrium disturbed, the Sentinel's laser eyes burned a hole in the floor a foot away from where Miles stood. In response, Spider-Man shot a dozen web bullets at its face, temporarily blinding it, but the lasers burned through the webbing with ease. Miles sighed as he used the momentary distraction to climb up its back again and slap where Angel had damaged it with a couple of venom blasts.
"Robots aren't even supposed to harm people!" he said as green lightning surged through the unit. He smirked behind his mask and pressed his hands against the Sentinel again, charging up another pair of blasts. "That's Asimov's first rule of robotics. That should go for Russian cyborgs, too!"
The propulsion units had already flickered off and closed, so the beams of red light scuffed their metal coverings but didn't do significant damage to them or the rest of the suit. "Is not my job to 'stay down,'" Rhino said, flexing his fingers within their metal digits. He couldn't dislodge all of the debris, particularly not the smaller pieces that had lodged beneath the plating over his knuckles. That didn't matter, though. What mattered was that he was still capable of picking up another piece of concrete-covered rebar to jab at the mutant's face.
Scott slipped to the side, parrying away the rebar as he unleashed a point blank force blast into one of RHINO's joints, "No, but it's my job to put you down," he countered. "And that's where you'll end up, one way or the other, so might as well make it easy on yourself," he noted ducking under another jab and unleashing another forceblast into the same joint.
Angel flew up higher, aiming another attack at its head. Most things couldn't survive without heads, right? Well chickens maybe. For a little while. But robots weren't chickens. Maybe if they damaged that enough it would go down.
"Things that aren't damaged by fire really aren't natural," she complained as she threw a series of fireballs at the head.
The Sentinel stumbled back under the force of Angel's attack, and Miles leaped off before he accidentally got hurt. Landing a few feet behind and to the side of the automaton, he shot a pair of web lines at the opposite wall to act as a tripwire. "Get it back a few more feet, Firestar!" he called to his teammate.
"Yessir!" Angel called back, repeating the attack on the head before flying down to aim at what would've been the Sentinel's knees if it was following a human structure. She aimed a series of successive attacks at each leg, driving the robot further back, then flew up for one last yoga-ball sized blast at its back.
Miles pulled the webs taut and anchored himself in place, sticking his feet to the ground like he did when climbing a wall. The Sentinel, unable to compensate for its balance, lost its footing and fell. Several tons of metal crashed to the ground, shaking the foundations of the warehouse. Like a turtle or one of those somersaulting robot dog toys, it remained prone, unable to get to its feet.
Scott spun to the side avoiding another swipe from the Rhino as forcebeams continued to pound the armour's joints with unerring accuracy, each attack hitting exactly the same point on the joints targeted. "See," he nodded at the Sentinel, "It's only a matter of time now," as he spoke Scott slipped behind RHINO unleashing a point blank beam full powered into the back of the man's knee causing the motors to splutter and give up the fight in a hail of sparks to protest the abuse they'd been put through.
Rhino stumbled and wound up using his latest piece of rebar-and-concrete to catch himself just before his suit gave out completely in that one knee. He had no idea how the others were doing, but they weren't his responsibility. The improved suit was his responsibility. Realizing he was once again outmatched despite the preparation that had gone into this venture, he braced himself with the suit's good leg and spun in a viciously fast maneuver, swinging the rebar as he went.
A forcebeam sheared through the piece of rebar sending it flying into a nearby wall as Scott calmly stepped back out of hte range of Rhino's fists. "Like I said, stay down," he warned menacingly, "If you keep this up I'll have to dismantle that suit of yours piece by piece." There was no give in the X-man's gaze, just the glowing ruby eyes that promised the Rhino that he was both more than capable and willing to back up his threat if pushed, and perhaps a little part of Scott hoped Rhino would get up again.
~*~
Rogue and Wolverine vs. the Beetle!
"Can I just say," Rogue started, backing up to take full measure of the robot and the Beetle, "you take me to the best places?" She glanced over at Logan. "How's about you take cold and metallic and I take ugly over here?"
''Fine by me. Long as cold and metallic ain't got some electric field goin' for him." And even if it did, it wouldn't matter in the end. There wasn't anything Logan had encountered so far that could stand up to adamantium. Sticky stuff on the other hand was a different story. But from the looks of it, he should be able to easily slice through the giant robot.
Sparks of electricity crackled along the Beetle's hands. "You're not going to underestimate me again, you mutie freaks!" he shouted, his voice mildly distorted through his helmet's speakers. "And you can't keep Osborn safe forever. He's dead. You're all dead!" The warehouse seemed to shake from the thunderous boom that accompanied the bolt of lightning Beetle hurled at Rogue, which awoke the slumbering giant next to him. It fixed its glowing red gaze on Logan.
"Mutant termination protocols initiated," it said coolly, as if it were just something so mundane as reading off a recipe and not in fact letting loose pinprick beams of blazingly hot energy at the feral mutant.
Rogue barely managed to get out of the way of the lightning, not expecting a creature called Beetle to have those powers. "Well shit," she called out, floating in the air, and trying her best to look around for a weapon. Maybe she should've taken the robot. "I already did, sugar. Seems you're not as terrifying as you think you are." Using her speed to her advantage, she launched herself at Beetle, with the hopes of knocking him in the head.
Beetle barely had time to brace himself before the impact swept him off his feet with the force of a tidal wave. He tried to align himself in midair as he was flung across the warehouse but his wings sputtered ineffectually and he tumbled to the ground.
Logan ran toward the Sentinel's legs. If the damn thing couldn't walk then it'd be easier to disable and maybe they wouldn't end up completely destroying the place. He barrelled into the left one, putting a sizeable dent into the metal sheeting. He then used his claws on the section where the foot was wielded to the leg in an attempt to disable all the connections there.
The Sentinel unit reared back but maintained its footing. Glowing eyes still focused on the clawed man before it, the robot raised its hands, palms out, and thick metal coils tipped with a four-pronged pincer shot out. One went to Logan to entrap him while the other, seemingly with a mind of its own, tracked Rogue.
Having already banished the robot from her mind (Logan would have it under control), Rogue was happy to see that the Beetle was not only stunned, but clearly had been knocked off his groove. So that made it worse when, as she neared her own bad guy, she heard a whoosh and felt something grab onto her foot. Yelping, she tugged and looked behind her. "These things got tentacles?!" Doubling over, she gave the strongest punch she could, managing to get her foot free barely.
"Don't let her escape!" Beetle commanded. The Sentinel unit was well ahead of him, though. While the blow had freed Rogue from its grip, the coil was not damaged, and the robot used it as a whip to slap her with bone-breaking force.
Beetle, meanwhile, charged and fired a lightning bolt at the other tendril. The Sentinel would withstand the damage, but the electricity was conducted in both directions and would fry Wolverine, still in the robot's grip.
Logan had his claws sunk into the tentacle in an abortive measure to get free and expected more resistance than several layers of thick coil slicing easily open. "Yeah, I kinda noticed," Logan said dryly. The sheer width of the tentacle was slowing him down along with having to shove pieces of coiled wire and metal sheeting aside. He wasn't moving fast enough to drop free before the electricity hit him with full force. He jerked and twitched, biting back a few yelps. The bolt left him dazed for a few moments, which the Sentinel used to widely swing him around.
Once his head cleared, he snarled and glared up at the robotic monster. He rapidly sliced his way free of what remained of the tentacle claw, dropping to the ground with a loud thud. The concrete flooring now had an impact crator and sizeable cracks spreading from it. He immediately had to dodge the lasers that were now searing the ground around him and doing even more damage to the floor. He called out, "Beetle, I'm gonna effin' slice ya in half for that, ya flyin' piece of waste!"
Even though she'd only been knocked out momentarily, it was enough to make her see double. "That's a concussion," she muttered to herself. The robot had already lost interest in her, assuming she'd be incapacitated for longer. Being invulnerable did have its benefits.
Doing her best to avoid detection (were those LASERS coming out of its eyes?!), she got as close as she neared before calling out an expletive. The sentinel spun around and shot out tentacles in one smooth motion. Having expected this, Rogue grinned and flew as quickly as she could looking behind her to ensure the coils were following her. Weaving in and out between its legs, she repeated this a few times before flying behind and pushing on the robot's back. The sudden motion caused the robot to trip, with Rogue scooping up Logan and getting herself into the air. "Timber," she cried out happily.
"Hope that damn thing squishes the insect," Logan muttered from his position in Rogue's arms. "Least all the damage was contained here. We won't be makin' the news for that anyway."
~*~
Marvel Girl and Blink vs. the Vulture!
The ground shook with every step the sentinel took as it made its way toward them.
Halt, mutant. The voice was tinny, authoritative, yet emotionless. Everything she expected in a giant robot.
Jean backed up, attempting to maintain distance as she tried to figure out a plan. She glanced to Clarice, who seemed to be the only one close by. Everyone else had scattered with their own problems to face.
"Okay, so we need to disable it....somehow. It's human shaped, but I'm not sure if the same rules apply as--" She was cut off as the Sentinel's eyes suddenly flashed and a laser beam shot out in her direction, one she quickly dodged by ducking behind a massive piece of equipment.
"Laser beams? Really? This isn't 1952!" she said.
"What did you expect?" Clarice shouted back from behind her own machinery, "They did horrible things to purple!" Pulling out a handful of pennies to shoot through her portals at the thing, she glared as they had little effect. They were effectively bullets the way she used them, gaining momentum between portals until she redirected them and their energy. "Well....we could take it apart?" She was good for that.
Jean eyed the giant behemoth, momentarily distracted by Clarice's power stunt.
"Works for me!" she said.
But the Sentinel had also suddenly noticed Clarice as a threat. It fired its laser vision her again, but then tried to anticipate where she was going to dodge and shot out a pair of tentacles at her to snare her with.
Clarice wasn't fast enough to dodge the snare and ended up tangled, "This is the plot to bad porn!" she shrieked, opening a portal both behind and below her to cut off the tentacles and then drop into her other portal, appearing behind Jean, already tugging the metal off herself. "See? Apart is a good plan," she stated eyeing the giant machine.
It stood for a moment, recalculating and determining where Clarice went, undeterred by losing its tentacles and instead powered up the lasers built into its hands.
Eying the separated tentacles, the wheels started turning in Jean's mind.
~I have an idea. Can you distract it?~ she said.
The Vulture chose that moment to make his move, swooping behind Jean and driving himself into the ground. The metal of his suit made a resonating clang as he landed and, using the weight of his body armor to his advantage, kicked her to the ground.
Jean let out something between a surprised grunt and a cry, skidding across the dirty warehouse floor. She'd seen her share of abandoned warehouses to last a lifetime.
Her head snapped up and she narrowed her eyes at the Vulture, aiming a telekinetic blast at him to try to knock him into the legs of the Sentinel.
"Wait your turn."
The Vulture let out a small cry as he was pushed off his feet and back toward the Sentinel, but he managed to catch his bearings quickly enough to activate what remained of his wings. The added drag kept him from flying into the metal, and he instead used the momentum from Jean's push to hover off the ground.
The Sentinel, noticing a sitting target in Jean, changed its focus. Mutant disarmed, it observed, the timbre in its voice barely shifting as it fired its hand lasers toward the genetic anomaly on the ground.
"Not hardly!" Clarice yelled as she teleported up onto the Sentinel's shoulder, trying to distract the machine from Jean so the red head could deal with Vulture while worked on the Sentinel. There had to be a control panel somewhere, right? She needed to find it and destroy it.
Mentally kicking herself, Jean sprinted to get out of the way, ducking and dodging the bright flashes of energy. The darkened room glowed red from the light, and the lasers bounced off a wall and a piece of equipment, leaving singe marks and sparks.
After a moment, Jean smelled something burning, and glanced down to find a few tendrils of red hair on the ground from the laser beam getting a little closer than than she realized.
"Oh, come on!"
Quickly patting bits of her smouldering hair out, Jean narrowed her eyes, then levitated off the ground and shot toward Vulture, using a force bubble to try to slam him into the ceiling.
"You're not the only one who can fly."
They had two opponents so it was a matter of picking and choosing who fought what battle.
In the seconds during which he was pushed further from the ground, the Vulture had a smirk on his face. He lifted his wings as Jean's powers launched him, allowing them to take the brunt of the impact with the warehouse's ceiling. Pieces of concrete crumbled beneath him, but he still managed to look entirely too satisfied.
"Maybe not," he said, moving to swoop over Jean. "But the sky is my element. Thought you'd have been able to guess that." He dove toward Jean, hoping the impact of his armored body would be enough to knock her out.
Ah ha! Control panel! Using her knife to pry it open, Clarice made a face at the blinking LED lights and circuit boards. This wasn't the wires she was hoping for like in the bad scifi movies. Fine. She'd break stuff anyways.
The Sentinel was trying to dislodge her and she flew off, teleporting around until she could get back to where she wanted to be, the Sentinel doing everything it could to protect itself and fulfill its mission. Stupid robot. "I am breaking you at the subatomic level," she muttered, opening a portal inside the machine and making it as large as she dared.
Jean waited until the Vulture was nearly upon her, sensing his approach before she abruptly dropped from the sky before he could hit her, intending to use his momentum against him to get him to crash right along into a nearby wall.
"You don't say."
It worked, sort of. Jean's motion was too sudden for the Vulture to recalibrate his flight pattern, and the warehouse wasn't big enough for him to swoop back around. He turned his back as he flew so that his wings hit the wall first, crushing the metal surface. He wriggled, trying to extricate a few of his metal feathers from the holes they'd made on impact.
With the man stuck in the wall, Jean attempted to telekinetically shove him flat against the wall and hold him there. "Stay," she said, glancing back to Clarice.
~Can you see if you can get him to try to grab at you by teleporting onto his head? I'll draw his laser fire. I'm thinking of a game of pop goes the weasel.~ she said, glancing down at the severed tentacle with a faint smirk.
~Know what I mean?~
"All around the mulberry bush!" Clarice half sang, half yelled as she teleported around the robot, ending up on his head and using a knife to help hold her up there, "The monkey chased the weasel!" she added, calling to Jean that she understood and was absolutely fine with being bait.
A grin blossomed across Jean's face, and she gave a simple nod of acknowledgement before her attention turned back to the Sentinel, and she took off into a sprint. The Sentinel's tinny voice issued an order that neither woman ever agree to.
"HALT MUTANT."
The Sentinel's eyes began to flash red, torn between the target on its head and the other in it's field of vision. So it tried to divide and conquer by firing a laser beam in Jean's direction, even as it's hands went to try to grab Clarice.
But Jean headed it off, and the tentacle that had been slice off coiled around the Sentinel's wrists like a snake, securing the it's hands to its head. The hands blocked the laser beam, refocusing the energy and causing it to build up.
"ERROR. ERROR. ERROR."
Burning metal and rubber filled the air, and suddenly the Sentinel's head exploded in a shower of metal debris and sparks. In all the chaos Jean's concentration slipped, leaving the Vulture unpinned.
The Vulture had managed to wriggle his suit free of the wall, but with Jean's focus elsewhere, gravity took over, and he slid for a second before falling to the ground. Debris landed around him, and a high-pitched screech filled the room as the semiconductors in the Sentinel's audio module blew. Rather than try to stand, the Vulture covered his ears as he tried to plot and escape route.
His brain and his technology had failed him. This one was over.
~*~
The Sentinels have one last trick up their sleeve, though.
Miles's spider-sense had been ringing pretty much constantly all night because there never was a moment he wasn't in danger. It had become a white noise almost, to the point that Miles hardly noticed it now that the Sentinel and Rhino were put down.
But it blared to life and set Miles on edge when the fallen Sentinel's eyes illuminated again and its voice boomed throughout the warehouse, joined in a threeway chorus with the other two units.
"Sentinel unit compromised. Activate self-destruct sequence in fifteen seconds. Fourteen . . ."
The Beetle, who was miraculously still on his feet even after suffering a disastrous beatdown by Rogue, cursed loudly. "Shit. I can't believe that fucker actually did it!"
Struggling up despite the damage his suit had sustained, Rhino chose not to speak. The litany of curses streaming through his mind was more than sufficient. Throwing chunks of concrete toward the laser-shooting man with one hand in an effort to stave off further conflict, he began pulling himself backward with his other hand. Using his functioning leg to assist, he scanned the area around him for an escape.
It was tough, but the Vulture had finally managed to get off the ground. His armor had seen better days, to be sure, but he was confident his wings would work. He would fly. He had to fly; something needed to go right today.
"Gentlemen," he said rather hurriedly, "this is our cue."
Scott gave the fleeing villains one final look before turning away and activating his communicator, "Everyone disengage and bail out, this place is going to blow and we don't want to be caught in the fallout." Putting action to his words the X-man started for the closest wall, if there wasn't a nearby entrance they could make one.
Opening portals to get everyone out, Clarice yelled, "All ashore that's going ashore!" because once her portals closed, they were out!
Miles spared a glance behind him before following the others through one of Clarice's exit portals. He kind of expected a scene out of Genesis, that turning back when fire and destruction rained upon them, he'd be transformed into a pillar of salt. And wouldn't that just be the best way to end this whole scheme?
"Self-destruct sequence in three, two, one . . . goodbye." The Sentinel's pleasant tone of voice stood in sharp contrast to thunderous explosion that took out the entire warehouse and much of the pier on which it stood, and probably woke up half of the Bronx. The Rhino, Vulture, and Beetle were nowhere to be seen, but the X-Men were all in one piece. Miles felt good about that.
He felt less good about the little meteorite that he had to leap back to avoid getting whacked in the head by. No, not a meteorite, he realized when he looked closer at the steaming pile of metal at his feet. The pincer from one of the Sentinel tentacles, launched into the air when the robot went kaboom. He wouldn't have given it much thought, but he'd seen that exact same pincer before. Before he came to Xavier's, before his own black and red suit, before he was even officially Spider-Man.
"This is Doctor Octopus," he gasped, accidentally bumping into Jean when he stepped back.
The world had turned upon its head after the explosion, and Jean had reflexively thrown up a telekinetic force field to protect herself from the debris. Ashes, smoke, and shimmering air curled off the wreckage.
When Miles bumped into Jean he had hit her force field instead. It felt like a solid mass of shimmering nothing. Jean let the force field drop, unconsciously glancing the boy, as well as her teammates, over for injuries.
"Doctor...Octopus?" she said curiously, eying the pincher. It looked more mechanical than a cephalopod limb but she had a feeling it was a figurative nickname.
"I take it you two have met before. Would you be able to tell us more about him when we get back to the mansion? It looks like he's been busy."
"Yeah, yeah, I'll tell you everything." Peter would have to know, too. If Ock was back after all this time . . . Miles shuddered.
Rogue normally liked to wait until everyone was safe but fuck it -- a giant robot attacked her today and she ruined her outfit. "One normal day," she grumbled to herself, as she tossed a grateful smile to Clarice. "Jus' one normal day." With that, she jumped through a portal.
"Well, this has been fun," Angel quipped as she flew for the portal. "Loving the giant robots, yeah, living the sci-fi dream!" And she was out.
"Giants robots explodin'. Just what the world needed more of," Logan said as he ran toward the nearest portal. That explosion would definitely make the news then they'd have to wait for the fallout and the PR spin. There'd be plenty of both.
"Fuckin' robots," Clarice was breathing hard from opening so many portals and bringing so many people through. Her limit wasn't distance, it was weight. She could teleport a good deal more than herself these days, but the weight still took it out of her, "I want pancakes."
"After this," Scott told her as he stepped through the portal after waiting everyone but Clarice to made it through, "I think we all deserve pancakes, or waffles. Something other than paperwork today," Scott wasn't quite sure how he was gonna write this report and explain to Charles how they gone to catch some bad had blown up a warehouse and found the Sentinels were back. That wasn't gonna be fun.
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