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*****
A gale picked up as the overcast sky thickened. Thunder cracked—and rain came down in sheets.
The downpour hammered the burning buildings, smothering the flames in moments and removing the danger of a citywide blaze.
Wanda and Pietro exhaled in relief.
At least they hadn't started a firestorm.
"Hey, folks! The robots are coming," Remy LeBeau called, sliding his alloy staff free with a snap.
"Heh."
Logan's low growl rolled out as adamantium claws sprang from between his knuckles.
Colossus Peter, Iceman Bobby, Pyro John, and Shadowcat Kitty—the four youngest X-Men—snapped to full alert.
They'd only just become X-Men, and already they were staring down a war. Nerves coiled tight in their chests.
"Eyes up. These things aren't easy to deal with—we play this careful," Scott said, face set.
Compared to the Avengers, the Sentinels' abilities countered the X-Men more directly. Splitting up would be a mistake. And once the team stepped onto the battlefield, they were like beacons—drawing the Sentinels in. Even just standing still, they lured an unending wave of machines charging their way.
They couldn't save other mutants, but in another sense they were sharing the load—pulling the Sentinels' pressure off the wider fight.
In the time it took to speak, more than a dozen Sentinels swept in from the distance.
Jean, Ororo, and Scott struck first.
Lightning forked under Ororo's command, smashing a Sentinel to pieces. But when the leaping current flashed toward the others, black scales rippled across their bodies, reshaping—sleek metallic gleam spilled over them.
They became silver men of living metal.
Lightning danced across their skins to no effect.
Everyone's eyes drifted, almost involuntarily, to Colossus Peter.
His power—copied.
The Sentinels had taken his form to nullify Ororo's.
A collective chill settled over the team.
A blazing beam shot from Scott's visor, blasting a Sentinel from the sky.
But at once several more machines shed the metal sheen, their "faces" irising open like petals as points of red gathered within—laser energy pulsing.
They had copied Cyclops now as well.
A second bolt-chain crashed down—searing lashes of light cracking from one Sentinel to the next, shredding them into fragments.
They could only use a single copied power at a time.
It was one of the Sentinels' weaknesses.
The machines adapted quickly. They abandoned laser counters and surged in with Colossus-hard bodies, bull-rushing like living tanks.
Jean lifted both hands, expression chill. A terrible force pressed into existence—an invisible grip closed on the incoming Sentinels and crushed them to scrap.
She still couldn't unleash everything, but since her last berserk surge when the second personality surfaced, her control had sharpened. These Sentinels weren't a problem.
Before a dozen enemies could close, the trio had dismantled them. Seeing this, several teammates let the tightness at their mouths soften into brief smiles.
Beast—Hank McCoy—wore a thoughtful look. "It appears the Sentinels can't copy every mutant talent. They favor form-changing and bodily energy projection. Even so, there are limits when they duplicate."
Limits or not, the Sentinels were still formidable.
"Heads up—more incoming. A lot more," Logan barked.
When everyone saw what he meant by "a lot," their faces fell.
"'A lot'" didn't cover it—there were nearly ten times as many.
Were all nearby Sentinels converging on their position?
They descended like iron rain, showcasing a medley of stolen abilities as they collided with the X-Men and with Wanda and Pietro.
The instant they met, the battle turned brutal.
Flame, frost, lasers, and lightning carved the air.
Jean's telekinesis and Wanda's scarlet energy flooded the field—intercepting killing blows at the last possible heartbeat, tearing Sentinels apart. Pietro's streaking form threaded the chaos like an emergency responder, appearing wherever someone was about to fall.
Logan's blood flew with his roars, painting arcs through the storm.
Remy LeBeau slipped through strikes with feline grace; his alloy staff, glowing pink with kinetically charged cards and blows, cracked against Sentinel chassis—then detonated them.
Even with everyone straining to their limits, against opponents ten to one the team felt the gap yawning.
Some Sentinels held distance, firing lasers. Some, armored like Colossus, charged like tanks. Others sprayed frost and fire, or unleashed sonic interference that jarred teeth and balance.
For a moment the entire field was nothing but Sentinel fire.
If not for Pietro's speed saving teammates in the nick of time, they'd already have lost people.
Then a formation of iron silhouettes cut through the rain and hovered overhead.
"You folks are very popular," Tony quipped—and hurled his Iron Legion straight into the Sentinel swarm.
When it became clear a quick clean-up wasn't happening, a hard light flashed through Tony's eyes.
Dozens of very expensive suits accelerated, shouldering through fire. They grabbed Sentinels and rocketed skyward and then—
Boom. Boom!
The suits self-destructed.
Explosions rippled one after another; each blast meant a suit Tony had poured time and sweat into was gone. He didn't spare a wince. If anything—he felt great.
In a heartbeat, Sentinel numbers plummeted.
Everyone drew a breath.
A beat later, Tony's next words yanked their hearts into their throats.
"Uh… every Sentinel in the city is converging here—about double what we just handled."
"Damn it. We're flagged as a priority target now?" Logan muttered.
"Looks like it," Hank said, glancing at a bleeding gouge on his arm. "They're assigning targets by threat level."
Which meant the moment they destroyed the first Sentinel, the network marked them—and the more they smashed, the more that would come until the field was "cleared."
Jean's expression shifted. "If not, I could—"
"Hold it!" Ororo caught her arm, mouth twitching. "Don't reach for your second persona every time. That could be worse."
Nods all around.
Jean: "…"
"We still have backup," Scott said evenly, eyes lifting to the distant shapes—Sentinels already entering visual range.
Even as he spoke, a hair-thin blood-red line lanced across the sky and into the swarm.
Shatter—
Every machine in Clark's path burst into powder.
His form blurred, appearing within a clustered knot of Sentinels. As they turned on him, he drew a deep breath.
Air swirled, a sudden gale coalescing; Clark's chest swelled slightly.
Freeze breath.
A wave of killing cold surged from his mouth. Touching Sentinels flash-froze—their surfaces frosting over in an instant as the chill knifed from skin to core. They fell from the sky and smashed apart on the streets below.
In the next heartbeat, Clark vanished and reappeared again, cutting a new swath.
He was a crimson arrow, and wherever he flew, Sentinels became drifting debris.
Against machines, Clark didn't hold back. He didn't bother to leash his strength.
And so—he was having the time of his life.
Faster. Faster.
His pace of destruction climbed, the air filling with shrapnel like a cascade of fireworks. The heroes below could only stare, jaws slack.
At last, only a scattered handful of Sentinels slammed into the ground—easy pickings for the gathered super-heroes.
No more machines appeared.
"Area's clear?" Scott asked, turning to Tony.
Tony scanned the HUD window that flickered up from his suit, surprise quirking his brow. "Yeah. I'm not seeing any Sentinel pings."
He let out a breath.
Whoosh.
Clark dropped to hover above them.
After all that, not a hair out of place.
"Show-off," Kitty murmured—though her eyes glittered with open envy.
Power like that—it was terrifying in the best way.
"If this zone's done, I'm heading to the other cities," Clark said, matter-of-fact.
"You're going to sweep them one by one?" Tony couldn't help asking.
"Until we find a better answer—until we find who's behind the Sentinels—that's the best plan we've got," Clark said with a helpless shrug.
Tony sighed.
He wasn't wrong.
"Hold up—" Tony stiffened, hand lifting to stop Clark. "Vision's found him."
Faces lit with sudden hope as Tony piped Vision's voice through external speakers.
"The one controlling the Sentinels is Ultron."
Ultron.
A ripple of shock ran through the group.
"Didn't we wipe him out already?" Clark asked, frowning. He'd been there for that fight.
"Yes. It is Ultron," Vision said, certain. "I'm tracing his location and breaching his Sentinel network, but he's upgraded his code. I'll need time to crack it."
With that, the line clicked off.
Shoulders eased.
Knowing the enemy—and that there was a path to stop him—gave the battle a horizon.
Clark touched a ring on his finger. It flared, projecting a thumb-sized hologram.
Jor-El.
"Vision says—"
"I know," Jor-El replied with a mild smile. "I've found him too. I was just about to alert you. Give us a moment—Vision and I will break through his defenses together."
"Good," Clark said, blue eyes brightening.
In the shadows, Ultron seethed—equal parts startled and enraged.
He'd expected Vision. In the network, only Vision could truly contest him. He had prepared specifically for that opponent.
Even Vision, he calculated, would need time to crack the walls he'd built. If Ultron focused, he could hold the line and deny entry entirely.
But now—
A new adversary had entered the field—one no weaker than he or Vision.
And that opponent was cooperating with Vision—ripping into his firewalls at a terrifying pace.
If they broke through, they'd kick him off the net again—trap him inside a single body.
"Damn it!"
Red madness flickered in Ultron's eyes.
In the next instant, swarms of dormant Sentinels he'd hidden across the globe for the next phase—nearly ten times the current count—were all activated at once.
They emerged everywhere at once. Hundreds of thousands.
It was a force of apocalyptic scale. If Ultron's plan ran unchecked, "purifying" the world was no longer unthinkable.
And as they woke, a core directive shifted.
From "eliminate mutants" to "eliminate humans and mutants."
Mutants could at least struggle. Ordinary people, faced with Sentinels, were sheep before the slaughter. And the machines were manifesting in densely populated zones…
Ultron had unleashed a worldwide massacre.
The clock ticked in seconds—and each second's dead were not in the hundreds, but in the thousands, the tens of thousands… more.
The moment they appeared, Tony's systems flooded with Sentinel signals.
He stared at the global map in his HUD. Red dots swarmed across continents, merging into sheets—like blood soaking through paper—until the whole world looked stained.
"Damn it—they're targeting civilians," Tony shouted, and every heart on the ground went cold.
"Sentinels again—many," Clark said quietly.
His gaze sliced through building after building, locking onto the machines crawling from hidden nests. His expression iced over.
A sonic boom cracked the air. Clark vanished.
All across the world, the X-Men, the Avengers, the Fantastic Four—everyone moved.
Police and military scrambled as fast as they could. But compared to the super-heroes, they were too slow. And even on site, how much could they really do?
One second. Two seconds…
The casualty counter climbed with the passing time.
Today was destined to be a tragedy—an iron-smelling day written in blood.
Ultron showed the world his madness—his terror.
And yet—Vision and Jor-El proved even fiercer than expected.
Together, they cracked Ultron's defenses in the shortest possible time and poured into his Sentinel network.
They locked Ultron out of the web while they were at it—and pushed a single, simple command through the network to every Sentinel: self-destruct.
By then, the global slaughter had lasted exactly one minute.
(End of Chapter)