A/N: Welcome back! Thanks for waiting patiently for the next couple chapters; some pretty important stuff goes down in these two. Read, review, and enjoy!

I do not own any of the characters in this fanfic.

Chapter 11: Strike Team X Part 3: Fields of Violent

OUTSIDE THE MACHINE CITY, EARTH-9466 – AUGUST 7, 2537

"So, Colleen, how'd you come to be the Sorcerer Supreme in Earth-615?" I asked as our team dashed through the field. "In the timeline I live in now, Stephen Strange is the Sorcerer Supreme. Actually, was. Then he got blipped by Thanos and the title went to Wong by default."

"Stephen Strange?" Colleen asked. "Then I'm assuming in that universe, HYDRA never launched their INSIGHT helicarriers."

"Well…technically they did, but then Captain America and Falcon stopped them."

"Captain America and Falcon stopped them in my universe too, but a second too late. First salvo killed about 700 people in the Tri-State Area, including Strange and Tony Stark. Four years later, right after Thanos' snap, this minotaur-guy named Rintrah came to me and told me that I was now the Sorcerer Supreme of that reality. I guess all the higher-ups in the Masters of the Mystic Arts had been taken out by Thanos, and some ancient agreement between K'un-Lun and Kamar-Taj meant that whoever held the title of the Immortal Iron Fist was now next in line to be Sorcerer Supreme as well."

"Cool. That's one of my favorite things to find out about the universes I visit: who's the Sorcerer Supreme and what's their backstory? That and whether George R. R. Martin ever finishes A Song of Ice and Fire."

"Ooh, does he?" Harley asked.

"About 30% of the time," I said. "Not in the Sacred Timeline, though. But if you're interested, I got a couple multiversal bootleg copies of the last two books back at the Citadel."

"The world's gonna go to hell in a handbasket when that happens," John said.

"Not Earth-616, that one'll survive. Earth-4583, on the other hand, devolved into World War III over which fanfiction should be the canon ending of the series."

We were directly below the warships, and either they didn't notice us or they did and weren't going to attack us. Either way, it worked out well for us.

"Could someone please go over again what the hell is happening here?" Peter asked. "Because you went over it too quickly last time for me to catch any of it."

"No, I'm not recounting it, but just know that any machine around you is evil and it responsible for the rest of the human race being trapped in pods like the one you were in."

"But…I must be dreaming. I wasn't in a pod, I was just at my job and then I woke up…wherever this is."

"If I'm understanding any of this nonsense, I think your job was actually the dream," Bane said.

"See, there you go. The Matrix isn't that hard to understand after all."

Suddenly, a dark cloud swooped down from the warships and looped around behind us. "Sentinels, six o'clock!" I shouted. "I guess the fetus fields don't mean that much to them after all. I stand corrected."

"Son of a bitch," John said. "What do we do now?"

"Blow these mother#$%&ers to hell, that's what!"

Huntress cocked her crossbow. "Works for me."

The Sentinels dove towards us, and when they were about a hundred yards away, launched a barrage of explosives at us. Harley and Huntress took aim and fired their weapons at the explosives. They must've hit their targets, because about halfway between us and the Sentinels, some of the explosives detonated, causing a chain reaction among most of the remaining ones. A few shot past, but Colleen put up a giant Tao Mandala at the last second, stopping them.

"Quick!" I urged. "That's not gonna stop them. Keep going; we can make it."

Well, I knew I would. But given how quickly the horde of Sentinels was growing in number, the chances of an impending TPK (again, except me) were looking more and more likely. Come to think of it, we should've brought a backup TemPad in addition to the one we hooked up to the Justifier. Note to self for the next attack on another universe I plan.

"Go on ahead; I'll catch up," Colleen said. "I'll hold them off as long as I can."

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Canary asked. "There's a #$%&load of those Sentinels coming."

"Trust me, I'll be fine," Colleen said as more explosions hammered against the Tao Mandala.

The rest of us turned and ran – or, in Peter's case, floated – towards the cliffs. Not sure how Colleen exactly thought she was helping us by keeping that shield up, because most of the Sentinels just flew over it after us. And then there was the secondary horde bearing down on us from directly overhead, descending from the backside of the warships. Huntress and Harley picked off some of them, but not the majority.

"Canary, we may be needing one of your screams sooner than expected," I said.

The Sentinels dropping from overhead shot a hail of bombs at us.

I braced myself to black out and then wake up to find the fire-blasted parts of my body fusing back together when a whizzing sound came from behind us. I looked back to see Colleen hurling the Tao Mandala through the air, spinning it like a propellor blade, which cut through the Sentinels chasing us. It stopped in midair directly overhead just in time for the rain of explosives to detonate against the shield instead of our heads. Seconds later, the Sentinels at the vanguard of the descending horde collided with the Tao Mandala in a series of metallic crashes.

Remind me to never second-guess Colleen again.

She materialized a second Tao Mandala under her and floated over to us on it, looking a lot like Kang the Conqueror flying around on his hover-pad. So she can't make portals, but trade-off, she has a chi sword and uses Tao Mandalas with more versatility than Doctor Strange. I can live with that.

"That might be the coolest #$&% I've ever seen," I called.

"Don't celebrate yet." She summoned two more smaller ones and flung them towards the larger one above us. Several Sentinels making their way around the edges of the larger shield were hit and collapsed to the ground. Harley blew away two more trying to flank us from behind. Colleen landed next to us and slashed another Sentinel in half with her sword, then flung the giant Tao Mandala into the air. From the sound of it, lots of other Sentinels that were flying towards us hit the Tao Mandala, then were crushed between it and the bottom of the warship above us. A large section of the ship's underside exploded.

"That thing's my new favorite weapon of all time," I said.

"Yeah, where can I get one of those things?" Harley asked.

"You can't 'get' them anywhere," Colleen said. "You learn how to summon them by training in the Mystic Arts at Kamar-Taj. Something it doesn't seem like you have the…discipline for."

Harley frowned. "You don't know me, bitch."

"Can we save the arguing for later, because there's still more of those robot things coming," Bane said, "and we've still got quite a bit more ground to cover before we reach the cliffs. And then we'll have to somehow hold them off while we…how are we even getting up the cliff?"

We set out running again. "Well, originally I was planning for us to use the grappling hooks I packed," I said, "but now I figure we'll have Colleen make us a path up the cliff with her Tao Mandalas. Use them like stairs."

"Are you not seeing how tall the cliff is?" Geralt asked. "With these metal monsters constantly bombarding us, there's no way we'll make it up in one piece."

Suddenly, Todo's voice came over Bane's intercom. "Mr. Bane, how are things going down there?"

"Could be going better," Bane replied. "We're holding off the Sentinels, but we're gonna be fish in a barrel climbing up the cliffside."

"I've managed to lose most of the Sentinels chasing me in the clouds. I'll head back down and give you some aerial cover."

Well, it was good to hear he'd be covering us, but not that he lost a bunch of Sentinels since our goal wasn't just to lose them, but to destroy all of them, since we had to assume all of them could still jump across the multiverse even once we destroyed the planegate.

The Justifier shot through the clouds and attacked the warships. Two of them turned upward to face Bane's ship, while the other slowly rotated around, presumably to face us now that we were behind them. So this basically confirmed my suspicion that they were waiting for us to start our climb and then blow the whole cliff to kingdom come to crush us under it.

More Sentinels closed in behind us as we neared the cliff. The top of the warship closest to us exploded as the Justifier swooped by it. Meanwhile, Colleen cast some sort of charm on her sword, and dozens of duplicate swords suddenly appeared in a rotating circle around it. Then, with a flick of her wrist, she sent the swords flying at the Sentinels like rounds from a machine gun. Each robot that was hit exploded in a burst of white light.

Damn. Every time I think her skills can't get more impressive, she goes and proves me wrong.

"Is there anything you can't do?" I called to her.

"The Mystic Arts are a pathway to many abilities," she replied.

"Are some of them considered to be unnatural?"

"What?"

I'm assuming Star Wars doesn't exist in Earth-615.

The Justifier flew to our right and then cut back towards us, blowing another batch of Sentinels to bits with its lasers. It was almost sad how easy it was to take down the Sentinels. They had numbers on their side, but throw a spaceship, a Sorceress Supreme, and a decent battle strategy at them, and they don't stand a chance.

Todo shot by overhead, smashing more Sentinels against the front of the ship like bugs on a windshield. No more Sentinels were directly behind us, and no more were coming from above after Colleen's stunt with he giant Tao Mandala, so we were in the clear for the moment. "Go, go, go!" I urged. "We can make it – look how close the cliffs are!"

As we set out running again, Harley said, "Hey Wade, are you by any chance related to some guy named Slade Wilson?"

"No. So far as I know, there wasn't even a Deathstroke in my home universe."

"Oh, so you know who he is. Just…you got the same last name, first names that sound kinda similar, suits that look a bit alike. It's a bit uncanny."

"I'm pretty sure I was created as a rip-off of Deathstroke, but somehow over the years I've become more popular than him."

A few minutes later, with more flybys from Todo and assorted party tricks from Colleen, we reached the base of the cliff. "Alright, here's the plan," Colleen said. "I'll make a few steps at a time for us, and also a larger one to cover us on the outside. That was none of them can attack us as we climb. Got it?"

"Huntress and I can go first and bring up the rear," Harley said. "We've got the biggest weapons to hold off the Sentinels, in case any try getting in above or below us and attacking."

"Good thinking," Geralt said.

Colleen summoned a trio of Tao Mandalas leading about a yard up the cliffside. A larger one perpendicular to the first three followed it, about as large as the one she'd blocked the Sentinels' first attack with. "Everyone, up," she said.

Huntress went first, then Colleen, Bane, me, Peter, Canary, John, Geralt, and finally Harley. Our platforms zigzagged back and forth up the cliff face as the Justifier flew back and forth farther out, drawing some of the Machine Army's firepower away from us. Explosions hammered against the far side of the Tao Mandala shielding us, but none of them breached it.

A short while later, we finally reached the clifftop. Before us loomed the massive fortifications guarding the Machine City, and beyond it the massive, pulsing spire of energy creating the planegate.

"This is it, guys," I said. "What we came here for. Ready?"

Everyone nodded.

"Alright, then let's do this," I said.