X-Men of Tomorrow By Ben Church The X-Men, Gyric and the Sentinel are the property of Marvel Comics. Mulder and Scully are owned by either Ten Thirteen Productions or Fox. The Tomorrow People are the property of Nickelodeon Studios. Max, Flash, Shade and The Cat are Twist's. Chapter 7 Somewhere April 18 11:05 a.m. Unseen by human eyes, Adam, Kevin, Max, Flash, Changeling, Illusion, The Cat and Shade materialized behind some machinery. Unfortunately they were only unseen by human eyes. "MUTANT SIGNATURES DETECTED." The Sentinel declared. "PROCEEDING WITH CAPTURE." "Oh no." Jubilee groaned. "Not again." "You guys go take care of the Old Lady's goons." Changeling grinned. "I'll take care of the Amazing Colossal Man here." "What are you going to do?" Shade asked. "Something I've always wanted to do." As the others split up into the maze of corridors, Changeling turned and faced the approaching Sentinel. Slowly, his skin turned green and he began to grow. Hotshot and Megabyte materialized out of sight from the Old Lady and her guards. Hotshot raised his wrist and looked in confusion at the device strapped to it. "What's wrong?" Megabyte asked worriedly. "My watch stopped, what time you got?" Megabyte looked at his own watch. "Ten after eleven." Hotshot made the adjustments and then brought his other wrist, the one with the Cerebro unit on it up to his eye level. "All right," Hotshot said. "I've got a fix on them. Let's go." "How are your friends doing?" Megabyte asked. Hotshot looked towards the sounds of battle. "Oh good grief." he said. "What?" "Shaw's been watching too many late night movies." Behind them, Changeling had taken the form of the horror movie monster Godzilla to fight the Sentinel. "Let's hope he doesn't get carried away. That Sentinel is our ticket home." "Why not just go back through the portal you came in?" "Because it's right on our front lawn. We don't want Gyric to know where we live." Bob and Rich, two of the mercenaries in the employ of the Old Lady stalked the corridors of the power plant. "You really think anybody broke in here?" Rich asked. "I hope so." Bob answered. "Ever since the lady got that goddamn robot, I've been goin' nuts wit' boredom." Behind them, one of the shadows along the wall began to move towards them. "Yeah I know what you mean." Rich agreed. "Ever since she got obsessed wit' those kids she been sayin' `I want them alive`. We don't get to kill anybody anymore." The shadow moved up to the men and solidified into human form. Shade smacked Rich in the back of the head and quickly changed back into a shadow. "What'd you do that for ya yutz?" Rich asked angrily. "Do what?" Bob asked. "This." Rich smacked Bob in the back of the head. Bob hit him back and soon the two were involved in a fierce fist fight. "That ought to keep them occupied for a while." Shade thought and settled back to wait. She would take out the winner. Mike strode casually along the hallway, whistling his favorite song, "I'm in the Money". Suddenly he stopped and stared ahead of him in disbelief. There was a teenager before him looking at him in shock. The boy turned and ran down the hall. "Hey!" Mike yelled. "Come back here!" Mike chased the boy down the hall. The boy ran through a doorway at the end of the hallway. Mike followed him and ran smack into the wall. He bounced off and fell to the floor unconscious. The door disappeared and Illusion dropped his invisibility. "Maybe I've been watching too much `Looney Toons`." he thought. Bob stood over the unconscious body of his former friend Rich. "Had enough?" he panted. It had been one hell of a fight. Shade came up behind him with a shovel and brought it down on his head. He too, fell to the floor, unconscious. "So far this has been way too easy." she said. Joe walked nervously down the hall, his gun at the ready. Suddenly, in the darkness ahead of him, he heard something fall to the floor. He turned on his flashlight and crept up to where the noise had come from. He soon found the source of the noise. A crate had fallen off it's shelf. Then a black shape launched itself at him from the shelf. The Cat screeched as she leapt onto the man's face, biting and clawing. Joe threw the cat away from him and ran screaming back down the hall. Peter stood where he knew the man would come. He could tell he was coming because he could hear the man screaming. "That cat plays rough." he thought with a grin. Joe skidded to a stop when he came face to face with a boy wielding a sword. "Hi!" Peter said cheerily. "Wanna play a game?" He swiped at the man's stomach, slashing his shirt. Joe looked down at his shirt, and fainted. "Wuss." Peter snorted. Max stood in the middle of the hall, blocking a guard's path. "Well, well, well." he said. "Looks like the old lady ain't so paranoid after all." "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you." Max replied. "Heh, I love that line. Goodbye now." He fired his gun but the bullets ricocheted off the shield that had materialized in front of her. Max had compressed the air around her into this shield protecting her from the man's gun. Unfortunately she had also thinned the air around her so she was stuck catching her breath. The guard was quick to take advantage of this fact. He rushed forward to take her down but he himself was taken down by a blow to the back of the head. "What took you so long?" Max asked her brother. Adam and Kevin stood in the hall waiting for the last two guards. "All right, you're sure the door is locked from the outside?" Adam asked. "Positive." Kevin answered. "All right then let's go." When they caught sight of the two guards, they 'ported to them, grabbed them from behind, and 'ported them into the locked room. "Not bad for pacifists eh?" Adam smiled. The Sentinel's weapons fire glanced harmlessly off Godzilla's tough green hide. "I knew this was the right form for the job." Changeling thought. Finally, Hotshot and Megabyte arrived at the stasis chambers containing the X-Men. "You've got some weird friends." remarked Megabyte, when he saw the mutants imprisoned in the chambers. "Yup, they're something all right. They appear to be unharmed. I guess the Sentinel's just took them by surprise, coming from an alternate dimension instead of from the air. But there still should have been some sign of a battle. Oh well, look for a control panel or something." "I think I found it." Megabyte said, indicating a panel with multicolored lights on it. Hotshot looked over. "That looks like it. Man this is primitive. Now all I have to do is hack into the computer and find the release mechanism." Megabyte held his hand over the controls and his hand glowed. The Computer beeped, and the chambers opened. "I knew there was a reason I brought you along." Hotshot grinned. "Well, unless anyone has any other ideas, I think we'll just kill them." the woman said smiling. "I got one!" a deep gravlely voice shouted. Suddenly a red beam flashed across the room and struck the gun from Masters' hand. "How about you surrender to the nice officers." Scully and Mulder acted as one. They quickly disarmed the men holding guns on them, and retrieved their guns. "I like his suggestion." Mulder said. The woman looked about in despair. Her prisoners were free. "Sentinel!" Gyric called. "Abort Mission! Access code zero nine four zero A!" The Sentinel stopped moving. Changeling began to shrink back to his true form. "That was getting boring anyway." "The code has been changed. Now it will respond only to voice commands from me." Gyric said. "It's over." Epilogue Washington DC April 19 10:00 a.m. Mulder finished typing the report for the whole crazy affair, and slipped the file in with the rest of them. "Skinner's going to have a fit when he reads this one." he said. Scully sighed in relief. She'd survived another one, with her sanity more or less intact. "Can't wait to see how you explain all this." Mulder smirked. Somewhere in the Atlantic April 19 10:00 a.m. Megabyte and his friends relaxed in beach chairs they'd set up on the beach. They'd survived another adventure, and they had some new friends. They'd probably never see them again, but they were friends all the same. "I hope things will be normal from now on." Kevin said. "Or as normal as they can be for a bunch of people with superpowers." Washington DC April 15 1:00 p.m. Gyric dropped the design for the dimensional weapon in the trash and lit it. He never intended to go through that again. He'd erased the files from the computer and had the weapon destroyed. Westchester County, New York April 15 1:00 p.m. Beast finished his scans of the cat. "I'm afraid that I can't do anything for you. You'll just have to wait till your brother figures out how to turn you back." *Oh jeeze! My brother! I forgot all about him!* "Well give me his number, I'll give him a call." Professor Xavier checked the area for any residual effects from the dimensional door. There were none. "Thank goodness for that." he thought. "I hope things will settle down for a while." "All right, fess up!" Jubilee said. "How come one Sentinel managed to capture you without any sign of a struggle?" "Oh, dat's an easy one petite." Gambit replied. "Prof detected dat portal and we went t'rough to see where it went. Then the sentinel got us while we were disoriented." "Hmmph." Hotshot thought. "Sounds a little too pat to me." The End Next: Werewolves