After two weeks of the new training regime, Scott and Logan met everyone at breakfast and told them to hurry up and meet them in the planning room. Five minutes later, the entire New Mutants were sitting around the planning room in their nightclothes.
Scott turned on the holoprojector, showing them a hologram of some sort of factory. "This is the remains of an old sentinel factory. We feel that it would do all of you some good to see an old sentinel factory. It might give you all some idea of what you will be dealing with in the future. So, get suited up and meet us at the Blackbird in fifteen minutes."
Everyone seemed excited about the idea of seeing the old sentinel factory. Steve was convinced that he would be allowed to bring home some souvenir, like a piece of a sentinel's eye or something. After everyone had strapped into their seats, Scott finished the preflight preparations and ignited the Blackbird's engines. Goosing the throttle forward, he put the modified jet into a forward motion. Soon, the jet reached the end of the underground hangar, where sat a large fortified steel door. The door opened with unusual quickness as the sensors detected the quick moving jet. After the Blackbird exited the hangar from its cliff exit, the steel doors closed as quickly as they opened, after which a hologram appeared, masking the door as a normal cliff.
After a few minutes of flight time, Scott had landed the Blackbird in an open field near an old decrepit building that had vines and moss growing all over it. Everyone walked down the ramp and onto the field. All were dressed in their various uniforms, the New Mutants wearing their black body suits with matching boots, gloves, and masks. Scott was wearing his old field uniform of a blue body suit with yellow utility straps mounted around his chest. Logan was wearing his yellow spandex uniform and yellow mask.
After a short walk, the group came up to the edge of the compound and passed through the old security fence. "Now," said Logan, "the most recently seen sentinels are twenty feet tall and boast laser cannons in the palms of their hands. The sensory equipment that helps the sentinel detect mutants is usually mounted in their chest cavity. Fortunately, their size helps most mutants know when the sentinels are approaching. Can anyone tell me how big the original sentinels were?"
After a second of though, Sam raised her hand and said, "The first sentinels were only ten feet tall."
"Very good TK," said Logan. "That made them a little harder to spot and take out, but by the same token, they were not as strong as the later models, so there was a trade off."
Scott was repeatedly tapping the communicator mounted on his chest, but all that was coming out of the communicator was static. Logan looked at Scott with a wondering look. "Cyclops, what is it?" Scott looked at Logan and said, "We were supposed to report in when we got to the factory, but all I'm getting is static. Are anyone else's communicators working?" Everyone tried their own communicators, which for everyone were mounted on their belts. After a few tries, everyone shook their heads no. Scott turned to Lucas. "Psycho, contact the Professor and let him know that we're all right." Lucas nodded and closed his eyes in concentration. After a few moments though, he opened them and a look of distress crossed over his face. "I'm not getting through. I can't even listen to anyone else's mind here. I'm totally blocked off everywhere I turn."
Scott and Logan looked at each other and nodded. "Ok," said Logan, "everyone head for the jet and let's get out of here." As they turned, they saw ten six foot tall robots with their palms facing the mutants. A human voice sounded from behind them, "You're not going anywhere, muties. Now, put your hands behind your heads and lay face down on the ground."
Scott raised his hands to his head, but instead of placing them behind his head, he touched the small button on the side of his visor, opening it and unleashing a bolt of ruby red energy at the nearest sentinel. It fell back with a large hole in its chest. Logan leaped backward, releasing the claws from within his forearms. They sprung forward from in between his knuckles, tinged with the blood of cutting through Logan's muscles. He landed in front of the human who had been addressing them and planted his left foot squarely in the human's chest, evacuating the human's lungs of air and knocking him onto his back.
The New Mutants stood around for a moment realizing that this was no training mission, but the real thing. Acting with surprising reflexes, Lucas drew his handgun and landed a perfect shot in another sentinel in front of the group. Steve stepped forward and stretched his hands in front of himself. As he focused, his body absorbed energy from the light around him and converted it into sound waves that were projected from his hands. The waves hit two sentinels, causing their chest cavities to crack. Danielle stepped up beside Steve and stretched her own hands out, emitting fire from them. The fire entered the sentinels' chests and fried them from the inside.
Mary had leaped backwards, even farther than Logan, into the group of sentinels behind the New Mutants. She kicked backwards, throwing one sentinel into two others with such force that various limbs were torn off of each one. Daemon stretched out his wings and lifted into the air, breathing fire on various sentinels from above. However, as he lifted into the air, he got a good look above the closest sentinels at the complex behind them. He saw sentinel after sentinel leaving the complex, almost as if there were no end to them. It occurred to him why these sentinels were so small; they were easier to produce en masse. He thought that they might have produced hundreds of these smaller sentinels and there would be nothing that could be done about it.
The fighting continued with the sentinel parts piling up. The human who Logan had kicked crawled towards the edge of the battle and waited it out. Caileen had drawn her gun, but was getting off very few shots. She seemed almost as if she were not entirely focused on the fight for her life happening all around her.