16893/Mutants and Master Molds - Ghost in the Machine

Mutants and Master Molds - Ghost in the Machine
Date of Scene:	18 January 2024
Location:	Government Storage Warehouse
Synopsis:	The X-Men find a storehouse filled with Sentinel parts being stolen. While they're there to investigate they face off with the real thing!
Cast of Characters:	Monet St. Croix, Kitty Pryde, Betsy Braddock, Tabitha Smith, Rogue, Jubilation Lee, Noriko Ashida, Quentin Quire
Tinyplot:	Mutants and Master Molds

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Monet St. Croix has posed:
After the scouring of Sokovia, all Sentinel technology had been banned by the signatories and all Sentinels slated for decommissioning. But one couldn't just clap their hands and immediately take them offline. It involved finding a facility that was capable of taking them apart chunk by chunk, experts that could take the different materials and safely dismantle them, and expertise that could disarm them when necessary. It was also extremely expensive and slow. So many Sentinels sat in storage under guard while they were taken apart in a slow process that would take years, and cost billions of dollars.

There were always small discrepancies in inventory. When places were checked only several months and at random, some things slipping through the system were inevitable. In this giant warehouse that had well over a dozen of the 'huge' nine meter tall Sentinels anchored to the ground and up to the ceiling by heavy steel beams, and numerous smaller ones and weapon systems in various stages of dissassembly with the most critical and dangerous parts removed.. The place was a giant maze of stacked crates, mostly automated systems, and dim lights above.

Xavier had many friends in the government. Some hated mutants. Some were ambivalent. But for each person that hated, there was another that helped. An FBI Agent that had been a long time friend of the X-Men, Fred Duncan, had passed along information of various Sentinel storage sites which had small amounts of 'inventory' missing. In recent years, with Sentinel attacks still happening - last year's attack by Hydra on New York a prime example..

Sometimes one had to poke thier head in. So, late at night, when one such fccility that had recently had some small things missing.. The X-Men were poking their nose in.

Kitty Pryde has posed:
Over in a quiet corner of the facility, a face slowly emerges from the ground. Just enough to get the eyes up above ground level and peer around, before the rest of the head lifts upright and Kitty Pryde's face can be recognized.

She takes another long look about and then begins to rise up, drawing with her everyone who is entering with the phasing girl, who held onto her during the entry into the facility. They got as close as they could to the building to make it as short of a trip underground as possible.

Kitty makes sure everyone is up above ground safely before nodding and saying quietly, "Ok, it should be fine to let go now." She pulls out her phone, one of her own design with a lot of features Apple and WayneTech don't give you, and begins scanning the wireless signals in the area.

Betsy Braddock has posed:
Psylocke wasn't unused to a light amount of B&E on government facilities, especially if it's for a good cause. And finding out what happened with the sentinels that were supposed to be getting decommissioned?

It doesn't exactly get more important than /that/. So she patiently made her way into the facility, noting the security flaws with a clinical detachment to possibly give later, depending on how complicit the people running the place were in the missing inventory. While she could have taken the ride with Kitty and phased in, the fact that she could telepathically keep tabs with the rest of the team and she trusted her own infiltration skills...

Well, for a job like this, she was more inclined to be separate to avoid discovery. Though her thoughts intrude on Kitty when she arrives, << Glad to see you, Katherine. Going to scout around a bit the old fashioned way. >>

Tabitha Smith has posed:
Despite her reckless and sometimes fearless demeanor. There are things that Tabitha fears enough she still gets nightmares.

One of them is Sentinels.

Which is understandable since she was on Genosha when Brainiac sent them to wipe out everything thing that wasn't scooped up in a bottle.

It's not helped that these things keep showing up, even in Sokovia. Even when bits and pieces turned up in the US and whole units got reassembled.

So Tabby might have some beef with these things.

Coming into the building with Kitty and her phasing. The blonde is in uniform, black synthetic leather pants, her black jacket with yellow padding, yellow boots, hair in a ponytail and her glasses in red tinted Ray Ban style.

The blonde's mood is pretty ansty and anxious as she chimes in on the mindlink, <<So what, we're just seeing what was taken so we can guess how many of these things are in the wild? No one gonna complain if I do a lap and drop enough bombs to slag everything on our way out?>>

Rogue has posed:
Rogue is outside of the target complex, wearing a fitted leather trench coat of brown fading to black at the base over top of her green and gold suit. With a hood sewn in the coat's lapel, it is up over her head. She's silently observing from afar, keeping as well covered as she can, her role clearly just to watch from afar and provide rush-in support should needs arise.

Jubilation Lee has posed:
    "It's not going to work," Jubilee had insisted. "It's never going to work. If it was gonna work, I'd have already tried it..." She had some serious doubts about using Kitty Pryde's ability to phase her inside a building she wasn't invited to enter. As much as Jubilee loves to break rules, the universe can be a real stickler for the ones that apply to vampires. But, was she a coward? Would she let others think she was? Jubilation stuck what might be her last ever stick of gum into her mouth, gets a nice chew going, and slips her dark sunglasses over her eyes. "Okay. Beam me up, Kitty..." she says, trying her absolute best to make the last thing she ever says something memorable.

    ~*~*~

    While the rest of the group might emerge with Kitty like it's a deleted scene from a Mission Impossible movie, the vampire does it with a look of pure horror frozen on her face. She just entered somewhere without being invited in. When Kitty announces it's safe to let go, Jubilation's hand lingers, clinging to Kitty Pryde's shoulder and unsure what will happen if she does.

Noriko Ashida has posed:
"That's weird.  Did anyone else keep their eyes open?  Took forever.  I thought I might have been Casked."  Noriko should be quiet, but at least she's whispering.

For her part, Noriko doesn't seem to have a healthy amount of fear when it comes to Sentinels, government facilities, just like anything else when it comes to her own body.  She has tagged along out of curiosity, though that's not anything she outwardly shared with anyone.

"Can you guys stop talking in my head?  You're super slow and distracting.  Just toss a hand signal if you need to talk to me and I'll slow down."

Monet St. Croix has posed:
The group has made it in. Spread out and around the facility. They're phased in to a deserted facility. Flickering lights above, a layer of dust.. Quiet save for the sounds of the large fans that were constantly running, with the occasional small shake in the place. A very, very big warehouse with things spread around all over. The place looked like it had no one in it for months at a time.

In the rafters, small security cameras would spindle and rotate in slow pathways, rotating back and forth in a repeating pattern. connected by power cords pressed into the ceiling and up the walls.

Occasionally dotting along the walls of the place old computer systems that looked like they were from the 1970's and 80's, large file drawers.. And small forklifts and ladders used when folks were going for specific parts.

Kitty Pryde has posed:
"Note the cameras," Kitty says quietly, and sends the same thoughts over to those who aren't with her physically. "I'll see if I can loop their feeds so we can move more freely." Kitty heads over to clip a cable onto the network cable for one of the computers, then retreats to a spot she won't be seen as she begins delving into the network. Actually being plugged into it, as it were, is one big advantage on hacking into a system versus trying to come in from the outside.

"Tabby, it might do more harm than good. Would slow them breaking the rest down. Not to mention create even more holes in the inventory log for things to go missing," Kitty murmurs. Though she glances around. "I share the sentiment though," she says with a glare for one of the robotic heads that is sitting on a shelf nearby.

She begins working her phone, to loop the security cameras, and also to try to get into the inventory so they can do a fuller accounting. Likely with Doug Ramsey's help.

Tabitha Smith has posed:
Having long been a thief and accustomed to illegally entering places Tabby points out some of the cameras she spots as Kitty spies a few herself. <<How old are those frigging things? Are they even on a network? I bet they use like VHS like our parents used to watch.>> she jokes. Though Nori gets a grin. "Hope they don't have mics. Wanna get up there and yank the cables if our lovely haxxor friend has to fight old tech and magnetic tapes?" she suggests.

Otherwise she's just looking about, taking as much video as she can with one of the burner phones that come in handy for the covert stuff like this. "None of this should be in storage. Just slagged. Makes my damn skin crawl."

That robotic head does get a golfball sized plasma stream punching between it's dead mechanical eye sockets though. Then a second just above that.

"Gotta make sure it's dead." the blasts not particularly louder that the mutants are.

Rogue has posed:
Rogue leans against a tree on the perimeter of the facility's yard. She pulls her phone from her pocket, checking the X-Men link system, spying locations of others on the team inside the building. Her free hand swipes a few locks of white hair out of her face, as she swipes across the screen, trying to use some X-Men tech that she didn't really pay attention to how to operate during the lecture awhile back. Wifi signals are supposed to be able to create maps of places in real time, but all she sees is a bunch of squiggly lines. She sighs quietly, and pulls a stick of gum out of her coat pocket, folding it up and slipping it in to her mouth. She chews, and leans.

Jubilation Lee has posed:
    Jubilation feels the security of Kitty Pryde's shoulder escape her grip as the other mutant breaks away in search of her network cable. The vampire is frozen in place with a deer in headlights kind of look. Blink. She looks down and starts patting herself down with both hands, checking if everything is still attached and that she's not actually decomposing or whatever horrible thing might happen to her for her trespass. Seeing that nothing has happened, Jubilation cracks a smile as though she's done this a million times. Easy peasy. She reaches up and props her sunglasses above her forehead and immediately walks forward with endless confidence.

    Jubilation picks up what archaeologists refer to as a floppy disk, brings it up to her eyes, and flops it in the air a couple of times. She hesitates, looks around to see if the coast is clear, and slowly brings it up to her mouth. Her tongue bops it like a snake, giving her a little taste of the thin layer of Cold War era dust. "Bleh...." she says, tossing the disk back on the desk she found it. "Can someone tell me... What the heck are we even looking for?" she quietly asks, eyes darting over to Kitty.

Noriko Ashida has posed:
"I'm just going to go push some buttons and have a look around, see if anything looks like it's been tampered with or squirreled away in the wrong spot, if anyone left their shoe in the door so they can come back, that sort of thing, but I'll stay out of view," Nori rattles off quickly, but clearly.

"I'll be ready if something happens.  I got a lot of juice on the way over," Noriko relays to Tabby, and by juice she obviously means electricity.  Then Noriko isn't there, flitting this way and that as she scouts quickly enough to not be detected, still making sure to skirt surveillance just in case.

Monet St. Croix has posed:
Kitty confirms that yes, the system is ancient. The system is extremely dated, and works purely as the vacuum tubes that make it up are solid and last forever. Much like the old Voyager probes sent into space. Long since outpaced by modernizing technology.. But still, they kept on going through the cosmos, passing out of the solar system. Dated things still moving. Solid.. But workable. The system is, however.. Slow. It doesn't take punch cards.. But it's not much better than that. The fact that the systems still work is expected. But it also means it's going to take awhile to get information.

Tabitha's quick blast up of energy bolts goes directly into the optic 'sockets' over of the Sentinel with a whine that turns into a scritch.. Wait, a scrittch? The blasts were accurate and went up to hit into said sockets.. Where the glass would fall back and away. Ther'es the faint whiff of burning plastic falling down 'into' the Sentinel.. And emptiness displaying if one were to poke up and glance into it.

Kitty Pryde has posed:
Kitty Pryde replies to Jubilee, "We want to make sure that parts of these things aren't disappearing where they can be rebuilt into Sentinels. Or used for anything else nefarious for that matter. The inventory files will go a long way. But we can also look around for any signs of unusual things," Kitty suggests.

She pauses, looking up from her screen to look around the facility. "Any signs of parts being shipped out instead of in. Or still intact if there's evidence they were marked as dismantled. Things like that," she suggests.

Looking back to her phone, Kitty shakes her head. "I think their database is running on a Pentium IIe," she says. "I might have to set this up to keep downloading after we leave, I don't know if we can get it all in time. Short of ripping the computer out entirely. And we don't necessarily want people to know we were here, if there is anyone smuggling out parts. So that would be kind of bad."

Betsy Braddock has posed:
<< Katherine, those security cameras... they're just for show. They aren't hooked up to anything. And the security here was pathetically amateurish, even by government standards of the lowest bidder. These things are meant to get stolen. >>

Betsy makes that observation as she seems to materialize out of the shadows, fairly close to Jubilee, giving her a bit of a concerned look. The butterfly aura dances around her face as she maintains the link, though filters it for Noriko at their request.

Tabitha Smith has posed:
Doubletapping the head of a giant robot usually should have more punch and molten metal and silicon and all the stuff when electronics are subject to much heat.

That results in Tabby frowning and peeking inside the head. "This thing has an emptier head than what you guys think I have." there isn't even her usual level of snark. A dead serious Tabby is probably something to cause concern. "I don't think they kept a record of outgoing shipping. And I bet we don't have time to do a stock take." she states and looks for any other larger sentinel parts elsewhere to cut open. "Like a dodgy car yard. Make the things look preem, but you got nothing actually under the hood." she explains while she starts cutting a hole along one of the hands she finds.

Rogue has posed:
With her frustrations at being unable to operate the Wifi scanner tech, Rogue swipes her thumb across her device screen a few times, until she brings up Candy Crush. Leaning against the tree, she chews on her gum, her phone on as low volume as possible. She glances up at the building, but doesn't see, or notice, anything unusual as of yet. Thus, her eyes drop back down to the screen, where she continues to crush candy in oddly very satisfying mental pleasure. Her gum is chewed, her hair is swiped again, and she shifts weight from one booted foot to the other.

Noriko Ashida has posed:
Then Noriko is right back next to Kitty.  "We should check to make sure the cores are all accounted for.  Can you target vital components or do you have to grab everything?  Are there serial numbers?  I could just, write everything down I find on the parts and we can check it later against the records you're pulling?"  Noriko is now looking over Kitty's shoulder, interested in what is going on as much as she is the great unknowns of the facility.  What Noriko is volunteering is tedious, but if anyone has time to collect all of that physical information, it's her.

"Also, I'm not sure if this matters, but none of these guys have any reserve power.  They are all dead as doornails.  No juice left.  Not even big juicy capacitors if that matters any," Noriko adds as if this were a minor detail.  "I would have loved to have a big old reserve battery to sink some electricity into whenever."  Le sigh.  A girl can dream.

Monet St. Croix has posed:
A quick scan of the system would show that the Sentinels that Noriko had indicated still, in fact, held internal batteries and (inert) generators of whatever sort. The archival system is definitely showing things intact that when the group pokes in at they're finding is not present. The security here is non-existant, even by the standards of the penny pinching US government. Someone's taken advantage of it..

And setup the perfect smuggling setup. Something that one of the thieves on the team might appreciate the efficiency of. Sentinels with propped up heads, missing batteries and other specific components.. All of it logged in place and with security designed to just look pretty (and ancient).

Quentin Quire has posed:
Betsy, at the very least, will have been aware of a telepathic eavesdropper on the group's mind-link since they infiltrated the facility, keeping tabs on the group as they explore further. Just Quentin, keeping an eye on the team as they go after what could be a big bad nest of Sentinels.

When it doesn't seem to be anything more dangerous than a dodgy used car lot, the Omega-level telepath naturally gets bored of holding back in the reserves to rush in and make the heroic save.

<<That purple one'll get you a bomb, Rogue...>> she hears in the back of her mind as Quentin silently drops down to the grass behind the Southern Belle, a faint pink glow fading from around the telepath as he lowers himself back down to the earth. Geared up for war as well, he's thrown a leather jacket on over his black & grey uniform, various punk and mutant right slogans sewn in the back, spikes across the shoulders and at the wrists.

"Does this seem a little anticlimatic to you?" he asks Rogue audibly as he looks towards the warehouse.

Monet St. Croix has posed:
Outside, Rogue is the one to hear it. Rocketing in from a distance are a trio of large.. Bulky looking things. Humanoid.. Heavy looking. More scaled like power armor than the mecha sized SEntinels the group was familiar with. But still massive, boxy.. And flying in towards the warehouse at high speed!

Kitty Pryde has posed:
Kitty Pryde pulls out a spare phone from a pocket of her X-man uniform. "Enable access to Noriko," she tells the phone, and then passes it over. "Good idea, Noriko. Here, can record the serial numbers. Give about a second to make sure you get a clean video and then move to the rest. I don't know how much you can do, but if you have to prioritize," Kitty says, and then moves over to the head that Tabitha has made a hole in.

"This is the central processor so is a good thing to focus on. Though as many as you can get of other components, the better. The power is... oh here," Kitty says, and if Noriko lets her, Kitty takes back the phone. A few taps and some scrolling and more taps, and she passes it back. There's a schematic of a Sentinel, with key components marked like processors, power cells, weaponry and sensors.

Rogue has posed:
"Thanks, sugah." Rogue quietly says to Quentin without looking up from her screen. She plays the move he suggested, and smiles lightly at the result. She glances over at him, and was about to say something, when she saw the sight of the incoming shadows. She upnods at them. "Somethin' is inbound." She tells Quentin. "Ya better let'em know. I thought this would be a milk toast run, guess not. Ya just had to open your mouth, huh?" She asks, smirking at him before tucking her phone in to her pocket.

Betsy Braddock has posed:
Betsy pauses, muttering something about Quentin Quire as she overhears a bit of Rogue's conversation through the mental link she's maintaining. Then she pauses and focuses more on Rogue, which is how's able to warn the others in the link about, << Three bogies coming in, power armor sized. I don't think that's a coincidence. >> Sending the warning to everyone in the link, despite Noriko's disdain for it, she then moves quickly for some measure of cover.

Not that she expects to remain hidden from sentinels, if that's what these are, but she does expect to need the cover to get in close and see how well a telekinetic katana does at severing robotic limbs when they make their entrance.

Noriko Ashida has posed:
"Uh, it'd be faster for me to just type it...and..."  Noriko is afraid she might fry the phone, but she doesn't argue.  "I'll get video and pics of the important bits and just type the rest."  Noriko is kind of thinking out loud while Kitty gets her the schematic, but as soon as she has the phone back and before there is any chance to amend how she is going to do things, her gauntlets are on the ground next to Kitty and she's off...kinda.

Noriko isn't used to working with phones, so there's a bit of a learning curve.  She spends some time sitting on the floor while everyone is seemingly stock still, just moving through the UI and getting familiar with the paths she'll need to take to switch back and forth to the camera and the records she's compiling.  They will be meticulous, like the kind of meticulous that assigns a random unique identifier to recorded component which corresponds to any artifacts like video or photos and notes.

Then the speedster sets the phone aside and works on giving herself a good stretch.  She senses the awakening of the electricity around her before she understands what is going on.  "That must mean I should hurry," she says to no one but herself.  She hops up to her feet and hums while she works.

Tabitha Smith has posed:
"Power can be beamed in these days. Like that one we dropped trying to off President Luthor." comes a reminder from Boom-Boom "Hydra gotten their hands on a few Sentinel Units." she exposits "Hydra, AIM. AIM wanted to cyborg things with this crap." that makes her visibly cringe.

"So question is, the hell the parts going before they end up in mad science labs or the barn of a bunch of redneck racist bikers." she adds with shrug while she cuts a hole and looks for what would be where a plasma generator might have been kept for those hand blasts they do.

<<Mini sized? Power Armor? Anyone in them?>> she asks at least the more experienced, or powerful telepaths.

Around her the warehouse gets a little brighter as she starts orbiting baseballs sized orbs of condensed plasma energy. Like making miniature suns revolve around her.

Quentin Quire has posed:
"Hey, you can't blame that on me." Quentin counters even as he follows Rogue's upnod and sees the three incoming sorta-Sentinels. "That's not in my powerset."

Obliging the southern powerhouse, he interjects a similar warning into the mind-link for those inside. <<Someone probably tripped a fancy silent alarm. These look a bit too beefy to be your average rent-a-cop security patrol.>> and there's a pause as the telepath reaches out passively towards the incoming power armors <<Don't seem to be manned, either. No human minds to speak of.>>

The telepath waits for the incoming unmanned suits to pass overhead before he envelopes himself in a telekinetic sheath of pink energy and lifts off the ground, arching away to come in from behind.

Monet St. Croix has posed:
There are a trio of box-like Sentinels flying in. Rather small - compared to many of the Sentinels the group has fought in the past. Each is only about three meters tall. Towering over almost all.. But also not the huge, ten meters or taller ones that are so common in combat back when they were fought en masse. The trio of them go to fly on down in attack formation, weapon mounts popping up.
    Each going to speak over in an identical, high pitched voice. <<MUTANT SIGNATURES DETECTED. TERMINATE.>> Then each of them goes to blast at the mutants! But..
    Not with a massive barrage of missiles and lasers. But with high intensity, blinding lights and deafening sonic blasts designed to hit levels that were extremely debiliating for most humans!
    Betsy's hidden from them, even as the three are on their attack run and Quentin is gong up to try and hit them from behind!

Kitty Pryde has posed:
Kitty Pryde quickly sets up the tap she put on the network cable to transmit, assuming they won't be there long enough to get all the data any other way. And then clears out of that space, not wanting to have the computer hit whose connection she is using.

Kitty runs down one of the aisles. "Watch out for nullifiers, they tend to be on the bigger models only, but never know," she sends to the group over the link.

Kitty wasn't expecting that blast of sound energy, she'd already phased but that doesn't really help against sound waves!

She falls, letting out a cry of pain and then sinks into the ground where she's protected from the sonic weapon.

Betsy Braddock has posed:
<< Probably not even a tripwire, Quentin. A simple mutant detector would have picked us up easily enough. Who else would bother looking into this place anyway? >> Betsy's thoughts are rather disgusted in the link, as she takes cover from the strobe light and sound barrage, wincing even though she's out of the main line of fire.

She frowns as the sentinels fly overhead, then mutters a bit, "Bets, this is a really /bad/ idea..." Then she grins, and decides to give herself a telekinetically-boosted leap, intending to land on the back of the trailing sentinel and give it a good telekinetic slice-and-dice. While probably thinking she needs to talk with Jean about some TK lessons regarding precision.

Rogue has posed:
Rogue isn't far behind Quentin. But where he suits up with some weird mental brain thing, she suits up by wrapping her arms around the tree she'd been leaning against, and flies it up out of the ground, roots and all. "Sorry, old fella, but I need your help smashin' some stuff. I'll plant a new tree in your honor." She whispered softly in to the tree's trunk, as she rose up in to the sky. Using the tree as cover, it flies through the air in Quentin's wake, trying to keep out of immediate frontal assault of the Sentinels. She's fought these things before. The tree and the Belle fly in from behind the Sentinels, leaves and dirt falling from it, raining down toward the ground, as Rogue means to outright battering ram run in to one, or more, of the enemies in the sky above the warehouse.

Tabitha Smith has posed:
Ten Feet is still pretty big. And those lights are stupidly bright and the sounds. Well even with her earpieces in for comms, and playing music when they're in transit. They don't cancel that much noise, alas.

Trying to get away from the lights Tabby dives for some cover. The orbs of plasma all flying with telekinetic guidance towards where the lights were brightest, even with her tinted lenses.

"Really, really miss Dazzler right about now!" she yells while covering her ears with her hands. Eyes squinting to try and not get blinded.

Darker Sunglasses next time Tabitha!

Noriko Ashida has posed:
Noriko was turning to sprint to get behind the incoming Mini-Sents.  She was bounding off at a very very quick velocity.  Things felt slow around her, as per normal, but she gets hit with the flash of light first, which immediately causes her to drop her speed to her natural velocity (which is much much faster than everyone else).  Unfortunately, this does nothing for her existing momentum, and instead she trips up on her own feet, everything feeling faster than it should in an instant as she goes bowling down an aisle, just smearing her way till she hits the legs of one of those giant husk-y out of order Sentinels with a CRASH!

The sound waves caught her along the way, but the whole time, Noriko just tries to focus on not frying the phone and holding it up from the ground even as she sees her crash coming.

"PHONE'S OKAY!" she shouts probably too quickly for anyone to understand and not loud enough to go over the sonic attack, but she holds it up in the air triumphantly, not paying attention to whether the giant robot husk is stable or not.

Quentin Quire has posed:
"Son of a bitch!" Quentin shouts as he meets the barrage of blinding lights and deafening sonics, concentration temporarily broken as he tries to cover his eyes and his ears at the same time. The sheathe of telekinetic energy pops like a balloon, sending the young man plummeting towards the earth below.

Luckily he gained enough height that by the time he recovers, he's still plummeting, so there's time to snag himself in that telekinetic grip before he turns into street pizza. Arresting his fall and righting himself, the telepath has formed a pair of heavy duty earmuffs out of pink energy, and found a pair of sunglasses in his jacket, telekinetically scrambling the molecules to make the lenses even darker.

<<Is it wrong that I'd prefer them to come on with laser blasts and missiles? Less of a headache that way...>> he complaints over the mind-link as he lifts himself back up towards the descending robots, reaching out towards the nearest one with telekinetic power to try and crush the strobing light sources.

Monet St. Croix has posed:
Quentin's attack goes to crush out the lights on each of them in rapid succession. As Kitty goes to duck into the ground, she's safe from the noise. And there are no signs of power nullifiers on the trio of units facing them. Which was a good thing.
    As Betsy went to flip up over on the back of one and slash her psychic katana over the back of the Sentinel, she scythes off some heavy armor. Titanium and ceramic plating? With maybe some steel or iron? As she would keep slashing at it, the Sentinel goes to blast out with a powerful electric field about it's body, trying to give her a brutal, overloading shock to fling her from it and leave her paralyzed!
    Rogue goes to plow into one up and over in the air, and slams into it like a pinball! IT goes to smash hard from the blow, not even bothering to try and engage her in midair as it goes to crush hard into the ground! And lands in a STOMP leaving a crater.. And flattening a chunk of the warehouse. It goes to raise up ti's fists over at Rogue and goes to start blasting at her not with rockets, lasers, or fire.. But from it's wrists there's a loud whine and then massive steel bolts are launched in the air at her! It's got built in railguns that it's trying to launch them like huge barbs to try and shish kabob her with hyper-accelerated rounds!
    As the thrown bombs from Tabitha detonate around them, sparking and impacting against ceramic reinforced armor. Which was better at absorbing concussive blasts. Whatever (or whomever) had made these Sentinels was clearly not using the normal factory mold.
    It goes to land with a thump right NEAR where Noriko has just announced with total SUCCESS that the phone is okay! The day has been saved! ... And now there's a massive multi-ton ten foot tall Sentinel trying to blast at the others near her!

Betsy Braddock has posed:
Psylocke frowns and leaps clear just before the electrical burst, wincing, "Blast! Reinforced armor against my telekinesis." She is, however, falling, which is a bit of a problem.

Concentrating, the blade vanishes as she instead focuses on her telekinesis, "Remember, just like Red showed you..." Unfortunately, it isn't quite like Jean showed her, as she comes to a /sudden/ stop ten feet above the ground, then falls the rest of the way with a thud. Though she manages to roll through the worst of it, she grimaces a bit, "... okay, that could have gone better." Picking herself up, she stays linked with the rest of the team as she considers a new tactic.

Kitty Pryde has posed:
Kitty Pryde sticks her head up, hands over her ears. Thankfully the attacks on the Sentinels seem to at least be affecting their aim of the sonic weapon her way. << I'm going for the hard drives, can't count on the transfer finishing. Call if you need me, >> she says to the combatants before ducking back down underground.

She resurfaces near the computers with the storage inventory. Kitty powers the computer down and then begins removing the hard drives and sliding them into a mesh pack she pulls from a pocket.

Rogue has posed:
Rogue, and her tree, hit the ground shortly after the Sentinel she took out of the sky. Her tree has shed about fifty percent of its branches and 90 percent of its foliage at this point, but it's still a usable weapon, let alone shield. In fact, when she feels the tingling senses of danger prickling the back of her neck, the southern belle raises the tree up, the bolts sonic slamming in to the trunk, as Rogue hides behind it. With a snarl, she closes her eyes, debris and tree guts flying all around her. The Sentinel is surely proud of its rail gun, maybe even believing that it has the Mutant on her heels. But then the tree is swung like a major league home run hitter, and what follows is Rogue battering the ever living Hell out of the Sentinel. The sounds of massive tree trunk, hitting metal likely echoes for miles in every direction, as she slams it again, and again, over and over, covered in tree bits, she keeps swinging, with the hope of leaving the machine in a pile of scrap metal chunks.

Tabitha Smith has posed:
There' a lot of blinking as Tabby works to get her eyesight back. Her own blasts hitting though at most they were getting knocked about as the armor proves a lot more resilient than that of the one she double tapped earlier.

Which then proves a problem. Tabby can't go buck wild while her friends, and Quentin, are all getting up in melee range. the danger is catching them in blasts. Movement of target and teammates means a level of finesse and concentration.

So she waits and looks for her opening, her fists igniting in purple glowing plasma flames as she watches and spots her chance.

Coming up from cover she appears to throw a punch, palm opening as that plasma streams in a gout as thick as her wrist, like someone cross bred a flamethrower with an anti materiel rifle and then figured out how to remote direct the blast.

All at center mass of one of the Sentinels. "Splode you walking dildo!" she taunts.

Quentin Quire has posed:
Having successfully neutralized the strobing lights, Quentin gives himself a little fistbump of satisfaction while Psylocke, Boom-Boom, and Rogue go after two of the miniature giant Sentinels. And then immediately needs to start deflecting stray rounds of steel bolts, telekinetic energy flashing as he first deflects the rounds off in random directions. Then a slightly manical grin forms across the young man's features.

Reaching out he snags the stray rounds before any more of them slam into anything. Then it's return to sender time as he re-accelerates the bolts to almost supersonic speeds and sends them whistling towards the Sentinel.

<<Let's see how they handle a taste of their own medicine!>>

Betsy Braddock has posed:
Betsy's voice comes in over the link, << They have a couple weak points I noticed while in close. The optics in the head, and the joints aren't heavily armored. Don't go for the center mass but get precise. Time to put that Danger Room training to use. >> She grins a little, adding, << Oh, and the one I hit now has a nice weak spot in the middle of its back. But that's where we should focus. Can't hit what you can't see, right? >>

With that, Betsy reforms the telekinetic katana, waiting for an opportunity to do another leaping strike, except she has a slightly different plan for /this/ pass.

Noriko Ashida has posed:
Noriko hobbles up back to her feet lightning fast and starts side-stepping attacks as she goes about her cataloguing again.  Faster is safer.  Faster is quieter.  Faster is invisible.  Faster is invincible!  But first she punches through some dry-wall in the wall to pull out some insulation and stuffs it in her ears.  It leaves some scrapes on her knuckles where she tagged a corner of an electrical box, but aside from a little pain, that's it.

"Hopefully this stuff doesn't have asbestos in it," Noriko says with a shrug before she goes about her nerdy cataloguing business.  She climbs all over the big Sentinels husks, well what is left of them, like a little ant, flashing the camera here and there.  She even takes some shots of the mini-Sents, oooh, cool.  Action shots of the team.  Maybe she should have Jubes help her make a scrapbook.

3990b.  Right.  That's the identifier she gave this guy's left elbow.  Nori better stay on task if she's going to get everything done by the end of the fight.

Monet St. Croix has posed:
Kitty goes to duck underneath the ground. She can grab the hard drives easily enough - and the irony of the ancietnness of the computer systems is that they're analogue. She can literally phase-yank them out and they wouldn't lose thier data, since the old bits and bytes didn't get wiped quite so easily if she felt like it was a quicker way to take them with her. She's able to get everything smoothly and without interruption wtih the melee going on outside.
    Betsy goes to skid off of one of the Mini-Sentinels, having slashed off some of the armor. SHe's able to 'land' in her own fashion wtih her telekinesis even as the Sentinelt hat had just been attacked by her is engaged by Quentin. The rocket-railgun strikes back from it that Quentin does are rather nasty. IT's heavily armored and reinforced.. But a steel spike slamming in at several times the speed of sound will mess up anyone's day. The Sentinel can only contort as it dodges one, but two and then three more impale into it! It twists about, broken from the barrage but.. Still moving. And going to try and blast over at Quentin with rounds of phosphorous through the air, superheated gas intended to detonate around Quentin and his telekinetic shield! COuld it keep off the intense heat put off if he had to actually brace for it and couldn't get out of the way? Wait and see..
    On the ground, it's a matchup of Tabitha and Rogue against the one that Rogue was giving an old-fashioned ground pounding to! Rogue oges to smash into it again, fists brutally crushing into it as she slams in with fists, with her giant tree, and with Tabby go to charge over in as she goes to hammer into it from behind! And for some reason her hair is glowing massively bright and one might swear it's almost spiky for a moment as her 'punch' goes to smash through.
    Rogue rips and tears and with a final smash punches STRAIGHT through the thing, a moment later it being ripped fully in half!
    That's one down. And now that Betsy has an idea of how to hit and engage them.. She knows where to strike. And her psionic stealth is letting her hide from their mutant detectors. As she goes to stealth mode she's clearly not being picked up by them.
    Noriko is focused and on-task. Maybe she could grab something for Jubilee as a souvenir? Was there any use for a discard SEntinel flamethrower? Superspeed inventory was efficient, but might not be the funnest thing. Between NOriko and Kitty, they'd get everything they needed.

Kitty Pryde has posed:
Kitty Pryde gets the hard drives stored away. Thankfully while electronics don't like a phased object passing through them, they are themselves fine being the object that is phased and passing through something else.

<<I've got the hard drives, making my way out. Anyone needs a hand let me know,>> Kitty sends to the others, though she figures those X-men that are here can handle 3 Sentinels, especially if they aren't the full sized model.

On Kitty's way out, she kicks one of the robot heads. "Hate those things," she mutters before disappearing through the wall.

Rogue has posed:
With her tree ground down to splinters and wooden stakes, Rogue tosses what is left of the trunk aside. At Betsy's behest, she rushes toward the upper half of the Sentinel that she and Tabitha had ripped in to two. Targetting its eyes, Rogue lands upon it, beginning to pummel it with punches of her gloved fists! She keeps punching, using the bulk of her strength to bash the optical receptors to pieces, before she reaches inside with the intent to grab hold of, and tear out any important ingredients of the dreadful killer robot that she can get her powerful hand around! She grumbles, she curses under her breath, and simply rips and tears...

Betsy Braddock has posed:
Betsy leaps up after one of the remaining sentinels, but doesn't go to try and land on its back. Instead, she brings the psychic blade across its face, looking to blind it by slashing the optics. Then, she grabs its arm, and flips herself up and over it.

Seeming to hang in the air, she slices down at another weak spot, this time the fuel feeds for the rockets in its foot. Which might make flying a little difficult for it as she hits both fuel lines, then descends gracefully with the help of a more-prepared telekinetic slowdown.

Tabitha Smith has posed:
Hot air moving is what might make that ponytail seem to float. Especially when her 'punch' hits a few meters away from the target she and Rogue put down. "So we just hit them harder." she says with a chuckle and maybe a little sigh of pleasure for the blast.

That still leaves two more up and running.

Betsy's pointing out weak points gets a grin. <<They still haven't figured out how to armor joints? Good, lets see what their melting temperature is.>>

The Plasmakinetic's hands start swaying and it almost looks like a funky kata like they kept drilling her in self defense class.

More plasma starts forming in a trail while she she throws her arms forward again, index and middle fingers extended as four streams fly out seeking out the remaining sentinels' shoulders, circling the plasma around the joints, keeping it flowing and building heat, bringing it closer and closer to all that exposed metal.

No arms is less shooting back.

Noriko Ashida has posed:
Noriko stares longingly at the giant oversized mechanized hands of the dead Sentinel.  She's pretty sure Kitty would not let her get away with those for Halloween.  It'd be awfully difficult to store them and then the surprise would be ruined.

"No one needs these right?"  The speedster says to herself, now suddenly standing on the shoulders of one of the Sentinels she's scaled like Jiminy Cricket.  She does these things best when not thinking about them, like worming her way into the empty Sentinel.  The things she can do without her gauntlets on.  But there's a reason she's working alone tonight.  Little bolts of electricity jump off of her at will, especially when she sees the back of the Sentinel's eyes.  "Oooh."

Nori hangs onto one cluster of eyeball wires so she can rip out the right one, but both give way at the same time and she falls, tumbling into some of the detritus of components somewhere piled up in one of the legs with a big CLANG.

"WOO!"  A zap from her hand makes the eye glow for a twitch.  "Cool."  She then ties each eye to each other and slings it over her shoulder for balance and counterbalance before climbing up and out of the robot.  As an afterthought, she spots the phone where she left it, still safe and sound.  "YOINK!"

Quentin Quire has posed:
The first of the phosphor rounds explodes well short of the floating Kid Omega, a brief fireball of intense heat as it reacts poorly to being telekinetically snatched out of mid-air as he attempts to redirect the round in a similar fashion. Before the danger can spread and ignite pretty much everything in the area the fireball is surrounded by a sphere of energy.

<<Holy shit, they really are going old school. It's like fighting a bunch of steampunk mini-Sentinels.>>

He reaches out, snagging the other rounds in similar spheres of telekinetic energy before they can get too close, but the last one has him throwing an arm across his face from the heat. The spheres start to shrink as he calls out to the others <<Back off from that last one. This shit'll eat you up something good...>> before launching the captured phosphorous at the sentinel that fired it.

Monet St. Croix has posed:
Betsy goes to pinpoint weak points over in the flying Sentinels. Having jumped up and slashed along one was a good way to find that out. So with the coordination she moves to lead Tabitha on the ground of blasting up and onto the joints. There was really only so much you -could- armor up internals for things that had to move. Unless one started getting into off-planet metals or highly exotic things. Joints had to be able to move and twist and be flexible. But for the crowd of Xavier's folks blasting at them?
    Dibs! Tabitha's shots go to cleanly blast it apart, tearing chunks off as Betsy goes to leap up and slash when an opening is there. Two more disabled limbs.. And the thing is flashing over from the damage as it goes to try and fire a barrage of mini-rockets over at Tabitha from it's position, and charges up an electric field around itself to try and hold off Betsy, that it can't locate as it's had enough damage to ti's thrusters to prevent it from being able to smoothly fly!
    Quentin Quire's mantra in a way that the best defense is a good offense holds. And using the enemy's offense back at it is even more fun. So as the flames go to spread over, in turn they're flung back over at the Sentinel and land atop it, bathing it over in flame as flame sears and melts. And the ceramics come into play now as they slow down the heat, protecting internals.. And it's arms go to pop up now and point over at Quentin as it blasts out dozens of.. Bolts? Small ones, each about the size of a nut. With some kind of guidance system to them as they would fly towards him at high speed. Not big enough to have explosives on them, but some sort of.. Wire? Dozens and dozens of 'pairs' flying at him like aerial ball bearings.. With monofilament blades beneath that would cut him up over like a flamethrower through butter! Though the Bot is badly busted up and it can't get the heat /off/. Fire burns.. And it can't put the flames out.
    Rogue goes to beat, batter, and bludgeon her way through. THe Sentinel is torn up and thrown over the area. Like some kid had taken a toy for their birthday, gleefully ripped it apart and thrown all the pieces around. There are legs busted up,arms busted up,t orso busted up, head thrown somewhere else.. Might Jean want a wall ornament as a trophy?
    Noriko is having the bestest time while the rest of them are fighting for thier lives. As inside Kitty goes to kick down one of the heads which hits the ground with a CLANG and one might almost wonder if Surge was going 'WHEE' to accompany her WHOO as she would seemingly be having the grandest time!

Betsy Braddock has posed:
As she lands, with the Sentinel that she and Tabitha have been working on trying in vain to locate her... she actually whistles, getting it to turn in her direction. Which is all the opening she needs, as she throws the telekinetic katana, impaling the Sentinel right in the face to a shower of sparks as it is definitely having a not good very bad day.

Rogue has posed:
After thoroughly bashing, and gashing, the Sentinel, Rogue steps up from it, dropping down to the soft earth. She adjusts the suede lined collar of her leather trench coat, and lets out a heavy exhale. With a glance around to spy others within her visual range, she nods quickly two small times, then lifts up off the ground. She launches up in to the air, her coat fluttering as she ascends, her flight path taking her on a winding route around the perimeter, as she goes on a patrol for any further dangerous incoming robots.

Noriko Ashida has posed:
Noriko is having such a good time...now running away from the rest of the carnage shouting weeeeeeeeeee all the way to the rendezvous point...and the way home.  The phone is left behind with Kitty with the words, 'See you back at the Mansion -Nori' at the end of the notes in large blocky letters.  Someone needs to get these treasures back before anyone notices she absconded with them and Jean, the Eye of Sauron, somehow rips it from their brain and confiscates them.

Tabitha Smith has posed:
Despite the warning from Quentin. Tabitha has no problems with the fire being rained down on that sentinel. <<Napalm might as well be candle wax for me Quire!>> she beams up at the higher level telepath.

So any splash while she's moving on against the Sentinel she literally disarmed while Betsy stabbed it's face. More streams leave her hands as she aims one at EACH sentinel. Finding gaps in armor, filling them with her more traditionally explosive plasma.

"Lets bounce, this place is going up. I'm gonna go have a soak and a smoke!" she states and sounds very much like she just had a hell of a time. The casual walk towards a door being blown open punctuating the happy tone.

The explosions when she and everyone else gets far away getting a very contented sound.

Quentin Quire has posed:
"Good luck putting THAT fire out, you walking toaster." Kid Omega taunts from on high even as he warns everyone else telepathically <<That one was using white phosphor rounds. That shit is nasty, you don't want to breath it or get any on you.>>

Sure, Xavier's has a few healers hanging about, but why employ them if you don't have to?

The blast of ball bearings is ignored as not worth his time as they whistle and whine their way through the air towards him, the first couple skittering harmlessly off the telekinetic sheathe keeping him up in the air. But then the next rounds pass by him, the sheathe lighting up brillantly as it holds off the monofilament wire, allowing the bolo-like lengths to whistle and wrap around the shielded telepath.

"Didn't these things used to just try and capture us? When did they upgrade to straight up murder bots?" he asks as the telekinetic sheathe expands like a balloon, snapping the monofilament wire and sending the bolts falling back to the earth; no doubt cutting their way through tree branches on the way down. "Okay, fuck this noise..." he calls out as he forms a comically oversized mallet on a long handle. Swinging it back over his head he swings a mighty swing, bringing the mallet down on the burninating Sentinel, crushing it into a pancake AND smothering the phosphor flames. Leaving Boom-Boom's plasma bombs to send the warehouse up.

Monet St. Croix has posed:
The sheer brutality of the assaults from the mutants smash, explode, and wreck the remaining pair of Sentinels, even as they were smashed and obliterated over the landscape. What happens with each of the three wrecked ones is a loud pop-HISS and internal glow within. Not a self destruct, but an.. Internal meltdown. Each had released small explosive, internal phosphorous charges to their electronics. Melting everything within them to so much of a paste and smoking down. Sensors, servos, gears, computers, controllers.. Anything within that might be useful in tracking down data from them simply wilted away into nothingness. But now they had a lot of data.. And a pattern to look into.
    Someone (or something) was stealing Sentinel tech. In large amounts. And had setup a very smooth routine of doing so. They definitely had things to follow up on.