Chapter 12: Strike Team X Part 4: Attack on the Planegate
Huntress and Harley blew a hole in the outer walls of the Machine City, large enough for all of us to get in. Inside was a wide hallway curving farther into the city. But as soon as we breached the wall, an alarm started blaring throughout the city.
"#$&%," Geralt said. "Now all of them are gonna know we're here."
"Pretty sure all of them already knew we were here," I said. "If anything, they're probably just surprised we made it past the warships."
"And in halls like that, we can't have hundreds or thousands of Sentinels coming after us at once," Huntress said.
"Todo!" Bane said. "We're inside the city now. Get back into the clouds before those things tear the Justifier apart."
"Yes, Mr. Bane," Todo said. "If I'm being honest, I'm rather relieved. One of them blew out the windshield a couple minutes ago, and since then I've been worried that one of those monstrous Sentinels would reach in and rip me to shreds. Or worse still-"
"Not now, just do it!" Bane said. He switched off his intercom. "I get a bit bad-tempered when I don't have a toothpick to chew on."
I poked my head into the hallway. No Sentinels in either direction, but no doubt that would be changing soon. I waved the others inside, then followed them down the hall. It curved farther into the city before reaching a fork.
"Which way do we go?" John asked.
Half a dozen Sentinels rounded the bend to our right and immediately saw us. I pointed towards the machines. "That way. Wherever they're coming from, no doubt it's somewhere important."
Harley and Huntress shot down two of the Sentinels before they could even attack us. The remaining ones launched a slew of bombs, but Colleen put up a shield at the last second. The roof of the hall on the far side caved in, strewing a mound of rubble on the floor. Colleen then sent the shield hurtling into the Sentinels, smashing them into the far wall.
"This is a good strategy," I said. "We should just rinse and repeat this to get to the center of the city."
Colleen shrugged. "I'm game. Tao Mandalas barely drain any chi energy to create."
We headed further down the hall and, a few Sentinel encounters later, reached the plaza that housed the planegate.
…Only there were far more Sentinels defending it than there were last time.
"Holy #$&%," Canary said.
"Would someone please tell me what's going on?" Peter asked. "I can only see the sky directly above us."
"A #$%&load of machines, that's what," I said.
Suddenly, a horde of tiny robots came flying from the floors, walls, everywhere around the plaza – pretty sure some even came out of the device housing Shuma-Gorath's brain. Pretty sure I knew where this was going.
Sure enough, they all assembled into a gigantic face hovering between us and the device creating the planegate. Deus Ex Machina himself. Never thought I'd get to meet this guy in our journey to Earth-9466.
"What the hell is this thing?" Harley asked.
"Impressive," Deus Ex Machina boomed. "I didn't think it possible for humans to ever successfully invade 01. But if you think you will win, you are mistaken. You see, this is but a taste of my fury-"
"You goddamn stole that line from the Penguin King in The Super Mario Bros. Movie, you plagiarizing son of a bitch!" I shouted.
A lightning bolt shot from Deus Ex Machina's face into my gut, knocking my over backwards. "Quiet!" he ordered. "I give you one chance to leave now and never come back. If you do not leave, you will be annihilated by the might of the Machine Army."
"Like you're going to let any of us survive when you and the Daleks invade the multiverse," Harley said. "Go to hell, asshole!"
She shot her weapon at Deus Ex Machina, but it passed right through him and vanished in the stream of energy forming the planegate.
"So be it," Deus Ex Machina said. "Machines…show them no mercy."
"Wouldn't have it any other way," Bane said.
Props to him and Harley for being ballsy enough to trash talk the giant floating face that was threatening them with certain doom. And not even knowing his name, for that matter, since they'd never seen the Matrix movies.
The robots forming Deus Ex Machina's face fled back into the foundations of the city, leaving just us staring down the countless Sentinels guarding the planegate.
"Battle plan?" Geralt asked, drawing his swords.
"Kill as many of these #$%&ers as you can and clear Canary a path to do her thing," I said. "You get hurt, hurt them back. You get killed…walk it off."
Damn, when did Captain America of all people start rubbing off on me?
I finished, "Antiheroes…Assemb – OOF!"
One Sentinel launched a bomb that hit me square in the chest. I was flung backwards into the wall, and…oh look at that, my legs were barely hanging on. Good thing they weren't ripped off entirely or I'd've been sidelined from the rest of the battle while they regrew. And had that Sentinel never read up on goddamn battle etiquette? You are to let each side shout a battle cry if they so choose before attacking them in any way!
Colleen summoned another Tao Mandala to block the Sentinels' attacks, while Harley and Huntress took shots at them around the sides of the shield. John and Bane tried to help too, but there was only so much they could do with their tiny firearms. Maybe we should've taken more stuff from Harley's arsenal. And then there was poor Geralt, sitting around not doing jack#$&% because he didn't have any ranged weapons.
And inevitably, it didn't take the Sentinels long to figure out they could just go around the Tao Mandala.
Come on, abdomen, seal back up faster! Being helpless is killing me!
Geralt deflected a bomb off the flat of one of his swords, then slashed it through the front end of the Sentinel that attacked him. The bomb lodged in a nearby wall and detonated, crushing several more Sentinels under falling chunks of metal. Meanwhile, Huntress shot another Sentinel's bomb just after it was launched, detonating it prematurely and taking down a whole group of Sentinels.
Come on, intestines, crawl back into my stomach faster! I'm missing out of the battle here!
Colleen levitated several pieces of the collapsed wall and flung them at the Sentinels. Most of them crashed to the far side of the clearing, while a few got sucked into the planegate and transported to Earth-328767. Well, that could potentially be bad, because the last thing we needed was them alerting Davros to the situation down here, and then a whole fleet of Daleks pouring through the planegate to reinforce the Machine Army.
Okay, I was healed enough. Still had a bit of an abdominal hernia, but nothing that would keep me from standing up and fighting.
"Geralt!" I called. "Pass me your other sword! My guns aren't gonna do #$&% against these guys!"
He unsheathed his silver sword while bisecting a Sentinel with his steel one, and tossed it to me. I caught it one-handed. Alright; now we were in business.
One Sentinel looped around our shield to attack Colleen, but she sheared it in half with her sword before I could do the same with mine. Another one grabbed me by the leg with a tentacle and hauled me into the air, but I hacked off the tentacle and dropped back to the ground. It shot an explosive at me, but I deflected it right back at the Sentinel, blowing it up. Harley picked off one that was about to attack John, while Bane leapt atop one that swooped low at him and pistol-whipped its back until it crashed to the ground.
Suffice to say we were doing pretty well. Having our "Avengers fighting off Ultron's horde of Mini-Me's in the Sokovian church" moment.
And then, predictably, everything went to #$&%.
One lucky shot by a Sentinel blew up the ground just in front of Huntress, sending her tumbling backwards and opening our right flank. I ran to fill the gap, but over half a dozen Sentinels had already flooded into our little "bubble." John took down just by ruthlessly blowing its front end to kingdom come, but the others set about running amok, amok, amok, amok…you get the point. Two grabbed Peter and tried to wrench him away from the cloak, but Harley managed to snipe them out of the air. Another one shot a bomb towards Colleen; she moved to deflect it, but hit it with the sharp edge of her sword instead of the flat. Both halves detonated, flinging her back towards plaza's outer wall. The cloak dropped Peter and whizzed over to her, catching her just before she hit the wall. Huntress, meanwhile, sat up and managed to plug the gap in our defenses again with her crossbow.
"Colleen, you okay?" I shouted, cutting through another Sentinel. "You – oh #$&%."
The giant Tao Mandala flickered and vanished. All the Sentinels stopped for a second to see what had happened, then pressed the attack on our now-unprotected front. And for every Sentinel we defeated, it seemed like they were somehow HYDRA-ing up two more to take its place.
"What do we do now?" John said. "There's no way in hell we can take down all of them with no protection!"
He was right. All of us were fighting a losing battle at this point, with the Sentinels closing in on all sides. The Cloak of Levitation was just barely keeping Colleen away from the Sentinels, Huntress and Harley were covering each other's six to pick off an ever-closing ring of Sentinels around them, John and Bane were fighting a losing battle to keep the Sentinels away from Canary, and nobody was even watching out for Peter. I slashed my sword through a Sentinel trying to haul him off, quickly forming a new plan in my head.
"Todo, I changed my mind! Get the Justifier back here now!" Bane yelled into his intercom. "We're by the planegate and getting our asses handed to us here!"
"Everyone, new objective!" I shouted over the ruckus of the battle. "All of us, cover Canary and get her to Shuma-Gorath's brain! Forget about killing as many of these things as we can; just shutting down the planegate'll be a step in the right direction!"
Bane pinned a Sentinel to the ground while John blew it to smithereens, then both of them headed towards the rest of us to regroup. Huntress blasted a hole in the ring of Sentinels for her and Harley to escape through, and Geralt and I hacked a few more of the goddamn machines in half. "Harley, Huntress, the three of us go at the front," I said. "I can't die, and you two have the most effective weapons. John, Bane, cover our sides; and Geralt, you bring up the rear. Antiheroes Assem – oh for crying out loud!"
Another Sentinel grabbed my by the legs and, before I could slice off those tentacles and free myself, ripped the arm I was holding the sword in clean off. Dammit! Harley managed to shoot the Sentinel out of the arm and I tumbled to the ground, then picked up the sword with my left hand. "#$&% it," I said. "I'm never gonna get both words out. Let's just go."
And so we did. We hacked, slashed, shot, blasted, deflected, parried, evaded, punched, kicked, body-slammed, ripped, cursed, and primal-scream-of-fury-ed our way through the Sentinels between us and that octopus brain. Eventually, through extensive plot armor because, you know, the story can't just end here with a TPK, we made it to the center of the plaza. Directly in front of us were the plating and controls surrounding the half of Shuma-Gorath's brain, with the beam of M-Rip Energy creating the planegate shooting into the heavens.
All of us formed a semicircle around Canary to hold back the Sentinels. "It's now or never; do your thing!" Harley said.
"You're all gonna want to cover your ears," Canary said.
"Yeah, because we can oh so easily cover our ears when our hands are occupied making sure we don't all get blown up!" I said.
"Uh, look up there," Geralt said, pointing up to the planegate.
I looked up to see three Dalek ships detaching from the Crucible and descending towards the portal. As I figured, Davros probably got word of our attack. "Guys, we've got inbound Daleks!" I said. "Canary, just do it – we're running out of time!"
"Alright, fine, you asked for it." She took a deep breath, and then….
Please stand by, we've experienced technical difficulties.
As in my ears basically broke when she let loose.
The few Sentinels on the far side of Shuma-Gorath's brain were blasted apart, and the wall on the far side of the plaza cracked and crumbled apart. The vortex of her scream gradually became more concentrated on the device spawning the planegate. After less than a second of taking the brunt of Canary's shriek, the metal split apart and went flying all over the place, thankfully not decapitating any of us in the process.
Her scream focused directly on one point of the brain, and the entire thing began pulsating more and more rapidly. The section taking the brunt of her sonic scream started glowing orange, then red, and finally…exploded.
No, seriously. The brain just exploded. Yeah, grey matter flying all over the place, you get the picture.
"Oh yuck," John said. "Brain in my eyes. Brain in my eyes."
"You're an expert assassin and you've never gotten brains in your eyes before?" I asked.
The blue stream of energy faltered but didn't entirely vanish right away. The view of Earth-328767 in the sky vanished, but was replaced by a series of other locations flickering too quickly for me to figure out what they were.
"The hell is going on?" Harley asked.
"If I had to guess, I'd say…I have no #$%&ing clue," I said. "It's on the verge of crapping out and is just going crazy now?"
"At least those Daleks can't get through now," Geralt said.
"Yeah, such a relief," Huntress said. "We've just got this goddamn never-ending army of Sentinels to deal with."
John pulled his triggers several times but nothing happened. "I'm all out of ammo!" he said.
"Well, I can't exactly get you more out of my ammo bag right now!" I said. "I'm a bit busy myself!"
A Sentinel threw John to the ground, where several others swarmed over him. Harley and Bane blasted through them, and Bane tossed one of his blasters to John. "Here, take this," he said.
John picked it up and shot his way through more of the machines. But as Bane turned back to the horde of Sentinels, one managed to shoot a bomb right at his feet. His eyes widened. "Oh shi-"
The bomb exploded and flung him straight into the still faltering planegate beam. His shouts of pain faded away as he vanished in a flash of light. I looked up, but the locations appearing in the sky were still flashing too quickly for me to tell where the hell Bane had gone.
"Is…is he dead?" Canary asked.
"Depends where he ended up," I said. "Deep space? Probably. Mustafar? Probably. Earth? Nah, he'll be fine. He'll probably just end up joining the Thunderbolts when they become a thing in a couple years."
Geralt and Peter had also been blasted to the sides by the explosion. Geralt got up again and got right back to work hacking at the Sentinels, while Peter just laid on the ground shrieking in panic.
"Canary, can you maybe pull off another scream?" Harley asked. "Taking down all the other Sentinels this time?"
"No, I'm all screamed out for now," she said.
Of course she was.
Another Sentinel shot a tentacle straight at my face and clamped on with four claws, then flung me around like a ragdoll. Oh come on, now I couldn't even see what was happening around me! I was flung into two people – couldn't tell who on account of, again, being blind – and it felt like someone was cut by my sword. "Sorry, whoever that was!" I said.
The Sentinel hurled me at the pile of metal that used to cover Shuma-Gorath's brain. I got up and tried to swing my sword, but somewhere in that wild ride my arm had been slashed open and everything below my elbow was barely hanging on. Well, I guess there wouldn't be any more sword-ing from me for a little while. The other machines had grabbed everyone except Huntress, who was still putting up a fight, albeit clearly a losing one. Oh, and the planegate had finally taken its dying breath. At least we didn't have to worry about getting thrown into that thing now.
And to add insult to injury, Deus Ex Machina's leering baby face reassembled high above us. He chuckled, "I told you that you would not prevail, but you foolishly did not listen. Now, my Sentinels will take great pleasure in destroying you. Slowly. I want it to hurt."
"You're gonna have a hard #$%&ing time destroying me," I said.
"You have basically no arms. At the very least, you won't provide much of a problem for my machines. Cut off the head and the snake dies."
"Except in this case, the snake just becomes Headpool. But you're welcome to try. It's been a while since I last got decapitated. I could use a refresher in what it feels like."
Deus Ex Machina shot another lightning bolt at me. Damn, what is this guy's problem? "Have at them, Sentinels," Deus Ex Machina said. "Now you interlopers will experience my full fur-"
Something flew through Deus Ex Machina's head from behind and landed at the center of the horde of Sentinels in the plaza. Most of them turned to face whatever it was, while Deus Ex Machina himself disappeared once more. A blast of blue energy flung several Sentinels to the far end of the plaza, and many of the remaining ones unleashed a barrage of bombs at their new target. Yet there was no resulting explosion. And a few seconds later, a portal opened high above the plaza.
One of Magik's portals.
The undetonated Sentinel bombs poured from the portal right onto the Machine Army, blasting about 95% of them to smithereens in one fell swoop. The ones that remained intact included the ones holding the rest of Strike Team X hostage, but not for long. Magik leapt through the cloud of smoke from the explosion and swung her Soulsword in one wide arc, hacking all the remaining Sentinels in half with one stroke. She did a superhero landing as my teammates and the broken Sentinels fell to the ground behind her.
"…We had the situation under control," I said. "The Justifier was just about to come back around and do that exact same thing. And in case you didn't notice, we shut down the planegate. So…yeah. Antiheroes Assem-"
"You have a lot of explaining to do," Magik said.
Damn; still didn't get to say it.
After the explosion, I didn't know what happened.
One second a Sentinel bomb detonates right in front of me, the next I'm waking up in some sort of meadow.
Something was prodding me in the side.
I grabbed it and pulled on it, yanking it out of someone's grasp. A stick.
"Oh, you're awake," an annoyingly high-pitched, nasal voice said. "I didn't know if you were asleep or dead or what."
I rolled over to see some creature I'd never seen before standing nearby me. It was humanoid, but only a few feet tall, with what looked like a green-spotted mushroom on top of its head.
"Who are you?" I asked, feeling around for my blaster. Where the hell was it? "Where am I?"
"It's okay, mister," the creature replied. "You fell out of some purple hole in the sky above my pasture here several minutes ago. If you don't mind me asking, where are you from? I've never seen someone like you before. The whole blue skin, red eyes, cowboy hat look."
"Somewhere far away, I think," I said. "I've certainly never seen any place that looks like this before." I almost reminded me of Naboo, but was too…picturesque. Not to mention those strange, multicolored, hills in the distance that looked like tall grain silos. Or maybe they were grain silos, just painted to look attractive. "Again, who are you?"
"My name's Farmer Peter Toadman, and on behalf of Her Royal Majesty Princess Peach, I welcome you to the Mushroom Kingdom."
A/N: In case you haven't read my other fanfic "Mario's Galactic Tale" (the one Deadpool briefly visited in my one-shot "Deadpool: Guardians of the Multiverse"), in recent chapters, Bowser has been planning to hire a bounty hunter named Cad Bane who's been gaining infamy in the Mushroom Kingdom to kill Mario and Luigi for him. So yes, that variant of Bane is the same as this one, a couple months in the future. Trust me, this will be important; there's another Deadpool-Mario crossover coming in the near future.
And also, by the MCU multiverse rules, you know what disaster will happen if a variant spends too much time in an alternate universe….