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As if Mutant Town didn't have enough problems to deal with, something like this happens!
It starts as a typical day in the generally nicer parts of Mutant Town. People going about their business. Kids playing stickball in the streets and dodging cars coming by. The occasional mutant finally realizing they have powers. And of course, highly mobile engines of destruction!
…perhaps that last one isn't typical, but it is cause for alarm! Shouts and screams of panic as the residents run for cover. The machines themselves are strange looking. They bear a resemblance to scorpions, save for that they only have 4 legs, their bodies are spheres, and the tails seem more like strange eyes then they do stingers. Though they have a pair of nasty pincers, and are the size of cars, so they aren't all cuddles. The three that run amok in the streets pause every so often as their tails swivel about and lock onto various targets before the bodies proceed. It's clear if someone doesn't intervene, they're going to catch up with some of the running citizens and undoubtedly do them harm.
*
Lorna had once more taken up her volunteering at Mutant Town's community center. Between Seth's insults about how she wasn't truly helping the mutants there, and the general 'off' feeling that had been hounding her since her freedom from Mojo had happened, she had returned. Boxes of donated supplies had been driven by the van from the Frost Institute, a few other college kids willingly aiding her with the unloading and the alike. Community service was part and parcel of what colleges loved, and it had been approved previously.
Of course, that previously had been before the Mutant Town Massacre and slaughter.
Lorna, herself, at least looked the part of a passable mutant now. Green hair free and loosely hanging down her back as she lifted a box with both hands and unpacked it. She was humming a tune playing over the radio in the community center, which was quickly drowned out by screams outside.
With a twist in her chest, a knot of fear wrenched in her gut. What was happening now? Lorna darted from the building and very quickly came to spot the metal looking machines terrorizing the section of the city. They were hard to miss. Fear whitened her face, even as she threw her hands out toward the bits of metal that made up her armor from the van.
It only took one slaughter of mutants to make her paranoid.
With the addition of a metallic headband around her forehead that hooked around her her face in matching green, the hue far darker than her hair in an off-set sort of way. It took seconds, and then Lorna was racing off down the street, choosing to run rather than her shaky flight skills. It wasn't hard to dodge the crowds fleeing the opposite direction. With a great push on her powers as she drew with in a few hundred yards of the machines, she tried to see if she might topple them down.
*
The mechanical scorpions pause for a moment once more, before, strangely, all three of them turn their tail eyes towards the approaching Lorna and locking onto her before beginning to scuttle their way towards the metallic heir. But as he powers fling outwards towards them, they get knocked over, crashing and skidding along the street and staying still for a moment, one of them actually on its back. But that seems to quickly prove ineffective as it just reverses the bend in its legs and tail, and gets right back up with the others.
«Mutant threat assessed. Category: Gamma» One of the robots pipes up in an unsettlingly metallic voice, before clapping its pincers at Lorna and making to close the gap between them, the other two moving swiftly alongside it. But the last one in the back suddenly stops, swivelling its tail around to a loud roaring noise. Making a flying leap towards the scorpion machine is a big blue blur of a figure, dressed in nothing, but tights around the pelvis and a big pair of hands raising up to smash the back of the creature. "Miserable cur! Have a go at someone your own strength!"
*
Lorna comes to a halt before the machines as they twist and target her. Her eyes going wide as the machine eyes scan her just as quickly as they get back up from her shove. With teeth gritted, and hands held up and out from her person, she prepared to try another shove as the things came barreling her way. She didn't know that such technology existed on Earth, that robots like that were even possible!
But she had seen such things in the Mojo-verse.
Her skin prickled with fear and she backed up a step, and another, before something blue came charging out and attacked the machines before her.
Her eyebrows shot upwards, but she didn't hesitate, reaching deep within her and around her, she drew heavily on the electricity that hummed on wires above her from telephone poles and some that had been knocked down with the machines.
Electricity crackled around her, boosting and amplifying the magnetic field that surrounded her. With a snarl on her lips she reached out for the remaining two machines, both hands raised toward them and made to try to slam them into one another.
*
As the blue man wrecked the mechanical scorpion behind the other two, the remaining pair stop to turn their tails at the carnage and speak again. «Gamma level threat detected. Suggested course of-» Whatever the first scorpion was about to say was immediately cut off the by the sudden blast of electromagnetic energy slamming to pair together. Evidently, whatever was in that bolt of power also seemed to magnetize them, as the pair squirm and flail their legs to try and get free, only to have the partner pull the other back from his efforts.
As the blue brute finishes pulling apart the body of the first, he rips off one half of a pincer and looks back. "Ms. Dane! Quickly! Pierce them through the chests! The central processors are in their chests!" From the sound of it, it's most definitely Beast! He chucks the pincer up and over the scorpions towards Lorna, apparently hoping she will catch it and use it to skewer the scorpions.
*
Lorna gritted her teeth in exertion, drawing more on the downed power lines to feed the heightened state of her powers. The raw mass of electro-magnetism around her magnified twice over what her abilities usually were, and the strain was beginning to creep on the edges of her control. The tossed metal skewer was caught not by a conscious act on Lorna's part, but rather on the magnetic currents that spun around her in an invisible manner save the static of electricity that snapped at the eges of the power lines.
It was a precarious position that Lorna, or rather, Polaris, found herself in. At least the other two things were magnetized together and didn't actively require her focus or attention.
With a hiss of flagging power and exertion, Lorna gestured with both of her hands, seizing the metal projectile and launching it after the machines as she'd been told to do so.
*
As Polaris launches the pincer into the magnetized scorpions, the makeshift spear pierces the pair, causing them to writhe and twitch a bit before finally coming to a halt. Sparks and wires flew from the holes the projectile had made, but from the looks of it, the trio of mechanical monstrosities were defeated! Now all that was left to do was for Polaris to "turn off" her powers.
Beast hopped off the scorpion he'd been ripping apart and walked towards the pair Lorna had skewered, placing a hand on them. "Most troubling… I fear something dangerous has brought itself to light…"
*
Lorna struggled to regain control of her powers, breathing hard as she collapsed down to her knees. Eyes closed as she tried to slow her breathing, in and out, in and out. Hands clutched at over her head, trying to shut out the roar of her metallic senses that were now charged higher than she was used to. The good in all of this was in fact, that so long as she wasn't drawing on the power lines, the electricity that powered her boosted magnetism, faded. Even if a good portion of Mutant Town was now missing power as a result.
And then all was left was an over exhausted Lorna, still crouched down on the ground before the downed machines.
"Professor Hank, I-I don't feel so good. W-what are those things?" Her head pounded, and she left like she'd just run a mile in an instant. Was this how Pietro and Tommy felt like when they didn't get enough to eat?
*
"Oh dear. Lay down, Ms. Dane, try to breathe." Hank said, moving to the young lady's side and urging her on her back, taking her wrist and checking her pulse. "Dear me… I may have pushed you a bit far. My apologies, Lorna…" Wow, Hank must be worried. He actually called her by her first name instead of the formal one! "Remember to breathe. That's it, well done. Excellent work, I must say."
Making sure she was okay, Hank turned back to the metal scorpion things and hummed a bit. "…I fear I don't know. I received a call from a parent of one of the students claiming some machines were running amok in Mutant Town. But they are clearly not standard military technology… and what truly worries me is they could identify- and, from the sound of it, classify -mutants. Judging from their aggressive behavior, I would say they are… anti-mutant weapons of some type."
*
Lorna did as she was told, laying back with a wary glance around her, eyes wide and brow pinched in worry. "Are there more? I-I don't think I can handle more. I'm so tired." She mumbled, a grimace pulling at her lips.
"I think I over did it. A bit." A pause, "My father's gonna kill me.."
Her skin was clammy with sweat and her pulse was pounding like a runner's. She nearly looked as green as her hair as he spoke of anti-mutant weapons.
"But how? I don't get it. This makes no sense. Are they actually from here? There's other dimension you know. And things. And—" She broke off with a pause and shifted to sit up, off the damp road slick from the rains earlier in the day. "We shouldn't stay here, in the road. If the cops show up.."
*
"I will address your father's concerns. It was my urging that you acted on. You just relax a moment longer." Hank nodded, before standing up and moving to one of the scorpions, taking the tail in his hand. "I would like to… get a sample..!" Hank tugged and with a mighty rip of metal, the tail came off, before moving to push the pincer clear of the wreck and reaching in. He fished inside before giving a grunt, and tugging out something else. What looks like a large metal box with wires protruding from every angle.
"This should be sufficient. Looks to be a core processor unit." Hank turned and nodded. "I have heard the reports of this… alternative dimension. But I do not believe these things are from there. I will explain more later. If you can, meet me at the Institute at some time. For now, I believe it would be wise to relocate ourselves. Undoubtedly, the authorities will have questions." He looked at the tail in his hand. "And I have some of my own as well… can you move?"
*
A grimace, as Lorna watched from her position on the ground, still catching her breath. Finally, as Hank reached in and yanked out some odd looking box with wires, her had tilted. "Processor? What's that mean?" Computers were most assuredly not in Lorna's long list of education. Not that the computers that she'd seen ever looked like that. The whole thing reeked of a scienece fiction novel.
"Dimensions, there's a lot of them, apparently." She shrugged and pushed her hair back from her face, the metal headband that framed her features coming off with a tug. She wiped her brow and nodded, looking faintly queasy at the thought of getting up and moving.
"I was still going to do something with or without being told to, Professor." She offered with a wince, and stood. "And yeah, I think I can move."