The X-Men Episode 1
"The X-Men and the Sentinel Threat"
By Maru Tamehana (23/5/2019, First Draft)
(24/5/2019)
The X-Men had bunkered up in the hangar, ready for the next mission. It wasn't part of the mansion, it was the secret hangar in the mountain overlooking the sea.
They were resting before their final move against the Brotherhood.
The children were bunkered there too. It wasn't safe for them in the mansion at this time, the Professor felt, without the X-Men there to protect them. And a mission like this – they could use their help. It had been difficult but Cyclops had reluctantly agreed. Children against killer sentinels – what a world.
Kitty was bunking with some of the other children. There weren't any boys and girls dorms, so they were all in bunks and sleeping bags in the same room. It had been an oddly thrilling change from the stultifying rules of the school. Not that she wasn't fond of it. The only thing to put a damper on their excited conversation was the threat of sentinels.
She was just one bunk over from "Idaho" (she called him that, because that's where he claimed to be from, although something in his tone made her suspicious) – a relatively new mutant, still learning his powers, but they had been getting along pretty well.
"Don't fall asleep - you'll fall right into the planetary core," he told her.
"Thanks," she replied sardonically.
He had the power to create iron magma and control it with magnetic fields. He just… didn't like to do it. At least, not too much. He enjoyed being able to do it, though, which she just found funny.
Beast had been discussing ex nihilo and the creation of something from nothing all day in his laboratory – he seemed to find it fascinating. There were few mutants who had demonstrated this kind of capability, that defied ordinary science, and each one expanded their discovery of the nature of the universe – so he liked to say. He and Professor Xavier spent a lot of time discussing it. Beast couldn't be happier really.
He had been constructing some kind of spherical testing device and chamber, which he planned to add to the Danger Room. Something where he could have them put their powers to the test. Iceman had already destroyed his previous equipment.
They wondered at the potential of it, but Xavier had told them that limits always came in somewhere. The boy could exhaust himself – or the economy of the world could. But to always be mindful of the extent of their powers. Kitty liked him.
Forge was working on their X-Plane, the spark of his welder lighting up the hangar, while Scott (Cyclops) and Professor X studied the map for their mission. Scott was going to have to fly them under some heavy weather.
The girls were otherwise all asleep – Jean Grey had already retired to bed as well. Wolverine was – who knows – skulking around the halls or outside, for one last patrol. He had been sniffing all day, and swearing under his breath about Sabretooth. He had a paranoid bent sometimes, but it was best not to disturb him – couldn't hurt.
Storm was off making weather for Africa and had already left some hours ago (which left Bobby, aka Iceman, second in command), Rogue was undercover in Brooklyn, looking for some mutants there. No-one had been comfortable letting her go by herself, but no-one could stop her either.
If only Gambit checked in from time to time. She had only stopped long enough to wonder where Gambit was.
"I don't gamble." He had smirked, playing his cards from one hand into the other, just to emphasise the lie.
"Gambling with love is still gambling." Rogue had told him.
Jean and Scott had looked at each other, feeling an unexpected sweep of sympathy she detected instantly with her telepathy.
They left in the morning – and it was hazardous. They weren't just going against the Brotherhood – the Sentinels had arrived. Stryker's men (always Stryker) had put up patrols and blockades, as the Sentinels were being deployed to do their work.
The X-Men had to dodge a couple of missiles coming in, but that was the sea patrol – soon they were swooping above the roof-lines of Manhattan, otherwise undetected – although it had put the pressure on for time if the local enforcement were suspicious. Jean Grey had planted the suggestion it had mis-fired on seagulls in the minds of those watching from the ships below – but there was no way to know if she had got them all – there could be a hundred other eyes watching from anywhere.
Perhaps Xavier and his Cerebro could have been capable, but he would only use that in dire emergency – until then, it was up to them and their skills.
Cyclops and Wolverine had their differences, but they were going to have to put them aside for this mission – there were people at stake, mutants, men, women and children. They didn't see eye to eye on a lot, but this was something they shared.
And Wolverine was too valuable an asset – too often he had survived where anyone else might have died, and once he got into a rage, it was hard to stop him. It was volatile but could be useful, Cyclops admitted – as long as he could keep him reined in enough.
It was dark and the rain swept in like shadows over the roof-tops. Barely anyone heard as the jet landed on its thermal heat jets, gently bringing it in. The X-Jet was one of the most advanced stealth jets in existence, and was the perfect dropship for their missions.
Especially while the government was on the look-out for them. They had flown over several "blockades" and helicopters cordoning the area, using the clouds for cover. The jet was almost invisible to radar, designed by, in Scott's opinion, some of if not the brightest minds on the planet. The Professor not least among them, he and Magneto were prodigious intellects, and it was no wonder they had founded the school for the gifted. They had built Cerebro, among other things.
The power of the mind, Scott. The words came back to him, as the jet lifted off, the bulk rumbling around him – and he became lost in his thoughts.
He still battled with some scars. Jean had died once – and he felt a odd sense of danger and paranoia concerning her safety at all times now, that he was turning into a bit of a hen.
It had been good to go on some missions again – terrible as they were, some of those first missions with Jean had been the best time. And although he was always eager for new adventure – this time he worried. Jean had had a brush with mortality that seemed to affect him more than her.
The X-Men disembarked, all of them in uniform and ready for anything – and soon found what they were looking for.
"Stand down."
"Says who?" Toad said, squinting into the light.
"We're the X-Men."
"The X-Men?!" Toad laughed, and it was a horrible gurgling sound. "Hey guys, it's the party poopers."
"Listen you little slime – those sentinels are here for you too. So you can either stop what you're doing, help out or get lost, and hope they don't find you."
Wolverine had approached in that time, and unsheathed his claws. "Yeah – before I do." He added for emphasis.
Toad looked at him with something akin to panic. He hadn't had good encounters with Wolverine before. Not many who crossed Wolverine did.
The professor didn't want things to end in violence, but if the Brotherhood wanted a fight, then the X-Men were prepared to give it to them. All he had wanted was to put an end to their operations here. Kidnapping innocent children off the street for their sick facsimile of the Xavier institute, attempting to recruit them like soldiers from their program. Professor Xavier had never said anything particular, but they knew he had a particularly deep-seated loathing regarding it.
The Brotherhood had a bad habit of abducting mutants, especially those with potentially great power before others could reach them. It wasn't quite as bad as being abducted by Stryker and his government allies, but it certainly wasn't doing any favours as an alternative.
The single shining light in the situation was that it was somewhat easier to rescue them from the Brotherhood than find them in whichever hole the anti-mutant group put them in. Support for them in senate circles was weak as it was.
The Brotherhood did surrender, rather quickly, and Cyclops and his team went about destroying their work before sending them back to Magneto. He would deal with them, Cyclops was sure, just not in a good way. Like the professor said, they would no doubt be seeing them again – but at least they had put a small stop to a small operation. Little victories could matter, while on the way to the real thing.
It was mostly just Brotherhood thugs, under the guidance of Toad, one of Magneto's trusted… toadies… to excuse the phrase. Not much of a fight in the offing.
Just as well – people like Mystique were dangerous. Jean Grey was along mostly to make certain she wasn't hiding in the crowd, but she was able to confirm that Toad was the only one. They hadn't expected the X-Men to break perimeter. Toad was rather good at getting into places he wasn't wanted, it seemed.
Kitty was just glad she didn't have to deal with him. She shuddered.
"My powers definitely aren't the right thing for that sort of job," she told Cyclops. He just smiled in response.
"Maybe I could throw rocks at him. That's a mutant power, right?"
"Tsk. Behave." Jean told her, but she also seemed to be hiding a smile. It was nice to see them together, Kitty thought. She had remembered them from before, and it seemed a while now. It have her an oddly good feeling – kind of like, you didn't know what it was you were missing until you felt it again, sort of thing.
(*)
The soldiers were using x-ray scanning rifles - they were scanning right through the walls for mutants. Wolverine growled. One of them paused as he saw something, and blinked. A skeleton.
Wolverine crashed right through the wall for him, growling. It was mostly dry-wall and crumbled around hi shoulders as he slammed the goon to the ground with his feet in a move that would have even Beast impressed. A bundle of nerves and muscle wired together in one lethal move.
He rolled, and in one of those fits of rage, twisted and shoved the guy right out the window.
"Shame," he growled, looking down. "Was going to turn him into shish-kebab, too."
He took the next ones by surprise before they even had a chance to realise what was happening.
The sentinels were usually self-directed, but this time they were working with Stryker's ground forces, goons and enforcers, making a practical and organized sweep – loading mutants and normal civilians alike into their trucks, where they'd be carted off for processing.
They couldn't do this for the entire city at once, but they seemed to have narrowed their pattern down to these few quarters for now.
The recent virus had cast doubt on the Sentinel program – something Forge had cleverly come up with to throw off their mutant tracking ability. It had failed, in a way, but also succeeded, in a way, by making the officials in charge doubt the Sentinels. Sentinels had a way of having that effect on people, when they doubted what effect they'd have on them.
Cyclops was holding the top position, the others were bringing over the X-Jet.
"Maybe we should stop for meat-loaf," Wolverine commented, climbing out of the hole in the roof, and then not budging even though the rain poured off his bulk. He was kind of a short guy, but tough. Not many wanted to tussle with him. Cyclops had to admit it was occasionally funny to see him throwing around two or three goons at once, but he tried to keep a lid on things like that.
Scott round-house kicked the next one in the face before he had a chance to bring his gun around. Cyclops had his own methods for dealing with the bad guys.
(*)
The next stop, Cyclops had continued on alone. There was a village in Africa where they had tracked the sentinels. At first they thought they were coming for Storm – but further mapping indicated their actual destination. The sentinels must have detected a mutant quotient in the population. Scott had sighed – but oh well, there was no stopping what had to be done.
There weren't many, and Cyclops happened to be returning in the X-Jet alone – so he was the only one he felt could make it in time. No need to involve the others, still evacuating people from Manhattan.
Someone had stowed away…!
It was Toad. He grinned disgustingly, wrapped up like a body contortionist in the locker. Scott sighed and closed the locker again.
He was always trying to impress someone.
He landed the X-Jet right on the perimeter of the village. He didn't want the sentinels to target it, but he might have to evacuate the people out of here in a hurry. As soon as he took care of these ones (which was kind of an if – but he was confident)
He had holed up in places like this before, when he had been on his, to be honest in describing it, grief journey following Jean Grey's death – something that still tore him up inside – but he didn't recognize this one. He hadn't visited every village in Africa, although he had made a brief stop here. Tyrannical regimes had been sprouting up like wild-fire. If it hadn't been for the harrowing guilt and fear and sadness, it almost would have been a fine time. He almost became lost in it. Saving lives, putting down the bad guys. Putting all that X-Man training to use – without any of the overreaching authority or the sad looks of others.
Xavier had reached out to him several times, but he had learned how to ignore it, and finally Xavier had left him in peace.
Which he eventually found again and returned to give the X-Men another shot. Two years gone. And now Jean Grey was back. It had been an odd parade of shocks.
Just as well he hadn't gotten a girlfriend in that time, he had joked – but it was forced past the armour of grief he had worn. He didn't know if she thought that was funny. He didn't, really, in retrospect – it just had been the first joke to come to mind. Two years hadn't done anything to sharpen his wit. Depression had a way of taking that out of you.
Still, when he had started feeling good again, that had all changed. He felt like himself again. Roughened, emotionally scarred, and with an entirely new weight on him, but some of the weight had been good. Gave him purpose – and that's what a person needed. Everything else could fall into line, find its place, become smaller, so long as you focused on the purpose – then it just became the work you did to achieve your goal, and Scott Summers had always been good at that.
It had been strange getting to know Jean again – his own scars were nothing compared to what she had gone through, which he was well aware of to the point of wanting to smother her, take her off the team. But he knew in his heart that wasn't healthy, they both had to… be together… he thought. Adventure ahoy.
The Sentinels had attacked. And Cyclops blasted a hole through the village sixteen metres wide. The sentinels, missing parts of their legs and outstretched hands, fell.
The soldiers were using some kind of laser rifles – Cyclops blasted them out of the hands of the first two, and rolled for cover. Red lasers shot out, searing through metal and concrete.
"Give it up, boys!" He shouted. "I'm carrying my own heat!"
Hmm. Pun. He was proud of himself.
A tank rolled up. They obviously didn't know what they were messing with. One blast from his optic visor melted away the treads into slag, softening under the kinetic force – and the rest were quick to follow. He had made his way around and caught them with a stunning blast from ambush, leaving them sprawling. As they recovered, they had hauled themselves and their unconscious comrades into the jeeps, and made a big hurry to leave, shouting.
Jeez, not much thanks in these quarters.
He could have used Colossus at a time like this, to help round up the hostages, but he led them out as quickly and as best he could – getting them on the jet. More sentinels would be on the way, and there was another village not too far away.
Cyclops dropped in through the jungle to scout ahead. He packed a backpack, water and rations.
Cyclops spent about two hours of every day on the tread-mill to keep fit, that plus his time trekking it about the world, had kept/put him in magnificent shape – as Jean made a point of telling him. Jean liked to watch the sports and news, she never really told him why at the same time (but he liked to think why, as they reparted glances) – but his constant spur might have had something to do with that. Wolverine came in to play pool sometimes, too (Scott scowled). It was a good recreation area for the weary X-Men.
He needed to keep his energy and fitness up, he didn't want to fall back into a slump. Replace the temptation with activity, the old-fashioned Scott Summers way. It felt good to be on the mission again. It came in handy now.
Jean was quite proud of his stamina, and he didn't hesitate to rib her about it.
"Must be all those teen hormones," she told him. She was joking, but it was closer than she thought – it almost made him feel like he was fifteen again, strange as it was. But better. His teens hadn't been an easy time. No Jean, that was a big one right there.
They had all gone. Nothing but empty clearings. Mission accomplished. He'd do a couple of flights just to make sure – but it seemed like the jungle jeeps must have taken most of them.
He paused.
"… I miss my motorcycle." He grumped. High-speed that thing. Worked on it himself.
He shook hands with several of the residents after dropping them off to another town, although he didn't speak their language, and even shared his food and water. (No contamination – Xavier was very clear about their protocols, and Scott followed it to the letter.)
He sighed and put his feet up as the X-Jet auto-piloted them home – courtesy of Forge. "Love that man," he said, and took a bite of his bagel.
He heard a sudden knocking sound. Oh yeah, I forgot. After a moment, he shrugged, and let the X-Jet take them home. Plenty of time to let Toad out later.
"Hey come on, I'm hungry!"
(*)
Toad was more a nuisance than anything. They just put him in a cell, furbished as comfortably as they could make it. He said he didn't want to go back to Magneto. He had always fancied himself a bit of a student, he said.
They didn't really trust him – but Xavier, as always, was the voice of reason. They didn't really want to turn him over to the authorities either. No telling what would happen under this kind of climate.
The Professor sighed. "It's either keep it here, or I will have to contact Magneto, and return what he lost."
Toad's face had gone white for a second, startling them all. "But perhaps… we can tolerate him for the time being. Despite his rather, unkempt appearance, Toad had always been more foolish than malicious, in my opinion. Perhaps some time with the X-Men will help him straighten out his views."
Scott had rolled his eyes. "If you insist, Professor," he sighed.
"I do, Scott."
Cyclops knew better than to argue with Xavier when he made up his mind. Behind that genteel exterior was a steel-hard will. After all, he was the Professor.
"Where's the others now?" Cyclops was prepared to take in the X-Jet (he itched to be back in action, hated leaving them by themselves – but it was an act of trust) - but they should all have been able to fit on Forge's second X-Jet. He insisted his stealth was up to date. Their roster had grown too large, and Xavier decided they needed two – quite wisely, it turned out.
"Still on their way back. Bobby should be bringing them in any time."
Cyclops hid a smirk. I wonder how Wolverine is dealing with being under his command?
(*)
Wolverine was growling. "Iceman and his blamed orders." He muttered. He didn't want to argue with the kid, but he didn't really want to be horsing around while Bobby gave him orders like it was funny. "Make fun of my beard."
Not far away, Kitty Pryde was also on the job. They were stalking a sentinel – the last one in this quarter, chiefly it lay between them and their goal – the facility which was providing the directives. It hadn't been easy for Kitty to find a way to get onboard, but she did and she was proud of it.
Kitty felt a shudder as the cold metal passed through and around her – and soon she was inside the brain of the huge thing. I'm literally inside your head, she smirked, but she still felt cold.
Her training with computers ought to come in handy about now – she was an excellent student, Xavier had said.
The giant robot shuddered for a moment as young hands rearranged cables and circuitry, untouched by the electrical defenses – and suddenly found itself shorting out due to unexpected interruptions. A slim form melded out of its foot as there was suddenly an electrical explosion in its inner circuitry and it came to a halt.
The circle of its spotlight eyes were still fixed on the brick walls, where a family had hid and watched fearfully. They didn't have to fear any more. Bobby was leading the rest of the team to bring down the other sentinels searching the city. Once they were all down, Stryker's men would have no reason to remain. Beast was with them, and could help them find where the mutants were being taken (he was crawling along the sewers this very instant – although not sniffing, he was sure to tell them, he had a very sensitive olfactory).
"You know anything about computers?" she had asked skeptically, once they were inside the compound. Wolverine had taken out the guards with an undue enthusiasm, she thought.
"Sure," he said, and held up his claws. "I brought a key."
She rolled her eyes, but didn't argue. He was after all, a senior member. Very senior, she thought privately. Guy was like a hundred years old – but not bad for that age.
Wolverine had made it to the central computer complex, over the bodies of several guards unfortunate enough to be standing in his way at the time. Turned one man-sized sentinel robot into shish-kebab – they still hadn't made them any less a target against his adamantium claws, or any smarter. Time to bring this little program to an end. Wolverine withdrew a cigar from a pocket stash in his coat as the numbers scrolled up the screen, and lit it.
"Nice meeting ya, bub," he growled around the cigar, and pressed his finger down on the key. "We're the X-Men."
The facility was destroyed. Beast would be proud.
THE END