Confrontation
"SENTINELS?" Logan shouted. "Those bastards have Sentinels?"
"Those Morlocks won't have a chance!" Scott shouted.
"Screw protocol!" Lance snapped as he kicked down the door to the van. "KINCAID!"
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING YOU FREAK?" Kincaid shouted. Roadblock and the other Misfits charged in after Lance and a lot of shouting could be heard.
"Nightcrawler," Jean said. "Come with me and let's find Xi and Kitty."
"Sunspot, Gambit, Berzerker and X23, you go with them," Scott ordered. "We have to warn them!"
"Great, I'll have to make two trips," Kurt groaned.
"Just get in the sewer and stop complaining!" Rina snapped as she opened the manhole cover.
"Stop the Sentinels now!" Roadblock shouted at Kincaid.
"You forget your place soldier, I am…" Kincaid roared when suddenly there was a warning alert. "What the…?"
"Now what?" Althea asked.
"One of the Sentinels has veered off course," Kincaid looked at the monitor. "It's headed for…NO! NO YOU STUPID PIECE OF JUNK!"
"What happened?" Wanda asked.
"One of the damn things veered off course! What do you think happened?" Kincaid yelled.
"Let me see," Arcade shoved him aside. "According to this it's picked up a mutant signature…in a hospital!"
"Oh freaking no…" Althea snapped. She glared at Kincaid. "Stop it!"
"I can't stop it!" Kincaid snapped. "Even if I wanted too I…" A buzzer sounded. "Now what? Uh oh…"
"Uh oh?" Rogue asked. "What the hell does Uh Oh mean?"
"It's targeting its weapons system!" Kincaid shouted. "It's not supposed to be on maximum! Not yet anyway!"
"Maximum?" Scott yelled.
"Come on!" Rogue flew off to head it off. Too late. They saw the explosion in the sky.
"GODDESS!" Ororo screamed as the Sentinels approached. "NO!"
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"This place is even creepier than those tombs in Egypt," Kitty shuddered as they walked in the sewers. "So where do you think your brother is Xi? Xi?"
Xi was lost in thought. He was remembering a day that seemed to long ago.
Xi and three others of their unit were racing down the halls of the facility. One was in the lead carrying a sword. Seven and Twelve were both unarmed but their claws dripped with blood. They fought off every Cobra that challenged them. One by one they saw the bodies of the others.
Once there were fourteen of them.
Now there were only four.
They made their way to the outside of the building. It was overlooking a huge waterfall. Thunder and lightning lit up the night sky as the four of them tried to make their way across the bridge separating the two sides of the facility.
"We can blow up the power grid to the other side!" Seven told them.
"Keep moving!" One roared.
A sniper shot at them. He barely missed One.
"ONE!" Xi ran to cover him. A sharp pain sliced into his shoulder. He slipped.
The next thing he knew, he had fallen over the railing.
"ELEVEN!" One screamed reaching out to Xi as he fell. "ELEVEN!"
"Xi! Hey Xi snap out of it!" Kitty waved her hand in front of Xi. "This place is creepy enough without you going blank on me."
"Sorry," Xi apologized. "I was…remembering."
"So this One guy is like your big brother right?" Kitty asked.
"He was the first one created and the leader of the unit," Xi explained. "Also the one they did the most experiments on. In addition to my skills he has other abilities."
"Like what?" Kitty asked.
"You…Don't want to know," Xi told her. He found the door to the Vault. "This looks like one of Cobra's designs. It could be an old headquarters."
"Well let's go take a look," Kitty took Xi's hand and they walked through the door. They came face to face with over a dozen very angry mutants. "Or maybe we should have just knocked first?"
"If you're with those creeps out there…" Eve charged up.
"Wait!" Solitaire stopped her. "I know one of them."
"Hey! This guy looks a lot like you," Cell noticed as he looked from Xi to Solitaire.
"One?" Xi gasped.
"You…" Solitaire gasped. "You're alive…Eleven it is you!"
"I am known as Xi now," Xi explained.
"I am called Solitaire," His 'brother' replied. "I thought those rumors of one of us working for the humans was a lie. I thought there was no way one of us could ever willingly allow ourselves to be enslaved again!"
"I am not a slave," Xi told him. "You don't know…"
"It's an X-Man!" Dorian piped up. Mrs. Leech was right behind him as he ran up to Kitty. "And you're one of the Misfits!"
"I told you both to stay in the shelter!" Solitaire shouted.
"The kids were getting restless," Slicer walked up to them with more mutants. "Relax. Nobody's gonna blast through that door."
"Dorian! Mrs. Leech?" Kitty was surprised. "What are you doing here? We've been trying to find you for like forever!"
"So was the GRSO," Postman explained. "That's why we took 'em in."
"You said something about him working with humans?" Cell asked Solitaire. He looked at Xi. "That true? You trying to hunt down your own kind?"
"No!" Kitty shouted. "We're here to help!"
"Help who? The humans?" Litterbug snapped. "Don't sell me any line about mutants working for the military! I was in the army before I changed! I know what they do to mutants!"
"Yeah and you X-Jokers aren't that much better!" Eve agreed. "Always trying to make nice with people who wanna kill us!"
"The X-Men believe that most humans will understand us in time," Kitty said.
"Yeah right!" Cell snorted.
"Most humans would rather see us dead than listen to us," Eve pointed out.
"What about Mrs. Leech?" Kitty pointed.
"She's the exception that proves…" Solitaire began when the ground began to violently shake. "What's that?"
That's when Kurt teleported in with Jean and Roberto. "Good we're not dead…" Kurt grumbled.
"That is debatable," Solitaire growled at them.
"You gotta get out of here!" Jean warned. "They're sending…"
Just then the ceiling began to break apart. Rubble fell on top of the mutants. They could see the sky in holes above them. And what was making the holes.
"THAT'S A SENTINEL!" Kitty screamed just as a stream of gas began to pour into the area.
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It was a scene of absolute chaos. The Sentinel that had attacked the hospital had gone haywire. It was now blasting everything in sight. It took all Rogue and Ororo's powers to destroy it. Ororo used a tornado like force to knock it off balance and froze its weapon's systems with a blizzard. Rogue used brute strength to tear it to pieces.
That left the rest of the Misfits and X-Men to deal with the remaining Sentinels. They managed to keep them at bay until more seven figures flew in from the sky.
"More Sentinels?" Rogue shouted. "How many does this guy have?"
One Sentinel had been wrecking the ground, punching holes and setting off some kind of gas. When the mutants tried to stop it, two more Sentinels appeared and shot missiles and lasers at them. One Sentinel was in the shape of a giant oblong spider with ten legs and pincers.
Scott blasted at the Sentinels as much as he could with his optic blasts but found that these Sentinels were reasonably protected against them. Something bamphed next to him and he saw Kurt and Rina on their knees coughing.
"Gas…" Rina told him before she passed out. Kurt fell unconscious seconds later without a word.
To his horror he saw several Sentinels scooping up unconscious mutants and loading them inside the huge spider like contraption. He saw a familiar flash of red hair. "JEAN!"
He raced to her aid only to find his way blocked by two more Sentinels that appeared. He used the full force of his optic rays only to knock them down. One grabbed for him only for it to be repelled by Lance's seismic tremors. "I've got your back!" Lance shouted.
"Thanks!" Scott blasted a missile intended for Lance. "I've got yours!"
There were explosions and falling debris all around the mutants as they fought for their lives. Although they managed to damage several Sentinels, this new batch was stronger. Suddenly as one they stopped attacking and the ones still standing flew away. "They're getting away!" Todd yelled.
"Let 'em," Fred moaned. "My head hurts. Is it me or were those Sentinels harder to beat?"
"It's not you," Ororo landed. "They must have been upgraded to combat our powers more effectively. Anyone seriously injured?"
"A few bumps and scratches but…" Althea groaned.
"Kurt and Rina got a good sniff of that gas," Rogue said. She saw Kitty limping towards her, she was hanging onto Logan for support. "You don't look so good."
"Gas…I managed to phase just in time," Kitty coughed. "But I…(Cough) couldn't get anyone else. Sentinels blasted some of the Morlocks and the others…"
"No sign of survivors," Logan told them. "I just checked the tunnels. They even took the dead."
"They got Jean," Scott told them. "The Sentinels captured Jean!"
"Gambit and Sunspot are missing too," Ororo told them.
"They're gone…" Rogue gasped.
"I found this…" Todd held up a broken watch. "Xi's teleportation watch. But no sign of Xi."
"Kincaid has taken off too," Roadblock noticed. "Now what are we gonna do?"
"We find them, that's what we'll do," Scott growled.
"I think I know where they're headed," Althea said. "The trouble is we gotta find the place."
"What place? Where are they going?" Kitty asked.
"Isn't it obvious?" Althea asked. "Neverland."