Running across the roof of an overturned car like an improvised springboard, a huge half-naked mutant leaps into the air and, clearing the police cordon with shields, lands on one of the soldiers armed with a rifle. Knocking the soldier to the ground, the enraged fanatic starts smashing the victim's head into the asphalt. However, the victim's comrades aren't asleep, and a rifle bullet pierces the idiot's head, drenching the man beneath him in a mixture of bone fragments, blood, and bits of brain.
Heh... I thought the moron charging at a bunch of soldiers with rifles, bare-assed, must have mush for brains, but look at that...
With a furious howl, a mob of enraged and desperate X-gene carriers charges straight at the locked police shields. The defending soldiers respond immediately—mounted machine guns on the roofs of military Humvees spew long bursts, and a hail of lead tears through the advancing mutant crowd, ripping their bodies into bloody shreds.
Well... The zerg rush tactic with cannon fodder didn't pay off. Although it stopped being effective since the advent of the first machine guns, it seems these guys watched some cheap war movies and decided to recall the proverb: "The new is the well-forgotten old." Rest in pieces, degenerates...
In the next second, one of the military off-roaders is covered in a crimson haze, spurts a final stream of red liquid, and crumples into a meter-wide ball of steel and flesh. Hovering over the devastated square, Magneto waves his hand, and the remains of the vehicle destroyed by his daughter, along with numerous metal fragments, rise into the air and rain down as a deadly shower on the positions of the National Guard soldiers entrenched before City Hall.
Ah, here comes the heavy artillery of the mutants. Although it would be strange if Magneto didn't show up at such a showdown—despite his advanced age, this old man can still give everyone a run for their money. But for every mutant ass, there's an anti-mutant bolt...
The old Jew's triumph ends as quickly as it began, because the regular soldiers are supported by fighters from the Weapon X program, who know their opponent's weaknesses well and have long prepared for this encounter. As soon as the metal starts flying through the air, defying the laws of physics, snipers perched on nearby high-rises quickly find their target, and several small spherical lightning bolts hit the body of the head of the Brotherhood of Mutants. Magneto's metallic suit is very poorly penetrated by anything, but it has excellent electrical conductivity. Having received a concentrated charge of life-giving current into his body, the victim of Nazism loses consciousness and plummets to the ground.
So they sent the old man into retirement... No, the Scarlet Witch manages to catch her stubborn daddy mid-flight and, creating a shield of crimson energy around them, drags the head of the Brotherhood away from the line of confrontation. But even if Lensherr survived, he won't be able to continue the fight anytime soon, and the X-gene carriers have lost one of their strongest fighters.
The scales tipped sharply in favor of the supporters of the current U.S. government... But it's too early for them to celebrate victory, because not all the pieces have been put on the chessboard yet.
A moment later, several quinjets with S.H.I.E.L.D. symbols make a sharp turn and, flying between the high-rises, fire a whole fan of rockets at the nearest buildings. Half of them suppress the firing points of the Program's shooters, while the other half hit the positions of the National Guard precisely. Amid the roar of cannon fire, complete chaos reigns on the positions of the American soldiers, and field commanders desperately try to bring some order to it. Most of the guards survived, but they didn't expect attacks from Fury's department—despite all the screams about a neutral position, S.H.I.E.L.D. is a strictly pro-American company and never acts against the star-spangled troops... At least not openly.
What a twist!
Even more annoying is that, in reality, it's not Fury's henchmen but von Strucker's agents, whom the head of Hydra transferred to aid the mutants rebelling against the "tyranny." On one hand, to create problems for the former CIA agent, and on the other, to prevent government troops from quickly suppressing the resistance of the desperate X-gene carriers, most of whom are an unorganized mob and cannot compete with the regular army.
As they say—show must go on!
But the appearance of the Hydra agents doesn't end the chaos and general bacchanalia—oh no...
One of the National Guard commanders has been shouting something into a portable radio since the beginning of the commotion, and it seems he finally got through to his interlocutor. A loud hum is heard in the air, and several huge humanoid robots land in the center of the square on jet streams.
Honestly, I've never understood why killing machines need to look like humans. No, in Terminator or RoboCop, this theme was clear and logical. In the first case, the robot was an infiltrator, embedding itself in human society and disguising itself as a human for unimpeded access to the elimination target. In the second, Alex Murphy was given a fleshy-leathery face over an armored metal shell because a police robot mainly works with people and should inspire at least some trust in law-abiding citizens.
But the Sentinels are hunters! So why not make them look like some multi-legged blob with a gun attached on top? The human body isn't exactly the most effective option in this case!
Raising their hands, the metal machines activate the repulsors located in their palms, and giant beams of bright yellow energy hum through the air. Starting to sweep through the mutant crowd, they quickly thin out the forces of the X-gene carriers and instantly turn dozens of people into ashes. One of the Sentinels raises its head upward, and a pair of bright red lasers shoot down one of the quinjets, which crashes with a roar just a few meters from the National Guard positions, scattering some of the soldiers with a powerful explosion.
Hmm... The artificial intelligence of these tin cans clearly lacks consequence prediction. However, they don't have to mourn "friendly fire" for long. The owners of the Sentinels see that their iron brothers have been quickly dealt with, and the remaining machines guarding the cargo change tactics and try to counterattack, concentrating their fire on the unmasked and hovering quinjets. However, no longer suppressed by the fire of the sniper Pers, they raise their heads, and the advance of Stark's marionettes quickly chokes.
This major cut corners on the government order, oh, he cut corners... For which the Syndicate expresses its deep gratitude.
Alpha-One to squads. Readiness number one. Brock tosses me a semi-automatic battle rifle, and to the rhythmic hum of servos, we stand in front of the landing compartment, while the other fighters check their weapons and line up behind our duo. Some of Stark Industries' robots might have survived the barrage, and the owners of heavy exoskeletons go in the first wave to take the possible hit of the surviving bots. Beta-One, aim more carefully—we're entering your firing zone... Go!
The landing compartment doors silently slide apart, revealing a view of the rusty, littered with overturned wagons and plowed by explosions, desert. But there's no time to enjoy the scenery—the feet barely touch the ground when a bright white laser beam hits the chest, creating a small explosion that knocks me to the ground.
My head is slightly buzzing, but the power of the energy beam turns out to be insufficient, and the polymer-covered chest plate withstands the direct hit. In the next second, the body of the metal bolt that shot at me trembles from the shots of Brock covering my back. Knowing who we're up against, we took not assault rifles but battle rifles with a much larger caliber for this mission, and a dozen armor-piercing bullets into the body are enough to hit the vital nodes of the combat machine.
This is Alpha-Two. After giving the fallen iron a control shot, Crossbones scans the immediate surroundings with the sensors built into his helmet and, convinced of the absence of other enemies, goes on the general channel. These are shit-bots of the eighth model. Their power block is sunk into the body, and shooting at the head is useless. Aim two fingers to the left and three below the center of the chest.
Timely... Noticing movement among the wagons, I jerk to my feet, and the body of another robot is pierced by several stacked shots, forcing the combat machine to take a few steps back and stretch out on the dirty red ground. And did you have to share your knowledge only after takeoff?
Well, Stark is constantly creating new dolls, and each version has different vulnerabilities. We're lucky that he palmed off one of the shittiest varieties of his... Suddenly, Brock cuts himself off mid-sentence and, tilting his head back, nods toward the cloudless sky, against which a small but rapidly growing dark dot is clearly visible. What the hell is that?
Activating the sensors to full power, I follow Brock's example and...
Is it a bird?!
Is it a plane?!
It's a headache!
These are the phrases flashing through my mind as the cyber-eye scanner displays the image of an armored suit approaching us with a six-barrel machine gun sticking out from behind its shoulder...---