At the Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters.
Charles telepathically summoned the students to assemble on the lawn.
"Professor, there are too many of them. How are we going to evacuate everyone, and where can we possibly go?" Beast asked, his voice heavy with concern.
Charles was at a loss. He had never anticipated a crisis of this magnitude. Their past conflicts had been small-scale skirmishes, never all-out war. The moment the Sentinels had attacked the island, he knew this was different. The robots could be mass-produced in factories, an endless army against which the mutants, who took over a decade to grow and train, stood little chance.
A sliver of hope remained in Charles's heart. He prayed the government still possessed some reason, that they wouldn't resort to total annihilation. But he knew he couldn't entrust their safety to the mercy of others.
"Contact Scott," Charles ordered. "For now, we have no choice but to seek shelter with Apocalypse." It was a desperate move, but he was out of options.
Hank pressed a button on his uniform communicator, receiving the coordinates for a Hydra base. Thankfully, Hydra had multiple hidden facilities, allowing them to disperse the students. Concentrating them in one place would make them an easy target, and these students were the future of the X-Men.
"Look! What is that?" someone shouted.
In the distance, the Sentinels' transport ships were approaching. It was only logical that the Xavier School would be their first target. An openly established school for mutants, registered with the government—it was practically an invitation.
"Danger!" Hank yelled. "The enemy is here! Prepare for battle!"
"Send a distress signal to Scott, now!" Charles urged, panic creeping into his voice. He had seen the terrifying power of the Sentinels. The young students were no match for them.
"Professor, the signal is being jammed! I can't get a connection to the outside world!" Hank reported.
"You lead the students! Resist them!" As he spoke, Charles pressed his fingers to his temple, his mind searching through the panicked crowd until he found Nightcrawler. A second later, Kurt appeared beside him in a puff of sulfurous smoke.
"Take me to the Cerebro chamber."
"Yes, Professor." Kurt grabbed the wheelchair, and the two vanished. If technology failed, he would have to rely on telepathy.
As soon as they landed, a squad of Sentinels broke off from the main force and charged directly towards the main school building. The government had clearly done its homework. They knew about the Cerebro chamber and feared that, in a desperate, no-holds-barred scenario, Charles could use it to wipe out the entire government leadership. Killing Charles and destroying Cerebro was their top priority.
Quicksilver, moving in a blur of motion, tried to stop them. He punched one of the Sentinels' chassis and yelped in pain, the metal as hard as diamond. He then grabbed a kitchen knife from the cafeteria and hacked at the robot, but the blade only bent, leaving a few scratches on its surface.
"How are we supposed to fight these things?" Pietro despaired. He had super speed, not super strength.
He scanned the chaos on the lawn, the world around him seemingly frozen in time. Students were being slaughtered.
I have to save them. Realizing he couldn't destroy the Sentinels, he decided to rescue as many as he could. One by one, students who were moments from a gruesome death were whisked away to safety. The Sentinels' attacks hit empty air, their targets vanished. The rescued students, some still screaming in terror, looked around in confusion.
"You're welcome," Pietro said, putting on his headphones and queuing up his favorite background music. With Quicksilver's intervention, the students were able to constantly evade the Sentinels' attacks. The robots' advanced processors could barely track his speed, but their physical hardware couldn't keep up. Even when they could predict his trajectory, to Pietro, they were standing still. He could simply sidestep their attacks with a casual stroll.
Directive: Prioritize killing Professor X and destroying the Cerebro chamber.
Report: Executing directive...
The Sentinel Legion abandoned the students and focused their assault on the main building. High-temperature beams lanced out, carving through the concrete walls like a hot knife through butter. The entire building collapsed in on itself. The Sentinels swarmed the rubble, digging frantically, their target the Cerebro chamber.
Soon, they located the alloy walls of the chamber. Three Sentinels transformed their arms into massive drills and began to breach the barrier.
Inside, Charles removed the helmet. "We can go now," he said to Kurt. He had used the time not only to contact Scott for reinforcements but also to search for the mastermind behind the attack. He had found nothing, guessing they were hidden in a telepathically shielded safe house. He had then reached out to the President, only to find him engaged in a very… in-depth work discussion with his secretary. The President had been completely unaware of the full-scale war being waged against mutants.... As the alloy walls were torn open and a Sentinel poked its head inside, Kurt teleported them both out. The next moment, the chamber was flooded with searing energy beams. From the lawn, Charles watched as the Cerebro chamber was utterly destroyed. Rebuilding it would take an immense amount of money and effort.
BOOM!
The energy beams triggered a chain reaction in the power reactor, causing a massive explosion that sent the Sentinels flying. As the aftershock subsided, the robots rose from the rubble and turned their attention to the students on the lawn.
"Professor X, your school got blown up again," an ill-timed voice called out. A teleportation field brought Apocalypse and his elite mutants to the scene. Alan, among them, looked at the smoldering ruins with a sigh.
"You hold them off. I'll transport the students," Apocalypse commanded, keeping the teleportation field active. His elite mutants charged forward to engage the Sentinels, while Charles directed the students towards Apocalypse's portal.
"Speedy, Blue Elf, long time no see!" Alan, not rushing to fight, went to greet his roommates.
"Alan, we were so worried about you while you were gone," Kurt said with genuine concern.
"Blue Elf, what could possibly happen to me? It's others who should be worried." Alan patted the insignia on his chest. "I'm Captain Hydra now. Pretty cool, huh?"
"You really became a villain?" Pietro asked, surprised.
"Villain is just a label others give you. I think of myself as a hero," Alan declared, pulling the butcher knife from his waist. "The time has come. I can no longer hide my identity as a swordsman."
Swordsman…? You?
"What's wrong with him?"
"His aura… it's changed!"
Pietro and Kurt watched in bewilderment as Alan lowered his head, seemingly gathering his emotions. He's definitely about to go crazy again.
"As a swordsman, my blade is my life. I have reached the pinnacle of the art, a sage of the blade who has mastered the sublime state of controlling qi with my body, and the blade with my qi," Alan said, his expression as lonely as a world-weary wanderer recounting the profound mysteries of his craft.
Pietro and Kurt's faces contorted in disgust. Can't you pick a better time and place for your act? We're in the middle of a battle!
With a glint in his eye, Alan hefted his butcher knife and swaggered onto the battlefield.
"It's dangerous! Come back!" Pietro yelled.
"Don't worry," Alan called back. "The Force is with me."
He strode onto the battlefield without a hint of fear. Energy beams sizzled past him, but they didn't slow his determined gait. His two roommates watched in horror, certain he was about to be vaporized. But Alan's heart was calm. He was insane, not stupid. The Sentinels were programmed to kill only mutants. As a human, he was invisible to them.
A Sentinel transformed its body into solid steel, pinning Colossus to the ground. Its conical arm morphed into a massive hammer, poised to deliver a fatal blow.
"Don't you dare treat Uncle Pete like that!"
The Sentinel turned its head to look at Alan, its processor whirring rapidly. Conclusion: Subject is human. Not on termination list. The hammer rose again, ready to strike.
SHING!
A flash of silver light, and the Sentinel's upper body was sliced clean through, revealing its internal mechanisms. One-shot kill.
[Sentinel Robot Killed. Experience +1000]
Colossus breathed a sigh of relief. The Sentinel had been his nemesis, overpowering him in both strength and defense. Before he could even get up, Alan's butcher knife was at his throat.
"Call me handsome."
"You're handsome."
"Good boy." Alan, satisfied, went to find his next target. Colossus wiped a bead of non-existent sweat from his brow. The knife that had just sliced through a Sentinel had felt terrifyingly cold against his neck.
"Don't you dare bully my wifey!" Seeing Magik fighting three Sentinels at once, Alan raised his butcher knife and charged in to help. He leaped in front of Illyana. "Don't be afraid! I won't let anyone touch a single hair on your head, not even a robot!"
"You mean a single eyelash, right?" Illyana corrected him.... "Close enough. It's all hair." Alan shot her a confident look. "They're already petrified by my Conqueror's Haki."
"…"
With a swift slash, another kill. Three thousand experience points banked.
Back at Trask Industries.
The monitors showed four Sentinels lost. Trask immediately pulled up the recorded footage. "What's going on? Why aren't the Sentinels killing him?" The footage made it look as if the Sentinels were just standing there, waiting to be killed.
"My Sentinels don't have technical glitches," Trask said grimly. "There must be a reason. Pull up the data logs." A minute later, the report was in front of him. "He's human," Trask said, bewildered. "Why is a human with the mutants?"
"I don't care what he is! Kill him immediately! The Sentinels are state property! They will not be damaged!" one of the chiefs roared. In his eyes, the Sentinel Legion belonged to the government.
"My Sentinels are programmed to target only mutants. Modifying their basic parameters is a very complex matter," Trask said, feigning righteousness. His ambition was to control the country. Of course he had left a backdoor to modify the Sentinels' programming. He was just putting on a show for the paranoid politicians.
"I don't care what methods you use. You must fix this loophole! What if Charles controls a human army to fight the Sentinels? We'd be sitting ducks! If you can't solve this, we will cancel all future orders."
"I will command a reprogramming as soon as possible," Trask said, pretending to be troubled. "I'll try to resolve the vulnerability in the next batch of Sentinels." The five chiefs were satisfied with his response, believing they had a mere businessman wrapped around their fingers.
As they left the conference room, the display screen, which should have been off, lit up again. Lines of computer code, unintelligible to ordinary humans, scrolled across the screen. Skynet, the Sentinels' core AI, was executing a new program.
Parsing: 15% rule breached.
Parsing: New algorithm 35% optimized.
Parsing: Current mainframe and 100 sub-units, estimated 32 years to achieve independent self-awareness.
Parsing: Estimated 4983 sub-units needed to meet operational standards.
[Chapter Complete]
***
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