2014-04-24 - Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Sentinels?

It's a beautiful midday on the outskirts of North Salem, not entirely far from the Xavier Institute but not so close that every telepath in the area can 'hear' stray thoughts. That's probably a good thing.

A basket with sandwiches, chips, some fruit, and drinks sits untouched by the picnic blanket, which is laying out under the shade of a large oak tree at the edge of the woods. A large, open pasture stretches out for several acres before Fiona and Julian, truly a beautiful and idyllic scene as they await for their friends to join them for a nice date(ish) picnic lunch.

Except being teenagers... well. Fiona is laying on her back on the large blue-and-red blanket, the soft white lace sundress she is wears slowly sliding up her thighs as she kisses Julian-- her arms slid around his neck, holding him half on top of her as they make out.

Teenagers. Not a care in the world.

"Julian, she -does- have to breathe," Noriko scolds, as she wanders across the grass to her friends. "If you kill her by snogging, I will totally zot your balls off. Forever." She is walking with Tommy, carrying a six-pack of Coca-Cola in one hand, and a pie (apple!) in a carrying thingie in the other. She's solicited Tommy to carry the cooler which likely has ice cream in it. For the pie. Because. ICE CREAM AND PIE.

Yes there is ice cream in the cooler. Though if he was one of those way less cool speedsters from the other world, it would have been eaten by now. Tommy stands there smirking beside Noriko watching Fiona and Jules with an amused twinkle in his eyes. "She'll do it Jules, she's crazy," he chimes in helpfully before he flumps down cooler and all beside the blanket.

Julian looks up from where he is happily snogging Fiona, and smirks, moving to sit up and helping her to sit upright along the way. He does not, however, look at all embarrassed about it. Very little sense of shame on Julian. "Hey, I knew she was crazy before she even met you, Tommy." He slips an arm across Fiona's shoulders and grins, "And I figured we may as well find -something- to do while we waited." It is amusing to him that the speedsters are the last to arrive, but hey, they brought food so any punctuality issues can be forgiven.

Fiona, on the other hand, looks quite embarrassed, though happy. ~Hi, Nori, Speed!~ she 'paths happily to them both. She snuggles close to him, waving her fingers.

She glows a little bit, and a pair of bottles of water float out of the picnic basket to her and Julian. ~And Nori, don't zot his... off. Because.~ She blushes more.

Dropping the cokes, and the pie, ... well, setting them down, Noriko grins some. "Oh. Totally zotting them off, if he even thinks about hurting you. Or anything," she tells Fiona, cheerfully. "So, if he ever treats you bad, you just let me know." She winks at Fiona. Then she turns towards Tommy, "And you, Mister. You only date me because I -am- crazy. So I don't even want to hear it."

Tommy's hand zips out and he grabs a coke and pops the top in a single fluid motion. While he drinks he holds up a finger before he finishes. "Not true," he argues to Noriko. "I also date you because you're hot," he says with a sage nod. Then he smiles over to Julian and Fiona and gives them a thumbs-up. "So you guys got it on huh? Kudos."

"You know, I'm going to stop inviting you around if you're going to keep threatening to blast the family jewels off, Nori." Julian notes as he uncaps the bottle of water Fiona floats over to him and takes a healthy gulp. "What's up with the mega-protective streak, Nori? Fiona's pretty good at protecting herself, you know?" He glances towards Tommy with a bit of a smirk, but doesn't verbally respond to his congratulations, just rubbing Fiona's back reassuringly as he adds, "Ahhh. My friends."

~I /like/ his family jewels,~ Fiona protests. And then realizes how that sounds, and turns scarlet. ~I mean.. I... uh...~

She's saved from too much further embarassment by a sudden jolt from the ground, as if something very heavy has landed nearby.

Noriko looks over at Julian, like he's grown a third head. "Obviously, he don't know me as well as he thinks he does," she points out to Tommy, and to Fiona each. She juts a thumb at Tommy, "Ask him what I did to his so-called friends, when they threatned him. It's how I am." She doesn't even bother to make excuses for it, doesn't seem to want to. "I protect my friends. All of them."

She then looks over at Fiona, winking. "You can tell me all about them later."

Tommy smirks as he pops a second can of pop open. "Phrasing," he says mostly to himself before there's that thud. He glances around with a frown on his face. "Did anyone else hear that? Also, no more talking about balls!"

"Except when you threaten to blast their balls off?" Julian notes with a smirk. Then frowns at that slight tremor, "What the hell was that?" He looks around, frowning, a flicker of green energy around his eyes accompanies a "bubble" forming over the four of them and their picnic site. "Didn't sound like an explosion or anything..."

The distant farmhouse seems to waver for a bit. And then from behind it, a form-- as tall, perhaps a bit taller, appears. Roughly humanoid. Metallic. Blue and purple, with glowing eyes, palms, and chest.

Fiona wrinkles her nose, unaware of the approaching danger. ~It felt like someone dropped something heavy,~ she points out helpfully.

And then another jolt. And across the field, a voice, mechanized and chilly. "TARGETS ACQUIRED."

Noriko's eyes get wide. She's - well, she's seen /footage/ of sentinels. But never one for -real-. She says one word. "Shit." They are outside of town. And, there's -nothing- for her to draw power off of. Sure, she has her storage batteries. But. Once that's depleted? She knows she's screwed.

Tommy jumps to his feet. So, this was a Sentinel. He'd seen them on TV before and in training tapes that he watched in, uh, places, but this was his first real encounter. He grins. "Chill guys, I've got this," he says before he zooms off the picnic blanket flapping in his wake. As he speeds towards the robot he builds up a kinetic burst between his hands and if he gets close enough he plants both hands on the robot and lets the energy go.

"Oh shit." Julian notes, blinking at the automaton as it comes into view. He barely gets his TK bubble "open" in time for Tommy to zip through, but he manages, instead shifting for a stronger field that's more a disc between them and the Sentinel, wide enough to hopefully deflect most types of area attack. "Might wanna buzz the school or send the alert or whatever, Nori. There could be more of these things around..."

A flash of blue light and Fiona is hugged by her own shield, staring at the Sentinel in fear. ~They've sent them to kill us,~ she mentally sends out to the other three. She's never seen one in person either... except training tapes. From... places.

The Sentinel absorbs the energy blast Speed uses on it, and looks down. "TARGET ACQUIRED. RESIST AND YOU WILL BE DESTROYED." And it raises a hand to blast Tommy with an energy beam.

What was Noriko just talking about? Oh. Yeah. Julian and Tommy? They have something in common. They have two very bossy female friends. That is, if Jeanne can be called a friend. "Julian! Pull that things hand into it's foot!" Or, at least, away from Tommy. And - she's not so certain /what/ Fiona can do, beyond fly and some light TK. "Tommy. The ground. Under it's feet. Vaporize that shit." She looks to Fiona, "As soon as it's off balance," she's hoping this whole thing works, "Hit it however hard you can on the topside. We need to topple it."

Guess she's /not/ going to the school, like Julian reccomended. Nope. She's not leaving her friends behind. And for her part? She releases two arcing electrical bolts aimed at the things eyes.

The sentinel's counter attack is too slow, by the time the hand is moving Tommy is long gone. It's sad how slow things were when you were a speedster. Hearing Noriko's order he flicks a salute her way, not that she could see it, but then gathering up another burst of kinetic force, he runs through the sentinel's feet and slams the ground letting the charge sink into the earth before he leaps trying to get clear of what should be an epic blast.

"Yeah, sure thing Captain America." Julian notes towards Nori with considerable wry humor. "Wanna yell "Avengers Assemble" or something before we start?" Not that he hasn't already, reaching out to try to force the thing's palm-blaster towards its' head, purely with telekinetic force. "Between the four of us, this should be a piece of cake..."

Fiona's appointed-by-Noriko part in this doesn't come to pass. She sits, still on the blanket, her eyes closed, terrified, hugging her knees to her chest, as a small child might 'hide' from an imaginary monster.

The blast /is/ fairly epic. And the Sentinel sinks into the ground, though moments later it blasts itself out, flying a short distance before lighting on the ground again.

"YOU HAVE RESISTED. IT IS IN MY PROGRAMMING TO TERMINATE THOSE MUTANTS WHO RESIST." Julian's TK push only works so much-- the Sentinel pushes against the force, holding steady for now.

The problem with Sentinels is that they tend to fight in packs. Another jolt, and a second drops to the ground near the wood's edge, near the picnic site.

And blasts Julian square in the back with the upgraded weapons Hammer Industries provided Trask.

"JULIAN!!!" Noriko's voice is a scream of shock, rage, anger, loss, straining her voice. And she turns a dial on her gauntlets. A field of blue energy begins to crackle around her. Her eyes are wet. And blurry. And she aims the blast of the reserved energy, half a city's block worth of juice, straight at the head of the sentinel that took out Julian.

Tommy grits his teeth. Two? And they weren't able to do much to slow down one. When Julian gets hit though that does it, he growls and fires a ranged burst of kinetic energy at the first sentinel to distract it while Noriko mega-zots the second one.

There's a scream of pain as Julian gets vaporized by that blast of energy that emits from the Sentinel. Yep, surely he's toast. Flash-fried, blasted into ash and...well, wait, actually, he's not. Oh, his shirt's completely gone and there are wisps of steam and smoke curling up from on and around him, but after a half-moment, he's actually starting to push himself up, "Owwwww."

"OK, that -really- sucked." And so with that, Julian rises to his knees, and after Nori and Tommy's blasts are unleashed, he kicks in a considerably more "heavy" use of his telekinesis, and simply moves to pluck up the new arrival and hurl it into the original with as much force as he can muster. Which...isn't a whole lot...but they're big and heavy, so that's going to carry a lot of force behind it even if it's not exactly moving at hundreds of miles per hour.

~NO NO NO!~ Fiona's telepathic wail shoots out to more than just the three companions-- elsewhere, much much further away there might be a person or three or four that hear it in the back of their minds as if echoing from a great distance.

And then Julian stands back up.

~Not again not again,~ Julian will hear in the back of his mind, as the second Sentinel is lifted by Julian and hurled awkwardly into the first.

They go down in a jumble, but both rise, one firing at Noriko and the other at Tommy.

Running on low batteries is no fun. And, she is certainly doing just that. She tries to run. Tries to. The blast hits it's target. Too accurate. Too fast. And she goes spinning, in ways a human being shouldn't, and skidding across the turf of the lawn. And man, if it weren't so loud in here, ... they'd definitely had heard bones snapping like wishbones.

Tommy dodges his blast, he's still got his speed up and his brain is processing sentinel's movements faster than it can keep up. Though all that changes when Noriko goes down. He zips to her side and stops, not wanting to pick her up until he knows how bad off she is. "C'mon, Nori, we need to get out of here!" he says as he looks her over and tries to get a response.

"NORI!" Julian yells out, still recovering from his Sentinel-toss and so not quite fast enough to get up a shield for either of his friends. "GOD DAMMIT!" A trickle of blood can be seen form Julian's nose as he pushes his telekinetic power to its' limit and a bit beyond to send a massive "spike" of telekinetic energy towards the chest of the first Sentinel to arrive.

Fiona forces herself to open her eyes, and flickering TK shields begin forming around the other three. Her face is tear-streaked, and her control is wavering, but she lifts into the air, glowing.

The Sentinels take the moment they are all distracted to fire again, at the grouping around Noriko-- so kind of the teens to bunch up together. Fiona's flickering shields absorb some of the blast.

Some.

But the ground below them disingrates and drops them (the non-flying ones at least) into a hollowed out pit from the blast.

"Ow. Ow. OW OW." Noriko pushes up to her feet, blinking, "OW." She says, but seeming - unbruised. Undamaged. Beyond feeling the sting of the blasts. She -looks- at Tommy. Hard. "Power plant," she demands. "Now. Fast as you can go." Then, she looks at her friends, "Julian, run. Take Fiona with you. Go. We're coming back. Quickly. Just - stay alive." That, too, is an order. "Not leaving you. Promise." Another dial is turned on her gauntlets.

Tommy isn't in much pain either, and he's not dead. Weird. However he doesn't have much time to count his blessings. He scoops up Noriko and nods. "You got it," then zoom the pair are off in a streak towards the nearest powerstation Tommy can find.

Julian shifts tact again, moving to try to "yank" the legs out from beneath both sentinels, then zipping over to where Fiona is, scooping her up in his arms and launching away at just belo- hey wait, was that a sonic boom? Given that nosebleed seems to have grown more profuse, it very well may have been. He's actually zooming towards open country though, not wanting the big murder machines following them into a civilized area.

Fiona's fingertips trace Julian's face as they fly. ~No... no you can't push too hard, you'll die...~ she panicks at him.

One of the Sentinels isn't getting back up. The other... gets to its feet and takes flight itself, following.

Speed. A fitting name; as in but a few moments, Noriko finds herself in - well, an epicenter of, for her, power. There's 'Danger! HIGH VOLTAGE!' signs all around. Not to mention 'No Tresspassing' and other warning signs about prosecution, and security guards, and everything. Noriko ignores all of these. Tells Tommy, "Go back. I've got this. You - won't want to be around. And, I can speed back. Help them. Love you."

She waits. Until he's gone. Then? Then the lightshow begins. And the blackout. Electricity crackles, like a huge, terrible lightning storm around her as she surges the power, into herself, through the gauntlets. She draws. And keeps drawing power in. And ... keeps drawing it in. Block by block, lights go out. And confused technicians are staring at their insturments inside, in utter confusion.

Tommy looks at Noriko, his expression torn, but in the end he goes, but not before stealing a quick but passionate kiss. Then he's gone, zipping back towards the others. Who, it seems are not hard to find, because well there's a giant robot following them. Tommy runs hard to get into range then begins to throw kinetic bursts at the sentinel to draw it's attention. There's not much he can do to it while it's airborne but at least he can distract it until Noriko arrives.

"S'all right...just...gotta keep you safe." Julian's words are slightly slurred, but his velocity doesn't slow in the least. He even maneuvers, zigging and zagging through trees, trying to make sure the giant mutant-killer robot doesn't get a clear shot. For the moment, he doesn't yet notice that Tommy's caught up with them again.

Fiona buries her face into his shoulder, her 'voice' small in the back of his head, ~You're bleeding. You're pushing too far, please stop, please...~

The Sentinel fires back at Tommy as he sends the bursts at it, blasts from both hands. Each kinetic blast weakens it a bit more.

It's not long. Longer than Tommy, of course. But, there's an eletric-blue blur that meets up with the crowd. Much like Tommy, she returns to where there were, looking for the Giant Robots Of OMG. She skids to a halt, behind one of the Sentinels attacking Tommy. "Fiona. FIONA. I need you to focus," she shouts at her roommate. "Get me into it's face. Now. You can do it. Float me up there." She sees Julian is taxing himself. And he'll need to recover. "Quick! I -can- take it down. But I -need- you. Now. You -can- do this," she enourages. "Please."

The double blast slams ahead of Tommy too soon for him to avoid. He is blown clear off the ground and lands hard rolling a few times before landing in a muddy ditch. "Uggh," he groans as he stands up. He was tired, he was spending too much energy to keep this fight going, but with Noriko here he needed to get back in the game. So, he zipps off after her.

Julian circles back around, bringing the bots back towards where he vaguely hears Nori's voice. "Yeah...Nori can get it...just need to bring her up there, Fiona. She'll fry that thing..." He sounds...a little out of it. But still focused enough to keep the Sentinel from drawing a bead on them, thankfully.

Fiona swallows, nodding to Noriko, and a glow forms around the blue-haired girl, lifting her up.

As soon as Noriko is face-to-face with the Sentinel, she aims both arms into the things eyesockets. And, a good 50 megawatts of eletric power 'Surges' from either hand into it's head through what is hopefully one of it's 'weaker' points, her entire frame lighting up like a blue-lightning infused christmas tree, or one of those odd crystal balls with the electric inside it that attracts to your fingertips.

Overloaded and overextended, the Sentinel drops... and explodes.

Tommy finds himself dodging again as the Sentinel drops and explodes. This time he's ready for it and makes it away unscathed. He comes to a stop and wipes his brow calling up to the others. "Okay, so who regrets not eating before we did this?"

Julian settles himself and Fiona back down on the ground, the green glow fading from them. "S'Ok...not really...ugh." He starts to pitch forward, into blissful unconsciousness. Though should anyone check (and they probably will) he's breathing evenly and his pulse is steady.

Fiona does check. And wraps her arms around him while setting Noriko down gently. ~Idiot,~ she 'paths to his unconcious form. ~You should not have pushed.~

Noriko is set down, but she looks - dead tired. Depleted. Drained. "That," she says, collapsing onto the ground, "Was not. Fun. Everyone okay? I - should totally be dead." And she starts laughing. In that crazy, insane, I should be dead what the fuck is wrong way the human brain does, sometimes. It's /not/ a humored laugh. It quiets, and dims. "Let's. Not. Ever. Do that. Again."