DC Marvel Book 1 Sentinels Over Gotham Ch 1

DC/Marvel

Book 1 Sentinels over Gotham

Chapter 1

    Alarm klaxon rang out, only muted by the occasional explosion.  The Sentinels were awake and battling the last of Tony Stark’s legion of automated iron suits.  The battle would not last much longer given the drastic difference in technologies but the suits would provide just enough time for Rachel Summers and her mentor Kate Pryde to obtain their objective and escape.  The laboratory for the Nimrod project proved to be a bit more difficult than either had imagined and It amazed Rachel to know just how far they had already made it while avoiding the Sentinels, if it hadn’t been for the Iron Legion, Rachel was certain they would not have made it this far.

    As the two moved through ran through a dimly lit tomb like corridors of Project Nimrod an eerie howl broke through the sounds of battle through the walls themselves.  On Kate’s control bracelet, one word blinked over and over, Nimrod, it was free and already engaging what was left of the iron legion. Dots representing the Stark armors began turning from a bright green to red at an alarming rate.

     “We don’t have time now. Going to release the Hulk Buster.  Get to the room like we planned.”

    With that, Rachel rushed down the hall, if any of the lesser sentinels were to attack Kate could handle them with the repulsor gloves she picked up earlier from the Avengers mansion.  Rachel just hoped their exit strategy was still in place.

    As Rachel ran ahead Kate removed her control device placing it in a partially shattered part of the wall.  She had just released their last big weapon against the Sentinels and the new threat, Nimrod.  She hoped that the machine that had been designed to stop the hulk would last long enough for her to get Rachel into position just like she had agreed to with the Phoenix force that now inhabited the younger girl.  It promised to keep Rachel safe and take her away from this nightmare world, it had made the same promise to Kate as well but she could not bring herself to leave the world that had killed Colossus.  She still wasn’t certain about the afterlife but she did know she did not want to risk traveling to another dimension and away from her beloved.

    She hadn’t been there when the rest of the x-men died, the X-men that had not been wiped out by the Sentinel.  She found out later how Magneto stayed behind at the camp to buy the others the time they needed to escape.  Even after crippling injuries the master of magnetism still had enough power to hold back robots that had been specifically designed to stop him, and even managed to take a few down.

    In the journey between the camp and the Baxter building, they had lost Franklin Richards.  The attack was too fast for even one of the most powerful mutants ever to avoid or stop.  They might have also lost Rachel if not for the fact that Wolverine kept her from Rushing at the robots.

    While Kate’s mind remained in the past her old friends Logan, the Wolverine, Ororo Monroe, the Storm both moved on to the backup plan along with her beloved Peter Rasputin, the Colossus.  She found out from Rachel that none of them came back.  The poor girl had no choice but to listen to the battle through their coms while she watched over Kate’s body.  She did not know what happened to them only that Wolverine had died first followed by Storm and then finally Colossus.  While their mission ended horribly the missiles that the Sentinels were planning on fire never left their chambers.  The world had been given a brief reprieve but the Master Mold, the mainframe for the Sentinels was still active and now moving on to its Nimrod plan.

    Nimrod was designed to the ultimate Sentinel and this above and beyond those that managed to kill off nearly every single super-powered individual on Earth.  Earth, however, was no longer enough for the Sentinel for it wanted to wipe out all life throughout the universe in a strange plan to make the universe safer from biological beings as they considered all life to be a mutation, even the baseline humans that were currently still permitted a certain amount of freedom.

    As Kate reached her intended target she began pulling out small boxes with the Pym logo on it tossing them to the ground as she continued down the halls picking up the pace as the explosions and fighting from before began to intensify.  The Hulk Buster was now engaging nimrod, each strike causing miniature earthquakes that threatened to spill the two women on the ground.

    Neither had expected what would come next.  A series of explosions, unlike anything the two women had heard before, well above the laboratory.  Explosions that brought to mind the end of the world, or Armageddon as the explosions drowned out all other sounds even deep underground. The two women had reached the true laboratory and Rachel was already entering the code for the lab’s vault just as Kate had dropped her last Pym box.  Ant Robots build originally by Ultron but reprogrammed by his father, Hank Pym would cover the walls and floors of the hallway leading to the lab and the lab itself.  While the robotic ants went about their duty, Kate pulled out one final gift she had prepared for the sentinels, a device that would melt the Nimrod laboratory to slag.  With that armed she moved towards the vault to join Rachel when suddenly she was flying as something exploded next to her, her mutant powers kicked in just in time for her to bounce off a nearby wall.  It took Kate a few moments to realize what had just happened as some liquid still clinging to her stuck to the wall she had bounced off of.  They could block her power? How was this possible? Already she could see the chain reaction of explosions coming from the Pym ants down the hallway and she did not have much time before they reached the lab.  Fortunately, the force of the explosion brought her next to the vault door and she managed to stumble in the door closing behind her as the laboratory erupted in flame and explosions.

    Kate’s trembling hands reached out towards the vault door only to feel cold metal.  Her power was still on, right? She removed the bag she had carried the Pym boxes and tossed it up in the air allowing the bag to return to its original nature watching as it arched slowly before falling back to the ground and through her outreaching hands.  They were the same hands that felt the cold unyielding metal on the vault door.  If all of the walls of the vault were like this, then she was truly trapped, Rachel at least would be safe she thought to herself as she finally turned her attention to the room she was in. 

    The Vault of the Nimrod Laboratory was split into two smaller rooms, one surrounded by what seemed like glass and what looked like an arch to detect and clean radiation but something was wrong with the arc, it was bent and damaged where something had flown through the arc and embedded itself in a box beside the door leading into the innermost room.  A box Kate slowly realized was the keypad, damaged beyond use.  She could hear Rachel checking up on her through an intercom device, perhaps there was a weakness in the wall but it would be too small for Kate to pass through and Rachel saw how Kate’s powers had failed, she couldn’t phase either of them out of the vault.

    Kate knew that the mission they were going on was a long shot and looking into the innermost vault she could see that the first goal of the mission was an utter failure.  The Master Mind main CPU was not down here to destroy there was only a prototype Nimrod strapped down in the corner of the vault, thankfully inactive.  She would just have to hope that the fraction of the Phoenix Force that had attached itself to Rachel would find a way to get her to the safety of that other world, the one she had helped by changing events so they would not end up in the dark reality of her world.  She spoke only two words into the communications box to a stunned Rachel, “Dark Phoenix.”

    With those two words, the flames of creation exploded from Rachel spreading out within the vault rapidly expanding for a second before suddenly rushing back inward and leaving nothing but melted walls and an empty inner vault where Rachel had once stood.  Even the inactive Nimrod was no longer where it once was as if it had been vaporized.

    As Kate stood there accepting her fate she could feel another type of heat coming from the vault door leading back to the laboratory.  It would take a tremendous amount of power to burn through those doors, but that was just what was happening.  She expected metallic hands to reach through the opening as the door slowly swung open, only to see a tall man wearing a purple outfit of some type of armor, a yellow cloak floated around him moving along the heated air of the rooms.  Yellow gloved hands reached for her to steady her as she stumbled backward.  He looked so much like a cross between Colossus and Nightcrawler.  Pale blue skin sporting a massive mustache of dark black hair looking through Kate with eyes that reminded her of obsidian and the only thought that came to her mind then was, The Kree are invading?

    “Hello, my name is Krona, I have dealt with the robots outside and now I think it is time you turned over something that I very much desire for you see I require the mind of a being that has seen the big bang, or at least one of them… so be a dear and tell me, where is the Phoenix?”