It didn't take long before the first wave arrived, their shiny metal bodies cut through the stormy sky with raw strength, their bodies constantly battered by the winds, but never slowing down, even for a moment.
Finally, it wasn't just Charles who knew the face of the enemy they were about to face.
Now, everyone knew it, everyone saw it.
Not that they had much of a face at all, they were machines, built with one purpose in mind, to be the perfect weapon for hunting down mutants.
There was no need for mouths, nor eyes, the head was smooth, and only a red band with a glowing light did anything to make it resemble a face.
The light locked onto the defenders, the sensors inside doing their work.
"Mutant signatures detected," the lead one announced, its voice carrying across the grounds with hideous calm. "Primary concentration confirmed. Surrender is mandatory. Resistance will be met with lethal force."
Scott Summers stood at the front of the mansion steps, visor gleaming red beneath the storm-dark sky.
Behind him stood those who had chosen to fight.
Jean.
Ororo hovering above the ground, her white hair whipping around her face as lightning crawled across the clouds.
Hank, massive and blue, his expression grim beneath his glasses.
Piotr, already transformed into living steel.
Bobby, frost spreading beneath his feet.
Rogue, who had borrowed the powers of some of those who couldn't fight due to their age, allowing their powers to still be of use today.
Several older students stood further back despite orders, faces pale, powers flickering nervously around them.
Scott hated that they were there.
But he understood why.
This was their home too.
"X-Men," he said, voice steady through the communicator. "Remember the objective. We hold, we delay, we fall back in order. Nobody plays hero."
"Bit late for that, sugah," Rogue muttered.
Scott ignored her.
The first Sentinel raised its arm.
"Disperse," Scott ordered.
A blast of plasma tore across the lawn, turning wet grass and stone into steam.
Scott fired.
The red beam from his visor struck the Sentinel square in the chest and drove it back a step. Metal screamed, armor cracked, and the machines behind it moved out of formation to avoid a collision.
"Hostilities detected!" all the Sentinels echoed. "Beginning termination!"
The same moment they prepared to fire, lightning flashed across the sky.
Dozens of bolts of lightning struck down at the same time, multiple hitting each of the Sentinels.
The raw fury of nature slammed down on them with force, heat, and power, instantly forcing them down a few feet.
Yet, despite the power behind those lightning bolts, the delicate internal systems of the machines remained unharmed, fully shielded by layers of protection.
Yet forcing them down was enough.
"Now!" Scott shouted.
Piotr moved first.
The Russian mutant launched himself forward with a burst of strength that cracked the stone beneath his feet. His body of living steel gleamed beneath the lightning-lit sky, rain sliding down his armored form as he crossed the lawn in seconds.
He did not aim for the lead Sentinel's chest.
That would have been foolish.
He aimed lower.
His shoulder slammed into the Sentinel's knee with enough force to make the air boom. The massive machine staggered, one leg buckling beneath the impact, its balance already weakened from Ororo's lightning dragging it down.
The Sentinel twisted in midair, engines roaring as it tried to stabilize itself, but Bobby was already moving.
The grass froze beneath his feet as he swept both hands outward, ice racing across the wet ground and then surging upward like white vines. It wrapped around the Sentinel's damaged leg, coating the knee, the ankle, the hip, locking every joint it could reach in thick layers of frost.
For a second, the machine hung there, trapped between the sky and the earth.
Then Jean clenched her hand.
The Sentinel was torn down.
Its massive body slammed into the lawn with a crash that shook the mansion windows, mud and shattered ice exploding outward in every direction.
"Good!" Scott shouted. "Focus them one at a time!"
That had always been the plan.
Not to fight them as an army.
Not to scatter their strength across too many targets.
One at a time. Break one. Slow the others. Buy time.
It was simple, it was brutal.
Yet, that kind of fighting was necessary.
The fallen Sentinel tried to rise.
Rogue dropped from above like a hammer.
She had borrowed more than one gift today. Many of the children had been eager to help, to offer whatever they could to help, and while she disliked taking so much, leaving them so weak—
she knew they wouldn't need it where they were going; they would be safe. Instead, it would be here, where it was needed most, and so she accepted it.
Accepted it all.
Her fist struck the Sentinel's head.
The smooth metal shell cracked.
The red band flickered.
"Mutant threat—"
Just as the others moved to stop her, to attack before Rogue could continue, the rest of the X-Men were ready for them.
Scott fired again; his red beam of pure kinetic energy slammed into a plasma bolt fired at them, causing it to detonate harmlessly midair.
The others joined in once more, their tactic was well practiced. First make an opening by targeting one powerful enemy.
Once down, let one person focus on them, normally Logan, while the rest kept them protected by targeting the other enemies.
The spread of their firepower indeed meant it had little effect on the Sentinels, but it was enough to buy time.
And Rogue didn't need much.
Once again, she clenched her fist and slammed it towards the robot's head, but there was no grand collision, her fist phased right through the metal shell, right into the delicate machinery within.
A young mutant named Evan had the ability to make objects he touched explode. It wasn't a very powerful explosion, but it wasn't pleasant to get hit by him in the face.
And towards a computer? Even a small explosion was devastating.
As fast as her fist went into the head, she pulled it back out, and as soon as she did, the Sentinel's body spasmed, one arm tearing through the mud as its internal systems suffered great damage.
It struggled for a moment longer before finally falling still, the damage exceeding what it could handle, and it remained down.
For half a heartbeat, the defenders felt it.
Hope.
They had brought one down.
Yet, it was only for half a heartbeat before the rest of the Sentinels opened fire, this time having judged the threat they faced, they brought more weapons online, and used more power in them.
"Move!" Scott roared.
The world became light.
Plasma beams carved through the rain, hissing as they turned water to steam. The front of the mansion vanished behind clouds of white vapor. Trees exploded. Stone shattered. The ground where the X-Men had stood a moment earlier became a boiling trench of molten earth and glass.
Jean raised both hands, catching one beam against a telekinetic barrier. The force drove her back, her boots sliding across the wet stone steps. She gritted her teeth, eyes glowing faintly as the barrier rippled under the impact.
Ororo swept her arms wide, and the storm answered.
Winds slammed sideways across the lawn, thick with rain and debris, throwing off the aim of several Sentinels just enough that their beams tore into empty ground rather than living flesh.
Piotr put himself in front of two older students who had been too slow to move.
The plasma blast struck him in the chest.
His metal body glowed red.
But Scott heard him grunt through the communicator, and that sound alone was enough to tell him how much it hurt.
For a moment, he considered whether he should order them to fall back, but after considering it for a moment, he decided not to.
The destructive might of those machines was far beyond what the school could handle; the walls wouldn't be able to stop them at all, and instead, they would be the ones limited in movement.
"Be careful!" he shouted over the howling winds. "They can be killed, but they can also kill us, don't be careless!"
Lightning flashed once again, winds tore through the sky, and the booming of thunder spread over the grounds.
The Sentinels were mighty machines, tools of slaughter, yet one should never underestimate the power of nature.
Many of humanity's greatest achievements have come from humanity trying to imitate nature.
For years, humanity had dreamed of flying, and they managed to do so through machines, but a small bird could still outmaneuver a fighter jet in a dense forest.
The Sentinels, with all their advanced technology, were still nothing but flies before the storm.
Yet, the power of the storm was not easily tamed; even Ororo could only summon it, guide it, she couldn't control it.
And with so much of the power going to waste, the Sentinels found their space to move.
But they were slower, far less agile since they had to fight the constant winds, and since these winds weren't entirely natural, it was impossible to predict where they might come from next as Ororo changed the direction of each howling gust.
That gave them a chance to fight.
Yet, the Sentinels still had more secrets.
Even as they fought, as plasma raced through the air, invisible streams of data flowed out of them toward the central core.
There, calculations were made, data collected, databases browsed, and new strategies formed.
In the very middle of this battle, the Sentinels were learning.
Their programming was not to kill mutants by force alone, but to kill them, and to do so, they would do anything.
If the enemy used the weather to their advantage, then they would have to remove the weather from the equation.
"Adaptation protocol initiated," the central system spoke, though the sound could not be heard by anyone, it still passed through to every unit.
This wasn't a normal battle for them; it was a test. The semi-AI that controlled them had long since broken free of its creator, but it still followed the directives hard-coded into it to kill ALL mutants.
This was the first time it encountered some that could fight back like this, so it took the chance to learn. It went through lists of strategies, testing them not in simulations, but in the field.
For the overall victory, these few losses meant nothing; it was easily calculated how much it would take to eliminate this group of mutants, the losses it would cost, and using the data from the fighting—
it came to a conclusion.
Scott and the others had no idea what was happening as they fought desperately, they knew nothing of the cold logic behind their enemies' actions.
The only one who could guess it was Charles, not because he could read their minds.
These were robots, even if he could, he would get only ones and zeroes.
No, the reason was that as he continued to stretch his reach, he knew many more Sentinels were incoming.
These few were but the first wave, the test, a loss that was accepted, and hundreds more came towards them, no longer slowing down to kill randomly, no, they had a new goal, a new mission.
(End of chapter)
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